Leveling Up in the World of Warcraft: Seasonal Boosts, Cataclysm Beta Insights, and PvP Strategy

Ever wondered how the latest tweaks to Azeroth's experience points and gold gains might revolutionize your gameplay? Prepare to have your curiosity satisfied as we take you through the World of Warcraft's Season of Discovery, revealing an impressive 100% XP boost up to level 39 and a whopping threefold increase in quest gold. Amidst the weekly updates, your trusty hosts, along with WoW veterans from the forums, dissect the Cataclysm Beta's rocky debut. We'll weigh the community's varied sentiments, from dissatisfaction to adulation, and offer practical advice to tackle the world bosses, the Emerald Dream World Quest bonus event, and the Comp Stomp brawl with finesse. Plus, I'll share the thrill of skyrocketing a druid through levels at an unprecedented pace, showcasing how these game changes create a more exhilarating experience for both neophytes and seasoned players alike.

As the scent of virtual ale wafts through the Pig and Whistle Inn, we shift the spotlight to the Cataclysm Beta testing and the PvP updates that have gamers on the edge of their seats. Analyzing the prospects of a summer release and the exclusion of features like reforging from the beta, we examine Blizzard's Herculean task of revamping classic continents without tangling up the infamous 'spaghetti code'. Our panel of expert gamers encourages dabbling in the beta to witness Azeroth's transformation while pondering the pre-patch's influence on guild dynamics. The chapter doesn't conclude without a nod to the unique identities of Cataclysm PvP, as we speculate the future meta and the brewing contention over late-season trinkets. Join us for a session ripe with insight, strategy, and a dash of Azerothian lore.

Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Telesokim music plays softly on yellow light علència and whoops, and here it's from Biробoints Quranani. We're ready to start this video without further ado. Lets marvelous. Hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, I go for a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft. I grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy.

Speaker 1: 1:05

This episode will be going over a couple bits and pieces Season of Discovery and the XP boost that has just been introduced. Cataclysm Beta is now out, which I don't think many people saw coming this week. I think there was some data mine of it the previous week, but I don't think many people thought that it would be quite this unpolished at the moment. But we'll be getting into that. But as always, we will be looking at other bits and pieces on the forums people complaining, people praising the game, all that stuff, and debunking that and arguing them like tosses. Now we have the weekly news. As always, bersericron, zikali, elders and Aerostar are your world bosses for the week. They are located in the Waking Shore Theralak Caverns and the Emerald Dream World Quest bonus event is your bonus event. Strangely enough, for this week this means that you get more reputation for doing these events or doing world quests. So if you're looking to get any bits and pieces, I myself am looking for the Proudmoor Music Box for my reputation, so I'll be doing that, and it is a very good week to do so, so definitely worth the while there.

Speaker 1: 2:22

Comp Stomp is your brawl for the week. What this is is that you go into Arathi Basin and you go against AI. These AI are very easy, hence why it is called Comp Stomp, because you are just stomping them into the ground, not giving them a chance. And yeah, it's a very easy way to make honor if you are running low on it. Afflicted, raging and Fortified are your mythic affixes for the week. If you're affected, you simply have to top up a spirit or something. If I'm not mistaken, something along them lines Raging when a mob gets below 30%, it will increase its damage by 100%. So either kite it, kill it quickly, soothe it, slow it down, you know anything of the sorts, but just don't tank them like if you've got a lot of mobs on you. And fortified is your last mythic aphix, where the non-boss enemies have more health and increased damage. So bring a talent build that can accommodate for that.

Speaker 1: 3:24

Now, where do we start off? Well, we'll start off with season of discovery XP. We'll start off there. What season discovery did? I've covered this in the past couple of episodes. It's given everyone now a 100% increase in XP gain, and this is up until level 39 or up until level 40. I think you still have it at level 39, if I'm not mistaken. But yes, from level 1 to 39 you have a 100% increased XP boost, and for classic. This is amazing. So I'll give you an example, but I will finish off the rest of the.

Speaker 1: 4:03

The buff and the rest of the buff gives you 300% more gold from Quests. So if you have a quest that gives you 50 copper, then you get one silver 50 instead or Make it a lot more easier for those that don't understand the currency Of wow one silver, you get three silver instead for handing it in. Very simple, isn't it? Now, this is amazing because they did cut the price of mounts in half at level 40, so you should be able to relatively easily quest and, you know, get what you need. Now, the reason that they up the gold is firstly, because it's kind of a sandbox mode. Let's face it. You just want to have fun on while you, if you want to play classic, you go to classic era servers. But it's because if you are questing at the normal rate with this XP buff, you're going to vastly out level most of the quests by the time that you get to a certain point in your leveling and this means that you're getting less Gold, less copper, silver gold overall. Therefore, you wouldn't be able to afford your mount at level 40 if you were to just quest, not like you would.

Speaker 1: 5:15

Normally. So Perfect example of this is I was leveling a druid last night and essentially this druid Starts off at level one, as you usually do. You start off in your starting zone. Each race has their own starting zone and For Nile's it is tell Drasil. Now, usually if I do every single quest in tell Drasil at the usual rate of XP, I would finish every quest in tell Drasil and I would be around level 10 to 12 12 for 5 to kill a lot of mobs and 10 if I get really lucky with like drop rates and stuff like that. Now I Leveled my druid last night and I ended up finishing every single quest in tell Drasil at level 15. I am now level 15 In tell Drasil, and that is ridiculously fast. So to give you some perspective, I usually head to the next town, which is dark shore and Orbedine and at level around 10 to 12, like I said, but I'll be going there at level 15 so I can do the higher level quests immediately. So there might not even be a point in me doing the lower level quests, hence why you get less gold, because you just don't do them. You don't get any XP for them or anything like that. You know that kind of deal, um, I so. Yeah, that's why the gold increase is there. But I do want to point out this is probably the best change I've ever seen in any of the wows. This is one of the best changes, clearly, on the basis of it keeps it fresh for people who want to level out. It's really good.

Speaker 1: 6:53

The whole point of classic is levelling. Like people want the levelling journey, which is good, but you don't want the slow levelling journey in Season of Discovery where you've got to get your runes and everything else in between. So the problem with that is like well, why would you level very slowly and have to, you know, get to end game, as it were, which is stranglethorne, veil and nomerogon raid at the moment With less than optimal gear and taking two times the amount of time that it should do. It's just not fun. If you wanted to go and level like a really slow levelling pace, you go to classic era servers and just level the classic way. But Season of Discovery is not classic era, it is a sandbox mode and I think that it is very good that they've put this in for people who are wanting to level out because, Like I said on Wednesday's episode, we have people complaining that they already have two level 40s and the end game is boring.

Speaker 1: 7:52

Well, I've, I would make the counter argument that end game is not meant to be the purpose of Season of Discovery. The journey is, which is pretty much what they said back in blizzcom when it was introduced, or like called out essentially. And it's crazy that people don't understand that this is a good buff. People actually think that it's like killing the game. No, it's keeping the game alive because it allows people to reroll classes and you know experience, you know Warlock runes or you know mage healing or rogue tanking, you know any of that stuff, and People just don't understand that. People get you know two characters and then they're bored and it's like, oh well, I have to raid log, you don't have to, you can go and log in and do something else.

Speaker 1: 8:37

But for me, season of Discovery isn't about making it my main world of Warcraft. If it is it for you, then you would understand that Leveling is part of what classic is like. That's the classic element to World of Warcraft, the leveling process. But I play retail, I play wrath classic, you know I do all the other World of Warcraft. So hoping on to a season of Discovery and just playing very casually is very fun. You don't have to take it too seriously.

Speaker 1: 9:05

I think we as a Wow community have taken World of Warcraft way too seriously. The biggest problem with season of Discovery is the passing meta, as it's called, or something People expect you to be in the best in slot gear pre raid best in slot have all of your runes. Now don't get me wrong. Having runes is an essential part of what the raiding experience it is in season of Discovery. But you don't need all of them. You need your core ones and you're good to go. Pretty much just walk into dungeons and then the raid. Now obviously the gear helps, but classic being classic, it's very simple. Like people want people who are going to pass 100 at level 40 in season of Discovery in a sandbox mode, like, sure, if you want to play it that way. But I think that we've we're ruining the game for people who, like, are just wanting to play normally, like it's absolutely crazy.

Speaker 1: 10:00

The reason that World of Warcraft, warcraft, go down the drain is because of us as a community. We take it way too seriously when sometimes it's just meant to be played for fun, not sometimes all the time, to be honest. It's meant to be played for fun and you know, I know it's tough to see that in some aspects, like with retail PVP at the moment, it's not fun unless you're a demon hunter, a warlock or an any sham. It's just not fun, is it? Um? But you have to try and make your fun within the game and people get way too caught up in oh, my god, you've got to be, you know, the top passer of your guild, of the server, to even join my group. And then you join the group and you wipe on the first trash Pull and it's like, oh, that's your fault because you're trash. And it's like, oh well, it is what it is, but people need to just get over that. In my opinion, that's what ruined the season of Discovery. But I think the XP buff is 10 out of 10. I think it's really good and a really good quality of life change. And be honest with you, yeah, because whenever a new phase drops in season of Discovery, you don't get that buff immediately. They drop it like a month or so afterwards so that people who are wanting to level the classic way can do in season of Discovery. But those who want to catch up and, you know, just enjoy a very chilled season of Discovery experience Can do so and in that regard as well.

Speaker 1: 11:23

Now this one that we didn't expect, but Cataclysm beta dropped On EU and NA servers. When was it Thursday? So yesterday, I think it was, yeah, early, early Thursday and a late Thursday EU. So what does this mean? This means that cataclysm is, I would say, a few months away from being out. Now they did put up a blue post and Saying what is in this beta test? So throughout this test period, will deploy fixes and improvements to the cataclysm test environment and provide Information and updates on this thread.

Speaker 1: 12:07

At this time, the following are unavailable for testing in the cataclysm beta reforging archaeology, goblins and wagen races, transmog field systems, leveling past level 80, endgame dungeons, dungeon journal, elberad and character info screen updates. What they're currently testing and or that they have like known issues for are a few things, but most of them are UI Errors that you know. Some highlighting issues, very simple stuff. They know that is a you know a problem on the current beta. So what they are doing in this beta is essentially doing the level 1 to 80 experience in cataclysm. Now if you open up the cataclysm test client Obviously not everyone can, but if you have a look at it on someone's stream, you will see that it is it looks very unpolished. It does look very, very unpolished.

Speaker 1: 13:05

Now the reason for this is because as you go through the world of Warcrafts, you have World of Warcraft classic, then burning crusade and then Rafa the Lich King. All of these simply added new continents. So Outland for Ben and crusade, you have Northrend for Rafa the Lich King. But what cataclysm did was revamped the entire world. So it revamped Callum door, the base game. Essentially it revamped Callum door and Eastern kingdoms and this meant that a lot of the quests got changed. So many of the quest got changed from the old world into the new world and this did mean, unfortunately, that there is going to be a tougher Transition period, if that makes sense. Because Whereas in the previous, like classic things, you're just adding a new continent, simply you are Taking everything that you've added into classic, which has been, you know, xp buffs, it has been heroic pluses, you know all of that and simply you are changing it into Cataclysm Classic, which might not necessarily go together coding-wise.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Now, I'm obviously not a coding expert, but we always refer to Blizzard's coding as spaghetti code. Change one thing, something else fucks up because it was reliant on this or something. You know that kind of deal. And when you're changing two giant continents that have so much connected to them you have so many zones connected to them, so many quests there's gonna be a few met like fuck ups here and there. And this is also to do with quality of life changes that they are bringing into the game. So what they're doing in Cataclysm, which wasn't originally in the other Cataclysm, the OG Cataclysm, is they are introducing quality of life updates, and these quality of life updates are simply auction house, like UIs. They are bringing the retail auction house into the game and as well as a couple other bits and bobs, but they will obviously affect the spaghetti code every now and again, which isn't great, and they're obviously gonna need a bit of time to play around with that.

Speaker 1: 15:30

But with Cataclysm being out or the beta, I would say we are on track to get a early to mid-summer Cataclysm release, or at least very much pre-patch, which would be amazing to see. I think a lot of people are kind of fed up with ICC now, with it being out for so long, and I think that the quicker Cataclysm pre-patch hits the better, because that way guilds can start doing their guild improvements and stuff like that. But honestly, I think that it's gonna be really, really earlier than we think. I think we all kind of expected oh okay, well, we're gonna get a yeah sorry, we've gotta push it back kind of announcement soon. But with the beta being released, we have a chance with it and that's really really good. I think that that is very, very good. So Cataclysm beta is out. They're gonna be adding more and more people to it. If you want to opt in, go to the Blizzard forums or WoWhead there will be multiple links to it to opt into the beta and you have to be lucky enough to be selected and then you simply download it on your Battlenet client. But yeah, it's looking good. At least it's good to see the graphic updates and stuff like that in Cataclysm and hopefully we can slowly see the beta progress like in terms of stages, and we'll be keeping a close eye on it throughout the coming months, essentially.

Speaker 1: 16:59

But let me take you to the next one where I will be looking over a little foreign post Now. This one is about Cataclysm PvP actually, and this is a really good post. I do rate it. Was it any good? For your information, cataclysm Classic was already in beta. I hear that Mr Pandaria was peak PvP cast design. Was Cata close to close in any way? With Cata being the start of modern WoW, it introduces quite a bit of quality of life changes. Will you guys try it out specifically for PvP? I'm highly considering it. What about you guys? Now I'm actually going to consider PvP and Cataclysm. I think it's possibly like a more fleshed out version.

Speaker 1: 17:46

Classes still have their class uniqueness and identity. That's what hopefully the War Within will provide for retail War of Warcraft. They still have their identity in retail now, but not as much as like Classic and the earlier expansions, because in Mr Pandaria, druids had symbiosis, mages had a couple other things flame, orb, warriors, bayblades, obviously as usual. But there were very unique abilities to these classes and I think, from what I remember, cataclysm wasn't too bad.

Speaker 1: 18:23

I think a lot around the later seasons there was something to do with trinkets that were a bit of a problem because there were some of the best trinkets in the game hidden behind, like raiding, and I don't think this should ever be a thing for PvP. I think every now and again you can have some raiding, like pieces be in there. Like with the latest AWC, there was a staff that was kind of like an execute. I think a lot of people could obtain that with Mythic Dungeons. But it's not great and it's not going to be make or break if you don't have this staff kind of deal. But I think Cataclysm will be very good for PvP. I just think the later seasons are going to be very much. If you do PvE and PvP you'll have that slight advantage. But we'll see, we'll see.

Speaker 1: 19:08

With that I would like to think that people come back for the PvE slash PvP. I do think that it's going to be very good, though I think that people do underestimate Cataclysm. I think that we are in a era of gaming where we can maybe look to enjoy the people that we're playing with rather than pass. But the reason that Cataclysm will get ruined for a lot of people is purely on the basis that people take it too seriously, they burn themselves out very quickly, or the fact that people just don't have time to play and therefore that affects other people in their raiding guild or just their frame group.

Speaker 1: 19:52

I obviously have people in the guild who played back in Cataclysm, but a lot of them are very skeptical about it, mostly due to the fact that they had people quit around that time and the people quit meant that they had no one to really enjoy the expansion with, so the expansion was kind of a dud to them and that's not enjoyable. That's pretty shitty and unfortunate and I just hope that people understand that the game is literally about who you're playing with, not about passing, not about making the most out of it, not about levelling the fastest, not about doing it, being the big passing guild and being rank one on the server, because that is you perfect. But there can only be one person on that server, can't there? That's rank one, so don't get your hopes up with it. Enjoy the game instead. Enjoy the game rather than stress about levelling as fast as you can, because I think that's what we've lost in World of Warcraft a lot of the time the enjoyment of it rather than the passing of meta that has become so community based driven that we lose sight of that. But that is where I'll end it. It's relatively short, but the Cascals in one kind of deserves it's own thing.

Speaker 1: 21:09

It needs to be known that the beta is out and we'll hopefully be getting a lot of changes as well. I do want to say that the class changes for retail or the balance changes will hopefully be out after this weekend, as soon as the Mythic Dungeon Invitational finishes. I think that it will be immediately like put out these are the changes everyone's going to get it like within the next like weekly reset, which will be Tuesday slash Wednesday, and I hope that we can go from there with retail, because it needs some love retail. At the moment it is a very dead meta in PvP, which is a bit rough, so we'd like some changes, please. Blizzard would be very appreciated. But thank you all very much for listening once again and go, valor Friend, goodbye all.