One Elf and his Cat - a very personal journey through Northrend. (complete)

This is a personal account of my adventures and experiences during this expansion, my thoughts on various subjects from levelling, questing and rewards through to raiding and “end game”. There are probably going to be opinions that are not agreed by others and even thoughts that may not be shared by anyone but me. This is why I called it a “very personal journey” and I hope that any thoughts you may have after reading this you can share whether you agree with me or not.

With the Cataclysm beta underway my mind has turned to what this expansion has meant to me, how Blizzard has changed certain aspects of the game and if those changes have been a success or failure.

It may be seen by some as a little self indulgent and too long to read in full however there will be a TL;DR at the end

I started playing WoW at the very end of “vanilla” in fact I was around level 30 when High Warlord Kruul started one-shotting people in Ironforge. I mention this as a little bit of background and to show I never raided at level 60 so am seemingly unaffected by the rose coloured memories of the game at that time. However I did do a fair bit of raiding at the beginning and middle of TBC so my glasses may well be slightly misted.

First Impressions

Wrath for me started not in Northrend but in outland handing in all 25 dailies that I had done the day before so that I would get XP for them on release day. Once that was done I set sail from the old world and as the Northrend loading screen gave way and one of the first sights I saw was a burning ship high above me between two cliff faces it was obvious that Blizzard had worked really hard on atmosphere for the expansion.

Valguard WAS epic, a small alliance outpost under attack from a seemingly endless amount of enemies. The detail was immense, from the chickens running around that turned in to plucked and roasted versions of themselves when killed to the winding almost invisible path ways up the cliff faces.

Of course it wasn’t without its issues, with it indeed being a new expansion the Northrend starting areas were crowded to say the least, respawn rates for mobs, items and such ranged from a few seconds to a few mins causing griefing and mob stealing. This led for me anyway to rush through quests and not read and respect the work blizzard had obviously gone in to (luckily I have since levelled another character through the area so I was able to spend time second time around taking in the entire story). Bugged quests were also a problem, does anyone remember the “pick up the sacks of grain from the quarry” quest or the bat poo quest that were massively bugged at release.

Overall though first impressions of the expansion were more than positive and certainly had that wow factor for me.

The Levelling Experience.

Northrend was a pleasure to level in; the quests were varied, sometimes funny and sometimes even controversial (torturing a captive for information). Levels seem to fly by especially in a group; TBC had a lot of Kill 10 mobs then kill another 10 mobs etc until oh here is a green quality cloth helm. Now there were a few like that in WotLK but to me they seemed to be less obvious (apart from good Hemet Nesingwary in Sholazar).
There was a mandatory ring of blood arena questline that was actually hard to complete at the required level and with a couple of the fights needing some coordination
Each zone was diverse and on occasions visually stunning (the first time you set eyes on Ulduar or the LotR inspired Icecrown spring to mind) and with Blizzards new phasing technology seeing a landscape change as you progressed actually helped the feeling of being immersed in a storyline.

The Zones

Borean Tundra
My least favourite area, I found a lot of the questing here boring and repetitive and even given the zone name I found the landscape barren and unappealing. There were a couple of bright points though, the D.E.T.A quest line was fun, as was the last rights/ Thassarian quests.

Howling Fjord
A fantastic area, the lore in this zone was fun and informative, quest lines were interesting and fun, and being fired on a harpoon back to the camp was a personal favourite. The landscape was also stunning from the impressive fortress of Utguard to the icy waters of the great sea.

Dragonblight
Simply a stunning area, the imposing sight of Naxxramas hovering over the landscape and Wyrmrest temple being a central hub of the zone. It was also the location of perhaps the greatest WoW quest line I have ever done (again not counting the vanilla “gates” quests) – Wrathgate. Dragonblight was also the “home” of the nerubians of which I believe more could have been made of.

Grizzly Hills
Not a favourite zone of mine however the landscape was pretty stunning, there were one or two moments of quality though in this zone, the “seed” quest with the shaking outhouse and the return if only a fleeting glimpse of Arugal.

Zul’drak
Its trolls mon’ a lot of lore in this area and the first real use of the phasing technology which allowed the story to flow rather than feel disjointed. The landscape wasn’t too pretty however the giant temple of Gun’drak which was big enough to hold a raid in itself was a highlight as well as the giant snake in the depths of the instance.

Sholazar Basin
Right through the latter stages of levelling I spent a lot of time in sholozar looking for the spirit beast (I was still BM until level 80) but I never managed to find or tame it. The jungle landscape which was slowly being invaded by the scourge was exceptionally designed and offered the first view of Freya (now there was a pair of thighs). Questing however didn’t live up to the standard set by the graphics and was overshadowed mainly by the Hemet Nesingwary quests which were boring, repetitive and frankly rubbish.

Wintergrasp and Crystalsong Forest.
Not a lot to say about either of these two areas, Wintergrasp was a PvP area and Crystalsong was seemingly created for Dalaran to float over.

StormPeaks
A visually stunning and lore rich area, the titan stronghold of Uldaur being its most striking feature. Most of the lore came from an innocuous little quest from a goblin in Area 52 that led to the Sons of Hodir quest line. This was another epic line of quests that took a fair amount of time but was both fun and necessary for people to do.

Icecrown
The final goal and also the area where phasing was used to its fullest. It was stunning; from the architecture of Icecrown citadel to the feeling of fighting an immense force you got from flying above the various planes. Icecrown is something that Blizzard should be proud of.

Classes
Despite predictions of the sky falling I think blizzard has done a good job in this expansion with its goal of “bring the player, not the class”. There has been undoubted teething problems at the start of the expansion from massively overpowered hunters and death knights to the over nerfing of certain classes (rogues believe it or not suffered for a while back at the end of Naxx/beginning of Ulduar). Leaving aside the massive gear inflation that has happened in this expansion most classes are in my opinion in a decent place, of course there will always be specs that have issues (BM hunters, sub rogues et al) but generally classes are where they should be. There has been some standardisation of abilities and talents that have helped the smaller mainly 10 man guilds that has allowed the main goal of blizzards class development to work.

5 Man Instances (normal)
A real mixed bag here, most of the 5 man normal were very well designed initially and felt reasonably difficult while levelling. They were also visually stunning in fact I defy anyone to look around in “the old Kingdom” and not marvel at the amount of detail in that instance, there are “birds” flying around, a summoning in the distance and a real feel of an epic underground city. However there are a couple of instances that were wasted; Azjol Nerub and Oculus I believe were wasted opportunities for differing reasons. AN was buggy and too short while Oculus was seen as too difficult due to the vehicle combat (I will touch more on that later).

5 Man Instances (Heroics)
Hmm where do I start here, ok; despite how they appear now the heroics at the start of Wrath were indeed slightly challenging and whatever you read on the wow related forums about how they could be “facerolled” while naked at the start of the expansion that wasn’t the case.
However I do think that with the badge system that Blizz should have made them scale with gear, it is something they could do I believe as the LFG system works on an item level system.
The main problem with heroics was caused by gear inflation for instance – The Spell flingers in Old kingdom were deadly if they weren’t either CC’d or Interrupted, or the venom spitters in AN had a poison that could prove deadly if it wasn’t dealt with promptly. Stat inflation really takes away all these issues unless you’re unlucky with a group.
Overall heroics could have been and should have been harder especially with the random dungeon awarding frost badges (I will touch on that later too).

Badges, Attunments and reputation

Wrath brought a new ethos to Warcraft that led some people to mockingly label the game “World of casualcraft” and although I wouldn’t go that far I do believe there were some fundamental mistakes made by Blizzard in this expansion.

Tier gear for badges
This was and always will be a bad idea for me as although the badge tier items are the lowest ilvl version of the tier it is also the version available to people who raid 10 mans. I don’t believe its elitist to believe this is wrong, gear is a tool to enable a player to clear content and not to stand around Dalaran looking cool so why give the same level of equipment to people who will not be using it outside of 5 mans or the odd weekly raid/VoA.

Attunments
I can understand why Attunments were removed completely but I don’t totally agree with total removal of them either. Yes it was a pain to run new people through the Attunments for Kara or SSC but it also gave people a goal to work towards and in the main Attunments sorted out people who wanted to raid from the ones who wanted easy loot.
The closest the WotLK had to an old style Attunments was the Sons of Hodir quest line which was long and after the initial quest line was quite tedious to get to exalted status. However it was necessary for anyone who wanted to get the best from their character.

Heroic Attunments
Removing these from wrath was a shocking idea and perhaps one of the things I was most disappointed with; it was obvious it was coming as back towards the ends of TBC they lowered the requirements for the Heroic keys from Revered to Honoured. Running dungeons over and over may not be everyone’s idea of fun but it improved players.

Reputation
The use of tabard to increase reputation was a good idea and could have been used in tandem with reputation requirements for entering heroic instances.

Raids

As the guild leader of a small (around 20 members) 10 man guild once most of the people had started reaching level 80 and began gearing up in heroics (unbelievable I know but these were people that had played throughout TBC and actually believed that you needed heroic gear to be kitted out to do raids) I started working on tactics for the three available raids:

Naxx 2.0
Although enjoyable to a certain extent naxx was a mess as far as raids go, I prepared for or first night in there by posting tactics and videos for the first wing we were going to attempt (spider wing), I believed that we would be lucky to get to the wing boss on the first night and that I wouldn’t be required to explain tactics past this point. It turned out that not only did we clear the spider wing but started working our way through the construct wing. I also was involved in some 25 man runs of naxx and if anything it was easier than the 10 man with very few tactics involved, for instance; Four horseman on 10 man involved swapping tanks on the bosses for the removal of the debuff – on 25 man they would be nuked down before the debuff had chance to stack to a dangerous level.

Sartharian
My favourite first tier raid in this expansion and although the basic Sarth +0 drakes was a basic tank and spank fight the addition of drakes made things a lot more interesting. It’s a personal shame that I never managed to do Sarth 3D while appropriately geared and now pugs are using the “zerg” tactic the title feels cheap and false for me.

Malygos
Ahh vehicle combat, not a difficult concept but it amazes me how people can fall apart when taken out of their normal environment of pressing certain keys and asked to press 3-4 different keys.
Maylygos was a fun fight but made tedious by the vehicle combat which I think has been a major failure for Blizzard in this expansion.

Ulduar
EPIC from the start, the view of the courtyard as you fight your way through the dwarven hordes to reach the main gate gave a real sense of the size of the task before you.
At the start the trash was immense requiring crowd control and tactics to survive and the large amount of bosses had interesting mechanics; Ignis and Thorim spring to mind with Mimiron getting a very special mention for being insane for a boss fight.
Ulduar was perfect and perhaps the best raid of the expansion and I hope Blizzard use this model more for Cataclysm.

TotC
To me this seems like a filler raid, 5 bosses and no trash meant that it wasn’t a favourite amongst the community. I though it was OK a little short but some of the fights were interesting; the twin Valk’yre for example, however no matter how good the other 4 bosses were I will always remember this raid for the “faction champions” a complete foul up of a boss that relied both on RNG and group makeup for success (until you out-geared it) that went totally against the 10 man “bring the player etc…” statement.

Icecrown Citadel
With the release of ICC came my joining of Lemmings and raiding with a completely new group of people. I have quite enjoyed ICC and while not as good as Ulduar it is still a fun raid with some very interesting fights.
Professor Putricide is one of the best fights it reminded me of Vashj back in TBC but there are also a couple of tedious fights, Marrowgar and Festergut are bosses I could be happy never to see again. The LK himself is hard as he should be and with a lot of differing mechanics it means that people have to play well to make any progress.

Nerfs

Character nerfs
Hunters were massively overpowered at the start of tier 7 with me being able to reach insane numbers in average gear, shortly after Naxx appeared we got a nerf that although I didn’t like at the time I look back now and see that it was very much needed and the sky is indeed still there.

Instance Nerfs
This is a big problem for me, I believe raiding should be hard and seeing places like Ulduar nerfed made me sad as although difficult it was hardly impossible. This brings me on to the ICC buff; my thoughts on this are that it is a joke now 20% is ridiculous it allows people to not bother trying for example “what do I need to move out of fire for, I have more health and the healers can keep me alive without me moving”. I am talking generally here and not using or implying anyone in Lemmings is like this.

General
Blizzard wanted everyone to see content in this expansion and in that respect they succeeded, it is a fine line however and they got the mixture between accessible and a mess completly wrong at the start of the expansion. This has changed and now with ICC the dificulty seems right (without the stupid buff level we have now - 10% is probably the maximum it should have gone to) so hats off to Blizz for experimenting and attempting to find the right mix.

The Community
This is where my biggest problem with this expansion has manifested itself. The WotLK instance, gearing and early raiding model has produced a whole generation of unpleasant players. Back in TBC you had to work and there was a definite progress path:
Normal’s --> Heroics --> Karazhan --> Grulls/Magtheridon --> SSC/TK --> Mt H/BT

In this expansion however that progress line has been eradicated with the badge system; for instance my own Death knight was “ready” for ICC within a week of hitting 80. I understand and remember the pain of getting new people in to a guild and getting them attuned in fact I lost count the amount of times I run BM for people to get Kara Attunments etc but there really needs to be some sort of compromise in Cataclysm.
What the wrath model has done is produce a whole army of “wannabe” elitists who believe because they have killed a few bosses in the final tier of raiding and collected epic gear using badges gained from running through 5 man dungeons that they have a right to be unpleasant, arrogant and downright nasty in some cases to others.
Gear is a tool to kill bosses and not a measure of success; do I care if some if Mr Dkarthasdk is running around in a bit of T10? No but I do care if he then starts whining at some other player because he has just hit 80 and is starting the gear grind.

That brings me nicely on to another subject; the bloody language in this game…
Faceroll, Bads, baddies and noobs are four words that bring my blood ever closer to boiling point when ever I see them written, they are for the most part a Wrath phenomenon and one I hope with the harder raids that we are promised in Cataclysm will disappear as the ones who normally use these kind of words are the as noted earlier “wannabe elitists”

Gearscore, seeing this add-on in trade makes me both laugh and despair in equal measures. The concept is a decent one and indeed if used correctly it can be a useful too however when people start shouting “l2fm ICC 10 man, 5800 GS min” it makes me wish that Blizzard would break this add-on. Lemming started ICC with a beimba score of approx 520 which relying on my memory is a GS of approx 4600 and we didn’t do too badly even without a 20% buff.

TL;DR - Wrath of the Lich King or Revenge of the damp squib?

Overall this expansion gets a “C – must try harder”.

The Lore, Levelling and actual areas were worth the money however the instances, gearing system and the community issues that arose from it leave a lot to be desired and have left me feeling a little let down.
I have a lot of hope for Cataclysm however as it looks like Blizz may have realised that mistakes have been made in this expansion and are looking to correct them. If they don’t and this game is further diluted to the point that it isn’t challenging for “me” by making things like gear easier to obtain or instances even LESS challenging or if they continue to try and implement obviously flawed “features” such as RealID then I will simply cancel my account and save the money for another tip to the ‘States instead.

Well there are my thoughts on this expansion, if you managed to read it all without being bored or wanting to smash your head against the wall then i salute you. All thoughts are my own and do not represent the views of Lemmings of the Light.

Thanks for reading

See you all in game

Coyy/Kerrina