Random Cataclysm discussion

[Dareus]

I am blown away by all the small things added to the game that really make it come alive. I was exploring the new starting area for night elves and you run across two elves gossiping about current Darnassus politics, and wondering what happened to Fandrel. When you run past the door to the room they are speaking in they suddenly stop and the chick goes "Shhh, someone is outside!" I thought that was totally bad ass and made you part of the world instead of something traveling around it from the outside.

[aurik]

Did 3.5 new zones last night on my 80, I'm pretty pleased with the new design so far. Each zone is constructed like the best part of Wrath questing: story-driven, phasing through world changes. 1 story per zone, as opposed to the ~3 per zone in Wrath. Did Westfall, Redridge, Duskwood, and halfway through Loch Modan now.

It's like they took everything that they learned in the last 6 years and used it to rebuild the original game better, stronger.

[Katlan]

Shadow orbs look amazing now, everything from how they appear / disappear to how they rotate around the body, shamans gonna hate

[Eaglestrike]

Did 3.5 new zones last night on my 80, I'm pretty pleased with the new design so far. Each zone is constructed like the best part of Wrath questing: story-driven, phasing through world changes. 1 story per zone, as opposed to the ~3 per zone in Wrath. Did Westfall, Redridge, Duskwood, and halfway through Loch Modan now.

It's like they took everything that they learned in the last 6 years and used it to rebuild the original game better, stronger.

Pretty much. How the fuck is anyone supposed to possibly kill WoW now? Lol.

[Correction]

I am blown away by all the small things added to the game that really make it come alive. I was exploring the new starting area for night elves and you run across two elves gossiping about current Darnassus politics, and wondering what happened to Fandrel. When you run past the door to the room they are speaking in they suddenly stop and the chick goes "Shhh, someone is outside!" I thought that was totally bad ass and made you part of the world instead of something traveling around it from the outside.

When you fly from Redridge Mountains to Stormwind you pass a guard tower and the tower watch guard yells "Rogue (or whatever your class name is) departing Redridge!"

Slick little details like that make me grin. Plus the Redrige story questline was goddamn epic.

[Dontkare]

One of my favorite things so far, is the new Stockades. Hogger is a boss in there, and the quest to kill him goes into detail about how he's impossible to kill and nobody has ever done it before, and when you engage him he yells "Forest just a setback!"

Haha that had me rolling.

[Moosey]

Yeah there is something like that in Durotar where you're going up a tower to see a quest giver and they person says "He's waiting for you up top, <class>". Pretty cool stuff.

Also, Hordies need to check out Stonetalon. AWESOME story for the horde.

[Bweigelt]

God damnit, I thought I was done with this game, but then they come out with this awesomeness and force me to come back. Also did I read right and 10 man raids now give the same loot and are the same difficulty as 25 mans?

[vrumpt]

God damnit, I thought I was done with this game, but then they come out with this awesomeness and force me to come back. Also did I read right and 10 man raids now give the same loot and are the same difficulty as 25 mans?

"same difficulty" is debatable. Its still harder to get 25 people who know what they are doing versus 10 people, but yes 10 and 25 man raids both give the same ilvl of loot, although 25 man gives more of it, along with more valor points per kill, and they share the same lockout.

[Siniroth]

Was leveling warrior earlier, whole of Hillsbrad was fun (really liked the throwback to old version of Hillsbrad), though I got 25 before even getting to Tarren Mill bit :/ it really feels 92347345983 times faster leveling because the quests are all nice and flowy now.

[vrumpt]

I'm loving the new questing flow but god damn is it ruined by the dungeons. Quests at the start all give a huge chunk of xp, ran Deadmines and Ragefire Chasm back to back, and gained like 3.5 levels in an hour. Since i slingshot my way up in level all my azshara quests are grey now, QQ.

[Aesctaa]

Did spriest to 34 last night, only zone i wasn't hugely impressed with was Desolace, the revamped and new quests alike feel awkward and disjointed, and award less xp than the lower level ones in stonetalon?

Overall though very very happy with the new leveling experience.

[Correction]

I'm loving the new questing flow but god damn is it ruined by the dungeons. Quests at the start all give a huge chunk of xp, ran Deadmines and Ragefire Chasm back to back, and gained like 3.5 levels in an hour. Since i slingshot my way up in level all my azshara quests are grey now, QQ.

Yeah I'm finding myself in a similar situation. I forget to queue for dungeons appropriate to my level and I get to caught up in the zone's questlines that by the time I realize I want to run a particular dungeon I'm over the level threshold to queue for it.

[Falaras]

So did they change all of the questing hubs? Like I leveled a BE hunter to 10 before the shattering and logged on it yesterday and nothing seemed changed.

[Siniroth]

BE Starting area + Ghostlands seemed untouched when I leveled my warrior, though the damage output at low levels meant I went 1-17/18 like nothing, did Deadmines and got 19/20, killed dar'khan to give me bonus xps for going all the way to UC, went to Hillsbrad and blinked, and promptly was level 25, arathi slowed down a tad but I'm not nearly on as much of an adrenaline rush over taking 0 time to get anywhere. All glory to new old world!

[vrumpt]

So did they change all of the questing hubs? Like I leveled a BE hunter to 10 before the shattering and logged on it yesterday and nothing seemed changed.

BE and Dreanai starting areas were untouched. Everything else is changed though.

[Aesctaa]

Yeah BE and Dreanai areas haven't been changed at all, and pretty sure you wont be able to fly over them either.

[Siniroth]

Yeah BE and Dreanai areas haven't been changed at all, and pretty sure you wont be able to fly over them either.

They're still on their own 'world tab' is what we call it. We did some experimentation with trying to attach those to the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor continents, but that was going to take a whole lot of production time that was going to be better spent elsewhere on content the players were going to get better use out of.

So yeah probably unflyable for sure

[Celeste]

I'm leveling a Night Elf Lore-Breaker right now. I've gotta say that the streamlining of the Teldrassil quests did not go unnoticed. In fact, it was extremely well done. I get to Darkshore, however, and the first quest I'm given is to kill Water Elementals, and check for survivors from Auberdine. Those two set the mood for the entire zone. It's very sad to me, but I must digress. I butchered all of the Auberdine NPCs I could get my hands on before the servers went down for the update. Well done, Blizzard. Well done.

[Tonko]

Two new Heirloom items will be available from the guild vendor once your guild reaches lv 10, and lv 20 respectively. Cloak and head slot items, which I believe will be effective until 85. These both increase XP gain by 10%.