What I've Been Working On: World of Warcraft

I signed in briefly to make the rounds of all my characters in the wake of WoW's new patch. 

Triumph of the Brew Kodo earned on one of my alts

As promised, mounts (subject to faction/class restrictions), pets, and achievements are relatively account-wide.  Realistically, the overwhelming majority of these were only on my main character to begin with, but the upshot is that my main character picks up a handful of new options, including the coveted Brew Kodo (which I had won on my Tauren warrior - like he needed more Kodos).  For reference, prior to logging into my main my account had 3565 achievement points, 43 pets, and 20ish mounts (Alliance side).  Afterwards, the numbers were 90 mounts, 168 pets (! - includes some duplicates due to how the new battle system works) and 7495 achievement points.  Apparently account-wide credit was also enough to push me over 2500 daily quests completed. 

More generally, the changes to game systems, like talents and glyphs, are confusing and at least temporarily disruptive for someone who comes into them mid-patch (i.e. basically everyone who played the game prior to Tuesday).  For example, Arcane Blast applying slow automagically is now a glyph and one that I happen not to have because that glyph was previously useless.  That said, I am already liking the system better - there are some legitimately interesting choices amongst the talents and glyphs, and it's not like the overwhelming majority of your talent points under most previous incarnations of the system weren't obvious.  I suppose they should have taken last expansion's revamp this far rather than revamping dramatically twice in a row, but at least they've done the job properly this time. 

In the short term, my plan is still to use the period before the launch to complete some unfinished business from the Cataclysm era.  I can't entirely rule out working on an alt, especially if one or more classes have changed in interesting ways, but ironically all the changes make it hard for me to tell which alt to work on.  That said, the bigger question is whether Pandaria will be the first WoW expansion that I don't bother to purchase on launch day. 

This is not purely a referendum on Pandaria - I haven't paid full price for an MMO box/expansion since probably Wrath, and I have many other things I am working on.  Basically, the only reason why I'd even consider fitting Pandaria into my schedule next month would be because I would have a month of time remaining on my annual pass.  Then again, I can use that time to mess around with pet battles and even roll a baby Pandaren alt through the newbie areas (which will supposedly not require the expansion) and call it even.  Blizzard's decision to forgo a launch event in favor of a one-week level 85 preview of a level 90 scenario is pretty lackluster in terms of competing for my interest in a busy period of MMO's.  Guess we'll see how I'm feeling on this in late September.