Patch 4.2: Firelands Now Live!

[Rendakor]

Figured we could use a new thread to discuss all the new stuff.

We just finished Thrall's questline; it was pretty easy, all the quest mobs involved counted for everyone regardless of who 'tagged' them. Took about an hour to do, and the reward is a 365 ilvl cloak.

I also started the new dailies, although you can't get very far; only 12 marks can be earned at first, and you need 20 to advance to phase 2.

[Ingmar]

I had read you would take 3 days to hit phase 2 but it sounds like you can actually manage it in 2.

[Rendakor]

I don't think so, some of the marks are earned from non-dailies; you can only earn 4/day from the phase 1 dailies.

[Paelos]

So what's the deal with the new dailies? How do they work and what do they do?

[Ingmar]

I don't think so, some of the marks are earned from non-dailies; you can only earn 4/day from the phase 1 dailies.

Ah, yeah, gotcha.

Paelos:

Think Isle of Quel'Danas, except the progression through the phases is personal rather than server-wide.

[Paelos]

I see, so there are big epic rewards at the top of the hill then?

[Ingmar]

Yeah, summary:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2320-Patch-4.2-Firelands-Daily-Quests-Marks-of-the-World-Trees-Rewards-MMO-Report-Comics

That doesn't include stuff like the cloak reward Rendakor mentions, I don't know if there is any other stuff like that where it directly rewards you from a quest without doing the token unlock stuff.

[Nevermore]

Go'el?  Since when is Thrall from Krypton? 

[Paelos]

The rewards seem pretty nice. Certainly for tanking you get ring/trinket/craftable sword/wrist. I could also make a case for the belt if you reforged the haste to parry as a pretty great upgrade over previous stuff.

[Ingmar]

2 rings, even!

One little negative, is there is a pair of higher level bracers from VP this time around, and also another tanking ring. Always a little annoying when they double up like that.

[caladein]

That doesn't include stuff like the cloak reward Rendakor mentions, I don't know if there is any other stuff like that where it directly rewards you from a quest without doing the token unlock stuff.

I think that's all judging from this search http://www.wowhead.com/items?filter=minle=365;maxle=391;cr=82:161:18;crs=3:1:1;crv=40200:0:0

Thankfully, the Agility cloak isn't amazingly itemized so I can skip grabbing it until later tonight.

[Ingmar]

Now I have to decide if I want the tanking cloak or the fury cloak...

EDIT:

Under the additional rewards category, there's a new hippogriff mount for completing the associated meta-achievement:

http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=5866

[Sjofn]

The dungeon journal thing is neat. It should've been ready to go at release, but at least it's in now for TEH FUTURE.

[caladein]

You mean like this expansion's release or six-years-ago release?  I'd agree with both actually, but I think my opinion on the latter (at the time) had it even been suggested would have caused me to be burned at the stake.

[Ingmar]

Hoping they expand it a la the similar feature WAR had.

[Sjofn]

You mean like this expansion's release or six-years-ago release?  I'd agree with both actually, but I think my opinion on the latter (at the time) had it even been suggested would have caused me to be burned at the stake.

I meant expansion release, but earlier in the game's life would've been nice, too.

[Rendakor]

Took my alt into our sister guild's FL raid tonite; my own guild's run is later. First impressions:

-Holy fuck wayyyyyyy too much trash. Like, tons and tons, and all of it is incredibly annoying. More trash than any other raid current or from LK.
-Lord Rhyolith is obnoxious; the turning mechanic seems very sluggish to respond, even with 3 people focusing exclusively on legs. The adds were going down fine, but the boss kept running into the magma and wtfpwning us.
-Shannox doesn't seem too bad, the only real PITA about him is that he's taunt immune.  Got a few more tries on him with this group, hope we get him down.

[caladein]

The trash isn't so bad once you actually pick a direction to go, at least in our case.  Staying down the road is just asking to get feared into things or pulling a boss.  Rhyolith does have the turning circle of a moon though .

[Rendakor]

Shannox didn't happen with my friend's guild, then we had 2 ppl bail during our run so all we did was grind trash to friendly. Got 2 BOEs and 3 patterns though, and grabbed another BOE cheap off the AH.

[Merusk]

Much, much whining in general last night after I compared this to ToC.  Many folks were asking "can I only get 12 today?" so I responded, "Yes, it's gated and you can only get a certain number per day to draw it out, like ToC."  *general wtf Blizzard whines ensued*   It's like the people hadn't made that connection previously. I don't get it.

[Paelos]

YOU MEAN WE WAITED AROUND FOR ANOTHER TOC??? OH NOES!

[Lakov_Sanite]

Silly me, thinking I'd do vash''jir instead of hyjal on my deathknight.  Took me three hours of bullshit level 80 quests to be able to do the new dailies for 10min.

[Merusk]

Yeah, that's one I can agree with whole-heartedly.  I was worried I'd taken off from the zone too soon to be able to on the pally (I didn't complete the zone), but so long as you got the Tauren Druid dude unlocked at Malorne's shrine you're good.  However, I never touched the zone at all on the priest and DK so I'm irritated I now have to.

[caladein]

Much, much whining in general last night after I compared this to ToC.  Many folks were asking "can I only get 12 today?" so I responded, "Yes, it's gated and you can only get a certain number per day to draw it out, like ToC."  *general wtf Blizzard whines ensued*   It's like the people hadn't made that connection previously. I don't get it.

Anyway, Firelands.  Lord Rhyolith may actually turn out to be one of my favorite fights in the game.  Shannox isn't bad either.  Don't really see the big deal with the trash so far through the lower three bosses.  Maybe my opinion on it will change once I start needing to go over towards Alysrazor and Baleroc?

[Paelos]

There is much wailing about how easy the normal raiding stuff is. I take that as a good sign.

[Ingmar]

Mixed feelings about the Thrall/Aggra quest, annoying having to listen to Thrall so much, but she's got a nice voice. Certainly wasn't much effort for a very nice cloak reward at the end.

[Evildrider]

Mixed feelings about the Thrall/Aggra quest, annoying having to listen to Thrall so much, but she's got a nice voice. Certainly wasn't much effort for a very nice cloak reward at the end.

Until you realize that as soon as you get Friendly with the new Rep from Firelands you get a better cloak.   

[Ingmar]

The faction is attached only to the raiding, so this still serves its purpose.

[Sjofn]

Silly me, thinking I'd do vash''jir instead of hyjal on my deathknight.  Took me three hours of bullshit level 80 quests to be able to do the new dailies for 10min.

That totally pisses me off too, and I actually took the Hyjal route on most of my people (and had gone back for the easy rep on my alliance paladin since they had my head enchant).

[Maledict]

Well, they certainly took people's feelings about the difficulty of tier 11 to heart. The new instance looks to be ICC or ToC level difficulty in normal mode. Guilds on my server have already killed everything bar Ragnaros on the first night, and we are not talking cutting edge hardcore here...

[Ingmar]

That sounds promising for us then. 

[Rokal]

I'm withholding judgement until I try the raid for myself, but it will be interesting if it is that easy. I expect the next major content patch is another 5-6 months away. If we kill regular Rag in a month, that's probably it for me until the next expansion. Honestly, this patch needed to come out a month or two ago, and it needed to come with a new 5-man.

The Thrall quest was pretty cheesy, but it was still better than I expected. It would have worked better with goal being something other than "kill elementals till this bar fills", and without other players in your phased instance. It's this highly scripted event and it's made to seem like you are the only one that can help Thrall, but that illusion is shattered pretty quickly when there are 40 other players around you tagging every mob as soon as it spawns. It reminded me of the LOTRO Epic Book quests, which also would have been pretty stupid if they took place in a public instance.

Not much to say about the dailies until people start getting enough tokens for the second quest hub. Thus far the quests have all been "Kill X enemies that pose no threat" or "collect Y". We'll see if there are any innovative quests when we get further in (something like how bombing runs felt when you first did dailies in TBC)

[caladein]

Well, they certainly took people's feelings about the difficulty of tier 11 to heart. The new instance looks to be ICC or ToC level difficulty in normal mode. Guilds on my server have already killed everything bar Ragnaros on the first night, and we are not talking cutting edge hardcore here...

Obviously, Wowtrack doesn't work so well after only a day so I don't have anything empirical to go off.

Last night, I only felt the place was undertunned, not easy, although that's to be expected since I technically overgear it little bit.  As an anecdote, my server (US-Wildhammer) only has one guild with more than two bosses killed.  Admittedly, my server only has one good guild .

[Rokal]

4.2 was apparently too ambitious for the 6+ months they spent making it.

We did have a lot of new hairstyles we had created over time up on the patch 4.2 Public Test Realms. The problem was that, even though these hairstyles were added on the test realms, many of them were not finalized or approved by our art team. Because of this, a good portion of them (about half) were pulled shortly before patch 4.2 was released on live realms, leaving only a partial implementation of new hairstyle choices.

Honestly, more than 6 months (considering much of Firelands was probably partially developed long before Dec 2010) to make...

-2 remakes of old raids as 5-man dungeons with identical loot/models and near-identical bosses for one of them
-a repeatable daily quest hub that is gated in such a way that you can advance it, at max, for about 30 minutes a day
-around 8 new quests unrelated to the daily hub (Zandalari/Thrall)
-1 new faceroll PvP raid boss that uses an identical model to a boss they added to the game 6 years ago
-one new raid (Firelands) with almost half the number of bosses that the intro tier offered
-25 new haircuts

What are they even doing over there? Playing Minecraft?

[Merusk]

Well, having spent the last 3 months working with "Designers" after having avoided them for 10 years, I'm reminded that they have their own ideas of what 'deadlines' and 'schedules' are, so the Art team stuff makes sense.   (It also reminds my why you don't let a designer manage other designers.)

The rest, though, is plenty to bitch about.