The chase for the Loremaster title continues in Outland. Having decided to go through the unfinished zones the hard way, at level with a character new to each zone, it was time to get started. My rogue, Trianis, ran through some of Hellfire Peninsula in order to gear up a bit and get to level 62 so that quests would be available, then headed into Terokkar Forest.
Map of Terokkar Forest
I will start off by stipulating that everything I bitched about while doing Bloodmyst Isle is present in Terokkar Forest as well; too many “kill 12 things” quests, the “kill 12 things” quests where there are only 15 things so if two people are trying to do the quest you start to hate each other, horrible drop rates for quests that require drops, having to run back and forth across the zone, being sent to kill minions and running back to the quest giver only to be told you now have to kill the boss behind all the now respawned minions, too many quests available to the player at one so that any story thread gets lost, and at least three escort quests where the NPC seems to actively seek out hostiles.
It is all there in the Blizzard of 2007, “People like quest? Then we will drown them in quests!” vision of how to make an MMO.
As I have said before, I have pretty much bought into Blizzard’s more recent vision of how to do a zone, where they limit you to two or three quests at a time to keep the story clear, pop up the “kill the boss” quest right then and there once you have killed the minions (or at least put the minions in combat with some of your allies so you don’t have to clear the field every time you need to pass through), and do not rely quite so heavily “go kill a dozen foozles while we figure out where to send you next” mechanics.
And before you ask, no I don’t hate The Burning Crusade. It has/had some of the best dungeon content in the game. The instance group had quite a time there. It is just the solo, overland quest philosophy that aches now even more than it did back then.
Anyway, all of that is there and… at least from this point forward… I will try not to dwell on those aspects of the zone. They were at least mitigated by having access to a flying mount (though I started to yearn for the faster mounts after a few round trips) and playing through with a rogue who could at least stealth through bad guys at need.
So on to the zone… after the cut.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 