Regardless though we get here and are presented with the quest hub here, however before we go on to the actual questing here I want to query the amount of flight paths in this zone, compared to like every other zone I have been in thus far there are a serious lack of flight paths here, in other zones with this format there would be at least 4 flight paths, perhaps 5 arguably but there exists only 2 in this zone, so flying back to your trainer and continuing at certain points is just damn right pointless, I understand that the zone is so linear and flows nicely that a flightpath is rather superfluous, but really if other zones have unnecessary flightpaths this zone needs them aswell. I would definitely add a flightpath here and at the ruins of Auberdine quest hub covered in the next write-up. Perhaps even one at the vortex although that wouldn't make much sense in terms of logistics :D, I mean I actually didn't think about this whilst questing until I got to the grove of the ancients and was like: "huh there are like no fps in this zone" so it shows that they aren't needed whilst questing but in terms of consistency between zones and continuation factors I feel like the zone needs at least 2 additional flightpaths.
Regardless though, lets get onto the actual questing of this hub. Firstly we have a couple of really pedantic quests. It isn't necessarily the fact that these quests are bad it's just they have a few issues in my book: Firstly, the amount of artifacts in this zone seemed extremely lacking, now I believe this is a ridiculously long respawn issue because I came here in a previous build and there were plenty of artifacts but not many people, so I presume that respawns are a just a bit too long.
Secondly you can end up adding like 2-3 mobs really fast because of patrols, not just for this quest but for alot of quests in this area, I really hate patrolling mobs :/, they are just seriously irritating because they can seriously delay your questing if you are a class that has mana issues (!?!!!??!?!??!!?!?!?!?!!) or struggles to deal with 2 mobs. The final point is that the patrolling overseers drop a starting quest item.. this is just something I highly disagree with, the fact you can quite easily complete both of these quests avoiding these patrols and basically miss this quest by being "good" and avoiding the overseers, this is just a bad design imo. If they dropped off the laborers or you had to kill like 3 overseers with the laborer quest then I think the drop is justified, however not in it's current state.
Regardless though, getting these quests leads you onto a couple more quests heading into their base-camp. The quest that involves torching some of the horde supplies is a neat way of doing an item quest, but also a few bugs, on certain crates you get automatically turned away from the crate so you have to use the item from a certain angle to be able to get credit.. I also feel like you have to burn too many supplies compared to what else you have to do in the area really, maybe this should be toned down a little. The quests here that involve you going to the prisoners here are kinda cool in terms of immersion, avenge the death of a night elf is always a cool style of quest. I don't like how the item dropped from the torturer isn't a quest starting item or the night elf in the cage isn't noted as a quest starter on the map.
I mean, sure it requires a brain from players but I mean if you forgot to loot him you would have absolutely no idea the quest was there or anything. The escort quest is pretty nice though, great synergy with the cleanup of the area and getting about the right amount of kills of the enforcers that you need for the quest. She also runs fast and is quite dynamic, I would have liked the flightmaster to spawn a windrider like most flightmasters do, just for the immersion even if they were much weaker than the standard elite spawns. It is cool she just jumps off and gives information about the story rather than it being embeded in the quest text, which I am always a huge fan of.
The next few quests are pretty interesting and particularly awesome because they introduce you into some solid raid fundamentals, there is obviously the fact that the shamans patrol alot.. really annoying especially when headed towards Sheya Stormweaver, if you drop down when one is patrolling they will run all the way around and aggro mobs, which is incredibly frustrating.
However, firstly the Tower of Althaxx quest is pretty standard, kill some forsaken and kill the named npc, he aggros when you take the tome which is nice but I feel like he patrols way too close to other mobs here so I was trying to time my taking of the tome with his patrol along with having to be careful about pulling the mobs in the room, not exactly sure if this is intended but I don't know if this is necessarily a bad thing. The named npc fights are pretty awesome though, the fight with Teegan Holloway teaches you to not stand in fire, by having a projectile that is fixed on your current position, a great mechanic really and it has great timing with the spear you get given.
The second npc (who was the bugged npc I was referring to) has a similar mechanic apart from you are learning to los casts, I mean thats a pretty awesome thing to learn and again it has great timings with the cooldown of the spear. They eventually both jump down and finish you off but here-in lies the problem with the bugs of these 2 npcs. Seemingly if a player dies or runs off after the npcs jump down from their perches they don't reset back up there and evade for anybody attempting the quest afterwards, this is obviously a major bug since the quest cockblocks you in the zone if you don't do this quest. Regardless though these quests are amazingly unique and I reccommend about 24 bajillion more of these types of quests that teach you about mechanics and are actually really punishing if you don't avoid the damage, not losing the water bolt is detramental and so is standing in the lightning (fire) which is just... man I really want to see more of these quests, they could go a long way in improving the player base as a whole at max level.
After these quests you are sent off to the front lines for the conclusion of this quest hub, you ride on up in a nightsaber, via the taxi-service through a night elf onslaught of the troll area, pretty epic battle going on around you and really immersive, you emerge on the other side of the cave and are given an awesome vehicle quest with an ancient to kill trolls and buildings, I really think the objectives should be cut in half though so you only have to go to 1 side, just because crossing to the other side takes forever..... and is incredibly pedantic, I would also like the quest hand-in for this quest to just be at the quest hand-in you already have so people don't like use their ancient and dismount at the original quest-giver here and have to run through a bunch of troll mobs.
The last quest is also pretty cool in this zone, you are basically to assault the leader here with a bunch of sentinel support, pretty immersive and you don't really feel like the hero here, which I think is good from now and then, you are just support really, I'm quite sure the sentinels would obliterate the troll leader without any assistance... however if you don't do enough damage you aren't able to loot the chieftain, which is REALLY troublesome since the way to "quest out" of this zone is looting the drop off of the chieftain, really bad design imo I mean, I hate starting quest items anyway but I mean this is even worse really because you can get denied this quest and just not have any in your questbook.
With this though you head back to Lor'danel for the end of this quest chain, it's a pretty cool immersive chain tbh and I really like how the nightsaber takes you directly back to Lor'danel instead of stopping off at the ruins needlessly. I might also add that the fact they actually converted this village, which was really just a flying doodad in vanilla and currently on live, into an actual quest zone, which concludes a good quest chain, I mean the fact that zones like ironforge airfield and this village are being implemented into actual gameplay in these zones is just so lovely.
Regardless, wrapping up this area, halfway through this zone and like in any other zone I could argue that this is a perfectly good conclusion, but we are barely half-way through and have a far more epic conclusion I mean yeh this zone is really immersive.
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