More 6.0 Observations

A few days in and we’ve definitely got a feel for the new flavor of WoW.   Yesterday I talked about the many immediate changes that bombarded us in the first minutes we logged in, but now the details can be absorbed a bit better.

Class changes are interesting.  The only thing I had to do on Saintvache was choose two new talents.  His action bars went nearly untouched.  I could not say the same for Tumunzahar, Siori, and Liouxpold.  Perhaps it’s an Alliance thing.  Speaking of classes, many people found Burnt Glyphs in their possession now.  Rest assured that’s just for Glyphs that are no longer in the game.

I completed the Iron Horde invasion on the Horde side, and while I don’t know the details of what is to follow, I really hope it isn’t done now.  I came out of it with a title and a new pet, but incredibly underwhelmed.  That and agitated because Thrally-Sue (which I think I’ll call him far more often now) had to be the one running around on the front line.  Really?  There couldn’t be anyone else?  The guy had a whole expansion dedicated to him (Deathwing was merely supporting cast) and still we get him shoved down our throat.  Not to rant too much, because up until the later parts of Cataclysm I actually liked Thrall.  It’s just that Blizzard has overplayed him.  Getting back to the Iron Horde, it seemed pretty linear and to the point.  I’ll have to flip over and give the Alliance side a try before I really assess it but I can’t imagine it is all that different.

One no longer has to spend so much time in Pandaria.  I logged into a toon and found it sitting at 100% XP, but hadn’t dinged yet.  There’s no way in Dire Maul I would ever let that happen.  The OCD in me would have to ding before I logged.  Particularly because that’s less than exploratory XP.  That’s more along the lines of “you dinged because the wind changed direction.”  Now, to confirm this is the case, I played for a little while and had six bubbles in half an hour.  At 88.  Hrm, this place really might not be that bad anymore.

The final nugget of “huzzah” is stacking.  Imagine my surprise when I had the bank open and decided to top up my stack of Dreamfoil and sell the rest.  Suddenly I had a stack of 28!  I began playing around with this immediately, finding eventually that stacks cap at 200 now.  Between that and the Toy Box my bags are bordering on empty (and the bag sort feature is fantastic).  But what it really excites me for is my guild banks.  For Claws, it just means having a cleaner bank.  For the auctioneer in me, it means more room to store goodies.  I mean, just look at the difference in one tab.

It wasn’t 100% good news, though.  On top of shelling out gold for some face lifts (I think I spent about 200g or so in total.  Obviously someone with more 90’s than I spent even more), I found that some gear held onto its transmogrification, while others reset.  Needless to say, many of my toons look incredibly goofy so I will have to correct that when given the chance to.

I’m sure many people knew about these changes already, from playing the PTR or reading about it.  For me, I have been incredibly removed from these details of the game as I’ve been merely puttering in it for the past few months.  I vaguely kept tabs on what’s going on and really didn’t read the changes ahead of time (of course I knew about character models).  Thus, it’s all a surprise.  It feels like a good surprise, and I have a feeling I’m not the only returning player to think so.

Waking Up To 6.0

Patch 6.0 is now live and with it came many changes, but none more than the vast amount of visual ones.  Almost everyone I spoke to yesterday was headed straight for the Barber Shop to see what they had to work with.  Many weren’t keen on what they saw when they logged in, while others didn’t mind the initial look when things went live around 1:30 EST.  Personally, Tum was far more angry than I wanted.  To be honest, almost all of the dwarves are surly/angry looking.  Not that it doesn’t fit the race, because it most certainly does.  It’s just that it wouldn’t hurt to have one lighthearted option.  As you can see by this image, I did the best I could with what I had.

Initial one on the left, new on the right.

I had to change Saintvache as well, as logging on to him I was blinded by an albino.  I just wish we had more hair options for the Tauren.  As for the rest of the team, I’ll check them in due time.

It wasn’t just character models that changed.  From what I saw last night and this morning, nothing sparkles anymore.  No quest items, no nodes. Nothing!  Instead, you’ll get a faint outline that gets stronger once you mouse over it.  Even characters gain an outline now (green for friendly, red for not) when targeted, though I’m sure there’s an option to turn it off.  Still, at a glance it took me a second to complete a couple of quests because I was looking for the shiny.

Action bars have obviously changed, with some spells removed and others simply changed.  But speaking of spells, they even look better visually.  The animations are fantastic, though I’ve only seen Paladin, Mage, and Warlock.  Once again, I’ll get to them in due time…or simply see them amidst my travels.

This isn’t even documenting some of the bigger changes that came with the patch either.  Things like the new level UBRS, the Iron Horde invasion (which I’ve started Horde side…so far so good), Garrisons, Premade Groups in the Dungeon Finder, all the class changes, etc.

With the game seeing an increase of over half a million players, this patch is well timed.  Many of the changes brought the game up to relatively modern standards and introduced a lot of things the players have been yearning for, for quite some time.  Will it translate to more than 7.4 million players and sustain them for a while this time?  Hard to say, but you can’t say the new expansion isn’t setting up to take a big swing at it.

(Nearly) Spring Cleaning

Woah. That’s a lot of ^@#%

I was informed today that there are 27 days left until Spring. Personally, it can take it’s time as I am enjoying the winter we’ve gotten…but that’s another discussion another day.  Wednesday night I began an arduous process -one that really should’ve started when I came back.  However, at that time there was just too much excitement and “ok, let’s get back into it!”  Even if I knew I should’ve done it then.  Yup, cleaning up the bags and banks.

That’s Tum’s current stock at the moment (ignore the slim gold total).  I didn’t even get a chance to go through it but looking now I can see some stuff that’s headed for the guild bank, some that’s headed to my personal guild bank, a few vendor items…and Void Storage, though he doesn’t have much room there either.  Plus I see about a half dozen Tier pieces that haven’t been claimed.  Yeesh.

I really don’t mind the work, as I do like being organized.  But the thing is, it’s not just one or two characters.  I have twenty one at the moment.  The good news is there are a few lowbies in there that don’t take long.  I’ve gotten some of those completed, but that leaves a good many left yet.  Even a glutton for punishment such as myself doesn’t want to spend all that time in a row just organizing, selling, and deleting (seriously, where did all the stuff you can’t vendor come from???).

So obviously the bigger question is why I’m sharing what essentially boils down to a “QQ” post, right?  Well what I happen to be doing applies to more than just my own spring cleaning.  Yes, you can apply it to anyone who comes back to the game after a hiatus.  Let’s face facts, the longer you’re gone away the greater chance you’re holding on to something more or less useless.  But it isn’t just that.  There’s an expansion coming.  Not today, not tomorrow, perhaps not even this spring.  But it is on the way and one of the things you’ll want to do ahead of time is make sure most of your bags are empty and everything else is in order when you do whatever it is we’ll have to do as we get transported back in time.  So while things are quiet content wise, why not look after that now?

Professional Bank Toons

Money Never Sleeps, Pal

Recently over at WoW Ladies, someone asked what professions their bank alt should have.  Amidst gold making efforts and several bank toons I can honestly say it never occurred to me until that moment. 

Excess Baggage

Wait...What? Bags?!?!

As we continue to rediscover Azeroth, more and more things amaze me.  Honestly, Blizzard has really made me fall in love with the game again (which, for an altoholic is not ideally a good thing) by “getting it.”  It seems they listened to the frustrations people had when leveling (see the insane number of flight paths, for example).  One of the biggest ones was having a backpack to carry everything.

In the old world, you got your 16 slots and that was about it.  You could book it to the Auction House if you had any money, or learn tailoring, to gain more.  The only other means of getting any extra bag space was by drops.  Let me tell you, in some cases, Orange Level items drop more often than bags.  You could go twenty levels of questing without ever having one drop.  That’s now changed.

The picture above is from a pre-level 10 quest in Gol’Bolar Quarry.  As you can see, it offers a bag as a reward, and an 8-slot at that.  Now, I know what you’re thinking.  It’s one of those flukes.  I thought it as well, the first time I got one. It might have still been in Anvilmar, but if not I definitely received a 6-slot bag as a quest reward prior to level 5.  That’s right, just by doing quests Blizzard has upped new characters to 30 slots before they even earn their first talent point!

Since half the low level quests involve bag space, either for items used in quests or collecting items (not to mention the greys that drop), it was almost always a nuisance having to go bag dump.  That’s why Netherweave Bags sell so well.  People buy them for their alts right from the hop.  But, for those starting out (or cheap like me), it’s nice to know you’re going to get some extra space immediately and not have to waste what little money you get at low level paying for overpriced storage.