Ok, so onto the Northern Barrens, firstly you are sent here via 2 breadcrumbs, 1 is simply a generic GO TO THE NORTHERN BARRENS, so that anybody can go here regardless of what quests have been done. The other one is leading on from the final quest of Durotar, this tells me that Durotar->Northern Barrens is where I should go according to STORY, which is probably the most integral part of the levelling experience imo.
Without story you are just chinese farming and basically just crashing through quests and not paying any attention to them, which means questing is boring and inevitably not satisfying.
However, onto the First quest-hub, the first area you arrive into is the Far-watch post, next to the bridge from Durotar which was almost wrecked by the cataclysm. Cool.. you are told that the cataclysm has caused the quillboar from the south of the barrens to move north and have started attacking the Orcs in the area and cutting off their supplies.
Firstly you are asked to cull the quillboar in the area, and kill the annoying plainstriders in the area.
Before moving onto the quests, I want to talk about the area first:
1) Far-watch post is *REALLY* not accessible, I mean its a big run from Orgrimmar and there isn't any sort of "FREE PASSAGE" quest to far-watch post, it's an annoying run through Durotar to get there, and well I feel this needs to be fixed
2) No flight path, because I decided to do this zone when like LOGGING IN/OUT caused you to lose specialised skills and you had to respec in order to retrieve them, I had to run to and from Orgrimmar, this zone is annoying enough to get to without a flightmaster, I feel like one needs to be added.
After that small rant, onto the quests, killing Plainstriders are all around the camp, the drop rate on this quest is like 50%, and there really aren't many plainstriders, having to kill around 14 REALLY spread out mobs, is a pain in the ass really, either increase the amount of plainstriders or drop rate or both :). I do however delight in the irony that the troll in Durotar wanted to save their lives and instead lead them to you killing them in the Barrens, awesome irony :D.
I also dinged 12 during this mission, PLEASE NOTE: this zone is marked as a level 10-20 zone and I started it a good half level through lvl 11 with some rested experience. Just a note that the LEVELLING TEXT, ie those cool animation things when you ding, are bugged and say you get a talent point every level as of the current build on this date, I presume it's rather low priority fixing, but I will point it out.
Moving south of Far-watch post we arrive at the quillboar, where there is also another quest giver, he wants you to rescue some wolves from inside a pen, which just so happens to be burning, simply walking into this pen and unhooking 3 wolves is simple, but hey this sort of quest is more fun than having to say save 3 wolves in opposite corners of a camp, at least they are nice and clumped.
Nothing much to say about the kill quest, the Quillboar are in about the Right proportion for the killing objectives and are plenty numerous in number to fulfill the quest objective with 0 problems.
Handing in you are told that the Quillboar have stolen horde supplies and you need to retrieve them and kill the Quillboar guarding them. OBVIOUSLY they have hidden these supplies in a cave, going to the cave you obviously have to kill Quillboar and work your way to the top of the cave (it's a generic vanilla cave) to kill the leader of the Quillboar, he has some nice interaction, when you reach the top (before you engage) he yells I CAN SMELL YOU COME AND DIE basically, which is a neat little trigger adding to realism/immersion.
Overall he is simple to kill, a note about the other quests in the area though. There are plenty of supplies to grab on your way up but there are too few thornweavers without going OUT OF YOUR WAY to kill them, ie going down optional paths or into the water, maybe decrease their objective count or replace some of the defenders with Thornweavers. Perhaps I was slightly unlucky with the rng spawns I was presented with, but that was my only functionality defect I had with these quests.
Handing in you now get a cool quest after those rather generic dull quests. They are like DEFEND THE CARAVAN WITH THIS GIANT GUN :DDDDD, cool stuff you get to ride on a kodo and kill stuff with guns. I believe? this is the first vehicle quest that I have done on this character that requires interaction, it's pretty cool: Quillboar go after the kodo behind you and leap up on it, you basically target them and shoot them down with your shotgun :DD. Sometimes the Quillboar were hard to like target, because their nameplate and name disappeared when attached to the kodo, perhaps some fixing of that would be nice.
However, this quest is awesome, and a gentle introduction to interactive vehicle quests (as opposed to the sit back and travel vehicle quests) anyway you get taken to Grol'dom farm, which is under attack by those pesky Quillboar and you are given various quests to kill them, capture them and well kill them.
A weird thing here is that you get the quest to move onto Crossroads immediately... I don't agree with this one bit, a new player might accept this quest and move onto crossroads before doing any of the quests here, This quest should only be unlocked once you have completed the quests in the area, in my opinion.
You also get re-introduced to Mankrik, now I am not a fountain of lore knowledge, especially to do with like horde low level areas, because I only levelled like 2 horde characters, and both of them avoided Barrens like the plague.. however, from what I gather Mankrik's wife was murdered by the quillboar and now he is sort of Bloodlusted into revenge against them. He clearly wants you to kill some in her name as well and asks you to get like 30 tusks, an audacious task but then you realise the quillboar drop 1-2 of these every kill and so you end up only having to kill 20 quillboar, which is pretty much done from the other quests in the area.
The other 2 more specific quests are: KILL QUILLBOARS IN THE AREA, and like capture a quillboar.. btw that quest is so good, you like use the quest item on a quillboar, and then like he turns friendly and you interact with him, and the dialogue option is "POUND THIS CHUMP" and then he sort of gets pounded to the ground, chained up and dragged along the ground as you quest.. seriously cool :D.
When you finish the other kill quest on the same mobs you drag this prisoner back to the questgiver, and some neat phasing occurs and the quillboar appears as a prisoner in the pen to the side of the hut.
I dinged from this quest, but regardless, you get another unique quest as a follow-up, you are asked to question the prisoner.. but unlike every other sort of QUESTION PRISONER style quests you are asked to choose between 6 dialogue options.. I believe that whatever you pick you always get the same result. However the cool thing about this is that the player is given an element of choice, and whatever decision you make you get a 20 minute buff for being NICE or being CRUEL. I ran through this twice and got the 2 opposing buffs, there maybe more buffs but regardless the cruel increases your damage and being nice gives a rather pointless buff.
Personally, I feel like they should have made this a zone-wide buff and perhaps have like other npcs react differently (but give the same quests) depending on what choice you made here. It would be really immersive and give the player a sense that CHOICES MATTER, where in an mmo you usually feel choiceless.
After questioning he reveals there is some leader all the quillboar are afraid of called Tortusk so.. you had better go kill him. Also a kodo has been captured by the Quillboar and you need to go save it.
Simply heading south across the road gets you to the stolen Kodo, you need to gather some food so it won't die. I would have liked a quest timer for this mission, it could be really generous like 20 minutes or something, but it would add to the immersion that you needed to gather the food before the beast dies. Basically you have to gather grain on the ground. I just got them as I saw them whilst heading towards Tortusk.
He is riding a frigging raptor, and when you engage he fights you on the raptor, which is pretty cool for a named guy you are meant to kill. He says some stuff, but nothing is that epic to really comment on. It's nice that there are like 2-3 grain piles behind him so that killing him helps you complete the save the kodo quest faster, which I feel adds to the immersion factor, or at least provides some synergy between quests, which is always nice.
Handing in the kodo quest (AT THE KODO) causes the kodo to basically run off back to the farm, on the beta at the moment it's animations are bugged and it stays sitting down slithering across the ground... hilarious btw... but yeh obviously unintended.
Final quest here is just the quest that was available since you arrived in this area.. again I feel it should only be unlocked after saving the kodo so you are forced down a fairly linear path, since you need to do these quests to ding in this area.
This quest is similar to the far-watch->grol'dom farm vehicle quest, so its obviously awesome. Apart from this time we have raiders attacking us from the burning blade (note.. there is no other presence of the burning blade in this area, in terms of a quest, so it seems weird they would attack us here). But ye they attack you and leap at you, when they do this you can use a new ability which basically uses the butt of your weapon and shove them off (awesome animation for that btw), making your shotgun skills even more epic.
A small comment, the vehicle is called "The Hotseat".. awesome :).
I really hoped they had more of these quests like culminating in some boss battle with your kodo type thing, but alas this is the last vehicle quest with it :(. Concluding this area here, moving on to the Crossroads in another post. Overall a reasonable start to the zone with 2 awesome quests, no real over-arching story at the moment though.. just like QUILLBOAR ARE ATTACKING WE NEED SUPPLIES, so a little bit disappointed here :<.
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