Regardless, I'm not exactly sure when I am going to "SPLIT OFF" say the 2 posts, I'll try and figure a nice point, whilst writing, it will probably be conservatively early so I don't run on too long with my post.
So handing in the sort of PRELUDE TO ASHENVALE PROPER quest, riding the kodo, which I probably underestimated how awesome that quest was in the previous write-up. Handing in the quest nets you your first ring, the armor like "look" of the zone is very similar to the barrens, pretty much yellow but a bit duller.
So we get some quests to go kill night-elves, I mean what else, but also some cool quest to go like POISON THE FOREST HEART, in the barrow-dens, awesome how you are like using the blood of the enemy against them, there are some really subtle stuff in this zone that are really nice.
You also get a couple of quests to kill demons in felfire Hill or whatever, but first onto the night-elves. A few things about this quest, I don't really like how the slimes are mixed in with the mobs, I glanced over it in my previous post, but I stand by it. It sort of breaks up the quest flow, they also drop chests like they do on vanilla and the fact that you can't loot anything from them is just annoying.
Whilst doing this quest I had some world server outage problems and got reset back to splintertree.. annoying since I was in the barrow-dens but hey. The mobs are quite good here imo, there are plenty of them. However, I do have a slight grievance, although this is to do with general questing in say wow with caves. I never liked how say you have 2 quests and 1 is like a KILL MOBS IN THE AREA QUEST, and the other is to kill a named npc or collect something far inside the cave. I never liked how their are tonnes of mobs outside when there are tonnes inside also.
I always feel the new player just sees the mobs they need to kill for the quest and stays outside, before realising: HUH? I could have gone inside and done that quest and I would have quested far easier, I don't know its a little "pet-peeve" I have with these types of quests.
There's also this pvp-flagged Quest giver who is Hostile and patrols right outside the barrow-dens. I am guessing it's an alliance quest giver, but I mean it's seriously annoying seeing these mobs, I remember when I first did stranglethorn vale as alliance with that patrolling lvl 40 pvp mob, I just avoided the road at all costs, and to my peril. I just feel if you are going to put hostile quest givers that don't aggro, make them neutral or phased so they don't make new players pensive. It also makes the quester question whether they are in the right area if they see a hostile quest giver.
Onto the quest with the corrupting of the forest heart. I REALLY like the fact that the direction to the quest objective is laid out on the floor by "blood spots", it's both immersive and helpful, since these generic "night-elf caves" have 3 areas where quests are usually, and an indication of where this specific one is was helpful.
There were 3 named night-elf in the cave. I feel like the quest should maybe be added to the horde repotoire.. since I presume it is an alliance quest at the moment. When I see named mobs my instinct is to always kill them, and to see they dropped nothing was a bit of a disappointment. Using the Quest Item is unfortunately not that spectacular :(, would prefer some explosions or like a Night-elf charging at you emoing out at it :D, otherwise it seems to do nothing, which is unfortunately rather under-whelming.
However, those quests were nice and functional, and were close to the other quests in the zone: at felfire hill. I am not sure what could be done to the quest map to indicate the quests are underground, but if you could think of an implementation, perhaps layers in the map so that caves were on a different level and make quests in cave go on specific levels, but it probably wouldn't look the most polished, if most functional.
Felfire hill is still much the same as it was, lots of demons and the quest involves you to kill them (unsurprisingly) and siphon, channel, fel fires with the quest Item. This is somewhat bugged in terms of you have to wait a good 2-3 seconds after the channeling to get credit, I always like to move on when I finish channeling something like a quest item to the next mob or so, and it's rather frustrating that you can't do that here. Clearly a bug tbh.
The demons drop a "DEMON ORDERS" starting quest item, not sure if this was just left over from Vanilla since the follow-up is just on it's own and rather frustratingly long to do. However, my advice? keep it, if only because of the awesome quest item text (included in the screenshots, highly amusing!). Other than that, there are plenty of demons, I feel like 15 is slightly too many unless that is to make sure you get the Demon Orders quest, regardless I would still reduce it to 10 and adjust the quest item's drop rate appropriately.
Heading back to Splintertree we get a follow-up to head east to go to Warsong camp and do quests, a quest to head to Zoram'gar. We also have a nice quest where 2 orcs are conspiring to consult with Fel-magic, always an awesome type of quest :D, we have to collect some ore from working peons, plenty of rubble piles so this is awesome.
Now the follow-up here is.. well.. bugged... totally and utterly bugged. However the concept for the quest is like insanely good. Accepting it phases you into a Night-elf onslaught of Splintertree Post, you get transformed into an Imp so orcs won't recognise you :D. The peons have some amusing lines, as usual with orc peons, and overall it's pretty realistic. You have to climb the Towers and mark out targets for the Fel-Demolisher rounds. However, on beta this quest is bugged. Wherever you target the Ore it doesn't fire. I tried this multiple times on both towers and couldn't get it to work. I'm just trying to say this quest is like SO GREAT, if it worked :P. Also, a sort of semi-bug, if you are mounted when accepting this quest you get turned into an imp on your mount instead of getting de-mounted. I guess this is a bug as imp's shouldn't be able to mount but yeh.
Last quest for this post anyway: Just going to finish the Demon questline, I note how like... on it's own this quest is, so I mean if it is to stay in for Cataclysm it needs some synergy quest here, to sort of warrant you going here to complete this quest. Seriously, I highly suggest keeping it and adding in a quest to acknowledge or at least something to do with Grom Hellscream/Mannoroth. They are major past lore factors, and the fact that Grom has a monument here that is wholly not cared about in terms of a quest really bugs me. You would think Garrosh being the warchief now, would want this area taken for the horde so he could have access to his father's body.
It would be awesome to implement some sort of lore to do with this quest. Even if it's just a repeat of the Nagrand quest, that quest is immensly awesome and would love to see that cut-scene here in Ashenvale at the actual place of the event, would be sooo worth it.
Regardless of my fetishes for warcraft 3 lore, we have the quest to deal with! The quest is well "LONG AND DRAWN OUT" the first Dreadlord is in an easily accesible position, whilst the second Dreadlord is in a Night-elf style cave, surely you could move him outside ^^? Or at the very least give us an alternative motive for going inside the cave.
Anyway, that's going to conclude the write-up here, I realise that this is far less descriptive and far more FEEDBACK, but really this zone needs some changing/tweaking so the higher feedback quotient is warranted in my opinion.
Slideshow anyway :).
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