There’s two reasons for that – firstly I’m finding that I have a lot less free time now that I’m looking after two children rather than one. And secondly, I’ve really lost interest in World of Warcraft recently.

I’m disappointed in Cataclsym. I really am. For me, the most enjoyable part of an MMO is the levelling part. I enjoy duoing with my husband, venturing into unchartered territory together. His reckless racing in without assessing the situation first complements my more careful nature perfectly. I knew there were only 5 new levels in Cataclysm, but I was hoping to have a month of two of enjoyable levelling out of those 5 levels. So yes, it was disappointing to see my guildies hitting level 85 within a week or so of release.

But then the double whammy – it seems to me that there’s nothing new at 85. When you get to 85 you can grind reputation, run heroics or raid. Just like you could at level 80. With the added bonus that everything has been made harder. So where you could once log in, drop into the dungeon finder, run a heroic in about 30 minutes, log off again, now you get to use the dungeon finder that puts you into a PuG that repeatedly wipes. As someone who doesn’t do PuGs at the best of times, the thought of everything getting harder is not something that appeals to me.

This all resulted in my husband losing interest in the game at level 83, and moving on to other things. I don’t want to level without him, because the fun for me is in playing the game with him. So I spent a few weeks messing around with the AH and dabbling with alts, and then gradually I started finding other things to fill my evenings with.

We did both get onto the Rift beta program, and found the game enjoyable enough to pre-order it. I’m not cancelling my WoW subscription, but I am quite looking forward to levelling a new character in a new world. I hope to blog about that a little here too.

So it’s been quiet around here because I’ve not really had anything to say. I’m still here though, just trying to find my way.

We’re both now about halfway through level 75, and have finished both Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. We’ve done a couple of quest-hubs in Dragonblight, but there are still huge chunks of unexplored map for us to discover. We’re just over halfway to 80, and it feels like there is so much content still ahead of us, which is great because we’ll be able to carry on questing for money when we hit 80.

We ran the Azjol-Nerub instance this week, and it was great! I really hope this is a sign of things to come – a very short instance that we completed within 30 minutes. Very little trash, just three bosses. Well, it’s more like three boss events. And when we finished the first run, our tank realised he hadn’t looted the quest item off the final boss, so we reset the instance and ran it again for him!

I really like this trend towards shorter instances. It means you don’t have to commit large amounts of time to a run, you can get some questing and an instance or two finished in an evening. It’s perfect for me

Hopefully tonight we’ll make some good progress towards 76

I love the scenery. I have explored both starting areas – Borean Tundra and the Howling Fjord. I love how different they both feel. I love the way Blizzard have adapted things that were problems in the Burning Crusade – giving two starter areas with lots of quest hubs means that on the whole people are pretty spread out, and everything is playable, even though some competition for some content can be a challenge at times.

I’ve run through Utgarde Keep a couple of times, and I hope this is a sign of things to come – a nice, short dungeon, not too much trash, we completed it in an hour or less. Some interesting boss fights. It seemed pretty easy for well-geared level 70s.

I recommend everyone make a Death Knight and play through their initial quest line. It’s great. The phasing of the world is smooth and seamless, and there are glimpses of the new siege weapon interface (taking over a cannon to shoot hundreds of soldiers on the beach for example). The storytelling is great, and I think they do a really good job of introducing the class. I have yet to suss out how best to play my Death Knight – at the moment I’m still just frantically mashing buttons for each fight, but it seems to make stuff dead

I’m loving the fact that new content has rejuvenated my husband’s enjoyment of the game – he now can’t wait for us to log in in the evening and quest together. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way for a Resto druid to level is duoing with a Warlock. Although I don’t feel quite as fragile as I did when levelling 60-70 – the changes to spell power have helped with that I think.

On the whole the launch was very smooth from my point of view. The EU servers did not experience the extended downtime that the US servers suffered from. Game delivered my Collector’s Edition the day before the release, and when I installed it I was delighted to see that it used the same patch files that I had already downloaded for the standard game – another learning point from TBC perhaps? I was all installed and ready to go when I got home from work on the evening of the 12th, and so when whisperings went around the server that Northrend content was opening up early (about 8pm UK time), I was poised and ready to go. I got my Frosty, created my Death Knight, and got a couple of hours questing in with my husband before bedtime.

As far as downsides go, there have been queues on my server – the longest being 30 minutes or so – which I have never seen before. I’m sure this is a sign of the popularity of the expansion, and Blizzard have another huge success on their hands. By last night the queue was down to 10 minutes or so – it’s inconvenient but I can live with it.

The only other downside I’ve seen is that there seems to be the same trend with quest rewards as in TBC – there’s no caster leather! All the quests seem to reward with caster cloth or melee leather. Where’s the Resto/Moonkin love? In TBC I didn’t replace any of my pre-TBC resto gear until about level 68 I think – I was hoping for something a little earlier in Wrath. It’s not that much of a big deal at the moment, as I’m in Tier 4/Badge gear, which should last me very well.

But those are two very minor niggles, and on the whole I’m an extremely happy Druid (with slight Death Knight tendancies!)

But I’ve had enough now. I don’t like PvP. I don’t DO PvP. I play on a PvE server for a reason. And I am SICK of being turned into a zombie and killed. And if I manage to avoid getting turned into a zombie the game is unplayable because the dratted zombies keep killing the quest mobs and flight masters.

This is non-consentual PvP. And it’s not what I signed up for. And I’m sick of it. I just want to play the game.

Game now lists the CE, and is taking pre-orders. This started at about 6.30pm last night. I got my order in about 7pm, so I’m hoping I’ll get a copy. No information as to whether Game know how many copies they are getting, or are just taking all orders and will let people know nearer the time if they can’t fulfil.

Amazon have a listing for the pre-order, with an “email me when this item becomes available” link.

I’m still watching the Play and Gamestation websites, as well as the thread on the official forums. I can’t decide whether I should pre-order from other places too, just to make sure all my bets are covered. At £50 a time, I don’t want to get landed with multiple copies. But then I guess there’s always eBay…