Elementium - US Barthilas

Although most of us have decided to lock in Dungeoning as the most preferred choice of levelling, I think that it is still important to understand how questing works. This is why china man TS and I have decided to lock ourselves away for the next 20 hours and quest from 80-85. I know this has been done many times before by other individuals in the guild, and both TS and myself have individually levelled through questing as well, but nothing beats trying to immerse yourself into the experience proper. This means we are going to simulate as if we were going for realm firsts - very efficient and fast levellng, little breaks, and all round me deciphering english quest text to the illiterate. Also, even as many have done so, few have actually documented the journey.

The purpose of this blog is to do just that. Every so often, I will update this post with regards to our progression - what quests we've done, any challenges, reflection on quests, how we are feeling physically, my irritation level with a china man, etc, etc. Hopefully this will be of some use to those who have decided not to dungeon to ding 85.

Day 1 - Monday, 1631hours

Although I have done this before, there is a certain sense of excitement strangely enough. Maybe it's the thrill of simulating the real thing come December 7 - should I actually need it. More specifically though, I look around my desk and have found that I have stocked up quite nicely for the next 20 hours. Bottles of water + sprite (my choice of levelling soft drink), sweets (gum is highly essential in keeping you fresh), cheezels (mmm yum), and other assortment of snacks that they only have here in australia so even if I listed them out it'll be useless to you SGs.

We kick off as usual with the long ass boat ride to Vash'jr. The ride itself isn't long actually, it's the freaking RP you have to wait through after picking up the first quest. Oh well. And so it begins...

PS. Don't forget to train flying at the flight master and set hearth to SW.

1816 hrs

TS dings 81 lol. i had dinged earlier but i think better if we go in accordance to his exp. we're about half way thru vash'jr

1951hrs

LOL vash'jr is too big for its own good. getting quite bored already haha. i just dinged 82 and TS is about 660k exp behind. quests so far have been fairly simple, but some quests you really need to do at least once just to know the positions of quest mobs, items, places, etc.

2024hrs

Idiot dings 82 finally. Am spending more time translating/explaining than questing. gg.

2131hrs

Wow. Vash'jr is getting quite annoying. We're at the last part of the zone, and it is really quite time-consuming due to the vast distances u have to cover. Seahorse mount doesn't really help lol. Glad this place is finishing soon though!

2154hrs

mmm. guess not. met with a bugged quest in the chain. moving on to deepholm now

2343hrs

ive just dinged 83, not sure when TS will. deepholm has been quite disappointing, although i would say it's a refreshing change from vashjr because u dont swim around lol? and hecteon is trying to simulate real world ganking and pissing TS off haha. quest wise again i think deepholm is rather like vashjr, both very linear and not very difficult. entertainment wise... well. quests are quests, there are maybe like 5 generic types and it's just different models around those that's all. anyway let's see how long mroe til 84.....

Tuesday, 0200 hrs

Our first break at 83 and a half (a bit more). Now onto Uldum for a bit...

0431hrs

funny, server shutdown?! that was rather unexpected. 12 hours in, i can say this experience has been an interesting albeit short one.  i am about 6bars into 84, and TS is about 4 bars behiind. timing wise we could have been a lot quicker and more efficient as a duo, but i think we are still quite okay. we took 1 30min break and still managed to clock 12hours. not forgetting however the beta guild has 10% extra exp. we ended up parking in uldum. strictly speaking, we probably could have/should have skipped uldum. it's a good zone bar from the fact that there are too many "unskippable" cut scenes, which does get annoying after awhile. the questing style is less linear than Vashjr and Deepholm, but i think it's not too wayward and still manageable

Edit: I just read a blue that they have officially concluded the beta testing, haha which means, we couldn't finish this endeavour. but i guess we probably could've easily finished the job in another ~8hours or less.

I'll post about my reflections in greater detail tomorrow.