Crossroads

Ok, lots of stuff to write up over the coming days, finally finished Ashenvale when the world server was kind to me \o/. I'm uploading all my screenshots, and maybe I'll add in the collage's later, but I mean I figured, hey adding all my screenshots is probably just as Useful as snipbit collages, and it just takes less time so I can write up that much faster.

So all the posts on Cataclysm Levelling feedback should have screenshots of all the specific content covered in the post, and then the final post of the zone will have a slideshow of every single picture of the zone and the last bit of the zone.

Ok, so we sort of just came from Grol'dom Farm on the awesome kodo quest.. shame there aren't more of them, they were enjoyable riding shotgun in the hotseat, quite literally :D.

Anyway, like i commented on previously they don't seem to care that the burning blade attacked their convoy, which seems strange but then again there is no burning blade presence in the zone.. so it's just pretty weird in general.

Anyway we have a quest from the tauren, representing the druids of the horde, that we need to figure out why the oases in the north are currently blooming after the cataclysm, we have 2 LETS KILL SHIT quests to go hunt some wild animals to well PROVE YOUR MIGHT TO THE HORDE, or well this quest giver :). Kinda nice though since like your new in town and well you have only done minor things in lore so far, you can't even have gone into dungeons yet (well you can, but it would be with a pug or a boost, both of which are unlikely for the run of the mill char).

Lastly we have a typical Forsaken Quest: GO COLLECT STUFF SO I CAN MAKE A PLAGUE :DDDDDD, obviously pretty generic. Going out of town to the north-west to do the quests, the zhevra and huntress killing quests are all pretty run-of the mill kill quests, The drop rate is around 75% iirc, and there are plenty of mobs so quest hunting isn't really an issue.

I also dinged whilst killing these mobs, again the text incorrectly stating I gained an extra talent point, :(.

Once getting to the oases, the mushrooms are pretty damn obvious, and also there are 2 more quests :D, basically the horde are a little worried that the centaur are becoming a little too organised, and since they don't want a repeat of warcraft 3 (being forced to move to a new home) they want you to kill them off. Again, pretty simple kill quests but its good synergy since you would have to have killed all these centaur anyway just collecting the mushrooms for the apothecary and discovering the source of the growth in the area.

Diving into the lake you can see a fissure and by swimming over it you can breathe and you get a quest complete, I was a little confused that you had to go over THIS SPECIFIC SPOT, so maybe the quest objectives should make it clear you are looking for something specifically and don't just have to enter the water. The centaur leader is to the southwest of the oasis to the base of this hut thing, which seems to be a new design in cataclysm, he doesn't do anything particularly exciting though and is basically a copy of the other centaur mobs, but with a unique face to make him stand out, would have liked him to have something that spelled him out as a leader to these centaur, he even attempts to run away :<.

Handing in the Forsaken give you a follow up which is like WE NEED TO TEST THIS NEW PLAGUE WE MADE, type quest: which overall is fairly standard for the forsaken. The tauren druid wants you to take his eyes, an eagle companion, to the top of a mountain so he can see the land, obviously he is a little too lazy :D. We are also sent off to kill the leader of the cats, Echeyakee.

I don't really like how you go back up north-west for just this single quest, but ye.. I guess it couldn't be helped, I do however like these style of named kill quests, where like you do something unique, like in this instance use a quest item, which summons the named npc. It's nice because it means you don't get camped npcs and yeh, makes the named npcs feel more special. I do like the cool white model of the cat, although sadly it isn't that threatening, would have been nice to see it be like a little more threatening, especially since the girl like yells about your efforts afterwards.

She does also give a follow-up, to check out some raptors this time towards where all the other quests are, to the south-east. This quest is fairly easy, since there are loads of raptors and only 3 nests the drop rate of around 33%, perhaps less is totally fine. I even ended up with an extra feather, perhaps some direction as to where all the nests are would be nice, the yellow one is kinda hidden on top compared to the other 2, but it's not that bad.

Moving onto the Stagnant Oasis, the logical place to go next, you again go by the pool and are greeted by more quests to do with the area. One is to collect some data on the centaur by picking up "intelligence", and the other one (the much cooler quest) is to just cause havoc and kill shit :D, taking the quest has the npc go a few paces to the west to the top of a hill, and basically its like IM GONNA PLANT THE HORDE FLAG AND WE ARE GOING TO HOLD THIS HILL, king of the hill style obviously :D.

He plants down the flag and waves of centaur come. I feel like this quest is slightly overtuned: I actually died doing this quest because I didn't pay attention to my health. Mainly the centaurs seemed to spawn really fast, so you barely had time to take down the centaurs and rest up before the next wave came, also the npc doesn't do a great help of tanking the mobs, which I feel like should be his function here. There are some awesome yells/says during this from the npc though, which is nice and immersive. The guy at the end is tough because you don't have time to rest up between waves, which is good but I feel may be overtuned for classes without access to self-heals at this level.

You can also plant the fungal plant here (plague), staying near it puts a powerful disease on you, that does do some damage but it's also very immersive and I liked the fact that testing the disease was like dangerous to you in some way. Collecting the Intelligence quest is really shit, there is only like 1 intelligence at each camp, and they are really spread out.. Need to really have 2 per camp or only require 2 bits of intelligence because going round all the camps was really pedantic, since it involved killing a good 20 or so centaur :/.

OBVIOUSLY, after gathering all this intelligence we are going to use it to kill the leader of the centaur here, this means killing his wife and then he appears. Again.. liking the way of spawning the named here: coming to avenge his wife is both realistic and immersive. I also dinged whilst doing all these quests, and hitting the 15 mark means I now have access to Dungeons, and Glyphs.

A small comment on this, I won't be getting glyphs at all during my levelling (mainly cos cataclysm glyphs aren't available yet really). I also will not be running dungeons, 1) because I want to fully test out levelling arcs of zones and 2) because leaving feedback on a dungeon is hard imo, they usually require multiple run-throughs and are sort of dictated by your group, I also feel that most of the dungeons probably aren't finalised yet, but I could be wrong.

I might run through them all later on, on my high-level char to see if anything interesting has changed to do with the lore, but in terms of balance and feedback on anything other than story I don't believe is so necessary.

Back to the Questing.. logically, I'm trying to stress this point, the last quest you end up doing is the tauren's and taking his "eyes" to the top of the mountain, some cool immersion here (although I would personally have preferred you HAVING to listen to the tauren's say's instead of just being able to skip and continue questing, mainly because I like being able to follow a story without reading the quest text of every single quest, and stuff like this really helps). The dialogue helps to explain the druid's view on the cataclysm and such, and you get some follow-ups which are like INVESTIGATE STAGNANT OASIS.

I'm really, really torn on this.. logically this is the last area you go on a quest route, I feel like there needs to be emphasis on the player to go to the top of the mountain first, perhaps the orc lady could come up to the mountain and give you the quest for the raptors up here, I feel like if the raptor quest wasn't available it would make the most sense to go to the mountain first, perhaps that is a bit presumptuous but yeh.

The quests are a little interesting though, not the standard kill turtles quest, but the planting dead seeds near the fissure in the lake. Some cool animations to show the seeds growing into some underwater vegetation is really nice.

Finally you go back to crossroads and turn in all your quests... You get a breadcrumb here to go to Silverpine Forest. I really do not agree with this, you are around half way through the zone here at level 15.. and like, silverpine is also a level 10-20 zone, so it seems really dumb you would be directed away from the zone halfway through it. So yeh, I highly disagree with this questline, and would like to see the sort of questline finished there and then.

The other quests both lead to Ratchet.. so thats where the next post will be on. Note I'll get Northern Barrens finished all tomorrow, and maybe ashenvale.. will depend whether I play through Stonetalon or not :).

Here's the slideshow for the area anyway :).

Far-Watch Post & Grol'dom Farm

Ok, starting off the day by writing up Northern Barrens, the first quest hub. Note a few things, 1) I am not sure if all the quests in this zone are implemented, 2) due to various frustrations (!!!!!!) I haven't finished ashenvale, so will be spending a great deal of time finishing that tonight, so might not finish writing up the 5 or so areas I divided the Northern Barrens into.

Ok, so onto the Northern Barrens, firstly you are sent here via 2 breadcrumbs, 1 is simply a generic GO TO THE NORTHERN BARRENS, so that anybody can go here regardless of what quests have been done. The other one is leading on from the final quest of Durotar, this tells me that Durotar->Northern Barrens is where I should go according to STORY, which is probably the most integral part of the levelling experience imo.

Without story you are just chinese farming and basically just crashing through quests and not paying any attention to them, which means questing is boring and inevitably not satisfying.

However, onto the First quest-hub, the first area you arrive into is the Far-watch post, next to the bridge from Durotar which was almost wrecked by the cataclysm. Cool.. you are told that the cataclysm has caused the quillboar from the south of the barrens to move north and have started attacking the Orcs in the area and cutting off their supplies.

Firstly you are asked to cull the quillboar in the area, and kill the annoying plainstriders in the area.

Before moving onto the quests, I want to talk about the area first:

1) Far-watch post is *REALLY* not accessible, I mean its a big run from Orgrimmar and there isn't any sort of "FREE PASSAGE" quest to far-watch post, it's an annoying run through Durotar to get there, and well I feel this needs to be fixed

2) No flight path, because I decided to do this zone when like LOGGING IN/OUT caused you to lose specialised skills and you had to respec in order to retrieve them, I had to run to and from Orgrimmar, this zone is annoying enough to get to without a flightmaster, I feel like one needs to be added.

After that small rant, onto the quests, killing Plainstriders are all around the camp, the drop rate on this quest is like 50%, and there really aren't many plainstriders, having to kill around 14 REALLY spread out mobs, is a pain in the ass really, either increase the amount of plainstriders or drop rate or both :). I do however delight in the irony that the troll in Durotar wanted to save their lives and instead lead them to you killing them in the Barrens, awesome irony :D.

I also dinged 12 during this mission, PLEASE NOTE: this zone is marked as a level 10-20 zone and I started it a good half level through lvl 11 with some rested experience. Just a note that the LEVELLING TEXT, ie those cool animation things when you ding, are bugged and say you get a talent point every level as of the current build on this date, I presume it's rather low priority fixing, but I will point it out.

Moving south of Far-watch post we arrive at the quillboar, where there is also another quest giver, he wants you to rescue some wolves from inside a pen, which just so happens to be burning, simply walking into this pen and unhooking 3 wolves is simple, but hey this sort of quest is more fun than having to say save 3 wolves in opposite corners of a camp, at least they are nice and clumped.

Nothing much to say about the kill quest, the Quillboar are in about the Right proportion for the killing objectives and are plenty numerous in number to fulfill the quest objective with 0 problems.

Handing in you are told that the Quillboar have stolen horde supplies and you need to retrieve them and kill the Quillboar guarding them. OBVIOUSLY they have hidden these supplies in a cave, going to the cave you obviously have to kill Quillboar and work your way to the top of the cave (it's a generic vanilla cave) to kill the leader of the Quillboar, he has some nice interaction, when you reach the top (before you engage) he yells I CAN SMELL YOU COME AND DIE basically, which is a neat little trigger adding to realism/immersion.

Overall he is simple to kill, a note about the other quests in the area though. There are plenty of supplies to grab on your way up but there are too few thornweavers without going OUT OF YOUR WAY to kill them, ie going down optional paths or into the water, maybe decrease their objective count or replace some of the defenders with Thornweavers. Perhaps I was slightly unlucky with the rng spawns I was presented with, but that was my only functionality defect I had with these quests.

Handing in you now get a cool quest after those rather generic dull quests. They are like DEFEND THE CARAVAN WITH THIS GIANT GUN :DDDDD, cool stuff you get to ride on a kodo and kill stuff with guns. I believe? this is the first vehicle quest that I have done on this character that requires interaction, it's pretty cool: Quillboar go after the kodo behind you and leap up on it, you basically target them and shoot them down with your shotgun :DD. Sometimes the Quillboar were hard to like target, because their nameplate and name disappeared when attached to the kodo, perhaps some fixing of that would be nice.

However, this quest is awesome, and a gentle introduction to interactive vehicle quests (as opposed to the sit back and travel vehicle quests) anyway you get taken to Grol'dom farm, which is under attack by those pesky Quillboar and you are given various quests to kill them, capture them and well kill them.

A weird thing here is that you get the quest to move onto Crossroads immediately... I don't agree with this one bit, a new player might accept this quest and move onto crossroads before doing any of the quests here, This quest should only be unlocked once you have completed the quests in the area, in my opinion.

You also get re-introduced to Mankrik, now I am not a fountain of lore knowledge, especially to do with like horde low level areas, because I only levelled like 2 horde characters, and both of them avoided Barrens like the plague.. however, from what I gather Mankrik's wife was murdered by the quillboar and now he is sort of Bloodlusted into revenge against them. He clearly wants you to kill some in her name as well and asks you to get like 30 tusks, an audacious task but then you realise the quillboar drop 1-2 of these every kill and so you end up only having to kill 20 quillboar, which is pretty much done from the other quests in the area.

The other 2 more specific quests are: KILL QUILLBOARS IN THE AREA, and like capture a quillboar.. btw that quest is so good, you like use the quest item on a quillboar, and then like he turns friendly and you interact with him, and the dialogue option is "POUND THIS CHUMP" and then he sort of gets pounded to the ground, chained up and dragged along the ground as you quest.. seriously cool :D.

When you finish the other kill quest on the same mobs you drag this prisoner back to the questgiver, and some neat phasing occurs and the quillboar appears as a prisoner in the pen to the side of the hut.

I dinged from this quest, but regardless, you get another unique quest as a follow-up, you are asked to question the prisoner.. but unlike every other sort of QUESTION PRISONER style quests you are asked to choose between 6 dialogue options.. I believe that whatever you pick you always get the same result. However the cool thing about this is that the player is given an element of choice, and whatever decision you make you get a 20 minute buff for being NICE or being CRUEL. I ran through this twice and got the 2 opposing buffs, there maybe more buffs but regardless the cruel increases your damage and being nice gives a rather pointless buff.

Personally, I feel like they should have made this a zone-wide buff and perhaps have like other npcs react differently (but give the same quests) depending on what choice you made here. It would be really immersive and give the player a sense that CHOICES MATTER, where in an mmo you usually feel choiceless.

After questioning he reveals there is some leader all the quillboar are afraid of called Tortusk so.. you had better go kill him. Also a kodo has been captured by the Quillboar and you need to go save it.

Simply heading south across the road gets you to the stolen Kodo, you need to gather some food so it won't die. I would have liked a quest timer for this mission, it could be really generous like 20 minutes or something, but it would add to the immersion that you needed to gather the food before the beast dies. Basically you have to gather grain on the ground. I just got them as I saw them whilst heading towards Tortusk.

He is riding a frigging raptor, and when you engage he fights you on the raptor, which is pretty cool for a named guy you are meant to kill. He says some stuff, but nothing is that epic to really comment on. It's nice that there are like 2-3 grain piles behind him so that killing him helps you complete the save the kodo quest faster, which I feel adds to the immersion factor, or at least provides some synergy between quests, which is always nice.

Handing in the kodo quest (AT THE KODO) causes the kodo to basically run off back to the farm, on the beta at the moment it's animations are bugged and it stays sitting down slithering across the ground... hilarious btw... but yeh obviously unintended.

Final quest here is just the quest that was available since you arrived in this area.. again I feel it should only be unlocked after saving the kodo so you are forced down a fairly linear path, since you need to do these quests to ding in this area.

This quest is similar to the far-watch->grol'dom farm vehicle quest, so its obviously awesome. Apart from this time we have raiders attacking us from the burning blade (note.. there is no other presence of the burning blade in this area, in terms of a quest, so it seems weird they would attack us here). But ye they attack you and leap at you, when they do this you can use a new ability which basically uses the butt of your weapon and shove them off (awesome animation for that btw), making your shotgun skills even more epic.

A small comment, the vehicle is called "The Hotseat".. awesome :).

I really hoped they had more of these quests like culminating in some boss battle with your kodo type thing, but alas this is the last vehicle quest with it :(. Concluding this area here, moving on to the Crossroads in another post. Overall a reasonable start to the zone with 2 awesome quests, no real over-arching story at the moment though.. just like QUILLBOAR ARE ATTACKING WE NEED SUPPLIES, so a little bit disappointed here :<.