First: You only receive xp on discovery of a region that hasn’t been revealed on the big map. There are subareas of this region that could have triggered it alternatively (had you ventured into the unknown area from a different direction) but since you’ve already filled it in on the map you don’t get to trigger discovery.
Second: If you don’t want the “elite” mount of your own race you can always get to “exalted” status for another side of your faction and get their mount. So, if you don’t like the undead elite mount then you could always get exalted (one rank above honored) for the orcs or tauren and get an elite wolf or kodo to ride. Personally I’m thinking about getting the night elf cat to ride for my gnomish mage, but I’ll need to head out to Ashenvale to work on quests there.
Yeah, but the areas I’m talking about hadn’t been opened on the map. For example, in Desolace, there’s a gnome’s camp (Sprizzlebrock or something - he gives you a quest to tame aged and sick kodos) that comes up as a yellow name on the screen when you walk into it. However, the map doesn’t open up at all and you get no xp. There is another adjacent area (some Horde outpost I think) that does the same thing. If you go just southwest of here, though, you get to the Kodo Graveyard, which comes up as a yellow name, with XP, and it opens up the whole area on the map page. In Dustwallow, the area I noticed acting like this was Dragonmurk. The Quagmire in the north and whatever is south of Dragonmurk gave XP and opened up the map, Dragonmurk just popped up a yellow name.
Also, revered comes after honored. My catass paladin just got revered by Stormwind yesterday. :)
As far as I know, you always get some xp from opening up areas, and even if you didn’t, that shouldn’t stop it from filling in. Some of my guildies had problems with this, for the longest of times splintertree post in ashenvale wouldn’t open up, but it eventually filled in on its own.
I can’t say I’ve ever had much of a problem getting stuff filled in, I have ended up in some rather bad situations trying to explore though. I’ve had my raptor since 42, I’m 50 now (yeah yeah catassing :p ), and I’m slowly mapping out the higher level areas.
I never played much in CB or OB so most of this is new to me. I just got Blasted lands and burning stepps filled in. Blasted Lands kinda sucked because there’s an area down there called Tainted Scar that’s filled up with ?? felguards. For some god unknown reason, I decided to try to sneak past them. I made it about 50 yards in before one saw through my stealth and 2 shotted me. From what I can see, it connects to the ?? elite troll place in STV, which made me want to go explore around it even more. Short of corpse hopping though, I wasn’t about to make it very far. After 4 more deaths, I had a warlock friend of mine summon me out.
One thing you need to be careful of is mobs that either net or use sprint. The minute you’re dazed you dismount and that can be problematic if you’re exploring something way above your level.
Notable exceptions are the newbie areas. You won’t get any XP for opening them up; in fact, you won’t even get a message telling you that you discovered them, they’ll just appear on your map after you go there.
Your goal should be getting to 60 so you can be uber when battlefields come around and then you can earn the super sweet armor and mounts that you only get as battlefield rewards.
Notable exceptions are the newbie areas. You won’t get any XP for opening them up; in fact, you won’t even get a message telling you that you discovered them, they’ll just appear on your map after you go there.[/quote]
Really? Never noticed that, but then again, the area I had been in might not have been the actually dwarf newbie land that I…happened upon.
I got my mount about a week ago (halfway through level 40, thank you auction house!). I find myself feeling somewhat the same as jafd. The mount is way cool and I love it. It makes it so much easier to complete quests and just get from one area to another. It also allowed me to respec, recovering three points I had put into a speed ability that I no longer really need. And exploring new parts of the map is not only quicker, but way easier since I can outrun most mobs.
And yet. I think the weird thing is that, after level 40, I don’t get any NEW skills as a Rogue. I get lots of improvements to my old skills, of course, but no new toys/mechanics to play with. I’m realizing that it’s that “cool new thing I can do” that’s been a real carrot for me in this game. I still love the game and play it all the time, and I’m looking forward to exploring new places (the other big carrot for me). But the relentless drive to get more XP and more gold is mostly gone–now I’m just playing casually as a sightseer. I may start a new character and come back to the Rogue after taking a break.
Anyone else feel that way post-40? I think maybe Blizzard should have done the character development a little differently, and had some cool new skills even at 50 and 60 (I realize I can get a better mount at 60, but again that seems like an improvement over something I can already do, rather than a new skill). Something that actually changes what you can do, the way getting Poison or Vanish or Blind or Riding do. Just a thought. I guess I can look forward to getting new talents, at least, which is cool. Three levels until Blade Flurry!
My Pally got a new skill at 50, but it turned out that it wasn’t all that cool - just a PBAoE undead damage spell that doesn’t do enough damage for the 50% of my mana bar that it consumes.
The only other thing really driving my levelling at this point has been the urge to purchase, and use, identically-named and matching sets of green gear. I finished the Revenant set and used it - people actually gave me compliments and wanted to know where to get it - and now I’m working my way up the Emerald gear.
