The War Within: Second Zone

This post contains spoilers for The War Within.

I hit 80 while working on the second zone in The War Within, the Ringing Deeps. I guess the expansion is really balanced around only doing the main quests. And maybe doing the remainder on your "Warband"? Shades of FFXIV and doing side quests on other jobs.

In any case, the second zone was pretty decent. It continued the story of the Earthen from the first zone. One thing though, there's a plot line about how the Earthen can transform into some type of ghoul. This seemed to come out of nowhere for me. I was rather confused for much of this, as the quests seemed to take it for granted that we knew all about this and how it was a problem.

Actually, to be fair, it was really unclear whether: A) we knew that ghouls existed and didn't know where they came from; or B) we knew the ghouls came from Earthen. Maybe there was an introductory quest line in the first zone that got cut.

Otherwise, it was a good zone. Again, very Alliance-heavy with the focus on the Bronzebeards. I do wonder how primary-Horde players are finding this.

This is also the first zone in the expansion that is underground, and I do think Blizzard has done a good job here. It's clearly underground, but at the same time there's enough room to move about easily. The ecology also reinforces the feeling of being underground, with really interesting choices in flora and fauna.