BETA; First impressions
 

Okay, I'm starting a new thread for first impressions of the Cataclysm Beta.

I hope this will be the place where we can discuss our likes and dislikes about the features, talk about where things have been relocated, etc...

When I first logged on, the first thing I noticed was that I probably should've stuck with a premade class that I was really familiar with. I logged in with a premade rogue, but its been so long since I've played one that I couldn't tell heads from tails over what my specs should be.

Next thing I did was to check my inventory. NICE! 5000g, a bronze drake, one of those feathery ostrich looking mounts (I can't remember the name) and some pretty decent gear, plus extras in your bag so you have some choices over how you're equipped.

The ability to fly in the main continents is really nice too. The only problem I had there was flying over Stormwind, I couldn't tell where I was from the air without looking at my map, because I'm so used to ground travel there.

Anyway, these are the first few things to strike me in the short time I had before my toon copies carried over and the servers reset.

The part where premades get gold, gear, mounts and such is default for every kind of premade (PTR/Beta)

The first thing I got from the Beta is I can't stay logged in for more then 3 minutes without getting a World Server is Down. :P

The new touches to the interface look good.

I like the new talent trees, and I've started flying over the old world, starting from Booty Bay and heading north. There's a lot of neat changes, several unfinished zones but it looks awesome so far.

I spent a while trying to make sense of the new talent system soon after we were able to log in today, but after futzing with it and getting frustrated I decided to just get started on leveling a druid (switching mains for the expansion). Chose resto as my primary tree in case I need to heal something along the way, and questing is easy enough to not really require a DPS spec. The resto tree as a whole is extremely janky right now. I know it will get the proper love before release, but the whole talent system feels very uninspiring at the moment (for example, in some trees you need to spec into almost every single talent just to progress down the tree). In terms of resto, Swiftmend is a duplicate talent (it exists in talent and freebie form, just from selecting the tree as your primary), and Tree of Life has been drastically changed (which I am in favor of), but doesn't seem to affect the non-healing spells that are listed for it. Plus the filler talents feel very awkward.

I managed to quest through the first couple small hubs in Mount Hyjal, and after flying around I must say it looks really nice. I am really looking forward to building my new computer when the parts arrive tomorrow, as the zone looks amazing even on this machine that is becoming aged.

The quests are... well, quests, I suppose you can only get innovative with them to a point. The zone seems to be almost entirely phased, as I could not find much of anything from flying around until I started at Nordrassil. It has been mostly kill and collect quests so far, but some old friends have shown up along the way. One thing I have to give a lot of credit to Blizzard for is the humor that goes into much of the more recent in-game dialog: be prepared for a lot of it! Of course people should probably expect that by now, since the game is becoming one huge melting pot of pop-culture references.

I only had a couple hours to really sit down and play, but even though a lot of things are roughly implemented so far, it's been fun. And I just remember to keep telling myself, 'IT'S BETA!', so it will still see a lot of polish before they even think about releasing it. Definitely looking forward to exploring more!

First thing... made a Goblin Hunter. The Goblin area is very stable so I never had any crashes. I am currently level 9, but I am extremely loving all the new stuff already.

The best part... there is still SO MUCH to see... this made my day (and wait) really worthwhile ;)

First impression.
Everything looks good on the ui end.
The work done to the environment is great!
The water detail is omg.

Gripes

WTF all healers have a 2nd tier offensive spell that increases thier healing abilities 0_o. I have spent the better part of a few years yelling at healers who dps.

First impressions:
- new water is a bit too dark and "liquidy" - feels just like mercury
- ui improvements are good :)
- i done worgen starting zone with my worgen hunter (obv.) and with exception of massive "WORD SERVER DOWN" it feels great!

The main problem I'm having at this point is getting used to the default interface all over again. It's gotta be going on 4 years since I played with all defaults, and now I'm finding out just how hard it is to readjust to it.

Other than that, everything seems to be working pretty well. It did take me a while to understand why my hunter couldn't summon any pets. There seems to be a glitch where you HAVE to visit a stable master and swap pets in and out of the active slots in order for them to be available. This doesn't seem like the correct default behavior, it feels pretty awkward. But once I got that straightened out, things seemed pretty good.

One more thing, any ideas where I can find glyphs for my premades? The ah is my usual source, but obviously it's out right now...

I like the fact that you now choose a spec and get bonuses bases solely on that choice.

I also very much like the fact that I got a Water Elemental at lvl 10 (Mage Frost spec talent) and that my Water Elemental's waterbolt does ~2x more damage per hit than any lvl <15 mob has :D
(Minor balancing issue there, but hey!)

Haven't been able to look around much yet. All my 80's are in Dalaran and there doesn't seem to be a working portal out of there. I just get DC when I try it :/

The UI changes are nice though. I especially like how the level-ups are displayed, and the new talents you have access to are flashed across the screen when they become available. The talent and profession windows look nice, although I'm not sure if they *work* nice yet.

I'll reserve judgment on the talent trees until they at least look like they weren't just randomly thrown together by the UI designers.

Started a goblin warrior last night, but only managed to get to level five so far. Goblin starting zone is great, lots of phasing going on.

To bad the login problem got fixed after I had to go to bed. So hopefully I will get a sneak preview tonight.

I wll be creating a Worgen warrior and leveling him tank specced in defensive stance. And no, I don't like hurting myself.

Same with the Worgen area. Gonna try goblins next....

Worgen Hunter`s pet make me lol

Another impression......

Sooooo lost without healbot =P

There's a building in Dalaran where you will find NPC's for all the classes (across from the Legerdemain Lounge in the The Scribes Sacellum).. the hunter one will have the glyphs you need. In fact, the little guy is standing right outside the front door. ;)

Just wondering, what type of gear do the premades have in particular?

Under OpenGL (Linux), there is no fancy water. The slider is there (just like the fancy shadows slider) and can be moved (not like the fancy shadows slider), but only the old water shows. Changing to Direct3D shows the new water, but halves (or worse) my FPS.

All the premades have all 251 ilevel gear, no more. Some characters have some 232 trinkets or what not, but other than that, basic 10 man ICC gear. (t10)

Either world server or the entire realm (Mekkatorque-EU) seems to go up and down constantly today.
Other than that, awesome :p

Woo I found my first blue and white block :)

Thank you, darlin! Appreciate the help.

Yeah the night elf worgen in the cave? He has a blocky hat.

Nah I just spotted it in the prison in the worgen starting zone.

I copied my lvl 80 pala over there, but I can't seem to do anything with him. I can walk around and use the /2 channel, but if I try to cast anything, talk to any NPC or use a portal, I just DC.

... no exploring for me, it seem :(

i dont like the talent trees. not enough ability to customize.

the water is nice, but it's lacking something. seems like the non-terrain objects aren't reflecting properly. i agree it's too dark/transparent. for me, the objects in the goblin pool look like they're just floating in mid air.

That's because true reflections aren't in the game yet. :)

I did some flying around just to check out video performance with my so-old-they-don't-even-have-the-drivers-for-download video card. Some of the changes are subtle and cool, others are stunning and very, very cool. And some of the things...well...I flew over Loch Modan as the damn and sluce-waterfall was one of my favorite spots...only way I can describe it is, "I felt as if I had been touched in an impure manner." *insert Charton Heston, Planet of the Apes moment*

I could comment for quite a while but so much of it is based on obviously unfinished at least working perplexingly that it's hard to form a cogent impression -- other than "the base UI burns us, it freezes us!"

I described it as gray, featureless concrete unless you catch the sun or a light-source in it. It's not even an issue of reflections for me, it's just...featurelessly opaque 95% of the time. First time I ran up on water (evening in gobbie zone) I thought it was a solid surface till the rather unexpected 'splash'

I actually got a hat with that graphics from Redridge :)

it's weird tho cuz it seems like they kind of reflect in some cases, but not in any convincing way... it's not really a hard effect to achieve, but maybe it's just a case of having to support different rendering paths...

Two more thoughts I've had since taking my premade hunter to Mt. Hyjal;

1. The mobs spawn WAY too fast. Yes, they're extremely easy to kill but it took me 30 minutes to do what should've been a ten minute quest because mobs respawn almost immediately.

2. Minor thing here, but it makes me sad :(. The green quest rewards are already better than the T10 gear you start out with (for the most part). I'd like to get just a little more use out of the full set of T10 before I start replacing it with greens, since I'll probably never be that well geared once Cata goes live.:rolleyes:

Vashj'ir is extremely fun. EXTREMELY!

And the whale shark is epic

I was questing and I saw this guy...

http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/4...1610181507.jpg

Is this an old god or something? it scared the crap out of me! edit - his eyes move around and stare at you :O

Wasn't particularly impressed with Hyjal but yes, I've found everything in Vashj'ir very fun, especially the instance.

In case anybody else runs into this, it appears it was a firewall issue. My ZoneAlarm firewall was (apparently) blocking part of the game, allowing me to use the chat and walk around, but not cast spells, rezone or talk to NPCs. One uninstall and a reboot later, I'm happily flying around Durotar :banana:

Now, if I can only get the talents I choose to stop resetting every few minutes...

If your videocard supports DirectX 11 you can force the game into using it, this way you get true reflections from the water.

Open config.wtf and add this: SET gxApi 'D3D11'

I like the fact that the game has been so simplified and toned down that it's about as complex as Farmville, and speccing talents is like peggle.

Possible sarcasm involved!

I like the simplicity.

I do NOT like how... clutted... everything seems at once when you begin your first few quests.

OMG! Let's NOT get the whole Blizzard/Activision/Facebook conspiracy going again! :eek:

Probably time to think about dual booting. Kinda strange that somebody that's in WoW enough to write addons for it isn't at least using an officially supported platform.

In any case - my first impressions are it's a great step forward. The phasing really adds a lot to the game, and makes quests a lot more satisfying. It's used to a great effect in that what you do can actually make a difference in the game world. And wow, so much has changed in this game. I can't believe they're able to start putting DX10/11 in a game this old. Looks great with the effects turned up. It still has the old school feel to it, but there are moments when you can really see the improvements (water, sunbeams).

What I like about it so far is that they are trying to spruce up the beginning areas at least of the old zones so that there won't be so many draenei and blood elves around due to their easier levelling curve.

After trying out the new worgen and the new improved night elf ( found a new user problematic bug already ) and the new improved human areas and it seems they are almost similar in questing time for the same level range.

The one thing I dislike about the premade toons - they ALL have enchanting and jewelcrafting as their tradeskills....

New tradeskill stuff really isn't in there yet (at least for inscription based on me copying my scribe).

I do like the Worgen starting area....it's pretty fun and different. Will try Goblin out later.

The Goblin starting experience is quite different than the Worgen. I reached 100 quests under my Goblin near the end, before you get the transition to Dutorar.

Yeah because copy and pasting a cookie cutter build from elitiest jerks was such a mindstrain.

Possible sarcasm involved! :P

Over water? I'll pass.

Why is that strange? The game works fine under Wine, and that's all that matters - I don't need an officially-supported platform to write code.

Agreed. I occasionally have to play in Windows, but I do all my addon work in Linux under Wine.

If only you could turn water into Wine :p

INC HUGE PATCH! 1.36gb

Ack, if they keep this up I'll have to expand my home partition again. :/

I keep expecting a BG message saying "If you guys would learn to cap three and defend, we'd be winning right now!"

Anyway, maybe this patch will deal with some of the little problems like HUNTERS NOT HAVING RELIABLE PETS!

sorry, I know it's a beta, but I really LIKE my hunter...:D

That's actually a combo update patch including all the beta builds so far.

Looks like they're also getting rid of redundant patch data in the previous builds as well if the analysis from the #wowace peeps is correct.

This would be why the combo update build updater thingy is actually smaller then the build updaters it's replacing.

I reinstalled beta last night. Despite me having all the beta builds downloaded it went straight to download and install the latest 1.38 GB build updater first. I then applied all the other builds first and when done it still wanted to install the 1.38 GB build :/

I agree I also run Linux and play wow with wine. Up to this point I have found very few reasons to run windows. I mean lets face it there are opensource replacements for just about any windows program you could ever need. But when I have to VmWare is just a click away.

*Warning Incomming Troll*

I hate you all... that is all. Move along nothing to see here!

/dodges the kitchen sink :banana:
:eek:

No I'm kidding sadly I have not gotten an invite yet so honestly I can't say anything yet about beta and I find it funny that Ive been in every beta so far yet this one nothing. Oh well back to spamming F5 on my inbox. :D

/cast sinkthrow (non-dodgeable)

Hey Ive dodged Cairenn sink throws so I think im good. :cool:

Sinkthrow: Spell does normal weapon damage + 15 million, kajillion, fofillian, bajillion damage over 1 second. Spell cannot be blocked, evaded or dodged.

New specs for Sinkthrow in the Beta.:D

Another (much smaller) patch incoming now. 108 mb

Wishing Blizz would update their patch notes, so we could easily see what's supposedly fixed or changed.

Abyssal Manta is now a Seahorse!! Yay! Plus I noticed some quest fixes.

Gief Seaunicorn!

Yea, the new Seizurehorse is pretty good. I like the model, anyways. They *might* have to do some adjustments to the speed of the movement animation though :D

http://yfrog.com/neseizurehorse1z

(Nope, I didn't speed up the playback... really!)

LOL! If it was in black and white, I could see the Keystone Kops trying to chase you down for speeding!

On a side note, if anyone is having the problem of not being able to train, for the time being you have to drop one of your two primary professions. Then you should be able to train in class abilities, riding and secondary profs.