Off to a Cataclysmic Start

There is a Shared Topic at Blog Azeroth about Cataclysm first impressions that I’ll leave stickied for an extra few days for those of you who want to share your first impressions about the expansion after Sunday.

I’m not going to talk about my impressions of the quests, dungeons and so on because, around this time, after WoW binging like crazy over the past few days, I don’t really care. I’ll probably care again in a few weeks so I’ll write about it then.

If I could sum up my first week of Cataclysm in three words, I’d say: disappointing and frustrating.

I’m not disappointed about the game, but rather my experience. I feel like a hamster in a wheel, running and running and not getting anywhere. I got to 85 as quickly as I could. It took me about 30 hours of played time, which is almost twice what it took the rest of my guildies. I wanted to see what a 24 hour WoW binge was like. I’ll write about it in the future, making a silly story out of it, but for now I’ll stick with the short story: it sucked, don’t do it. Curiosity got the best of me, but if I were to do it again, I’d stick with my original plan of play-sleepy-play-study-play-sleep. Combine sleep deprivation with mindless questing and the stress of 4 finals to cram for and you get pretty messy results.

And frustrating. I’m paranoid about being left behind. I’m always paranoid about being left behind in anything I do (comes from being repeatedly and traumatically left behind on school trips throughout my childhood), but when added to a situation where the chances of being left behind are pretty big, my anxiety goes through the roof.

I remember when Wrath dropped, I was pretty nervous and clinged tightly to the people I wanted to play with. I remember the delight I felt whenever we’d run an instance together and the devastation any time I’d miss a run. This is more or less the same, but with missing runs outweighing the doing them. I missed out on every single guild heroic first. I’ll have completely forgotten about it in a month, but for the time being, it’s heartbreaking.

Finding guild groups for instances is near impossible as a healer anyway- we only have two or three tanks and they’ll only run with the same two healers. I have been lucky with PuGs and I really enjoyed running Heroic Deadmines despite not knowing anyone in the group. But it’s not the same. The thrill I get from WoW comes from learning and wiping with people I know. PuGs give me gear and rep, but they give me very little fun. And I have seen very little fun so far this expansion.

Honestly, since Cataclysm dropped, I’ve rarely felt anything but stressed. Between trying to keep up with my guild and not compromising my GPA, I’ve worn myself thin. I’m not sure how else I could have done it- being present for guild firsts means a lot to me and is something I’m ready to fight for, but I’m starting to wonder at what cost. During high raiding times, I love being in an efficient guild that kills bosses. But at times like these, I miss being able to step away from the computer and not being panic stricken over what I’m going to miss.

Anyway, I do have a lot to write about pally healing and dungeon strategies, as well as some funny stories of my odd brain dead behaviour, but it’ll be a few days yet before finals and WoW lightened up enough to let me blog.

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