Sunday, November 4, 2007

The (Still) Missing Diplomat

I was browsing WoWWiki (which is a great source of information for all things World of Warcraft) for some new things I could learn, then I stumbled onto something unexpected.

Patch 2.3 is adding more quests to The Missing Diplomat quest chain for Alliance, one of my favorite quest chains, as part of increasing player experience in Dustwallow Marsh. Theramore forces seem to have noticed the sudden presence of Defias agents on shores to the north and sends an investigation. One of the interesting things about the new chain continuation is one of the steps, a survey of Alcaz Island.

I've arranged with Cassa Crimsonwing, the apprentice to Theramore's gryphon master, to allow you to use one of her beasts to survey Alcaz from the air.
— Jaina Proudmoore

Does this mean we will get to control some kind of aerial mount? This would be a first for aerial mounts outside of Outlands. If so, I wonder how Blizzard is going to limit the use of this mount so that you can only use it to survey Alcaz and not go wandering off where you're not supposed to be able to go to in the old Azeroth environment. This has been one of the main hindrances for Blizzard for not implementing flying mounts in Azeroth. They've designed the environment such that there are places where you can't visit by conventional methods (eg. Hyjal), while the Outlands environment was designed to be fully accessible.

Again, the new chain ends without actually finding the missing diplomat, King Varian Wrynn. It just indicates that Stormwind will increase its crackdown on Defias activity.

2 comments:

Lupe said...

In Outland there are several quests that require you to "Survey" something from the air. (or even perform aerial bombardment!)

Although they put you on a flying mount, you cannot control it's course - it's effectively on rails. My guess would be that's what they'll do here.

Still, It would be great to be able to take a high altitude tour of Azeroth!

Pike said...

Ooh, it'll be nice to see how that quest goes. It did stop rather abruptly.

And yeah, I'm guessing it'll be like the Outlands "flying" quests, where you get put on a mount that flies by itself. =P