Leveling a Goblin and other Impressions #WoW

Last night I decided to create a goblin mage (I’ve never played a mage before) and my intentions were to simply mail myself some heirloom gear and then call it a night. However. I very quickly got caught up in the goblin town and quests and before I knew it two hours had passed. It was that good. In fact it was so good I don’t remember the last time I had THAT much fun creating and leveling up a new character in any game. I literally laughed out loud at all of the quests, the hidden jokes and humour that were found within the starting area. I don’t want to give anything away but needless to say if you have not attempted to play a goblin yet, I HIGHLY suggest it. Take your time, enjoy the laughs.

Sitting at a comfortable level 8 it’s true that the beginner experience is quite simple but I don’t even notice how simple it is because I’m having too much fun. If every starter could balance simplicity with humour I think a lot less people would notice the shortcomings of these zones.

Aside from creating my new goblin, I have barely touched cataclysm. My priest (main) is still level 80 (half way through) and I did a few quests in the new underwater zone. Enough to earn me my seahorse mount (LOVE IT) and get some exploring done. Last night I decided to head to Dire Maul to finish off a dungeon achievement rather than battle the mobs of people in any of the new zones. I was incredibly pleased to discover that you still gain guild experience for completing quests you have out leveled, and I was in fact earning faction with my tabard of choice (happens to be Bilgewater Cartel at the moment) for defeating grey encounters. I absolutely love the method Blizzard has taken for guilds to level up, earning experience and faction through numerous methods like – killing a mob. Completing a quest. Battlegrounds. Guild achievements (guild raids, guild groups). These are ideas I wish were implemented in EQ2 where the only way you can level a guild is by grinding writs (crafting or combat), defeating bosses in group instances (or raids), and turning in status items. You don’t have to like WoW at all to be able to appreciate some of the features that they’ve implemented in their game.

I’ve been very pleased with the launch of everything so far. Servers had no down time for Cataclysm. I restarted and it was there. I imagine they will have to be taken down sooner rather than later to fix any other bugs that may have been encountered along the way, but as far as expansion releases go, this one was flawless.

One side point. I am incredibly impressed with how blizzard has seamless instancing. While questing in the newer zones 90% of the time I am actually in a particular instance that represents a point in time and as I progress my quests I move through layers of instances, and am barely EVER aware of it. An example of this: My goblin eventually gets to a point where she must click on a “town in a box” it’s (you guessed it) a box in the middle of the jungle. No one is around. Clicking on it throws her up into the air, through a cloud, and when she lands PRESTO there is an entire town below her feet, including NPC and players. There’s no zoning, no instance screen, nothing to indicate that you are actually passing through to another zone at all, but you must, because that stuff sure wasn’t under your feet a moment before.

It’s an incredibly fantastic way to feel time passing by, the world changing. There are other examples of this seamless zoning in Wrath zones (Icecrown in specific) and every time I encounter it I’m just struck by what an amazing idea it is.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!