I’m loving my Blood Elf experience right now, though I’ve pretty well stalled out in the Ghostlands doing the friggin group quests. One thing I wanted to mention was the fact that Blizzard is the only developer who put in a quest almost solely to make people cry… and that kinda rocks. If you haven’t done the BE quest returning Sylvannas’ necklace, you should take a little time out and do it. The xp stinks, the pay is nearly non-existent, but it really drives home the tragedy woven in with both the Forsaken and the Elves.
This is one of the reasons I’m loving the Blood Elf areas, their quests, and their NPCs. There’s such an overwhelming feeling of profound tragedy underneath all of it, all of the arrogance and the preening and the ego. They loved their lands deeply, and the Scourge simply destroyed almost all of it. What they didn’t destroy, they corrupted. The blood elves are selfish and egotistic, and relatively loose with their ethics, but there are centuries of connection to their land and their culture there.
Since none of my old toons are beyond level 37, none of the added stuff helped them-- at all. I did make a dranie and a bloodie, just to see the new areas and I loved the dranie’s jacked-up spaceship.
Haven’t had time to really explore, though.
Just like I said I wouldn’t, I created a Draenei shaman, and got her to level 6 this weekend. My current main is a 42 rogue, but shaman was the first class I ever played, and I still enjoy it a lot. This shaman will not become a jewelcrafter despite the racial bonus to gemcutting. You couldn’t pay me to jump into that insanity.
Well, at least not as a buyer. One thing that comes with every MMO expansion is the opportunity to make tons of money. I have made about 40 gold in about 4 days by simply buying low-priced jewelcrafting items and reselling them for profit. Prior to the BC release, I bought jewelcrafting recipes from vendors whenever I saw them. I had also accumulated a number of gold and silver bars and gems from treasure chests and pickpocketing. Everything sold for at least 5 times its usual price. I also have been searching the AH for items that are being sold low (like 7 gold bars for 2g, when others have 7 for 9-10g). It’s been crazy-- I didn’t think I’d recover so quickly after spending nearly all my gold on my mount. You have to not be trying to not be making money.
Thank you so much for saying this! My husband is tolerating me occasionally waxing poetic on the Blood Elves storyline, but I have a feeling he is thinking I’m a little wacky. Seriously, though, it is resonating with me emotionally as nothing has done previously in the WoW universe. I was having trouble rationalizing my Blood Elf priest character’s motivation with the way the Blood Elves were being portrayed, and then she hit the Ghostlands. The destruction of Tranquillien compared to the beauty of Eversong Woods, oh god. So I decided that she had joined the fighting to hold back the Scourge from her homeland, because relying on the Alliance in the past had brought about this horrible destruction. (Oh, by the way, I don’t play on a role-play server, I’m just weird and make up backstories for my toons and somewhat get “in character” when I play them. It helps me maintain interest among my cast of alts.)
There are dramas playing out amongst the NPCs in Silvermoon City, have you noticed? There are two NPCs in a corner of The Bazaar who are speaking to a crowd, trying to tell them that aligning with the Horde is ill-considered and that their race is giving in to their magic addiction with dire consequences, when some members of the crowd summon a magister who mind-controls the dissenters into perfect harmony and agreement with Blood Elf policy. It’s very very creepy, and dare I say, a little topical to the real world. There is also a “Harassed Citizen” right near the gate being guarded, and if you click on him, he begs you to leave him alone as he is already in enough trouble.
Undercity’s elevators are notorious for killing you if you lag a little, especially if you ride into them.
Silvermoon has a REALLY deep pit right outside the port from Shattrath.
Shattrath itself has some nice lethal falls.
It must be a Blizzard thing. Allies just never got a taste of it before. Well, Ironforge has the forge, but you really have to work to fall in that.
Ever seen Thunder Bluff? Tauren home city set on six high mesas, three of which are connected to the central trio via long, narrow rope bridges. The flight path is set in a tower at the highest point. So you can fall off the elevators (the way to get up there), off any of the mesas’ edges, off the bridges, or misstep after landing from your wyvern flight and fall down the middle of the tower. Any falls off the edge of the mesas would kill most characters, even high-level ones.
:eek: That’s possible? I’ll have to check that out.
I think it would be amazingly funny if every once in a while a griffin flew into the forge and failed to swerve aside, so it flew straight through the molten metal. Poof! cloud of feathers… and you’re in the cemetery…
Isn’t falling damage a percentage of total health? And I didn’t think the wyvern tower was tall enough to die falling down the inside. But I have fallen off the elevators in both TB and UC–in the latter case once I somehow landed on the wall with a sliver of life left, so I waited for it to regen to full (the elevator passed through me a few times) and then jumped down the rest of the way. Thunder Bluff is one of hte most beautiful cities to fly into though, so it makes up for the potential lethal falls.
I’ve already managed to die twice in BC from falling, once off Telredor and once in Shattrah* coming off the Aldor’s rise. I’m still tempted to jump off the edge of the Outlands just to see what would happen though.
*There is no good way to shorten that name.
Well falling from the wyvern tower or some areas of Thunder Bluff won’t kill you. It does take around 80% of your life away though. But there are a number of areas in TB where it’s certain death to fall. More annoying’s Freewind Post where the only convenient way up or down’s the elevator. Miss it, you die, and the graveyard’s a good two minutes run away.
I fell off the edge of Outland the other night. That was interesting. And lethal.
(I get extremely vertiginous on the sloped area where you do the ghost quests there - killing Unyielding Footmen and Unyielding Nights)
I know what you mean. Same thing for the rock floating out in the middle of nowhere.
That’s true as well, but it being spread out with lots of pools of water in between key areas, with few guards to give directions, plus the lack of a forge, truly cements the deal. Before you get a mount, it’s truly a pain to deal with.