World of Warcraft™

Many people I hear talk about how they will skip this zone because it looks annoying, and they HATE underwater quests...

Does anyone from BETA have any input?

Looks annoying?!

It's one of the best looking zones in the game!

All I've seen is screenshots and descriptions, and I personally can't wait.

Vashj'ir is anything but annoying. The whole zone is freaking amazing and I'd never skip it.

The only thing I didn't like about it was entering the sideways sunken ship wrecks... ugh... So disorienting.

You swim fast enough for it to not be a problem. The 3-dimensional fighting is a bit offsetting at first but you get used to it.

So from BETA this zone doesn't feel like you're leveling slower than if you had chosen to do Hyjal instead? I assume that you really only need to do ONE of these starting zones and not both?

You swim fast enough for it to not be a problem. The 3-dimensional fighting is a bit offsetting at first but you get used to it.

This could be true for some, but my advice would be that if you find it terribly disorienting, just stay on the sea floor. Most stuff can be completed by staying on the floor. There are obviously times when you'll have to swim up and down for certain parts but it's fairly easy to avoid swimming combat for the most part.

I just did a quest in Swamp of Sorrows that gave 60% swim speed and "underwater walking" (which lets you "run" on the ocean floor). Is that what we get in Vashj'ir?

So from BETA this zone doesn't feel like you're leveling slower than if you had chosen to do Hyjal instead? I assume that you really only need to do ONE of these starting zones and not both?

I leveled through Vashj'ir and skipped Hyjal in the beta. Questing was quick in Vashj'ir, you get a swim speed increase, free permanent underwater breathing, and the seafloor feels like the normal ground, you walk on it. I can't say for sure how fast leveling feels, as I think when I leveled through it there was a leveling buff overall, but I worked through the 3 zones pretty quickly. You get a water mount a little less than 1/3 of the way through the whole area and that speeds things up even more.

I liked it better than Hyjal, although it was disorienting at first and aoe spells were sort of broken.

You are so correct, Vashj'ir is a terrible zone, it is so annoying. Go to Hyjal like everyone else...

...So that I can have the zone all to myself on launch night. Muahahahahahahaha.

I love real water, but i really dont like game water...i dont know...everything seems so far away and slow, the breath system is not good, aoe skills are totally broken...I allways skipped water quests, lets hope this changes with vashjìr

I was in the Beta, and it was really quite fun. :)

That said, I plan on holding off Vash'jir for a week or so after Cata launches, because the initial few quests were fairly hard to complete with a mass of other beta testers all gunning for the same stuff. I don't want to spoil it, so that's all I'll say about that.

But once you get beyond the first few quests, it's an engaging and interesting story line IMO. And the underwater regions are made easier through the use of several tools collected along the way. In other words, don't worry about water-breathing potions and such.

And the mount / "flight" paths... very fun. :)

Under the sea
Under the sea
Darling it's better
Down where it's wetter
Take it from me!
Up on the shore they work all day
Out in the sun they slave away
While we devotin'
Full time to floatin'
Under the sea!

I did it in beta. Did not like it at all. I (and probably everyone else) will be in Hyjal, because Hyjal was awesome.

I did it in beta. Did not like it at all. I (and probably everyone else) will be in Hyjal, because Hyjal was awesome.

I watched some of the Yogscast videos of Hyjal and I kind of got the opposite impression. We'll see, I guess.

I just did a quest in Swamp of Sorrows that gave 60% swim speed and "underwater walking" (which lets you "run" on the ocean floor). Is that what we get in Vashj'ir?

You get an underwater mount.