Big Cats and Quests That Aren't

So it ended up taking me an extra four levels until my night elf hunter was able to afford her mount. I'd forgotten just how much I love nightsabers; they are so majestic. Unlike my taurens' kodos, whom I see as purely functional, I actually love watching my hunter ride along on her big new cat, especially with a smaller cat running alongside it. It's just a joy to watch. Now I only have to remember to actually mount up more often - turns out that simply throwing on Aspect of the Cheetah for 24 levels is a hard habit to shake.

As usual I'm really loving the fourties - circling between Stranglethorn Vale, Tanaris, Feralas and the Hinterlands is just good fun all around. One thing I found interesting to revisit and which I hadn't thought about in a long time were the hippogryph eggs in Feralas. It's an interesting mechanic that's kind of like a repeatable quest but not exactly.

Basically there is this gnome in Gadgetzan that has a couple of conversation options about hippogryphs in Feralas, how they are threatened by the Gordunni ogres and how she wants to preserve them by collecting their eggs. You may find yourself reading through these gossip options after another quest sends you to talk to this NPC, but she doesn't actually give you a quest for hippogryph eggs.

However, if you do find yourself in the mountains near the ogres in Feralas and you keep an eye out, you might find nests with eggs in them, and somehow you can stuff an egg that's almost as tall and twice as wide as your character into your backpack. (Though I guess the size might explain why it's labelled as unique and you can't carry more than one at a time.)

If you then return to the gnome in Tanaris, you can stick the egg into the machine next to her and it assigns the egg a quality (bad, ordinary, fine, or extraordinary). Based on the quality of the egg, she will then offer you a reward box. So like a quest really, but not using the usual language of floating exclamation marks and quest log entries.

There are a few of these in Classic (another one I can think of is the Shady Rest Inn - while there are a number of quests associated with it, there is a big "gap" in the middle where after being sent to Theramore and talking to various people there who bring it up, you need to actually find the place on your own and pick up the clues scattered around the area before being given more "proper" quests).

I do think these are pretty neat, and I quite like picking up another egg every time I'm in Feralas now. It also makes me wonder how I'd feel about playing an MMORPG where all the quests required more "discovery" like that instead of simply always being indicated by UI markers... (though chances are I'd not find it as intriguing and more tedious if it was just the default).

On Levelling on a PvP Server

I have more than a passing interest in PvP, but at the same time I'm far from being a hardcore PvPer. Generally I tend to go through phases of high interest in it, which alternate with long periods of me barely doing any at all.

However, one thing I had never done in any MMO before I started playing on Kronos was roll a character on a PvP server. It just didn't seem like my cup of tea, because as I said, there are times when I feel like PvP and times when I don't. I had no interest in forcing it on others or having it forced on me while in the middle of doing something else. You can participate in battlegrounds and have honourable duels on a PvE server too.

At the same time, I did wonder about life on a PvP server sometimes. Some people managed to make it sound quite exciting, and if you've ever had someone of the opposite faction "steal" a gathering node from right under your nose for example, the thought of being able to stop them - or at least get revenge - holds a certain appeal.

So when I found out that whether I chose to play on Nostalrius or on Kronos, I would be on a PvP server, I wasn't too put off. It was worth a try, wasn't it?

Kronos' not too massive population has been helpful in that regard. I was nearly level twenty when I encountered my first Horde player and it was around level thirty that I got ganked for the first time. So far I've never been singled out by a level 60, and I've never been corpse camped. It's been a bit annoying to die and have to do a corpse run just because an orc warrior suddenly jumped out from behind a tree when all I really wanted to do was get from one end of Stranglethorn to the other, but it wasn't the end of the world.

This weekend has really made me rethink the whole thing though, especially since people in guild were discussing the subject as well. PvPers like to argue that playing on a PvP server makes things more exciting - and it kind of does. But to be honest, the only times you come away from this excitement feeling good is when you win. Like that one time an orc hunter tried to kill me on an island off the coast of Desolace. We got into this weird stalemate where he would run or recall his pet whenever I went after either of them, but if I healed up and tried to walk away he would give chase again. We must have swum around the island for a good ten minutes or so when it looked like he managed to get himself trapped in an exhaustion zone without noticing, because we were both in the water and he suddenly lost a huge amount of health quickly and then dropped dead without my intervention. I got a good laugh out of that and felt like he got his just desserts for insisting on harassing me.

The past weekend was less amusing. First I was trying to do that quest at the Grimtotem village in Feralas to free some Sprite Darters. I knew that a Horde rogue and warlock were nearby, but they seemed to be minding their own business so I felt reasonably safe. However, as soon as I started the quest, they were suddenly on top of me and ended up killing both me and my quest NPC - which was annoying in so far as the quest is timed, and even though I had technically succeeded at the objective, I failed the quest since the NPC was dead and I couldn't hand it in. After she respawned I made a point of waiting for the two Horde players to bugger off before I even tried again.

Worse though was when on Sunday I tried to do the mechanical chicken escort in Tanaris. I had already failed it once - my own fault that time - and really wanted to get it done the second time. I was so glad when I was finally only mere meters away from Steamwheedle Port, as good as done... until two tauren hunters suddenly decided to come up behind me and killed both me and the chicken. I'm usually not easy to upset when it comes to PvP, but that really filled me with rage, and if it hadn't been for the language barrier I would have given those tauren a piece of mind involving a lot of swearwords I usually never use. That freaking escort quest takes twenty minutes, and you think it's fun to kill me five meters from the finish line? GG, dickbags.

Soon after that, I logged off for the day even though I hadn't achieved much that weekend. Suddenly I really hated Kronos for being a PvP server. The truth is, I've never had the urge to initiate combat with the opposite faction, so if I'm being honest I'm just making myself a punching bag for other players by going along with it. All that ever happens is that I get attacked by people who are several levels above me, in twink gear, or in a group. Sometimes things get turned around and they are the ones who end up with egg on their face, but that's a cold comfort when compared to the amount of my time that ends up getting wasted by corpse-running and having to re-do quests. I've put up with it because there were no other options at the time, but weekends like these really make me wonder whether it's worth it when I could be having fun with something else where other players aren't able to ruin my enjoyment every step of the way. My free time is really too precious to me these days to waste it on nonsense like that. The notion of a rage quit has never been closer to my heart.

Tales from Southern Kalimdor

My little human rogue finally completed her journey from the northern tip of Kalimdor down to the very south of the continent and hit level sixty. We last met her in Thousand Needles, so these are my impressions of what I saw of Tanaris, Un'goro and Silithus.

Tanaris

Tanaris is still a good zone, but I struggled to be truly enthusiastic about it because I loved the old Tanaris that much more. I always felt that it was a very evocative zone, making you truly feel like you were on the edge of a desert on the ass end of nowhere. The dunes south of Gadgetzan seemed to go on forever, and the goblins didn't give a rat's ass whether you were Horde or Alliance, as long as you didn't pick any fights while within their walls and helped them steal water from the waste wanderers and booze from the local pirates.

The new Tanaris feels smaller somehow, and it is, seeing how almost a quarter of the zone has been flooded by the Cataclysm. When I flew over the shallows where I used to farm waste wanderers, I felt sad at the sight of the area's emptiness. In general, the zone feels way too busy for a desert now though, with hordes of NPC archaeologists fighting over the various ruins and the Southsea pirates being taken on by an entire army. The Horde vs. Alliance conflict rears its ugly head in Gadgetzan as well, with a girl gnome and a goblin whining endlessly at Marin Noggenfogger that he should join their respective side already. You can't help but feel sorry for the man.

One thing I liked was that there is a sort of intro quest line to Zul'Farrak now, which explains why one of the quest givers you meet on the inside is the ghost of a dead troll. It just strikes me as slightly weird design to make quests like that now, when ninety percent of dungeon runners might never even set foot into the zone associated with the instance anymore.

Another thing I found notable in this zone was that after completing all the quests I could find, there were still several sub-zones that I hadn't even touched. This gives me hope that the Horde quests might not all be mirrors of the Alliance ones this time and might actually utilise different environments to tell different stories. I'm looking forward to seeing this one from the other side.

This quest text made me burst into uncontrollable giggles.

Un'goro Crater

Un'goro is a wonderful zone. I was always quite fond of it to begin with - if Tanaris was the desert at the ass end of the continent, then Un'goro was the metaphorical pimple on that ass, not to mention a wild and untamed jungle. Plus it used to have lots of quests that led you all over the zone and gave pretty nice XP.

The new Un'goro somehow managed to capture the charm of the old zone (the developers added a small extra quest hub but on the whole the area still feels like proper "adventuring territory"), while also updating it to Cataclysm standards and adding some new bits and pieces. Old quests feel familiar and slightly streamlined, but not to the point where it feels like you're just being led around by the nose. I actually ran into more than one little surprise that made me go "Oho, what's that?" while exploring.

For example I spotted a little mound of earth with a blue question mark above it in the now abandoned Marshal's Refuge. Of course I had to investigate it, and found it to be the burial site of Dadanga the kodo. Nooo, not Dadanga! I still remember gathering dozens of Bloodpetal sprouts for you and being sorely disappointed by the way you rewarded me with a pumpkin and some moonberry juice. I decided to accept the challenge issued by the new repeatable quest and honour her memory by depositing some Bloodpetal sprouts on her grave. This turned out to be harder than I expected since the damned things don't show up on the herb tracker anymore and you need some pretty keen eyes to spot green sprouts on green ground, but in the end I did it. After depositing my gift, I was rewarded with a little speed buff that lasted a whopping twenty minutes. Still the same old disappointing Dadanga, even in death... /sniff.

One old quest that I was surprised hadn't been removed is the one to rescue Ringo the goblin from Fireplume Ridge. I kind of assumed that the way you had to lead him back to camp yourself and keep sprinkling water on him every so often would have triggered the developers' "not fun enough" sense these days. I guess in a way it did, because while you still need to use the water, you can apparently also keep him going by slapping him every so often before he falls over. I never quite figured out how that was supposed to work though, as the response to my /slap emote seemed very delayed and hardly ever seemed to do any good. It felt like a pretty cruel way to "rescue" someone anyway.

My favourite new addition to the zone were the Maximillian of Northshire quests. I don't think there was a single one of them that didn't make me go: "What the...?" They are incredibly silly and funny, but still manage to not feel out of place. The fact that I was doing them on a rogue added an extra layer of hilarity, as knight Maximillian was not at all impressed by my roguish fighting methods, and would idly stand by as I stunlocked mobs to death. Then he would charge off towards the nearest elite before I could restealth and make me facepalm. I would say the zone is worth doing for his quests alone.

Silithus

Unfortunately, Silithus still sucks. They cleaned it up a bit and removed all those old raid quests and weird currency grinds, plus a couple of quests where I have no idea why they took them out. (The Spirits of Southwind was a rather haunting story in my opinion, and The Calling gave the most interesting bits of lore in the entire zone.) Then they smoothed out a couple of bumps in what was left over, such as adding a remote hand-in here and reducing the number of items needed there (the dwarves down south tell you that "conveniently" another adventurer already brought them the parts they needed from the other two silithid hives, so you only have to go down into the one right next to them)... but that's it. Grinding for encrypted texts is still boring. Killing fifteen dredge strikers just to get a follow-up to kill twenty dredge crushers still feels uninspired.

I found this particularly disappointing since I remembered seeing this video of the 4.1 PTR and fully expected there to be some new and exciting quests with phasing in them. But nope, looks like none of that actually made it into the live game. I guess Silithus was Kalimdor's Arathi Highlands, aka that last zone that the developers didn't find the time for in the end. It's a shame because the story behind the zone has so much potential... but at least with Silithus we're already used to it being a boring place.