Thousands die yearly just riding the elevators…you think they care about a precariously balanced bell?!
I tell ya, it’s infinitely easier to get Northrend and Outland explored than it was Kalimdor or the Eastern Kingdoms. Flying mounts (or flight form in my case) make it SO much easier to explore in the two former locations than does my mount in the Old World. I hope the next X-pack opens up old world flight. 
twitch I thought I’d gotten away from that with EverQuest and the Kelethin lift lagging and killing you. But no, more deadly elevators…
And holy crap, I hadn’t noticed that audio before. I don’t know anyone who plays with the ambient sound turned up; most of us in my guild are fans of the music and crank that.
Yup.
Never gonna happen, or so the devs say. Azeroth was created with the assumption that players would only ever see it from the ground or predetermined flight paths. As such, the world is one big mock-up, like those cliche old Western towns that are nothing more than facades propped up by lumber. In order to facilitate flight, they’d have to basically recreate all of Azeroth to be two continuous continents, which is more than an expansion’s worth of work. It might happen eventually, I suppose, but that’s the given explanation for why it won’t happen.
No, I expect the next expansion will open up the Emerald Dream. That or the Maelstrom (AIUI, there’s a few archipelagos around the Maelstrom, mostly troll land).
I heard the UC sound earlier in the day but hadn’t paid attention or realized what it was. I actually keep my Ambient Sound volume up, because I like to hear things like the rain falling. I actually have the music turned off; not because I don’t like it, but because of the way it loops and loops…
For a good look at what the Old World would look like from the air, check out the maps at http://mapwow.com/ . You’ll see there’s a whole lot of empty space in the areas that aren’t “playable”. For example, in Kalimdor there’s a whole bunch of nothing between Stonetalon Peak and the coastline (I actually managed to get into that area accidentally a while back and took some screenshots). Scroll the Kalimdor map down and look at Un’Goro Crater - the flat areas are all places you were never intended to see. Eastern Kingdoms are much the same - there’s a huge blank area from Stormwind north to the dwarven lands. And if you look at Lordaeron/Undercity, you can see why they definitely wouldn’t want people flying over there. The walls of the “Ruins of Lordaeron” run around the edge of that shield-shaped area, but the only parts of the city they’ve actually built are the parts you can actually see as you’re riding in.
Basically, there’s a good reason why almost every zone in the Old World is completely surrounded by mountains 
We (me Sagan a retadin and Zwingli a tankadin) completed most of the Scarlet Monastery last night only Thalnos left to go. The runners in the cathedral caused us to wipe 3 times though one of those was my fault completely when I didn’t press down the CTRL key so ended up trying to judge Zwingli instead of healing him. I panic at least once an instance at the moment, not a good sign. I enjoy healing more then dealing damage though that’s for sure, think I’ll respect to Holy when I get to 80.
Nice scene after you kill Herod and all the trainees stream into the Hall, I was thinking this is it we’re dead no way we can take on all these. Oh well might as well go out fighting so cast Consecration and blam they all drop dead, they all must have only a few Hit Points.
I also joined a guild for the first time it was nice having a lot of sensible chat and people congratulating each other. However I don’t know what is expected of me so any tips appreciated, what should I do when I first join a guild? Deposit stuff in the bank? Offer to help others on quests\instances?
Different guilds have different expectations, but I’d offer these suggestions on being a good guildie:
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If you’re not doing something else important, jump in and help when people ask. You generate massive positive karma by helping people finish a tough quest, telling them where to find things, and so forth.
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When you have a BOE item you can’t use, ask if anyone wants it, or see if the guild leaders want you to put it in the guild bank. Obviously, if you pick up some marvelous epic that sells for massive heaps of gold on the auction house, you’re not expected to donate it, but if you give away a few blues you can’t use to guildies, you may end up getting something nice in the future.
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Help someone get started. I joined my first guild at level 5 or so (my kids were in it), and one of the guild leaders came and found me in Elwynn forest and gave me a bunch of runecloth bags, a tabard, and three gold. That three gold was nothing to him (level 60 back in pre-BC), but it was huge to a startup player.
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Be supportive in guild chat. Answer people’s questions, congratulate them on major accomplishments, greet them when they sign on.
You’re a palladin, and you didn’t jump off the cliffs to get us better pictures? Jumping off of tall things is one of the big reasons I rolled a pally =)
Mister Rik: Nice MC Front link 
jayjay: That’s really nifty–I’ll have to try it the next time I’m in UC.
JayRx: Grats! And here’s a video that demonstrates why we will never have non-taxi old-world flight as long as they are still developing new content. (Personally, I got all of my old-world exploring finished up while I was killing time waiting for Wrath to drop last fall.)
martu: Don’t worry about the freaking out–I used to do it, too (as a tank). The more you play, the easier it will get, and you’ll get more comfortable using your “ohshit” buttons to get through those quick panic moments. As far as guild etiquette, it depends on what kind of guild you’ve joined. If they have a website, definitely go check it out, paying particular attention to any guild rules. Otherwise, I’ll just second InvisibleWombat’s advice.
In other news… How to: Flame Leviathan. Er, sort of.
That’s a rather interesting video. I had no clue they had built stuff up with dead zones in the old world. I could see two ways around it though. One, flight-form/flying-mounts become “free” taxis with behavior like the gryphon master (perhaps adding the ability to start anywhere along the flight path), or two, they can hover a few feet off the ground but can’t travel over mountains. Both are probably non-trivial to implement though, so I can respect them not doing either.
Oh, and I loved the song they had playing during the video. I had to go out and purchase it (yay for iPhone with song-recognition software).
Hell, Stormwind is pasted together like a cut-out cardboard castle. If you ever had a hunter and did an Eagle Eye on one of the taller towers around Stormwind Harbor, you can see “behind” the walls into some of the dead zones in the city itself. The Keep is particularly bad…those big towers looming above the entrance are kind of floating in space below the line-of-sight from the ground.
Awhile back I was able to take advantage of a very cool bug in the system before the announced that they would be banning anybody who tried it subsequently–having a death knight stand on board the boat in Booty Bay and Death Grip someone standing on the dock led to a psychedelic 10-minute “magical mystery tour” of the world of Azeroth in all its pasted-together glory. It was great–my mage flew through the air, passing floating trees, disembodied chunks of ground, ships hanging in midair…I wish I’d FRAPSed it, because it was incredibly cool.
I don’t blame them for putting the kibosh on it, though, since some people were getting stuck in limbo requiring GM tickets to fix them, and unfortunate lowbies were getting hijacked by unscrupulous DKs without their consent.
Still, it was fun while it lasted.
I did that one! It was great!
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If you search YouTube for “death grip bug,” you can probably pull up video of the whole ride. I can’t remember if there was one linked from the WoW Insider article on it, but that might be worth checking out, too. (I can’t look from work, unfortunately.)
The thing I found fascinating (aside from the fact that you didn’t jump off the cliff ;)) was that somebody took the trouble to plant some weeds up on that big plateau that nobody is supposed to see.
[quote=“JayRx1981, post:1051, topic:488294”]
I could see two ways around it though. One, flight-form/flying-mounts become “free” taxis with behavior like the gryphon master (perhaps adding the ability to start anywhere along the flight path), or two, they can hover a few feet off the ground but can’t travel over mountains.
[QUOTE]
I’d be happy if I could just summon one of my flying mounts on the ground in Azeroth and be able to move at full flying speed without taking off.
What is the song?
Conjure One - Center of the Sun, although the only version I’ve found of it was short vocal version, not the long extended one playing in the video.
I spent the afternoon wading through Western Plaguelands on my hunter, with my faithful raptor pet by my side. It’s a very atmospheric zone, with sun-shot dust and withered creatures lurking, desolate except for that which cannot rest.
[spoiler]So many zombies, cadavers, and skeletons that I killed, until I was heartily sick of it.
And, in the end, I walked my riding raptor down the road to Uther’s Tomb after a battle in the center of a dead town. A battle where factions were forgotten and enemies briefly lined up against the cursed undead. With a smile to my comrades, I left them as the sun drew low.
One last death, and I stepped over High Priest Thel’andris to fulfill the terms of the quest that had brought me through this zone to its end.
The Ghost of Uther Lightbringer spoke to me, in words that made me wonder about what had lain between him and his former student. A question that might never be answered.
Still musing, I rode north again.
After that, I found Stratholme, and standing on a parapet overlooking the keep, hearthed back to Undercity with the words of the ghosts still ringing in my ears.
[/spoiler]
Doing Western Plaguelands got Kutkal to ding 60. Beautifully done zone IMO.
Now I’m working on getting the Scholo key for the sheer experience of it. And I’m horribly torn between getting my blue butt out to Outland, or rolling through the vanilla endgame content at near-level just to see what-all’s there (and pick up some old school gear for the hell of it). 
Help me decide, o mighty Dopers!
I suspect it’s because you can see the plateau area when you climb high enough up the hill from Stonetalon Peak. The far edge with the dropoff is far enough away to be invisible from the near side, not to mention obscured by the normal “fog” you get with distance.
It was an incredibly difficult climb to get up there; I was simply trying to get to one of those annoying mining nodes that you can see on the minimap but there are no visual clues as to the “correct” path to get up to it. I was attempting to get above it and then jump down to it (a tactic that has worked more than once with other hard-to-reach nodes), and purely by chance I stepped on just the right little spot that allowed me to get over the crest of the hill and onto that plateau, and I doubt I could repeat it (I haven’t tried).
The main reason I didn’t jump was fear that I’d get stuck in limbo and have to call for a GM who’d want to know what the hell I was doing. But looking down I assumed the ocean was below me; it wasn’t until I saw the map at mapwow.com that I discovered there was still a big stretch of “land” between there and the coast.
Meanwhile … I’ve been playing around with my lowbie undead mage, and just finished the Tirisfal quests last night. I’m discovering again that it sucks being a low-level caster. The final quest in Tirisfal requires you to get the skull of a guy at the bottom of a twisty-turny crypt, which is basically impossible to solo as a caster. Because of all the corners and stairs, I couldn’t get line-of-sight on anything while maintaining a safe distance, and every room had at least three mobs (bad enough due to only having enough mana to kill two mobs before I have to drink) who would all come running as soon as I attacked one of them. I could cast Frost Nova (the only thing I’ve got resembling an AoE spell) to freeze them all in place once they got to me, but then I still couldn’t get far enough away to start the ranged attacks again without running into something else, and even when I could I could only maybe kill one of them before the other two were all over me again, and by that point I had no place to run away to. On top of all that, when I died I woke up all the way back in Brill, 800+ yards away, so that by the time I ran back to my corpse most of the mobs I’d killed had respawned. Yuck. I whined for help in guild chat and I think Yeticalayla offered to come help, but just after that I spotted a lvl 47 orc shaman nearby who kindly agreed to “tank” for me. Amusingly, the orc belonged to the appropriately-named “Horde Escort Service” guild
I had a tiresome moment in Brill while a lvl ?? draenei mage was romping around killing all the NPCs over and over and over and over. He was making it very hard to turn in quests. I ended up standing next to a questgiver’s corpse and clicking on him the instant he respawned. I managed to get the quest handed in mere seconds before the draenei trotted over and whacked him again. A lvl 80 troll hunter finally showed up and chased the griefer off.
However, while all that was going on I got a good chuckle when I spotted that rarity of rarities: a character with an honestly clever name. It was an undead rogue named “Backstabath”
Grats on 60!
If you’re having fun with the old world content, then by all means stay and enjoy it. Outland will still be there when you’re done. Don’t let anybody tell you to stop what you’re doing and LEVEL NOW! NOWWWW!!! if you’re having a good time with what you’re doing.
Thanks for the advice.