Well color me surprised. I really expected for the servers to be a horrible mess last night, but instead they were rock solid stable. There were very few lag issues even though the server was packed full for much of the night. Considering how unstable the servers have been lately, this was a big improvement and because of that I'm probably going to take off early today to get a little bit of extra leveling in again.
Yesterday was a different experience for me than BC. Though I wasn't in the BC beta, I knew people that were and I had seen enough of the area to know what to do and where to go for the start. With Wrath, I had no clue at all. The first thing I did, of course, was to port to Stormwind and take the first boat to Northrend. I was wanting to go to Howling Fjord, but ended up in the Tundra.
The first thing I noticed was that the zone looked...fantastic, yet more normal seeming than most anything in Outlands. There was also less re-use of old building designs...the main castle there was different than the 300 different WOW castles I've visited. The Inn was different.
The second thing I noticed was just how dense everything was, and the large number of people wandering the area just enhanced that effect. The starting town isn't really all that big, but it still took a while to find the crafting trainers and starting quests. I was waiting for my partner to log in, but at the same time I did want to look around and see what I could see, so I started doing some of the initial quests right outside of town, talking to everyone and trying to get used to everything was.
The next thing I noticed was the quests. At least in the Tundra, there seemed to be a lot of quests involving 'kill this specific single mob who only spawns at one place and everyone needs'. These types of quests were rather rare in BC, but there were at least 7 or 8 we ran across last night; and 4 right at the very beginning. These quests were just an excersize in frustration--15-20 guys all waing for one guy to spawn, AOEs flying everywhere, and it was just a big pain in the ass.
After doing some solo quests, I figured that I should avoid getting too far ahead so I just started traveling around; collecting discovery xps and playing tourist. The Tundra is a large zone, with large vistas and very spectacular views. It is also very dense, and haphazard--the zone just seems to be a random mishmash of random terrain types; which robs the zone of some of it's flavor. The Tundra itself is beautiful when viewed at a distance; you can see a LONG way in the zone and therefore seems more worldly and real--or at least it would if it wasn't so random. Still, it's pretty and there is a TON of stuff to do in the zone.
While exploring I then got a chance to go to Utgarde Keep. I got summoned there, and the second I got there you could see the striking difference between the Fjord and the Tundra. While the Tundra is pretty--the Fjord is spectacular. And Utgarde Keep is stunning in it's size and color. The first 5-man there is pretty short (the first time we did it we took about 40 minutes, the second time 20). For a zone so short it seems relatively big though.
The first boss is a necromancer-like elf. He's pretty easy to kill; the only trick to him is that he spawns 4 undead adds that you have to kill which will keep being resummoned until he's dead. The second encounter is a pair of bosses, a warrior and a mage. This is a bit more serious of a fight--the mage hits relatively hard, but can be locked down pretty easily. The last boss is easy. He's only major ability is a massive short-range attack that the tank has to avoid; and in his second phase an annoying whirling blade that the tank needs to avoid.
We did the zone twice, had 1 or two deaths, no wipes; and the instance went very smooth. As a mage I got to spell steal some nifty stuff--including a fire AOE, and a damage shield; and the trash last far longer than anything in BC now allowing me to actually get some spells in.
After that, my friend was ready and in game, so we started questing for real. We caught up with the quests that I had done, and the one's near the mine which I hadn't done but he had started while I was in the Keep. Then we started hitting other parts of the zone. To be fair, we were kinda all over the place when it came to leveling--jumping from quest area to area; not always finishing everything before moving on. This was partially due to a bit of 'wow, look what is over here!' mentality, but also due to the fact that certain quest areas were so overwhelmed that there was no point messing with them.
I managed to hit 71, barely, by the end of the night. Tom didn't get so far--he made it to a little over half way to 71...those two Utgarde Runs must have really packed in some additional XP. So far I've liked the DEHTA quests, but otherwise there hasn't been any quest lines that have really stood out as interesting to me. Most of the quests have so far seen fairly simple, and to date no quest rewards have even APPROACHED being interesting to me. The Utgarde rewards were only slightly better--but still weren't worth it.
Today, I'm hoping we can finish out the Tundra and move on to the next zone. If possible I'd like to get 73 today--or at least get close to 73. I'm definitely going to need to start farming for crafting materials too--Enchanting is going slowly (I only got 379 last night), and tailoring is going just as slowly (380). There just hasn't been a lot of drops relating to materials yet, so we'll have to see where it goes today.
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