03-29-2004, 04:44 PM
Quote:My biggest issue is navigation for new players. The mini-map is basically useless, except for finding your corpse or your party. It is basically a blob of mushy colors with no notes except the location of cities (which I presume would be the job of the world map). NPCs almost all give vague directions, and I have yet to see a "welcome to town" NPC or a clickable map or a much in the way of signs. What this all boils down to is that you can easily spend several hours looking for a specific trainer or shop keeper in a given city. You can spend hours trying to find a quest location in the wilderness. I think this will be a big turn-off for new players, and it is something that could certainly be fixed (although given the amount of specific locations involved it would take a lot of time to do).I've found that the mini-map was actually really helpful for me when I was playing in the Human areas. You can distinctly tell if something is a mine or a building or a pumpkin patch or something just from the map.
However, in the Night Elf starting location I can't tell what ANYTHING is! :) For them, you've put it very well, "a blob of mushy colors." I couldn't tell the building from the terrain on the map for the longest time. After an hour or so of playing in those areas, I could start to see where it was, but until then I was randomly walking.
As for the directions to find quests, I've not really had a problem with that, for the most part. The only times I've gotten in trouble are when I either don't read the quest information carefully enough (and so don't know which direction to go) or on some of the delivery quests (like the delivery to Stormwind) where I couldn't find the NPC I was looking for.
Also, I read a post from a Blizzard employee the other day who said that the minimap functions were still being implemented and that they intend to allow you to place markers on the map (as well as for your party) and other stuff so that you don't have to wander around so much when you complete a quest and are looking for the NPC. If they can get everything like that working, I think the map will work out pretty well. :)
-TheDragoon