We are into the afternoon of day three of the release of the xpac. I had planned to do little but play the WoW and level but, like it normally does, life had other plans. I have gotten to play a far amount and I have noticed some really awesome stuff. I started leveling in the underwater zone of Vashj’ir. I hate nagas (scaly underwater snake people) and I hate murlocs but I went there anyway. It was freaking epic.
You get on a boat from Stormwind, the human capital city, and start to sail out there with characters like Budd who has been in the game before as a mildly retarded troll hunter. The scenery is stunning and you can really see how much work Blizzard put into recreating Azeroth. Then, suddenly, a kraken, but only one of them. This starts one of the many epic cuts scenes that have been added into this zone. Basically, your character gets mostly drown, saved by a shaman, and hauled into the remains of a boat. From there you quest around to get things like under water breathing and a seahorse mount.
Vashj’ir is massive and full of quests, though I could not find the 160 I needed for the achievement. One thing I really liked is how the quests moved you naturally through the zone. In the past, a player had to spend time searching for the next quest hub and it got intensely annoying. In Vashj’ir, for the most part, there were quests that moved you from one hub to another. Sometimes you even got to ride on a submarine.
Another thing I liked is that there are portals to the various far flung parts of the new xpac centrally located in Stormwind. It is a major pain in the ass to travel from one place in east jesus nowhere to another place in west jesus nowhere. Blizzard decided not to torture the players with that and fixed it for us.
I have liked the instances I have done so far. They are interesting and not overly long. All of the bosses and most of the trash has something unique about them that presents a bit of a challenge. I really like this departure from the old idiot style dungeons that we had in Wrath of the Lich King. Cata is really starting to feel like a return to the ideas of orginal WoW and the Burning Crusade. The only annoying thing is that a player has to physically visit an instance before they can queue for it in the dungeon finder. It is annoying but I understand why the developers did it because it forces players to atleast visit all the zones while they are leveling.
Another really awesome thing about this xpac is that Blizzard really worked with the phasing concept that they began in the later zones in Wrath. Phasing is when you complete a quest and the world changes. It was always kind of anti-climatic to do all these quests and have nothing change in the world around you. They really fixed this with Cata. The players can really interact with the world around them.
I will write more later. Back to leveling!
Geeks a Geeking