Saturday, March 24, 2018

BFA General Questing Impressions

I got into the Warlords beta as soon as they started inviting random players. It's hard for me to remember how incomplete the systems were at the time.

At the moment, Battle for Azeroth's zones are in a state of near completeness, but perhaps because they're so close, you get a kind of uncanny valley effect.

The zone I've done the most of is one that has been open from the start: Drustvar. In many ways, this feels close to complete - there are a lot of new models, a full quest chain that takes you through the story of the zone, and indeed a lot of voice acting and music.

While some things are certain to change (there was one NPC whose voice lines were all incorrectly repeating broadcast lines from another quest chain) I suspect that Drustvar is largely complete, so I'll comment primarily on this zone.

My sense is that there's a bit of the "Christmas Tree" problem they used to have in Vanilla and Burning Crusade: you'd show up at a town and all of a sudden there were a million quests to do, many of which didn't really have much to do with another. Drustvar (and what I've seen of the other zones) has a tendency to send you in two different directions for different quest chains. I'm all for side quests, but what often happens is that you'll complete the objectives for, like, five quests and turning in two sends you on your way while you're forced to backtrack significantly in order to turn in the other three.

Plotwise, I'm very excited to see the Waycrest Manor dungeon, though I suspect that this story might be resolved within the dungeon, rather than a more epic raid setting.

The backstory of the zone is tantalizing, and I wouldn't mind finding out more about it. My understanding is that we're seeing the use of Death magic outside of the Scourge, and I wouldn't mind learning more about that.

There is some really effective quest design here - I particularly like a little side-quest involving a super-creepy child.

I've done a little of Tirisgarde Sound, though once again, I find myself continually sent forward before I've done the quests within a particular area. Perhaps having some stricter prerequisites would help.

Aesthetically, Kul Tiras so far is perhaps a bit heavy on the grey and brown - the autumnal look is good for witches, though having just seen the otherworldly creepiness of the Emerald Nightmare in Val'sharah, it's a bit of a step back. Honestly, this could be touched up with a bit of environmental work, and I suspect that that work is not yet done, given how bare and empty some of the Kul Tiran buildings are. Creature design in Drustvar is top-notch, between a broad assortment of wicker-creatures and a decent variety of masks and hoods for the hag-like witches.

What I've seen of Zandalar is definitely more colorful, which fits with the Trolls. I haven't done as much questing there (a bit in Nazmir,) but some of those same issues arise. Given how well they handled quest flow in Legion, I'm hoping to see them work on that in BFA.

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