Before beginning to play the WotLK Beta last week, I was worried it would spoil the expansion for me when it goes live. I did not foresee a more insidious consequence: I don’t want to play the Burning Crusade expansion right now. Or rather, I do want to play it, but the impetus to play the Beta is much stronger.
If I was somewhat disappointed by the Death Knight starter zone, I have to say I am much more impressed with what little I’ve seen of Northrend. I suppose the same was true of BC. I was not particularly thrilled by the Draenei and Blood Elf zones–it took me over a year to level a Draenei past level 5–but the Outland content was terrific. I still recall the awesome feeling of stepping through the Dark Portal right into an epic battle on the steps of the Hellfire Peninsula side of the portal.
Stepping foot in Northrend has none of the shock and awe of stepping through the portal, but it is thrilling nonetheless. I was actually more stunned by the changes in Stormwind than anything else I’ve seen thus far. I took a screenshot of the new Stormwind harbor, but really a screenshot can’t do it justice.
A screen shot can’t even capture the whole thing. In the picture above, you can’t see the massive shipyards off to the right of the shot. Nor do you have any sense of the size and detail of the new boats that take you North. The prow of the ships are shaped like eagles, golden plated and reflecting the water below. It’s little details like that–the shimmering of the water in the gold-plate–that makes Blizzard so head and shoulders above its competition in terms of a transcendent experience.
There is also a boat that will take you from Stormwind to Teldrassil, a much needed connection with the Night Elf lands. Anything that eases our getting around Azeroth is a bonus in my opinion.
But when you get to Northrend, that’s when you really start to see what a great effort Blizzard is putting into this expansion. Borean Tundra–the only part of Northrend I’ve seen so far–is gorgeous in a Scandinavian way, and everything about it, from the icebergs floating in the sea off the coast of Valiance Keep, to the furry Rhinos and Mammoths wandering the arid landscape, all make you feel as if you are somewhere both different and familiar at the same time.
As the boat was docking for the first time, someone in general commented that the NPCs seemed fatter. I remarked, “It’s winter fat.” And I was only partly joking. It would not surprise me if Blizzard did make them fatter just to add another small brushstroke to the canvas.
Overall, I’ve barely touched the Northrend content, though. I transferred my characters to the PvP server, just to experience life on the edge, and my first two nights of play have been spent either looking over my shoulder or running back to my corpse. Warsong Hold and Valiance Keep are very close together on the map, closer than Honor Hold and the Horde equivalent (can’t think of it’s name at the moment). Trying to quest was an exercise in frustration, as there were always Horde in the area sometimes working on the same or similar quests.
Maybe playing on the PvP server will sharpen my dull reflexes, though. In my defense, I was seriously handicapped because I was on my hunter rather than my Warlock. I haven’t played my hunter seriously in months, but I wanted to take him out first and try out some of the new Beast Master hunter talents.
The first thing I did was tame one of the Rhinos, considered an exotic pet and available only to hunters that have gone all the way down the BM tree. I was hoping for some kind of “Squash” ability when tamed, or maybe “Impale,” but the Rhino talent really wasn’t that impressive. I think it had the ability to swipe several enemies at once, and that was its only special ability. The crab was more impressive, surprisngly.
The crabs look like any other crab in the game, but besides Claw, they come with a talent called “Pin” that entraps a target for a few seconds and hits them for damage. This should make it an excellent PvP pet, as well as a good PvE pet since they can stop runners. Crabs are not exotic, though, and everyone wants an exotic pet.
The level 75 Blood Elf hunter that kept ganking me Saturday night had a Devilsaur that tore me up. The exotic pets I’ve seen so far don’t scale in size, when you tame them, either, so the Rhino was as big when I tamed it as when it was roaming free on the tundra. This makes it more formidable than any special talent it might have. Imagine this enormous rhino stomping on you, hitting you, and then it goes all red and mean and grows even bigger.
I have to say, I am really tempted to take my hunter out of mothballs when the expansion goes live. My first goal has been to level my Warlock to 80, and that still is my goal (I think), but I may find myself leveling him and my hunter simultaneously. I’ve really enjoyed playing him again in Northrend. However, this whole experience with the beta is causing me to revise pretty much all of my goals for the next couple months, so everything is in flux. For example, I am suddenly much less interested in raiding with my Warlock. It doesn’t seem all that important.
Increasing in importance is getting my hunter’s mining, engineering, and fishing to skill cap to prepare him for the expansion. I also want to get my Warlock to skill cap in fishing. And I want to get my Shaman to 70 as well. I am feeling the pressure to get these things taken care of, so that in November (assuming the expansion is on time), I can step off the boat into Northrend and be ready to upgrade my professions and roll into the new content.
