That is the title of a thread on the official European forums that's currently sitting at seventeen pages of replies. I'm grateful to Nils for casually referring to it in his last post, because otherwise I never would have looked for it. I didn't read the whole thing, as it basically devolves into a lot of uninteresting back and forth after a while, but the fact that so many people felt the need to comment on the subject at all really surprised me.
I have to admit, I'm an old-school leveller. I levelled my first character back in Vanilla and I didn't think that it was terribly grindy. In fact, WoW was praised for having the fastest and smoothest levelling of all MMOs back then. However, as Blizzard started to tack on more levels and players repeated the same content over and over while levelling alts, people started to feel that reaching the level cap took too long, so the experience needed to advance was reduced. And again. And again. I didn't really like it. I didn't ruin my own levelling experience or anything, but I didn't consider it a good development either. However, I was sure that my opinion was part of a minority that would only ever grow smaller as time went on. Apparently I was wrong.
I'm not claiming that the people who say that levelling goes too fast now are a majority because I honestly don't know that, but I think the fact that this subject is brought up on the forums at all and gets such a huge response says a lot. I believe that WoW's ever-increasing levelling speed has reached a breaking point where it's starting to bother more people than ever before. Everyone already knew that a game not having enough content to last you through the levels was a bad thing, but not having enough levels for all the content is a new experience.
I had to laugh when one of the people defending the current levelling speed as "fine" argued that if anyone thinks that they are levelling too fast they should just play less. Talk about missing the point. Levelling and consuming content should be in synergy with each other, and I'm clearly not the only one who thinks that things are somewhat out of whack right now.
I don't think anybody is pining for the days when you had to be half a Loremaster and run every instance at least once to reach the level cap at all, but this new system doesn't flow very well either. Blizzard used to encourage people to dabble in different aspects of the game, but right now doing so almost feels like a punishment. When you're halfway through a zone-wide story arc, you don't want to see that all the quests have turned grey after you "dared" to run an instance and a battleground. Doing grey quests isn't nearly as satisfying, and abandoning every other zone halfway through is completely at odds with the developers' new approach of telling overarching stories. People used to write guides for efficient levelling, do we now need guides on how to level as slowly as possible so you can do more quests on the way without them becoming completely trivial?
You do have the option to repeatedly turn XP gains off and then turn them on again to keep the content interesting, but that's a rather clunky way of gaining sixty levels. I liked a lot of the different suggestions on the forums, such as an option to simply reduce your own XP gains (by twenty, fifty percent, whatever) instead of constantly stopping and restarting them, or slashing overall experience across the board while buffing heirlooms so that those who want to level their alts quickly can still do so.
I do hope that Blizzard considers the issue, as this speed-levelling has really affected my own enjoyment of the new content already. I'm no longer looking forward to new levels, instead I feel as if they are chasing me. "Can I at least do a couple of quests without outlevelling yet another batch of content? Nope, I dinged again. Crap!" Since I started dungeoneering at level fifteen, I haven't been able to get any more of the new quests done, and my druid is nearly thirty now. I always think that I'll do just one more instance before getting started on a new zone, just to find that I've already outlevelled the area I wanted to go to. Then I find something else that's level-appropriate, do two quests, ding again and notice that a dungeon that I wanted to do will drop off my available dungeons list in another level, so I have to do it now or else.
I suppose that these feelings are at least partly based on the newness of the shattered world, because I want to see all of it and the thought of missing out on any of the content probably seems more awful right now than it really is. Given enough time and enough alts, I will be able to see all of it one way or another. But as much as I like rolling new alts, I don't like the thought of having to roll a new one for every single aspect of the game because the current levelling curve doesn't support anyone wanting to do more than a couple of quests each level.
29/11/2010
More dungeon reports: Wailing Caverns and Shadowfang Keep
Last night I specifically queued for Wailing Caverns and Shadowfang Keep, to make sure that I'd get a chance to run them before they fell out of my level range. I feel like I have to throttle my gameplay very carefully right now to not miss out on content I want to do, which is really rather bizarre.
Wailing Caverns was a bit of a disappointment because it didn't appear to have changed at all. Now, WC is one of the old instances that I'm slightly less familiar with, so I can't completely exclude the possibility that they removed a side passage or two, but it looked exactly the same to me. The changes that the developers were talking about at Blizzcon, where they mentioned making the instance less confusing and putting all the bosses into separate rooms definitely haven't been made. I can only guess that they ran out of time before the Shattering and that this is something that they'll patch in later - or at least I hope they do, because otherwise WC is going to feel horribly outdated compared to other instances.
The only positive change that I noticed, other than the quest givers sitting inside the instance now, was that the Disciple of Naralex actually runs once you start the escort event now - instead of walking at a snail's pace, as quest NPCs that claim to be in a hurry are so often wont to do. Thanks for that.
Still, for what it's worth I enjoyed that run, because I had a group that was both nice and competent. The trip to Shadowfang Keep that followed afterwards was exactly the opposite.
SFK itself has been changed drastically, just like the Deadmines, but I couldn't really warm to those changes yet. In the Deadmines, even before I had played through Westfall to learn about the story behind it, it was at least somewhat apparent that we were breaking up a rather shifty operation in those caverns. I mean, mining monkeys? That can't be legal.
SFK on the other hand just confused the hell out of me. Gone are Arugal and his werewolves, and instead there are... evil Forsaken? The quest giver at the entrance greeted me like an old friend and went on about avenging some insult against Sylvanas, but I had no clue what the hell he was talking about. The fact that three of the bosses looked like they were identical triplets or something didn't help either.
This basically strikes me as story gone wrong: instead of the background enhancing your experience by giving you additional motivation to clear out the evil guys' hideout, the story is your only motivation to take action... otherwise it's just random. I mean, this stuff was clearly designed to be a sort of follow-up to whatever happens in Silverpine - about which I've only heard good things - but without that background it's just weird. I guess I'll have to roll an undead hunter soon and maybe I'll change my mind once I understand what it's all about.
Like in the Deadmines, the new bosses are considerably more complex than what you'd usually meet in this level range, and pretty much all of them have some kind of big flashy move that you're supposed to avoid. Oh, and the first boss seems to have no other purpose than to scare the crap out of your healer. You're dead! No, you're not! You're dead! No, you're not! Arrrgh.
Most of my unhappiness with my SFK pug came from the fact that my entire party absolutely loved standing in the bad stuff, even though several of them wore heirlooms and really should have known better. I didn't have the mana to save them all the time and there were multiple deaths. On the last boss we even wiped twice, though our warlock managed to finish him off on our second attempt as the last man standing.
The tank also aggravated me because he kept pulling whole rooms at once, which led to loads of unnecessary damage on him as people were killing things off one by one, so I was constantly oom and left with no time to regain mana as he kept charging off into yet more mobs over and over. This sealed my decision to not queue as a healer anymore until I can get dual spec at thirty. At least then I won't have to constantly feel guilty and question the validity of my off-spec healing whenever someone dies to playing stupidly; I'll know that it's their fault.
Wailing Caverns was a bit of a disappointment because it didn't appear to have changed at all. Now, WC is one of the old instances that I'm slightly less familiar with, so I can't completely exclude the possibility that they removed a side passage or two, but it looked exactly the same to me. The changes that the developers were talking about at Blizzcon, where they mentioned making the instance less confusing and putting all the bosses into separate rooms definitely haven't been made. I can only guess that they ran out of time before the Shattering and that this is something that they'll patch in later - or at least I hope they do, because otherwise WC is going to feel horribly outdated compared to other instances.
The only positive change that I noticed, other than the quest givers sitting inside the instance now, was that the Disciple of Naralex actually runs once you start the escort event now - instead of walking at a snail's pace, as quest NPCs that claim to be in a hurry are so often wont to do. Thanks for that.
Still, for what it's worth I enjoyed that run, because I had a group that was both nice and competent. The trip to Shadowfang Keep that followed afterwards was exactly the opposite.
SFK itself has been changed drastically, just like the Deadmines, but I couldn't really warm to those changes yet. In the Deadmines, even before I had played through Westfall to learn about the story behind it, it was at least somewhat apparent that we were breaking up a rather shifty operation in those caverns. I mean, mining monkeys? That can't be legal.
SFK on the other hand just confused the hell out of me. Gone are Arugal and his werewolves, and instead there are... evil Forsaken? The quest giver at the entrance greeted me like an old friend and went on about avenging some insult against Sylvanas, but I had no clue what the hell he was talking about. The fact that three of the bosses looked like they were identical triplets or something didn't help either.
This basically strikes me as story gone wrong: instead of the background enhancing your experience by giving you additional motivation to clear out the evil guys' hideout, the story is your only motivation to take action... otherwise it's just random. I mean, this stuff was clearly designed to be a sort of follow-up to whatever happens in Silverpine - about which I've only heard good things - but without that background it's just weird. I guess I'll have to roll an undead hunter soon and maybe I'll change my mind once I understand what it's all about.
Like in the Deadmines, the new bosses are considerably more complex than what you'd usually meet in this level range, and pretty much all of them have some kind of big flashy move that you're supposed to avoid. Oh, and the first boss seems to have no other purpose than to scare the crap out of your healer. You're dead! No, you're not! You're dead! No, you're not! Arrrgh.
Most of my unhappiness with my SFK pug came from the fact that my entire party absolutely loved standing in the bad stuff, even though several of them wore heirlooms and really should have known better. I didn't have the mana to save them all the time and there were multiple deaths. On the last boss we even wiped twice, though our warlock managed to finish him off on our second attempt as the last man standing.
The tank also aggravated me because he kept pulling whole rooms at once, which led to loads of unnecessary damage on him as people were killing things off one by one, so I was constantly oom and left with no time to regain mana as he kept charging off into yet more mobs over and over. This sealed my decision to not queue as a healer anymore until I can get dual spec at thirty. At least then I won't have to constantly feel guilty and question the validity of my off-spec healing whenever someone dies to playing stupidly; I'll know that it's their fault.
28/11/2010
Reporting from Ragefire Chasm and the Deadmines
Even without heirlooms or restedness, levelling still feels too fast to me. I want to see the new quests, but I also can't stay away from instances entirely and that's already enough to throw my questing completely out of whack. By the time I finished the Northern Barrens, most of the quests and mobs there were already grey to me, and all because I had done a couple of RFC and DM runs... I guess it's good for people who like to level using only one part of the game or who really like to pick and choose their content, but for me... not so much.
I chose to make my new troll druid feral but didn't feel like tanking, so I queued as dps... and as healer, since I healed low-level instances as an off-spec very successfully in the past. I do have to say though, I'm now not sure anymore whether that's such a good idea, at least not with random groups. It's far from impossible, but I still found it a lot harder than I expected, even though I had collected a full set of int gear for healing.
Mana was the biggest issue - healers all get meditation at level ten now if they choose to go resto or holy, and I reckon that not having that as an off-spec healer was what made the biggest difference. Spell scaling was another problem: in the past I used to compensate for off-spec healing by only queueing for instances for which I was on the higher end of the level range, using the fact that the extra levels had increased my mana pool to my advantage. However, nowadays the cost of my spells increases with each level as well, meaning that being a few levels higher doesn't help at all - my mana pool will still only be good for x number of spells. If anything I found it more difficult to heal once I hit twenty or so, since it was around that time that I seemed to lose the massive regeneration bonus that all the low levels get these days.
Some of it might also be a class-specific problem however. For example I had a run in which I was a kitty and our healer was a shaman in pretty crappy gear, but his mana bar hardly ever seemed to move at all. After observing him for a little while I noticed that he was making a point of using his super mana-efficient heal, healing wave, most of the time. Paladins and priests get their version at low levels as well, but druids still don't get nourish until level seventy-eight. Ouch! This left me with only rejuvenation, regrowth and healing touch in my toolbox. (Compare the 26-35% of base mana cost to nourish's 10%!) Rejuvenation worked reasonably well, but I needed a direct heal to cover damage spikes as well, and neither regrowth nor healing touch worked really well for that. The former is fast and heals for a good amount but too expensive to use all the time, and healing touch is so fricking big that it's hard to use it effectively as you'll overheal a lot of the time, and that while it's still quite expensive. (In my runs it healed for a little less than 400, with the tanks having between 400 and 600 hitpoints. I could hardly wait with casting until they were near-dead every time!)
Still, I don't want to make it sound as if healing was completely horrible or anything, but the instances as a whole are definitely not as facerollable as before. It's hard to make a judgement on how much more difficult they've become, because it still depends a lot on your group. If you've got a tank in full heirlooms you'll probably be fine. However, I've also had non-heirloomed tanks that were at the lowest level for the dungeon and went splat so quickly that I could barely even get a healing touch off in the time in which they went from full to nil. I actually started pre-casting and cancelling my heals in some cases, the humanity! Talk about something that gave me vanilla flashbacks. Actually, that's probably the best way to describe the state of these revamped low-level instances: they have a certain vanilla WoW feel about them. They'll still go a bit faster, but overly crazy pulls are definitely not recommended. Crowd control is not strictly necessary but can be helpful.
I already mentioned in my last post that Ragefire Chasm hasn't changed much. Mobs have been thinned out and moved around a bit (for example Oggleflint is right up ahead now instead of up in that cave up on the side), they have more health and hit harder now, but otherwise it's more or less the same. I expect that this is the way Blizzard handled most of the old five-mans.
Both the achievement system and the dungeon finder also still claim that the instance has been completed once you kill Targaman the Hungerer, which is just as silly as it was before, seeing how he's only the second boss. However, due to the new dungeon maps which show more skulls further ahead and the fact that there's now a quest at the start to kill Jergosh the Invoker and Bazzalan as well, you should have better luck with convincing your party to do a full clear than you might have had in the past.
The quests at the start are noteworthy as well I suppose. Blizzard did mention that all dungeon quests would be available inside the instance from now on, and they weren't kidding: a full contingent of quest NPCs awaits you, offering about three to four quests for the instance at once. As if the dungeon finder wasn't efficient enough already... still, I'm not complaining. Having everyone on the same quests has its advantages (see above) and it saves you all the running around you used to have to do to pick up all the dungeon quests. Just remember to go back to the instance entrance at the end to hand in instead of leaving the group and teleporting out right away.
My only complaint with this system so far is the rather awkward way in which it works with one quest in the Deadmines. One quest giver there has a whole chain to kill all the bosses in the dungeon, except that you don't know that right away. So you get the quest to kill the first boss, clear the instance - then at the end all the quest NPCs conveniently show up so you don't have to run back, and when you hand in, this quest giver tells you to go and kill another boss. But, but... I just killed everyone in here, you're standing right on top of their corpses, lady! I ended up having to do three runs in a row or so just to complete this one quest chain, which felt a tad silly. Why can't she show up after I killed the boss she wanted me to kill and give me the follow-up then?
The Deadmines as a whole have been changed a lot, presumably so that the level eighty-five heroic version would be on par with other heroics. This means that the boss fights are fairly involved for such a low-level instance, though still not too difficult. Almost all the bosses have some sort of ability that requires you to move away, but you shouldn't die immediately if you don't - you'll just make your healer cry. Still, compared to the usual tank-and-spank in other dungeons of that level that's a huge difference.
Also, all the bosses (with one exception) are different from the classic Deadmines. If you're Horde, you'll probably just go "What's going on? Who are these people?" and then kill them anyway. If you're Alliance you can level an alt through Westfall (which I did afterwards) and learn all about the story behind the changes there, with little nods to pretty much all of the new characters. If you're at all into lore, it might be worth levelling an Alliance alt just for that, even if you're usually Horde.
I chose to make my new troll druid feral but didn't feel like tanking, so I queued as dps... and as healer, since I healed low-level instances as an off-spec very successfully in the past. I do have to say though, I'm now not sure anymore whether that's such a good idea, at least not with random groups. It's far from impossible, but I still found it a lot harder than I expected, even though I had collected a full set of int gear for healing.
Mana was the biggest issue - healers all get meditation at level ten now if they choose to go resto or holy, and I reckon that not having that as an off-spec healer was what made the biggest difference. Spell scaling was another problem: in the past I used to compensate for off-spec healing by only queueing for instances for which I was on the higher end of the level range, using the fact that the extra levels had increased my mana pool to my advantage. However, nowadays the cost of my spells increases with each level as well, meaning that being a few levels higher doesn't help at all - my mana pool will still only be good for x number of spells. If anything I found it more difficult to heal once I hit twenty or so, since it was around that time that I seemed to lose the massive regeneration bonus that all the low levels get these days.
Some of it might also be a class-specific problem however. For example I had a run in which I was a kitty and our healer was a shaman in pretty crappy gear, but his mana bar hardly ever seemed to move at all. After observing him for a little while I noticed that he was making a point of using his super mana-efficient heal, healing wave, most of the time. Paladins and priests get their version at low levels as well, but druids still don't get nourish until level seventy-eight. Ouch! This left me with only rejuvenation, regrowth and healing touch in my toolbox. (Compare the 26-35% of base mana cost to nourish's 10%!) Rejuvenation worked reasonably well, but I needed a direct heal to cover damage spikes as well, and neither regrowth nor healing touch worked really well for that. The former is fast and heals for a good amount but too expensive to use all the time, and healing touch is so fricking big that it's hard to use it effectively as you'll overheal a lot of the time, and that while it's still quite expensive. (In my runs it healed for a little less than 400, with the tanks having between 400 and 600 hitpoints. I could hardly wait with casting until they were near-dead every time!)
Still, I don't want to make it sound as if healing was completely horrible or anything, but the instances as a whole are definitely not as facerollable as before. It's hard to make a judgement on how much more difficult they've become, because it still depends a lot on your group. If you've got a tank in full heirlooms you'll probably be fine. However, I've also had non-heirloomed tanks that were at the lowest level for the dungeon and went splat so quickly that I could barely even get a healing touch off in the time in which they went from full to nil. I actually started pre-casting and cancelling my heals in some cases, the humanity! Talk about something that gave me vanilla flashbacks. Actually, that's probably the best way to describe the state of these revamped low-level instances: they have a certain vanilla WoW feel about them. They'll still go a bit faster, but overly crazy pulls are definitely not recommended. Crowd control is not strictly necessary but can be helpful.
I already mentioned in my last post that Ragefire Chasm hasn't changed much. Mobs have been thinned out and moved around a bit (for example Oggleflint is right up ahead now instead of up in that cave up on the side), they have more health and hit harder now, but otherwise it's more or less the same. I expect that this is the way Blizzard handled most of the old five-mans.
Both the achievement system and the dungeon finder also still claim that the instance has been completed once you kill Targaman the Hungerer, which is just as silly as it was before, seeing how he's only the second boss. However, due to the new dungeon maps which show more skulls further ahead and the fact that there's now a quest at the start to kill Jergosh the Invoker and Bazzalan as well, you should have better luck with convincing your party to do a full clear than you might have had in the past.
The quests at the start are noteworthy as well I suppose. Blizzard did mention that all dungeon quests would be available inside the instance from now on, and they weren't kidding: a full contingent of quest NPCs awaits you, offering about three to four quests for the instance at once. As if the dungeon finder wasn't efficient enough already... still, I'm not complaining. Having everyone on the same quests has its advantages (see above) and it saves you all the running around you used to have to do to pick up all the dungeon quests. Just remember to go back to the instance entrance at the end to hand in instead of leaving the group and teleporting out right away.
My only complaint with this system so far is the rather awkward way in which it works with one quest in the Deadmines. One quest giver there has a whole chain to kill all the bosses in the dungeon, except that you don't know that right away. So you get the quest to kill the first boss, clear the instance - then at the end all the quest NPCs conveniently show up so you don't have to run back, and when you hand in, this quest giver tells you to go and kill another boss. But, but... I just killed everyone in here, you're standing right on top of their corpses, lady! I ended up having to do three runs in a row or so just to complete this one quest chain, which felt a tad silly. Why can't she show up after I killed the boss she wanted me to kill and give me the follow-up then?
The Deadmines as a whole have been changed a lot, presumably so that the level eighty-five heroic version would be on par with other heroics. This means that the boss fights are fairly involved for such a low-level instance, though still not too difficult. Almost all the bosses have some sort of ability that requires you to move away, but you shouldn't die immediately if you don't - you'll just make your healer cry. Still, compared to the usual tank-and-spank in other dungeons of that level that's a huge difference.
Also, all the bosses (with one exception) are different from the classic Deadmines. If you're Horde, you'll probably just go "What's going on? Who are these people?" and then kill them anyway. If you're Alliance you can level an alt through Westfall (which I did afterwards) and learn all about the story behind the changes there, with little nods to pretty much all of the new characters. If you're at all into lore, it might be worth levelling an Alliance alt just for that, even if you're usually Horde.
27/11/2010
Did we or didn't we do these things?
One thing I've started to notice during my questing and during my first couple of dungeon runs since the Shattering is that Blizzard has moved the old world forward through the Cataclysm in a very inconsistent manner.
Let me explain what I mean:
Before the Cataclysm, the quest Lost But Not Forgotten by Misha Tor'kren in Durotar was about her son having gone missing. You end up finding his remains in the belly of a crocolisk, and while she is obviously very sad, she thanks you for providing her with a definite answer in regards to his fate.
In the new world she gives you a quest with the same name, but in it she acknowledges that her son has been dead for a long time and asks you for help with crafting an item in his memory. This basically acknowledges that the previous quest already happened: her son disappeared and she was informed about his death.
On the other hand however, we have quests like Fizzled, which asks you to fetch something from a character that you supposedly already killed for some guy in Razor Hill years ago. Apparently that quest did not really happen.
In the Barrens I saw the same pattern: On the one hand Mankrik is full of hatred for the quillboar because they killed his wife, alluding to the adventurers that he asked to look for her back in the day already having confirmed her fate.
Yet another character asks me to kill Kreenig Snarlsnout, another named guy that I already killed years ago. Likewise all those centaur leaders whose heads I chopped off back then are also miraculously back from the dead, pretending that the story of those quests never happened either.
Ragefire Chasm still has Oggleflint and Targaman the Hungerer, perpetually frozen in time, but the Deadmines are full of new bosses and no more Defias because we killed those and obviously things are different now.
I don't know, it doesn't make the quests any less fun to play through, but if you're trying to think even the slighest bit in-character, it's just odd. The way everything that you kill respawns after a few minutes has always required a certain suspension of disbelief, but at least I was never being asked to kill the exact same NPC twice while being told that this was actually happening five years later. Either the quests we completed in original WoW really happened and have had an impact on the world or they haven't, but acknowledging that some happened while pretending that others didn't just feels strange to me.
It's almost as if the developers couldn't quite make up their minds whether they wanted the Cataclysm to truly move the story forward or whether they just wanted to overhaul the existing quests and streamline them. I'm surprised that nobody pointed out to them how weird and inconsistent it would look if they redid some quests with the former principle in mind and some according to the latter.
Let me explain what I mean:
Before the Cataclysm, the quest Lost But Not Forgotten by Misha Tor'kren in Durotar was about her son having gone missing. You end up finding his remains in the belly of a crocolisk, and while she is obviously very sad, she thanks you for providing her with a definite answer in regards to his fate.
In the new world she gives you a quest with the same name, but in it she acknowledges that her son has been dead for a long time and asks you for help with crafting an item in his memory. This basically acknowledges that the previous quest already happened: her son disappeared and she was informed about his death.
On the other hand however, we have quests like Fizzled, which asks you to fetch something from a character that you supposedly already killed for some guy in Razor Hill years ago. Apparently that quest did not really happen.
In the Barrens I saw the same pattern: On the one hand Mankrik is full of hatred for the quillboar because they killed his wife, alluding to the adventurers that he asked to look for her back in the day already having confirmed her fate.
Yet another character asks me to kill Kreenig Snarlsnout, another named guy that I already killed years ago. Likewise all those centaur leaders whose heads I chopped off back then are also miraculously back from the dead, pretending that the story of those quests never happened either.
Ragefire Chasm still has Oggleflint and Targaman the Hungerer, perpetually frozen in time, but the Deadmines are full of new bosses and no more Defias because we killed those and obviously things are different now.
I don't know, it doesn't make the quests any less fun to play through, but if you're trying to think even the slighest bit in-character, it's just odd. The way everything that you kill respawns after a few minutes has always required a certain suspension of disbelief, but at least I was never being asked to kill the exact same NPC twice while being told that this was actually happening five years later. Either the quests we completed in original WoW really happened and have had an impact on the world or they haven't, but acknowledging that some happened while pretending that others didn't just feels strange to me.
It's almost as if the developers couldn't quite make up their minds whether they wanted the Cataclysm to truly move the story forward or whether they just wanted to overhaul the existing quests and streamline them. I'm surprised that nobody pointed out to them how weird and inconsistent it would look if they redid some quests with the former principle in mind and some according to the latter.
25/11/2010
A troll druid's first fifteen levels
I've decided to tackle the huge amount of new low-level content with (new) alts. I know that some people prefer to just do it all on their level eighty main instead, but to me that would feel cheap. All game content is much more fun at the right level, so I'll make sure that I experience it that way first, and maybe I'll go through it again on my main later on for the sake of being a completionist. Right now I just hate it when I try to do a low-level quest - and there's plenty of competition from other alts anyway - and some eighty decides to come breezing through and one-shots every mob in the area. Gee, thanks.
Anyway, the first alt that I rolled was a troll druid, native to Argent Dawn since I have no empty character slots on Earthen Ring anymore. And oh my god, troll druids are popular. I swear there were hundreds of them in Durotar last night, turning the place into the new Barrens chat. On the whole it was kind of fun to see all these different-coloured kitties bounding across the landscape, but there were certain "choke points" in the quest lines where the sheer number of players caused problems. For example the third quest or so that you get as a new troll requires you to fight a captured naga in a miniature arena, and this can only be done by one person at a time. When I finally managed to spam-click the NPC that starts the event before anyone else, someone else ninjaed the actual mob from me. RAGE! Even worse was a bit where you were supposed to kill a named guy on a hill and he had a respawn timer of five minutes or something. When I last left the place, there were no less than a dozen new troll druids camping the spot in hopes of getting there first with a well-timed moonfire. Not exactly much fun.
Still, on the whole I rather enjoyed the first five levels of new troll life, and I pretty much got exactly the opposite impression as Tobold, who thinks that the new troll starting zone is too complex and will confuse new players. I doubt many people who quit WoW before reaching level ten did so because they thought that the game was too complicated; more likely they just didn't find it very engaging or their kind of game at all. Personally I think it's great that Blizzard tries to teach new players important abilities (such as different ways in which a quest item can be used) from the start now. They might not get it right immediately, but the zone is very forgiving. You don't encounter actively hostile mobs until a few levels in (and unlike the sudden neutering of the old starting zones, having more neutral mobs actually fits the story here). When you do meet hostile mobs at last, a friendly NPC accompanies you and he's quite good at killing things, so an accidental overpull or mobs spawning on top of you isn't going to get you into any trouble.
At the end of the zone, you get into a big boss battle (yes, at level five). Tobold criticises that the strategy to defeat the boss isn't detailed in the quest text, but fails to mention that instructions flash across your screen in giant letters during the fight, raid-warning style. How often have people pointed out that WoW's single player content doesn't prepare people in any way for what they'll encounter in dungeons and raids later on? Well, here we finally have an attempt at a solution to this, by giving people a taste of what a boss fight will look like as early as level five. And it's still very forgiving as far as I could tell, as the friendly NPCs that fight with you seem to be quite good at keeping the boss busy on their own, so it's no biggie if you can't figure out what you're supposed to do right away. I didn't check my combat log, but I got the impression that I was receiving heals as well.
As I moved on to mainland Durotar, I noticed that other random mobs had also been upgraded to be more interesting: human soldiers would heroic leap at me, others dropped bombs or traps at their feet, scorpids spat poison circles on the ground... they still weren't difficult fights, but again giving the mobs abilities that players also encounter in dungeons and raids later on strikes me as a good move on Blizzard's part, as it teaches people early on to watch out for bad stuff on the floor and to engage their brains to figure out whether they have any spells that can counter a particular mob's signature move. Dare I hope that this might make the next generation of players a little smarter a little sooner?
But enough of gameplay. Let's talk about the landscape, lore and quests. I'm actually a bit undecided about the new troll starter area in terms of looks, as I felt that too much of it was taken up by the training area - surely the Darkspear don't spend all their time preparing for war? Do they always have to swim to Sen'jin Village if they want to do as much as have a beer?
Lore-wise the conversation between Vol'jin and Garrosh was a bit of a shocker. I mean, I cheer for Vol'jin saying it as it is, but at the end of the day he pretty much makes a death threat against Garrosh there! I'm surprised that trolls are allowed back into Orgrimmar at all.
Durotar as a whole hasn't changed a lot, except for the western half of the zone having been partly flooded. It was actually kind of funny - up until I got to that part of the zone I was progressing very quickly, because things mostly looked the same, but the moment my kitty felt the (new!) long grass tickling her belly, I almost forgot all about what I was doing and just started randomly bounding up and down and wasting time in this wonderful new world that I had discovered.
The quests are pretty similar to the zone's looks in terms of changes, meaning that I was initially surprised by how little certain things had changed. The centaurs are gone and humans from Northwatch took their place, but the quest to destroy their attack plans is still exactly the same. Where you used to kill Kul Tiras marines you now get exactly the same quest, only with the mobs being called "Northwatch" something-or-other. Fizzle Darkclaw has drowned in the flood, but you're still supposed to get him.
But just like with the look of the zone, you might find yourself moving on quickly because you think that you've already seen it all... and then you suddenly run into something completely new and different that blows you away.
I have since moved on to the Northern Barrens, where I've encountered a similar pattern so far. Yes, there is still a Plainstrider Menace quest, but at least the quest giver doesn't pretend that they really are dangerous this time around, and you get to ride on a caravan kodo afterwards, which is quite fun.
Having reached level fifteen, I'm keen to try out some dungeons now to see how they have changed.
Anyway, the first alt that I rolled was a troll druid, native to Argent Dawn since I have no empty character slots on Earthen Ring anymore. And oh my god, troll druids are popular. I swear there were hundreds of them in Durotar last night, turning the place into the new Barrens chat. On the whole it was kind of fun to see all these different-coloured kitties bounding across the landscape, but there were certain "choke points" in the quest lines where the sheer number of players caused problems. For example the third quest or so that you get as a new troll requires you to fight a captured naga in a miniature arena, and this can only be done by one person at a time. When I finally managed to spam-click the NPC that starts the event before anyone else, someone else ninjaed the actual mob from me. RAGE! Even worse was a bit where you were supposed to kill a named guy on a hill and he had a respawn timer of five minutes or something. When I last left the place, there were no less than a dozen new troll druids camping the spot in hopes of getting there first with a well-timed moonfire. Not exactly much fun.
Still, on the whole I rather enjoyed the first five levels of new troll life, and I pretty much got exactly the opposite impression as Tobold, who thinks that the new troll starting zone is too complex and will confuse new players. I doubt many people who quit WoW before reaching level ten did so because they thought that the game was too complicated; more likely they just didn't find it very engaging or their kind of game at all. Personally I think it's great that Blizzard tries to teach new players important abilities (such as different ways in which a quest item can be used) from the start now. They might not get it right immediately, but the zone is very forgiving. You don't encounter actively hostile mobs until a few levels in (and unlike the sudden neutering of the old starting zones, having more neutral mobs actually fits the story here). When you do meet hostile mobs at last, a friendly NPC accompanies you and he's quite good at killing things, so an accidental overpull or mobs spawning on top of you isn't going to get you into any trouble.
At the end of the zone, you get into a big boss battle (yes, at level five). Tobold criticises that the strategy to defeat the boss isn't detailed in the quest text, but fails to mention that instructions flash across your screen in giant letters during the fight, raid-warning style. How often have people pointed out that WoW's single player content doesn't prepare people in any way for what they'll encounter in dungeons and raids later on? Well, here we finally have an attempt at a solution to this, by giving people a taste of what a boss fight will look like as early as level five. And it's still very forgiving as far as I could tell, as the friendly NPCs that fight with you seem to be quite good at keeping the boss busy on their own, so it's no biggie if you can't figure out what you're supposed to do right away. I didn't check my combat log, but I got the impression that I was receiving heals as well.
As I moved on to mainland Durotar, I noticed that other random mobs had also been upgraded to be more interesting: human soldiers would heroic leap at me, others dropped bombs or traps at their feet, scorpids spat poison circles on the ground... they still weren't difficult fights, but again giving the mobs abilities that players also encounter in dungeons and raids later on strikes me as a good move on Blizzard's part, as it teaches people early on to watch out for bad stuff on the floor and to engage their brains to figure out whether they have any spells that can counter a particular mob's signature move. Dare I hope that this might make the next generation of players a little smarter a little sooner?
But enough of gameplay. Let's talk about the landscape, lore and quests. I'm actually a bit undecided about the new troll starter area in terms of looks, as I felt that too much of it was taken up by the training area - surely the Darkspear don't spend all their time preparing for war? Do they always have to swim to Sen'jin Village if they want to do as much as have a beer?
Lore-wise the conversation between Vol'jin and Garrosh was a bit of a shocker. I mean, I cheer for Vol'jin saying it as it is, but at the end of the day he pretty much makes a death threat against Garrosh there! I'm surprised that trolls are allowed back into Orgrimmar at all.
Durotar as a whole hasn't changed a lot, except for the western half of the zone having been partly flooded. It was actually kind of funny - up until I got to that part of the zone I was progressing very quickly, because things mostly looked the same, but the moment my kitty felt the (new!) long grass tickling her belly, I almost forgot all about what I was doing and just started randomly bounding up and down and wasting time in this wonderful new world that I had discovered.
The quests are pretty similar to the zone's looks in terms of changes, meaning that I was initially surprised by how little certain things had changed. The centaurs are gone and humans from Northwatch took their place, but the quest to destroy their attack plans is still exactly the same. Where you used to kill Kul Tiras marines you now get exactly the same quest, only with the mobs being called "Northwatch" something-or-other. Fizzle Darkclaw has drowned in the flood, but you're still supposed to get him.But just like with the look of the zone, you might find yourself moving on quickly because you think that you've already seen it all... and then you suddenly run into something completely new and different that blows you away.
I have since moved on to the Northern Barrens, where I've encountered a similar pattern so far. Yes, there is still a Plainstrider Menace quest, but at least the quest giver doesn't pretend that they really are dangerous this time around, and you get to ride on a caravan kodo afterwards, which is quite fun.
Having reached level fifteen, I'm keen to try out some dungeons now to see how they have changed.
24/11/2010
First impressions of The Shattering
I have to admit, I didn't prepare for the big changing of the world at all. All my level eighties are still sitting in Dalaran - I still have some ICC runs to do before the actual expansion after all - and won't change their hearthstones until I get around to it. I didn't log out in a special place. The thought of getting half the expansion in advance just didn't really compute for me. As long as it's not expansion day, no patch can be all that exciting, can it?
I logged onto my bank alt today as I do on most days. Somewhat unusually, I had left him next to the Orgrimmar flight master, as I'd been making the rounds around the Pilgrim's Bounty tables to level his cooking. When I logged in however, I wasn't greeted by good old Doras - instead there was water, some greenery and birds chirping in the background? WTF? We're not inKansas Orgrimmar anymore, dear banker... except apparently we are.
Chat was filled with a strange mix of praise and complaints. There were comments about Orgrimmar's new look being awesome ("take that, Stormwind") but also unhappy voices that didn't like being unable to find the forge anymore or having to discover dungeon entrances before being allowed to use the dungeon finder. However, overall the mood didn't seem too dire - the latter complaint was eventually met with "LFM to discover Northrend dungeons" for example.
Orgrimmar has certainly changed a lot. Garrosh has not only fortified its structures, but NPCs, facilities and whole buildings have been moved around. It took me ages to find my beloved Kaja, and she doesn't seem to be as conveniently placed as before. The zeppelins dock inside the city as well now, instead of in front of it. I was proud of myself for finding my way up the central rise and to the zeppelin tower for Thunder Bluff without too much difficulty.
The goblin lady that welcomed me looked slightly odd at first glance. Playable female goblins have been looking slightly different from the NPCs for a while, but I never gave it much thought. Suddenly seeing all the NPCs change to the new model is a little strange however.
Eventually the zeppelin arrived, I settled down at the prow and observed the landscape passing by under my feet. When was the last time I enjoyed flying this much and actually paid attention to my surroundings? I've never felt so close to being a newbie all over again. There is a whole new world out there that I don't know! Okay yes, I have an idea of the basic geography, but the details will be very different. I actually find myself wanting to take it slowly just to savour that feeling. Mmm.
Flying over the northern Barrens, I was surprised by how little things seemed to have changed, though everything looked crisper and clearer somehow. I don't know whether that's just my imagination, whether the patch actually changed my graphics settings without me noticing or if things really do look better. Then the zeppelin came to the edge of the zone and I saw this big crack in the ground with lava flowing through it. I actually winced. Deathwing, what have you done!
Arriving in Thunder Bluff, I found that very little had changed there, though that was fine by me. It's nice to know your way around at least one city. When I ran into a tauren paladin, I cheered at him.
I returned to Orgrimmar by wyvern afterwards and carefully peeked off the top of the central rise. Elevators are for wusses! I hurled myself down into the nearest bit of tarpaulin, where I almost got stuck - what a start to my day that would have been! To my surprise I survived the following fall to the ground... and ended up landing next to the new level 85 elite Gamon, who was being kited around by a couple of hunters and mages. I burst out laughing at the sight of it - some things never change!
As if to confirm that thought, I then ran into a couple of people duelling in front of the gates as usual and some crafty mages that were selling their portal services to the public for some gold. The world is alive and I don't know what awaits me... I couldn't imagine a more wonderful feeling.
I logged onto my bank alt today as I do on most days. Somewhat unusually, I had left him next to the Orgrimmar flight master, as I'd been making the rounds around the Pilgrim's Bounty tables to level his cooking. When I logged in however, I wasn't greeted by good old Doras - instead there was water, some greenery and birds chirping in the background? WTF? We're not in
Chat was filled with a strange mix of praise and complaints. There were comments about Orgrimmar's new look being awesome ("take that, Stormwind") but also unhappy voices that didn't like being unable to find the forge anymore or having to discover dungeon entrances before being allowed to use the dungeon finder. However, overall the mood didn't seem too dire - the latter complaint was eventually met with "LFM to discover Northrend dungeons" for example.
Orgrimmar has certainly changed a lot. Garrosh has not only fortified its structures, but NPCs, facilities and whole buildings have been moved around. It took me ages to find my beloved Kaja, and she doesn't seem to be as conveniently placed as before. The zeppelins dock inside the city as well now, instead of in front of it. I was proud of myself for finding my way up the central rise and to the zeppelin tower for Thunder Bluff without too much difficulty.
The goblin lady that welcomed me looked slightly odd at first glance. Playable female goblins have been looking slightly different from the NPCs for a while, but I never gave it much thought. Suddenly seeing all the NPCs change to the new model is a little strange however.
Eventually the zeppelin arrived, I settled down at the prow and observed the landscape passing by under my feet. When was the last time I enjoyed flying this much and actually paid attention to my surroundings? I've never felt so close to being a newbie all over again. There is a whole new world out there that I don't know! Okay yes, I have an idea of the basic geography, but the details will be very different. I actually find myself wanting to take it slowly just to savour that feeling. Mmm.
Flying over the northern Barrens, I was surprised by how little things seemed to have changed, though everything looked crisper and clearer somehow. I don't know whether that's just my imagination, whether the patch actually changed my graphics settings without me noticing or if things really do look better. Then the zeppelin came to the edge of the zone and I saw this big crack in the ground with lava flowing through it. I actually winced. Deathwing, what have you done!
Arriving in Thunder Bluff, I found that very little had changed there, though that was fine by me. It's nice to know your way around at least one city. When I ran into a tauren paladin, I cheered at him.
I returned to Orgrimmar by wyvern afterwards and carefully peeked off the top of the central rise. Elevators are for wusses! I hurled myself down into the nearest bit of tarpaulin, where I almost got stuck - what a start to my day that would have been! To my surprise I survived the following fall to the ground... and ended up landing next to the new level 85 elite Gamon, who was being kited around by a couple of hunters and mages. I burst out laughing at the sight of it - some things never change!
As if to confirm that thought, I then ran into a couple of people duelling in front of the gates as usual and some crafty mages that were selling their portal services to the public for some gold. The world is alive and I don't know what awaits me... I couldn't imagine a more wonderful feeling.
22/11/2010
Heirlooms - yay or nay?
So, the old world is going to be revamped in only a few days it seems. No additional character slots in sight, so I won't be making any new alts on my home servers, but I guess nothing stops me from making a troll druid, a tauren paladin or whatever on another server. They won't have access to heirlooms of course... but I'm starting to think that this is probably be a good thing.
Of the alts that I've been levelling recently, two have both heirloom shoulders and the chest to boost experience gains, one has shoulders only and two went entirely without any heirlooms. I think it's great that these items exist to give people the option of shortening their time spent levelling, but as someone who actually enjoys levelling I'm becoming more and more convinced that I'm actually better off without them.
How fast is too fast?
Faster levelling doesn't have to be a bad thing even if you do like the levelling process - after all everyone has zones and levelling ranges that they don't like as much and where they'd rather move on to something else sooner than later. In fact, at first I enjoyed the freedom of picking and choosing my favourite quests and zones on my heirloomed alts, but it soon became apparent that I advanced so quickly that I unintentionally ended up leaving content that I really liked behind as well. For example it felt rather awkward on my rogue when I realised that all the mobs in the Arathi Highlands had gone grey before I had even had an opportunity to get started on the zone, and I nearly missed my chance at gainful questing in Tanaris as well, even though I love doing the wastewanderer and pirate quests there.
It was even funnier when I quested in Silverpine Forest with my fully heirloomed mage. Silverpine used to be the worst of the 10-20 zones for the Horde because quests were so scarce that you couldn't really make it through the zone's level range without doing something else on the side as well... but on my mage I gained a full ten levels in Silverpine alone, with the last quests having gone grey by the time I got around to them. Overkill, thy name is restedness plus heirlooms.
In comparison the pace at which my Alliance hunter advanced through Redridge and Darkshire, with no heirlooms and not always rested, felt much more natural and "right". Considering that the revamped low-level questing is supposed to be so awesome that I'll want to see all of it and multiple times, I really see no reason to make my next bunch of alts rush to eighty(-five).
She who has everything misses out on a lot of upgrades
Another supposed advantage of heirlooms is that they scale with your character's progress, meaning that you'll always have the equivalent of a blue quality item of your level equipped in your heirloom slot and will never have to worry about upgrades. This is particularly nice for melee classes, who are heavily dependent on their weapons for good damage output. If you've ever outlevelled your gear by ten levels or more without noticing it immediately, you'll know what that's like.
On the flip side however, half the dungeon drops and quest rewards that you'll see on your way to max level will be completely useless to you. This didn't seem like that much of a problem to me in theory, after all I still had plenty of other gear slots... but as it turned out, the vast majority of instance drops seem to be things like weapons and chest pieces. I actually found this quite depressing on my rogue after a while, seeing yet another dagger or sword drop and going: "Oh, rogue weapon! Oh wait, I got the heirlooms..." There's something very fun about receiving gear upgrades, and being "stuck" with the same chest, shoulders, weapons and whatever other heirlooms you may have is actually kind of sad and a bit of a fun-sucker. Which leads us to the third point:
Looks do matter
I don't know about you, but the first time I got heirloom shoulders for one of my low-level alts they felt extremely cool. Usually you wouldn't get any shoulders at all until around level twenty, but the heirlooms can be worn from level one. Likewise all the other heirlooms borrow their looks from old level sixty gear and thus look a lot shinier than anything else a low-level character would usually wear.
The problem is, this gets old really fast. Again my mage was the most striking example. When I bought him the heirloom cloth shoulders, robe and caster staff in his teens, he went from looking like a ragged farmboy to a truly mighty mage. This was cool for about five minutes, until I started running into other people in the zone I was questing in and every other mage, warlock or priest looked exactly like me. That's beyond a fashion faux-pas, that's a disaster. And I mean, it's not as if you just happen to look the same for a few levels like people often do in Hellfire Peninsula, you'll look exactly the same for the entirety of your levelling process. How sucky is that? I'm not expecting to be a unique snowflake all the time, but levelling the 147th clone trooper is no fun either.
In summary, I don't think I'll be interested in buying any of the new heirlooms in Cataclysm, but I'll keep using the ones that I already have on the characters that have been using them for a while, because once you start using them it's kind of annoying to go back to normal gear, as you might not happen to have an appropriate chest, shoulders and weapon lying around to replace them...
Of the alts that I've been levelling recently, two have both heirloom shoulders and the chest to boost experience gains, one has shoulders only and two went entirely without any heirlooms. I think it's great that these items exist to give people the option of shortening their time spent levelling, but as someone who actually enjoys levelling I'm becoming more and more convinced that I'm actually better off without them.
How fast is too fast?
Faster levelling doesn't have to be a bad thing even if you do like the levelling process - after all everyone has zones and levelling ranges that they don't like as much and where they'd rather move on to something else sooner than later. In fact, at first I enjoyed the freedom of picking and choosing my favourite quests and zones on my heirloomed alts, but it soon became apparent that I advanced so quickly that I unintentionally ended up leaving content that I really liked behind as well. For example it felt rather awkward on my rogue when I realised that all the mobs in the Arathi Highlands had gone grey before I had even had an opportunity to get started on the zone, and I nearly missed my chance at gainful questing in Tanaris as well, even though I love doing the wastewanderer and pirate quests there.
It was even funnier when I quested in Silverpine Forest with my fully heirloomed mage. Silverpine used to be the worst of the 10-20 zones for the Horde because quests were so scarce that you couldn't really make it through the zone's level range without doing something else on the side as well... but on my mage I gained a full ten levels in Silverpine alone, with the last quests having gone grey by the time I got around to them. Overkill, thy name is restedness plus heirlooms.
In comparison the pace at which my Alliance hunter advanced through Redridge and Darkshire, with no heirlooms and not always rested, felt much more natural and "right". Considering that the revamped low-level questing is supposed to be so awesome that I'll want to see all of it and multiple times, I really see no reason to make my next bunch of alts rush to eighty(-five).
She who has everything misses out on a lot of upgrades
Another supposed advantage of heirlooms is that they scale with your character's progress, meaning that you'll always have the equivalent of a blue quality item of your level equipped in your heirloom slot and will never have to worry about upgrades. This is particularly nice for melee classes, who are heavily dependent on their weapons for good damage output. If you've ever outlevelled your gear by ten levels or more without noticing it immediately, you'll know what that's like.
On the flip side however, half the dungeon drops and quest rewards that you'll see on your way to max level will be completely useless to you. This didn't seem like that much of a problem to me in theory, after all I still had plenty of other gear slots... but as it turned out, the vast majority of instance drops seem to be things like weapons and chest pieces. I actually found this quite depressing on my rogue after a while, seeing yet another dagger or sword drop and going: "Oh, rogue weapon! Oh wait, I got the heirlooms..." There's something very fun about receiving gear upgrades, and being "stuck" with the same chest, shoulders, weapons and whatever other heirlooms you may have is actually kind of sad and a bit of a fun-sucker. Which leads us to the third point:
Looks do matter
I don't know about you, but the first time I got heirloom shoulders for one of my low-level alts they felt extremely cool. Usually you wouldn't get any shoulders at all until around level twenty, but the heirlooms can be worn from level one. Likewise all the other heirlooms borrow their looks from old level sixty gear and thus look a lot shinier than anything else a low-level character would usually wear.
The problem is, this gets old really fast. Again my mage was the most striking example. When I bought him the heirloom cloth shoulders, robe and caster staff in his teens, he went from looking like a ragged farmboy to a truly mighty mage. This was cool for about five minutes, until I started running into other people in the zone I was questing in and every other mage, warlock or priest looked exactly like me. That's beyond a fashion faux-pas, that's a disaster. And I mean, it's not as if you just happen to look the same for a few levels like people often do in Hellfire Peninsula, you'll look exactly the same for the entirety of your levelling process. How sucky is that? I'm not expecting to be a unique snowflake all the time, but levelling the 147th clone trooper is no fun either.
In summary, I don't think I'll be interested in buying any of the new heirlooms in Cataclysm, but I'll keep using the ones that I already have on the characters that have been using them for a while, because once you start using them it's kind of annoying to go back to normal gear, as you might not happen to have an appropriate chest, shoulders and weapon lying around to replace them...
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