The War Within Start

It’s been almost 2 months now since the War Within was released for World of Warcraft. And so far I have been through almost the entire campaign on Morpheus, my Druid. I already hit max level 80 in the second zone, because I completed the entire first zone and with rested XP and a few delves here and there I hit 80 pretty quickly. After that I mainly followed the main story to open up world quests. Even after that part, the story quest line continues and it’s overall quite long. It’s overall ok, though I don’t really care too much for the last zone with the nerubians (‘spider people’) to be honest. The last zone is also the staging ground for the raids and the Harbinger of the Void, the main antagonist in this expansion

Zone overview at blizzard site : https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24125258/explore-the-zones-and-dungeons-of-the-war-within

The other zones are wonderful, especially Hallowfall and the other underground zone, the ringing deeps. The interiors of the housing, and the delves are full of details, it’s like you’re playing in a cartoon (in a good way). This is one of the best expansion graphics wise.

War Within Interior screenshot
Very detailed interiors in the War Within wow expansion
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Back to Dragonflight

As you might have gathered from the gap between this post and the last one, I didn’t play a lot of wow the past few years. After I got tired of Battle for Azeroth, I played a little bit of Shadowlands when that came out. Leveled Morpheus to 60 but the end game grind was horrible with non enjoyable repeated quests at max level.

Also the shadowlands themselves weren’t very enjoyable. With the pandemic going on at the time, to also spent your time in a virtual bleak environment didn’t seem very inviting to me. So I hadn’t played until last november at Blizzcon the War Within expansion was announced. There was a special offer to come back and check out the game again, which I took!

I have been slowly leveling Morpheus to lvl 70, enjoying the quests in Dragonflight. Decent stories, and a nice environment. I’ll post more screenshots here as well as I move along.

And of course when The War Within finally hits this fall! I’ll try to level a few more alts before that happens.

Morpheus at 80

After a mere 2 1/2 weeks after launch Morpheus, the balance druid, got 80 in Icecrown. That sure is a lot faster than 60-70 when BC came out. Think back then I burnt out in Mountain’s edge, only to return six months later to complete the quest for lvl 70.

Questing sure got a lot better in WOTLK as you have read from various other sources. Every now and then you get a quest that uses the new vehicle game mechanic and you get to control a giant or a flying machine. Or shoot arrows from a flying machine ;).

I am now a few days at 80 and I feel a little lost. I do a few dailies, might do an instance with the guild and that’s about it. Already quested so much the past weeks, that I don’t really feel like doing that. The pvp doesn’t seem to be going a lot, a few matches of Strand of the Ancients is fun, but not for a whole evening. I might try Arena again once the next season starts, but I am not really looking forward to this. Most pvp gear will require some sort of ranking though, which I find a bit silly, but I might try it. Last time it got a bit frustrating every time we got over 1500.

Morphea my hunter is almost 72, and the questing is still fun, but the surprise element is a little gone now. I haven’t done any quests in zul’drak, so I’ll make sure to hit that zone with her. I changed her spec from Master Marksman to Beastmaster, which made leveling a lot easier. As mm your pet can hardly hold aggro and you spend a lot of time meleeing. Which isn’t the best thing to do. The cat turned out to be the best pet for this. My scorp will be at rest for a while.

Isle of Quel’Danas

As you can see in the picture below there was quite a bit of interest for the new dailies ;). The new ones are very easy and pay well. Especially now that the novelty has worn off a little, and you don’t have to fight 6 other people for the same mob. The two new ones in Hellfire are also very good. Quick to do and you get a sunwell surprise packet, that can contain a badge of justice, and always a green item that I usually end up selling to a vendor.

crowded1

There is an excellent overview at cursegaming of all the dailies. Not all are available yet as Aggramar is currently in Phase 2.

new_isle

We also tried the new instance the Magister’s Terrace and unfortunetely got beat by the second boss. I am sure we’ll get our revenge when we get back in somewhat better PVE gear. It’s a beautiful instance and definately different from other ones. A lot of casters though, that are hard on the tank. Only thing I didn’t like were the tight corridors, where you sometimes end up pulling, as it’s hard to see when you play a Tauren and it make the fighting somewhat confusing.

All in all patch 2.4 is very nice I think. Patching was very smoothly, I turned off most of my addons (except Bongos2) at patch day, and updated everything thursday and friday night and dropped a lot that I didn’t use much anyway. Oh and I can now press my mount when I am in Moonkin and I morph into caster form and hop on. Very convenient ;).

Update : Excellent overview of the new dailies + the Phases 1-3 explained at the Wowhead Forum

The week in review

Ok it’s been a bit longer than a week, but the title sounded cool ;). Morphea has finally left Terrokar Forrest behind her. We did the group quests with the guild, which was a lot of fun, but the environment was getting on my nerves by now, so I left a few quests undone and finally moved to Nagrand. I’m so glad I got an epic mount, because it’s rather big and there is quite a bit of running around between the various quest hubs and mobs.

The first quest chains I did were ofcourse the hunting quests for the Nesingwary Epidition. Kill 60 goats, owls and clefthoofs. And then the elites. A friendly guild druid helped out with those. The big elephant like creature at the end of the chains ‘Tusker’ was pretty tough, but we made it and I got me a new gun to replace the epic pvp bow. I also collected the beads killing ogres and some quests for the Consortium.

Wow - Morphea in Nagrand

Also ran various instances with the guild the past week, with the help of one or two non-guildies here and there. Slave Penns was easy, we were a bit higher lvl than the instance is rated, and cleaned it out without problems. Sethekk Halls was more troublesome. I think we bit off a bit more than we could chew, and wiped quite a few times, especially at the End Boss, some of us even had to go back to the caravan camp and repair. But it was so cool when we finally did it. The quest reward for the instance is a very nice polearm with lots of agility and stamina on it that actually looks great.

Mana Tombs seemed to be better suited. Only had a little mishap, we even beat the Prince without any troubles. But out of all these, the most fun was Old Hillsbrad in the Caverns of Time. It was pretty tough, but we made it, only wiping twice. The mobs have fear, and some of the groups are pretty close together so you can figure out what happened those two times ;). Also cruised around old Southshore and Hillsbrad for a little while after we were done. It’s very nicely done. So nice to see Hillsbrad in it’s original state ! All in all Morphea is now lvl 68 1/2 or so, and still plenty to do in Nagrand.

wow - morphea in Old Hillsbrad

Almost exclusively played Morphea, with Morpheus doing the daily pvp almost every day, and one Arena Night. We did well this week going 7-3, now with a priest / mage / boomkin combo, instead of hunter / mage / boomkin. Ruryk has dusted off his retired priest and at least the fights do last a lot longer now ;).

Patch 2.4 is around the corner, I think it’s already been downloaded in the background, looking forward to the new dailies !