Sunday 5 June 2011

Cartographical Issues...

Quick warning... this is a </rant>


I am lost, cold and alone deep underground, I'm scared and there are wolves after me...

This is in fact a lie, because a Dwarf Hunter is A) never scared B) at home underground (yes even Wildhammers, and C) a hunter is never, ever, alone. As for the wolves well it was just the one and I shot it a few times before my devilsaur ate it.

I am however... LOST!




Am I the only one of the 12 million players this game attracts to get turned around, disorientated and utterly lost in every single cave, cavern, and tunnel complex? It's just embarrassing! I'm a dwarf hunter, my underground tracking skills should be second-to-non and yet I run around in circles in the dark for and hour trying to find the quest objective, only to find the exit 5 times, right up until the point where I complete the quest and need to leave, at which point I repeat the above but never find the exit, agro'ing instead, every denizen of this subterranean maze!

With the roll-out of maps for all instances (which by the way is awesome) I wonder if we can't get a greater mapping system for all areas? if I run into a cave and have to bring up my map it is likely not because I want to check where I am in a zone, it's because every rocky ogre-filled twist and turn looks like the other down here and I'm lost. In a day an age when we're setting the art dept' to redesigning Warlock pets to have genders (since when did demons reproduce via meiosis anyway?) couldn't we draw some maps for underground areas?

(no, I don't need people to correctly point out that as a VFX artists I know the 3D modellers and Texture artists are not the same ones that do 2D map graphics, but I'm trying to have a /rant here!)

Help me out here people, are there any add-ons that guide you more accurately than quest helper (which is pretty much a compass heading) or replace you map when your underground with a picture of the area you're in instead of the whole zone?

Answers in the comments please guys cause one of these days an Elf is going to walk in and have to guide my Dwarven ass out of a mine, which is going to be intolerable... worse, I think I know who that Elf will be.

Magni save me! (and while you're at it...)

...Swear Allegiance

2 comments:

  1. I'm afraid not. Atlas hasn't even done a map mod (that I know of) for the caves.

    Best advice I can give is to pick a wall and follow it. Eventually you can find your way out :)

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  2. I tend to try that but inevitable combat etc usually turn me around...

    Presumably the maps exist in a data-mineable form as they are visible in the minimap, but obviously size/scale is an issue.

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