Beta Impressions after the first 1.5 weeks
Background: Where I am coming from.
On the live servers for about 6 months I was a raider. My “main” a druid tank has 5/5 T4 and 1 T5 there would be more but there were personality conflicts in the guild I was in and left and I am currently waiting for the 10-mans in this expansion. Prior and after being a raider I am 2 things. First and foremost a crafter and alt-o-holic. Many of the leaks and official information released prior to getting into beta had set my expectations pretty high. A secondary trait of being an alt-o-holic is that I like to explore for the sake of exploring, unless driven to complete a goal. As such many times I will take a new character on a tour to get the flight point and speed up travel and leveling later. I have been playing since June/July 2005 and I did not have any characters at level cap when tBC launched. I most likely would have if I did not switch factions after about my 3rd month.
The Good: What IMO is looking good.
1. The number of quests at each quest node seems like it will be very nice to quest when the expansion goes live and when a patch comes that make me want to actually quest again.
2. The Scenery rocks. I like how everything looks and what music I have heard I like. I have to mess with my sound options I usually turn down ambient and music due to vent.
3. The instances I have run on my druid felt very different and were interesting. This may just be a newness factor. I usually hate instances until the group out gears them and this may have been the case with the groups I was in. I plan on checking this with some of my other toons that are not as well geared.
4. The itemization and stat consolidation. I am really looking forward to so new different pieces of gear now that there are going to be few permutations of gear required. I think this was definitely something long overdue.
5. Crafting, of the crafting professions I have trained: Tailoring, Leather Working and Jewel Crafting, I like that there have been many starting patterns to learn. It is also refreshing to see patterns in the 350-375 range to help get past the previous top level area. The 275-300 range however still needs attention especially in blacksmithing. I would like to mention 2 annoying parts here however. These patterns and such should not be set for the 70+ they should be crafting filler for the 68-71 levels before you really start to get going in Northrend. In addition I was very disappointed that there were no mail patterns available in Leather Working. Yes I know rogues and some druids take leather working but almost every hunter I know is a leather worker where is the mail armor patterns near the beginning of the skill range.
6. Over all from what I have seen in beta there are tons of opportunities coming in the expansion and I look forward to the release.
The Bad: What is lacking and or what I don’t like so far about Beta. Yes I know it is Beta and somethings can and or will change.
1. Lack of resources. The landscape understand is suppose to be desolate however the impression I am getting while traveling around it that the mining and herbing nodes are few and far between. This will cause hell with the AH if it were to go live in it’s current state.
2. Exp Curve: Way to slow, don’t enjoy doing the quests as I know it won’t get me anywhere. The game starts at level cap this has been made abundantly clear through out the release cycle of patches through out tBC and classic. Most if not all content added in each patch is oriented at level cap. There were some notable exceptions to this trend but those have been more recent than most. It could be said that the trend changed at the re-evaluation of Dusk wallow marsh but still to little to tell as 1 patch does not a trend make. As I have stated in numerous threads before at 70+ I hope it is 4-7 hours per level. With 70-73 in the 4ish range, 73-76 in the 5ish range, 76-79 in the 6ish range and maybe 7ish hours for the last level. This give 4,4,4,5,5,5,6,6,6,7 hours series so 52 hours of /played to go from 70-80. This is an acceptable pace for a game that we can expect to spend weeks and or months of /played at level cap where all the major group and raid dungeons are created.
3. Dalaran not accessible to level 74. Of all the things that I have come across in the game good and bad this is the one that pisses me off the most. There is no good reason to limit it as it is currently. If it is to belimited at least limit it to level 68 or the expansion level. Shattrath still exists so most if not all of the leveling toons can and hopefully will be using it as the hearth and portal station. Hell it would not have been an issue with TBC if travel was not such a pain in the ass. Especially when you have quests that make you cross continents and multiple zones just to do a 2 or 3 person delivery quest. I will say as a good point that at least all of the quests I have encountered so far are reasonably close to the quest hub, with the acceptable 1 or 2 “hey go to this new hub”introductory quest. Dalaran as the central city in the expansion should not be restricted to one of these quests. Yes I know you can get summoned/portaled there by others already high enough but there should not be such a limit imposed for any character of the appropriate level to do any content in the expansion.
4. Dalaran. I do not say this lightly. I think that this unneeded pathetic limitation is one of those few issues that may cause me to re-evaluate expenditure of my multiple accounts. I am still currently planning on participating in the expansion, hell I have a lot of plans for raids and guilds built around theexpansion with at least 2 or 3 copies preorded. But if this is does not change for release I will have to stop and think about it quite a bit.
5. The Grind – I have played Vanguard, EVE-Online, EQ, Guild Wars, and several other less popular or known MMOs. The one thing that I have liked about WoW in comparison to them is that the death penalty is the least and is was usually less grindful. The current leveling and questing pace not so much.
