More news from the Loremaster front

I reached 3000 quests completed a few days ago, and today I became a Loremaster of the Eastern Kingdoms. The latter felt really premature though, as I still have a ton of quests left in Burning Steppes and both plaguelands. I might just do them anyway, even if it doesn't count for anything. I just have this vision now of my quest log being empty again for the first time in ages, not because I abandoned anything but because I simply completed all of it. First I'll work on completing the other Loremaster achievements though.

While clearing out all the starting zones was relatively quick and easy, the higher level areas were where things started to become a bit tedious. While I talked about the value of doing a bit of travelling as part of our quests just after finishing the Barrens, constantly being sent back and forth between zones of similar level that are located on different continents felt kind of meh. This quest was a good example: it starts in Searing Gorge and has you collect some quest items there, then you have to pick something up in the Swamp of Sorrows (three zones away), collect something in Dustwallow Marsh (on the other continent), and then cross another two zones to finally hand in in Tanaris.

I was also surprised to see just how many quests I'd already done nearly everywhere I went. I mean, my priest was already sitting at nearly 2500 quests completed before I started this project so I knew that I had done something already, but for some reason I assumed that I had mostly focused on the zones that I like. So I went to Searing Gorge for example, thinking that there'd be loads to do because I hate the zone and must have skipped it before, just to find that I had already completed everything but the aforementioned annoying delivery quest and this rather bizarre quest, of which I could have sworn that it simply hadn't been there three years ago. Unlike with the low-level zones I had to actively start searching for leftover quests in obscure places to get anything done at all.

The quests that I did find were a bit of a mixed bag. There were gems like this, which made me laugh out loud:

Or the apothecary in Tarren Mill who keeps talking about all the cute fuzzy animals that he's using for his experiments. (I love animals in real life, but he's just too morbidly funny.)

On the other hand I also found myself getting rather annoyed with some of the changes that Blizzard has made to old and memorable quests. Take the one to summon Shadra, the spider god: (On a side note, I wasn't surprised that I hadn't done that one yet, how did anyone manage to pick up on that little venom bottle back before that stuff sparkled?) I remember walking into Shadra'Alor once and nearly having a heart attack when I saw this huge spider sitting in front of the temple, almost as high as the temple itself. In fact, I think this is how I first found out about the quest, because I was obviously curious what that was all about. So I summoned Shadra myself this time around, anxiously awaiting her appearance, wondering why nothing happened... until I noticed that she had appeared next to another spider, completely normal-sized and unimpressive. That's no way to treat a god, Blizzard! Sometimes size does matter!

The only thing worse was what they did to the Tanaris Field Sampling quest - basically the whole quest chain is centred around acquiring a "field testing kit" to examine tissue samples of some wildlife; you used to have to collect eight usable samples from three different types of animal, and they all had a chance to turn out unusable. The developers apparently decided that this was too much work, so they changed the quest to require only one guaranteed drop from each animal, called an untested sample. After all the work to get that stupid testing kit working, you don't even get to use it. What the hell, that just makes no bloody sense!

Things like that really make me look forward to Cataclysm and Blizzard overhauling all this stuff. Hopefully none of the new quests will feel as pointless as that.