Breakfast Topic: What not to do before Cataclysm

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

We're all getting ready for Deathwing and his sundering of the world by raiding the last few bosses of ICC, jumping into the Ruby Sanctum and beating it until it turns into a broken loot box, and leveling our alts. I, for one, have been focusing on the latter. My 80s are geared appropriately for the level 80-85 zones that are coming in Cataclysm, and I believe I'm pretty well prepared. I have enough gear to get into ICC hard mode runs to pass the time if I get really bored, but other than that, I'm focusing on leveling my baby shaman and paladin in preparation for Cataclysm and the old world changes.

If you're not doing any of that, then you're probably hitting one of the game's many meta-games. Gold farming, achievement grinding, rep grinding, mount grinding ... pretty much any kind of grinding there is to be done is a popular option in the calm before the Cataclysm. A huge gold pool to work with when you reach 85 is going to give any type of player an upper hand -- casuals, hardcore raiders, hardcore PvPers alike. Completing WoW's current iteration of achievements before they become Feats of Strength can increase the ever-important ego of every player, and grinding (especially old-world reps) can give you things that may become impossible to retrieve when Deathwing goes insane all over the Azeroth we all know and love.

There still remains one question to ask once you've thought about everything that you need to do in preparation for the upcoming expansion: What shouldn't I do? That is to say, what will be a waste of time before this expansion? For me, getting any of my fresh 80s great gear by grinding heroics seems like a waste of time. They'll sit at 80 for a while while I get my mains to 85, and it just seems pointless to me.

What sort of activities are you all going to avoid before Cataclysm? What long-term goals were abandoned when you realized how close the upcoming expansion is? Do you have any regrets for things you missed out on (and feel it's too late to start) at this point in Wrath?

Have you ever wanted to write for WoW.com? Your chance may be right around the corner. Watch for our next call for submissions for Breakfast Topics via Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. The next byline you see here may be yours!