Fight Mechanics

While slowly making my way through Outland (one step, second step, corpse run, third step... you get the idea) I had a chance to fight many times. In fact sometimes it felt like too many times. In fact it was not so much of "had a chance" case, as "had to"...

Throughout the fights I noticed that the mob AI seems to be improved over what I am used to from standard WoW play. I cannot confirm it in 100%, but the opponents seem to have their own fight tactics, making it much more challenging.

When fighting two mobs at the same time, I often found it fairly difficult to keep both of them in front of me. Especially in case of humanoids, they tend to have some limited flanking ability, positioning one in front of me and one hitting from the back.

It could be all a blind chance, but I have a feeling that it is a conscious design decision. Harder? Yes. More challenging? Yes. More fun? Hell, yes!

Hiding underground

I found one particular type of creatures most interesting - the underground ones. You might have seen something similar in Dune or That movie with Kevin Bacon (I think) where they fight the underground worm-thingies (I may be not 100% correct on the second title). They come in many flavors; Bursters, Tunnelers, and whatnots, but they have one thing in common - an interesting attack tactic.

You cannot be the first to attack the underground mobs for a very simple reason - they are hidden and although you can see a pile of rubble travel through the ground, you are unable to target the creature. This gives our mob a better hand right from the beginning of the fight. Warriors cannot charge them (hence less rage), Rogues cannot Sap or do some other dirty trick that Rogues do... The mob has the first hit guaranteed.

My passing makes the mobs come out

During the fight it will not just stay in front of you waiting to be hit. Much like the disappearing bugs in AQ20, the tunnelers will quite often hide underground, make their way underneath you and reappear at the safe distance behind your back. From there they will launch some ranged attacks (spit green stuff at you), while you need to re-target them, turn around and if you're a melee class - run a couple of meters to get in range.

In a long run it may be frustrating to fight them, but that's just because I got used to easy kills of the brainless mobs. Now it is more like Half-Life without impulse 101. (Yes, I like Half-Life. I keep referring to it on various occasions. I think Half-Life is one of the best games ever made. There, I said it, now let me be!).

They proceed to spit venom at me.

Meanwhile a redskin also wants a piece of the action.

...by the way, there was indeed a similar creature in Half-Life :P I believe in expansion. Now back to Opposing Force expansion... Now back to The Burning Cursade.

There is a bunch of creatures (Stonewhelps if I recall correctly) who use a strange Paladin-Berserker technique during the fight. When their health gets down to around 50%, they cast a buff on themselves, making them invulnerable to the attacks and get healed up a bit. Just as the buff is about to finish they go into a frenzy attack type, gaining what I believe is around 25% extra attack power. It is bandage while you can or corpse-run when fighting these guys for most of the time.

I actually wish I had some caster or hunter character at level 60 to try Outland mobs with, since I noticed all my experience is with melee fights. I really wonder how is it to fight the same opponents with a ranged attack techniques.

Burning cannon

Outland does not differ much from the Blood Elf (by the way, I hate when people call them Belf) and Draenei starting area quest mechanics. Gone are the days of boring tasks. There is a really nice variety of things to do, and literally almost everyone wants you to do something for them.

One of my favorite quests so far required me to set fire to huge Alliance cannons, surrounded by redskin orcs. It wasn't maybe the most enjoyable concept for the quest, but hell, destroying public property of humans - definitely my kind of thing.