Arelith

Just some thoughts on the area's I've seen so far, did a quick run through of the new spawns etc.

In general: Love the new areas. They're beautiful, expansive and awesome to traverse. One question, is the new logging grounds indicative of Guldorand ramping up their logging? It went from several lumberjacks hitting at some small trees to many carts filled to the brim with massive logs.

Caves: Awesome new spawns, love the orcs. They seem decently balanced, can't complain about that. The oozes/slimes however I do have a bit of an issue with. They all seem to have their own form of elemental shield, either acid or death. On hit they deal 35 back to you and the shield lasts a decent time, making waiting them out difficult. They also have a ranged touch attack that on hit imbues paralysis. I think the paralysis is alright, but the shields seem far too strong. Walking into a crowd of five of them is nigh impossible to kill unless you're specifically a summoner or have some way to dispel, which for most of the server is not the case. It's especially worse as of late because I'm sure quite a few builds won't have the UMD to deal with the shields.

New Viper Monks: Awesome amazing change. Probably my favourite out of all the new areas. No longer is it some convoluted mess, it's an actual temple now. There is a bug however that you can't get passed the final door because of an invisible barrier. Aside from that, the top floor has two ancient air elementals that have insanely high AB and AC. They're difficult to hit and do a lot of damage, plus have chain lightning that hits for 60 - 80 damage. I think this is worth a look at, the rest of the mobs are decently difficult but these will be nigh impossible for a team of adventurers in the 15 - 20 range unless you throw an army of summons at them and even then I think you'd be hard pressed to deal with them.

My favourite change is the new logging grounds. Lots of space to setup small RP camps and the like.

The door in the monastery will be fixed at the next reset.

Only suggestion i have is redo the town itself with the new tile-set. Town could use a new and improved look and Cordor and Bendir got theirs so Old Guldorand should get as well.

I appreciate the new content but I've found that the areas feel a little too big and that there is too much distance between points of interest. It feels like a lot of care has been put in to making them asthetically pleasing but that less attention was put in to how they "play."

There's a zone in the underdark that is basically wilderness area with some gnolls and formian giants, and what I noticed is that I'm usually more interested in getting through them than I am experiencing them. I felt the same way about the lake Minmir expansion and the cave in the skull crags. I personally prefer smaller areas with unique obstacles/encounters to larger areas where the same obstacles/encounters occur over and over.

edit: I wasn't a fan of the acid sheaths on those slimes either. I would either tone down the strength of the shields or reduce the frequency in which those slimes load.

I actually like the large zones. They feel very wilderness-y, and the size works with the tilesets used. As for content and how to play through them, there's enough spawn in the western slopes that I could see treating that zone like a dungeon in its own right. And the zone design is very welcoming for RP IMO, I want to do nature walks with friends sometime. There's a lot of nooks everywhere that are fun to explore.