Random MoP beta puttering: Dammit, lemme tame something!

[Skywatcher]

No real spoilers here, just some observations.

I checked out some of the newly opened Jade Forest zone last night. I didn't get to do a whole lot since the beta server crashed.

While having gigantic pets was fun for a bit, I went to the stables to swap my Krush and Chromaggus for some smaller beasts. When I did, I noticed that 5 of my slots at the stablemaster were empty. At first, I thought maybe this meant we were getting more slots, but then realized I was just missing 5 of my pets. I'm not sure which pets they were. When I tried to drag one of my five pets into one of those empty slots, I got an error message indicating the slot was locked. Weird. I put it down as another beta bug and swapped out Grumpy and GIR for a raptor and wolf (Takk and the Lone Hunter). They were still 'wild' sized, but at least I could actually *see* what was around me.

The intro quests/videos shown on WoW Insider and elsewhere aren't in place yet. Speaking to a Pandaren outside Garrosh's building just gives the option to teleport to either the Horde starting point (actually, to a spot a way south of it), or a temple in the middle of the zone. There are currently portals back to Org from both those places, but the one at Hellscream's Hope doesn't work. I dunno about the other one.

The most interesting beast I ran across in my short visit was the new tiger skin. I really like it. I also kind of like the turtles near the Horde starting area. The other beasts I was able to find were standard skins of bears, owls and talbuks. Unfortunately, none of the beasts are tameable yet. I imagine that'll happen in a later beta patch.

The taxi's are kind of cool. Leaving from the Horde base, the flight was on a standard wyvern. From the temple's flight point, it was a big kite with a lantern on the back.

Questing was tough just due to the large number of people there. The Horde ones consist of some of the "Kill a bunch of these guys" and "Gather 8 of those things" Nothing too difficult, unless there are 20 or more people all around trying to do the same thing.

My UI and talents make things a bit more challenging too. I really miss my macros, bar mods and other quality of life addons. I've got abilities spread all over the action bars and I resort to clicking some things. My talents are kind of all over the place as I've tried some of the new ones.

The one that gets to me in a bad way is graphics related. There's nothing wrong with the zones or anything. They're beautiful. What bothers me is that everything has a rather strong golden lighting effect to it. I'm sure it's a setting somewhere, but I can't find it. It makes things look as if it's late afternoon and there's a bright, almost harsh, pre-sunset light on everything. It kind of bothers my eyes. Since it occurs everywhere else I've gone (Orgrimmar, Mulgore, and Thunder Bluff) I figure it's some global effect. It gets to my eyes after a while.

[Orcala]

I got into beta but it was wicked crowded, might get back in later to try. Speaking of graphics, hopefully they update all the other races to look as nice as the pandas and other new models!