Rolled a new Undead Rogue post-Cataclysm and was surprised by the phasing and the linear progression of the story. I haven't played WoW in years and this is a nice addition IMO. Tried to roll a blood-elf and a draenei to check out if there's any of the same phasing and quests but haven't found any so far. What other races were changed in the same way as the Undead? If you could, can you tell me what the general plot of the quests are? The Forsaken quests seem centered on Sylvanas vs the Worgen.
World-of-warcraft – Starting Areas changed in WoW Cataclysm
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There's been a massive amount of changes. Obviously there are new zones, new battlegrounds, higher level cap, new skills, etc, but I'll try to cover the biggest changes as they will probably affect your character:
- Two new classes, Death Knights and Monks.
- New professions, including Inscription which affects every character through the addition of glyphs to modify your own talents and spells.
- Completely redone talents: there are now only 3 talents to pick from for each tier (and there is a tier every 15 levels). This was instituted because a staggeringly high number of talent trees had almost identical builds. These new talents represent the minor variations from the stock builds.
- Specialization (BM vs MM vs Survival) is now separated out from your talents. There are no longer "BM" talents or "MM" talents.
- Removal of many statistics from items, e.g. attack power, spell power, and the addition of "mastery".
- The Dungeon Finder makes running dungeons infinitely easier for DPS, as it is really quite easy to get pick-up groups compared to vanilla and TBC.
- New raid difficulties:
- LFR - dungeon finder, but for raids!
- Flex - anywhere from 10 to 25 man raids. Bosses scale to howevery many you have. No more waiting for 2 more DPS - it just scales back the boss to make it a fair fight.
- Normal 10 and 25
- Heroic 10 and 25 (tougher bosses, better loot)
- Badges of Justice/Valor replaced with Justice Points and Valor Points. Valor points mainly used for upgrading gear. For example, a 528 LFR piece can be upgraded to a 532 for 250 valor points, and again to 536 for 250 more.
- The ability to raid in pick-up groups quite successfully in each tier.
- Achievements.
- Hunter specific:
- No ammo (speaking as a fellow Hunter)!
- No more "Bow Slot" (librums, totems, idols, wands). Bows and wands are now actual Main Hand weapons. So no more agil-staffs or polearms for Hunters!
- Pet talent trees
- Hunters use focus now, very similar to rogues energy.
This is a good question for the "un-initiated". Just buy a game card and start playing. Cataclysm is coming but it's a few gigabytes of updates. Blizzard's launcher is pretty smart by pre-downloading content ahead of release, so you can just log on and play when it's officially released. So, to avoid disappointment with Cataclysm. Start downloading now.
PVP or PVE?
With PVP realms, there is a thing called "ganking", (Arqade discussion on ganking here), where groups of players just wait in ambush and just smack you senseless whilst travelling between cities or trying to complete quests for no reason apart from bulling players. If you like that sort of stuff, and want to PVP you can go this route. It does waste a lot of time when you want to go questing/farming and generally getting gear, though.
PVE has battlegrounds where you can engage in PVP play. I prefer PVE because you can get into PVP at your choosing, rather than getting ambushed every 10 minutes. PVE it's just you vs the environment. Not other players. PVE also has duelling. So, you can also pick a fight when you want to.
As a casual gamer. There is a built in quest helper, so this can speed up the grind of going around completing quests. If you're not playing constantly, then there is value in logging off in taverns and major cities, because you gain "rested XP" faster in taverns and cities, rather than logging off in the forests/roads. Rested XP basically is worth double the normal XP from kills and quests. You will level faster that way.
Best guides I have found are these:
Addons
Add-ons are enhancements to your WoW interface that can really improve game play. They have become an industry in itself, although Blizzard discourages people paying for them, you can get them for free.
You can find wow addons on Curse.
I use Auctioneer among others, but a good list of what's popular can be found here. There are class specific addons as well and you can keep them up to date with wowmatrix.
Instances
If you like raiding, I recommend that you get good at the 5 man dungeons (also known as "instances"). The key thing about instances or raids is to know the role you play in the group. It boils down to 3 different types, Damage dealers/Tanks/Healers. They're self explanatory, but Tanks are basically the one player who tries to hold the attention of the big boss you will end up fighting. This is so the damage dealers can kill it, and the healers, well... heal everyone.
Holding their attention, is called "holding threat". As the bosses or any mob you are fighting does a calculation to determine who they should kill, by estimating who presents the biggest threat. So, damage dealers tend to have high threat, because of their DPS (Damage Per Second). Healers can gain threat, because they're keeping everyone very healthy. You can improve your level of threat through talents or buffs. (A buff is like drinking a potion or a beneficial spell that gives you a special attribute for a period of time). You'll learn about which buffs are important to your style of gameplay as you progress. Finally, each instance tends to have anywhere from 3-12 bosses. You don't have to wait til you're level 80 to do raids, you can do them through level ranges of character, but the first one to do would be Stockades in Stormwind (if you're alliance), when you're about level 15, and you should go in with at least one or 2 other players of similar level. You can find dungeon groups through the dungeon finder. There is also a "raid browser". It's all built into WoW. The trade chat channel tends to have lots of offers/requests for player to join raid groups. If you do get hooked on raiding (as I expect you will), better to look for a guild to join because once you start doing 10man or 25 man raids, you need a reliable group of people to run the instances, because random or ad hoc groups can be painful, if you get the wrong group of people together.
Terminology in WoW
Basic dialog/lingo in the trade channel is like this.
LFM = Looking For More. LFG = Looking For Group. GS= gearscore So, someone might say LFM Ony= Looking For More players to do the Onyxia instance. or Say LFM ICC min gs5500 = "Looking for more for Ice Crown citadel, minimum gearscore is 5500". You'll get to know the lingo as chat with people.
Trade chat is global across all cities. But only available in the cities. You can't see trade chat outside of cities.
Also, you might hear about "Gearscore". This relates to the quality of all your gear you wear. Each item you have has an "item level". The higher the item level, the better suited you are for the harder instances. The top item level (pre-cataclysm) is 264.
Gear and Items
You can acquire great gear by making it/buying it/looting it. The auction house can be good in this way to buy gear from other players. You can also buy very exotic gear from special merchants using tokens. There is a large array of currencies for different levels of gear. Blizzard are now unifying it, you got 2 basic "token" currencies, Justice Points and Honor points, (This is different from gold/silver/bronze). You earn them by doing raids or PVP. There is also some gear that you can buy from merchants, by trading other exotic items, but this is the highest level stuff (level 80).
The quality of gear you have determines whether you can do higher level instances. That's what Gearscore works out for you. There is an addon for gearscore. Get it. Players will sometime ask for people who only have a certain level of gear. They're basically trying to keep out the riff-raff, so these can be good raids to get into even though they are ad-hoc. This is common for trying to do ICC (Ice Crown Citadel instance).
At the end of the day, just do whatever you find fun in.
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Best Answer
As Raven Dreamer says, only "classic" WoW zones were updated with Cataclysm, although some experienced much more profound alterations than others. In terms of starting areas:
ALLIANCE SIDE:
A new worgen character experiences the siege of Gilneas by the Forsaken, during which time he or she is bitten by one of the numerous worgen running amok in the city. Quests here focus on saving the people of your falling kingdom while coming to terms with your new identity as a half-human. This is a dramatic story with lots of phasing and atmosphere.
A new human character appears outside Stormwind and will help restore order in the aftermath of the cataclysm: your main opponents are Hogger's Riverpaw thugs and the low-level minions of the current end-game antagonists, the Twilight's Hammer. There are some fun and funny quests, but it was nowhere near as dramatic or interesting as the worgen opening, in my mind.
A new dwarf appears in an isolated settlement southwest of Ironforge and must train and prepare for the trip out of the backwoods and into the Alliance. Most of the combat at this point was against local flora and fauna, rather than major organized factions, although there are some ice trolls that have fallen in with one of Deathwing's elemental underlings.
A new gnome appears in Gnomeregan; my understanding is that it's just been retaken by the gnomes, and a new player has to deal with isolated pockets of resistance before going up against a major mechanized rebellion. Haven't actually played this one, yet.
A new night elf will explore Darnassus while learning about kaldorei culture, before beginning a very antagonistic relationship with a particular satyr, who starts you off on quite the campaign of corruption-chasing through northern Kalimdor. I enjoyed these quests, but like all classic races, they weren't nearly as dramatic as the Cataclysm-exclusive races.
The draenei starting area is still unchanged from The Burning Crusade. Draenei are dealing with the the crash of the Exodar, and their first tentative steps toward working with the Alliance.
HORDE SIDE:
A new goblin character is an up-and-coming executive on an isolated goblin utopia. You'll get a fast car and some flunkies and clear out as many obstacles as you can to becoming the next Trade Prince—but the Cataclysm will destroy your entire civilization and leave those of you who tried to escape stranded on an island where you'll gradually be introduced to the Horde and your destiny as their premiere artillery faction. Incredible use of drama and phasing; easily the most personal quests I've experienced. If you can stomach the playful use of anachronism and satire, this is some of the best that World of Warcraft has to offer.
A new orc has to help survey areas affected by the cataclysm and reassert orcish control of Durotar and surrounding regions. It's been such a long time since I played this that I can't honestly remember too much about it.
A new troll gets to see the newly reclaimed Senjin Village and deal with increasing tension between the orcs and the other races of the Horde, while simultaneously putting up with human coastal invaders (I'm assuming). Haven't played this one yet.
A new tauren must deal with the rift that Garrosh Hellscream caused by killing Cairne Bloodhoof, but I don't know much more than that, as I haven't played this opening yet.
A new Forsaken will learn what life is like for the unliving while trying to make the transition easier for the newly undead—including Lilian Voss, whose powers are certainly unusual. There's a lot of worgen and Scarlet outposts that you have to deal with, and a lot of tension with the rest of the Horde as you perpetuate Sylvanas's plans to chemically conscript as many human settlements as possible in the vicinity.
The blood elf area has also not been changed. Blood elves have to help their people deal with their magical addictions and the scars of the Scourge invasion.
That's all I've got, at the moment. I may be able to update with more information as I continue playing and researching.