We all knew Cataclysm would bring big changes to damn near everything in the World of Warcraft, but the latest bomb dropped by Blizzard regarding the complete overhaul of talent trees is some serious stuff.

This complete rework of the size and scope of the talents presents some great opportunities for Blizzard, but also some potential headaches and what I think will be delays for Cataclysm. Either that or we’ll just spend the first 3-6 months of the expansion being inundated with balancing patches. Regardless, it will be a lot of fun to play every character I have through the expansion.

So now what?
Since I’ve been incredibly bored playing WoW lately, but for some reason have the compulsion to play, I’ve tried to find other activities to take up the time I do choose to play. I don’t raid anymore, as I am happy where all of my toons are at, and I don’t care too much to gear them since the expansion will bring a whole new wave of gear.

I’ve been working on making some gold, but not Greedy Goblin style, just chipping away toward an OK nestegg. Right now I’ve got about 15K, which is a pittance to most people but works for me. I want to try and have 20K-30K by the expansion.

However, this afternoon in a fit of boredom, I’ve decided to embark on the Loremaster/Seeker achievement on Hesston. I figure this will do two things: A) Pick up a good chunk of gold after doing all of the quests, and B) Give myself a fine tour of the world before Deathwing tears it to shit.

So….

… I’ve got a long way to go.

Yeah, my druid is totally becoming a troll. And the paladin will be a Tauren, no more BELF!

Who’s ready for the Warcraft Hunter’s Union event? Hesston, that’s who! To be honest, it was a little annoying leveling without heirlooms. Even so, it wasn’t hard getting to level 19 (the current cap). Wonder who we’re going to kill.

I’m ready for my closeup Mr. Frostheim.

So I’m in a new guild … of my own. Not wanting to leap right back into steady raiding (although what we were doing was far from steady), I decided to chase down lowbies for signatures and start my own guild to house the family. I still have to get someone who I can trust to join and make an officer so they can invite the entire roster, but that will be easy enough.

I think I’m going to take this time, between now and 3.3.5 and on to Cataclysm, to try to shore up some lame achievements, make money to be prepped for the expansion, and just again enjoy not having raid pressure. I don’t care much about hard modes or what not, or even killing the Lich King (though I wouldn’t mind it it), so PuG’ing raids once in a while is good enough for me. I’m sure once people get the hang of it The Ruby Sanctum will be easy enough. Perhaps I can even snag that new ArP trinket, which is like a marriage between DBW and WFS. Zomg!

That’s all.

What now? What comes next?

Frakk!

So what I thought would happen happened, the GM basically disbanded the guild. Only, he didn’t. He told people in vent that he was tired of the no-shows, sign outs, raiding with terrible people, blah, blah. He then said they’d probably do 10-man stuff and to those that wanted to stick around could.

However, this is what threw me for a loop. He said, in vent: “Now I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, but I’m going to kick some people that I hate. I hate raiding with you, talking with, everything. Just get out.”

And boom, I got Das Boot! I don’t have any personal feelings about it, just confusion really. I’d been talking to the GM off and on, and last night about this situation. However I’ve shown up to every raid, even wrote the recruitment thread and maintained it on the forums. Yet apparently I wasn’t “buddy” enough with him. I’d have preferred if he would have just manned up earlier and said he didn’t want me in the guild if he had a problem.

As with all people that hide behind their avatars, they are rarely upfront with you in game.

So, once again the family is without a guild. I’ve been here before. It’s not a major deal, I can PuG stuff on all of my characters to be honest. And what better way to start the beautiful Minnesota spring and summer than to have no in-game obligations again and be able to play at my leisure. That’s what happened last year and I had a great summer.

So I say bring it on. But if anyone needs a good healer or hunter DPS, pst plz.

So my latest thing then, BEAR TANK! I’d wanted to try to bear tank, since I’d done the paladin and warrior thing already, and have a level-capped druid. I’d already had some pieces but wanted to get at least a full set before trying to tank. So, I slapped on the healing gear and hit the LFG hard.

About 50-emblems in I saw a call for a “quick” ToC25 forming in trade that needed a healer. It was hosted by a reputable guild so I figured it’d be an easy run and I’ve healed it plenty of times. Getting badges outside the monotany of heroics was fine by me, and I figured I might be able to sneak off with a piece of tank gear.

And oh boy did I ever. So this is how things panned out:

A) Only druid in the raid.

B) All the rogues (and hunters) were ICC geared.

C) We were allowed unlimited offspec rolls.

Results

• Northrend beasts: Legwraps of the Broken Beast

• Lord Jaraxxus: Vest of Calamitous Fate
• Faction Champs: Icewalker Treads
• Twin Val’kyrs: Twin’s Pact

Seriously, that’s ridiculous. No one else needed or wanted any of that for offspec. I went to ToC on my rogue and not one piece of DPS leather dropped, and I’ve never seen that damn staff on my hunter. RNG is crazy. We didn’t kill Anub because suddenly everyone just forgot how to play, but I didn’t care. In less than an hour I got a bunch of badges and 4 pieces of iLevel 245 gear. Enchanted, gemmed (I’m kinda broke now) and mixed with the other gear I now have a competent tank set for heroics and probably some 10man raids. I must say, gearing a bear tank is significantly easier than a plate tank. It’s all druid loots!

Hesston and The Space Bunnies

No, that’s not my new indie-rock band. The Space Bunnies are the guild I’ve been in for the past few months in ICC. We’ve been doing well but have been plagued by no-shows and attendance issues. Raiding only 3 days a week and for only 3 hours, every night counts. We’d open the week on a Tuesday downing 8/12 and ready to work on progression, only to have a fraction show up on the following days. Though most seem to have excuses, I suspect people don’t want to come for the non-farm bosses. Progression or having a night of working on a single boss scares some people.

We’ve been trying to recruit, but every time we get someone another drops or has real life issues. To top it off, one of the officers got hacked the other night and they emptied the guild bank and deleted his toons. Come on people, don’t go to the free pet sites, nothing is free. Get a frakking authenticator damn it.

After that happened, I caught wind last night from the GM that there could be a disband this evening instead of a raid. Pretty much blows my plans for being part of a good guild going in to Cataclysm. I might still be able to join somewhere, but right now isn’t a great time. Many guilds are set on their HM-ICC progression or have their farm groups set. To try and get established past a trial status in a new guild is going to be annoying. We might try and form some 10-man groups and keep the guild together that way. For the most part I like the people I’ve been raiding with and don’t feel like getting used to a whole set of new personalities and attitudes.

Oh well, thus is WoW life. I’ve been having fun raiding even if we haven’t downed the Lich King. I’m sure we could have if we’d only gotten a few more dedicated raiders. The ones that did show every night had the skills to do it, we just lacked consistency and coordinating with new people every night screwed us.

Regardless, Hesston is more than geared enough to tackle the first bit of Cataclysm. I imagine the early dungeons will be laughable for ICC-geared folks. I wasn’t a raider then so I came into Wrath pretty green (literally), and have no idea what UK and The Nexus was like for the Sunwell folks. I imagine that was easy too.

What next?
BEAR TANK! I’m going to spend some time learning to claw, bite, swipe and growl my way through content. The druid will become a troll come Cataclysm, and I want him to be a geared to level easily as a bear. Though I could always laser chicken my way through. I have also vowed not to level any more alts until the expansion, not only because it is kind of pointless but also so that I don’t get burnt out. I still want to have the desire to level a new toon or two when the experience is fresh and interesting. I’m thinking goblin shaman perhaps, a healer.

Now that I think about, hunters are the only DPS class I really like. Every other class I play I either prefer tanking or healing. My one other pure DPS class, the rogue, hasn’t been as much fun as I thought it would be. I haven’t had much interest in a mage or warlock. And to be honest, I’m finding I enjoy tanking more than almost every thing else, which is funny because I used to be terrified of it. So far warrior tanking is clearly the most fun.

So that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

For the Horde!

Meh, whatever. Hesston is a happy orc.

Ding!

So that makes six level 80 toons now. Hmm, I bet I could sling my account on eBay now for a couple a bucks. I’m curious to see how much more difficult it will be to gear out a DPS rather than a healer/tank who have insta-queues in LFG. Regardless, this now gives me a wide range of characters to take to 85 in Cataclysm. However, despite my altaholism, I vow not to level anything else until then. Next up is a shaman or a priest however.

Time to get to work.

So the guild is making good progress, but the problem as always is just being a person or two short. We killed (or healed rather) Dreamwalker on Tuesday and got damn close to killing Blood Queen Lanathiel tonight. We’d have killed her had if we had a full raid on, but severe weather, sign outs and some Internet outages took some of our raiders out. I’ve been trying to help with recruitment on the forums, but so far no luck.

Regardless, I’ve been having fun. My rogue is almost at 80 and I’m looking forward to gearing him out. Stab-stab DPS is awesome.

Raid changes
Honestly, I think it is pretty awesome if executed right. We often have 25 people logged on on our first raid night, then less and less the following two. If we could continue on the same level of progression on the nights without a full raid, morale would be much higher and I think people would enjoy the raids more. I wonder if 10-man strict guilds are going to be pissed though. Overall it seems like most people are stoked.

Cataclysm better come soon though, I want to start < Project Mayhem >, an army of goblins that level and raid together from 1 to 85. Who’s coming with me?

So yeah, I jumped on it like all the other fools and bought a star pony. The way I justify it, I’ve secured a mount for all of my future alts.

/facepalm

In other news, rogue is at level 65 and making his way toward Northrend. Once he’s 80 I’ll do my usual heroic zerg and see how fast I can get him geared and then I’ll have six level 80s to adventure with in Cataclysm.