Echoes of Doom Patch

My WoW accounts have been inactive for several months. Wrath of the Lich King has gone gold, and the Age of Arthas will soon be upon us. In preparation for the Death Knight's arrival, Blizzard has given us a content patch so big they gave it a name. If you are currently a player, whether the patch is full of quality or epic fail is irrelevant; you must patch to play. But, for those of us who took a break from the penultimate expression of escapism, is it worth enduring the 1.2GB download to re-enter the World of Family Neglect-craft?

Now that the server bomb that is patch day has settled from its 24-hour upheaval of all the game servers, we can start to see what the game changing, uh, change has in store. The most significant change has to be the rework to the talent trees, and as a result, all talent points and their dependent skills have been reset. The trees are expanded to include 51-point talents, and a lot of the talents underneath were reworked. Of the three classes I'm most familiar with (Priest, Druid, and Rogue), I'm not sure I like the changes and don't appreciate what stayed the same. This is mostly unfamiliarity with it all, and will probably prove beneficial as we get used to using these new trees, but for the moment, not really liking it. The top tier Shadow Priest talent, Dispersion, seem inconsistent with the Shadow Spec, and the one in the Rogue's Combat Tree, Killing Spree, seems situational at best.

The funnest feature for me is the Achievement system. I have no idea what impact achievement points have for your toon yet, but there are like 700 or so objectives to complete in the achievement system. These include things like "earn 10,000 gold from quests", "do dailies 5 days in a row", "kill 20 wild turkeys", and "explore everywhere" with checklists of all the different Kodak photo spots in each of the zones. I think that completing these achievements may be more fun than raiding 40 hours a week, but probably won't yield the in-game rewards. I hope they put an achievement leaderboard on the website, for all your epeen needs. There does seem to be an inconsistent tally of what you had accomplished prior to this patch and what you hadn't. For example, the achievement system knows all the places I've been. It does not know how much gold I've earned from prior quests, even though it knows how many quests I've completed. I don't know if that will be fixed or it is what it is.

The new profession, Inscription has been added, as has the slots for character to receive those inscriptions. It looks like they locked some of the slots based on character level. I don't have any toons taking up this profession yet, but just think Jewelcrafting, except with herbs. It will require a whole florist worth of herbs to level. This profession does finally give the enchanters a means to AH their enchants, so no more trade chat spam.

The barbershop is now active. Woot! I can finally whack the ponytail off my priest. That pony tail has caused too many graphical glitches with many of the kewl, epic head pieces. But no more! I can proudly display my T2 head piece without looking like a dorque. There weren't many options for hairstyles though. It looked like all the standard hairstyles for your race/gender with a couple of blood elf styles thrown in. Overall, itís a meager selection, but a fun little add-on.

There are quite a few useful UI changes. Your mount(s) don't take up a bag slot any more, and neither to the vanity pets. They now live on a new tab next to the character tab. There is an in game calendar hanging off the mini map that shows the standard weekend events, holidays, raid resets, and even has a means to create your own events. The mini map has a lower level quests option, which will be useful for many of those achievements. You have the ability to link your profession dialog in chat, so people can see what recipes you have. There is an actual clock beneath the mini map.

The new content, like Northrend and the Death Knight class are not available yet. However, Old World changes have been made, like the dock to Darkshore from Menethil has been moved to a new section of Stormwind, called Stormwind Harbor These are done, most likely, to make room for expansion content. The leveling grind from 60-70 has been eased, much like they did with the grind from 20-60 a few months ago. Also, the raid bosses have been nerfed. So, anybody wanting to tie up some loose ends, like getting a character to 70 prior to WotLK, or completing a raid instance like Hyjal, there is a compelling reason to jump on this patch prior to the expansion. Otherwise, there really isn't much to see, as it's still WoW, and it seems the more things change, it's really just more of the same.