Well, my Burning Crusade Beta continues....

Blicero has soldiered through the demon-infested wasteland that is Hellfire peninsula, and made his way to Zangarmarsh, which is as different as you can imagine.



It's a lush marshland, filled with huge glowing mushrooms, giants known as boglords who seem to be warring with the small glowing Sporregar, fish-men called Naga who seem to be trying to piss everyone off as well as pump the water out of the marsh for no reason we can yet fathom, ogres who are there stealing mushrooms and causing no end of trouble, and all manner of strange fauna, from sporebats to hydras.



From a purely visual point of view it's one of my favourite areas of the game so far. It's fairly dark and damp -- as you'd expect from a marsh -- with the skyline dominated by giant mushrooms and floor cris-crossed by shallow rivers, stalked by giant weird-looking creatures and surrounded by a variety of different insects which are also -- as you may have have guessed -- also glowing.



A few interesting play dynamics have been introduced in this zone too. The insects I mentioned earlier look like giant wasps, and as you might expect they sting you. These stings have an interesting mix of positive and negative effects though, generally boosting your damage output, but also increasing your damage taken.

One of my higlights of the zone so far is a quest from the aforementioned Sporregar, called 'Bring Me A Shrubbery!', and its follow up 'Bring Me Another Shrubbery!'. Well, it made me laugh.

The zone is also the first area in the Burning Crusade that I've had a chance (and the motivation) to do some serious fishing. This is a rather frustrating experience -- it moves very slowly, the rewards are insignificant, and the procress of increasing your fishing skill has been inexplicably slowed to a crawl. So all is not rosy, but at least the area you're fishing in is rather picturesque.

Anyway, having done a significant portion of the outdoor quests in the area, and cleared the two currently-accessible instances there repeatedly it's almost time for me to move on.

Next stop is Nagrand, where the legendary hunter Hemet Nesingwary has set up his Safari basecamp. Time to hunt some big game (and perhaps read that damn book of his...)!