Shadowmoon Valley First Impressions

Right now, I have not been able to progress all that far in Shadowmoon Valley because of the usual Beta difficulties, and a specific quest that, rather than putting the player who turned it in into a different phase temporarily, it puts everyone in the zone into that phase, interrupting combat and making all NPCs disappear, and making the whole server work harder.

But that said, what I have seen of Shadowmoon is very cool.

For one thing, it looks utterly different from Shadowmoon Valley of BC. It's all blue and purple vegetation over a colorful night sky, and lots of Draenei architecture.

Very soon after you arrive, you make camp at Lunarfall, which is where you build your Garrison. Lunarfall, also known as "Character Name"'s Outpost, is phased and actually seems to technically be its own zone, like how Thunder Bluff is separate from Mulgore. Shortly after building the place, you get your first follower, build your first building, and basically get the briefest taste of how the Garrison will work.

From there, you set out into the zone.

There are clear storyline missions, but the thing that struck me immediately is that there are many, many quests that you can just find if you explore a little. In addition, there are rare spawns and chests to find that add to your Garrison resources. There are also some areas with "bonus objectives," that are like quests, but you don't pick them up - they're just kind of there.

It looks like it will pay to stray from the beaten path. In a way, it's a rejection of the Cataclysm-era on-rails approach, though there are major quest chains through the zone that will most likely tell the story.

Another cool thing is that there seems to be a kind of evolution of the "Remote Questing" feature added in Cataclysm. Some quests will now simply update objectives as you complete them. For instance, you might be sent to find a prisoner in a cave.  You find him, and he's dead, so then the quest updates so that you now need to fend off an ambush. When the ambush is defeated, you then get new objectives to kill the leader of the guys who killed the prisoner.

It's very streamlined.

It also appears that there are legit group quests back in the game, though I imagine that if you are, like me, still sporting gear in the 550s, you might be able to solo them.

The zone feels really large, but then again, the first time you get into any zone, it will feel big. The map, however, seems to show the whole zone without needing things to be revealed, so you'll still be able to point yourself in the right direction if you want to find something.

Plotwise, I haven't gotten too far into it, but Ner'zhul is definitely the bad guy of the zone. However, so far, it still feels like a zone that is dominated by peaceful Draenei.