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Tuesday, January 6, 2009

New First Impressions

As promised, here goes again.

First of all, the transition from the Old World to Outlands is immense. I could say that it's the Same game, but it's not the same Game. This comes down to the much discussed (earlier at least) problem of Outlands greens outgearing the Old World raid gear.

The first thing I did as a new lv58 was to get the two quests for better gear, namely for a new shield and new sword. The rest would come as the defences and damage dealing would be up. But still I was killing two, three, even four levels higher demons and demonic creatures with more ease than the Furbolgs or Owlbeasts in Winterspring! And the greens quickly replaced my blues which had been sufficient for levelling in the Old World.

One thing I have to complain about, and that is the fact that the quest rewards and majority of the loot -for a plate wearer- are for a certain flavour of the month class of TBC. That is paladin. The plates seem to have, almost all of them, some intelligence and +spell power, with the cost on +STR or +STA. So far I have been able to find only one quest reward helm which has been devised for a tanking plate wearer, and that's been after doing all quests available till lv61. And my chest and legs are with +INT... stupid, I know.

The other issue I'm having with Outlands is the incredible design of the mobs. Like I stated earlier, I could easily tackle higher level mobs with less downtime than in Old World in similar levels. But the real problem I have with them is the ease of downing versus their experience value! They seem to give much more experience than the similar level opponents in the Old World, making the levelling even faster, leaving more content unattended!

Negatives, negatives. At least in my book. 

But there are positives. Shocking news in my blog: something to give applauds to!

It seems that the Outlands is a lot more populated now than when I visited there last with my horde toon: there were lv58-62 toons running around, killing mobs and even grouping randomly to tackle some harder opponents. Grouping in the fly for one opponent and breaking up after downing it! I posted earlier a question whether the games you play change the way you play other games, and I think this is in the similar lines: reminds me of the Public Quests of WAR, the way people are just forming for one opponent only to fly in their different ways after achieving the 'quest finished' sign.

Nice. I love it!

I'm not sure whether it's because of the high population in Hellfire Peninsula or has it always been this way (my memory fails me), but the respawn rate is very, VERY high: it's like you cannot clear your way to a quest objective before the first ones have respawned, twice, as they have been camped by the second wave of quest doers! This is both good and not so good in the sense of helping more people to complete the 'gathering quests' and making the experience gains even higher (as you have to fight your way back to the quest giver).

Outlands change the way you play for sure. Too bad most of the quests are kill ten foozles and collect four dingles (by killing foozles till you get enough) types. The few exceptions to the rule are very refreshing (like bombing the demonic portals).

I know I shouldn't say this, but it feels so hard to return to Old Azeroth and help guildies. 

Do I really have to? 

Yes I do. The members of the Order deserve it and some more.

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