Obviously you’re right that the race isn’t screwed because they can just go to someone else’s starting area. But I think his point was just that if you decide to play a NE in the NE area, you’re fucked. You have no reasonable option except to go to the Human/Dwarf/Gnome area and play there.
Obviously you’re right that the race isn’t screwed because they can just go to someone else’s starting area. But I think his point was just that if you decide to play a NE in the NE area, you’re fucked. You have no reasonable option except to go to the Human/Dwarf/Gnome area and play there.[/quote]
I don’t understand? Why can’t you do the NE starting quests and get to level 15 or so and then go somewhere else?
On the Horde side everyone does the starting quests and levels and then goes to Org and makes that their home. I was bound there by about level 13 or so I believe. If I need to quest in Tirisfal Glades, I take the zep to UC. If I need to quest in Stranglethorn, I take the zep to Grom’Grol. If I need to quest in Barrens or nearby lands, I take the bird.
I would think that Alliance do the same thing, bind in Ironforge after level 10-15 or so.
And if you want to complain about ganking, Crossroads gets attacked all the time and Hiilsbrad is a deathzone for Horde since higher level Alliance are nearby in Southshore doing quests there. It’s a 60 second trip to go to Hillsbrad and gank, which they do. I don’t think Alliance has it any worse.
The Barrens isn’t a contested zone, last time I checked. Exactly how does ganking occur there?
Obviously you’re right that the race isn’t screwed because they can just go to someone else’s starting area. But I think his point was just that if you decide to play a NE in the NE area, you’re fucked. You have no reasonable option except to go to the Human/Dwarf/Gnome area and play there.[/quote]
Ummm… why? I’ve done a perfectly large number of quests on that side of the world. I mean, yeah, you’re going to have to go to the mainland eventually because, y’know, other than Darkshore and Ashenvale and Teldrassil, the rest of the continent is effectively much higher level or Horde owned, which cuts down on your levelling.
However, if you follow the quests through ashenvale at about level 19 or so they actually lead you to Menethil. That’s right, follow the quest progression and you’re handily led to the next area to open up more quests. There are, of course, another line of quests that continue down through Astranaar and around Ashenvale. But the game is designed to show you other places because it knows that there’s a dead end because, well, the rest of the continent is horde territory, so it’s a bit unfriendly to have young night elves running around there all alone.
I imagine the Undead are in a similar predicament what with their starting type area quickly running into a level 35ish alliance levelling ground.
(There are some nice places that still have quests on Kalimdor, mind you… they’re just spread out and not really places one is likely to be led by the nose to. Wailing Caverns comes to mind; it has about 4 or 5 quests related to it, and is a nice instance to play around in pre-blackfathom… but you’d never find it unless you really like to explore through the barrens as a young elf or someone tells you it and its quests are there.)
Because newbies usually don’t know to leave the raid well enough alone? Because it’s fun to throw yourself at a superior opponent until you realize that you really don’t have a chance in hell? Because it’s easy to accidentally right-click a raider while trying to talk to an NPC before the NPC gets killed?
Not to mention the sheer server-destroying stupidity and lag caused by throwing 400 alliance players into a zone and sending them all after NPCs.
Because newbies usually don’t know to leave the raid well enough alone? Because it’s fun to throw yourself at a superior opponent until you realize that you really don’t have a chance in hell? Because it’s easy to accidentally right-click a raider while trying to talk to an NPC before the NPC gets killed?
Not to mention the sheer server-destroying stupidity and lag caused by throwing 400 alliance players into a zone and sending them all after NPCs.[/quote]
Because some people play on a PvP server.
You can, and as far as I know, everyone does. The complaint centers around three things, I guess:
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The run itself is a pain-in-the-ass trek through several high-level zones. There’s no good footpath. There’s no boat or zep or train or similar transport that you don’t have to unlock on foot first. You just have to make this long run through a bunch of level 20-40 zones, and you’re likely to die continually before you make it back to a zone that is close to your level (I think I died 8 or 10 times. Since I didn’t know what to expect, I hadn’t banked my equipment first, and everything I had on got trashed, meaning I also got to incur a swell repair debt). Every other Alliance race (I can’t say for Horde since I haven’t tried them yet) has a logical series of areas and quests, so that you can progress fairly seamlessly from level 1 to at least level 35 (where I am now). Night Elves are the only Alliance race that suddenly has to make this pointless, murderous trip if they want to keep leveling.
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There’s no in-game indication that you need to go there. Like I said above, the other Alliance races get “breadcrumb” quests that lead you gradually through the zones. For NEs, you get to Auberdine, do a few quests there, but there are few (if any) quests that direct you to any other areas. That’s probably just a continuation of problem #1. The NE early-teens area is surrounded not by high-teens or low-20’s areas, but rather by areas suited to late 20’s and early 30’s. That makes it tough to put in the typical “I need you to take a message to so-and-so in the Slightly Higher Level Valley Next Door” type of quest.
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It seems silly. The devs did a great job in making a whole interconnected set of zones and quests for the main Alliance area. They also did a great job on the NE area for levels 1-10, which flow really well, just like the early Dwarf/Human/Gnome areas do. But then it seems like they just got sick of designing, or maybe they were up against a timetable due-date or something, and just quit making anything for the NEs. Again, there’s nothing stopping a NE from making the hourlong, multideath trip to the human lands. In fact, I’d say all of them do exactly that. It’s just a question of wondering why the devs decided to start the other 3 races together and with a good set of zones/quests that will last your character’s lifetime, but decided to stick the NEs out in the middle of nowhere with no leveling track of their own and no reasonable mechanism for getting them on the same track as everybody else.
Maybe Horde players have it even worse. I have no idea. But whether they do or they don’t, there’s no question that the NE area is very poorly designed for post-15 play, and that the other Alliance races have it a lot easier in that regard.[/quote]
Did you miss the part about the Barrens being Horde-owned, or the part about huge raids killing the server’s performance and making it impossible to do anything?
OK; I never saw those. I got to level 15, and the only quests I could find in Darkshore were orange and undoable. I looked around Ashenvale and it was full of mobs that were higher than me, and Horde players that were way higher than me. So I set off for the Human lands. If there’s a line of quests I missed, my bad.
OK; I never saw those. I got to level 15, and the only quests I could find in Darkshore were orange and undoable. I looked around Ashenvale and it was full of mobs that were higher than me, and Horde players that were way higher than me. So I set off for the Human lands. If there’s a line of quests I missed, my bad.[/quote]
The quests in auberdine take you to around level 20 if you do them all… (there are a few hidden back in Darnassus that you’d generally never find unless you stumble on them… poor design in my opinion, especially since one of them was among my favorite quests). But I had no difficulties with getting to 19 or 20 or so in Auberdine, and then I ran into quests that led me into Ashenvale (Tower of Althalaxx) and Menethil (The Prospector Quest). Now I haven’t actually levelled anyone past 20 in the other Alliance territories, so maybe there are multiple series of quests that lead you to the next zone progression, but for me at least, levels 1-20 consisted of taking every little yellow exclamation point I could find, and neither of the series that led to Ashenvale or Menethil were particularly out of the way (the Ashenvale quest started near the Tower, which you were near to due to completing a previous quest up in the satyr/grellkin area whose name I’ve forgotten, while the Menethil quest, as I mentioned, actually starts out in Auberdine proper and leads you to Remtravel’s Excavation Site then on to Menethil).
I think part of the problem is that the night elf lands require more of an exploratory nature… you’re not given all your quests from one central location like Westfall or Thelsamar. But then again, I tended to run across these NPCs on the way to doing other quests that started in Auberdine, so it wasn’t like I just had to wander at random to get them. (There is in fact a quest to follow a bear/druid to Ashenvale that first leads you into the area IIRC.)
I was actually impressed by how everything seemed to flow together in night elf land and how coherently the game tended to nudge you into the right area for your level, frankly. However, I had the advantage of not having people telling me where to go or what to do next, which means I was probably doing the requisite exploration that the game designers envisioned as part of my process of levelling anyway.
Did you miss the part about the Barrens being Horde-owned, or the part about huge raids killing the server’s performance and making it impossible to do anything?[/quote]
No…
I missed your point.
We got ganked at XR irregardless of server performance issues. Why? Because it’s a PvP server and either side can wantonly kill the other whether it is Horde owned or contested or otherwise. So there are times where i see like 20-30 Alliance players of varying levels just walking into in XR and killing everything that moves. The more annoying ones roam THe Barrens looking for lowbie players about.
I think what makes XR vulnerable is because it’s a 5 min run from ratchet, which, as I’ve mentioned, is a minute loading time from booty bay, which is again, another minute loading time from Menethil. And it’s where Trolls, Taurens and Orc goes post level 15. Well, at least for those that decide to stay on Kalimdor instead of making the free easy trip to Undercity.
And because it is a PvP server, some people just like to gank lowbie players.
This is not true. On PVP servers, horde players cannot be attacked in the Crossroads unless they attack an alliance player first. Then they’re attackable for a period of time after that, I think 5 minutes.
I went to Silverpine instead of Barrens to get to level 20, so I have no personal experience when it comes to this “Crossroads gankfest.” I can imagine it’s kind of annoying having to deal with an Alliance induced lagfest. This doesn’t qualify as “ganking,” imo.
If Horde lowbies are getting themselves flagged while LocalDefense is filled with chatter about an Alliance raid, I have no sympathy. I don’t even have any sympathy if they are flagging themselves accidentally – yeesh, grab a clue.
That thing about people “forcing you” to attack them by standing on things you’ve killed, though, is pretty foul. There should be a command line to loot what you have targeted, that would fix that problem. Also, there should be a command line to disable the local client drawing corpses, that should fix lag quite a bit. I think the latter does exist, although I don’t know the syntax.
dwinn and I have a pair of Night Elves, and we’ve had no problems with content or travel yet (at level 12). He’s skinning/leatherworking, so he has 0 problems getting crafting material. I chose mining/engin, which is my own fault.
There are 3 seperate docks right at the landing point for the Darnassus (via the portal)->mainland bird. One goes back to the worldtree, one goes to (I think) menethil. I’m not sure where the third one goes (if there’s a third one). We’ve got plenty of quest fodder to get us well past 15.
I like that there are different feels to the different races. It makes sense to me that the Night Elves are isolated, and the game is designed that one I get to a “big city”, it’s easy enough to get around (find the bird masters).
It can’t… they obviously don’t understand that by attacking first they are flagging the player PvP. Or alternatively it is already flagged players coming from contested areas (which flag you just walking in) such as Ratchet, Thousand Needles, Stonetalon, Ashenvale, etc. (I’m speaking of the PvP server rule set)
AFAIK PvP servers still require players to flag themselves PvP enabled in their own faction controlled areas. This was to prevent people from camping the newbie (lvl 1-5) areas and ganking repeatedly, discouraging new players. But what do I know, I only play on Blackrock.
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edit: yep, pg 132 of the WoW manual.
There should be content there from level 15 all the way to level 20. If you didn’t find quests you could do yourself, you should have either looked harder for more quests or asked some people to group up to help you start the quests you couldn’t complete on your own.
AFAIK PvP servers still require players to flag themselves PvP enabled in their own faction controlled areas. This was to prevent people from camping the newbie (lvl 1-5) areas and ganking repeatedly, discouraging new players. But what do I know, I only play on Blackrock.
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edit: yep, pg 132 of the WoW manual.[/quote]
hmmm, It can’t be that while me and my friend were getting whacked early in our levels, we were hitting first. I tried to avoid fights with any alliance pre-15.
Yet it is still what happened to us.
We were questing near the oasis when alliance human and elves ran into us. They sorta stared at us for while. Now, we’re thinking that hopefully, they’re nice and won’t bother us while we go on to kill some more centaurs. 5 minutes later, i’m running ghostlike all the way back to find my body. I don’t know how that happened…
I’ll admit that most other times, I could have flagged myself cos all i do is sit by one side and heal horde players, or buff them. That sucks.
OTOH, these days, i usually pick a fight or two when i’m over at Hilsbrad, Arathi or Ashenvale. I try not to hit anybody more than a level below me.
Healing a flagged player will flag you, which makes sense if you think about it.
Teldrassil is suited for levels 1-10 (or 12 if you push it). By then you should receive a quest or two involving traveling to Auberdine, where you can pick up the buzzbox, beached sea creature, fishing for gadgets, groupers, explore the ragekin camp, kill highborn, kill grellkin, …, quests ; tons of quests exist in the area if you look around a bit. Eventually you will receive quests from the ancient of lore there which will lead you down to Mystra’s Post in Ashenvale and there you will pick up more.
The only difference between the Human or Dwarven lands and the NE lands is that they are more easily connected, but their progression is exactly the same if you don’t deviate from doing all the quests in your own race starting area. Humans go to Westfall at level 12, dwarves and gnomes go to Loch Modan at level 12, and Night elves go to Darkshore at level 12.