Spires of Arak

I love Spires of Arak.  It is far and away my favorite thing zone-wise of all of Draenor: the ambiance, the story lines, the puzzles.

You get introduced to the stories in Spires through two routes: aiding the Arakkoa, and helping out at Pinchwhistle Gearworks, where attempts to start an outpost have gone awry.  Along the way you meet various members of the Arakkoa Outcasts, find out what Wrathion has been up to in Draenor up to this point (not-spoiler spoiler: no good), and fight more plant zombies like you ran into in Gorgrond.

Into the woods to help my bird buddies...

I like the Arakkoa story here the best, but the two kind of side-plots with Pinchwhistle and Admiral Taylor's garrison are both engaging as well (and the former will land you the Salvage Yard plans).  Ultimately this is where my alts have been hitting 100, working towards getting Talonpriest Ishaal, their Salvage Yards, and Admiral Taylor's sword (where applicable).

The Arakkoa Outcasts have had a difficult time, basically on the losing side of an Arakkoa civil war.  They've fled from the spires in the sun down into the shadows, and you both help them against the Laughing Skull, who are hunting them, and against the Arakkoa who still live in the glory of the sun above, following Terokk's story as you do.  Depending on how well this Draenor's Arakkoa parallel our own, this story line helps flesh out the bits we got in Terokkar Forest in our broken Draenor.

Spires in the sun...

... banished to the shadows.

I vastly prefer getting around this zone grounded compared to Nagrand, and despite the rope puzzles making my palms sweat, I also appreciate most of the puzzle rewards here more - the archaeology fragments, the various items at Terokk's shrines.

Bear-okay puzzles

Bear-not-okay puzzles

Arakkoa are interesting; those following Rukhmar have sun and air magic, and they also make much use of wing-blades.  The Arakkoa Outcasts make heavy use of shadow and illusion magic - sort of the flipside of Rukhmar's followers.  They are closer to Anzu, the raven god, and Terokk, their former king.  Prior to Spires I didn't understand why people wanted to play Arakkoa, but now that I've got Ishaal and Kurekk hanging out in my garrison, and Reshad and Percy visiting?

I don't know that I want to play one myself, but I wish they were a bigger faction back in our home timeline.

In the meantime, I've retired Bloodsail Admiral for awhile.

Flying in Azeroth & Beyond

Is flying good or bad in WoW?

The short answer, really, is both.  The lists of reasons for both sides is similarly short:

Positive aspects:

• Allows for three-dimensional zone structure (think the floating islands in Nagrand, or Vashj'ir, which was a flying zone disguised by water)
• Allows for non-linear/random patterned activities (such as travel between archaeology zones, which are not directly correlated to flight paths)
• Flying is fun, especially on a druid or with a Sky Golem

Negative aspects:

• Masks otherwise cumbersome zone design
• Makes some zone challenges (generally, the mobs) trivial

There are some places that I absolutely prefer the change in access flight has made: anything in Blackrock Mountain, for example.  Those chains!  I used to parachute into the lava rather than run the chains.

I used to farm ore for extended periods on a ground mount, usually in Un'goro Crater, where I could go more or less in a circle and hit all the nodes up in the nooks in the cliff wall.  I went back to Un'goro recently and discovered that a lot of those nooks... are gone.  Closed up.  That seemed weird, now that we have flying and getting into them wasn't even tricky.

The problem of flying making zone travel trivial is easily negated.  You remember the forge camps in Blade's Edge?  The cannons that would shoot at you as soon as you mounted up?  Or the frostwyrms in Icecrown that made flying in front of the citadel dicey (even if there were a couple good ore nodes there).  The air can be made dangerous.  Imagine roving zeppelins of pirates that would shoot you out of the sky the same way a whale shark would just eat you.  There are options for that.  (I... kind of want roving zeppelins of pirates now, with ships that can be captured and/or defeated like world bosses.  The Dread Ship Vazuvius takes flight!)

The real downside is when flight masks otherwise cumbersome zone design.  I hadn't thought much about this until last night, when I was thinking about why losing flight would be bad.  Really, no flight in a new space isn't bad - that space will be designed with no flight in mind.  (As long as it doesn't have bridges with stunning mobs that my healer can't kill, a la the Timeless Isle, probably not a big deal.)  The problem is when zones for levels without flying are designed with flight in mind.