World of Warcraft Wednesday: Borean Tundra – There’s Nothing Borean About It
Places of Interest
The Nexus
Valiance Keep
Warsong Hold
Amber Ledge
Coldarra
Fizzcrak Airstrip
Bor’Gorok Outpost
Kaskala
Now we’ve moved on to Northrend, and an interesting little twist to the zoning. After being tired of having every character on the server getting log-jammed into Hellfire during Burning Crusade, Blizzard decided to spread things out a bit for Wrath of the Lich King, which means that you can choose to start in either Borean Tundra, or the Howling Fjord. Frankly, I like Borean Tundra more as an introductory zone, though.
From the moment you step off the boat or zepplin, you’ll find that the zones are more well put together and more player-centric than the old vanilla and BC zones. The NPCs here know who you are, the quests are varied and interesting, and importantly, at least in my mind, the hubs are well centered. You move from your starting city to tour the minor factions to find out what the story of the region is (for Borean Tundra/Dragonblight it’s Malygos), then you quest until the region’s storyline is satisfactorily filled in with an instance. It’s something that old school WoW really only did twice, in Westfall with the Defias (and that was Alliance-only) and then in Silithus, with Ahn’Qiraj. It’s really nice to see how much they’ve learned about appealing zone layouts with this expansion.
Mining: Cobalt. The first of the new metals, and there’s actually not a ton of it here. Cobalt pops up fairly frequently throughout the first four or five zones, depending on your path, so don’t worry about not getting enough of it, but don’t expect to be farming tons of it from the get go like you did with Fel Iron.
Herbalism: Gold Clover, Tiger Lilly. Unique in that there is an entirely new set of herbs to gather in Northrend (Burning Crusade started off with several of the Old World plants mixed in). Borean Tundra isn’t a great source of herbalism, but it’s decent, and you should have a good stock for alchemy and inscription by the time you’re ready to leave.
Cloth: Frostweave. Another new item! Frostweave doesn’t have nearly as high a droprate as Netherweave did, thank God, but you’ll still be able to get plenty of it off the various humanoid and dragon mobs in the area. It’s worth noting that leveling your First Aid past the general Frostweave bandage is pointless until you can get a Heavy Frostweave book (which is a random drop off pretty much any mob on the continent).
Leather: Borean Leather. Well, that’s a bit of a shock. Borean Leather is actually pretty damn easy to gather, but most of the animals that you can kill to get it give you a buff that makes it impossible to complete the DEHTA questlines in Borean Tundra, so proceed with farming at your own risk (or after you’ve gotten their achievement).
Borean Tundra has a better, more cohesive story than Howling Fjord, and I think it sets the player up better for the rest of Northrend’s content. Sure, Howling Fjord puts you right into the thick of it with the Lich King, but the lore thread is weaker, and doesn’t really pick up until you’re able to complete Utgarde Pinnacle. But Borean Tundra is a shining example of how much Blizzard has learned about building a zone that’s both fun to play and to see. Sure there are mobbing issues (many of the mobs are way too close together which means that caster classes will have trouble pulling too much aggro), but it’s not nearly as bad as it was in Hellfire. Overall, you’ll leave thinking you had a really awesome experience. And that sets you up nicely for Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, Zul”Drak, Storm Peaks, and Icecrown.