Some Post-Patch Shout-Outs

The Patch

Yesterday’s update to World of Warcraft 3.0.2 was generally pretty smooth¹. On Kul Tiras, I didn’t really hear of missing items, except for people who couldn’t be troubled to read the patch notes. We experienced one server restart during the evening, and we were out of the game for about 5 minutes. All in all, though, for such a massive patch with such overarching changes to the game, I give Blizzard a solid "B+" for their efforts.

The UI

I spent a good deal of time before the patch yesterday updating my many, many addons. Some old favorites were left out (I may still try to see if a couple of them work) and many new ones were added. Even after the patch was out, I had almost no trouble logging into any of my three main suppliers (in order of my preference): 

• WoWUI (Grade: B)
• WoWInterface (Grade: B-)
• Curse Gaming (Grade: C+; the + is in recognition of the vast number of mods at Curse)

I must say, I was extremely disappointed that Curse doesn’t have a separate listing of 3.0-ready mods. And still doesn’t this morning.

WoWInterface had one, but it would only display one page: It had no "next" buttons! So if you sorted alphabetically, you could get A-F and R-Z, but nothing between! To its credit, there was an additional listing of 4 pages of mods, but not all were 3.0-ready. Unfortunately, WoWUI, which is my favorite, doesn’t seem to be the favorite of a lot of add-on developers.

Kul Tiras came up right around 2pm Pacific Time and I was able to log in with no problem. Of course my first hour or two were spent tweaking the UI (and I still didn’t get to play with everything I wanted to). Generally, things worked as expected. Most importantly, Xperl Unit Frames and Dominos button bars worked. Whew!

There’s a shot of the current setup at the bottom of this article.

Achievements

I was a bit annoyed at the continual Achievement spam but I soon got used to it. Blizzard seems to have hit a home run with Achievements: I heard more than one comment in guild chat from people who were quickly becoming addicted to completing them. If you listened to this week’s Twisted Nether Blogcast, you heard me suggest an achievement for not getting any other achievements. In a word, fuhgeddaboudit: I think there may be an achievement for simply logging in!

There should be an additional achievement, though: An in-game shout out from another blogger. I was very pleasantly surprised to get a /tell from the dworc himself, Ratshag, as I was logging in and out tweaking one thing after another with the UI. Ratters, sorry if I wasn’t as hospitable as I should have been: I was also getting called to dinner in the middle of all that! Please, come back and visit anytime.

The Priest

Eventually, though, it came time to actually respec Osprey. Thanks to Dwarf Priest and her outstanding Priest Survival Guide to 3.0.2, I was able to quickly and easily assign my talents. I did make one slight change to her Holy PvE 14/47/0 template, however: I put 5/5 in [spell]Holy Specialization[/spell], and only 1/2 in [spell]Holy Reach[/spell]. I may well reverse that when Wrath is released, but for the next month, I think this will serve me better. Regardless, if you’re a Priest, you owe it to yourself to check out Dwarf Priest’s guide.

The Hunter

Next, it was time to log in Kestrel. It was at that point I realized I’d neglected a very important part of my (extremely limited) pre-patch research and planning: I had no clue how to reassign my talents! I quickly tabbed over to the Blog Azeroth chat and asked if anyone knew of a viable Beastmaster spec. Someone² suggested I check out Pike at Aspect of the Hare. Sure enough, she had a couple suggestions. (Of course she did: She’s one of my favorite hunter bloggers; I should have known to go there.) I ended up with the deep BM spec; today, I hope to get an exotic pet or two tamed.

Inscription

Finally, I was ready to tackle Inscription. Although Osprey is my herbalist, I wanted to retain his 375 Tailoring Skill. So with a bit of regret, I untrained Kestrel’s 375 Leatherworking (my second hunter, Sparverius, is at 350-something, so I can raise him up if I really nee to do so). Here’s a tip if you haven’t started working on Inscription yet: Go to Honor Hold or Thrallmar to skill up from 1 to 355. They’re a LOT less crowded than the capital cities! The only drawback is you aren’t quite as close to a bank, if needed.

Thanks for every bit of my leveling to Siha’s fantastic  guide to Inscription,³ two of my friends and fellow guildies (more or less) quickly skilled up to 355. Today, I’ll be putting some of the products of my labors in the Auction Hall to perhaps recoup some of my expenses.