Cataclysm … 4 Days Later

Now that I have a few days under my belt in Cataclysm the first thing that stands out for me is I seem to be leveling extremely fast. I feel like I have a full set of heirlooms on my druid which I don’t. I had read about professions giving XP and of course forgot about it in all the excitement so my plan to slow down by doing some archaeology didn’t work so well, lol, I dinged 81 in Tanaris digging up fossils. Got to get my Fossilized Hatchling completed. I am happy about archaeology, not because the mechanics are fun it’s about as much fun as fishing, yeah, that fun. I am happy as it finally gives me an excuse to visit places I remember fondly but outside of getting Loremaster there was no reason to go back to. I had really hoped that Blizzard would come up with something so that I could revisit my favorite places like Winterspring and Tanaris and they have.

I have always favored Darnassus and Ironforge so I was dreading having to hang around Stormwind but hello, we have color-coded roofs! Now that I can fly over Stormwind I’m finally finding my way around by the rooftops, this is great, I now don’t have to wonder aimlessly about SW while the guards eye me suspiciously.

I now realize that as soon as Cataclysm launched I was able to get over my obsession with being fried by Deathwing. It seems the look I got at him flying into Mount Hyjal satisfied my burning (ha) desire to see him.

And boy, did I ever forget how crowded zones are at the start of a new expansion. I thought I’d give Hyjal a day to thin out so went through the Worgen starting zone. The experience there was a complete 180 from my first character’s experience back in vanilla. My hunter really leveled through vanilla for the most part by grinding because I couldn’t ever find the quest hubs or for that matter the quest items. Okay some of it was caused by my inexperience and the lack of the resources there are today but Darkshore was, well, painful.

Gilneas on the other hand was not. I almost got whiplash as I was ushered along my quest lines. I’m sure I didn’t miss any quests, it was pretty linear. For the most part I was happy with this it sure beat stumbling around Darkshore but I think it was a little cruel to litter the area with mining nodes when there was no way to learn professions or were those trainers hiding somewhere and I just didn’t find them?

Overall I’m thrilled with my new alternate universe, my home away from home, or um my home while I’m at home, oh whatever, you know what I mean. Oh and one last thing. I am ecstatic about going to the AH and seeing something DIFFERENT, geez, I don’t even care if I can’t use it I was so tired of knowing everything listed at the auction house by heart.