The Wrath So Far

We're five days into Wrath and it's our first Tuesday maintenance, so it's a good time to reflect a little on what's been going on.

The release went off rather well in my opinion. I actually went to the midnight release at my local Gamestop.  I arrived shortly after 11:45 PM and was on my way home with my Collector's Edition less than an hour later.   I had heard that the line had started assembling at about 9:00 PM and there were probably about 100-120 people in line by the time I arrived and more people were arriving as midnight approached.  The Gamestop people kept the pace of distribution deliberately slow and besides that, the whole ordeal went quite smoothly.   I got home and had enough time to install Wrath, upgrade my account, and get Ziv to the Howling Fjord before going to sleep.

The short time I was able to play after installation, I was thoroughly impressed.  I took a quick look around the Borean Tundra, but started questing in the Howling Fjord. Northrend is beautiful and the quests that I was able to work on were very well done.  I could tell that Blizzard put a lot of effort into making the new content more engaging, interesting, and fun.  The visuals are stunning and the subtle details make it that much more impressive. There's a definite reason why WoW is enjoyed by so many people worldwide, and this new expansion is no different. I  believe this expansion will be more popular than the Burning Crusade. Great job Blizzard!

The release wasn't without it's problems however.  There are a few bugged quests in Howling Fjord and I've heard of a few in Borean Tundra as well.   Since I haven't quested outside of Howling Fjord yet, I don't know if there are other bugged quests in other zones, but I have a feeling there are.   Another big, but expected, issues was that of the login server queues.  I had a feeling by the time the weekend rolled around that we'd see the login queues at prime time, but I didn't think it would be as bad as I've seen:

I've almost completed all the quests in the Howling Fjord and Ziv dinged 72 last night and got the achievement, I've Toured the Fjord.  This is the achievement for completing 130 quests in the Howling Fjord, so there are at least that many in this zone alone.  I still have a few remaining quests to finish, and I still haven't been into Utgarde Keep.   I'm being directed by the NPCs to make it over to, Dragonblight, but I'll finish up the zone first then head over there.

Looking back now, starting in the Howling Fjord probably wasn't the best zone to level quickly because there's a lot of cliffs, bluffs, and other obstacles that means a lot more running around to get to quest objectives.  However I told myself I'd slow it down a bit and really take in the new content, so it didn't matter to me that I probably picked the slower starting area of the two.  So if you're looking to level as quickly as possible, Borean Tundra is probably the place to start, and save the Howling Fjord for after you get your flying mount defrosted.

Death Knight?  I haven't created one just yet.  I hear the Death Knight's starting area and storyline are fantastic so I know I'll make one at some point.  I know there are a lot of Death Knights running around already and if they are as cool and fun as people are saying, then I'm sure we'll see our fair share of them throughout the expansion.  I'm going to wait a little longer before starting one, and take leveling him to 80 as the opportunity to see the other starting zone, Borean Tundra.  Maybe I'll start one up sooner rather than later?

I've been so busy with soloing through WotLK with Ziv that I haven't had any time to dual box at all.  I'll get back to it eventually, but it looks like leveling the Twins will be on hold for a while.  I may actually mix the teams up again and make one with a Death Knight as one of the pairs once I get one to 60.  Since I don't plan on dual boxing any time soon, I haven't upgraded the second account yet, but now that Blizzard has announced direct digital upgrades and downloads, doing so will be easy. 

A few more hours still before the realms come back online.  Let's hope there aren't any new problems like what happened last week.