The Queue: Let’s see what’s behind door #1
@faience
Surely no harm could come to us by examining what’s on the other side of this door, right? It’s so bright and colorful, so inviting! Maybe we could just poke our head in and check it out, and walk right back out if we don’t like it.
Spoilers: In Ny’alotha, none of those things are true. But also it’s a long walk back to the dungeon entrance, so door #1 it is!
Okay. Let’s get to some totally unrelated Queue questions.
I was shocked by the pre-patch hitting the PTR. I had expected it to be several weeks later.
Q4tQ: Does this change your guess on when the pre-patch will go live?
My guess (okay, actually my wish) was that it would go live right when Hallows End started–you know, death expansion pre-patch hits during death holiday–oh the cosmic symmetry!
But now I’m wondering if it will drop more like second half of September.
I’m expecting Shadowlands in November. I think a PTR right now implies the patch landing in October (or maybe late September), which fits with a November launch.
QftQ: I remember everyone hating Vashj’ir back in Cata except for me. It’s one of my favourite questing zones ever. The main complaint was always that it was 3-dimensional and therefore hard to find where you had to go.
Enter Warlords two expansions later and we had zones like Nagrand and Shadowmoon Valley, which could be a nightmare to navigate before flying. They also taught us how to deal with “3-dimensional” terrain and now it’s pretty standard.
In view of this, could Vashj’ir deserve a fresh look as a levelling zone? You might surprise yourself and actually enjoy it.
I wasn’t a fan for exactly the reasons you cite. Three dimensional navigation often made it frustrating to find things, and though I find this frustrating in all zones (flying, caves, etc), it feels worse in Vashj’ir. I think in part due to how much of the zone, I think in part due to just how much of the zone is on that Z-axis. (A lot!)
Vashj’ir makes very good use of its ocean terrain. The underwater space is vast and mysterious. But despite its murky beauty, it’s more difficult to navigate than other zones, with longer travel times due to its size.
That isn’t to say it’s a bad zone, but its one that I still find a little frustrating to level through.
And completely unrelated to navigation, I personally find underwater zones a bit unsettling. Something about the sense of water pressing down, making it hard to breathe (even though your character gets water breathing), and obscuring your vision (even though the distance you can see has more to do with your graphics settings than the water). I just have some kind of mental block where it comes to underwater adventures in video games.
QftQ: Besides Vashj’ir (if applicable) what WoW zone makes you the most uncomfortable and why?
Deadwind Pass. I remember the very first time walking through the zone in vanilla, well before there was anything of use in the zone. It was (mostly) empty and quiet. Everything was abandoned, and only skeletons remained, strung up as a warning to unwary travelers (like me).
It was really unsettling walking through that zone and not knowing what I would find around every corner. Even now that I know exactly what’s in the zone, I can still feel a trace of of the fear I felt walking into the zone the very first time.
Question for the Queue:
With the coming pre-patch ability to level in any expansion solely from 10-50 and disregarding how the expansion was actually received as a whole, what expansion will you be choosing to level up your alt?
For pure leveling experience, I enjoyed Mists most of all with Legion and Warlords a close second and third. My least favorites would have to be Cata/Vanilla Azeroth. I do feel that I will end up leveling an alt in each expansion just to see how it plays out.
Wrath of the Lich King. It’s not so much a commentary on the quality of the expansion — though it was quite good — as it is a commentary on my memory of the expansion. I had a lot of good times playing with friends in Wrath, and I’m looking forward to revisiting the expansion in the new leveling system. It’ll be nice to play Northrend through from end to end without having to hop around from expansion to expansion.
Q4tQ: Has Blizz committed to releasing one mega dungeon each expansion? Though intimidating at first, I grew to enjoy both Karazhan and Mechagon when they were relavant, and really hope Shadowlands gives us another dungeon that feels like a huge sprawling city.
Though they haven’t promised anything, the past two mega-dungeons — Karazhan and Mechagon — were both well-received and I doubt Blizzard intends to abandon the epic feeling of these longer dungeons. Remember, both of those dungeons were added after expansion launch: Karazhan in Legion’s first major patch and Mechagon in BFA’s second major patch. So whatever Blizzard’s plans here, we may not know about them immediately.
And that’s all for now, everyone. I hope you have a good Friday and a good weekend. Be sure to take some time out of your day to pet your dog, cat, goldfish, or other favored companion. (Whether you include spouses in this category is up to you.) As usual, Cory will be here to greet you on the other side of the weekend, so leave some questions for him, would you?
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