Notes on the Forsaken Story

My mage is lvl 22 by now and while I played I made notes. Instead of writing a (very!) long post about it, I decided to just copy/paste the notes:

• Storyline makes players not explore anymore. Too quest heavy.
• A friend that doesn't play 100% synchronous will not play with you. Single player game
• Story is told well, but not experienced.
• Too silly, not serious enough (matter of taste).
• To fight along allies that have 100 times your hit points makes you feel very, very weak. To be celebrated as the hero then feels just wrong.
• As soon as you do an instance or too many battlegrounds, the leveling becomes much, much too simple. This is not about challenge, but about pace and interesting combat. It is about enemies that allow you to use your skills and not drop dead after the second fireball all the time.
• Some named enemies have more HP. Thanks!
• Battlegrounds could as well be scrapped at that level. They do more harm than good as unbalanced as they are. More compressed CPP would have improved the game a lot!
• Just got my fourth invitation to a guild. All of them later raid at least 10 mans, they say. I declined.
• Too much flying around. It's fun on the one hand. But on the other hand you don't get to know the landscape. To get to know the land your virtual character 'lives' in, is part of the fun.
• Professions too expensive for new players and useless at the appropriate level.
• Wonderful graphics, art style, animations, weather effects!
• Need to return to "trainers" doesn't make any sense any more.
• Looting is irrelevant and just annoying. Especially grey items are superfluous. Nobody even reads their names!
• Quest items that are inferior to dungeon items just don't make sense. Teleporting and then walking behind a tank to collect loot is easier and more accessible content than quest rewards!
• Every skill is memorable and unique. Not like Rift.
• Early talents in talent tree are somewhat lacking. Reason is that players can access them later and mix them with other talent trees. This seems to be a bad compromise.
• Quest pointers really are a two-edged sword! Are they really necessary? And don't tell me I could disable them.
• Fully-grown level 17 Dragons? The level as pure gameplay / story telling tool doesn't sit well with me.
• Falling damage too low to be credible.
• Player can stay under water for much too long to be credible.
• Why is almost everybody larger than I am?
• To simulate a battle with lots of two guys that hit each other without losing health in the process is not very convincing. What about having them spawn and actually hurt each other?
• I level much, much, much too fast even without dungeons, without battlegrounds, without gathering, without heirlooms and without rested EXP. My enemies are one to three level below me! And I don't have a choice but need to follow the story line!
• My spells (e.g. Fireball, Pyroblast) gain longer cast times when I level. I see no reason for that. It feels wrong.
• A billion-dollar and more revenue game should be able to offer more than a handful of cave and interior designs.
• Mobs that you can kill to no avail because they are part of a quest later are just not fun.
• The active quest that the quest marker points to, jumps randomly after completing a quest. If one is not careful one runs half a mile in the wrong direction for the wrong quest.
• If you want to make this game about linear story lines, please do just that. Raise me a level after each part of a story is finished. The status quo is a bad compromise.
• The Forsaken story is great. The end of the storyline is epic. But it is told in about 10 seconds! Have a look at Bioware or The Witcher to learn how to tell stories well.
• When I was finished with the Forsaken story line, I was already level 21. I was almost past the requirements of the LFD queue! Do you really expect me to break my immersion and do some dungeon in Stormwind or Orgrimmar while being at the Forsaken story?
• Finally I entered Shadowfang keep. It seemed like the Forsaken story would find its conclusion there, even though there was no quest. I was paired with a druid tank that had 600 life and fury warrior with 1100. After the druid tank had died 4 times, the Warrior tanked the rest in fury specc. We came through very smoothly. At least I did.