Breakfast Topic: Where will you ride out the Cataclysm?
by Matt Mitchell 
Aug 1st 2010 at 8:00AM
Soon, Deathwing the Destroyer will spring forth from his exile in Deepholm and wreak havoc upon Azeroth. The world (of Warcraft) as we know it will never be the same again. Some locations will be mostly unchanged, while others will be completely unrecognizable.
One of the things I'm looking most forward to in Cataclysm is having my characters wake up in the newly changed world and experience that "Holy cow!" moment. When I get home from the midnight opening of my local game store and install the game, I want to log in at the most interesting and significant place I can. I plan on taking some time during that last night to move my characters to certain specific locales.
There are many places to choose from. Where will you log out the last time before the expansion? Will you choose a place that will experience a big change, like the bottom of the Shimmering Flats? While it might be fun to wake up underwater -- or will you be floating, or ported to the speed barge? -- there might also be a million other players who had the same idea. You may want a more secluded and original place. Other zones with big changes like Desolace or Blasted Lands might be less crowded and still provide that "whoa" factor.
Some people may want to begin leveling their 80s right away. Will you be ready to jump right in to Hyjal or Vashj'ir? Are there roleplay reasons for your character to be where he will be? Perhaps your toon lost his home or was somehow or another affected by Deathwing's return.
Maybe you just want to leave your characters where they are. You want them to keep leveling where they have been, perhaps the Cataclysm took them by surprise, or you're just too lazy to move them somewhere else. Many zones will have their level ranges changed, so that is something to keep in mind when parking your lowbie alts the night before release.
Perhaps you'd like to avoid the Cataclysm all together. Dalaran and Shattrath should avoid most of the destruction, and the portals to the rest of the world will leave you with the ultimate choice of where to begin your expansion experience.
So tell us, where will your character or characters experience the Cataclysm?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Gamer am I Aug 1st 2010 8:05AM
The worry-wart in me doesn't want my characters to end up stuck somewhere because of the changes to the old world and launch-day glitches, so I'll be parking my characters in Dalaran for safety sake.
ANeM Aug 1st 2010 9:19AM
From personal experience in the beta, specifically during the 31-point patch day, Shattrath is really the place you want to be to avoid server crashes and instability.
The city itself is very basic, wide open, situated in a fairly simple zone, and openly despised by a good portion of the player-base. Unlike Dalaran your computer won't be trying to deal with a memory leak that manged to sneak past QA, in addition to also rendering half of the servers population and half the continent.
In addition to that, Outland is, in terms of base server operation, the most basic of the continents (in Cataclysm). The lack of phasing, weather effects in most zones or any form of massive NPC battle, excluding the dark portal, all add up to a better chance of the server maintaining stability.
However, Shattrath is not the actual place you should log out. Oh no, simply logging out there would be a waste, as you'd have none of the new content to enjoy, not now that we actually need to discover dungeon entrances to queue for them. To truly make this plan come together you need to log out near the southern ramp into Blackrock spire, where the entrance to Blackrock caverns will be located. When the maintenance concludes you must make a mad dash into the portal for BRC and then hearth to shattrath. Now you can happily enjoy spending the entire day waiting in a queue that will never pop on a world server that will never crash.
Cyrus Aug 1st 2010 9:51AM
"The lack of phasing... any form of massive NPC battle, excluding the dark portal,"
Or the dueling Shattrath guards. 40 dueling NPCs in the capital. Right next to the flight path, in fact. It's not a problem now that that's underpopulated, but during BC I felt that whatever designer did that should have been fired.
Tribunal Aug 1st 2010 12:51PM
In my personal opinion, I think we'll all end up in our racial capital cities at launch, or at least SW/Org, or at bare minimum our hearth locations, though I could see that causing problems.
Yes it will make them ridiculously crowded, but it would be so much better than the absolute FLOOD of tickets about people being stuck etc, and all the 'falling to death' upon logon that would just get really old really fast. Also keeps people close to trainers since they will most certainly refund talent points/be changes in when you learn what etc.
But I could see them not doing it too, I just happen to really think they will.
musicchan Aug 1st 2010 2:43PM
I toyed with the idea of leaving my characters in horribly bad places, but at the end of the day, Dalaran is probably where all my high levels will be, with my various lowbies in various capital cities.
The question is, with all the changes those cities are undergoing (like Stormwind and Orgrimmar), where is there somewhere SAFE to stand? Where there won't be, say, a new building with Garrosh's chair. Now there's a thought; place yourself where you might actually log in standing on Garrosh. Amusing.
Or if you're feeling really brave, log out in The Park in Stormwind. Bwa ha ha.
AltairAntares Aug 1st 2010 3:47PM
I don't get why people are so concerned, just use the auto-unstuck function if you're stuck somewhere weird...
Damian Aug 1st 2010 4:47PM
Auto-unstuck is just a glorified hearth, it even uses your hearth cooldown.
Pyromelter Aug 1st 2010 5:25PM
I think since the cataclysm will come as a surprise, I'm going to allow my characters to do what they do, just chill out wherever they are at the moment, and not worry about the cataclysm. I think setting your hearth or logging out in a "safe" place defeats the purpose. I'm imagining that none of my characters know anything about what is coming, so when it hits, I'll deal with the aftermath then.
I really don't think many people will be stuck, but for those who are, a simple hearth should be all that's needed. If for some reason you log into a place where there is no floor under your feet, you'll fall a zillion yards to your death, you'll release, and the game will either auto-rez you like in a BG, or you'll have to spirit rez. (I've had that experience quite a few times from, shall we say, less than successful blink attempts on my mage.)
ENOUGH! Aug 1st 2010 5:34PM
The danger is not having a building placed on you while logged out, you can walk through solid surfaces from the inside to the outside. You can try this on a mage by blinking into the seige engine by the wintergrasp battle master, you can just walk out of it.
The bigger gotcha will be if the ground plane is raised while you are logged out, in that case you just fall through the world and die, if you can't get your spirit close enough to the x,y coordinates of your corpse, you will have to spirit rez, so logging out with your stuff in the bank may be a plan.
ENOUGH! Aug 1st 2010 6:29PM
It's been mentioned that blizz plans on porting characters to either their hearthstone locations or to a graveyard upon logging into the expansion the first time.
It would be far more interesting to solve the problem of characters logging in at a position that is below the current ground plane by calculating a new z axis above the current one that would place the characters on a solid surface.
You might have characters logging in to find themselves on top of towers or buildings, or mountains, or floating in water, but overall more interesting and cohesive to the story than just finding themselves at an inn or graveyard.
eoinomahony_2 Aug 1st 2010 8:11AM
For me in terms of RP, it's going to be quite fun.
My Paladin lives in Menethil, so she'll prompted to leave once it becomes flooded, since she'd worry it'll get worse.
My Hunter on the other hand would instantly be worried for his niece and likely end up tryin' to find her.
But, all in all... I think the first place I'll check out is Stormwind, then maybe the Barrens.
BenMS Aug 1st 2010 8:10AM
I plan on parking mine in Shattrath - again, for safety's sake, and because the chances of the Outland servers being borked is even less (in my opinion) than the Northrend one. Also, Shatt is generally pretty deserted these days, I'll probably have it mostly to myself.
Valorum Aug 1st 2010 9:28AM
don't forget azuremyst, bloodmyst, ghostlands, eversong, etc are on the outlands map too.
Robert Aug 1st 2010 4:00PM
The only two cities that are possibly more deserted than Shattrath are the Exodar and Silvermoon.
ashchapman777 Aug 1st 2010 8:14AM
I always liked Shattrath more then Dalaran, so will probs park my butt there.
Knob Aug 1st 2010 8:15AM
All characters will end up being hearthed to their main home city before 4.0 hits, so there's no reason to look for an interesting spot or fear that your character will end up in limbo when the ground he was standing on no longer exists in 4.0.
Elica1079 Aug 1st 2010 8:21AM
party pooper :P
Rai Aug 1st 2010 8:50AM
Okay, but from an RP perspective there's still plenty to talk about.
Valorum Aug 1st 2010 9:29AM
won't 4.0 be up before the cataclysm? Isn't that what they've done in the past?
Babaloo Aug 1st 2010 9:41AM
*Looks at username*
That explains it all. ;D