Casting out the Demons of Outland! - Saving Honor Hold

After several days of waiting, the email finally arrives: "World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Beta Test." It is clearly about time!
 

Much will happen in the next two months while I figure out how best to deal with being a priest who needs to level and also learn new instances. It has been a long time!
Being an experienced raiding priest, I have been mostly "holy spec'd" since I hit level 60. Before this, I spent my leveling time being mostly "shadow". My current gear is composed of the full tier 2 raiding set, with a few pieces of DPS gear that sits in the bank, largely unused. This is about to change. Benediction becomes Anathema (the priest epic staff quest from Molten Core, for those who don't know) and resist gear goes in the bank to be replaced by my DPS gear.
Unlike Buster, I remembered! A quick trip to the Priest trainer shows me I have no new spells available since I already have the spells from the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj. Talents talents talents. Only problem with talents at the moment is where the trainer is to reset them. I haven't found a Priest trainer in Outlands yet, (and I'm told there isn't one) so a trip to Azeroth is necessary every time I wish to change them around. Luckily, beta prices for doing a re-spec is only 1 copper. My most likely course of action for running instances will be to hearth back to Azeroth and re-spec Holy before I head in. Otherwise, since I'm leveling, it makes sense that I'm a shadow DPS'ing machine.
I plan on playing with talents a lot, and I will in a later article give you my impressions of many of the new talents as I get familiar with them. For right now, I have put 41 points into various shadow talents, which I keep constantly changing. I also spent a few points in the discipline tree so I have a little more health and so that my Power Word: Shield is slightly stronger.
As I spend time exploring the various sections of the Outland, I get a bit confused as to which quests are starting where, and where I need to go to turn them in, especially if I haven't been doing a single quest chain. There are four basic areas that quests on the Hellfire Peninsula start from. Of course you have Honor Hold and I imagine the Horde have quests in Thrallmar. Two other quest hubs are located just outside of town on either side. The first one is called the East Supply Caravan and the other is in a half destroyed tower just outside of town to the west. The fourth quest hub is at a place called Expedition Point. People are constistantly asking for Expedition Point's location, as it is rather small and just out of viewing range. It's location is “400 paces to the east”, give or take a stone's throw, which is a less than 30 second ride on an epic mount. The quest hubs are easy to get to once you have your bearings, but they are far enough away that you will find yourself constantly running amongst them trying to figure out which quest is from where. Rumor has it a fifth quest hub exists called the Temple of Sha'naar, but I haven't quite gotten that far yet.
My favorite quest series so far has got to be the aerial bombing quests. I won't go into the details of the quests that lead you down this line but they start at the East Supply Caravan and take you to Expedition Point. The actual bombing quests are a blast! You fly around on a battle gryphon and literally drop bombs on targets. It may sound plain, or perhaps even boring, but trust me, it is quite fun. The last part of the quest line is repeatable and I must admit I have done the quest several times even though there are no rewards beyond the first completion. The special bombs you need "from Area 52" are provided for you, so you can just bomb away to hearts content... I sure did!
Not all of the quests are quite as entertaining. Many are the typical collect thirty pieces of scrap wood and metal, kill 20 bad guys, go talk to the guy next to me because he can't hear me talking to you type quests. I imagine there are only so many things you can come up with as a quest designer, but almost all of the quests I have run across so far are the same old quests we have become used to. They will probably be more entertaining once the game is a bit more polished, because right now most of the text in quests is pretty raw format (see the picture above) and believe me, I am being kind when I say that.
Overall, I have been having fun, and working on leveling myself so I can try more talents and new spells. I will give my opinions on the new spells and talents as I get familiar with them. I hope to find more "fun" quests along the way as I explore across the new regions and towns of the Outland. I plan on finishing this level here in Honored Hold, then venture out into the wide world of the Outland. See you next week but don't forget to come back tomorrow for Alordrogon's Paladin perspective article. He claims he is going to show a short video of him bubble-hearthing in each of the new Outland areas!