4.0.3a Impressions Part One: Mostly the Alliance Part.

4.0.3a Impressions Part One: Mostly the Alliance Part.

NOTE. This post is full of spoilers for the World of Warcraft Shattering. If you don't want to know about the Shattering, or how I feel about the changes, then you probably shouldn't read this. Also, I'm writing this in my NaNoWriMo document and counting it as part of my NaNo word count, so this post is long and in some places uses a lot of words where less could have easily said the same thing. But that's part of the fun of NaNo, and it was very cathartic for me to be able to write all this out. Also, as I am writing this in my NaNo file it's sure to be full of spelling and grammatical errors. I'll probably catch some of them as I skim through it in the future, but I tend to skip entire words when I get typing fast, so there may be sentences that appear to be missing words.

STORMWIND. Stormwind is beautiful. It looks like it's been hit pretty bad, but the people inside have adapted to the change and rebuilt. I love the area north of the Dwarven District. Olivia's Lake is beautiful and little Olivia is cute as well. The houses, farms and fields there are very cool, and that little house with a clearing in front is a lovely place to put the druid trainer with the demolition of The Park. The fountains around town are lovely, but there are so very many of them. It's like everytime they had some free space they decided to throw in a fountain. "Hey we've got some space here, what do we do?" "Put in a fountain." "Nah, man. That's getting old. We have far too many fountains as it is." "Alright, then put in a half fountain with a lion's head coming out of that wall there." "That's awesome. Great idea."

Adding the fishing and cooking dailies to Stormwind was a great way to really cement Stormwind as the new Alliance hub. There are certainly people that prefer other cities better, but Stormwind has the access to Northrend, Outlands, Kalimdor (maybe because I haven't explored enough to really know what they did to Auberdine/Darkshore), and the tram to Ironforge, as well as trainers for all classes and professions (I didn't check on Jewelcrafting though). With Stormwind as the new hub, I do expect it to be a bit more laggy than usual, but hanging around there tonight around 6pm server wasn't really any laggier than usual. Which is very nice. I love the addiction of a second bank and auction house in the Dwarven District. That will definitely be helpful for people who do have lag problems in Stormwind, as they will be able to head there instead of trying to get anything done in the Trade District.

The Hero's Call Board is also a cool addition to the Stormwind Trade District. I'll have to do the quests and check the board again to see if they are one time quests or low level dailies. The two quests that I got tonight on Hiromimmi looked to me like they were specifically to get low-level characters re-exploring some of the regions that have been hit hard with the Shattering.

Overall, Stormwind is looking to be a pretty great Alliance hub. The lag is bearable (and today was patch day. Patch day lag is always the worst), though time may prove me wrong on that and the city is close enough to it's former layout that people who have been playing for a long time can still get around. It's really nice to see so many people hanging around Stormwind, fishing and generally going about their business. It really sunk in when I saw people posting in Trade Chat offering services such as Jewelcrafting and Enchanting to the public in Stormwind instead of Dalaran. My only regret is that fishing up the coins in the Dal fountain is almost going to be creepy with no other people around the city.

DALARAN. While I've started on Dal, I may as well continue. I love Dalaran. It's small, neat, beautiful and I know my way around it. I'm going to miss it. It was nice to have a place where both Horde and Alliance characters hung out. It made the world really feel whole. In the major Alliance cities you only see Alliance characters. In Dalaran, you'd get to see Horde characters as well. Enemy faction or not, they are the other half of the same world, and it was cool that Dalaran (and Shattrath before it) provided a place where the two factions could interact with (mostly) the same NPCs and go about their business in peace. The fact that the city had a sanctuary for each faction was nice as well, because it pushed the idea that while the two races got along in the city they were still enemies and don't get along outside of the city.

I speak about Dal so fondly because I didn't play before Wrath of the Lich King, and I never saw Shattrath in it's glory days. Dal provided fishing, cooking, and other profession dailies, as well as the test of trying to fish in the fountain. Fishing in the fountain was etiher a test of luck, trying to get all the coins, or a test of patience, trying to fish while some idiot on a mammoth tromped all over the fountain and blocked your bobber. It was also the main place to spam trade for people for lvl 80 raids. I feel that in the coming weeks Warlocks (and people willing to meet at the stone and summon) will be more needed and loved. IceCrown Citadel is a bit farther from Stormwind than it is from Dalaran.

Also, I need to continue to run my warlock around Dalarsn to find the last couple of those Higher Learning books. The transporting book that comes from the achievement isn't very excxiting now, but I still want that cute little voidwalker pet for my warlock, because come on! She's a warlock. And I already have it on my DK and my druid, of course.

DUNGEONS. My dungeoning experience since the patch is pretty slim. It's only been a day. But I did run Gnomeregan a couple times and Scarlet Monastery: Graveyard a couple times. I love that quests have been moved inside the dungeons now. It's much easier than sharing quests and trying to make it to a zone you're not questing in to turn in it. The Gnomeregan quest chain took me two runs to complete, but that's only because I missed the Face turn in, and had to run back and turn in his quest after we killed the final boss. So I didn't complete the boss killing quest until the next run. The Scarlet Monastery: Graveyard quest also took me two runs: one to complete it and one to turn it in at the beginning. It's nice that the quest rewards are still pretty awesome. The gear looks pretty good, the money is nice (at level 30 I got a little over 1 gold), and the experience is awesome (Over five thousand experience at level 30).

I also like that the bosses have been buffed. They have more health than I remember them having, which was good when the rogue in one of the Gnomer groups stealthed off presumably to try and solo the boss. If the bosses in all dungeons really have been buffed, then soloing low level dugeons is going to be harder than before at level 80, though maybe it will be back to the same at level 85.

GNOME STARTING AREA. New Tinker Town is very cute. It's nice that the gnomes (and trolls) are finally getting a place of their own. Gnomes start inside the same building where the Gnomeregan instance is. The quests are pretty close together and very easy to follow. When one chain ends a new quest can be seen on the minimap. The quests level you quickly. I think I got to level 4 withing 20-30 minutes. And they quickly take the new character from New Tinker Town and out further into Dun Morough to fight against "red" creatures (creatures that will attack the character). As much as having starting zones have all "yellow" creatures is easy and a nice way to introduce new players to the game, it makes leveling slower (because you can chose not to attack all the creatures around you) and it really doesn't fight in with the idea that someone in town needs you to go attack them because they are super dangerous.

Gnomish buildings.

I like the New Tinker Town's look. It's very much Gnomish. It's all Gnome buildings, like the one's seen at the airstrip in Borean Tundra, and spare parts lying around. And the NPCs around town are creating crazy devices (some of which make you explode), and watching holoscreens. In one of the first quests as a new gnome, you are asked to "rescue" the survivors by beaming them out. So you get to run around the area and cast the beaming technology on the survivors of Operation: Gnomeregan.

Me and my robot for one of the early Gnome starting quests.

Beaming out the survivors.

It was also fun to watch a hologram projection of the final events of Operation: Gnomeregan after participating in it on all three of my 80s. It's like "hey, doing those quests made a difference because now the gnomes have this great new city that they're building and growing and protecting."

Another thing I noticed was that the slimes in the Gnomish starting area have faces. They're some where between cute and really "Fern Gully" creepy.

The slimes are kinda scary.

DUAL-BOXING. Blizzard wants me to get a second account. They've discounted the prices for the base game (Vanilla) and both Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. Instead of paying around $90 for the game (all the way up to Wrath of the Lich King) and the extra $15 a month for the second account I could buy all three (Vanilla, Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King for $20 and then only have to worry about the $15 extra a month for the second account and my social life and nerd status.

I'd really like to try dual-boxing because having a second account would make leveling easier and give me more options for race/calss combos on Shadowsong. Having these ten extra character slots on Shadowsong would also mean that I would be able to experience all the Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor quest and zone changes through questing.

I can see leveling being much nicer if I always have a healing class to keep the dps (or maybe even a tank, gasp!) alive. It would also make dungeon queues easier for my dps characters (not that I have many low level dps toons right now; they've all been abandoned for healers.

I think the biggest cons to getting a second account are macros/extreme multi-tasking and the nerd factor. I'm worried that I will have trouble controlling two characters at once, and a large part of my play style really is how much I connect with my characters personalities. I'm not all that good with macros, and I don't want the whole game to become a large set of macros that make multiple characters do different things. It may force me to learn more about things that I have so far avoided, like tanking and aggro handling, and group dynamics (how different classes work well together or don't). The nerd factor is more about real life and less about the game. I'm already a huge nerd that writes a novel every November, works at Dunkin Donuts, takes nerdy web design art classes online and plays WoW all the time. It really won't help if I decide that not only am I going to play the characters I already have at level, but I'm also going to get a second account so that I can play even more characters at the highest level. Nothing's nerdier than playing WoW, except playing two versions of WoW at the same time.

For now I think I'm going to stick with my one account. I love the characters I have, and I still have seven slots on my server to get to 80 (soon 85). If I come to a point in the future where I have ten level capped characters on Shadowsong, then maybe I'll revisit the idea of a second account and dual-boxing. The recruit-a-friend is still very tempting though.

LEVELING, QUESTING, DEATHWING'S DESTRUCTION AND THE TROLL STARTING AREA. It's getting very near to my bedtime, and I only got to play a couple of hours tonight after getting my homework finished up. However, I look forward to playing more tomorrow and getting a look at more of the world. I'll have more impressions tomorrow night and hopefully they'll be as productive as tonights because up to this point this has added almost two thousand words to my very behind NaNoWriMo word count. My WoW plans for tomorrow include creating a troll of some kind (I'm thinking druid right now, but I'll see what my other options are tomorrow) and exploring the troll starting area and checking out Origrimmar. I won't have nearly as much to say about Org as I did about Stormwind because I am an Alliance player at heart and Org confuses me. I know a bit of my way around, but not like I do Stormwind. I also plan to get in some questing on one of the many characters that I have stuck between the levels of 28 and 80 (my highest non-80 is actually my 45 priest). As well as some exploring (either with one of my leveling characters or with one of my 80s). My shaman has quests from the Hero's Call Board for the Barrens and Stranglethorn Vale (both of which have been changed drastically I know).

Azeroth is a whole new world, and so far, I am loving it. I'm torn between trying to explore and do everything as fast as possible and trying to slow down and pace myself so that there's more new things for me to look forward to in Cataclysm.

I just hope that most everyone else is enjoying the Shattering as much as I am. And I still need to finish my Pilgrim's Bounty stuff because I love how fast it is to level cooking with this holiday.