Beta JournalsThe Mage They Call Jayne(z), Part 2: A Norse is a Norse (of Course, of Course)
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A Norse is a Norse (of Course, of Course)
When last we left our intrepid spell-flinging hero (me), I had logged off in Vengeance Landing in the Howling Fjord to wait out the all-too-frequent server crashes. Well, as it turns out, Blizzard's poor overworked server hamsters just can't keep going for very long, and - at least for the moment - Northrend crashes are a simple fact of life in the WotLK beta. Just something to work through, y'know?
I decide to make the best of the momentary uptime, poking around the quests available for me in Vengeance Landing. There weren't many - and at this point, I haven't actually done most of the available ones, so I don't know if this changes or if the quests are just spread out more around different hub areas - but it was worth giving some of them a shot, right?
The Vengeance Landing houndmaster asks me to help feed his plaguehounds, lamenting that since he's now a walking corpse, live dogs no longer trust him ... so these demon hounds are an acceptable substitute. It's an interesting sentiment and there was a moment or two for sympathy - but quest XP waits for no man!
Plaguehounds apparently like to eat crow meat, so it's awfully convenient to have a flock of crows right outside the encampment. Unlike other quest-specific pets (for example, the Skyguard Nether Ray), the plaguehound can actually fight and assist you in killing said crows, and I have to admit I relished the feeling of having a semi-proper combat pet while on the quest; it was a neat little touch. Despite the obvious difference, though, I had assumed that the plaguehound would function similarly to the Hungry Nether Ray for the Skyguard quest, and was puzzled when it wasn't going to feast on the carcasses as the two of us culled the Howling Fjord's burgeoning crow population.
Then, I discovered that each crow was dropping "crow meat," which was useable - I had to feed the devil-dog manually. Oh, the perils of auto-loot. Once that was done, I returned the hound to his master, who asked me to take it out again - only this time, it'd be searching for clues for something or other like a rotting, undead Scooby-Doo, and I'd have to follow it (ostensibly like a pajama-clad, Mohawk-sporting Shaggy).
Unlike certain other hounds quest-givers ask you to follow that take all day to wander leisurely around the area and half the way to Darnassus before revealing that the spot they were looking for was about ten feet from where they started (I'm looking at you, Fei-Fei, you blasted mutt), the plaguehound immediately takes off running North along the shore. I follow, and we essentially keep making a beeline North before encountering a cave. Now this is no ordinary cave ... well, okay, it is an ordinary cave, but it's the only thing around as far as I can see and there's a map on the ground that I can click and interact with, so this is obviously our destination.
Unfortunately, clicking on the map spawns a big burly Viking who seems protective of these secret plans that they just left lying in a cave, and he tries to smash my head in with an axe. Which would be unfortunate, but we live in a world of Hit Points, so sucks to be him. After a thorough burning, I return to Vengeance Landing (my plaguehound having scurried away at first sign of trouble - "Mage's Best Friend" my blue Troll ass) and point out to the High Executor that Vengeance Landing is marked with a skull on the map. As we all know, skull means you kill it first - so this probably isn't a good thing. Apparently, we at Vengeance Landing have made enemies of the local Vikings.
Just like the Green Bay Packers!
...huh, tough crowd.
There's some other thing going on with a battle with some Alliance forces over yonder or whatever, but I decide I'll get to that later, because I've been contacted by a Druid I'm acquainted with from the WoW General Forums - goes by the name of Emuslayer here, but there he's Noobu. Hi, Noobu! You get to be in a writeup! :D
Er, yes. I'm contacted, and we decide to go run some of the new dungeons. Unlike the ragged, malnourished hamsters running the Northrend world server, the critters powering the beta instance servers are fresh, energetic, and ready to dance. My sincere apologies if you now have the Hamster-Dance song running through your head, and I think I've overextended that metaphor anyway so let's just toss it.
So! What with their improved stability, instances are pretty nice to check out as far as the beta goes; it's far less likely you'll find everything going kaput than you will outside. Of course, the downside is that when the server does crash, everything's respawned. Fun times.
We quickly get a group together and make our way to Utgarde Keep, a stronghold looming over the center of Howling Fjord. I have a surprisingly hard time figuring out how to get down to the entrance, and eventually decide to just cheat and Slow Fall down - but I'm sure there's probably a more proper way that I simply overlooked.
Oh, one thing I'd forgotten to mention: the Druid They Call Emuslayer tips me off to a new console command players can look forward to in WotLK: /console extShadowQuality [#]. This command enables a brand-new graphical feature in the expansion: Dynamic Shadowing. When activated (0 is disabled, while 4 is the intended maximum), objects and players ... actually cast shadows. I don't mean the little black blobs that we call shadows currently in the game, but real shadows. Shadows that depend on the angle of lighting, shadows that reflect what your character looks like and what they're wearing, shadows that reflect what you actually do - if your character waves, so does your shadow.
Dynamic Shadowing is hardly a brand-new concept, of course, but it adds a visual depth to WoW that is really hard to explain without actually seeing it first hand - personally, I'm incredibly glad that I'm no longer playing the game on an underpowered and ill-powered laptop, but finally have a PC capable of running it on max settings (level 4 Dynamic Shadowing does require more than a bit of graphical power). Even so, like almost everything else in Lich King, full shadowing looks really, really good. Even if it is a bit buggy at the moment. But that's what beta's for, eh?
Sorry, tangent. Anyway: it's dungeon time!
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