Northrend Week 1
What happens when a WoW expansion is released after 1.5 years since the last one? As blog author you lose all your readers and you stop blogging. 
No worries, I am still alive and kicking, but just like everyone else I am busier playing than usual.
While powerguilds like the new TwentyfifthNovember have already cleared all WotLK content, I am enjoying my sweet and slow ride. I am actually leveling three characters at the same time. My main is Kadomi, she’s 73 now. My shaman is 71, to do instance runs with the other half who did indeed switch to her feral druid as new main. Tagging behind I will level my rogue, simply because I need her to pick herbs so my shaman can use them for alchemy and inscription.
Kadomi started out in the Howling Fjord, as I had hoped it would be less crowded. I wouldn’t say it was deserted, but it was totally manageable, at least in my prime playing time, which is well ahead of server time. Vengeance Landing is a very cool starting place, and the Forsaken of the Hand of Vengeance are all…interesting fellows. And so I did questionable things like working on plagues and dropping plague bombs on alliance ships. Good times. The quest rewards in the starting area weren’t that exciting for me, until I did my first Utgarde Keep run.
Utgarde Keep itself is breathtakingly gorgeous from the outside, and insanely dull on the inside. The design is very intricate, the level of detail is great, but that doesn’t change that it’s dark, dull and probably the most linear instance I have ever run. You cannot even take a wrong turn. The pulls are all incredibly easy. I think my favorite part of the instance is the series of jumps you take from the top to the exit once you’re done. All negativity aside, the bosses are interesting, and it’s a fast run for good exp.
The quest rewards are pretty nice. Vambraces of the Vengeance Bringer are now my new DPS bracers, and Tiled Stone Pendant finally replaces my Maiden necklace. Note, horde necklace reward > alliance reward IMHO, huzzah. 
The scenery in Howling Fjord is incredibly pretty. The amount of detail is pretty amazing, there are just so many fine touches, like the Shoveltusk stags fighting with each other, but once you run in, one of them runs off, e.g. The quests are all pretty fun. Few drop quests, interesting touches with hints at the Titans, and I loved having my own pet tauren in Skorn or a pet giant at Giant’s Run. Soloing as a protection warrior is a dream. I find myself having absolutely zero downtime. I don’t have to eat, I rarely ever have to use a bandage, I find myself having to pull larger mob groups for some rougher action. So far I have done all group quests on my own, the only one that wasn’t quite so easy was the March of Giants, as the giants have a nasty DoT. Still, with spell reflect it’s possible to survive those guys too. Northrend elites are such pushovers.
I love the new models on most mobs, even though I heard that people hate the new wolves. I think they look cool. The new yetis are the best though, they look really pissed. Speaking of yetis and wolves, I really enjoyed the quests with them. Running around as a worg was tons of fun. That’s just it, most quests are pretty much just pure fun. Notable exception: the buggy Twisted Glade and its spores of permanent Evade bugs. That was the only quest I gave up in frustration and went back the next day when it was deserted there.
On Saturday, I then ran the Nexus for the first time, and thought it was a huge step up from Utgarde Keep. Not in terms of difficulty, but the whole design of the place. It’s easy to get lost because you can pick the order of the bosses however you please. I heard it described too much like Botanica, but I don’t agree at all. Sure, there are angry flowers, but we’ve had those as far back as Dire Maul East or Maraudon. All four bosses are incredibly fun, from tentacle lady to icicle guy, and the end boss must be an homage to every non-stop jumping nightelf rogue you’ve ever seen. Jump to stay alive, how cool.
Also pretty cool, wait, scratch that, make that amazing, are the quest rewards. I was flabbergasted to replace -three- pieces of purple gear with the Nexus quest rewards. I really expected my Pauldrons of Stone Resolve to last me longer than they did, but I replaced them with Tundra Pauldrons. I am pretty happy that they look wicked at least, very orcish if you ask me. My Bonefist Gauntlets also went bye-bye to be replaced by Gauntlets of the Disturbed Giant. As a sidegrade I picked up Boots of the Unbowed Protector. I have no idea if I’ll need avoidance gear anytime soon, but if yes, they are most certainly better than my Boots of Elusion.
Hopefully I can get a replacement for my chicken head soon, because without all the other Zul’Aman style gear, it just looks silly now.
I just started the quests in Dragonblight yesterday, hit 73 there, and think I fell in love with the zone even harder than with Howling Fjord. My shaman is doing Borean Tundra, so I am skipping that with Kadomi. Lore-wise, it just feels great playing horde now, Warsong Hold and Agmar’s Hammer are really giving you the feeling that the Horde is serious about this war business. As a nice touch that I really appreciated, my shaman got a really rough greeting from Garrosh Hellscream, formerly known as emo-boy of Nagrand, but when I showed up in Warsong Hold with Kadomi to get to the Nexus, he was just a little bit friendlier, telling her he remembered her deeds from Nagrand. Yay recognition! After all it was me who brought Thrall to Nagrand, or he would still be standing moping by the campfire in Garadar.
I am looking forward to the two instances in Dragonblight, but it might be until the weekend until I actually get around to them, due to stupid work schedule this week. Azjol-Nerub is bound to be fun!
And that’s it! Blog-wise, I will do my best to actually keep a schedule now: Monday is story-time, Wednesday I’ll try to write instance guides, starting with UK, and Friday will be addon-time. Sounds good, let’s see if I can make it happen.
the end boss must be an homage to every non-stop jumping nightelf rogue you’ve ever seen. Jump to stay alive, how cool.
Which is great…if you’re not a healing class who has no real hots except one on a cooldown.
My shaman had a hard time healing that fight. We did end up losing the hunter, but that was because she stayed in one place and didn’t move at all. Other than that, I liked the Nexus!
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Yes its been a total blast !!!! been playing as much as I can humanly fit in. Dragonblight is beautiful. Just when you think you know the zone, you go to some little sub area which is completely different in design, mobs & quests. Wrath is a rich and gorgeous experience.
Been tanking up the instances of course. Nothing too challenging for our groups & fun fun bosses. Oh and gorgeous breathtaking designs. The nice part is that they’re all a lot shorter: you can get in and out nice and quick and move on. I really love that. Looking forward a lot to the heroic mode.
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I actually liked Old Kingdom better than Azjol-Nerub. The bosses in the former are amazingly cool.
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Namthe Reply:
November 18th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Agreed on the Old Kingdom being much better than Azjol-Nerub.
AN’s over pretty much as soon as it begins – I found it disappointingly short.
Old Kingdom bosses are much more original, too.
Namthe´s last blog post..Gnomeregan Redux
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Namthe Reply:
November 18th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Also, I’ve described The Nexus as being like Botanica. I didn’t just mean the walking trees and flowers – the entire thing is laid out very similarly, with bosses at different points around a central room, which contains the final encounter.
In any case, the lore makes the dungeon, and I hadn’t seen any of that when I stepped inside for the first time – I spent my first day in WoTLK being summoned from dungeon to dungeon.
It feels a lot better once you understand a bit more of the story.
Namthe´s last blog post..Gnomeregan Redux
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Vetiverr Reply:
November 19th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
I agree, knowing the lore behind dungeons makes them much more enjoyable. At this point in the game when I’m instancing, I can throw a riptide on the tank when it’s up and maybe a few chain heals around, otherwise I’m jumping around in circles paging through AtlasLoot and being bored out of my mind. It gets boring pretty quickly, and at least having a story in mind and some originality makes it better.
Or maybe I’m just too hard to please these days. :/
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I think you echoed what many of the older players felt this early in the expansion.
Utgarde is an absolutely terrible instance with no value to it. The look is bad, the mobs and bosses are beyond easy; and as you pointed out a completely linear instance.
As the first instance I experienced in Wrath, I was very worried that the EZ mode we saw in 3.0 had continued.
Since then I have only been able to do the Nexus, Nerub, Drak and Gar instances, and am much more relieved.
The new instances all touch upon mechanics from Vanilla WoW. In BC they focused so hard on the difficulty equaling lots of multi-mob pulls and some things hitting really hard. Basically BC was simply a STA and DPS gear check.
These instances have more dispelling and situational awareness with threat being a very low level concern. Sure there is a fair amount of gear check fights, but nothing as bad as BC.
Right now my favorite instances are Gar and OK. Gar has some fun moments, like being impaled on a Rhino horn. Old Kingdom was fun and evoked some great things from Vanilla and BC. The “Baron Rivendare” boss with a demand on killing adds quicky or the Leotharas and Teron Gorefiend lovechild that is the final boss.
I still have some reservations about the ease of things, given how quickly end-game has been beaten. My server had both 25 man raids completed this weekend. That seems a little too fast, even with one instance being a rehash.
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admin Reply:
November 19th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
That does sound a bit concerning. I heard that heroics are really rough as young 80, which I found very reassuring, but I think WotLK has brought us the end of the hardcore raider. I think it’s too easy for hardcore raiders, unless Ulduar and the following raid instance are a huge step up.
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I liked Utgarde better than Nexus but both were really fun. Of course they were too easy so we had to pull 2 or 3 groups at once to keep it entertaining.
I had harder time in Anjol-nerub. It was so hard to see and we had no idea where we were going. We wiped when we all jumped at the wrong spot. Then we wiped on the last boss because I charged in and only the healer made it in with me and the 3 dps got locked out. We almost 2 manned him. I want to go back and redeem myself there with a clean run.
Ahn’Ket went much better and I liked it a lot more. The third boss wiped us twice as we couldn’t target and dps down the add quick enough.
I haven’t replaced much of my T5 and badge gear yet. I’ve had no problem rolling through quests to level 78. I need to make more dungeon runs or I’ll be wearing the same gear trying to get through heroics.
Tankette´s last blog post..77 to 78
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