Expand those zones

My hunter is about halfway through the few quests in Azshara and I got to thinking, how come some of the zones are so underdeveloped?

It isn't the only zone with a very limited amount of quests. Swamp of Sorrows and the Blasted Lands also don't have much, at least for Alliance, and up until recently Dustwallow Marsh was pretty useless unless you were going to kill Onyxia.

You may also notice that the later zones run a little lower on quests than the early ones. It's not such a big deal now with the faster leveling, but before that we had a tough time finding enough quests to do to get to level 60. Even so, I would like to see those zones developed a little more. They just seem like optional zones that usually aren't worth going to, but I think making them more viable for leveling would give us some variety in where we choose to go and help us altoholics out a little.

Now with Outlands in the picture we can see that Blizzard figured out that maybe they should put in more than enough quests to get to the level cap rather than just enough. With just enough, you usually had to grind at some point because you would be skipping the group quests. Now some people don't even have to set foot in every zone to get to 70.

And they did this all without taking away the raid content. Actually it seems like there is a lot more to do in end-game raids than with the level 60 stuff, and a lot more end-game content overall as well.

I think the initial idea was to make getting to the level cap a huge challenge, something that not everybody could do, and to get there you had to go pretty much everywhere, or else end up grinding out levels to make up for it. Now grinding isn't worth it, they've made the lower levels go by faster, and Outland has way more than enough quests to get you to 70.

It looks like they figured out that, while leveling may be fun when you haven't experienced anything else, people don't want the level cap goal to be so out of reach that it takes forever to make it there. For those people who don't get to play that much (like me) it gets frustrating when you hear about all the cool stuff at the end and know that it's gonna take forever to get there. Also, grinding sucks and if they want questing to be your main source or XP then they need to give you more than enough quests to get you there.

I guess I was a little intimidated to get to 70 at first because I thought it would be like the trek to 60 that I had endured before the expansion. Now that I have one character at 70, and didn't even have to finish Shadowmoon Valley, let alone even see Netherstorm, I know that when the time comes to make my way through Outland on another character I can go about it in a different way and still get there without having to worry about running out of quests.

Choosing a class

For many players their character's class is their identity. BRK is a hunter, BBB is a druid, and while they may or may not have other characters they play, they are still their main class at heart and that is how everyone knows them. I, on the other hand, am pretty general. I play them all, some more than others, but I don't identify myself with any one class.

Either way, choosing a class is important, especially when you first get the game as this will most likely determine how much you like it. Choosing a class that you don't have fun playing can quickly make you lose interest, so try to imagine yourself playing and what you imagine your character being able to do. Now read on to see if any of these class descriptions match what you imagined. Obviously I can't go into too much detail or it would take me all day, but I'll give you the highlights.

• Druid - Probably the most versatile class, you can shapeshift forms becoming a cat that can claw away for lots of damage, a bear that will take a lot of punishment and keep you alive for a long time, a moonkin (owlbeast) that can blast spells at enemies from far away, or a tree that will keep your allies alive and well. If you're undecided on a class I would go for this one so you can try all different styles and pick on that suits you best.

• Hunter - This is the only class that can hold it's own using ranged weapons like bows and guns. You also get to tame a pet, which will run in to attack enemies while you shoot them from afar. Some say they make the game very easy compared to other classes, but playing in groups with one is a whole different ball game.

• Mage - Like doing lots of damage? Like throwing fireballs and ice bolts at enemies and watching their life go down quickly? Then mages are for you. As long as you keep from getting hit it's all good, but don't count on staying alive too long when enemies start beating on you.

• Paladin - These are the holy knights, able to wear heavy armor, take lots of damage, and heal allies. You will usually carry around a big two-handed sword or mace and cause big damage to enemies while also being able to keep your friends alive, or you can choose to defend them with a shield, maybe not causing as much damage, but definitely taking the brunt of the attacks.

• Priest - Most people who have played a game like this before see the priest and automatically think 'healer', but with the right skills you can cause lots of damage too. Yes, they are one of the best healers in the game if you choose to go that route, but you can also turn into a shadow priest and blast enemies while using that damage to heal yourself and your friends.

• Rogue - Rogues are sneaky, strike fast, and cause lots of damage up close. You can become invisible to your enemies until it's too late, then stab them in the back before they even know what hit them. You can even add poison to your blades to cause extra pain and keep them incapacitated so they have no chance of even striking back.

• Shaman - Another class that can serve many roles. Shamans can be powerful casters, throwing lightning and other spells at enemies and causing massive damage, but also able to run in close and hold their own in melee, all the while having healing spells to keep yourself and your friends alive. They also use totems to further increase their power, just don't get too far from them or their benefits will fade.

• Warlock - If you don't mind being evil and watching people run away screaming while you burn them down, then you might like being a warlock. They use various curses and diseases to cause damage over time, then throw fire and shadow spells to cause even more damage. They also have a range of minions that they can summon to fight at their disposal which have various skills of their own.

• Warrior - This class is built around melee combat, both dishing out damage and taking it. Warriors utilize plate mail, a shield and lots of health to stay alive, but can also either dual wield or swing a big two-handed weapon to inflict lots of damage. They use no magic and have no healing abilities, but make up for it using their rage.

Are any of these descriptions what you imagine your character to be? If so then choose away and have fun.

If not I would suggest going with a druid as they mimic many of the other classes, and even if you find you don't like it, you may like one aspect of it. Bear form is like being a warrior, cat form is like being a rogue, moonkin is like being a mage, and tree form can be compared to a holy priest. None of them are exactly the same, but should be close enough to get the idea. This doesn't cover every class, but it should be enough to get you thinking.

After all this explanation it might be good to add that you should not fret too much over your class. With how well this game was made, chances are you'll have fun anyway, even if it doesn't end up being your favorite class. I've found that I like each class in its own way, and while I may like one better than another, they are still fun to play.

BETA not guaranteed

It may seem to many of you that the bloggers have been rather lucky in getting beta keys for the new expansion, maybe a little too lucky. Well I don't have one, nor have I ever gotten a beta key from any game I signed up for. I was very hopeful in getting one for Warhammer Online because I put my name in pretty much as soon as they opened up for applications, but that doesn't seem to be a factor. So far the only beta I've been in was for Warcraft 3, but that was when they made it and open beta.

I'm not complaining though. Sure I would review a lot of the stuff here, and running Vista I am probably the most prone to having the game cause my computer to crash, but since any progress I would make in beta wouldn't count once the expansion was actually released, I don't see myself playing it all that much in favor of leveling my current characters.

Something else that alleviates the bitterness is this new patch (see previous post), and since I probably won't venture into Northrend right off the bat anyway, it pretty much means getting the expansion early for me.

Actually, that isn't quite true. See, what I'm going to do right when I get the expansion is create a death knight. I mean come on, cool new class that the game hasn't seen before? Of course I have to try it out, just like I have to try every other class out.

I know many of you are going to wait on it until the initial rush dies down a little, but I made a Draenei shaman right when TBC came out and I have to say, it wasn't too bad. The thing is, at that time we thought the game mechanics would stay the same, and with so many players running around the same area, with the same quests, killing the same stuff, it would be impossible to get anything done. Well the new respawn rate rules were also introduced at that time, and I have no trouble finding mobs to kill.

Blizzard actually tends to read our feedback and in the case that they believe it is valid, they will do something about it. I'm sure by now they have heard all the speculations on how the death knight starting area will be way too crowded and have done something about it. Sure it will be crowded, but that doesn't mean it will be impossible to get anything done.

I'm sort of wondering where the death knights will be after finished up their starting area. Will they be ready for Outland, or will they still have to do some work in Azeroth before they are up to speed? Obviously it also depends on how you go about playing through the starting area, but for the most part they tend to plan zones around getting you to a certain level before you move on to the next.

It's gonna be cool to create a character and immediately have a bunch of talent points to spend. I personally can't wait to summon ghouls, but I'm a little undecided on which talent tree to go into, they all sound pretty cool. I guess by now the beta testers are already figuring out which trees work best for which styles of play, so hopefully I can find some info out there on release day to give me a better idea of where to put my points.

On a side note, my hunter hit level 54 and is now on her way to Azshara to take on the few quests that are there. I always wished they would do more with that zone as much of it doesn't get utilized in the game, but it doesn't look like they will be going back to add to any of the Old World content anytime soon.

The big news

I'm sure by the time you get around to reading my blog you have already heard the big news about the upcoming patch incorporating a bunch of WotLK stuff. I'm not going to quote it again here, but if you really haven't seen it you shouldn't have too much trouble finding it.

One thing I do want to know is whether we will get our talent points refunded. I know that sometimes when they revamp a class' talent tree they will refund the points because of such a drastic change. Well I think adding new tiers of talents is a pretty drastic change, and with lots of talents that were previously very good becoming useless and vice versa, it only seems fair that we should be able to respec for free when the changes hit.

I've also been looking into the new hunter pet families and it's probably one of the things I am excited about the most. Not only do we get more pet stable slots, but there are way more pets to choose from and your choice isn't going to be based one of only a few viable pets that outperform everything else. Sadly it looks like cats aren't going to be much good with prowl as their special ability. Lots of people will be putting away their cats for something else now.

The one thing I've noticed though is out of all the families that are listed so far, there are still a lot missing. Of course it wouldn't make sense to have any of the underwater only beasts as pets, but what I'm not seeing are the rest of the dinos from Un'Goro, kodos, clefthoofs, basalisks, talbuks, or even a zhevra or stag. I realize most of these guys are normally neutral, but they still tend to pack a punch if you do decide to fight them.

I saw BRK's pics with his giant rhino, so that rules out the kodos and clefthoofs being too big, of course your raid would probably hate you if you brought one along. Basalisks seem like an obvious choice as they tend to have a stun ability (stone gaze or something like it), which would be very good for a pet. The Un'Goro dinosaurs don't seem too far fetched if we can have raptors and devilsaurs, and the pterrordax with a fear ability seems like an obvious choice for PvP hunters.

I suppose the talbuks, zhevras and stags are more grazing animals, and might not make sense when you think of training one to obey commands. I suppose they would be more like sheep or cows, and we all know how well they listen. That isn't to say that sending a cow in to off-tank a raid boss wouldn't be hilarious, but maybe Blizzard is being reasonable about this. I couldn't see these types having any special abilities anyway.

Lastly will be the new inscription profession. As I mentioned before, my hunter is really far behind on his herbalism, and with my lack of motivation to go back and level it up to where it should be, I might just drop it and go for inscription when the patch comes out. Can you send glyphs through the mail to other characters or is it going to be like enchanting is now?

I really want to try out the new druid shapeshifted form changing glyphs, but they will probaby be in pretty high demand, meaning high prices. Along those lines the, inscribers will be able to make some kind of parchment for enchanters to put their enchants on and sell as items. This means my priest can finally just send her enchants to my other characters and maybe even make some money selling them.

I ended up talking about the patch pretty much the whole post even thought it's been posted about enough already, but that just goes to show how much anticipation is built up about the new expansion and all the changes that will be going along with it.

Back to basics

I never read blogs over the weekends. It's more of a 'do in your free time at work' thing. Usually I end up with a bunch of new posts to read as I do read quite a few other blogs, some of which will have multiple posts per day.

Today was a bit of a surprise as my normal barrage of new blog posts to read was a lot smaller than usual. Many bloggers didn't post this weekend, and the ones that did either kept it short or just had one new post. I'm not sure what the deal is. It doesn't seem to be people getting burnt out, more like with a new expansion coming most people just aren't as motivated since most of what they accomplish now will be obselete in a few months.

I guess I'm lucky in that respect since pretty much all the leveling I do will only further my characters along in the game, I'm just holding off on my level 60+ characters in hopes that Outland leveling will be accelerated in the expansion.

This weekend I got to relearn how to be a hunter again, although not for much longer as I can already see the end of my rested XP bar. It actually feels a little strange gaining two levels in the amount of time it would take to get about half a level in Outland. Really makes you notice how much faster the leveling is before you hit 60 now.

To recap, I finished up Tanaris pretty quickly with my hunter, then moved on to Un'Goro crater. I'm really starting to remember what made being a hunter so fun. I can pretty much solo anything within 4 levels of me, maybe even more, I just haven't tried it yet.

I started out at level 51 at the beginning of the weekend and am now most of the way through level 53 and should be 54 very soon. The only drawback is when you level this fast you run out of that rested bonus fast too. I'm already closing in on it, and since my strategy is to level characters only when they have rested bonus, I may be switching over to the shammy sooner than I may have liked.

One advantage with my hunter is that she is a dual gatherer, with skinning and herbalism. The drawback is she never really leveled herbalism much and I can't really pick any of what I see in the areas I'm questing in. Good thing I have no alchemists that need farming, but I'm not really looking forward to farming a bunch of zones to get to where I need to be.

The plus side is I haven't managed to level my druid's leatherworking past 300 yet so he is stuck with lots of knothide leather that he can't use. Well now that my hunter is far enough along he's getting heavy and rugged leather from all those dinosaurs and gorillas in Un'Goro, meaning he can give it over to the druid and maybe I'll eventually push my leatherworking into the higher levels.

If my leveling keeps going at this rate I could very well have 5 characters over level 60 by the time the new expansion comes out, and I might even be able to find some time to level my little Hordies a too.

WoW as in literature

Unlike most games that have very simple storylines, WoW has lots of background, both coming from previous games and from literature that has been written by various authors. Now I can't claim to know too much of the lore behind the game, but from what I do know of it I can easily relate to other fantasy novels.

Anybody out there think reading fantasy is for geeks? Well if you play WoW you are pretty much playing a role in a fantasy, and that would make you a geek too right? And I'm not just talking about Lord of the Rings here, but pretty much any fantasy novel or series out there. The Warcraft storyline loves to follow the recipe that most of those books use.

A powerful evil being unlike anything the world has seen before calls upon an army of terrifying beings to kill off all that stand in their way. The good guys are comprised of multiple races who had their problems in the past, but to face this greater evil they must work together. Despite the overwhelming forces of evil the good guys find a way to defeat them, usually through some kind of magic. Sound familiar? Seems a lot like the Scourge or the Burning Legion to me.

I relate this to fantasy novels just so you can get a sense of what I'm talking about, but what is interesting is that most of the ideas for the fantasy books come mainly from Scandinavian mythology. Yes, even Tolkien didn't come up with all that stuff on his own, and now with the new expansion we see it more than ever in Northrend.

The world tree Idrassil on Mount Hyjal? Well the Scandinavian world tree is called Yggdrassil. Hmm. The new Vrykul race in Northrend seem a lot like Vikings to me, and Utgard Keep is named after Utgard, the place where the giants live. The Howling Fjord is one of the new zones, and as you many know, fjord is a word of Scandinavian origin. The dwarves in Scandinavian mythology are made by the gods from the earth, so it's no wonder they would live inside of a mountain in WoW. And guess who else has a hammer that can throw lightning. That would be Thor, son of Odin who is leader of the Scandinavian gods.

Obviously I can't say everything in the game comes from this Norse mythology, because it doesn't, but there are many similarities between the two. I'm sure many of the other important pieces of the Warcraft story come from various mythological stories of different cultures.

This isn't to say that the stories they have come up with aren't original, but I do think it's interesting to know where they draw their ideas from. Blizzard obviously either has some well read writers or they just really know how to use Wikipedia well.

On a side note, I read a review of the new Indiana Jones movie a little while ago, and the complaint was that it was too much like a videogame. After thinking about that, it occurred to me that he had it backwards. The movie wasn't like a videogame, it's just that videogames have become more like movies. Looking back at the first three Indiana Jones movies, I think if they had been released now he would have said the same thing about them too. We're just spoiled with games now that have great storylines, and WoW has one of the best so far.

How it all began

Everything happens for a reason, and my obsession with alts is no different. Now I'm at the point where sticking with only one class just seems a foreign way of thinking to me, but it wasn't always that way. I played my first character, Deadbare the rogue, well into the 50's before I created my first alt, and he was mainly there to take up time for my rogue to rest at an inn.

Blackbare, my druid, started out on a whim I had. As I got close to 60 with my rogue I found very few quests left to do an still a few levels left, so I resorted to grinding. I hate grinding, but it had to be done, and with the double XP bonus you get when rested I decided to only grind when I had a good amount built up. This led to creating a second character to play in the meantime.

Why a druid? Well I though shapeshifting was cool. I actually didn't know that the forms each served different purposes, I just wanted to be a bear or a cat. Once I started out I found that being able to heal myself was the best thing ever. No sitting and eating, just cast a spell and move on. The druid slowly grew on me, but the rogue was still my main and getting to 60 would take priority.

Upon reaching 60 I was in a semi-end-game guild. Most players had a 60, with some up and coming, along with alts that were being leveled but in the guild so they could still chat with us. Problem was we had lots of rogues, and they were running MC and ZG and such, which I wasn't ready for yet. I managed some Scholo and Strat runs with some of the less experienced guildies and PUGs, but with so much DPS out there it was frustrating trying to find groups.

After a bunch of runs in which I never came out with any gear I was getting fed up. How was I supposed to join the rest of my guild if I couldn't get myself decently geared up? I noticed that every time I tried to get a group together the hardest thing to get was a healer and that if I had a healer I would be getting in groups easily.

Now at that time priests were pretty much considered THE healer class, bar none. Sure I had a druid, but everybody wanted a priest. I made up my mind to create a priest and join the guild in the endgame when I was ready. Of course I knew I wouldn't get her to 60 before the expansion, but priests would always be healers, so I would fill that role in end-game no matter what.

She leveled as holy for a while, but it was getting ridiculously difficult and I switched her to shadow. It was great, and I knew that getting to level 40 I would get shadow form, which pretty much makes you and your mount look awesome, which I cared about more than the stat boosts.

Now I had three characters, and they were all fun in their own way. Then came the announcement that shamans would be playable by Alliance. Shamans always seemed awesome to me, and there was a time that they were PvP champs, the bane of the Alliance. Now we would get them, and then and there I made up my mind that creating a shaman would be first priority when I got the expansion, and that's exactly what I did.

Not only was the shaman fun, but the new Draenei starting area was really cool and well thought out too. I went enhancement for the high melee DPS it provided and haven't looked back, although I respecced when I found I had picked some of the useless talents out of that tree.

With four characters sitting on my account I was well into becoming obsessed with alts, and now that I had witnessed firsthand the fun I could have with each class, I was becoming very curious about the others.

This pretty much led to all the other characters, and while at first I went Horde to play with a friend, I eventually decided the change of faction would add even more variety to the game.

My hunter came from a desire I had to play a hunter ever since I first got the game and watched one of my friends play one. The mage was because I had seen two undead mages just obliterate a bunch of Alliance in WPL. The rest I just figured I had everything else, why not complete the set?

I've come a long way since then. One 70, two over 60, with two more coming up in their early 50s. Of course with how limited my play time is I don't expect to ever be going on any raids or even end-game instances, but unlike many of you that's not what makes the game fun for me. I like leveling up, doing quests, and I like to do it on all different characters.