Beta Testing Day Five

I had a blast today and got to finally head into Dragonblight. The last chain in Tundra that I finished up was out of the Airstrip and I couldn't finish it last night because I couldn't find a Hair Trigger that wasn't 2k gold. Engineers can craft them, but per my note yesterday everything is far more expensive.

Upon arrival in Dragonblight, my first stop was Star's Rest, a druidic encampment. The inn for this alliance town is just a tiny tent that one person can't even truly fit in, which I find a little funny. I was nearly immediately sent over to Wintergarde where my actual first quest was fun and aggravating all in one. You are ordered to rescue villagers that are stuck in this town the scourge has taken over. So you use your whistle and call down a gryphon and climb on. This changes your main action bar into something entirely different and off you head into town to find these villagers. The biggest challenge on this one was that you can only rescue villagers that are actively running from scourge, so over half of them are bugged out (not moving), then you have to be in front of these running villagers on the gryphon that moves a little slower then they do, and to cast the "spell" that throws them on the back of the gryphon you actually have to stop. So this quest took me nearly a half hour. I submitted my issues with this quest and hopefully we'll see some changes come the xpac.

I did get to explore the Dragonshrine's today as well, visiting Ruby, Emerald, Azure and Bronze. One of the quests at Ruby has you "helping" one of the front fighting line captains, so essentially I just dotted up a bunch of incoming mobs and then the forces took them out and I got credit. It was super easy and nice to have some interaction with the npc's.

I also noticed some changes in a few quests that require you to interact with dead mobs. Currently, if you have to kill a mob, then interact with it (burn it, skin it, put a flag in it, etc) you need to have killed it, but all of the quests I've done along this line in Wrath, it lets you perform your task on mobs you didn't kill yourself. This comes in handy when someone else is either randomly killing mobs or trying to grief you.

I noticed a huge lore discrepancy with Alexstrasza. In the Tundra, there's an entire quest chain involving Alexstrasza, culminating in her death in the Nexus. (She's a boss in there). But then you proceed to the Dragonblight and low and behold at the top of Wrymrest Temple is "Queen" Alexstrasza and Krosus her consort. I filed this one under the quest survey as well, but to me it doesn't make sense that you kill her, then she's giving you quests in the next zone over.

I got to see some new epic items day. They were both plate, and one shield. The plate were tank items, and screen shots of the item stats can be found on the photobucket site. They had incredible amounts of stam (like 120) and the shield was really cool looking. The shield is named something like Naxx 10 Badge Tank Shield and there's a healer one named similarly. Currently they are available in Dalaran for somewhere around 54g. If I used shields, I'd go and pick one up, but I can't.

Lastly, I did hit 73 today. I went to do training and the only druid training available at 73 was entirely feral talents, so I was really disappointed. I respecced to a more resto tree build, to include Master Shapeshifter and Omen of Clarity. I turned on the Blizz floating combat text and I'm trying to keep track of Clearcasting procs, but so far I'm not sure I'm impressed. It'll require closer watching, but I think I was hoping it would proc more. One of the OOC changes I do like is that it is no longer a spell you cast every half hour, but a passive talent.

Anyway, I'm enjoying my time in the Beta even if I do continue to miss my friends. I am starting to make some new ones, one being a Death Knight who's actually looking for a new server live side. Who knows if she'll come to join us, but she plays a good death knight so far.