Mixed signals

I'm having quite a bit of fun with Cataclysm content, but one thing that I've found striking so far is that Blizzard is sending some very mixed signals in certain areas.

For example I found the revamped low-level areas to be very easy-going for the most part, with mobs much more spread out than they used to be and more neutral mobs interspersed among the hostile ones. Yet some of the new high-level zones are among the most deadly areas (without elites) that the developers ever designed, what with the enemies' massive health pools, tight grouping and high respawn rates.

Or take dungeon quests: On the one hand Blizzard advertised that they were going to put the quest givers directly inside the instances so people would be able to pick them up more easily, yet on the other hand they gave us Throne of the Tides, where the quest NPC inside won't even speak to you unless you've completed all of Vashj'ir. Having to pick up quests for Sunken Temple in four different zones was a piece of cake compared to what essentially comes down to having to do nearly one-hundred and fifty pre-quests just to do two instance quests in a levelling instance.

On the one hand they introduced a guild levelling system and guild achievements to make you play with your friends, but on the other hand they got rid of group quests almost entirely, made levelling in sync a royal pain in the arse and generally made questing more annoying if you've got company.

And of course, they left the dungeon finder in the game with no changes. In my guild this has led to some strange conflicts. Everyone agrees that running with a guild group is generally far superior to running with a pug, but guild groups (at least in a medium-sized guild) have a problem: unless you plan ahead for every five-man as if it were a raid, they are pretty unreliable. The tank you were hoping for might have a headache and end up not wanting to run tonight, maybe there are three healers online and they can't all get into a group, or maybe everyone just started a run five minutes before you logged on.

Comparatively, the dungeon finder has one advantage there: the guaranteed spot. If you queue up there, you might have to wait forty minutes, but unless it's three in the morning (and maybe even then) you will get into a group eventually. It might be a horrible group and you might not make it past the first boss, but at the very least you'll get a chance to go.

So you try to build a guild group in the evening and get responses like "I would have come but I just got into a pug after a fifty-minute queue" or "oh sorry, we're already in a run together and just pugged the healer from the dungeon finder". And so everyone ends up pugging something or someone, and then the ones who log on later end up having to pug more in turn... and suddenly you have ten guildies doing heroics but not a single group that counts as a guild run.

I don't want to condemn the dungeon finder here, but I have to say that in light of the changes to guilds and the like, it feels oddly out of place to me now and as if the different systems are sabotaging each other. Run with your guild, it's more fun and gives achievements! No, use the dungeon finder, it guarantees you a spot at the press of a button!

Cataclysm, the expansion of contradictions?

Gearing up is hard to do

My fellow officers are starting to talk about when to start raiding, and while I agree that we should probably look into it soon, I have to admit that I don't think I'm quite prepared for it yet. I got to eighty-five somewhat more slowly than many, ran some normal instances... but I've only completed one heroic so far. I know that I could do better, but part of me is seriously put off by the gearing up process for some reason, which surprised me because I've always been one of the more dedicated raiders. What has changed?

I started thinking about how I handled the gear reset in previous expansions. In Burning Crusade it didn't really affect me because I didn't get into raiding until a few months after expansion release, and even then I was kind of drafted into it as my guild needed a shadow priest to shackle stuff in Karazhan. I was brought for my utility before anything else, and nobody cared that I had crappy gear. I only learned about things like the hit cap and enchants slowly and over time, but nobody seemed to mind much.

Looking back at BC heroics, they weren't that amazing a source of pre-raid gear either though. There were no "heroic" tags and I had almost forgotten that with the exception of the last boss who dropped an epic, all the previous bosses dropped the same items on heroic as they did on normal, plus some gems and stuff. Wearing full heroic gear before you started raiding wasn't really a requirement, because for many classes there was only a limited amount of heroic gear to begin with. There was a heavy dependence on crafting and quest rewards.

In WOTLK on the other hand the gear curve was so gentle that gearing up happened almost automatically because very little of it was necessary. I know I wasn't the only raider who still wore a lot of her level seventy epics when stepping foot into the new level eighty raids. In addition, heroics and ten-man raids were designed to be alternative gearing paths, so they dropped the same quality of loot. Or in other words, just having run normals meant that you were geared enough to raid.

The Cataclysm system on the other hand seems to be designed with the intent to be very grind-heavy. Run lots of normals to gear up for heroics, run lots of heroics to gear up for raids. I don't actually know how tight the gear requirements for raiding are, but from what I've heard they are tough enough that you'll want to wear the best gear you can possibly get beforehand. Now, thinking back to how people chained heroics in WOTLK that doesn't sound so bad, but Blizzard went back to a model of more challenging heroics in Cataclysm, so chaining them with pugs is actually not recommended. I've only run two so far myself, and while they were fun with my guild, I'm rather intimidated by the notion of attempting those same instances with pugs. So I don't do a lot of runs and gear up very slowly. My old epics mostly had to go before I could even enter the last of the new normal modes because they were dragging my average item level down too much. Sadface.

In addition I'm being told that warlocks and mages don't like spirit anymore now, and Blizzard seems to have itemised accordingly. Maybe I'm just imagining it, but spirit cloth suddenly seems annoyingly rare. For example I was looking for some nice pre-heroic boots for my priesting and the only PvE item I could find where these shoes from normal Halls of Origination. In comparison, my clothie brethren not interested in spirit have a choice between two different pairs of crafted boots (they have resilience but are accessible without actually doing any PvP) and two ilevel 333 quest rewards.

So you run the same couple of normal mode instances that have the only spirit cloth drops over and over, just to have a pug mage or lock who hasn't got the memo about spirit yet outroll you when your item finally drops. Argh.

Dejected, I turned towards reputation rewards where possible, just to find out that the faction with the best rewards for my class and spec is the only new Cataclysm faction for which you can't grind reputation by running dungeons with a tabard, and the only way to get your rep with them up is to grind dailies in Tol Barad. I gave this a try in my holy spec and had to run for my life after the second pull. I don't remember the last time soloing as a healer was this painful; my damage is piddly compared to the mobs' massive health pools, I run oom after every other kill and getting adds leaves you no choice but to run or die. I eventually caved in and sacrificed my PvP disc spec for a shadow soloing spec so as to not be completely useless on my own. But I'm a healer, damn it, why do I have to struggle through killing things to get better healing gear?

I guess I will have to push through this rough spot somehow, because it would set a rather bad example if not even the officers are ready to raid in terms of gear. But damn it, gearing up has never been this un-fun.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

I hope you all had a good Christmas.

I was just looking through some old pictures on my computer after uploading a couple of Christmas shots, when I stumbled across this (click to enlarge): It's a crappy old sketch of mine that I had completely forgotten about, detailing some of my first impressions of Northrend.

How does this compare to my feelings about Cataclysm right now?

Everything looks really good. Oh, without a doubt, especially now that you can fly over (nearly) all those old world zones.

NPCs talk a lot more than they used to. Oh god, I had no idea what was yet to come, did I? I almost miss the days when Apothecary Lysander yelling about SEVERE STOMACH PAINS every thirty seconds counted as "talking much".

Most quests can be soloed... that doesn't mean that questing alone is actually more fun. Those stick spiders were supposed to represent the Nerubians just outside Warsong Hold, which forced my hunter into a tight spot more than once during early WOTLK. Thinking about whether that statement still applies today, I kind of have to say no. Respawn rates can still be silly in places, but I think that zones like Vashj'ir for example are actually designed to be more fun when you're playing alone. Of course, once you've tried to do some dailies in Tol Barad and got swarmed by the same mobs respawning on top of you three times in a row, you'll desperately cling to anyone who's willing to group with you again.

Instance bosses with adds are pretty common and a healer's bane. That one's funny because I don't remember feeling that way about the Wrath instances at all, ever, but I had very similar thoughts during several of the boss fights in the new Cataclysm instances. (Azil, I'm looking at you.)

Instances in general are very... interesting. Again I can hardly believe that I ever found the Northrend instances interesting. That's what rerunning the places a few hundred times will do to you I suppose. Though I do remember the multiple times I saw people get stuck on that ledge in the Nexus and be forced to suicide (pre-dungeon finder teleport). Cataclysm instances seem interesting to me too now - I'm not looking forward to one day finding them as dull as I found the Northrend instances towards the end.

My picks for the Pink Pigtail Inn list of 2010

Larísa is once again looking for input for her annual roundup of what was good and interesting in WoW - if you haven't seen it yet, the post is here. I always love these; finally an awards "show" that I can care about!  

1. Best raid instance 

Unfortunately there isn't really much to choose from in this category, is there? We pretty much raided Icecrown Citadel all year round. It was good for a while, but it was annoying and tedious for even longer. 

2. Least successful raid instance 

Again, this one is pretty easy. Like I said last year when I nominated the Eye of Eternity, the least successful instances aren't actually those that people complain about, it's those that they don't even care to go into. There was only one such raid that fit that bill this year: the Ruby Sanctum. I think it's a bit of a shame actually because Halion wasn't a terrible boss. He just felt kind of out of place, both in terms of lore and in terms of difficulty. Then again, a small part of me is tempted to nominate Naxxramas. People raided Karazhan right until WOTLK came around, but who bothered to visit Kel'thuzad anymore this year? 

3. Most longed for instance 

I'm finding it hard to pick anything here because we spent all year longing for Cataclysm. I don't think anyone really longed for Ruby Sanctum to come out (and if they did, they were probably disappointed quite quickly). I suppose some of us were longing for the Ulduar days, but Ulduar already won this category last year. Personally I think I mostly longed for the Black Temple, remembering what it was like for raiding to truly hold my interest until the very end of an expansion.  

4. Silliest gold sink 

I already nominated them last year but since they didn't win I can do so again... Mechano-Hogs! Not only are they ludicrously expensive, their sound effects are annoying as hell. I can listen to cars driving outside my window all day, thanks, I don't need that to invade my fantasy world... Of course now it's even worse because with the introduction of goblins to the Horde, poor people can get access to noisy vehicles too. /sigh  

5. Biggest addition to the game  

I don't think the dungeon finder counts because it was already introduced last year and it just doesn't feel new to me anymore. So I would say the 4.0 revamp of all classes and their talent trees.  

6. Best quest 

Have there even been any new quests this year other than the breadcrumb quest for Ruby Sanctum? I think I'll have to abstain from that one because all I can think of right now are the shiny new Cataclysm quests.  

7. Ugliest tabard  

I'll probably have to agree with someone else's nomination of the Loremaster's Colors here. The idea with the exclamation mark was nice and all, but the end result just looks ugly. 

8. Favorite non combat pet 

On a side note, I was rather baffled when immediately upon release of the Shattering, half the blogs I read updated with nothing but squeeing about some new non-combat pets. O...kay? The whole world has changed and that's the thing everyone's most excited about? Am I the only female player who doesn't really care about them? I mean, they look kind of cute but I never even remember to keep any of them out anyway... My personal favourite this year would have to be a tie between the Netherwhelp and Lurky because a guildie gifted me a BC collector's code, which meant a lot to me. But since those two are not from one, but two expansions ago by now, I'll vote for the Curious Wolvar Pup instead. Nothing beats a pet with a story. I was rather disappointed that Blizzard never reset the Dalaran orphan quest this year so I couldn't get the Oracle Hatchling as well.  

9. Biggest community controversy 

You know, I couldn't actually think of something for this category right away, until I saw someone else bring up Real ID on the forums. Oh right, that thing where I was in the very small minority that wasn't terribly upset; that would explain why I forgot about it... definitely caused the biggest hubbub though. 

10. Most charming Blizzard employee 

I haven't really been keeping up with what the blues say and do, so I can't comment on this one.  

11. Best podcast 

Blue Plz! is the only one I listen to with any regularity, but the Obscurecast seems pretty nice as well.  

12. Biggest blog facelift 

Murloc Parliament, without a doubt! I'm not sure if everyone even remembers who she was before...  

13. Most memorable blog post 

I've read a lot of good posts this year but can't think of a single best one to pick.  

14. Most noticed blogger breakthrough 

Syl from Raging Monkeys. Yes, I know she's got co-bloggers... but it was mostly her that I noticed commenting on other people's blogs when they'd only just started up and I've seriously never seen a blog skyrocket in popularity so quickly. That's what I call successful networking!  

15. Most solid content provider 

I'd like to nominate Klepsacovic from Troll Racials are Overpowered for this one. Sometimes he strays into crazy rambling territory, but he does update more frequently and more reliably than anyone else I read. That's worth a lot, especially on a quiet Sunday afternoon.  

16. Most hugged blogger 

Again I take inspiration from another blogger and cast my vote with Pike from Aspect of the Hare. The outpouring of support when she brought up having financial problems recently was quite impressive. Though not as impressive as that in response to her favourite pet's model getting changed... Hunters. They like to stick together.  

17. Hottest blogosphere topic 

The whole feminism debate. There was some good and thought-provoking stuff in there, but it went on for so long and got so heated after a while that I just wanted it to go away eventually. "Frostheimgate" or whatever you want to call it would probably make a pretty decent runner-up though. And if bronze medals were to be given out as well, I'd give one to the whole "harrassing bad roleplayers" affair early in the year.  

18. Best writer 

Tamarind won last year... can I nominate his co-writer Chastity then? If not I'll go with Rades from Orcish Army Knife. I can't wait to see Larísa's own picks, she always has interesting thoughts on them as well.

Some instance musings

I've finally run all the Cataclysm dungeons on normal mode now, mostly in guild groups, but I've also healed and tanked a couple of dungeon finder pugs. Apparently a lot of healers are rather unhappy with them at the moment. I don't want to downplay their experiences, but I really don't think it's all that bad.

First off, I can't comment on the difficulty of heroics yet since I haven't run any so far, but making a judgement about them being too hard less than two weeks after expansion release strikes me as premature. I'd be rather disappointed if the progression curve was completely smooth sailing from beginning to end on day one. Running into some obstacles and not always succeeding at what you're trying to do sounds about right on target to me when everybody is only just barely fulfilling the minimum gear requirements for heroics and half the people have no idea what the bosses' abilities are.

Some healers are also complaining about bad/rude groups... that's nothing new though, is it? The only difference is that your group not playing well and not working together might actually jeopardise your success now, where previously you could just heal through the dps standing in the fire, and if the ICC-geared tank ran off and pulled before you were ready he'd survive without heals anyway. But was that really a so much more fun game, where people flailing in three different directions simply didn't matter?

Related to this, I've also seen comments about healers feeling... powerless. Again I can kind of understand that, especially when I'm trying to "top off" a dps that ate a cleave and he has as much health as the tank so even that simple task feels like a momentous undertaking... but in all honesty, there's also a part of me that really likes it. Yes, being a healer is about being responsible and saving others, but I found that in late WOTLK there came a point where I felt like I was supposed to heal through absolutely everything simply because I could and it just became too much. It's nice to be able to pass on some of the responsibility and be able to say "no, I can't cover that, you'll have to do it differently if we're supposed to defeat this encounter". In fact, in normals it's hardly even pronounced enough in my opinion. I've healed some pugs through Vortex Pinnacle and Lost City in particular where no crowd control was used, three different people had aggro on the pull and still I could keep everyone up without any deaths. It just made me want to facepalm.

Most of my runs have been guild groups though, and while I can heal through messy pug pulls, watching them get executed by guildies who actually work together is so much more fun. I just swell with pride and happiness when I see some of our top dpsers, who had been degraded to AoE bots during Wrath heroics like everyone else, crowd control and kite and help me dispel and generally do an awesome job.

I'm also oddly enjoying the logistics of putting a guild group together. It feels really old school to grab one of the tanks when he gets online, ask in guild chat whether anyone else wants to join and then fly to the instance to summon the people who haven't discovered the entrance or whose gear doesn't qualify for the dungeon finder yet. You could consider it annoying faffing around, but I actually find it pleasant to have more reason to interact with my guildies outside of raiding again. (We're not all real life friends or anything like that, so it's quite possible to lose touch if you never chat in-game.)

In terms of healing as a holy priest, these are some of the observations I've made:

- You'll want to be in Heal Chakra pretty much ninety-nine percent of the time. The AoE healing Chakra is kind of meh in instances because you shouldn't be doing heavy AoE healing for any prolonged period of time; it will just drain you of your mana very, very quickly. In most situations where more than one person takes damage it's feasible and preferable to just top them off with single target spells whenever you get around to it. Heal Chakra is actually pretty good for that too, as you can cycle heals around to refresh Renews on multiple people.

- Heal Chakra also gives you access to Holy Word: Serenity, which is actually all kinds of awesome. I have to admit that I completely ignored it pre-Cataclysm because I just didn't see its use. It wasn't until I found myself increasingly starved for mana after levelling that I realised that it actually costs less than Heal, while healing for more. Now I use it pretty much on cooldown. The increased crit chance on the target afterwards is a nice bonus as well, and reason why it should be cast on the tank by preference.

- I'm really liking Surge of Light again. It still doesn't proc quite as often as I'd like, but often enough to notice. Again it was mana starvation that truly changed my mind about it, because when everything feels like a drain on your mana bar, free instant heals of a reasonable size are quite amazing. Every time those golden curves appear next to my character it's a little "hallelujah" moment. Now I just wish Blizzard would allow us to spend it on smites again, because I get so many procs while soloing and they are all utterly useless right now.

- Echo of Light, the holy mastery, is really growing on me. Again this is something that didn't really strike me as that amazing back in ICC since the heals from it seemed so piddly, but in this new Cataclysm world full of mana constraints where people aren't always topped off all the time, having a little extra HoT tacked onto all of your direct heals is actually quite valuable. According to my Recount it makes up about ten percent of my effective healing on an average dungeon run, and that's with relatively low mastery rating. I'll have to consult the theorycrafters though to figure out how the stat compares to crit and haste in terms of efficiency.

- I'm actually using my full arsenal of healing spells again, which is pretty fun. Then again, I was using my full arsenal of healing spells pre-4.0 too, only with a heavier emphasis on the AoE spells. Now it's the opposite, with the single target heals hogging the spotlight and the AoE heals feeling kind of weak and not worth the mana unless shit has really hit the fan and you're struggling to keep your party alive for even five more seconds (after that you'll be oom anyway). I suppose one thing I do like about that is that the single target heals are the ones that reward intelligent targetting, as opposed to all those AoE heals that eventually became so smart that you just had to click on anyone and all the right people would be healed anyway. I do like my own decisions having more value attached to them again.

Uldum and cut scenes

My boyfriend and I completed Uldum today. From what I can gather it seems to be a very popular zone, but I can't really share that sentiment after this first playthrough.

First things first though: I did like the overall look and feel of the zone, what with me being a fan of all things related to ancient Egypt. The Harrison Jones quest line bordered on being tacky at times, but personally I thought that it was quite funny. (My favourite bit was the "into the chests" line early on that made fun of the extremely dodgy start of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.)

I also liked the tol'vir. They are basically cat centaurs, which is cool. I was just kind of disappointed that they didn't seem to have any females as far as I could tell. Not to press the feminism angle too much, but this just struck me as kind of lazy. I mean, I can kind of understand why Blizzard hasn't introduced any female ogres into the game to date for example, because they aren't something that's been frequently portrayed in fantasy art and they'd have to invest rescources into designing something that looks convincing themselves. But the tol'vir... are freaking cat centaurs. Normal centaurs already have females in the game, take that basic concept, replace the head with that of a cat and the legs with cat paws and you're golden! I just don't understand... /sigh

Quest-wise Uldum played with some new mechanics, which was interesting, but also repeated some old mistakes that Blizzard really should have known to avoid by now. Killing a trillion pygmies for some quest item with a rubbish drop rate is not fun! Another quest that I remember as impressively unfun was one where you have to pick up some items off the ground in area filled with neutral mobs that turn hostile and aggro as soon as you touch anything, with some additional mob spawns all over the ground that triggered as you walked past them.

And then... there were the cut scenes. The popular opinion seems to be that these are the greatest thing since sliced bread, but personally I really came to loathe them throughout the course of the zone.

One reason for this was that a lot of them were simply very badly bugged. I expect some bugs here and there, but I had problems with about a third of all cut scenes, most often because they would simply force my camera to look at the wall for a minute and watch... nothing. Most often this seemed to be triggered by me and my boyfriend trying to set off a cut scene at the same time, and we finally managed to avoid more troubles by making sure to "take turns" as it were if we knew that something was coming up. I just can't believe that problems like these made it into the final release. I mean, it's an MMO; surely more than one player completing a quest at the same time is not that strange a concept, is it? On other occasions I've had a cut scene fail to play altogether, or the opposite: it started playing for me again when my boyfriend completed his quest even though I'd already seen it once. Another time I saw my character randomly appear in the air and fall to the ground halfway through a series of unrelated events that I was supposed to watch.

If the cut scene was supposed to play in the middle of a quest and failed, I could at least abandon and try again (and again...), but some scenes only triggered upon quest completion, so if you missed them you were out of luck. This was particularly annoying when I was supposed to watch an important council meeting that I'd been working towards for about a dozen quests - and then I got to stare at a wall for a minute and had no idea what was actually decided in the end.

Other wonky side effects included unwanted teleportation. One quest triggered a cut scene upon picking up the last quest item and then dumped you back at the quest giver, which was a fair bit away from where you had been working on the actual quest objectives. I was rather annoyed by this because there had been loot on the ground that I hadn't picked up yet! So I started to fly back to fetch it, and just as I was about to reach my sparkles, my boyfriend completed the quest as well, for some reason I got the cut scene again and was dumped back at the quest giver again! I guess the developers thought that this would be a convenient way of saving people the oh-so-long flight back, but for me it was just a nuisance.

This sort of leads me to what else I didn't like about the cut scenes even when they weren't bugged, namely the lack of control. About half the time I felt that they added little to the story and seemed to be more about taking control away from the player by fixing their camera angle and making them watch certain pieces of NPC dialogue in real time. I just didn't really see the point. At other times, they even take control of your character away from you, most often to justify them doing something stupid, like getting captured by a bunch of random bandits or whatever. If you died to some felboars in Hellfire after having killed C'Thun that was kind of silly but at least your own fault, but now every Kingslayer gets pwned by random pygmies because Blizzard says so. This doesn't help the roleplaying experience, it hurts it.

I can't blame Blizzard for wanting to try something new, and I did enjoy some of the cut scenes. When they were used to show events happening on a greater scale or to show character animations that we don't usually see in the game... that was nice. However, especially towards the end of the zone I couldn't fight the feeling that someone just went nuts with their new cinematic tool and decided to make every bit of NPC speech into a "cut scene" just because they could. Take quest. Watch cut scene. Hand quest in. Watch cut scene. Hello, I would like to do some actual playing here!

I do hope Blizzard won't consider Uldum a successful experiment in that regard...

My thoughts on Vashj'ir

Others have discussed this topic at length already, but I wanted to throw my hat into the ring as well.

Let me start off by saying that I rather enjoyed the zone as a whole, but I do have to add the caveat that this was my first playthrough and that I did the entire zone solo. I think the latter bit is particularly important because from questing with my boyfriend I've got the impression that "the new WoW" is actually not particularly group friendly. As Zelmaru pointed out in a comment elsewhere, the frequent phasing means that you can only level with someone else if you are in "lock-step", since you can neither skip ahead nor go back to help your friend kill things that have already been phased out for you.

Contrary to what some people hopefully proclaimed after the Shattering, collection quests don't all have a hundred-percent drop rate either. My boyfriend and I got started on Uldum today and I lost count of how many times we had to circle the same spot of desert, killing pygmies for their stupid rare drops, just to complete a simple quest for both of us.

Some quests are also more likely to just not work properly or bug out if you try to do them in a group. For example there was this quest in Mount Hyjal where you were supposed to trap and interrogate a harpy, and I was very confused that I didn't get any dialogue options when I tried to talk to her... and then she suddenly dropped dead and I got a quest completion message. Turns out that only my boyfriend had been allowed to question to her. Lame. Or in early Uldum we completed a quest at the same time and while my boyfriend got to watch a cut scene afterwards, the quest giver just phased out quietly on my screen. I could go on and on...

Anyway, Vashj'ir. The sad truth is, questing alone actually made it easier for me to enjoy the story since things went much more smoothly that way. I only had to worry about gathering crab meat or whatever for myself, nothing got borked up for me just because my boyfriend clicked on it two seconds earlier, and I found it easier to suspend my disbelief and believe the NPCs' constant praise of my unique talents and heroic deeds.

While the zone is still extremely linear, I do admit that it felt a bit less constraining than the worgen starter area, because at least I was never completely locked into a four by four market square or anything of the like. I could still swim around and explore the entire zone if I wanted to, even if many areas seemed oddly empty if you were visiting them in the "wrong" phase. I only ran into an obstacle on the rails once, when I finished everything at a hub but couldn't pick up any follow-up quests. I then went back to the area where I had completed the last couple of quests and found a completely unrelated quest giver in a corner somewhere, whose quest then unlocked the rest of the zone for me. In the end it turned out that he wasn't completely unrelated as he became a recurring character, but it still felt clumsy to me that he was placed somewhere where he could easily be overlooked if he was that important to the plot.

Many of the quest achievements also felt kind of pointless to me. For example, you can't get 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea without completing Visions of Vashj'ir Past and Sinking into Vashj'ir as well, so why have separate achievements for those anyway? Fancy names aside, they are basically all equivalents of "complete x quests in Vashj'ir". Felt to me as if Blizzard was worried that if players weren't getting an achievement pop-up at least every so often during their way through the zone, they might get bored...

There were a couple of quests independent of the main storyline by the way, but they were thoroughly unimportant. For example you'd kill a wandering Alliance NPC, get a quest pop-up saying something along the lines of "Alliance, here? You better kill them!" and then that was it. Didn't really make me feel like I had discovered a great little Easter Egg or anything.

Also, the seclusion of the storyline made suspension of disbelief harder for me than usual. You're supposedly helping out these ship-wrecked survivors with no contact to the outside world... but for convenience's sake, you can stop at any time and then hop through a portal in Orgrimmar that will take you right back to where you left off. MMOs have always requried a lot of suspension of disbelief, but if all NPCs are stuck in the same place and time forever, at least that's consistent. However, having my questing move the story onward, until the point where I decide to hearth and it all magically freezes in time, is once again a whole new kind of awkward. I like the idea that the world goes on without me, that's part of the appeal of an MMO.

Many of the quests themselves also weren't actually that inspiring. I'm tempted to keep a record of my next playthrough and count just how many quests are basically a variation of "kill some naga", because I got the impression that it's a very large percentage. Good thing that I like naga. They are probably my favourite NPC race and if they ever became playable I'd happily roll a dozen.

I particularly liked the battlemaiden quests for that reason, but also because my character "playing" yet another character felt like diving into an additional layer of roleplaying to me, and even as someone who hasn't actually roleplayed much in WoW in a long time, I really got into the spirit of being the battlemaiden, appreciating her fierce loyalty to her cause and the way one of the male naga quipped with her about who got to do more killing. Why wasn't she around in the end? With her abilities she would have made for a fierce raid boss...

Since I'm talking about likes now, I should probably also mention that I really liked the look of the zone. For some people that might be a minor thing, but for me it's very important. If I don't enjoy the way a zone looks, I won't ever enjoy questing there either, regardless of the actual quest content. Deepholm for example was a big turn-off for me simply due to being nothing but black rocks overlaid with more black rocks. The underwater movement in Vashj'ir didn't pose too much of a problem either, though it probably helped that I was going through the zone on my druid, whose instant-cast aquatic form was often more efficient than even the seahorse.

The ending to the major quest line struck me as very weak, unfortunately, because it was basically one endless cut scene - except that for the first ten minutes or so it's not even apparent that it's a cut scene. I can pretty much agree with Adam's spoileriffic account of it here because my own experience was eerily similar, except that as Horde I was dealing with goblins instead of gnomes... and I got stuck behind one of the submarine's pipes while bouncing around in boredom and was about to hearth out in disgust when a cut scene mercifully ejected me. Who designed these bloody ships anyway? I managed to get stuck on the Alliance airship in Deepholm the other day as well.

Anyway, tl;dr version:

Things that I liked about Vashj'ir:
- Smooth single-player story progression
- Pretty to look at in a Little Mermaid kind of way
- Naga everywhere, and you even get to play one for a little bit, yay!

Things that I didn't like so much:
- Too much linearity and all its associated problems (awkward time flow, redundant achievements, getting stuck)
- The final quest basically being one huge, boring cut scene.