Mists of Pandaria To-Do List

Hello everyone!

As some of you might recall, I'm a big fan of making lists (it might be my OCD). So, I'm revisited my pre-Cataclysm to-do list and creating my first Mists of Pandaria to-do list!

Below you'll find everything I hope to accomplish before the end of the expansion. In a few weeks I'll post and update so you can see how well (or poorly) I'm doing.

Leveling-

• Get my Death Knight to level 90 (currently level 70)

Misc.-

• Finish my Shadowmourne
• Finish my Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings
• Get the last of the Blacksmithing recipes I still need

Achievements-

• Exalted with Avengers of Hyjal
• Finish these Metas:
• Glory of the Pandaria Hero
• Glory of the Firelands Raider
• Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider
• Glory of the Pandaria Raider
• Find people that aren’t failures to get my last WotLK raid achievement

PVP-

• Get 100k honorable kills (still 12k away)
• Get the Justicar title (grr WSG rep)
• Start doing arenas and stop being a coward about it :(

Mounts-

• Grand Expedition Yak
• Sea Turtle Mount
• Deathcharger’s Reins
• Ashes of Al’ar
• Big Love Rocket
• Corrupted Fire Hawk
• Reins of the AstralCloud Serpent
• Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger
• Reins of the CrimsonCloud Serpent
• Reins of the Drake of the North Wind
• Reins of the Drake of the South Wind
• Experiment 12-B
• Flametalon of Alysrazor
• Invincible
• Grey Riding Camel
• Jeweled Onyx Panther
• Jade Panther
• Ruby Panther
• Sapphire Panther
• Sunstone Panther
• Reins of the Vitreous Stone Drake
• Vicious War Steed
• Depleted-Kyparium Rocket
• Geosynchronous World Spinner
• Life-Binder’s Handmaiden
• Mimiron’s Head
• Obsidian Nightwing
• Onyxian Drake
• Phosphorescent Stone Drake
• Pureblood Fire Hawk
• Son of Galleon
• Swift Springstrider
• Swift Windsteed
• Pandaren Kite String
• Scepter of Azj'Aqir
• Reins of theTwilight Harbinger
• Golden Primal Direhorn
• Amber Primordial Direhorn
• Jade Primordial Direhorn
• Cobalt Primordial Direhorn
• Slate Primordial Direhorn
• Reins of the Bone-White Primal Raptor
• Thundering Cobalt Cloud Serpent
• Ghastly Charger
• Black Primal Raptor
• Red Primal Raptor
• Green Primal Raptor
• Sky Claw
• Clutch of Ji-Kun
• Spawn of Horridon
• Armored Skyscreamer
• Armored Bloodwing

Roll alts to get the following:

• Dreadsteed
• Felsteed
• Exarch’s Elekk
• Great Exarch’s Elekk
• Sunwalker Kodo
• Great Sunwalker Kodo
• Thalassian Warhorse
• Thallasian Charger

Pets-

(Not counting unobtainable or ridiculously difficult to obtain pets)

• Banana Charm
• Baneling
• Crawling Claw
• Cinder Kitten
• Darkmoon Rabbit
• Darkmoon Eye
• Death Talon Whelpguard
• Fox Kit
• Eye of the Legion
• Ethereal Soul-Trader
• Hippogryph Hatchling
• Pandaren Fire Spirit
• Pandaren Water Spirit
• Porcupette
• Searing Scorchling
• Rocket Chicken
• Stitched Pup
• Wind Rider Cub
• Clock’em
• Giraffe Calf (bane of my existence)
• Hopling
• Infinite Whelpling
• Qiraji Guardling
• Scourged Whelpling
• Singing Cricket
• Sumprush Rodent
• Dragon Kite
• Tuskarr Kite
• Gusting Grimoire
• Spectral Porcupette
• Red Panda
• Mountain Panda
• Snowy Panda
• Sunfur Panda
• Zandalari Anklerender
• Zandalari Footslasher
• Zandalari Kneebiter
• Zandalari Toenibbler
• Tiny White Carp
• Tiny Blue Carp
• Tiny Red Carp
• Tiny Green Carp
• Thundertail Flapper
• Swamp Croaker
• Elder Python
• Electrified Razortooth
• Son of Animus
• Living Sandling
• Ji-Kun Hatchling
• Spawn of G'nathus
• Sunreaver Micro-Sentry

Thoughts on Cataclysm

Hello!

So, I'm sure by now pretty much anyone reading this played the newest World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm and drawn your own conclusions about it. Or if you haven't played it then you may have no interest in my opinions of the game.

But regardless whichever category you fall under- read this post anyway, I have a family to feed!

First Impressions-

When I first booted up the game, it was after a long (re:16 hour) workday, and I knew I had maybe an hour tops to play before bed. I threw in the installation disc, grabbed some chow, and sat down expecting to watch a loading bar. Thankfully however the game was ready to play

quickly and I was off to the races.

Prior to the expansion I had done zero research regarding leveling, or strategies for traversing the new content, so I was a little overwhelmed at first. I headed to Mount Hyjal and started questing through the typical "kill 10 boars" or "loot 5 orbs of evil" quests. I was disheartened to see a realm first level 85 achievement pop up on the first night, and was annoyed that people were hitting level cap in less than one day, a drastic change compared to WOTLK.

Overall however, I found myself sucked into the questing, the new zone, and the new achievements and ended the night craving much more.

Hindsight-

I played through Hyjal, Deepholm, Vash'ir, and Uldum over the next few days and got a good idea of the game-play of the expansion. While there were some really awesome quest lines, I think the majority were far too familiar, predictable, and underwhelming. For example, the end of the Hyjal quests involved defeated Ragnaros with some legends from WoW lore, (amazing concept right?) but it ended up being a drawn out fight involving too much repetition (heal the guy, dodge the fire, kill the adds, repeat) to be fun.

In addition, it seems like the developers heard all the positive reaction to their cut sequences (Wrathgate) from the fans and decided that they needed to strike the iron while it was hot. So expect A LOT more cut scenes in Cata. And this is by no means a good thing. The Wrathgate sequence was a triumph of visual and emotional imagery which provided not only entertainment, but emotional appeal. When Bolvar calls out to Arthas, you hear the passion in his tone, and to see him fall to apparent betrayal by the Forsaken really sparks a variety of emotions in the player.

The Cata cut sequences by comparison are boring, unnecessary, and extremely random. It seems kind of like the development team ended up with some extra budget while designing Uldum and decided every other zone needed a cut-scene.

There is one cut scene where you literally ride about 50 yards on a caravan while some guy in a funny hat talks about something irrelevant to anything that matters in the game.

I found myself literally annoyed by these cut scenes at several times, because they took me out of the game, which was Blizzard's argument originally as to why there weren't more cut scenes to begin with!

Closing Thoughts-

Aside from the frustrating an pointless cut scenes, if I had to give my overall opinion of Cata, I would say everything seems too formulaic. Don't mistake me for an elitist when I say that, I realize that they have something that works, so obviously there will be redundancies. But it just seems like everything is just a re-skinned regurgitation from the past. New, expensive crafting pets and mounts to create- check; new, rare drop mounts and pets to farm- check; new factions to farm rep for, check. This may just be me being cynical as a completionist, but it feels too much like I've already beaten this game before...

Anyway, overall I know I'm going to be wasting more time than I should playing the expansion, so i can't hate on it too much. It looks better than ever, some of the quests are downright epic and/or hilarious, they added a ton of new places to explore, they added new things to farm, and the guild achievements and perks are amazing and really add extra unity to guilds. Overall Cataclysm has some brown spots, but this is one piece of fruit still worth eating.

Cataclysm To-Do List Revisited

For those of you that don't know, wayyy back in June I posted my list of things I wanted to accomplish before the release of Cataclysm. I figure with the 4.01 patch presumably being released tomorrow, now is a good time to take a look and see how well I did!

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• Finish the Insane achievement!
• Finish my "Salty" title.
• Get exalted with Hydraxian Waterlords.
• Get exalted with Silverwing Sentinals.
• Get Exalted with The League of Arathor.
• Get the Battlemaster achievement.
• Get Shadow's Edge (and Ideally Shadowmourne).
• Get the achievement for 100k honorable kills (55k 39k to go).
• Kill King Krush to finish Frostbitten grr.
• Get all of the argent tournament tabards.
• Complete the Hero of Shattrah feat of strength achievement.
• Finish my AQ quest chain.
• Get all the blacksmithing recipes I still need.
• Compete my old class sets: D1, D2, T1, T2, and AQ set.
• Farm the following mounts:

[Deathcharger's Reins] from Stratholme.
[Reins of the Blue Proto-Drake] from Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle.
[Reins of the Azure Drake] from Eye of Eternity.
[Reins of the Dark War Talbuk] from Nagrand.
[Reins of the Green Proto-Drake] from the mysterious egg.
[Reins of the Onyxian Drake] from Onyxia's lair.
[Reins of the Raven Lord] from Anzu in Sethekk Halls.

[Sea Turtle] from fishing.
[Reins of the White Polar Bear] from Brunhildar dailies.
[Reins of the Twilight Drake] from Obsidian Sanctum 3 drakes, 25 man.
[Reins of the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth] sold in Dalaran.
[Reins of the Time-Lost Proto-Drake] rare spawn.
[Swift Alliance Steed] from ToC tribute chest.
[Mimiron's Head] from Yogg Saron.
[Reins of the Ironbound Proto-Drake] from the Ulduar 25 meta achievement.
[Invincible's Reins] from Lich King hard mode...

[Argent Hippogryph] from the argent tournament.

[Ashes of A'lar] from Kael.
[Crusader's White Warhorse] from ToC tribute chest.

• Farm the following pets:

[Giant Sewer Rat] from fishing in Dalaran.
[Ice Chip] from the Midsummer event.
[Parrot Cage (Hyacinth Macaw)] rare drop in STV.

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Yeah, I defiantly set some pretty lofty goals for myself. I'm exalted with Shen'dralar and Darkmoon Faire- but am making slow progress on the goblin reputations for the Insane title.

And despite putting in thousands of casts towards some of the rare fishing rewards, I am no closer to that goal at all (RNG ARGH).

As far as the PVP goals, I have made some serious progress. I am almost done with Battlemaster, and with a little luck I may still get it before Cataclysm. In addition I put a huge dent in the 100k kill achievement.

Unfortunately mounts and pets have more or less eluded me, so only a few got crossed off from that massive list- and I REALLY hope they don't remove any, I hate missing out on mounts.

Anyway, wish me luck as I forge ahead in my attempt to finish as much of this list as possible!

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Paladin-Bias

Pre-Cataclysm To Do List!

With the Cataclysm beta and Blizzcon fast approaching, the release of the Cataclysm expansion looms on the horizon. The expansion brings with it an entirely new version of classic Azeroth, an increased level cap (85), a multitude of new dungeons and raids and several thousands additional new quests.

With the abundance of content promised with Cata, players will find themselves with more than enough to keep them occupied. So for masochistic completionists like myself hoping to accomplish various feats and complete our collections, now is the eleventh hour.

So, please enjoy my own personal list of things I want to accomplish before the Cataclysm!

• Finish the Insane achievement!
• Finish my "Salty" title.
• Get exalted with Hydraxian Waterlords.
• Get exalted with Silverwing Sentinals.
• Get Exalted with The League of Arathor.
• Get the Battlemaster achievement.
• Get Shadow's Edge (and Ideally Shadowmourne).
• Get the achievement for 100k honorable kills (55k 48k to go).
• Kill King Krush to finish Frostbitten grr.
• Get all of the argent tournament tabards.
• Complete the Hero of Shattrah feat of strength achievement.
• Finish my AQ quest chain.
• Get all the blacksmithing recipes I still need.
• Compete my old class sets: D1, D2, T1, T2, and AQ set.
• Farm the following mounts:

[Deathcharger's Reins] from Stratholme.
[Reins of the Blue Proto-Drake] from Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle.
[Reins of the Azure Drake] from Eye of Eternity.
[Reins of the Dark War Talbuk] from Nagrand.
[Reins of the Green Proto-Drake] from the mysterious egg.
[Reins of the Onyxian Drake] from Onyxia's lair.
[Reins of the Raven Lord] from Anzu in Sethekk Halls.

[Sea Turtle] from fishing.
[Reins of the White Polar Bear] from Brunhildar dailies.
[Reins of the Twilight Drake] from Obsidian Sanctum 3 drakes, 25 man.
[Reins of the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth] sold in Dalaran.
[Reins of the Time-Lost Proto-Drake] rare spawn.
[Swift Alliance Steed] from ToC tribute chest.
[Mimiron's Head] from Yogg Saron.
[Reins of the Ironbound Proto-Drake] from the Ulduar 25 meta achievement.
[Invincible's Reins] from Lich King hard mode...
[Argent Hippogryph] from the argent tournament.
[Ashes of A'lar] from Kael.
[Crusader's White Warhorse] from ToC tribute chest.

• Farm the following pets:

[Giant Sewer Rat] from fishing in Dalaran.
[Ice Chip] from the Midsummer event.
[Parrot Cage (Hyacinth Macaw)] rare drop in STV.

So clearly I have a lot to do before Cataclysm. I plan on crossing things off from this list as I go, so check it periodically to see how well/poorly I'm doing!

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Paladin-Bias