What Will Cataclysm Bring for Me?

Like most everyone who plays WoW, I am excited about all the shiny new content and explorations that Cataclysm will bring for us.

But this time around, the expansion also brings up a lot of uncertainty for me. Because I am in a very different place — in game and out — than I was at the last turn-of-the-expansion.

That Was Then

I was secure in the knowledge that although I no longer wanted to druid heal, I would definitely be playing my druid main, as per usual. I was enjoying being a lazy guild member without any responsibilities, and crossing my fingers my casual guild would work out for raiding in the expansion, even if it was just at a slower pace, given our good times in Kara. My hours at work allowed me to have a regular raiding schedule, as I rarely had to stay late unexpectedly. All my characters were on the same server were I’d started out playing WoW, except for the shadow priest horde alt I rarely popped onto, as she was stranded on a friend’s server with nothing to do.

This is Now

Now I have three 80s Alliance-side (Boomkin, Shadow Priest, Mage) with a warlock at 70. Horde-side, on a separate server, I have four 80s (Shadow Priest, Boomkin, Shaman, Mage) with a warlock at 72. Horde-side, I’m an officer in a large guild that completed all of WotLK’s raiding content, including a number of 10-man ICC hard modes. Heck, I even got to kill Algalon! Alliance-side, I’ve found myself a great friendly guild that had been doing some casual raiding, and enjoy the camaraderie and conversation (inclusive of G and on Vent and on Twitter.)

This Monday, I headed back in to work after five glorious weeks of time off. And despite heading in bright and early each day, I am not getting home until 6:30 each night due to the workload. This has meant no raiding anywhere, no NaNoWriMo writing time. And no blog time. In other words: MEH.

So What’s Next?

With Cataclysm only a month away, I’m not sure how things are going to pan out. How much can I get done with only a few short hours to play each night after work? We still need to eat dinner and have outside of game time after all. Even if I concentrate only on my two primary characters at first (Alliance Boomkin and Horde Shadow Priest), I’ll still need to sort out daily quests for the others (cooking/fishing/professions).

Having just taken all this time off, I won’t really get to have a big chunk of time to play until my time off around the holidays, at the end of December. So in all likelihood, I’ll be leveling the slowest I’ve ever leveled. And will have my attention split between two toons I love, instead of being able to focus my energies on just one of them. This will be an adjustment for sure.

Both guilds are planning to kick the raiding tires in Q1 2011. So at least with that I do feel I’ll have time to level up and gear up. Then work in the alts as time allows. But as it stands, I don’t really know yet what my availability will look like as far as raiding goes. Or how I am going to feel about these characters at 85, having not gotten into BETA to try things out for myself.

So like everyone else who didn’t get a sneak peek via BETA, I’ll just have to play it by ear and hope that I do like how things turn out int he end for my ladies. Que sera sera, whatever will be will be. I’m just hoping that somehow I’ll find a way to give both of my favorite toons the attention they deserve.