Progress Report: World of Warcraft - Tirisfal Glades

Progress Report provides ongoing impressions of games as I play them.


When I first played World of Warcraft back in 2005 for merely the thirty day trial period, the game was still in its infancy, piggybacking on the success of similar MMORPGs like Everquest and the influence of those games was strong on the basic structure of WoW. However, even then, the game showed the kind of polish and streamlining that Blizzard is known for. Their games are hardly innovative, but they take the best of what their rivals have and shine them up to an impeccable polish.

Still, there was a lot that was part of the original design of WoW that was pretty rough. The original design wanted to keep the leveling process controlled as the endgame wasn't as expansive as it is today and it also wanted to push exploration and running around the huge world that they've built, so the original quest storylines often had you running all over a zone or across multiple zones and continents, leading to many quests taking a lot of time and/or being unfavorable in terms of time spent versus reward. Consequently, a large number of quests were ignored, several zones avoided altogether and the overall leveling experience feeling like a grind. This was the WoW that I remembered.

After The Shattering, an event in WoW that acts as a prelude to Cataclysm, the 2010 expansion to one of the most successful computer games of all time, the entirety of the original game continents was irrevocably changed. Having spent most of my previous WoW experience before the great account compromise as one of the amoral Forsaken, the reanimated undead warrior Clie, I decided that for my return to Azeroth, it would make sense to see the changes that have been made and revisit the undead starting experience. Building a variety of characters, I noticed that even the way that the classes worked had changed in the intervening years, so it took a little time to get adjusted.

The starting experience for the Forsaken has changed greatly, taking into account the defeat of the Lich King, the whole purpose of the Forsaken has been fulfilled. Nevertheless, you wake up in the cemetery of Deathknell, a small town in Tirisfal Glades, raised by a val'kyr, a ghostly apparition and are immediately tasked to serve the Banshee Queen, Sylvanus Windrunner, by killing X number of zombies and skeletons, etc. Some things never change.

Still, hints at a larger zone-wide storyline are planted in Deathknell with one of the first two quests that you encounter, rather than the more general "fight the Scarlet Crusade" story of the original incarnation of Tirisfal Glades. There are several quests that remain partially intact, even if the questgiver and/or process has changed a little, but the rewards are somewhat more consistent and useful, the experience and gold better suited to preparing you for the next set of quests. After creating a zone-wide storyline that has actual characters involved, the next best effect of the revamp has been the streamlining of quests. Each new area presents a nicely grouped clump of quests that results in minimal backtracking, so you see the sights and move on and don't have to go back (unless you're into leveling a profession--that experience is still a grind).

Visually, not much has changed, the Tirisfal Glades are a gloomy, sparsely populated place, but the storyline keeps it somewhat interesting, even if it could have been even better integrated into the greater leveling experience--I wanted more of that and less of the random hunting/killing/gathering quests which didn't really seem to have any sort of real cathartic reward. Still, the Tirisfal Glades really shows an improvement on the leveling experience and so it was a welcome (and quick) run from level one through level ten. Another nice change is the addition of a couple minor flightpoints to different parts of the zone, meaning less "just running from place to place", which was always a boring part of the experience once you'd seen an area once or twice. At the end of the experience, a quest opens up directing you to head for Silverpine Forest, but I opted to take my undead guy to Undercity and have him rest in a coffin in the inn. Silverpine Forest will come another day.

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