We already had an anticipatory thread on this, but I want more the reactions of those who’ve played already. Most people who were going to “early adopt” should already have their game and have played a bit.
My initial reactions (I don’t have a 60, so I haven’t done the Outland content yet):
The Draenei got boned. They have no flight points. They have no secondary zone (Westfall, Darkshore, Loch Modan, The Barrens, Silverpine, Ghostlands). Their starting zone is small…from personal observation, I’d say it’s smaller than either Eversong Wood or Ghostlands. And, barring the “follow the totem” questline, their quests are a little…mediocre. But Exodar is just too cool.
On the other hand, the Blood Elves are looking good. Good (if just a bit anime-inspired) models, big zones, great attitudes, and their zone music is HEAVY on cello (which I love…it sounds so big and sad). Nice quests, too.
It’s just fun to be earning XP for my main (Gnome Rogue) again, I just got to L61 last night. Seeing the main square in IF virtually empty every day is very strange indeed, and getting high level help for my alts is simply impossible - they are ALL in the new areas all the time.
Yeah, I was in Dun Morough trying to get signatures for my guild charter tonight and it was deserted. No one’s even making that many new toon of the old races.
I don’t know how it is Alliance-side, but on Horde side the lion’s share of new characters are gonna be Blood Elves, and not because they’re racials are so good (IMHO, Taurens still have the best, and everyone but Trolls are competitive), or because they’re gleefully decadent and evil, or even because they’re pretty, it’s because their starting area and capital are so much better designed.
Yeah, they’re gorgeous, but that’s just the begininng of it. There’s a mailbox on every corner. There’s two banks and two auction houses. Access is difficult (you have to take the orb to UC, and then catch the Zeppelin if you want to go anywhere else), but besides that, it’s designed in mind to avoid the computer crashing crowds you find around the auction house in Ogrimmar. More importantly, I’ve gotten two bags as quest rewards before I hit level 10. Blizzard has learned some things since WoW launched (like: , and it shows.
Shattarath is a masterpiece of design. Two banks, two inns, and portals to every capital in the game.
I’m very impressed by the first two new dungeons. Bite sized and straightforward, more like Scarlet Monastery Wings than the mess that is Uldaman. But with awesome architecture. I expect the later instances will get more complex, but I’m really enjoying what I’ve seen so far. There was also a quest line that simultaneously moved me and made me hate the Alliance (previously, I was a “can’t we all just get along and kick the Scourge’s ass” kind of guy). That’s never happened before.
My complaints with the new content mostly have to do with the fact that everything’s so crowded. To combat the rash of starting BE’s and 60’s moving through the portal, Blizz has turned the respawn rate up to “ridiculous”. It’s not at all uncommon to see a mob respawn while you’re still looting his corpse.
That said, I expect that to soften as people more hardcore than me move beyond me, and I fall ahead of people more casual than me.
The Draenei do have a secondary starting zone; the big island north. Flight points are beside Exodar and in the secondary zone.
I’m trying to figure out Draenei dancing. I’ve got a priestess and a warrior. Making her dance reminded me of this time that an Ukraininan folk company had a show in my home town and ended with a special gig: they’d gotten some local music and set a coreography to it with our local dance (the jota). Only, apparently they’d gotten their ideas for the coreography from seeing stills, no movies or live action: the positions were correct, the movements were all wrong. We gave them lots of Points For Effort, though.
Seeing these two dance made me wonder if they’re supposed to be doing flamenco and jotas, but as depicted by someone who’s only seen stills…
I do have a question: anybody know why male blood elves have bigger tits than female ones? Maybe it’s just the “hip out, chest out, shoulders back” position, but sheesh, them boys do seem to have equilibrium problems.
The revamp to the rep is interesting. Either I’ve suddenly become much more efficient at rep, or rep rewards are up generally. Getting honored with Gnomeregan used to take forever and a half, now your dwarves and gnomes can do it by the time you’re in Loch Modan.
They don’t connect, though. You can’t fly from the Exodar to Auberdine.
Oh, and the flight point for the Exodar is outside the place. You have to run around and down to get actually there, and then back again to get out. I’m hoping they’ll move it to the middle area or something.
I hate the design of the city, though. Running in big circles half the day gets boring, and I started singing “Can’t Get There From Here” to myself more than once. The consensus in my guild, at least, is that getting the hell out of there is the way to go. Portal to UC and take the zep out to Org, then grind Barrens quests.
BTW, if you want bags, the way to go is to quest through the newbie zones around UC. The drop rate there seems much, much better than it ever was, or than it is elsewhere. (At least, that was the case right before BC’s launch.)
I like how the blood elves weren’t made as just one-dimensional magic-seeking sociopaths, but have a real depth to their story and motivations. Everything about them is a sad compromise on the part of their leadership; hemmed in and nearly destroyed by the Scourge, addicted to magic, their leaders seek to keep the remnants of their people alive and preserve what territory they have remaining. There’s one quest in Eversong Woods where you have to attack treants, former allies of the blood elves, as the Scourge must be kept back and the treants’ plans would weaken their defenses. If you happen to kill a named one, the quest giver’s reaction turns from deeply saddened to distraught. It’s very moving.
Darnassus suffers from the same sickness and nobody ever uses it as a home base. Why, Blizzard?
My reactions:
I really, really wish there was an AH in Outland. Class trainers, I can understand, but there was no AH added as they wanted us to return to Azeroth “occasionally”. I use the AH a lot more than “occasionally”. What actually ends up happening is I mail all my stuff to an alt I use as a broker, as I’m not willing to make the trek just because my bags are full.
Money grows on trees in the expansion. It’s crazy. There is absolutely no reason to do any of the old endgame content anymore - not when you can be getting greens better than epics, and making piles of cash just from vendor trash. I hoarded quite a bit up for the expansion (low level stuff and gems, mostly), but because the massive influx of prices and massive number of new characters have driven the prices up so high, I’ve made about 650G in a week. I had 100G to start with!
The new areas are quite well done and often beautiful. I’m 63 and doing quests in Zangarmarsh, and I’m quite enjoying it. The music there is lovely, also. I’ve been helping out the Cenarion Expedition and the Exodar, plus these little Sporegar mushroom people. Neat. Nagrand is also quite wonderful, though I’ve only been there once.
Engineering kinda got hosed in the fun and combat department, but I’m keeping it long enough to use my Mote Extractor to become a very wealthy gnome and then we’ll see.
Socketing isn’t nearly as distracting and disruptive to the game mechanics as I thought it would be, at least so far.
Everyone’s hung up on instances, but I’ve been doing a lot better soloing. Without much rest XP, quest XP is the way to go, and if you visit the quest hubs all at once in a new zone you can pick up a lot of quests to be done at the same time.
World PVP has gotten a bit of a boost through some new zone objectives. Hellfire Peninsula is under constant contention (due to tasty quest rewards), though Horde has all but given up Zangarmarsh beacons on our server.
I went to one quest hub in Terrokar Forest last night only to find everyone dead - hopefully that won’t be a common problem. I hung around for a couple minutes waiting for spawn, then left.
People seem more willing to group for quests, especially to kill specific NPCs, than usual. The inter-faction competition in the zones seems to have encouraged teamwork, and that’s enjoyable. I’ve not been declined anytime I’ve offered to group up when people are camping about for a respawn, and that’s nice, because I hate camping.
Are people in your servers completely crazy too? My draenei warrior found a blood elf bandit mask and sold it in seconds for 10g. In the AH the prices are 20-30g. I’ve seen someone pay 15g on the spot. Stacks of copper are going for 3-4g. Meanwhile if you go to the old mine in Dun Morogh the troggs are so bored they almost welcome you.
Level 67 and rising fast. (I had last week off between exams and start of the new term)
Firstly a word about stability. There were many predictions of doom about server stability coming up to TBC’s release. There has been at absolute worst a very slight performance degredation. Good job Blizzard on that one.
The new areas range from dull (Hellfire) to atmospheric (Zangarmarsh) up to the just plain gorgeous (Nagrand). Despite being 67 I’ve been primarily inside intances (holy priest +1000 other people camping spawns is not a recipie for pleasant game play) and haven’t seen much of the later zones beyond picking up the flight points. They do look like they’re a little less creative though.
The quality and quantity of quests has improved. Theres absolutely no need to repetatively kill mobs to gain XP. Finish what you’re doing and go get the next quest, there are enough now.
The quest rewards in hellfire peninsula are clearly aimed at getting everyone up to speed gearwise so that they can level out the next few zones. I’m in tier2+ so none of my healing gear got replaced but from quests and a couple of lucky drops I managed to construct a passable dps set for soloing with. People playing gear catchup should be careful to take and complete every quest chain possible, especially in hellfire.
For me and my usual instance group the instances have been great fun. We’ve taken a strict ‘no pre-knowledge’ approach and testing out your ability to learn a new boss encounter has been one of the best parts of the experience for me to date. The instances themselves are shorter but slightly more unforgiving than previous instances. I cannot for example see how a randomly formed group could be expected to perform the co-ordination for many of the fights from the underbog onwards. The Thrall escort in the Caverns of Time first instance is great fun and while our first attempts at defending the opening of the dark portal were unsuccessful, we expect that that will be accomplished shortly.
As the endgame looms once more into sight, I can see that will be things to do for everyone. Small group PvP via the arena system, small group PvE via the heroic instances. Solo PvE via reputation accumulation and of course, raiding.
All in all it’s clear that Blizzard has learnt many things from the 2.5 years WoW has been running and that the future of the game is relatively secure.
No one uses Darnassus as a home base because it’s not remotely close to anything, especially for raiders. Exodar will probably suffer more here, since it’s harder to get in and out of (ditto on Silvermoon).
I’ve been vendoring all my junk–all the new quest items are kind of pissing me off because I don’t have a lot of extra bag space (packrat, plus one of my chars is a druid with two full armor sets). A bank would be nice as well as an AH. If you can get mail, why not a bank or AH? I really wish they would put class trainers in the Outlands though, both my chars are set up for fairly easy trips back and forth (mage with ports, druid with hearth to Thrallmar and port to Moonglade) but it’s still a pain.
The new spawn algorithym is kind of annoying, because often the mob does repop too fast to deal with it properly, even when the area isn’t very populated. This is especially annoying on my mage because I can’t keep space clear to fight in–I’ve taken to hovering just outside the area I’m interested in and picking stuff off. Not the most efficient way to do things but keeps me from being ganked by overzealous repops. But it’s still a good idea, just not without it’s own problems.
The bombing run quests rock. Too bad you can’t control the mounts though.
And I’ve found exactly one thing I like about Blood Elves so far–watching them die. The males have the most ridiculous death animation in the game.
I disagree about the Draenei quests. I reached level 20 before I ever had to fly to Auberdine, and many of the quests were awesome and had great quest rewards. My server is one of the newer, low-pop servers, so other than Day One, I never had to spawn camp. I’m ready to hop back onto Medivh and go to the Outlands with my L60, but I just got a friend into the game with a trial account, so I’ve been sticking around to play with her.
Quite franky, I’m loving it, and not because I’m using the new content.
I love the fact that IF, GS and the rest are ghost towns. It makes it easier to get things done and I don’t have to contend with as many people spamming, begging for money and dancing naked in the taverns.
And, I love the new jewelcrafting profession. Not because I’m doing it myself, but because I’m making a killing selling gems and ores to the ones who did. It’s only a temporary hike in prices, though; soon the new miners will be glutting the market. (They’re up to bronze bars, at last check.)
I’m thrilled with the expansion. I haven’t had much fun playing WoW since about July, and this expansion has revitalized my interest in the game.
I’ve been concentrating exclusively on my main char - a gnome warrior, level 61 atm.
I love the new zones and all the gazillions of quests. The graphics are stunning, even to non-players. Mr. Athena spent ten minutes watching me run around looking at a Fel Reaver.
Quests are interesting and fun. Spawn rate is incredible - there’s only been one or two quests that I delayed because of overcamping. I’ve only done one of the new instances, but had a blast trying to figure out the strategy. I’m soooo happy not to be doing Strath for the gazillianth time.
I’m on an old, full server (Killrogg) and the longest I’ve waited to get on is about ten minutes on release day. There’s been occasional delays, and last night I got booted a few times. Other than that, the release has been smooth.
Blizz really has their act together. As a former EQ player, I’m used to servers being hosed for a week after an expansion. Blizz makes it look easy!
I’ve been experiencing both aspects of the new expansion- I’ve got a level 60 Gnome Rogue in the outlands, and I started up a Draenei Shaman.
My Rogue is having an absolute blast in the Outlands. The bombing missions are incredibly fun- and luckily, you can repeat 'em. The quest rewards are… amazing. A five minute quest, early on, netted me a chest armor that had THREE TIMES the armor my previous set had, as well as DOUBLE the stat bonus. Now, granted, I hadn’t been grinding instances to get the really good stuff- but he wasn’t a complete slacker.
The Draenei Shaman? I got bored with him in a day or so. The quests in the newbie areas are fairly neat, but I wanted to concentrate on my Human Warlock.
My Warlock had Enchanting/Tailoring, but I’d been underwhelmed by it for quite a while, so I switched him to Mining/Jewelcrafting. So far, I’m very impressed- even at level 32, I’ve been able to use most of the stuff I’ve made, and my Jewelcrafting’s only at 100 or so. I’ve been avoiding buying ingredients at the AH, just 'cause I don’t feel like giving someone else my hard-earned gold.
The only drawback is that I have to return to The Exodar to train my Jewelcrafting. That’s just flat-out silly. I guess that’s how they plan on keeping Exodar from being a ghosttown. I’m predicting the other towns will start getting Jewelcrafting trainers before too long.
I’m very surprised they didn’t learn from the mistakes they made with Darnassus… but at least Darnassus is easy to get around in. Exodar, on the other hand- is there another city where a misstep can kill you? I imagine most people will kiss Exodar goodbye as soon as they can, and will never return.
My experience playing a Draenei shaman, following the line of the quests without being a rampaging slaughterbeast, was that I ended up at the Exodar boat dock with four quests at level 10: 1 orange and three red. Also, the only recipe I had for cooking was the stags, back on the previous island. I could have gone back and killed everything I saw to level up and gained nothing but xp and cooking skill, so instead I hopped on a boat to Darkshore. Did a few quests there, made a few levels, and hopped on a boat for Menethil Harbor at level 15. I ran to Loch Modan and picked up a level 22 shaman on the way; he was headed that way and just set himself to Follow. Good thing, because when we hit the hills, there were lvl 2 bad guys. He killed them. Then I picked up some quests in Loch Modan, went to Ironforge, then Stormwind (yay, shaman trainer!), then Westfall, where I figured out that if I wanted to get any more totems or jewelcrafting training, I was going to have to go all the way back to the other side of the freaking planet. So, I took a half hour and flew/sailed/sailed/flew back to where I started, trained up, and, since I didn’t find a totem quest, now I’m headed back to Westfall.
So, it’s been fun, and a lot of traveling, but I am very disappointed that there are no jewelcrafting trainers on the mainland, and only one shaman trainer that I could find.
Then I picked up some quests in Loch Modan, went to Ironforge, then Stormwind (yay, shaman trainer!), then Westfall, where I figured out that if I wanted to get any more totems or jewelcrafting training, I was going to have to go all the way back to the other side of the freaking planet. So, I took a half hour and flew/sailed/sailed/flew back to where I started, trained up, and, since I didn’t find a totem quest, now I’m headed back to Westfall.