2901

There’s an NPC that lets you turn XP off? And with my rogue, I had to plan carefully and still ended up doing green and grey quests. I am 42 (43?) right now, and he did all of the starting area, all of loch modan, most of redridge, a handful of wetlands, a handful of westfall quests, most of duskwood, and nearly all of STV. But the only reason I was able to keep the grey quests to a mininum and still see the story parts I wanted to see before the world blew up is because… I already knew what was coming. I knew what quests took me where. To deny most people will stop and move on once the rewards end is a little naive and I thought Blizzard was designing a game where they wanted players to experience the story.

And to be clear, I don’t have a problem not being able to see all the content in one run from 1-60. That was the case even in vanilla WoW, but rather that each zone has its own arc as it relates to the instances and out pacing content can leave the experience disjointed as it feels like you’re abandoning content to move forward or any semblance of challenge if you stick around.

Hellfire Peninsula was relatively challenging (not EQII or FFXI challenging) if you weren’t decked out in raid gear. A lot of vanilla wow (before they removed almost all the elite areas) had areas that encouraged group play and teamwork out in the persistent part of the world (ie… the part that makes it an MMO and not a fantasy rpg version of TF2 or Left4Dead with a monthly fee).

Treating an MMO like a single player RPG is a diservice to the medium.

2902

I think if that’s part of the new plan, you should rarely if ever end up doing an instance and watching all your quests go grey. By the very nature of breadcrumb style storytelling… you don’t know which quests you should abandon and which you should keep to see the story.

I’ll see with my dwarf warlock. My plan is to do each zone as directed and each instance related to that zone once (for those zones that have them). If all my quests stay at least green, then they’ve probably hit their target as far as pacing.

2903

I don’t know what it is you’re doing to be so dissatisfied with the pace of the questing, but I’ve leveled more characters than I care to admit and I’ve never had the problem you’re describing. And I’ve leveled the last several recent ones with heirloom gear. To be honest, I’m really not completely sure what you’re looking for here. You keep saying WoW shouldn’t be treated like a single player RPG, yet you seem to want exactly that from it in terms of story.

2904

Story can be conveyed in a lot of ways. What I mean by, single player RPG, is the way single player rpgs (well, excepting open world ones… but even there) will have a module like presentation and progression to the game. WoW’s version is compartmentalized sub-sections of a zone that once you’ve completed that little subsection you’re done with it and serves no purpose as part of a larger realized virtual world

Old world quests like the Morbent Fel questline which starts in Duskwood and then sends you to Stormwind to get information and then out to the wetlands to dig up the Lightforged Iron bars from the sunken ship and back to get it forged, and then return to Duskwood for the final confrontation. These are pieces of the world, woven together, into a larger story and along the way you have opportunities to interact with other players and help them.

Just open up the map of the [new] dwarven area (post level 5) and you can see the compartmentalization transparently visualized and you feel like you’re just making check marks on each part of the map and then moving on.

Edit: And to be clear, I’m not saying it’s terrible. There’s lots of positives to the new setup, especially for veterans or people that want to raid with their friends ASAP even if I miss doing stuff like fighting my voidwalker rather than just clicking, ‘train’ at the trainer.

I’m just saying, they’ve abandon some of their world building in favor of ease. I don’t think that’s an improvement in every way as some people seem to make it out to be.

2905

I’ve done several zones with a fresh character and was still easily able to finish each storyline from A to Z with no green quests, while constantly queueing in LFG from the moment it became available. That’s on a DPS character, admittedly, so the queueing was somewhat long, but I felt I was doing just about as much instancing as I could stomach anyhow. Deadmines more than twice in a row is no fun.

I did end up “skipping” Redridge, but that was because I hadn’t even started it yet, noticed that the breadcrumb to it was green, and figured I might as well go straight to Duskwood.

This seems almost too obvious to mention, but the railroading effect of an overarching plot varies from zone to zone. The new Westfall has an extremely domineering plot that steers you around the zone, and I’d feel very dissatisfied if I had to break it off in the middle. Duskwood, on the other hand, has a bunch of quest hubs that are only loosely connected and I wouldn’t lose any sleep over moving to STV after the first or second. In fact, I got the breadcrumb for STV before I finished the first hub.

Edit: Oh man, I always hated Sven’s silly questline that sends you across the continent. I certainly don’t see how it encouraged player interaction in any way at all. Crappy chains that suddenly demand you to take a fifteen minute AFK flight were one of my pet peeves in vanilla. There are still breadcrumbs that point out adequate zones for you, which is exactly how I think it should be: Hey, there’s this neat place, why not go there if you feel like a bit of travelling.

2906

And to be clear, I’m not saying it’s terrible. There’s lots of positives to the new setup, especially for veterans or people that want to raid with their friends ASAP even if I miss doing stuff like fighting my voidwalker rather than just clicking, ‘train’ at the trainer.

I’m just saying, they’ve abandon some of their world building in favor of ease. I don’t think that’s an improvement in every way as some people seem to make it out to be.

2907

Because you generally didn’t do all the steps at once back to back (or I didn’t), so you might meet someone who’s doing the light forged part and then group up with them on the final part. Or heck, on your way out of Menethil, someone might need help finding that named bluegill murloc. It kept you moving which meant more chances for you to collide with others and interact rather than everything being so transparent people just silently do their scripted bit next to you.

Heck, even forming the group to do the final portion, or harassing a higher level pal into helping you is about putting people together and interacting in a virtual space rather than merely coexisting.

Admittedly, part of the problem with this approach (especially on a shard structure) is that once the first few waves of people pass, it makes those elements less pronounced more annoying for people who are forced to mostly solo.

2908

I think it depends on shard population as well. Most of the servers I’ve played on are high population, there have always been others around in zones when I’ve leveled.

2909

So am I to take it that along with the old world content that the storyline of Lich King is no longer available?

I’m guessing so since the King is back in Stormwind talking about his triumph over the Lich King.

Just asking since I never did complete that story.

2910

Most story tidbits will still be there for you to do, even if the “world” indicates they are already finished. Onyxia’s head on a stick in Org or SW you can still go make a raid and kill her. With phasing now I believe the intent is to make it a bit more seamless so if you haven’t done it, it will still be “old”. That said cata made some irreversible changes to the landscape, quests, and lore.

2911

Oh damn you all! Now for the first time in a year and a half I’m seriously tempted to play some Wow.

The only question now, is do I reactivate my EU account or pick up the US version for $5?

2912

In the post-Cata timeline, Arthas/Ner’zhul is dead and Bolvar is the new Lich King. How does that appear for new characters doing the quests in Northrend for the first time given the focus of so many of the quests was to fight the Scourge and Arthas?

2913

In an interview, someone from Blizzard said Outland and Northrend are untouched. Supposedly they want to update them, but didn’t have time.

2914

That must be pretty immersion-breaking for new players. They’ll do level 1-60 quests in a post-Cata world where the Lich King has already been defeated then go to Outland and Northrend for the 60-80 experience to participate in events that took place chronologically before the shattering.

2915

I played my Tauren Druid for a little while tonight. Did a bunch of quests in Western Plaguelands, and one Uldaman run, and went from 37 to 41. I do have heirlooms for feral spec (shoulders, chest, weapon, trinket), but it would be very fast even without those.

The redesigned areas are great. Good quest variety, the new textures look much better, and the hub-based quests don’t run you all over. It feels like you are always doing something, and not just burning time in flight or eating/drinking. My caster gear is pretty weak, and the Uldaman run was more challenging to heal than before 4.0.3. I was running out of mana just about as the boss fights were ending, so there wasn’t much wiggle room.

2916

That’s good to hear as I’d previously been underwhelmed by the instances on my return, but I guess maybe proper gear makes it a bit easier. I don’t have any heirloom gear, so I’ll be relying on quest rewards and/or crafting (another rant).

I want to reiterate, I’m not arguing an absolute position where I think there’s nothing (or very little positive) about the changes. Getting matching gear from quest rewards I think is a positive change as well as many of the graphical upgrades and the scripted stuff is well done within its relative context.

It’s funny to see people implicitly complain about old-WoW’s downtime between fights. Vanilla WoW was a huge shift from other games already (namely EQ), though FFXI could have very little downtime if you had a good group because of its party combo system.

I wonder if RPGs will mostly converge on action like mechanics (Diablo, Vindictus, etc).

2917

That is the old version of the Armory, which is no longer being updated with new content; it will eventually go away, like the old forums. The new Battle.net info for your character is here, and contains all the new items. they still don’t have everything up and running on the Battle.net side yet, but the basic character/talent/achievement info is all there, in a much better display than the old Armory stats.

2918

I’m still not sure how any of that follows. Keeping you moving doesn’t exactly do much if you spend most of the time on a flight path. And it seems very contrary to me that spreading a quest chain makes it more likely to meet somebody doing the same stuff rather than if you concentrate players on the same quests into a far smaller area.

I agree that vanilla encouraged grouping more, but I don’t think it was due to the reasons you describe.

2919

Azshara is soooo cool now. From rocket-rollarcoasters, to Raptors in Space, to the Gob Squad, to UNMITIGATED BADASSERY, Blizzard did a hella job with the zone.

2920

Having levelled my mage to 70 with my wife (playing a warrior) I never really intended to play solo because I always found mage to be the most boring class to level (kill mob, sit down and eat, almost die on pulling 3+ mobs, etc); now it’s… it’s… marvellous. Levelling an arcane mage is lots of fun.