Sunday 17 November 2013

World of Warcraft revisited

I've been feeling some pre-patch burnout in Eve so I've had a little look at several other games. WoW offers a free 10 day trial to former players so I activated that made a Panda Monk and played for a while.

The Pandas aren't as cringeworthy as I thought they would be. The intro movie features a badass mean kung fu panda ambushing a member of the Horde and the Alliance and taking them both on. He sticks to the shadows and has glowy red eyes. In game the asian themed starter area is rather charming with well-designed quests and a nice story. It takes you to level 10 after which new expansion content is off the table until high level (85? 90?).

Leveling up is speeded to such an extent that there's a real problem with quests going grey. I guess the style is to go to an area, do a handful of quests, a few dungeon runs, then delete all your quests and try a different area.

They've considerably streamlined the quests. Dungeon quest givers now stand at the entrance to the dungeon and the magnificent and confusing sprawl of some of the leveling areas like the Barrens have been drastically cut down and made easier to zip through without getting lost.

The economy is inflated out of all proportion to the starter areas. I think I had about 80 silver and I went to the auction house to see if there were any cheap bags. The cheapest was 55 gold. I knew enough though to pick two gathering professions and my light leather and peacebloom sells at the same ludicrious prices.

Overall the game didn't feel very changed since the last time I got bored of it. It's still a very very solid MMO and stands up well to most newer rivals.

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