So long! Cata Recap - needless yammering about my Cata memories.

First off, Holy Crap it's been an entire expansion and more than two years since I've posted! As much as I aspired to be active in the blogging community, life beyond the computer screen takes precedence. That said, I've been getting the blogging itch for about a month and finally blew off the dust on this old account!

Can anyone guess where this is?

So.. one of the most recent posts on here was a Wrath Recap.. wow.. that was long ago! I thought about doing a Cata recap, but I am going to lean more towards a timeline rather than just picking memorable moments in my time played.

To be completly honest. I enjoyed Wrath SO much more than Cata. I don't if its because I have this strange love for Lordaeron and Arthas, and didn't feel any attachment to the storylines in Cata. WAIT! That's wrong! Aside for my liking of Lordaeron, Arthas and the Alliance in general, I really enjoy the story of the highborn, and was legitimately excited for Vashj'ir, and then it just never happened. I felt that the end of Cata came too soon, that the push to get out of this expansion and onto Mists, happened a patch too soon. I still feel that we could have handled another raid before Dragon Soul and the Vashj'ir raid would have been a very nice contrast in environments to follow Firelands.

At the beginning of Cata I started on my EU account, nice thing was the Paris Midnight release was I think 4PM my time, so I got to start early and get some good play time in before it was stupidly late at night. Unfortunately, Cata release the day before my finals for College started, so I only got to play opening night. 

I found Deepholm SO pretty :D

Taking a two week break from wow for school, I came back leveled up my Resto Shaman and started spamming 5 mans. This was the WORST playing experience I have ever had. I was an excellent Shaman healer in Wrath, and now I sucked. I couldn't keep the tank alive, any melee that took damage would go down like flies, and on really bad fights, the casters were dieing just as fast. I have never been called so many horrible things and names in the three years prior to playing this game. I was miserable and eventually quit because I just couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. (During my hiatus, Blizz acknowledged the crap-factor of Resto Shaman and did buff them, plus SOME people learned how to freaken CC mobs, and also nerfed all of the 5 mans).

Still to this day, I have yet to resub my EU account.
 
(Personal crap, you can bypass this if you only want to read about the game)
During this break from the game, my personal life exploded, my dad got sick, and I couldn't handle the stress that the accelerated college program I was in was putting on me while dealing with life attacking my heart and my head. I took a break from school and moved home. I started back at my old job, helped my dad get better and got back into wow.

I captured my death when getting the Achievement "Stood In Fire"

I re-subbed my old US account on patch day of 4.1. I started completely new. No gold, no high level characters, no awesome mounts, and no heirlooms (GASP!). I decided to play on Ner'Zhul and play a class that I had never played at max level before, a Priest. I leveled her from 1-80 as Disc, picked up duel-spec and Shadow to level in Cata. To my guildies surprise, I leveled this toon extremely fast (especially since I had no gold, knew nobody to recruit a friend with, and had no heirlooms). Once I capped her, the guild pulled me into a BWD and said heal. Let me tell you, I was BAD. Despite leveling as disc I had no idea how to play my poor Priest at a raid healer's caliber. It took a while, but I got some gear, did some research and eventually got better.

As a guild, we had a lot of pain and drama in Firelands, besides myself, we cycled through healers like nobody's business!   I switched things up, leveled a shaman and came back to healing like a boss! (Despite always and STILL losing healing shields to Holy Paladins... SIGH) Due to the lack of reliable healers and constantly losing our top DPS to guilds who raided more (which only happened because people kept leaving!), we couldn't get actual progression in Firelands until the first nerf.

ZOMG! someone didn't finish texturing HoT! Ignore the horrible UI

As for Dragon Soul, rinse and repeat the story from Firelands. Other than the shiled, which in 8 months.. never dropped once. So I guess I could be happy that a freaken pally never stole THAT shield from me.

As Cata was starting to wind down I leveled a ton of alts, got a ton of titles, made my mount and pet collection much more substantial than what I had on my EU account. Though.. the Brewfest Kodo has still eluded me.... One day it shall be mine once again!

If anyone actually reads this.. THANKS! :D  I have an idea for another post already. Just have to wait for another bout of insomnia and me avoiding homework to get it written!