BDGE
2961
Rolled up a new Alliance Human just for kicks and to experience the progression questing.
So Elwynn Forest is almost entirely unchanged, outside of some minor quest differences in northshire(the level 1-3 quests in the zone). Almost everything regarding the Eastvale Logging Camp, Goldshire, et al. is EXACTLY the same. Dissapointingly so as I began to worry how much actual thought went into this ‘Shattering’.
Westfall however…damn what a cool makeover. The questline is interesting, filled with a few nice uses of phasing, and generally the player is pushed through the zone at a proper pace, severely limiting how often you are farming ‘farms’ as in the original. The penultimate reveal to the questline mystery is great too! Entirely repurposed from the classic zone, I’m now on board with the ‘Shattering’.
Redridge I barely remember, but I do recall enough to know that there was never any stealth segments, taming massive ogre’s, and forming an elite squad of NPC heroes to wage war on the gnolls once and for all. The awesome continues…
Kareem
2962
I’m surprised Darkshire isn’t radically different. I figured it would be since the main cause of it being a shithole was the undead. Disappointing after Redridge.
There are a lot of convenience changes in Elwynn that you’ll miss unless you did it recently before the patch (which I did). It shows that they did actually work over and change nearly every quest in there, which does make it a little baffling that they didn’t bother to spice up some of the more mundane ones.
Southern Barrens is unrecognizable now, not to mention completely new to the Alliance. Thousand Needles is just jawdropping, I can’t believe what they did with that zone.
I was working on killing lots of Booty Bay bruisers to get reputation with Bloodsail Buccaneers, but now that 4.0.3a is in effect, I’m certain all the bruisers are level 85. Which means I’ll have to postpone my efforts for like a month or more. Great, as I’m already 0/36000 hated with them.
Dun Morogh is a lot of fun now. Just finished it up with my newbie dorf, and it’s got a cool storyline that illuminates the changes to dorfy politics in the run-up to Cataclysm.
Mordrak
2966
My dwarf warlock was on his way to Desolace on reclaimers business and decided to go through 1000 Needles to check out feralas along the way. He then fights through the Razorfen who’ve overtaken the great lift, looks down and thinks to himself…
“Oh. I guess stonetalon it is.”
Heh, I hadn’t kept up on all the changes so it was neat and a one time funny surprise. It’s nice you can cut through stone talon though. Edit: Oh and some class quests are still in. My warlock had one for a staff a little while ago… though not quite as epic as the old lock quests since you just queue up for DF.
They’ve put in quite a lot of effort to make travel and movement in the new 1k Needles less painful than you’d expect. I highly recommend it once you hit 40.
So, what’s the logic behind allowing goblins to be hunters and not allowing gnomes? And I do mean “logic” as in gameplay-wise logic, not lore; this just means that all races in the game can be hunters except gnomes.
So a gnome can cover himself in steel and take the same amount of punishment as a fully armoured tauren (the largest playable humanoid species) but they can’t learn to tame animals and fire ranged weaponry? Bah!
JM1
2969
No animals would take them seriously. At least goblins are spiteful.
Athryn
2970
The new “live” Strath is annoying, almost every single mob in there has knockback.
On the amusing side, if you play horde, you can get goblin mounts already. All you need to do is get one of the new tabards and grind rep to exalted.
By the way, the quest in Durotar to collect crocolisk teeth? Hilarious!
I made an undead character and the first proper quest was broken, where you have to go inside the crypt to fetch embalbing fluid and twine. I wasn’t able to loot the twine until I relogged. I do like how they updated all the newbie undead quests, though - and added some new ones in-between.
My wife and I made some new taurens yesterday. The starter zone has been completely redone. It’s not about preparing for winter and getting established in the new land. It’s a battlefield. It infuses the experience with a greater sense of tragedy for the taurens. Then again, a new player does first log in to a funeral for an NPC that always made me smile.
So back in the old Barrens, there was a quest to collect something like 60 raptor teeth, and it ended up being a zone-wide quest that you took care of while doing other things, because raptors would rarely drop even a single tooth.
Now in Durotar, you get a quest to collect 250 crocolisk teeth, so I was thinking it was going to take FOREVER. Then the first crocolisk I kill: 30 teeth. The next one: 29 teeth. I thought it was brilliant!
Kryten
2975
Dinged 60 with my Loladin last night - I’ve got both the chest and shoulder heirlooms (for the 20% XP bonus) and managed it in 2 days and 18 hours. And with only 12 deaths (8 in instances, at least one deliberate suicide so I could sneak into Moonglade).
Paladin’s are most definitely cheat mode! This is without using quest helper to optimise paths etc, and only the last 7 levels were done since the 4.0.3 update. But those were QUICK.
Annoyingly, I haven’t visited the Plaguelands with this character and have no real ingame incentive to do so. And for some reason once you reach 60 you’re only able to access Burning Crusade instances as random dungeons. Dumb.
idrisz
2976
almost every class can easily power through first 60 level without breaking a sweat if you have heirloom items, not just pally, pally actually feels slower since before I can aoe grind instance with prot which I couldn’t anymore.
Yeah, one of my new toons in 4.0.3a is a tauren paladin, and their starting experience is radically changed, and much improved. Things look very similar, but the quests are much better designed. You’re don’t run back and forth across the endless plains, for one thing. They also included a really awesome moment where you have to go to the top of a plateau, and the view from up there makes Mulgore look truly spectacular. True, you could have gone to a high place on your own & gotten the same view pre-patch, but the developers are doing a much better job of guiding you to those “Holy shit, that’s awesome” moments.
My other new toon is a night elf mage, and although her starting experience is also better, it wasn’t amazing like the tauren starting area. I was glad to get done with her area & move on.
By the way, there’s a quest chain in Badlands that is the best (short) quest series I’ve seen in the game. I’m not talking about the main quest chain for the zone, although that one’s pretty good. I’m talking about the three old guys standing next to Deathwing’s scar in the middle of the zone. I don’t think there are any pre-reqs for that chain, so make sure not to miss it.
I don’t want to spoil any of the details of the quest chain, but the chain is basically about how old guys often talk about the past. It was perfect.
My favourite new starting zone so far is the gnome area; plus, playing with a gnome warrior, once I got this reward I couldn’t help myself but laugh out loud.
Also, about levelling speeds, i’m currently playing without heirlooms while I wait for my wife and I to transfer to a new server but i nthe meantime I’ve been playing around and so far:
Troll Druid - level 1 to 19 - 4 hours
Tauren Hunter - level 1 to 20 - 3 hours
Tauren Paladin - level 1 to 20 - 3 hours
Gnome warrior - level 1 to 15 - 2 hours
So, stuff is pretty streamlined and still fun, I can’t wait to start levelling my worgen warrior and goblin hunter.
One of my friends is playing a new tank (with his boyfriend as his healer), and he’s said that he averages 20 minutes for a level… in the 30s.
