Howling Fjord vs Borean Tundra

Howling Fjord vs Borean Tundra  

I remember seeing a post about a week or so ago about a guy saying Fjord was much of a less friendly starting zone to begin questing in when it came to comparing it with tundra. So i figured i’d do both for STARTING IMPRESSIONS, not full zone impressions. Considering the starting impression makes you decide whether you’d like to stay and quest or not.

 

 

HOWLING FJORD

I did my priest (Sunwell geared) in Fjord, and i must say i was very impressed with the entrace. Pretty epic, felt like it was I venturing into a more then just a new land, but a whole new type of game. It was very welcoming, felt great, quests waiting for me the second I got off the boat. The story instantly picked up as if I just finished killing illidan in outland.

 

The first quest to defend the town against the wolves and vrykul was very cool. Although, the area seemed a little small and closterphobic. You didn’t have any space from anyone else questing around you. But it was a very cool starting quest considering you got to see new enemy player models.

 

Once done with that, major quest hubbing opened up for wyrmskull village. This was a very cool village of quests, new kinds, got to interact with arthas during the spirit quest. Which was a pretty cool quest specially if you got to witness him squish you like a fly.

 

I wasn’t very impressed with the catacombs quests. It wasn’t very fun for me. The artifact lootable pieces for the quest were barely glowing so was kinda hard to notice them at first and 300 ppl looting them made it kind of a pain. Also, the ashbringer artifact quest, did NOT feel as epic as it should have, given the item you just looted, you were not hinted at all of it being ashbringer until Tirion said so. Should have been more lorey of a quest line graphically. Kind of like the last DK quest.

 

The prisoner quest was just fine, Although, they fought for you and followed, but some ended disappearing or dying. What’s the point if you don’t have to escort them anywhere? Should be an escort or they just run away to safety for the purpose of it making sense.

 

The ring quest to kill the non elite named mobs, and loot the piece off the last guy and for the prisoner was pretty fun. Doesn’t say group quest from what I remember. Well geared, or DK’s can easily do this quest. Interesting quest though, although the mobs weren’t very unique at all. The quest reminded me of the Ring of Blood from nagrand except less fun in every way. The ring would be a great opening quest if it was designed like ring of blood, where each named is summon based off what quest you’re on, and was elite, and a group could do it. The problem right now is randoms tagging the named everytime you need it, and the ring introduces the next named, it’s like a cycle that won’t end. Where as ring of blood you can start from whereever you left off. Would be a little more epic, and feel more epicish. And the reward for this quest was sub-par for how well it could have been designed.

 

The rest of the wyrmskull quests were just fine, such as the harpooned soldiers and the plans off the harpooners. The quests quickly sent you to other sides of Fjord to begin quests, which was VERY quickly, not much time spent in wyrmskull.

 

Overall: TO much travelling to quickly, little closterphobic, some quests could have been made more epic given how well of a thought out quest it was. Overall 6/10

 

BOREAN TUNDRA

 

So i decided to do this on my death knight at lvl 68. I figured it’d be a little trouble since my gear was pretty crap as outland didn’t give anything decent of an upgrade and my lvl being only 68.

 

So we start off with valiance keep. I must say, i was pretty unimpressed with the entrance. It was so un-epic, felt boring, nothing special happened, no interaction with arthas at the begining.

 

Once I began the quests with killing the crypt fiends, netting down the scourge flamespitters and the quests rewards being good, I begin to like the pace of the quests. Very simple, good rewards, great experience and felt like I had much room to go around and do things how i pleased in comparison to wyrmskull vilalge where i was limited to a corner.

 

The quests to find the cultists in valiance was a pretty cool quest. I enjoyed that one. The lore started to pick up here.

 

I also loved the whole questing hub for Farshire. Very simple quests, AMAZING rewards (specially to ring the bell quest). Lighting the plagued grain on fire, seeing the corrupt soliders, and the harvesters and ghouls made it feel like a very traditional warcraft 3 quest where the grains are plagued. Was very lorey and made you feel like you were finally in the battle against arthas but only at the begining of saving the people he’s trying to kill. The quest felt like westfall due to the geography of the area.

 

Although, it would have been awesome if the quest givers were Old blanchy and the group :P Give people a nice memory. I was even hoping for some undead defias zombies but I guess i was stretching it lol.

 

After this quest line, it moved into Riplash Strand where the tuskar gave you more simple and easy quests. I particularly enjoyed this quest, specially since you get to do quests for a naga. It finally seemed like I was on a diff side of the battle, and now everyone was against arthas.

 

Seirously, Ragnar’s spawn time is just ridiculous, make this faster. I think I fell asleep waiting for him to spawn.

 

Another thing I noticed is it said to go RIPLASH RUINS for Ragnar, where alot of people were searching RIPLASH STRAND thinking it was the ruins aswell and had trouble finding him. Maybe a new name for the ruins would be a little more helpful.

 

Particularly enjoyed fighting the big monster in the lake, i soloed lurker below! Ha! Anyways, cool quest, he should have had some kind of YELL or stuff. Make it more interactive.

 

After done with riplash, sends you over to Kaskala. Great great quest hub, I swear i had the same quest again from riplash strand to kill the raiders? Maybe im jus delerious.But the quests were great, and the quests from there on leading to Thassarian quests were amazing. But i’ll leave that for another post.

 

Overall 8.5/10

 

Would definately chose tundra over Fjord from what I see.

 

Welcome to leave comments and feedback on what you feel needs to be changed or added or removed.******FROM THE STARTING IMPRESSIONS ONLY, NOT WHOLE ZONE FEEDBACK******* Please refrain from bashing and heat talk as I’d like this to be a constructive post for the blue team.

 

The Windfury thread

The Windfury thread  

This isn’t a class-specific topic and it’s going to generate a huge amount of discussion, so let’s just get it in general and let everybody take a stab at it rather than trying to piece together the changes from posts in each class forum.

 

If you missed it in the notes, Windfury Totem is now a 10% haste buff rather than a chance to proc an extra attack. This is probably a positive change for the game in the long run as it will greatly reduce the randomness that is rampant when WFT is present. The bad news is it completely throws all existing theory on how the melee classes are balanced out the window of a 50 story building. Every warrior spec, rogue spec, enhancement shamans, feral druids, ret and prot paladin and probably even hunter and warlock pets are going to need a solid head-to-toe on how this change affects their abilities and DPS.

 

The big winners are rogues, fury warriors, enhancement shamans and druids: the former because the haste buff now affects their offhands as well as their main hands and the latter because they never got Windfury before this anyway. There’s no listed change to Windfury Weapon for shamans, so it is probable that their self buff now stacks with their totem buff. This is great for everyone as they will no longer be tempted to drop a different air totem instead of Windfury. If hunter and warlock pets are affected by this it’s great for them since they never had it before either.

 

We don’t really know the full extent of the tanking changes yet, so for now we can guess that both prot specs are probably not going to see drastic change here.

 

The minor loser is Ret. An extra attack from a two handed weapon was extremely powerful but far more bursty than it had any right to be. The increased haste makes Seal of Vengeance even more hilariously bad for Alliance than it was before, but it is pretty solid for Horde. The yet-unknown Seal of Corruption may change how Windfury is viewed by Ret.

 

Arms is the spec that gets the biggest kick int he junk. Unless Slam is modified somehow the current rotation that Arms warriors use will have unreasonably small margins of error if they aren’t outright impossible to play: without 3 seconds between swings, even if Slam changes to work like Steady Shot does now (cast between swings to get an extra hit off, does not reset swing timer) you’ll never be able to fit both a Slam and an instant ability between swings.

 

I would probably elaborate more but I am really tired. This change is pretty major in terms of melee class balance, so it warrants some discussion.

 

Around Azeroth: The fallen protector

 Around Azeroth: The fallen protector

 

Undeath seems to be more contagious than the Spanish influenza. (Gasp! Too soon for that joke?) While spending a little quality time in Naxxramas, night elf priestess Fallion of <Rampage> on Turalyon got a taste of undead life, courtesy of Sapphiron. Her Spirit of Redemption is a little prettier than the usual bones/shackles/braaaaaains style of undead, but probably looks worse in tiered armor, considering that it doesn’t usually have wing-holes.

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards.

 

World of Warcraft mouse available for pre-order

World of Warcraft mouse available for pre-order

Although we’d heard about the World of Warcraft mouse as early as a month ago, there weren’t much details about the reportedly $100 mouse and what made it so remarkably expensive. But tipster Marco wrote in today to point us in the direction of the new SteelSeries World of Warcraft mouse designed exclusively for the game. Although I recently bought a new Razer hoping to improve my PvP, this steeply priced gadget looks so remarkably, temptingly sweet that I just might pre-order one today.

Aside from the unique form factor and slick brushed metal enclosure, the $99.99 price tag will give players the ability to make macros with up to 160 characters, a whopping total of fifteen (oh man!) programmable buttons, the ability to drag-and-drop macros, and — get this — 16 million illumination choices with 3 intensity and pulsation levels. I have absolutely no idea what that last part means, but it sounds pretty wicked. Probably unnecessary and overboard, but wicked nonetheless.

The mouse, the first ever designed purely for playing World of Warcraft, promises to be beneficial to all players regardless of style or level of play. [CLARIFICATION: It probably works for other applications or games, but it's the first mouse designed from the ground up specifically for playing WoW] Looking like the bastard love child of a Worn Turtle Shield and Tim Burton’s cocooned 1989 Batmobile, the mouse will start shipping on November 13 — around the same time as some sort of game expansion, I think. It’s all pretty cool, and I’m just about sold despite the stupefying price tag… I’ve just got one question: will it work on a Mac?

 

Engineering

Even with a toolbox, huge bags, and a really deep ammo pouch I’m still pressed for space. I’ve noticed that with the Traveler’s Mammoth being released we now have a valid way to travel and stay away from cities and towns for extended periods of time. As an Engineer and Miner, and all around profession junkie, I lack the bag space for a lot of things. The Repair Bots were certainly a boon to raiders when they were first conceived and given to engineers, now though they’ve simply become just another space in my inventory which I have to worry about and keep a stock of. I don’t doubt this was a good idea when it was originally implemented but now we have a mount and companion tab. I think its time that the Repair bot became a companion with its own unique cooldown that we can create as a one time use toy much like our Apex professions. This alone could optimize bag space and the new Scrapbot could very well me made useless by the the Traveler’s Mammoth.

Who doesn’t want to tool around on a hog with a little mechanical buddy in the sidecar squeeling his gears out! Raise your hand. Anyone?

Deep Sea Fishing!

I was talking with a friend about how fishing, even with the upcoming reduction, is a *!!@@ and a half to level up- there’s just not enough of a variety of stuff to do while we’re fishing.

So we came up with this idea to spice things up a bit - Deep Sea Fishing trips.

A boat would leave a major harbor (or all major harbors?) every hour (or whatever) - taking it’s passengers out into deeper waters (this would probably be instance based), where there can be a small island/atoll or even a large raft, at which point qualifying fishermen can jump off and catch special deep-sea fish.

The possibilities are endless with this- just a few simple ideas: there can be a charge on a trip (round trip- 20g?), it can involve fishing quest lines, there could be multiple deep-sea locations (different harbors lead to different locales), some could be horde/alliance only, others could be pvp free-for-all zones. It really could open up fishing to a whole new territory, even if it’s just a simple little addition without any of the extra frills.

It seems to me that something like this wouldn’t be very complicated to put together, but what do I know… :)

Your thoughts?

JC gets “Lazer Sights” — Eng gets sha

JC gets “Lazer Sights” — Eng gets sha   

I’m not sure what the exact effect is, other than they apparently focus a beam of light on a target.

And yeah, it sounds like Smoke Flares 2.0 — so I question the usefulness. But the fact remains: Engineers have been asking for “laser” stuff like this for years (laser targeting on our goggles, etc), and now the Jewelcrafters get it. Great. Not only do they get a wide array socketable trinkets, but now they get lazer sights. =/

Yet another nail in the coffen for Engineering.

If it makes you feel any better, Deathknights are a class practically built from the suggestions for improving paladins

Personally I don’t care though, I never use flares, i’ll probably never use the lasers either. The lasers seem somewhat pointless since you can already mark the target with a symbol.

Actually scratch that, if EVERYONE carries one, then you can use them to see whos assigned to what target. So basically jewelcrafters will either be super rich if it catches on, or more than likely no one will ever use them

We want your Beta UIs

We want your Beta UIs

Reader U.I. of the Week is looking for your user interfaces that you’re using in the beta right now. With Wrath of the Lich King and patch 3.0.2 around the corner we want to get the word out there to everyone about what is working and what isn’t in the upcoming patch, and what better way to do that then to show off what other readers are using!

Send us screenshots and some information about your U.I. to  and you might see it featured here soon enough!

We’ll also be compiling a list of working addons for the upcoming patch, along with where you can get the latest and greatest versions when the patch drops on October 14th. With a little bit of work all your addon needs should be a-okay come patch 3.0.2.

 

38 Studios buys WoW newsletter

38 Studios buys WoW newsletter

Here’s a strange little story — 38 Studios is the MMO/entertainment company owned by baseball player Curt Schilling (who is himself a very big WoW fan). They’re working on a secret project codenamed Copernicus (which our sister site Massively has been covering closely), but apparently they have other interests as well — they’ve picked up a company called Mentor Media, whose main product is the Azeroth Advisor, a custom newsletter about World of Warcraft.

I don’t know if we’ve ever mentioned Azeroth Advisor on the site before — they claim to send you a custom newsletter (for a fee) built around your own personal character, but most of the information and guides you can actually get from them are pretty much equivalent to what you’d find here on WoW Insider (or less helpful, if we may say so ourselves see update below*). Still, for casual players who just can’t get enough information (and who don’t want to browse our WoW insider Directory to find guides for your specific class), it might give you something else to read.

But what’s strangest about this is why 38 Studios, a company working on its own MMO, has chosen to pick up a company that produces an unofficial newsletter about World of Warcraft. It’s like Bioware buying World of Matticus (not that Matt is for sale or anything like that). Maybe they eventually have plans to have Mentor Media start producing content about Copernicus, or maybe Curt Schilling just found the guides really helpful and figured he’d like to own the company that made them. Stay tuned for a possible interview with 38 Studios to see if we can figure out the reasons behind the purchase.

Update: I let my obvious bias for our site show a little too much there — Azeroth Advisor provides a valuable service to some players, and they work hard to do so. I apologize for hinting otherwise. Stay tuned for an interview to learn more about the site and the people behind it.

 

AT&T maintenance tonight to cause connection issues

AT&T maintenance tonight to cause connection issues

A news announcement on the login screen is letting us all know that AT&T, the people who provide data center service to Blizzard, will be performing maintenance tonight from 12:00 a.m. EST until 5:00 a.m. EST.

This will likely cause problems with both being able to login to the game and stay connected. This is an odd maintenance announcement, and one that I don’t recall seeing before.

Hopefully this will not develop into anything more serious – such as extended network outages or other such issues.