I spent some time last night and this evening playing in the beta. My method anytime I’m testing is to have my handy notebook and I write down all the changes I notice, the quests (last time I even wrote out all the quest texts), any problems I see.
This time I have my laptop serving for note taking. I’m reading all the quests but am only noting the title, the quest giver and the objective. Many times I’ve got a pile of quests and can’t recall who gave me what. This fixes that.
Starting out, I created a Night Elf Druid with the pre-made level 50 character. I just wanted to re-create Atherne and get going. There are a ton of new hairstyles, and that’s just the Night Elf. I kind of got lost. You have some necklace choices and some viny stuff for your hair. New hair colors! Black, a lavender, and one that is almost blond.
Not to be too fiendish, but here’s one called Looped. They actually have named all the hairstyles, even the existing ones. Yellow eyes!
For once, I remembered to write down my toolbar skills layout, so I could just copy it to the beta character. However, it initially appeared that most of my skills were gone. It turns out, they have split up the spellbook so there are overall Druid skills on one tab, and the Feral Druid skills I thought were missing were on a separate tab.
Then, I cleverly forgot to do my my talents. I was already in the Maw, but luckily they’d provided Tomes of the Quiet Mind so I could fix it all.
So this level 50 isn’t my own character, she’s got good item level 75 gear. Still. My answers to some of my questions so far:
Well, how horrible is The Squish? Why isn’t anyone whining about this? It doesn’t feel like you’re squished. It isn’t any different of an experience than a new expansion ever is, you just gear up as you go along, pick your fights carefully.
Is this expansion depressing? So far I will say no. The Maw was only depressing as far as the psychological welfare of some of the characters you meet. Despite place names like The Crucible of the Damned, and little ghostly gnomes and drenai stuck in the floor, the game has had many dark areas where it’s all gloom and doom. There are also areas of the afterlife where everyone is all cheery and philosophical about souls passing through.
What are my initial impressions? I’m finding the story so far to be interesting. I would use the word immersive. It’s telling a story World of Warcraft hasn’t told before, which is something. Of course dread, icky Sylvanas lurks somewhere, but we knew that. As long as she doesn’t get much prominence and meets a grisly end, I’ll be ok.
I think the changes to appearances are pretty great. I should make a human though and see if they still look like Olive Oyl with a squished face. Agh, and did they fix the gnomes? I’ll have to check.
Will I wish I’d spent more time gearing everyone up? I’d have to do a character transfer to see if my girls get flattened. It always works out. I’m not worried.
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