The Beta is kind of a mess right now. This must be one of the buggiest beta patches, because a lot of critical quests - quests that block advancement - are broken, some mechanics are broken as well, and.. well, it's hard to keep record of anything because it's impossible to see an entire zone, and in some cases, you can't even get to see any of it.

But that's what beta tests are for, right? I'm very grateful I got a beta key and I try my best to report bugs and suggestions every day. With that in mind, I'll keep posting my impressions so far, but unless we get a new (and more stable) patch things will be kind of incomplete.

Also, I was playing on a server that doesn't shows up on my list anymore, so I lost all my characters. Time to start anew, I guess!

Time for some Shen'dralar goodness.

A little lore background: You can now roll Night Elves Mages because the Shen'dralar came back to the night elves and wanted to join them again for the sake of surviving against the forces that threaten Azeroth in cataclysm. So basically if you roll a night elf mage it's either a Shen'dralar or a young night elf that is being taught arcane magic by them.

For this quest, now you get an item that roots and kills the imps, so you are free to explore the cave and complete the other quests without worrying for respawns on these annoying fucks.

One of the biggest surprises was the change to the Barrow Dens quest. This was one of the most annnoying quests because that place is a mess and the mobs were kind of unforgiving. Now, after I entered the dens, a night elf sentinel came to my aid! but the best part is, you could ask her for directions to the 4 quest items you need from here, and she would create a green mist that would flow in the direction of the item! that right there improved this place by 1000%. They could have made the sentinel not attack the mobs with you and this quest would have been vastly improved by the green mist.

I really hope they implement this new tech in some other confusing quests and dungeons. I can see this working in The Wailing Caverns, one of the most confusing dungeons in the game.

I also found a whole new line of quests in teldrassil, along with a new area. This quest takes you to a path up the mountains inside of teldrassil to free some druids of the talon controlled by a furlborg. It was nice to see new things added to this zone.

Finally, the zone seems to end in an EPIC quest where you combat the remaining corruption on teldrassil (which is an army of demons and satyrs) by being infused with power by Elune herself. Your actionbar changes to different abilities that sound totally epic. Alas, this quest is bugged, so I can't really say how it ends, or how it goes, or take screenshots. From the looks of it and the buildup, it seemed to do justice to the zone.

I glossed over this zone but as with the human zone the experience here has been vastly improved. This zone used to be very dull and pointless, but now it's very interesting and not annoying at all. The new flight points in the zone cut down the walking you have to do, and overall it's very well tuned. I can see myself leveling up my night elves in this zone again.

By the way, I visited Darnassus, and with the changes to some of the architecture and the new graphic improvements it looks prettier than ever. Also, there's a new zone, the Howling tree, and it seems to be where the worgen will hang around. It's very beautiful.

I will leave you with a slideshow of some of the pictures I took. Enjoy!