BC IMpressions, haha, check out how I just changed the word. I'm so freakin' clever.
Okay, gooey mushy "AH MAH GAWD IT'S BURNIN' CRUSADE" fangirling is now to be swept aside: I am here first and foremost as a beta tester and, of course, as the eyes and ears for my not-so-lucky friends. I will provide you with ample amounts of RAW AWESOME, as well as TOTAL SHIT, because no game can escape having shit at some point.
Draenei get the most interesting quests ever, I swear to god.
While the Blood Elf lands are prettier, they are, at heart, your usual "go here, collect this, kill [x] of these guys, go find my tools, where's my sammich bitch, why isn't that shit dead yet, do you know what time it is young lady" questing fare. Draenei, on the other hand. DRAENEI. They get your usual questing shit, and then you have a quest that actually gives you a reason to pick up fishing (i.e. "the trainer is right there, gives you a quest to get some redfin snappers, and rewards you with a fishing pole RIGHT FREAKIN' THERE at the water's edge"). There's also a quest where you unofficially learn a language by tracking down a series of Furbolg totems with words, the last stage of which actually LAUNCHES YOU INTO A FUCKING INVISIBLE WORLD AS A SHADOW CAT, which completely blew any Blood Elf quest I'd done to that point out of the fucking water. My fledgling mage is only level 11, but I am soon to embark on a quest called "The Kessel Run" (LOLZ STAR WARS REFERENCE, THAT SHIT NEVER GETS OLD BLIZZ LET ME TELL YOU AHAHA DIE IN A FIRE), where I'm equipped with an epic mount for like fifteen minutes. I have never looked forward to a quest in my entire life, but now I am.
The only comparable quest in the Blood Elf lands is disciplining two errant magic students by turning them into animals. Boring.
Blizz is actually doing crazy shit like "integrating popular add-ons into the default UI," and "listening to what people say."
Soon, my need for CT mod will be all but gone: Blizz has implemented the ability to see your target's target, to automatically cast a beneficial spell on yourself if no one else is targetted, and to set a hotkey to cast a spell on yourself without losing your current target (alt or ctrl, your choice). They've also included the ever-popular scrolling battle text where you can see what happens to you right on your character instead of just seeing what you do to your enemy.
On your character's equipment menu (you can see I have a picture of it in my screenshot gallery, I'm just too lazy to go and find it for you), there's the option to see whatever stats are important to you in two different windows. This is not the only part. It also automatically calculates everything for you: your health from stamina, mana and spell crit from int, AP from strength, AP, dodge, crit, and armor from agility, your regeneration from spirit, your damage reduction from armor (as always). Throughout the various menus, you'll see your chance to hit, dodge, parry, block, crit, spell crit, weapon damage, speed, DPS, in addition to adding up and displaying your total AP, +spell damage, and +healing. This is fantastic news for someone like me, who absolutely cannot remember calculation formulae for shit.
Your quest log's maximum capacity has been increased to 25.
The new LFG interface is pretty much crap.
This may be beta, but no one uses it at all, preferring, instead, to piece together groups by announcing over general chat in a given region, as it always has been. It's a pity, because it's truly a fantastic idea, but the only way Blizz will ever get people to use it is to take away the /who function and any ability to talk on a regional chat. You can also only look for a maximum of three possible groups at a time, which is silly when you're sitting at level 70 and you're willing to do anything, goddamnit, just give me a freaking group I don't even care if it's filled with child rapists and Bible-thumping grandmothers, just give me a group oh my god. It's also fond of doing silly things, like clumping together two rogues and three hunters, and I don't care what instance you're doing, but that group will not fly too far, especially if it's just a bunch of random strangers.
But frankly, for all its quirks and bugs, I'd so much rather see the new LFG interface see use because I do NOT miss the LFG channel at all.
If you're planning on making a Jewelcrafter, start stocking shit up NOW.
Introducing the third goddamn profession to use mining as a fueler, Jewelcrafting will completely ensure that there will never be a free node again in the entirety of Azeroth. For the first few months, know that you will be competing against level 60+ characters on epic mounts for copper nodes in Durotar, Dun Morogh, Elwynn Forest, or really anywhere where copper has even a remote chance to spawn. Know well that the prices of simple gems like Tigerseye and Malachite will go off the fucking charts. Be prepared for a whole new market for raw ore to absolutely explode.
It will be like the Ahn'Qiraj War Effort, but worse.
That said, if you don't want a jewelcrafting character, go ahead and start stockpiling shit anyway so you can be one of the thousands of jackass capitalists who thinks it's totally awesome to play on the game of supply and demand and charge scalper's prices for a stack of 10 copper ore. There will be people who will buy it.
Besides spawning what will soon be the biggest bitchfight over ore World of Warcraft has ever seen, Jewelcrafting is a pretty nifty profession.
In the Native American tradition of using every piece of the corpse for something useful, you will terrorize helpless ore nodes and use every single bit of their succulently rocky flesh. Stones go towards carving up statuettes that basically act like a HoT potion, which is pretty awesome considering it doesn't share the same timer as a potion. (The Rough Stone Statue heals you for about 75 damage, around the same as a basic minor healing potion.) Most rings and amulets do require some basic kind of gem to make, but there are pieces that only require metal bars/components made purely from metal bars. Even if you don't have the gems you need, you can still make use of your Prospecting skill and crack open 5 pieces of any kind of ore and reap the gem(s) you find. You can start equipping your rings and amulets as early as level 10--impressive, considering that many characters now don't start finding rings until the late teens/early 20s.
More to come later as I play. My screenshot gallery as been updated with a billion pictures as well.
Edit: Arcane Missiles is STILL broken, but in a completely new way. I think I liked it better the old broken way.
Draenei get the most interesting quests ever, I swear to god.
While the Blood Elf lands are prettier, they are, at heart, your usual "go here, collect this, kill [x] of these guys, go find my tools, where's my sammich bitch, why isn't that shit dead yet, do you know what time it is young lady" questing fare. Draenei, on the other hand. DRAENEI. They get your usual questing shit, and then you have a quest that actually gives you a reason to pick up fishing (i.e. "the trainer is right there, gives you a quest to get some redfin snappers, and rewards you with a fishing pole RIGHT FREAKIN' THERE at the water's edge"). There's also a quest where you unofficially learn a language by tracking down a series of Furbolg totems with words, the last stage of which actually LAUNCHES YOU INTO A FUCKING INVISIBLE WORLD AS A SHADOW CAT, which completely blew any Blood Elf quest I'd done to that point out of the fucking water. My fledgling mage is only level 11, but I am soon to embark on a quest called "The Kessel Run" (LOLZ STAR WARS REFERENCE, THAT SHIT NEVER GETS OLD BLIZZ LET ME TELL YOU AHAHA DIE IN A FIRE), where I'm equipped with an epic mount for like fifteen minutes. I have never looked forward to a quest in my entire life, but now I am.
The only comparable quest in the Blood Elf lands is disciplining two errant magic students by turning them into animals. Boring.
Blizz is actually doing crazy shit like "integrating popular add-ons into the default UI," and "listening to what people say."
Soon, my need for CT mod will be all but gone: Blizz has implemented the ability to see your target's target, to automatically cast a beneficial spell on yourself if no one else is targetted, and to set a hotkey to cast a spell on yourself without losing your current target (alt or ctrl, your choice). They've also included the ever-popular scrolling battle text where you can see what happens to you right on your character instead of just seeing what you do to your enemy.
On your character's equipment menu (you can see I have a picture of it in my screenshot gallery, I'm just too lazy to go and find it for you), there's the option to see whatever stats are important to you in two different windows. This is not the only part. It also automatically calculates everything for you: your health from stamina, mana and spell crit from int, AP from strength, AP, dodge, crit, and armor from agility, your regeneration from spirit, your damage reduction from armor (as always). Throughout the various menus, you'll see your chance to hit, dodge, parry, block, crit, spell crit, weapon damage, speed, DPS, in addition to adding up and displaying your total AP, +spell damage, and +healing. This is fantastic news for someone like me, who absolutely cannot remember calculation formulae for shit.
Your quest log's maximum capacity has been increased to 25.
The new LFG interface is pretty much crap.
This may be beta, but no one uses it at all, preferring, instead, to piece together groups by announcing over general chat in a given region, as it always has been. It's a pity, because it's truly a fantastic idea, but the only way Blizz will ever get people to use it is to take away the /who function and any ability to talk on a regional chat. You can also only look for a maximum of three possible groups at a time, which is silly when you're sitting at level 70 and you're willing to do anything, goddamnit, just give me a freaking group I don't even care if it's filled with child rapists and Bible-thumping grandmothers, just give me a group oh my god. It's also fond of doing silly things, like clumping together two rogues and three hunters, and I don't care what instance you're doing, but that group will not fly too far, especially if it's just a bunch of random strangers.
But frankly, for all its quirks and bugs, I'd so much rather see the new LFG interface see use because I do NOT miss the LFG channel at all.
If you're planning on making a Jewelcrafter, start stocking shit up NOW.
Introducing the third goddamn profession to use mining as a fueler, Jewelcrafting will completely ensure that there will never be a free node again in the entirety of Azeroth. For the first few months, know that you will be competing against level 60+ characters on epic mounts for copper nodes in Durotar, Dun Morogh, Elwynn Forest, or really anywhere where copper has even a remote chance to spawn. Know well that the prices of simple gems like Tigerseye and Malachite will go off the fucking charts. Be prepared for a whole new market for raw ore to absolutely explode.
It will be like the Ahn'Qiraj War Effort, but worse.
That said, if you don't want a jewelcrafting character, go ahead and start stockpiling shit anyway so you can be one of the thousands of jackass capitalists who thinks it's totally awesome to play on the game of supply and demand and charge scalper's prices for a stack of 10 copper ore. There will be people who will buy it.
Besides spawning what will soon be the biggest bitchfight over ore World of Warcraft has ever seen, Jewelcrafting is a pretty nifty profession.
In the Native American tradition of using every piece of the corpse for something useful, you will terrorize helpless ore nodes and use every single bit of their succulently rocky flesh. Stones go towards carving up statuettes that basically act like a HoT potion, which is pretty awesome considering it doesn't share the same timer as a potion. (The Rough Stone Statue heals you for about 75 damage, around the same as a basic minor healing potion.) Most rings and amulets do require some basic kind of gem to make, but there are pieces that only require metal bars/components made purely from metal bars. Even if you don't have the gems you need, you can still make use of your Prospecting skill and crack open 5 pieces of any kind of ore and reap the gem(s) you find. You can start equipping your rings and amulets as early as level 10--impressive, considering that many characters now don't start finding rings until the late teens/early 20s.
More to come later as I play. My screenshot gallery as been updated with a billion pictures as well.
Edit: Arcane Missiles is STILL broken, but in a completely new way. I think I liked it better the old broken way.