03-26-2008, 10:08 PM
A few initial observations on the newly patched world of Azeroth:
Shattered Sun Offensive dailies
So far they've done a really nice job on these quests. Most of the ones available so far are quick and painless, and the respawn rates are high on mobs that need to be killed. There's a decent amount of variety (even working within the limitations of WoW's quest models), and spreading the quests out geographically rather than putting them all on Quel'Danas has spread the masses a bit.
Besides the rep and gold rewards, the "Shattered Sun Offensive Supply Packages" reward green items, and I picked up a decent amount of Motes of Fire and Mana just from killing quest mobs. Bonus points to the designer who added Marks of Sargeras/Sunfury Signets as a reward for one of the quests.
Sunwell Plateau
After the darkness of Black Temple, its nice to be back in a sunny instance again. The graveyard is mercifully close to the entrance - a good thing considering how often we used it. I did run off to Magister's Terrace a couple of times by mistake.
There is a *lot* of trash to clear to get to Kalecgos, and its pretty demanding. In around four hours of work, we managed to get 1 pull on Kalecgos before a server reset and trash respawns sent us back to the start. We were better at clearing the trash by the end of the night than when we started, but we still have some work to do refining our strats. There is one pull in particular that gave us headaches all night long: premature pull - wipe; scout wakes up "Chain Lightning the Robot" - wipe; scout wakes up robot again - wipe; player feared into robot, activating it - wipe; player feared into next trash pack - wipe. Oh, and did I mention there is currently no place to repair on Quel'Danas?
We did get a couple of epics for our troubles: the super-sexy Ring of Harmonic Beauty (a beefed up Coral Band of the Revived) and the elemental shaman gloves which one of our resto shammies exchanged for the healing pair (a nice new feature which should see less loot rotting).
I suspect I'll notice the increased mana regen much more once I return to old content.
Unlike Treesh I don't use my combat log much (I use Eavesdrop for quickly reviewing info like "what the heck just killed me?") but it was a little disconcerting to switch to it halfway through the night and watch about 10,000 lines scroll past over the next 5 minutes.
Shattered Sun Offensive dailies
So far they've done a really nice job on these quests. Most of the ones available so far are quick and painless, and the respawn rates are high on mobs that need to be killed. There's a decent amount of variety (even working within the limitations of WoW's quest models), and spreading the quests out geographically rather than putting them all on Quel'Danas has spread the masses a bit.
Besides the rep and gold rewards, the "Shattered Sun Offensive Supply Packages" reward green items, and I picked up a decent amount of Motes of Fire and Mana just from killing quest mobs. Bonus points to the designer who added Marks of Sargeras/Sunfury Signets as a reward for one of the quests.
Sunwell Plateau
After the darkness of Black Temple, its nice to be back in a sunny instance again. The graveyard is mercifully close to the entrance - a good thing considering how often we used it. I did run off to Magister's Terrace a couple of times by mistake.
There is a *lot* of trash to clear to get to Kalecgos, and its pretty demanding. In around four hours of work, we managed to get 1 pull on Kalecgos before a server reset and trash respawns sent us back to the start. We were better at clearing the trash by the end of the night than when we started, but we still have some work to do refining our strats. There is one pull in particular that gave us headaches all night long: premature pull - wipe; scout wakes up "Chain Lightning the Robot" - wipe; scout wakes up robot again - wipe; player feared into robot, activating it - wipe; player feared into next trash pack - wipe. Oh, and did I mention there is currently no place to repair on Quel'Danas?
We did get a couple of epics for our troubles: the super-sexy Ring of Harmonic Beauty (a beefed up Coral Band of the Revived) and the elemental shaman gloves which one of our resto shammies exchanged for the healing pair (a nice new feature which should see less loot rotting).
I suspect I'll notice the increased mana regen much more once I return to old content.
Unlike Treesh I don't use my combat log much (I use Eavesdrop for quickly reviewing info like "what the heck just killed me?") but it was a little disconcerting to switch to it halfway through the night and watch about 10,000 lines scroll past over the next 5 minutes.