Kill Ten Rats

Joining a PvP server was a mistake. I should have found a different friend to join. Making the server PvP seems to have three effects:

1. Level 80s can gank with impunity. Once I hit 80, I still expect the difference in equipment tiers to make playing at peak times unpleasant rather than more exciting.
2. People can shoot you in the back while you PvE.
3. You can perpetuate the cycle from 1 and 2.

It was a trivial annoyance in the original zones, but as the population gets more concentrated in the expansion packs, it becomes more frequent. In the long run, I am not going to want to be on this server, and I am certainly not going to want to be here when the expansion hits and everyone is in the same zone. Paying to move the Paladin could be an option, but I want neither to abandon the alts nor to effectively re-buy the game several times to move them all.

So here I am. I made a mistake in listening to a friend, and I am not willing to pay $100 (or whatever) to correct a game error. I might come back, but the Blizzard account maintenance page is incredibly patronizing, and I don’t really want to deal with those people again. I mean, this is a less annoying version of the screen Blizzard requires you to go through to exit. But there are still neat things to see, so I am going to keep looking around. And, for some reason, doing some grindy things because that is apparently just what we MMO players do.

: Zubon

I finished out level 70 in Shadowmoon Valley. This is exactly what you want a Hell dimension to look like. The place is covered with lava flows, demons, cultists, and all the fun you might expect where horrors rule. A never-ending supply of Infernals falls from the sky at the bases.

It reminds me a lot of Shadows of Angmarâ„¢. Once you get to the original endgame in northwest Angmar, it looks much the same, down to the green flows of liquid in Carn Dum. This place could be the gate to Mordor, but the Black Temple serves much the same purpose. Also like the Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ endgame, it slides quickly into group-based content. There is more than enough solo content to finish out 70, but not a lot more that was immediately apparent. I smashed things, dinged, and left the area with exploration achievement in-hand.

Netherstorm is exactly what you would want from a shattered Outland, with floating islands and strange energies. This makes Hellfire Peninsula perfect as the place where the two zones meet, with sundered lands, strange energies, and demons on the march. Continue reading Visiting the Rest of Outland at 70

As a setting, this was my favorite zone in Outland. That feels wrong, because it is the least Outland-esque zone in the expansion pack, but it seems to have succeeded as a clasic WoW zone better than the classic WoW zones did. I see this as the target for re-made zones, a test run for how to do it if we had it to do over again.

I look at Nagrand and see the Serengeti. It is a lusher version of the Barrens, a zone I loved with its kodo and giraffes. You first meet a Nesingwary in the jungle, but he seems better placed here, like the Great White Hunter from some colonialist era adventure story. Of course there will be an elephant hunt.

But it remains Outland. It keeps touches that could mark it as Generic Fantasy Africa, but the Outland-specific earthmotes and Burning Legion camps are there. We have a giant crystal instead of volcanic activity. You could walk off the end of the world. And in this shattered dimension, anything fits, so the more out of place the better.

Continue reading Touring Nagrand

I did not find myself thinking much with respect to this zone. I traveled here more than usual, with quests sending me around as I presumably missed the wave of perfect ordering. That led to running around the zone, into Shattrath, and occasionally elsewhere. Other times, I got to an area and stayed there a while. Instead of one big quest hub, quests were widely spread here, with one medium hub and chains all over.

My first thought upon entry was “the forest of parsley.” You start to ignore what the trees look like. About half way through, it converts to the land of the dead, and you spend your time in the south amongst the spirits. As a Paladin, I always approve of that. The difference between the two halves was so large that I forgot for a while that both were part of the same zone.

I just do not have many comments on the zone, despite doing every quest, getting a couple of levels, and getting the achievements. The many scattered quests, for several different groups and in many sub-zones, kept me from getting a single, overall impression. I think this worked better with the many small areas in the Hellfire Peninsula because they felt more tied together. Having fewer hubs helped unify the experience. It does, however, give you an idea of the many factions at work in the expansion pack, becoming a messy web in Shattrath and its larger zone.

There were a few new models, but the zone was dominated by humanoids, which are known quantities. The PvP quest for the zone has the unfortunate feature of shutting itself off for hours at a time after being done. Yes, that makes the reward more meaningful, but it also means that I could go through my entire play session without having a chance to affect it. I note that there is a four-winged instance in the zone. I heard people running Mana-Tombs (no, my Pally is not healing a PUG tonight, thanks), but otherwise good luck visiting the rest in a post-BC world.

: Zubon

Despite the thorn-vine airlock on the edge of the Hellfire Peninsula, the transition is rather jarring. You move from a devastated plain of red to an azure woodland of giant mushrooms. I accept this as a part of being in a shattered dimension beyond the Dark Portal and move on.

The visuals here are great. It is an above-ground underwater zone, with flying manta rays and ridiculously huge, hovering jellyfish. They must be gas-filled to stay up like that. Combine it with an above-ground underground zone, as there are giant mushrooms, mushroom grottos, mushroom people…

Somewhere in that process it goes downhill. This is the reverse of the Hellfire Peninsula: the initial impression is great, but it quickly becomes wearying and tedious, despite the lack of boars.

Continue reading Touring Zangarmarsh

“Welcome to the expansion pack. It’s a whole new world! Go kill some boars.” I know, they are hellboars, and don’t think that my Paladin does not appreciate their being classified as demons rather than beasts. And those little guys in the cave just outside the welcoming town, the jawa-looking ones, they are totally not kobolds, because they do not have candles on their heads.

That said, the new models can be pretty spectacular. The leaders of the totally-not-kobolds are great steampunk things with whirling blades and tubes that glow malignantly. We have souped up versions of kenku and hooked horrors. The ravagers are exactly the sort of wandering beast you would expect in a hell dimension. Elite crystal giants that split into many smaller giants, with corpses you can mine? Fun.

Continue reading Touring the Hellfire Peninsula