14 November, 2008

First Impressions

Well I went to the local EB last night and picked up my two copies of Wrath (after 3 hours of waiting) and headed home. After redownloading the OSX patch for 3.0.1 to 3.0.2 (the PC already apparently had a copy funnily enough), I finally boarded the boat from Stormwind.

I thought I was going to Howling Fjord, but then my guildies lovingly pointed out I was in the same place as the rest of them. So I trundled around and did some quests then headed to Menethil Harbour and jumped a boat from there. Since it was 2:20AM I decided work should take a bit of precedence and went to bed.

5 Minute View of the Starting Zones

Borean Tundra

While I love the idea of a boat wedged in the middle of a keep, it was relatively uninspiring and felt very much like Honour Hold. Quest after quest made me run up into the top of the keep, then back down to the entrance etc. The immediate area was pretty much devoid of anything but players and the occasional swamped mob, though the forces defending were nice to see.

Howling Fjord

The boat entrance to HFJ is much better than BT. You cruise into a valley and travel under the burning wreckage of a ship which I'm guessing is Arthas's fleet, though how it came to be wedged halfway up a cliff and still burning after 5 years is just I guess "WoW Physics". You slowly curve round to a small town nestled at the base of some cliffs, vaguely reminiscent of Southshore, but much cooler and much more alive.

On Inns

In the two places I've been the most interesting new feature was the Inn layout. Blizzard has held true to the painful habit of making switchback staircases in every single Inn, but despite that its still interesting to see an open balcony at the top.

Anyway, back to software testing, more updates tonight.