Light & Leafy

Deathwing is coming. You can feel in the air. People are reporting minor tremors across Azeroth. In the blog-o-sphere, curiosity was piqued when the blues released some information regarding stat changes to gear in Cataclysm. Greg Street and Cory Starkton hinted at previews of the female Worgen model in the near future during their developer chat on Twitter last Friday. Most bloggers are reveling in this quickening release of data; they’re giggling as they postulate about what changes could mean for their particular niche and eagerly lap up any tidbits the devs  see fit to publicize.

And who could blame us? It’s an exciting premise: the world (of Warcraft) as we know it will be completely destroyed. Barren lands will become lush oasis.  Elemental planes long forgotten will reemerge, bringing with them new threats to civilization. Flying mounts will soar over the old world!

Sometimes my internal monologue turns into that of an excitable puppy: “Oh-gosh-look-it’s-the-new-neighbors-can-I-go-sniff-them-now?-I-bet-they’ll-let-me-sniff-them-and-then-maybe-rub-my-tummy-ohboyohboyohboy! Can-we-go-now-pleaseeeeeee?!” *scratches at door*

Then the “adult” portion of my brain kicks in and reminds me that I haven’t yet seen or done everything I’ve wanted to do yet in Wrath of the Lich King. And my puppy begins to panic.

So, I thought I’d come up with a little list, and cross them off as I’ve completed them. It’s all well and good to be excited about Cataclysm, but I feel the need to take that abundant energy and reroute it towards things I can accomplish now. Some of these things might not be possible after the Cataclysm rocks Azeroth. And I don’t want to leave Northrend with any regrets.

Get my hunter to 80. This should be fairly easy seeing as she’s now sitting at 15% of the way to 73. I only have 7.85 levels to go, and the way Osy’s pushing us to level I’d be surprised if it took more than a couple of weeks. I want to have a pure dps at the level cap as well; normally if I have the choice on a character to dps or heal, I’ll gladly heal. This is putting me out of my comfort zone and giving me something fresh and exciting to play with. And I love my pets.

Get Edainne her dragonhawk mount. Ever since the 100 mount achievement went live, I’ve wanted to get my priest her blue alliance dragonhawk (like the one the flight trainer rides on Krasus’s landing). I think it’s an absolutely gorgeous mount, and really the only thing preventing me from obtaining it is a lack of trying. I need about 5000g and some mind-numbing hours in Stratholme and Magister’s Terrace.  I don’t know if they’ll still offer a dragonhawk come Cataclysm, and I don’t want to regret never getting the one mount I really wanted.

Max out my character’s professions. I know this sounds silly, but I want everyone at 80 to be as close to maxed out in their given professions. I know I won’t want to spend the time once Cataclysm comes out to get my professions up to date before I go off to level my characters to 85, and I really don’t want to have to go back and do them all once my toons are settled at the new level cap.

Create a photo album of all my favorite locations in the Old World. We all know that some zones are going to be drastically…redecorated. I don’t want to forget the WoW I fell in love with.  Some of my happiest memories from leveling my priest were the adventures I had when leveling actually took a lot of work and questing in a lot of areas. My goal is to try to get at least one picture of my favorite area in each zone before they’re gone for good.

Explore all the Zones I’ve Never Been to Before. While I’ve travelled a LOT on Edainne, I’d still love to take the time to really see all that Azeroth has to offer.  I’ve never been to Stone Talon Peaks, or Burning Steppes. I still mix up Felwood and Feralas.

Do a few more of Horde Starting zones. I’ve never really leveled a hordie. I’ve always been curious to see their storylines, but all my friends have always played Alliance, and as I’m a sucker for pretty races, I’ve never even goofed around on anything more than a blood elf or a really cute tauren. Even if I never put too much time into them, I think it would be really awesome to see the Undead and Orc/Troll starting zones.  Heck, I could probably stand to do the human and dwarven starting areas as well!

Earn the title Starcaller and get my Rusted Protodrake. Starcaller Edainne just has a pretty ring to it. I know I vastly outgear Ulduar now, but it’s never lost its beauty for me. I’d rather wipe in there week after week than constantly stare at the same one room as Tirion Fordring parades “challenge” after “challenge.”  I have a pretty stellar (bad pun, sorry) group to finish the last 4 achievements, but coordinating a schedule might prove harder than first assumed.

Defeat the final encounter of ICC and watch the cinematic for myself. I’ve been avoiding lore posts and youtube videos for the last 3 weeks whenever the word “spoiler” shows up in their titles. I don’t even go near the fountain in the center of Dalaran. I have no desire to watch someone else beat the Champion of the Scourge.  I leveled my priest during the Burning Crusade; I never felt connected to Illidan’s story and I never thought I’d come close to killing him. But now? I’m literally 3 bosses away.  Arthas’ story has consumed my characters’ lives for the last year and a half or so. More if you include all the time they were frolicking in Outland while the scourge infestation grew at home.I feel so involved and I want to be the one who sees how all of this ends.

That’s my wish-list for Wrath of the Lich King. I’ve loved this expansion. I’ve loved the accessibility of all the raid instances. I’ve loved the way the lore was woven into every zone and experience my characters have had in Northrend. I’ve loved the difficulty of the hardmode encounters. And the perfect way to send myself into Cataclysm would be to complete at least some of these goals before the world is broken asunder.