BETA: Random Useful Links

I have been wandering round the net, as I am prone to do, and I found a couple useful beta info thingies. Figured I'd share...

First, for all you hunters out there. You know our pets are changing (like our class and our resource), but do you know how to select which pet to bring to a raid? Our viable options (viable as in you can justify them without going "cause I want to") will vastly increase. You want a buff, well, our pets are bringing all sorts of sexy buffs. And by sexy I mean stuff like Heroism, Blessing of Kings, 5% crit, 8% spell damage, good stuff like that. Now, the beast masters get the best ones, cause well, they're all about the pets, but there's a lot to love for all of us. Only problem is deciding what's best for any particular group.

Well, thats where this awesome Petopia thread comes in. Scroll down to see a lovely flowchart which walks you through a pet selection process. Plus, it lays out the pvp abilities as well, and has a spreadsheet! Great thread, and one I know I'll be referring to when I request Gariath bring a particular pet. Me, if I'm raiding on my hunter I'm probably bringing Eriador, my dragonhawk. I miss having him around.

Second, archeology. I fiddled around with this in beta, it's nifty, and hey, here's an excellent guide to it, written by Mitarn.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to keep hunting a dragon. He's got this sinew that, when combined with a leaf and patch 4.something, will turn into a 24 slot bag.  Here, dragon dragon dragon!

BETA: wow, a fresh 80 is painful...

Well, after having beta issues, I finally got the druid transfered and logged in to see how a fresh 80 in fresh 80 gear will handle the new zones.

Not so well, as it turns out. Monera (who's been renamed on the beta server) is a moonkin, and by the time I'd managed to kill my first earth elemental, she was at half-health. Now, granted, she's a caster so she's a bit squishy, but that seems wrong.
Here's her talent tree, which I didn't research at all, and she may not be glyphed. I kinda forgot to check.

So the lack of glyphing may be one problem, and my ignorance of the new boomkin rotation is another. As far as I can tell, instead of Insect Swarm, beam of light from sky, Wrath till eclipse, then switch to starfire, it's now....
pick one dot (since dots now add arcane or lunar energy), then wrath or starfire till you get an eclipse, switch to other dot and spell, repeat....

Here we see me practicing at a dummy. I'm going to play around with this a bit, but I may end up going feral for leveling again. This makes me sad, cause I like boomkin, but seriously, one mob reducing me to half health isn't really viable.  Of course, when your first quest rewards you with....

those, it might not be such a problem. And for comparison, yes, Lyllea is wearing the shadow tier 10. That green is almost an upgrade, and that's the first quest in Hyjal.

and yes, Lyllea is now a belf. One of the most entertaining things about the beta is that they're testing all the paid features as well, so I get to fiddle with races and changing from Alliance to Horde and stuff. She was even briefly a gnome, till I remembered why I don't play gnomes (can't stand being short in game).

BETA: Looky at the new UI stuff (and a couple other random screenies)

I got to play around some more in the beta. I had transfered some premade characters, and *gasp* they actually showed up. So without further ado, I give you...

The New Glyph Interface. I really like this. It's actually easy to find the different glyphs and you can see all your choices, and yes, this makes glyphing MUCH easier.

Blizz has also incorporated a Power Auras Classic bit to their UI. Here we see me being alerted that um, I should Frostfire because I have some buff that makes it free... I like the highlighting of the ability on the bar as well, it's a nice touch.

And here we have the current state of the female worgen.... I'm really not sure about the pink box, I was rather hoping for blue.

And last, EYE CANDY. I'm not saying where this is from, but it's gorgeous. Trust me, just wow....

BETA: Whee, Worgens

After finally getting enough of the beta downloaded to allow play, I rolled a worgen. Male, since the female ones aren't available yet.

The starting zone is quite good, but um, OH GOD the female voices. It's sad, cause it's great otherwise but the awfulness of those voices completely destroys immersion for me. Hopefully they're still working on that.  Blizz, just saying, if my first thought upon hearing a voice is "Why is she trying to combine Cockney and Drusilla from Buffy/Angel and doing it badly?" well, the accent is not good. Dunno what it was supposed to be, but not good.

My human face is apparently trying to disguise itself as a Forsaken. Yeah, that 5 o'clock shadow's a bit out of control. But you can switch back and forth between forms while character-creating, which is very nice.  Oh, and text in pic is spoilery. Sorry, that was the least spoilery human pic I had. But here he is in worgen form, and other than the pink in his muzzle, I quite like him.

I still die a lot as a rogue, but I don't mind so much. And I'm hoping my toon carrying bags and heirlooms will be transfered soon so I can kit this rogue out. I went subtlety, and have no idea what I'm doing beyond... Sneak sneak sneak, AMBUSH, sinister strike/eviscerate, mob dead now. Just can't be caught out of stealth.

I also rolled a troll druid and tried that for a bit. Didn't get to form levels, and well, having done the troll starting zone recently in vanilla, I can safely say that the first few levels are completely different. After that, it seems to be pretty familiar. At least they increased the crawler mucus drop rate. Hate that stuff.

And yes, everyone's going "oooh Gnomer" but my plan is to do that this morning. Way too crowded last night.

BETA: thus far (talent tree spoiler)

I'm going to put BETA in all posts discussing any aspect of the beta, so that people can avoid spoilers.  If I need to do more, please let me know.  I am going to try to avoid discussion of plot and zone changes as much as I can, but if something is OMG Amazing, well, I may not be able to resist squeeing.

Anyway...
thus far there has been a great deal of waiting to download, some crashing, some cowering, and a few nifty discoveries. I have yet to make it to a new zone (heck I'm having issues just getting Lyllea out of Northrend), but I have learned some important things.

One, Darnassus was not a good place to have Lyllea parked when I transfered her. I actually had to retransfer her (once I moved her to Dal), because she was stuck. I'm now having issues trying to make it off the continent via portal to Stormwind. My baby mage is also in Stormwind, and I can't load her either, but I suspect that has more to do with lack of zone info (the download's not complete) then anything else.

Two, beta is buggy. Very buggy.  Like randomly not being able to click on anything buggy. Like cowering every time you log in buggy. Like, um, crashing the game by casting levitate buggy.  Yes, buggy.  Did I mention the bugs? Good thing Blizz has me to point them out, right? Well, me and about 50k other people.

Three, the talent trees. Weird. I'm still getting used to the idea that you kinda have to fill out rows.

Without further ado... Random Screencaps!  Because I can.
The talent tree, to explain what I mean by filling out the rows.  That's shadow.

Dal under construction.

Power Word: Stand in the shiny for once