Beta Journal: Deepholm, 83, Vashj’ir, Kezan and Gilneas

After admitting the problem last week, that I’ve been terrible at spending time in beta, I was determined to rack up some quality time there over the long weekend. I ended up burning through the entire zone of Deepholm, dipping my toe in the pool that is Vashj’ir, hitting a roadblock in Kezan, and then finishing up the Worgen starting storyline in Gilneas. This is going to be a pretty heavy post full of screenshots and minor spoilers, so I advise skipping if you want to stay pristine when Cata launches. I’d put it behind a more tag, but I hate when people do that, so you all must suffer for my vanity.

First thing I did after firing up the beta was get my Draenei paladin set up with glyphs (I’ll talk about that a little later on) and then head over to Stormwind to follow the breadcrumbs to Deepholm. This involves going to the Maelstrom itself where Thrall is working to repair the rift. You talk to the big guy himself, then the wyvern rider nearby who will shuttle you through the whirlpool and into Maelstrom. It’s a pretty incredible sequence, eye candy galore.

Just that minor area with the whirlpool and the sea splashing all around you is probably one of the most beautiful locations in game.

Once we dove into Deepholm, the sound bites the wyvern rider was spouting off seemed to fade off at the end of every sentence. Which is funny, because at the same time the Fungalmancer Glop’s little speech being spoken on the other side of the zone was echoing like the little bastard was sitting right next to me. They need to work on speech distance/triggers I think.

This is probably part and parcel for a new trend in making the world seem more “alive”, in the sense that everyone talks more. With actual speech. I kept running into little scenes or events where once a simple text bubble would have sufficed, but instead it’s fully voiced.

So storyline progression definitely got bumped up a notch in Deepholm. How about questing? Well, truth be told, I found Deepholm’s quests intensely boring. There were a few really fun ones (like a fight against a dragon where you get tossed onto a floating rock and have to hop from stone to stone dodging breath attacks and dealing damage, lots of fun!) but the majority of the quests were “go to this hub”, “do these six quests involving killing certain mobs or retrieving items”, and then “here’s the next hub to go to”. I guess that’s the bread and butter, but still… yawn.

In the end, Deepholm felt like a chore to rip through. I started there at level 82 (which I realized after the fact might have been a bad idea) and finished the normal quests/storyline about two bubs short of 83. It was bizarre going through a whole zone and not dinging once.

Another thing I noticed while in Deepholm was how tough the mobs were. I usually finished each at about 70% health, and would have to pop cooldowns if I managed to get two or three. Of course, I was still in a mix of half 272 gear from Hyjal and half 251 gear from ICC10 (came with the premade character) while quests were doling out between 288 and 300 pieces. Not to mention I was only level 82, while the zone mobs were between 82 and 83, so I think I was generally unprepared for the whole place. So don’t take it as gospel that whole zone is crazy hard.

Lastly, speaking of loot, the tanking gear in Deepholm was pretty sparse until the last few quests. Even so, with defense now automatic from talents, the tank gear has basically devolved into three kinds of pieces: avoidance+master, avoidance+avoidance, or avoidance+hit. Oh, or threat+mastery, though one could say that’s really a dps piece.

In any case, I found myself favoring mostly the latter for questing, while hoarding avoidance pieces for dungeons. Mastery is fun to accumulate. Avoidance remains less so.

Under the sea, under the sea

After Deepholm, I returned to Stormwind to sit on the docks and wait for the boat to Vashj’ir. While sitting there I was surprised to see a troop of soldiers walk up and (true to all the extra blabbing going on) muse in full voicing about the mission ahead of them and the military prowess of Nagas, and other minutiae. It was a nice break from sitting there like a dope, or alt-tabbing a waiting for the sound of a boat pulling up.

Once we set sail, I recognized the “mercenary crew” as the guys from outside ZA and other locales. There was Budd, who seems to have picked up an interesting accent, and Samir the shirtless repair guy, and other fine folk. I could already tell who would be a story driver in the zone ahead.

Eventually a released Kraken ripped the ship apart and we all tumbled into the briny deep.

When I “came to” I was stuck in a bubble. I believe what was supposed to happen was I’d regain the ability to move, or float towards the air pocket that some npcs were hiding in, but instead I was stuck in place and couldn’t move or cast. So I drowned. Annoying.

Unlike Deepholm, the sparse time I spent in Vashj’ir was a lot of fun. I wasn’t doing the hub-clearing dance autonomously, I was actually engaged in the world around me. I don’t know if it was just because I was enchanted with the zone design, but it felt like what Cata questing should be: interesting,

Underwater movement is usually terrible in video games, but it was actually very fun in Vashj’ir. Totally intuitive too. You touch the ground and run, or you jump and fly/swim around. Made total sense and wasn’t a hindrance at all. Well, the only drawback I can think of is sometimes it was hard to judge my distance from a mob or item in a three dimensional, floating space. I’d have to pan the camera to get the proper sense of depth. But that wasn’t really a huge deal.

Hitting 83, and Tankadin combat thus far

After some questing in Vashj’ir, I finally dinged 83. Two to go.

Nothing much gained outside of a new talent point and a healing spell. I allocated the point somewhere stupidly and went merrily on my way to continue questing under the sea.

Before I pivot to starting zones, I wanted to speak a little bit about how it was to play my tankadin. I know we haven’t been receiving as much design attention lately and generally it’s because we’re in a pretty good place in terms of rotation. We have our Holy Power, we have our 15% block, we have our stable of attacks. The pieces are in place and it seems like all that’s left in the numbers game–how much does this attack hit for, how much damage does this reduce, etc.

The rotation as it stands now is predictable, but still varied, thanks to Grand Crusader. The framework we’re operating in is: CS, _, _, CS, _, _, CS, HP dump, _, CS, etc. Every other other attack is Crusader Strike (or HotR), we weave in Judgement, Holy Wrath, or Avenger’s Shield/Grand Crusader procs, and then dump Holy Power when needed on ShoR, a heal, or Inquisition.

I’m still hopelessly in love with Grand Crusader, so ignore any fanboi-ish squeal about how awesome it is to have a proc emanating from me. Here’s the “power auras” for it, by the way:

I also stopped being a dope and figured out how to show glyphs (thanks to the kind folks that offered tips in the comments and Twitter) and ended up going with Judgement, ShoR, and HotR for Prime and (initially) Seal of Truth, Consecration, and Holy Wrath for Major glyphs. After noticing that my Holy Wrath still wasn’t stunning elementals, I swapped that out for the Focused Shield glyph.

You know what’s more than a Grand Crusader proc? A Grand Crusader proc critting for 15k damage. Focused Shield is a beast of a glyph and definitely amazing for questing. I wasn’t aoe tanking as much out of fear for my life, so any extra single-target damage was icing on the cake.

Kezan, before the Fall (and Gilneas during)

After a while my mind wandered and I decided to roll a Goblin toon to take their starting zone for a spin. If only because I love Goblin character design and cannot wait to roll one on live. Just looking at the character creation screen you can see this impressive amount of detail that puts even the crisper Blood Elves and Draenei to shame, let along the terrible-by-comparison vanilla races.

They really need to redesign the vanilla races’ appearance.

Unfortunately the tenth quest in or so was broken as of the latest patch so I couldn’t get further than level four or so. What I did see though was a lot of fun, if not a bit depressing. Kezan is awfully bleak.

One thing about the Goblin starting zone that I absolutely hated was the storyline. (Sorry the following is a spoiler.) The basic idea of the starting experience is you’re in line to be the next Trade Prince, and you’re trying to “out-Goblin” the guy with the job currently so you can take over. A lot of the characters at the company you run call you Boss, and act like your employees. You go to a football-ish game and the coach says you’re some fantastic player who is the only one who can pull out a win in the game.

It’s like an institutionalized Mary Sue situation. It’s awful storytelling and just doesn’t make any sense… why would the boss be the one who goes down to the mines and knock around the dissenting jungle trolls? Why would the boss be the one who goes and kneecaps some deadbeats in Drudge Town? Why would the boss do his own shopping, on a quest given by his assistant?

“You’re the usurping Trade Prince-wannabe Goblin” sounds like something a terrible fanfic writer would vomit up. How will this jive with future dealing with the faction leader? How is it that you have an entire race of potential Trade Princes? Can they also be the half-Draenei son of Garona too?

Bah.

In terms of the overarching story, Gilneas is leaps and bounds ahead. Though, to be fair, I only saw the first four levels of Kezan, and it could redeem itself. For the time being though, I am in utter awe of the Worgen starting experience. Blizzard totally knocked this one out of the park.

When I last played my Worgen I was having a fun time dealing with no passive health regen, incredibly tough mobs, and a constant snuffling sound that made any further leveling torture. I set aside the Worgen until the next build, and I’m glad I did.

I finished up the quest I stopped on, went into a cellar to turn in the quest, and when I emerged the fields I was questing in were swallowed up by the sea. Now THAT is phasing

Later quests involved evacuating some npcs and doing random quests to get them to flee for you. One quest involved going into an apple orchard, and when I entered there I had to stop for a second and take in everything. Perhaps it’s the wistfulness I’m feeling at the imminent start of Fall and end of Summer, but I was completely caught up in the scenery. The haunting music, the twitching tree branches with orange leaves, the stomp of a raging Ettin in the distance. I forgot I was playing WoW. This really is a whole new experience.

Also, apparently my Worgen’s human form is Venom.

I also was witness to a fantastic take down of someone in general chat. Some mouth breather was complaining about bugs and specifically why they had to “play a buggy piece of crap” and some rational soul responded with “If you think you’re here for any reason other than discovering and reporting bugs, you should not be in beta.” The mouth breather had no reply. Well done for the responder.

Later quests took me around the zone and then finally to the Battle of Gilneas, which was one of those “get this ridiculous buff from this npc and kill waves of mobs” deals, ala the Battle for Undercity. Droll as it was, the fun part was in the aftermath when Tobias (spy worgen) and I snuck into the cathedral where Sylvanas was meeting with her lieutenants over how the Battle was going.

She is such a malevolent badass, I love it. I’m looking forward to the storyline turn of the Horde becoming less the “noble savages” and more a real antagonist in the story arc.

Afterwards, I assaulted the Horde forces assembled in Gilneas with a glaive thrower, and then snuck aboard a zeppelin to sabotage it. The quest that officially has the Worgen evacuating Gilneas seems to not be done yet, so all that was left was to take a Captain Placeholder-esque fellow across the ocean, into the sunset, and over to Darnassus.