As snow fell outside on Christmas for the first time in Atlanta since the 1800s, I sat around idly sipping something warm and wondering what to do. I’d completed my dailies and there was time to kill, so I bit the silver bullet and rolled up a worgen. In moments, Onsunshine stood in the streets of Gilnaes, ready to lend a paw in the battle to save the city.
Over the course of a few hours I slogged through the starter zone. For me the zone was very much “Aliens Vs. Predator”…. 15 minutes of awesome surrounded by two and a half hours of suck.
I’ll give full credit where it’s due: some of the quests were downright engaging and entertaining. “Grandma’s House” was decorated amusingly with portraits of presumably grandchildren on the mantle. Gazing upon the aftermath of Deathwing’s assault brought a long and thoughtful look. The atmosphere was sound and the story of a quasi-Victorian city under siege and the plight, fight, and flight of the survivors moved briskly. So why did I hate it?
Ian noted that I disliked the area because it was gloomy and depressing. Although I dismissed the comment out of hand at the time, it likely factored in to a small degree. Although it was appropriate for the setting, I don’t play games to feel depressed. Just sayin’. My biggest gripe has to be the sheer volume of killtenrats quests. Although I’m generally ok with them, I realized that, for the most part, most of my playtime had been devoured just doing one right after the other. Generally, everything that wasn’t a killtenrats was completed in ninety seconds or less (“grab a book from the shed next to me”, “talk to the person standing over there”, and so forth.) so a vastly disproportionate period of time was spent doing the ‘non-fun’ grind. To top things off, the quest line is so linear it may as well be on a railroad track. Not only should you kill the ten rats, you MUST to do anything else on the island and since you’re walled off from the ‘real’ world in a starter instance, you don’t have the option of doing anything else.
When I finally left the isle, Onsunshine was level 13 and I’m enjoying the druid mechanics immensely.
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