Cataclysm Heroics can either Make or Break WoW's Social Life

Video contains spoilers of dungeons in Cataclysm.

The video you see here is Heroic Blackrock Caverns, as described/discussed by TotalBiscuit from http://www.cynicalbrit.com/. As you can see, it looks fairly difficult, as do many of the heroic versions of instances that we have seen so far from beta testers.  But is this a bad thing?

Granted, once people start attempting to hit up heroics in Cataclysm, there will be waves upon waves of complaints about the difficulty of the instances (I've heard the complaints have already begun from beta testers but hey).  I pray that Blizzard refrains from nerfing the fights too harshly, because it's stuff like that that helps players find out where exactly they stand skill-wise, and what they should do to improve themselves so that they are playing at the level of the game rather than depending on gear to play for them.

But what does this all have to do with the social aspect of WoW?

I'm not really a "Dailies" sort of person.

My dearest warlock certainly has been busy lately! Like the title says, I've never really bothered with doing daily quests often (probably the reason why I still haven't gotten my Chef's hat and why I ended up dumping Jewelcrafting for Engineering...)... I don't know what inspired me, but I figured that since I don't have the recipe for Delicious Chocolate Cake yet, that I'd give dailies a chance. I did the Cooking dailies for Dalaran and Shattrath, and figured I'd try the Fishing dailies for the both of them as well.

I found this little guy in one of my reward boxes, so I'm quite the happy camper.  I'm always trying to find new little pets to add to my collection, so I was very glad to get the chance to meet him.

I (finally!) got my "the Explorer" title.  I was going through my achievements last night looking for stuff to do, when I came across the Exploration section and found that I only had a few more zones to do before I was finished.  Knocked those out in about an hour, and sha-bam.  Mandaconda the Explorer, proud owner of really cute baby crocolisk Snarly.

I'm also trying to up my reputation with the Zandalar Tribe by doing Zul'Gurub a bit, grabbing those Bijous and coins, while attempting to grab some neat mounts before they get rid of the raid instance altogether on December 7th. I just hit Honored before the server shut down, so wish me luck.

Brewfest is over now, and my hopes of getting that ram or kodo on my warlock have subsequently gone down the tubes until next year. My hunter is very happy though, the only one out of 5 toons that ended up with any mount at all from Brewfest (actually she ended up with 2 rams and 2 kodos).  Still, it was fun while it lasted, and while I didn't think to grab another 80 or so coins on my lock for the little pet, I'm still happy that she got her Brewmaster title, and is one step closer to her proto drake.

Speaking of, I'm still working on setting myself up for the last leap in my What a Long, Strange Trip it's Been achievement and mount. I've only got Merrymaker left, so I decided to grind a few quests out and make it so I can do the Fa-la-la-la-Ogri'la part of the achievement.  I even invested in a pretty handy little addon, called "Ogri'lazy" or something to that effect... Hey, in my defense, it was late, I was tired.

Enough about me though, what's next on the schedule?  Patch 4.0.1?  I've heard it's doubtful it will drop tonight, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.  The game feels like it's starting to grind to a halt, with everyone waiting for something new to happen.  The holidays can only distract us for so long...

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(¸.·´ (¸.·`¤Mandaconda¤

Malvenor on Youtube

There's a few Cataclysm spoilers in the above video, but if you choose not to watch it you are missing out.

It appears that he has been around for a while now, but I just recently discovered Malvenor, a machinimist that specializes in the RP and Lore aspects of WoW Machinimas.

Above is a movie he made focusing on two dwarves in Loch Modan, going about their day and coming across an interesting troll. It touches on the daily lives of the citizens of Azeroth rather than the MMO players lives, which is something you do not often see in popular wow-oriented videos these days.  The amount of skill and effort put into it is breathtaking, and I am very much looking forward to his next video(s) in his "Faces of Cataclysm" series. So if you haven't gotten a chance to already, I highly suggest taking a look at some of his work!

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(¸.·´ (¸.·`¤Mandaconda¤

In-Game Entertainment

As you may or may not know, in Shattrath there's a place called the 'Worlds End Tavern' in the Lower City. It's been a while since I've had any characters need to go wandering around in the Lower City of Shattrath before, so I decided to take my time.

While wandering around trying to find quests to increase my rep from Lower City, I happened across someone advertising for the 'Elite Tauren Chieftans' being about to play in the tavern.

Remembering that these were the people who sang such wonderful songs as 'Rogues Do It From Behind' and 'I Am Murloc', I decided to drop by.

It was entertianing to say the least, and I was surprised that I hadn't run into this in all my years of playing WoW.  I remember running into the comedian who had those horrible jokes... haha.

But anyway... It got me thinking. With the Cataclysm's Closed Beta popping up now, we are getting much closer to Cataclysm coming out for us all to play.  Will we be seeing this sort of thing when Cata comes?  Or will the overall mood of the game be one of doom and gloom?