Northern Durotar

Ok, remember no screens in this write-up for the moment. I will upload screens later and stuff, but write now I want to get my feedback down on paper or what have you.

Right, so I left the durotar action having dinged level 10 and been sent back to Razor hill after doing the awesome lil' patrol quest hub. Like I mentioned in the previous feedback module for this quest hub there was one early quest you got in razor hill that was away from the patrol area of quests, so I skipped it, and in retrospect I regret skipping it, as it was just a one-off quest in that area.

Basically you head up to the east side on top of the canyon to this cave controlled by the burning blade. The orcs of Razor hill want to know what they are up to and such, this quest is awesome though, the burning blade cult put this debuff on you, Fel flame I believe or well it's fel something, and basically every time you kill a mob you get an extra stack of this debuff, until you get enough that you transform into METAMORPHOSIS form, which I mean, is so awesome. Especially as cat cos like the animation makes the form take off and land. I mean small debuffs and stuff like this are really awesome, especially because that illidan form is so iconic from warcraft 3, and only available to those lucky demo warlocks. /envy.

Right, so like I said this quest is like a one-off, kinda annoying imo. I feel like you should only get this quest and come back and get the patrol quests OR the quests up north, like choice wise, so its natural for the player to go to the closer patrol quests. A quest could easily be added to the goblin female gail nozzywigg questline in the burning blade cave before sending you to the patrol hub in order to facilitate the questing experience better.

However, the guys at Razor hill are like OMG BURNING BLADE ACTIVITY TO THE NORTH, go and reinforce the Dranosh'ar barricade (bad spelling no doubt) and inform the superiors there of the burning blade activity.

Now on the way you meet a goblin npc with quests to kill harpies and pick up some random objects. This is purely identical to the quests in vanilla, so I am not sure if these quests are meant to be here, I presume they are because well no other quests involve the harpy area, but it would be nice if these quests got a bit of a makeover, they are just a purely generic kill quest and gather quest whilst you are out there. However, they break the quest flow of the burning blade cult, which would be nice to continue rather than be interrupted by dumb steamwheedle goblins :<.

However, you eventually arive at like the Barricade, and a big dialogue ensues between the far-seer (READ PRO THRALL) and the commander (READ PRO GARROSH), which is basically a thrall vs. garrosh type dialogue with insults thrown about the opposing side etc, however I really love this immersion factor, it really gets you into the tensions within the horde right now. Especially coupled with the troll starting area, to really set the scene for the horde sort of SETTING in cataclysm, which is really important in a starting zone imo.

Ok, so we get to this sort of quest which puts you in a wolf vehicle to sort of tell a parable. This quest is really awesome, but its really weird.. in the build that I did this quest you had pure control of the wolf and had no real direction as to where to go. I feel like this is a bug and you shouldn't be controlling it, considering the amount of yellow emotes triggered whilst moving and total lack of directions. However, the overall sense of this quest is awesome and I really enjoy these types of quest.

I also LOVE the ending of this quest where the commander in chief is like IGNORE THE WARNINGS GO KILL SHIT :D, type message and you are sent out to go kill stuff and retrieve this orb from one of the burning blade camps that got destroyed in the cataclysm. Along with making the waters safe by discharging some thunder kodos. I do like the realism factor here, I mean THUNDER LIZARDS GOT FLOODED, of course we need to make the water somewhat safe to swim in, or at the very least collect the lightning discharges.

Killing the elementals is nice because you see the first sign that the elementals are actually fighting each other and not just the denizens of Azeroth, which is a sort of nice introduction to cataclysm again. Like said you go to the now flooded Thunder ridge and tether some thunder lizards so peons can drag them out of the water. We also go grab this orb, the interaction on this quest is awesome, basically its like THE GOBLINS HAND CLUTCHES ONTO THE ORB IN DEATH, and like you just rip his arm off to get the orb anyway, awesome stuff :D.

Also the quest reward text for the orb is like U GAVE ME A HAND (lol pun) so allow me to return the favour, and he gives you some glove rewards, I love those little puns, even if a little cheesy. They give you reason to read some of the quest text, rather than just the story :).

You get a breadcrumb to go to azshara here, when I first levelled a tauren here I did wonder where that breadcrumb was, but suffice to say I won't be going to azshara with this character because the zone is very GOBLIN orientated, so it makes more sense to go there with the goblins.

Instead you get sent out to find another shaman near some more burning blade :), who asks you to go get some collars. He has a companion who tells you to go to the coast, to do some AWESOME quests, where basically you are killing 3 opponents, all with increasing difficulty. It gives the player a great chance to test their soloing capabilities and a sense of progression and accomplishment. The last fight was actually really tough to solo as a feral druid, and I was like YES I DOWNED IT when i killed it, which I mean for a starting level quest is a really good thing to accomplish.

I also dinged level 11 here, obviously the numbers for this zone are a little off as you should be getting around level 10 after this zone, and I ended up around 11 and a half at the end of the zone. So, obviously a few numbers need to be tweaked, but yeh onto the last quests of the zone.. you go to the cave (WITH THE SAME AWESOME METAMORPHOSIS DEBUFF :DDD) and its a generic kill quest. This is basically the last quest of Durotar, the follow-ups send you to Orgrimmar and then breadcrumbs to Northern Barrens.

Nothing really happens, with these breadcrumbs, which is a little bit of a shame. I presume the like BURNING BLADE QUESTLINE, would get resolved in Ragefire Chasm, but since you can't really go till level 15, it's kinda like a bit annoying you have a break in the chain of events.

My overall thoughts on the zone: AN AWESOME AWESOME STARTING ZONE, the opening zone is great for tutorial style levelling and lore, the quest flow is really nice, the quests themselves are well-designed, other than the few quest flaws i stated previously and those weird goblin quests that are really just "there".

Definitly a good zone though, not much I would change besides numbers for quests, the patrol quest order type thing and those goblin quests in the middle of nowhere really.

Onto the Northern Barrens (probably going to write this up tomorrow and do Ashenvale tonight)

Here's all the screenshots for Durotar on My Druid if you want to Browse through quests and stuff.

Druid Mastery Specialisations

Ok, so right now I am figuring that hey.. why don't you just write up your feedback and put the damm screenshots and all this jazz on the blog later, makes perfect sense right?

So what I am going to do, from now on, is basically write up zones as soon as I have finished them and/or topics of feedback and then every week, maybe a friday or something, go and fish around and put together the composition screenshots so the posts look prettier, the feedback overall is more crisp and actually some things make more sense for other viewers (LIKE THERE ARE ANY).

Ok, so tonight is going to be a very busy write up for me, Yesterday I finished the Northern Barrens (although 1 level short of 20, not sure why or if I missed some quests, but regardless). So I have around 6-7 posts incoming tonight with Northern Barrens and Northern Durotar Feedback.

Firstly though, some feedback on the Druid Specialisations you are presented with at level 10.

When dinging you are greeted with the UNLOCK FEATURE: TALENTS, on that little animation thing, quite cool I think, and like on live the talent button on the bar starts flickering when you ding to indicate you should click it.

When clicked you are prompted to choose your specialisation, you are presented with a summary of the specialisation spells and the signature spell in the middle, you can also view the talent trees by clicking the button saying "VIEW TALENT TREES"

Some comments on this generic feature.. GOOD :), overall, perhaps revolve a class quest around choosing your specialisation. (If a class quest has a place in wow I really think one based on choosing your specialisation would be great).

If we move onto the Druid specifics of the specialisations, we obviously have the 3 trees: Balance, Feral and Resto.

As Balance we get the ability Starsurge, a new ability in cataclysm, that does arcane/fire damage (can't remember the precise term used) and is going to be essential for generating eclipse procs by moving the eclipse bar by 10 each way.

We also get dreamstate to increase mana-regen for the spec and I think the last point is the eclipse bar, but it might be spell pushback for wrath,starfire etc. Whatever it is, its baked in stuff thats good for Balance Druids :).

Overall I think these are decent spells, can't argue with the smaller passive spells at all, definitly completely mandatory talents you would have to take anyway, so it's nice to have them baked into the specialisation.

As for the signature move, I'm a little half/half right now. Obviously I haven't played as a Moonkin on the Beta so I've no idea how crucial starsurge is to the rotation, Presumably it will work like you want to use it on cooldown, and inbetween you will want to proc eclipse with wrath and then move to spamming starfire as much as possible without triggering a solar eclipse early etc.

So I mean, there are arguments for and against it, It will be a signature ability of the balance druid, but I mean, when you think balance you think BOOMKIN, so I would really think moonkin form should be the specialised form, considering blizzard wants to appeal that resto is the spec without the dedicated form. I feel like boomkin should be given at level 10, and starsurge a talent in boomkins place.

However opposing this view is the fact that balance become very accustomed to the eclipse bar and starsurge mechanics from level 10 onwards, but I just feel that boomkin would be just so much more iconic as a specialisation ability.

Onto Feral Druids, we get some passive modifiers, (reducing rage/energy costs, 15% more damage and stuff), the vengeance mechanic for all tanks for bears. Pretty much most trees I think these passive stuff are good things, that you WOULD take and are rather boring talents.

The signature ability of Feral druids is mangle, definitely the right choice here in terms of both levelling progression and the fact that it has good crossover between tanking and dpsing. I mean the only other ability they could have used was like.. berserk, and a cooldown is something I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT WANT as a signature move, I mean a cooldown is almost always attrocious for levelling, because using it on mobs that die in like 5 seconds always feels superfluous. Obviously an ability that has a cooldown is fine, if it does damage and is like less than 30 seconds, but beyond that I always feel that a cooldown is like something you feel like you want to save and things die to quickly for the cooldown to be useful.

Lastly we have Resto, again the minor passives are good for the tree. However, I disagree with Swiftmend being the signature ability. I disagree with it because it has no damage output, I mean it accomplishes nothing to help soloing for levelling. Whilst I do agree that this is probably the best thing that druids could get as a signature ability, I feel like that it could be so much more awesome like if say it could also consume a moonfire on the target to do instant damage. I don't know if this sort of change would have pvp balance issues, however in terms of making resto more level friendly, this change to swiftmend would be awesome imo.

So finally onto my choice: I picked Feral (if it wasn't obvious by the screens :)) because well I think its much easier to level as feral compared to say balance, I don't really like casters so much because they always feel so much more vulnerable if you multipull.

I also chose it for the 30% movement speed increase you get as feral constantly, however I might add that actually feral has felt extremely weak when playing through northern barrens, having to swap out of cat form multiple times to heal and basically dying to any sort of chain pulling, where you just take too much damage. I may switch to balance for the next 10 levels or so to see if it feels stronger and isn't too bad mana wise.

I also want to test out the new eclipse bar, which I obviously haven't tried out yet :).

Anyway, moving on to the Northern Durotar write-up