Cataclysm

[Azazel]

I sat down and figured out how to go through Alliance 1-58 with minimal overlap on 3 characters:

Dwarf/Gnome: Dun Morogh -> Loch Modan -> Wetlands -> Hinterlands -> WPL -> EPL -> Badlands -> Searing Gorge -> Burning Steppes -> Swamp of Sorrows -> Blasted Lands
Human: Elwynn -> Westfall -> Redridge -> Duskwood -> N. Stranglethorn -> Cape of Stranglethorn -> Dustwallow -> Thousand Needles -> Tanaris -> Un'Goro -> Silithus
Nelf/Draenei/Worgen: Teldrassil/Gilneas/Azuremyst -> Darkshore or Bloodmyst -> Ashenvale -> Stonetalon -> Desolace -> Feralas -> Thousand Needles ->  Felwood -> Winterspring

If I've got it right this gets you through 3 characters Old World leveling with only one zone repeat, although I think the Kalimdor character may finish around level 55 instead of 58-59ish. However if you aren't a quick leveler and thus accumulate some rest, have heirlooms, or do a few dungeons that will pretty much do it.

Nod. Doing a few dungeons will actually easily allow you to skip whole ranges of outdoor zones, so you can do them later on.

[Zetor]

I made the mistake of going to Vash'jir on my first chara (went to Hyjal on #2). All I'll say is: Stormwind Helms -- camp check!

How are Hyjal quests? I've just gotten to the point in Vash'jir where I harpooned down a bunch of fleeing naga, and so far it's been "ok" with some fun spots and some annoyances.

[caladein]

I hate Uldum with a burning passion.  Such a horrid zone.

[Lt.Dan]

I made the mistake of going to Vash'jir on my first chara (went to Hyjal on #2). All I'll say is: Stormwind Helms -- camp check!

The trick to questing in Vash'jir is to move away from all of the sheep-like player.  I had a lot of success doing those camp quests while others seemed to be quite happy to spawn camp.
I found:
Drowned soldiers seem to spawn regularly in the thick kelp - swim over to one and bubble and chances are you'll get there before anyone else.
The giblins, helms, axes, and breastplates were thoroughly camped but a short swim away from everyone else and behind a wreck and me and another guy shared six giblin spawns and about the same of the item spawns.
The chests for the S.E.A.L gear spawn inside the wrecked ships too.  Everyone else was spawn camping.  I swum into a wreck and got my 5 items almost immediately - three chests in the boat and one respawned on the way out.

After that it was much easier.

One other tip.  If you've got a DX11 graphics card you can enable DX11 through a command line toggle or through adding something to the config option file in the WTF directory.  Makes a big difference in performance.  Tomshardware has all the details.

[Cadaverine]

How are Hyjal quests?

I just finished Hyjal.  The quests are all really well done, except for a couple.  Somewhat early on, there's a quest to kill some named fire elemental, and loot his chest.  Spent like 20 minutes trying to be the first one to hit him.  There's other quests like that at the end of most of the hubs, but once I got further on, and the players were more spread out, it wasn't nearly as bad.  I might have had to wait one, or two minutes, tops.  There's another quest at the end that has you kill 4 flame aspirants, and there's maybe all of four places that one will spawn at, and unlike everything else, it's a good 4 or 5 minutes between spawns.  One of the last quests has you bombing mobs from the back of a dragon.  Except there were a number of others doing it at the same time, so it took forever to get the required 40 kills.

Once the rush dies down, the zone will be pretty fun, I think.  Though, most will hate the jousting quest, I imagine.

Took me about 7 hours to finish all the quests, and I went from 200 experience into 80, with no rest xp to a smidge into 82.

After I finished up there, I ended up going to Deepholm.  I can't imagine the other zones topping that one.  It's simply gorgeous.  The down side is that it's pretty small compared to Hyjal.

[K9]

I ran out of quests in Hyjal; I did the one to kill the Dragon lady and then flew back to the camp in the middle then.... nothing.

So I did some instances instead.

[Hawkbit]

Logged on to a 800 person queue on Earthen Ring.  suck.

[Minvaren]

Just took a peek in because I forgot to get Archaeology trained this morning...  and a ton of the people I'm seeing in Org are 82 or 84?   

[01101010]

Just took a peek in because I forgot to get Archaeology trained this morning...  and a ton of the people I'm seeing in Org are 82 or 84?   

I was on about 45min ago and a string of class realm first 85s came through. Druid, hunter, shaman, priest. It was sorta sad.

[Ratman_tf]

I got lost when I missed a breadcrumb quest and ventured past Kelp'thar. Is this what phasing is all about? The zones were pretty much empty, maybe a couple of mobs here and there. I had to go back and finish 1 or 2 quests to unlock the rest of the world.

Seems pretty daft way to set things up to me.

*ed* oh, except they don't phase the lone boss dudes, so everyone waits around trying to be the one who tags him for quest complete. 

[Threash]

Mobs come so fast it's almost impossible to leave sometimes.

[Sjofn]

goblin

I dinked around in the water zone for a few quests but now I'm kicking around doing archaeology. It's OK, I think I would enjoy it more if I was doing it alongside leveling as a random diversion, like how I do fishing.

[Abelian75]

goblin

I dinked around in the water zone for a few quests but now I'm kicking around doing archaeology. It's OK, I think I would enjoy it more if I was doing it alongside leveling as a random diversion, like how I do fishing.

Yeah, agreed on the archeology.  It definitely seems better as a little thing to mix things up while leveling rather than a long grind at max level.  It is really cool though to see an actual interactive profession in the game, though.  It reminds me of one of the skills from A Tale In The Desert back when I used to play years ago, though I forget which.  That's totally the direction I've been hoping crafting eventually goes in MMOs (not that I'm advocating ridiculously complex crafting for every game), so it makes me happy, simple as the "interactive" aspect of it may be.

It confused the hell out of me at first, though, because the first area I was surveying had tunnels and such, and it seems like it points you not in the absolute direction of the dig spot, but rather uses pathfinding to "walk" you there.  Like, if you're in cave system, it'll gradually lead you out of the cave, pointing in wildly different directions as you move through the tunnels.  I thought it was just going crazy at first.

[Selby]

My only serious complaint so far is that it takes so long to get a flight path that gets you back out of Vash'jir.  And that there are SO many people in that first section it's almost impossible to get things done without ninja'ing from everyone else.  Made 81 in a timely manner tonight, looks like the rest of the levels will be much longer.  We have people in the guild at 84 looking to make 85 tonight already.  I think that's just a bit nuts.

[Rendakor]

The dialog between the two goblin NPCs at the Zeppelin tower in Azshara is one of the funniest things I've seen in WoW.

[apocrypha]

Saying "Who wants to group to kill Namey McNamerson for This Bloody Quest?" when you're surrounded by 30 people all trying to tag the same mobs seems to be working really well on my server.

We're outnumbered roughly 3:1 by Alliance here and there's been loads of pvp flagged Alliance in all of the busy starting quest areas, hoping to get Horde to accidentally flag themselves so that they can gank us. Grouping up seemed to fix that - once our little group had stomped several lone/duo gankers quite soundly they started avoiding us. 

[Sjofn]

Hit 82 on my paladin and I'm still in this dang underwater zone. 

[caladein]

The general path is: get the first two levels in Vashj'ir, Hyjal, or Blackrock Caverns and then a level each in Deepholm, Uldum, and Twilight Highlands.  The experience requirements for each level scale up so much between 82/83 and 84/85 that the only zone you want to "out-level" but still finish up is Deepholm.

Partially because Deepholm is pretty awesome and Uldum... isn't (although it's probably okay if you're solo and like cutscenes) but also because you'll likely need the experience as you need to come pretty close to finishing Twilight Highlands to get 85 if you came in right around 84.

My main complaint about Uldum is that while it looks gorgeous, the quest design is just horrible.  There's tons of gathering quests that suck as a group and there's a lot of mini-game stuff (one of wihich we deemed Simba Wars) that's more than a little buggy and doesn't even spawn enough mobs the first go-round.  The worst thing though, are the cutscenes.  Every other quest for Harrison Jones seems to have one, and many across Uldum (and a few in Twilight Highlands) are "practically unskippable".  Sure, you can hit Escape and cancel it, but then you don't get quest credit, which you won't know about until you've already canceled out of it.



Edit: Grammar.

[DraconianOne]

Sounds like I'm going to love Uldum then!    (Being a largely solo player and someone who rarely skips cutscenes!)

From the sounds of the overcrowding, I'm glad I haven't got my copy yet. Then again, with Wrath, I spent a week kicking around the Outlands before heading to Northrend so I could quest in peace and without having to fight for spawns.

[Brogarn]

goblin

I started this up again to have something to do this winter. I have to hand it to Blizzard, they made Goblins awesome. Last night I was strapping fireworks to jungle chickens and disabling bomb-throwing Monkeys. I can't remember the last time I had this much silly fun in an MMO.

[Merusk]

Yeah, I've seen a lot of hate for cutscenes in general chat and I don't get it.   They're a nice addition and you'll only ever have to watch them once, take some time and enjoy 'em.

Oh, and the advice for the helms in Vash'jir should be macroed and spammed in that zone.  I figured it out after 3-4 mins of watching 10 people stand in the same area in front of the sunken boat, but it just kept coming up.  "WTF Blizzard where's the helms?!"    Ground spawns always seem to work that only x# will be active at one time.  If there's a 500yd x 500yd space they can spawn in and it seems like they're not spawning, it always pays to check the fringes.  Chances are there's x# spawned there and you'll be able to walk (swim) away with a complete while everyone else is camping the single spawn they think exists.

[Malakili]

I didn't really follow the beta, but can anyone tell me how they ended up implementing the underwater zone?

[Zetor]

Actually the design of the underwater zone is alright, IMO.

The first quest gives you a buff that allows you to breath water indefinitely and increases your walking speed while on the seabed by 60%; you can also swim freely (pretty much the equivalent of flight in other areas of the game), but it's slower. A few quests later you get a seahorse that massively increases your 'flying' (swim) speed, so getting around the zone isn't bad at all. Most of the quests/areas focus on the seabed level, but you always have the option to swim upwards if you want; you need to use the Z axis quite a bit when travelling between areas. There are a few questing areas that have multiple platforms on different elevations, which can be a bit unusual.

Mob aggro also seemed to be reasonable; mobs swimming around at higher elevations do aggro if you get near their level, but if you just walk around on the seabed, your foes will be pretty much limited to what you see around yourself. You can also see the shadows of mobs (players too, iirc?) that are "above" you.

About the helms: I eventually found a spot with 2 helm spawnpoints in range and got my 4 helms in 3 minutes (while killing the rapidly-respawning mobs for xp/loot). Doesn't make the design for that particular quest any less shitty, though...

[kildorn]

So far I'm liking it all (though D: at some of the bottleneck quests. Really? That fire dude and his chest? REALLY? Did you not stop to think how this would go on release week?), but I haven't hit Uldum yet.

Our LFD queue has a horrible lack of tanks, so I've been leveling my little DK instead of my priest, who is busy digging up random artifacts. So far Archeology is a Fishing that doesn't bore me to tears. The ilvl requirements to queue for certain instances have been screwing me, even if I did manage to get into the right range after most of Hyjal. That DK hasn't been played since Naxx, but my jawbone was AWESOME back then! <3

Also: the "must find instance entrance before queuing" thing is total bullshit. Not because the idea is bad, but because the instance entrances are in BUMBLEFUCK, and mean that the LFD queue is completely screwed up because half the possible players haven't been breadcrumbed far enough through to get there. At least Hyjal ports you to BRC quickly in the zone.

[Threash]

About the helms: I eventually found a spot with 2 helm spawnpoints in range and got my 4 helms in 3 minutes (while killing the rapidly-respawning mobs for xp/loot). Doesn't make the design for that particular quest any less shitty, though...

It has to be a bug, there is no reason why all the other parts are ground spawn/mob loot and the helms aren't.

[Dren]

Yeah, I've seen a lot of hate for cutscenes in general chat and I don't get it.   They're a nice addition and you'll only ever have to watch them once, take some time and enjoy 'em.

Normally I would agree, but I recently started a new undead character based on comments made here about how well done it is now (which I agree!)  While leveling my undead priest, I was subjected to multiple cutscenes.

I enjoyed the ones that told a story and were acted out well.  I was really annoyed at the ones that stopped everything just to give me a little "tour" of the surrounding area.  It really just comes down to the proper use of cutscenes.  I haven't had a chance to play since Cata release so I can't comment on how well done those are.

Yes, they aren't bad the one time you go through them on your char.  It is the 10th time you do it on your 10th alt (yes, that is how I roll,) that becomes a real pain.  I didn't try to "ESC" out of them though.  I assume you can.  Then it really isn't a big deal.

[Threash]

Well i just hearthed back to vashir and did not get my water breathing buff back, lovely.

[kildorn]

Well i just hearthed back to vashir and did not get my water breathing buff back, lovely.

I never saw it as a buff anywhere, I just got the "breathing" timer and it never went down.

However, this is probably just a sign that we should not meddle in the affairs of naga and giant octopii.

[Lantyssa]

Yeah, I've seen a lot of hate for cutscenes in general chat and I don't get it.   They're a nice addition and you'll only ever have to watch them once, take some time and enjoy 'em.

It slows down the progress to 85.

[Merusk]

So does questing.  If you've got that much of a hard on for L85, do the dungeon crawl thing in a group.  Guy who hit it first on my server had 12 hours played that way.

/irritable grump

[Numtini]

Really? I got summoned to heal last night before I'd even gotten to the new zones and it didn't seem nearly as fast as questing. (Of course I am using wow-pro's guided add-on.)

[kildorn]

Really? I got summoned to heal last night before I'd even gotten to the new zones and it didn't seem nearly as fast as questing. (Of course I am using wow-pro's guided add-on.)

It's fast if you have a solid group and compared to the cockblock fest outside with some quests.

It's a question of "okay xp constantly" and "good xp if only people stopped flying in and tagging this quest mob"

[Polysorbate80]

I'm not surprised the realm firsts came so quick.  I got 45% of the way to 81 just from exploring Twilight Highlands from dragonback and working archaeology up to 80-ish, without ever killing an xp-giving mob :P  Couldn't decide whether the Maw of Madness reminded me more of the Sarlacc or the Zerg Overmind...

Then I got bored and went swimming.  Other than the fact that every quest hub had about 8-12 horde and 1-3 alliance, with at least one jackass trying to force everyone to mis-click on him and get ganked, it weren't too shabby.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The people in my guild who are grinding dungeons make me go  since they are all gonna need to grind those quests to unlock faction vendors anyways. Someone in my guild got to 85 after 12hours of play and I stop and think, why? I mean there's not going to be any robust max level play until a few weeks in at least.

[lesion]

The dungeons so far I've found really fun, if still a bit too easy. I'm hoping heroics are as brutal as they sounded in beta.

Picked up a 2H with more than 400 DPS early on in Deepholm and it seems out of place. Everyone who can use axes: quest in Deepholm!