Jord's Burning Crusade Beta SPOILER Thread (pics inside)Follow

Yea, Blizzard had a litle write up about it as well.

http://worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/townhall/lookingforgroup.html



Also, here is the druid tree form! (I think) I <3 resto durids.

http://img178.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wowscrnshot101206080211xk0.jpg

I decided to check out Rep grinding myself, so I started killing furbolgs in Winterspring. Just the normal 5-6 points each. I was also boggled at the 415K XP necessary to get to L61. ...and, of course - something that doesn't happen to me in the regular game: one of the furbolgs dropped Hurricane.

I also decided to check out the Caverns of Time doen in Tanaris. The graphics are awesome! The artists ands animators really outdid themselves there. However, when I got to the instances and tried to jump in, I got a "This instance has not been implemented yet" message on both of them

Edited, Oct 17th 2006 at 8:36am PDT by ohmikeghod

This was something I had emailed to me, from a suscribed yahoo chat thingy...

"Anyways last night I spent sometime playing and talking with a Blizz
Employee in the beta.

Some interesting things; he hates raids and we were testing the new
anti-raid-casual gamer content. He asked me a lot of questions about
what I thought was fun, progression for levels, PVP, how much I
played. Heh. I told him that raids sucked and he agreed, he even
nodded to the insanity of the gold farmers when I noted that I had
made 25 gold in less than one hour in the new zones from bonking kodos
on the head with him.

This is the kicker, it took him and other testers four weeks or less
to get to 70 in the new system, playing about four to six hours a day.
So no more grinding plain and simple (then again four to six hours a
day is unacceptable in a family or healthy unless you are getting paid
to do it). "


What, if any Jord have you been seeing about more casual gamer friendly testing of content?

Is it known whether the Wildhammer Stronghold in Shadowmoon Valley uses Wildhammer clan rep? I'm right at the level where I can grind trolls in the Hinterlands and was trying to decide whether it would be worth while to do that.

A couple of replies -

I'll go looking for the Draenei mount vendor soon. I'm L6 now on my Shaman and will soon leave the starting area.

As for this discussion about "grinds" ... I can't say yet how casual friendly most of the content is because I simply haven't experienced it yet.

However - 415k exp is bad, but not TOO bad when you figure that you get 500 xp per normal same level kill. Of course - they might have just bumped that up for Beta so we could level faster.

On another note - EVERYTHING is a grind if you let it be one. I guess the word "grind" can be loaded w/ negative connotations (although not necessarily). For example, I'm exalted w/ WSG... Some people call that a horrible grind, but to me it was one of the most entertaining parts of the game.

Argent Dawn rep can be earned in a number of ways. If all you're doing is staring at the rep counter (especially after you're revered) then I guess that is a pretty nasty grind. However, if you are simply enjoying isntances and farming w/ your friends and allies, then it's just another form of in-game entertainment w/ ultimate rewards.

What I have seen in the first zone of the Outlands is that there is zone-specific rep. (I think it's zone specific because it is named after Thrallmar, the main Horde camp). You get rep for finishing quests and for completing outdoor PvP objectives in the area. It has it's own entire reward system and it seemed to me to have decent rewards at all levels of rep, as well as rewards that you get for tokens WHILE you're working up your rep.

To conclude that thought - it would seem that there will be more solo- or small group-friendly content with meaningful rewards to keep players busy outside of instances, raids and BGs.

IMO that is one of the greatest shortcomings of the current WoW world - there are very few things to draw end-game players (who make up the majority of the population) out to most zones in the world. As a result, most zones are abandoned. It will be a major success, IMO, if Blizzard is able to keep all of the new zones meaningful enough to keep people there on a regular basis and have them entertained while they are there.

Any info about arenas? I'm probably a bit slow but haven't read anything about them so If anyone knows anything please share the info.

Awesome, I look forward to it! lol

I was hoping the blood elf mount to look diferent, but it looks sorta cool. (i wanted a short but sleek dragonhawk thingy.)

There is a L10 quest that let's you ride the epic mount to the next zone. I'll get a pic and add it soon.

No. It's just a quest.

I know I know ... I just need another hour of playtime to get to where I wanted to get before I post and between running BGs w/ my guild last night and my mid-terms I haven't got there.

I'll try to get it up tonight - tomorrow afternoon at the latest.

/cry

Well 2(and a half) questions to tide me over...

1) How do the rep rewards work now and are there any additional recipies (specificly jewelcrafting recipies) offered by old factions? (AD, TB, CC, ect...)

2) Have you been on any instances/raids?
2.5) What were they like?

Any and all details would be appreciated. ^^ Ty Ty.