First Impressions of the Patch

[MongoJerry]

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Patch First Impressions

Here is a quick compilation of first impressions and screenshots of WoW after the patch, while I wait for Tichondrius to come back after a crash. Feel free to add your own first impressions of the patch to this thread.

I really like the new user interface, and I have a strong feeling that I will not be fully reinstalling Cosmos ever again. The extra hotkey bars look really good and are easy to use and manipulate. The main thing I'm missing from Cosmos right now is that I can't see everyone's buffs. Perhaps someone can direct me to a simple addon that will give me that functionality.

Tab targeting actually works. Woohoo!

A hunter reported that there's a bug such that if a priest or shaman rezes a hunter pet, the rezer will get resurrection sickness. Ick!

But the main thing I noticed was the addition of the new Dire Maul instances. Woohoo! I understand they're kind of like the Scarlet Monastery in that it's broken up into two or three separate instances. In addition, there are multiple entrances to the same dungeon. It'll take a while to gain an understanding of the layout.

The huge exterior of Dire Maul can be see above.



Even outside the instances, the ruins are absolutely enormous. There are all kinds of passageways and places to go.



One of the guys in my party had been on the test server, so he took us first to the lowest level area, called the Warpwood Quarter, so that we could do whatever it is that lets us get our keys to the higher level instances.



This area was really easy for us, but that's understandable, since it's designed for level 56 players, and the five of us were fully decked out level 60's. One thing we noticed was that we were getting a *ton* of green drops off normal elite mobs and we even got a bind-on-pickup blue necklace off a normal mob. So when the Blizzard designers said that they were going to improve the drops off normal mobs, they weren't kidding.



We found a side passage that led to another instance portal. Going through it led us back outside, so this is apparently another entrance to the instance.



Past the Warpwood Quarter came an area called The Hidden Reach that had satyrs as well as the walking trees and flowers. At the end of this hall was another portal that led to the outside, although to be able to get in through that portal, you'd need to open a locked door with a special key or have a rogue with well developed lockpicking skills in your party. The partymember who had been on the test server said that just beyond that door (in other words, just outside the door -- we were already inside), there's a quest giver, but the server crashed at this point, so I can't tell you exactly where this NPC is.