Astranaar

Ok, lets not beat about the bush, from this point on the questing experience takes a somewhat downward slide. I want to note this is not because the quests are in any way bad, it's just the fact that they don't flow together.. I'll say that it's much better to have bad quests that flow well together than good quests flowing badly together, since you end up forgetting they are good because of all the travelling you have to do to them.

So firstly arrive in Astranaar and are given a load of quests.. firstly I don't like this at all, considering some of the quests are about protecting astranaar it seems utterly ludicrous to be given quests to do other errands when they need your help to protect astranaar from the horde. I suggest phasing out all the breadcrumbs and make the "saving astranaar" quests the only quests you can do before proceeding onwards. I also feel that offering the breadcrumb to forest song *this* early is a bit urgh. Basically you offer it at a time when it's not prudent to head there, because you have quests in the immediate vicinity. So it gets relegated to "go there when you are done with the quests here, which is definitely not its place in the ashenvale questing experience. I'll come back to this point later.

Onto the actual cool quests though.. well astranaar is under horde siege and you need to... put out the fires!! Oh how the mighty have fallen seemingly ^^. Regardless the quest is pretty cool interactivity wise, there probably aren't enough "clear-cut" fires in the town, I was basically aiming at what I thought looked like fires and presuming they were. Also the aiming for this quest is a little off, sometimes you hit the fire and it goes out, other times it just stays there.. I also don't really like how your work goes un-noticed.. there's no phasing showing the buildings not being on fire anymore it's just.. hey you did all that for nothing, which is pretty disappointing.

However the follow-up is pretty damn cool you get to ride a Glaive-thrower and shoot down Horde wind-riders, nothing fancy with this vehicle quest just a shooting gallery really but it's pretty awesome imo just because the glaive-thrower controls are really nice and you only get one shot per rider because of the energy regen.. it sort of works out really well. Now this is when we should get the furbolg quests and the Elune's tear quest (although more on that quest later) once we have cleared the horde out. The area does phase now slightly so you don't see the fires (would have liked that one quest earlier) I don't think the wind-riders are still above Astranaar but I might be mistaken here.

I'm going to comment that the "Shrine of Aessina" Quest hub, (which I'll cover in a later post) *should* be here, It obviously isn't available now and only becomes available at a really weird point in the zone.. it would make so much sense to add that questline here so that the zone has better quest-flow. Regardless though you go and kill some furbolg and loot a quest starting item about troll charms.. pretty standard really. Handing them back in leads you to the quest you got on the horde side for troll charms. However, heading to this cave leads you to that green furbolg I commented on in my horde post, he does give a quest for the alliance. By the tone of his quest I can see why he doesn't give this quest to horde, but it is very strange that he is friendly towards them :S.

The quest is a simple "kill a named" quest where you have to kill the chieftain, he was actually pretty tough to be honest, however he was both tough, manageable and rewarding for doing so, which is definitely a good thing for any quest, the quest map shows him in the wrong position in addition to the points above. Now whilst in this chamber I came across a caged tauren druid seemingly, in bear form. I presume this is a horde escort, but if it is there definitely needs to be a quest pointing towards it, the place where the cage is, is miles away from the area where the troll charms are in the cave and if you don't have the map fully zoomed out (for which the default is fully zoomed in) there is absolutely no way you would see this escort. On a future run-through I'll add an addendum to the horde post regarding this quest.

Now.. handing these quests in leaves us with a breadcrumb to the "Earthen Ring Volcano" quests, which I have covered in my horde write-up, they are entirely identical to the horde quests however with the lovely touch that the goblin npc is phased out and a human "female" (presumably worgen) is in their place. I presume that the worgen npc in the Astranaar inn will be updated to cataclysm worgen model/textures and is simply an oversight using the old models.

Mostly the bad quest flow is in the next write-up :(, However I want to point out that the "Forest Song breadcrumb" should be available after both the Shrine of Aessina questlines and the furbolg corruption questlines are available. I also would like the Tears of Elune quest and the Earthern Ring breadcrumb quests to only be available after the forest song quests are completed. This would just lead to a far more streamlined and quest-friendly zone.