The Commander is On Deck!

Whenever somebody calls me "Commander," This is what I think of.

Some stray thoughts about Warlords after the first weekend:

Shadowmoon Valley was tremendous fun, with some good storylines that I enjoyed a lot. Gorgrondor, my next stop in Draenor, feels utterly formless by comparison. I'm not entirely sure what's going on there because all the questing I did was about checking in with the Ragnari and helping them solve some ecology-related problems. As soon as I found a summons to Talador, I took it. I haven't gone far there yet, but it was a little disappointing that the promise of immediate engagement with the Iron Horde was deferred by the need to construct an artillery tower instead. 

Argh! Karabor was a snooze fest! The final battle against the Shadowmoon orcs was all well and cool, but Karabor was originally to be the main Alliance hub in Draenor. When that was cancelled for Ashram instead, Blizzard promised Karabor would still be an exciting mecca of Draenei culture. But no, instead it is one huge, sparsely-populated botanical garden. I've had one reason to go up into that area since the Battle of Karabor and can find no reason to go back.  I wandered into Shattrath last night and found a sprawling city with whole districts I didn't know existed. And it was inhabited and showed signs of recent battle. But again, no signs of questing in this area. And no mining or herb patches. These are great big empty patches of nothing. I sure hope they turn into something. 

DPS queue lines for dungeons have been absurdly long, but I ran with a guild group (healing again!) and saw the Bloodmaul Slag Pits and The Iron Shipyard.  Slag Pits was a fairly nonsense attack on a few bosses, only one of which had any particular mechanics to pay attention to. The Shipyard was more challenging and just more interesting in general. 

The Garrison- Hrrm. I'm presently struggling a little to keep an open mind and see how this evolves, but overall, The Garrison feels like a well-packaged Facebook game. It's even more like Farmville than the Pandaren farm was. You pop by, get some projects going, go away for a while, return later to reap rewards and reset various tasks. It only lacks the convenience of being able to whip out your mobile to get it done from wherever. I wonder how many people are going to see their missions complete while in raid and feel compelled to "run out" and take care of it, "real fast."  Other issues I have with the garrison: I don't know how to go about farming up the resources for expansion. There doesn't seem to be a consistent origin for those and when you'll seem to need garrison resources by the thousands, finding thirteen here, and getting 50 more as a reward somewhere else doesn't seem very productive. 

And I think I understand now why Blizzard went all-out to improve storage capacity for individual characters: because you have 8x the crap to carry around. I think I have five different kinds of fishbait in my bags, along with awesomefish and grieferfish and stacks of fish not divisible by 5 or 10, along with the stacks of meat from the fish that I have skinned or prepared or whatever it is you do when you "use" a pile of fish. That's like 8 bag slots of stuff (not counting my pole and bonus gear) just to facilitate the part that I might cook into something useful. And that's just fishing. I've got three variants of leather so far, and since there's a mine in the Garrison, I'm carrying around bloody ore and rock. I'm not sure what's exactly going to happen with all the sumptuous fur that's presumably going to turn into cloth one of these days. I've produced two different first aid items, and neither of them are a bandage, and I still have a pile of tentacles that, again, are not divisible by the amount you "use" to create the reagent they are used for. All of this is just a little overwhelming. 

No Flying - So,I can go on record infinitely preferring to explore a new continent on foot. (Or, more likely, on ground mount) I like to spend the time. I like to see all the details close up. It's the only way to find secrets in the world and the only way to get to know the space we're occupying. That said, Draenor has got some mighty rugged terrain. More than once I've run off the top of a cliff. Several times I've tried to reach a point on the map and been unable to find a way around the mountains. While questing, this isn't really the end of the world and it helps with the exploration part of the game. Later in in this game when I'm coming back trying to farm herbs, ore or archaeology, it's going to be a severe pain in the butt. I've already farmed some dig sites where I had to take long zigging, zagging paths through a set of steppes to gather the relics, jump to the base and zig zag the way back up again. All I can think about is how much easier that would be if I could fly up the ridge instead.  So, while I'm happy to be on the ground now, I'd really like to be airborne before too late in the expansion.