The way to 80 and first endgame-ish impressions

So I hit the magic 80 a couple days ago. Which lead to the one single major problem: 535 defense. As soon as I would be able to run heroics the remaining 5 wouldn’t be much of an effort anyways, so 535 was my target for the time being. I was sick the last days, so I had a hell of a lot of playtime, and things changed fast.

Dinging 80 was somewhere in the middle of Grizzly Hills, after I cleared the Tundra, Fjord and Dragonblight. I then continued to clear out Sholazar Basin and with the cash that yielded I finally picked up my epic flying mount. This is a necessity in Northrend. Full stop. From those five zones I can’t quite tell which I liked best – they all have a certain charme and feel to them, but I can tell so much: I liked em all.

The Horde Expedition

I started in the Tundra and think it’s the perfect zone to start, especially for the Orc and Troll player. The lore part is very nice and introduces you to the scourge problem immediately. The quests are very diverse and the whole area is interesting. Quest chains are straightforward and if you just follow the directions given you’ll get your achivement for 150 quest – which, by the way, is the most (only 100 for the Fjord), so exp-wise I think the Tundra just yields more than the Fjord. Plus, you get to wear a second-hand murloc costume. It doesn’t get any better than that.

It’s the mountainside, baby

Which brings me to the second zone I did, the Fjord. I stopped the extreme-instance-running I did in the Tundra (I left it close to 75 if I remember correctly) and concentrated on questing, because I started to really enjoy the chains and the woven lore pieces. That being said, the Fjord might not be that great for introducing the Northrend feeling – it’s a lot about northern mystics. Which I love, just they seem … unrelated, especially after not having seen anything related throughout the continent. Also, the Fjord feels more like a place where small factions fight here and there, while the Tundra gives you a more hands-on “it’s war!”-thing. And the Nexus with it’s whole surroundings definitely > Utgarde Keep. On the other hand, the Fjord definitely wins the beauty contest – high mountains, cliffs, the architecture around the place. Beautiful. Go see it.

On to big lore epicness

The Dragonblight. Questing around here is a bit weird, you come to do a lot of things that feel … uhm … questionable, and you do them for a lot of different people with sometimes unclear intentions. On the other hand, the quest chains end in one of the most awesome lore pieces I have seen in WoW so far. No spoilers here, go do the Quest Chains in Dragonblight and see for yourself. The scripted sequence. The fight side-by-side with Thrall. Awesome. Also in the Dragonblight you’ll get your first must-do daily: Mount a dragon and kill lots of other dragons. The quest is easy, yields wyrmcrest-reputation and, most important, is a hell lot of fun. Seriously, if you’re into questing or not: Don’t miss out on the dragonblight. It feels epic.

Back and forth, anyone?

While all three zones so far were a revolution in WoW questing, Grizzly Hills kind of felt like “back in the days”. Q: Go to A and pick up B. Turn in. Follow-Up: Go to A again. Do B. And so on. It was a lot of running back and forth, with only two flight points in the area not making it more enjoyable. There’s a quest chain that’ll send you back and forth between the camp and the questing area six times, in a row. What the hell? But it’s a rather small area with not too many quests, and it has a lot of Troll lore, which is cool in the first place. Because Troll lore is always, necessarily, cool. We rule.

Heming!

Just recently I finished off Sholazar Basin. The area is pretty nice, a great combination of de-stupidified STV-quests and Un’Goro landscapes, with an awesome questline that leads to you sitting on a giant’s shoulder and quests with funny wolvar and oracles. I’d label this the “fun”-area so far – lots of giggles, funny quests and goofy characters around here. And for the upcoming tank there are interesting quest rewards to pick up, too. The questline with the giant is the counterpart to all the comedy and certainly feels epic in the end, whilest to get there just takes a bit of running around.

Fighting the big guys

Instance-wise I’ve seen a lot recently. Becoming crit-immune for heroics wasn’t hard at all and I started doing them immediately. Actually I started with probably the hardest out there: Halls of Lightning. And let me tell you, this is a hard nut to crack. With a really solid healer we made it through until Loken, where we’d wipe 7 times until we faced the inevitable respawn.

I thought all heroics would be that hard. In fact, the second one I tried was Stratholme in the caverns of time. First off: It’s the same as all the CoT-instances: Very … different. I liked it, but it IS annoying for a decent part of it and I don’t think I’ll run it all too often until I’m overgeared for that kind of stuff. But then the Nexus heroic opened my eyes. This was a walkthrough. Easy owned. Nothing special whatsoever. No problems. Halls of Stone was just as easy overall, except for the council-event which got darn close in the end. The final boss was easy fodder once we figured out his little explosion-thingy.

Aaaah, back to the wiping-game! How I missed you, my dear

Not so lucky was a Violet Hold try just before I started to write this. We faced Xevozz at the sixth portal and never made it beyond. It took me two tries to get the kiting worked out, but he would always finish us off on the second teleport when we were inbetween all those spheres who deal a shitload of damage. As far as I see it, this fight is a DPS race. Finish him off before he teleports the second time and you’re fine. If he gets in touch with only one of those spheres he hits for around 10k effective damage, and let me tell you he doesn’t hit slow, too. Our highest DPS was only at 1100 for that run, so I expect the whole thing to be much easier with people doing 1600+ (2600dps being the current record I’ve seen, done by my brother with his hunter on Mal’Ganis in Stratholme heroic – are hunters op at the time, by the way? They seem to rock every damage meter, by far). As a heads-up: Since it’s new content, people don’t mind wipes. I joined BC late, when T6 was on farm already. So when pugging any instance whatsoever, usually after the second wipe someone left or people just got mad. I very much welcome people saying things like “server restarts in 15 minutes – let’s do two more tries on Xevozz!” – after wiping two times already.

Oh you very special … erm … thing

Also I’ve finally done the Oculus. I was lookin forward to this for the great tanking gear drops, but have since gotten some other pieces, so it was more about curiosity. This place is very, very, very different. Right now I’m disgusted. First off, it’s boring – you’re not really doing anything, but it takes it’s time to get necessities done. Like taking out the trash. And I’m talking trashcans and recycling, not mob groups. Then, and that’s probably the biggest bummer, there’s alway the fact that the final boss fight, the fight against a huge blue dragon, is – listen closely – completely independent from the characters playing. You ride your mount and fight him on that. If I had only 12k health, it wouldn’t matter. Sure, you need to clear the way to get there, but it’s just annoying that your character, euipment and skill don’t have any impact on the most important encounter of the place. Anyhow, I expect this to become a “time-out” from regular heroic-farming: “I can’t stand all those places anymore, can’t we do something different?” – “Mmh, how about that weird thing in the Nexus, you know, dragons and flying around and stuff?” – “Ah yeah, sure, let’s go for it!”.

Conclusions

The good news is: Almost every instance run gives significant gear upgrades right now. In only one day I jumped from 16% dodge / 535 defense / 19.8k health to 19.5% dodge / 540 defense / 22.2k health, and I’ve already started to collect emblems of heroism. I got my AtlasLoot wishlist all set up and the farming can begin right away.

All over the game feels different than before. Questing is a vital part. It’s not a means to an end anymore, there’s many many more quests than ever available, and you certainly don’t need all of them to get to 80. But most quest chains do have an interesting, funny or just plain awesome end. Almost every quest introduces to you a piece of lore. I’d heavily recommend questing as a way of getting to know the world we play in, with the rewards only being a nice side effect.

A final note. Things are different than they were in BC. I’m a casual player, so in BC it took some time to get all those heroic keys and it certainly took some time to get reputation rewards. Now – not so much. Within two days of 80 I’m revered with Wyrmcrest for their tanking stuff and am already collecting Kirin’Tor reputation. About half the instances I haven’t even seen on normal mode, and probably never will. I expect the endame to be exhausted pretty soon, even for a casual player like me.

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