Bludgeoned to death with a nerf bat

Relevant snippets, trust me:

• Level 1 characters no longer start with food or water in their inventory.
• Quest Tracking Feature
• Instant quest text is on by default.
• Dazed: Creatures attacking a player from behind can no longer cause players level 1-5 to be dazed, and have a reduced chance to cause players level 6-10 to be dazed.
• Health and Mana Regeneration: These regeneration rates have been increased by up to 200% for low level characters. As a player’s level increases, the regeneration rates gradually reduce, returning to normal rates at level 15.

All can be found somewhere around here: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

So I’ve got that nelf DK off on another server, on another battlegroup even.

All by his lonesome.

And rapidly running out of inventory space.

Solution?

Bank alt!

Roll up a little space goat pally and run her to the Exodar as fast as her dainty little hooves will carry her.

Naked of course, don’t want to take any durability damage along the way.

Park her in the Exodar and make her the AH/Bank bitch.

That was just before the big patch.

Well now that my DK is 70 I’m thinking it’s time to expand my stable to get a little more professional functionality.

Time to get some professions on this bank alt.

That means hitting level 5 to pick up crafting professions.

(Going enchanting and inscription in case you were wondering.)

So run her little hooves back to her bank and pick up her starter gear, healthstone and the food and water that I got before the patch.

Neener, neener on you Blizz! Can’t take away the food you already gave me.

Run all the friggin’ way back to the crash site and start rounding up quests. I’ve done the starting area here a couple times so I have a pretty good idea of what I need to kill and where.

First thing, the new quest tracking/map thing they got going on?

It’s like cheating.

They practically drag you to the spot where the mobs are.

Read quest text?

Pfffft…. fuck that noise.

Just open the map and go to the number. If the mob is found in a range, just go to the shaded area and poke around.

Bah.

Welcome to WoW for the Illiterate.

You don’t even need to click the Accept button!

As soon as the NPC displays the quest text, boom!

It’s already there being tracked all nice and neat.

Gee, will I still have to click Complete when I bring it back? Or maybe I just need to get in the vicinity of the quest giver and I’ll get credit. Maybe next patch I can just think about returning the quest. Can I mail the NPC the quest items and he mails me my reward?

So I get to the first quest where previously I have had to deal with the introduction of “aggressive” creatures.

You know how it is, the first 2-4 quests are all about beating up “yellow” or neutral mobs and then you move up to the irritable mobs that will attack you for getting too close.

In the wild, you get too close to the bear, it eats your face. Here, you get too close to the mutated plant and it eats your face. Somehow. With lasher root things.

So I’m looking around for these plant things I need to be killing, but all I’m seeing is a sea of yellow names.

WTF?

All the mobs are neutral now.

Move on to the quest where you have to kill a bunch of blood elves (it’s so weird listening to them die – I’m killing me, the horror!)… and they’re all neutral too!

The whole learning experience of watching patrols, picking your targets with some semblance of reason, maybe even kiting… all out the window.

The moonkin?

All neutral.

Every last fucking creature in the entire starting zone is neutral.

So why the change to getting dazed?

If you stay in your appropriate level area, there is nothing that will chase you down unless you poke it with a large stick first.

And even then, if you can’t beat the shit out of it with auto attack you should consider a move to Hello Kitty Adventure Island.

Mana and health regen?

Out the wazoo.

I might be a little low after combat, start to cast a heal, and I’m full before the heal is done. Then I have all my mana back too.

I can’t see that all these changes were made to ease the leveling of experienced players.

We generally have our BoA care packages ready to go, a little cash, a few green drops, at the very least we bring the experience of how not to be a total noob in the starting area.

I get that to “hook” a new player, there needs to be a series of relatively easy to accomplish goals with tangible rewards very early in the game.

If they get frustrated by dying or if they don’t get a new toy, players that are making the decision to continue playing will lose interest.

But seriously, my mom has made it through the starting areas without dying. Too much. (Love you, mom!)

Death is (usually) an unavoidable thing in the game. Best to learn about it sooner rather than later.

Aggressive mobs sure as hell are an unavoidable thing in the game. Best to learn of their existence and how to calculate best positions sooner rather than later.

The starting areas never felt particularly dangerous, but there was at least some element of almost danger.

Now, it’s a fucking walk in the park with a two-handed mace.

I think for a new player, the pendulum has swung so far on the side of easy that they will be in for a very, very rude awakening and will be more likely to be frustrated by a steeper learning curve later in the game. (Unless everything else gets nerfed by the time they get there.)

I don’t get it, were the starting areas horribly difficult for other people?

Has anyone started up a fresh account to see the changes to the tutorials?

Am I overreacting or is this much simplification just too much?