So I’ve had my rogue at level 60 for a few weeks now, and I have a fair amount of end game loot on him. I mention the loot because that is basically all there is to do at level 60 – quest and raid for the best loot. It gets to the point where you spend several hours going through an instance just for the chance you might get something slightly better than you already have. And you are most likely competing with others on the raid for that item. I’ve been less than impressed with it.

As a result, I’ve been drastically scaling back my time in WoW. I generally only log in to help out guildmates now. Maybe I’ll be more interested when they start adding more new content.

I've been to Dire Maul (here to for known as DM) more than a few times. In fact, I've been through the first instance, the plant one on the east side, enough times now to know where all the named mobs are, and have a fair idea what they drop. I've also done all the quests I had for there, so I'm left wondering what blizzard had planned for the 2nd and 3rd DM instance.

Yes, mages need to go a short ways into the 2nd instance to get their mage water quest, and yes the elven legend quest takes you there. But that's it. No more quests. Seems a little anemic to me.

Anyway, DM is a great way to pass the time with a good 5 person team. The drops are about as good as Blackrock Depths, and if you decide to do the 2nd and 3rd instance it can be very challenging. The quest thing is annoying though.

Which brings me to my next topic, unfinished quest lines. You don't start seeing these until you hit your 50s, but after that they show up more and more. You will get a quest, which after completing has a followup, which might have one more followup, and then it falls off. Best case scenario the quest giver tells you to come back later, worst case they just hint at the follow up and never give it. Here are just a few unfinished lines, off the top of my head:
Redemption of Eranikus -- starts in Sunken Temple, becomes unfinished in Winterspring
The Druid Silithis line -- 2 missions, then a come back later message
Winterspring Felpaw line -- after a few missions you get a diary that hints at further trouble, then nothing

There are more, but that will do for now. The more I go around at level 60 the more apparent it becomes that Bliz didn't get much of a chance to work on endgame content. The starting out content was excellent, with the Horde and Alliance having completely different quests in different zones that only rarely overlapped, the mid-game content, shared by both sides was good, but end game there is not much to do but raid instances for drops and farm crafting ingredients. There are some endgame quests (Plague lands, the whole Blackrock line) but since you stop receiving experience at level 60 there is little reason to do them. I can't help but think that Bliz planned to add more after release, but got blindsided by all their server problems.

I hope they get a chance to add more soon. Of course, I also hope a raise in the level cap and the promised Hero Archtypes get added soon too. What can I say, I’m a dreamer.

Seanmike is right about the lag. That stuff was bad last night.

On the patch, opening the firewall ports really helps, if you can do that. Another great option is Fileplanet. The Blizzard patcher is by no means speedy.

So, I didn't get a chance to revisit Dire Maul last night, but I did pick up a new quest for it. And in the most unlikely place too. If you talk to War Caller Gorlach in Orgrimar (Horde side, obviously) he will give you 2 quests added this patch - one to Ferelas that leads directly to a Dire Maul quest, and one to Thunderbluff to talk about a druid quest. When you go to TB you will get sent to Moonglade. And I would guess that unless you play a druid the chances that you have ever been to Moonglade before are slim to none. Well, if you opened the way to Winterspring you can get to Moonglade, just take the other path in the Timbermaw Tunnels. They’ve even added a non-druid only flight bath to it, just talk to the handler directly to your left as you exit the tunnel.

Right, Moonglade. Your quest will have you talk to the head druid in charge, and he will give you a quest to Silithis (the up until this patch unfinished zone West of Un’goro Crater.) However, if you talk though his conversation string he will also give you another quest in Silithis, one that will lead you back to Dire Maul. Off to Silithis for me.

And once I made the looong ride from Gadgetzan to Silithis what do I discover? Why, they have added a town and a flight path to Silithis! Excellent! So, I talk to the quest fellow in town, get a follow up quest, and then it is off to hunt ghosts and bugs. Yes, bugs. Perhaps I should talk a bit about Silithis.

If you played through Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne, as well as read the manual (yes, all 5 of you.) then you may remember that the Lich King Nerzul started his campaign to build the Scourge by wiping out an insectal society within the frozen depths of Northrend. That society provided the Crypt Fiends, as well as the Scourge hero Anuburak. Well, apparently that society was only the northern arm of what was once a vast bug empire. And that empire still exists in Silithis. So, those hives you’ve seen in Tanaris, Ferelas, and Un’goro are just the outposts of a vast bug population that centers in the very large hives of Silithis. Bug town if you will.

So, I’m just starting out on the Silithis quest line. Looks like it will be interesting though!

So, if you play WoW you know that we got hit with the new, quite sizable, patch last night. Lots of changes for lots of people, but as a rogue basically all that changed for me is that I can’t use UI mods until they get updated. However, new content is another story…

Dire Maul – the new instance they added in this patch. Dire Maul is HUGE. There are 3 instances, and we didn’t even make it through the first one last night. Just finding the instance entrances was an adventure, as the Dire Maul area is quite large. Highlights from the instance so far:
-- there is an imp quest for the key to the 2 other instances. Don’t know how it ends yet, but interesting so far.
-- One of our guild warriors found a quest for an end-game sword that requires a trip to Onyxia. Could be neat!
-- This is the best place I’ve seen for finding Living Essence in the game. Crafters take note.
-- So far the mobs we saw were mostly plant and treants, then lots of Satyrs
-- There is a seriously tough water elemental mob (level 57 elite, but much tougher than that would indicate) who hits incredibly hard, has knockback, and has major armor. This guy was no joke.
-- We didn’t make it to any named mobs, but the loot was pretty good.
-- There are 2 quests for the instance in Ferelas. And one in Org that leads you to Ferelas.

More as I find it out.

It's been awhile since I've had a chance to post in the blog, so I've got lots to talk about.

First, instances! Since I've hit my late 50s in level I've had a chance to go to several of the endgame instances. A quick summary:

Blackrock Depths -- the big city of the dark dwarves. It's huge, and several of the quests are nigh impossible for a standard group of 5 to do. The Lyceum for instance, is sheer madness. All kinds of great loot in it though, and many many quests.

Upper Blackrock Spire -- Home of the false horde, lead by Rend and a black dragon in human form, this place is brutal. I ran through it twice with an excellent raid group of 15 very high level folks. The loot is top notch, but you work for it!

The Sunken Temple -- Technically this an instance for lower 50s, but the sheer numbers of mobs you face in each pack make it challenging at that level. Recently went through this with 4 other 50+ folks, and it went very well. The temple can be confusing, and as with other instances it is best to make sure you have ALL the quest before you go in, but the rewards are quite good.

Other thoughts -- High end engineering is not very exciting. A fair number of the items you can make with engineering (goggles, monocles, etc) are only really useful to casters, so my rogue is a bit left out. Hopefully I'll stumble across some of the end game crafting schematics and I can put it to use. Until then, guess I'll make more thorium grenades.

Speaking of high end crafting, I sure am glad I have a guild. Seems like all the high end crafting requires that you have a friend with a different high end craft skill. Evil!

Things to come -- The next patch will be the first one to actually add content to the game. 2 new raid boss mobs, and a ton of bug fixes and updates. Where are the Hero archetypes Blizzard! Also, finish Silithis! Finish the Cavern of Time! Finish Medivh's Tower! And when are we going to be able to go to the tomb of Sargeras or Northrend?

So me and some of my Guildies geared up and did a run into the Zul'Farrak instance on Sunday. And by gear up I mean we did the whole side quest in the Hinterlands that you have to do to get the right hammer that you need in Zul'Farrak to use on Gahz'rilla's gong. A process that took several hours.

Having done the extensive preview, we were ready for the real thing. Some guildies attempted the instance on Friday night, but had to throw in the towel after a couple of bad wipes (particularly in the zombie area.) A few of them joined us for the Sunday run, and they were able to offer some very useful advice on zombie agro management, which we ignored and then regretted. It was ever thus.

For those of you who have never been in Zul’Farrak, it is worth noting that this instance has some things you’ve never seen before. There is one segment on a pyramid that requires your party to take on an army (by which I mean something like 100 mobs). There is the aforementioned zombie area, which can also turn into a you vs. army situation. And then there is Gahz’rilla, the giant hydra, who can throw you several stories into the air.

We had a blast.

We also had 3 near total wipe outs. Twice we were able to come back due to our shaman being able to self rez, and once we managed to recover due to a judicious use of vanish and goblin jumper cables on my part. Did I mention our group had 3 rez capable players? (Four counting me and my cables.) I strongly recommend such a group for this instance.

We didn’t finish everything in the instance, and still have several guild mates who want to hit it too, so I’ll be going back several more times. Besides, I still have my unused gong hammer, and there is a big gong in there just waiting for it.

Things were generally much better in the lag department last night, but it is a little hard to tell. The server kept being shut down for "scheduled maintenance." What I want to know is, if it was scheduled, how come they have never had to take the server down on Thursday evening before?

With all these issues it is hard to say which I've played more -- my main Horde character on the high pop server, or my low Alliance alt on the low pop server.

Dear Blizzard,

We love your game. Fix your servers please!

Love,
Your customers

I'm totally with Blur on the whole server issue. On the high populations servers (one of which we play on, obviously) there have increasingly been problems with lag and attendant issues. These include but are not limited to:

*Mail does not load, or takes 5-10 min to load.
*Mail loads but does not allow you to send. (or takes 5-10 min to send)
*NPCs disappear
*Players disappear
*You start seeing messages like "you are not close enough" or "wrong side" when attacking a monster you are right in front of. Generally it means he has made like a displacer beast and is in a different spot than he appears to be.
*Looting causes your character to adopt a crouching posture, which they will not leave, no matter how much you jump and run around
*zeplins and boats disappear at random
*and the most fun one - zeplins and boats deliver you to random locals throughout the game world. Visit exiciting places, see new monsters, and be horribly mauled by them.

I had to start an alliance alt on a low pop server just so I could play this last weekend. And while that was fun, it doesn't exactly excuse the problem.