Cataclysm NDA Lifted! Beta Begins! Exclamation points abused!

[TheDragoon]

Your first zones are either going to be steamrolls for both of them, where you 1 shot the mobs and get insane gear to roll the rest of that zone, so that you can move to the next zone and not die (because these mobs will be beefy) ...

This is how I felt the Classic -> TBC and TBC -> WotLK transition went for the level 58/68 quest green characters. Those intro quests are all about getting those quest greens replaced with new and improved, TBC/WotLK quest greens.

or the guy in 277 gear is going to roll the zone

I'm not sure that I ever really did play through the TBC -> WotLK transition with a character that had end-game gearing from TBC (because the very geared characters I had swapped specs and had to basically start over again) but the Classic -> TBC transition for an end-game character was certainly different if you had end-game epic items.
I know my character that had geared up in AQ40/Naxx before TBC basically went through most of Outland using much of the best gear (replacing some of the less-great gear midway through).

That balance between the quest characters feeling like they gear up at a massive rate in the first zone and the very-well-geared characters that could use their gear through part/most of the new areas felt like Blizzard had hit the sweet spot. That's why I think it's somewhat surprising that it sounds like the model might be changing. Is the difference between quest geared and end-game geared characters that different now?

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To me it's about the experience, not all about the gear.

I think the thing the rankles with some people is that it feels strange from a quasi-roleplaying standpoint to enter a new zone using equipment wrenched from the hands of of the baddest creature in the WotLK universe only to squash a bug that drops not-quite-as-clown-suit-as-it-used-to-be armor which blows your awesome stuff out of the water. As I noted above it seemed, to me, that Blizzard had hit a sweet spot between making old gear useful and catching up the quest geared new characters so it's surprising to see it change.