Northern Barrens Exploded

Northern Barrens was a change from Durotar. My slightly dinged up Troll Druid followed the multiple quests leading into the zone to find things were a little different than they used to be. The very first quests were, you guessed it, collect plainstrider beaks and kill quillboar. The main differences this time was that the quest givers were now right at the entrance to the Barrens cutting down on running time drastically. From there you ride on a caravan and defend it from attacks up to another outpost.

Here you meet up with the legend of the barrens, Mankrik. Unfortunately he once again tells you to collect 60 tusks. The other quests in that area have more interesting mechanics including capturing a prisoner then choosing between torturing it or rewarding it in order to get information. Another quest from this hub involves you finding a kodo near the quillboar den and collecting grain sacks for it. In my personal experience there were not enough grain sacks in the area and it would probably be a good idea to skip that quest.

The next quest takes place on another more difficult caravan ride to the Crossroads, I say more difficult because you use two buttons instead of one. Crossroads has its usual quests such as the oases and the hunting quests which and with Echeyakee. The centaur quests are still in as well but with slightly different mechanics making for less run time and a better overall experience.

After that you fly to Ratchet to begin the goblin portion of the barrens and begin the massively updated pirate quests. I'll leave the mechanics of them for you to see but they are much better and involve much less running back and forth than they used to. The only other real quest from the barrens leads you to kill and trap some raptors which was quite easy, but the boss raptor seemed to have a slightly long respawn time. From here you take a boat ride north up the river to do the Samophlange chain. It seemed the same as before but with one more quest tacked on the end.

Last but not least you kill harpies in the northwest corner. Overall Northern Barrens had some fun new things at the beginning but seemed to taper off near the end. I would recommend playing through it until you finish the pirate quests, then grabbing the quest from Crossroads that leads to where my next article will be focused, Ashenvale.

Post-Shattering Durotar

Today is my first post in a series I will continue up to and part way into Cataclysm describing the general feel and questing experience of each of the changed and completely new zones. Today I played through Durotar on my brand new Troll Druid.

For the most part it felt like the old Durotar but with a more economical questing experience. There were a few old quests brought back such as collecting crawler mucus and killing human marines, but several changed ones. In the quest to collect Burning Blade collars there was an interesting debuff added which would turn you into a demon boosting a few stats if it ever built up to a 5 stack. The most fun in my opinion however were the new quests including an amazing chain that sent you through the newly flooded western half of the zone helping various npcs you come across.

This is not even mention the brand new troll starting area which is a little slow to start with but builds up quick using fresh new mechanics and culminating in a Battle For Undercityesque boss fight. After completing all these I landed at a healthy lvl 12. Overall I would say this starting zone is miles better than all the ones I played pre shattering.