Midnight So Far (no spoilers, I think)

So I figured I would post a follow-up to my War Within Reflection post, since I have some news and some thoughts.

First, I did end up getting my a character to 90 before the end of the Early Access period. It was being talked up so much that I decided to jump in and see what all the fuss was about.

The cliff notes version is that the opening quest line gave me a headache, Eversong Woods started as “meh” and then got better, Zul Aman was my favorite and was unexpectedly awesome, Harandar is full of impressive graphics but the main quest line drove me nuts, and Void Storm didn’t feel much different than the part of K’aresh I actually played through. The Arator section of the main quest line was decent, and the ending has me sure that we’ll revisit its themes again later on.

Delves and follower dungeons have been ok, though Valeera sometimes has good aim with healing and sometimes forgets that I’m not melee and throws the healing hearts (are they blood?) too close to the ground effects. The mage and shaman in follower dungeons could also use some work as they seem to, often, not target or attack anything at all.

Without going into spoiler territory, there’s a pervasive theme (both in the opening quest line and in the main quest through Harandar) of blind faith, fanaticism, and “what I say goes” that just drives me nuts. I spent the whole opening quest line yelling at various characters and rolling my eyes. I’m not surprised it gave me a headache as it’s everything I hate (and I don’t use that word lightly) about extremists and fanatics of anything.

It did seem to get better as the quest line went on, but I think it’s telling that I stopped playing new content almost as soon as I unlocked the Haranir race. I did create a Haranir druid but haven’t even logged on as her.

I think, ultimately, that I just need some time away from the new content before I dive into it again. I do have plans to dive back into it as I have a second character (my original main) that I want to get to 90 and I would like to explore the side quests a little more.

Hopefully, as the story goes on and is expanded upon in various patches, the characters wake up a bit more and start actually using their brains and critical thinking skills.