So the quests for Strat have been re-integrated into the instance itself? I never finished a lot of those quests, and I’ve never felt compelled to wander around and pick them all up; if they are really centralized now, I might just run back and take a quick trip through. Then again, I may just wait and run it with a level-appropriate, now that the new Dungeon Finder is in place.
Side note: I love the new Dungeon Finder.
sinnick
2882
What’s new about it? I did a heroic last night and it seemed the same to me.
How did you manage to put my name with that quote? I didn’t say that.
sinnick
2884
Whoa, I have no idea why that happened. Sorry about that, Mark! Fixed.
Levelling sure is fast now. I did a single run of shadowfang keep on my lvl 21 warrior (100% rested) with all the quests there and am now lvl 24.
Three levels in half an hour time? Sure beats the early days.
Mordrak
2886
You don’t feel like you’re missing out? Have they reduced the total number of quests in each zone and streamlined the storylines? It seems weird to do quests leading up to and related to an instance and then after doing said instance potentially be 2-3 levels ahead of the next area it funnels you into.
It seems odd. At that kind of pace, it seems like the scope of the old world is totally out of whack. They might as well just sell level 60 characters in their store. Anyway, I’m still early on… but I’m curious to see how the pacing works with all the changes. On my rogue pre-shattering, it was frustrating to keep over leveling content I wanted to do.
Maybe, they should consider an alternate advancement system, similar to EQII. That would be a bit redundant with their talent system though. They could also put in an option to turn quest xp into money upon completion, regardless of your level.
Edit: And rather than make a new post below, in reference to intruder’s comment on flight paths. They don’t even have you (as a newly minted gnome or dwarf) make the run up to gates of Ironforge anymore. They automatically give you the flight point so when you’re finally assigned to go to Ironforge… you just fly there.
It’s almost like they forgot how to use layouts to create drama and atmosphere. I know that’s not the case, because of other aspects (the view of Ironforge from Frostmane Troll village is breathtaking)… but the gates themselves are a big reveal as you enter this major city on foot for the first time.
That kind of stuff (the plucky new hero entering the big city for the first time) are iconic adventuring moments.
Someone went a bit overboard with new flightpaths.
7 (SEVEN) in Eastern Plagelands alone (all Argent Dawn).
Scholo is a lvl 40 instance now and was a bit nerfed (less mobs).
Nothing compared to the nerf at the end of vanilla though.
At the entrance from Western Plaguelands to Eastern Plaguelands is a female NPC Worgen btw. in case you want to see the model in game.
Athryn
2888
Actually, that is not something new. You’ve always had the flight path to your home city.
I also completely disagree with your complaint of there not being a story. There is much more of a story now than there was in the old days. They added quests to complement existing quests to make things have a more coherent story. I think that it is much better for people who are new to the game, and the sprucing up of the questlines makes wide open zones like Mulgore much more tolerable. I think getting turned into a ghostly eagle and flying to your next destination feels much more heroic than slogging around on foot with angry wolves in the way.
JM1
2889
You’ve never had a flight path before your home city, though. At least not that I can remember.
Athryn
2890
That’s correct, because until now there weren’t those flight paths.
I think it’s a matter of one person’s heroic vista is another person’s boring timesink. I never liked the runs to the capital city, even when I was a new player.
I was questing in Azshara with my new shaman, and dropped out to do RFC (which I did twice for the novelty value) and did run through of wailing caverns (to check out the random dungeon thing) and I seem to have out leveled a good chunk of the zone, it seams… kind of disappointed by that, actually. I’m getting the idea if you want to do zone quests and instances you have to manage things a bit more carefully.
Kryten
2892
I enjoyed the first ever run from Teldrassil up to Ironforge on my first ever character, but yeah after that it was a hell of a drag.
Nothing new last night; I mean “new” as in “new in 3.3 (or whatever that patch was).” Although I believe they are changing it for Cataclysm, where you actually have to discover the entrance to an instance before you can queue for it in the Dungeon Finder. I think that’s a nice compromise, so you still have SOME sense of discovery.
What’s the problem? All that means is that there are more quests than you are going to do, which has always been the case. Worst-case scenario, you are ahead of the curve for a bit, then eventually skip a zone to go somewhere more advanced. It just means you have more to do if you come back with an alt.
They accelerated the progression, because people want to get past the 1–60 progression and get closer to endgame content. As higher content is available, the earlier progression will always get spend up. For every person who complains that progression is too fast, there will be ten people complaining that it takes too long to level their fifth alt.
Some shortcuts are nice for the tedious runs, but yeah, I hope they don’t overdo it. Hopefully they will pull back from making convenient pre-set flight paths everywhere. I enjoyed my epic run from Orgrimmar to Thunder Bluff back in the day, but I can see why not everyone would want to do that (or should have to).
HRose
2894
You just can’t. Maybe a good thing for alts since every character sees less of the world.
It’s even worse if you try to do tradeskills. If you do a dungeon once or twice you’ve already outlevelled the zone you’re questing in.
I’m level 24 and just out of the starting blood elf zone and I’m trying HARD to stay out of rest state. If I even try to run a dungeon now I’d outlevel already 2 quest zones without even seeing them.
Nellie
2895
From what I’ve seen of it so far it gets a big thumbs up from me. I’ve spent a few hours pottering around, picking up the odd flight path and just seeing what’s changed. The overall facelift is pretty impressive and I really love what they’ve done with it. The level grind starts soon enough so I’m enjoying the changes while I can.
Wolff
2896
No one is stopping you form doing green or (gasp) grey quests if you want to see the story. In wotlk this is what I ended up doing on my main, to see the entire story of northrend. Also you can turn off you experience in any capitol city.
Yeah, I’m not sure I get the complaints about outleveling quests by one or two levels. Very few quests out of the thousands in the game are the least bit challenging even if you’re doing them at the appropriate level, so if your aim is to see the content, why would you pass on it just because your character is “too high”? If you’re really serious about it, just go to the NPC that lets you turn off XP.
I wonder if outleveling the zone due to questing might be part of the plan - if not, I wonder if Blizzard thinks it’s a happy coincidence - if that’s the case then aside from seeing more content if you play a different race, you might even be able to reroll the same race, start in an area you’ve started in before, and still see some new content.
Yes. Somewhat annoyingly, some of them are the same quests, but completing the old ones doesn’t count towards the new ones. Also, Stratholme seems to be a level 48-50ish dungeon instead of 60. (Which sucked, because I was only there to grab some Large Brilliant Shards)
Mordrak
2900
Um, not before you actually got there, as someone else noted below. You used to have to run into Ironforge your first time, you couldn’t fly straight to Ironforge skipping the walking entrance altogether and perhaps never seeing it from that perspective.
I also completely disagree with your complaint of there not being a story. There is much more of a story now than there was in the old days. They added quests to complement existing quests to make things have a more coherent story. I think that it is much better for people who are new to the game, and the sprucing up of the questlines makes wide open zones like Mulgore much more tolerable. I think getting turned into a ghostly eagle and flying to your next destination feels much more heroic than slogging around on foot with angry wolves in the way.
I didn’t mean to imply there wasn’t a story and my complaint isn’t about the raw amount of story present, but rather how quests and areas are chained together as well as designed, whether you’re slogging around on foot with angry wolves in the way, soaring like a ghostly eagle, or something else altogether.
