All in a Day's Work

Lal and Elionene hit level 90 last weekend. Since then it's been a little overwhelming as to what to spend our time doing. There are numerous daily quests, scenarios, heroics, and of course there are the rest of Townlong Steppes and the Dread Wastes to finish. I like having options, and when you have limited time to play, you're forced to prioritize what you do in game. Here's what I've done.

Since my primary goal is to enjoy the story of Pandaria, I'm much more inclined to focus on finishing the quest chains in each zone. We're very close to finishing Townlong and then it will be on to Dread Wastes, where there is a new daily hub with the Klaxxi. While I say that is my primary goal, I will admit to being distracting by the many other quest hubs. We needed to do Golden Lotus every day because Lal is a tailor and Elio is a Leatherworker, and we needed Honored status with the Golden Lotus to have access to our patterns. It took us about a week to get there, and now Lal has her fancy epics made because she's been able to stockpile cloth since we started leveling. With Elio, on the other hand, I can't make one piece of epic gear because I need a lot of Spirit of Harmony just to make one piece.

We'll continue to do Golden Lotus to open up the other factions. We're also pretty hooked on farming, as it seems to be the best way to get guaranteed Motes of Harmony once you have opened up your farm. It really isn't that difficult either. Then there's the Cloud Serpent dailies, which we have been doing, but I don't feel  are that necessary because it's just for the mount, whereas some of the other factions were about gear for when we start raiding. Most of our raiders have just hit 90, so the next few weeks should see us finally getting into regular heroic runs.

Speaking of heroics, I've only done a couple and they've seemed fairly standard. I've also done a few Scenarios that have been a lot of fun because it's something different. I haven't gotten to do as many as I would have liked due to the amount of other things there are to do, but I am looking forward to writing out some lore posts for the dungeons soon.

I see a few people on the forums complaining about the amount of dailies they "have" to do and the fact that there is no cap makes it a horrible burden. If you're one of those people, I can understand what you're saying, but I would also advise you just to look at what's there, and prioritize. If you're after gear, you only have to worry about Golden Lotus and Klaxxi for the most part. You can get any honor gear without reputation from the vendor in Townlong. Valor gear is available with rep, but the valor gear is not something you need to start raiding, so you have time to work your way up with the reputations and then get the valor gear you need to fill in the gaps you haven't gotten from the raid instances.Other reps, such as Tillers, Cloud Serpents, and Anglers, offer mainly cosmetic rewards such as mounts and pets. I'd save those for if you have time, or after you've got your gear situation settled. You could argue that Tillers is more necessary than the others because you can grow Motes of Harmony and ingredients for buff food.

I've taken some fun screen shots. This one is of a Pandaren that will play music for you if you pay her two gold. She's located in Halfhill at the market, as well as in the Alliance city on the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. You'll also see Lal and Elio at the top of Mount Neverest up above, and a nice shot I took from Zouchin Village in Northern Kun-Lai. I'm continually impressed at the art design in Mists. Everything from Jade forest to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms has been a delight to look at and quest around.

Since turning 90, I've had the chance to tame two of the new rare hunter pets, and our guild got together for the Wanderer's festival in Krasarang last Sunday. I'll be sure to put up shots of that in the next post. Until then, have a good morning!

My First Day in Pandaria

Months after seeing the majesty of the Jade Forest on the beta for Mists of Pandaria, I finally made my first foray back onto the island yesterday. I picked up the basic game at the local game store at midnight, but because we live on the east coast I wasn't going to be able to stay up until 3 AM when the expansion went live. Instead I went to bed because unlike some others I did not have the luxury of taking any time off work to play. I did manage to leave a bit early though, and all the way home I couldn't stop chanting, "Pandas Pandas Pandas Pandas!"

Eating a hasty dinner, my wife and I logged in together. She had actually already gotten to play, but spent the time leveling professions, waiting for me before actually heading to Pandaria. Elionene is and will always be my main, so along with Lal, we got sent on a special mission for the King of Stormwind to the mysterious new found land in the south. I enjoyed the quest set up quite a bit. I'm excited to experience new stories and lore again. 

I won't spoil any specific quests or things here for those that may have not have seen it all yet, but we played well into the evening and made it probably 65% of the way to level 86. In that time, I feel like we'd barely made a dent into the Jade Forest having just arrived at Dawn's Blossom before we stopped. In that time we had defeated horde forces, befriended two new races of people, and fought off an invading force of a third new race. And that was just the beginning of the zone.

As I said before when I was in the beta, the setting of Pandaria is beautiful. It's seemingly endless and so full of color. The Pandaren villages are bustling with activity, and there's always something to new and interesting around every corner. I found myself content just to look around and click on various NPCs to see what they had to say. One of the meditating Pandaren in the first village told me, "You are only good for ordering food at restaurants and spending your guild's money!' That made me smile. Later on, at Dawn's Blossom, a little Pandaren girl showed me she could burp. It was most impressive. 

One particular area had me in awe at the design. The Den of Sorrow is a small cave with water shrines inside, and a waterfall as well. A main story line quest takes you inside, so you shouldn't have to worry about missing it. The calm atmosphere of a haunted cave with the sound of falling water was so peaceful. Speaking of the sound, I was sure to turn up my music volume while playing, so I could enjoy the wonderful music in the new areas. One of my guild members was thrilled to hear a string duet in Pearlfin Village that was wonderful indeed. If you happen to be in Dawn's Blossom stop by the local inn, The Drunken Hozen, for what must be some of the best music ever composed for World of Warcraft. I heard several different songs upon leaving and entering the inn over the course of the night. They were all great.

The quests flowed smoothly from one to the other, and I have to say I'm enjoying the new quest reward system where everything you get is good for your class and current spec. As a hunter, spec doesn't really dictate gear choices that much, so that was one less thing to worry about. None of the items were upgrades to my normal Dragon Soul gear yet, but as we continued on the stat difference started to close. One quest even gave us a new vanity pet!

While there were plenty of the regular kill and fetch quests, there were a few other quests that stood out. A set of three or so quests have you reliving a story as three different story tellers. Along with being fun and different, there was a small story reveal that propelled you onward. I thought it was really cool. If you want to make sure you don't miss it it's part of the quests in Pearlfin Village, which you should arrive at shortly after leaving the first Pandaren village of Paw'don, and involves the Alliance NPCs from SI:7.

I'm looking forward to continuing the story tonight, and maybe try our the first dungeon of the zone, Temple of the Jade Serpent.  I ran it during the beta, but it wasn't quite the same as running it with a guild group at level with quests. As I've done in the past, I plan to write a lore post about each dungeon, and how it fits into the overarching lore of Pandaria and the World of Warcraft. Happy hunting, and see you in Pandaria!

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Were 5 Levels Enough?

Since I couldn't recently find the time or subject matter to write about anything I thought up myself, this post is brought to you courtesy of Ringo Flinthammer via the Blog Azeroth shared topics forum.

Ringo asks, "For the first time, WoW's latest expansion, Cataclysm, only raised the level cap by 5 levels, in addition to the other content it added. Was Blizzard right to make this call? All other things being equal -- the same number of high level zones and dungeons, for instance -- should they have raised the cap by 10 levels? Should the fourth expansion be a 5-level or 10-level jump?"


When Blizzard announced the next expansion would only be 5 levels instead of 10, I was probably about as shocked as everyone else. Did that mean it was only half an expansion? Would the overall content introduced with Cataclysm be less than what we've gotten used to with previous expansions? A lot of people probably thought Blizzard was taking the easy road by having to develop only five levels of content.  I think after experiencing the Cataclysm first hand, I can see a lot of reasons why they went with only five levels, and it certainly wasn't to screw us out of content.

There are different types of people who play WoW, and Blizzard tries to provide ways for all of those types of people to enjoy the game. I want to look at just two of those types of people. Those who like leveling, and those who don't.  Typically those who like the aspect of leveling aren't as committed to end game content (raiding, heroics, gearing, etc.), though that is certainly not a given. Levelers may like to quest, try out different races and class combinations, play a lot of alts, and other things that are all part of the 1 to 85 leveling process. Those who don't like leveling usually want to level as fast as they can so they can enjoy the end game content more. Again, not always the case. These end-gamers like to spend more time at the top level and therefore may have fewer low level alts, and enjoy running end game heroics and raids to get the best gear.  These are some pretty specific stereotypes, but I'll be using these viewpoints to look at two very different ways of seeing the 5 levels in Cataclysm.

Levelers
At first you might think people who love to level should be disappointed in only 5 new levels in Cataclysm. You move through zones a bit faster than you may have in Wrath or Burning Crusade, and there aren't as many new zones to begin with. While it probably takes a good deal more time to get to 85 from 80 than it did to get to 75 from 70, the process of going from starting level to top level is faster, so those people who really enjoy the leveling process have a shorter time in that process than they had before.

But there is something else to look at.  If you do enjoy leveling, there's a good chance you enjoy alts and leveling early levels as well, and Cataclysm practically revamped the 1-60 leveling experience for every class and race. That means that in addition to 80-85, we got 1-60 as well. So if you really like leveling, then you got quite a bit more than just 10 levels. New content, new quests, new levels, and new places to see.  If you're not that invested in end game content, there's a whole new world for you to explore.  I think we have to take this into account when looking at what was added in Cataclysm.  There might only be five more new levels, but they also upgraded a whole 60 levels of quests and zones.

End-gamers
I think Blizzard really likes its end game crowd.  For people who only level because they have to in order to run end game content, and thus want to get it over with as quickly as possible, well, now they only have 5 levels to contend with instead of 10.  And to top that off, there is about as much end game content in Cataclysm as there was in Wrath and TBC.  There are three raids, all accessible at 85 with a relatively similar gear level, and numerous heroic dungeons to run. There were three raids when Wrath started as well, and that was after you had to slog through 10 levels of content.

End-gamers probably got the better end of the deal in this regard compared to those who like to level. While the latter do have a whole new 1-60 experience to enjoy, they don't get as much content in the higher levels.

Personally, I'm a mix of both of these views as I very much enjoy leveling and seeing new content, but I also have spent the majority of time on Elionene, my main character, to get her ready for raiding. I'm looking forward to raiding and downing bosses, but I'm also looking forward to when I can spend less time getting ready for raids, and more time working on alts and seeing early level zones.  Lal and I both would love to spend some time on the new Dwarves or Night Elves we created between 4.0.1 and the release of the expansion.

Again, these are two very specific points of view. But I think it illustrates well that 5 levels, for the most part, was enough for this expansion. The reasoning being that Blizzard also spent an inordinate amount of time and resources on both the earlier leveling experience and the end game content, to keep the ultimate amount of content in this expansion on par with their other expansions. So for the next expansion, if they are only introducing new content and not changing any of the old content, then I would hope for at least 10 new levels. But I don't think that's what will happen. It think they'll stick with the 5 level expansion from now on, just so they don't get numbers that seem ridiculously big to work with. So it will take 3 more expansions to get to level 100, rather than 2. Here's hoping for a revamped Outland and maybe even Northrend in a couple expansions.