Cataclysm may bring me back. I am itching to play something along the lines of WoW and nothing is really doing it for me. I have been tempted to fire it up now, but I have a feeling I will play for 5 minutes and quit since all the old leveling is still the same.

Don't like the talent tree changes. Looks like they cut out 1/2 the talents which limits your options and doesn't give you much customization. Gonna have to get used to the whole focus thing for Hunters, in some ways I like it and in others I don't.

where do people go to level in northend? I'm 72 and haven't seen anyone since lvl 70. I've been doing quests around where both zeps land.

I am leveling another character and have seen less people the higher up I got. I still see a person every now and then in Northrend ,but I do not see too many people.

I suspect more and more people are reducing time played or maybe they are taking some time off since Cata is coming out soon.

I think I will have time to level at least one more class before the expansion assuming I can force myself to do it again.

Beta is much more stable and alpha. i was getting DCed so much in alpha.
i went and did the first couple Mt Hyjal zone quests and it was sad to see that a green quest reward chest piece was better than my crafted epic one, haha

The reason the talent trees are so small is that they have removed all the "+3% to crit" talents and made stuff like that built into the trees as you level. They are supposedly trying to make all the talents that you choose from "fun" talents that grant an ability or something like that. So we will have less points to allocate but end up with more abilities than before. I think the idea sounds good, but will have to wait until I play to see if I actually like it.

Yeah at first I didn't like the idea of only having something like 30 talent points. Then I thought about it and remembered all of the lame-ass talents like 1% to crit, 1% mana regen, 1% health, etc, and then having to put 5 levels worth of points into them before moving to the next tier. I'd much rather have less talent points and those removed.

from what I can see, though, there really aren't any choices still. For PVE you pretty much take all the points in your main tree, except the few obvious PvP talents.

The only real choices I see are in the healer trees ... those weird "do damage to increase your healing" talents. I'm not really sold on them, but last time I looked you had to take some of them to get further down the tree anyway. SO ... bleh

I see what you're saying but I see where Blizz is coming from too. Most of the population goes for the best "cookie cutter" spec anyway and the tons of talents can tend to confuse the less experienced players. I see why they went with a more streamlined approach to the talent trees. I'm not super excited about it, but I'm not going to knock it until I've tried it.

Back when I played, I was a total "casual" player. I'm really only interested in what's happening "in game" and spent zero time looking at forums, reading about the game or anything like that.

That said, whenever I started a new toon, I just went to the WoW forums and printed off a spec that did what I wanted to do (basically PvE. PvP holds no interest). Then I leveled with that spec. The idea of an easier spec tree is great, as I really don't care what everything does. I just want something that works and allows me to kill monsters.

wow no mention of Cataclysm getting a release date
December 7
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company...es.html?101004

I pre-ordered the CE but I probably won't play it until next year

I pre-ordered the CE as well for my wife's account..but I'll probably just pick up the regular for my own on release day (or week). I took off for about 3 months, and just started playing my 77 troll combat rogue again (my main is a 80 dwarf shadow priest). I dunno, I hope cataclysm really spices things up. I know my wife loves it and i love playing with her, but the game isn't awesome for me anymore. It's just ok.

I don't play wow but i thought this was pretty cool:

<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/aWI5XTmGrmo?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/aWI5XTmGrmo?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

Been playing beta the past week and Azeroth really looks amazing with all the graphical changes. Stormwind is f-ing awesome! Trying to limit what I do in the game as to not spoil it for me when its released in December.

I am hearing mixed reviews on the beta. I have heard if you are getting sick of the game this may be enough to keep you playing, but if you already quit playing or lost interest it won't be enough to bring you back or at least keep uoui playing past the first month.

Ive still been playing. not raiding anymore, though. mostly working on alts and playing beta. my wife finally got Loremaster this weekend

The 4.0.1 patch is coming tomorrow. This will have all the mechanics changes for the expansion, including the new talent points system. It also will have the content for the events leading up to Cataclysm, but I'm not sure when those will start to go active. The 4.0.3 patch will contain the revamped original content, and should be up a few weeks before the expansion.

I checked out the Beta a bit a few months ago, but didn't want to ruin everything. I think its all pretty amazing looking seeing everything revamped. It's great that pretty much every quest in the original areas are getting changed or removed, and new ones added.

Hmmm...might fire my lapsed account up tomorrow just to get my spec straightened out before Cataclysm. I have it pre-ordered, so I'm definitely checking it out. Just don't want to have everything broken when I start back up in December.

Yeah, I am going to be a little lost tomorrow. Don't have the time to research things like I used to. So tomorrow I'll have to deal with new talents, new abilities, new glyphs, reforging my armor, potentially new gems and a new rotation. Think I'll start with my hunter. He at least only has one spec to worry about for now.

If anyone is planning on getting the XP Hierlooms, you should do so before the patch tomorrow. They are removing the current ones, and replacing them with ones that give XP bonuses to 85, but the cost is going up drastically, since they are geared towards the much larger number of Justice points you get at 85 versus 80.

I don't really see myself playing this much at all. Especially with a future young Horde initiate on the way.

But I do love the classic game, and to see all the old school areas changed....that is what I am looking forward to.

One thing for the beta players....

Did Mankrik's wife make it?

The hallow's even stuff started. there is a bug where some people will freeze up when they mouse over items that bring up a cog, like the pumpkin that summons the headless horse man. i have yet to have a group where everyone participated in the fight.

Yeah, it's a crazy bad bug, that effects a lot of things that show cogs when you mouse over them. Luckily it's a pretty easy fight, you don't really even need a tank for.

I finally got around to installing the 4.0 patch, and it died out at roughly 80%. Meanwhile, my wife is having fun with the hallow's end stuff. ARGHHHHH!