Everyone Is Writing About Cataclysm

It seems these days everyone with a World of Warcraft-related blog is writing about Cataclysm.  Some are speculating how the new talents and abilities will work out.  Others are deciding which character will be their main in the new expansion.  Still others are making plans for the time between now and the next release, tagging achievements they hope to finish before the world is shaken to its core and a good number of them disappear.

At this point, I'm not too worried about the talents and abilities.  I understand that Blizzard is not giving the Resto Druids a new spell, figuring we have a large enough toolbox already.  However, according to the information available at this point, the Resto talent tree will be reassembled in such a fashion as to require us to take talents which would be seemingly worthless by today's abilities and requirements.  This indicates to me that some of our spells will be reworked a bit, requiring us to adapt our healing style to maximize our potential according to new rules.  This isn't unusual.  They've done it for every expansion.  As one of the guilds on my server likes to say, "Adapt or die."  (Well, in this case, it's more like, "Adapt or don't get invited to the raids while we replace you with someone who really cares about playing their best.")

There is no question for me which character I will be playing through the expansion.  The only real contenders would be my Druid or my mage, and I enjoy playing the Druid much, much more.  I wonder how many people who are running around with five to eight level 80 characters will actually change their mains come Cataclysm.  Of the raiders who were in my guild at the end of Burning Crusade, I think only about three or four changed their mains, and one of them didn't change his until after T8 content.

As far as achievements go, I'm not sure I really have a big goal.  I could work on getting my Vanilla dungeons finished (stealthed into Ogrimmar the other day so I could get the Ragefire Chasm achievment . . .)  I do not know how many (if any) of these dungeons will disappear.  I could work on getting my Vanilla raid achievments, but to be honest, they just aren't that important to me.  BGs will most likely still be there, and the grind to get the BG achievements is too tiring to consider at the moment.  And there is NO WAY I am going to run around getting all the low-level quests for any achievements in that area.  (Sorry.  Tried it once and quit after about 15 minutes of sheer boredom.  Just isn't happening.)

So what am I going to do between now and Cataclysm?  Well, I will continue raiding on my Druid.  I will still continue doing random heroics on my mage, for badges and for the variety.  When my RL friend levels her pally high enough, I will probably run things with her.  And when I am bored, wondering what on earth I can do, now that I've run my random, done my fishing, cooked up fish feasts, mixed up flasks, and generally prepared myself for the next raid, I will sneak over to the Horde side and do low-level questing on my hunter.  (/wink)