BETA; First impressions

[voodoodad]

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.

[p3lim]

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

[neverg]

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.

[IQgryn]

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.

[Kjado]

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!

[Cralor]

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

[Nobgul]

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.

[Drauer]

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!

[voodoodad]

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...

[Marthisdil]

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.

[ricks322]

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.