World of Warcraft

Well, I'm in the Cataclysm Alpha at the moment. Unfortunately I can't do very much on account of a bug that drops the FPS to 1 if you travel more than about one zone. But so far the revamped zones that I've seen look pretty sweet.

I realize we don't have a huge WoW community here on KMC, but for those that might be interested: I'm going to have a video featured on WoW.com relatively soon. And the article that accompanies it, while not written by me, is written by a good friend of mine who writes the hunter column over there (Scattered Shots) and will be mostly a collection of work that I've done over the past year within the huntering world. I'll post a link if there's interest.

Yes do.

I don't play WoW atm, nor post here, but I do follow all news on Cataclysm closely and other WoW related things.

Ok, cool. It should be going up Tues/Wed. of next week. I'll drop a link in-thread when it does.

http://www.wow.com/2010/06/28/scattered-shots-pet-tanking

Ta-da! My 15 minutes of WoW fame. The video is mine, the article writer a friend of mine, and the article itself is a collection of information about hunter tanking that I've been putting together throughout this expansion. Most of the videos at the bottom are mine (one isn't) as are a couple of the links to other articles.

Dealing with questions constantly both on wow.com and youtube is annoying, though. If they'd actually read the articles I write (both on the Warcraft Hunters Union, or Frostheim's article there at wow.com) they'd have 90% of their questions answered.

Let me guess: "How do you do it?"

Really well done by you and the raid.

Edit - If you read this post before edit, never mind it. It completely slipped my mind that Hunter's Mark only increase Ranged Attack Power.

Originally posted by Obsidian Fury
Let me guess: "How do you do it?"

That, and requests for the song in the video. Also some calling it fake, but I anticipated that and actually expected more of it than what I got.

But it really is my fame spike, dorky as that is. The video has tripled my next closest video in views in about a day and a half. I have an occasional column on the Hunter's Union that he linked to, so there's a small audience, but nothing terribly substantial.

Well closed beta started today for Cataclysm. Too bad, I was enjoying playing on alpha servers with a total of about 30 other people. Oh well.

Would you say it feels like vanilla, Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King? I have been crossing my fingers for TBC raiding to return.

The new raids aren't in the beta yet. The level cap is only level 82. All I can comment on are the new zones and the remade zones. Both of which seem solid for the most part.

They've also upgraded the graphics pretty heavily. Particularly the lighting.

Which classes did you play Blackfire? I'm very interested in the new Soul shard system for us locks.

I have one of each at level 80. To be honest I haven't really tried the lock yet, waiting for their talents to be changed, which should be happening soon, before messing around with them.

Ok, did you play the priest?

I've been a lock since the Closed Alpha test back in 2004, and I feel like doing something else in Cataclysm, so I was thinking of a Worgen Priest, but the time I leveled a Troll Priest I found it to be a very dull experience leveling up, at least when I compared it to me lock's way of pulling all the mobs I could see and dotting them up and letting the Voidy distract them, by the time my priest had two enemies down my same-level lock would have done 12.

So basicly I am just hoping to see some changes to the Priests that will let the leveling flow more by.

If you have tried Discipline Priest, I would love to hear some about it. Priest has grown less and less fun ever since 3.0.8 and I am hoping that Cataclysm will bring them back to life. No one wants a priest anymore, if not for the buffs. We used to be a class spoken of in reverence.

I haven't tried disc, but shadow priests seem really solid. Their new shadow orbs ability seems very cool. Just from glancing over disc the biggest new change seems to be a new talent - power word: Barrier, which is like pw😖hield but instead of shielding a specific character is shields an area. Meaning several characters can stand within it and have damage absorbed.

I'll go mess around with disc a bit more and get back to you.

It would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Yeah, PS Barrier is definitely the biggest change. Other than that disc seems pretty much the same.

Damn. Ah well, PS:Barrier alone seems like an awesome change and might suffice to make Priest fun again. Thanks for checking it out.

They need to make a good way to track absorbs in-game. Recount and Skada have addons that have built-in "guesses" but nobody really knows how accurate they are. And I've literally run into people who initially refuse to let me heal because they didn't realize disc. was a healing spec (I only do disc, and dislike Holy). It seems like this will only become more pronounced in Cat. so I'd really like to see this implemented.

Originally posted by Digi And I've litera
I've literally run into people who initially refuse to let me heal because they didn't realize disc. was a healing spec

... wow.. that just speaks horribly of the wow player base.. I'm so glad I'm not getting cata.. are you guys enjoyin the alpha (if you've gotten in)?