War of Thorns, week two, day one.

I did the part two this morning. I went there on my druid. Teldrassil is her “birthplace”. I knew basically what was going to happen.

But it was heartbreaking. I have never been affected by a quest/chain/task/event in WoW as today in Teldrassil. First, in Darkshore I got angry. I even emoted spitting on two horde npcs. I’ve never done that before. And I would never do that to Horde players. As much as I did my fair amount of pvp (almost all in battlegrounds) I never felt disdain for the Horde. But this time I did. And sorrow for the elves. Maybe Blizzard want to motivate me to turn war mode on?

After finishing the fight in Darnassus (an impossible rescue mission), and reporting back to Stormwind, I felt lost and empty. I tried Dalaran portal to Darnassus and wound up in Lor’danel. Killed a few horde npcs. The flight master was gone, so tried fly to the burning tree. There is a wall, so Teldrassil is now in practice a big picture, nothing else. I flew around Darkshore. The new world quests are there. Five now. But the whole zone is pretty dead. Apart from the tragedy, it just sucks as a zone. Not only burnt, it is just a filler place now. Burning Steppes feels like a lively happy resort in comparison. Ironically, the troll place in the far north is untouched.

When flying along the eastern border of zone, as soon as you enter Moonglade, Teldrassil is gone from view. I am not sure it was visible before, but probably not.
In the very far north of Darkshore I found a path that starts nowhere and leads to this:

Never seen before. Can only be reached by flying.

Furthermore, I saw some really pathetic graphic mishaps, worthy of vanilla WoW. Trees growing like on flat ground but on steep slope.

View of Teldrassil as far north as possible:

You can ask Zidormi to turn back time to see Darkshore as it was. I did that. But the fight at Lor’danel is still on and flight master is gone.

You can then fly over to Teldrassil. Some fatigue, but you reach there without any risk. And enter the old city. But… it does not feel exactly the same as before. I will however keep it that way. Portal from Dalaran works as usual, and the dreamwalking feature I mentioned in previous post works too, if you asked Zidormi to show the old Darkshore. You can also fly from and into Teldrassil. However, Lor’danel is still only possible to fly into. The “new” Darkshore just feels pointless anyway, so why have it as it is?

After taking a few screenshots and testing the travelling as above I did not feel like playing WoW at all. I did not feel like “Fight the Horde!” or something like that. Just empty. And I still do 6-7 hours later.

I had Guardian of Cenarius title for “ever” on my druid, but now she is Wisteria of Darnassus. Even the feel in the Dreamgrove changed a bit for me. I am usually not that immersed in game, and while I like the lore, I have a little distance to gaming, as probably can be seen in this blog 😉 But this just is sad. Did not put my gaming soul on fire, if that was Blizzard’s intention, it just felt as a odd combo of ruthlessness and pointlessness.

Many races have lost their home, but either they did that before WoW, or it was a starting zone that you can’t return to anyway. Furthermore, those zones came with that condition. Teldrassil been around from start, and many have dear memories of it. I loved the original Darkshore, and while the destruction during Cataclysm was enormous it made sense story-wise. The present change is just too simple. Brutality is banal.

I do not have energy to solo play in war mode, but I think some time I’ll check LFG for raids on Horde territory. Could be enjoyable. Maybe.