The Adventures of Neriad

[MongoJerry]

Inside the city, the architecture is gorgeous. There's a large temple called the Temple of the Moon with an indoor park and moonwell. A small delivery quests takes you into the temple and you get a small quest there in return. However, I didn't see any priest-only quests there, and I understand that priest-only quests weren't added in this push after all, which miffs me to no end. Still, the temple was beautiful and there is a lot there to build on. I hope Blizzard adds a lot more features to the temple before release. Incidentally, for you mages, the teleport trainer is also inside the temple.



The centrally located bank is a tree with a trunk the shape of a tiger. Actually, when Leme and I first saw a tree like this out in the wilderness, we thought it was a bunny rabbit. :lol: But there seems to be a link between tigers and elves, so looking at the figure more closely, I can sort of see the resemblance to a tiger. The elvish mounts are tigers and panthers, by the way.



I've lavished praise on the city of Darnassus and the area of Teldrassil, but one quickly notices a queer feature of Darnassus. It's practically empty of players. Why is this? And why do elves leave almost as soon as they can? Simply put, there's nothing to encourage people to visit or return there. As far as I know, there aren't any human, dwarf, or gnome quests that send you to Darnassus. Meanwhile, there are several quests in Darnassus that send you away. In addition, unlike all of the other major faction cities, Darnassus doesn't seem to be a flight path hub of any kind, so even those elves who stay in the elvish areas of northern Kalimdor have little reason to return even briefly to Darnassus. What's more, Darnassus is out of the way. There's no direct flight path from Darnassus to Ironforge or Stormwind. To get anywhere from Darnassus, one takes the teleporter (pictured above) to Rut'theran Village, change over to a hippogriff which takes you to Auberdine on Darkshore. From there, you have the choice of taking a boat to Menethil or Theremore. From one of those places, you can probably find your way to Ironforge and Stormwind in one or two jumps (I'll have to explore a bit to find out). But one can easily see why dwarfs and humans hardly ever make the reverse journey to Darnassus.

If Blizzard intends that the faction cities to be "happening" places where people hang out, why on earth did they make Darnassus so hard to get to and with little or no reason to ever visit? Blizzard managed to balance the Horde cities pretty well so that all three of them (Undercity, Orgimmar, and Thunder Bluff) are similarly popular. But the alliance cities are broken in that Stormwind has become the central hub for nearly all alliance activity. I understand Blizzard redesigned Ironforge in this patch to make it more pleasant to be in. I hope they spend some time redesigning Darnassus to make it easier for people to visit there and also give them reasons to go there.

That's enough for this time. I was going to mention some things I noticed about tradeskills (including why is Neriad walking around with a fishing pole?!), but I'm going to leave that for later. I hope you enjoyed this first writeup!