Blizzard has gone to great lengths to make sure that World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will
have a smooth launch. With the game pre-patching Cataclysm content to
accounts that have pre-activated the game and the lovely new option to
buy a digital download version of the game rather than lining up in the
freezing cold at midnight this is the easiest expansion yet to pick up
and play.

Expect Lag

With the ease of purchasing and
installing Cataclysm, the huge hype and marketing that has been done,
and an enthusiastic playerbase of 12 million gamers there are going to
be a lot of people logging on on Tuesday. Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King were relatively lagless on release other than a few servers, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

The login servers are going to
be getting hammered hard and zones will be packed with players using
spells and abilities so the game is simply going to lag at some points
much more than it usually does.

Game servers, as a rule of
thumb, are typically much more stable than the login server. Take
advantage of this fact and when you’re able to log in stay in
game as long as possible. Avoid logging out because you really
don’t want to be at the whim of the login servers on one of
the busiest days in World of Warcraft history. For this reason
it’s a good idea to have your UI updated to the best of your
ability. Assuming that any of your mods will work at all this is a good
way to have a pleasurable game experience without having to frequently
log out or restart your client.

Get Ahead of the Curve

There are going to be a ton of
people playing and most of them are going to be after the same things.
Expect Mount Hyjal and Vashj’ir to be packed solid with level
80 players trying to quest up. If you’re stuck in the middle
of this pack then you’re going to be competing against a
plethora of players that are trying to kill the same mobs and loot the
same items, this is not a good thing. Nothing can slow down your
leveling and start a day of frustration like waiting 2-3 minutes or
more just to attack and tag a monster that you need to kill 10 of.

I’m not going to
recommend unhealthy behaviour here, but the Cataclysm servers will
officially be live at 3am Eastern time 12am Pacific. If you happen to
be awake then and seize the opportunity to get through some of the
early questing then you may be rewarded for it later on when you
aren’t sharing the early areas with hundreds of other players.

Another thing to remember is
that Vashj’ir and Mount Hyjal are essentially parallel zones
progression wise. This means that you can use either of these zones to
level from 80 to 82. Hyjal is more straightforward and (obviously) not
underwater, this makes it easier and more appealing in some respects.
For this reason I’ve got a hunch that Vashj’ir will
be less packed with players and possibly easier to progress through
quickly.

It’s a Good Day to be a Tank

The Random Dungeon Finder is
going to be on overload on the 7th. It’s been widely
suggested by players who participated in the Cataclysm Beta test that
leveling by grinding instances is the fastest and most efficient way to
level up. The extremely high level new loot that drops there
doesn’t hurt either. Everyone’s going to be queuing
up trying to get into these dungeons.

If you’re a DPS class
then you should probably not be relying on this method of leveling up
unless you have a premade group. Tanks and Healers are going to be
scarce, and DPS queue times may be in the
‘hours’ range. Tanks on the other hand are
going to have a field day with instant queues from 80 all the way to 85.

[protip]Blackrock Caverns is
already explorable in-game and if you head there and discover it now
then you will be able to queue for it in the Random Dungeon Finder
immediately upon logging in on the 7th.[/protip]

Also remember that if you want
to queue for a random dungeon you’ll have to have visited it
in the physical world already!

Cataclysm May Sell Out Fast

Sales expectations for
Cataclysm are high, if you haven’t pre-ordered a copy and are
opting to buy a physical box instead of the digital download then
you’d better line up early. There are no guarantees that
supply will be sufficient to meet the demand.

Just thinking about it reminds me of standing outside in sub-zero weather waiting to pick up Burning Crusade and
watching as people who had been in line for over an hour were turned
away due to lack of copies. Don’t be a victim!