footloop

Cold weather flying was originally obtained through a questline and not paying any gold. For some reason they decided that was 'unintuitive' and so they changed it to 1000 gold and no quest.

 

Okimi

The quest itself is still there as of today.

 

Malan

I did it on beta and I thought it was unintuitive myself. I found it difficult to see and target the attacking mobs and to figure out what exactly was going on, I'm really not even sure how I managed to complete it the first time around because I was convinced I was going to fail it.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

footloop

I hadn't done the quest so I can't comment on this, but I remember the blue post saying something like having a quest at all was unintuitive, not that the specific quest they used was unintuitive. Although I suppose that may have been the reason for the removal, and they didn't want to write a new quest for it.

 

Ukerric

I understand absolutely Blizzard's reasoning there.

There was absolutely no lead-in anywhere to the quest. Unless you're looking at spoiler sites, you cannot guess that you need to go there at 77 to get your flying skills back. If you skip a couple quests here and there, you would probably miss it.

 

DeusEx

Did anyone notice how easy Group Quests have become?

e.g. The Jig is Up - Quest - World of Warcraft was one that was suggested for three players, and I could solo it on the first attempt, and no, I don't sport fancy T6 gear, just Kara level mostly. With the same gear I still couldn't solo The Crimson Courier - Quest - World of Warcraft a week before, despite this being a lvl 60! group quest. Now, I don't want to complain, because non dungeon group querst were always a bitch anyway, so this is a good change, but it's also a quite glaring one.

Does anyone here not use Questhelper? I refused to use it in the beginning (were is the fun in being auto navigated to your quest objectives, yada yada), but I broke down and installed it last night. With the hundreds of Quests out there, searching is only fun the few first times and gets old quickly. It made me think how questing changed from Classic over TBC to now in WotLK. In Classic I wouldn't use any help, it was just the quest text and perhaps your guild chat, and that was it, in TBC I already alt-tabbed a lot between WoW and Wowhead, looking up coords, and now I just look at the ingame map, where questhelper has conveniently marked my quest objectives. One can't deny that it makes leveling that much more faster and indeed people seem to reach the 80s in record speed this time around. Last night the first DK on my server dinged 80. I wonder if Questhelper will be incorporated into future Blizzard UI standard designs.

I'm not an addict ... maybe that's a lie.

 

• Nisu

Having done all of Howling Fjord, Dragonblight, and Borean Tundra (later two on beta only), there's been a very limited number of times I've actually had to go to Wowhead to find stuff - most of the time, the quest text gives you excellent directions, and actually looking at your map and planning a route feels more involved (and fun) than following an arrow to your next x,y coordinate.

 

pseudo

Questhelper or Carbonite functionality should definitely be included in the base UI.

I was much like you in that I refused to try it for the longest time, but after playing Warhammer Online (where they have that functionality built in) I couldn't stand leveling without it.
Sure it takes away from questing in the sense that reading a quest is now entirely optional, but lets be honest, those that didn't want to read the quest text weren't going to read it anyway.

 

DeusEx

Oh and speaking of: Does it pay off to do Borean Tundra after already finishing Howling Fjord or is it better to hit Dragonblight right away, as probably a lot of Mobs in Borean Tundra would con green to a lvl 72 and thus only provide diminished XP? Or should you do a as much low lvl quests early on as possible and keep the high lvl quest areas for the time after you ding 80 to farm them for the XP -> Gold conversion?

I'm not an addict ... maybe that's a lie.

 

Faldrath

You kinda already answered your own question there: if you want to level faster, go to Dragonblight. If you want more gold after 80, do the Fjord and the Tundra before moving on. I'm currently 2 bubbles into 75 after doing Fjord/Tundra and just a couple of hubs in Dragonblight (and some instances), so maybe that will give you an idea. I think in lore terms it's better to do Fjord/Tundra first as well, so you can better understand what's at stake from both sides when you get to Dragonblight.

 

Truht

For all the reasons you've mentioned, it seems to be the best thing to do. The similar exp needed for each subseqent level makes the choice that much easier. For some frame of reference, I've completed BT and HF with a couple of quests finished past the achievement and am close to doing the same in Dragonblight. And I'm already 76, which leads me to believe that I will have a huge number of higher level quests to funnel me money for all the goldsinks they've put in.

 

kalbear

From what I understand green quests do not give any less experience than yellow ones do. The quests in dragonblight give exactly the same xp that the quests in HF/BT do (20k for normal ones). The only difference is the xp from mobs; you will get substantially less xp per mob doing the starter areas again compared to what you get from doing mobs of your level. My experience is that you get about 1k XP per mob of your level, and that drops about 100 xp per level difference.

However, being able to breeze through the early quests and being able to keep as many quests alive combined with the rep rewards is worth it.

 

bbartlog

Some of them, yes. The main issue in my opinion is that because of this the quest text is no longer a reliable guide to the actual difficulty. There are quests that suggest two or three players that can be soloed (by someone in Kara gear that is, not by a prot warrior in Sunwell gear...). And then there are ones like Do Unto Others that are a decent challenge even for a full group of the appropriate level. This leads at least in my case to trying to solo just about everything on the initial attempt (unless clearly labeled group[5]), which is kind of fun in a way but certainly puts the value of the guidance in question.
However, I think this has been a problem for a long time. There are plenty of quests in TBC where you could make a similar complaint. Many of the quests that involve killing elites are soloable either with a strong soloing class or just good gear and/or execution. The issue I think is that if you *don't* put a warning on quests that not every class/spec can solo, you'll get some justified complaints. One solution would be to build a huge step in quest difficulty into the design so that any and all non-solo quests involved much, much tougher opponents, but this seems like a stupid solution to what is after all a pretty minor problem.

 

Ghando

Regarding the integration of Questhelper/Carbonite functionality into the base UI, it's done in other games (WAR jumps immediately to mind) and done very well. In that game, whenever a quest is accepted it shows up on the relevant zone map with a small red circle "drawn" on the map. Much like Questhelper it gives the player a basic idea of where they need to go and what they need to do to complete their quests.

Another neat feature is that the player can click on the active quest display (the listing typically on the side of the player's screen that says "3/10 Kobolds killed" or whatever) and it will open the player's quest log, automatically opening the full text for that quest. It makes the entire UI feel tied-together, like everything the player sees is part of an interconnected whole. Finally, I love showing active quests on-screen even when no progress has been made on that quest. It keeps all the quests and all the player's options open. All these things would be sweet integrations into the UI, but I get the feeling that Blizzard wants to stay old-school and simple with questing/levelling. Considering that most people on this board only spend a small amount of time levelling compared to level-cap content, it's probably not a huge issue.

I'm a Shaman.

 

dlanod

While there are some that are definitely soloable, there are others that are just as definitely not. I ran into problems with several of the Dragonblight group quests (e.g. Really Big Worm, the WANTED quests, etc) as well as the runed stone giant group quest in HF. Having said that, I'm a lot more inclined to at least give it a go of soloing after the TBC experience... it comes down to the "suggested" number of players usually being up to +/- 2 players wrong, as well as (I'm guessing) the assumption that those players are only in quest greens. I'm assuming just about everyone on here would be (at a minimum) T4 or better, which probably explains a decent chunk of that variance.

I still level without it for a couple of reasons. One, I enjoy exploring. Two, I have a second computer beside me that I can Wowhead anything on if I really get stuck. Three, once I've done a quest once I'm usually pretty good at remembering details for leveling my alts (and the second through sixth times tend to just reinforce it) so it'd only be useful on my first character through any given zone. My fiancee is a lot more hopeless than I am at quests, and she uses Lightheaded instead because QuestHelper is just too much of a hand-holding device for those of us who enjoy leveling.

 

• Titanstrider

As far as questing addons I highly recommend LightHeaded and Tom Tom (at wowinterface.com I think).

Lightheaded adds a panel to the quest log that gives you the comments from wowhead.com, and you can click a coordinates link from there and Tom Tom adds an arrow pointing you towards the location.

 

richard

Not every quest has a comment with the coordinates on it though. Questhelper just adds an arrow regardless of Lightheaded.

 

Legitimate

I've noticed this as well. I've found myself alt-tabbing out of WoW into WoWHead very few times thus far and that alone has made questing much more enjoyable. I still think the maps have a bit to be desired in terms of labeling points of Interest but that's a whole different discussion.

I started in the Borean Tundra and noticed that a lot of quest objectives were very close to the quest givers, which makes questing much more enjoyable. I prefer killing things, not walking to the place where I'm supposed to kill things then back again. Dragonblight a bit less so, but overall, it's been a big improvement over TBC.

I will say this: If you haven't done the Wrathgate quest line out of Dragonblight yet, you absolutely must. It's a huge line, about 20-25 steps, but there is so much lore and it's all worth it for a sweet cutscene at the end of the whole thing. Very cool set of quests.

 

Kumar

I will disagree with that. I feel that questing in Storm Peaks and Icecrown is slower as there is a lot of flying involved. Not to mention, Icecrown is probably the toughest place to level.

I did, HF->BT->Grizzly->ZulDrak->SB->SP to hit 80, only one instance run and only 4 group quests in Dragonblight. I would recommend that circle for everybody.

For questing help, I recommend Welcome to WTBBlue.com

 

Prinsesa

I would absolutely recommend doing Borean Tundra after finishing off Howling Fjord (and vice-versa).

Every WOTLK level requires 1.5 million experience, and never goes up much after that. Similarly, quests give roughly 20k experience each, and never goes up much after that, regardless of the zone.

Yes, you will get less mob exp from green-con mobs, but since a large proportion of your experience comes from quests anyway, and since those green-con mobs will die so much faster, staying in the starter zone should still be faster than moving to Dragonblight immediately.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Renzil

A very light version of a questhelper functionality is already integrated in the base UI. For few quests you can select (highlight) one in the quest-log and then a little indicator appears as a golden arrow on the minimap, pointing to the right direction. As an example, this works for the three Kirin Tor quests in Borean Tundra in which you are asked to visit a disruption.

 

Taja

I am probably outgearing the quests slightly but I loved those 2 and 3 man quests. So far I have been able to solo them all (tundra and part of fjord so far) where Breaking Trough in Borean Tundra was one of the coolest things to do so far. Granted as a frostmage most named mobs are a joke if there snareable but the last guy in that chain was not. Yet with some clever water elemental / ice block / invis use I was able to down him. Apart from that quest the other were definitely doable with some shitty gear aswell.

 

DeusEx

Have gone to Borean Tundra after finishing Howling Fjord and you guys are right: since mob XP is negligible compared to what you get from quests, leveling is breeze there now. Nonetheless I preferred Howling Fjord to Borean Tundra so far. Though you have some great quests in the Tundra (D.E.H.T.A. and the Murloc quests) the zone seems much more eclectic and "in the face" compared to the Howling Fjord, which left a very harmonious and pleasantly understated impression on me. A question of personal taste I'm sure, but I'm glad I went with my gut feeling in choosing the Howling Fjord as my first WotLK starter zone.

The obvious difference between the measly mob XP and the very good quest XP made me think that perhaps it would have been better to reduce the amount of quests and increase the mob XP a bit. Now, there are many great and really worthwhile quests in WotLK, but there are of course also very many "filler" quests, that don't add much to the experience. Let's take the Coldarra area of Borean Tundra. There is the very interesting and well done Keristraza questline, but there are also several "kill x mobs" quests that get repeated for almost every type of mob in this area. If there would be less of these quests implemented and mobs been given more XP per kill, I think the expansion could only benefit from it.

I'm not an addict ... maybe that's a lie.

 

Axl_Stukov

For any melee/tank classes having weapon skillup blues, Rothin the Decaying in the Obsidian Dragonshrine gives skillups, won't fight back, and can't be killed unless someone stops by with the quest item for him: ImageShack - Hosting :: wowscrnshot111808055025ce6.jpg

 

Mideci

/sarcasm

Cause it would have been terribly difficult to put an NPC at the griffin master in Dalaran with an ! over his head telling you where to go to get the quest. And it would have been equally difficult to name him Neill Strongarm or Wilbur Orville.

/end sarcasm

That's just not a reason.

Someone decided to suck some gold out of the economy. Any other explanation strains the imagination.