Judgement of Wisdom wrote extensively about one of those topics which have been bugging me since TBC too. When The Burning Crusade hit, both Outlands and the new draenei and blood elf zones have given life to the next generation of zone design in WoW.
I’m particuliarly in love with the Blood Elf lands, which I find visually gorgeous, and a testimonial to the skill of the designers who have extracted the best learnings out of two (or more if you actually count the WoW beta) years of experience to produce high quality zones, be it in terms of visuals, fitting background music, quest density, storytelling, and quest rewards (to a point - the level 20 blood elf pallie polearm, while supported by a good backstory, is not only badly balanced for a pallie in general, but totally pales in comparison to alliance’s good ole’ Verigan’s Fist).
However, when you have such a vivid example of how to get things right, the rest pales in comparison.
In order to get a different perspective both on tanking and healing, I recently tried to start (yet) another druid. I have something like a love-hate relationship with the druid since I first bought the game in 2005, it’s probably one of the classes I find more appealing on paper, but I’ve never managed to level a single one past level 16 so far. Except for hunters I have started more druids than any other classes, but never managed to get them through the teens.
On the other hand, I just levelled a prot pallie to 67, and the pallie class in general is reportedly the slowest leveller in the game (except specific talent combos like prot warriors and other stab-yourself-to-death-with-a-cushion self-crippling experiences), so I thought I’d eventually find it within me to reach kitty form which should speed things up quite a bit.
It’s Mulgore->Barrens though, and all which I found to be completely lacking between Ghostlands and Outlands on the pallie hits me with full force again.
Most notably, the all-but-useless quest rewards, and the spirit-laden drops.
Of course, the overall zone design and the aging quests and all the fedexing through two continents may take a lot of efforts to fix. Itemization gaps, especially for hybrids, though, might be much easier to address.
Why not just extend the new item suffixes introduced in TBC to green and blue Azeroth loot? Giving healing and spelldamage mail and plate will help pallies and shaman through levelling, and druid loot needs a lot of love as well. It would also go a long way into making other than just the cookie-cutter tree viable for levelling.
It would also buy the devs some time while reworking or adding to the existing quest list and, hopefully, finally fixing the levelling hellhole you’ll find, depending on class, between level 43 and 52.
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2 Responses to “Fixing Azeroth”
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That is possibly the best idea I’ve heard yet (the extension of item suffixes). I’m hitting a similar issue with all my new characters of growing weary after the starting zone (although I’m alliance, and I love me some Duskwood questing).
Laheth & Tusk
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