If you really read the quests + did all available quests in chain / zone you got a deeper look into the lore behind Warcraft.
For example you could already see that there was something fishy up with the Scarlet Crusade even before their leader in Living Strath turned into a Dreadlord when fighting him doing while doing quests for Fondering in Eastern Plaguelands where he told you about this organization and the reasons why he abandoned them.
Strath is an excellent example btw because now you get in the quest text already: “The Scarlet Crusade is lead by a demon in disguise. Pitty those fools that don’t know they are serving what they have sworn to destroy! Go and slay him!”
Before it was: “Go and claim the head of the leader of the Scarlet Crusade. He is hiding in Stratholme!”
Discovering that guy was a demon during the fight was much more epic than getting it laid out to you when accepting the quest in my opinion.
Jag
3562
I think Vashjir looks absolutely stunning. Like a beautiful tropical fishtank. I’m just not a fan of questing in an underwater environment all the time, no matter how well done it is.
That said, the ride to Vash’jir was probably the best zone entrance ever done.
Finished all the remaining Hyjal quests last night, doing the last 30 or so teamed with a guildmate. We were very surprised that there were ~20 quests after getting the achievement for the zone. I quite liked the Ragnaros fight, which made for a pretty cool ending encounter for the zone. Having to save one of the caster NPCs from the Sons of Flame was a nice touch for anyone who ever raided MC in classic WoW. Also really liked how the world phased and forest fires became lush regrowth as you progressed the story.
I felt the last several dozen quests dragged on quite a bit with lots of unnecessary filler. For example, were all those quests where you infiltrated the Twilight cult in Darkwhisper Gorge really necessary? I felt it took away from the pacing of the zone. The offensive against Ragnaros should have happened once the quest chains to secure the help of three ancients and Cenarius were resolved.
Currently I’m level 82.3 and have only done the quests in Hyjal plus one run of Blackrock Caverns. Do the XP gains slow down? I plan to do Vash’jir next – at this pace, I’ll be ~84 after finishing only the two starter zones.
But Blizzard had to make a Rick Astley reference and toss in a bunch of innuendo there. How are they going to do that with the Earthen Ring? Wait, don’t answer that.
I learned more about the story and lore of the game world from reading one WoW book than I ever did playing the game. I tried really hard to read some of the new quests, but after a while it became apparent that I would have to weed through too much garbage to find anything interesting in the story. I will probably go back to clicking through everything and rushing to the quest markers.
Since I haven’t played since TBC, I am definitely seeing some improvements in the content. The improvements are mostly window dressing and gimmicky. Immersive it is not. Most of the quest improvements are a matter of them being situationally interesting rather than engrossing or deep. The tasks are more varied, but I’m no more invested in the outcome than I ever was in the old content.
Some things never change and Blizzard certainly hasn’t changed their formula one bit. I feel myself driven by achievement and little else (just like any other Blizz product). Its compelling to the point of addiction, but having broken that habit before, its easier to see through it all.
I’m still just starting to experience newer content, so maybe my feelings will change or maybe I’ll just get overwhelmed by WoW’s feverish addiction. Either way, the next generation of 2011 games can’t come soon enough.
Skorin
3566
I ran Tol Barad this morning, and there were four other Alliance there, and zero Horde. We got the achievement for a quick victory, then ran some of the daily quests together, since we made up an easy 5-man group.
It almost felt like cheating.
Basically what I’m saying is, level up fast and you can cheat at WoW.
razarok
3567
Oh yes it slows down! XP for quests goes up to around 57k/quest later with 46k in between.
83-84 is 5.2 million, while 84-85, which I just did today is a whooping 9.1 million.
I skipped Vashir due to it being very annoyingly full (and worse quests for getting through quickly, though I thought it was beautiful) and I only did the first ~30 quests in the shadow twilight highlands,or whatever they are called in addition to the Arena Quest.
I’ve done some 85 instances, being short 4 item levels for heroic mode, and I must say that mana has become a commodity (again).
I could use some more advice on zone progression. Zone quality varies greatly since the Cataclysm.
Being Horde there seems to be two sets of zone progression:
Ashenvale -> Stonetalon -> Desolace -> Feralas -> Thousand Needles
Hillsbrad Foothills -> Arathi Highlands -> Hinterlands -> Plaguelands
Has anyone been through these areas since the Cataclysm and can comment on the quality of these zones?
I have only seen Hillsbrad as an Alliance character running around leveling my mining, but it looks really neat now, especially for Horde - the zone is (I think) completely Horde controlled, and the architecture in Tarren Mill has been changed to the building style used in Northrend for Undead towns.
The little bit of Arathi I have seen looks pretty similar to what it was before, though I’ve only explored the western reaches.
I guess I’m a little confused. I haven’t had much time to play really but last night I took my mage to Hyjal and did the quests they had for me there–mostly for druid-dudes and which involved fire elementals and fairy dragons or something. Then…nada. No more quests there at all. Tons of people milling about killing the same Firewalkers or whatever but no more exclamation points. Nothing in my Cata quests but one to go to Blackrock I think, and maybe one other to go to a guy in Duratar. I get the feeling I’m missing some lone dude out in the wilds with an exclamation point over his head or something, as there are tons of caves and shrines and things with clearly quest-able mobs, but no quests.
Tons of Alliance though. Only got ganked twice, in the middle of a fight once and once in a tunnel when a druid ran past me and attacked. I haven’t bothered ganking anyone because it’s such a goat rope of players milling about. My AoEs have frozen a gnome or two though. Accidentally.
Rywill
3571
Are there? Because I feel like I covered the vast majority of the Worgen area and there were never multiple quest zones or hubs available. It was A to B to C, keep your hands and arms inside the car at all times. Is it even possible to make a level 1 Worgen and just head out to Elwynn Forest if you want to? I don’t think it is. I think you need to progress through the phases and quests. Maybe I’m wrong.
But the whole experience definitely felt different to me. In the original lowbie world, you had pretty directed stuff up to about level 5. After that, there were usually a variety of places to go and things to do. For example, as a human you get to Goldshire. You can do stuff there, or pretty quickly you can go west and do the Hogger area stuff, or east and do the stuff at the bridge and the logging camp. And before you’re done with either one (much less both), you can go to Westfall or Redridge or whatever. To say nothing of the fact that if you want to you can grab the train to Ironforge and quest out in the dwarf/gnome areas.
The Worgen area was much more limited. That brings some benefits with it (cutscenes, set-piece battles, etc.) but loses a lot of what I liked about WoW. I’d like to see WoW move more towards an open-world game like Fallout 3. Instead I feel like I’m playing Medal of Honor: Azeroth Assault.
JM1
3572
You sure you didn’t pick up an item that gives you a quest, Wombat?
What really cracked me up was the quest [A Case of Crabs] leads to [A Girl’s best friend] and [A Taste for Tail]
I love the bad pun and innuendo-laden quests.
I just finished Mount Hyjal quest achievement and plenty of quests left to go. I never got lost, there were always breadcrumbs leading me to the next area. In fact, I’d say it was very well streamlined.
Well, except for that area where the blue dragonkin are (Saritha’s minions or whatever)… turns out that every single freaking player was farming the relatively few mobs up on the top ledge, when there were actually large camps of them all the way down the cliff ledges, entirely untouched. Not really represented on the map, though.
Heh, could be. My bags or so full of crap if there’s something there that I have to use to start a quest I probably missed it. I mean, I haven’t played in, what, six-eight months? I don’t know how the new spell/talent system works, I can barely cast my way out of a paper bag, and I’m toting around tons of crappy stuff. Thanks.
I had a small point in Hyjal where I thought I didn’t have any quests, but it turned out there was one quest that popped up near the burning grove or whatever it’s called that I hadn’t seen. I would revisit the “mini-hubs” where you’ve been, including Nordrassil, the place where you start (there’s a quest that pops up there at 81 I think…).
I got stuck in Hyjal a couple of nights ago because I couldn’t get to Saritha, since it was being so camped. So I ended up doing some daily quests in Org and flying around doing some Archaeology until I could log on the next morning to do it.
Andrew
3577
When I did this quest yesterday, the really huge string bean shaped area where the relevant mobs were was shown. Generally, it seemed that flying to the slightly more remote parts of the blob on the map avoided the crowds.
I think you forgot Silverpine Forest in your 2nd route.
I did the zones in your 2nd route on my 80 to get the quest achievements and see the changes. I can’t comment on difficulty because of that since I naturally one-shot everything.
Silverpine: Must do. Amazing! You directly serve the Banshee Queen Sylvanas and she is mighty pissed! Great quest chain
Hillsbrad Foothills: Also amazing as Horde! Utterly domination in that zone and some really memorable quests (Seedlings)! Bonus: The “Plants vs. Zombie chain” to get the Sunflower pet (a favourite in our guild now you will see why when you have it -> la la la la la la).
Oh and the quest chain with you starting to be a Quest GIVER is hilarious!
Arathi Highlands:
Basically the same quests than before Cata. A 2nd Horde camp at the entrance from Hillsbrad incl. flight path makes it faster to quest / hand-in.
Hardly any elites anymore.
Hinterlands: Again basicially the same quests.
1 more Horde outpost makes it faster as well.
Western Plaguelands:
Has somewhat transformed due to druids and less Scourge.
Nice quest chains for sure with a new hub in Andoral (where Horde and Ally fight for domination). Also an epic ending for that quest chain (the reveal of your quest giver is pretty cool).
Tyr’s Hand (formerly Scarlet Crusade) is Argent Dawn now and has another flight path and hub.
Eastern Plaguelands:
A really cool quest chain “Fiona’s Caravan” starting right at the entrance to that zone and leads you through it. Excellent and logical immersive hand-holding (the caravan stops at certain quest hubs and continues once you did those quests).
It’s largly the same from a quest point of view though.
In my opinion everyone should do Silverpine and Hillsbrad in one form or another. Plaguelands are pretty cool, too.
Alliance side Vash’Jir has, so far,been a very tight narrative. I’m through the first two zones I think (I’ve finished all the Vision quests) and I have to say that while some of the early stuff was your standard boring “quest hub” at the time, looking back on it the last two zones have been a fantastically coherent story of going out to fight the other side of the war, getting shipwrecked, freeing your allies and figuring out what’s going on. I’m at the point where I think we’re about to start dealing with what’s going on (at level 82.25 or so, althoughI did a couple of blackrock caverns runs in there when guildmates wanted to do one of the new dungeons). I haven’t run into Throne of the Tides just yet, though I suspect from reading some of the boss names in there as well as some of the quest set bits I’ve just gone through that I should be introduced to the instance relatively soon.
There’s a quest in the Nordrassil starting camp in Hyjal - I forget from whom, but I think Ysera - that leads very unintuitively over a nearby bunch of mountains to talk to… um, I think Malfurion Stormrage, who will give you the next quests. That first bit of Hyjal feels kind of disjointed to me, but it passes quickly.
