At least you only died from NPC horde. The first day of Cataclysm I had to wait until after the work day to play. By the time I got home at 4:30 and chose to start my adventuring in Vashj'ir the horde were already there, outside the boat, kindly letting all us alliance know that we had made the wrong choice and should instead start in Hyjall. My first 6 or so deaths were trying to leave Vashj'ir without attracting... anyones... attention... agai.. crap! Swim for it!

I made it all the way to 84 and Twilight Highlands before dying, too. As yet another prot pally, I was killing slowly but felt invincible enough... but OH MY GOD, the respawn rate of those Naga storming the beach! I didn't intentionally pull big; they just kept coming and coming and COMING faster than I could finish killing... it was a total rat-packing, I tell you!

My pally's even more embarrassed now to know that my mage got through the same area without a hitch... of course, she just did it last week and there weren't NEARLY as many people around to make lightning respawns an issue, heh.

same for me, I got cata 5 days after the release (strikes at the mail) and the boat place in Vashjir was camped by 85 horde players who clearly had nothing better to do than kill some feeble lvl 80's.