Orange County Register

So, here we are in the aftermath of what could be considered the single most anticipated game in history (at least until Diablo III or Starcraft II). In 24 hours, over 2.8 million Warcraft players stood in line, payed, installed, and…well, disappeared from reality for a time. While the race to 80, was sure to be quickly accomplished by a few, I don’t believe anybody expected how quickly 80 would be achieved.

By the time I had achieved level 72, a French player by the name of Nymh had achieved the new level cap in just 27 hours. By having his healer friend Pavelomm, follow him for that marathon leveling session, out of group and with no experience gain for himself, he and Nymh’s time in Beta (where he plotted the best plan for grinding) made such an achievement possible. Nymh, is a 21 year old playing a Warlock on the Drek’Thar realm[FR].

For me, well I didn’t want to start posting about how different Wrath was to The Burning Crusade before I actually got to 80, so here I am, a little late but 80 nonetheless. I managed to get to the new level cap on 11/23 just 10 days after the release.

How was that leveling experience you ask? To reply simply, “fun!” Blizzard has done a phenomenal job in making this new expansion fun and interesting. In my opinion, Wrath feels more like WoW than TBC did. In TBC you felt rushed and overwhelmed; you had to grind for materials, you had to save money, you had to raise factions for gear, you had to raise factions to buy Heroic keys, you had to PvP for some of the best gear (HAD to PvP if you wanted to do Arenas). You HAD to do a number of things that a casual player simply wouldn’t have the time to do. Even the most hardcore of players get burned out, and the sheer number of things that you had to grind out was unreasonable.

Now, there are no keys for heroics, you get close to exalted with nearly all the factions by simply completing all the quests in Northrend (extra money comes easily), instances yield tons of experience, quests are lore intensive (there is an amazing cinematic in Dragonblight for the Wrathgate), and each profession seems to have the “awesome” item(s) that will make it fun to level.

While leveling, you’ll long for your Flying Mount again, but when you finally get Cold Weather Flying at 77, it makes it so much more sweeter. However, I did miss quite a bit of the love that was given to each of the zones. If you look closely, there seems to be a vast increase in scripted events and special animated characters (Example being the birds that sit on the Rhino’s tusks in Sholozar and fly away when you attack the Rhino, or the discussion between Darion and Tirion in Icecrown, or Geists that run around and leap from buildings). There are also many quests in which you “control” an elite mob, where you run with or ride upon them, and have special abilities available to you. There is one such quest in Zul’Drak, where you help a giant by the name of Gymer “The Storm King.” You sit upon his shoulder, and are essentially in control of an elite giant….and can jump, yes over large obsticles. You can stomp, throw bodies and have them explode, eat storm clouds to regenerate, and take out Thyrm. Quests like this add so much flavor to the leveling experience, that I really was excited to see what was in the next zone. I’ve recently returned to Zul’Drak to finish up the area and move onto the Storm Peaks (I need money to buy the vendor materials for the Mechano-Hog), and am working on a quest where you spread the Blight Plague by sending in Abominations to a troll camp…and explode them. Needless to say, I’m very impressed with the level of detail that was put into each zone and each questline.

Now that I have my first level 80, what do I do? Well, I finished my profession grind of Engineering, which was something I wasn’t looking forward to. In the end, engineering is just as horrible to level as I remember it the last two times around. At least I can make the Mechano-Hog now, even if it does cost a fortune to make (12,500 gold in vendor materials alone). I’m questing in the areas I didn’t get to (making much needed money to cover the cost of my Hog), doing the dailies in Grizzly Hills and Dragonblight, leveling my warlock and rogue (in very short bursts), and farming materials for sale on the Auction House. In between my near daily routine, I’ve also started doing Heroics and the PvP Raid while I wait for the rest of my guildees to level up. Soon though, we’ll start hitting the 10 mans, and we’ll be hitting them hard. From what I’ve seen of the heroics, is that they are very approachable, even for a group whos members are still clad in level 70 epics. I’m very excited to start experiencing the end game(ish) content, especially considering how amazing the grind was.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there at get 80 already, I can’t do these raids alone!

This is pretty funny. It’s one person playing 5 characters, 4 Shamans and 1 Paladin. I’m not entirely certain how this all works out, but I do know that they all dance at the same time, they all emote at the same time, and they all lightning bolt at the same time (the Alliance on the floor found that one out the hard way).

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