Interview: Jame of WoW-Pro (part 2)
What are your favorite zones to quest in, and why? (One each for classic, BC, and LK would be great)
Classic: Eastern / Western Plaguelands. While most people may be put off by those old zones full of undeads and plaguebats, I love it. There are so many quests, that if you do them the right way, you'll end up leveling much faster than in Hellfire or Zangarmarsh. This is even more true for Death Knights, because of the Death Gate abuse, you can cut down a whole lot of running. I just love the Plaguelands, it's great XP ;)
BC: I'd definitely have to go Netherstorm, I love the way the zone looks, it's jam-packed with quests and most NPCs give cash and drop cloth, which is great for funding your epic mount.
WotLK: Dragonblight, hands down. The fact alone that you can fly a Wyrmrest Red Drake throughout the whole zone even if you are not level 77, even if you don't have the epic riding skill (my guide explains how to do this). Now add to that all the cool quests involving all the Dragon Flight Aspects. And to top it off, you get that awesome quest chain leading to the opening of the Wrath Gate cinematic and an epic battle with your faction leaders.
What do you do once you're done leveling? Raid, PvP, dailies? Or do you just turn around and level a new character? ;) And kind of a similar question: do you have a "main", and if so, what class is it? Or if you prefer, what's your favorite class to play?
My main is a level 80 Orc Death Knight since WotLK, and it's definitely my favorite class to play.
Before that my main a Tauren Warrior, I was one of the MTs for my guild all the way from Molten Core until Naxxramas 40. I then mainchanged to Hunter during BC due to a hunter shortage in my guild (hard to believe eh?).
During normal times, when I'm done working on the guides, I log in and do a 10-man raid with my friends' "casual raiding guild", or I'd do a couple of 2v2 Arena games with one of my friends.
Sadly, I don't even have the time for that lately. I do my 5 Arena games a week and that's it. I just have too much on my plate right now with the Leveling Addon and I also still have to work on the last few guides for Northrend: Zul'Drak, Scholazar Basin, Storm Peaks and Icecrown.
The little free time I have left is spent with family and friends. That might sound crazy, but I kinda miss "playing" WoW lately, haha :)
What do you think of what we've seen so far of patch 3.1? Ulduar, dual spec, mana regeneration nerfs (not a problem for your DK, I guess)...what are you excited about, and what are you not looking forward to?
I'm very excited about the Dual Specs, and that's an understatement. It's a change I've been pushing for since early 2005. I actually made several long posts on the blizzard forums back then, trying to make re-specs less taxing on players, especially for tanks and healers. So I'm extremely happy to see it finally happening and I look forward to swap my DK from "raid mode" to "arena mode" at will. It's going to be fun!
I'm also very interested Ulduar of course. Unfortunately, I probably won't be seeing much of it in the near future, as I'm a very casual raider these days, and most of my free time spent on WoW is spent improving my leveling addon. But I can't wait to see how long it will take for the top raid guilds to defeat all the bosses in hard mode, I'd like to see some heated rivalry between the top guilds. It's something we haven't seen in quite a while sadly.
No comment on the mana regeneration nerf, I'll wait and see how it pans out on live servers.
My experience with the DK (I've got one at 80, and play it probably as much as my previous priest "main") has been that it's a really well-designed, really polished class. So much so, in fact, that it kind of makes the other classes look bad. Warriors and rogues especially feel a bit clunky by comparison. It seems like the devs applied all the lessons they learned about class design, and the DK is what came out.
So the question is: Do you think the DK plays better than the other classes? And if so, do you think the other classes are going to be brought up to DK level?
I do think that the DK plays better than most other classes. It's very easy and fun to level, and it's just very powerful. I do hope that Blizzard will make a few changes to other classes to make them less painful to level and give them more fun tools, especially in the lower levels, because that's where they are the most frustrating. Classes like the warrior and the rogue are just quite dull and difficult to level up until lvl 40+, and still remain relatively difficult in comparison to DKs all the way to level 80.
This is not the case for all classes though. Hunters, Druids, Paladins and Warlocks have it easy too. They may not all be as fun as Death Knights to level, but are still pretty close in terms of power. As far as the end game is concerned, I don't think blizzard will make any drastic changes to any class. They will just keep on making small adjustments until all classes are more or less balanced, but nothing that will alter gameplay much for the old classes. At least, that's what I believe.
Well, that's about the size of it. Big thanks to Jame for putting the time in to do this interview, and thank you for reading. Readers, any further questions for the guide guru? Maybe we can entice him to come by the comments here.
