Whole Lotta Slimming Going On

Courtesy of Rohan of Blessing of Kings, I found out about this little tidbit from MMO-Champion:

"Questing

• The Jade Forest quests had a very clear story, but it also had a lot of side quests that could bog you down.
• In Warlords of Draenor, your map will show you where to go to continue the main storyline, along with the locations of bonus objectives.
• The bonus objectives no longer have any story text that go with them, just a list of objectives. Now when there is quest text, you will know that it is really worth reading."*

My first, flippant remark on Blessing of Kings' comment section was that Blizz is cutting corners rather than being innovative. And really, on the face of it that sure seems to be the case. But I wonder if this is just another nail in the coffin for all previous WoW content.

Consider: you buy WoD, you can get an instant L90 upgrade. You'll also be allowed to purchase additional L90 upgrades as well. Both of these, taken together, mean that you don't have to play any of the previous content at all to play WoW. 

Now, add the quest "slimming" to the mix, and you've got a recipe tailor made for people who say "the game only starts at max level". The only way it could get easier to get to max level would be to show up in different places, watch a cutscene, battle a boss, and move to the next location.**

I'm sure Blizzard is viewing this as a win-win situation. After all, consider the following positives:

• Less time coming up with clever ways to describe how to kill ten rats.
• Shuts up the complainers who say that leveling is a bore and takes time away from raiding.
• Partially cuts the legs out from under the shadowy business of third party "we'll level your toon for you" routines.
• Focuses the storyline so that authors don't have a myriad of new names to keep track of when writing novels.***
• Makes the game seem more like Guild Wars 2, which has a similar mechanic, but on a reduced scale.
• Allows Blizzard to put more time into Scenarios and Raids for important content, rather than spending time trying to explain side quests.

However, all I can think of is one thing:

Mankrik's Wife.

Side quests give a zone a flavor just as much as art and music. Were it not for the side quests, the "kill ten rats" quests, we'd never have come to know Mankrik's Wife, one of the most well known memes in the game. The original Green Hills of Stranglethorn quest --that maddening quest that would fill up your bag space-- gave pre-Cata Stranglethorn Vale as much flavor as all the ganking going on. The old questline in pre-Cata Thousand Needles to assist Magistrix Elosai in searching for a cure for the Blood Elves' magical addition would be gone, as would Apprentice Mirveda's attempts to cleanse the Dead Scar in Eversong Woods.

Life --even online MMO life-- is filled with little quirks and oddball things. Quest slimming would eliminate a large part of that, in favor of speed and efficiency. Which begs the question: is this a game, or a job?

*MMO-Champion is referencing this developer interview held at PAX East 2014 on YouTube.

**Or you could just buy a max level toon. Opening up Pandora's Box by allowing people to buy an expac's starting level means that it's not out of the realm of the possibility.

***Any expanded universe of novels --Dragonlance, Thieves' World, Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, or Star Trek, for starters-- has to deal with this problem. And, I've been told, it's not pretty.

Not These Guys Again

Anybody remember when the Zandalari were the good guys?*

Now, they're reduced to the role the Nazis filled in the Indy Jones movies.

Zandalaris....  I hate these guys!

I reached the end of the "original" Pandaria quest chains, and I find myself...  Disappointed.  It seems that Blizz walked up right to the edge with the Mongols Mogu and decided that it was too risky to have new baddies out there all by themselves.  Therefore, they dug into their collection of past enemies and pulled out the Trolls.

Again.

I should have seen this coming; after all, both vanilla and every expac of WoW that has been released has featured Trolls as the baddies in some form or another:  Zul'Gurub and Sunken Temple (Vanilla), Zul'Aman (BC), Drak'Theron and Gundrak (Wrath), the 5-man Zuls (Cata).  While they don't get their own separate instance/raid, they are heavily featured in raids such as Mogushan Vaults and Throne of Thunder.

You can't go more than 100 feet in the Isle of Thunder without smacking into a Troll.  And if it weren't for a Rogue's stealth ability, I'm sure I would have.

I just feel like there was such a great chance to Blizzard to fully commit to the Mogu as the balance to the Sha in Pandaria, and they decided that the Thunder King and company couldn't stand on their own.  What's going to happen in the next expac, anyway?  Should they skip other baddies entirely and title it "Trollmageddon"?

***

As an aside, I had to wonder about the naming of Lei Shen's home.  Isle of Thunder doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but when I switched it around I realized one reason why it shouldn't be named Thunder Island:

I'm actually disappointed that nobody has created a WoW music video based on Jay Ferguson's 70's tune.  Of course, I don't think that you'll find people "chasin' love" out there on WoW's Thunder Island.

***

That does bring up another issue I had with the questing in Pandaria.  Blizz deliberately went for the darker feel in their quest writing, making Vashj'ir seem like a walk in the park by comparison.  But even then, they snuck in their traditional pop culture nods and humorous hijinks.  (Hayden Christophen as the Alliance Honor Quartermaster, for instance).  This time, however, I think that the humorous asides actually detract from the rest of the questing.  Like how Toshley's Station (and to a lesser extent Area 52) are jarring enough that you lose your immersion in the game, quests like the ones associated with the Grummies left me grinding my teeth.

At times like this, I wish Blizz would dial back the humor a bit and at least take themselves more seriously.  We already get tons of "kill ten rats" quests as it is, I don't think a spoonful of sugar humor is going to help that medicine go down any easier.

***

The ending to Dread Wastes, however, is right up there with the ending to Vashj'ir, where you watch what happens and think "Holy shit, we're screwed."**  That said you only get that sort of emotional punch out of an ending once, and if you mess it up you've lost a golden opportunity.  Blizz did a great job on that one.  And on the Jade Forest's ending as well.  For some reason, Townlong Steppes and the combined Krasarang Wilds/Valley of the Four Winds endings didn't have the same sort of punch.  And of course, Kun-lai Summit's ending is in an instance, so it gets an incomplete.

All in all, Blizz did some things right --a bit less quests on rails, although it is still quite noticeable-- which pretty much balance out the issues I had with questing.  I knew I was getting near the end when I kept saying to myself "Just hang in there, Dread Wastes has got to end soon."  The last time I was saying that, I was in The Old Republic and slogging through Belsavis.  And that's a shame, because the overall story behind Dread Wastes was very interesting.




*Or at least semi-good guys.  Hey, scholars are good.

**At least a real raid came out of this, compared to what happened in Vashj.


EtA:  I forgot Zul'Farrak for Vanilla.  That's what I get for hanging around the Eastern Kingdoms lately.

On a Clear Day, I Can See Pandaria

I may be a Wrath baby, but there was always something exciting about passing through the Dark Portal and into Outland on a toon for the first time.  When my rogue passed through into the barren wasteland of Hellfire Peninsula, crawling with demons and Fel Orcs, it brought a smile to my face.*

I've yet to figure out why starting out on the Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord doesn't inspire the same reaction out of me.

Boring Borean Tundra is vast, sprawling, and feels totally disjointed.  The Horde and Alliance outposts in the northern part of the zone seem like a clumsy method of introducing the Taunka and Mechagnomes --the Taunka outpost in the SE part of the zone does a much better job for the Horde-- and I often get the feeling that the flight point is there merely to provide a connection between the main bases in the zone and Sholazar Basin.  I like Coldarra and the Taunka village as well as the DEHTA compound, but the best quest zone in the Borean is Thassarian's quest line.

By contrast, Howling Fjord is more focused, the scenery more beautiful, and plants the seeds of the quest lines that bear fruit in both the Wrathgate and Storm Peaks.  But there are only so many Viking rip-offs one can take before it starts to get old.**  The same goes for the Forsaken, where after a while you start to wonder if the writers were using Jeremy Irons' character from the Dungeons and Dragons movie as a model.

Perhaps the biggest reason why I'm not that fond of the Wrath intro zones boils down to the storytelling itself:  Blizzard does best when it is a) being completely original and not basing storyline elements off of a real world counterpart, and b) when they are trying not to do too much.  If the storylines are too much to remember, or you're led too much by the nose, a zone loses its luster.

Look at Storm Peaks versus Icecrown.  While both have quests that end two separate storylines, the better of the two is the more original one:  Icecrown.  In Storm Peaks, while I do enjoy the zone better than Howling Fjord, the quests are an exercise in "spot the Norse myth behind the story".  The Icecrown storyline is all about the Death Knights and the Crusaders, where groaners are limited to the Valhalla and Eye of Sauron references.

In the end, these detours into Hellfire and Borean Tundra are just so I can gear up enough to press onward.  My rogue is only two expacs behind, now, but reaching L70 means I'm that much closer to my goal of leveling up to Pandaria via BGs.  The path has been painfully slow at times, but the end is in sight.

And I really hope that I'm not going to be wincing at all of the sly in-jokes when I reach Pandaria.





*The minimal level of cooperation between Alliance and Horde never hurt either.

**The biggest eye-roller isn't in Howling Fjord at all, but in Borean Tundra:  Hagar Heigarr the Horrible.  Considering Hagar the comic strip jumped the shark back when I was a kid, I can only groan when I see that name in the Tuskarr area.  What's next, a storyline with names from Funky Winkerbean?

The Elekk in the Room

Remember how busy the Old World was when the Shattering happened?

Toons swarmed over the Vanilla zones like ants on a picnic, investigating the new quest lines and the leveling experience.  Many new alts were created, and a plethora of blog posts were written about the new zones.  This fed into the excitement surrounding Cataclysm’s release and for the first few months after, keeping Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms busy.  Blizzard’s gambit to revamp the Vanilla zones paid off in spades.

Or did it?

I’ve spent the spare time I’ve had in between battlegrounds catching up on my Eastern Kingdoms’ questlines, and what I’ve noticed more than anything else is how empty the zones are.  There are a few farmers around and maybe one other leveling toon out there.  Some zones, such as Arathi Highlands or the Hinterlands, are completely empty.  In fact, it seems like the only busy zones in the entire Eastern Kingdoms are the starter zones.  I’ve cruised up and down the Ghostlands right before Christmas, and there was nary a Horde toon around.  You’d think the sight of a Draenei riding on a blasted Elekk around the Dead Scar would bring some L85s out of the woodwork, but that didn’t happen.

Is it possible that all that work to revamp the Old World was wasted?

Think about it:  we’re back to where we were in terms of leveling zone population from mid-2010 in a bit over a year since 4.0.3b dropped.  It’s the equivalent of a kid ripping open Christmas presents, playing with them, and declaring “I’m bored!” an hour later.

Are there no players leveling toons?

Well, there might be toons being leveled, but there are LFD and BGs as alternate routes to max level.  Additionally, we can’t simply state that there aren’t any new players, either, because new players are typically shunted into the new, empty servers.  However, on servers that have been around for a while, there are definitely very few players leveling toons through questing.

Which again begs the question:  was the revamp worth it if very few of the existing player base take advantage of the options presented?

Now Mist of Pandaria is on the horizon, and without a further update –aka more money spent on these zones that have seen little long term interest— the Vanilla zones will be once again out of date.  A new player to WoW will end up scratching their heads if they try to level via questing.  (“I thought Mists of Pandaria was about Pandas!  All I see are all these Deathwing references!  And who’s Illidan and that Lich King guy?”)

I believe that the revamp was a bold move, but incomplete in execution.  Furthermore, by performing the revamp Blizzard set itself on a course where the story of Azeroth is told in a jumble, not in a series of sequential chapters.  A revamp is pretty much an all-or-nothing scenario, especially when you mix the expansion’s new zones in with the original Vanilla zones.  No amount of hand waving can make a new player forget about Outland and Northrend --especially when you have to pay for them!

A Changing Quest Design Philosophy

As I've previously documented, I've played around with a few other MMOs in addition to WoW.  Certainly WoW takes up the majority of my time, but I do like to putz around when the mood takes me.  While I've tinkered a little bit with Rift, my experiences are primarily with Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan.  Those two and WoW form the bulk of my MMO experience, and what I've noticed is that the quest emphasis on WoW has evolved in a direction that seems, well, more Diablo-like than anything else.

I've read on several occasions that you'll be able to finish Diablo III playing solo.  Yes, you can bring your friends along for the ride, but on the normal setting you should be able to beat the game all by your lonesome.  Now, take a look at how WoW's quest lines changed from pre to post Cata.  Sure, there was a lot --a lot!-- of meandering quest lines that got cleaned up, but think about what also changed:  any requirements for teaming up.

The last vestiges of group quests are found in the Outland and Northrend zones (including the BC racial starting areas).  The new post-Cata quest chains are all on rails, too: you have to do them in sequence, no exceptions.  This means you zip right along, heading straight up to L60.  Things get a wee bit diverted in Outland and Northrend with the lack of updates to those areas, but the L85 Express kicks right back into gear once you hit the Cata zones.

The first few times you level up to L85, that's not a big issue.  You can quest, you can run instances, you can run BGs.  You can even heavily incorporate herb gathering and mining into your leveling experience if you feel like it.  But after a while, you start to get tired of seeing the same zone in the same order again and again and again.  Yes, the phasing is cool, and you do have a visible impact on the world.  And yes, the quests-on-rails is a consequence of that design decision.  However, a side effect of it is the lack of group play when you're out questing in Azeroth.

Let's think about this for a moment.

• A design that emphasizes --and encourages-- solo play until you get to max level.
• Due to the speed of leveling, the emphasis isn't simply on playability, but on how quick you can get to max level.
• The quests-on-rails environment is all about telling the story --the same story-- which is completely locked in to this expansion.  This means that if Blizz were to create another expansion that had an impact in the two main continents of Azeroth, this entire environment would have to be redone, the story rewritten.

Doesn't this all mean that the "new" Old World is set up to simply get players to max level as quickly as possible?  It sure feels like it.

I'll give Blizz the benefit of the doubt in that I'm sure they wanted to tell a good story that couldn't be told without a complete revamp of the Old World, but the law of unintended consequences has re-emphasized that all the action is at max level.  Being out in the field is a solo affair, and unless you play in a PvP realm, there's not a lot of interaction going on in Azeroth.

Now look, I know quite well you can turn off XP and goof around as much as you want.  But I have tried to slow down advancement on a few of my toons while still collecting XP, and unless you spend your time in zones far below your class, it's almost impossible to not level up while questing.  And fairly rapidly, at that.

A side effect of Blizz's current quest design philosophy is that it is so jarring to move from Azeroth to Outland and Northrend, where the quest-on-rails simply doesn't exist.  That's why the upcoming adjustments in leveling in Northrend became so necessary: they were the brake on the L85 Express.

However, never has this design philosophy been so evident as when you leave WoW and enter another MMO.

LOTRO is a lot like 'old style WoW':  there are mostly solo quests out there, and you can do them in any order you want (within reason, naturally).  You're not locked in all the time.  LOTRO also doesn't have a bunch of small quests as part of a large chain, either; it's all one long quest, but it's broken into sections without having to subdivide into mini-quests.  There are some group quests as well:  people hook up for those quests, and they're done ala pre-Cata WoW.  The leveling is at a more sedate pace, which matches the tone of the MMO.  Sure, people will want to play WoW because they loved the story found in the books and Warcraft I-III, but not as many as you might think.  In LOTRO, however, the story is the primary draw, and Turbine knows it.  If you spread out the pace of leveling you can immerse yourself more fully into Middle Earth, and you can be more social with friends.  End level raiding isn't their primary design emphasis.

Now Age of Conan...  That is a horse of a different color.

AoC does have a neat little trick called offline leveling that allows you to level more rapidly once you're past L30, which is perfect for those who choose to accelerate their movement to max level.  But if you choose to level using questing, you're in for a surprise.

Once you get past the Tortage starter area, the number of group quests really goes up.  Sure, you have a lot of individual quests to work on, but AoC practically pushes you into group cooperation with the way the zones are designed.  The Cimmerian area Connall's Valley has the Vanir deployed more like an instance than anything else, and their movements are a lot more detailed than I've seen in WoW.  As I've commented before on the AI, enemies are far more sensitive to nearby attacks and use real tactics to give themselves the best possible advantage.  For some quests it becomes absolutely necessary to work in a group, even if the quest itself isn't flagged as a group quest.

With AoC the focus is not only on creating a more demanding quest line, but one that encourages group cooperation.  AoC shares a similarity with LOTRO in that the journey is important enough to encourage immersion, but the approach to get people involved in the journey is different.  The net result, however, is that both MMOs slow down leveling; their devs don't focus the MMOs to getting the player to max level as quickly as possible.

This upcoming week, we'll hear about the new WoW expansion from Blizzcon --and if you don't think we'll hear something, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you-- and I wonder what Blizz will do to counteract the heavily story-laden Star Wars: The Old Republic juggernaut.  Will they orient themselves even more toward end-game raiding, or will they go off the quests-on-rails and change their quest focus again?  I guess we'll find out soon.

Imitating Budd

No, I don't mean by pretending I'm an Manataur.

If you've ever seen the movie Up, you know there's a scene where the two protagonists meet Dug, the talking dog.  When he begins to describe the collar that allows him to talk, Dug is distracted by a "Squirrel!"

Well, that's sort of what I've been up to lately on Tomakan.

I've been leveling Tom's Engineering, and since I didn't feel like paying the AH prices for Fel Iron and Adamantite, I've been rummaging around Outland, farming the stuff.  And in true Budd fashion, the "Shiny!" has been distracting me.

"Well," I thought, "since I'm here, I might as well solo a few heroic BC instances.

"And oh look, there's a quest here.

"And I can pick up the To Hellfire and Back achieve with a few more quests.

"And I can see about getting enough rep to get into the Tempest Keep heroic 5-mans.

"And here's some quests that lead into Draenei lore."

"And...."

Well, you get the point.

This is why I put on blinders when I was leveling Tom and Neve to L85; the lure of the Shiny! is just too great.  Maybe if you've got a stable full of alts this is all old hat, but to me, this is still new.  Yes, even BC, because I'm exploring things from an Alliance point of view.

***

One thing that I've been struck by is how perception is indeed reality in Azeroth.  Take Dustwallow Marsh, for example.  If you've leveled through there as Horde like I have, there are a few simple truths to the region:  the Grimtotems are a loose cannon, the buildup to Onyxia dominates the questing, and Theramore dominates the area.  If you get even just a little close to the place at level, the magnitude of the stone walls and cannons --and oh yeah, the soldiers-- make the place look impregnable.  Brackenwall Village is your kids' backyard fort built with leftover lumber by comparison.

Then try leveling an Alliance toon and take the ship from Menethil Harbor.

Once you land on the dock, the first thing you're struck by is how empty Theramore really is.  With such a frontal display of might, your mind conjures up a battalion or two of Lordaeron's finest.  While there are buildings around, there are so few NPCs to match.  What's more is that a good portion of them are actively trying to subvert Jaina's leadership.  Once I got over the surprise, I laughed.  Psychological warfare is alive and well in Azeroth.

***

I'll elaborate on this in a later post, but I'm struck by the parallels to the history surrounding the BC races.  Both the Sindorei and the Draenei had most of their race willingly turn away from the Light and embrace the Burning Legion.  Both have dealt with genocidal campaigns, and barely cling to survival.  Both mistrust the other, yet would do well to examine their own ranks more closely.

***

Heard Around Azeroth

In Battle of Gilneas:
BL:  I can't believe half of our team is AFK!
Neve:  We're not.  We're getting corpse camped by two Hunters, two Locks...  ::dies:: and a Priest.
BL:  And you can't break through that??
Neve:  Not when they're on the boat with you.
Priest:  And no @#$% tanks, either!!

In Honor Hold, Hellfire Peninsula:
[Tomakan (L85) is perusing the offerings by the Honor Hold Quartermaster for curiosity's sake]
Warrior:  ::challenges Tomakan to duel::
Tomakan:  ::inspects the Warrior, finds he's L61, and Declines::
Warrior:  ::challenges Tomakan to duel::
Tomakan:  WTH is wrong with you?  ::Declines::
Warrior:  /flexes  I'm bad!  I'm bad!
Tomakan:  ::Mounts and flies off to a Shattered Halls run::
Warrior:  ::challenges Tomakan to duel::

Through the Looking Glass

While I was waiting for LFD last night, I was mentioning to Soul about how similar --yet different-- the questlines are between Alliance and Horde.  I've not done a lot of quests on Tomakan as I've been using the LFD tool a lot, but I have done several quest chains in Ashenvale, and I'm partway through the Shady Rest Inn chain in Dustwallow.  What continues to interest me is how essentially the same chain can be viewed through two different lenses.

Take Felfire Hill for example.  The Draenei simply can't believe that they traveled this far just to have a Legion outpost nearby, and want to eradicate it.  While you're cleaning out the mess of demons, the secret plans for the assault on Forest Song drop, and you are then sent to wipe out the Dreadlords.  You see the quest entitled "Never Again!" and you know how important it is for the Draenei to eliminate the Legion.

Sounds like a perfect fit for the Draenei, but until you see the Horde side, you can't help but think that the quest chain was custom designed for the Alliance.

The Orcs, however, are outraged that this group of demons managed to survive.  They have nothing but disgust and hatred for their former masters, and want to destroy them at all costs.  When the plans drop for the assault on Splintertree Post, the Horde questgiver gives you the quest "Never Again!" with the orders to eliminate the Dreadlords.  The Horde will never be subject to demons again, and you believe it.

Same quest chain, two equally valid --yet different-- viewpoints.

Another comparison is the Shady Rest Inn chain.  For the Alliance, you're given a quest to check up on a relative, and when you arrive in Theramore you discover that there was a fire, and the wife and kid of the relative died.  Your job is to investigate the fire and bring the perps to justice, because the Alliance's laws will be upheld.  Contrast that with the Horde:  You enter Dustwallow Marsh and pass by this burned out husk of an inn, with the owner wandering around dazed.  He's human, but not flagged as an enemy.  Well, you think, what the hell happened here?  You arrive in the Horde outpost in Dustwallow and are pulled aside by a questgiver.  Thrall, the giver explains, has received word about the fire at the Inn and he knows that because it's on the border of the Barrens the Horde is the main suspect.  Thrall is anxious to keep the peace, so your job is to investigate the fire to demonstrate the Horde's good faith in maintaining the truce.  And if it does turn out that Horde people are implicated, show no mercy.

The same questline begins with completely different motivations:  Alliance is personal/legal, Horde is diplomatic.

Now that that's out of the way, I want to drop a big gripe about the LFD tool:  lack of context.  So far as I can tell, there are no quests or common ground for the opposing faction in the Deadmines, Ragefire Chasm, or Stormwind Stockades.  Sure, there's an achievement involved, but with LFD nothing highlights the lack of context quite like those three.  If you're Alliance, the Searing Blade means absolutely nothing to you:  an Orc is an Orc is an Orc.  To the Horde, the Searing Blade is serious bidness:  they want to return to the "glory days" of being Fel Orcs in the Burning Legion, and will stop at nothing to overthrow Thrall and the rest of the current Horde leadership.  Likewise, I had never heard of the Defias Brotherhood until I started leveling an Alliance alt.  "Big whoop," I said.  "A bunch of thieves.  Try the Scarlet Crusade on for size instead."  But for the Alliance, the Defias represents a real threat to the existing order, and have a nasty ol' surprise in store for leveling characters.

Don't get me wrong, I like the LFD tool.  It allows solo artists a chance to check out instances they ordinarily would have a difficult time getting into.  From a lore standpoint, however, I have to wonder about the dungeonmaster achievements gained via the LFD tool.  There's no context for several of the instances, and there never will be.  What I'd like to see is a separate achievement, highlighting all of the quests that touch on an instance, and have a separate achievement for that.  Call it "Contextual Obligations" or something similar, emphasizing that your toon has been involved with the lore leading up to the instance.

(EtA:  Cleaned things up because, you know, I need an editor.)

Halfway Houses

I occasionally get strange looks when I'm putzing around in The Barrens or Tirisfal Glades, working on low level quests.  I swear that some people must think that I'm the reincarnation of Don Quijote, or that I'm banished by my guild into doing some sort of bizarre penance or something before I'm allowed back into raiding.

Passing through Tarren Mill after having completed a quest from the Hinterlands, I was accosted by a 20ish Hunter loitering around the Bat Handler.  "Dude!  Yr an 80!" he shouted.  "LOL!"

"Yeah," I replied.  "I noticed."

 "U shouldn't be here!"

"I'm not going to be," I said and took the flight path to Light's Hope Chapel.

That didn't hold a Kobold's candle to the crowd that gathered around when I was in the Orc/Troll starting area, working on quests.  I finished a quest and left Quint standing around AFK for a moment.  When I returned, there was a crowd of about eight to ten L1-L5 characters surrounding my Pally.

Okay, I thought, this is weird.  I mean, you just go up the road to Orgrimmar and you can see boatloads of 80s around.

I popped out of AFK, and one of them asked "Are u doing the starting zone quests?"

"Yep."

"Y?"

"I'm working on Loremaster."

"Oooohhhhh," came the collective response.

"Yr crazy!" said one.

"Yeah!" said another.

A third challenged me to a duel, which I declined.

A fourth chimed in with a "That's not hard!"

"Maybe not, but not a lot of people do it."  I took that as my cue to split.

To be fair, the majority of the time I don't get a reaction at all, which suits me just fine.  Other people are doing their business, and I'm doing mine.  Since I'm the oddball high level character in these zones, however, I do try to make myself available should someone need some assistance on a quest.  What's the point of achieving Loremaster if you don't share your knowledge?

I've even had this Loremaster mentality creep over into some of my alts.  My mage, who is at L26, dropped into The Ghostlands to finally try soloing Dhar'khan when she found a L21 Hunter thinking the same thing.  I asked the Hunter what she knew of the fight.

"Nothing.  This is my first character," she said.

"That's fine," I replied.  "Even though this is an alt, I'm still fairly new myself.  We'll do this together."

I told her I'd pull the aggro so we didn't have the entire room on us, and then she could let her pet tank attack and take it over.  The strategy worked, sort of --I held aggro better than I expected-- but the net result was one dead necromancer, and one happy Hunter.

"Thanks so much!" she said.

"You're welcome.  Just so you know, you're about to be doing some traveling on the next couple of quests, so get ready to meet some of the leaders of the Horde."

"Cool!"

Ah, new players.


(Oh, the title of this post?  That's simple, really:  I'm officially halfway to Loremaster.  I'm actually much farther along, but I've only dinged Outlands and Eastern Kingdoms.)

Hmmm.... What to do.... What to do....

Since I seem to have a copious amount of time on my hands, I've been thinking about the future.  No, not Cataclysm -I'm trying to not think about that too much- but what I intend to do once my main goals of Loremaster and Seeker are achieved.

I guess I should specify that my main goal is to have Quintalan complete Loremaster and Seeker on the Horde side.  Once that's done, I figured I'd slip Quint into semi-retirement, using him to accumulate Emblems for Heirloom items.  (If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.)  He could chill around Dalaran, or hang on a park bench in Silvermoon and harass the newbies all afternoon. 

"Whining about Dar'Khan Drathir, are you?  You young whippersnappers don't know how easy you have it!  Why, back in my day we got ganked 10 times a day in Tarren Mill, and we liked it!"

"Aw, shut up you old Geezer!"

"Come back here or I'll whack you with my cane!  I'll have you know I got this wound fighting alongside Sylvanas Windrunner herself!  Call me Geezer, eh?  STAY OFF MY LAWN!"

But what after that?

Originally, the plan was to transfer and faction change Quint to follow Souldat and Millalyn to Ysera, but since I can't really finish the Horde side Loremaster that way, Quint will have to stay Horde for the time being.  At the current rate I was on with questing, it would have been about early summer before Quint would ding that last quest to capture both achievements.  With my account in a holding pattern until my stuff gets returned, that timeline will slip into mid summer.

My backup plan was to generate a new Alliance toon on Area 52, load the toon with Heirlooms, and ship him/her over to Ysera to begin a new life.  (And start running instances with similarly leveled toons that Soul and Milla would have.)  I was planning on shipping a Paladin over so I could take my lumps as a Holy Spec without the backup of an overgeared tank, but it might be smarter that I ship my Blood Elf Mage over instead.  She's already at L26 and has all but the Heirloom trinkets.  I'd have to find a decent Alliance toon that has her snarky BE attitude, but that might make the most sense.

Once the toon gets shipped over, then what?  Just run LFD?

Part of me wants to go for Loremaster on the Alliance side, just because I can say that I've covered all of my bases.  (Crazy?  Yes.  Insane?  Nah; it's just another challenge.)  Another part of me thinks that it would be smart to get in early on PVP, so that you don't have to learn what the hell you're doing at 80 in the battlegrounds.  Either way, my time spent online ought to fit with within my budget.

Well, I've got plenty of time to stew over my options, although I definitely wish I had less time right now.  My trigger finger is getting plenty itchy.

Fun and Excitement with Questing

I was catching up on Darth Solo's posts on WoW Alone when he commented in this post about how he couldn't stand questing in the Old World (Classic WoW's locations), and how much better Outland and Northrend are by comparison. That got me to thinking about my own questing experiences; while I can see Darth's point, there are plenty of quirks out there that balance out the questing throughout the WoW environment.

It's no secret that I'm a bit of a quest whore -as Souldat calls me- and I've an ultimate goal of having Quintalan reach that Seeker achievement. I'm roughly 600-650 quests away from Loremaster, and from there only about 100 or so to reach 3000 and the Seeker. For my alts, I'm not planning on being so thorough; there's no need, really, with the exception of the class specific quests. (By comparison, an achievement such as Explorer on a PvE server isn't nearly as impressive as on a PvP server; there aren't many Alliance gankers you have to worry about when exploring on a PvE server.) Nevertheless, there are some major differences in how the quests were designed to push a character along in Classic WoW vs. the two expansions.

Blizzard designed the quests in Classic WoW to push a player from region to region when the appropriate quests opened up. This is still used in BC and Northrend, but instead of viewing each expansion continent as a whole, Blizzard focused more on individual regions. You can see that in the quest achievements themselves; in the Old World, the quest achievements are for each continent, not for completing quests in a given region. BC and WotLK have achievements for clearing each region which add up to the Loremaster meta-achievement.

It seems that in the Old World there were more options for leveling in a specific range, say for the 20s: you could go to Hillsbrad, Thousand Needles, Ashenvale, Duskwood, Stonetalon, Wetlands or even Stranglethorn if you're feeling brave. The breadth of locations to work with means that you can work on your questing as, say, a Tauren and never have to visit the Eastern Kingdoms at all. Blizzard seems to have compensated for this by putting in these oddball quests that have you traipsing back and forth between two continents just to talk to different specific people, who then tell you to go hunt for stuff in an instance. For example, you're in Arathi and you stumble on the quest chain that leads you to Tarren Mill, the Undercity, Senjin Village, Zul'Farrak, and lord knows where else. It's clever on the face of it, but without flying mounts you have to make more connections than trying to get from Atlanta to Anchorage on Jet Blue. The travel time gets to be tedious, and you often start to wonder whether the quest chain is worth it.

Outlands quests narrowed the scope to a more manageable level -and the addition of flying mounts helped tremendously- but there still is a maddening tendency to insert cross region dependencies on some quest chains. This wouldn't be that big of an issue unless you're trying to reach the Loremaster of Outland achievement, where you find you're perpetually short of quests in a region (Nagrand and Hellfire Peninsula are two big offenders) until you come across a quest in Shadowmoon Valley that sends you to those regions.

With Wrath of the Lich King, the quests evolved further. The maturing ability of Blizzard to mix in an overarcing quest chain with the more narrowly focused ones really kept the pace brisk. That was most felt in Dragonblight (Wrathgate), The Storm Peaks (Thorim and Brann Bronzebeard), and Icecrown (Argent Crusade and Knights of the Ebon Blade). Blizzard's fancy phasing tech has a tremendous impact here as well; no more equivalents of killing Dar'khon and then finding him respawn a few minutes later. "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome Necromancer?" (Apologies to King Henry II for that little quip.)

I must admit that the phasing technology has me biased toward the Northrend quests; I found them much more interesting than some of the grinding you feel like you're doing on the other regions. Ironically enough, I like the Outland quests the least. Perhaps it's because the changes were half baked, but I often felt like I spent hours hunting around Outland for an individual quest that would put me over the top for an achievement, and I would spend an equal amount of time perusing thottbot and wowwiki as well.

Classic WoW has a bizarre sort of appeal to me. It was by design big and broad, and the concept of trying to check out everything is a daunting task. The things that Blizzard put in place for Classic WoW may have made sense when they designed it, but the creakiness of the Old World is pretty apparent these days. Yes, I hope that Cataclysm will bring a Northrend style focus to old Azeroth, but I've a certain amount of fondness for the meandering (and maddening) nature of some of the Old World questing.