Hopefully, new screenshot teasers will come out since more people will be play-testing the new expansion. I’m sooo envious of those alpha testers! Unfortunately though, it’s not open to the public and is only available to friends and family of Blizzard employees, hence the name “Cataclysm Friends & Family Alpha”. So if you get any email claiming to give you access to become an alpha, it is most probably a SCAM. Mmmkay?

Any Blizzard employee want to adopt or marry me? Haha.

I have to be honest, I’m really getting bored out of my mind in World of Warcraft at the moment. I haven’t been logging in much, except for our raid times which is around 4 times a week, for around 4 hours a day. That’s 16 hours gameplay total for a week. That used to be my number of hours played in a day, haha!

My other guildmates are getting bored, too so I’m not surprised that they’re not logging on as often as they normally do. Well, that can’t be avoided! This is the lull that happens before an expansion.

Oh, but fortunately for those who are still hopelessly addicted to World of Warcraft and can’t log off, Children’s Week is up! Going around and touring Azeroth orphans will probably entertain you for a day, and multiply that by how many alts you have, you’ll have enough to do for a week.

But that’s given that you haven’t done Children’s Week last year, because if you did Children’s Week last year, the quest line in Dalaran does not reset so that means you won’t be able to complete Children’s Week this year. Sucks!

Anyway, here are more Cataclysm screenshots I found all over the internet. Nothing too great, but I’m mildly intrigued by the screenshots of the dark, rainy towns. I wonder if those are the starting areas of the Worgen class?

News about the changes in the raiding system came out last Monday and a lot of my guild mates started shouting, “The sky is falling!” causing a bit of uncertainty in our guild come Cataclysm.

In a nutshell, Blizzard is planning to implement the following changes to the raid system when the expansion comes along:

• 10-Man and 25-Man raids will share the same lockout.
• 10-Man and 25-Man raids difficulty will be as close as possible to each other.
• 10-Man and 25-Man raids will drop the exact same loot, but 25-man will drop a higher quantity of items.
• Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel
• For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid.

My guild is a casual raiding guild (with around 20-30 regular raiders) so news of having a single lockout for both the 10 and 25 player modes came as a shock. Even though we have regular 25-man raids during weekends, we have 2 10-man raids that are very important to our raid progression, as well.

Our 10-man raids serve as venue for us to be familiar with the fights, and of course to get gear so we can be ready for the 25 man raids. The 10 man raids definitely make our lives easier since the only thing we have to worry about is the group synergy, since we already have the gear and the experience.

Basically, with the new changes, if you want to do both 10 and 25 man raid in a single week, you will need to do so on two different toons.

And for a casual raiding guild, that definitely poses a problem as not everyone has time to actually level up and gear 2 different toons so early in the expansion.

I’m sure though that the hardcore players and guilds out there are rejoicing, like, “FINALLY, we get to be L33T again!” I have to admit, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion was definitely casual-player friendly. Too casual-friendly, I think! So even though the new Cataclysm changes are appearing to be a bit hard on casual players, I personally think Blizzard is just balancing it all out for the hard-core players, too.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after 5 years of playing World of Warcraft, Blizzard is definitely an expert when it comes to game balance.

It’s the time of the WoW year when everything seems to be slowing down. This usually happens when a new expansion is about to come out.  I’m guessing that Cataclysm will be coming out around December (this year) or January (next year, duh). I noticed those were the months when expansions usually get released.

By this time (considering you’ve been playing since the start of an expansion), your main toons are probably decently geared and you’ve probably experienced all the content already. By now, you’re probably asking, what is there to do now in WoW?

So here’s a list of things to do while waiting for Cataclysm (or any expansion for that matter) to come out:

1. Save your gold, and make more gold! Trust me, when expansion comes out, you’d want to have a lot of gold saved! I’m guessing they’ll probably introduce a new expensive fee to be able to use your flying mount in the old Azeroth.

2. Try to complete achievements. Especially those with rare mounts as rewards. Remember the rare bear mount in Zul’Aman? It’s highly possible that they might remove the rare mounts rewards if the achievements are too easy to achieve.

3. Max out your professions, if you haven’t. Admit it, some of you guys are slacking off with their professions. Like me. Haha. My enchanting is stuck at 420 at the moment. I know right, just a couple of more points. But then like I said, I’m a slacker, haha. Oh, and that reminds me… my cooking is at 0. Haha.

4. Level a new alt. You can take this time to level a new alt, especially if you plan to roll another class. But then, if you’re planning to make a Worgen toon or a Goblin toon, you may want to save your energy for the grind.

5. Go around old Azeroth and take photos! As you all know, when Cataclysm comes out, Barrens will be transformed into an entirely new place! Take as much screenshots as you like ’cause you’ll probably never see the old Barrens ever again. Atleast you’ll have photos to show your future WoW babies!

6. And lastly, take a break from WoW! As much as it saddens me when people stop playing the game, I suggest you take a break from WoW, or else you’ll get burnt out and probably leave the game altogether. A month or two before an expansion comes out is the best time to take a break, since you’ve probably experienced most of the game content anyway. Just don’t forget to let your guildmates and friends know, or they will most likely kick you out of the guild if you just disappear so suddenly. AND MAKE SURE YOU COME BACK TO PLAY!