More Levelling in SoD

I mentioned last month that I was getting back into Season of Discovery with the goal of eventually seeing the Demon Fall Canyon dungeon. Over the past couple of weeks, I got a bit distracted by some things in SWTOR, but I haven't forgotten about this project, so I wanted to jot down some notes about my most recent adventures.

In general, I've continued to be surprised by how not dead the SoD servers have remained after the launch of "Classic Classic". According to my census addon, there are pretty consistently about 1000 players online on Wild Growth Horde side, which is actually pretty close to my personal sweet spot in terms of server size: enough people to keep the auction house replenished, make it easy to get into a group for most dungeons and see plenty of activity out in the world, but not so many that you can no longer gather or quest without perceiving other players as a constant competitive nuisance.

The economy is a bit less good and feels quite inflated to me. People trying to charge one gold for a single Green Hills of Stranglethorn page feels quite ridiculous to me for example. I sometimes see complaints that prices on the era servers are inflated due to the servers' age, but at least on the PvE cluster, most things are pretty fairly priced even after more than five years. Occasionally someone will try to drive the price of certain goods up, but the thing with era players is: they've got time. If you charge too much, they can always wait and/or go farm for themselves. On seasonal servers there's more urgency to get stuff now and it's noticeable.

I also remember hearing that certain activities in earlier SoD phases really cranked up inflation (incursions awarding lots of gold or something?) and that's probably part of it as well. Either way the end result is that as someone returning after several months of absence, I find a lot of things on the AH quite unaffordable. If I find one of those lost supplies boxes, if I can't fill them with my own gathering and crafting skills, it's basically a no-go. I have managed to make a bit of gold by occasionally flogging some goods for (to me) rather silly prices as well, but opportunities for that are somewhat limited and partially luck-dependent so not really a reliable solution.

I think there's also bots? It's probably not as bad as on the anniversary servers, and I've stated in the past that people are way too quick to cry wolf about people supposedly botting, but sometimes you can definitely tell. (I remember one time in Elwynn when I saw a whole stream of low-level humans leave the village zig-zagging along the exact same path; that was eerie.) I haven't come across a lot of such cases on SoD myself, but definitely at least a suspicious number of hunters with unnamed or scrambled pet names.

As for myself, I continue to rotate through all my alts to use up some restedness and try to have them quest in different places for variety. My priest also healed a Razorfen Kraul and my mage did a Wailing Caverns and a Shadowfang Keep. The latter was a bit funny to me because I actually used the group finder tool for the first time and saw a group that was just missing a tank - with the three dps being a warrior, a shaman and a warlock, all three of which can tank in SoD. I sighed and just listed my mage by her lonesome... but within less than five minutes the other group had invited me anyway and we were off to the races.

It's also been fun to do more "discovering" of content and mechanics that are unique to SoD. The other day, I was in Stranglethorn Vale during the Blood Moon for the first time, and while I had the immunity buff on me, it was still a slightly odd experience. I didn't actually see any fighting for example, but lots of max-level allies running around killing my quest mobs. Does that give them rewards? I couldn't be bothered to do any deeper research on it. I did also run into this boss-type mob that was yelling and taking a swim in Lake Nazferiti for some reason.

In terms of questing, my hunter has offered the most interesting experience. I only noticed the other day that it's possible to place traps in combat now for example, something I'm pretty sure wasn't possible in the earlier phases. She also kind of struggles with the massive XP bonus, since it doesn't apply to pets, meaning her little tiger is currently three levels below her. I've tried to get him caught up by focusing a bit on mob grinding while unrested, but then I hand in one quest and bam, suddenly I'm another level ahead again. It's a bit annoying to be honest.

Another questionable adventure she had occurred around the AQ gate opening event. I mentioned previously that it worked a bit differently in SoD compared to normal, with the war effort completing automatically on a timer, but apparently the ten hour war - or at least the events tied to it - were extended significantly as well. I kept running into giant floating Qiraj crystals in levelling zones for days, which I think made farming Brood of Nozdormu rep a lot easier for people, but I'm not sure Blizzard fully took into consideration what this would mean for levellers. For example one of these crystals spawns right in the middle of Camp Mojache, so when I tried to pick up the flight path there, I swiftly got stomped into the ground. I couldn't even res and quickly click on the flight master, as I would instantly get put into combat and killed again. I think in the end I had to accept a spirit rez and use my hearthstone.

The other day I saw a video by WillE about what's new in SoD, and he mentioned that there are now vendors that sell all the runes for one copper each. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I was a bit concerned about how much of a grind it would be to find all the runes at this point, and this is definitely a nice solution for people who want to level more alts to raid. But I'm not looking to raid, and finding more runes was kind of part of the journey I was looking forward to? I mean, I can still gather them myself over time, that hasn't been disabled as far as I'm aware, but it does make me a bit worried whether people will be shirty in dungeons if you haven't just bought all your runes. Then again, so far everyone I've grouped with since my return has been very chill, so one can hope.

Big Cats and Quests That Aren't

So it ended up taking me an extra four levels until my night elf hunter was able to afford her mount. I'd forgotten just how much I love nightsabers; they are so majestic. Unlike my taurens' kodos, whom I see as purely functional, I actually love watching my hunter ride along on her big new cat, especially with a smaller cat running alongside it. It's just a joy to watch. Now I only have to remember to actually mount up more often - turns out that simply throwing on Aspect of the Cheetah for 24 levels is a hard habit to shake.

As usual I'm really loving the fourties - circling between Stranglethorn Vale, Tanaris, Feralas and the Hinterlands is just good fun all around. One thing I found interesting to revisit and which I hadn't thought about in a long time were the hippogryph eggs in Feralas. It's an interesting mechanic that's kind of like a repeatable quest but not exactly.

Basically there is this gnome in Gadgetzan that has a couple of conversation options about hippogryphs in Feralas, how they are threatened by the Gordunni ogres and how she wants to preserve them by collecting their eggs. You may find yourself reading through these gossip options after another quest sends you to talk to this NPC, but she doesn't actually give you a quest for hippogryph eggs.

However, if you do find yourself in the mountains near the ogres in Feralas and you keep an eye out, you might find nests with eggs in them, and somehow you can stuff an egg that's almost as tall and twice as wide as your character into your backpack. (Though I guess the size might explain why it's labelled as unique and you can't carry more than one at a time.)

If you then return to the gnome in Tanaris, you can stick the egg into the machine next to her and it assigns the egg a quality (bad, ordinary, fine, or extraordinary). Based on the quality of the egg, she will then offer you a reward box. So like a quest really, but not using the usual language of floating exclamation marks and quest log entries.

There are a few of these in Classic (another one I can think of is the Shady Rest Inn - while there are a number of quests associated with it, there is a big "gap" in the middle where after being sent to Theramore and talking to various people there who bring it up, you need to actually find the place on your own and pick up the clues scattered around the area before being given more "proper" quests).

I do think these are pretty neat, and I quite like picking up another egg every time I'm in Feralas now. It also makes me wonder how I'd feel about playing an MMORPG where all the quests required more "discovery" like that instead of simply always being indicated by UI markers... (though chances are I'd not find it as intriguing and more tedious if it was just the default).

On Levelling on a PvP Server

I have more than a passing interest in PvP, but at the same time I'm far from being a hardcore PvPer. Generally I tend to go through phases of high interest in it, which alternate with long periods of me barely doing any at all.

However, one thing I had never done in any MMO before I started playing on Kronos was roll a character on a PvP server. It just didn't seem like my cup of tea, because as I said, there are times when I feel like PvP and times when I don't. I had no interest in forcing it on others or having it forced on me while in the middle of doing something else. You can participate in battlegrounds and have honourable duels on a PvE server too.

At the same time, I did wonder about life on a PvP server sometimes. Some people managed to make it sound quite exciting, and if you've ever had someone of the opposite faction "steal" a gathering node from right under your nose for example, the thought of being able to stop them - or at least get revenge - holds a certain appeal.

So when I found out that whether I chose to play on Nostalrius or on Kronos, I would be on a PvP server, I wasn't too put off. It was worth a try, wasn't it?

Kronos' not too massive population has been helpful in that regard. I was nearly level twenty when I encountered my first Horde player and it was around level thirty that I got ganked for the first time. So far I've never been singled out by a level 60, and I've never been corpse camped. It's been a bit annoying to die and have to do a corpse run just because an orc warrior suddenly jumped out from behind a tree when all I really wanted to do was get from one end of Stranglethorn to the other, but it wasn't the end of the world.

This weekend has really made me rethink the whole thing though, especially since people in guild were discussing the subject as well. PvPers like to argue that playing on a PvP server makes things more exciting - and it kind of does. But to be honest, the only times you come away from this excitement feeling good is when you win. Like that one time an orc hunter tried to kill me on an island off the coast of Desolace. We got into this weird stalemate where he would run or recall his pet whenever I went after either of them, but if I healed up and tried to walk away he would give chase again. We must have swum around the island for a good ten minutes or so when it looked like he managed to get himself trapped in an exhaustion zone without noticing, because we were both in the water and he suddenly lost a huge amount of health quickly and then dropped dead without my intervention. I got a good laugh out of that and felt like he got his just desserts for insisting on harassing me.

The past weekend was less amusing. First I was trying to do that quest at the Grimtotem village in Feralas to free some Sprite Darters. I knew that a Horde rogue and warlock were nearby, but they seemed to be minding their own business so I felt reasonably safe. However, as soon as I started the quest, they were suddenly on top of me and ended up killing both me and my quest NPC - which was annoying in so far as the quest is timed, and even though I had technically succeeded at the objective, I failed the quest since the NPC was dead and I couldn't hand it in. After she respawned I made a point of waiting for the two Horde players to bugger off before I even tried again.

Worse though was when on Sunday I tried to do the mechanical chicken escort in Tanaris. I had already failed it once - my own fault that time - and really wanted to get it done the second time. I was so glad when I was finally only mere meters away from Steamwheedle Port, as good as done... until two tauren hunters suddenly decided to come up behind me and killed both me and the chicken. I'm usually not easy to upset when it comes to PvP, but that really filled me with rage, and if it hadn't been for the language barrier I would have given those tauren a piece of mind involving a lot of swearwords I usually never use. That freaking escort quest takes twenty minutes, and you think it's fun to kill me five meters from the finish line? GG, dickbags.

Soon after that, I logged off for the day even though I hadn't achieved much that weekend. Suddenly I really hated Kronos for being a PvP server. The truth is, I've never had the urge to initiate combat with the opposite faction, so if I'm being honest I'm just making myself a punching bag for other players by going along with it. All that ever happens is that I get attacked by people who are several levels above me, in twink gear, or in a group. Sometimes things get turned around and they are the ones who end up with egg on their face, but that's a cold comfort when compared to the amount of my time that ends up getting wasted by corpse-running and having to re-do quests. I've put up with it because there were no other options at the time, but weekends like these really make me wonder whether it's worth it when I could be having fun with something else where other players aren't able to ruin my enjoyment every step of the way. My free time is really too precious to me these days to waste it on nonsense like that. The notion of a rage quit has never been closer to my heart.

More Kalimdor Questing

I don't seem to be very good at keeping up with writing a series of posts, but as far as my project of writing about levelling alts through the new low-level content goes, I haven't given up on it yet - I just took a break from it.

Last time I wrote about how I had taken my human rogue through the Southern Barrens and Dustwallow Marsh. After that I continued to Thousand Needles, but something about the story in that zone confused me (more about that later), and I found myself wondering whether the alternative available levelling path through Desolace and Feralas might've explained events better, so I decided to take my warlock down that route before writing about Thousand Needles, to make sure that I had all the relevant info.

Desolace

Before the Cataclysm, Desolace was a zone with a less than stellar reputation. I always thought that the quests themselves weren't too bad (though I only ever finished the Magram/Gelkis rep grind once, while working on Loremaster at level 80 - that definitely wasn't one of Blizzard's brightest ideas), but there were two downsides to the zone that I definitely took note of as well. One: it was ugly as hell. I'm not saying that everything has to be lush and green (though I love those zones myself), but there is barren... and then there's Desolace, which is seriously nothing but a depressing grey wasteland. Two: it has always felt somewhat out of the way to me, especially whenever I was playing Alliance. Even with the accelerated levelling speed I wanted to return to a capital city once in a while questing there on my warlock, and the return trip always took bloody forever. Before the Cataclysm I mostly just ended up getting my levels elsewhere during that level range, often not even due to a conscious decision or anything. I'd just kind of automatically make my way through Stranglethorn or Arathi and not even realise that I had completely skipped Desolace until I was well into my forties.

When the Cataclysm promo video first came out, it included a shot that had the camera panning across a rejuvenated Desolace, and to me, that was easily one of the most exciting sights in that video. Unfortunately, the reality didn't really live up to the dream. Yes, there's a lush glade in the centre of the zone now... but all around it, the place is still the same it's always been. Also, the Cataclysm hasn't really made the zone any more accessible.

The quests were enjoyable enough, but then as I said before, to me they've always been pretty decent. The zone seems to offer a pretty even split between quests that are completely new, quests that are based on old ones but have been revamped a bit, and old quests that have pretty much been left untouched. I honestly don't know how I feel about that. In some ways it's an awkward mix. Then again, I kind of enjoyed running out to some lonely hut without having any kind of breadcrumb quest, and finding that it was still inhabited by the same old goblin wanting me to round up kodos or gather ghost-o-plasm. On the latter quest I even managed to get myself killed once, not a mean feat in today's levelling world. But at the same time it doesn't really fit. When all the other quests have been streamlined into one big storyline (the naga story in this zone is quite interesting by the way, as is the new centaur plot), then those others just stick out like sore thumbs. I couldn't actually find a follow-up quest to lead me into Feralas, which was a first for me in the post-Cataclysm world, but I continued down there anyway.

Feralas

I have an old post somewhere in which I declared my love for the old Feralas and how it continued to surprise me even after years of playing. Obviously I can't say with any certainty that the revamped Feralas will never surprise me in the future, but considering that it follows the new linear quest model, I'm not getting my hopes up.

This is also one of the two neutral zones that I've already done on characters of both factions (the other one was Stonetalon), and I have to say that, in that regard, it's been rather disappointing. One of the biggest appeals of rolling an alt of the other faction in the old world was that it gave you access to some very different content. I'm not saying that there was never any overlap, and neutral quest givers have always been available to everyone, but if you had separate camps for the two sides in a zone, you could generally count on being tasked with different things. For example, while both factions used to be sent to the Ruins of Ravenwind to kill harpies, the Alliance would be sent there to assemble the staff of something-or-other, while the Horde was out to kill the leader of the harpies. The night elves wanted to save fairy dragons, some orc in Camp Mojache just wanted the horns of Grimtotem. On Alliance side you discovered the local silithid hive while on a mission to rescue a lost elf, on Horde side you followed the trail of the gnolls' aggression back to the silithid. And so on, and so forth. They were separate stories.

Not much is left of that, and I find that quite sad. The vast majority of the new quests are identical across factions, down to even the basic ones to kill x amount of dragon whelps, stags, ogres, gnolls, silithid or what have you. Once again Blizzard seems to be operating under the principle that everyone has to see all the content, and thus we couldn't have any quests on one side that might make people on the other side feel as if they are missing out on anything. In some cases this felt quite forced too: For example the Alliance now also gets the same quests as the Horde that have you killing mobs east and north-east of Camp Mojache. While the Alliance has a flight path much closer to the Horde base now, it was still fricking annoying to have to run through tons of gnoll camps in order to sneak past Camp Mojache over and over again, as the quest chain had you running back and forth about four times. In the old days I never had any quests to go there, and you know what? It was not a bad thing. I do hope that not all zones have become like that.

That said, the quests themselves are still enjoyable enough, and there's some interesting lore that has you meeting Ysondre and Cho'gall. Also, if you're a herbalist, this place will drive you crazy with how many herbs it's got. I kept following the golden dots on the mini-map and would always find myself in a completely different place than where I had intended to go. By the end I simply had to force myself to ignore most of the herbs or I never would have got anything done.

Thousand Needles

Now, Thousand Needles. This zone is weird now. Not bad, just weird. I did it on my rogue, and as I mentioned at the start, I came here after doing the Southern Barrens and Dustwallow Marsh. The breadcrumb quest leads you to the very western edge of the zone, where the night elf outpost supposedly needs help, but then they only ask you to kill a few attackers and immediately send you away to the local luxury speed barge owned by a gnome and a goblin. Because that's the logical thing to do with desperately needed reinforcements, send them away on holiday. Bwuh?

So then you get sent to the very eastern end of the zone, where you get quests to work your way west again, and then back east again. This didn't feel like good flow to me. Also, everything being covered in water didn't help. The quests are partly on land and partly on water, and like in Vashj'ir the designers tried to make the latter as painless as possible by giving you increased swim speed, underwater breathing and a mount. Except that the mount isn't actually a mount, it's an item in your inventory that you have to use to activate a boat vehicle, and it still feels depressingly slow in the vastness of the sea, especially compared to the insanely fast and mysteriously powered night elven speed boat that initially takes you to the barge.

The quests themselves are almost all entirely new, mostly good fun and quite memorable. Among other things, there's a gnome who wants to open an ice cream emporium in the middle of nowhere, and you run into Tony Two-Tusk again, whom Horde players might remember from the Northern Barrens. However, as Alliance I was also quite confused that I was told to help the Horde fight back the Grimtotem that had taken over Freewind Post. I mean, excuse me? You just spent the better part of three zones telling me that the Horde is my mortal enemy, in Stonetalon I had to work on forging an alliance with the Grimtotem, and now this? Unfortunately Desolace and Feralas didn't explain this sudden development either. On the border between Feralas and Thousand Needles there is talk of the Grimtotem suddenly attacking for no reason, but that's still quite a 180 degree turn. Helping the Horde after all they did to us... /grumble. (And that's coming from someone who mainly plays Horde.) If anyone could enlighten me about why that's supposed to make sense, I'd appreciate it.

Towards the end of the zone you also forge an unexpected alliance with a not particularly friendly lore character (I don't want to spoil it), which once again left me wondering where this particular story was going, as the ending is somewhat open.

I have to admit, so far my trip across Kalimdor has felt less exciting overall than the revamped Eastern Kingdoms, but I still have zones to cover, so we'll see how it goes.

Questing in Feralas

Feralas is another zone that's very dear to my heart. In part it's simply because of its looks and atmosphere - I love that it's basically a single forest that's so big that you can barely see the sky, yet it's still lush and full of life instead of dark and threatening. I think Feralas was also the first zone in which I became aware of the rain in WoW - it struck me as beautiful and very fitting for that kind of environment.

Feralas is also a zone with which I connect a lot of fond memories of noobishness and exploration, such as riding down the main road on my night elf priest and straight into the Camp Mojache guards. What, a Horde outpost in the middle of the road? Outrageous! Or finding myself stuck on top of one of the Twin Colossals without a parachute, trying to levitate down and landing right in the middle of a bunch of elite dragonkin. Or running into an annoying night elf hunter while doing the mechanical chicken escort quest, zapping giants together and eventually becoming friends. Or looking at a shadow priest of the enemy faction killing ogres and wondering why I can't shoot funky blue lines out of my palms. Yes, I was a shadow priest in my fourties without mind flay once. Those were the days...

And somehow, even as I levelled up alt after alt after alt, Feralas never lost its charm and ability to surprise me. I remember coming there for the first time as Horde and being completely baffled that there were ogres living in the mountains north of Camp Mojache. I never even knew that place existed before! It also took me a long time to find my first ever Hippogryph Egg. When I levelled my paladin through the zone I was quite surprised when I managed to find a path up a mountainside to a cave full of gnolls where I could finally mine that ore vein that I had seen on my minimap dozens of times while riding past, always wondering where the hell it was hidden. And today I was playing my shaman and found a Gordunni Scroll, which started a little quest chain that I'm pretty sure I had never done before. It's just wonderful that a game that I've been playing for so long now can still surprise me sometimes.

It was also interesting to note that, even though Cataclysm and a complete revamp of the old world are looming ahead, Blizzard hasn't stopped tweaking old content to make it more convenient to level through it right now. Take the quest A Strange Request. This used to send you to Orgrimmar to trade a shrunken head for some herbs with Neeru Fireblade. As I skimmed my quest log today I did a double-take: Xerash Fireblade, located at the Lariss Pavilion... eh, what? Yep, flying all the way to Orgrimmar was clearly too much effort, so Blizzard placed a random NPC just around to corner so you can deliver to him instead. That probably sounds more sarcastic than intended, because it really is convenient, as it means you can get straight to the next part of the chain without having to fly across half the continent.

Speaking of the next part of the chain: Testing the Vessel used to require you to travel to the Hinterlands to use the quest item on owlbeasts there, but not anymore. Now you just need to use it on a bunch of bears and wolves that roam the area aplenty. Again a massively convenient change, and one that kind of makes sense too in my opinion: to be honest I never understood why just to test the item you needed a very specific kind of owlbeast from another continent... though I'll admit that in this case I was also a little bit sad. These quests didn't send people halfway across the world just to waste time, it was also a way of helping them to find other zones appropriate for their level. I mean, how else would a newbie questing in Feralas for the first time feel inspired to go to northern end of the Eastern Kingdoms? So the loss of that connection saddenened me a bit, but as far as I know Blizzard is planning to make all the zone transitions much smoother in Cataclysm anyway, so hopefully that question will have become redundant by then.