2.4 First Impressions

After last night's Kara run I had a chance to run up to Quel'Danas (aka Sunwell Isle) and poke around a bit. Having never seen Blood Elf architecture firsthand before, it was really cool to experience fresh content and new quests.

Getting There
Alliance have a flight point at Ironforge which will get you there pretty quickly via a loading screen while in-flight. Unfortunately, flying back to IF does not seem to work the same way, where you hit all those flight points in Eastern Plaguelands, etc. on the way back. So use your hearthstone to get back if possible (until the Shat portal gets unlocked). Tip: if you log out mid-flight, you'll land at the next flight point along your original route.

The Isle
Aside from being graphically beautiful, the storytellers at Blizzard did a great job of making it feel like you've landed in a warzone and need to get to work right away. The place was still a zoo at 1am server time, lots of folks running around - some looking very lost, which added to the realism of the storyline. :) When I started out, the quest givers reported 39% progress, but 30 mins later they were at 41%, so no doubt by now phase 1 is close to being over. At this point the island basically has nothing available other than a flight point, quartermaster and quest givers. Over time more facilities will be unlocked.

Other highlights:

Dailies
It looks like there are lots of new options for dailies, which is fantastic. I find the bombing run quest extremely annoying and the Simon Says one mind-numbing, so it's good to have other things to try. There are both PvP and PvE dailies, scattered over Shattrath and the new Isle.

Teleport to Caverns of Time
There's now a representative from the CoT in the lower city who can teleport you directly there. Genius! Now they just need one for Sunwell Isle, maybe that will come later?

Marks for Honor
A new repeatable quest allows you to turn in 1 of each BG mark (AB, AV, EOTS and WSG) for ~300 honor. This is all win, except for needing the EOTS ones. Bleh.

Black War Elekk
This thing is way hotter in-person (in-game?). After the Season 1 helm, the elekk may be my next PvP goal: only 30 marks each from AB, AV and WSG.

Reputation PvP Armor
I went around and collected all the Seer's Linked pieces but as I tried to mix/match them into my current set, I only found that the chest and legs integrated well in my setup. RatingBuster FTW. I mostly gem'ed up with strength and crit, and now feel like I've got a decent setup as far as a hybrid PvP/PvE set goes.

Last night in Kara we had too many melee DPS for (Iron) Maiden, so I was rotated out to help heal - I'll likely go buy a set of Seer's healer gear to help in those situations. It's nice to have the option of a premade gear set for trying out alternate specs! Now just have to Learn2Healz.