One week since the Shattering; one week left until Cataclysm.
I have a confession to make: in the past week, I haven’t played with my “mains” at all. I logged in with them once, just long enough to run them up to stand by their trainers in Thunder Bluff. I didn’t feel like getting them respecced just then — it was too tedious and boring a job for the limited time I had for playing WoW while we were at BTH’s brother’s house for Thanksgiving. I’ll have to do that this week, along with cleaning out their banks a little more thoroughly. I haven’t gone out and explored the World of Ruin yet, either. I have this odd sentiment that I want to see the new world through a new character’s eyes — on the Horde side, at least, as I’ll probably end up going through the revised Alliance zones with my exisiting level 30-something Alliance toons. Kamalia hasn’t explored the changed world yet because she’ll be doing that anyway while she levels Archaeology.
Instead, I rolled up a bunch of new level 1 alts and checked out the new level 1-5 areas. I played all the way through Teldrassil with a Night Elf Mage and got about halfway through Dun Morogh, Durotar, Elwynn Forest, and Tirisfal Glades with a Dwarf Shaman, an Orc Mage, a Human Paladin, and a Forsaken Hunter, respectively. I should delete the Human Paladin and make a Hunter to do all of the revised Elwynn Forest with. I decided to save the Troll, Gnome, and Tauren areas for after we got back from Thanksgiving vacation, so that I could play through them with greater focus and fewer interruptions. I’ll be doing that this week. The revised starting areas are a definite improvement over the previous versions. Some of the quests have entirely changed; others have new rationale text for the same objectives. Overall, they feel much less trivial now.
Of the capital cities, Orgrimmar is far and away the most changed. Silvermoon and the Exodar seem to be completely unchanged. Undercity and Thunder Bluff don’t seem to be much changed — their city maps are practically identical to the old ones, but I haven’t explored them thoroughly to find small changes yet. The only major differences in Darnassus seem to be the addition of the Howling Tree where the Gilneans congregate and Malfurion’s reappearance at Tyrande’s side. Stormwind has a lot of changes, most notably the destruction of the Park, the remodel of the Keep, and the addition of the Cemetary and the Gilnean farmstead district, but the remaining areas of the city still look more or less like their old selves (only cleaner and more detailed). Orgrimmar, on the other hand…. Only the vague outlines of the old Orgrimmar remain. I miss the old Orgrimmar; I’m sure I’ll get used to the new Orgrimmar in time. I like the details of the insides of the new buildings. I like the distinctness of the different racial enclaves. I like the sunshine in the new Drag, though I barely recognized it at first for this very reason. I’m not so keen, however, on the addition of Elevator Bosses!
Today is BTH’s birthday. I intended to do something cute and fancy with Liala’s Perfect Potion labels for his birthday present, but yesterday while we were travelling home we came down with the stomach flu and so I had to resort to something a little more practical.
AHHHHH, I love them! So cute! It’s so nice to see them in action š