25/07/2010

My least favourite vehicle quest

I'm kind of ambivalent about vehicle quests in general, but I think after last night's round of questing I've found at least one that I definitely don't like. The Golden Raspberry for worst vehicle quest of WOTLK goes to... The Storm King's Vengeance.

I actually liked it on my first playthrough and thought that the way your character sits on Gymer's head was cute, but I was teamed up with my boyfriend then, and with two storm giants at our disposal we could simply steamroll our opponents and bypass a lot of issues that way. Re-doing it on my own I ended up facing a lot of frustrations however.

First off, it seems buggy. It's not the buggiest quest I've seen in WOTLK (that honour goes to Changing the Wind's Course, which bugged out on me in at least four different ways), but unlike the latter, The Storm King's Vengeance is messed up in ways where I can't even tell whether they are actual bugs or simply bad design.

It immediately starts when you mount the giant and get teleported into a phased version of the zone where the mob density is about ten times higher than normal and you have an aggro radius of several miles. I'm not kidding. With my view distance set to high, all the mobs as far as I could see immediately began to make a beeline for my giant. You have an AoE attack, but it's relatively ineffective and I often found myself surrounded by enemies in such a way that they were just far enough apart that there was no way to get rid of them other than to precision-punch each of them individually.

Trying to shake them off and make them reset doesn't work so well either. According to the comments on Wowhead there's a golden spot where you can make a lot of them turn around, but if you don't know where it is, running away will just lead to a larger and larger horde of scourge minions trailing behind you, until they finally catch up and you get to enjoy the in-game equivalent of being gnawed to death by ants.

So, just to make sure this is clear, you have to spend the entirety of this quest running around with about hundred scourge chewing on your feet and whittling away at your health as you try to complete the actual quest objectives. Sure, you can try to kill them, but they'll respawn faster than you can finish them off anyway. So much fun! Except not.

Fighting the boss mobs is an exercise in tedium as well. If you're lucky you'll notice that auto-attacks stop every time you use a special attack, so you have to spam the attack command constantly or take off their health really, really slowly with nothing but specials. And all this while several dozen ghouls and banshees are gnawing on your toes at the same time, just in case you forgot.

You also get to kill Thrym. Oh yeah, that huge dude walking up and down the road! Except... during the one quest where he's actually relevant he's not there. He only spawns after you kill another one of the mini bosses (something there was no prior indication of), and even then it's possible to miss him since he's in a different place than usual. Way to be confusing, Blizzard.

Then there are the storm clouds. You're being told that they'll heal your storm giant friend, but nothing more. The problem is, it's not that easy. First off, they aren't hugely common and can be somewhat hard to spot in the sea of ghouls, which is obviously a problem. Just walking through them doesn't do anything, you have to grab them. Except, that doesn't always work either. In the Wowhead comments there's some discussion about how only a special kind of storm cloud heals you and how to recognise it... but why is that mentioned nowhere in the quest? Is this a bug or intentional? It sucks either way. Also, to get full use out of a storm cloud you apparently also have to attack something right after grabbing it to get the full effect of the HoT it gives you or something. I wonder how many times the people who found out about that had to die on this quest just to figure this out. Again, there is not even the slightest hint in-game that this is how things are supposed to work. Personally I just gave up on the storm clouds eventually and simply let Gymer die repeatedly, completing only a small portion of the quest on each new try. Hint: having to resort to zerg tactics is usually a sign that something's wrong.

I was rather surprised that so many people in the Wowhead comments actually talked about how much they loved this quest. I just can't share their enthusiasm. What about my readers? Did you find Gymer tiresome too or was there another vehicle quest that really got on your nerves?

7 comments:

  1. The first time I did this quest I had no troubles at all and thought it was mildly entertaining. I skipped it on my next three characters. I tried it again months later on my fifth toon and it was as bad as you described. I don't know if something changed or not but it's terrible now and I won't do it.

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  2. This quest actually makes me physically sick.. :(
    Motion sickness I think..
    It's by far my least favorite too :)

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  3. Well, I've mad the Storm King's vengeance on all my chars. I like that quest, I think it's great, but I concede it has some poor implementation in some areas.
    First one is the view. With such a huge giant walking around it's very easy to get blocked by terrain. And that sucks because the giant should be able to step on these places easily, you're not being stopped by some castle wall, but some roots usually.
    The amount of mobs it's ok and very easy to fight them. The key is to grab a vrykul and toss it... it explodes like a bomb and deals massive damage to everybody in front of you. Also that trash mobs attacks aren't aserious threat to you.
    Another glitch you've already mentioned: to kill Thrym you need to kill first Prince Navarius so Thrym spawns right besides you. I can't remember if it's mentioned in the quest description but since it appears just next to you you can't miss him. The problem is when somebody else is doing the quest too. You kill Navarius and that #@&%! kills Thrym, so you have to start over again and wait for Navarius to respawn (time to go and kill Algar the Chosen), kill him and then pray no bloody ninjas will hit Thrym before you.
    And yes, the way to use storm clouds may seem confusing... but once you grab one you see your hps start going up. The question is... should I toss it like a vrykul? I don't remember that doing anything. Also there should be a timer displaying how long the cloud will stay in your hands before it runs out of power. And if that exists as some buff, it should be bigger so it's easier to spot.
    Anyway I consider it's a great quest that just needs some polishing. There's a very simmilar one in Scholazar Basin: Reclamation, that lets you ride the Etymidian (a titan construct you find in Un'goro Crater!) to kill lots of undead and three bosses. And this time you have clearer skills and you need to use them in different ways for every boss. The only problem with Reclamation is it needs more prequests than the Storm King's quest and all of them are veeery boring.

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  4. I thought the Etymidian quest was okay actually. I had some trouble with one of the bosses there at first but that was because I was using abilities in the wrong order; once I got that sorted it was smooth. The big difference for me was that the weenies in Sholazar don't have a five-mile aggro radius...

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  5. I loved that event the last time I did it, Except for the thyrm spawning issue. Perhaps it was a good idea when the zone would have been full of people and waiting on a respawn would be painful or silly (5 second respawn times look weird).

    Maybe it's been luck that m only problem with clouds has always involved forgetting I have an angy vargul in my hand.

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  6. I hate that quest. I've never done it. I don't like vehicle quests at the best of times but that one is badly explained and badly implemented. If I have to trawl the WoWhead comments because I can't do a quest, I usually see that a a sign there is something up with with the quest. I've never managed to make the storm clouds work and the fixed camera positioning is absolutely terrible. How are you meant to kill things you can't see? GAH!!!!

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  7. Oooh hatey hatey hate hate hate hate hate hate hate.

    I did this quest once, never again.

    Hatey mc hate hate. Hate it.

    And Changing the Wind's Course bugged out for us too.

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