The Mor'shan Ramparts

Right, so since I can't personally get on beta right now to do Stonetalon Mountains, I think I'd better get cracking with writing up Ashenvale.I'm going to put a few provisos here first, before cracking on with the feedback and description and all that Jazz

1) I realise Ashenvale is really incomplete, most of the "new quests" seem to be here but they are incredibly buggy and some of the old quests still linger.

2) I am not sure whether the Mor'shan ramparts are meant to be part of Ashenvale's quest quota or Northern Barren's quota. I.E should I include them in a 20-25 level zone feedback or not.

Lets just crack on with the feedback though, ok firstly, I decided I would try balance for this zone with 0 gear to start out with, obviously not a problem However, one thing that was a problem was the world server, in the current build every time you disconnect or like relog you lose your specialised skills, in this case Starsurge :<. So basically I did like half the zone without this skill, which is a real pain in the ass.

I'll do some comments on Balance druid in another post however, firstly you are given a bunch of quests, 1 is to gather quivers off the ground, 1 is to kill lots of night elves and the other is to find a horde assassin. Going out of the gates here is just ridiculously stupid, if you try to pull without going far past the gate you get continually sprung upon with adds, what makes this worse is the fact they are nightelf males.. seriously Blizzard keep Malfurion Stormrage as the only male night elf in game, he is the only cool looking one :<.

Anyway, this is just hideously Nightmarish trying to exit the area, you basically have to time your exit with 2 skirmishers just spawning and then run past the bowman to the otherside, really just awful. I think the fact that the ramparts is being attacked is actually pretty awesome, but the fact that the night-elves here aggro you first and not the guards is just really awful :/.

Having made it past these guards you find that there are pathetically few quivers to the west of the ramparts... seriously they are all on the east side apart from like 2, and even then there are ridiculously few, really need to bump up those spawns. However the night elf are plentiful in supply, so thats at least something.. I'm going to add that there are a few level 23 wolves in the area aswell, for a level 19 entering this zone, it's kinda urgh, you can avoid them but I am sure they are not meant to be here. However, we eventually get to the dying assassin and he is like TAKE MY FINAL REPORT BACK avenge me etc.

So after doing this you run back into the ramparts, which is somewhat easier than running out since you can just run past the guards and they take aggro on those annoying skirmishers.. :(.

Regardless we hand in these quests and are told we can ressurect the dead assassin's spirit to avenge his death and kill his murderer. Cool stuff really, the dialogue is really nice and so are the actions, although he does talk alot for somebody who is dead, it is pretty decent quest, after this we just run back :).

I've got to say these next quests are a bit o.O in terms of names, firstly we have GOT WOOD? where we travel on a kodo to the lumber camp, nice FINALLY A WAY TO GET OUT WITHOUT AGGROING STUPID SKIRMISHERS, we ride it to the next little quest hub. However I believe my fortune was slightly premature.

Instead of fighting 2 lvl 20 or so skirmishers we now have to deal with level 24 STEALTHED spiders and those 23 wolves, which are far far far far far far far too numerous in number for a zone which should be for level 20's.. seriously. To top all this off the next quest is like you have to talk to peons to get them to cut lumber (great quest btw if it wasn't bugged) they go to a tree and like I think it is if you are in combat when they finish their animation, it might be just if you don't kill the assasin quick enough, the lumber doesn't spawn. None of my peons died but I had to talk to about 15 peons to wait for 5 peons where I didn't aggro a stupid lvl 23/24 mob or get a random nightelf assassin spawning when collecting the lumber.

Yeh this quest is seriously annoying. I dinged level 20 here aswell, mainly cos I had to kill so much frigging stuff to get that quest done. Kinda annoyed they didnt add an auto quest or something to go train your mount, would be kinda awesome rather than the IN THE MAIL type quest.

Anyway the next quest, NEEDS A LITTLE LUBRICATION, yes it does get better :). Where you have to kill slimes with a drop-rate of seemingly 25% or less, it's an awful drop-rate really, especially since the slimes are littered with 24 stealthed spiders and lvl 20 stealthed night-elfs you consistantly aggro.

I stumbled across a quest whilst like killing these, it was the old Vanilla quest where you storm into the Silverwing outpost. I liked this quest from vanilla, but it seems so... out of place I mean, it's out of the way of quests really and the levels of the guys you fight are too high really. However, if it could be kept and given a breadcrumb to, I feel like the quest is really nice and fits in with the cataclysm alliance-horde fighting very well.

There is also the mob Sharptalon here, which used to be apart of the GREAT ASHENVALE HUNT series of quests, I know that killing it yields a starting quest item. However, seriously, remove this quest and the other quests. I met all of them on my travels through Ashenvale, but unless the player is given some sort of hint they are meant to kill them, half of the time players won't unless they get aggro'd by them. Whilst I like the HEY LETS HUNT SOME RARE ANIMALS, type quest. I feel like it at least needs to be a quest to go out and hunt them, perhaps you could add it into the Mor'shan Ramparts starting hub, that is if they stay. I decided to not do any apart from the last one, because I had he well aggro'd me.

However, after doing these several annoying long-assed quests we finally get to go back to the Mor'shan Ramparts, but hey what do you know ^^ being shapeshifted when the kodo arrives to ride you back there bugs it out, so you don't hop into the vehicle, basically I tried to chase it but didn't get completion so had to go back and not be shapeshifted to get the quest done. Not sure if I should call that a bug or if it's just limitations with the vehicle implementation, regardless it needs to be fixed or indicated in the quest not to be shapeshifted.

Regardless, the actual riding of the kodo is fun, and also rather dramatic since your orc companion gets shot and well dies when you reach the ramparts, pretty awesome drama there, if only I hadn't lost immersion from the long-ass quests :<.

After this though you are immediately flung straight back onto the kodo, because apparently Splintertree post is under attack O:. We also get to see how awesomely badass this kodo is under the reigns of Kadrak, the orc commander. Seriously wish we could control one of these Kodo's :<.

This quest is really awesome though, sort of a drama filled cutscene but YOU are right in the middle of it, you are fighting through the alliance scum! (omg yes) to get through to splintertree, and after some neat phasing we get into Ashenvale proper and Splintertree.

Like I said at the top, this zone is incredibly buggy at the moment in terms of quests and mob levels. However the quest direction for these quests was definitly good (even if I was distracted by the somewhat childish quest names).

Like I've already stated in the previous post, Splintertree is Going to get split into 2 posts, not sure where I'm going to make the cut-off point, but there are alot of quests for the area and well putting them all in 1 might make my 2000 word long posts become like 3-5 thousand word thesis :(.

Anyway Slideshow :)

Final Quests in Northern Barrens

This post is basically going to be the last few quests of the zone and my final thoughts on the zone as a whole and all that Jazz.

Basically, I guessed that the next quests would end up being in Crossroads, and that's exactly where they were. There is a breadcrumb to Ashenvale and to 1 last quest hub to the west of crossroads.

Again, they need you to do some more culling of the centaur, firstly to the south near the entrance to Wailing caverns, the horde want you to kill Centaur here. Pretty functional quest really, nothing wrong with it, the named npc is fairly strong because he comes with a couple of adds, but pretty easily beatable compared to the others in the zone. It is a little annoying how the bracers aren't a 100% drop rate though, because there are only just enough centaur to get your bracers unopposed.

After handing this in you get this really cool quest (which happens to be a group quest) to kill the leader of the centaur. Basically, using phasing technology, the area phases and now you are under attack by centaur, you basically have to kill like 20 or so centaur and the boss guy appears who you have to fight. Luckily I was fortunate and there was a Tauren Paladin questing here aswell and we teamed up to kill the elite, however I want to firmly state that this elite is far too tough.. I had to pretty much heal 100% of the time and cannot imagine 3 pure classes soloing this elite.

However, I feel the need to comment on this quest, I HATE group quests, why? because they require somebody else to be on the exact same stage of quest as you, and be willing to help. Like, that doesn't happen unless they want to do the quest themselves. Whilst the concept of group questing is overall sound, it seems silly to me that they exist, I know this is an mmo and interaction is obviously encouraged, but you have the dungeon finder for that. When you are questing I like to feel empowered and basically anything "non-instanced" should be soloable, maybe it has an elite tag but it should still be a pretty weak elite every class can solo.

The only type of group quests I can really get behind are like ARENA style group quests, they make sense and usually players are willing to help out because a) they have no pre-requisites b) are at a centralised questing hub and c) they make much more sense of wanting to be in a group.

I just feel like, especially for this quest, you are with an army of orcs and some trolls here holding off the centaur, why do I need a group to hold this off when I have a horde army supposedly supporting me. More horde troops need to spawn or there needs to be a buff that makes you more powerful so you can take out this guy without help from somebody else in the area imo.

This is also the first quest where I really disagree with the quest rewards.. they are blue but its like 2 shields and a wand.. basically that means alot of classes get no reward from that quest, which tbh if you are going to make it a group quest needs to change or nobody will do it unless 2 players happen to finish the quest at similar times and are just there.

Now this, as far as I can tell, is the end of the zone in terms of quests. Now note I am like level 19 at this point and I started the zone at level 11 and a half. So I mean I guess the zone is incomplete OR the early quests in Ashenvale (mor'shan ramparts) are meant to count as the northern barrens zone. I don't know what happens when you go from Azshara->Ashenvale, so I can't comment on that yet really. I could make an argument for either, you aren't ever sent to the north-west of the northern barrens and after doing the opening quests in Ashenvale you are around level 20 and a bit, you also still end Ashenvale at lvl 25.

My thoughts on the zone overall though: functional, there is no real OVERARCHING PLOT of the zone, or even direction, it's just a series of good functional levelling quests. I personally prefer zones with a story or interesting plot to it. However, this zone is more of those huh? I want to level quickly zones, which I guess have to exist to cater to those players. From what I hear, silverpine and Azshara, the 2 horde alternatives to this zone, are much more story driven but less quest optimised than this zone, so it is nice that this zone is a more functional alternative than the 2 aforementioned zones.

IF the ashenvale starting quests are meant to be the end of the northern barrens in terms of experience, then I agree that the zone has a worthy conclusion, however if that centaur quest is meant to be the conclusion to the zone, then I feel it's rather lacklustre.

With the levelling experience as it is, you are sort of "funneled" into doing Ashenvale->Stonetalon if you want to stay in Kalimdor whilst levelling, so it makes much more sense that the Mor'shan Ramparts quests are the end of the Northern Barrens, although hard in difficulty now, these could easily be tuned to be more in line with the level 19 experience or so.

So yeh, I feel like the zone is just really functional, I would like some more interaction with say WHY U WANT TO DO WAILING CAVERNS as a dungeon type quests, at the moment there is merely a breadcrumb and no real overarching story as to why you want to do the instance, like there is for like Blackfathom deeps or like Deadmines. I feel like zones with an instance should definitly be wanting you to explore the area and want to do that instance, to promote socialising and well instancing at a low level.

I've already done Ashenvale and laid down the areas, I feel like I have to split Splintertree into 2 different posts because well there are just so many quests sparking from that hub. I also want to mention how BUGGED Ashenvale is right now, and how unfinished it is, to me. So my feedback will be quite critical in places of the zone.

However, slideshow of the final quests and my overall questing experience in the Northern Barrens O:

Nozzlepot's Outpost

So, after the awesome little boat ride, I don't think I mentioned that I love these seemless transitions between quest hubs, sure it takes away some of the EXPLORING factor, but I feel like quests should always be somewhat directed in an mmo, since you can explore outside of quests almost all the time.

We arrive at Nozzlepot's Outpost and basically the whole "focus" of this hub is this SAMOPHLANGE, now apparently these are all quests that were in vanilla, don't know if this is their final mock-up but they work reasonably well here apart from some of the really long walking distances :////.

Anyway you are asked to go and like find this venture company place (REALLY FAR AWAY TBH) and obtain the samophlange by working the machinery and killing off the boss of the area type thing. The quests are overall well worked, however like stated the running distance back and forth is really far, there are also a bit too many mobs in the area and they all tend to run away into each other, and multi-pull. It can be rather frustrating.

There is a quest in the sludge-fen but I will cover it later when it seems like it should be covered.

Basically you take this samophlange back to camp and the goblins try to repair it and actually figure out what it does, they decide HUH? we can't figure this out so they teleport you to this female goblin npc (I like how I don't have to run there). Of course being typical Goblins, their machinery is not so reliable and you end up being teleported high in the sky and barely survive, (however you also get the Going Down? achievement, which is nice). Again, nice little quest really, however the follow-up is again another long run-distance back to where you were before basically.. the sludge-fen.

A few things here, there are only like 3 buckets of nuggets for the quest, and whilst they all contain like 2-4 nuggets per bucket, there are just not enough buckets, there need to be WAY MORE around the pool. Now whilst you are here you can pick up the little escort quest, first you have to get the key to this shredder, which is not surprisingly being held at the top of the oil rig, nothing particularly spectacular here. Then you get a nice little escort with great dialogue and immersion.

It would be nice if all the mobs you aggro on the escort wouldn't run away into every mob in the area.. just make them not run away, I really hate that mechanic in anything other than instances (it makes sense there due to having ways to cc and things dying that much faster).

Did I mention how annoying it is that you have to run ALL THE WAY BACK to the goblin girl to hand in this quest... and then just RUN ALL THE WAY BACK to nozzlepot's outpost. I could handle maybe the quest being handed back in nozzlepot outpost, but it's stupid to have to go back and forth between the 2 camps 3 times or so for like 1 quest.

Anyway.. they realise that they can't figure out what this samophlange is/does so they want you to get the manual for it by killing some venture company guys north of the outpost. Now... a few comments here, there are WAY too many mobs in the area, and the cave especially, I was having to be EXTREMELY careful when pulling, and even then I died once because of a patrol coming at an inopportune time. (the graveyard is really.. really far away :/) I mean, you might aswell have asked the player to kill like 30 or so of the mobs on the way to getting the manual cover, as thats how many you end up having to kill. Seems silly that you get all the pages you need before even entering the cave to get the cover.

However after getting all this done and handing in you have some cool dialogue and the samophlange still is somewhat a mystery, and you are left hung out to dry in this quest area.

From what I can tell with some reading these quests seem to be directly taken from vanilla, and perhaps the area is incomplete because of it, it just needs to fix the long run times and over-zealou mob distribution and a breadcrumb back to the crossroads for the zone to be decent though, the storyline is at the very least interesting.

Slideshow :)

Ratchet

Ok, lets crack on with the writing up, so previously we were sent to Ratchet via 2 quests, one to collect some money the horde is owed and has gone missing, and also to correspond between 2 forsaken about THE PLAGUEEEEE etc :D.

You want to head east out of the Crossroads following the path all the way to Ratchet, there are literally a fuck tonne of quests here in Ratchet, however first we will hand in our 2 quests, the collecting the horde payroll just is a simple turn-in and like GO INVESTIGATE type quest, which is cool: I'll come on to why these quests are particularly cool in Cataclysm in just a bit.

On the way to the Forsaken hand-in we pick up a quest to like kill some humans, always a good quest, remember now that ratchet is really a horde quest hub specifically in cataclysm, whilst I am sure it is still neutral for alliance, the whole zone is basically a horde-only zone for quests, so I doubt there will be many, if any, quests for alliance here. Heading into the Inn we hand-in the Horde quest, and basically trigger some awesome dialogue.

Again, highlighting the tensions between the horde at the moment, I think its cool and adds to the ambience of the place. It is also nice it sort of relays events you haven't done yet (wrathgate) and puts them into context in the future, which basically 1-60 is, without ruining exactly what happens in Northrend so it doesn't ruin a new players experience there, which is a nice touch. It also helps apply culture, and like I said, I am a big fan of story through quests and /say dialogue, it helps the quests flow better and makes things far less pedantic and far more dramatic.

The other quests here are like kill a named raptor, kill some pirates, meet up with a couple of pirates, and 1 last quest which is to retrieve some schematics. Again cool quest, you go into the inn where you just were for the forsaken and like "CLUB" the engineer guy unconscious by interacting with him, this in turn starts some massive brawl in the inn, with the forsaken girl being most amused by your actions, it's a nice subtle quest really. Handing this in gives you a quest to go blow up a ship.

Now, like I said before, whenever theres a BIG AREA FULL OF QUESTS, I prefer to do quests in an opposing area first, in case there are extra quests for the big area, since usually if you are given a bunch of quests at the same time, with 80% being in 1 area, they won't lead onto quests in the second area.

Regardless, the investigation quest involves us going up to some wreckage, now this is the AWESOME thing about cataclysm quests like this, the new feature: Auto-questing, which is basically like instead of trecking back to the quest giver and handing in the quest, on certain quests you just hand-in the quests right at the objective and get a new quest given to you, overall it means less travelling time and a far more immersive story line.

This is the first incarnation of the auto-quest we have seen thus far in our first 2 zones, a mechanic which is probably under-used in the early zones imo, however as we will see later there is probably a good reason for it. Anyway.. we receive additional instructions to follow the tracks and find out who stole the goods.

On the way we meet a troll npc who like decides to replace every r with a w like some sort of child, reading his quest text and dialogue and like the quest items are amusing :D. He gives you a quest which is pretty cool interactively, you lay a trap on the ground it makes a raptor call and a raptor comes running, it then zaps them and turns them into a tiny raptor which you then loot from the trap. Pretty nice animations and interactivity in the quest, if I had been smart I might have used it to help kill the named guy for the other quest, which is actually tough.

However, here comes the problems of auto-quest, whilst doing that other quest I get the other quest completed.. the auto-quest hand-in triggers and I hand in... but alas no follow-up, which means trekking ALL THE WAY BACK to ratchet to pick up the follow-up, obviously this quest is bugged and should auto-trigger the follow-on there and then.

Basically the follow-on is just kill raptors and loot back the stolen silver. Now, going on to kill the named for the other quest here.. this is actually really difficult for the level, I mean I'm level 15 here and we are forced to face a level 18 named with 2 level 16 adds, thats pretty damn tough for a level 15 new player to solo, I died once because I basically pulled an extra mob on top of that. If the intention is for this quest to be completed after the like pirate/human missions down south, then I suggest the quests, including the investigation, be only available once said other missions are complete.

Anyway, after barely killing this named and collecting the silver from a chest we head back to Ratchet, there are plenty of raptor spawns for the quest, so completing it is rather trivial. I also dinged after killing the named here, which was nice although would have preferred to have dinged before ^^.

Handing in both of these just ends their quest chains and we are forced to head south towards the Humans and Pirates. Now I have to say I was fairly impressed with the walk from Ratchet southwards down the coastal path, it is laden with stealth commandos who jump at you when you get too close... really awesome feel to that. You also need them for your quest to get medals, which is also good. Nice synergy...

My only problem with this is that you end up with like 5-7 medals before you even get into the camp of humans LITTERED with mobs and you have to kill a good more 3-5 mobs to complete the quests here. I would say the amount of mobs need to be toned down a little, it was really hard to not pull multiple mobs at a time, and not pull the named, meaning pulls of 3 members... which is pretty tough to deal with for a newer player and rather pedantic waiting for patrols to wander off so you don't pull that many.

The 2 named people for the quest are fairly close by and go down rather easily, I like how the male has an ability that makes the player want to run away for it's duration. Nice early practice for running out of fire effects. I love the little pirate of the Caribbean references with the little dog holding the keys to the cage. presumably there is no choice and selecting the NO I DONT TRUST YOU just means you reset the dialogue and are asked the same choice, however I stupidly didn't test it out :<.

Freeing him however leads you to a quest which is like GO GET THIS HEAD OF A PIRATE which the alliance decided to hang outside their camp.. pretty awesome really you get to see the head and everything when you go to get it hanging on a tree :). Now, moving onto the blowing up the ship. There is one obvious ship in the area and diving underwater reveals a MUCH LIGHTER area of the ship which is labelled thinnest part of the hull.

Obviously you place the bomb here and get a countdown, I'm not sure what happens if you don't move, but having a countdown easily makes the player want to move away, so it encourages what it is supposed to... again another auto-quest bug with the hand in auto-appearing and the follow-up not being given to me. Kinda annoying really, since this is the only quest left in the area after taking it much later.. I'll discuss it now since like this is when you should get it. It involves going around and blowing up weapon caches, always awesome, however there really aren't that many of them, there are like ONLY 5 and they are all spread out and littered with human mobs. Since you need 5 for the quest, it seems rather pedantic and annoying, and easily frustrating if there is more than 1 person farming the quest with you.

Finally we move on to the pirates on the little island off the east coast, previously this used to be the warrior class quest island I believe and the human camp the place for the pirates, but obviously the cataclysm has forced the pirates to flee to this island :O. Anyway, we have a series of directed quests from the little quest-hub on this Island to start a mutiny, what else would you do with mistrustful pirates :D.

Firstly you are directed to kill an ogre sitting on some gold, he actually does sit on gold.. highly amusing npc because of this :D. The quest item text is also, kinda amusing referring to the fact that an ogre was sitting on it.. eww :(. Next the mutiny needs guns, and that involves going directly to where the named character is that we need to kill anyway, always good. I feel like this hut has way too many mobs in, you have to pull in 3s realistically unless you are far too cautious and take about 2 at a time, which still is quite alot for a lvl16 character.

Cap'n Garvey, the named npc, comes with 2, possibly 3, level 15 adds and is extremely annoying because of that. I feel like he is a little too tough for a non-healing class, or at least the new player who doesn't exactly have a full grasp on their character yet, I could understand him having at least 1 add though, since that makes sense. The guns are right where he is on the side, which is again an awesome touch and nice synergy between quests.

Handing in those guns we get to start the mutiny, very nice quest this is aswell, you get on the boat and blow your horn and lots of friendly pirates spawn and you take over the ship together.. really immersive and enjoyable quest, especially with good interaction between you and the original quest giver.

Once this is over you have like 7 quests or so to hand-in in Ratchet, I hearthed at this point to learn some new skills, I might attest though that running back is extremely annoying, since you have to go through those commandos (which I do like) again, and it doesn't have quite the same effect running through the wrong way :(.

Only 1 of these quests actually lead to anything, and that is to DIG UP the treasure you found with the map from that dead man's head you got. This is a nice little collect mission though, you have to go a long way round and eventually wind up at a dig site, which is obviously in the most concealed place around! Once you dig it up it spawns Baron Longshore and 2 adds, which are now hostile and don't want you stealing the treasure.

This really caught me offguard and I died from them, they are actually pretty weak and most players shouldn't die if they know they are coming. However their spawn is really nice and realistic and sort of captures the piratey feel of the area. I also like how they can kill you and you don't need to kill them, so it doesn't matter if you die to them :D. (I did check to see if you looted anything off of the baron when killing him, you don't).

Regardless, handing in this money nets you your first blue upgrade. I haven't really talked about quest rewards, because quite frankly I think they are well distributed, but I really do like the fact that armor from specific zones have like a specific look, so taking the quest rewards from a zone makes all your armor match instead of being a rag-tag bunch of gear like you would be from vanilla quest rewards.

The last quest in this hub is to take a MICKEY MOUSE-ESQUE boat up the river to the next area... Really I found this quest highly amusing because of the Mickey Mouse look of the boat, and the fact its piloted by a goblin so is about the size of Mickey Mouse.

Anyway the boat sets you down near the next quest hub.. which will be covered in the next post. OMG SLIDESHOW! :)