abandon
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The end of vanilla WoW
We've heard about suggestions of vanilla servers before (and Blizzard has flatly stated that they have no plans for them), but here's a new twist: Nomnom on Korgath says that Blizzard should finally, once and for all, abandon the old world. He says that leveling from 1-60 is a pain, even with the changes and recruit-a-friend (and on that, I agree -- my Paladin is level 50 and staying there, because leveling is boring), and that Blizzard should just start all new characters at level 55, especially if you've already got a 70+ character. They already did it with Death Knights, and those have worked their way into the endgame just fine.That idea's definitely been batted around before, and anyone leveling an alt can definitely see the benefits. But think of what you're giving up with a new rule like that: Deadmines, Wailing Caverns, Scarlet Monastery. All of the epic quests and reputations, all of the great old-world vistas and settings. Plus, new players to the game will find the old world even emptier than it already is -- everyone who has a high level character will already be leveling through Outland or Northrend.Do we really want to abandon the old world for good? Blizzard doesn't think so -- Palehoof unofficially suggests that Blizzard is happy with the subscription fees for the two weeks it takes you to level your character, and Bornakk officially says that Blizzard is happy with the way things work now, and if they see a problem, they'll fix it. You have to think that they'll eventually allow this kind of "powerleveling" in some way -- as we move closer to level 100, it'll just be silly bothering with the lower levels considering how far ahead the new content is. But for now, you'll have to stick to leveling the old-fashioned way, because vanilla WoW isn't going anywhere.
Quest items disappear when abandoning quests
I noticed this last night when I was clearing out one of my quest logs-- 1.12.1 added "functionality" that destroyed your quest items when abandoning the related quest.Which is great when it works the way its meant to-- I'm always annoyed when I find a "Scrap of Paper" taking up a slot in my bags at 55 from a quest I'd abandoned twenty levels ago. But according to what players are saying, the destruction is a little on the greedy side-- it'll even destroy items you've picked up for the quest, i.e. if you've looted Arugal's head and then abandon the quest, bye bye to your head. And I haven't yet heard what might happen on normally non-quest items-- if you have 6 stacks of runecloth in your inventory and a quest requires 3 pieces, will you lose everything when you abandon it?It doesn't help, then, that this is mentioned in association with "curbing experience hoarding." A lot of players have already put quite a bit of work into saving up turn-ins and otherwise to quicken the route to 61, simply because they weren't told before this that it wouldn't be allowed. And especially if this "functionality" causes people to lose things they don't deserve to lose (or just plain want to keep), the fact that Blizzard did it (in only part, admittedly) to slow down player progression might be pouring salt in the wound (did they even put an "item destruction imminent" warning in the abandon confirm?). At any rate, be careful with your quest items when abandoning. Anyone tried trading them to a friend and back while you press "Abandon"?
