Catathoughts

Two weeks have passed since the launch of Cata. The *urnaks family has been busy leveling both character and professions, mainly via questing. So far I've only done Blackrock Caverns twice, first as dps and then as tank. And only because they were guildruns with just one pug. I'm not going to go pug-happy, specially with tank and healers until I get the grasp of all the bosses mechanics.
So how have been these two weeks for me? Busy, very busy exploring all the areas and doing all the quests possible (I haven't completed Twilight Highlands quests yet, I tend to reach 85 before finishing all questlines in Uldum). The first days were a nightmare, but that's nothing new. All the world rushing to the same spots, trying to get any ore, herb or quest mob over the rest of people swarming the area. Blizz tweaked some quests so other players could finish the quest even if they didn't kill the mob (Lord Incendius' chest comes to mind), but I think these fixes came late. Right now the amount of zerging has decreased enough to be able to play without much problems. Still some quests are a pain when you're not the one who hits the mob first (Resonating Crystal, a perfect example), but with some patience they're doable.
I have confronted feelings on the new quests. Some are fun and you get enough variety of them not to get bored after 30 minutes of playing. But as a lot of people has pointed out, new areas' quests are too lineal. There's no choice on which questhub you want to do because they're linked. You get only two choices, two questlines that tend to end mixing at the end (Earthen Ring and Therazane lines in Deepholm, Ramkahen and Harrison Jones in Uldum...) so you lose the sensation of an open world and you feel like being back in an old adventure game where you couldn't progress in the game until you solve present puzzle. I don't want to repeat myself, so you can read more about this on a comment I left on this Righteous Orbs post. Blizzard has gone from "this is the world, do as you wish as long as you have the proper level" to "potatoes or salad as first course and you don't get the second until you finish it". Then second course comes and it's only "meat or fish" again.
Speaking about quests, I want to highlight two as the funniest and worst ones:
- Gnomebliteration. Who wouldn't like riding a big ball of fire trampling leper gnomes? Even the amount of gnomes to be killed is a bit high (1000 gnomes!) and takes some time when there're other players doing the same quest, it's just a laugh. And not only that, the preceeding quest has a nice geek reference: Hacking the Wibson refers to the film Hackers where a bunch of computer hackers try to break into a mainframe called Gibson that controls oil carriers. The film is totally forgetable and anyone who knows a bit about computers would point out the amount of mistakes when talking about computers. Any serious hacker just gets mad at it. The only good thing I'd point out is a very young and sexy Angelina Jolie in one of her first films.
- The flapping quests in the second Fire Gate in Hyjal Mount. Just f*cking horrible. Why make a flying control system this way instead of using the everyday flying mechanics. It's ok if they want to make things more interesting by adding inertia to the flight, but controlling the hippogryph can be a real nightmare and hitting the vulture riders very frustrating. Also just makes hitting the only action availble kind of retarded. Flap flap flap... miss! flap flap flap... oh shit! I got into a lava stream falling from one of the floating rocks. And after all you get to choose between two pets who have the same model and just colour schema is different.
A remarkable mention to the final Fire Gate quest in Hyjal, where you get to face old Raggy again, although it's a "weakened" version and not the real final instance boss. Even original Ragnaros is harder than this soloable quest. But hey, it's the Firelord! And I love engaging this quest with my Lil'Ragnaros pet out and saying "look! it's daddy!". Old "MC friends" are also there in Hyjal, with Baron Geddon as part of one of the initial quests and Charr as a rare spawn 5man boss. Will we ever see a resurrected version of Majordomo Executus?
Well, I think I'll go back to the game to get the rest of *urnaks into shape (so far 2 85s, 1 82, 3 81s), so probably won't be posting much.