Creature Damage Increases.

I feel compelled to have a rant about this here, maybe it interrupts the "flow" of my questing and such but I feel like I need to leave some feedback, please note I have not done more testing than simply engaging a couple of mobs in deepholm, this post is not going to be a feedback post on numbers, it is a feedback post about the idea.

Firstly, let me point out SPECIFICALLY, that I play a Paladin, arguably the easiest class to solo with in the world. That's important simply because ANY effect of levelling is going to be WORSE on pretty much every other character.

My problems are sort of 2-3 fold with this move, if we look at wrath's npc philosophy, you can pretty much easily admit you were in this sort of "GODMODE" for most of your quest experience, the only way you could die was if you pulled around 5-10 mobs (depending on class) or an elite mob. This leads to a whole variety of things that are incredibly arguable like "LESS SKILL NEEDED TO LEVEL" and all this junk, but one thing everyone can agree on is that it made levelling less frustrating. You didn't have to worry about pulling a few too many and could blast through quests like there was no tomorrow. Elites were still, well, elites and were tough to take down without a friend to help you.

Now.. if we take a look at this through say a time monocle, or some sort of ocular device, we can see that overall wrath has been the easiest, casual friendly expansion. It was "easier" to level as a whole in wrath, 5-mans were very much easier and with the introduction of normal mode raids, raiding was much easier to get into. This point can be argued with good and bad reasoning, suffice to say though: people get used to a status quo. When everything goes 1 way, in this case towards the easy end of a spectra, people get used to an idea, in this case that soloing is meant to be an easy experience and everything else is meant to be an easier way to get into end-game activities.

The problem here is that to suddenly go away from this analogy is going to be somewhat daunting for any player, I won't go into too much detail about specific numbers, but if the situation is something like you have to "Rest" after 2-3 mobs, it's just detrimental.

One great thing about wrath's levelling mantra was that it really hid the disparity between levelling as different classes/specs. Because the levelling experience was so easy it didn't matter if you levelled say a rogue or a Ret Paladin, because even though a Ret Paladin can solo SOOO much better than the rogue, the only quests where this is actually noteworthy are elite quests, and they are meant to be group anyway.

By wanting to increase the difficulty of levelling, which lets be honest here I think is a pretty sound idea generally, you are infact making the differences between classes far more apparent. Instead of advocating your choice mechanic, everybody will be forced into the most efficient levelling spec, nobody will want to say solo as a fire mage if a frost mage can kill 1 more mob before they have to drink or something. These little differences are magnetized on a small scale.

Take for example a demo warlock and Affliction warlock in wrath. When I levelled my warlock, affliction warlock was much more fun to level, and arguably better for dealing with generic multi-pulling because of the self healing and such. However, when I ever came to an elite quest I would immediately be switching spec to Demonology, because with tools like Improved Health Funnel and such I could actually solo elites.

People will almost always value LESS DOWNTIME=FUN, so even if they enjoy say spec a over spec b, if spec b means they level with less downtime 90% of people will spec b. It isn't a question of people who want to level quickly or slowly. That difference isn't what determines spec. If somebody is new to the game they will probably pick a spec based on the descriptions and their flavour, but if they end up dying alot, they are going to severely question their choice. Some people want to level slower, and say experience the lore and read the quest text and stuff. This does not mean people want to be pigeon-holed into a spec they actually don't enjoy. Why is this? because drinking and bandaging and just downtime in general disrupts questflows dramatically.

Let's take most quests for example, most quests involve you killing 15 mobs or so, thats a pretty generic kill-quest count. The goal here is to find out what is a necessary sweet-spot for downtime, and lets define downtime as around 15-20 seconds.

If you have to stop for downtime every 2-3 mobs you end up having to stop around 5-7 times and waste around 2 minutes DOING NOTHING. If say you have to stop around every 10 mobs, that means you have to stop once. Which, is probably reasonable.

My question is here is what is the role of the player in wow, they have always in the past be deemed as a hero, somebody who has much less health than any boss but has the tenacity and willpower to be considered a hero. That makes them much stronger than other npcs right. However, if the idea is to bring the player back down to the npc level, I cannot agree with this thought process.

My biggest problem, as highlighted above, is the fact that any difficulty whilst levelling is ONLY HIGHLIGHTED by disparities between classes, classes/specs that have more downtime will just not be played whilst levelling and there is a challenge. I could understand if it was possible to be able to balance all classes/specs to around the same level, but I honestly believe this to be impossible on a 1v1 basis. Blizzard has already stated they could not possibly balance 1v1, you balance people on a 3v3 basis, having synergies etc. The fact is that with classes having such a big disparity and non-homogenization it is impossible for this to be even.

I am sitting here being kinda annoyed as a Ret paladin, I can't imagine somebody like a fire mage or a Combat Rogue having the same time as me with the current state of beta, it will just mean that less people play these specs whilst levelling, or in worst cases classes. The advantages of levelling a Hybrid, specifically one that can heal and therefore minimise downtime, will be far too great.

The last point about this change is I think this will get people into very bad habits. I'm quite sure Blizzard has stated it's abject wish that their be little distinction between a good levelling and raiding/pvp spec. That mostly these be the same apart from a few utility choices across the trees. So, we already know that there SHOULDN'T be a difference between a levelling combat rogue and a raiding combat rogue.

So what does this mean, people start using abilities that increase their survival, rogues pop evasion/dismantle on cooldown. Paladins start using the healing seal (can't remember name :<) instead of their dps seal, because it minimises downtime. People start doing silly stuff like this, whilst some of it could be applauded, say healing yourself when taking damage (I ONLY SAY THIS because Blizzard has stated they want dps to do this whilst raiding, I WHOLLY disagree with this and believe people will flood to a class that doesn't require much active self maintenence, perhaps shadow priests or mages and such, but that's a different story). However, I don't like the mantra that Soloing=5-mans=Raiding in terms of playstyle. I like the fact that they are all very different playstyles. Soloing=Whack-a-mole, dps, 5-mans=Large C-C and concentrated damage and Raiding=Maximum Damage output.

I also feel that any change in say creature damage should be very much skill-capped. What I mean by this is that a skilled player should still be in godmode, not because of class and such but because they avoided special abilities of the creatures. I could really get behind this change if AVOIDABLE damage was increased to deadly levels, IE people who didn't move out of a character whirlwinding or an aoe spell they cast 0r didn't interrupt a spell they could etc. If this was changed I think the overall levelling experience would be perfect, npc specials could kill you if you didn't avoid them properly, overwise you are perfectly fine.

This gets people into GOOD habits of moving out of fires whilst levelling or you get frustrated and die.. that's an amazing habit to get onto players. If people aren't punished specifically for that, and really just for engaging a mob, that doesn't teach a player anything other than SPEC A IS BETTER FOR SOLOING THAN SPEC B, or I SHOULD USE ABILITY A OVER ABILITY B BECAUSE I HAVE LESS DOWNTIME BUT ISNT PART OF MY NORMAL ROTATION.

I agree with the mob health increase, mainly because I feel like mobs should take around 15 seconds to kill, which they currently do on beta, but I don't feel that both are necessary, the mob health increase is a far better change than the dps increase.

I think it would be nicer to hear say why you want to change, because simply: WE WANT LEVELLING TO BE HARDER, doesn't cut it with me. Why should a "limited" part of the game need to be harder, maybe it is too easy now, but that just means I can embrace the story more, I feel powerful and an influential figure in the lore of a zone as I quest, I really get to enjoy the actual mantra of questing. However if I have to like cc and pull individually and be pedantic on every quest, then I'm going to forget the meaning of most quests, and I think this is a big detriment to some of the awesome quests that have been designed in the expansion.

My conclusion: Do 1 of 2 things, 1) Increase Special, AVOIDABLE!!!, damage. or 2) Increase all damage a smidgin (I believe in deepholm the damage was pretty comparable to damage output, although this was without masteries and with incomplete talent trees, so doubling their damage would probably end up about right.)

Otherwise you will get a very big shift in levelling power base as Hybrid Healers->Dps with Self Healing/Kiting ability -> Ranged Dps -> Melee dps. Maybe it is a good thing, but I think it just becomes unfair and kills any choice I had whilst levelling, and forces me into the best soloing spec. I loved how I could level as holy in wrath because I could kill things quickly and rarely had to use my healing abilities. However in Cataclysm I would just have more downtime and would just rather heal as something that minimised that.

Desolace Final Quests

This is a short area, simply concluding the zone, but I feel like it needs it's own post since it's in a very much distinct questing area, regardless your uniting of the centaur is important and is resulting in a final clash between the Demons and the Centaur, the great thing about this quest are you are apart of the Centaur army.

You are given a regiment of Centaur to command, when I first tried this they got stuck in the barricades surrounding the Khan, obviously a bug that needs to be fixed.. not exactly sure how. The Centaur is also slightly bugged, using the 2 ability doesn't work, they won't attack the target unless you are in range, kinda like they are on defensive and are pets.. but ye the number 2 ability doesn't work.

However, this quest is really immersive, the healing and controlling of units is fun.. just great, nothing wrong with this quest other than those bugs, which didn't prevent me from enjoying this quest :D.

I feel like I should be able to hand-in this quest on my centaur, since I need it for the follow-up instead of dismounting and then mounting the vehicle again. I also feel like this area needs to be phased with the centaur say taking over this first area so that you don't have to like clear your way through demons you had essentially just killed in the last quest.

However, this quest is awesome aswell,you get to fight the PIT LORD, when engaging the Pit Lord, the 3 Centaur Khan's charge up behind you and proceed to engage him, it's a pretty iconic Pitlord, it has all the warcraft 3 spells, although I would have loved to have seen some summon Infernal action, whilst you seem to be quite a spectator in the battle, you still feel apart of it so it's pretty epic! :D.

Handing in the quest ends the zone..

Before concluding this post with the slideshows just going to comment on my thoughts on the zone: LONG is the major word I would use here, the zone could definitly use some streamlining, not really in terms of cutting out quests though imo, they are all pretty good and necessary (other than a few vanilla quests and well that awful kodo quest). However, I do like the philosophy of this zone, which seems to be alot of mini story epic quest hubs, which I am certainly a big fan of here, with a little bit of polish this zone will be pretty damn awesome so yeh.

Apart from it's length and some lack-of polish though, the zone overall had a great flavour, there were alot of "awesome" quests and a few "epic" quests aswell, the zone utilises the auto-quest feature well and it only failed for me once, which was nice for a change :D.

Obviously the Feralas Breadcrumb isn't in place, and I don't know exactly how the Centaur Khan can give this breadcrumb, I feel like they should direct you back to the cenarion circle who say you need to help them in feralas and aid them there (and get a free travel there). Since the beginning of the zone is quests from the Cenarion Circle, or at least a Tauren Druid. I don't know though so.. :).

Here's a Slideshow of these final quests and of the entire zone (biggest zone yet in terms of screenshots).

Shadowprey Village

Ok, so onto Shadowprey Village, the next logical place to go here :D, Whilst heading here again there is a signpost which is like NEW EXPLORERS LEAGUE HUB! or words to that effect, which obviously needs to be fixed at some point :D.

When coming here there are no quests until handing in the breadcrumb, then 3!!!?!?!!??!! quests appear, but the 3rd quest is like miles away from the other 2, so unless you know it's there you wouldn't pick it up here, whether that's a good or bad thing I haven't decided yet. However the 2 quests I picked up first, which are next to each other, involve looting shellfish traps (a vanilla quest), and killing a named orca in the area eating up all the fish :D.

The Vanilla quest has been improved immeasurably with the drop rate on looting the traps increased to 200%!, meaning you get the quest done in 3 loots, which is just SO NICE for a quest that doesn't provide breathing or a swim speed buff. Now it took me a while to find the named orca, It either patrols WAYYYYY too far, or somebody just killed it before I arrived, not sure which is the truth but ye.. it was annoying searching for this guy with the map only showing one position for him, and he wasn't there :<.

I'm also going to comment on the reward from the shellfish collecting quest, In vanilla this reward was like a quest objective of another quest, I can't remember exactly which, but I'm quite sure that quest DOES NOT exist anymore, so updating to a reasonable quest reward seems appropriate.

Now the third quest I was talking about asks you to kill the Lobstrok in the area, I'm sure they aren't called that elsewhere and are called Makrura, maybe it's slang or something Idk... Anyway, the reason why I am torn between this being shown or not to the player is because although there are Lobstrok underwater and this provides synergy between the 2 quests, if you restricted yourself to the water it would take SOOOOO MUCH LONGER to kill all the lobstrok, since on the land there are just a greater abundance of them, so although they have synergy together, I am pretty torn between whether or not they should be together.

Regardless, completing this unlocks the FERALAS BREADCRUMB, obviously not yet implemented here so ye! :), loving the !!!!!!1 action in this quest. There is also a breadcrumb to Northern STV, I've stated countless times but I DO NOT LIKE BREADCRUMBS TO OTHER ZONES NOT IN THE QUEST FLOW IN ZONES MILES AWAY FROM THEM. I also think the feralas breadcrumb should be at the end of the zone, and not here, since the entrance to feralas is soo near D:.

Anyway, moving on involves us going to our remaining active quest! rescue the daughter of the Gelkis Khan, so heading up towards the zone where we are asked to kill 10 Maraudine Maulers, looting any of these gives you a quest-starting item showing where the Khan's daughter is.

Heading inside Maraudon, I don't really like how "The Nameless Prophet" Elite is here still, he is kinda tough to take down and annoyingly aggro's alot of nearby mobs. The Daughter is inside a cage and is pretty obvious to see, the quest right next to her is highly confusing though, both in name and description. I mean the quest is like "WHILE YOU ARE HERE" and there is no indication in the description where these artifacts are, since you are inside maraudon the zone map is disabled so you can't see where the artifacts are.

They are outside, but I mean it needs to be in the quest description or the Zone map needs to be enabled here so you can see that the artifacts aren't inside. I would like to add though that it would be nice to have a couple of quests here taking you to all 3 entrances of Maraudon so they unlock in the dungeon-finder for people wanting to go there, and perhaps give some background to the 3 dungeons.

Anyway, heading back outside to kill off the rest of the maulers and collect artifacts there are plenty of both so the quests are pretty simple.. There is also an escort quest, but I HIGHLY BELIEVE this is a left-over vanilla quest, because a) nothing directs you quest-wise to where the escort is, b) The escortee walks sooooooooooooooo slowly and c) the follow-up when handing in (also a left-over quest) is marked as a red quest in my quest-book.

Both the quests from the Khan, and the quest inside Maraudon are completed via auto-quest, speeding up quest-flow, which is a nice touch.

I don't really think feedback on that quest is really necessary, but yeh... remove it or make it better and give some direction to the player towards her :).

Anyway, handing in all of these quests lead you to the final area of the zone.. I'm going to add how like, the quest is really unclear I mean the map objective is perfectly clear, but it makes no sense how you meet him at the final quests zone rather than say at the Wildlands and then head towards that area, but yeh.. I feel like this needs to be cleaned up a little.

Ghostwalker Post

Right so of course now we logically head to Ghostwalker Post, and pick up the 3 or so quests here, we get the, awesomely sounding, typical quest from the Forsaken here... I NEED SOMETHING FOR MY PLAGUEEEEEE. Oh, it cracks my up how almost all forsaken quest givers are the same ^^. Theres also a quest to cull the demons in the south, and to head on over to a goblin quest giver: who in turn wants you to "Kombobulate" the kodo's.

This quest is a vanilla quest, although reduced in numbers from 5 to 3, the quest is pretty awesome though, showing off the awesome goblin ingenuity of somehow being able to turn these old/aging/dying Kodo's and turn them into fresh young Kodo's, I particularly find the amusing references when handing them in, which I like since it's unique even though a vanilla quest, about how you want to use the kombobulator on yourself. Theres some typos in the hand-ins that are to do with the vanilla to Cataclysm conversion. The quest still refers to you gathering 5 kodo's when obviously you have only gathered 3. I also don't like how slow the Kodo's are, they can't keep up with a 60% speed mount, which they really should be able to do since they are a Tauren mount of choice..

HOWEVER, we then move on to THE QUEST FROM HELLL!!!?!?!?!?!?!!?!? The quest from the Forsaken, what is bad about this quest, well it requires a SPECIFIC TYPE OF KODO, there are 3 types in the graveyard, and they are all randomly spawned from locations, we have Ancient, Aged and Dying Kodos. The quest item only drops off the dying Kodo's, and since there are only around like..10-15 Kodo's in the area, this means ON AVERAGE there will be a maximum of 5 dying Kodo's in the area, however since there is absolutely no reason to kill the other 2, the Dying Kodo's slowly dwindle in the area meaning a number of around 2-3 is far more accurate.

THEN, if that wasn't bad enough, the quest item is like a 25% drop rate or something... just ridiculous, I mean this quest needs to be changed to either all the Kodo's dropping the item, or a 100% drop rate on the dying Kodo's. I spent around.. 20 minutes or so farming 3.... horns. Was just URGH. I also did not appreciate the irony of the quest giver hand-in text "BACK SO SOON", although I doubt it was meant to be irony, it was rather distasteful after wasting so much time :<.

Anyway... after this somewhat attrocious quest, you get a pretty cool follow-up to hand in this plague to the Cenarion Circle so they can use it :O, lovely twist to the Cenarion Circle imo. It's a typical bombing run type quest, the plague bombs 1 shot everything, so it's pretty nice and easy. Pressing the FLY BACK BUTTON, is a little.. urgh though. The animations are really not fluid, it was alot of stop-starting whilst seemingly trying to get in lanes to the right path to go back, obviously the pathing needs to be fixed, but the quest itself is fine.

Then the next quest to logically go to was the demon quests, The infernals you have to kill drop periodically from the sky, pretty nice effect. I was kinda disappointed I could never gain enough stacks of the Burning Blade debuff here to transform, because the infernals don't give you a stack but all the other demons do. Would like the Infernals to grant this debuff just because the debuff is awesome :D.

Killing any infernal and looting it gives a quest starting item, and this quest is REALLY NICE, you have to take control of the elite, the quest text is also just really nice, making you out to be some sort of power-hungry warlock :D. After taking control of the elite you use it to defeat the elite warlock here, the fight is pretty close and you feel like skill plays a good part here, even if it doesn't necessarily. I would perhaps like this to be in the vehicle ui and not just replacing your unit bars.

After completing this quest it just auto-completes, which is really nice: it's like your character has self-will, which as commented on in previous posts, is just a great thing to advocate with the auto-quest feature.

The quest has great synergy with the other 2 quests aswell since there are a bunch of infernals and portals in the area, closing the portals requires you killing the demons after clicking on the portals. I don't how like doing this shifts you out of form as a druid, I also feel like the portal number should be reduced to around 4 to match the amount in the area around the elite quest, for just perfect synergy and making the quest go quicker.

Btw, just because level 34 means that mob hp is around 1300-1500 by evolution of health, doesn't mean that every single mob has to have 1337 hp :<.

Whilst I'm down south I thought it best to continue with the other areas, so over to the Gelkis Encampment to complete that quest, there are ALOT of centaur here, a bit too tightly packed for my taste, making multi-pulls quite easy and accidentally so, especially because they ALL run-away T_T. The 3 sons are in pretty obvious places and fairly easy to kill,

Cenarion Wildlands

Had hoped to be writing this post much later, but hey Beta maintenence interrupted my feralas run-through, hopefully it won't fuck up my feedback that much.. I don't think it should since all my quests were complete and only had breadcrumb quests really. Regardless, that means the Desolace feedback will be all done tonight, perhaps also the first hub of Feralas aswell, since I can't go back and do that, depending on if there is a new build tonight, I might put a post up discussing that, so busy busy :D.

Anyway, lets get onto the Cenarion Wildlands, the major new area of Desolace. The druids of the Cenarion Circle have come to Desolace and seemingly REBORN the land, it's a lovely temperate climate in the middle of this desolate zone :). Obviously I am coming from the breadcrumb via the naga quests at Ethel Rethor. Firstly you are given many menial tasks around the zone, culling air elementals, weeds... I mean Lashers, collect some Aloe Thistles and take samples of blood of the Thunder Lizards.

These quests are all nicely in the same area (other than one :/), to the west of the wildlands, the air elementals and lashers have plenty of abundance and are easy to take down making those quests pretty straightforward and generic kill quests. The Sampling of Blood quest I am sort of torn on, since I'm usually a "DO FIRST ASK QUESTIONS LATER" type of person, I continually ended up killing the Thunder Lizards before using the Quest Item on them to spawn the leeches, this was particularly annoying because it has a minimum range, so you can't use it if the Lizards are in melee range. However, I do like the twist on a generic kill quest, to loot leeches and use quest items and such, so although it was a little frustrating I don't really mind. The thunder lizards also had a very annoying habit of using Thunder nova when they were about to die, and apparently since they were casting means they can't die until the cast finishes, don't know if this is a bug or the idea was that they do this nova before dying that you can't stop ^^.

However, this last quest to collect the Aloe Thistle is just ridiculous, you need 10 and there are like 2... spawns in the area where all the other quest objectives are, even spread around the wildlands there are like only 5 thistles really, most of these are in the graveyard, and you shouldn't really be going there tbh. I really think the thistles need to spawn FAR MORE to the west of the Wildlands, along with all the other objectives. It's not like you can save it and do it whilst questing in the area, it is actually a pre-requisite to the next couple of quests.

Which, involve planting seeds in fertile ground, and calming down enraged kodo's, although I was kinda semi-torn on the whole "TENDERING THE ZOO" type quests we have here, they do fit well with the theme, it's just they lead to alot of boring generic quests for a while, which is unfortunate imo, however the zone has been lacking these really ^^.

Both quests are quite easily completed in the area south-east of the wildlands, there is a small bug with the bowl for the "De-raging" Kodo's quest, if you accidentally go too close to ghostwalker post, which is where some of the kodos are, you aren't able to place the quest item to de-rage them. Since they are elites, I almost died because of this bug... I wouldn't think it would be that hard to fix, so I'm putting it down as a bug since it was a little annoying. I did really like how both of these quests were really fast paced, you just had to use your quest items like 10 times total and not even wait and the quests were done. Whilst sometimes immersion means watching and taking longer, I did appreciate the fast paced flavour of these quests.

Now, onto the actual "major" quest of the zone, at least imo since it encompasses the next 3 or so questing hubs. In Vanilla there are the 3 centaur clans: The Kolkar,Magram and the Gelkis. Now, in vanilla you were told to ally with 1 of 2 clans, with the third being always hostile iirc. However, the Cataclysm has caused a massive power shift in the zone. The Magram clan were driven out of their home by an invasion of the burning blade, they took over the Kolkar clan and the Gelkis now are the power-house of the centaur factions.

Now, the Kolkar Clan Khan, the leader of centaur clans, has come to the Cenarion Circle, and more specifically you, to help unite the factions against the common enemy of the burning blade.. I'm going to point out here that this storyline is just really good, FORMER ENEMIES UNITING, that's like warcraft in a nutshell and it's nice to see some parallels here in this zone with the player perhaps taking on the function of Medivh from warcraft 3. Kinda cool imo. Anyway, you are first sent out to free Kolkar from being imprisoned by the Magram. You are also to recover stolen Cenarion Circle supplies.

You can also pick up the breadcrumb to ghostwalker post, (You could have gotten the quests from this area already) I would definitly suggest making all these quests only available once you're finished in the first centaur area, just to make the quest cycles cleaner.

Both quests don't have a real lot of synergy, but at least they are paired and aren't alone per-say. Heading on over to the encampment there is a signpost with the direction to cenarion wildlands directed as "AWESOME NEW CENARION CIRCLE QUEST HUB!?!?!?!" or words to that effect, obviously not anything major, but something that will probably be changed, even if it's amusing ^^.

The Magram warden is a little tough, he comes with 2 adds (I believe they are all linked, when i pulled the warden the other 2 came at the very least). However, overall he goes down pretty easy so I'm fine with the 2 extra adds, all chars should have that 3rd tier talent here, which should make these adds manageable.

The Cenarion Supplies are basically in all the huts, they are perfectly fine to get to, it could just do with some synergy with the warden quest, perhaps having supplies in with the prisoners would provide that synergy and make the quests go somewhat quicker.

Heading back to the Wildlands we are given the task to rally the survivors of the Kolkar centaur and attack the Magram in a show of strength! You get to ride into battle on top of a centaur, pretty cool animations here. You are given a vehicle interface and told exactly when to use the 1 key to trigger the attack, a pretty neat way of twisting the sort of normal KING OF THE HILL type quests. Upon triggering it lots of Kolkar centaur spawn and lots of weak defenders try and swarm the hill, overall a lovely quest, I would have perhaps wanted more defenders attacking just to make it a little more of a THIS IS SPARTA!!?!!!?!?!!??!!?!? feel, since well who doesn't love that sort of heroic struggle

Eventually the Magram Khan shows up and he gives you a quest to win the favour of the Magram Clan, GET THEM SOME FOOD! Now, I would really like the Magram centaurs to go unfriendly here, since you kinda signed a ceasefire when accepting this quest, it seems strange you can still slaughter Magram centaur whilst getting food for them so they can survive.. Just feels odd and makes the quest hand-in a little more lengthy than it should be.

The Basilisk Flank's are pretty much 100% drop rate, and there are just plenty of them so the quest is fairly trivial. Handing it in gains the loyalty of the Magram clan, and now they turn neutral. The quest map is slightly bugged here showing the wrong position of the Khan when trying to hand-in the quest, it updates when you get near the wrong position, but obviously this is somewhat buggy.

After handing this in we are told to head towards the Gelkis Clan and slaughter the khan's sons... seems a little harsh for centaur looking to rebuild the land and unite... You also gain a Shadowprey Village Breadcrumb, which is fine aswell.

However, Before continuing with this quest line it makes more sense to do the Ghostwalker quests, so that's what I'm going to do :)

Thunder-Axe Fortress

Ok, so this is the second optional questing area, it's a bit shorter than the Ethel Rethor area, but This area is so big that splitting off these little hubs makes sense to keep the post length down, aswell as consolidating feedback for specific hubs.

So we get 1 quest here, which is to go kill a named npc in front of Thunder-axe, he's pretty easy to pull alone and well easy enough to kill, however the great thing is the interactivity with this quest hub, firstly you get an auto-quest upon killing him BASED on his yell, that's pretty damn awesome immersion, your char is like HUH HE MENTIONED SOMETHING BETTER CHECK IT OUT, instead of being a dumb ass who can only do what quest givers tell them, which is just sweet immersion factor.

You also get an additional quest for just looting any of the burning blade in the area when you kill them, to basically just COLLECT EARS, not exactly sure why they want ears particularly, usually its heads.. but oh well collecting ears it is! 25 is sort of a daunting number, perhaps reducing this to 20 would be about right, since I had to kill 20 to kill the quests in the area, but had to go searching for the last 5.

Since this is a burning blade area, you also get the AWESOME AWESOME debuff like in durotar when you kill any mob and around 3-5 stacks you transform into the demonology warlock metamorphosis form, I really love how this is an astigma attached to like Burning Blade zones in cataclysm, It's just so cool :D, especially the animations for feral charge in Metamorphosis OMFG! Druids need metamorphosis form ok, replacement for boomkin or something!

Onto the actual quests, going into the room you kill a whole bunch of mobs, the middle mob is sort of weird, he will aggro you but not engage in combat, I suppose it makes sense otherwise he would aggro the entire room, but I would just suggest lowering his aggro range dramatically instead of having him keep you in combat throughout the room. The box which the summoning ritual is a little small for my liking but hey, it's obvious and easy to loot.

Now.. I got an auto-quest failure, or at the very least I presume it is an auto-quest failure as going back and forth made no sense, you get the auto-quest hand-in but no follow-up was triggered, obviously I went back and got it, but the idea is you head straight to the main chamber and trigger this summon early, with the auto-quest inplace this is some awesome immersion, a race against time so to speak to summon this demon TO AWAKEN HIM TOO SOON etc :D. There are plenty of skulls around the place, I feel like they should on average drop 20 instead of 10-15, since that way there would definitly be more than enough patches, instead of just like ONLY ENOUGH PATCHES, which is a big difference.

You face off against this demon after performing the ritual, it's a little weaker than I thought it would be, although I did have metamorphosis form thing, so that made it easier :D, after this it's a simple hand-in for the quest completion.

It's a bit of a mini-quest hub but I mean it's fast paced and great action/story. For a short quest it utilises the auto-quest feature magnificently (OO A NEW ADJECTIVE!!?!?!?!) to really grip the player and immerse them in the action.

I included the travelling to Cenarion Wildlands in the screenshots.. the effects on that Tornado are just awesome! You get flung about whenever you walk into it and take falling damage, good fun stuff.. I love it :D.

Anyway onto Cenarion Wildlands and sort of the start of the MAJOR questline, if you could call it that, in the zone.

Ethel Rethor

Yeh, weird title for a zone ^^, I would call this something different, but I feel that's a little spoilerish, and probably less descriptive. Obviously these whole posts are spoilerish but ye.. I feel like they give good feedback hopefully.

Anyway, this is 1 of the 2 options from Furien's Post, I decided to go here first because it seemed FURTHER OUT OF THE WAY, so was more likely to be it's own quest hub, even though both turn out to be, so it doesn't matter which way you go.

Regardless, the Cenarion Circle are here and they are mildly concerned with the naga invasion, the researcher here sends you off on a tour of the zone, where you get to see the lay of the land, and a priestess of Azshara, and the fact that Water elementals have risen to fight the naga here, clearly something is going on here and is more than meets the eye O:.

You get a follow-up to sort of SLAUGHTER NAGA, now this quest is actually ridiculous imo. The drop rates on the FINS especially from the Warrior's is exceptionally poor, it is around 25-50% and there are just nowhere near enough of them. Whilst I understand this quest needs the reagents for actual quest flow reasons, the drop-rates are exceptionally poor, just bump them up to 100% at least, maybe reduce the Bones to around 6 or something aswell and I think the numbers are right.

There were also alot of Sorceress' that evaded on the coastline, obviously inherently annoying because they would end up keeping you in combat and aggroing nearby naga to you, I ended up dying because i got 3 naga on me D:::, very annoying considering the closeness of the patrols on both the land and the water patrols so you get naga sort of appearing from nowhere (ie the water) and killing you, very annoying. This was an unfortunate distraction to an otherwise simple quest.

However, after this irritating quest you get a far more awesome quest! You get disguised as a naga and share their awesome animations, pretty damn awesome if you ask me, you slither on land pretty slowly, although normal walking speed, and get a 150% speed increase in the water, pretty nice buff for the quest involved, you have to go talk to the priestess of Azshara, Valishj. Now she is sort of STUCK IN THE RUINS on the beta, which is amusing however I presume totally unintended :P.

She is obviously like WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE USELESS NAGA and sends you off with a trident! To go kill the servants of neptulon, they are neutral elementals, there are plenty in the area and are pretty tough to take down, you don't really need much skill to take them down, however the heal you are provided is pretty pathetic, if you don't kite much when he charges after your first netting wears off you lose around 500 hp or so, and the heal is just pathetic, it really needs to take you to full health because tbh you are only able to use it out of combat, so it seems kinda silly that like it only does a small percentile of your hp.

However killing them is pretty trivial, there are a couple of annoying crab creatures, I can't remember their exact name in warcraft, makk... something idk. However, they remove your disguise, which can be somewhat irritating, this is an intended mechanic but I think its silly that there are alot of them around the naga island where you have to hand in rather than say out in the open sea where you can avoid them easier.

The follow-up is somewhat irritating, although I am not sure if it was because I was looking in the wrong area, you are told to unearth rubble to find some relics, the rubble itself is really kinda hard to see against the sea floor, along with their being relatively few spawns of it. The map objective screen wasn't working so I don't know if I was in the most optimum zone for it, but regardless I feel like the amount of rubble needs to be increased. I am also sort of TORN between when you unveil the rubble and it reveals like 3-4 artefacts or w/e. Only one of them sparkles, the one that actually contains the quest item, as a quester I'm sort of like YES THIS SPEEDS UP QUESTING, but I also feel like it defeats the point of spawning multiple artefacts if you see the one which is EXACTLY containing a quest item.

After collecting all 4 artefacts and arranging them into Ancient Engravings of Neptulon you get an auto-quest to head back to the Cenarion Circle, obviously liking this since obviously you wouldn't want to give it to the Naga. What I am annoyed about is that after this quest you lose your naga disguise, when handing in to the circle, when you could still very much utilise being able to run past the naga without aggroing them, and the actual swim-speed increase granted by the Naga disguise.

Regardless, you are sent to go and contact the leader of the water elementals here: Lord Hydronis. I like how approaching the island phases you so you into that zone, but it's far from seemless since you have vision of naga on that island and around the border of the zone and when entering the zone they all disappear, if you were being chased by naga (like me) then they disappear when you zone into the island area aswell, so some work on the phase transitioning here would be nice.

Speaking to Lord Hydronis he is like WE GOTTA KILL THE PRIESTESS, so we get to mount him and control him, pretty easy vehicle quest your ice block cd lines up with you going oom quite well, so it's pretty hard to die. The Typhoon style interrupt is really hard to control, I couldn't tell if it was hitting or missing the priestess, I guess if it was hitting it wasn't working since she never got stunned/interrupted like the text implies. However ye.. if that worked the quest is perfect. The mobs have [Q1] by them, but I guess that's a testing mechanic that hasn't been patched out of yet.

Again, going back to like the Cenarion Circle, again wtb swim speed buff from naga here :<, you get a breadcrumb to the Cenarion Wildlands.

This quest sort of gives you some background to the Vash'jir zone and what the Naga are intending to do in the cataclysm, which is nice lore to include to the zone, since this is the only zone in Kalimdor that could really accomplish this other than like Azshara, and that has more important goblin and Blue Dragonflight lore to cover, so this is the only place for it, which is just a nice simple addition tbh.

Anyway, if you didn't do the Thunder-axe fortress you can head to that now or go straight to Cenarion Wildlands, I like how these sort of zones are very much based on choice, you aren't forced into either one immediately, but are forced into doing the more lore intensive quest if you want to gain the breadcrumb and maintain quest flow, but it is certainly not required for the Cenarion Wildlands quests.