Before I run out of weekend I just wanted to post a really quick update to my last WoW Journal post. No sooner had I posted that than I logged into WoW and turned in a quest (I’d already completed the work but I sometimes like to quit just before a quest turn-in to get that boost when I start my next section) and it turns out it was the last quest of the main campaign.
So Dragonflight is completed though I’m guessing maybe there is a Raid or something to put the absolute final period to it because the Dragon Queen mentioned there was one more rock to be activated but didn’t ask me to help.
Anyway with the quest line completed WoW now unlocks something they call Adventure Mode which as far as I can tell is similar to what classic used to be. You are now free to move about the cabin. World quests unlock, faction quests/collecting seems to unlock. It’s now a matter of going out and doing what you want.
I pretty much IMMEDIATELY started having more fun. Did some world quests, did a Follower Dungeon (which I love and which maybe deserve their own post) and did some “little guy” quests which I often find fun and charming. At the top of this post is a screenshot from the last quest I did this weekend. These two little Tuskarr (walrus-people) kids are trying to befriend a lost, starving gnoll pup and they needed some fish to befriend him with. So I went fishing. And the gnoll cub got a new home. Hope that all works out for them.
But I enjoy these kinds of street-level heroics.
Anyway, that’s it. Just wanted to say that for me at least, WoW gets WAY more interesting once you finish the campaign. I’ve got about 15 levels to get through before I can move on but I suspect they’ll go quick. I made I think 5 since I posted earlier today.
I totally get *why* they push players to do the main quest at least once, but for us alt-olics, Adventure Mode is a godsend. They’ve finally worked out most of the kinks – those “main story” quests are still there and you can do them on other characters, but there’s also so much else to do as well.
I just wrapped up this expansions “Loremaster” achievements, which means I’ve now found all of the major side stories on one character or another (love love love that that is also account wide now), and I think I’m with you – the smaller quests where you’re not saving the world are often as good or better than the overarching story.
Glad you’re enjoying yourself again!
I guess this is just the Blizzard DNA at work because Diablo kind of does the same thing, and just like in WoW once you finish the campaign the game opens up and gets much more interesting. Anyway once I get to TWW at least I’ll know, if I find the campaign a bit of a slog, that better days are coming. 🙂
Okay, I am a little confused by this – your last post mentioned that you’d started “the same way I used to play [..] Classic WoW.”, which I remember from when I was doing it, pick up all the quests (and then one will send you to the other continent, oops). That’s pretty much the way that I still level.
And then you said you decide to go for it, main quest to the cap! And that’s definitely a way to play, and definitely one that you couldn’t do in Classic – my first character I fixated on only full-fat quests that I could get 100% XP from – and then I ran out of them, and dinged 60 grinding some miserable cauldron in Western Plaguelands.
And then you get to the cap, and you’re free to play like Classic – but you were anyway? Not the World Quests and such (we’d have killed for those back then), but all the small quests that you’re enjoying – you could have been doing them all the time, right?
I’m not disagreeing with you, I think – because I’m not sure what you’re saying.
Yeah so I started like you still do it. But then I was worried about this report that once you hit level 70 you get bounced out of what you are doing and into The War Within. [I haven’t experienced that first hand but someone told me it had happened to them.] So I stopped doing any side quests so as not to level ‘too fast’ to get through the main story before 70. But by just following the main quests I zipped through zones so quickly I got no sense of place from them, if you know what I mean.
Once I’d finished the main story some new things popped up but additionally I was no longer worried about leveling too fast and could just poke around and follow interesting quest lines and things of that nature. I wasn’t sure while doing the main quests how far they’d get me through the leveling process but clearly I was being too cautious because I only got to 55 or something doing the main quests.
I am honestly still not exactly sure what “Adventure Mode” is other than kind of a state of mind.
But does that make more sense? I generally write these posts with the assumption that the only ones who will read them are folks I’m already talking to on social media so they’ll have some context. I realize that coming in blind it was all kind of sketchy.