The sky fell, and we're still here

The patch hit, and one would think that they had turned the game into hello kitty adventure island or something. People really need to realize one thing....if you don't like a product, don't get it. WoW is not a necessity, it's a luxury. It is not the ONLY MMO out there.


It's not as if bread was only available without crusts one day, and people who love crust on their bread were left in the dust forever and were forced to make their own bread so they could eat crust.


Anyway.

Changes. Lots of fucking changes.

Visual changes- the game looks crisper, and right now it's running on low settings, and it still runs beautifully. Ish. I'm convinced that my laptop would not have handled the tech requirements.

UI changes- some menus were streamlined, and I can say that I like it a lot. It looks fresher. A lot of add ons were rendered idiotic and superfluous. Also, when abilities proc, they light a glowy shine. It's a bit distracting, but I'm a fan.

Random stuff- They made dual speccing 100g, coming down from 1000g. Too much freedom all at once, but I sure as hell got dual spec on both my warrior and death knight. They also allow you to see the abilities you will gain in the coming levels, and when you ding, it tells you what you can learn at your trainer. They added a new tier of flying, making flight training beyond the basic training a whopping 10k g. A bit daunting. Glyphs were reworked, to my delight. Glyphs are now a permanent thing, which I imagine scribes hate. The economy will be in shambles for a few days, but who cares. It will stabilize.


Classes-
A. Hopped on to my death knight, just to respecc him. Blood is now the defacto tank spec. I haven't tanked with him, and I won't lie, I'm a bit scared to do so. Didn't do much else on that toon, other than respec and get the dual spec at the trainer.

B. Warriors- I spent the majority of my evening playing around with my toon. Wow. We ran two instances, and they went by passably well. One was UK,for which we were overgeared and overleveled, and then COS, which is basically what we should have been doing to begin with. I did not wipe, but I am far squishier. Hopefully it has to do with the fact that you are now penalized for mixing and matching plate armor with mail and leather pieces. Some abilities were removed, most noticeably mocking blow and bloodrage. Some abilities were reworked. I noticed that basically threat is more difficult to keep and establish, a fact that gives me a bit of the jitters in foresight: if DPS doesn't learn that you now need a few moments to hit shit with a stick before they can jump in on the fun, it will make this game a living hell. I have also noticed that I hit a LOT harder, and right now I'm getting hit a lot harder too. It's to be expected- I'm losing stam and armor from wearing a leather leveling piece, and I'm adjusting to the new way threat works, and my favorite healer is relearning how to heal, which she's taken to as a duck to water. Overall, I think I'm falling in love all over again.

C. Druids- I am still waiting to make a druid in December, but apparently these were REWORKED the heck out. We'll see.

D. Pallys- wow. Ok. So I logged into Jura, and the tree now is....well.... paladins now have holy power in addition to mana. I don't get it. Sadly for Jurakan, this seals his fate in a lot of ways. I get to use crusader strike ...as prot. Maybe it's that I haven't played a paladin in so long...but it felt like a lot to take at level 80. Jill agreed with me. So we agreed to reroll as human pallys in Silver Hand. This works, in a way, for me, as I wanted all my tanks in that server. It will suck if I ever have to move to another server. Holy power looks like some very pretty glyphs on top of your screen. I equated it to runic power for death knights, but we'll see.

I spent most of the evening figuring out stuff and fighting that nagging feeling whenever I looked at something that had changed. I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out that my #3 hotkey in bar 2, which was now blank, had been Bloodrage. I became a bit saddened, but then I figured that the shouts now generate rage. =D


All this game needs now is actual shouting, a la LOTRO.


ps- Hunters start with pets, wtf.