Malaka'jin

Right, pictures for Desolace are up, haven't decided what zones to split it in, my god there are a tonne of quests in that zone. I'll figure that out after finishing Stonetalon, which of course I left by saying you got a breadcrumb to Malaka'jin.

First off I want to say that riding to this zone is fine, it makes sense that because the Grimtotem are launching a surprise attack on the area that transport to this zone would be at a premium, however I would say that the Northwatch encampment that you burnt and killed their leader and held off their massive attack on your HQ should be phased out, it was rather annoying to tippy-toe around the alliance forces here, which really should be phased out since you pretty much wiped them out in those series of quests. Obviously the fight between the goblins and gnomes should be ongoing still, but the camp just seems superfluous and annoying in terms of travelling.

Anyway on our way to Malaka'jin we pick up a quest to kill *shudder* spiders, now I am PETRIFIED of spiders, doesn't matter if they are on a computer screen or television or whatever, I get absolutely petrified by them, firstly I'm going to comment though how this quest is weird you are on your way to malaka'jin and then have to back-track to do this quest. What would make more sense, which will get discussed in the final post in the zone, is to get a free travel type quest to malaka'jin and then Travel up this area either whilst doing quests or (hopefully) when going towards sun-rock retreat. However, this doesn't make much sense in this context until my final post, so I will discuss it in more detail there.

Back to the quest, it requires you to kill spiders, and one named spider. My god this quest is scary, the named spider is like MASSIVE, almost the size of the spider in Terrokkar forest, can't remember the name. BUT WHAT IS WORST, is it frigging patrols, I was killing mobs for the quest and BAM A GIANT SPIDER BEHIND ME, I was like shitting my pants :/, god I hate spiders D:::. The actual quest is fine if a little isolated like commented upon, but scary spiders D::.

Back on track to Malaka'jin we get a bunch of quests, to get some voodoo reagents,

Anyway back onto the nitty gritty handing it in apparently the horde army is running out of dumb orcs to use as cannon fodder, so we need to go and round up a bunch of kobolds.. this is just seriously epic :). There is also a follow-up to the voodoo quests in the same area.

There is also a breadcrumb to Northern Barrens here, I actually think that is because I dinged 28 from this quest and not because it unlocks after completing. Again, I would much rather have the breadcrumbs from finishing the zone and not halfway through the zone. If you want to promote the "YOU CAN DO ANY ZONE WHENEVER U WANT" type mantra, just make the breadcrumbs from Orgrimmar, since all these breadcrumbs litter the place up imo. Obviously zones that lead on from each other should have breadcrumbs, but only when the entire zone is complete.

Basically there is a Kobold cave, where it is on Vanilla iirc, and you have to whip kobolds over and over until they submit, until you have YOUR MASSIVE ARMY OF KOBOLDS, I really wish you could get like 200 or something and not like only 6.

There is one thing I would like to comment on here, I don't really like how the quest items disappear off the objectives panel when quests are completed, there are MANY quests, including this one, where having the quest item still on the bar after completion is just plain useful, I would have liked to have not fought any Kobolds when running out of the cave and just plain whipped more into my army :D

The other quest, to collect resonite crystals, is fairly trivial although there are a little fewer crystals then I feel there should be, but it's only a minor point.

Heading back to Malaka'jin you are given 2 quests: TO INFUSE DA VOODOO into the horde soldiers fighting the grimtotem, and the other quest: TO UNLEASH THE MASSIVE KOBOLD ARMY ONTO THE ALLIANCE SCUM, both pretty awesome quests.

The Infusing the voodoo quest is sort of buggy though in a couple of ways, the grimtotem do a couple of aoe attacks (demo shout and fan of knives) and being hit by either interrupts your channelling, it's somewhat infuriating considering the long cast time, I was sort of resorting to standing at max range. Also the voodoo infusion goes onto your current target, and not the orginal target of the spell. So like there are 2 horde soldiers standing next to each other, I use the item on the left one, and target the right one after. At the end of the cast the right one gets the buff even though the animation was on the left one. A minor bug really, but ye.

There is the named leader of the grimtotem here, and I was somewhat disappointed there was no quest to eliminate him in anyway, it would have made sense since malaka'jin periodically sends that force of horde warriors to kill him. I have no chance of killing him without a buff or lots of help though, so couldn't see if he dropped a quest item. Regardless it would be nice to kill him with some help.

The other quest, to unleash the kobold army, is somewhat confusing, originally I went up the back door of the alliance quest, the elite who should be stopping anybody from attempting to go up this way is far too off to the side, and I just thought he was a random patrol and not meant to be a "DO NOT GO UP THIS RAMP" elite. Regardless, going all the way round, which is rather tedious for one quest, means you go through a quarry, which is a new part of the zone in cataclysm and had absolutely 0 quests, I did have a look, but nothing was in this area, seems extremely strange considering the area. I presume that perhaps there will be quests here in a later build, but that is based alot on the fact that the zone is very sparse of quests generally.

The actual quest to unleash the Kobold army is actually pretty cool though, theres a good amount of kobolds and they like MARCH TO THEIR DEATHS, but put up an amusing fight. The backdoor ramp I was talking about makes for a good getaway aswell, which is a nice touch.

After these quests, you are then told Malaka'jin is safe and that you should go back to Krom'gar, and earn yourself a promotion of course. Now like I said this just seems incomplete in terms of quests of the area, they seem pretty sparse and don't really have a conclusion, obviously wiping out the grimtotem leader would be a good conclusion, but there was no quest for that so...

Onto my final post on Stonetalon though, and yes the lore/rp is so epic :D.