Last night I just finished all the quests available in Vashj’ir and did a run through TotT. While I can understand the criticism for the region, I thought it was actually pretty good overall. The story is really what does it for me. I really enjoyed all the flashbacks to the naga fighting back the kvaldir, and seeing the ruined city of Vashj’ir. I had no idea that Azeroth originally had only 1 megacontinent like our planet originally did, and that the sundering sank this landmass deep below.
I actually would have loved to of had more quests and story elements about the sunken city of Vashj’ir, rather than the whole “we’re underwater, oh no!” thing, but I get it that there has to be a reason to be there. Finishing everything off with an appearance by Neptulon was a nice touch too.
Anyway just wanted to put my two cents in. Looking back, did you like or hate Vashj’ir? Also, restricting the water mount to that region sucks.
Vash’jir was my fav zone in Cataclysm. Loved the scale. Loved the aesthetic. Loved the music. Loved the quests. It actually tried a lot of new stuff, and I appreciated that too.
IIRC, you can use the seahorse anywhere! Provided you’re underwater, of course.
I always liked that zone from a story standpoint, considerably more than Hyjal or Uldum. Really the only zone I liked more in Cataclysm was Twilight Highlands and that was just because of the dragons and Orc lore. (Deepholm was kind of a ‘meh’ for me.)
Were the underwater controls disorienting? Sure! But it was pretty neat once you got used to it. And for long distance travel there was nothing stopping you from going to the surface, hopping on a flying mount, and bypassing all of that nonsense if you wanted to.
It was certainly one of the more beautiful zones to come out of Cataclysm for sure. And once you got over the annoying 3Dness of navigation it was a good questing experience. It did feel unnessecarily large though- there were some empty spots that were pretty to look at and run around in but there was nothing to actually DO in them. My single favorite part of the zone was the kelp forest at the begining.
No, the one you get from the quest is only usable in Vashj’ir. You can get recolors that work anywhere, although they don’t move nearly as quickly as the Vashj’ir Seahorse does.
OP, if this is the first time you’ve played through Vashj’ir, you should look up the original intro and ending of Vashj’ir. The game used to show you how you ended up underwater at the beginning and had a giant battle at the end, but those quests broke extremely often so they just removed them rather than fixing them.
I’m a returning player, so I was lucky enough to see the intro video way back then. I guess I’ll have to watch the outro video on youtube. Thanks for letting me know!
I’ll do some research into getting one of those recolors! It would come in handy to have one of those!
Vashjir has always been one of my favorite zones tbh. I loved the music and just the atmosphere of it. Tbh the only thing missing was letting us partake in some part of the battle over that island the Horde and Alliance were fighting over. I think it would have been cool if we had a few quests fighting each other there and then on our way home we got attacked by the sea monster.
I always try to level in Vash’jir. It was by far my favorite zone in Cataclysm. Uldum would have topped it if half of it wasn’t wasted on stupid memes.
Vashj’ir was beautiful! It’s unique Coral and Glowing Seaweed, Giant Anemone and Giant Tube Worms gave it flavor that Nazjatar didn’t have.
Next time we go beneath the Tides for Queen Azshara’s Expansion let’s hope that Blizzard actually has us Underwater even if it’s just a visual effect and we can’t actually swim in it!
They scrapped it because they hadn’t put a lot of effort into the Abyssal Maw raid yet, and decided to drop it to make the Rage of the Firelands patch stronger single thematic instead of dual thematic.
Vash’jir is one of my all time favorite zones. I am still super disappointed they removed the introduction and finale quests. The should reintroduce them with their new Scenario tech.
Vash’jir is pretty great as a zone, and you can clearly see it was the zone they took chances on, both in content and how they fed the players the story. It holds up far better than many of the other zones in Cata, and was pretty clearly one of Blizzard’s first steps to how they told zone stories.
I can’t speak for the Horde side of the quest, but the Alliance side was masterfully done. From a story standpoint, I mean.
Blizzard really captured it. I would recommend anyone who hasn’t done it to do it…but only if you do it right. You can keep your gear and everything, but commit an afternoon to it. When you take the quest, do not leave until you are done. This means no hearthing, no dungeon finder, none of that. Stay there, and read the quest text. There is a mounting sense of dread that you feel building in the characters, this sense of overwhelming despair.
That is the zone that made me respect the hell out of Captain Taylor. But there were so many other nice touches. I think one of my favorites was the night elf archaeologist (I think) who knew how bad the situation was, but also realized that she would never get another chance like this to learn about her culture. She was almost apologetic in her begging you to get some artifacts, and she said something like “I’ll find some way to get these to the surface”, understanding full well that she was probably going to die down there.
Vashj’ir was refreshing to me because we actually lose.
I’m not joking. We failed to defend Neptulon. I can also remember that one quest where you bomb a whole lot of Naga with exploding fruit, only for the naga to be fully reinforced. It always felt that you were the underdog. Always on the run, hiding and trying new creative ways to get an edge, like the exploding fruit only to fail. When reinforcements arrive in the form of the subs, it feels like you are finally gaining ground. You even take out the Twilights hammer’s ascendent temple in Vashj’ir and you still lose.
Even in Throne of the tides we lose as Ozumat captures Neptulon. Shame that storyline got cut and was resolved in a tweet.
The quest chain with the Battle maiden was 100% great as well. It is a shame she did not show up in Nazjatar though. Hopefully blizzard hasn’t forgotten about her (my guess they did until people started asking questions about her when 8.2 was announced).
It was the first time blizzard designed a complete zone in a 3-D environment. Most instances or even bosses that had 3-D elements in them were negatively received in the past. Such as Oculus with the drakes and phase 3 Malygos. There is a reason why blizzard waited until BFA to have a complete encounter in a 3-D environment. While there have been previous bosses that were fully “underwater” they were optional bosses in dungeons. Such as the crab in the revamped Blackfathom deeps.
Some class abilities didn’t work correctly in the 3-D setting as well. Such as D&D for DK’s and concentration for Paladins. These aoe affects would just sink to the bottom of the floor even though you were above it on the Z-axis. Even heroic leap runs into some problems when underwater.