Journeys in Azeroth Archives:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII

Part IX

Part X

Part XI

Part XII

Part XIII

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Journeys in Azeroth IX

We’re Not Evil, Just Misunderstood

Warning: Throughout this article there will be several spoilers related to World of Warcraft. If this is a concern to you, please do not read any further. This is the only spoiler warning you will receive.

With all of this running around with Alliance characters that I’ve been doing since this column got started, the whole thing has been wearing on my nerves as of late. Seeing all of these gnomes, dwarves, and humans running around, constantly seeing the game turn into a slide show anytime I got near the auction house in Ironforge during prime time, it was time to pack my things and go hang out with the Horde for a while. With that, I headed on over to another server where I kept my Horde characters, and logged on with a Tauren Shaman that I hadn’t used in ages.

The nice thing about switching factions for a bit is that you get to see how Azeroth’s politics work from a different perspective. The game constantly bombards players with different groups’ ideologies, and it’s nice to see how everyone ticks. The Forsaken are probably the most evil of the Horde, since they genuinely enjoy watching people suffer, and go out of their way to advance this agenda. As for the trolls, orcs, and tauren, they seem to fall under more tragic circumstances as the Horde races who aren’t all that evil, but just misunderstood. We have Thrall leading the orc race, trying to lead them away from their mindless war-making ways. The trolls are some of the most laidback Rasta men you’ll ever meet. Meanwhile, the tauren just want to be one with nature, but since they’re a race of big, scary cows, the Alliance just assumes they’re evil and must be done away with.

Marching through the low-level tauren quests, things were very straightforward for my shaman. There’s plenty to do, and their pacing is set out well so that there is no reason to do any grinding. The only time things got a little sketchy was while getting close to level 20 in the Barrens. There’s a ton of quests that can be done at Crossroads, but the one problem is that there just aren’t enough to get you to twenty. Players pretty much have to go to Ratchet, do some of the quests there, and possibly mosey on down to the Sepulcher in Silverpine Forest. The latter is actually a good idea if you’re a tauren, though, since your reputation with the Forsaken will be only at neutral at the beginning of the game. Doing Sepulcher

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quests for a while goes a long way towards insuring that you can at least bump that reputation up to “friendly”. In terms of questing at this point, though, things have remained pretty fun. About the only quests that have proven a bit of a drag are the shaman totem quests, as they can require a lot of legwork to complete. The quest for the water totem is proving particularly painful thus far, forcing me to travel halfway across creation to get things done.

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What with spending this time playing as a shaman, I really don’t see where these complaints are coming from that the class needs to be nerfed. I did quite a bit of dieing while making my way up to level 24 thus far. If anything, I find that playing as my rogue is far easier than shaman. All of the stealth options, and critical hits that class can do makes for a much easier character to play as. If one decides to specialize as an herbalist, and alchemist while they’re at it, then they’re stronger still. As for shaman, I’m just not finding that they are overpowered at this point.

Probably one of the most enjoyable areas that I’ve been questing in thus far has been the Hillsbrad Foothills. There are quite a few quests given out there, not to mention a number of delivery quests that require players to trek out there for some reason or another. All one needs to do is make their way to Tarren Mill, which is quite easy if you are heading that way via Silverpine Forest since you needn’t worry about level 30+ mobs attacking you (unlike entering the region via the Arathi Highlands). What’s nice about these quests in Tarren Mill is the excellent pacing of them. Usually they require a certain body count, or the collection of certain ingredients for someone, but the joy of it all is that there isn’t too much travel time to get where you need to go, and the drop rates are decent enough that players aren’t stuck grinding like mad. About the only drop that took me a while to get was for a certain type of paw that comes from bears in the region. I needed to collect ten of them for a member of the Royal Apothecary Society, and it just seemed like the game was completely unwilling to hook me up with what I needed. The one other thing that was learned while doing quests in Tarren Mill is that the Forsaken are nasty, nasty sons of bitches. These guys just love to watch people suffer, constantly looking for ways to make new poisons, raiding local villages, and generally striking terror into the living every chance they get.

Strangely enough, while questing in Tarren Mill, I didn’t see one raid attempt by the Alliance while I was there. Maybe it’s just a server thing, as my shaman is on a different server than the rest of my characters, but it I’m just so used to seeing huge seesaw battles in Hillsbrad, as the Horde and Alliance push each other back and forth between Tarren Mill and Southshore. By contrast, however, Alliance raids on Terenas server are constantly hitting Crossroads. I know that Warsong is a popular battleground, but it’s surprising just how many Alliance players come down to Crossroads to wreak havoc while killing time.

Be that as it may, I’m still able to get my quests done without much trouble, and I’m having a hell of a time playing Horde, after such a long stint with Alliance characters. This coming week, I’m pondering whether to stick around in Tarren Mill, or heading out to Sun Rock Retreat over in the Stonetalon Mountains. Both areas have their charms, and I definitely find myself gravitating to the lush green environments of the game, so I reckon I’ll pick between those two areas for doing some more quests in. Decisions, decisions...

Mr. Nash

(July 22, 2005)