The Eye of The Vortex

Ye, I think the title just shows how awesome this zone is, there is an area called the eye of the vortex!!! Before I get on to the actual quest feedback and discussion what have you I want to make a few comments on the cloth-set for this zone..

I have very mixed feelings on this design-set it's very.. pyjama-esque. I actually like the design alot, but it doesn't fit in with the zone really, this is a zone under rampage from alot of air elementals and the twilights hammer but I've decided to wear my pyjamas :D. The design though is really pretty, just I don't know what zone it would fit in, maybe a zone like Tanaris or 1k needles would fit in well, but here it just feels like the opposite of what my character should be wearing, don't remove the set though it's pretty and me being the fashion conscience guy want it to stay in the game :D.

Heading on to the actual quests you get told to head to Malfurion (OMFG FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP) in the middle of a cyclone, and I mean this cyclone/vortex looks pretty scary heading towards it and you have to head into it to speak to malfurion, I don't know but this felt pretty damn epic and the perfect place to have the Powerhouse that is Malfurion, I know I've mentioned this in the Teldrassil series.. but Malfurion is a sexy beast, I really would love male night elfs to get this type of model.. he is the only male night-elf (other than illidan for obvious awe reasons) who I actually like the look of, he looks "macho" and wise at the same time, the look is just really awe-inspiring.

I also want to say how I love the fact we get to interact with Malfurion in this zone, interaction with major lore characters, like in the stonetalon zone aswell, is always a good thing. I only wish Tyrande would get off her ass and be involved somewhere, maybe she does I don't know but not in any zone I have done so far :(. This area also has a really good quest setup, you have 3 mini-questing areas to recruit allies for malfurion, they each have their own great personal touches. We intend to invoke the help of the wildkin,furbolgs and Ancients in the area.

Firstly I went north, again since I picked up we were generally going in a linear fashion directly south towards ashenvale, it made sense to do the quest that involved going north first. Firstly, I love the name of this npc, I don't know if this is a reference to boomkins or not, but the name "Ar-oom" is just epic, maybe even add in that hyphen just for the amusement factor. Regardless all these quest places involve you doing a couple of quests in the area, this area involves collecting feathers first. This is a bit more annoying than it needs to be, although the feathers seemed to be in pretty plentiful supply they were pretty hard to spot since the sparkles just blended into the background and the model for these feathers is probably around 50% of the size it needs to be, they are pretty damn small.

The last quest here involves you killing a named npc and collecting a flame from his corpse, pretty standard quest really, nothing particularly wrong with it. The hand-in though is a bit annoying, the quest completion either phases or spawns in a flame right where you naturally stand to hand in this quest and this really fucked up my camera in the zone, perhaps making the flame spawn further towards the entrance so you avoid the camera issues I was facing with it spawning directly on top of me. The little interaction here is great though, with the added bonus that all the wildkin turn green once handed in to Malfurion (I was silly and didn't check/don't remember if the wildkin were friendly after doing the flame ritual or only after handing into Malfurion. Regardless its a nice little immersion, I also love how the wildkin gets phased into the area around Malfurion, regardless of the order you do the quests they phase into where Malfurion is... this is just such a lovely touch.

The next area I went to was the ancient of war here, he basically seems to have gone AWOL on the elementals here and wants you to kill even more of them, pretty easy quest but I don't like how the elementals patrol, it was far too easy to pull 2-3 accidentally here, and whilst they aren't particularly threatening it is just annoying :D. This is just a 1 quest area and heading back to Malfurion he again phases into the area, pretty simple quest design here and I actually really like this quest style though, where you do alot of meanless quests towards a larger goal.

Heading on over to the last questing area we see the furbolgs are under attack by fire elementals, so obviously you need to go kill them. Again a generic quest but the environment here is really nice with the scorched earth and fire elementals, plus theres a real reason you want to be doing this kill quest.. to save cute furbolgs :D. As a follow-up you get a typical defense/king of the hill type mission. This quest is pretty good though the fire elementals spawn pretty quickly to kill this totem but they are totally not threatening and you have just about enough time to kill them all before the final fire elemental shows up. Pretty nice quest and action-filled for a king of the hill, always better to verge on the side of "too-action packed" in a koth type quest rather than a waiting around for 20 years for spawns king of the hill quest.

Heading back to malfurion we now have all the creatures phased in to help protect Malfurion, but there is one more powerful ally.. a Green Dragon trapped in the emerald nightmare. Pretty nice quest here really, I feel getting to the actual cave is a little more annoying than it needs to be because of the cataclysm and having to drop down into the river and then up a small crevice, but it isn't exactly bad just maybe a little annoying. The quest here is pretty nice though, head through a portal, kill some nightmare fiends and then ride out on the emerald dragon. Pretty awesome ride out towards malfurion.. unfortunately though the world server decided to crash halfway through my ride so Idk if there was some cool rp on the landing, but hey :(.

You get a cool quest to conclude this area though, typical sort of bombing mission riding up on the green dragon and killing twilight drake riders and a portal, it's a little weird how killing the portal means it has to respawn immedietely otherwise you wouldn't get enough drake riders, perhaps make this somewhat 2-stage bombing run so you have to kill riders then kill the portal once you have enough for the objective. Also theressa is visible on the ground when flying down when you are supposedly riding her for the quest, obviously this needs to be fixed somehow so you can't see her whilst riding her, just for the added immersion factor.

Regardless though thats the end of the lovely immersive area, really I enjoyed this zone because it felt like a race-against time with the awesome lore figure that is Malfurion, pretty fun :D.

Ruins of Auberdine

Cracking on with finishing this zone, firstly lets talk about the quests you get leading off from the previous area, firstly we get a breadcrumb for the rest of the zone, which proceeds in a far more linear fashion from this point on rather than focused on the quest hub of Lor'danel, I really like how this zone has a good contrast between this style of linearity and a centralised question hub, personally I prefer the linearity and the second half of this zone rather than running around in circles based at a centralised location, maybe one of the reasons I despise deepholm :<.

Regardless though, you also get a quest for seemingly completing this first centralised hub, you get a cool non-combat pet and a blue, I mean I'm really torn on this.. 1) because it sets a precedence for other zones, is it really fair that one zone gives a cool pet compared to others, and for seemingly nothing related, I mean its a mini treant which is like massive and just awesome, but I don't really see what it has to do with the questing we have been doing in the zone realistically. I could understand if it was a conclusion to the zone as a whole but the fact you get it in the middle of the zone for seemingly doing nothing *that* epic seems wrong, it just seems to be here to reward anybody who rolled a worgen and followed a natural quest path. Maybe I'm wrong here but the Azshara zone features another cool feature as the goblin follow-up zone and I feel like.. why should you be rewarding people for rolling a worgen/goblin over another race with the cool non-combat items.

Regardless though, the pet is pretty cool the fact it has interactivity with the environment is only a plus in the long run. Moving on to the questing, we are told to head to a twilight camp and do a few quests here to discover what they are doing in the zone, it's right around the bashal'aran area so I just took the taxi to there and headed straight there, the great thing about doing this quest here is that by entering from the taxi directly towards the questing area means you cannot miss the quest giver, along with the close proximity of the named npc you need to kill, which is always a great quest design, the only thing that is a bit wrong with this quest are the really low levels of these mobs here, I was level 15 going onto 16 in this area and these mobs were level 12, which is exceptionally low for quests that are cockblocked until you do the shatterspear vale quest series.

The quests in this area are pretty well designed though the ratios are about right between plans and npcs you need to kill and the quest in the area calls for the right number of elementals to be slain, which is a plus. The only other little bug was that the plans were often looking wrong, I.e they were a few pixels off where you feel they should be and were just floating in the area rather than looking nice on the tables/barrels in the area. Handing in these quests leads us to another set of quests towards ruins of auberdine where the zone turns entirely linear heading south with a bee-line towards Ashenvale in terms of questing.

The quests here in ruins of auberdine are really nice again and very immersive and a large variety, kill generic mobs quest with a twist, kill some npcs, an escort, a gather quest and a conclusion. Onto actual feedback and meanings though, there are plenty of elementals and the quest objective is probably considerably tame considering the respawn rate. I probably killed 20-30 elementals whilst doing the quests here compared to the 12 bracers requirement, perhaps increasing this to 20 would be a prudent thing to do. I like the fact that there are 2 quests in the area, whilst doing these that are impossible to miss because of their location.

I do wish the escort quest had more synergy with the area though and went to every npc to get their spirit for the quest in the area, it goes to the one in the inn obviously but it would just make perfect synergy to go to every one of these on our way out of the zone, since alot of the npcs you have to go to in this area are also close to the named npcs you have to kill that has really great synergy aswell. Mostly the intial 4 quests in this area have amazing synergy and it could be made better with the escort actually being more expansive, I do like how the escort is fast paced though so thats always a plus.

The named mobs also have great variety and aren't just bland npcs like they can sometimes end up being. The follow-up located within the zone is also a lovely epic conclusion to these quick fire quests, I always loved getting like 5 quests for one area and handing them all in at the same time along with them having great synergy the area feels streamlined, fast and well polished. Like in Nagrand doing the village (can't remember the name sunspring comes to mind..). The 4-5 quests there had great synergy and your xp just always shot up after doing those areas, which is just a great feeling.

Regardless though this last quest is pretty epic since it's like YOU AWAKEN AETHERION TOO SOON, with elementals incessant obsession with capitals, just like me seemingly :). The immersion of this quest is really great with the spirits you released in the previous quest coming to weaken him, I would have liked for him to be a raid boss or have alot more hp in elite form so you really get a sense of him being weakened instead of him just going from elite->normal status as it feels slightly underwhelming imo.

Regardless though, I think this 1 quest hub really epitomises great questing, fantastic synergy and alot of quests clustered in a small-ish area so you end up doing 5+quests at the same time, but don't feel like you are doing anything special to complete them, so it takes the same effort as say 2-3 quests in one area but with the added bonus of just "getting 2 quests for free".

That is actually it for this area though, which is perhaps surprisingly quick but I mean that is exactly what happens when you have a polished zone and there is really little feedback I can give :(, other than make more quest hubs exactly like this one.. they are just perfection imo, since you get the story conveyed, you are totally immersed in the action and it's just fast paced BAM action.

Priest Feedback Build 12803

Bit of a break from the darkshore feedback, will get back to the write-up after this post by I wanted to make a good rant about priest changes, my main alt is a shadow priest and has been played at a reasonably high level so I feel like I have some precidence to comment on this far more than say my druid playthrough.

Firstly lets take a look at the specialisation spells: Penance, Holy word: Chastise and Mind Flay. Got to say these are all pretty good choices, especially the holy and discipline choices, they give options to do damage at a low level and are going to become signature abilities for both of the healing specs, the perfect signature move for a healing class.

However Mind flay I am very much torn on.. like, sure it is the primary nuke of the shadow tree but it doesn't fit in with the structure of the shadow tree, I mean my experience at a low level really signifies how bad mind flay is, lets ask what mind flay means in terms of levelling:

1) 100% uptime needed on Power Word: Shield, I mean if you get 1 hit you lose a tick of mind flay, and that is huge whilst levelling and so you end up needing to keep up power word: shield up 100% of the time, whilst you could argue it isn't necessary I feel like it is rather mandatory whilst levelling.

2) Anything up until level 80 at the moment is like low health quick kill, meaning (according to your model) that the ideal rotation would be a combination of mind blast/mind spike.. a spell ironically unlocked at level 81 when dots become so much more useful because of the high hp in the new cataclysm areas :S. Mind flay should be used in combination with dots but dots aren't worth it until you get a spell that is useful later.

3) It doesn't teach you anything to do with say rotations at an early level you just learn that Mind Blast>Mind Flay and shadow word pain isn't worth casting... not exactly great in my opinion.

Now I feel the problem with mind flay, is that although it is useful whilst soloing, a 50% slow on melee mobs whilst closing for example, it makes your levelling spec very immobile, I mean when I levelled my shadow priest on live I actually levelled as a disc/holy hybrid for dpsing because it was more mana efficient and actually did more damage than being shadow until you got access to shadowform, and still only mana efficient once you gained access to dispersion. When you are levelling going a healing spec should mean you can do dungeons and can solo fine, but soloing as the dps spec is better.. this is just not the case on live nor on the beta.

Firstly, mana is absolutely attrocious on the beta for a priest, as a druid I never had to drink at all when going balance, even whilst wearing entirely feral gear but as a priest I am oom after killing about 5 mobs in a row with a 1000 mana base pool. I realise numbers are very much placeholder and such, but this problem exists on live aswell and I hope this is rectified in the beta.

I am also going to mention the fact that Blizzard has said in the past and currently that it is a failure on their part if you don't want to take the talent at the bottom of the tree, across the 3 trees we have Barrier, Guardian Spirit and Dispersion. I don't know how I feel about a situational talent being the bottom point of the tree. It has been bought up before about how dispersion wasn't a good "51 pt talent", however I actually think it was a good 51 pt talent, you took it because there wasn't anything better to take and having a situational survival talent is something shadow desperately needed.

However, it does not fit with the 31 point model, why is this? 31 point talent points are staple cooldowns of a spec seemingly, or a staple ability of the spec, dispersion doesn't fill this role imo, where you want people to have around 30 mandatory throughput points with around 11 choice talents, 5 in the off and 6 in the main trees, dispersion falls in the category of utility, I feel limited because I am locked into my shadow tree, and when I get onto it later the tree is actually well designed, but then I look in the first 2 tiers of discipline and I'm pissed I can't take all the dps talents there because I am "forced" to take dispersion. If the talent trees were applied without the lock in shadow I feel like people would be speccing 11/0/30 and not 5+x/5-x/31 or whatever the 5 should be that are definitive points. Now, don't get me wrong dispersion is not a bad talent nor would I want it to go away, but it does not fit in the current place of the tree.

Concluding these points, what are the things I think of when I think shadowpriests: Dots and Shadow form, this is what should be the points, I would propose a radical re-arrangement of the tree and specialisations, since I highly doubt mind spike would become a level 9 spell to learn, although this would be the absolute best resolution in terms of being able to redesign the trees. Maybe I'll digress a little but Mind spike needs to be available at low level imo, it could even be the shadow specialised skill, does it really do anything for holy/disc anyway? Since all the dps talents in those trees effect smite/holy fire/penance/chastise/mind flay.

I just want to make a disclaimer that I wouldn't expect all of these changes to happen but some would definitely be appreciated.

The first major thing I would propose that would alleviate lots of "pain" would be to switch mind flay and mind spike. I.E make Mind flay available to all priests at level 81 and have mind spike become the specialisation of Shadow, whilst perhaps it isn't something you would be definitively using in your rotations on patchwerk you are probably going to be using it a lot on a majority of fights, I can probably definitively say I could use it on half the fights in ICC right now, perhaps even more than half. I don't think mind flay available to holy priests and disc priests would be a bad thing, sure it would have some pvp ramifications but mind flay is a channelled spell and so you can't heal and apply a slow, I feel you could add this to the holy/disc toolkits and it would get some use, perhaps when going for a kill to stop a getaway, but thats similar to priests using holy fire/smites now so I don't think it would add much to the pvp matchup.

The second major thing would be to *either* make shadowfiend available early, around level 12,14,16, 18 or 20, or make dispersion the specialised spell of shadow. I don't like the second point really because a) it doesn't do damage and means you still have to use smite/holy fire until mind flay, which would probably end up being a level 29 talent. It has to be specialised because it can't be made available to discipline/holy priests as a sub-spec option in my opinion for the pvp ramifications and pve mana regen mechanic. Making Shadowfiend early is probably what should happen, like I have said previously shadow priest mana regen at a low level is attrocious, obviously mana regen of a shadow priest is based upon shadowfiend at a high level, which is a 3 minute cooldown, this means that unfortunately priests eat mana like crazy at a low level because of an ability they don't have. Also, the fact that tier 1 has a talent that primarily is for reducing the cd on shadowfiend, whilst this makes sense for subspec options it is silly that early shadowpriests have a talent that you would never consider taking until level 64 (or whatever ridiculous level shadowfiend is learnt, maybe 66 D:)

The last thing I suggest is switching Dispersion with either Vampiric Touch or Shadowform, my personal preference is Shadowform. Although it is a large dps increase that levelling shadowpriests would go without, it's lost alot of its YOU NEED THIS EARLY, all it is now is a model change a 15% dps increase and a raid buff. Whereas before it also provided crit/haste application to dots, pushback resistance and stuff that is just useful for levelling. Now it is just a damage increase which isn't necessary for getting early, just in defining you are a shadowpriest.

Originally I thought that shadowform would end up being the specialised skill, but obviously that makes no sense because what is shadowform without dots and damage skills at a low level, you wouldn't be able to utilise it without at least mind flay. So since it IS the single defining talent of shadow I really think it deserves to be the 31 point talent, it fits all the bubbles and nobody would ever consider not taking it, in a similar vein to tree of life or metamorphosis, apart from permanent.

The problem shadowform has is that you gain nothing from it specially whilst levelling and you need it for raiding and stuff, so its position in the tree is relatively inconsequential towards levelling, so it just makes sense to make it the 31-point talent. You could make Vampiric Touch the defining ability aswell, but it really doesn't have the same signature as Shadowform, and stuff like sin and punishment would be forced earlier in the tree and be pointless to take before getting the spell.

Optimally I would like a combination of all these points implemented with mind spike the specialised skill, shadowfiend at level 12, mind flay at level 81, Dispersion as tier 3 talent and Shadowform as the 31 point talent. This doesn't really change the "feel" of the level 85 shadowpriest, but it makes the levelling experience much nicer, perhaps you would end up getting "too much too soon" but I feel like with numbers tuned for the 85 player these changes are necessary for mana to not be an issue for the lower level player.

If we move on to the actual feel of the shadow tree, the tree itself is pretty much perfect, the changes I have stated above make no difference to this, you have the perfect choice between utility and damage within this tree. The problem I have with Shadowpriest talent trees are the subspec options, firstly I have no choice but to subspec in discipline, there is nothing in holy that is worth devoting points to other than a self heal you can't use in shadowform. Whereas the discipline spec has a very packed top 2 tiers, I have say a choice between improved power word: shield and Mental Agility, thats an ok choice, but then I am choosing between dps and dps, in the second tier.. Improved Inner fire needs to go really, in every spec It competes with other talents far too much for an upgrade that increases spellpower, it just needs to be baked into the ability and axed imo because it's just a talent that feels mandatory and its just not fun choosing between dps and dps, because one will always win out, especially in terms of inner fire because evangelism and archangel is always going to be better than 15% of the spellpower upgrade.

I also feel the Improved Inner fire pidgeon-holes shadow into a discipline subspec along with evangelism+arcangel, I feel like evangelism and arcangel should be t1.

Looking at the other talent tree specs, I again see similar problems with the sub-speccing, considering that Inspiration is arguably very much wanted by discipline priests who want to tank heal, you are forced into dual speccing 2 discipline specs for group and aoe healing based on your points you take in the holy-subspec, which I feel isn't good. I like the fact that Blizzard wants all healers to be able to aoe heal and tank heal equally but making 2 nearly identical specs that differ by points for said role is wrong, they should be able to do both equally in the same spec and not be locked out, otherwise there will always be a "better" spec, and priests will be told to go disc/holy for tank healing and disc/holy for aoe healing depends which ends up the best.

The only way I can see this situation not happening is the flavours being so different that it's hard to define "best" in a scenario and just differentiate by how the spec feels, but again I feel that has to be achieved by 1 talent spec having the 30 mandatory points provide all the aoe healing/tank healing talents and the other mana regen talents, with the rest being utility talents stuff like the smite buffs and such.

Ye, you can probably tell I play mostly a shadowpriest based on the comments here but I feel like the trees at level 85 beyond subspecs are all great so far, they just need re-arranging for subspec possibilities and for ease of levelling purposes.

Ruins of Mathystra

Moving onwards with the write-ups we get told to head off to Shatterspear Vale to head off a troll invasion seemingly, we again get a nice little ride on our Nightsaber, which as mentioned is in a far easier location to access in comparison to heading off to the area, you can't really miss the npc.

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.

Bashal'aran

Right, onto the next questing hub. This is what starts to make this zone immersive, you get a /say message from the sentinel here when accepting the quest to go to Bashal'aran saying you can catch a free ride on a nightsaber out of town: awesome a mini-taxi service. Always a lovely thing to have in an area this huge if the questing isn't totally linear. However, I do not agree with the positioning of the nightsaber rider, sure it makes sense to have the 2 riders, 1 north and 1 south, in the same area. However since there is no quick way to access the rider from the west side of town without having to pedantically walk all the way round towards it, it seems a little silly.

If you were ignoring the /say and just headed towards the objective you would totally miss it, especially later on in this zone where there is a quest giver right on the bridges of the western border of the town and has quests around this area where using the taxi-service would be convenient. I just think it should be moved to one of the western bridges out of Lor'danel. Regardless though the actual ride is pretty cool, you can dismount from the ride at any time, which I am not sure I agree or disagree with really, maybe it's a bug Idk but it's not like it really affects gameplay in anyway.

When arriving you are greeting by a quest giver: Excellent, always love getting the quests in the field and not all at the direct questing hub, makes the questing a little more immersive at the very least, regardless this area has changed a little since the cataclysm, instead of grell here we have a lot of Highborne who have moved north from the ruins they inhabited in Vanilla. Putting out the flame is pretty easy, and a little challenging since you get 2 adds spawning from doing this, fortunately they are adds you need to kill for another quest anyway: loving the synergy. Could have even had a few waves of these just for increased synergy. The ratio of mobs you need to kill seems to be spot on, however I VERY MUCH disagree with the shadow resistance on these mobs, I don't like the fact as shadow I was forced into smiting because of these high resistance mobs. They simply do not have a place anywhere unless there is some mechanic like in ahn qiraj for the frost stacking buff, like if say a boss is heavily magic resistant but doing lots of physical/magic damage (could be either) enables a big vulnerability in magic damage.

Again, the named npc from south also moved up north and killing her is pretty easy, she is neutral in this area so she is relatively easy to spot and pull separately from the Highborne here, which is overall a nice feature of the questing area. Before heading back to Lor'danel though we still have a quest to rescue Grimclaw, the little polar bear :D, we however arrive to his location to find he is collapsed :OOOOO, with a keeper and a dryad over his body. Thankfully they have quests to help you revive him, which is cool and a nice twist to the zone for people who actually know who grimclaw was and stuff. There is an error in the quest hand-in text where Grimclaw is spelt Gimclaw, nothing major but obviously it's still there.

These quests are pretty awesome in terms of uniqueness, one is a generic item gathering quest, however instead of the normal gathering quest you actually loot mobs in the zone after certain things happen. This is a pretty nice twist to a gathering quest really so being smart can mean avoiding mobs and being dumb is punished via having to kill more mobs. Definitely a nice little quest this, more please. The other 2 quests have lovely synergy together. Collect items in the same area as the naga and kill naga. The killing naga quest is also a lovely twist on the normal kill quest by razing allies to help you kill them. They also tend to pull naga that end up working out perfectly the right number getting to their leader if you start with the closest one, which is pretty neat.

There was a small issue where you can say collect the moonstalker item and have the moonstalker wake up but could walk away before she aggrod you and chased. A minor bug maybe but I presume the intention is that you should definitely have to fight one if she woke up.

This next quest though is absolutely great, I mean it's a pretty unique quest type for wow, you get to choose between 3 completely different npcs which reward you with a certain mob being neutral/friendly to a specific type of mob depending on the spirit you chose. I was silly and accepted the quest for the stag before screenshoting the text for the others, and since there is an abandon quest bug I couldn't go see the others. Oh well, you have 3 choices here which are: Stag, Moonstalker and Bear. They give you respectively a movement speed upgrade, an attack speed upgrade and a damage reduction upgrade for the entirety of the zone. I love this sense of choice here, there isn't really a right option.

I mean, I went for 10% movement speed upgrade 1) because no spec has access to a movement speed upgrade until midway through the zone, and I mean why would you go to your trainer through an immersive story line 2) I thought it would increase my levelling speed the most, and it probably did in retrospect.

I would probably say that in retrospect the bear upgrade is probably the best, simply because the neutrality of bears is reasonably useful compared to the other 2 reputation gains, and some of the mobs are pretty powerful later and having the 10% DR is pretty useful, but the fact is it doesn't matter and gives a player choice.. this is simply amazing really I love the sense that I get to forge a slightly individual path in a linear questing world, these sort of choices are really good and I wish there were more of them.

After this we head back to Lor'danel, pretty nice that a nightsaber is by the quest-giver at bashal'aran where we originally got dropped off for a nice transport back to the main quest hub. I do like the fact that the conditions of the night elves change and some of them have passed away whilst you were out questing, even Volcar the owner of grimclaw passed away :(, but he got to see the polar bear so its cool right :D, it would perhaps have been nice to see a little cutscene when entering the inn seeing his last moments and seeing grimclaw make him happy before passing, but that's me being an emotional soppy guy when it comes to things like this.

Regardless there is 1 quest left here before I wrap up this quest, this quest is really weird in terms of it's fucking hilarious but completely random and totally unnecessary :DDDD. Firstly it involves swimming out to sea, a longgggggggg way, just for 1 quest. It's just like.. this quest is totally here at random no synergy with anything and totally unecessary in terms of plot development in the zone. However, the epicness of this quest maybe justifies it. You get control of a robot dubbed "Foolhardy adventurer" and basically your job is to run into hordes of murlocs and blow yourself up... oh how I love thee random quest of killing murlocs for no reason what-so-ever :D. Seriously though, this quest is hilarious the text is amusing and the fact there are hundreds of murlocs here is just damn funny. The objective of 50 is actually way too small imo, should definitely be 100 or have some achievement linked to it which is like: KILL X MURLOCS IN 1 DETONATION, just because it's that awesome and totally random that it deserves some external factor to do it. I say it's small just because it is done in 2 trips so the quest is quicker than the actual swimming there (not even including swimming back) which is a little disappointing :(.

Regardless though, you get a little breadcrumb quest to head off towards the Ruins of Mathystra, again using the taxi-service which is in a much more sensible position than the Bashal'aran one, regardless though pretty awesome.

Questing starting to heat up here, onwards in questing!

Lor'danel

OK :), finally got through the zone so lets crack on with the write-up, firstly as always lets set down a few thoughts initially about the zone.

1) This zone seems pretty near completion, the questing was extremely polished other than a few bugs and a couple of annoying quests.

2) This zone is massive in terms of questing, it might end up being the same length/size as desolace but in terms of worth-while screenshots it was way bigger, I might add however that the zone went pretty damn quick, it didn't really feel that long.

3) I absolutely loved this zone!!!

4) These write-ups will be pretty long, I split this zone into 7 zones where I could have split it into at least 10, so yeh.

Right, lets get onto feedback, firstly we start with the breadcrumb from Tyrande (2nd laziest faction leader behind the blood elf leader? :<, seriously it would be nice if she could get out of darnassus at least once), to head to Lor'danel the first major questing hub of the zone, completely new area and really it looks lovely, the textures are all amazing and very night-elf, loving it.

We land here via air and are immedietely charged with going out to rescue survivors at the landing spot, lovely immersion and really ties a breadcrumb into the zone, it's always nice to be able to like get a breadcrumb and be flunged straight into a "crisis" instead of say being given a generic breadcrumb which just leads to more boring quests in the area. So the quests we are given are to kill some water elementals and rescue night elf survivors from auberdine.

I have a bit of an issue with the elite Vile Terror here, I don't really disagree with it being here but the sentinels do barely any threat to it, so perhaps the audacious adventurer wants to help the night elf sentinels fend off the elemental attack but instead they take aggro and die/have to run away. They do net the elemental but urgh I just feel they should do massive threat so it isn't an issue. The actual quests though are very easy, all the guys you have to rescue have MASSIVE arrows pointing down at where they are, pretty cool. Would have liked if say the arrows disappeared after you rescued each person just for a little bit more immersion. Also the last guy is way away from the others and the arrow isn't in vision range of any of the other 3 which are all clumped in the same area, a little strange imo. I don't mind him being further away it just seems pointless to have the arrows if you can't see where the last guy is without looking at your mini-map.

Heading back you get quests to go around and kill some crabs for the buzzbox quests from vanilla, although I don't believe the quests here are anywhere like the same for them :D. Also you need to collect like a few clams. These quests are fairly straightforward and easy to complete. The drop-rate on the meat wasn't great from the crabs, but you had to kill basically the right amount to complete the clams quest so it wasn't really an issue, I just don't like random drop quests really :(.

You hand in the meat at the buzzbox and given a quest to collect a sample and head back to base, it's a small quest of course but it gives the next quest a sense of purpose and better quest flow by placing it here.

Continuing on with the buzzbox quests we are told to collect some bear guts to research the corruption behind the bears, this is a pretty standard kill quest. I had to compete with 2 other people for kills here and didn't run into any trouble completing the quest quickly, so a pretty nice standard kill quest. The follow-up takes us into Cliffspring falls where the corruption is coming from, theres also a quest giver on our way to the falls who tells us that the satyr from Teldrassil (the one you turned into a frog) is here spreading corruption, I don't really like the fact that a great time has seemingly elapsed between the 2 zones so maybe the quests in Teldrassil aren't meant to still be there.. Idk but it doesn't make much sense imo.

Killing any of the demons in the cave drops a starting quest item to free uncorrupted animals from cages, always a nice thing to do. There is also an apothecary table in this cave which gives a quest to basically head back to Lor'danel. All the quests in this area are very easy to complete, I feel like killing 8 vile grell is perhaps a little too small, perhaps 10 would be a better number for perfect synergy, considering you have to clear to the apothecary table aswell. The respawn time on Zenn Foulhoof felt a little longer than it should be, since I was competing for the kill from 2 other people in the area, regardless though these quests were pretty nice and lovely flow to them.

Heading back to Lor'danel you get a bunch of quests in Bashal'aran, the opening quests fill their purpose somewhat and overall flow very well, they are great in terms of a sense of time, basically these quests are designed to show time has passed from you saving the survivors to them recovering whilst you are out at cliffspring falls. I might also add I do like how the quest giver at cliffspring falls phases out when you have left the cave after killing zenn foulhoof, a really nice touch imo.

Anyway, onwards to the next area :)

So cool stuff

Like said, the mob in Darkshore was bugged, but as fortune would have it, I logged on and she was unbugged (only to be rebugged a few hours later according to general), and I finished the zone mere moments before the server was going down for maintenence, some nice ee-han timing there tbh.

Dunno whether I will write up the zone tonight or tomorrow, probably half and half, darkshore is a pretty big zone questing wise but definitely oh so worth it, one of the best zones I have done, probably better than Stonetalon horde to be honest, just because the story flows AND there is alot of bulk that is engaging at the same time. (Plus you get a non-combat pet!!!!!)

Anyway, feedback for that zone will go up within 24 hours of this post at the very least, new build aswell tonight (presumably) so will have to see if it's worth devoting a post to that, oh well least I can get back down to writing feedback :D.

Wth though my screenshots for this zone double the count of any other zone.. over 700 :(.