Project Lore

I have been spending a substantial amount of time leveling a new toon since BlizzCon 2009's Cataclysm announcements.  Like many players, I want to experience the aspects of vanilla WoW before they disappear into the digital abyss (maybe then Blizzard will setup a vanilla server cluster?).  And no, I am not running the 1-60 gauntlet alone, but with a group of five other players.  Amazingly, we've actually managed to stay within a few levels of each other. We've noticed a ton of major differences from v1.0 to patch 3.2.2 during our trek to level 22, the Christmas tree effect is gone, the multitude of traveling quests to far away lands have been reduced dramatically, the painful menagerie of escort snail quests have all but disappeared, and mounts at level 20 that cost a disgusting four gold are nice.  Since the group has been able to pull off that rare leveling feat, we've been able to tackle a few 5-man dungeons, and boy has dungeon quest design radically changed. Once WoW hit its third month of service the characters spread across the level range with incredible coverage.  It was easy to find a group during early days of WoW for nearly any instance in the game, from RFC to BRD.  That was only half the battle though, once the group was formed it became clear that not everyone was prepared.  People hadn't done the multitude ofpre -requisite quests to open up this or that quest.  Off the group went, splitting up to tackle the various tasks before returning, often an hour later, to the entrance. Or the group as a whole failed to pick-up the quest with the amazing reward offered by an NPC in a far away city.  There goes another 30 minutes.  Finally, finally you begin the run, pounding through the dungeon, claiming life after life, only to realize that there isn't enough of a quest item to go around.  Cue the greed factor as everyone scrambles to grab this or that plant, skin, weapon or other interactive item on the ground, instead of performing their job.  God forbid you have to run the instance a second time! Blizzard may get ragged on for abandoning so much of the old world, but this archaic design was downright painful.  The pre-requisite quests aren't awful - in fact, they tend to be the ones that contribute most to the dungeon's lore - but the scramble they caused, and wasted time, was.  Sadly, the category has largely been abandoned.  As has the crosscountry treks, a win-win in my book, and a logical move.  After all, how many people in Ironforge really care about what is going on in Blackfathom Deeps?  They are literally on opposite sides of the world.  It's the guy standing outside the instance, or in the closest town that should be concerned - and has been since The Burning Crusade. Oh, and in case you are wondering, we all rolled classes that we've never played before.  Should be interesting when we have to actually begin using strategy.