I got Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms last night! I have about 32 Kalimdor quests left and I’m done with Loremaster for the old world, squeaking in ahead of Cataclysm.
I thought the same thing about the Hodir dailies (well, their names, anyway).
The biggest joke in the Amberseeds quest chain isn’t how the seeds are recovered, but rather what happens to them after they’re recovered.
If we want to be completely logical about the Amberseed quests, we have to ask: who scoops up a handful of seeds/nuts and swallows them whole? You’re going to chew them before swallowing, and regardless of whether they’re regurgitated or force-excreted, the result is going to be a paste, not whole seeds/nuts.
So … playing my male night elf hunter, Nouveus, on Argent Dawn, I’ve had him walking a lot while in towns, instead of running, since AD is a roleplaying server. And … good grief, I hope that’s something they “fix” in Cataclysm, even if they’re not updating the vanilla models. Could a walking animation possibly be any stiffer? He walks like he got shot in the ass and they weren’t able to remove the arrow!
At the other end of that spectrum, I rolled me up a female dwarf warrior named Ensyld. And to be perfectly honest, I think the female dwarf has just about the most natural walking and running animations of any vanilla Alliance model. I played her all the way from level 1 to level 12 yesterday. I haven’t played dwarf warriors or paladins much at all, so I was very surprised to realize, after doing every Dun Morogh quest available to a lowbie character (except for the Gol’Balar Quarry quests) that I’d gotten all the way to level 11 and had not seen a single mail chest piece quest reward, and drops had been utter crap*. Ensyld finished up in Dun Morogh and headed to Auberdine, and that’s when I realized she was still wearing several crappy gray-text items, along with the white chest piece she finally had to buy from a vendor because the gray-quality leather chest she had found just wasn’t cutting it. So I had to log in Noveus and send him to the AH since at level 35 he’s my “main” on Argent Dawn and has the most money (less than 100g, though). He managed to sift through all the “hey, let’s gouge level 80s trying to gear up their alts” prices** and managed to find a handful of decent green pieces at reasonable prices and mailed them off to Ensyld, though she won’t be able to wear some of them for a couple more levels.
- Having rolled several new alts since Blizzard implemented the “no hostile (red name) mobs in starter zones” thing, I’m coming to the conclusion that this new “feature” actually does new toons a disservice. Why? Because you don’t have to kill nearly as many mobs to complete your quests now. Certain quests, where you used to have to fight through numerous mobs to get to your objective, you can now just walk straight in and do, without being attacked. Fewer mobs killed = less XP, less coinage, and fewer loot drops. I mean seriously, my dwarf warrior reached level 11 (when previously she would have hit at least level 12 doing the same quests), left the zone with something like 4s in her pocket, and didn’t see a single mail chest piece drop. WTF?
** I can’t remember if I mentioned it before, but one of the first things I noticed on Argent Dawn was almost every single helm on the AH level 30 and below has a buyout price of something like 284g, 92s, 51c. A very odd, very specific price, exactly the same for every item, with a different seller on each one. It’s almost like one large guild agreed amongst themselves to post every helm they find for that same weird price, and to buy out and repost anything they find priced “reasonably”. Either that, or the Horde players on AD have rolled Alliance bank alts and are doing this so that the Alliance can’t wear hats 
I actually originally tried the trial back in late 2008, and not being able to choose too much, just rolled a human warrior. There were a lot more ‘long caves where you get killed in the middle of them’ stuff going on. That, and I didn’t understand the play mechanics at all and I stopped playing before the trial was even over.
When I gave it another try this January I did a different race and class and it’s totally made the difference. I do miss not being able to skin neutral animals like deer and squirrels.
So my nelf hunter is in Hillsbrad, doing the quest to kill all those Syndicate goons, when I notice that not only is he running low on arrows (though he has enough to finish his current quest and probably the next one), but he’s level 35 and still using the level 25 arrows. So he breaks off mid-quest and rides back to Southshore to upgrade his arrows real quick, only to discover that the next tier of arrows isn’t available until level 40. D’oh!
Now that I’m up on the lore, certain things in the game bug the hell out of me. I come from a JRPG background, so having everything be linear and the story play out before you is what I’m used to.
I have a blood elf rogue. I’m going to align myself with the Aldor.
Then why the hell will I be able to go on a quest to kill Kael’thas? And the entire Horde thing in Outlands is the Orcs being all like, we had ancestors here, let’s check it out. And I want to be like, yo, where do I sign up to be one of those Blood Elves that are campaigning with Kael, Vashj and Illidan? The game is forcing me down the Orc storyline, when there’s a rich Blood Elf storyline that is more relevant to my character.
And then there’s neutral cities. Everything is by faction, but race and rep should count more. Think about Theramore - it should be an Alliance only city, except for Orcs. But then not all the Orcs follow Thrall, so then it has to be narrowed down to reputation. But then again, I’ve never played an orc, so I don’t even know if there’s an anti-Thrall side rep or all Orcs automatically decide to follow Thrall.
I mean, of course there’s only so many avenues you take, even in a MMORPG. I’m not blaming Blizzard, these are just things that are popping up in my mind as I play now that I know more about the series.
Any lore to gameplay things annoying anyone else?
I admit I have some gaps in my lore knowledge though I do consider myself relatively well-read about it, but I gotta say I have no idea what you’re talking about.
I read the flavor text with quests, but that’s about the limit of my lore-fu.
Dinged 78 today. Loving the dungeon finder.
What’s the best plan for gearing up once I hit 80? I’m skittish about heroics. Don’t think I have the gear for that yet…so PVP 80 gear? I’d think it oughta be reasonably easy to get some major upgrades with a bit of honor farming…how flexible is 80 gear? I’d like to get something of a hybrid set…one set of gear suitable for pvp or pve, but iirc that wasn’t rally doable at 70.
kushiel, compared with monsters like Dungeon Siege, WoW is about as linear as a 20D fractal. But yes, there are times I’ve wished certain options were more intertwined.
Mister Rik, I’ve always had a soft spot for dwarves, since I used to have to play a Dwarven Priestess of [insert god of War here] in order to be allowed the use of a 2H-axe in table RPGs. But the reason my main is a female dwarf is that she has proportions similar to mine and moves like me. The human females are about half my width 
Yesterday I was bored and went to a couple of battlegrounds. In the first EoTS, I was wondering why did I keep getting that team of one warrior and two paladins on me dwarven ass (I mean, I know I have a sweet ass, being dwarven and female, but seriously, someone get this bull off me! If you kill the blonde belf I’ll give you a year’s supply of ale as a bonus!)… until it ended and I saw I was the highest Ally for damage. Apparenly the tactics consist of running around like a herd and ignoring any attacks, baaaaah. That’s boring!
Geez, now I’m getting Aion account phishing e-mails, and I don’t even play Aion! They’re even worse (grammatically) than the WoW phishies I’ve gotten:
Especially Theramore - Orcs there? WTH? And yeah, until Wrath, they pretty much all followed Thrall.
There’s also content in BC that shows Kael’thas selling out his people, so I’d sure hope you get to kick his ass.
Note to self: after you’ve changed into your PvP gear to do the Flame Leviathan fight, remember to change BACK into your PvE gear for the next boss.
Don’t think anyone noticed, and we went through with no deaths, but embarrassing…
Actually, the Scryers are a splinter group from Kael’s followers who defected to the side of the big glowy glyph things due to a vision their commander had. The little quest where you follow the purpleberry around Shattrath explains that the Scryers came to Shatt to conquer it for Kael but defected instead.
And as far as the orcs in Theramore thing, he may be thinking of the WCIII battle where Thrall killed Admiral Proudmoore…was that actually IN Theramore? Maybe thinking that as Thrall and Jaina are pretty good buds, she would allow orcs in the city?
Of course, Jaina is incredibly tolerant for an Alliance leader, but she still has to govern (IRL terms) hundreds of not-so-tolerant people who would make her rule pretty shakey if they had to share a human-built and -settled city with orcs.
I am a she, and here are some quotes from WoWWiki:
I do admit I am quite easily influenced by fanfic, most of which seems to show a close relationship between Jaina and Thrall.
Both are true: the Scryers are a splinter and there is content which shows Kael was selling everybody out.
Well, Jaina has a personally friendly relationship with Thrall[1], and possibly any other human survivors of the campaign against the Burning Legion (and judging from how that plays out in the game, there probably weren’t many) might have more open minds about the orcs than others; but the average resident of Theramore is much more likely to remember the Horde invading, blowing shit up, and killing Admiral Proudmoore (Jaina’s own father!). Not a very strong basis for mutual amity there.
[1] and there are moments when this comes into play.
Woohooo! Got Lich King (10 man) last night!!! I really like the fight to be honest. Definately requires 10 people working together to get it done. I can’t imagine what it must be like for all those people trying to avoid defile in 25 man.
You are now looking at Clawdio the Kingslayer 
(yes my main’s name is same as my board name, dont’ judge me)
Clawdio-Aegwynn (US)
One of my favorite bits of this will happen if you hang around the very center of Shattrath for long enough; a female BElf Blood Knight (I forget her name) comes in to speak with some of the major players there. Pretty neat scene.