When leveling to 80, I pretty much did only the zones I needed in order to get 80, and then went straight to heroics and raids… and ultimately casual-land. This meant that I had quite a few quests, and a couple zones left to discover. This week I ventured in to Storm Peaks, and I was not disappointed. Some of the very best quests and story lines in the game reside in this amazing zone. The landscape is beautiful. Pre-BC Winterspring was my favorite zone. I love snow, and Winterspring had that in spades. Storm Peaks has snow and much more. There are hidden factories inside mountains, and an entire battle between two armies frozen in ice. There are epic buildings, giant machines and a hundred wonderful quests that keep you playing, even when you are almost late for work (oops).
My favorite part of the entire zone had to be the quests. They were innovative and amazing. Blizzard introduced this new layering ability, where, depending on where one Is in the quest chain, you may or may not be able to see different aspects of the zone. For instance, in the beginning of a particular chain, I was killing these dwarves who were trying to build an evil giant robot of DOOM! But after killing off the dwarves I came back to that same area to find the evil robot of DOOM was running amuck; and I had to turn in to a giant worm to put him back in his place. The cool thing is that though I saw the robot walking around, anyone else who was not on that step in the chain would still see him locked up. It is cool and a bit annoying. You can’t randomly help people with quests, because there is a large possibility that you aren’t on the same step as them, and will therefore see something different.
I also spent a few hours/days farming Fel Armaments for my healing shoulder enchant. Out of sheer frustration with the difficulties of finding the Armaments, I decided to level my reputation with a faction that offers Northrend shoulder enchants, the Sons of Hodir. This faction is conveniently located in Storm Peaks. Woo. So now, after finishing that amazing zone, I am also very nearly able to buy the new shoulder enchants - the one thousand gold I gained from the quests wasn’t bad either. =P
Something else I dealt with this week was getting over my fear of leveling with others. I have always been someone who leveled alone. I pretty much do everything alone in WoW unless I need help from others. It is not that I dislike people; I just always found that it was easier and a lot more efficient to get things done without having to worry about anyone else. I quest like a mad woman. With the addition of the questhelper mod, I just go go go. I usually don’t stop to read lore, or admire scenery. I also take frequent afks. Even as I write this, I am afk in WoW. Oh, and I get more xp from mobs when I kill them alone. I stated all of these same reasons to my friends when we discussed leveling lowby alts together; and they proceeded to debunk every one of them. So, I finally gave in to at least giving leveling with other people a try, and it was not half bad. In fact, for the most part, it was really fun. For the first time ever I actually read the quests, and knew why I was killing so many spiders for this random person with a “!” over their head. The company is nice too, and their being around made me less inclined to afk and do other things.
Maybe the next time I quest in Storm Peaks it will be in a group. I wonder what new and interesting aspects of the game I will discover while playing it with the company of my friends.
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