It's been a week since our last review in progress and it's time to see where things are at in the wide World of Warcraft. So far, Blizzard has of course fixed all major server issues. Players are still experiencing queues, but the queue times on the businest servers are now well within an hour during primetime. I think in the last few days the most I had to wait was 20 minutes to login, during primetime which is about the same amount of time I think it takes me to turn left out of my subdivision. 

Currently, I'm level 100 on a Blood Elf Priest. I've begun re-leveling my alliance Paladin to see some of the Alliance's side, of course I can't use the level 90 boost on it due to very old rare quest items that would be purged in the process.

Ten Levels is Better than Five aka Instant Gratification

One of the most exciting and promising features is the fact that you get to level a full ten levels this time around, instead of five. It has made leveling to be something magical again. Seriously, it's so nice to be able to actually make progress in a day, even if it's the same or more progress, it's still nice to see those bubbles fill up at the speed of light. While I had to take a short break for a day or two to just get rid of some gaming fatigue, but the idea that you get something for doing something brings WoW back to its roots. I mean, after all that's what made it so popular. Legacy MMOs required you to work an entire day for a bubble of XP.

So yeah, super happy about the entire journey. It was great, it was exciting, and it was so fun I kind of want to do it again which is what you really have to do right now since raiding is still a week and some off. I do have some issues with the pacing, the game does start a bit slow. In the first zone, at least on Horde, that first level felt like an entire day of work, but since then each zone just loads you up with things to do and if you follow the storylines, you'll be at Nagrand either at or right before level 100.

Garrisons are Awesome

Housing doesn't have to be specifically a house to be housing. Garrisons are the coolest feature I've seen in an MMO in a long time and it's not even that special, but what it does is put a nice bow and ribbon on everything you're doing and take a lot of the pressure off of doing things when you have no time. It can farm gold, XP, resources, and even gear. It's beautiful in the sense that it boils it all down to time. So you can do whatever you want to do with your garrison missions, up to and including gearing yourself out, if that's all the time you have to play. It lets you accomplish regular task goals without having, to you know, walk out and do something.

Lack of Post-Launch Issues

Since the last review, servers have been stable. I've not personally ran into any queues or any issues since then. This previous weekend the game ran great and I was in some very, very short queues. Whatever problems they had have solved themselves. I've ran into no bugs, stops, or even graphical glitches since then. 

Lack of Challenge

I've gone through and played some Wrath, Cata, and MoP content to see how it compares. Needless to say, the PvE content isn't specifically challenging. The enemies are in locations that are easy to find, it's all streamlined, and the entire 90 through 100 experience isn't specifically hand holding but it is, streamlined. You don't have a lot of risk 

My Plans Moving Forward

In order to fully test this expansion and form some strong opinions, I'm going to be attempting to level a Human Paladin to 100 so that I can see all of the content on the opposite side. While my understanding is that it's mostly a mirror, I still before I say one way or another on this expansion want to see it. Because it's immature to judge the expansion from only one side. Next week I hopefully will have some opinions formed about the current endgame ( no raiding ), and some opinions about the Alliance.

Until then, have fun and be safe in Azeroth.