🚀 go-pugleaf

On 7 Nov 2014 09:35:13 GMT, Urbin <urbin@invalid.invalid> wrote:

>I did not think I would be back for WoW after quitting more than two years
>ago. However, there was this e-mail from Blizzard tempting me with 7 days of
>free game time and as these 7 days coincide with the wife being away at a
>conference I thought "why the hell not" :-)

Hehe, great timing! :-)

>So I updated my client and logged in for the first time last night and have
>now played a few hours. Wow. Do I feel out of my depth :-)
>
>- for 7 days I won't even bother updating any addons, I'm just playing using
>  the standard UI. Quite a bit has improved, but it's an unusal view
>  compared to the tailored UI I had put together during my 7+ years of
>  previous play time

It's a lot better than it used to be, yep, I've found I can play with
no addons fairly well, so long as I'm not healing, still prefer to
have my addons though.

>- half of my abilities seem to be gone or changed. My survival hunter seems
>  to be down to 5 attacks, two of which are on long cooldowns. I can kill
>  stuff and don't intend to group, so I won't even bother with working on a
>  rotation but it all seems to be rather haphazard

Yeah, they did a big ability prune, in fairness kinda needed as
actionbars were overflowing, think they overdid it in some cases
though, most my characters have missing abilities I really want
back...

>- my pet dies. a lot. Back then, my pet seemed to be unkillable, I could
>  just send it from foe to foe without ever healing it. Now, I need to.
>  Frequently. Or it dies.

Ouch. My warlock's voidwalker is unkillable in old content, but very
squishy indeed in more recent content... I'm not used to having to
heal him ever time I get adds!

>- did they tinker with the numbers? My health is down to 39k or so. I seem
>  to remember being way about 150k when I quit. Did they rebase everything
>  or am just misremembering?

They did indeed, a big numbers "squish" as they called it, since
numbers were getting a bit silly, we were into hundreds of thousands,
moving towards millions, so it's all been reduced again. Feels weird,
I'm getting fairly used to it, but I have zero idea what dps is "good"
or not these days.

>- with just 7 days I won't even bothering on anything completionist, so I'm
>  just wondering around randomly questing a bit. Back when I came back for a
>  month to test out Pandaria, I only quested as far as it took me to turn
>  90, then spent a lot of time on pet battles, so there should probably be
>  half of pandaria to quest in remaining. However, I didn't get that far.
>  First I got sidetracked by the pre-quests to the expansion, that was fun
>  but very easy and got me a few hefty upgrades (may average item level was 
>  around 440 or so, now I've risen to 455 which is probably still nothing,
>  but not bad for 30 minutes of questing :-)

Pretty good indeed for such a short time! If you want more, and really
easy high lvl gear, go to the Timeless Isle, you've probably been
given a quest to speak with Chromie, if not, go up to the Lorewalkers
building in the vale (above Mogu'shan palace) and have a word with
her; she'll portal you over there. Then have fun treasure hunting,
although be careful of the mobs, they *hurt* when you're lowgeared -
but, there's tons of little treasure chests, and not-so-rare (about
30-60 mins spawn) rare spawns to kill, all of which can drop tokens
which turn into 496 gear. Also some worldbosses in the main area who
can drop really nice gear first time you kill one (only get a chance
at loot on one kill per week, not all of them)

>  Next I went to the vale but instead of going back to normal questing I
>  was sent to Thunder Isle, so far I've done one solo instance and am
>  enjoying it, so I'll probably continue on this. Just one question: I'm
>  now at the Kirin Tor base but cannot find a flight master or a portal.
>  Is there a way to go back and forth between here and the rest of the
>  world? Or do I need to complete the next solo instance(s) to unveil 
>  that possibility?

There ought to be a portal after the first solo scenario, if not, I'd
keep doing them - it might be hiding in a building or something, the
horde one's not the most noticeable, anyway (haven't unlocked it
alliance side so can't give you any more idea!)

>- I am lost. Sure, I still remember the world but I'm nowhere near as
>  familiar as I used to be, you sure forget a lot in two years

I'm not surprised you're lost, things change so fast! Especially when
you're coming in just after a major patch, where even more than usual
changed.

>- my guild is not dead. While there are not many active people (I haven't
>  seen anyone yet) but at least there seem to be four or five players
>  whose characters have logged in during the last few days, I'm really
>  looking forward to catching up with them

Always good to see old names around, only seen a couple of my old
friends but at least some have returned with the patch :-)

>Well, I guess that's it for the time being. I won't buy the expansion but I
>plan to make the most of those seven unexpected days of reminicscing :-)

Hehe hope you have fun!