ang: (basterds» tres francais)
hiit iit and quiit iit ([personal profile] ang) wrote2010-12-24 12:23 am

(no subject)

I was going to whine here about my paladin's mediocre DPS and then I realized NO ONE CARES.

Anyway,

Things I am entertained yet saddened by:

* While Beckah was never going to play World of Warcraft anyway because she hates elves and fantasy or something, and also because it costs money, now she really can't play it because there are way too many tentacles. Like, you're just walking along in Ashenvale or something and then BAM, holy fuck, there's a bunch of fucking tentacles coming out of the ground being all Old-God-influenced and shit.

Things I like:

* Deepholm. The whole thing. I liked knowing what my goal for the entire zone was starting from the first few quests (rebuild the World Pillar). I liked helping out all the various groups their in their fights. I adore Therazane and all the earth elementals. I love the way the place looks and feels (it's kind of Outland, which is probably why). I even like most of the dailies. And I like the way that you actually feel like you accomplished something at the end of the questline. Basically, it was awesome.

* The Iso'rath questline in Twilight Highlands. So first you get eaten by some Old God shit. And then you have to face waves and waves of mobs until you die, and then Thrall rezzes you and is like GO SOLO DEATHWING WHILE YOU'RE AT 10% HEALTH, and even though this is insane, you can't even attack Deathwing anyway, and then it is ALL A NIGHTMARE, but you are still in the stomach of some Old God shit and you have to free some lolzy shamans from their nightmare tentacles and then they help you fight the brain of the Old God shit, but there are some tiny boss mechanics where the zone gives you a debuff and you have to keep running back to the safe zone to lose the debuff. I never got to do any of the Old God raid bosses, and while this is obviously much much easier, it seemed to have the same sort of feel as those things and I found it a really successful questline. Plus, I like how the enhancement shaman you save tells you his nightmare was about being forced to heal raids where no shaman gear ever dropped. STORY OF MY LIFE ON MY ENHANCEMENT SHAMAN, DUDE. (Well, 5 man dungeons, but the NUMBER OF TIMES I HAVE HEARD "shaman, you heal" even though I'm in all +agi gear is enough for a lifetime already.)

* That the zones are largely designed to be completely soloed. While I'm sure some people will cry "nerf!" because now the game gives you helper NPCs instead of demanding you go find an appropriate group in General, I actually really like that you can complete a zone even if you can't find a group. The only actual group quest I've found so far was the Crucible of Carnage in Twilight Highlands, and it's skippable unless you want the weapon rewards from the end of it. This is really nice because I always hated finding a group quest when I was leveling Honor because I knew I'd have difficulty finding folks to complete it with. Now, when future expacs come out and these zones are deserted, you can still experience them at level largely in their entirety.

* I like how the zones, like, teach you stuff now. A lot of normal quest mobs do things like create void zones where you can't stand or you'll get poisoned, or attacks where you need to move out of the way, which is really useful for future fights in dungeons. The quests in Thousand Needles to kill the various leaders of the Grimtotem Clan basically teaches you how to DPS for lots of boss fights with very different mechanics. The mini-bosses you get out in the world in Cata (who may or may not be actual elites) often have a quirky mechanic that teaches you to move while DPSing, be aware of your surroundings, etc. So while grouping up is less necessary, you are still taught a lot of the things you need to know for while in a group.

* Archaeology. Except for how I still haven't found the epic troll sword. :(

* How badass my Worgen looks when she channels Mind Flay.

Things I Don't Like

* Because the zones are so linear now, if a single quest is bugged, it can render the entire rest of a zone unavailable. You can't just go quest elsewhere in the zone. The rest of the quests will be completely unavailable. Which is unfortunate.

* Retribution paladin mechanics are fairly clunky at the moment and I hope they are streamlined.

* All the instant freaking respawns. The number of panicked moments I've had due to being respawned on top of, or a mob respawning immediately upon death is... very high.

* Tol Barad is basically broken. The system is such that once you have Tol Barad, defending is very easy. (Attackers much capture all three points, defenders only need to maintain one point. That means the defensive strategy is to cap a point, then zerg the next point once the attackers have capped a point, so that there is always one point capped, keeping the attackers from winning.) The losing team also gets no Tol Barad Commendations at all, which means that once a faction loses Tol Barad, getting enough players to play to retake it is nearly impossible. Not having Tol Barad locks you out of 10 of 16 dailies for Baradin's Wardens/Hellscream's Reach, which locks you out of a number of nice pre-raiding gear upgrades at high rep levels, and it also locks you out of the raid for those who have control of Tol Barad. Boo.

* Some seriously sketchy race stuff. Gidwin calling the Scourge baroness who kidnapped him a "nappy-headed horror" (are we really referencing Don Imus, Blizz?) in the paladin pals questline in Eastern Plaguelands really ruined an otherwise amazing story. And now there's Uldum and the sand pygmies. I just. Really, guys? Really? Some folks at [livejournal.com profile] wow_ladies keep saying it's almost like there are two creative teams that don't even talk to each other for the different zones. There are these really awesome thoughtful zones with really compelling questlines, and then there's this crap. I feel like I should go into depth on this more, but mostly, I'm just baffled. And kind of annoyed that it's very difficult to lodge a complaint with Blizz about either this sort of thing or some of the blatant sexism in the game.

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