Second Impressions

[Ruvanal]

I was wondering: You say that you're playing a Gnome Mage and that you die too often. I haven't seen or played the WOW beta, and I have no clue about the game statistics either, but could it be that (little) GNOME Mages have simply a weaker physical constitution (hitpoints, strength etc) than, for example, HUMAN or TAUREN Mages? Or does this weakness apply generally to ALL Mage classes, no matter what the race is?

It is pretty much a problem with mages in general and almost as bad with the warlocks also from what I have seen. The mages start with typically lower stamina (primary attribute for hitpoints) and need to spend most of the talent point they end up getting on other areas instead of the ones need to raise the hitpoint level. Couple this with their being only allowed to wear cloth armors and no shield, which translate to much lower defense rating over all. This will mean that they will get hit frequently if the monster gets to them (not a lot of hope if the opponent is using missiles). This pretty much means that if the encounter is like to case more than one monster to be activated at the same time the mage will need some sort of tank to help releave the pressure. This is why the warlocks can get off a little better, they can usually summon a tank if that is the way they want to play.


As for the elite quest, I have not got that far to see what happens if you have to restart from a disconnect while in an instanced area. But I have had several cases of getting disconnected during crashes while in the middle of an encounter. In those cases you will restart in the exact same conditions and it can be ugly. For example my warrior Arkthorn was standing in the middle of an almost cleared Murloc village when the server crashed. When restarting I was still in the same possition but with out most of the murlocs having been slain already (think if you had to restart D2 in the middle of a super Flayer village if you your game interupted there). I imagine that the intstanced areas will force you respawn just outside the entrance into them.

There really are no "town portal" effects that will allow you to easily travel back and forth to towns with ease. While there are some portal effects that will allow you to travel to some specific spot, they are not a 2 way affair like the D2 town portals and they are not apparently usable by others either.

Currently the closest thing that I have seen to the Waypoint system is the Griffon transportation system. At the start there is only an open path between Stormwind (aka lagwind city) and Ironforge. As you travel to other areas you can open up more routes, but these are only point D to point E types routes, not Point E to any other point that you know of. The other points on the route also have level limits before they will be opened up to you even if you do get to them fairly early (one of them had a white exclamation mark for it when I first showed up in the area but change when I went up one level). They also cost money for each leg of the trip and could add up quickly if you keep running back and forth without generating some income inbetween trips on the average. The price is not bad but it is enough to discourge just riding around alot. I am guessing that there are other similar types of transportation systems when one gets out of the human and dwarven areas (think of the Morrowind transpotation system stiltriders/boats/mageguild-teleportation).