As with pretty much everybody has said, it has its good and bad sides.


The one thing that makes me batty is the bugs when your doing phased and cut scene stuff. Like when you do the caravan quest into Uldum. Both my wife and I got stuck once the cut scene stuff was done. We couldnt move. We both had to relog to be able to move out of the cage.


I also got stuck in Hyjal till I found the quest by the trampoline. I was like I can't be done yet. I was 83 so I left and went to the next zone. Last night I went back to skill my herbing and mining and found the quests I missed and started doing them.

 

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An age old problem with these games is - how does make each player, one of thousands on a server, feel special and unique and a hero?


There's no great answer to this. The phasing and stuff WoW is doing is one such way. I kind of like it, but it's not original WoW so while this would (will) feel natural in a Bioware game, it's a fairly big shift for WoW.


Obviously some players will like it and some won't. I like it, I think Aun asks a fair question, is it overdone, and how does this affect alts?


I would have to answer, if it's done well, which so it appears to be, I can't complain too much.

 

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I rather like the quest/zone design changes. So I don't think they did miss the picture. I don't really think of it as "directed gameplay". I look at it as consolidation and efficiency. Sure they tell you what zone to head to next, but they did that in the past as well. From what I can tell, you can head to any level appropriate zone, and pick up quests. I have headed to areas out of sequence, and was able to start questing there if I was high enough.

Edit: This comment was about leveling alts, not the 81-85 content.

 

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Agreed, I love the change. It feels more story-driven than random-acts-of-kindness. Maybe it's just me, but that guy standing in the middle of nowhere waiting for a hero to come and save his cat from the tree doesn't make much sense.


The guy who sends word to Stormwind for help because his cat is stuck in a tree and the local constable directs you there because you're a so-called hero does.


Yes, yes, bad example, I know, but everyone loves pussy . . . cats that is.

 

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Well said, Pally, well said.

 

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Ohh Ohh Ohh !!! GC Sighting!!!!

 

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I am not a fan of the linearity or the phasing. Also, some of the quest rewards don't make sense. You are doing a chain and right off the bat you get your choice of blue gear. Then later throughout the quest chain it will offer you that same gear but in green and lower item level. But there would be no way that you missed the piece that was blue because the chain is linear.

 

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TLDR version: The phasing stuff is nice in lower level areas, but most people won't get/want to see them, which kind of sucks.

You know, I have mixed feelings about this. I've done a little bit of the new lands, but then decided to park them for a few days to let the leveling craze die down slightly, and instead worked on some lower level alts. I made a worgen druid even though I already have a night elf druid, but I wanted to experience the worgen stuff, which I found pretty interesting, and had to remind myself a few times that it's sort of a prequel of things that happened just before cataclysm (sort of like the death knight scenario).

Another thing I liked is how fast leveling is now. I've noticed many people already hit 85 within a few days of the expansion releasing, and on top of that, it doesn't feel too much like leveling anymore, if you're questing anyway. I hit 31 on my druid and finished darkshore and ashenvale, and started a few quests in stonetalon mountains.

I then played a 41 priest, and did quests in Western and Eastern plaguelands and managed to get to 45 in a few hours. I like the changes they made, and it seems to flow better, story-wise. Most quests don't feel like "go kill 10 animals" anymore, even though they're still basically the same, and the phasing stuff changing the landscape slightly as you advance feels nice too.

I then played my 53 hunter, and went to Felwood. I saw a lot of interesting quests there, including one where you watch Illidan as he rises to power and eventually gets corrupted (and it didn't dawn on me that I had to help him fight those mobs until I failed the quest when he died fighting Arthas lol). The questing is largely like Outlands and Northrend in that you do some quests in one hub area, then they send you to the next area, and the stories in the quest for the most part are interesting (although as Alliance it sucks in that Horde seems to be claiming a lot of territory, such as Southshore and Silverwind Refuge). I then did Winterspring, and noticed they have a mini-STV like hub area where you have to kill x amount of animals, then another x amount, then a named mob. I also did a quest where I had to find a machine called "Echo 3", then when I found it, the screen blacked out, and when it came back, I was upside in the cave with a giant yeti coming at me, and had to break the ice out (lol, Empire Strikes Back homage, and no I didn't get to cut its arm off or run out the cave because I had to fight my way out lol).

You know what my biggest gripe is? That despite all these zones being redone (fairly well too I might add), the vast majority of players will never experience it. Mostly because their alts are all high levels, or they have no interest in making a newbie character, so many players will never get to see some of the cool things like I just mentioned. New players will, but only if they go to those zones. So that's kind of a drawback to having too many zones to choose from. Yeah, you can always go to those zones and do low level questing, but most people probably won't.

Urk, nice post.


Yeah, even though I've got a lot of 80's, I still have a bunch at different levels scattered from teens through 70ish.


I went back to some of the lower zones (rolled another pally from scratch to tank for my guild when they are ready to do deadmines). And I was left unsettled with some of the zones half-redone and other parts left untouch. NPCs there had been advanced in storyline and I wondered how many new players would even understand references (example: guard thomas in red ridge, most of westfall, corporal Keeshan, etc.) I wondered if those new story lines could stand alone without earlier game experience.


Guildmates and I have been talking about this topic since I started the thread and we're still trying to sort it out. We have at least collectively reached the conclusion that the cutscenes actually disrupt the feel of immersion for us, that it has an LotRO-chapter-movie feel which from a storytelling viewpoint might work for a lot of players. It leaves us wanting the more seamless experience we had exploring Vanilla. (Kyrv nailed that one right!)


We did agree however, that phases and evolving storylines and one or two cutscenes work beautifully in starter zones.


Where we start to get cranky is when we feel like: "your reward for playing an MMO and turning in a quest is you get to see a little movie!" Expecially when the cutscenes feel "gratuitous" (oooh, watch Harrison Jones climb a statue) which (we think) do nothing for the game or the lore.


-still probing the sore-tooth feel


edit: please note these are initial feelings about the "customer experience"

 

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