Goblin zones have the best quests of any game ever

Been trying to not go back to wow. But this entry is pulling me back

Cars? Laser beams from sharks? Field goals? Riding rubber duckies? Yeah. Sounds like my dream MMO for sure.

That’s the sound immersion makes when they drive a stake through it’s heart, Keen. Jumping the laser-beam shark.

This has been a very strange launch for me. Cataclysm is honestly the first WoW expansion where I haven’t been openly hostile towards it – I think for the first time ever they seem to be moving the game in the right direction in terms of class mechanics, instance design, PvP, and a number of other areas. Not saying I prefer what Cata is compared to vanilla – much less a game like DaoC or EvE – but at least Blizzard is solidly moving in the right direction.

In short, looking at a change log for cataclysm makes me think “they’re learning from their mistakes”. Oddly one area I don’t feel this is in the questing – I hate the Wrath-style linear questing-on-rails with a passion. But I understand the fun and storytelling elements are certainly improving for the most part, and frankly I’m in the minority – most people would rather quest through Wrath than the clusterfuck (but much closer to “sandbox”) experience that late vanilla questing became.

I dunno, call me weird but I’ll take the hellish old school globe trotting quest lines any day over “convenient” quest hubs like we had in Northrend.

All that said, despite having a more positive attitude and opinion towards Cata than any previous WoW expansion, I just find myself thinking “but what’s the point? A hundred hours of questing through Azeroth with a mindlessly simple character, only to be stuck with the irritation of Outlands and Northrend again? No thanks”.

I just can’t bring myself to get excited for the same old leveling grind again, only to be faced with the huge cock block that levels 60 to 80 now are… And the idea of just leveling to 60 to see the new Azeroth feels like a total waste, since you don’t even get access to all your character’s skills or any of the “real” content of the expansion. I know it says more about me than Wow, but I feel it’s a real problem when your “fun content” feels like a waste, if you’re not going to get to level cap where you can actually play the “real game”.

The whole situation just makes me even more anxious for GW2 to come out – there I can play the leveling/questing game as casually as I want, while still having access to competitive PvP and a fully functional character from day one (at least in PvP). This is a huge deal to me – in WoW I have to spend dozens of hours leveling a character without really knowing how they’ll play – I’ve already gotten 4 classes to 80 and promptly gotten bored of, why should I buy Cata and level another?

Eh, like I said, this is all about me and my hangups. I’m glad to read positive things about Cata, and I hope you guys keep enjoying your time in the new-old-world. ^^

@esloan:

You sound like one of those die hard PvPers that played a AQ40/Naxx equipped Rogue in Classic, ganking MC/BWL raiders for hours at the northern entrance of Blackrock Mountain just to reply to the inevitable hatethreads with “u mad bro?” or “stop whining and transfer to PvE”.

World PvP never was and never will be balanced, so your love of that and hate of everything that actually helped players enjoy the game instead of being corpse camped at summoning stones or instance entrances shows me that you are not really someone Blizzard should listen to when designing their game. If you were actually up for a real chellenge in PvP, you’d embrace cross-realm battlegrounds and arena. But that’s not what you’re really after, is it?

And regarding the pop culture references: what exactly was more subtle about Linken, the Lost Vikings, apes with empty barrels, the countless Diablo-inspired items, the fight club in Old Town, Muigin and Larion and all other easter eggs in Classic? And on a related note: ever heard of Richole Nichie? Can you get more subtle than that?

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Regarding Keen’s posting, I totally concur. The Goblins are a race of madmen, best to be described as a mix of Ferengi and the A-Team. An all serious starting zone wouldn’t suit them at all. In my opinion, Blizzard found the perfect balance between engaging storyline (which isn’t a joke at all) and hilarity. They are tinkerers, have a thing for makeshift “engineering” and they love to blow stuff up. So why should we expect anything but that from Kezan and the Lost Isles?

The pop culture references might work if it’s your pop culture they’re referring to. Unfortunately, for me most of those activities don’t have the benefit of familiarity so there’s no recognition factor.

Added to that, I’m in my 50s so even if the teens-and-twenties references were culture-appropriate they’d still be several decades out of synch either with my own nostalgic memories of youth or my current interests.

Now, if the goblins were taking long walks in the countryside, spending hours curled up in front of roaring fires reading or taking trips to other parts of Azeroth to admire the architectural achievements of other cultures, then something might begin to chime.

Although those would be some weird kind of goblins…

Having the day off yesterday, I managed to get through both the worgen and goblin starting areas entirely (11 on the goblin and 13 on the worgen, which I thought was strange.) I’d have to tip my hat SLIGHTLY in favor of the goblin, but I must say, it’s the most fun I’ve had in WoW in a long, long time. I’ve been very impressed with everything so far, and I was sure I’d be let down.

WoW has never really been anything more than a theme park, but they just made the attractions a whole lot more fun.

Driving cars … pool parties … running people over with cars … male models having gasoline fights a la Zoolander … sharks with laser beams … gobbo girls with blonde hair?

I thought WoW was a fantasy MMO? It sounds like a mish-mosh of all sorts of pop culture fluff chock full of references to make today’s youth reference something else. GTA4 … the Sims … subpar Ben Stiller movies … Dr. Evil.

I’ve never played WoW and for all the hype I was going to give it a brief spin. Sounds a bit not what I was expecting. I’m sure this is all fun in some ways and gobbos sure can be zany … but is this somehow a part of the bad turn this game took when “space goats” were added? What were space goats anyway? I keep hearing about space goats.

I like whackiness … played Ratchet & Clank …
I like pimpin’ around … played GTA …
No desire to chill in the pool … hate the Sims …
The photo above looks like Gobbo Entourage.

I’m not hating on this but am really confused. Someone please explain.

Be sure to play through Stonetalon Mountains, one of the best done zones in Kalimdor.

Goblins are what they are, and their starting zone reflects that perfectly. That doesn’t mean that every other zone in the game is like the Goblin starter zone. Stonetalon Mountains as McJigg said above, that’s a very serious zone, it ends with an event that some people may even find very sad and disturbing.

As for those that see Cataclysm as a reason not to play the game I’d say you are missing out. Is WoW my idea a perfect game? No, far from it. Is it by far the best made most enjoyable game on the market today? Absolutely.

which I completed yesterday – taking me from L1 to 15 in an interrupted, involving and fantastic quest line.

The Gnome 1-5 start is also a lot of fun.

Just finished the Goblin starter zone, and I thought it was fantastic, havnt laughed so much from a game before, they have done really well, and im dissapointed some people dont like the goblins, theyre meant to be whacky, no one is complaining about the gnomes.

I believe the lore available in cataclysm is going to be bigger and better than ever, who doesnt like dragons woo! 🙂

Well not my cup of tea but glad you’re having a good time! I will have to be content with the wait.

Yeah I loved the goblin starting zone as well. I was fully expecting it to be a nightmare once I started mine around 20 minutes after the launch. But the phasing and super crazy fast respawns were great. When i got that very first quest to kill 6 of the worms I was like “great now I have to camp 6 of these with 1000 other people.” However they instantly respawned as soon as one died. I literally did not move and I killed all 6 heh.

And yes that cutscene was great, much better then the last game model one from dragonblight that looked down right horrible. This one looked fantastic, I hope who ever worked on it gets a bonus.

“will last longer than six months before losing 70% of its players…”

It seems to me that it’s more like two months. The recent empirical examples show that nobody subscribes after the first 30-day period. It’d be genius if somebody included 90-days in the box instead of 30 because at least then they’d be giving themselves a chance…

I guess that’s sort of what FFXV did, albeit not intentionally?

esloan’s post above accurately reflects my concerns / fears, but as much as WoW was as he described (sitting around waiting for queues to trigger), I actually enjoyed the journey (the leveling up experience) more than I enjoyed the end-game. Or at least I think I did. I know there were some raids I enjoyed, but mostly it seemed like work. I was never hardcore enough to get to do much raiding, since I’m an adult with a serious job and my schedule is rather unpredictable, so my guild raids were more like glorified PUGs. That said, I enjoyed the hell out of the 5-man’s back in Vanilla WoW. I’m no nub either — back in the day, though, I organized and lead the first successful keep capture on my DAoC server!

Anyway, I’m secretly hoping (and trying to convince myself) that Cataclysm will be like an entirely new game. Although, admittedly, I like my MMORPGs dark and gritty — so the goblin humor is a significant turn-off to me.

Keen – do you think WotLK and Cataclysm are necessary to fully enjoy the game at this point? I haven’t seen you (or anyone else for that matter) write anything about that. I know you can’t play Worgen or Gobs without Cataclym (I’m less clear on what’s in WotLK other than Death Knights), but what would I be missing without those expansions? I’m not that fast at leveling up, so it’d probably take me a couple of months to get back up to 60 anyway (and if I was having fun, I could just buy the expansions at that point)… Is there anything in the middle of the game (say level 40) that I’d be locked out of? Are the new tradeskills expansion-dependent?

Well, $15 to give it a go then… I’ve wasted multiples of that trying out various flavors of crap, with Cryptic crap leaving a particularly foul taste in my mouth.

I was reading more of your old posts. You should think seriously about revisiting Global Agenda and writing about it, since you seemed to like it too. Of all of the games that I’ve tried out over the past year, that one had the most unrealized potential in my mind. Net-net, it was still mostly a fail, but there was something there that was fun. I actually liked the (mostly superficial) MMORPG side of it — and wished there were more quests to do, etc.

Although you’re mostly focused on WoW, I really appreciate your comments and thoughts on some of the less publicized titles, and I’m sure other readers do as well. Thanks for engaging with me.

Archeology and flying in Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms does require the Cataclysm expansion.

But you can’t fly in the old world anyway until 68. At which point you head to Outland and don’t need to return until your ready for 80-85.

Also avoid Arathi Highlands. No quest changed at all, only 2 roads added for easy access to the pirates and the Hinterlands.

On top of that, Hinterlands is balanced for ignoring Arathi.

A shame as visually and lore wise I really enjoy the zone.

My problem with “the journey” in WoW is that for the vast majority of that journey, you’re playing a gimped class that only has a handful of abilities – and none of the most interesting abilities, many of which are skills which only become trainable during the levels of their respective expansion – for example, all the cool new spells being added in Cataclysm.

I’ve just found all my WoW characters crushingly boring until they have, at minimum, the terminal talent from my chosen spec. Now sure, that may have more to do with my choice of class than anything else – however, I’m not inclined to risk another couple hundred hours to find out, after the first 3 times…

All that said, I’m surprised no one has mentioned EvE online as a WoW alternative. It’s not to everyone’s taste, but you can’t argue that it’s stable, successful, and offers many of the old school MMORPG delights that are so lacking in other modern games.

@Sisphean – I’ve tried EVE Online, and I enjoyed it. I did get tired of it after a couple of months, but it has been the most satisfying of the existing alternatives that I’ve played. I’m ashamed to admit that it was a little TOO hardcore for me. After playing for a couple of months, the progression slows down to a trickle, and you’re mostly forced to join a large guild out in the far reaches of space — or so it seemed to me. There was very little that I could continue to do solo, and I like games where I’m not explicitly forced to group (but can if and when I want to, in order to tackle challenging content).

But I’d certainly recommend EVE Online to everyone. If you haven’t tried it, it is innovative in many, many ways — and might provide some inspiration for other MMORPGs to think outside the box. The fact that skill progression is explicitly unrelated to time spent in-game is a big one.

All these WoW-haters crack me up. I mean, I have critiques of WoW as well and I’d also prefer to play something more along the lines of EQI or DAoC w/ an updated interface and graphics if I had the choice.

But, when I read what some of WoW’s harshest critics have to say about it I just shake my head and ask myself, “Man, are we playing the same WoW?”

Thanks Keen, i have seen these in the past. I have not found any so I turned to you. Thanks for telling me. Be sure to post a new thingie on your blog when one comes out!

Now you’ve got me thinking about giving EVE Online another go. I focused on trading last time and managed to work my way up into a nice industrial trading ship doing nothing but moving goods from areas of excess supply to areas of excess demand. Then I got overconfident and tried to make some more lucrative runs through low-sec (low-security or PvP) space and promptly got my rear-end handed to me in spectacular fashion. While a painful lesson, it’s one of my fondest MMO memories ever. I vividly recall nervously making two sequential jumps through hostile low-sec gates into an otherwise inaccessible sector and almost wetting myself when I came out of warp right into the middle of a well-organized blockade that wasn’t there moments before when I had scouted it (sneaky bastards!). I even tried to negotiate my way out of it, but they blew up my ship and then podded me for good measure — and I totally deserved it.

Although it was a significant financial setback (as it should be), the unfortunate consequence was that I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to advance much further without joining a similarly well-organized corporation (aka guild) that could provide armed escorts for my trading vessel, and, at the time, that just seemed like too much work…

@Russ: You’re making me want to try EvE again, too… 🙁 You bastard! I think I’ve done like 3 trials at this point, but it’s just never stuck. Maybe when they add the ability to walk around outside your ship; as sad as it is, one of my main sticking points is that I don’t like just “being a ship” all the time.

Also, the time commitment is just more than I can handle. You got me thinking back to my last trial, when I took a break from doing some combat missions to fly a couple easy trading runs like you describe. I made good money, sure, but I must have spent more than an hour just watching my trading frigate automatically jump from gate to gate through perfectly safe space (I was too much of a newb to try anything more dangerous).

It’s just not a dense enough experience for me. There’s a ton of fun to be had, but it’s padded by so much “empty” time, where you’re just watching your ship fly on autopilot, or a laser chip away at an asteroid. I have great respect and affection for the game, and occasionally read some story about a massive corp-run event that gets me all interested in playing again, but when I actually think about trying to commit to the game, I hit the brick wall of reality. 🙂

@ Caleb: I have not, you’re totally right. It’s one of the reasons that I’m tempted to resub to WoW for a month, just to try leveling a new character (I’m not particularly interested in either of the new races, so I don’t even need to buy Cata).

My reservation is this: Is the new Azeroth quest content really so interesting, that when I get to 60 I can just say “Man, that was worth it. I have some memorable experiences of leveling 1-60, now I can stop before I make myself want to jump out a window by doing 60-80 for the 5th time”. If the questing by itself isn’t good enough, are the new class designs interesting enough to be engaging through all that content?

Historically the answers have been a resounding “no”. That content was only “worth doing” in the context of getting to end game where the “good stuff” was found – for me that was PvP, meaning it wasn’t even particularly good stuff. Which raises other issues – if I only played up to level 60? Sure, I could PvP, every 8 levels or so for a few hours; but my gear would be crappy, my spec would be meant for leveling and not PvP, and I’d be stuck doing the same two battlegrounds I’ve been doing for the past 6 years.

Or am I wrong? Are the new battlegrounds for Cata available to characters below level 80? And why not, I wonder?

@Sisyphean – Your post was a bit sobering — thanks for taking the wind out of my sails! I haven’t played EVE Online all that much in total – I think I went about 3-4 months or so – but there were big swaths of game play in there that were (upon further reflection) extremely, extremely boring. You can autopilot around policed space in relative (but not complete) safety, but it’s much faster (I’d wager 3-4x faster) to manually pilot your ship — and speed is of the essence in getting the best trading deals. That said, spending two or three hours doing nothing but jumping from gate to gate to gate to gate to gate to gate to a particular base in a particular system to snap up a good deal… and then spending 45 minutes flying to some other system to sell what you just bought just isn’t all that satisfying. I can only imagine how boring mining would be. At least with trading, there was some element of trying to beat the competition to the deals. And there were at least a handful of times where someone tried to ambush my ship (only after scanning it to see that it was loaded to the hilt with millions of ISK worth of expensive cargo) in policed space — which really only works if the person flying the trade vessel is AFK and on autopilot. If they’re AFK and not paying attention (and thus unable to activate defense systems), there’s just enough time for an organized group to blow them up, loot their trade cargo, and warp out before the interstellar police arrive.

Unfortunately, I’m still flailing around trying to decide what to invest some time in. I’ve been reading that Age of Conan has gotten a lot better (I didn’t stick around after the first month) and, in contrast to my perceptions, some people seem to think that Warhammer has gotten a lot better (to the point that it’s supposed to be satisfying RvR at the end-game). Do I believe those people enough to invest time in those games, particularly the time required to grind up to the level cap in Warhammer? I’m not sure. That’s a big problem with Warhammer — it might be the case that the end-game RvR is good, but is it good enough for me to have to suffer through the grind to decide for myself? That’s horrible game design. If they want to make it an RvR game, then just get rid of all the PvE stuff and drop everybody into the end-game RvR zones on equal footing…

Meanwhile, I’m trying to decide whether the MMORPGs that have been released in the past couple of years have been unusually bad (or unfinished), or whether it’s that I’ve gotten a lot more discriminating (perhaps because WoW raised the bar of what I consider acceptable). I tried virtually all of the old MMORPGS, and I don’t remember any of them truly sucking. Sure, I liked some more than others, but I remember pretty much everything I tried as being reasonably satisfying. Asheron’s Call 2 was a good time, for at least a while — and that got shut down in fairly short order. Same with Tabula Rasa — although I didn’t maintain my subscription after a couple of months of playing, I was genuinely surprised when they pulled the plug. Is there no middle ground between subscriptions and F2P? Tabula Rasa wasn’t worth $15 a month, but they probably could have gotten $5 out of me for a long time without much in the way of new content…

In the interim, I’ll probably keep dabbling with Global Agenda. I’m actively considering buying a booster pack, despite swearing that I wasn’t going to do that when I bought the game originally.

What always gets me with EvE is reading things like Pirate blogs or tales of inter-corp warfare. EvE clearly has these moments of awesomeness, but as was said earlier in the comments you really need to be in a small corp at minimum to have them happen with any regularity. I just don’t know that I have time for it, I’ve gotten so spoiled by playing games like TF2 where I can just come and go as I please, and don’t feel any responsibility to help or interact with guildmates…

Although, I never knew you could save that much time by manually navigating in EvE – I assume by that you mean manually selecting the jump gate and choosing “warp within 1KM of location…” sort of thing?

As to your questions about WAR and AoC, perhaps someone else can help you there – I’ve tried the “hey try us out again” deals for both those games in the past couple months, but neither grabbed me at all. Granted, I never got past level 10 in either, but I just wasn’t impressed enough by the class design and combat mechanics/fluidity to put any more time into them.

I’m curious to try DDO and LotRO at some point, and I think I’m about ready to cave and try leveling a new character in WoW for a bit, just so I can say I’ve seen the new world design… but other than that, I’ve been pretty MMO free myself. Nothing I know of out there that’s captured my interest.

For anyone who’s leveled a new character in WoW post 4.0, are there any particularly good starting areas that shouldn’t be missed other than the Goblin/Worgen ones? Any classes that have been particularly fun to level in their new incarnations?

Also, if anyone has some spare time they want to kill, I found another…psuedo MMO

http://www.realmofthemadgod.com/

It’s an 8-bit 2D MMO. Definitely a time waster instead of a long term thing, but it’s fun for what it is.