Exciting Talent Trees in Cataclysm

Since this was a blue tagged post, I presume they want some specific feedback on talent trees so far in the beta, which are the most exciting and stuff.

I think first of all you need to look at what is meant by "exciting", if you mean huh this tree is pretty cool looking, or if it's like bam that's an exciting tree. I think the wording of this is pretty poor, realistically I think talent tree analysing falls into 2 categories: Core talents, and Utility talents.

Let's be frank with my feedback here, none of the talent trees are "exciting" in my book, since they are basically still the exact same way they were at 51 points, there are still going to be builds you can't have any choice over for pretty much every spec. The fact this question is being asked makes me think that a lot of the talent trees are finalised in terms of layout talents and such, and if this is the case then there was 0 point moving from a 51 point to a 31 point system, the same problems are still there with the talent trees.

Stuff like increased run speed is labored as a "utility" talent and is "optional" whereas as a hardcore raider I know that is anything but the case, run speed is a mandatory dps talent, like Metabolic boost is for zerglings in sc2, run speed=dps and is mandatory. Most of the talent trees at the moment are 31 points in your direct tree that you have absolutely 0 choice over, sometimes you are choosing between 2 different throughput talents and you can't have them all, this is wrong.

My "vision" for 31 point trees would be that you would have 25 points in your main tree that were mandatory for dps increase, this includes talents like run-speed aoe increases (because not every fight is patchwerk) and then you should be left with 5 points in your main tree you can spend on other utility things, such as Selfless healer in retribution or denounce in the holy tree, where there probably will be a "best" spec, but it would probably end up varying from fight to fight and beyond those 25 initial points might increase your dps by 1% at most, but more likely will give you utility to your group.

I think a prime example of the talent tree's failure is the talent impact, you called specifically for ideas on "utility" and I don't think it's too surprising people would give you ideas for dps increasing utility. At the moment impact is basically fire pestilence, obviously a bit rng but yeh, and that makes this talent mandatory, it is going to be a big dps increase on certain fights and does not in any way shape or form fall under the term utility in terms of raid utility.

Raid utility are stuff that don't directly increase your dps and are very situational, perhaps they help healers out with healing or are things that give you snare immunity or increase time on utility spells, stuff like incorperating the current glyph of evocation into a talent, thats purely utility. Many people would probably take it but only if the talent system fell under my criterion.

The idea here is so you end up needing to spend about 4 points on average per tier and then have 1 extra point per tier (maybe 2 or none per tier but on average 1) where you can put into any talent you have access to and it be "ok".

My main problem with talent trees are there are going to still be plenty of talents that never see the light of day outside of say levelling, denounce is one of these in Holy's current status, you just don't have any room to take this interesting utility talent, it obviously doesn't affect healing throughput it's just utility but I can't take it because I don't have enough points.

My biggest qualm with talent trees right now are the subspecs. I realise Blizzard wants to encourage subspeccing but ideally I feel people should have loads of choices with their subspec options, if something that is "mandatory" for dps is in the second tier I have to devote 8 points to that tree, you may argue that you can choose between talents in the first tier (often this isn't the case and people need "motivation" to spend talents in the first tier to get to the second tier) but well surely it's better if there are around 5 mandatory points in subspecs, that were all in the first tier. Lets say for shadow we had evangelism and Archangel in the first tier and then twin disciplines a 2 point talent in holy and then some talents in shadow main tree clipped, ideally you would end up with a cookie cutter spec which is like

3+x/2+(5-x)/25+6 where you get to choose the plus talents completely freely, right now in pretty much every tree the talent tree cookie cutters are like 31/8+x/(2-x) where you basically have a maximum of 2-3 points you can choose from, and even then thats being generous. I'll try and list the "best" trees that fall under this criterion.

1) Shadow Main tree

I've already commented on how this tree doesn't really work for levelling because of mana issues, but if we ignore this we get a pretty good tree, you end up with 4 points to choose between utility talents, you could grab silence and psychic horror or you could grab the free pvp trinket or a stun or whatever, you have a lot of choice in the shadow main tree. This is exactly how I would hope to choose my max level spec (obviously whilst levelling this needs tweaks but thats more rearranging talents that are mandatory and the same cost rather than anything major).

However if we look at the subspec options we just don't have any, all 10 points have to into discipline, 8 points are already mandatory in discipline, and 2 points extra in the second tier all have dps consequences so really you only have 2 points to choose between mental agility and improved power word: shield, which isn't enough.

2) Fire Sub-spec

I want to make it clear that this is about Sub-speccing options, the actual fire tree is poor because you don't get any choices for utility (unless you consider impact utility) and you have to actually spend 32 points in the tree to get all the dps talents you want.

However, looking at the subspec options of the tree they are probably one of the most ideal, you have 3 points you *need* to spend in arcane/frost (that is netherwind presence/Piercing Ice) then you have 4 free points you can spend in either tree or back into the fire tree on pure utility and not on dps increasing talents. Obviously I feel like netherwind presence and Piercing Ice should be 2 point talents, (or even removed since these are talents which are supposedly boring). This assessment also presumes that arcane concentration is in no way mandatory for fire mana conservation. If it is then this sub-spec is again worthless.

I want to note these are all from a pve stand-point, in my opinion pvp is useless and shouldn't influence choice on talent trees, obviously utility talents have far more use in pvp than in pve. I also want to note that I do not consider purely threat talents in a tree utility unless they are an increase to aoe threat, numbers are not finalised so I cannot tell how mandatory those talents would turn out being.

Other trees which are pretty good:

Beast Master Hunter Main-tree

Arcane Mage Main-tree

Fire Mage Subspec-tree

Frost Mage tree (some talents need work but overall the feel is good, subspec is pretty good aswell presuming frost doesn't need master of the elements and arcane concentration)

Retribution Paladin Main-tree

Holy Priest Main-tree (If Test of Faith is changed to 2 points)

Shadow Priest Main-Tree

Combat Rogue Main-tree

Subtelty Rogue Main-tree (Presuming that Energetic Recovery is not Mandatory, Cheat Death is Reduced to 2 points)

Elemental Shaman Sub-spec Tree (I'm torn on this, 7 mandatory points is too much but you have good choices with the 3 remaining points, it remains here but it's borderline)

Affliction Warlock Main-Tree (If everlasting affliction is a 2 point talent)

Demonology Warlock Main-Tree
Destruction Warlock Tree (Very good tree (from my limited understanding of Destruction Warlocks)

Arms Warrior Main-Tree (Improved Hamstring needs to be 1 point or a talent below it only 1 point otherwise this can't be taken)

Fury Warrior Main-Tree

Protection Warrior Main-Tree (Borderline.. I say this is ok presuming aoe threat isn't mandatory but you can't get all of the aoe-threat talents as utility so it needs some tweaking but is "ok")

Trees which need to be changed:

Blood Deathknight tree (Choosing between throughput talents in main and subspec)

Frost Deathknight tree (Only 1 choice at tier 2, rest is mandatory)

Unholy Deathknight tree (Choosing between throughput talents)

Balance Druid tree (IF Owlkin Frenzy procs on all attacks, this tree needs work... if not then it is ok IF Moonglow is not required for boomkin mana regen, subspec is all mandatory)

Feral Dps Druid Tree (All mandatory, no subspec balance options & mandatory 8 points in Resto)

Feral Tanking Druid Tree (All mandatory, arguable that kotj is utility but that's the only thing you can spend points on, subspec options all in resto but amount of choice is good)

Restoration Druid Tree (Far far too many mandatory talents in resto, I had to spend 5 extra points to get everything, subspec options offer no choice)

Beast Master Hunter Sub-spec Tree (no choices at all)

Marksman Hunter Tree (All Mandatory and too many talents, no choice in subspec options)

Survival Hunter Tree (All Mandatory and too many talents, no choice in subspec (presumably I don't have enough knowledge of survival hunters to know for sure))

Arcane Mage Sub-spec Tree (8 mandatory points, little choice beyond that)

Fire Mage Main-Tree (Way too many mandatory points, probably want to spend 35 points in the tree)
Holy Paladin tree (All Mandatory talents in both main and sub-spec trees)

Protection Paladin tree (Way too many choices of Mandatory Talents in both main and sub-spec trees)

Retribution Sub-spec tree. (8 Mandatory talents with little choice available for the remaining 2)

Discipline Priest Tree (Absolutely no choice, all talents are mandatory in both main and sub-specs)

Holy Priest Sub-spec Tree (This is here because there are 8 Mandatory talents, the choice between the final 2 is pretty good though)

Shadow Priest Sub-spec Tree (All talents in sub-spec are mandatory, you even choose between 2 throughput talents, nothing in holy is worthy of sub-speccing)

Assasination Rogue Tree (Presuming Back-stab is an execute ability all talents are mandatory (Movement speed is not utility), choosing between dps increasing talents in sub-spec)

Combat Rogue Sub-spec Tree (Considering run-speed is mandatory and that eviscerate is used in combat rotation 0 choice in sub-spec)

Subtelty Rogue Sub-spec Tree (Considering Run-speed is Mandatory, no choice in sub-spec)

Elemental Shaman Main Tree (Way too many Mandatory Talents)

Enhancement Shaman Tree (No choice in Main-spec or sub-spec, (regardless of if primal wisdom is or isn't mandatory)

Restoration Shaman Tree (No choice in Main-spec or sub-spec, (Elemental Precision needs to be available and not mutually exclusive with Movement speed))
Affliction Warlock Sub-spec Tree (No choice at all)

Demonology Warlock Sub-spec Tree (All Mandatory points, choosing between way too many dps increasing talents)

Arms Warrior Sub-spec Tree (This is dependent on Enrage stacking with wrecking crew, if it does it's bad, if not then the sub-spec tree is "ok, but could use some tweaks")

Fury Warrior Sub-spec Tree (Deep Wounds is far too mandatory to be 2nd tier and 3 points, should be baseline and removed, then sub-spec is perfect)

Protection Warrior Sub-spec Tree (Too many Mandatory Talents to choose between)

Hopefully this comprehensive list of opinions tells you what you want to know, the best tree at the moment is the Destruction Warlock Tree in my eyes, whether you call it "exciting" is very different because I don't think "exciting" quite cuts it, all the trees are pretty exciting but this tree is the most well made and allows for the best freedom of choice whilst remaining as exciting as some of the more bloated trees.

Feralas Alliance Supplement

Similar to Desolace, Feralas is basically a mirror on the Alliance side with pretty much identical quests, however the questing flow and actual story on the alliance side is just much more engaging, the zone starts off identically until we get to Feathermoon Stronghold as opposed to Stonemaul Hold. Here you are given a briefing from Shandris Feathermoon to 3 worgen sentinels, this not only gives you a sense of progression through the zone it also just makes the zone far more engaging on the alliance side.

Firstly you fly over to the ruins of Feathermoon and find it to be under brutal assault from the naga, you fight your way through the naga to kill the named npc and get to fly back, pretty short but also very engaging and immersive. I also love how feathermoon stronghold looks in comparison to the Stonemaul Hold, it's just so.. lovely.

Moving on from here we get sent to the Highborne encampment where our second worgen is located, basically we get complete mirrors to Stonemaul hold quests, but instead of the Muisek quest we get a quest which apparently is rallying the troops. However, these are in a 20,000,000x better order than the muisek quests and flow perfectly with the other quests in the area, I also like how rallying the mobs here sometimes spawns horde poachers you need to take down, so you still have to kill as much as the horde people do.

When taking on Cho'gall in the Dire maul arena, which had sound when I did this, which is so awesome.. this event was pretty damn epic anyway but the sound just makes it great, instead of the orc leader you get Shandris Feathermoon helping you out, which just feels so much better and makes more sense. I presume it's somewhat of a bug that she basically 2-shots cho'gall compared to the orc leader, but regardless ^^.

The final worgen leader is located at a new alliance encampment, which basically all the quests here have not been implemented on the quest map however they are purely identical to the horde versions, apart from the lack of alliance involvement with the Grimtotem encampment, regardless to say that I presume this is NYI, since the alliance npcs are still located in the grimtotem and presumably will be used once these quests are implemented.

Ysondre is still bugged, so can't bring any feedback on that quest here, and well here are some pictures, the alliance side is definitely much better than the horde version of this zone, it flows better but still suffers from some lack of quests by being a level short of where I should be finishing this zone.

Desolace Alliance Supplement

This is going to be a pretty short post since basically this zone is practically identical for both the horde and the alliance, there are a couple of unique quests but they are basically mirrors of the horde versions, firstly there is a quest, which is actually probably available for the horde aswell you are just never directed there, it involves killing lots and lots of the local wildlife, I feel that 15/15/25 are way too high numbers even if its a 100% drop-rate, they feel like nagrand v2 and that is never going to be a good thing, perhaps reducing these to 25/10/10 would be good, since the vultures drop more than 1 item per kill. Otherwise it's a pretty simple kill quest.

The other quests are the reclaimer's incorperate want you to collect a chest and then kill naga to get the satchel to drop. This quest seems to be a vanilla remnant and if this quest is to remain in the game it definitely needs to have some auto-questing here to stop the painful travelling to and from Nijel's point.

Finally the Explorer's league hub has a quest to kill a named apothecary in the south, pretty standard quest really and It's pretty much there instead of killing the named orca in the bay, nothing particularly amazing and so you can see the questing experience is very much shared. The quest where you destroy nijel's point is obviously not in the alliance version and no alternative quest is given either, instead you just go round Satyrnaar and do the 3 quests at each of the areas of interest and nothing else comes of them.

Overall though there isn't much to talk about for this zone so just a few screenies ^^.

Farwatcher's Glen

Finally we reach the conclusion of this zone, which is actually somewhat incomplete seemingly, we arrive in Farwatcher's glen after taking vengeance on the horde and get given a series of quests to complete up the exploded volcano in the south west of the zone. One of these quests is meant to take you via rocket-pack to the questing area, however obviously this isn't implemented and you have to run around the long way, not exactly an issue since this is beta but obviously something that should be fixed for live.

The quests on the mountain are pretty standard and I would like some sort of interaction with the elite black dragon on top of the volcano, I mean she is just sitting there and you end up killing her eggs and whelps and she does nothing and you don't fight her which is somewhat disappointing, like I said the conclusion to this zone is weird in a sense that it doesn't feel like a conclusion, it's not like the Horde area where it really felt like you could conclude with the bomb exploding and the truly epic lore with garrosh and Krom'gar, the alliance version just isn't a great ending point, personally I would have liked to see some form of attack on the horde with Garrosh having to choose whether to apologise to the alliance or still be made out to be an awe-inspiring warchief, would have had some good dialogue.

If that isn't possible then definitely this last questing hub needs to be expanded somewhat to include a fight with the dragon here, that could easily fit for a nice conclusion to the zone and showing where the true threat should be lying rather than the on-going battle with the horde in this zone.

My overall thoughts on this zone are really good, this zone isn't as good as the horde version, and well it was never going to be, you can't compete with the insanely epic questline of the horde version, but this zone still manages to deliver a pretty good questing experience and some epic moments within it, which is great. The conclusion of this zone needs some work along with decisions about the south east of the zone and the Northwatch area, but other than that I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this zone for alliance.

Mirkfallon Post & Thal'darah Overlook

Heading back to the main story with the bomb we are told to make haste to Mirkfallon post where the bomb has been spotted, cool story really immersing you in a common theme through the entire zone, whereas in the horde that was advancing through the horde ranks on the alliance side it's about saving lives and stopping the bomb, both of these ideas however give you a great sense of progression throughout a zone and a sense of purpose, which I personally really love.

The actual questing here is also really interesting, we get a standard kill quest and another quest which is like, blow up some oil-pumps, which basically involve killing a controller next to it and then using the item dropped by them. Firstly, the controllers call down an orbital shredder, which is pretty damn cool I might add, but it's marked as an elite which is pretty scary and completely and utterly wrong since they haven't got the health nor damage to be classed as elites so I presume this is a bug. What makes this quest note-worthy though is how using the item basically causes a nuclear holocaust from what I can tell, you use it and about 5 seconds later there is a massive explosion!! I think it even pushes your character away when the wave hits you, that's just so awesome.. really I cannot put into words how good that interaction is.

We were also given a quest to meet minx inside, I really love this "Goblin" Pump controller as a gnome wearing a goblin male mask.. classic :D. Basically you are told to grab this log book, nothing too special about that but.. the mobs on the platform are incredibly annoying mainly because of the Orbital shredders they call down, because these come from above if you pull the goblin controller at the top of the ramp they call down the orbital shredder and it lands on the above platform and basically pulls the entire area. Luckily I have shadowmeld and was able to kill the controller regardless though this needs to be somewhat fixed.

Handing in these quests though we have to rush to Thal'darah Overlook because the bomb is headed for the grove, upon hand-in you are swept immediately onto a hippogryph. Fortunately as an experienced wow player, *cough* by luck *cough* I handed in the other quests before the quest to head to the overlook so wasn't left with quests to hand-in here. Needless to say this needs to be an "activate on talking to" type quest rather than it immediately transitioning you to the next quest hub, although that's good for story purposes it really is annoying if you didn't hand in the other quests here first.

Upon landing it seems like it's a race against time before the bomb hits and you are dispatched franticly on a vehicle pick-up quest, similar to the dragonblight quest for alliance. I feel like the gryphon needs to go faster speed whilst sped up, this quest is good for the first 2-3 fly-outs then it just seems like a total chore, really fun quest though and great for the immersion factor here, which I definitely appreciated. The follow-up quest really surprised me though, and god is it awesome, you go out for one last effort to save druids and you basically are just watching a cut-scene of the bomb falling on the grove, but my god is it epic having a massive explosion in front of you crushing your hope of rescuing druids.

There was a slight bug with these quests where I was "stuck" in a parachute whilst on the hippogryph watching the bomb, I actually didn't notice this until reviewing the screenshots I had made because this scene is epic but obviously this is bug and needs to be fixed ^^. The follow-up to this is to exact revenge on the horde and take a glaive-thrower and reap havoc on the horde in what is a mirror of the horde quest with the catapult, I don't do this quest until after but I will just comment on it now, obviously the "bug" id is still on the glaive thrower as it was on the demolisher. The quest was good other than the fact that the number 2 button seemed totally redundant, why would I use it when I can just spam glaives every second using number 1 button. I also liked how this area neatly transitions you to the final area, but I will cover that after this last bit.

The other quests you can pick up after the somewhat epic cut-scene involve trying to cleanse stonetalon peak, which has seemingly been taken over by old god corruption and, tentacles!!! Oh, how I love you tentacle missions. What is better is the fact that these tentacles grab night elf sentinels and dryads, oh hentai references perhaps :). Regardless the quests here have perfect synergy and are really lovely, I always love tentacles and they really have a great aesthetic with Stonetalon peak. Nothing much is explained as to who the old-god corrupting this place is, but regardless it's nice to see tentacle missions :D.

A pretty epic conclusion to the main storyline of this zone I thought, I mean it's no "you are dismissed", because my god that is seriously awesome, but it does a pretty good job of itself on the alliance side.

Northwatch Expedition Camp

Right, so this is one of the breadcrumbs you are given from Windshear Hold, I chose to do this for a few reasons: The breadcrumb only really works taking it from windshear hold, the "vehicle" needed to get to the place is located near here and it is in the opposite direction of the story meaning I know you will not get directed back here, whereas you are more likely to get directed back to the main story.

Continuing on from my point in my previous post, I wholly disagree with giving a breadcrumb against the flow of the story, the quest text about the bomb is really urgent like you need to follow it asap, but its not logical for questing xp to do this, which really goes against the story flow of the zone.

Lets crack on with the area though, firstly I don't know if I agree with the positioning of this vehicle, it's pretty far away from Windshear hold and is the second set of crossroads you come across, which isn't exactly the most logical of areas to look. However the vehicle cut-scene I suppose you should call it is pretty damn awesome and a lovely way to transition to this area.

Firstly we get, what I think anyway, is a great answer to the question of why the cave is so damn big on the horde side, turns out that its a double-ended cave with somewhat mirror quests on the alliance side who "accidentally" opened up a back-door to the horde stronghold. So this time we get a different set of quests, the alliance want to shut off the cave so they can't be attacked by the horde, but before doing so you need to plant explosives save some miners and kill horde assassins.

The actual place for the explosives was really confusing, I feel like some sort of direction was needed for this objective because the sparkles weren't all that helpful and although the pillars were in somewhat logical places I don't think it is really clear enough, especially how inaccurate map objectives look in caves.

The miners quest is basically a pure mirror of the orc peon quest so I won't go into too much detail on that, the other quest is to kill assassins utilising the infra red goggles stolen from the goblins ^^, in a similar quest to the start of the horde version of Stonetalon putting on these goggles marks the assassins on your mini-map and killing them is rather elementary, once killing them however you get a cool auto-quest from the gnomecorder, not sure how he got a hold of it but regardless, to kill their leader.

I really, really think that the leader needs to be shown-up on your mini-map I was running around looking for her, then realising she was right in front of me because I thought she would be marked on the map like the assassins, so yeh.. was rather confused :<. After doing these quests and handing them in you get a nice phase where the roof comes down and the mine collapses :). Pretty nice effects tbh, the only bug was that the infra-red goggles effect kept on until you left the cave, I presume this is a bug and they should be removed once you hand in the quest, but it's a pretty minor qualm.

Now, I particularly liked this next quest since it sort of brings a paradox in the questing world, the alliance want to ally with the grimtotems because the horde have fallen out of love with them, which is true if you go through the mulgore zone, however as the horde you are told to fight the grimtotems because they allied with the alliance, so it seems rather paradoxical and which came first, which I actually like and gives the player whos played as both races an extra immersion of the zone.

The quest though basically gives you a "collect lots of items quest", I like the npc name of Mcweaksauce and seemingly he has been promoted from azuremyst isle to the best chef in all the alliance and has ended up in Stonetalon, pretty nice evolution of characters.

This quest sort of mirrors the horde version, with the exception of killing Kobolds... the drop rate on the Boulderside Cheese is extremely poor, it definitely needs to be 100% like I've argued in previous articles, I would like to add how lonely this quest is, it could use a companion to do whilst out here. The hand-ins though require some cool interaction with the grimtotems, who are like we need big weapons!

So what do you do? you go into the horde mine and collect some alliance crates and kill horde there, great synergy with these 2 quests really, having looked at the area though you can see why there isn't a horde mirror quest here.. I mean what would they do here, theres even a Zeppelin tower here which is un-climbable, so I'm not sure if this area if fully implemented or not. Regardless though, after collecting the weapons you get to go and interact with the grimtotem chieftain, perhaps this is why there is no horde quest to kill him ^^.

He basically asks you to do the alliance version of "buff up the troops", however this version is 20x better, one because it's not a humongous cast time and two, because when using the weapons the grimtotem weapons turn into alliance level 60 pvp weapons, which are just so iconic and awe inspiring. I also like how there are plenty of grimtotem just standing around the chieftain you can just use the item on really quickly.

The follow-up to this is also really awesome, you basically have to kill a series of horde generals, 4 in total, all big named mobs. This quest was really challenging and I don't know if it was too challenging and perhaps there should be slightly longer between the waves but I really loved the feel of this quest, perhaps it could have been enhanced by having a grimtotem strike force with you, which would have been even more immersive, but this quest was a pretty lovely conclusion to this area.

Now from the end of this zone you get a quest that leads you into the southern barrens naturally, obviously I've already stated my opinion on this but yes this does make sense but if this is to make sense this area should be mutually exclusive xp wise with farwatcher's glen or share experience pool with the southern barrens.

That's the end of this post though, obviously I flew back to Windshear hold and cracked on with the main storyline of the zone, "the bomb".

Windshear Hold

Urgh, huge internet problems at home meaning I wasn't able to get these out yesterday and am having to cope with near dial-up speeds most of the day, seriously annoying T_T. Regardless, lets try and crack on with the rest of this zone.

After the epic conclusion of the previous area we find ourselves in windshear hold, which is kinda a mirror version of Krom'gar fortress, we get similar quests so I won't go into too much detail of those (other than the fact that its so cool that the large daddy was replaced by big papa on the alliance side, lovely name twisting for mirror quests.

The difference here is that instead of incinerating the northwatch tents, instead we have to release huntress'. Pretty standard key quest with a pretty decent drop rate. I particularly like how you get a big army of sentinels to help you, what is particularly awesome about that though is they help you kill the elite fish, so the alliance have a much easier time of killing cragjaw than the horde. Now, Cragjaw's interaction with the sentinels did seem buggy, since he decided to grab one of them instead of grab me which may or may not be a bug, regardless I really did appreciate that awesome synergy and would hope for some sort of equivalent on the horde side.

Following-on from this the Big Papa quest seems to have mostly been fixed, or at least it works out for the alliance version, and the sucking up goblins and launching them grants you credit, which is nice :D. Now this particular area is much better constructed as alliance, obviously we don't have a mine to go to so you get told to go to some highborne ruins unearthed in the cataclysm and do the horrible spider quests.

Since I've commented on the spider quest (and how horribly terrifying it is) I only want to make a comment on how I love the debuff effect Queen Silith, I don't think I mentioned it in my previous write-up because I was in total shock and horror about the event, but the fact she launches like mini-spiders and they attach to you and try and nibble and kill you, becoming a debuff, is seriously awesome and a great way to implement debuffs like this.

Moving on to the Highborne area though you have these quests where you have to launch a box at them and they either turn good or evil and you get your credit on the good ones. They seemed to work like every other was good, maybe it was just luck that made it occur that way for me but yeh a pretty nice touch. Now what I particularly liked in this area was the abundance of Relics in the lake itself, whilst I was disappointed with the lack of relics on the surface there were plenty in the lake, which is always a good tactic if quests just can't work in synergy. I.E theres an area free of mobs where you can collect relics.

I would say however there definitely needs to be more relics on the surface, I ended up with like 3 once I had the spirit bound quest completed, which is obviously not enough really, I appreciate there is an area with little to no mobs to complete this quest but I would rather have close synergy and then that synergy being perfect wholly dependent on rng.

Now, in this area there are a lot of named highborne and you aren't ever told to come back to this area, I presume they are linked with a horde version of this area quest that hasn't been implemented yet, they have some interesting lore quotes here and it would have been nice to have been given a reason to listen to all of these, either through a "disguise" type quest or just through having to listen to all of their conversations, maybe it's a horde version of the quest but still.. highborne are probably more associated with the alliance than the horde and it would be nice to have a quest to take in the lore surrounding this area.

From here we get given 2 breadcrumb quests, I'm going to take a time to discuss this because I feel like I'm very torn between them, firstly I like the fact that say the breadcrumb to southern barrens involves you doing a certain questing area in Stonetalon, thats nice because it means you can offer the breadcrumb earlier and it still be relevant later when you want to leave the zone, however I feel like because this is an area you want to actually quest in, in the actual zone, you should be directed to this area first then told to move on or at the place after the bomb events you should get the choice to either go south-east to Northwatch or south to Farwatcher's glen and have them as basically mutually exclusive areas for experience allocation of the area.

Regardless the rest of the area is to follow :)

Windshear Mine

So this zone starts off by having a few quests preceed it from the Ashenvale zone, I made the cut-off point here because all the quests from this point onwards are in stonetalon mountains so it makes perfect sense to include them in said write-up.

I just want to say how great this zone is, even though it doesn't have the epicness of the horde version it is still very well done.

So we get some nice flavour quest text from the gnome, I was amused at the very least I mean it would be amazing if at some point quest text could become audio, I know that is nowhere near in cataclysm's plans but I mean it would do so much for the immersion factor, theres such a difference between reading and hearing in my eyes, reading is a chore and hearing is a pleasure.

Regardless we are told to shoot down some horde windriders, pretty standard quest really perfectly good control on the vehicle and a fun quest though, I particularly enjoyed how you could shoot 2 cannonballs at the same time and shoot down the wyvern and the windrider at the same time.

Handing this in gives follow-ups to press forward the advantage and head into stonetalon, now obviously I was blind and didn't pick up the quest from the gnome, which obviously you should at this point, this gnome quest is particularly interesting as it gives the zone access to auto-questing throughout its entirety, I particularly enjoy it because it "makes sense" theres no Oh lets throw in an auto-quest somewhere to make the quests flow better, theres already a precurser for having auto-quests throughout the zone.

I also appreciate how riding through into stonetalon presents obstacles like do the "night elf killers" from the horde quest actually activate if you go near them riding through, would be particularly great immersion if they did but I'm not sure since no horde were questing here at the time. The actual quests here though are very interesting though, they involve killing elite incinerators by killing a non-elite oil canister on their back and blowing them up. This is really lovely, great way of spicing up kill quests by making your killing more ingenious than simply targetting the mob you want and killing. The incineration of the horde supplies is pretty simple realistically and has good synergy with the other quest because there is just about 1 incinerator per crate.

Handing these in we get up to windshear mine, where "the bomb" has been spotted, I mean this zone is really good at giving you a sense of story and progression and throwing you right in at the deep end. Regardless though we have to do a simple kill and gather quest, but again with a nice twist on the gathering quest. We have to kill orcs and they drop their pay-load, not exactly a unique quest in cataclysm but certainly appreciative of the change up. Now one of the orcs dropped a starting-quest item, I presume the overseers for synergy purposes, personally I would have preferred this quest to be told to go straight to Minx inside the mine instead of going outside then fighting all the way through to minx who is really deep inside the mine.

Heading back outside, there is suddenly panic apparently the bomb is going to blow up an alliance stronghold and we need to stop it, this quest is just so epic really you feel a great sense of urgency, running over to the balloon you can enter it via the enter vehicle setting and you have to blow up the power coupling *before* reaching windshear hold, I just love how you have a sense of time-limit for this quest, sure its a very very conservative time limit but that is also good, you feel like you need to kill this thing asap but you aren't in any real danger of failing the quest.

I am not sure if you are meant to be attacked by the overseers, I feel like you probably are but I aggrod one before entering the vehicle and they continued to attack me so not sure if thats a bug, also it took a *long* time for the balloon to crash after I destroyed the power coupling, again that might be intended I just felt I was standing around waiting for the balloon to crash and me to parachute outta there.

The hand-in is in Windshear hold where the next write-up will continue from.

Discipline Priest

Right, so before I crack on with the stonetalon write-up for alliance I wanted to take a post to talk about discipline priest levelling in cataclysm. I could probably sum it up pretty easily by just saying its about 20,000,000 times better than shadow, but I want to go ahead and explain that, by level 23 you have 4-5 spells you are using on every mob, the rotation is dynamic, engaging and actually really fun. It is pretty skill capped, if you forget to archangel properly you run oom - that's an amazing feature. Let's just analyse a few bits at a time.

Firstly, the biggest perk of the discipline tree is that all the "levelling" talents, or at least the talents that enable the player to dps effectively are all in the first few tiers of spec. This is important, the main problems that shadow has is that you don't get a "feel" for the actual rotation until a much higher level, but as discipline by around level 20 you basically have all the tools you need to be able to dps effectively and level. I mean, that's just great I mean sure you need to have "progression" through a tree so you feel like you are becoming more powerful, but you can do that by spicing rotations up through talents like Pain and Suffering, the fact that your "core" is available so early on is just great.

The fact that discipline is such a good tree and actually you could see alot of merit in it's rotation could spring some arise of a "need" for a discipline dps spec, similar to feral tank/dps. I don't know whether it would necessarily be popular but a dual healing/dps spec similar to feral could have a great place in wow. The necessary tools are there and if you wanted to, I feel like you could easily make the discipline dps tree actually viable in raids. Now I realise this is highly unlikely, and tbh I prefer the playstyle of shadow, but I can see the attraction of discipline and see other people perhaps wanting the spec to become competitive.

Now, the only downside to the tree, although actually I wouldn't call it a downside to the tree persay but more so the others, are the talents arcangel and evangelism. Like or not they are designed for shadow priest mana viability and dps, it obviously has a discipline equivalent so that its a great talent to pick up for discipline in cases of downtime of healing and for overall levelling. Right now though, it is like.. well I need this for all 3 specs whilst levelling, I cannot imagine levelling as shadow or holy with this talent available in discipline and the other trees having no active source of mana regen until level 66 or so when they get access to shadowfiend.

Whilst this talent obviously fits the design for discipline quite well I feel like, it needs to be made baseline if you do not want to implement some of my suggestions for shadow in my other post. 15% mana regen every 15 seconds or so is very big for all 3 specs and at low level it just feels mandatory.

I've stated my feelings about discipline tier 2 already and there is just way too much going on, so making evangelism/dark angel baseline would free up the tree immensely.

That's probably all I have to say on discipline other than the fact that OMG I LOVE HOW PRIESTS HAVE WINGS NOW, this is awesome :D. Gonna finish all the stonetalon write-ups today and the supplements and hopefully start my Dwarf Shaman later.

Stardust Tower

Ok, so we at last arrive at the conclusion of this zone, and for all this zones flaws his conclusion is pretty damn good, as with the horde conclusion to this zone it basically acts as a prelude to Stonetalon Mountains and is required for said so, so I mean you could argue this is apart of Stonetalon Mountains but all the quests are in Ashenvale so ye, if you look at questing experience it probably does end up counting as Stonetalon allocation of xp, but in terms of write-ups: It's in ashenvale so I'm writing it up as Ashenvale.

Regardless we are given a few really interesting quests, first we have a gnome who like is trying to put on a sort of russian or german scientist impression, one of the 2 and wants us to collect goblin technology, we have to kill a named goblin, kill elementals in Mystral Lake and save a couple of gnomes from the horde. Getting the technology and killing the named is easy but you then discover the gruesome fate that is about to befall the alliance. A Giant Bomb! You get told to report this back to command, but obviously I'm going to do the quests in the immediate area.

You get the exact same quest as horde to kill the elementals in Mystral lake so I won't go over that, you don't get the drop that the horde do though, which is maybe a little confusing. The rescuing of the gnomes is pretty fun though, although the cart has some phasing issues, you have to catch it at certain points that the driver and the gnomes phase into the world.. a little irritating and presumably a bug but yeh. Once you get near to the cart the driver jumps off and tries to kill you, he is another pretty challenging but not overly so named npc, which are pretty cool I might add. After killing him the gnomes run off back to camp seemingly.

Whilst we are here we get to complete the Dartol's Rod questline, first we do the mirror quest for the horde to kill the chieftain in the village up north. Then we have to kill another chieftain down south, I do appreciate how they moved this named kill quest to right next to this npc, really lovely touch. I don't like however how many furbolg are in the area, there are way too many, there are about 4-5 furbolg literally surrounding this guy you have to kill and overall I think it's a little too many. Regardless killing him leads us to the final quest of this chain: cause a furbolg-uprising. You use the power of the rod to become a furbolg and convince the furbolg being held captive by the horde to go on a rampage, they break out of the cage and go around murdering horde.. awesome stuff :D. You then get a hand-in at Astranaar, since the best time to do this quest is whilst doing the stuff at stardust tower, I really think the hand-in should be there.. but it's inconsequential.

I decided to take the opportunity to hearthstone and spec discipline, I'm going to make a separate post on this because it deserves one really and perhaps isn't appropriate to this discussion. I have to saw though: wow, discipline is just... so much better than shadow for levelling.. my god.

When you eventually find yourself back at Stardust spire you hand in and get given a whole heap of cutscenes, you see the bomb being taken out of stonetalon on the balloon and they are all in serious panic mode and we get led into the Stonetalon series of quests.. basically this area is one giant prelude to Stonetalon and what is going to be happening throughout the zone.

Some final points on Ashenvale, the questing flow just needs some work, with a little bit of work this zone is lovely there are plenty of entertaining quests and with a cut-down on travel time the zone is definitely streamlined, I personally prefer the horde version of this zone, and I will definitely say the same about stonetalon, but the zone definitely works. Now in terms of xp this zone definitely gave way too much, if you don't include Stardust tower xp then I think the xp of the zone is pretty accurate.. maybe slightly too much though not sure.

As with the set item look of this zone, pretty good I feel, there are some vanilla items that haven't been reskinned or re-itemised (read the rewards of the dryad quest in forest song) but I do love purple/pink dresses and it does fit the night elf feel of the expansion, so overall I'm pretty impressed with the set-design.

As always slideshows of this area and the whole zone are here, hopefully they are working because they look somewhat buggy when I'm looking at them :S.

Forest Song

Again, I've previously stated this should probably be earlier in the zone, I admit that I went here too late realistically, but I only went at the logical time realistically. I'm probably going to be quite skimpy with my details for this area, it is basically a complete mirror of the horde warsong area, but in some areas worse and some areas better.

Firstly you are given quests to collect items in Satyrnaar and find a lost Dryad, I really feel like the Dryad quest should be first and then the other 4 quests should be given at the same time so you don't end up going through Satynaar once to collect 2 sets of items and then head back there to kill Satyr and gather more items.. it's a bit urgh. The dryad quest is the same as on live though, collect branch from named Satyr and head back to camp. The other quests are also the same as vanilla, although the Satyrnaar wood quest has been separated from the Warsong lumber and been made into 2 separate quests. Regardless though all these quests would benefit from doing them at the same time, they have great synergy together and I always love doing loads of quests at the same time.

Heading back we realise the hand-in for the Satyrnaar wood is down south by the Warsong camp. You get given a bunch of quests to do demons and kill Warsong. I probably should have done the Warsong first so I will discuss them first, also their quests are different than the other quests here. Firstly we have to collect Warsong lumber, like we did for the live quest, and we have to kill warsong horde and the leader here. Pretty standard quest. I feel like there needs to be much more lumber in the area where the overlord is, since I was a good 4-5 short, but the amount of horde needed to kill is pretty accurate.

Handing it in we get a cool unique quest which is basically steal a shredder and use it to destroy explosives. I really feel like the shredder blades need to 1 shot the hordes here, they aggro really easily to the shredder and the fire rate/repair is just atrocious. However the quest is pretty fun once you realise that if you aim the shredding blade at the explosives and not catch the horde's leg he won't aggro :D.

Handing this in leaves us with quests for felfire hill. These quests feel much better than the horde equivalent, you have to seal portals whilst killing the named demons at the very least, so that quest doesn't feel so "on its own". Most of the points I made in the horde versions of these quests still stand though.

Afterwards you are told to head to the Dor'danil Barrow Dens. I feel like this needs an auto-travel type thing to get there as its pretty far to run there and back. Regardless though this quest has some really nice touches. Firstly the markers on the ground inside the barrow dens are green and not red as they were for the horde. I think this touch is just lovely really, it's really small and you only really notice it if you play through on both factions, but I think thats such a lovely touch. Again you have to kill like the named druids here and collect some essences to allow the forest heart to be moved. I feel like this needs to be a better drop rate.. I don't know but it felt like it was less than 50% and it is on the cusp of 7/8 where I feel 100% drop rate is in order. The quests here are pretty nice though, I had some undead hunter in the cave with me so I had to go hunting for essences for the quest, but if he wasn't there I feel like the quests would have had near perfect synergy, which is always a good thing.

Heading back to Gnarl at the Warsong camp he cleanses the forest heart but like.. the quest just ends theres no follow up or anything and ye you have to just head back to Astranaar for the Stardust Tower series of quests. I feel like this quest needs some sort of travel back to astranaar breadcrumb and an auto-travel to there.. just to make the quests more immersive and flow much better.

Shrine of Aessina

I have already stated how I feel this quest should be in a different place to its current situe in the quest story arc. However, these quests are all really good though, it's just a shame it suffers from the bad quest flow of the zone, if anything I feel like they should be expanded upon.

Firstly you are sent via breadcrumb to see the edunes near the Shrine, he has some amusing dialogue with the human here about his adventures in azeroth.. I'm personally not sure who they are referencing, they were apparently added in TBC, but nothing has come of them on live.. not sure tbh I guess they are a reference to something but hey I can't really tell :<. Regardless though unfortunately that's all you get to see out of them, I did check later there were no quests to do with them :(. Regardless though you get sent down to find 3 night elves in the forest.

This quest is just utterly brilliant, a sheer stroke of genious. It's a Trap! You hand in the quest to chained night elfs you have been shackled by a demoness and bam she ambushes you, she has a lot of health and is like... huge. She is pretty challenging to take down but not overly so, I just personally love the epicness that is "ITS A TRAP" quests ^^. Always fun, regardless you loot her heart and they have to eat it "eww" and then they become free. They give you a follow-up which is to basically kill demons and then "warn" the ancient at the Shrine of Aessina. Killing these demons is pretty easy (other than the fact the fel puppies mana-burn an already struggling shadow priest :<).

However handing in this quest we realise the ancient is under attack by hordes of demons and you have to kill 30 of them, personally I find this number wayyy too excessive, especially since a shadow priest goes oom after killing like 6 of them :<. I feel like the quest needs to give you some form of aoe or "ancient power" to 1 shot these mobs so they go fast, I do really love this last stand feeling though the quest gives, you and the ancient alone against hordes of demonic invaders.. simply awesome :D.

This though ends this mini-questhub, he phases after the hand-in so all the demons are vanquished and you are a hero of the forest. However, again you are given no breadcrumb back to Astranaar, which is a little disappointing in my opinion.

Raynewood Tower

Right, so this is where the questing gets ugly.. firstly though we are told to go collect the tear of elune for the saving the girl quests, pretty standard gathering quest, I really love how they updated this quest for cataclysm, by adding soot to the tear and therefore rendering it useless, pretty cool in my books. This obviously is pretty near the Earthern Ring quests so I did these at the same time, I won't go over the quest really, they are identical to when I previously ran through the area other than I think the end quest was slightly more forgiving than before, or maybe I was just better at it. I'm not really sure ^^.

However, this is when the questing is bad, firstly you are left with no breadcrumb from the Earthern Ring place, that's fine right because you have the quest left to hand in for the saving the girl quest.. but this is where it gets ridiculous.. after handing in the saving the girl quest, after running to and from the earthern ring area, you have to run back to basically the exact same spot again. On top of that I missed the quest for the Dartol's rod questline because you don't have any quest that explicitly sends you to the inn and I simply thought this was the only follow-up, some quest that sends you to get that quest from Raene would be really appreciated, since not getting it makes this zone 20x more painful. This quest needs some sort of automated travel time, or make it so you cleanse the Tear of Elune in Astranaar and then get free transport to Raynewood Tower from the sentinel station after collecting the quest from Raene.. yes that would work pretty awesomely.

Instead though you have to run alll the way back to the area and cleanse this tear, fortunately you get a pretty cool auto-quest, which basically gives you a pretty unique quest to help a satyr seek atonement for his corruption, pretty awesome quest but we'll get onto that later. Now arriving at Raynewood Tower we would get 3 quests, 1) to kill Satyr's, 2) to collect Laughing Sister's corpses and 3) Get part of Dartol's Rod.

Now I have to point out that I did not have the last quest because of the bad quest directions in Astranaar/my blindness, which really made the quest flow bad, but ye back to that later ^^. Firstly collecting the Laughing Sister's corpses is very nice and simple, I also like the fact you need to avoid the patrolling elite guy to get to the retreat to hand in to the dryad.. pretty nice quest. However, the follow-up is pretty damn epic in my opinion. You basically become a spectral tiger and go on a massive killing spree. What makes it epic however is how skill capped this quest is, you die reasonably quickly if you don't realise how you are meant to use the 3 abilities you are given, but once you learn what to do you barely take any damage, have got to love and adore quests that have some sort of skill cap towards them.

Now if I had the Dartol's Rod quest, these 2 quests would have at least some synergy in terms of the area you have to go, I personally don't like how far north you have to go to do the Dartol's Rod quest, I don't like it on live and I don't like it now, it really needs to be much further south tbh. The Dartol's Rod quest is fine though in terms of drop rate and availability of the chest, I just feel it needs to be bought further south somehow or you need to be granted a buff that increases your movement speed for this quest so you can get their faster.

Now... this Satyr quest, boy is this quest annoying, firstly.. the drop rate is horrendous like said before with 5 I would expect a 50% drop rate at worst, but this drop rate is like 25% or something similar, really really too low imo. However, that isn't what makes this quest annoying. What makes this quest annoying is the debuff these Satyrs give you: -100 spirit. For a caster of my level that makes me go into the negative spirit.. I had around 50-70 spirit, so basically I was just going through my 1.4k mana pool in 1 and a half mobs, that's pretty bad, I mean I know my situation is exaggerated because of the fact that I was a shadowpriest and their regen is attrocious at the moment, but yeh this definitely concerned me.

The other thing that was really infuriating was that because I had specced into twisted faith (The Shadow Spirit->Hit conversion talent) the -100 spirit meant I had around a 50% chance to miss with my spells with the debuff up. I have no idea if this functionality is intended, that negative buffs of spirit affect hit rating in this way. But if it is I HIGHLY suggest removing it, it's ludicrous that I should be punished for spending points in a practical talent on 1 stupid quest that decides to debuff me with -100 spirit. However, the quest at least redeems itself with the hand-in, which is quite seemingly brilliant. The Satyr phases into a night elf upon "sacrificing" itself to save this girl. Truly lovely ending to this quest here, the phasing is near seemless. I mean I want to add that I personally would prefer to be a satyr over an ugly male night elf.. at least try and redeam yourself as a female night elf^^. Regardless though, the phasing is pretty sweet here.

The last quest here (again, if I had done this right) is another pretty unique quest.. you basically have a "feign death" item which basically means you lose aggro from the bears in the questing area, you use this feign death to grab the item and avoid fighting the elite located here, pretty awesome unique quest here. Not seen a quest like it really and I think it's just a lovely quest tbh.

Now a few things need to happen hear, Raynewood Tower needs something.. it either needs a sentinel station so you can travel on nightsabers back and forth between Astranaar and here or it needs a flightpath. I think for immersion purposes it should probably have both, but if I was to choose one it would be a sentinel station, just because you could have far more immersion by having one of these here rather than a flightpath. It definitely needs some form of travel between here and Astranaar though.

Heading back to Astranaar though gives you a follow up for Dartol's Rod and an end to the Saving the girl questline, where she is unsurprisingly saved.

Now, if all my points were followed this would work out perfectly and you would only have stardust tower to go to along with the quest with Dartol's Rod, which would really flow lovely in the zone, however because they aren't I have to do the Shrine of Aessina and Forest Song before then so ye ^^.

Astranaar

Ok, lets not beat about the bush, from this point on the questing experience takes a somewhat downward slide. I want to note this is not because the quests are in any way bad, it's just the fact that they don't flow together.. I'll say that it's much better to have bad quests that flow well together than good quests flowing badly together, since you end up forgetting they are good because of all the travelling you have to do to them.

So firstly arrive in Astranaar and are given a load of quests.. firstly I don't like this at all, considering some of the quests are about protecting astranaar it seems utterly ludicrous to be given quests to do other errands when they need your help to protect astranaar from the horde. I suggest phasing out all the breadcrumbs and make the "saving astranaar" quests the only quests you can do before proceeding onwards. I also feel that offering the breadcrumb to forest song *this* early is a bit urgh. Basically you offer it at a time when it's not prudent to head there, because you have quests in the immediate vicinity. So it gets relegated to "go there when you are done with the quests here, which is definitely not its place in the ashenvale questing experience. I'll come back to this point later.

Onto the actual cool quests though.. well astranaar is under horde siege and you need to... put out the fires!! Oh how the mighty have fallen seemingly ^^. Regardless the quest is pretty cool interactivity wise, there probably aren't enough "clear-cut" fires in the town, I was basically aiming at what I thought looked like fires and presuming they were. Also the aiming for this quest is a little off, sometimes you hit the fire and it goes out, other times it just stays there.. I also don't really like how your work goes un-noticed.. there's no phasing showing the buildings not being on fire anymore it's just.. hey you did all that for nothing, which is pretty disappointing.

However the follow-up is pretty damn cool you get to ride a Glaive-thrower and shoot down Horde wind-riders, nothing fancy with this vehicle quest just a shooting gallery really but it's pretty awesome imo just because the glaive-thrower controls are really nice and you only get one shot per rider because of the energy regen.. it sort of works out really well. Now this is when we should get the furbolg quests and the Elune's tear quest (although more on that quest later) once we have cleared the horde out. The area does phase now slightly so you don't see the fires (would have liked that one quest earlier) I don't think the wind-riders are still above Astranaar but I might be mistaken here.

I'm going to comment that the "Shrine of Aessina" Quest hub, (which I'll cover in a later post) *should* be here, It obviously isn't available now and only becomes available at a really weird point in the zone.. it would make so much sense to add that questline here so that the zone has better quest-flow. Regardless though you go and kill some furbolg and loot a quest starting item about troll charms.. pretty standard really. Handing them back in leads you to the quest you got on the horde side for troll charms. However, heading to this cave leads you to that green furbolg I commented on in my horde post, he does give a quest for the alliance. By the tone of his quest I can see why he doesn't give this quest to horde, but it is very strange that he is friendly towards them :S.

The quest is a simple "kill a named" quest where you have to kill the chieftain, he was actually pretty tough to be honest, however he was both tough, manageable and rewarding for doing so, which is definitely a good thing for any quest, the quest map shows him in the wrong position in addition to the points above. Now whilst in this chamber I came across a caged tauren druid seemingly, in bear form. I presume this is a horde escort, but if it is there definitely needs to be a quest pointing towards it, the place where the cage is, is miles away from the area where the troll charms are in the cave and if you don't have the map fully zoomed out (for which the default is fully zoomed in) there is absolutely no way you would see this escort. On a future run-through I'll add an addendum to the horde post regarding this quest.

Now.. handing these quests in leaves us with a breadcrumb to the "Earthen Ring Volcano" quests, which I have covered in my horde write-up, they are entirely identical to the horde quests however with the lovely touch that the goblin npc is phased out and a human "female" (presumably worgen) is in their place. I presume that the worgen npc in the Astranaar inn will be updated to cataclysm worgen model/textures and is simply an oversight using the old models.

Mostly the bad quest flow is in the next write-up :(, However I want to point out that the "Forest Song breadcrumb" should be available after both the Shrine of Aessina questlines and the furbolg corruption questlines are available. I also would like the Tears of Elune quest and the Earthern Ring breadcrumb quests to only be available after the forest song quests are completed. This would just lead to a far more streamlined and quest-friendly zone.

Maestra's Post

Cracking on with this area we are left with a quest to go to Maestra's post. This is a problem I have with most of the zone actually you get like left with a semi-conclusion to a quest and no breadcrumbs whatsoever to a new area, just quests in your inventory still. This is the "vanilla school of thought". It basically is like, hey lets give you lots of choices to go to different areas and quest but not link any of them together. I don't really like that.. I always feel there needs to be quests leading into other quests, even if its a simple breadcrumb leading back to the original quest-hub, it's just nice to have quests lead into each other.

However you arrive at Maestra's post and are given alot of quests.. pretty exciting :O, since Maestra's post is under attack from 2 fronts. I choose to do the against the horde series of quests first, since 1) It's right in front of you as you enter and 2) the horde are more menacing, you get a pretty nifty new cataclysm-esque quest where you are given a squad of sentinels to help. This seems to be one of those quests you associate with a new expansion, there are a lot of these quests that send you out with a squad of troops or quest givers in some cases and just have them help and kill shit :D. You just have to kill a bunch of hordes, but hey thats pretty fun and having a group of sentinels is awesome. I don't really like though how if you engage a pack of 3 all the sentinels attack the target you pulled and let the other 2 bash on you. It would be nice if they acted more like offtanks and just attacked the mobs you weren't attacking so you don't fall on your face and die :D.

The follow-up is just as cool you have to sneak through the horde and recover some items off fallen paladins who used to be here in the post, I didn't really feel that nostalgic because those guys gave awful quests, but regardless ^^ the quest mechanics are pretty cool. Feero Ironhand was incredibly hard to spot though, he definitely needs some sparkles to attract where he is, he basically just blends into the shrubbery and I was on low graphics settings so I can only imagine this gets worse as you increase in them. It's cool that you have to fight a warlock at the top to get the item. I would maybe appreciate a slow fall on the cloak, because any accidental drop down from the base of the tower at that small cliff gives you fall damage and basically results in your death since you cannot use the cloak in combat.

The follow-ups are also pretty synergetic. They involve you taking the battle to the other front against the furbolg, basically its a kill quest and an activate items quest. They are pretty synergetic and the animations on deactivating the moonstones are pretty nice with them visibly turning off. Good quests really nothing much further to add. The last quests involve you going west and killing tentacles.. oh how I love killing tentacle quests.. always fun :D. Basically the quests involve killing tentacles and the faceless one here. You get the quest in the field aswell from the keeper located here, which is always cool for immersion and a great way to hide the fact somebody is dead in the objective screen. I also really like the quest which involves you using an item in a beam of light, I feel like this is a pretty unique twist to using an item.. by having a massive bright beam to use it in especially in the dark surroundings of the area.

Now heading back you get 2 breadcrumbs to Astranaar, now in a future slideshow I actually come back to Maestra's post and realise there was a third breadcrumb, if you look in the pictures you can see there is a question mark located here and I was obviously blind and missed it. This third breadcrumb gives you free passage to Astranaar. Maybe Maestra's post should also have a flight path but I think that is either way considering you can use the sentinel station to travel to and from Astranaar, I was just too dumb to notice :(.

This area is pretty short but the quests are pretty exciting and engaging and the area went very quickly, which is always a good sign for a quest hub imo. I perhaps feel this zone needs a more climactic end with a fight against a horde leader at Maestra's post, but this isn't entirely necessary and the quest flow works here. This is the last point at which the questing flow is really good though :P.

Next up is Astranaar O:.

Orendil's Retreat

Ok, a somewhat unproductive week on the writing front it seems, basically whenever I tried to do beta I would get tired and annoyed (at how bad both shadow and the quest flow in Ashenvale is ^^) and would log out. However, I yesterday perservered and have done up to Feralas on my night elf priest (I specced to disc :P) so I've got 2 full zones to write up and a couple of supplements, so hard work ensues :D. Regardless though, lets crack on with Ashenvale.

Firstly I want to state a few things, 1) This zone looks fairly incomplete, I mean the quests seem to be all implemented and inplace but the quest flows are way off, alot of quests lead to dead ends or are just "hey lets randomly travel for 20 years to get to a quest objective". The zone definitely needs a lot of work.

2) Like darkshore this zone needs more flightpaths, but unlike darkshore this zone NEEDS them, in Darkshore the questing was very linear and in 1 direction whereas in Ashenvale the questing is all over the shot so needs the flightpaths for stability.

3) I probably did the quests in the wrong order that they would be intended, I may also have missed some quests because of some horde boomkin killing quest givers in Astranaar. (Sometimes I question why these people bother to play a beta test, it's pretty sickening to just down right deny beta testing for some people). I'll try and list some sort of optimum quest flow in my last post on the area.

4) I probably am slightly too predjudice on my zone, the fact that shadow was so bad and I had to drink after 3 mobs and ended up using 55 drinks in the zone (and I only bought them when I first got to astranaar) is pretty bad, I apologise if my feedback is somewhat skewed by the dreadfulness that is Shadow levelling right now.

Ok, with those points out of the way lets crack on. Firstly I want to comment on how.. unintuitive it is to go ahead and purchase a ground mount. You obviously should be dinging 20 when entering or just before entering the zone and since Ashenvale is a good 20 bazillion miles from Darnassus it's really really annoying to go and purchase a ground mount, and it really is necessary for this zone. I would suggest that there be a riding trainer plus mount vendor at Maestra's post, I'll get onto this questing hub later, but there is a "sentinel station" there and it would be really streamlined if you could purchase a mount there. Even if it was just a temporary one for the zone (because of how big it is) it would be a great bonus.

Actually entering the zone we end up at Orendil's Retreat. You are given 2 quests in Bathran's Haunt and an extra quest once you get there. The quests to kill horde and collect Bathran's hair are well synergised, I feel like there are slightly too many horde in the area though and perhaps toning down on their number would be ideal, it was especially annoying by the Bottle of Wildfire objective. I also appreciate the change in model to the Bathran's hair, since before it was really small and white on live and the thick bushy brown item is much easier to see and collect. The quest is pretty intuitive though, grab a bottle of wildfire and burn Bathran's corpse and then return, it synergises well with the other quests, if there were slightly less horde as previously said.

Regardless handing in these quests gives you a choice between heading to Maestra's post "as quick as possible" or going to Zoram Strand, I don't really know how I feel behind the text on the item that is the breadcrumb to Maestra's post.. it implies that is the most optimum place to go whereas in reality it is always going to be more optimal questing wise to head towards the Zoram strand. Perhaps adding in an extra quest for the "saving the girl" type quests to collect some items in the zoram strand and then delivering them as soon as possible to Maestra's post would be the most ideal way of linking these areas together.

Heading to the Zoram Strand we see there is a new alliance encampment here, and a flightpath.. it's nice to have a flightpath right outside the instance entrance to Blackfathom deeps ^^. The quests here are to collect 10 items and kill 15 naga. There was a distinct lack of statues nearby the quest camp and only really near the Horde base to the south could I really find an abundance of statues. I feel like this is because some worgen had just finished questing here and had taken all the statues that spawn nearby so I was forced to head further south to the Horde encampment, regardless though the quests have reasonably good synergy. The Wrathtail Wave riders had an annoying "bladestorm ability" that meant I could not mind flay them. I don't know if you can mind flay when a warrior is bladestorming on live but I feel like, just because I cannot slow them I should be able to do damage with my "signature" abiltiy.

I know this is a little offtopic but I'm going to discuss my feelings about quest numbers in this next paragraph, maybe I should discuss it in another post but really I'm still going to discuss it in the Ashenvale posts so I'm going to discuss it now. Firstly, I feel like kill quests should only ever have a maximum of 15 kills, beyond 15 it is quite demoralising to kill 20 random npcs. If the quest objective calls for more than 15 it should be because the enemies are really weak or you are using a vehicle/have some external buff etc. Note though this only applies to individual objectives in a quest. For example in the naga quest above you could say ask to kill 10 Wrathtail Wave Riders and 10 Wrathtail Sorceress' to bump the amount needed to kill up to 20 and that is better than asking to kill 20 outright. Obviously there is a point where this breaks down, but I prefer small and numerous objectives rather than one massive chunk you have to swallow.

My second point here is drop rates.. This is a big issue, especially with this zone, with questing in wow. I feel like there are some "golden numbers" that you need to follow when assigning drop rates.

1-3: Minimum 25-50%

4-7: Minimum 50%

8+: 100%

I feel like once I get told to collect 8 items or more they need to be a 100% drop rate, since anything 50% ish is pushing you above that 15 mark I talked about, which is just demoralising. I would rather see a quest that told me to collect 20 items and them being 100% drop rate than do a quest that asked me to collect 8 items and them being on a 50% drop rate. Even if it means I take longer with the 20 items quest I at least know exactly how long it's going to take me rather than setting me up to be disappointed by the drop rate and the quest feeling longer than I expected it to. This isn't exactly related to this area specifically but I feel like random chance drop rates only have a place sub 7, and even then only 50%+. I feel like on some quests it makes perfect sense that they have a random drop rate but just make them require less than 7 rather than asking for something like 10 and putting a drop rate of 50% on them.

Anyway, back on topic of the zone these quests are basically carbon copies of Vanilla quests, down to the interaction upon hand-in requiring more help. I presume this quest should still be here in cataclysm, since it flows well and obviously the alliance have an encampment here so there needs to be some quests flowing out of the hub. Regardless you are told you need to kill a named naga npc.. Lets be frank here she is ridiculously tough for this level, she has about 100% more health than any mob in the area and has a ridiculously frequent knockback that knocks you back pretty far. You can't even use the pillars to stop you from being knocked back because she knocks you onto a ledge and she evades. I can understand knockbacks, they are a pretty fun feature really, but they need to be far less frequent. There are some mobs, like this one, that knockback like every 8 seconds.. a knockback should be a 30 second cooldown.. even on mobs, otherwise its just really unfair on casters trying to kill them.

Anyway that's it for this starting area, I want to note that my comments for quest flow only really start to kick in when we get to Astranaar this area flows really well, other than the silly choice to choose between the Zoram Strand and Maestra's post this zone has a nice flow about it.

The Master's Glaive

Right, so as the title portrays this questing write-up basically focuses on the Master's Glaive and the heart of the story here, but firstly we get the explorer's league quests. Firstly I might add all these quests are available and visible whilst doing the stealthing about the master's glaive encampment quest, I feel like they should unlock after handing in this breadcrumb otherwise people will be like ooo shinies! and just take the quests and break up some of the questflow.

However, these quests are superb the breadcrumb quest is a simple hand-in and hand back but obviously you can get other quests here, one is an escort quest one is a kill quest and one is a gather the item quest. All the quests have great synergy really and you end up killing the murlocs at the same time you have done both the artifact collecting and the escort quest.

I really want to comment on the escort quest though, it is amazing I was laughing so hard when it ended the fact that all you do is end up walking all the way round the ruins ending up at the encampment anyway.. superb really that quest is so awesome I mean, god I just love these surprising quests every once and a while, the fact I only realised it right before the end of the quest was really good aswell :D.

You get a couple of cool quests though as follow-up, use some metal detector thing to grab some ancient device hidden in the area, nice quest really a good twist on the common gather quest and the go out to sea and collect some wreckage, pretty bland but the fact that the objective is to build a home for the murlocs is really cool and surprising at the same time. Handing in these quests give a little cut-scene with the device fully activated which is pretty intriguing and also quite scary and forboding since this site is a titan area (master's glaive lore), do we need another algalon :(.

We also get this awesome quest to build a murloc encampment where loads of murlocs rush to along with the kewt baby murlocs, the quest text at the end is also just so good.. What has he done!?!?! Regardless after that little fun excursion, which always, always have a place in a serious story line just for hilarity without breaking the story because the serious story hadn't begun yet, we head back to the Grove for the follow-ups.

Firstly we are told we need to awaken the ancients to battle this old-god awakening, but upon getting to the keeper who holds the horn to awaken them we find it has been stolen by naga and the keeper is dead.. Really I love the revelation here that we find him dead and aren't told he would be on the map or what have you. Regardless we get a follow-up to head back to the grove and figure out what to do, which essentially means go kill the naga and try and get the horn back.

These quests are also really immersive, the naga here are in plentiful supply and the ratio is about right for the cave maybe you could add some myrmidons to the objective, but it's not exactly a major issue. Regardless though the named npc uses the Najentus model, which is pretty cool and you hand in and pick up a new quest at his body, which is pretty cool for immersion a nice substitute for the auto-quest feature, which could have also worked in this scenario. Regardless it seems you are forced to try and stop the horn from being offered to azshara so you can retrieve it.

This quest is pretty awesome though you kill the priestesses, which do have some pathing issues, if you try and kill the back right one from range she will run into all the other priestesses aggroing them because of the pathing here, a little irritating so perhaps increasing her spell range would be nice or something to detract from the pathing issues. Regardless though you kill the priestesses and bam.. Queen Azshara appears, now I presume this model is placeholder.. if it Isn't it needs to be, Queen azshara just needs a different model than other leading naga lieutenants, she is like the most important naga out there and deserves a unique model. The lore is pretty awesome and you get to see malfurion come and save your ass from oblivion, which is always cool.

You get the follow-up though to quickly head to the master's glaive and use the horn to kill the old god avatar here. He has a really lovely model, I would like to think the ancients would spawn quicker to aggro him, I used the horn at max range from him and still had to run to stop from being meleed, I don't know how hard he hit but I didn't want to risk dying since he has like 4k hp. The fight is pretty epic, more and more ancients spawn to help kill him and you really don't necessarily feel like the hero here you just instigated the process of summoning ancients. A pretty epic conclusion to this brilliant zone tbh.

I just want to say a few words about darkshore as a zone, it really is superb it puts alot of zones like Northern barrens to shame in how good and immersive the zone is. It starts off slowly (I think totalbiscuit for example really goes ott on this point in his videos of the start of the area, for a new player you won't be doing the worgen starting area and going from teldrassil to darkshore is a really smooth transition) However the conclusion is lore-infested and overall the zone is amazing.

I think the best way to some up this zone is "how to make a zone immersive without auto-quest", whilst auto-questing could be used instead of the methods employed here, it wouldn't be that more immersive really it would just be slightly more streamlined, I don't know if auto-questing is going to be implemented in this zone at all, but honestly the zone doesn't need it so if the resources aren't available to devote to implementing it in the zone then it really just isn't necessary.

Slideshows for this zone and obviously the whole zone are here, started Ashenvale earlier today I have a few fps/crash issues at the moment, perhaps due to the new build, but hopefully I will finish that today and write-up the zone later today/tomorrow, however enjoy the slideshows :)).

Grove of the Ancients

Ok, so getting back into the feedback after being incredibly tired and sleeping through the day (zzzz :<) We get to the grove of the ancients, now I probably could have just done this area with 2 posts labelled #1,#2 because they all fit in the same area but I wanted some variety in my names of posts just because I don't like having the same boredom. Firstly, a bit of a grievance, GET RID OF THE NIGHT ELF MOHAWK.. I mean, I can see why some ludicrous people might find it somehow appealing, but really it has no place in wow imo. It can be a hairstyle for some people to use, but not on questgivers, it just makes them look way less serious than they should do.

Along with my incessant passion for hating male night elfs, this really was quite pathetic to be quite honest to see a male night elf quest giver with a mohawk, Night elf males are meant to be majestic and wise with some brawn in my mind and Malfurion portrays that perfectly, but the mohawk... It really saddens me.

The actual questing here though is pretty cool you get given a few quests to do around this area and they all have some great synergy between them, firstly you need to find the source of corruption for more bears in this area and kill some of the unfortunately consumed bears, pretty menacing and yeh that's cool. Ideally after this you would be right at the furbolg camp you were sent to, but obviously I had a world server crash or my client crashed or something and I ended up back at the ancients camp, which btw I have to say is so pretty and aesthetically pleasing. I mean the fact that this zone is so dark and damp but it has such lovely havens as this is just such an awe inspiring contrast that I really love and appreciate.

Regardless I'll discuss the follow-ups of that after I've completed this area, which omg could have potentially ruined this zone for me.. these quests are just attrocious. The first quest though is pretty neat, you have to go collect some items that are situated on the outskirts of the furbolg encampment so that you don't have to engage anything, that's pretty cool because why would you want to bust into this camp full of furbolg. You then get a quest to kill a named mob in the woods by the pool, good synergy if you hadn't done that quest on the way and channel the quest item into a statue near the grove enabling you to hand-in the grizzly quest from earlier, again I'll discuss the follow-ups afterwards.

But then.. boy the follow-ups are attrocious, you have to "cleanse" the corrupted furbolg here by using an item on them, now this seems pretty cool and inovative right, you use the item on the furbolg and they spawn a "spirit of corruption".. hopefully the model is placeholder as a slime really makes no sense, and then killing this spirit cleanses the furbolg... what is bad about this quest is the fact that using this item makes the furbolg harder to kill, the spirit has as much health as the furbolg here and do comparable damage, so you are having to kill a mob whilst having twice the damage output upon you. Along with the fact that a lot of these furbolg patrol means you end up with 3-4 mobs on you at some times because you are trying to finish this quest, coupled with the mana problems of the priest at this level made these 2 quests attrocious.

Yes there is also another quest here, which involves you having to end up killing about 15-20 furbolg to complete because of how spread out the braziers are in this zone. This quest took way too long, about 10-15 minutes, which is just absurdly long and frustrating. I really think the furbolgs need to go green when you release their spirit of corruption or get somehow weaker so that using the item is beneficial, otherwise it's just.. why do I want to uncorrupt these furbolg if it makes it harder for me. Also, need more compact areas of brazier spawnings just so the numbers have better synergy.

Then... THEN you get a quest to remove the satyr causing this corruption, the furbolg here don't phase and respawn far too fast so you have to fight through them all again to get to the satyr, I would have loved if the furbolg phased to being friendly and uncorrupted and you could get a free pass through them to the satyr, make it elite and fending off furbolgs or something and kill it. It would just add a level of immersion and make this zone far less frustrating than it should be.

This zone was like the worst part of darkshore by about 20,000,000 miles. It reminded me of vanilla questing in it's structure and it was just urgh imo. Regardless though, heading to the Master's Glaive whilst we are here we get to use the cool quest item which turns you into a prowling cat, pretty damn awesome tbh. You also get to spy on the conversations here learn some cool lore and stuff. I have a few complaints though, the faceless patrolling mobs have a far too big aggro range imo, I was nowhere near one yet apparently it saw me and I ended up dying because I was really near 6 mobs that couldn't see me, highly frustrating, I really like the fact you have to avoid these patrols to get to the top of the tower, but their detection range is really too big.

Now I probably did these quests in the wrong order, I know I did really, heading back to the grove of the ancients you would get a quest to gather some seeds and a breadcrumb to head over to the explorer's league camp.. I'll cover that in my next post but Ideally you would probably head over there and do it now in an ideal questing cycle, I was just doing stuff in a random order and had to get the seeds quest early because of the world server crashing.

The seeds quest though is pretty unique though, you have to ask an npc to give you 1, you have to click a wisp in a tree, which is pretty tough but also I really enjoy the warcraft 3 parallels with wisps harvesting lumber, which I thought was a little lost in vanilla, I barely saw wisps doing anything but randomly running around and basically disregarding how they were presented in warcraft 3, which was nice. You also have to grab a seed from inside a shell where a crab ambushes you after looting, pretty cool stuff. I realise now after doing the quests in the zone that it would have made much more sense to have done the explorer's league hub whilst doing this quest but ye that is what happens when testing an area for the first time.

After grabbing these seeds though you have to go test it on some of the uncorrupted wildlife in the area to save them from the impeding corruption of the area, this is one of the reasons why I say it might be better to take the bear buff in the long run, simply because this is the only area where having one of the 3 mobs neutral/friendly is really good. Regardless though using the item gives a revelation of what is causing the corruption, a faceless one!

Following on from this quest we are told we have to spread this cure/inoculation, whatever you want to call it to the wildlife and we get a pretty nice bombing run type quest where we are saving wildlife, I like how the area is split into 3 distinct animal sections so you know what you should be targetting, the /say for the moonstalker area should be sooner than it is in the run because I easily got all 3 moonstalkers before it told me to try and target them so. The numbers for this quest are fairly easy to obtain, I would have perhaps liked one of those buttons that sends you home when you are done instead of a full wave regardless because I feel that is very punishing on a player who misses 1 mob and has to do an entire run again, but regardless this quest was pretty fun :D.

The last quest in this cycle ends up killing the corruption at the bottom of the watering hole.. which is a MASSIVE faceless one, he spawns once you use the item and just keeps growing and growing, he's pretty big and I think that's a pretty cool touch.. I also like the analogy of bigger=more powerful, and therefore get more satisfaction from killing the beast here.

Regardless though that's it for this post at that quest chain, overall it sets up the zone for a lovely conclusion that will be foretold in the next post. Just please fix that furbolg zone :(.