In LK there are 2 starting zones, Borean Tundra (http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?zone=3537) and Howling Fjord (http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?zone=495). So, which one do you plan to start in? Why?

Right now I (as a Horde player) plan to start in Howling Fjord.

My Feral is starting in Borean Tundra because of an alliance quest there with the best early trinket for DPS. (Deathknight's Anguish.)

My boomkin is starting in Howling Fjord to keep my life interesting :)

does it make a difference ?

Just the rewards. One zone has a really nice blue trinket you can get the other has a blue neck I think. Otherwise, both are nice zones.

I think Borean Tundra had better flow of quests and better overall story cohesion. I think Howling Fjord had a much better theme and music selection. Otherwise I liked both zones. I found Borean stared a bit easier.

does it make a difference ?Just click on the links in my first message and you can see the list of quest rewards for each zone. Unfortunately, the reward Alla is talking about is Alliance only.

I think one zone has "trinket" group quest rewards whereas the other has "ring" (or neck??) group quest rewards. I doubt any of the non-group quest rewards will be of much use to those that have T4/badge+ gear.

Very true... as always Alliance and horde will have differences. I know on horde side in BC, you didn't get the kick butt chest piece that alliance got, but you got amazing weapons instead in HFP. They keep us guessing!!!

A quick glance at the quest list for each zone shows...

There are more quest in BT (though this includes both shared, alliance only and horde only).
The average quest level in BT is a touch higher than those in HF (probably due to issue #1).
There are more blue quest rewards in BT than HF (I think the 5-man in BT is a higher level than the one in HF).

So, it sort of seems like (on paper) that the HF zone is a touch lower level than the BT zone.

is it a case that you cannot do quests in both the starting zones then ?

Nope. You can do both zones.

Yeah I did both just to see them on my main. Its not a bad plan if you think you want to use the rest of the quests later on to make cash. However you'd probably end up a bit undergeared later on.

i still cannot decide on zone !

i think i fancy the sound of Borean. I'm horde ofc if its makes a difference.....

guess i need to look again later before deciding on those links tlb.

anyone care to tell me which one (and a brief why - ie cos of abc blue drop) they think would be best for a horde feral druid but one would is considering speccing oomkin after the first level or 2.... ?

i'll be picking up my CE copy after work today and hoping to get a couple of hours in tonite for the upgrade and first look.

already seen posts on UK forums by people who got into Wrath by about 21:30 laast night (Wed).

people already taken DK's up a few levels !

others nearly lvl 72 !

one done all the quests in Howling Fjord and moving on....

these sad people were posting and playing all through the night ! dont they have lives/ jobs !

sadly despite all this not one of them posted a screenshot ! all they did was a couple posted screenshots of the screen that said 'Success' in upgrading their account :o

I logged off of Blackrock last night at 12:15am PST, and the East Coast players who had gotten in right at 9:00pm PST had already been leveling for 3 hours

I did a quick /who Death Knight, and there were already multiple lv 58 death knights (after 3 hours! wtf), and already multiple lvl 71's......

People are crazy. I'm still at work, plan on picking my copy up otw home and trying to get a few hours in too.

lol Clar

as i posted here during the day yesterday i was seeing people on UK forums reporting they were at lvl 72 and heading to 73.

also DK's were already over lvl 60 !!

last nite i was seeing people talking about hitting lvl 74 - this was as i was installing the game ! and DK's were being listed by people as 68 as the highest they had seen !!! a few had simply played all through the night it seemed and carried on in the day!

people have no lives !! lucky them :p

i got about an hours play tops given it took an hour to install it. was then out for the evening. however the servers were taking a beating it seems last night as many people we on forums reoprting queues of upto 2000 to login ? also bad lag and many dc's, including being dc from a queue when its gets to a low number ! many unhappy people with blizzard - but what's new.

which is odd cos from what i gather these servers have never been affected like this before with queues......so where are all the players coming from ! even my server which i've never ever had to queue on, suddenly last night i was in a queue of over 300 with a wait time of around 15 mins :(

hoping for a couple hours tonite. Given you need 1.5 million XP to get lvl 71 it may take me a week ! :o Although having said that i made about 250,000 XP by saving up about 20 daily's from the day before and handing them in last night before heading off to Northrend.

in the end i have made my way to Borean Tundra and had a quick look around including comgng face to face with Kel'Thuzad and some others.

I also managed to find every Grand Master Profession Trainer in the starting area, Warsong Hold but the ones i am - LW and Herby !

I think leveling is so much easier now with the several addons that make it so easy to do quests rapidly and efficiently.

QuestHelper
Carbonite
LightHeaded

Plus there are several really slick purchase'able addons (Carbonite has a free and paid version)

I'm going with QuestHelper (combined with TomTom). My brother (now 73??) told me it makes leveling stupid easy.

@Khel: Don't feel bad about leveling slow or getting a slow start. I was only able to log in to start my rest XP Wednesday night as I'm at a convention in Vegas and my work laptop only gets 5fps (lol). So, I won't be playing until very late Friday or maybe not until Saturday. I fully expect to see a lvl 77+ in my guild by then.

And regarding DK's leveling so fast...

Besides the super questing addons, don't forget that blizzard reduced the XP required to gain levels from 60-68 (70??). Making it that much easier for DKs to get caught up with those that started in the Northrend with a lvl 70.

so you'd recommend a quest helper addon tlb ?

i've never used one tbh so do not know whow they work or aid you in making questing quicker ?

in the old days i rarely used addons and i guess i've not acutally levelled anything in well over a yr since my druid hit 70?

which of the free ones is best - QuestHelper ? (which i have heard of...)

i know i'll be v slow to 80 cos of RL and not being in a 'proper' guild to be able to call on people to help with grping for quests / new 5 mans for levelling.

as guy on my server whose alts are in my guild was in The Nexus, a new 5 man last night on his main in a guild run and he said they were getting 3000 XP per mob killed.

so i am going to have to do a lot of pugging as level to get good xp i guess.....unless mobs out of new 5 mans are also giving that sort of xp as i level and quest....


that's good news for when i get time to level a DK next yr ! he will at least level fast and i can get advice from people on the best talent tree :)

oh and a mage i know got a Teleport to Dalaran spell and bought some Black Armoured Warbear for 750g and said a Wooly Mammoth (multi person mount??) was 19000g !!

I never used an add on for my first toon...which certainly made the experience more interesting. I had never played before so I literally learned as I went - as my earlier posts clearly indicate. :icon_lol:

For my Alt, though, I used Questhelper and I love it.

However, I am also told that Tour Guide is quite good.

So, here are links for both. You decide.

Quest Helper

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quest-helper.aspx

Tour Guide

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/tourguide.aspx

thanks mag.

Not sure about tour guide, but questhelper more or less requires a "map helper" type addon as well. It supports TomTom and Cartographer(?). I use TomTom.

Basically, QuestHelper looks at the quests you have in your quest log and literally shows you where to go to complete that quest. The TomTom arrow points to the "next" goal and on your map you see a questing "circuit" to follow.

Literally, if these addons could move and attack you could auto-level.

Literally, if these addons could move and attack you could auto-level.

Ya, I'll admit I do feel a little bit of guilt while using Quest Helper.

I used to have loads of add ons - Cartographer, Gatherer, Auctionneer, but it became too much of a pain reloading them every time I had to run a Wow Repair....which for some reason, I have to do quite often.

So at the moment I'm not using a map add on. I'm just using my trusty world map.

As a side note, Quest Helper also tracks the current quests your fellow party members are on. Which gets stupidly confusing. I guess that's my only complaint about it.

Of course, there is probably a way to config that off.......

yeah got them both. qhelper seems great !

i need to get tom tom it sounds like.

i dont feel any guilt at all Mag.

i have such limited time to play that getting somewhere when i can play makes it seem worthwhile.

qhelper been great for 2 hrs tonite doing a ton of q's in warsong hold area.

got up about 900k now on the way to lvl 71 !

BTW, back to the Original Topic -- I ended up doing both. I did all of Howling Fjord, then went to BT, and finished there. I was only like 74 when I got out -- but granted, there was no rest involved. Then on to Dragonblight (out at 76 or 77), Grizzly Hills (out at 78 maybe? GH is a far smaller zone) and I hit 80 while in Zul'Drak. Few instance runs sprinkled in there.

I liked Howling Fjord a lot better than BT. The northern area is beautiful.


As far as quest addons - I'm using Carbonite, and it is really nice. It takes over your map, so whenever you hit 'M' it will show you in color shaded areas where on your map the 'kill zones' or quest points are. And it has coords and stuff too. Really nice mod.

I liked Howling Fjord a lot better than BT. The northern area is beautiful.
I've been to HF once (UK run) and have just finished BT. I have to agree HF looks a lot nicer. I know this is sort of lame (kind of like vanity pets), but that's the primary reason I'm going to quest there as I'm lvl 73 and could easily move up a zone.

Honestly here's my take on the two zones.

Borean Tundra:
Quests are more cohesive.
It gives you the "scourge theme" right out of the gate if you are looking for it.
The zones aren't as cohesive and the land looks a bit mishmashed.
The quests have a better density.

Howling Fjord
Its prettier and has better music.
The land looks cohesive and is believable.
The quests are annoying with their, go do one thing and then come back to me for the next part of the chain. You can't chain enough of them together to get a nice 4-6 quests done and then turn in all at once.

I forgot about the music. I've had it off for so long. Just might have to turn it on tonight....

They need an option to "turn off music in instances" or something like that.

The environmental zone music is fantastic in this expansion. Its well worth listening to.

The environmental zone music is fantastic in this expansion. Its well worth listening to.

I guess I will have to turn my music on ... I usually play without any games sounds.

The environmental zone music is fantastic in this expansion. Its well worth listening to.

Yep. Check it out.

And to re-iterate, Carbonite makes leveling a breeze ;)

Does the music change in different areas within a zone? I turned on the music last night. I started in BT (10 min max) flew to HF and did most of my questing. The HF music was the typically annoying moaning type stuff and I don't remember the BT stuff at all (wasn't there long enough). At some point during my flight between BT and HF the music was nice, but I thought I was over HF at that time. Had a folk music type sound?!?!

I think it can change.

BTW I personally am not a big fan of the new mods that point you in the direction of quests... I'm a huge fan of the words RTFQ. The quest descriptions are much easier to sort out than they used to be.

But thats my personal hang up not yours :)

BTW I personally am not a big fan of the new mods that point you in the direction of quests... I'm a huge fan of the words RTFQ. The quest descriptions are much easier to sort out than they used to be.Funny, now that I use quest helper, I actually read the quest text far more often than I ever did before. In the past, I'd just alt-tab wowhead for every quest.

So, I follow the arrow wondering what I need to do when I get there. Then I read the quest text to discover that I need to use some stupid quest item to perform the quest. Though I never read (or recall) the "story" part of the quests. I honestly have absolutely no clue about the story of this game, unless some loremaster type mentions it in vent.

FWIW, why are there so many use item quest? I fricken' hate those. though at least now we can use most of them while in cat form. I would have quit LK by now if we still had to switch to caster to use items.

See that's my issue with it. You aren't reading it till the arrow points you and says... hey you need to go over there. I don't want an arrow leading me around. I want to go there on my own and explore, but as I said... my personal hang up.

See that's my issue with it. You aren't reading it till the arrow points you and says.But without Questhelper I'd just alt-tab to wowhead and never, ever look at the quest text. Plus it would take me a zillion times longer to level since I was alt-tabbing all the time. Though later i started to use lightheaded, but I don't bother with that now.

Before I would literally write down 3-4 quests names on a piece of paper, alt-tab and look them up on wowhead and write down a few loc points for each quest. Then alt-tab back into wow and do the quest. Throw in a few more alt-tabs in the mix in case my first notes were bad.

At some point I started using a leveling guide which helped quite a bit (think of it as a on-paper version of questhelper but only for a few quests). But I'd still alt-tab all the time if the guide wasn't clear or if I wanted to complete a quest that wasn't done in the guide.

So, for me questhelper makes me read quest text. Without quest helper i don't read it at all.

Questhelper gives me the location and the order to run quests, the quest text tells me what to do. As it is the location portion of quest text that I find is not specific enough. Ex. "on a hill along the west coast you'll find Bob, bring me his left toe." Great, there are only a billion hills on the west coast, thanks. Alt-tab wowhead (or lightheaded, or quest guide).

Questhelper saves me that pain and frustration. I don't play the game to "explore". I just want to kill bad guys and progress (level, gear-up, rep, etc.)...

I think the last game in which I actually followed the story and/or "explored" was the original Ultima IV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_IV) (played on an Apple ][e). Though I think I may have followed Questron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questron) (C-64 game) a bit a couple years later.

I'm with tlbj... I like exploring, but I don't equate trying to figure out where to go for the quest as 'fun'. I stopped playing for over a year, and when I came back, I had all these quests and no clue where to go for them. It was so confusing, it was the single reason I didn't keep playing. Instead, I let my account expire again. After several friends recommended QuestHelper to me, I finally tried it out, and it's very helpful for questing.

Several newer MMOGs now have functionality like that built-in.

Several newer MMOGs now have functionality like that built-in.War Hammer has Carbonite like functionality in the game. It doesn't do questhelper like stuff (route planning), but it does show you where to go to complete a quest (that's all carbonite does).

I stopped playing for over a year, and when I came back, I had all these quests and no clue where to go for them. It was so confusing, it was the single reason I didn't keep playing. That was the single biggest reason why I quit playing wow when I was leveling my hunter years ago. In the months I stopped playing I discovered leveling guides and had the ability to Xfer to a PvE server (I hate world PvP). Without the guide and the Xfer I wouldn't be playing wow.

is carbonite better than questhelper ?

i did think about doing HF but ended up just moving from BT to Dragon and have about finished Dragon now and hit 75 last night.

is it worth going to HF as a 74 once i wrap up in Dragon ?

(all my XP is from questing etc as i've yet to step into an instance due to small guild / aversion to pugging and lack of time to commit to an unfamiliar instance).

oh and given i dont get a lot of time i do end up with some nice rested xp.....most of 73 was rested and i've already got rested to cover over half of lvl 74 :)

I use Carbonite and like it (not used Questhelper) and it does enough to help out without leading you by the nose all round the place.

That appeals to my sense of adventure rather than having it all laid on a plate for me.

Also the two low level instances - Nexus and Utgarde Keep - are a disappointing pushover and the next one up in Ajab-whatever (DB) is even worse. We did it in 30 minutes and we're only a guild that's raided up to a Kara clearance.

I'm hoping stuff further down the line is a bit more of a challenge - but got some nice blue kitty shoulders from one of them tho which do for now at lvl74 :)

Also the two low level instances - Nexus and Utgarde Keep - are a disappointing pushover and the next one up in Ajab-whatever (DB) is even worse. We did it in 30 minutes and we're only a guild that's raided up to a Kara clearance.

I'm hoping stuff further down the line is a bit more of a challenge

Blizzard made the short instances on purpose.
My record on Azjol'Nerub was 13 mins. We farmed the instance down to death for the fast XP :-D

Dungeons wont get more difficult in normal mode.
But heroic is a whole different story.
If u can tank/heal a heroic, then u can heal Naxxramas.

is carbonite better than questhelper ?There are cosmetic differences (Carbonite uses "areas" for quest targets, where as QH puts the "target" in the middle of that "area", etc.), but the the primary difference is that Questhelper continually computes your "best" questing route based on the quest you currently have.

So, you might have QuestA, QuestB, QuestC. QH tells you to go to QuestC, then QuestA, turn in QuestA, then go do QuestB, etc. If when you turn in QuestA you get QuestD, it might re-direct you to do QuestD (because its target is closer than QuestB), then QuestB, etc.

So, I find it is best to gather up as many quests as possible with QH so it can compute better routes. So, as you run to do a Quest, if you see a quest giver on the edge of your map, I run over and pick it up, just so QH has more to work with.

And since it is continually computing your best questing route, if you need to run back to town to empty your bags (I always have to with so many damn quests having "use" quest items) you might find that your suggested questing path has changed now that you are in a different location.

Now, once you have reached lvl 80 and don't really care about questing efficiently, Carbonite might be a better solution. Carbonite has a few slick feature that let you track your friends and/or guildmates. Neat, but not really needed for questing.

Blizzard made the short instances on purpose.
My record on Azjol'Nerub was 13 mins. We farmed the instance down to death for the fast XP :-D

Any reason why they did that? It didn't happen on BC and I think most people would prefer a bit of a challenge tbh rather than just leg it through these things at high speed.

The 30 mins was our first visit as we had to work out the bosses (rather than read up on them).

We shan't bother going back to that one!

yeah i agree that i like questhelper as it makes my limited playing time more efficient.

i still tend to read the quest text, well ok most of the time maybe not always. but without it helping me i would be levelling that much slower and possibly just get fed up and quit.

i've made level 74 but feel that without questhelper/tom tom i would probably only be 72 now as I would also have probably ended up often alt-tabbing to check a quest on thotbot etc.

I cant believe you're saying you can run 5 man instances in 13 mins !!!

I've yet to have the time to do one (or so I thought!!) but if they can be done that fast then I can !

I was wanting to do the instances for rep.

I cant believe you're saying you can run 5 man instances in 13 mins !!!


We were a group of RL-Friends who played along together now and we know how each of us plays.... we rushed through.
Group: Me (Tank), Arcan-Mage, Resto-Drood, Retri, Rogue
The healer never had to reg (if he had too he used Innervate) and i gave my innervate to the mage when he was low.

So not a single reg-pause.
We never spent more than 40 mins in one instance.
Even the first times we entered we were fast as hell.

I can say i leveled about 3-4 lvls only instances.

Northrend rep works differently than TBC rep. Once you have enough rep to buy a tabard from a particular faction, you just wear that tabard every time you run a level 80 instance and you get rep for that faction.

I've been wearing the Wyrmrest tabard, and I get rep with Wyrmrest Temple every time I do an instance.

And yes, the regular instances are very easy if you had t4+ level gear, but heroic instances are very challenging and fun. I now have 31.5 k armor unbuffed and I get cleaved for 10-12k by the final boss in heroic UK, for example.

ahha interesting that you wear a tabard for rep in instances.

War Hammer has Carbonite like functionality in the game. It doesn't do questhelper like stuff (route planning), but it does show you where to go to complete a quest (that's all carbonite does).

Yep. That was one of the things that I liked about WarHammer, and it has made WoW that much better.

I like Carbonite better, as it shows zones, as well as specific points for NPC's, but doesn't take ALL the planning out of it. Still makes me stop and read the text on select quests (when I'm riding toward where I'm supposed to do something). Definitley saved me a lot of time.

I like the fact that normal instances are pretty quick now. Really the focus for instances IMO should be on Heroics (as they were for most people in BC). I also like the way that you can wear a certain faction's tabard to get rep for them wherever you are. Makes the inevitable rep grind much more palitable.

does the get rep wearing a tabard at 80 only work in heroic instances ?

does the get rep wearing a tabard at 80 only work in heroic instances ?

no. it works in all 80 instances

when we say '80 instances' are we talking about all instances run when you are lvl 80 or are there some instances designated as lvl 80 ?

when we say '80 instances' are we talking about all instances run when you are lvl 80 or are there some instances designated as lvl 80 ?

i think it's for instances quoted as lvl 80.
The tooltip on the tabards say:
"All reputation gains while in level 80 dungeons will be applied to your standing with them."

That would be:
Halls of Lightning
The Occulus
CoT:Culling of Stratholme
Utgarde Pinnacle
and all Heroics

ahha thanks S3R.

i've yet to do an instance so a bit unsure of them all, names, lvls and locations !