BC Journal - 17-October-2006

This will be a short entry. I received my new laptop yesterday, *and* it was Dungeons & Dragons night, so I didn't have time to play much. The only thing I did was ride around in Outlands a bit and explore.

I visited the two zones adjacent to Hellfire Peninsula: Zangarmarsh and Terokkar Forest. I especially liked the mushroom forests of Zangarmarsh. But for gameplay the city of Shattrath in Terokkar Forest is more important. It gave me flashbacks to the original Everquest.

In Everquest getting from one place to another was hard and took a lot of time. I happened to play a druid, who not only could teleport himself, but also could take his group with him. So during the time of the Kunark and Velious expansion I had a nice business going as a taxi service, teleporting people for monetary donations. Then came Shadows of Luclin, which introduced the Nexus, a spot on the moon of Luclin with teleport portals to many places on the old world. That killed my taxi business, as people could just teleport via the Nexus instead of finding a druid to teleport them.

Shattrath is the "Nexus" of World of Warcraft. It has teleportation portals to all 8 cities, but of course you can only use the 4 portals leading to the cities of your faction. The portals are one-way, you can't teleport back to Shattrath. But you *can* set your hearthstone to the inn in Shattrath, and I guess that is what most people will end up doing. Shattrath is relatively central in the Outlands, and with the ability to teleport to Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Undercity, and Silvermoon (for Horde), being bound in Shattrath means that I can reach any place in World of Warcraft relatively quickly.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:51 AM Permanent Link