3.1 First Impressions

We've had two days of 3.1 and I've only had a small chance to test it out. Part of that of course is the result of server instabilities. I know, it sucks. But it's got to be better than the alternative. Do we really want Blizzard to be less ambitious and slower to patch? It should be better within a week or so.

I of course got kicked out a few times due to "world server down" errors. I also had some weird talent bugs. When I first specced after the patch, I somehow ended up with a 11/0/61 spec — equivalent to a level 81 toon. Interesting! But I couldn't buy my dual spec option at that point, so I paid to respec as one attempt to clean up the mess. Then when I logged in yesterday, I saw I'd had my talent points returned again anyway, so all that was somewhat wasted. 45g lost! Crisis!

Addons of course are a big hassle too. I have maybe 40 addons installed so working through that is a pain. I use the Curse updater which has helped immensely. Most of my key addons had updates and so much has gone well. Grid has been the biggest challenge, but I eventually tracked down an interim fix that seems to be working OK. I did have to spend a good chunk of time tracking down errors in my less-crucial addons, in an attempt to figure out what I can keep running and what I can live without. It's not rocket science:

1. Observe an error
   
2. Log out
   
3. Turn off one or two likely offender addons
   
4. Log in and see if the error is still there
   
5. If it is, log out again
   
6. Turn on the addons you turned off before, and turn off a couple more candidates
   
7. Repeat until things are working again.

I worked on that for a few hours both Tuesday and Wednesday until I was functional again. It seems that TourGuide is a likely problem candidate, so I hope Tekkub has time to get that updated. The whole process is painful, but it's also a good opportunity to get rid of unused or redundant addons, and to reconfigure anything that needs some attention.

What about the patch? I stayed out of raids, partly because I didn't have time, and partly because stability of the instance servers was an obvious problem. Our guild spent a bit of time in Ulduar and at least got Flame Leviathan down, so that's good. I also haven't tried Wintergrasp yet, mostly due to being online at the wrong times.

I did spend some time with the Argent Tournament and had fun with it. I think it's going to be more fun than the Sunwell dailies, with some better rewards too. The fishing dailies have been enjoyable too, and I'm hopeful that I'll get some good money from that as well. (One annoyance however: I don't know why they felt compelled to add the glow worm as a new +100 lure. We had fish hooks in BC, so why add a new item to stack and save up?)

I did however love being able to switch to Boomkin for the daily quests. It's easier and a whole lot more fun. If you prefer kitty, I'm sure that will work too, but either way it's nice to have some alternatives to being a tree.

It's too early to judge the patch as a whole yet. In particular we need the world servers and instance servers to stabilize. And I'm eager to get into Ulduar! The unfortunate timing though is that I'll be on vacation next week. I might play (and post) a little bit but I won't be around much for a week or so. So have fun, ask Elune for some stable realms, and try not to get your HOTs in my DOTs, OK?