It’s been a little over a week now since Cataclysm launched. My paladin tank is lvl85 and has finished most of the new areas. Mount Hyjal was not that great, just a lot of the same old. Twilight Highlands I have yet to visit, since I like to do all the quests in a zone and then move to another. But the other two…

Vashj’ir was just breathtaking. I could not imagine a more beautiful setting. The bright colourful palette of the environment that could have so easily been an attack on the senses was calming and mesmerising. The emptiness of the usual maps were contrasted in the full of life landscapes of every conceivable aquatic creature, shimmering about their every day chores, a ballet of shimmering masses and constant movement that provided such a lived in experience. This was a world that I was intruding upon and yet felt a deep connection to. I’ve always loved the sea and this setting gave me many pauses that I would just admire the surroundings and try to find a piece that just seemed to belong to the previous feeling I had of a WoW map. I could not find it, and how joyous it was that I felt like this was a different game altogether. I could stay there for many more hours, and I truly wish there were many dailies to be done there so that, when I do go there and just swim about, I did not feel like there was something else waiting for me on another map.

Uldum, the vast emptiness of the desert with the lush banks of a river. Egypt renewed and Gods resurrected in a new race of WoW. Magnificent ancient tombs, wonderful architecture that simply feels like transporting through time. Had there been no Vashj’ir, this would have been my favourite thing about Cataclysm.

With all the new quests and the distracting beauty of Vashj’ir, I did not have the time or resources to level up my two professions; jewelcrafting and enchanting. This has happened of late, although I did rush to 475 in both to be able to do the daily JC quests and DE the new greens I was getting. Now it’s been about 3 days that I have really started levelling up my tradeskills, being largely helped by the fact that I switched many a product in AH (meaning buying them low and selling them high) and I levelled my mining/herbalism DK to 525 in both (but only 82 in level). Jewelcrafting is a slow tradeskill to reach an equilibrium because we cannot get more than one pattern every three days. So while there will be rare cut gems on the AH, their prices will be largely inflated by their scarcity considering that most jewelcrafters will not want to learn a new pattern that already exists in the AH. I fully expect a month before we see rare cut gems drop in price.

Enchanting is not hampered by this and everyone who flushes gold down the drain will learn it all very quick. This has led to enchants that are the most powerful in their field to be so mass produced that they are ridiculously cheap. Consider a scroll that needs 8 dusts (10g each now) and 3 greater essences (60g each now) being sold for 2-3g on the AH. This is just madness and I am purchasing all I can find and send them to my bank alt. When the equilibrium comes they will most definitely be worth much more than that.

My guild is currently at level 2 and a half. We are a very small guild, people that know each other in real life, and we don’t mind the slow progression. We have already done half the guild dungeon runs and have accepted that we will never see certain achievement rewards (like “Classy”). It is a good system, none the less, and we will eventually climb the levels and most of the achievements since at least three of us are achievement junkies. We already have UN, we just need the guild reputation to unlock it.