What's changed?

[Venkman]

Been five months since I've played. Logged back in to 23 quests I remember taking but not much else. Still in Shadowmoon Valley with the stuff to do there, and some Auchindon quests. Mages were da bomb back in March, but seems like Warlocks are all the rage now.

So, business as usual? There any new solo-friendly areas that have been added?

[caladein]

If you're 70, they two new factions with tons of Daily quests: Ogri'la and the Skyguard rep rewards: (Ogri'la and Skyguard). Both start by talking to an NPC in Shatt, by the flight master for Skyguard and by the Tailoring/LW trainers for Ogri'la.

The Skyguard stuff basically starts with some solo stuff and then you're sent off to Skettis in SE Terokkar, there isn't much "fun" to do there though. The Ogri'la stuff has about four quests that require 3-5 people to do before you actually get to go there, but once there, you can solo your way through. The dailys for Ogri'la are pretty unique, two of them are basically variations on kill X thing, but the other two are pretty unique: a Simon Says game (video) and a bombing run that has you dodge incoming fel cannon blasts (can't find a good video of it, but I actually have quite a bit of fun with it).

They also added in some quests for the Consortium, but it's just a metric ton of grinding.

If you're Horde, you may have missed out on the final Mag'har quest chain that is chock-full of lore fun. The early going is a hassle without a flying mount though.

[Azazel]

What are the consortium ones?

[caladein]

What are the consortium ones?

Starts off with Seek Out Ameer and continues on until you get to summon an optional boss in Heroic Mana-Tombs. The reason I said "metric ton of grinding" is that it is basically:

• Get Revered with Consortium, more or less. Your options are: Heroic Mana-Tombs, grinding Warbeads in Nagrand (not recommended unless you also want Mag'har/Kurenai rep), or grinding Insignias and Prison Keys / I.D. Tags (this combined method is your best bet).
• Once Revered, farm more Prison Keys to make an uber Key to free an even bigger 3- to 5-man nasty.
• That nasty will have a chance to drop a quest item that will send you off to Heroic Mana-Tombs. (You are Revered with Lower City, right? No? To Shadow Labs! Again!)
• Go out and grind another few uber-keys and pray that quest item drops again!
• Optional boss!
• Once you get Exalted you don't have to go through the whole uber Key grinding business whenever you want to summon Yor. Yay?

Compared to the Ogri'la/Skyguard stuff that is essentially:

• Easy money (the 5-man cockblock is at the beginning though :().
• No seriously, that's it, it's an easy 40-50g (up to 60g once Honored with Ogri'la) a day.

[Merusk]

• Easy money (the 5-man cockblock is at the beginning though :().
• No seriously, that's it, it's an easy 40-50g (up to 60g once Honored with Ogri'la) a day.

[/list]

However, there's almost always a few people shouting to kill the various Gronn in Blade's Edge.  It shouldn't take too long to find a group and get it done.  Even then  if you REALLY REALLY hate grouping, you can just hang out at the various Gronn sites until someone who has a group comes along and kills one.  The quest item doesn't drop on the corpse, it spawns on the ground so anyone can come along and clicky-complete once the Gronn is dead.

Then there's also the various Dragonmaw dailies you can do if you've got your epic flight and have done the quest to get neutral with them in Shadowmoon.  When I was rep-grinding there I made ~120g a day off of quests and item drops.   It took me a few hours to get it all done, but I built-up the 2k I needed to pay-back to my wife in short order.

The stabby-twist to WoW is it's a pain in the ass to farm that 5k you need to get an epic flyer.. but once you have it the gold get a lot easier to obtain.  Not to mention some quests get a lot easier to take-on.  Both bombing runs for Skyguard and the netherray wrangling, for example.  My wife struggled with them when on that slow-ass 60% flight mount.  Now they're a breeze because she can out-fly the stuff that was giving her problems.

[Fabricated]

Been five months since I've played. Logged back in to 23 quests I remember taking but not much else. Still in Shadowmoon Valley with the stuff to do there, and some Auchindon quests. Mages were da bomb back in March, but seems like Warlocks are all the rage now.

So, business as usual? There any new solo-friendly areas that have been added?

Warlocks are stupidly overpowered right at the moment in PvP and are currently the flavor of the month in terms of classes. They'll probably receive a good hit with the nerf bat at some point. Everyone still likes a water vendor and sheeper in the group though.

The Ogri'la and Skyguard stuff is a pretty horrific rep grind if you're gunning for the rep rewards and a decent way of getting gold if you just want something to do.

Heroics have been made playable in the 5 months you've been gone though. Changes in glancing blow mechanics, removal of the stupid sweeping strike/360 degree cleaves from mobs, and 90% of the heroics getting a good hard whack with the nerf bat have rendered them survivable with a decent group. Just get revered with all those factions and you've got some challenging (but not brutally unfair like before) runs you can do for lots of nice equipment and a smattering of pretty good epics.

Also, IIRC you may have missed the 2.1 patch. All level 70 epics were given a good bump in item levels, so Heroic/Karazhan epics are actually upgrades now from the better blues, where some were barely sidegrades (or downgrades) before. Lots of heroic items were totally changed to make them actually useful.

[Venkman]

Thanks all. Sounds like I'll be making some trips to Terrokar once I hit 70 (currently 69.5)