Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Wild Weekend Fun

While I have been playing WoW for quite some time there are certain standards that I have adhered to for various reasons. When I create a new character (usually an alliance character) I do the human quests regardless of what race the character is. I found myself growing bored with my characters and I realized that the reason why is because I follow the same pattern with them. So how to break the standard?

Night Elf Druid - Instead of heading right to the human area with my night elf I decided to stick around and do the night elf quests. What I have come up with is this, the night elf areas are large and expansive. Doing the quests here takes a bit longer because of the fact that you have to do a lot of running.

Dwarf Hunter - I stuck around until Loch Modan, I couldn't stand it because of the running that is required once you start doing the Loch Modan quests. It takes way too long to gather what you need and kill what you have to then run all the way back.

Human Mage - The human areas are tightly packed (for the most part) and the quests are all grouped together in similar areas. More frequently than I have seen for any of the other alliance races (gnomes don't count since they don't have their own area) human quests are grouped together.

Take Westfall for example: All of the westfall quests have their own counterpart (in most instances). The quest to gather hops can be completed while killing harvest reapers and other golems. Westfall Stew and Goretusk Liver Pie can be completed together along with the harvest reaper quest. Killing the Defias mobs while gathering bandanas or looking for the messenger. The list goes on, don't get me wrong I am not saying that other areas don't have quests of their own I am merely saying that these quests are more frequent on the human side.

This weekend I did something out of the ordinary for me, I created an Undead Rogue. My wife was gone for the weekend and I was bored. I have found that the quests for the undead are quite similar (in grouping) to the humans. While they are not all as closely packed they are much more gathered than for Taurens and Orcs/Trolls. Other than the beta test where my primary character was an Undead Warlock named CrazyLarry I haven't played any horde past level 21. I hope to change that with my Rogue.

Tauren Shaman - Not exactly packed tight, these quests are spread out across a vast plane that the Tauren inhabit. It takes a bit of running to do most of the quests that you are given up to the point where you are thrust into the barrens.

Undead Rogue - The Forsaken quests are more closely grouped than those of the other races in my opinion. While watching the first two seasons of Smallville I got my undead rogue up to level 16 in one day. For casual playing while watching DVD's that isn't a bad progression.

Orc Hunter - The amount of running required in the starting area for the orcs reminds me of the dwarven area in some ways. You run around doing a crapload of outside quests, then you go into a cave and do a few quests then you're off to the next town.

I may be wrong but it seems like the humans and the undead have a bit of an advantage quest-wise. I have found that I can level any class quicker in the human area (for alliance) or the undead area (for horde) quicker than I can level a race in their own area. That could be the familiarity factor or it could be that those races have a geographical advantage. Who knows?

General Areas: I am so tired of the Stranglethorn Vale area that I'd like to scream every time I run across even a simple potted plant. Blizzard needs to get the hint and create a few more mid-range areas to quest in. On that note I have never really liked the barrens area ether, it involves a lot of running around as well. I was hoping that in the expansion they would surprise us and release some new content for mid-range instead of just new starting areas and new high-level areas. Things are getting really bland on the leveling side of the house. What we get are two new races, two new 1-20 (or so) starting areas and a bunch of high-level content. Something has to give here, I don't want to loose interest in my (and my wife's) favorite game but you can only slaughter trolls and basilisks for so long. I usually progress through my faction's general area and then move on to arathi then STV, then the plaguelands or where ever I can find a few quests. My wife has taken to instance farming/leveling with her characters. Her Priest didn't leave the stockades until she was close to her 30's.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

No where is as bad as the Tauren starting area. You can tell it was built with the original idea of Plains Running being a Tauren racial trait. It takes forever to do Tauren starter quests.

Mr. Gone said...

Yeah I remember that, it was trashed in favor of Kodo mounts. If I remember correctly they didn't get that until level 40 anyway though.

While the view is nice in the Tauren area the scenic view doesn't make up for the constant running you have to do, you're right. :)