Gnome and troll events have begun.

[WindupAtheist]

1) NPC mail telling me the reclamation of Gnomeregan has begun! Oh boy, new content!

2) Go to Ironforge, do a few simple quests that lead me to meeting the gnome leader in the field.

3) The gnome leader isn't here right now, please wait for this giant scripted event ala the final battle of the DK starter zone to end and reset.

4) Wait.

5) Wait.

6) Wait.

7) /abandon

8) /hearth

[lesion]

Not gonna lie, I'm considering a re-sub.

[Lakov_Sanite]

5min timers, oh god the humanity.

[SurfD]

Sort of dissapointed, was hopeing for the rumored Overcloak reward, just got a shittyass common type cloak with 48 armor and no stats that has a nifty looking model.  Nice little rp event though (similar to the Battle for Undercity).

[WindupAtheist]

Got dragged back to it by a guildie a little later. Gnome king dude was there this time.

Ten minutes of zero-consquence combat with god mode turned on, in an event scripted to function perfectly well even without any players helping. Exactly like the DK questline finale and the Battle for Undercity, minus any meaningful quest rewards or lore/story impact anyone might possibly ever care about.

"Hey let's take back Gnomer! Whoops we failed, here's a cloak you'll never wear! (Psst, we were establishing a new starter area for gnomes in Cata here, not a new capital. We were never really gonna reclaim the whole place!) Yeah enjoy the cloak!"

I mean it's nice that they took the time, I guess. I hope they put at least as much effort into explaining why everyone goes back in time to fight Illidan and then the Lich King from levels 58-80 in their new post-Arthas cataclysm world.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Trolls > gnomes


fuck gnomes.

[Lantyssa]

Did they really spend more effort hyping it than they put in to the actual quests?

[Morat20]

Did they really spend more effort hyping it than they put in to the actual quests?

I dunno. I mean, it feels that way -- but if you think about what they had to do....they probably had to do a lot of single-use only work to get the flying part to work (fucking with skyboxes, mostly) since 'it looks right from the air' doesn't work in the Old World. I don't know if any work had to go in to get vehicles to work, but I'd imagine they had to basically redo the depot area to handle it and skybox in the flight path.

Other than that, no, not a lot of work. :)

[SurfD]

There is a decent amount of phazing going on during the Troll event.  Since all that stuff that is happening on the islands is phazed for each step, as well as being seperated entirely from the normal quests the level 5-10's are running.

[Shrike]

Saw this last night. Some guildies had actually stayed up until the wee hours  to do it. Never got around to it myself (Lair of the Shadowbroker had a singulairity grade attraction to me after dailys were done). Perhaps tonight or tomorrow I'll get my DK and shaman through it.

I figure I've got a month or two to get my 80s through it. Considering the antipathy draenei have towards gnomes, no one is in any hurry to help out. My night elf warrior hates Gnomer. Bigtime. Spent way too much time in that hellhole back in the day.

[Ingmar]

The gnome event has some phasing too. If you're just looking at the surface level of quest writing, etc., no, it doesn't seem like these were a big effort, but once you factor in adding the phasing, flight paths, etc., that they're just going to turn around and throw out when Cataclysm hits, I think there was a fair amount of technical whatnot going on behind the scenes. Plus it is the sort of non-reusable content that the people in charge of the purse strings tend to hate at most companies.

I would guess it was probably a fair sight more work to implement than any of the prior pre-expansion events overall, and this is allegedly just the first of a few that Cataclysm is going to have.

As far as nobody caring about the lore side of it, eh. I know some gnomes who are pretty happy.

[Rendakor]

Does this end with the new capital cities unlocked, or is that still to come?

[Ingmar]

That won't come until the expansion, and calling them capital cities is a bit of an exaggeration. They're not going to be full Ironforge-style affairs. More like just new starter towns.

[Lakov_Sanite]

From what I've seen the troll village will be pretty impressive but it all depends on if they add banks/ah to them.

[Rendakor]

Oh, they don't have banks and auction houses? I was under the impression that they were going to be full featured cities ala Org, UC, etc. and not just glorified starting zones.

[K9]

It doesn't sound any more or less impressive than the other pre-expansion events.

Opening of the dark portal was utterly dull, although the doom lord in Stormwind was  

The scourge invasion was just fucking annoying

[Lakov_Sanite]

The scourge invasion was just fucking Awesome

[Slyfeind]

I was excited when I saw that in my mailbox. This is all good to know. Not gonna bother with it then.

[WindupAtheist]

The gnomes and trolls are getting their own Northshire Abbey, not their own Stormwind, if you get the idea.

Anyway, the zombie event prior to WOTLK was fucking awesome. The way it, the recycled "necropoli over random zones" event, and the Halloween stuff all ran at once and blended together was brilliant. Nothing like leaving zombie-infested Stormwind to find the Headless Horseman burning down Goldshire. Really gave the impression that shit was hitting the fan.

[Morat20]

I was excited when I saw that in my mailbox. This is all good to know. Not gonna bother with it then.

Hey, you get an awesome-but-useless cloak and an item that turns you into a gnome-in-a-diving-helmet for 30 minutes, with a 4 hour cooldown. Plus, all told, about 50 gold. :)

Although it was amusing to ride out of Ironforge with 5 gnomes on mechanical chickens riding with me.

[Mrbloodworth]

Is this how the world ends?

[Morat20]

Is this how the world ends?

It is too late for the pebbles to vote.

[Draegan]

I took back Gnomer 6 years ago at level 30 or something.

[Simond]

Nah, that was a coconut
Wait, that's the troll storyline. 

tl;dr version - do you have half an hour to kill before Cataclysm hits and want a shapeshift trinket, useless but pretty cloak and a feat of strength while watching Vol'jin, a troll druid and Baron Samedi kick the shit out of Zalazane/watching Mekkatorque get chased out of Gnomeregan again?

Then do the event. If not, don't.

[apocrypha]

Gnomeregan event is bugged to fuckery btw. High Tinker Twatatorque routinely just stops at the top of the tunnel into Gnomeregan and does nothing... for about 5 minutes and then it resets and loads of 80 elites spawn and kill everyone there, all of whom no longer have the LOLInvincible buff.

Waste of time, x100.

[Azazel]

I saw it running yesterday, but I'll wait until the weekend to do it. Clearly my gnomes need to be able to shapeshift into gnomes!

 

[Merusk]

Fuck a cloak, it should have been a tabard.

[Slyfeind]

Nah, that was a coconut
Wait, that's the troll storyline. 

tl;dr version - do you have half an hour to kill before Cataclysm hits and want a shapeshift trinket, useless but pretty cloak and a feat of strength while watching Vol'jin, a troll druid and Baron Samedi kick the shit out of Zalazane/watching Mekkatorque get chased out of Gnomeregan again?

Then do the event. If not, don't.

Ooo. Feat of strength? k, DAMMIT.

[Sjofn]

The scourge invasion was just fucking Awesome

I did the run up quests to the taking back of Gnomeregan on my level 44 gnome rogue, it was nice XP.    She can't do the actually taking back part though, which made me a little sad. Part of me feels like if they're going to do the lolinvincible buff, why NOT let the little guys do it too?

[WindupAtheist]

Fuck a cloak, it should have been a tabard.

It was supposed to be an overcloak, but Blizz has unceremoniously scrapped that idea because any sort of appearance customization is bad. (Link)

http://It is true that the cloak rewards had overcloak functionality when these events were up on the public test realms some months back. In the end we decided that implementing the cloaks in such a way that players could aesthetically change the cloak they're wearing could set a bad precedent. We like customization and flavor items, but we don't want to start implementing aesthetic items in the game which allow players to look however they want while keeping all the stats they want. We felt the overcloaks were breaking that barrier a little too much.

Cue page after page of "WTF we can already HIDE our cloaks totally!" met by silence. I feel another bout of UO coming on.

[pxib]

I killed Zalazane when I was level 8. I got access to the magical world of Witch Doctor Bombay.The cloak sounds less impressive.

[Merusk]

Blizzard clueless about customization of appearances? Color me shocked!  If only LOTRO wasn't so goddamned boring... And visually bland.  And a different game. 

Meh! Fucking half-baked half-assed halfwit industry.

[Sjofn]

Seriously, their art people have got to be the biggest fucking crybaby prima donnas in the industry for Blizzard to be so constantly idiotic in this area.

[Ingmar]

It is half they don't want people to ignore the new art and half we-want-people-to-be-able-to-visually-ID-someone's-awesomeness-level, I think.

Oh well, that's what City of Heroes is for.

[Sjofn]

I don't need to have this argument again, but let us just say I find both of those reasons to be weak. More like excuses.