f13.net

I just completed a "tour" of the new content - Hellfire Peninsula, Dranei Shaman, Blood elf mage (no pally for me thx). I didn't beta it, so this is all fresh to me.

The launch was super smooth.  I expected at least some choppiness, lag, disconnects, queues, hanging web pages when trying to upgrade my account, SOMETHING.  I got nothin.  I did get my copy at midnight, so maybe I had a better chance of not seeing account management problems.

Hellfire peninsula does a good job of breadcrumbing you in the right direction.  The place was ridiculously crowded, even at 2am, but no worse than you'd expect for the amount of people.  I'm on a PvP server, but I was surprised to see that it was not really a gankfest.  A few selected gankings here and there was all.

The content once you get started is pretty complete.  Lots of quests, and the land seems huge.  In a way, too huge, because I found it a bit hard to find where I was supposed to go at times... and the way there is patrolled by pretty ugly stuff.  That's a nitpick, though, really.

The new noob experiences are pretty polished.  I was a little confused at the Dranei back story - the intro swoop tells you that they piloted their ship there on purpose, while the NPCs seem to think that it was an accident.  Also - while I didn't get very far in the noob quests, compared to the blood elf ones, they seemed a little spare.  Granted, Dranei was a last minute decision, so I would imagine that they didn't have as long to come up with the lore to get them to the right place to be a player race.

As I alluded, the blood elf noob experience is top notch.  I mostly play Alliance, and I remember people saying that the Horde quests aren't as fleshed out as Alliance, but blood elves definitely break that mold (again, without going too far in-depth; I only got to 4).  I did find it much harder to leave off following the trail of noob quests when I was a belf because they kept me interested.

One thing I noticed is that there were very few male dranei, and very few non-pally belfs.  Not only that, most of the pallies were named something derived from or playing on the word "bubble".  I sense a bad touch from alliance pallies over the year.  Oddly, not all the draneis were shamans, which I expected to see. 

Overall excellent launch.  Other companies could benefit from doing it like Blizzard did - last non-expansion patch having much of the expansion content front-loaded, launching the upgrade website hours ahead of time, doing midnight releases (which by their nature phase the players in hour by hour due to timezones).

On a side note, I took the day off to play, and by some mischance (involving wife and kids, not the game) have not showered yet at 2pm.  I suppose that helped me get into the role....

A_FEL_REAVER_001 says "Hi, Jayce! Smell my boot!"

I did some of the newbie quests in Hellfire and ran Hellfire Ramparts a few time. Short, quick instance with some interesting boss fights and great drops - I replaced 6 pieces of gear just last night in about 6 hours (pvp blue/tier 1 stuff).

The lack of lag and server problems really impressed me. The closest it came to troublesome was the fact that I had to authenticate my account upgrade twice.

I picked up CE up from Gamestop on my way to work this morning since they didn't do the midnight release deal, entered the account key from work, and slipped home at lunch to install and poke around a bit.  The BE area is very, very impressive, and the newbie quests are very nicely done.  I kinda wish they'd go back and give similar treatment to the other newbie quests as well.  They also finally got rid of the the letter to the trainer quest, and just had a guy point you in that direction.  Since they delayed the trainer visit until level 2, that makes more sense.  I have no clue why they originally changed that from beta and made you not start with the letter.  The first quests give a good intro and feel for the backstory, options for all armor types in the rewards, and the critters in general seem to be a bit more generous in their vendor drops.  And a quest to basically get you to learn about and use your racial ability was nice.  I couldn't find a cloth vendor for armor at all though, which was a tiny bit annoying.  I'll have to poke around more once I get home. 

Anywho, ran to the BE capital, and it was bigger than I expected it would be, having not followed beta overly closely.  Lots of little nice touches, like an NPC chasing a tiny construct gone amok.  A harrased citizen right inside the first gate, and so forth.  My only issue was that in the short time I had, I couldn't find the portal to the Undercity that I've heard is around. 

Class wise, I did see alot of paladins, and a few warlocks, with a smattering of hunters and priests.  I expect the area will get much more crowded this evening when I'm back on.  I did find it amusing to log into a draenai shaman I made for kicks, and so me and the gf could see their intro.  When I finally get control of my character, there's probably half a dozen new characters stacked on the creation point, all shaman.  I expect Alliance to be drowned in shaman for awhile, which means I'll hold off on mine or ignore common advice and try a paladin. 

Im sucking it up and making a BE pally for my guild. The BE starting zone was very crowded last night, at 3 in the morning. Im really scared to see what its like when I get home today.

My plan is to level my BE Pally, and then level my rogue in outland when he has rested. I was in beta, and I really liked outland, but I can wait a few weeks to see it. Hopefully by the time I get my BE up to 60, the population will have spread out a bit in outland.

I picked up my copy of the regular edition from BestBuy at noon today. BestBuy preorder boxes they had sold had stickers that said "Preorder for regular or collectors edition", so there were actual arguments between smelly losers fighting over which one of them was entitled to the last two collector's editions they had behind the counter. Installation, account upgrade, and patching were smooth as silk. It was 1:30 by the time I logged in and started. There were no queues, lag, or other problems. I created a female belf paladin on Malfurion (The server I have Horde guys on) and leveled to 7 in the span of about an hour. The belf inn is hella sexy. I realize it's my own fault for making a female belf, but horny nerds were out in force, and I had possibly the worst opener used on me right before I logged: "Your mini-diablo if the perfect match for your Unadorned Mail". Ick. The starting area was crowded, but not unworkably so. The only mob I ever had to wait to be able to kill one was a named something-or-other at the top of some floaty platform thing for a level 4 quest. And that was only because no one thought to group up and get everyone it's head at once.

There was quite a bit of complaining about Alliance players rolling belfs though, which I thought was kind of weird. It went past the sort of generic crap talk/ribbing you'd expect in into the realm of hateful, meanspirited spite. I thought that was odd, considering Malfurion is a newish server. I could sort of understand it on Warsong, or even Earthen Ring, but I don't think anyone on Malf has even a year invested in those toons.

For anyone holding back on leveling a main in Outlands because of Rest EXP, you might not need to.  I logged in this morning after installing the expantion and had almost 2/3 of a level worth of Rest exp just sitting there.

Still waiting for the UPS man.   :|

The general discussion board is full of "server x is down" threads.

Figure I'm gonna wait a couple weeks for them to fix some of the stuff and/or add new servers.

Thanks for the updates, though, it's nice to read about the stuff, since I'm not gonna see it for a while.

I thought to myself, "ha ha, no queues for Sargeras".

Then I tried to login tonight.

700 person queue there too!!!!!

Icecrown is Full.
Position in Queue: 498
Estimated time: 53 min

I should have just let myself get afk'd out when I left so I'd be at the character select screen when I came back.

My first 2 and a half hours of BC:

-I log to my level 60 warrior main, who was standing on TOP of the Dark Portal before it opened. The Portal is a boneyard. like 3-4 people there. I go through to the huge gate drama with the demons you've all heard about. I fly on to Honor Hold.

-I dick around in Honor Hold, picking up quests and scoping out NPCs. I get all the new blacksmith plans and upgrade my mining.

-Holy shit, the whole server is there. Hundreds of people around Honor Hold, several more hundred raping the whole zone to death. This place is gonna feel really fucking lonely and huge when everyone has moved on.

-The new continent is huuuuuuge. No more of that micro-zone crap in Azeroth where stuff is 10 feet away. It takes a while to get around even on an epic mount. Oh yeah, Fel Iron Deposits don't exist. The catasses have them all permacamped. Lots of lonely Khorium veins though since they're the highest end deposits.

-I knock out a handful of quests, and obsolete all the mainhand swords in my inventory with a green. Yeesh. Oh well, cool.

-My guildies are really anxious to hit Hellfire Ramparts so we head in with no quests there. We kick the place over in an hour and a half with nobody knowing the instance from Cain. This is including like 3 bathroom breaks and a fair amount of figuring out pulls. No wipes. Really fun instance, lots of melee-type enemies for me to brush up my rusty tanking skills on, no pulls that make you want to die, fun bosses that yell and talk a lot, and great loot. Hunter got a pair of gloves and a main-hand sword, I got a resilience cloak and Hellreaver since our pally didn't want it and no one else could use it. We're gonna farm the hell out of this instance.

-Walk out of the instance, do more quests in the horribly crippling lag. I throw away more blues in lieu of greens after fighting for spawns in the previously mentioned lag. Did I mention the lag was awful?

-Server crashes on return to town. I think I may have been rolled back until just after we exited the instance. Oof. I'm out for tonight.

I am officially readdicted. If the Ramparts are any indication BC is gonna be really fun. Short, content packed, voice-overs, no garbage loot, fun fights.

Transferred characters from Cenarion Circle and Blackwater Raiders to Farstriders.

Total number of Blood elf pallys on right now: 9
Total number of people in Ghostlands: 3
Total number of Blood elves over all: 20

Life is good.

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Reminds me of Shadowbane.

Tichondrius didnt' crash once on me tonight, and the level of suckitude in the eversong chat should have caused a stupid singularity, causing it to crash.

However it had half the queue of Sargeras, my main server, so maybe that had something to do with it.

I made my blood elf paladin on ER but I'm much too impatient to try and play tonight.  I have no tolerance at all anymore and when I get grumpy, I accidentally abuse people in games.   :?

When it opened it was fine. Wife and I ran around for several hours and had fun doing the first quests (the bombing run ones are great!)

Got on this afternoon, and its like the bad old days, only worse as far as lag goes. 500+ queue at 2pm on a Wednesday (aust time), so I guess US Prime Time Tuesday. I expect it to thin out slowly, but right now the server has shit itself twice. It's essentially unplayable, except for the fact that every dumbass (including myself, admittedly) is running around playing anyway.

I'm avoiding combat quests, and just doing collects and fed-exes for now. I figure it's safer.

TBC now crashes every time I tab out. Wonderful. cannot read memory error my ass, that's your sloppy coding.

Other than that, it's fun. For people trying it out, once at fort hold head directly west into the next zone (even the temple in the west of hellfire is crowded) for alternate level 60 quests with less crowding.

www.worldofwarcaft.com at 11:41 PST:

Service Temporarily Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

sigh... I had promised myself I would wait a week. Of course I didn't.

Ya, Tichondrius was fine last night.  Barely any lag.

I shut off general chat and all pc names.  Made for a more immersive experience.

Server crashed several times last night in varying degrees.  Sometimes it was just the Outlands, sometimes just the Hellfire zone, once it was the instance server and once the whole dang thing.

  My guild broke-up into various 5-mans and was running Ramparts/ Blood Furnace and WOWing at some of the drops.  I reccommend doing the same to anyone else who can't take the lag anymore, as the instances are much more stable and don't suffer from Lag.  The Xp was incredible for it, too.  We got about 20% of our bar in 60 for our first 45-min run through.

It seems like busier servers actually had some problems.  On Ravenholdt, newest RP-PvP realm, I haven't heard any reports of problems and everything was flawless for over 10 hours after launch (until I went to sleep) and continues to be now.  It's almost heartening to hear there were issues, as it means my lack of faith in expansion releases isn't completely shattered.

Nevertheless, I'd have to say that it went down much, much, much smoother than I ever imagined, even if there were troubles.

Same here.  No problems locally.  Just couldn't get the server to stay stable.  I wanted to do instances, but couldn't get the server to stay stable long enough.

Only had one server crash, which was actually an INTERESTING experience, because i got to see something hardly ANYONE is ever going to see in game if the server stays stable.

When the server crashed, the Demonic Seige on the outlands side of the Dark Portal "Reset".  I got to see all the Alliance / Horde NPC's line up and get ready for the demons, and then the Pit Commander comes walking down the road to stand in the position you normally see him in, preceeded by a wave or two of demons.  He actually MOVES down the road and up the hill to stop at his current position, a little bit of scripting that pretty much no one is ever going to see.

As to alt tabbing, must be something on your end, cause I alt tabbed numerous times to check some stuff with no problems what so ever.

No problem alt-tabbing here either.  I did it several times while waiting for servers to come back up.  I was trying to be sure I didn't lose my spot in any queues.

Absolutely perfect upgrade experience, no lag issues, patch issues, acct mgmt issues, server crashes, etc. Go Ysondre !

Chromaggus server has been stable with no queues, although its always been a low pop server.

Run a circle around the the dark portal going behind it. I found about 8 fel iron nodes back there. No mobs either to bother you. Of course, since Chromaggus is a low pop server, you might see different things.

Another thing is to get (and convince you guildies) to get the developers version of gatherer. When you (or anyone else in your guild/party/raid) mine metal or pick herbs, it will send a message using the addon channel and you'll get the location in your gatherer.

Where exactly would you get the "developers" version?  I mean, from what I understand about the author of gatherer, such a feature wouldnt normally exist, since the author had specificly stated at one time that gatherer would never let you "share" or "merge" databases because she wanted you to do all the work filling out your database on your own.

Beta version of Gatherer 2.99 (http://www.gathereraddon.com/dl/Gatherer).  Basically, on top of the awesomeness that is Gatherer, it also adds the functionality to send the node you just mined, or the herb you just picked location to guild/group/raid.  So, if Monkeyballs is in EPL mining Thorium, when he hits that node, it fills out the node for him on his map, and fills out the node for me on my map if I'm online at the moment.  It's fantastic and the more people that have it, the more information you'll get.

Type /gather options I think to open the window in game once it's there and make sure you have the transmit to guild/group/raid selected and working.

It's fantastic, a few of the guildies and I checked it out before TBC and it worked wonderfully.

From what I can remember, they said they didn't want to just put out a huge database file where people who installed gatherer would instantly know where everything is. With this, you have to be online when someone mines/herbs something to get the info. Although if you really wanted to, you could figure out how to merge the \WTF\Account\<AccountName>\SavedVariables\Gatherer.lua file with other peoples.

Played alot more last night, and I'm really, really liking it.  I've moved on to the Ghostlands settlement, and the way they do it is pretty interesting.  It's basically it's own faction, and it also has a vendor who will sell you items as you raise that faction, just like they do for BGs and such.  I think I did three quests and went from neutral to friendly, and opened up the first item.  I believe at app. 16 or 17, you can get a blue even.  So I see little grinding, if any, to get good faction and some nice low level items.  Also, it seems like the main BE faction raises alot quicker than I remember my undead's main faction rising so early on.  Finishing out all the 1-10 quests I could find in Eversong put me at halfway through honored, which seemed alot quicker than I remember.  So, at first blush at least, it seems faction grinding will be nowhere near as necessary.  I really, really wish they could roll the various changes to the low level experience into the original race starting areas, it'd be very nice. 

Server wise, I was on Thrall, and we only had one hiccup the whole time I was on in the evening. 

Gatherer and Gathershare - a good pair of mods.

I have heard rumors that they have moved up the faction rewards for low level quests in the original newb zones.  My friend started a dwarf this week and saw lots of high level alliance burning through the low level dwarf quests, presumably to get their faction up with Ironforge.

It was like that as of 1 or 2 major patches ago. When they introduced the PVP. I assumed it was a bug, but did a few baby stormwind quests for the rep while waiting on AVs

I got in a good 5 hours last night and the two servers I play on - Shadow Council and Steamwheedle Cartel, had no crashes or problems.

For someone like myself that is still very much in love with the game, it is an embarrasment of riches. With 3 60s and my two new characters I started last night, I actually have *too much* to do ... and it's all good. I'm going to have plenty to keep me entertained for the forseeable future.

I have no more mods.  Righ will just copy his over and I'll pick the ones I need.  I'm disappointed in the colour scheme of Blood Elves.  I expected themto have a redder choice and have cool valley girl looks on their silly faces like the Night Elves.  My Night Elf always appeared like she should be chewing gum.  I don't like the pirouette, either.  The flip was cute, the pirouette is just dumb.

All I know is that the blood elf jokes own.

"Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot... like... me?"

And that's from the male.

Tichondrius had around a 9 person queue, and was fucking rock solid all day. I was very impressed. So far the game has run smooth. I do think that the BE pally ratio is insane though. Its probably about 10:1 Pally to every other class. I expect this to drop off a lot after level 20 though.

I played in Ghostlands all day yesterday, and damn, what an awesome zone. It takes you from level 12 to level 20, but the quests are very well designed, and if you read them, and make mental note of the locations you can usually do little loops over the zone completing about 6-8 quests per loop. MUCH MUCH better place to level than the barrens. Im having fun with my Pally so far, but im almost out of ghostlands, and then its back to "Normal" WoW.

Also, DAMN but the Outland weapons look awesome. A guildie (and RL friend) got two awesome weapons, the first was Hellrazer (Hellreaver?) some thing like that. Its an insane looking polearm. I drooled all over myself. He also got some sweet blue 2h sword, that had 85 Crit rating on it. Which means at level 60 he is getting almost 4% crit.

You can color me completely readdicted also.

Oh yeah, Jayce dropped by and said hi. Was cool. And hell, I think even MrHat is having a blast.

I seriously think this is the best emote they have ever done. The next best one is "The best thing about your eyes is that when I look deep in to them, I can see my own reflection".

Earthen Ring was essentially a complete wreck from 5 PM to 11 PM. After that, it recovered. I hope they force a server split soon. Yes, there are free transfers to a non-crashing server, but my guild reckons they're staying... as does every large guild on the server. If the split doesn't happen soon, I'll likely transfer one of my non-raid 60s off.

I was a bit disappointed on the Blood Elf face choices - the males anyway - they are all almost identical. Why even offer a choice when the difference is so miniscule you'd never notice?

What Guild/Side do you play on SWC?

On my PvP server there is a very thin, tenuous "truce" going on in Hellfire. No one is attacking each other. I expect that to last maybe another day or two, before it's complete and utter carnage. It's gonna be great!

Ya, I expect it to dissolve this weekend.

Morph: I'm having a blast just doing quests, taking it super casual though, so maybe I can get a few instance runs this weekend :P

I've got two Alliance characters, a Priest named Grandpappy with the guild ERA and a Druid named Valerian with The Scarlet Redemption.

And of course my new Draenei Hunter named Popovich.

Ahh - I'm in Deranged on the Horde side. Maybe we will kill each other some day. Then again.... I'm pretty sure we already have.

My priest is named Kifu and my BE is named Katiri.

What about jewel crafting or some such I was reading about? Is it another gimmick like enchanting or is it something awesome like in D2?

Well, if you explain why you think Enchanting is a gimmick, we could probably better address this.

It's similar to D2 in that you can find socketed items, and various gems that do different things.  From what I've seen of the gems, however, they're not going to turn something that's nice into "zomg uber lifestealing sword of pwnage, you can't die."   They do make decent enough changes to customize the item towards your playstyle and spec.

 Note I said 'towards'  all the socketed stuff I've seen so far comes with some sort of baseline stats on it.  Nothing's just a blank with 12 sockets for you to completly customize the item.
 
The biggest question tho, is will the best "jewels" be drops or pattern drops like enchanting.  If the jewels themselves are drops, then the profession is just 'filler' much like the other professions, and you'll use the stuff until you find better through adventuring.

I rocked a 9 hour marathon of Blood Furnace runs and questing away from Thrallmar, and got to level 61, and a quarter of the way into 61.

It's enjoyable. So enjoyable that I bought a second copy on a whim at lunch for my second account, so my shaman can powerlevel my as-yet-to-be-born Blood Elf Rogue.

I played all day yesterday on Frostmourne. Only had lag once in the evening, and two server resets after midnight. I have been very impressed with the stability.

Done most of Hellfire, including both low instances a couple of times (both very easy), and explored into Shattrath and Zanga. So far I have only upgraded one piece of equipment, though I did miss out on a nice drop to a mage.

Working today so :(, but looking forward to playing a little tonight.

Level 62 now, so hopefully a little above the curve, and can start getting into the less over populated areas.

Did Blood Furnace and Slave Pens instances last night. Graphically the dungeons are head and shoulders above what's previously been done, Blood Furnace in particular. We were pretty impressed by it, until I told them to look up, and then we were just floored. Really enjoyed the Metroid-like second boss of Furnace as well.

Our instance server had quite a bit of lag and disconnect issues later in the evening though, so we quit Slave Pens early.

I have had no problems with the launch at all. This is the first expansion where I can honestly say I have not seen a single bug, yet.  In addition I have had no denial of services due to increased traffic to the server (first time ever).  I couldn't be happier with the installation/launch and connectivity issues surrounding the BC.

As far as the content is concerned, I love every bit of it.  I am taking it in slowly and deliberately.  I accomplish about 10 quests a night and the rest of the time I am putting into leveling alts.  I have currently upgraded 4 pieces of equipment and changed my class from protection spec to fury spec for leveling.  So far I have done this without experiencing any problems.  My first trip into the Ramparts instance ended successfully and I had a blast although it seemed a bit to easy... I am not going to complain about that though because I understand why the difficulty level was so easy.  I had to be easier to allow people who just got to 60 or was a casual player to participate in and experience the instance.  So I guess Blizzard tailored this instance to the low end with the intent of bringing those people in line with the Epic  Raiders.

My concern if I have one is with the greens that are dropping.  Some of the greens that I have seen are in fact better than epic drops in the retail.  While I understand again this is probably to elevate people who did not have the opportuntity to equip by raiding, I just think that its too good and its to fast.  Although I am not sure what I could do to change this other than toning down the equipment a tad.

Dont worry the difficulty ramps up sharply in the 65+ instances. The auchindon crypts will generate many nerf posts I think.

Heh, the last two boss fights in the ramparts can actually kinda suck if you don't have competent DPS. I went in the first time with the more regular players from my guild (including one of my best friends) with a holy-spec pally as the healer and we just ran over the place in 50 minutes or so with no wipes. Went in the next time with some of the people who don't play as much in my guild with a feral-spec druid healing, we wiped halfway in and the druid bowed out for my pally friend. We rolled the instance up to Val and then wiped because the less experienced rogue/fury war we had kept wandering into that breath attack (that and Val wasn't going down before or right as his mount landed).

#3 was a pug with a loot whore Ret Pally, a largely pre-BC green equipped rogue, a mage in PVP epics and Netherwind, and a fresh-from-Ebay priest in Prophecy/MC gear. One accidental wipe at the beginning due to me assuming they had ran it already (none of them had), but after they asked me to do the pulling and explain the bosses we rolled the place up to Omar. Omar wiped us like 4 times since the rest of the party could not seem to kill the fel hunters fast enough (and jesus shit, that drain life of theirs hurts). Barely pulled that off, then we hilariously enough did just fine on Val (nevermind I said about 20 times "Do not stand in the fire. You'll die.")

I ran it with a pug, and we did reasonably well.  Died too often to overpulls, but we took all bosses with no problem except the dragon.  Our tank had really low FR and kept losing aggro due to the spam heal we had to do to keep her alive.

Ow.  My group rolled that instance, but the group who ran it before us went so far as to say "Dude, you can't do the end boss without FR!"  After we (feral druid, war, rogue, hunter, priest) womped the shit out of him, the other group proceeded to make excuses like, "well, Warshank is fury.. and he doesn't have any FR."  Erm... just move.

I will remark, however, that it's obvious the last few months of 40-man content has really made a few guildies' 5-man skills shit.  Completly different skillset, and most of the time the groups have been beating the instances only due to being overgeared, rather than skilled.   I wish I could get into a group together of the rogues and mages whose only focus has been personal DPS, just to watch them go splat-die several times.

I think the first handful of instances are gonna be a learning experience for old-school raiders who haven't touched a 5-man in gear that wasn't 5000 times what you need in over a year.

I keep getting pugs with people in Tier 1/2/3 and having near wipes/full on wipes since healers/Squishy DPS get really confused when stuff starts hitting them because they didn't control their DPS, or tanks that have no idea how to hold more than one enemy at a time and freak when they get below 60% or so HP.

edit: Had a pug with my mage where a Tier 2/3'd warrior would happily sunder away at a single (and rarely, 2 mobs) mob in HFR and BF while the rest of the group danced around snaring and frantically DPSing down the rest.

Yes, Yes, Yes and God Yes.

These catassing fuckers need to learn some skill now and it shows.  I DO NOT have time to wait for you to pull of that fancy greater heal that you think you can do because your mind still thinks there's 8 other priests in the Raid.  And, once you do and I miraculously survive it, you'll pull ALL the fucking aggro and die like a screaming Bitch.

I'm still with me and the wife and two others who, though we raided every now and again, always ran 5 and 10's for fun.  We're finding the content much easier even though, ironically, we're not as geared.

I know this is a big call a few days after launch, but it seems to me this expansion is a labour of love and a masterpiece of art and design.

Having done my explorer thing across Outland with the in-game music turned up, run a few instances, hit level 61.5, seen the way progression works and the lore and myriad little touches in the nooks and crannies, I'm captivated. I did not feel that way about the original WoW - while it was good fun, it kept failing to hold my attention.

The Burning Crusade is a great game. It's like a successful band nailing its second album - it's difficult to get motivated when you already have more money hats than you dreamed possible, so it could easily have been bad. Two thumbs up.

P.S. My favourite bit so far is Nagrand. Beautiful graphics and atmosphere. I can tell I'm going to live there.

Before Raistlin and Drizzt, there was Elric.  The obvious Melnibonéan influence for blood elves is pure love for this old-school fanboi.  I had just leveled my primary, a human warlock, to 60 before Christmas; yet my newly-minted blood elf warlock is way more interesting to play.  I'm hooked, Travis.

Damn it. You done went and made me resub. Picking up BC tomorrow - rearranging toolbars and respeccing my lock and rogue atm. BC release and praise plus my Xbox dying just seems like fate...

When I got into the beta and then made my way to 70 it got increasingly harder to play vanilla WoW because BC is just so, so, so good. Everything is tightly tuned. The worst instance in BC is better than the best instance in vanilla. It's brilliant. They learned enough from old mistakes to completely (yet subtly) change the way things work. Epics for all with some time (and not even that much) with skill being the major limiting factor. I'm sure gear will come into it at some point but most of these bosses are skill checks. I'm just in love all over again.

Amen on the retard raiders. You can really tell who was a coat tail riding mouth breather. That's always been the case though; some of my worst pugs were invites from Strat where I thought, "Sure, I could use some cash", and the tier2 tank couldn't handle shit. And it's not going to get easier. Those dudes will hit 70 (albeit more slowly since they're going wipe a bunch. I'm looking at you Mana Tombs!) and start raiding that content... and they're going to hit a wall.

Any complaints about people getting ganked in Outland?  My theory is the people who don't like playing PvP will whine enough to get Blizzard to change it.

I'm on a pvp server, and have played a little every day (just hit 61), all in Hellfire.  Gankage is minimal, although I do have a KOS list going.  Some hunter kept ganking me yesterday while I was trying to do quest, although the horde all around him did not join in, nor did his guildies that I ran into in other places.  (Maybe he was one of my victims in Ashenvale a few days earlier when I went on a rampage after getting ganked on my daughter's hunter repeatedly, who knows.  It seemed personal somehow).

Ganking is far less than it was when I originally levelled my main which was about a year ago, I guess - I restarted from a launch horde pve server to alliance pvp because I was bored to tears on a pve server - this was before battlegrounds was put in.  Somehow opting in/out of pvp just seemed lame to me. 

Hellfire so far has not been STV v.2.

That is true, however, who does the ganking in STV?  the level 50-60's, who were generally much higher level then the people questing there.  Right now, the imperative of leveling is > cheap thrills of ganking outside the PvP objective areas (and the possibility of being counter ganked and facing disruptive corpse runs that cut into your EXP time.

Once more and more peopel start hitting 68-70, expect ganking on PvP servers to experience a sharp increase.

Except for the ganking now and then, I've never noticed much of a difference in PvP servers and regular servers.  Most people gather groups and go PvP'ing or they stick to the BGs.  My characters are on ER because that's where they started the f13 guild way back in the olden days.  I think an Arr Pee server was chosen under the illusion that there would be less silly people with silly names.

While I see an occasional Pimpdaddy or Ddrrittzz on Thorium Brotherhood, I've found the majority to be at least tolerable in their attempts at being roleplayers.  Yet, I haven't met a dwarf character who appreciates my Discworld-inspired question "is it true that dwarfs don't actually love gold; they just say that to get it into bed?"  Unfortunately, WindupAtheist's assertion that dwarfs only RP with "ach!" and "ale!" is all too true.

See, if you'd found my dwarf you'd have gotten a better answer. :) Then again, I'm on Argent Dawn.

Okay... correct me if I'm wrong:

- The new areas are beautiful and well designed.
- There are ten new levels before everyone hits the new "endgame".
- Item mudflation supercedes the necessity of multiple instance runs to pick up old "Tier" armors and...
 - ...the new high level areas and instances are more fun to level in than the old ones anyway.

Why is any of this a reason to resubscribe?

Why buy the expansion for functionally what I paid for the original game for what will be perhaps 1/4 the content I received then? Any 60 I have could theoretically have 10 levels of new content, but any new character I start in order to take advantage of the new 1-20 zones will then have to level the same 30-55 grind that I've suffered through before... only to hit the wall at 70 just like I hit the wall at 60 pre-expansion.

Okay, so there's arena PvP. Okay, a new battleground, new shiny, new content... but the SAME GAME I got sick of before?

I want to know if I'm missing something obvious, or if you're all just fans who got bored and have paid the piper for a little ten level fix of your favorite drug. I've been off the junk for a few months and have withdrawl pangs... but unless there's something new to be had I'm staying on the wagon.

So to quote a certain lady's left-hand man, "How does this benefit me?"

This tells me that you shouldn't resubscribe.  I was enjoying the game just fine before; the expansion just makes it that much better.


I don't know what to tell you about this.  You got problems, man.

I'm pretty sure the main reason I didn't stick around very long in WoW is because the only endgame I had to look forward to was raiding, something I don't like.  I just couldn't get through the somewhat grindy 40's and 50's because I knew that all it would lead to was joining a guild and raiding.  Now that there is a viable small group endgame I kind of wished I had stuck with it because that is something I would find much more enjoyable.  I'm almost tempted to resurrect my little 40 something priest on Earthen Ring.  Plus I understand they have added more level 40 and 50 quests to make it more enjoyable.

I enjoyed leveling to 60 on my druid but just couldn't face the prospect of 40 man raids and collecting a million keys for this and that and doing it all over and over until I went mad.

I picked up the expansion and I'm going to enjoy leveling to 70 and doing smaller instances. And I can do it all without having had the best equipment from the old world. Sure, I'll probably only last 3 months before I deactivate again but that's worth 50 bucks to me.

If you don't like the game from 1-60, you won't like the game at 60.

I like instances as a protection specced warrior, and I find it the best way to level actually. I got the game on Wednesday evening, and I hit 63 on Sunday afternoon. So like 4 days for 3 levels, and about 3/4 of that is in instance xp. I get to keep the spec I like, and my reputation gain is actually very tidy compared to the other way of doing things.

It just seems so stupid to gather chicken wings rather than annihilating bosses, imo.

60-70 is a much better game than 1-60.

Much.

But yeah, still similar.

I'm 65, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm currently rocking Nagrand (think space Mulgore), and I'm really liking how they integrated the World PVP with the general flow of the zones and quests.

Example - the Terrokar Forest PvP event. It's this big, dark, kind of creepy forest, with lots of quests involving druids, rogue Blood Elves, and these bird people called the Arrakoa.

However, in the lower section of it is this big ol' desolate crater, full of skeletons, creepy dead people, and scavengers.

Smack dab in the middle of the crater is Auchindon - this giant, ruined Draenei city, which is a winged instance.

All around Auchindon are these 6 towers - they work like the capture points in the Eastern Plaguelands. Every 6 hours, these towers spawn and are reset to neutral. The faction that can capture all six towers at once wins the ownership of the towers for the following six hours. What this grants is a 5% experience buff and a 5% damage buff to everyone of that faction in the zone, so it's plenty of incentive for the people there to help contribute. In addition, the side that controls the towers (the buff is called the Blessing of Auchindon) is able to obtain Spirit Shards.

Every time a boss is killed in Auchindon within those six hours, everyone in the party can loot a Spirit Shard from the boss. These are a currency that can be used at certain vendors to obtain items - these are good mid-to-high end blue items, as well as really good purple rings.

That is pretty damn cool, and one of my favorite outdoor PvP objectives so far. Things like that are keeping my interest quite well.

63 and 3/4ths now. What I think so far...

Hellfire Peninsula: Great fun early on, a lot of fucking riding and waiting for spawns later. Not bad though. You'll be sick and tired of red by the time you finish all the quests...which is good because...
Zangarmarsh: ...Now you get to be sick of the color blue. Boring quests here IMO. Not quite done with it yet.

Instances:
Ramparts - Fun, short, good loot. I however am fucking cursed when it comes to good tank gear. Took me 18 runs to get the belt I wanted, and I have never seen the boots I want drop. Ever.
Blood Furnace - Really fun outside of the engineers. Fun fights and hot loot for uh...everyone but warriors for the most part.
Slave Pens - A distinct ramp up in difficulty and a painful experience for people who threw away their pre-bc NR gear. Relatively fun, good loot, but not nearly as quick as the first two instances.
Underbog - Too much running and trash for my tastes. Awesome loot, cool fights. I haven't seen a single one of the awesome plate drops that're supposed to be here because again, I'm cursed. I'm pretty sure I'll never see them. We only wiped once, but that last fight is a doozy. Thank god for that blue +def trinket you can pop for 900 more life.

Also, we attempted the Auchunai (spelling, whatever) crypts with a party of 63-64 players and holy god was it gay. It's scholo all over again. Clusterfucks of undead trash with tons of debuffs. Ugh.

Yeah you're in the crypts too early at 63-64. That's a good level range for the mana tombs if you've got a solid group and a tank with good shadow. You'll need over 200 buffed on the tank to handle the first boss.

We did the Crypts at 66. It was much easier. The spawns are a joke at that level range.

Absolutely no need for NR gear here.  If you are thinking about the last boss, its not nessicary.  Keep the druid in the cage alive when the 3 naga jump you, and you can talk to him for a half hour, +110 NR resistance buff.  Thats all you need to keep your group alive.  Also, the Acid Gyeser attack it does is directional.  Point it away from the group, and the only thing you need to heal the group through is the periodic Poison Dot.  Horde have the advantage on it due to Poison Totem, but any team with a backup and primary healer would rock the place (we did it once with a shadowpriest / druid heal team and raped the whole instance.  Shadowpreists ROCK on boss fights)

I would SOOO not reccomend doing Crypts at sub 65-66.  At 63-64, the mobs are going to be orange, and the pulls in that place are EVIL.
- Every "living mob" has an attendant invisible "spirit" mob that pops out of stealth when you engage them.  So in a pull of 2 Living mobs, you will actually get 4 mobs total.
- Add to that the fact that there are LOADS of patrolling "phazing" mobs, which periodically "phaze" in and out of existance as they wander their patroll path (makeing it hard to tell exactly where they are untill you aggro one), and a pull of 2 mobs can quite quickly turn into a pack of 6 things that are whooping on you.
- CC abilities are king in there, and having a Mage, Priest and Hunter in the party for on demand CC can really make the difference between a good and bad experience.
- Also, the first boss in there is HARD.  I mean, REALLY HARD.  Compared to anything else you have run into recently.

The first time I did that boss in beta you got no warnings except for the flares on the ground near you. That was fun.

I play Horde. Tauren Hunter. In the first 60 levels of the game, I can recall exactly one quest that made me touch "poop".

As part of the 10 part quest line that starts by talking to the Fallen Hero of the Horde just outside Blasted Lands, you are sent to Azshara to collect crystals from the various crystalline formations, some of which look curiously like people. You are told that they actually were people that were ingested by the giants in Azshara and then digested into the crystalline form they are now in and then crapped out across the landscape. When you loot them, there is a chance they drop the Azsharite crystal you need, but they also drop notes that were written by their own hand, some written even while being digested.

You then use the crystal to have a sword forged for you. I dubbed it the "poop sword". This sword is used to kill a demon atop a high peak in Blasted Lands that can only be reached by having the quest and using the teleport circle to go up there.

Since BC came out, I have had to handle "poop" twice now and I'm only level 64!

First, in Hellfire Peninsula, I had to handle the fresh "poop" of a Felhound that ate the keys to the mech behind the goblin just north of Thrallmar. To make it more interesting, once you open the "poop", you get a debuff called "Stanky", regardless if you get the keys or not.

Last night, in Nagrand, I was given a quest to dig through the fresh "poop" of the bucks to the west of Garadar(sp?). My objective: to find soiled berries. I return these berries to the elementalist that asked for them and he washes them, gives them back, and states that I can place one under my tongue and will be able to breathe water for the next 30 minutes.

Someone at Blizz has a scatalogical obsession. And that second quest is just gross!

It helps to have a friendly hunter along. Aspect of the Wild is another +60 buff to NR. Hunters who've never bothered with AQ probably don't even remember they have it.

My thoughts...

..on Instances:

HFR is boring and easy.
BF is nice but a little too long at the start. Only the second boss is close to fun there.

Slave Pens is good fun. The second boss is the better of the three, the first one being boring and the last one beign typical. Not worth doing gain that much though.
Underbog I really like. Looking forward to doing it in Heroic mode as I have no reason to go back for now. The Hydra race is fun and the other bosses have some nice variety. Some of the trash is annoying though.

Mana Tombs is the trickiest instance I've seen so far. You need a good group otherwise your healers get ruined with the mana burn. I've tanked the first boss which was fun, half the fight being just me and a priest. The second guy is easy with two healers - I like that you have to work the placement. The last chap is a bit simple.
AC is good fun. Too much trash though. Waaay to much. First boss is great fun, though it's darn hard to move out of the traps in time with Aussie lag. Last boss is a snore.

Steam Vaults is really well done in terms of trash, but the boss fights are a bit simple.

Still havn't done Halls, Labs, Shattered Halls or any of the Keep. :(

...the Zones:

HF is a bunch of yawn. HFC is nice, but the rest is boring boring.
Zangarmarsh is good, but I got sick of the blue. It's also very annoying to get around while questing with all that water in the way.
Terrokkar is the best area in the game to date. The bone wastes are a bit typical (unless you've never visited the shimmering flats) but the forest has the most atmosphere and is just the most fun place in the game. The Skettis village on the eastern hills of the bones wastes is one of my favourite areas of the game.
Shattrath is a bit boring and empty.
Nagrand is nice; one of the few 'normal' places you get to spend time in as a non-tauren Horde player, it's also very nicely designed.
Blades Edge is great. Broken the zone up differently to the typical and it works really well.
Netherstorm is great too, though I think they could have make Stormspire a bit cooler.
Shadowmoon Valley... Blackrock Mountains - except green! Lame and lamer.

So, with the exceptions of HF and SM, the best designed zones in the game to date. Great fun!

One lesson they need to learn is mob spawns though. I'm sick of seeing random clumps of spawns just for the sake of it. They need to design the spawn zones in closer conjunction with zone design; I get sick of being in areas where mobs just seem to pop up for the sake of it. Zangar is probably the worst for this.

Visually I think Hellfire is one of the most boring ones (some places it rocks though..) but in terms of quests it's pretty close to the top.
Zangarmarsh was a nice break from HF but was a bit boring. I liked using Herbalism on the bog giants though.
Terokkar was really cool, visually, and in quests, especially the mana-bomb quest chain. Does this place remind anyone else of that forest deathmatch map in UT2004?
Nagrand is lots of fun as well although I hated the Nesingwary quests.. I think we were past straight-up 'kill 30 of x' quests ):
I haven't gotten a chance to do the rest, only 67 at the moment, but I'm almost done with Nagrand so I'll be hitting Blade's Edge soon.

Overall: improvement! Outlands are definitely not Azeroth; on the whole visually more interesting, more enjoyable quests, more interesting mobs.

Have a warlock tank Pandemonius.  Honestly, its much easier for everyone that way.

It's easier if a Warrior or Druids tanks it. That spell reflect really sucks (Spell delay, and my spells HURT). It's really just about HP, so Warlocks can do it and I've done it - but it's not any easier that way.

I love Spell Reflection on mobs.  It really forces people to pay some fucking attention.

Having one of our mages fry himself for 2600 was so funny I almost died myself.

Pandemonius is easyish to tank as affliction. The shield doesn't reflect damage from DOTs [including drain life if you started channeling it before the shield]. The only gotcha is the aoe shadow knockback, and the possible need to use demon armor for +sr instead of fel armor for +heal.


-- Z.

Alright, so I managed to catass my way to 70.

Immediately dropped what I was doing and got down to Shadowmoon Valley to buy my flying mount. The non-epic one is really, really slow. Non-epic-ground-mount-that-can-fly-in-the-air type of speed. But, you can get on all manner of cliffs. My favorite use for it so far is on the towers in Terrokar Forest. When the 6 hour hits, and the tower PvP starts, you can fly to the top of the tower and land on it, and you still count as capturing the tower from up there. You need to be physically on the ground, though. You can't hover near it to capture it.

Started my Kharazan key quest line. My guild has already dropped a couple of bosses in there, so I figured I'd catch up. Did the quests around Kharazan, and now I'm on the 'do every level 70 5-man' part, so I ran Shadow Labs last night.

Pretty straightforward, nothing too crazy (for a Tier 3-laden guild). The boss dropped my Tidefury Kilt (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27909), which is one of the new 'set' armors for Shamans in the level 70 5-man instances. Think of it like the old 5-man instance gear (Valor, Devout, Elements, etc.), but upgraded to be in line with the rest of the new gear. It's pretty much just stam/int/mana per 5/damage/healing. Which is fantastic, since I'm an Elemental/Restoration build.

Some of the encounters in the dungeon were like mini versions of previous gimmicks from 40 man instances. Such as the third fight in the Shadow Labs, which reminded me a lot of Kel'Thuzad's phase 1 in Naxx. You gotta kill these voidwalkers that are spawning and slowly walking towards the middle where the boss is being tanked, or they blow up and do a crapload of damage. Somewhat gimmicky fight, but still fun.

Anyways, on to more PvP (hopefully!) and catassery.

Yes, indeed they do.    Alliance doesn't have any poop quests before BC, but there's been two so far.  The Cenarion Outpost has you collecting Bog Lord's "Discarded Nutrients" to find out why they're eating the sporelings.   Well, that's poop, folks.   Then, as you mentioned the poop quest in Nagrand.  I'm fully expecting to have to collect demon crap in Shadowmoon Valley or somesuch.

As for the 'grossness' of the cherries.  People pay hundreds of dollars for coffee that's made out of berries that come from cat shit.  I suppose if cats pooping coffee seeds makes them taste better, cherries from gazelle dung can make you breathe underwater.

I've made my way to 68, then proceeded to have a blow-out with my guildleaders. Yay asshats.  Now that the wife and I are guildless I find I haven't  had much incentive to level. I can speak of the next two zones for y'all though.

Blade's Edge -  Interesting little zone, with some nice quests that were a little different that the usual "go kill this."  Getting ogres drunk was much fun.   Toshly's Station became one of my favorite places in the game for the various sci-fi references it makes as well as the more original quests.   There's also several 'found object' quests here, IIRC.   I can recall at least 2.   

The end part of the zone really is a pain in the ass.  The Dragon Cultist cave is buggy and has LOS issues with the Dragonwhelps that cause them to aggro you, then either nuke from afar, or run to catch you and bring half the cave.  Some of the quest drops off these guys suck as well, and the respawn was way way too quick for my wife and I to duo back to kill the boss dude.  I'm not sure if that's just the dynamic respawn timer or if that area is just buggy.


Shadowmoon  -
This place is quickly becoming my least favorite area.  It's bleak, it's desolate, there's lots of trash that stuns you and wanders across roads.  It was clearly designed with people who can fly in mind, and since I can't yet, the whole zone sucketh.   I'm only a few quests into the area and it's really killing my drive to go any further.  The best part about it has been that there's Scryer and Aldor faction drops here that are the next level-up, and mini-camps for both factions.  (Protip: If you're questing with someone who belongs to the opposite faction, make sure you don't run through the "green name" mobs and kill your partner.  Whoops.)

Actually, the poop sword* quest is Alliance, too. (Long chain, the final one of which is called something like "You are Rakh'lik, Demon").  You get it from the same fallen hero of the Horde.

*"Azsharite Felbane" Sword/mace/hammer/sickle/brass knuckles/whatever

Sounds like the last boss in Gnomer, actually. Bombs drop out and waddle towards the middle where you're fighting the boss.

I've been going zone by zone, without doing the tourism thing except for a quick trip to Nagram (on a quest).  Completed Hellfire (except instances) before Zangarmarsh, Zangar before Terokkar (where I am now). 

I have no favorite zone.  I like them all.  I haven't not liked any of them.  I've gotten a little tired of them by the time I've finished the quests, maybe, but there's nothing like going into a zone for the very first time and looking around.  It's one of the best parts of playing mmos, in my opinion.

Nagram kind of reminds me of the Barrens only green with deeper chasms.  But then, I liked Barrens - not how the quests were all spread out, but I like the way it looks.  African savannah.

The art in WoW is great.  Cartoony, but not in a cheap way.  Cartoony in a old school Disney way (Sleeping Beauty, not Hercules).

Not quite - you can hit the buttons to stop the bombs from falling in Gnomer, whereas you're forced to kill the voidwalkers on this fight (same with the Kel'Thuzad fight - you're forced to kill skeletons, wraiths, and abominations before they make it to the middle, where your 40 man raid is clustered).

Also, the voidwalkers can turn a good attempt into a wipe amazingly quickly.

For the record, by the way, Nagarand = Space Mulgore. I helped coin the phrase circa beta. (http://www.thenonentity.com/?p=29)

Actuallyu, i dont think the Discarded Nutriment is poop.  Could be wrong, but from the description on it, it sounded more like shrooms the boglords picked up and went "Bleh, im not eating this crap" and tossed away again.

If your group is light on dps and you take too long to kill the boss that pace picks up horrendously, until they are coming faster than you can kill them.

Fel Armor.  20% more healing on the warlock (up to 26% with Daemonic Aegis).  Makes the 2k less hp than I have compared with the bear not a big a deal.  Also Shadow Ward for another 900 or so less damage every 30 seconds.

I do beleive that some of the damage is mitigateable by armor though. If I'm wrong on that then yeah, it's easiest with a Demo/Affliction lock. SL Felguard/Felhunter (out of range of the volley) + Felarmor and Shdow Ward is easy. Destro will probably be more annoying to hold aggro w/o the super dots and drain.

It's all shadow. I parsed the logs, "Pandemonius hits you for 1000 shadow damage"... our lv66 druid tank was getting chewed up like crazy. He then threw on a few green SR pieces we've found (cloth, leather, doesn't matter) and the fight went a heck of a lot smoother. C'mon blizz, we all love gimmicky boss fights, but no resist gearchecks in leveling dungeons please. :p

The only thing that kinda annoyed me in mana tombs was that freaking AOE manaburn that seems to be random target and have a 40+ yd range. It didn't hurt me, but we had a pally, a priest, a mage and a druid tank.. not exactly the best group makeup. With a rogue or hunter it's probably a LOT easier. It didn't cause any wipes or anything, but having to drink after every pull made me a bit stabby. Oh yeah, and the last boss isn't too affliction-friendly, with the need to burn down adds crazy quick (fear kiting works... on one add, but not the beacons themselves).

Just did some lv70 instances a few days ago.. and rule #1 of seed of corruption is, you do NOT talk about seed of corruption. ;) Seriously, that thing is due for a nerf once people see what it's capable of (10+k dps? yes plz). They'll probably add a cooldown or something.


-- Z.

I just had the priest throw Shadow Resist on everyone, and it went much better. I was able to heal the fight and let the priest shadow DPS.

Well, shadow reflect buff goes without saying. I also used shadow ward whenever it was up... but the druid tank was still taking crazy damage. Warrior'd probably fare better with spellresist and whatnot. Just sayin'.


-- Z.

Well, like the weakling I am, I resubbed and the expansion.  So far I've got to say I'm really enjoying it.  Got my Orc Hunter retagged with my former (very) casual guild on Earthen Ring.  Almost at 62; I level pretty slow.

Hellfire Ramparts was really fun.  Not dragged out with cockblocking yard trash, and the final boss was really fun to do the first time.  It took us 3 tries to knock him down; that's a good challenge and very satisfying when you finally pwn him.  Even on a second run it wasn't just a gimme.  That's the only instance I've done so far.  Maybe it was challenging because I suck; but I liked it nonetheless.

I've been sticking to Hellfire trying to do all the quests before I move on. But I think I'll go on a little tour and try to get to the city where I can bank.

Chances are I'm at least sticking around until 70 and as long as I find the 5-10 man instances entertaining. Raids can DIAF but I'm they couldn't be worse than pre-expansion raiding.

Any decent spoilers on that city where you have to pick a faction?  Or is there really no wrong answer?

You get different items based on which one you pick.

A good comparison is http://www.wowwiki.com/Comparison_of_Aldor_and_Scryer_rewards - they're both pretty good, either way.

Bah.  I unsubbed from WoW in late November to study for my exams (it worked...3 As and a B+ yay!) but now the WoW bug has resurged and I want BC.  Only problem is my diskdrive conked out and won't open.  Is it possible to buy this and download it online?

I haven't seen it digitally anywhere yet, but I haven't looked too terribly hard, either. If you find it, let me know.

I'm a European playing on a US server... since I didn't feel like waiting 2 weeks for snailmail, I had to download the US client from a certain well-known torrent site [yarr!], and it's worked fine. No keyloggers or anything. :P


-- Z.

Have you tried sticking a needle in the little needle sized hole on the front of the drive? Mine gets stubborn like that but sticking in the needle pops the door open right away and then it's good for another few weeks.

On the offchance you didn't see in the other thread:

So I hit 70 last night.  The base flying mount feels slow as hell, but seeing as I have only 800g to my name now it'll have to do for a bit.  I reccommend everyone do instances as much as you can so you're hitting 70 about as soon as you're done with Blade's Edge Mountains for 2 reasons.

1)  Flying makes Shadowmoon MUCH simpler.  No damn pigs w/ stun to deal with, and no "crap I have to run around that mountain AGAIN" for quest completions.

2) The quests I still have there will pay me between 10 and 22 gold per completion.  Thinking about how many quests I've done while in SM, and all the quests I've yet to do in Netherstorm.. that's a lot of cash.

Or, be a druid  :-D  Even though its not usable in combat, an instant form is still a slight pvp advantage over a 3 second windup.  We've all been in those situations where our draw distance suddenly rubberbands and three gankers on horseback are 10 feet from us.

Just wanted to add that I am greatly enjoying BC, and they really put in the little touches that matter.  The bombing missions in Hellfire Peninsula were great.  After that, I did a quest that ended up with me in a complex full of Alliance ghosts (Expedition Armory).  When I pacified the head ghost commander, a bunch of other ghosts appeared and bowed to me in thanks.  That was neat enough, but when all the solemn ghosts faded away one stayed a few more seconds and waved playfully at me. 

One waving NPC may not sound like much but it is the little things that matter.  People can bitch and moan about WoW/Microsoft/Starbucks etc. being bad, discouraging innovation, etc., but the bottom line is that WoW doesn't succeed because of Satanic bargains/finding indie programmers and breaking their legs or whatever.  They just have a damn nice product.

Did the Mana-Tombs twice in a row. Level 65 now. Mana-Tombs is really fun but god if the trash isn't annoying. I got my tank shield off Pandemonius (who was pitifully easy), and my guildies all got upgrades. That escort quest is a bitch.

I just got a Draenae to 20 -- did the whole starting area. A few things that stuck out:

1) I took a quest off a wanted poster. When I completed it, I happened to notice the poster was still clickable (wasn't the case before, I don't believe). Clicking gets you something like "The wanted poster for X has been scratched out, with the message 'The vile criminal Y has been brought to justice by the valiant efforst of Y (me)'. It continues to extoll your virtues at some length".
2) When you beat the main boss at the end of the Dranae area, you get the usual "All Hail Player Y, Who Is Every So Freaking Awesome and Has Saved Us All" (pretty much every zone). What was new? When you walk out of the building after turning it in, every NPC you'd taken a quest from in the whole zone was lined up outside cheering you. From the chick I took a fishing quest from when I first hit Azuremist, to the injured priestess I healed, up to the Stillpine guys I'd worked for a bit. (Heck, I even clicked on the cook and bought a recipe for him right there).

There were several more -- but those two were "hey, cool!" moments. It's amazing how much polish -- little touches -- Blizzard's added with this expansion. Makes me wonder what the original game would be like if they had the chance to do it all over again.

They're really fucking over most other MMORPGs with this whole "quality" thing. :)

Are you implying Starbucks has good coffee?

I like Starbucks coffee, though not as much as my home brewed.  I even buy some of their coffee beans, although Wholefoods has better. 

I'm 69 and I've done 1 quest in Blade's Edge.  I intend to, later this week when I have some decent rested xp, grind most if not all of my last level on water elementals (damn you frozen netherweave set).  Think it'll be worth it when it comes time to fly through Blade's Edge, Shadowmoon and Netherstorm? :)

Mostly noticeable in Shadowmoon. Blade's and Nether have three FPs each and less back and forth with the questing.

There are some zones later on where simply the act of doing a quest changes the way other mobs react to you. After doing a long-ish questline in blade's edge, the formerly aggro trees would turn yellow (still attackable, but not aggro), ditto with the ghost wizards in Netherstorm after you "put them to rest".

Edit: Obligatory QQ for the day -- I dueled a lv70 hunter yesterday, after I saw him completely obliterate a l70 feral druid. 2.6k multishot crits on the druid's bearform armor... I dunno how much he was hitting my clothie ass for, but I definitely I died waaay too fast.


-- Z.

That's my main gripe with the expansion.  I tend to max out my alts a lot (like, I fill all the available alt slots, not that I get them all to max level, I mean), and while the new content is extremely solid, the old content is untouched.  Want to play a Dwarf?  No cookie for you.  Troll?  Same deal.  Blood elf?  Enjoy this ludicrously polished newbie zone for about three days, and then it's back to the Arathi Highlands for the next month.  The new content is only available at the extreme high and extreme low end of the game, and there's a really big "middle" that hasn't been improved much since the game launched.  Would have been nice to have some new 30-40 or 40-50 zone somewhere.

Aside from that, though, I'm loving it.  I haven't stepped through the portal yet (my only 60 is a tauren Shaman in level 30-something greens, so I doubt he'd survive), but the newbie zones are amazing. The Blood Elf zone seems to have just this ludicrously optimized quest layout, where I'll head out to some place to do some quest and on the way I'll find some new quests to do there, or I'll spot the objective to another quest just off the road, or something like that, so I'm often doing two or three quests at once, and they're all fairly quick and fun (minus the occasional overcrowded boss spawn).  Levelling seems way quicker than with other lowbie zones (just casually messing around for two days and I'm already level fourteen), cash seems way more abundant (I can actually afford vendor armor, weapons, and the like without having to stall my training), and bags drop very frequently.  I'm not as far in the Dranei zone, but it seems slightly less optimized, fewer bags, et cetera, but it's got more of a story than the Blood Elf area.  They almost seem like they're done by different teams, to me.  The art seems much better, now, too; the gripes I had with the old character models are mostly fixed with the new ones, and the visual design of the zones is amazing.

I muled my Shaman 5 gold when I made him. He's currently sitting at about 6 gold, and he's level 20 and fully trained. (Including jewelcrafting) and has bought a lot of recipes.

For the record, Ghost Wolf is ludicrously nice. I'm about to move to Ashenvale (never really done that area -- always moved to either Menithil or Lakeshire), but figured I'd do the run to IF and SW since I was in Auberdine. With Ghost Wolf, the run was painless. I hit the flight points at Menethil, IF, Thelemmsar, SW, Lakeshire, Duskwood, and Sentinel Hill and about four full stacks of copper for my jewelcrafting.

Ghost Wolf form would make the Darkshore quests tolerable (that zone design is godawful). 40% speed boost at level 20 is just ridiculous.

One of the big reasons I liked alt'ing my druid.  Travelform at 20 for 40% increase.

You get travel form at 30.  Cat form at 20.

I think Hunters get Cheetah at 30 as well (might be 20) -- but they have a stun if damaged. (Which is there to make it more difficult to kite using Cheetah -- I wish they'd have a talent or advanced version that lowered the stun chance). Is Druid travelform 40%? I know Cheetah is only 30%.

I always wondered why Shamans got a 40% speed boost at 20, not 30.

Just to muddy the waters some more:
Hunters' Cheetah is at 20.  Feral Druids can get a 20% increase from feral swiftness (used to be called feline swiftness) only usable outdoors.  Travel form is 40% IIRC - not as fast as a mount, but pretty fast, and usable in combat.  Also, only usable outside.

edit: 40%, not 30%.  Mount is 60%.

Yeah, as I typed that I couldn't remember for sure.  Now I do remember.  I got that talent that boosted the cat's speed up to like 30% which was pretty nice between 20 and 30.  I was loving it.

The more I play around with Force of Nature (the treants) the more I like it.  It is simply awesome in 1v1 or small encounter pvp.  By far its best feature is appearing right on top of your enemy.  I've successfully attacked two person groups myself because I set the trees on the healer and then kill their low-hp partner.  I've seen the trees alone kill mages from half health because they didn't know wtf was going on.  People either have to 1) stop and deal with them, wasting valuable time, or 2) chase me and have a nasty, nondispellable DOT going.

I'm hard pressed at this point to think of a better class/spec for solo pvp (ie, you are questing or grinding and just happen to see a target).  Heals, stealth, pets, and near-mage like burst DPS.  I still haven't figured out how to deal well with the healing classes, but when I get my Poultryizer that will give me a quick CS (and 15 sec of no casting spells, although damage can break it).   

What happens when yer low on mana? Personally I've always liked grouping w/ Druids, and fighting druids because of all the things they do.  As an enhancement shaman I LOVE grouping w/ leader of the pack or moonkin druids, +crit melee, or stormstrike + nature spells.

If I am in 1v1 pvp and realize I am too low on mana, I utilize the druid's other talent: running.

When fighting a melee class, can you root them and innervate yourself?

MOONFIRE is always the answer.

My next alt will probably be a druid, Taurens be damned!  Feral up the ass, maybe try tree of life healing for stint.

Go play Dark Age for a bit if you're really worried about the run speed perception.  You'll come back feeling like a Ferrari. 

I'd also like to humbly request that you name your druid, "Morecowbell".  There needs to be more of us.

I was just thinking this thread was missing something...


DING

Hasselhoof if it's not taken.

Paxxandu since all my other chars on this server are Paxx something.

Or, Colonel Angus.

Hasselhoof (http://hasselhoof.livejournal.com/) was my server's only internet celebrity [well ok, not really :P].


-- Z.

So, I finally got a character to 58 so I could go through the Dark Portal. Holy CRAP. The Fel Reavers look awesome, and the quest rewards and loot drops are sick. And I have only been on Hellfire for a couple of hours. I can see now why all the people who were 60 forever and raided for loot feel like they wasted their time now  :evil:

As a catass - I demand respect!

Gratz mate - have fun.  My favorite zone overall was Zangarmarsh - maybe it's the biologist in me :)

Fetish confession:  everyone once in awhile - I love jumping into the Abyss.  I have this hope that my dead avatar might find the "bottom" - but it's fun watching my avatar vanish into a tiny spec as I hurdle into the void  8-)