Every week over on Blog Azeroth – a small community of World of Warcraft bloggers – a shared topic is announced every week. A topic that we can chip in on, if we are so inclined. And I am! This weeks topic asks us what we do to prepare ourselves for Cataclysm.

First of all, I still think that Cataclysm is many months away. It is difficult to really gauge when Blizzard might push it out, and there are tons of different factors: How long can they keep people entertained with the current content available in World of Warcraft? There are still plenty of people going through Icecrown Citadel, and Ruby Sanctum is coming as well. I’d say a few more months, at least, would be in order.

At this point, we would be relatively close to Blizzcon, scheduled for October 22nd 2010. If Blizzard were to release Cataclysm before Blizzcon, then they might as well shut down the World of Warcraft hall. Unless they plan to reveil their next expansion – the one coming after Cataclysm – it seems unlikely that we will see Cataclysm on this side of Blizzcon. Blizzcon’s logo even shows Deathwing – alongside with Kerrigan and Diablo – and while Starcraft 2 will come out before Blizzcon, I doub that Cataclysm will.

So I am taking my time. I’m not stressing. That being said, I am making preperations and there are things I have to consider.

Switching mains

In Vanilla, I was a priest. In The Burning Crusade, I played a hunter. In Wrath of the Lich King, I’ve been a druid. If there is any sort of pattern to my choice of playstyle, this pattern dictates that I should find a new class to play. Maybe a shaman or a mage or something.

But on the other hand, I don’t think I have ever been so involved with a class as I have been with druids. When I was a priest, I was practically on noob-level. As a hunter, I started caring a bit more – I wrote some guides, I posted on forums and the like. But as a druid, I’ve been camping forums and even started this blog. An enourmous amount of time has gone into being a druid, thinking about druids, writing about druids and, yes, even dreaming about druids. This class also have the benefit of having a lot of choices: I started out as a tank, and now I am a moonkin. Who knows, maybe I’ll be a restoration druid in Cataclysm! Hah, as if..

Hand on heart, I don’t see myself playing anything else than a druid – a balance druid that is – in Cataclysm. I think this is a good time to break the pattern, and stick to what I know best: Being an awesome moonkin. You have nothing to fear.

Achievements and old stuff

There are a lot of people who plan to round up a lot of achievements now that they have time. Finishing Glory of the Hero, killing rare spawns and whatnot. If you know anything about me, you’d know that I care little for achievements, unless they offer me something unique, like a cool mount or a title I might want to display above my head. I’m not really that much into stuff like “Outland Dungeon Master”, because it is nothing but an image that noone will ever see, and points that I could never spend. I am not all that hyped up about achievements, as others are, and I’m beginning to find them a bit boring; When a single player game such as Splinter Cell: Conviction has an achievement for using a flash bang on 15 people – an achievement that nobody else would ever see me do – then they are becoming sort of redundant.

I don’t PvP much, cause, truth be told, I suck at PvP. I also don’t think I quite have the time to get seriously involved with PvP or arenas, and I don’t like to do things half heartedly. So I am probably not going to spend my time on that as I wait for Cataclysm to come out.

Stocking up

I have never been a huge gold hog. I’ve farmed for what I needed, and that has been enough for me. But ever since a few months ago, when I found myself wanting to make a pair of leggings for my DPS set and realised that I didn’t have enough money to buy all that Saronite, I’ve been camping the Auction House quite a lot. It’s not going fast, but it is going up there, and in the past few weeks I have pushed my gold up to around 40.000. Cataclysm is most likely going to bring a lot of fancy new things to play with, so having extra gold will do me good.

I’ve thought about buying the Tundra Mammoth to have a shop ready at hand, but I have never actually found myself in need of that. All the time, as I have been leveling up, I always visit a vendor often enough to let me empty my bags, and I have never found myself without reagents. I also wonder what the value of the Tundra Mammoth will be if Blizzard decides to not upgrade the items available on the vendors – what good would a reagent vendor be if it didn’t have the reagents I would need in level 85?

So at the moment, I’ve decided to hold on with buying it: I don’t need it rigth now, and if I decided that I do, I have enough cash to get it. Who knows, there might be something even cooler in Cataclysm – a kodo or your own private zeppelin – and I can spend my money on that instead.

I have an alt, Niknoom, who is currently stocking up on gems. These gems is sort of an investment, leftovers from a lot of Titanium Ore prospects, that won’t really sell on AH. Or, they will sell, but I can’t be arsed to relist them over and over again for 3 gold with one or two sales every day. Instead, I figure there will eventually be a lot of people wanting to level up professions on new characters, and I will be the one helping them with items to do that – at an insanely unfair overprice.

Gathering intel

The biggest preparation I can do, however, is getting to know what I will be facing. There will be a lot of moonkin information to read up on and digest, a lot of theorycrafting to do, and a lot of new stuff to find and kill.

So in the end, I guess I’m not really stressing about Cataclysm. I do my stuff, I gather some gold, and other than that, I’m just sitting here waiting for the world to end.

What do you do to prepare for Cataclysm?

- QQ