Vashj'ir? No, thanks!

After bringing my 6th character to 85 one thing I can say for sure: Vashj'ir contains several flaws that affect people who are leveling and decided to choose that area as starting zone. And it's not because it's an underwater area with a full 3D environment (the so-called Oculus-effect). Let's get to the points!

1. Excesive long intrduction/arrival quest. If you want to start in Hyjal you just speak to a Hyjal Guardian who teleports you to Moonglade and there you take a short flight to the starting point, witnessing the return of Ragnaros meanwhile. To go to Vashj'ir you talk to a shaman that tells you te get on a boat. And here starts the problem. The boat is located in the same dock as the Northrend boat, so the instroduction is phased. But instead of arriving at the dock and finding the boat waiting for you, you have to wait for it to arrive. And it's a long time until the phased action begins (with the soldiers gathering up and talking) and then the whole boat trip, which is not that long, but after all the time listening to the soldiers while waiting for the boat you are already fed up with all that inactivity.
Didn't Trial of the Crusader teach anything to Blizzard? Longs introductions containing lore are ok the first time. But when you're leveling your second or third alt you wish you could skip it. By the fourth you're totally fed up with it. Could we avoid at least the soldiers gabbing and just find the boat once we head to the dock?

2. Huge area. I get the sensation Vashj'ir was the first designed starting area and looks it got a little out of their hands. Instead of just a single area it consists of 3 areas, not as big as a the rest of Cataclysm areas but still there's a lot of space out there! And much of it it's empty! At least the seahorse has a good speed so moving down there is not a pain in the ass (anyone remembers the Thorim questchain when normal flying was 60%? How I loathed Thorim's tall mountain!).
Also while the rest of Cataclysm areas get it's own diferenciated subzones (even Deepholm!), all Vashj'ir looks the same, except for Scalding Chasm and the Throne of the Tides vortex.

3. Reputation. Right now this is the most painful point for me. If you do all the quests in the area you'll end Friendly with Earthen Ring, while other areas leave you at Revered with its faction. I can't understand why Blizzard puts the Earthen Ring quartermaster in Silver Tide Hollow when most of the Earthen Ring reputation is won in Deephom. Well, the only answer I can find is to avoid having two queartermasters (ER and Therazane) in the same area, but the result is very lame. And it's even worse when you want to get some ER rewards and you started in Mount Hyjal. You must endure all the starting introduction plus several quests until you get the seahorse and can move around (getting only Sea Legs may be good for druids but for the rest is too slow due to Vashj'ir size) and locate the quartermaster. Big design fail, Blizzard!

4. Dungeon. Same as before, getting to the Throne of the Tides is not trivial, like locating Blackrock Caverns and you must do a big amount of quests until you get the quest to go there. Even worse, once there and you start heading to the center of the vortex you'll see the Fatigue bar appearing on screen. First time I saw it I thought I shouldn't go there and maybe the entrance was located elsewhere, so I moved back and let the quest gather dust in the Quest Book.

5. Azshara's veil. This plant only grows in the area. While other "low level" plants like Cinderbloom and Stormvine can be found (specially Cinderbloom) in other areas, alchemists must go to Vashj'ir yes or yes. Even if it's an underwater plant there're places with water out there (Mount Hyjal pool where Tortolla's eggs are located, Twilight Highlands coast...) I have no problem with exclusive area herbs as long as they're not starting herbs. And if you add the grinding madness things are even worse. While the initial madness has rushed off, now comes the daily grind ninjaing. Same as for ore, but at least you can get obsidium ore in several places. So if you really need Azshara Veil to level up your skill or to produce specific pots you're screwed. Go back to point number 2.

6. Poor lore. While in Mount Hyjal you get tons of info about the Ancients, Vashj'ir only offers some bits of naga lore and how they teamed up with the Old Gods minions. The battlemaiden quests are good, but until you get them you must do a ton of quests before.

Basically these are the points why I don't recommend leveling your char in Vashj'ir. But don't get me wrong, I think the area is beautiful (I'm scuba-diver, so I enjoy it specially) although a bit repetitive, the quests are good (the Jaws hunt quest is a laugh, Nespirah and its twin creature have good quests too, etc), offers good leveling loot (as Mount Hyjal), but these design problems are a ballast preventing you from getting a pleasant experience. Solving the long introduction would be a big step, also adding more Earthen Ring rep (it would be ok to reduce it on Deepholm as a counter) would make wonders.

Here we go again

So the intrepid Verech reached level 80 past sunday. That's my eleventh character to reach that magic number. But as everybody knows, that's just the begining. Now starts the hard part: gearing up, getting rep for the different factions, farm some gold for the epic flight... The big problem is all these activities rely mainly on running dungeons. While you can get reputation with some factions by doing dailies (Wyrmrest Accord, Sons of Hodir, some Kirin Tor with the daily cooking), the only way of gearing up and getting reputation with factions without dailies is the old dungeon grinding. And this is the dreadest phase because of pugs... or to be more accurate: the amount of failpugs you can get into.
I almost stopped palying my main characters in Hellscream because I grew tired of the wild fauna you can find in heroics, so now compare the seasoned Turnak, clad in full epic gear (ICC, T10, etc) with the frehsly dinged Verech, wearing mainly crafted and quest blues. Cold sweat runs down my back everytime I hit the LFD. I even dualed him retribution so I could do some runs without the responsability of tanking or healing the place. Just good ole no-brainer dps, simple and plain.
With such a poor gear for today' standards I'm just running normal instances in the hope of building some decent gear even if it's slowly. Yet Lady Luck hates me. First random I got was no other than Forge of Souls. At least was as dps, but my dps gear is totally laughable. I ended the last in dps with 1200 but at luckily nobody complained. And not happy with that we ran the place again. And Pit of Saron too. The party was fairly competent and I managed to survive (I thank the kind healer who kept me alive) without much problems, but this experience showed one thing: why retri paladins tend to get so much damage. This got me wondering in the past. They weren't supposed to get so much damage (unless standing in fire, stealing aggro or in front of the mobs). And still I don't know how could I get damage when I was dpsing the mobs from behind, but my health bar couldn't stay still for long. On any group pull I was getting more damage than the rest (and my pathetic gear made things look even worse). Again nobody said anything but I'm sure the healer was cursing me in silence for needing more heals than the tank.
Anyway, knowing what to do and not being a dickhead is a great step in randoms. You don't screw it when Devourer of Souls has Mirrored Soul up, you hide behind saronite chunks when Garfrost is swapping weapons, you move out of green shit and explosive mines on Ick & Krick, you let the tank grab aggro in the tunnel before Tyrannus and you stop dpsing him when you get Overlord's Brand. Isn't that complicated. And nobody died. Why the hell then some idiots can't do any of these simple tasks right?

Old sensations

Leveling the new chars in SAN has brought back old memories. Usually painful ones since I was used to the comfort that a level 80 armed to the teeth gives you. Good gear, all the class skills available, fast mounts (including flying ones), big bags, plenty of money... all of that disappears when you start leveling a new character in a new realm (although you can cheat a bit by making a deathknight to get some starting gear and money easily)

- Sills. Until level 20 or so your skills won't matter much. You can play any role if you go into a dungeon. Verech tanked RFC at level 12 or so... without any aggro generating skills and using Arcane Torrent to pull groups
- Walking. You'll spend a lot of time walking from one side to another. Nowadays things are much easier since you can get a mount at level 20 (and won't cost you a small fortune like in the old times) Still the lack of "quest-hub design" will make you visit the same place several times. Yesterday night Verech had to cross Arathi Highlands from one side (Hammerfall) to another (Stromgarde) three frigging times! in order to complete the sigil questline. Horse helped, but I couldn't help but feel angry since everytime had to clear the way of mobs I just killed some minutes ago to get to the new target
- Fleeing mobs. This is one of the worst ones. I had almost forgot mobs could flee from you. At low levels almost all humanoids flee from you when theyreach 20% health. And it's a pain chasing them to avoid they call some friends to dance on your face. Some classes like paladin got some good tools to prevent the cowards from getting away (Judgement of Justice, Hammer of Justice) but other ones aren't so lucky
- Survivality. An hybrid class with mail armour is easier to keep alive and level than a pure dps wearing cloth. Thanks to several nerfs introduced in the game (eliminating almost all elites outside instances, better hp & mana recovery, tanking classes doing more damage, etc) some quests can be easily facerolled by some classes. In the old vanilla WoW I would have never been able to kill elites with 2 or 3 levels above me or normal mobs with 5 levels above me unless I'd be very lucky (I'm talking about soloing btw) with a prot paladin. Now it's maybe too easy. Other classes, specially ranged ones who don't have a "tank" will suffer more (mage, balance druid) to achieve it even if you're good at kiting due to the lack of skills and spells at these levels
- Reputation. I still remember my first exalted reputation took ages. Back in the days your rep gain depnded on your level, so completing low level quests for reputation yielded very feew reputation and runecloth grinding was th eonly stable way of getting rep with major cities. Although this was changed long ago (giving now a fixed rep quantity) I find it amusing I got my first one before level 30
- Leveling. this is also an old change but with every expansion it has been modified. In the old vanilla days getting to 40 required a good investment in time play. Now in 3 weeks dedicating some time will get you there. Not a bad change but can't help to feel sad seeing how much took me to get to 40 my mains.
- Gear. Wrath finally hit the nail on the head with quest rewards in form of gear. Now you get an object that will suit your class/role most of the times, but in vanilla WoW, until Cataclysm comes, you're still presented with very poor rewards (unless it's some former elite quest), both in number (two options max to choose from) and usefulness (plate with agi and spirit and things like that)

It's good to do all the journey from start, but as I level I think it's going too fast. On one hand I prefer it this way. Low levels (specially when soloing) can be a pain when lacking so many skills and spells and travelling back and forth to the same place again and again (not to mention those pesky quests that make you travel all around the world, hopping from one continent to the other and back thousandfold). On the other hand I feel I'm maybe losing many things behind... but I won't complain, I can always level another toon :)