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World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

74 - Grizzly Hills

After sleeping for about three hours during the early morning hours of Friday, I got back to questing in Grizzly Hills. The place was mostly deserted, but I did run into a fellow player or two from time to time - it appears that during my nap I had fallen slightly behind and people were catching up - people who had the same idea as I did, to play non-stop. Some even more hardcore people were already approaching level 76, so it was clear that I wouldn't make "realm first 80" - I just wasn't hardcore enough. So I concentrated on the goal of being the server first Shaman to 80.

Having played most of the quests in beta was a great asset, but by 75 I was already running into quests that were broken in beta (all now fixed, thank you) and quests that were added after I had passed the area in beta. Completely new stuff. Happily I also noticed that almost everything I had reported along the way during beta test had been addressed in some way or the other, except for one thing; Everything was easy - too easy. I was doing 3-man "group" quests in Grizzly Hills and Zul'Drak as solo without troubles, and that's just not how it should work.

Gear upgrades were also nowhere to be seen, but that was to be expected. By 75, I had upgraded one ring and one trinket with blue quest rewards. I got a new weapon from the 5-man gladiator arena event in Zul'Drak but in the end I mostly kept my T6/SWP melee shaman set all the way to 80, replacing major pieces only with loot from level 79-80 instances. Those with old Heroic/T4 level gear may find upgrades earlier - even Zul'Drak had some potential sidegrades to my gear, but it simply wasn't worth the trouble to enchant them for completely insignificant gains.

As the level curve of Wrath of the Lich King was really casual with level 75 requiring almost the same amount of experience as level 71 did, I slowly picked up speed over time. Zones were still mostly deserted - majority of the players were barely in Dragonblight while I was past Grizzly Hills and already romping through Zul'Drak. By 4PM on Friday, about 40 hours after launch, I hit 76 and by 76.5 I had moved to Sholazar Basin to do some moonlighting for the big game hunter Hemet Nesingwary. Five hours and many dead wild animals later the experience bar hit 77 and I could drop 1000g for Cold Weather Flying at the Dalaran landing pad. Time to dig out the flying mount and take to the skies!

Distilling some juice for Nesingwary's pals - interesting concept for a quest (76)

Serious hunting in Sholazar Basin

The End In Sight - Storm Peaks

I ended up leaving Sholazar Basin somewhat half-complete as the flying mount allowed me to head to the last two zones - Storm Peaks and Icecrown. Things got a bit more complicated as many portions of these two zones were incomplete for most of the beta test and I had done only fraction of the quests in these zones during beta.

Interestingly the gameplay changed a bit - in previous zones you were carefully nudged to explore the whole area and do many side quests in addition to the main quest lines of each zone, Storm Peaks turned to a nearly linear experience. Initially the zone was mostly "locked" - only a couple of quest hubs would give me things to do. The rest of the area was partially hidden by Phasing as NPCs were hostile and flight paths unavailable. Bit by bit the quests changed everything and I could watch the zone actually change in substantial ways through Phasing as the story advanced.

Phased quests - you get to actually fight on flying drakes, hopping from drake to drake. (77)

Sometimes you just get to watch as the big boys settle their scores (78)

Until now I had averaged a bit over five hours per level and spent about five hours total sleeping. Around this point the hardest of the hardcore on my server hit 80, but based on horde characters showing on /who I was still the highest level Shaman on the server. By 2AM Saturday morning I was level 78 and well into Storm Peaks, admiring the incredible architecture and great quest lines. Around this time I also ran into Alliance Shaman that was already 79 - a major blow for my aspirations to become the first level 80 Shaman on my server. I was also dead tired. Playing World of Warcraft for over 48 hours straight with just two small naps was taking it's toll.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: Road to Level 80 - Part 1Page 3: Road to Level 80 - Part 2Page 4: Road to Level 80 - Part 3Page 5: Gameplay, FeaturesPage 6: Features, cont.Page 7: Raids, EndgamePage 8: Visuals, PerformancePage 9: The Annoying BitsPage 10: Conclusions, Scoring

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