Spent most of the Thanksgiving weekend carving through Kalimdor like a knife through water. The Seeker quest total was, in fact, bugged and I didn’t lose any credit towards the 3k quest completions…although it certainly looked like it for a while. Quite happy to say the balance of what was needed was knocked out before I had finished the second zone.
Determined to acquire Loremaster of Kalimdor, I set forth once again from Theramore, hitting Dustwallow Marsh and getting really disappointed that 80% of the quests there were the same as ones I had done before, just at a slightly different level. From there, I started exploring the Southern Barrens, got sidetracked and wound up in Thousand Needles.
1k Needles is now almost entirely underwater and I was dreading it—swimming is horribly slow, but I wanted to see the new speedbarge floating over the wreckage of the raceway. Wow. Aside from the horrible time I had getting lost in the speedbarge itself, the zone itself was…amazing. There’s quite a lot of travel and underwater activities in the area, but you’ve got plotline tools that make it painless: a river boat of your own (summonable only in 1k Needles), as well as an underwater-breathing apparatus that also greatly increases swim speed to ‘very fast mount’ levels.
I won’t go into details on too many of the quests in the various zones—that’s for another time with another character. As it is, running a level 80+ through this content is really only based on how fast you can get from point a to point b and running lowbie quests in ‘god mode’ doesn’t make for good story. I will, however, note:
The changes to Vanilla are spectacular and the people attempting LM now will be able to have a much easier time of it than in the days of old—I’m not simply talking about “vanilla flight”, which is still over a week away: the whole enchilada is just designed better. I’ve now finished all of the quests in all of the zones in Kali except Stonetalon and none of them send you to other zones halfway around the world and most of the ones that have you leave the zone you’re in is just a breadcrumb quest to get you started in a new hub or adventuring area.
The redesign of the zones is a godsend: there are dozens of additional flight points and the maps have been changed to allow people to EASILY travel to nearby zones without having to find some obscure hidden tunnel on an ill-defined map. (Speaking of, the new maps are brilliant too.)
The quests are well-thought out with a feeling of impact—each zone has an internal cohesive story arc and most have a sense of closure when you have “finished” a zone. Humor is still there, in abundance, and there’s just enough “epic” to keep you wanting more without diluting the experience.
I envy players just starting out—this is what Warcraft should’ve been from the start.
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