Before I dive into my adventures in Gorgrond, it looks like further details on the Legion Remix have arrived!
I’ll be honest, I have no idea what the majority of that means or pertains to, but I can read dates. So, we have until October 7th to wrap up this foray into Warlords of Draenor. I’ll touch on this more later, but at the pace things have been moving, that shouldn’t be too much of a rush.
Anyways, onward to Gorgrond! Right out of the gate, this zone is nuts. The makeup of the zone itself is nothing that appears to break the mold, but the sheer amount of massive named elite mobs here really lends itself to the feeling that you are in a land of storied giants.
Entering the zone, we meet the Laughing Skull Orcs, a group of murderous psychos who need some help against an equally murderous band of something called Goren. So, as is typical, we kill a bunch of guys, help them retake their village, and then we skedaddle.
Somewhere along the line here, a Goblin named Penny falls from the sky, tells us she’s from our Azeroth, and wants to join. Also, there’s a nice spot for a camp just around the bend.
This is where I learned that you apparently get a Garrison or foothold in each zone, and get to make a choice on how they are equipped or what bonus they provide to you. This is neat, because the idea of running back to Frostfire every time I needed to check something didn’t seem appealing. I picked an option, and got access to a Shredder that allows me to cut through large roots that may be hiding treasure or access to certain places. It is a neat little addition, and again seems like each zone has one. In Frostfire I could summon a few soldiers from the Garrison to help, now in Gorgrond I get a Goblin Shredder I can hop in.
Around this point, I realized I was on the second zone of WoD, and already pushing level 40. At this rate, I won’t be able to explore every zone and see the story before I end up hitting the Chromie Time cap, so I had to make a bit of a decision.
Do I continue knocking out all the quests in a zone to see everything, but potentially hit 70 well before visiting all zones, or start to focus solely on story in an attempt to stay roughly on pace with the leveling?
I decided to focus on the story for now, and I am glad I did.
As I mentioned earlier, flying from quest to quest I repeatedly see massive elite mobs stomping about or fighting, but it doesn’t appear that I am expected to interact with them at any point. Part of me is curious if this wasn’t something more of an endgame thing, or if they are purely set pieces. On the map, certain named ones are marked and it states that they appear periodically. My assumption at the moment is that they were intended as overworld bosses, but since no one does them anymore they just stay spawned and hanging out. As it is, they somewhat remind me of the Fel Reavers in Hellfire Peninsula back in TBC, and honestly, even if they are just there for show I still enjoy it. The zone overall feels like a wild, untamed jungle with these massive creatures who seem to have their own lore centered around how they returned life to the barren wasteland that the zone had been in the past.
I continued to quest my way through, focusing solely on story quests now, and tried to remember to take little trips back to my Garrison to send my Followers out on missions. From what I have seen so far, there are three possible rewards from these missions: Follower XP, XP for me, or materials for my Garrison. Being able to check in once or twice a day and see these Follower missions completed for small rewards is neat, and just adds another layer of mechanics to the Garrison itself.
Somewhere along the line here, I traveled to Ashran to turn in a book for a Garrison plan, and had a quest to upgrade my Garrison as a whole to level 3. I managed to scrape together enough gold and resources for this upgrade, and it seems to have opened up numerous building slots, more quests, and a heck of a visual upgrade.
With the new building slots I added a Trading Post, some sort of pub, barracks, and the coolest one of all…a Menagerie. I promptly upgraded this to level 2 after I realized I can just purchase the plans for these higher tiers from a guy next to Gazlowe. Battle pets are something I wanted to tinker with a bit more during this stint in the game, as it was something I enjoyed a little back in the day but did not devote much extra time to. The Menagerie looks like it allows me to battle an elite Battle Pet or something similar for a daily quest to get pet rewards. The first one absolutely destroyed me, and I will definitely need to do some research on how this all works before I take another stab at that.
Returning to questing, I realized that Gorgrond was a fairly short zone if I focused solely on story, and I was pretty quickly sent off to Talador. From the map, this looks to be where Shattrath City is located, which is interesting since it was in a gloomy forest back in TBC. In this alternate universe, Talador is a pretty forested zone with Draenei villages dotted throughout, though quite a few appear to be on fire at the moment.
The first place I visited was Vol’Jin’s Pride, our base of operations in Talador. I had honestly forgotten about Vol’jin replacing Thrall as the Warchief, and it was neat to see him hanging out at our random little fort here in Talador. It didn’t take long though before I was sent back over to rendezvous with Thrall and Durotan, and we took the fight to the Iron Horde. From fighting our way through swarms of Iron Horde Orcs as they landed on the beach, to confiscating an experimental shredder, all the way to storming some docks to attack a super weapon, this was a pretty fun chain of quests.
I am not super sure who the large orc was that we battled for the super weapon, or what said super weapon actually was since it just looked like another cannon on a boat, but honestly if Thrall says smash, I smash. Khadgar did some magic and teleported us around (in the most circuitous way possible), we fought against what looked like a Deathwing version of an Iron Horde Orc, and he absolutely destroyed our whole little group. After we beat on him a bit, he laughed at us and detonated, making it look like everyone was wiped out.
When it looked like the dream team had been completely defeated, there was a pretty epic cutscene where Khadgar gave the order to fire the giant cannon at the boat carrying Blackhand and all of our friends, but he stopped short at the last second upon seeing a flash of holy light. Our Draenei buddy and Durotan were still kicking, and worked together to bring Blackhand down. Durotan chucked one of his axes to the Draenei, and she called down the light to bury the axe in Deathwi…I mean Blackhand’s neck. The tough bastard didn’t quite go down, but Durotan followed up with an attack using the Draenei’s goofy crystal warhammer to drop him. Khadgar gave the order, and the weapon fired what looked like a complete ripoff of the terrible Battleship movie (Sorry Rihanna).
Altogether, a really enjoyable questline, and set the stage for the rest of the zone. The town of Auchindoun, which I really thought was a dungeon or ruin in TBC that was much further south, appears to be a Draenei town under attack by Gul’dan. Throughout a handful of quests, I was conscripted to help push back demonic attacks, save some Draenei, burn some bodies, and eventually chase Gul’dan himself through a Warlock portal (which seemed incredibly ill advised). Another Draenei was able to hold the portal open, I dove through, and surprise surprise, there is Gul’dan ready to wreck me. He and his lackey summon a big demon, the whole group of Draenei and Blood Elves we’ve been helping throughout the zone appear to help, and we all take down the big bad. Popping through yet another Warlock portal, we return to Auchindoun to find that Gul’dan took the time while we were distracted to pop over and murder everyone, but was repelled because we foiled his plan to summon the big bad. Well, less that we foiled it, more that we just let it happen and killed said big bad. Close enough.
This all wrapped up Talador, and it was now on to Spires of Arak, the homeland of the Arakkoa. These hunched over little bird guys were all over Shattrath back in TBC, so it is neat to see them now, but that is where I will be stopping for this entry.
At this point, I am pushing 60 and hurtling headlong towards the end of what Chromie Time can do for me, but I haven’t really seen quests in two of the remaining zones, Tanaan Jungle and Shadowmoon Valley. Tanaan looks to be a zone that was intended for endgame, and is where we appeared to begin the expansion before finally reaching our Garrison. Shadowmoon Valley I have yet to see anyone mention when we’re fighting back the Iron Horde, so I am unsure when it comes into play.
By the time I finish Spires of Arak and Nagrand, I should have hit 70 pretty easily, and can see how I’m really feeling about this expansion. Honestly, at this point, I really don’t understand all the hate.
Lets see if the last couple zones change my opinion…
Next time: So Long, and Thanks for All the Garrisons (Wrapping Up Warlords of Draenor)
Grizzlebeard Plays 