Friday, November 14

Brainless questing? Why sure!

Just like many many others i've stepped on to the Lich King's soil yesterday... i had done it before in the beta but this time it actually mattered.
What else was new was that i was actually gonna do some questing and not just pass through area's but would go to where ever the quests would take me.
In just half a level of XP i've already seen quite a few things i missed when glancing the area before and many of the quests are really good fun, something i couldn't have commented on earlier aswell.

I'm more a picture-guy though... often a movie is more about how pretty it looks then the storyline, my brain gets tortured at work already and i'm often too tired to go deep into lore or a story. (although in weekends i make more time for that) As there are thousands of quests in Wow, reading them all would drive me nuts and thus i pick out the few details i need and then simply accept them.
When really lazy i even look up the coordinates on Wowhead. (which is quite often too be honest)

Just before WotLK was released i installed a new addon to help me with this luxerous life of ignorance and yesterday evening i got to try it out for the first time:
Carbonite!
I'm not sure i can ever go without this addon anymore i must say, it's not perfect and you are still required to read your quests (or at least those details) but it saves you sooo much time searching where to go!

What it basicly does is replace your regular map with a google-earth style map (although you can turn that off aswell), add a small map on your screen, replace questtracking and add a direction marker with distance to your quest objective. (the quest selected in the quest tracking list)
On the minimap it also marks area's in different colors where the quests take place, that way you know where to go to not just for your current selected quest but of others aswell... that way you can simply plan your own route. If you need to be in more then 1 area for a quest, that is shown aswell (matching colors per quest)
When done it will show the Questionmarks on the map aswell, not just in range but all over the (world)map. It even remembers where you were able to take a quest but you didn't.
Apart from the area where the quest takes place it adds some minor info of what to kill or what to look for when mousing over the new mini-map marked area's.
Like i said, that info is limited so i still catch myself checking out Wowhead now and then, i've come to a few area's not knowing where to find an item or wether to kill mobs till it dropped.



In meanwhile i found some addons that solved that problem aswell on The Big Bear Butt making a lazy quester's life complete: Lightheaded and DoubleWide, BBB has a very short description on them or you could use the direct links for more info and/or download.
There are way more options in it (even more if you buy the full version) and i'm still trying to figure that all out. Do be warned that it is my most memory consuming addon i got at the moment. ;)