06-20-2004, 08:52 PM
Since the start of this new version of the game, I've been trying to play a Human Priestess to see how that class works (I hadn't played one before her). However, the Human lands are overrun with players resulting in overcongestion in EVERY area of Westfall (and many of the Forest) as people compete to complete the many collection quests that Westfall offers. I quickly became frustrated with those areas after I had spent 4 hours playing yesterday afternoon and obtained FOUR new quest items (when the standard quest in Westfall requires upward of 10 items to complete the quest). So, out of frustration, I decided to recreate my main character from the last push on the FvF server. Thus, the Night Elf Warrior, Adam, was created.
I chose to recreate my night elf warrior since I had played an equivalent character up to level 20 on the PvE server in the last push. I figured I could compare the old Warrior versus the new to see how the changes affect Warrior tactics. Also, I wanted to see if there was anything new added to the Night Elf lands or if there was anything changed. Over the last day of my playing, I've found several diffences in each and I'd like to share my thoughts on them here. I'll start with the changes to Teldrassil.
Teldrassil: Where fun quests reign supreme
Initially, I didn't find that very much had changed in the lands of the Night Elves. The newbie area seems very comparable to the old one (though perhaps the quest items drop a bit more frequently). There are definitely more mobs roaming the lands, however, so completing quests seemed a bit less of a pain in the newbie areas this time around. Besides that, however, the starting area is basically the same as it was before. You've got some basic quests that involve killing certain types of monsters or obtaining items for NPCs.
You also start one of the things that I like about Night Elf lands, the quests that have you run around, filling up vials and giving you a great deal of backstory for the Night Elves. Those quests are great because they really help you get into your character and see the sort of motivation he has to go and start roaming the world. Also, those quests encourage you to explore the island and the quests often lead you to find other quests that you can do.
Continuing out of the newbie zone, I found that many of the old quests are still around, but there are a few new ones that go a long way toward helping an up-and-coming Night Elf progress through the levels without having to just randomly grind through monsters for XP. For the most part, these quests don't really add additional areas for you to go through and kill things, but instead provide you with additional quests to do in each area. One such quest gives you more to do in Starbreeze Village than before and eventually leads you to fight a powerful new named boss in the area. Another quest makes fighting through the Awakening quest less of a boring dungeon crawl as you can find and complete the quest deep inside the dungeon without ever leaving. I found these quests to really tighten up the experience of playing a Night Elf, allowing you to be continuously questing through the newbie zone. In addition, these quests help you get more than enough experience over the course of the island so that when you are ready to leave the island, you're strong enough to last in the next area. I found this in stark contrast to the human lands where I'm often out of quests to complete before I'm at a high enough level to last in Westfall or beyond.
In addition to more quests, the lands of Teldrassil are much more filled out than they were before. In areas where there used to be empty forests, you can now find enemy encampments, additional quests, or other additional things to keep you interested. This makes the land seem a lot less empty and encourages you to explore as you quest.
Finally, one big difference that I saw during my time in Teldrassil over my time in the human lands was that there wasn't nearly as much over-crowding. I would say that the number of people playing in the areas alongside me in Teldrassil was just about perfect. I had few problems finding mobs to fight (again in stark contrast to human lands) yet whenever I needed to find a group to take on the dungeons of Teldrassil, I had few problems putting together a team to do so. In addition, when I went to play in teams, I often found one or two people I had previously played with still in the area and available to quest. That was nice in that it seemed to shrink the world down a bit, allowing me to chat with them as we fought as we got used to playing with each other.
Overall, starting this new Night Elf was a blast! The quests are more inventive and group-oriented rather than dull collection grinds like most human quests seem to be. Rather than killing the same 4 mob types for 6 straight hours, I was able to wander the world, delving into caves of my choosing alongside other people and not have my progress slowed down. I hope that Blizzard will realize just how fun Teldrassil is to play right now and try to take the good things about the Night Elf lands and apply them to the other areas of the game. If so, I think this game will be great fun to play and I would definitely play it when released!
The Warrior: Now with a more frenzied Rage
In the last push, my impression of the Warrior was that it was a fairly good class to be able to handle most situations, but that it just always seemed sluggish. Most Warrior abilities could only be applied at however fast you attacked so there was a huge incentive to use the faster weapons. In addition, whenever you used a special ability, like Rend or Hamstring, you would gain no Rage from that special attack. Again, this provided a lot of incentive to use a fast weapon like a dagger since, over a given time interval, you'd generally get more Rage. Also, since you could only use abilities as quickly as you attacked, if you had a slow weapon you seemed to stand around for ages in between each action. If was fun, but kind of annoying.
Now, however, many of these problems have been addressed. Rend, Hamstring, Disarm, and Sundering Strike are now instant cast abilities. This means that they no longer take the place of an attack and so you gain Rage from additional attacks compared to before this patch. In addition, combat for a Warrior doesn't have the sluggish feeling it once did. You now tend to have enough Rage to use abilities more often than before and since you don't have to wait for your next standard attack to use them, combat is much more frenzied with lots of special abilities being used throughout combat rather than the few from before.
Overall, I think the changes to the Warrior's combat abilities make the Warrior slightly better in combat than before, but MUCH more fun to play! The Warriors of this push are much more frenzied, calling upon most of their skills in every battle as they whirl around throwing down standard and special attacks left and right until nothing is left.
I chose to recreate my night elf warrior since I had played an equivalent character up to level 20 on the PvE server in the last push. I figured I could compare the old Warrior versus the new to see how the changes affect Warrior tactics. Also, I wanted to see if there was anything new added to the Night Elf lands or if there was anything changed. Over the last day of my playing, I've found several diffences in each and I'd like to share my thoughts on them here. I'll start with the changes to Teldrassil.
Teldrassil: Where fun quests reign supreme
Initially, I didn't find that very much had changed in the lands of the Night Elves. The newbie area seems very comparable to the old one (though perhaps the quest items drop a bit more frequently). There are definitely more mobs roaming the lands, however, so completing quests seemed a bit less of a pain in the newbie areas this time around. Besides that, however, the starting area is basically the same as it was before. You've got some basic quests that involve killing certain types of monsters or obtaining items for NPCs.
You also start one of the things that I like about Night Elf lands, the quests that have you run around, filling up vials and giving you a great deal of backstory for the Night Elves. Those quests are great because they really help you get into your character and see the sort of motivation he has to go and start roaming the world. Also, those quests encourage you to explore the island and the quests often lead you to find other quests that you can do.
Continuing out of the newbie zone, I found that many of the old quests are still around, but there are a few new ones that go a long way toward helping an up-and-coming Night Elf progress through the levels without having to just randomly grind through monsters for XP. For the most part, these quests don't really add additional areas for you to go through and kill things, but instead provide you with additional quests to do in each area. One such quest gives you more to do in Starbreeze Village than before and eventually leads you to fight a powerful new named boss in the area. Another quest makes fighting through the Awakening quest less of a boring dungeon crawl as you can find and complete the quest deep inside the dungeon without ever leaving. I found these quests to really tighten up the experience of playing a Night Elf, allowing you to be continuously questing through the newbie zone. In addition, these quests help you get more than enough experience over the course of the island so that when you are ready to leave the island, you're strong enough to last in the next area. I found this in stark contrast to the human lands where I'm often out of quests to complete before I'm at a high enough level to last in Westfall or beyond.
In addition to more quests, the lands of Teldrassil are much more filled out than they were before. In areas where there used to be empty forests, you can now find enemy encampments, additional quests, or other additional things to keep you interested. This makes the land seem a lot less empty and encourages you to explore as you quest.
Finally, one big difference that I saw during my time in Teldrassil over my time in the human lands was that there wasn't nearly as much over-crowding. I would say that the number of people playing in the areas alongside me in Teldrassil was just about perfect. I had few problems finding mobs to fight (again in stark contrast to human lands) yet whenever I needed to find a group to take on the dungeons of Teldrassil, I had few problems putting together a team to do so. In addition, when I went to play in teams, I often found one or two people I had previously played with still in the area and available to quest. That was nice in that it seemed to shrink the world down a bit, allowing me to chat with them as we fought as we got used to playing with each other.
Overall, starting this new Night Elf was a blast! The quests are more inventive and group-oriented rather than dull collection grinds like most human quests seem to be. Rather than killing the same 4 mob types for 6 straight hours, I was able to wander the world, delving into caves of my choosing alongside other people and not have my progress slowed down. I hope that Blizzard will realize just how fun Teldrassil is to play right now and try to take the good things about the Night Elf lands and apply them to the other areas of the game. If so, I think this game will be great fun to play and I would definitely play it when released!
The Warrior: Now with a more frenzied Rage
In the last push, my impression of the Warrior was that it was a fairly good class to be able to handle most situations, but that it just always seemed sluggish. Most Warrior abilities could only be applied at however fast you attacked so there was a huge incentive to use the faster weapons. In addition, whenever you used a special ability, like Rend or Hamstring, you would gain no Rage from that special attack. Again, this provided a lot of incentive to use a fast weapon like a dagger since, over a given time interval, you'd generally get more Rage. Also, since you could only use abilities as quickly as you attacked, if you had a slow weapon you seemed to stand around for ages in between each action. If was fun, but kind of annoying.
Now, however, many of these problems have been addressed. Rend, Hamstring, Disarm, and Sundering Strike are now instant cast abilities. This means that they no longer take the place of an attack and so you gain Rage from additional attacks compared to before this patch. In addition, combat for a Warrior doesn't have the sluggish feeling it once did. You now tend to have enough Rage to use abilities more often than before and since you don't have to wait for your next standard attack to use them, combat is much more frenzied with lots of special abilities being used throughout combat rather than the few from before.
Overall, I think the changes to the Warrior's combat abilities make the Warrior slightly better in combat than before, but MUCH more fun to play! The Warriors of this push are much more frenzied, calling upon most of their skills in every battle as they whirl around throwing down standard and special attacks left and right until nothing is left.
-TheDragoon
