It's The End Of The World As We Know It.

I won't be one of the first people to experience it on live being I am at work but I have taken a sneak peak already like a lot of curious players surely have.  The changes are astounding to say the least but I can not help but already miss certain things.

For instance, the docks when you first arrive to darkshore.  I've started many new characters on new servers where I did not have a sugar daddy 80 to give them gold and I used those docks to make gold.  A brand spanking new character, with 30 minutes of fishing from those docks, could easily find themselves with 50 gold.  That 50 gold would be enough to get somewhat decent bags and bags make leveling 100 times easier.  Where can I go for quick and easy cash now?

There are some places that needed a boost really because there was almost no reason to visit them.  Changes to the areas will surely bring a lot of visitors there but it will be a temporary thing.  Once people have gone there and taken in the scenery then what?  They go back to where the top level content is so they can hang there, farm there, or wait there for their raids.

There are a few places I will miss but over all the impact on me outside of those small things is extremely minimal.  Leveling in the new world will be fun. I have a Hunter, a Pally and a Warrior that are still just babies on an RP server that will get some attention in the new world.  That is something to look forward too.

Changing the old world is nice and all and it does progress the story of the game but over all it is sadly a complete and total waste of programmer and designer resources.  The amount of time that was spent redesigning what was there must have been huge.  While I do agree that a change was needed I do not believe that change should have really been, what seems like, a large portion of what this expansion will bring.  I do understand that the changes are across the whole world, not just for the expansion owners but it is still marketed as part of cataclysms changes so we have to consider that the time spent making cataclysm is also the time spend doing this.

If they spent even half that time on working on raids, mechanics, class balance, stopping bots, etc then the game would be 100 times better then it is now with just new scenery. 

The new Feathermoon is amazing I think.  I hated the old one because it was blah and it was so far away.  Now it is a tiny bit closer and looks incredible.  Does this mean I will go there?  Nope. Will I go there to look at it?  At some point, maybe.  Outside of a quest requiring me to go there I do not see any reason I will ever go there.  So all that time spent redesigning that is completely and totally wasted on me.  Actually, it is wasted on everyone. Even a first time player. 

There is no need outside of questing to ever go there and the old version was fine for that purpose.  After I quested there on my main my first time through playing the game I have never been through there again, never.  No need to.  It is so far out of the way and the quests are all spread out.  It is not an ideal area to quest.  Once you see it, there is never any need to go back.  Even with the redesign it will be the same.  Once you see it there is no reason to ever go back there.

While over all I support the changes, I do think an update of sorts was needed, I do not think it should be something that is being considered part of an expansion.  They could have just as easily updated little bits here and there when there was nothing going on and worked on other important things.

Don't get me wrong I do like the changes and being I am a questing fool I will do each and every quest that has been changed or added and is open to me to do.  It will give me a chance to enjoy the new old world.  I really am going to enjoy seeing it all again with new eyes.

I just question the over all thought put into this rebuilding.  As I said before, there is no reason to visit feathermoon before the change and there is no reason to visit feathermoon after.  All that work for nothing.

Blizzard should have considered making zones a bit more dynamic instead of making them pretty.  Scale mobs to the person attacking them.  If a level 40 runs past it will attack a level 40 creature, if a level 80 passes by they will attack a level 80 creature.  If a miner at level 20 passes by he will find a copper node and if a level 80 miner passes by he will find a saronite node. 

You get where I am going with this?  Make the zones all current for when you are at max level.  Only when at max.  So if a level 60 goes through a 40 zone they see 40 stuff but if a level 80 goes through they see 80 stuff, they pick 80 herbs, they mine 80 nodes, the skin 80 leather, they get 80 drops, etc.  Now there is a damn good reason to make me go to feathermoon.  It is so out of the way no one would ever go there.  So it would make for a perfect mining, herbing, skinning area being there would be less competition.  Now I would have a reason to see this feathermoon more then just once as I visit and never come back again.

It would have been as easy to code as redesigning the entire landscape was most likely and it would have actually made all these areas worth visiting again.  As it is, even as pretty as they look, 98% of azeroth will still be unused once everyone gets their first visits out of the way.  The way they did it gives top level players a reason to visit it once, if they made it dynamic based on top level it gives top level players a reason to visit it often.


Now that would have been a fantastic change to the game and not just a minor cosmetic one that this will be.  So say goodbye to the old things we will miss, say hello to the new things we have and when cataclysm comes we can go back to completely ignoring them like we have ever since we passed them the first time.  It will be like a kid with a new toy.  Everyone will love it and enjoy it and then cataclysm will come out and no one will ever see any of it again.  Sad really.  All that wasted time to make it and it will get thrown away again in 2 weeks.  They really should have used that time to do something that would have been good for the game.

Working on Cooking

The Pilgrim's Bounty is something I have been waiting for.  The reason being is that since it last passed I started a bunch of new characters.  Two of them I leveled cooking the old fashion way, I worked to level it.  This required fishing, hunting, running all over for recipes that I needed, even the occasional visit to the auction house.

Is there any more satisfaction doing it that way then doing it easy?  Nope.  High cooking is high cooking no matter how you got it there really.  With that in mind I stopped training cooking on my characters looking forward to pilgrim's bounty time.  Not saying I never picked it up.  I did.  But usually somewhere between 60 and 160 it died out.  Either because I needed to go somewhere out of the way to get a recipe or over pay on the auction house.  Two things I had no desire in doing. 

That is where this holiday event comes in.  You can easily get to 305 minimum and 350 maximum doing the quests and cooking from the recipes that are supplied for the event.

Basically you will need around 80 of each unique item, there are three, one each in each of the vanilla cities.  If you do the quest line the best way to handle this is to not make anything until you got the quest for it that says "prepare 5" of the item.  Once you get that quest, cook 80 of them.

Keep the others on hand because you will get a quest to turn in 20 so might as well already have them done being you were doing them to level any way.

On the last step if you go over the 80 mark and really stress it you can get it up to 295.  I would suggest that, the materials are cheap so getting 1 skill up every 4 or 5 is no big deal.  It also means less turkey hunting should you want to max it later.

Once you go back to do the turkey one you will need to get 25 turkeys anyway for both quests for it so kill 25 and go back and cook them and you will be at 320 cooking.  If you really want to you can go and kill more turkeys and get it up to 350 or if you want you can stop at 280 on the previous cooking and only get up to 305 with cooking the turkeys.

Either way, for much cheaper, less time, less travel, and some achievements made along the way, you will get cooking up to 305 at least.  Usually you can power level it from there using the auction house.  So many people leveling through BC areas sell meat and fish dirt cheap.  Just a matter of grabbing the recipes which in BC, with flight, is a hell of a lot faster then hunting them down in vanilla.

Love this event for the ease of leveling cooking.  I am not working on the meta achievement on any of the other characters.  I did it on my main last year and in truth it was most of them are not fun in the slightest.  It is not something I would ever want to do again on any of my other characters unless there is a pet or mount or title I might want.  With the exception of the polymorph rabbit from noblegarden I do not think there is anything in any event I would go after now.

I am proud of the achievement for a long strange trip on my main but it is not something I will ever do again even if you paid me to do it.  Not sure what type of person would consider doing some of the crap they have us do as fun.  90% of the things you do for these events are purely time wasters and nothing more. 

In the end, all you get out of it is a mount and master flight now.  That is 4,000g (with faction rep discount). It will take you at least 100 hours to complete all the crap for the meta.  Most of it is either boring or frustrating.  Now, in that same 100 hour you can make 40,000g with ease even if you are not an auction house master mind.  So lets see. 100 hours get the mount and flight for one character or 100 hours gets no mount but flying for all 10 characters on a server.  I'll take 310% for everyone and only worry about the meta on my main if that is really what you are into.  Most of these events are useless.

Except for this one.  It is something that everyone should do even if you do not care about cooking.  Why not level it up if it is cheap and easy?

Pro Tip:
If you have a Mage, hang around one of the tables, people will whisper you for ports.  I made almost 500 gold and I was not even trying.  I was just getting my cooking up and at that it was really early in the morning and not many where on yet.  Once I was done I logged off.  Imagine if I stayed around?  I could have easily made 10K gold yesterday.