BC Journal - 7-November-2006

My undead priest in the Burning Crusade beta hit level 63. Now he needs 744 kXP to reach the next level. What helps is playing slow and using a lot of double xp rest bonus. But more interestingly, the Burning Crusade challenges my perception of what exactly a level is. I might be "leveling" twice as fast as I thought, depending on how you define it.

Now you think I'm going crazy. What would anybody need a definition of level for? It's that little number shown under your portrait on the World of Warcraft screen. But numbers are just that, numbers. The really important thing is what happens in consequence of these numbers. And you could argue the most important consequence of leveling up is learning new spell and abilities. So how many levels do you have to gain to get new spells? In "old WoW" you only got new spells every second level. In the Burning Crusade, after level 60, you get new spells every level. And that isn't just half the number of spells you'd usually get, at level 63 I got 3 spells, and looking ahead on the trainer window I see about that number or more new spells (or spell ranks) every level.

That means that while the Burning Crusade gives you only 10 levels worth of talent points and stats increases, it gives you 20 levels worth of new spells and abilities. If you previously had a tendency to disregard uneven level gains, and only counted the ones that got you new spells, you will now only get levels that really count. And the difference in xp needed from 58 to 60 compared with 60 to 61 suddenly isn't all that huge any more.

Besides leveling up, I did a couple of arena fights, the new additional PvP mode. Terribly, terribly boring. You start in a side room to a small arena, get one minute to buff up at no mana cost (all previous buffs are erased) and then the fight starts. There are no objectives other than killing the enemy players. And in all the fights I was in, all the enemy players were invisible, either rogues, druids, or night elves. Going into the arena visible is a death sentence. I have no way to detect an invisible rogue, I get backstabbed, stun-locked, and die before I can cast a single spell or do any other action. Did that three times and decided that the arena wasn't for me. Unless Blizzard changes PvP in a major way to either prevent total invisibility or total stun-lock, there is simply nothing I can do there as priest.

I don't know anything yet about arena PvP rewards. The fights I was in were just practice fights with no rewards at all. To get rewards you need an arena charter for 50 gold per team, with a team having twice as many members as needed for each fight. But this is only available at level 70, and the beta is still capped at level 67. On the good news front, while checking for PvP rewards I noticed that the latest beta patch added lots of level 70 PvP rewards for the standard battleground PvP. Curiously they were prices pretty much identical to the level 60 rewards, so you can chose whether to spend you 15000 honor and 30 battleground victory marks for a level 60 or for a level 70 sword. I guess most people will take the level 70 reward.

I got killed once by a very funny bug. In Hellfire Peninsula there is normally a level 70 mob wandering around, called a Fel Reaver. That is a huge robot-like creature, reminding me of a battlemech. He is 10 meters tall, and the earth shakes where he walks, and he makes some sort of trumpeting sound. And he kills you with a single blow. But being so huge makes him pretty hard to miss, and after dying once you learn that you'd better run when you see him. Only that since the last patch the Fel Reaver is bugged, and runs around in the shape of a normal sized black bear. So I see that black bear approaching me, am a bit confused because that zone usually doesn't have any bears, hear the trumpet and the earth shaking, and turn around to see from where the robot is approaching, and to where I can run to safety. By the time I realize there is not robot, and it is the bear who is the Fel Reaver, I'm in his large aggro radius and die.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:22 AM Permanent Link