2941

You’re trying way too hard, HRose.

2942

I predicted in my blog three months ago that Hrose would find nit-picky reasons to slag on Cataclysm.

2943

If you want to nitpick the new dailies then you should look to the Alliance “Big Gulp” quest, which currently has such a low drop rate that it takes anywhere from 50 to 150 casts to finish. Ouch! Skip that one until it gets patched.

2944

Oh, pfft. Who plays Alliance?

2945

Okay, I won’t spoil the troll starting area, but somehow Blizzard introduces you to the idea of grouping to complete a quest, and the area ends with an actual honest-to-goodness boss fight. I mean, a real boss fight, with a tank, healer, DPS, adds, environmental factors to account for, and even…well, I won’t spoil it. It is definitely worth experiencing though.

2946

I have a natural tendency to nitpick what I play. One of the last quest in Ghostlands was about poisoning three food stacks, I probably misclicked one twice and couldn’t complete the quest because the poison given had only 3 uses. So I had to travel all the way back, cancel the quest, re-accept it, and redo it from scratch.

Or today in Ashenvale right at the entrance where you go with a Kodo to a nearby camp and then have to escort the NPC back. I trigger it, mount on my mount, and do the whole escort thing, only to see it fail, even if the NPC thanked me and everything, because it assumed that I was too riding the Kodo instead of my own mount. So had to go back and repeat it from the beginning.

But nitpicking doesn’t mean I think the new content sucks. What I’ve seen so far is very well done. I approve most of the big changes/rebalance they made to the game.

2947

That’s odd, I got it on the first cast!

2948

After rolling through a couple of changed zones and one revised instance (Sunken Temple), tanking a full run of the completely untuned BRD was PAINFUL. On the other hand, I did get Ironfoe so it wasn’t a complete waste of time :)

2949

I thought they added teleporters to it? That’s what they said they were gonna do at blizzcon.

2950

A good example of this is in Western Plaguelands. There’s now a quest chain (at least for Alliance) where you work with Thassarian to mop up the remnants of the now-directionless Scourge in Anderhol and liberate the city. A <60 player might do that series of quests and then later head to Northrend where the Lich King and the Scourge are presented as a huge threat even though players were told previously that the LK had been defeated.

Not to harp too much on this point, but I found another instance of this last night while doing the new quests in Westfall (which thankfully no longer involve fighting Defias Pillagers!). Once you get to Sentinel Hill, your character meets Gryan Stoutmantle, who you may remember as the founder of The People’s Militia and later the leader of the Westfall Brigade in Grizzly Hills. I always thought it was really cool how he “remembered” your character when you encountered him again in Grizzly Hills, as it showed that the game wasn’t static, time had passed, and your character had had an influence on the lives of the NPCs you met along the way.

In his new quest text, he frequently refers to his experiences fighting in Northrend and how he discovered his homeland had fallen on hard times when he returned to Westfall after the victory over the Lich King. Yet new characters will go through those quests at level 15 and then later find him in Grizzly Hills at level 75 fighting battles that he previously said had already been won.

I get that it’s a pretty minor complaint overall and I’m running the risk of sounding like Hrose, but I actually really enjoy the quest text and storyline of WoW, so little things like this that break the chronological flow of the game stick out for me.

I really like the suggestion earlier in this thread about moving the entrances to Outland and Northrend to the Caverns of Time. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard did something like that in a later expansion, perhaps keeping the current 60-80 content in “CoT-Outland” and “CoT-Northrend” and then updating the “present day” version of those zones for 85+ content.

2951

Redridge has become one of my favorite zones of all time. I urge you to do the Redridge quest chain as soon as it becomes available all the way to the end, because it is another example of complete and total badassery.

2952

I’ll second that. Redridge was always a zone I skipped past as soon as possible, but I finished that quest chain last night and holy crap that was fun.

2953

They did (thankfully), but damn if it isn’t still isn’t a big, rambling and mostly incoherent instance.

2954

Dire Maul East is now a level 40ish instance, but they half-assed it. The end still has rich thorium veins, there are high-level herbs, and one of the things you can get from the pods (a Fel someting-or-other, I think) requires level 55 to use. The old exits from the dungeon are also still there.

2955

They could have easily fixed Outlands by putting some Bronze Dragons out front, telling you that you needed to go back in time to set things right in Outlands.

But from an overall practical standpoint, I think I can deal with the minor quibbles, instead of having to wait another 6+ months for them to adjust all the Outlands and Northrend quests.

2956

I’m just amazed people read quest text. I didn’t even realize that Stoutmantle was in Northrend and I leveled 3 characters through Grizzly Hills.

2957

Here are some strange 4.0.3a things I’ve found, mostly involving my adventures grinding Timbermaw Hold rep in Winterspring:

-Certain fish in the Eastern Plaguelands can be skinned for Cataclysm-level Leather (Savage Leather, Deepsea Fish Scale). It doesn’t drop every time, but it’s pretty frequent.

-Ragefire Chasm (the very first horde dungeon)'s first boss, Grimmlock, almost always drops a BoE blue 1-Handed Mace (One-Hand, non-Unique). The AH is flooded with them. My 80 Mage spent 10 minutes grabbing and enchanting a pair of them for my baby Enhancement Shaman.

-Timbermaw Hold reputation gains have been increased to the tune of 10x. For instance, turning in 5 Winterfall beads gives you 2000 rep (2200 if you have the Thanksgiving buff). My Mage was farming the rep for the Agility Enchants and was currently at Friendly. 30 minutes later I was 999/1000 Exalted and had the goofy trinket.

-Chests have been redesigned. They’re now less cartoony and more low-key, making them harder to spot (I thought the first I found was a flavor object until I moused over it). Inside will always be some zone-level-appropriate coin and one BoE blue (again, zone-level-appropriate). I’ve found 3 so far in Winterspring and gotten an Orb of Deception off one of them (~2k on my server, will undoubtedly spike when Cata releases because Goblins become Worgen on use).

-Rich Thorium veins are much more common (at least in Winterspring).

Clearly Intentional Quirks:

-The lowest-level mobs use combat mechanics previously found only in boss or Northrend fights, including ticking time bombs thrown by encroaching Alliance Marines in Durotar, to Earth Elementals casting a “spike” that throws you into the air for damage + falling damage and requires being dodged ahead of time, to scorpids that throw a poison slick down that does damage if you stand in it. It’s pretty clear that Blizzard wants newbs to learn not to stand in the fire starting at level 8, which I think is a very, very good idea based on how awful some of the players I’ve seen in this game are.

2958

I would agree, except the consequences are non-existent. Instead you’ll get…

Raid: DON’T STAND IN THE FIRE!
New Player: Why, it’s never really mattered before?

Edit: To be fair, they’ll at least have seen what that kind of mechanic looks like even if they rolled over it without having to really deal with it.

2959

I had a mob actually run BEHIND me as I was casting a spell at him! I never saw that until I started doing PvP. I think it’s great that they’re making the encounters more than “Press 3 until dead.”

2960

The thing with the mobs running behind you is a bug that’s been in the game since they coded hunter pets to always try to attack from behind. It’s why pets sometimes dance off into the horizon with the mob they’re attacking because both are trying to be behind the other one. It’s also especially annoying if you’re a tank trying to position several targets.