Back to Where It All Began
Now that my adventures in Outland were done, it was time to sit back, relax, and prepare to start my adventures… in Outland!
…wait, I think I screwed that up. Hm. Oh well, nevermind. Best to ignore it, I feel.
After waiting for around an hour at Gamestop (hey, they said to come at 11, I came at 11!) and finding myself thankful, for the first time, for global warming… I returned home with my copy of Burning Crusade and put the disc in my computer.
What?! It won’t install? Oh no! I’m ruined!
And then, I realized I’d put the wrong CD in first. Whoops. False alarm, folks! I install the game (having deleted my beta client earlier to make room for it, of course) and then, after a few tries, head to the Outlands. Though my laptop never actually renders the multitude outside the Dark Portal other than their shadows, I make it through the mass unharmed and cross into Outland for the first time!
…uh, the first time… again? Something like that.
The more things change, the more things stay the same. There’s still the constant battle going on in front of the Dark Portal, but there are also a lot more people. And I mean a ton more people. The beta servers were relatively sparsely populated, and I still ran into competition for quest mobs and drops on occasion. Mug’Thol, in comparison, is packed to the brim with would-be heroes and villains.
Still, with experience I know some tips and tricks to get around it. For instance–to Horde doing Forge Camp: Mageddon… there’s a forge base with Gan’arg servants right north of Thrallmar. Much fewer people there, so you can get your quest done faster! However, some things are strange. There are significantly fewer quest givers in Thrallmar, and it isn’t until I go and do the Reaver’s Fall questlines with the bombing missions that I unlock the rest of the quests. I suppose it’s cool, and the bombing missions are definitely fun-so I do see why they’d want to ensure that almost all of the players do them as a part of their initiation into Outland.
Grouping up is certainly helpful. Not only does it aid in protection from the other faction (though on Mug’Thol there appears to be a temporary, unofficial cease-fire between Horde and Alliance as we level up) but it reduces competition for mobs. Even in quests with drops that aren’t shared amongst the party, more people means the ability to tag more mobs, so it’s a better shot I think.
Things that didn’t used to be chains (for example, the quests for the goblin outside Thrallmar’s mine) are now chained, which gives them a nice sense of cohesiveness. Still, most of what I’ve seen is old hat. I think I’ll take my time leveling this time around-not in any hurry to see the higher level stuff, after all!
Yay for dinging 61. And I think… now it’s time to head to Zangarmarsh. See what’s different there, if anything.
See ya soon.
