Guide To WoW Cataclysm Newbie Area Revamps

I've finally "finished" my survey of the new level 1-11 content in Cataclysm.  If you're considering rolling up a new race and have no idea which way to go, there's a rundown.

The New (Worgens in Gilneas, Goblins in the Lost Isles)

Cataclysm added new introductory experiences for the new Goblin and Worgen races.  I don't say "new zones" because, like the starting storyline for Death Knights, these stories are ONLY available to newly created characters (who are not allowed into the "real" world until they finish them).  If you like the DK intro, or the linear quest style of the level 80+ zones in Cataclysm, these new areas are not to be missed.  If you dislike the "theme park", well, at least you'll be done in two hours or so? 

Many people like the Goblin story for its sheer uniqueness - there are a lot of vehicles and other gimmicks, along with a storyline that continues into the new Azshara.  For some reason, I wouldn't rate it so highly.  I don't know why - the content is pretty, and the comic relief fits with the personality of the race.  Somehow, it felt like I was spending more time watching travel than I did in other zones, and like almost every quest involved some gizmo from my amazing toolbelt.  Maybe I was just burned out by the time I got to this one (which I saved for last because it got such good reviews).

By contrast, I really enjoyed Gilneas, which I felt captured the feel of an old school werewolf story nicely, while bringing in clear reasons for the Worgen to side with the Alliance against the Horde.

The Abandoned (Eversong for Blood Elves, Azuremyst for Draenei)
It appears that these areas did not get significant attention for the Cataclysm.  Both have new voiceovers explaining what the races have been doing for their respective factions in the four years since TBC.  Azuremyst has at least one new flight point, and Eversong has two.  Unfortunately, it looks like that's where the changes ended.  I didn't see any new content in Eversong, and I gave up on my Draenei when I realized that all the quests were still set in the immediate aftermath of the crash of the Exodar four years ago.  (Sorry, gang, just didn't feel like doing that arc yet again, even for the blog.) 

On the plus side, these areas are both a bit less linear (especially Eversong) precisely because they're older, which I guess is good if you miss that sort of thing.  However, both areas are more isolated than ever now that lowbies from the other races get equal quality loot in their new areas.  The BE still at least have some personality, but the Draenei would have been better off if the Exodar had been destroyed in the Cataclysm so that they could start somewhere else (perhaps Elwynn?).   

The Half-Stories (Trolls in a corner of Durotar, Gnomes in a corner of Dun Morogh)
Both races get their own content from levels 1 through 5-6 before joining their Orc/Dwarf comrades on their leveling paths.  As with most new Cataclysm content, expect significant quality time with NPC voiceovers.  The intended epic feel of these stories is cut short by the abrupt endings; it's hard to build that much accomplishment into a story that ends at level five.  Also, I'm not a huge fan of the zones that either of these feed into.

The Revamps
The remaining six races got a range of updates.  There are limited changes to the geography.  (On the other hand, there appears to have been an conscious effort to Cata-splode all of the level 10-20 zones except for the abandoned TBC areas.)  All zones also got significant travel improvements - at least one new flight path, and often some one-way rides from one hub to the next to save some time running without a mount.  Some of the zones got a more dramatic scripted event as a finale.  The rundown:

• Durotar (Orcs, later trolls): The level 1-5 section was completely untouched.  The north west chunk of the zone has been partially flooded, and feels poorly paced - you're sent on a long circuit around the area, but it's not clear what quests you need to do first, and I found myself outleveling them (perhaps because I went out of the "correct" order?).  Also, the zone storyline just ends with routine breadcrumbs to The Barrens.
   
• Dun Morogh (Dwarves, later gnomes): Level 5 characters no longer need to run through the cave of troggs - an NPC gives you an airlift out of the starter valley.  Beyond that, the content seems to have gotten a fair amount of attention, but there's actually too much of it.  They could have easily left out at least one quest camp and still had enough exp to go around.  Instead, there are too many quests and you end up feeling dragged around by the nose as you go somewhere to be told that you only need to kill 6 rats (or whatever) before being sent on.  At least this zone does get a finale event. 
  
  
• Teldrassil (Night Elves): The major change here is that there are no more quests that require players to run all the way back across the zone to talk to the dude by the lake in the far eastern corner.  Your quests will either be turned in near where you did the killing, or at the next hub.  Also, the zone has a finale event.  Considering that this was the most painful zone to start in previously due to insane travel, making it up to average status is a huge improvement.
  
  
• Mulgore (Tauren): The story here is similar, many quests provide one-way travel on to the next location, and the zone got a finale event (before putting you on a flight path to Ogrimmar to hit The Barrens).  I've always loved the look of this zone, and now it's just a bit less painful on the travel.  That said, if you've done this zone before, you're probably going to find it very familiar. 
  
  
• Elwynn Forest (Human): The newbie area has been attacked (and set ablaze) by Blackrock Orcs and Goblins.  I don't know if your average newbie realizes that these guys are NOT the factions in The Horde, but they're certainly more memorable than the previous residents of the area.  Travel time out to the lumber camp on the far east of the zone has been fixed with a much needed new flight path.  The finale is the most epic-est encounter that any level 11 will ever attempt and (possibly) survive. 
  
  Also, I might have been doing things wrong by trying this on a completely un-twinked warrior (a class that really suffers from outdated weapons), but this was far and away the zone that challenged me the most.  Elwynn seems to have more social mobs than most areas, there's a few areas even a perfect pull brings multiple mobs, and one quest target who has a whopping three helpers in his hut with him. 
  
  
• Tirisfal Glades (Forsaken Undead): Among the existing zones, this was far and away the most dramatic revamp.  All of the lore has been re-written to accommodate the fall of the Lich King.  An additional mini-hub has been added to avoid some previously long travel time.  We get some new supporting characters who will apparently be following us to Silverpine.  Overall, I give this zone the highest marks, both for the improvements and for creating the most compelling storyline - if I had to delete ten of the eleven new characters I created for this exercise, the undead is the one storyline I would choose to continue.
  
  

Overall, I'm glad I went on this little project, and I hope that this info is at least somewhat useful to some of you who are considering new alts.  I should have a followup in the next day or so looking at the paths from 10-60 (no, I'm not planning on actually leveling characters through all of them). 

An Hour Of Rift Beta

 A variation on the theme of Lyriana, now with 100% more Razorbeast.

I got in the dreaded single hour of time with the Rift beta over the weekend - long enough for any thinking person to form an opinion and short enough for anyone who disagrees with that opinion to dismiss it as too hasty.  Overall, I'm reasonably convinced that there's at least a month's worth of high quality entertainment there, but I did not see anything to alleviate (or exacerbate) my concerns about the game's longevity. 

Smooth purchasing experience
Within two hours of clicking "purchase", I had received my game serial number, been invited to the ongoing beta event for the weekend, and downloaded the client.  (Direct 2 Drive's only contributions to this transaction were undercutting the official Trion store by 20% and offering up the 18 MB installer, which got the remaining files from wherever it gets them.)  That might not be quite as fast as you can enter Norrath or Azeroth with the respective streaming clients, but I'm still reasonably impressed; games have launched with worse account creation infrastructure. 

On the downside, like many MMO companies, Trion requires billing information and consent for recurring billing as a condition of letting you have the 30 days you paid for when you bought the game box.  At least the "remove payment method" button works as advertised. 

I can also confirm that you remain eligible to sign back up for the multi-month "founder's" subscription rate if you cancel your subscription, which means that you should be able to change your mind about which plan you want up til the March 15th deadline (and will then have the next two weeks before you're actually billed to decide to go back to month to month). Personally, I'm not sure that even $60/6 months is a gamble that most players are going to win, but at least you're not irrevocably locked in/out the minute you sign up. 

Not in Azeroth Anymore

In Azeroth, the exclamation point is not as shiny, and doesn't get to be enclosed in a green circle.

As promised, the first hour, which is basically what I got to see, is a linear series of quest hubs.  I rolled up a Defiant Bard/Ranger/Nightblade and got to level six, at which point Sarah Connor sent me back to save her son from Terminators Telara from the threat of Regulos.

The comparisons to Warhammer make a lot more sense now that I've seen the game.  The art style definitely reminds me more of that game, and the interface when you enter a rift almost identical to the Warhammer PQ interface (except without the option to join open groups, since Trion has yet to implement these).  The rifts I saw - one as part of the intro questline, and a second right next to where you zone in afterwards - were also very similar to PQ's, though the more experienced players say that these aren't "real" Rifts.

Unlike Warhammer, though, the solo PVE content is actually fun to play on its own merits.  (Unfortunately, also unlike Warhammer, Rift has implemented the scourge of NPC class trainers who demand nominal amounts of coin in exchange for training players in "rank 2+" of skills - see Zubon's KTR commentary on this topic.)  The rift content could fall flat on its face and I'd still be fine with paying to play as much of this stuff as Trion can release. 

Dabbling in souls
Because I was really pressed for time, and because the character is going to be wiped at the end of the betas anyway, I decided to save some indecision by rolling up a bard named Lyriana (as is traditional). 



Bards are the Rogue archetype off-healing spec; by level 6, my default attack was automatically regenerating my (solo) party's HP.  Unfortunately, like LOTRO's minstrel, most of these skills require the playing of a brief musical tune that is sure to get old eventually. 

Next, I added the Nightblade, a more traditional melee rogue with some elemental attacks mixed in for flavor.  This was a large disappointment.  Similar to Warhammer's mastery system, all your class abilities scale with the total number of "soul points" you have invested in that soul.  As a result, my fully upgraded bard abilities were always a better choice than my baseline melee attacks.  Also, the Nightblade doesn't actually get the stealth ability until four points into the tree (level 12, further than I was going to get this time out), so that choice was basically useless. 

With my final soul pick of the newbie area, I added the ranger, which is your stereotypical archer with pets.  Again, I never actually used the bow attacks because my (now self-healing) bard songs were more powerful, but the baseline boar pet was more than capable of holding aggro, and I never seriously felt threatened after that. 

The last experience highlights my general concern with the soul system - when developers offer a ton of options, some of them are going to end up significantly and obviously more powerful than others, making the remaining choices much less interesting.  Yes, I'm free to deliberately choose something different for the sake of challenge (e.g. my latest WoW alt, a Disc Priest who wears the statless festival outfits for armor), but it's nice if the game doesn't cease to be fun as a punishment for making good decisions. 

There's also the question of my "incorrect" choice of the Nightblade soul.  Perhaps I would have found a good way to use it somewhere down the line, when paired with later acquisitions.  Perhaps it won't really matter because everyone will eventually gain all eight of their archetype's souls anyway.  Perhaps the bard/ranger combination is so good for solo content that there's nothing you could put in the third slot that I would care about.  In the short term, though, I was left feeling that I had chosen poorly due to limited newbie information.

Outlook
At the end of the day, there was more good than bad in this first, limited experience.  The game appears to actually deliver what it promises at the low end, and I'll definitely be curious to see how NPC invasions play out in practice. I'm still concerned that souls will be horribly unbalanced and invasions will get old quickly (Ravious @ KTR already writes about wondering if there's an end in sight during a long rift-closing session).  Even so, many games don't get far enough for the long term to matter, so this is progress.

Newbie Info Overload

I've been getting ready for the launches of Rift and DCUO by spending some time on the local wiki's (Telarapedia and the DCUO Wiki respectively).  This has me thinking about the amount of information that newbies need to get ASAP in a new game.

Rolling Up New Characters
When I ducked into DCUO's beta for an hour or so, I really felt that I didn't understand the choices I was being asked to make.  Which options affect gameplay, and which can be changed later?  No one wants to spend their first hour in game reading tooltips, but it's equally irritating to be hours into the game before you discover that your character doesn't do what you wanted it to because you made an incorrect choice before you knew better.

From what I can tell, DCUO has six character classes, all of whom have a DPS spec and one group role - Fire and Ice tank, Mental and Gadgets do CC, and Nature and Sorcery heal in their alternate roles.  I had absolutely no idea how this worked from the beta character generator.  Newbies are also asked to choose a combat style - such as martial arts, energy blasts, or dual swords, and a movement power.  Though I'm sure that these choices matter to min-maxers, they're not nearly as important as failing to realize that you've rolled up a tank. 

Rift has it easier in this department because at least their archetypes have the traditional MMO labels, but even then I've heard that "how do I replace a soul I don't like" is a common question in beta.  It's problematic that the answer is "you can't, but we'll let you get the rest of your archetype's souls if you keep playing for long enough". 

Showcasing your game
In a related topic, Pete at Dragonchasers and I have been going back and forth on how early Rift should actually hit players with Rifts.  My point is not that newbies should log in to see the tutorial tooltips abruptly cut off when rifts open and 100 elite mobs destroy the starting area.  On the other hand, players have to make decisions about whether to continue playing the game based on the information that's available to them at the time.  If you're going to advertise the game as "not in Azeroth anymore" (in fairness, this was marketing's decision, not the designers) you need to present the portion of the game that doesn't play like Azeroth as quickly as possible.

In an era where the default way into an MMO was to buy a box with a month of pre-paid time included, developers had the relative luxury of time to get new players situated.  Today, though, players are just as likely to wander by through a free trial (or open beta) feeling that the hours they spent on downloading the client were already a significant initial investment.  I don't know how you balance that against the reality that there are limits to how quickly you can present information.  Then again, with more and more options competing for less and less of my free time, I can't fault anyone who is very quick (yes, even within the first hour) to pull the plug on a game that doesn't somehow convey the crucial information fast enough. 

Rift Digital CE For Less Than Regular Edition?

Syp observes that Trion is offering a digital version of Rift's Collector's Edition, handing out a mount, a pet, and a larger base backpack (!) for $10 more than the regular edition of the game.  (He comments that this seems like a bargain compared to the retail CE, which costs $20 more than the digital CE but only contains some physical goodies.) 

I'm not generally a fan of paying more for digital goodies; because I tend not to subscribe to all my MMO's at once, it makes much more sense to save the extra $10-30 to pay for an extra month of access to the whole game than to spend it on a perk that goes away with the rest of the game when my sub runs out.  However, Massively just posted about sale at Direct 2 Drive that offers the chance to both have and eat this particular piece of cake.  This weekend only, D2D is offering 20% off all MMO's, including preorders of the un-released DCUO and Rift.  The discount would presumably knock $12 off the price of the digital CE, which, at $48, would be cheaper than the regular edition at launch.  (The regular edition would be $40 during the sale.) 

I'm not a fan of the paid closed beta phase of MMO marketing, but Trion at least seems to have realized that taking money for access to beta and headstarts means that their "testers" are now officially customers; Brannagar had a good customer service experience with getting his pre-order key in time for this weekend's beta event.  Meanwhile, Trion's announced founder's multi-month discount pricing will be available until March 15th (two weeks after retail launch, three weeks after the headstart), which is encouraging in that it shows more confidence in the product than demanding long-term commitments before anyone has had the chance to play the game. 

In this context, I'm strongly considering picking up this particular pre-order sale.  Rift is probably a game that's better experienced at launch anyway due to larger populations for the scripted events.  If I was going to spend $50 on the regular box anyway, getting the digital CE bonuses for $48 is probably worth paying in advance for a pre-order.