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World of Warcraft Patch 4.0.3a - The Shattering

Chittagong

Gold Member
TheYanger said:
The capital cities and a lot of the other towns now have bulletin boards that will give you leading quests to level appropriate zones. Stormwind and Org are the main hubs and in very obvious areas have these boards. For example at level 10 you'll get like "Warlord's Decree: the Barrens" or "Azshara"

If you're ever lose, these will steer you right.

Also as far as zone recommendations, do the undead newbie areas. They are amazing.

cool. thanks for the advice. that is what I shall do!

So far everything else looks pretty nice. Some very thoughtful additions to the user interface, and performance is waaaay better than this Spring. Now I can actually Ultra some settings on my i7 MBP.
 

Alex

Member
Plaguelands suite is great:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPjirvpAsKQ

So is the song that plays when you fly into Ironforge:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRXqLUbCtVE

Plaguelands needs a name change now though, place is so lush now.

I'm liking how much of the kind of "on the warpath" kind of movement the new bullheaded faction leaders are bringing to the table in the new Azeroth. For the first time in this game, double factions actually feels like it's been done right to me.

Any recommendations on zones to quest in? So far I've done Thousand Needles (awesome), EPL (also cool), Azshara (not bad), and Badlands (amazingly hilarious).

Westfall was hilarious and very interesting, Ashenvale has a ton of neat Alliance vs Horde bits, Red Ridge was great in general.

Most of the stuff I've done so far has been largely redone from scratch. Only Teldrassil being the outlier with the only new stuff being the updated history and briefings and the quests about Malfurions return, although it was at least totally rearranged/altered to flow and read a lot better.
 

Spruchy

Member
The shattering is awesome but don't be deceived some zones did get neglected pretty hard. The Hinterlands was a snooze fest.
 

Alex

Member
Hinterlands and Arathi are the worst, I hear. They could've done some neat stuff in Arathi, like retaking Stromgarde, so that's a shame.
 

Ramirez

Member
Hinterlands was a pretty awesome questing zone for Horde in the old world anyways, did they not change much, or did they change it and it sucks now? I always liked Arathi too, wasn't many quests there though. What level are those places now? I'm almost 40 and haven't even been to Thousand Needles/Stranglethorn, etc. places that I would have had to hit at some point if I wanted to level smoothly in the old game. Questing is so good now that I think I'll even roll a Worgen on some server at some point...
 

Alex

Member
Lack of changes, Arathi was always a pretty good leveling zone for Alliance, Hinterlands was ok (Alliance side, I remember it being better for Horde), but even when old zones were "good" in quality back in the day, it completely pales to the shit they do now so it's a shame to see a couple zones glossed over.
 
its awesome seeing all the zones updated but i have one tiny problem. im a level 41 undead priest and currently am "stuck". i supposedly have finished all the quests in thousand needles (only one guy has a silver ! above him, and ive done all the quests in that new goblin zone, and gotten the boat, etc) and the message board thing in orgrimmar also has a silver ! above it, so i cant use it to tell me where to go. ive been just going back and forth between feralas and thousand needles to see if there was anything i can do, but all the quests in feralas are now green to me...

right now, i just decided to go to the eastern plaguelands. i heard that zone is now 40-45. should i be going someplace else now?
 

Bregor

Member
From MMOChamp:

levelflow.jpg
 

Alex

Member
How on earth did you blow through an entire zone and only gain one level in it's range! It was averaging out to me to be like 10 quests per level!

But yeah, EPL is 40-45 too.

New Azeroth map

Reminds of that Feral Druid/John Madden image.
 

ToD_

Member
secretanchitman said:
its awesome seeing all the zones updated but i have one tiny problem. im a level 41 undead priest and currently am "stuck". i supposedly have finished all the quests in thousand needles (only one guy has a silver ! above him, and ive done all the quests in that new goblin zone, and gotten the boat, etc) and the message board thing in orgrimmar also has a silver ! above it, so i cant use it to tell me where to go. ive been just going back and forth between feralas and thousand needles to see if there was anything i can do, but all the quests in feralas are now green to me...

right now, i just decided to go to the eastern plaguelands. i heard that zone is now 40-45. should i be going someplace else now?

Go to Mudsprocket in Dustwallow Marsh. There will be a quest that will send you to another area in Thousand Needles. Upon completion of that quest you will be sent to that goblin boat again where you'll be able to start doing quests from here on. Good luck
 

Akim

Banned
I'm still trying to decide if I should actually play Cataclysm. This is the first time I've generally been not very excited about an expansion and I've been through em all.
 

Bregor

Member
fizzelopeguss said:
What, the new levelling content is out now? i thought that wasn't until cata launch.

The revised lvl 1-60 content is out.

The lvl 81-85 content will arrive with Cata release.
 

ScrubJay

Member
Can't believe it but the $5 sale made me jump back in for now. I just want to check out the old world revamps and see how much it is improved, all the raving impressions got me to bite. If I like what's happening I'll just resub on my main account to get all my stuff back for Cataclysm.

I've downloaded about 4 gigabytes so far of the 10 necessary. I was able to jump in and make a dwarf shaman and play till level 5 or so until I got sleepy. Not a good litmus to see what's different because the initial starting zone isn't changed that much, but the UI seems spiffier and I got much better performance than I have in the past for some reason. I'm about to get enough downloaded for stage 3 of the streaming performance so I'll play a little tonight and see how things are from there.
 
*studies level flow chart*

For us Worgen it's looking like we finish up our zone and move on to Darkshore (meh) and proceed to stay on Kalimdor until Burning Crusade. I'm hoping the paths are optional as I'd rather go to Hillsbrad instead of Stonetalon at 20.
 

kitzkozan

Member
The revamping just confirm what I think of World of Warcraft in general.The best part was and still is the old world,or Azeroth if you want to be more precise. :D It got 4+ years of development and it's still absolutely amazing,far more interesting than either the outlands or Northrend could ever wish to be.

It's just that the big technological upgrade that went into Outlands and especially Northrend made the Azeroth content outdated.You had a lot of zones lacking in quests,featuring outdated questline,traveling distance to continue some chain which was insane by 2010 standard,etc.The quest themselves were the most boring and basic,especially compared to the questing of Northrend. :lol

That's not to say I did not like the outlands or Northrend (love that place),but you just can't beat Azeroth which is fairly huge and possess all the climate variation+rich amount of lore. :D If anything the leveling from 1 to 85 is going to rock now,since you start in Azeroth and get a nice change of pace from 58 to 80 before hitting the new Cataclysm zones.
 

Alex

Member
Hillsbrad is Horde territory now, the new Darkshore is anything but meh, that zone is so, so different.

The revamping just confirm what I think of World of Warcraft in general.The best part was and still is the old world,or Azeroth if you want to be more precise. It got 4+ years of development and it's still absolutely amazing,far more interesting than either the outlands or Northrend could ever wish to be.

Classic WoW can really go rot, IMO. Vanilla EK/Kalimdor vs Northrend is like sending an armless blind man in a wheel chair into a heavy weight fight. Dragonblight alone utterly shames it in execution of lore, progression and general richness of world design without even going into the night and day game design.

Saying the potential for things is there really isn't saying much, because it's a base world centered on variety, whereas BC and LK are focused expansions.

I'm glad they waited on jumping back into EK/Kalimdor though, because while I think WoW got it's chops with BC, it's quest and world design really flipped on in LK.
 
The zone phasing is great. Westfall was amazing throughout. The plaguelands is also great. Goddamn this game is amazing sometimes. Til I'm grinding badges or dungeons points or whatever.
 
My warrior was 65 Kalimdor quests away from Loremaster. Once 4.0.3a hit? Almost 1 fucking thousand.

Thanks Blizz. At least you could've lubed me up for such as massive ass-ramming you did.

Seriously, they said we'd lose SOME of it, not such a massive ass rammingly bad amount. A little more honesty would've been nice. I'd have worked a bit harder than I was near the end.
 
Outdoor Miner said:
*studies level flow chart*

For us Worgen it's looking like we finish up our zone and move on to Darkshore (meh) and proceed to stay on Kalimdor until Burning Crusade. I'm hoping the paths are optional as I'd rather go to Hillsbrad instead of Stonetalon at 20.
I doubt you'll be in Hillsbrad long if you choose to go there as Alliance. Trust me on this one.
 

Alex

Member
The zone phasing is great. Westfall was amazing throughout

The big, fancy new Sentinel Hill burning down was depressing as shit, more than I figured it would have been, these people are really just pounded and pounded and have no relief in site. That zone has an odd contrast because half of it is just ridiculous and hilarious and the other half is pretty earnest and good at tugging some of the ol heart strings

But yeah, death, things burning down, this seems to be the general theme of the Alliance in Cataclsym though. :lol
 

Spruchy

Member
Alex said:
Hinterlands and Arathi are the worst, I hear. They could've done some neat stuff in Arathi, like retaking Stromgarde, so that's a shame.
Yep once arathi said I could move on to the hinterlands I got the fuck out of there without looking back. Unfortunately hinterlands was just unchanged but now I'm at western plaguelands and the battle for Andorhal so things should be picking up.
 

kitzkozan

Member
Alex said:
Hillsbrad is Horde territory now, the new Darkshore is anything but meh, that zone is so, so different.



Classic WoW can really go rot, IMO. Vanilla EK/Kalimdor vs Northrend is like sending an armless blind man in a wheel chair into a heavy weight fight. Dragonblight alone utterly shames it in execution of lore, progression and general richness of world design without even going into the night and day game design.

Saying the potential for things isn't saying much, because it's a base world centered on variety, whereas BC and LK are focused expansions.

I'm glad they waited on EK/Kalimdor though, because while I think WoW got it's chops with BC, it's quest and world design really flipped on in LK.

See where you are coming from,but I prefer Kalimdor/EK to either Outland or Northrend. :lol I was already thinking this when I went through the old world back in BC with my Draenei paladin.I was nice to level up and have some choice as to what zone you want to hit,even if the quest themselves were incredibly dull.Even nicer was to see the awesome level of work that went into those zones (lore,artistic flair,etc).It just needed to be brought up to par with Northrend which got phasing,great quest variety and an amazing sense of height+possibility of flying.

Outland was and still is ugly as sin,except for some zone like Nagrand or Eversong woods.BC will easily be the weakest part of the wow leveling experience,since I feel that it's somewhat outdated.No phasing,most quest still follow the kill x or bring me y and kill z.

Will wait until Cata to try out the full 1-85 leveling experience with a worgen hunter.:D
 
Interesting, pretty cool too.

No Darkwhisper Gorge :O

"Ahn-Qiraj" is seperated from Silithus, too.

Very interesting indeed.

I take it the powers that be expect people to stick in one path from 1-58ish and that it'll "last"?

Or is it a breadcrumb quest thing?

Classic WoW can really go rot, IMO. Vanilla EK/Kalimdor vs Northrend is like sending an armless blind man in a wheel chair into a heavy weight fight. Dragonblight alone utterly shames it in execution of lore, progression and general richness of world design without even going into the night and day game design.

Don't insult Classic. Barring the unwiseness of ignoring the great things from 2004's release that are now gone, remember that 2010's stands on the shoulders of giants.
 

Belfast

Member
Speaking as Horde player near the end of his first 1-60 tour in Cataclysm, I'd have to say that Stonetalon and Thousand Needles are now two of my most favorite zones. Desolace is pretty good, too. A little unfocused, but considering what it used to be.... and of course, much more beautiful!
 
ToD_ said:
Go to Mudsprocket in Dustwallow Marsh. There will be a quest that will send you to another area in Thousand Needles. Upon completion of that quest you will be sent to that goblin boat again where you'll be able to start doing quests from here on. Good luck

went to eastern plaguelands for a bit (3-4 flight paths!), then i went to dustwallow marsh. didnt know that you could run along the top of the mountains to get there from thousand needles, so i flew to the barrens and ran all the way around just to get there :D

ended up going back to the goblin zone and the guy sent me to tanaris/gadgetzan! so thats where i am now...level 43 fighting against 45 monsters, and loving it!

thousand needles has been by far my favorite revamped zone. i cant wait to see all of them now! :)
 

Spire

Subconscious Brolonging
I can confirm that Arathi Highlands (Alliance) is ass. Same quests, they just throw most of them at you at once now. Bad drop rates abound as well, it was never a fun zone to quest in and it's made even more unbearable in contrast to the all the new stuff.
 

SOLDIER

Member
Does anyone know if the prices on the Blizzard store for WoW and the expansions will expire on midnight on 11/29, or if they'll still remain active all day Monday?

Long story, but I kind of need it to be the latter.
 

TheYanger

Member
They just added the Aq stuff to the world map. It's not any different. Silithus is one of the zones they admitted they were basically going to ignore since it has absolutely no place in the levelling flow of anyone anymore.

There are definitely some zones that didn't overhaul as completely as others. Northern barrens is pretty shit still (Aside from the wagon-train bandit quests and dragging the boar around), ditto arathi ditto hinterlands. Most of them got very thoroughly badassified though.
 

kinoki

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
Going from racing to 80 finishing server 6th I'm now at leveling alts and looking forward to each level. Currently level 10 on two new alts. Loving the new zones.
 

Duki

Banned
Tirisfal -> Silverpine -> Hillsbrad has been the best thing questwise the game has ever seen imo

Just holy crap
 

jersoc

Member
SOLDIER said:
Also, is the Blizzard sale going to expire on the 29th or 30th?

since monday is cyber monday i could assume it goes until the end of monday.

but who knows, buy now to be safe.
 

ultron87

Member
Quick question, if my friends buy the $5 World of Warcraft thing right now, does their free month start instantly?

I have a friend that wants to start but won't have a laptop for a few weeks.
 
ultron87 said:
Quick question, if my friends buy the $5 World of Warcraft thing right now, does their free month start instantly?

I have a friend that wants to start but won't have a laptop for a few weeks.
The free trial starts right away. If he buys the game now and waits a few weeks for that laptop, he won't get that full month trial.
 

Yaweee

Member
Duki said:
Tirisfal -> Silverpine -> Hillsbrad has been the best thing questwise the game has ever seen imo

Just holy crap

I didn't even do all of Tirisfal (rolled in late with a Tauren Paladin), but dammit, I agree. Great stuff.
 

ultron87

Member
Darkshier said:
The free trial starts right away. If he buys the game now and waits a few weeks for that laptop, he won't get that full month trial.

Are you sure about this? Because it looks like I can get the digital copy and gift it to someone. I'd assume it wouldn't automatically start the trial until they install the game.
 

Owensboro

Member
Oh man, a buddy and I just finished up Westfall.... and it may be my new favorite zone in the game. The cheesy CSI: Miami references are awesome, and that main quest line is really interesting even if it does make you feel like a complete utter dick by the end (I actually did feel a little bad).

I can't wait to finally get into Deadmines and check out all the new fights. And I'm really, really looking forward to Duskwood. (It was my favorite leveling zone since vanilla WoW). Oh, and I'm looking forward to skipping as much of Outland as possible. I think I'm going to head straight to Northrend at 64 and just group up to do quests. And I'm probably just going to do instances to get from 60-65 anyway.
 

Xavien

Member
I did the whole set of quests in Thousand Needles the other day, best set of quests i've ever experienced in WoW.

So fresh its amazing, they also give you a boat, scuba gear and a jet pack for underwater quests.
 

Sober

Member
Vigilant Walrus said:
advice: See the new world by doing a alt or a new character to lvl 85.

do not take your 80s and learn flying, and just fly around - its amazing flying around but you need to discover, and see and complete the content from the ground, or it wont have the same impact. Orgrimmar and Stormwind are nice from the ground but sick from the air. but dont cheat yourself from going all the way from 1 to 85 in this new world. if you do, it's the equivelent of skipping the entire lord of the rings trilogy and only watch the 10 last minutes. they might be good(or whatever) but they wont mean shit compared to if, you had seen the 3 films in their entirety.


yeah, it might be hard not to do, but exploring from the air, is not the way to start. trust me on this. wait with that shit.
I wish I had the time before Cata, but it looks like I'll have to do it afterwards. I always liked exploring and it's nice they kinda redid the old world so it's like coming back and noticing all the changes. On the ground of course. I did a couple of zones, and it's nice to see the new changes and it even surprises me when they decide to trash an old quest hub (e.g. Bloodvenom Post in Felwood) but in term add 2 more. It actually gives some feeling that the world has changed since we left to go to Outland or Northrend.
 

Snipes424

Member
I've done all of the Eastern Kingdoms quest (horde side) and most zones are fantastic. The best ones IMO were silverpine, hillsbrad, EPL, and badlands.
 

RPGCrazied

Member
Oh, this week will be unbearable! I'm still waiting to see the new old world on my Worgen / Goblin characters. I'm hearing good things about these new quests, and alot of them have voice over cutscenes! That's pretty cool.

Thankfully I have 6 PS3 games to play.. lol
 
OK, that does it, I'm starting up again! If anyone wants to send me a scroll of resurrection (I've got up to Burning Crusade only and haven't played in forever), please PM me. I'd rather put it out here for first come first serve instead of picking and choosing someone out of the OP list. I just want to get it done before the 30th, so that I can get Lich King for $10. Got a scroll now!

[edit] Does anyone know if the 7 free days thing that you get for having a lapsed account will stack with Scroll of Resurrection?

[edit2] Yes, it does stack!
 
HiddenWings said:
The end of questing in mulgore gives you a free flight to Orgrimmar, so northern barrens (or Azshara) is a short walk away.

Oh, that's anticlimatic. I'm trying to get Tauren rep as an Orc and tried Stonetalon Pass. Up there, you can go to Stonetalon Mountains (but there were level 29 mobs nearby) or Desolace (I didn't bother looking, I knew that was the wrong way to go).
 
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