I love Ghostlands. It's one of my all-time favourite zones in any MMO, and easily my favourite in World of Warcraft. As a dark, twisted reflection of Eversong Woods it has a fantastic look and atmosphere, and there's so many interesting locations to explore – from the ruined villages to the troll catacombs and villages and from the ziggurats flanking the Dead Scar to the fortress of Deatholme itself. It should feel crowded, but there's plenty of hills and valleys and trees to break up line of sight and ensure each location feels distinct from the rest.
Unlike the preceding zone there is an overarching story in this zone, building up from reclaiming the lost villages to striking against Scourge outposts and culminating in the attacks on Deatholme itself, which makes for a very satisfying finale to the Blood Elf starting experience. But it's not just about that. There's side stories as well, involving the trolls on the eastern edge of the zone, and the night elves in the west.
There's nothing fancy about this zone – no mini-games, no gimmicks, almost no scripted sequences (there's one, but it takes place elsewhere) and it tells its story through standard go-kill, go-collect quest text and through atmospheric environmental design. Ghostlands is a perfect example of classic WoW zone design.
There's just one problem. Nothing can kill me.
I’ve spent 4 hours in Ghostlands so far, going from level 15 to level 20, and I haven’t died once. In 1 on 1 fights my health bar barely moves and the closest I’ve come to dying was in Goldenmist Village when a passing Paladin rushed in and killed one of four mobs I was fighting at the time – a kill I was relying on for my next Victory Rush heal.
Anok'suten – the elite that Ghostlands puts you up against when you’ve barely entered the zone – took half my health before I killed it. Kel’gash the Wicked – whose kill quest was usually the last thing I did before finishing the zone – took three quarters of my health before I killed him, in a reckless fight where I hadn’t bothered to clear the other mobs nearby first. I haven’t seen Knucklerot or Luzran yet, but I don’t expect them to do any better.
Admittedly I’m running a Protection-spec Warrior and perhaps my experience would be different if I were on a less tanky class, but I’ve done this zone before on a Warrior, and even during Cataclysm I don’t remember it being this easy.
This is when level scaling starts to sound like a bad idea. Yes, it lets me spend more time in zones that I like, but is it doing so by draining the challenge out of those zones? When I push south into Zeb'Nowa it doesn’t actually feel any more dangerous than anywhere else I’ve been, and conversely if I had been finding it tough I’d have had no way to pull back to an earlier/easier area… because the difficulty – or lack thereof – is the same across the entire zone.
Maybe things will change. I still have to hit Deatholme and I'll be interested in seeing how the fight with Dar'Khan Drathir plays out. A lack of challenge is what has always dulled my interest in WoW in the past, and if I'm feeling it this early – in my favourite zone – what's it going to be like when I reach zones I like less?
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