Flying Machines!!

Lately my WoW experiences have just been full of flying machines. As a (frustrated) real-world pilot, I find this delightful.

It all started a few days ago, when I was exploring Northrend with Alaurai. I was wandering around the northwest of Howling Fjord, slaying a monster or two now and then, when I stumbled across a quarry. Fortunately, I didn't stumble into it, because it was very deep with very steep walls!

I wandered around a little, checking out the quests offered by the local NPC's, not sure if I should pick them up, since I was hoping to quest with my friend Sthenia in Borean Tundra when she hit level 68. (She did reach level 68 on Saturday. Congratulations, Sthenia!!!)

Suddenly I spied a couple of flying machines perched on a deck overhanging the quarry.  Yowsa!! I strolled over for a closer look. Typical WoW-style autogyro-type flying machines: rickety-looking, a wobbly shaft driving a floppy rotor, fat little turbines on short outriggers, stubby tail, and plump little floats with smiling shark faces painted on their noses. I hung around for a while, wishing I could fly one.

Before I left, I noticed a little guy in a hut near the flying machines, offering a quest. Should I pick it up? Ahhh, okay, check it out at least. Maybe something worth doing. Maybe not.

YOWSA!!! The quest was to climb in one of the flying machines, FLY it down to the bottom of the quarry, and haul some bags of something or other up to a platform at the top. Would I like to try this, the guy wondered?

WOULD I??!! Yikes!! I hop in that flying machine so fast I almost get beheaded by the spinning rotor.

I launch off the platform in a cloud of sooty black smoke from the sputtering turbines and start whiffling around the quarry. Every so often the engines quit. Don't panic! After a moment it restarts itself, keeps flying. Apparently this is normal behavior for these flying machines.

The first sack of goods comes up off the floor quite easily, and I fly it up to the platform, no problem. Ditto the second. But before I latch onto the third and final bag, I decide to fly this thing around a little, do some exploring.

I mean, after I land that third sack, my flying in gorgeous Northrend will be over for weeks, until I finally make level 77, right? And no more flying machines, ever, unless I get another character leveled up and make her an engineer, then forage, beg, borrow, and steal all the mats she'll need to make one of these things. That'll take forever.

Forget it. I've got the controls, I'm flyin' solo, there's no Air Traffic Control. I'm flyin' this thing outta here. Right now.

Oops. I wander just a little ways from the quarry, trying to see what I can see over there to the west, in Grizzly Hills or something, and suddenly a big red warning comes up: YOU HAVE DEPARTED THE AUTHORIZED FLIGHT AREA!! SHUTDOWN IS IMMINENT!! Or something to that effect.

I whip the machine around and head back to the quarry. The scary alert fades away, and the machine - and I - stay airborne.

At last I succumbed to the inevitable, flew down into the quarry and got the last sack, and plopped it at its destination. Puttered around a little more before landing and dismounting, terribly sad for the ride to end.

Eek! When I hit the dismount button, some sort of ejector mechanism launched my body high in the air!. After a moment a parachute popped out, lowering me gently to earth. Awww! How cute. Well, the wonderful ride was over, but at least I had a gentle landing.

I turned in the quest, getting ready to be on my way. But...what's this?? There's a follow-on quest from the same fellow, to pilot the flying machine again and slay some flying dragons which are attacking the quarry! And...and...get this...it's a DAILY!!!

Now I have a DAILY assignment to go up to that (damned isolated, in the middle of nowhere) quarry and FLY that flying machine again! Every day!!

Furthermore, my first assignment was to do this RIGHT NOW!!!

I hopped back into my flying machine and shot off the platform, looking for dragons. Sure enough, here they come. But...all my weapons buttons are gone! In their place are just two little buttons: 1. Machine gun.  2. Missiles.  And way over on the right is a third button, for turbo boost or something.

The first dragon comes at me. I hit the machine gun. Bang! Bang! Bang! Not at all what I expected, nothing like a modern machine gun. Sounds like my hunter's gun, and fires slowly, about the same rate. I hit the missile button. A bunch of missiles blast away and the dragon goes down. Yippee! My first air kill!!

I get another, and another. Suddenly a whole gaggle of dragons descend on me. Yikes!!! My health is getting low, the machine is sputtering madly...I aim for the coast, hit the Turbo Boost button, and zoom!! Whew! Outran those suckers. I wait for my health to come up a bit, circle back, pick a dragon that's off by itself, and start shooting. He's down, then another, and before I know it I've got the day's quota of ten kills. I'm a double ace already!!

LOL! I land, get the ejector seat and parachute treatment again. I'm laughing with delight. I am GOING to make an engineer! No question! ASAP!!

I get on my big white kitty and ride off into the sunset.

But my flying machine fun isn't over yet. No sir.

A day or two later, after doing my FLYING daily (!!!) I am wandering around near Valgarde, the harbor in the southeast corner of Howling Fjord, and I come across a little guy on the dock, offering a quest. Hmm. Should I? I'm still trying to conserve quest list slots for when Sthenia makes it to Northrend and we can start questing in Borean Tundra. But maybe it'll be something interesting... I pick up the quest, scan it, click the map to see where it is. Hmm. Way over in the east, beyond the fjord. Can't get there from here.

I go back to the quest text, looking for clues about how to get there. Maybe I should dump this thing...no, wait, here it is...he says I should see that guy over there, who will give me a ride on his FLYING MACHINE!!!  Aaaugh! Flying machine!!! I almost dumped this quest!!

What guy?? Where??? Where is this guy!!! I'm riding all around the town, out on the dock, back and forth, clicking on everybody. You got the flying machine? No? Who? You? No? Where is he??!!!

I can't find him! He's hiding! Finally I hit WoWWiki. Nope. Their site is down! Augh! Try WoWHead. Okay. Here it is. The guy standing in the sea.

What sea? There is no sea. This is a fjord!!

Gak. Oh, wait. A little guy standing by the water. Not in it, but close. Could it be him? YES!!!!

Oh boyoboyoboyoboy!!! I'm flying! Clouds of black smoke, wobbly rotor, and all. I'm swooping over the harbor, down the fjord past the perpetually burning ship which hangs inexplicably over the passage, and out over the sea, icebergs and all. Fabulous!! Fantastic!!

All too soon it's over. The flying machine drops me at the quest site and vanishes. Awwww!

But wait. There's more. A couple of days later - yesterday - I make a decision. Okay, I'll hold off on more questing for a little while longer, but I could just go over to Borean Tundra and do that one little quest that takes me up to Fizzcrank Airstrip, right? Sthenia won't mind, surely.

I take the flying bird over to Valiance Keep in Borean Tundra and ride the big white kitty north. Soon I see some sort of flying machine overhead. And there it is, up ahead, the airstrip. I ride down the runway - no FAA here to yank my license, no stupid homeland security cops to come yelling out of the tower and throw me in jail for acting like a terrorist - and look at all the flying machines lined up on the runway. Wish I could fly one!

Wait. A big robot is towing a bigger plane down the runway. What's this? It's a bomber, getting ready to take off on a bombing run. Is there a chance I could go along? Maybe a bombing quest?

Off to WoWWiki again. WoWWiki has been resuscitated, but as for my hopes... Nope. No quest for the bombers. So I just sit and watch them take off and land, like in the old days when I was little kid, watching the airplanes take off and land from the airport near Poughkeepsie. Only now I can sit on the runway right next to them, watch them take off, chase them down the runway.

Leafing through WoWWiki, just to make sure...wait...what's this??? The flight master at Fizzcrank Airstrip uses FLYING MACHINES??!! But there was a gryphon perched next to him! You mean... I can fly on a flying machine?? To Unu'pe or Valiance Keep? <click> YESSS!!! I'm flying a flying machine again - across the countryside!

Of course, I'm not actually flying it, even though I'm at the controls, flying solo. It's on autopilot, just like all the flying beasts in the flight master system. But it's still great. Clattering away, wobbly rotor shaft, clouds of smoke...

I land at Unu'pe, take the flying beast back to Fizzcrank, take another flying machine to Valiance Keep. Woo hoo!!

But what if I want to go to Dalaran, or back to Howling Fjord? Will the Fizzcrank flight master give me a flying machine for one of those longer flights?

I don't know. And it's getting late. I decide to save that for another day.

Today.

Today is that other day. I'm at the airstrip. The flying machine is warmed up and ready.

I'm headed to Howling Fjord. I hear there is a zeppelin flying out of Westgarde Keep. And they're looking for Alliance players to go out on a bombing run...

Northrend! I love it!

I made it to level 70! Alaurai reached this milestone last night.

When I was about halfway through level 69, I decided to leave Outland and try Northrend. Now I wish I'd done this as soon as I hit level 68!

Not only do I find Northrend a much more pleasant place to be, but I'm acquiring XP at almost twice the rate I was in Outland, and accumulating gold faster as well. And the gear is hugely better than what you get from the quests in Outland. I've replaced all my weapons and most of my armor with stuff I've acquired just in the few quests I've done so far.

At level 69, I have been (easily) killing mobs of levels 68-71 and getting 1800 to 2000 or so XP, compared to about 900-1100 in Outland. Quests are yielding as much as 25000 XP. The last couple of levels in Outland were a real slog, but in Northrend I whipped through that last half of level 69 in a few hours.

For the past several days I was finding the quests in Outland (particularly Netherstorm) to be either tedious or annoying, or both. So far the quests in Northrend have been much more fun. For one thing, some different things are happening; for example, for a couple of quests in Valiance Keep, when I attacked some mobs, the guards came and helped me! This is different.

Also, questing is a little different from Outland, in which some quests are way too easy, some are confusing, and others are ridiculously hard (mostly as a function of how densely packed the mobs are). So far in Northrend the quests have (mostly) been straightforward, with a reasonable degree of challenge. Maybe I'm just feeling good because of the rapid progress the additional XP has allowed me to make, but I'm enjoying the quests in Northrend a lot more.

By far the best thing, though, is the scenery. I've never liked Outland that much. Aside from Nagrand - which has its own weirdness - much of Outland is strange. I don't really like being there. Most of it is dark and oppressive. Death and demonic - dare I say satanic? - imagery abounds: Hellfire Peninsula with its rumbling earth and roaring gouts of flame; Terokkar Forest, monochromatic and gloomy, littered with crypts and spiders, haunted by the skeletal and the undead; Shadowmoon Valley, dark and menacing, with demons everywhere.

Then there's Netherstorm, its stark and desolate landscape littered with weird domes containing lush green oases, connected by strange transparent pipes beaming who-knows-what all over the place; static electricity making your hair stand on end. Even sunny and green Nagrand, with its floating rocks, is bizarre.

And wherever you are in Outland there is the constant risk of a fatal fall off the edge of the world into the twisting nether. Twice I had to resurrect at a spirit healer because there was no way across the nether to the island where I'd died.

Northrend, by contrast - so far, at least - is gorgeous. Just beautiful, with nothing weird at all (aside from floating Dalaran, which I can live with). When I took the icebreaker from Menethil Harbor to Howling Fjord, I was stunned at the magnificence of the fjord and the land around it. My friend Trojanne took me to Vengeance Landing on the rocket, but I'd never seen the fjord itself until the icebreaker brought me in to the harbor at Valgarde Port. Stunning! And the town itself is lovely, as is the countryside.

After slaying a few mobs outside the north gate I rode west and found a village fortress called Westguard Keep. Picked up the flight point, of course, and flew back to Valgarde. Lovely flight!

At Valgarde I boarded the ship back to Menethil, flew to Stormwind, and took the other icebreaker to Valiance Keep in Boorean Tundra. I'd been there before, briefly, at level 50 something, when I tried to follow some advice I'd gotten on WoWWiki to swim to Unu'pe - and got eaten by sharks.

Now, at level 69, the trip to Unu'pe was easy: just a short ride along a nice scenic road. I only got accosted by two mobs along the way; one I just ignored, the other I killed just for the fun of it. Stopped and killed a few more so I could fish a school of some kind of arctic fish from a pool just off the road.

The reason to go to Unu'pe is simple but compelling: from there, you can catch a turtle ferry to Moa'ke Harbor, and another from Mao'ke to Kamagua. Getting the flight points at these harbors opens up flight across the entire southern portion of the continent. And from Moa'ke you can fly to Dalaran, so once you've made it to either Unu'pe or Kamagua you can always fly to Dalaran to get another hearthstone, in case you ever accidentally lose yours.

The landscape across southern Northrend is just glorious. It's graced with magnificent stone castles; picturesque ships ply the coast, and icebergs floating offshore complement the beautiful shoreline landscape. I first saw the coastline from the turtle ferries - which have a great, unobstructed view from the stern - and then from the air when I flew all the way across the continent. The flight's not cheap: almost 2 gold! But really worth it.

I've been auctioning madly and within a couple of days should have more than enough for the 4500g artisan flight training at Honor Hold plus an elite flying mount. But this isn't that essential at this point; since I can't fly in Northrend until level 77, the only place I can use the extra speed (280% vs. 150% for the regular flying mount I already have) right now is in Outland. And who wants to be in Outland?

I'm looking forward to playing with my friends in chilly Northrend! (It's so cold, you can see your breath, and that of other characters as well.)