Ask a Beta Tester: A closer look at the starting zones and other things

There's only about a week left of Ask a Beta Tester, so get your questions in while you still can! You can be special like Radiophonic and get your name all bold-like up here! I guess we could actually answer the questions, too...

So I'm hearing that there are tons of quests in all areas, has the allowable number of quests in your quest log expanded or should we all start getting those last 10 or so completed?

The number of quests you can have in your log is still limited to 25. If you stick to one zone at a time, it's very highly unlikely you'll ever have more than 15-20 quests in your log at once. If you're anything like I am though, curiosity will probably get the best of you and you'll end up questing in 2-3 different places at once and you'll need that space in your quest log.

You might want to finish up the quests you have now, or when Wrath comes around you can scribble down where you got them, abandon them and go back later.

JonRowley asked...

If you are exalted with Argent Expedition and in a dungeon that typically gives their faction, but wearing a DEHTA tabard will you still get rep with DEHTA?

Well, DEHTA isn't a faction you can gain reputation with, but you can do that with championing, yes. After a bit of testing and checking, it looks like most of the dungeons don't give any specific rep beyond the main Horde/Alliance factions. The neutral factions, you'll only gain rep with those if you put on their tabard. Argent Crusade, Kirin Tor, Knights of the Ebon Blade, and the Wyrmrest Accord. You can pretty much go to whatever level 80 dungeon you want and gain rep.

Mouton asked...

For the dungeons in the starter zones, how "buried" are the quests? In HFP, you'd have to do a reasonably long quest chain to get the Ramparts quests, which meant I had run the place twice before actually getting the quest for it. Will this happen again in Northrend?

Both of them require a little bit of questing. The Utgarde Keep quest appears near Utgarde Keep itself after you've done the "Welcome to Northrend, now go kill those jerks over here" quest.

Over in the Borean Tundra, there's a questline from the Kirin Tor that you need to finish first. You need to do a few quests at Amber Ledge, and then they'll fly you over to Coldarra where you'll get a new flightpath there. You do some quests there, and then they send you into The Nexus. It's quite a bit longer and more complicated than Utgarde Keep, but worth it.

Schtix asked...

I've been looking everywhere, but I've yet to find much information on changes to Naxxramas. So I'm wondering, did you have an opportunity to see any ten-man content? Do you know if the bosses are very different from how they were before?

As dcwdvl said in the comments yesterday, the biggest differences are simply that it's scaled down for 10 people. Fights that required specific class abilities (like Mind Control) have been altered so anybody can do it. Those things still exist in the 25-man, just not the 10-man. Those are really the only differences It's scaled down. The fights mostly use the same strategies at 80 as they did at 60. Just smaller.

Jodi asked...

Could you possibly tell us more about the starter areas? Everyone says to quest where you like it the best, but I cant find enough on each starter area to really know which one I will like best. What kind of story does each bring, what kind of quests, what kind of playstyle? I'm really interested to know because I want to start leveling as soon as I can so my mage can start porting people to Dalaran.

Before Wrath's launch, we plan on having a much more informative breakdown of the two zones, but I'll try to sum it up:

The Borean Tundra is a very varied zone. Moving from one questing area to the next, each part will look a little different from the previous part. Sandy beaches into hotsprings into snowy tundra into fiery caves and then you fly over to Coldarra which is all frozen over and laced with magic.

If you play Horde, this region is full of Orc and Tauren lore primarily. You get introduced to the dynamic between Garrosh Hellscream (doofus) and Saurfang (anti-doofus). You meet the Taunka. All that good stuff. If you play Alliance, there's not much direct plot advancement (in my opinion) but they go to great lengths to make you feel special. You step onto Northrend shores and you're immediately regarded as a hero. You walk up to quest givers and they recognize that the Alliance just pulled out the big guns. Outland's saviors just showed up and are about to rock the house down. If you want to feel like a hero, this is the place that'll do it.

The Howling Fjord is, for better or for worse, more consistent as far as terrain. Rather than being big splotches of random landscape swirled together, it's more of a big sprawling forest with oddities. There's the eternally burning forest, the snowy areas with the nymphs, and the western coastline is a bit frozen over. It's much prettier, in my opinion. Some people find it more boring though, since it's a big zone that doesn't change up its appearance too much.

For the Horde, the focus is largely on the Forsaken. Vengeance Landing is here, the staging point for their offensive against the Scourge. You'll be doing a lot of questing developing and testing their new plague and things such as that. For the Alliance, there are some origin stories here. You learn where Humanity came from, you get more information on the Dwarves, that whole spiel. For both factions, your Titan lore in the expansion starts here.

That's just a really simplistic breakdown of the two zones. Like I said, we're going to try to have something more comprehensive for all of you before Wrath of the Lich King's launch. If you want to get a feel for each zone's mood and appearance, we do have an image gallery for each you may want to look through.

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