Deepholm Feedback

Ok, so I decided to do deepholm instead of like Northern Barrens cos I wanted to see how they changed the paladin class, I won't go into details of that in this post and yes this is just going to be a massive wall of text.

Ok, lets be blunt: My feedback of this zone is almost entirely negative, Why is this? Well first of all I would like to state killing mobs with 60-70k hp is not exactly that fun when your character can only really put out 4 or 5k dps when it should be dishing out at least double that, but regardless of that. I found the whole zone really un-immersive, Vashj'ir and Hyjal you really felt part of the story you were risking your life to actually help the kingdoms you did cool stuff, here you are just seemingly an errand boy running around and doing tasks, there is no immersion factor in my mind.

The zone itself is very made and the concept of the quests themselves are also good, but the quests are just hideously un-immersive, before you can ever get into an area you are forced to move on to an area completely different. I can see how that is attractive for the speed leveller, but personally I want to feel immersed in my quests and the story without reading all the quest text and therefore taking 20x the time to level up. This zone horrendously fails at that. It seems to be a zone completely aimed at speed levelling and 0 quest immersion factor, I'm abbreviating that to qif from now on.

What I mean by qif is that, without reading the quest text, I feel embeded in a story and get a good idea of most of the lore and story. Example of good qif's include the battlemaiden storyline in vash'jir bad forms are stuff like generic kill quests where no information is given besides in the quest text. You are told to kill this like priestess at the end who is seemingly a total badass yet you only just meet her. I love quest chains that say end in u killing a bad guy to introduce that person fairly early on and for it to be known they are your enemy.

This zone is full of horrible kill boss type bosses, they might be slightly challenging or something like that and yes that is actually quite cool, but when they are given no backstory through quests they seem horribly random, I mean I want "boss fight type quests" to be against guys I either know through lore or have been introduced through a big chain of quests and climax them, not after like 2 quests in a chain or just a random quest parked in the middle of nowhere. They are really bad qifs these type of quests really spoilt the zone for me, it felt fragmented and not really flowing at all, the only place i felt flowing was the earthern place, but it also seemed so random, there was no back story u were just flung in to fighting with the earthen just so u could greedily take their fragment.

This was the only part of the zone that was actually good quest flow. Wherever you have to fly manually with your flying mount just breaks quest flow so much, when you have to fly halfway across the map and end up only having to do like 2 quests in that area, it is just so demoralising I want quest hubs to be meaningful, and to immerse me in the story of that area and then climax.

Like I have said I like the story of this zone, there are 3 fragments and you have to collect them. 1 is owned by the therazane clan, the other by the earthen and the last was being delivered by the horde gunship. With the Twilight Cult as the common enemy of all 3. That is a perfectly cool and awesome story line but the implementation was just so un-immersive, I was fighting the last battle having no real idea who this girl is im trying to beat up, I mean thats wrong you are fighting a mega kick ass battle and you don't really know who you are fighting, urgh so unimmersive.

I have looked on the forums and have seen mostly positive feedback, almost in its entirety for this zone. Idk if I was doing a different zone or something but this zone was leagues worse than Hyjal/Vash'jir in terms of immersion and fun. I grant you this zone was perhaps more efficient for questing (although the fact you don't even get a full level from doing the quests in the zone without dailies is horrific) since it took me a full hour, hour and a half less to clear this zone than the other 2, but yeh. The quests need some serious revamp in my opinion, extra quests need to be added in most of the hubs besides perhaps the earthen questline.

There need to be far better tranisitions between zones (this is something that hyjal needs to imo) like how in vashjir you would transition between quest hubs slowly because it was a pretty linear zone, and that was very good. However you don't need all your quest hubs right next to each other to be awesome, you just need awesome travelling things, stuff like the lost isles area uses (cannons/tigers etc) they make moving from hub to hub more seemless and far more immersive than having to mount your flying mount and fly for a good 5 minutes alt tabbed, yeh thats not fun in anyway. Like how you are fighting one of those guys begins with a Z in deepholm where you fly around on a dragon chasing him, thats a cool way to transition between hubs.

Look, I'm no expert in testing and giving feedback to be quite honest, but I feel like this zone needs a hell of a lot of work on quest immersion, Vash'jir was my favorite zone of the 3 so far with hyjal not that far behind actually, but deepholm is utterly attrocious in my books and if this sort of quest immersion made it to live I would certainly be skipping this zone every time unless the thalazane faction was important for something.

I also hate how I start this zone at 82 with full rested and end up at 85% or so and only having dailies to get that level, I'm sorry but I really despise dailies and feel this zone needs hefty tuning to make it a viable zone.

As a side note to this rather negative wall of text, I do like what is being done with the Paladin class, although I have my reservations over Inquisition it basically just seems like a new version of savage roar/slice and dice, Personally I don't want another melee class that has to hold up this buff based on "COMBO POINTS TIMINGS". I'll save that for another post though.

I don't know if Blizzard will read this post, but I hope so.

Sen'jin Village

Ok, so the first of 4 parts of the rest of Durotar, Sen'jin Village.

This is obviously the Troll Village which was a major quest hub in Vanilla WoW, you were sent out to deal with Zalazane on the echo Isles and the Centaur in the south, and various wildlife around the area to protect the trolls only village in the area.

Now of course the Troll's have relocated their major home to the Echo Isles and now the Village is more of a Remnant. There is an Orc overseer type presence here, to do with the fact Vol'jin and the darkspear tribe were banished from Orgrimmar and there is bad blood between the trolls and orcs at the moment.

Generally, the area here is pretty similar, you get a breadcrumb from Vol'jin shown in my previous post on the Echo Isles to come here and speak to the lead troll here. I presume there is a similar breadcrumb from the Valley of Trials.

Basically when you arrive you first of all see that a flight path is added to Sen'jin, I'm a little disappointed this isn't pointed out by a quest of some sort but hey, having a flight path here is just useful for the new player.

First you are given a voodoo type quest, basically a generic kill quest to kill crabs. Kinda dull, but necessary really. After this sort of generic quest you get sent out to collect venom from some scorpids.

Quite a nice quest really, big emote when you have to use your totem, its kinda weird how they are hit by the sundering cleave of the scorpids, they take 90% less damage as if they are a pet rather than a totem, maybe this is intended or not. Nice variation of a kill quest though.

Whilst out here you are told to kill some crates and lugs. This quest is very annoying on the beta for a few things. 1) Because there are too many scrubs rolling low level trolls because of videos from totalbiscuit and such with no intention of leaving feedback really, and 2) because this quest has some annoying features.

The issue of 1) is obvious, Blizzard wants to invite alot of people to the beta, probably as much as 75% of which have 0 intention of helping Blizzard develop the game and just want to experience the content, or perhaps wont even use the beta key. There are obvious limitations with private alphas, and there are great people who will provide good feedback in the mass public, but it saddens me there are so many scrubs on the beta now that won't provide feedback at all.

The second, obviously specific to the quest and feedback, is very annoying. Firstly there are only 3 crate/ lugs spawning at once, meaning that 2 people really camp this area out. The ratio for the quest is totally off for this matter considering it is 2 lugs per 1 crate, and on 1 crate it is just 1 lug per crate, the ratio should be 1:2 at worst, so something like 3 crates to 5 lugs or 6 lugs. However the quest is 3 crates per 10 lugs, meaning you have to kill far too many pairs of lugs for the spawns available, and even wasting kills of the crates.

Secondly, if you kill the crates first the lugs despawn, this is obviously irritating if you kill the crates first either accidentally or because hey its a quest objective and you have to waste even more time. It's also irritating that these spawns patrol into the valley where the next quest is located, meaning people on that quest kill these guys aswell. 1 other person made this area too camped, this quest definitly needs to be improved.

I do like the crates/lug animations though, with the appropriate amount of kills and that bug fixed, this will definitly be a good quest.

When handing in both these quests I dinged level 6, again seems kinda early and would perhaps like to ding exactly when I leave this area to make sense, but thats a little thing. Nice that I don't learn an ability at level 6 though so I don't have to trudge to find a class trainer to learn stuff.

The quest with the Juju's seems to end rather abruptly, talking with the quest giver turns you into a chicken as a hex, which is a kinda cool touch, would have been nice if you got turned into it on hand in without further interaction.

Moving onto the last 2 quests of the area...

These Basically just mirror the Centaur quests that used to be here, go into the valley kill cent.. i mean northwatch humans and burn attack plans. Basically it exactly mirrors the quest that used to be here with the centaurs replaced by humans who have invaded. Tbh these are better enemies to fight in terms of law and ramping up the horde/alliance conflict which is a prime theme of the cataclysm. I would perhaps prefer something a little different than the quests that were here, but they server their purpose.

Coming back to the Camp you then get told to go to Razor hill to get help from the guy there.

This quest is *really* nice, here's a video showing the ride to razor hill, the comments by the orc you are riding with are amusing :DD.

(Video will be posted after upload :))))

The guy you are riding with has some weird pathing issues tbh, idk if its intended that he is so irratic and riding in you most of the time, but regardless the quest is nice to show u the area of durotar whilst taking you to the next quest hub.

SC2 Trailer

Ok, so whilst I was on Holiday a few things happened on the sc2 scene: 1) The Beta ended :(, ironically on my birthday: not that I could actually be there at its conclusion. and 2) Blizzard released this awesome new trailer for the game, Ghosts of the Pasts.

Basically, I am as excited as hell for this game, here is a link to the trailer if you didn't see it yets

I mean god this trailer is awesome, and the fact is it is all in-game footage: You will get to experience all of this in the campaign cut-scenes, obviously some of these will be optional quests, however I presume mostly these are quests that you have to complete to get these cut-scenes.

I am so excited to get SC2, my collector's edition is on order and got posted on Friday, hopefully it will come on Monday so I can play immedietly after midnight and spend hours and hours engrossed in the single player campaign.

Talking a little about the content of the trailer, it features all the main characters other than Duran, but that is not surprising (didn't notice it missing anyone huge). Nothing Major revealed plot wise that wasn't already revealed (other than the last bit about Raynor going back to Char to finish the zerg but ye).

Firstly it shows Kerrigan in New Gettysburg where she was captured by the Zerg. It then goes onto show some awesome cut scenes from some of the various scenes in the campaign. I especially love the shot of Kerrigan petting the Hydralisk: So sexy O:.

Personally, I am so excited for this game, some of my friends have concerns about the game like lack of lan/offline play. Afaik the game only requires online activation once and not to be online when actually playing the game, if you don't care about achievements and all that shit. Personally I believe there won't be anything wrong with the campaign at all, my only concern would be that maybe the story was weak or something but Blizzard games usually have some of the best story around so I hardly think thats a concern, from the blizzcon videos of the mechanics I feel like they are pretty damm solid.

This will probably take up my time for a good week or 2 before getting back into Beta testing Cataclysm. Hopefully I will have finished Stonetalon by then, doing Northern Barrens today then Ashenvale then Stonetalon. Hoping to finish on Stonetalon for the simple reason that its a nice concluding end to alot of subplots in the previous 2 zones, and is a good finishing point imo before Sc2 comes out.

Anyway, onto the Barrens Write-up :D.

Back From Holidays

Ok, So Just come back from Holiday in Cyprus in the early hours of Friday Morning, Hot holiday... omfg just so hottt. Was kinda fun, but ye I was just relaxing mostly getting away from the hustle and bustle of my life online. Was kinda cool, gonna upload a gallery or w/e it's called to facebook, don't really want to litter this blog with my Holiday, just wanted to post what is going to happen over the next few days.

Firstly, didn't get to do durotar before I left because, lol, the beta servers were wholly unstable the majority of the day and didn't get enough time to analyse it. I did however do it yesterday and am going to write up the zone sometime later today, along with maybe the start of the Barrens. I am not really sure how to split up the zones, because really they are quite long and tbh I don't think one massive wall of text on the whole zone is going to cut it. I'll Probably split it into 4 parts. Sen'jin Village -> Razor Hill -> Patrol Quest -> Orgrimmar Rampart (forget the name off the top of my head). So the posts aren't that long and can do better quest Analysis.

I also hit level 10 and so obviously am gonna do a little comment on the druid specialisations and talent trees at the moment, of course they are very wip but I'll try and discuss ideas rather than numbers and where I think each tree is heading. Feedback etc, Druid's aren't a class i have amazing experience with, but I know the basics, I have played a feral tank/dps and Resto Druid at 80 so I know those specs well enough to do analysis, I only played Balance at 70 though so my analysis of that will be a little wishy-washy.

As I will level I will try and do an analysis on each of the specs at 10 level intervals, perhaps with special mentions at specific "GAME CHANGING" levels where you learn a new spell or what have you. I'll do far more detailed analysis on feral, as that is what I am going to level as.

So with those 7 posts I am going to write, I am also going to make a post on some of the stuff I missed, mostly a few beta builds which have made changes to my beloved Paladin Class O:, the awesomeness that is the new SC2 trailer (OMFG HOW AWESOME IS IT?!?!?!?!) and what have you.

So yeh :) Good to be back, catching up on stuff you miss is so much of a time sink D:.