Thunder-Axe Fortress

Ok, so this is the second optional questing area, it's a bit shorter than the Ethel Rethor area, but This area is so big that splitting off these little hubs makes sense to keep the post length down, aswell as consolidating feedback for specific hubs.

So we get 1 quest here, which is to go kill a named npc in front of Thunder-axe, he's pretty easy to pull alone and well easy enough to kill, however the great thing is the interactivity with this quest hub, firstly you get an auto-quest upon killing him BASED on his yell, that's pretty damn awesome immersion, your char is like HUH HE MENTIONED SOMETHING BETTER CHECK IT OUT, instead of being a dumb ass who can only do what quest givers tell them, which is just sweet immersion factor.

You also get an additional quest for just looting any of the burning blade in the area when you kill them, to basically just COLLECT EARS, not exactly sure why they want ears particularly, usually its heads.. but oh well collecting ears it is! 25 is sort of a daunting number, perhaps reducing this to 20 would be about right, since I had to kill 20 to kill the quests in the area, but had to go searching for the last 5.

Since this is a burning blade area, you also get the AWESOME AWESOME debuff like in durotar when you kill any mob and around 3-5 stacks you transform into the demonology warlock metamorphosis form, I really love how this is an astigma attached to like Burning Blade zones in cataclysm, It's just so cool :D, especially the animations for feral charge in Metamorphosis OMFG! Druids need metamorphosis form ok, replacement for boomkin or something!

Onto the actual quests, going into the room you kill a whole bunch of mobs, the middle mob is sort of weird, he will aggro you but not engage in combat, I suppose it makes sense otherwise he would aggro the entire room, but I would just suggest lowering his aggro range dramatically instead of having him keep you in combat throughout the room. The box which the summoning ritual is a little small for my liking but hey, it's obvious and easy to loot.

Now.. I got an auto-quest failure, or at the very least I presume it is an auto-quest failure as going back and forth made no sense, you get the auto-quest hand-in but no follow-up was triggered, obviously I went back and got it, but the idea is you head straight to the main chamber and trigger this summon early, with the auto-quest inplace this is some awesome immersion, a race against time so to speak to summon this demon TO AWAKEN HIM TOO SOON etc :D. There are plenty of skulls around the place, I feel like they should on average drop 20 instead of 10-15, since that way there would definitly be more than enough patches, instead of just like ONLY ENOUGH PATCHES, which is a big difference.

You face off against this demon after performing the ritual, it's a little weaker than I thought it would be, although I did have metamorphosis form thing, so that made it easier :D, after this it's a simple hand-in for the quest completion.

It's a bit of a mini-quest hub but I mean it's fast paced and great action/story. For a short quest it utilises the auto-quest feature magnificently (OO A NEW ADJECTIVE!!?!?!?!) to really grip the player and immerse them in the action.

I included the travelling to Cenarion Wildlands in the screenshots.. the effects on that Tornado are just awesome! You get flung about whenever you walk into it and take falling damage, good fun stuff.. I love it :D.

Anyway onto Cenarion Wildlands and sort of the start of the MAJOR questline, if you could call it that, in the zone.

Ethel Rethor

Yeh, weird title for a zone ^^, I would call this something different, but I feel that's a little spoilerish, and probably less descriptive. Obviously these whole posts are spoilerish but ye.. I feel like they give good feedback hopefully.

Anyway, this is 1 of the 2 options from Furien's Post, I decided to go here first because it seemed FURTHER OUT OF THE WAY, so was more likely to be it's own quest hub, even though both turn out to be, so it doesn't matter which way you go.

Regardless, the Cenarion Circle are here and they are mildly concerned with the naga invasion, the researcher here sends you off on a tour of the zone, where you get to see the lay of the land, and a priestess of Azshara, and the fact that Water elementals have risen to fight the naga here, clearly something is going on here and is more than meets the eye O:.

You get a follow-up to sort of SLAUGHTER NAGA, now this quest is actually ridiculous imo. The drop rates on the FINS especially from the Warrior's is exceptionally poor, it is around 25-50% and there are just nowhere near enough of them. Whilst I understand this quest needs the reagents for actual quest flow reasons, the drop-rates are exceptionally poor, just bump them up to 100% at least, maybe reduce the Bones to around 6 or something aswell and I think the numbers are right.

There were also alot of Sorceress' that evaded on the coastline, obviously inherently annoying because they would end up keeping you in combat and aggroing nearby naga to you, I ended up dying because i got 3 naga on me D:::, very annoying considering the closeness of the patrols on both the land and the water patrols so you get naga sort of appearing from nowhere (ie the water) and killing you, very annoying. This was an unfortunate distraction to an otherwise simple quest.

However, after this irritating quest you get a far more awesome quest! You get disguised as a naga and share their awesome animations, pretty damn awesome if you ask me, you slither on land pretty slowly, although normal walking speed, and get a 150% speed increase in the water, pretty nice buff for the quest involved, you have to go talk to the priestess of Azshara, Valishj. Now she is sort of STUCK IN THE RUINS on the beta, which is amusing however I presume totally unintended :P.

She is obviously like WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE USELESS NAGA and sends you off with a trident! To go kill the servants of neptulon, they are neutral elementals, there are plenty in the area and are pretty tough to take down, you don't really need much skill to take them down, however the heal you are provided is pretty pathetic, if you don't kite much when he charges after your first netting wears off you lose around 500 hp or so, and the heal is just pathetic, it really needs to take you to full health because tbh you are only able to use it out of combat, so it seems kinda silly that like it only does a small percentile of your hp.

However killing them is pretty trivial, there are a couple of annoying crab creatures, I can't remember their exact name in warcraft, makk... something idk. However, they remove your disguise, which can be somewhat irritating, this is an intended mechanic but I think its silly that there are alot of them around the naga island where you have to hand in rather than say out in the open sea where you can avoid them easier.

The follow-up is somewhat irritating, although I am not sure if it was because I was looking in the wrong area, you are told to unearth rubble to find some relics, the rubble itself is really kinda hard to see against the sea floor, along with their being relatively few spawns of it. The map objective screen wasn't working so I don't know if I was in the most optimum zone for it, but regardless I feel like the amount of rubble needs to be increased. I am also sort of TORN between when you unveil the rubble and it reveals like 3-4 artefacts or w/e. Only one of them sparkles, the one that actually contains the quest item, as a quester I'm sort of like YES THIS SPEEDS UP QUESTING, but I also feel like it defeats the point of spawning multiple artefacts if you see the one which is EXACTLY containing a quest item.

After collecting all 4 artefacts and arranging them into Ancient Engravings of Neptulon you get an auto-quest to head back to the Cenarion Circle, obviously liking this since obviously you wouldn't want to give it to the Naga. What I am annoyed about is that after this quest you lose your naga disguise, when handing in to the circle, when you could still very much utilise being able to run past the naga without aggroing them, and the actual swim-speed increase granted by the Naga disguise.

Regardless, you are sent to go and contact the leader of the water elementals here: Lord Hydronis. I like how approaching the island phases you so you into that zone, but it's far from seemless since you have vision of naga on that island and around the border of the zone and when entering the zone they all disappear, if you were being chased by naga (like me) then they disappear when you zone into the island area aswell, so some work on the phase transitioning here would be nice.

Speaking to Lord Hydronis he is like WE GOTTA KILL THE PRIESTESS, so we get to mount him and control him, pretty easy vehicle quest your ice block cd lines up with you going oom quite well, so it's pretty hard to die. The Typhoon style interrupt is really hard to control, I couldn't tell if it was hitting or missing the priestess, I guess if it was hitting it wasn't working since she never got stunned/interrupted like the text implies. However ye.. if that worked the quest is perfect. The mobs have [Q1] by them, but I guess that's a testing mechanic that hasn't been patched out of yet.

Again, going back to like the Cenarion Circle, again wtb swim speed buff from naga here :<, you get a breadcrumb to the Cenarion Wildlands.

This quest sort of gives you some background to the Vash'jir zone and what the Naga are intending to do in the cataclysm, which is nice lore to include to the zone, since this is the only zone in Kalimdor that could really accomplish this other than like Azshara, and that has more important goblin and Blue Dragonflight lore to cover, so this is the only place for it, which is just a nice simple addition tbh.

Anyway, if you didn't do the Thunder-axe fortress you can head to that now or go straight to Cenarion Wildlands, I like how these sort of zones are very much based on choice, you aren't forced into either one immediately, but are forced into doing the more lore intensive quest if you want to gain the breadcrumb and maintain quest flow, but it is certainly not required for the Cenarion Wildlands quests.

Desolace Furien

Right, now again like most zones I write-up going to set a few provisos before continuing about the zone.

1) This zone is frigging long, seriously you can construe this as a good or bad thing I suppose, the quests within it are pretty good, but in essence you feel like you should be level 40 rather than 35 when you leave the zone.

2) The aesthetics of this zone are really lovely, very polished and the overall feeling on this zone is well done

3) There are a few carbon copy vanilla quests still lingering, I presume 2 of them are certainly unintended, the others may or may not be.

4) The Quest Objectives have not been fully implemented on the map for a large majority of quests, I probably won't mention them in these write-ups because there just are alot, but there are screenshots provided of all the times I noticed/needed the quest objectives on the map and they were not there.

With that out of the way, lets crack on to our first quests, when last I left it on my Troll druid write-ups, we were being given a choice by Garrosh Hellscream to go to either Southern Barrens or Desolace, In terms of a questing flow this means a choice between Desolace->Feralas and Southern Barrens->Dustwallow Marsh. As of this build Dustwallow marsh is pretty much identical to its state on live, not that that is a bad thing, since the quest flow is pretty nice, but It's not really worthy of a write-up yet because of that.

So I chose Desolace, obvious by the title I guess D:, and with the breadcrumb you are told to go to find Furien. Now, to get to Desolace one runs through the Charred Vale, which is not so charred on the east side and more volcano on the west side, I expect quests here in the future, or at the very least on the alliance side. However lets crack on with the Desolace Experience.

We arrive to Furien to find him well... dying and then dead :<. Nice little dramatic twist to a placeholder, we then get a nice travel to the first little quest hub, you are sent out immedietely to find out what Furien was up to with his Research, which, in turn, after a nice travel on his mount, which is pretty sweet btw :D, directs you towards Sargeron.

I like this type of quest, it's pretty similar to the patrol type quests, you visit 3 places on the map here, the 3 ruins which aren't on the quest map yet, and you get quests at 2 of them, and at the final one you get an auto quest to complete at the third one.

The quests at the other areas are all to do with killing Satyr in the area, which is great: They don't detract from the story, in fact they actually contribute to the immersion of the History of these ruins to do with elune and such. Whilst the quests are allowed to be completed whilst you carry on with the main quest line. Getting both completed is fairly trivial and doesn't require you to do any specific killing, because you are on the over-arching quest to visit all 3 places originally, the player is very much inclined to go to all 3 places and get all 3 quests before continuing.

The auto-quest follow-up involves collecting melons for a ritual, much like the other 2 quests, the melons are pretty easy to spot and there seem to be plenty of them, they seem to appear mostly under trees in the area, which is a nice aesthetic touch imo. After this you gain a buff, which allows you to see Night elf spirits in the area. They are hostile but don't aggro you, so I would consider making them neutral.. you have to kill them later, but I never agreed with Hostile non-aggroable mobs.

The next quest involves you following more research follow-ups and finding the Ruin's of Elune's Palace, pretty nice to see this included in the lore of the place. However, it's more of a simple hand-in. Now, because I had done this zone previously and was a total noob :<, I proceeded to the next quest in the chain forgetting I had to do the first part. I'll discuss that before moving onto the hand-ins for the other quests you got in the area.

This quest involves you killing night-elf spirits with a vortex pet out, it sort of SUCKS THE SPIRIT OUT OF THEM when you kill them, the animation is pretty awesome anyway, and then proceeds to grow bigger. There is a slight delay between the change of size and change of name of the vortex, which is a little bit annoying, but I don't know if that's changeable in anyway.

This again is another auto-quest hand-in, which I am glad is working here since I would not have liked to have walked all the way back to the original quest hub, which is on the other side of the zone :). Now, the other 2 hand-ins are again rituals, the weapons ritual I have absolutely no problems with, the animation for doing it is actually pretty awesome, you toss a load of swords in :D.

However, my problem is with the Satyr Flesh ritual. 1) The buff you get from this quest is really poor, 15% more base health is like maybe 60 hp or something in that region. Pretty disappointing and 2) It only lasts an hour, for a zone that you are going to be spending roughly 4-5 hours in, thats not really long enough. I would really like to see the buff increased somewhat, maybe 15% increase in health would be nice :D, and for it to be a zone-wide buff like the ones in darkshore for alliance characters. It would be an awesome addition. The final point, 3) is the fact that this quest is repeatable and DOES NOT have a blue question mark above it, people may believe it is a quest to do again without realising it doesn't give xp, I never ever ever liked quests that were repeatable and sort of disguised as actual quests, like the one in Zangarmarsh with the naga killing, they are highly confusing and ye.. just urgh.

Regardless though, we move onto one of the most AWESOME quests I have done with a vehicle, firstly though the actual place where you summon this vortex is WHOLLY UNCLEAR, with the current quest map objectives location. This implies you need to go into nijel's point, full of 35-40 alliance guards, and use the quest item here. Whereas in fact you need to use it at the arch in front of Nijel's point. I would HIGHLY SUGGEST making this area sparkly at the very least, it's pretty tough to see and I wasted like 5-10 minutes when I was originally doing the quest thinking it was bugged because I was trying to follow the map objectives screen.

The actual quest though, boy is it awesome.. you summon your RAGING VORTEX you created in the previous quest and just hop into it :D, you get somewhat control over it, it goes in a set cycle and well SUCKS UP EVERY ALLIANCE NPC IN YOUR PATH, and flings them to kingdom come. You also have an ability, if the sucking up wasn't enough, to 1 shot any alliance character in the zone. Now obviously this zone is phased so you can't kill pvp-flagged alliance, but still it's frigging awesome.

I would have liked to have seen more Merchants, by doing like 2-3 circuits I was done with Defender's and instead was just hunting merchants, they seem to appear mostly off of the route your vortex takes, so using your ability on them was what you seemed to have to do, maybe I was just being slack on using that, but there seems to be way more defenders to merchants than the quest ratio implies, either increase the amount of merchants or like bump up the amount of defender's to kill to around 60-70, I don't think anybody would mind in the slightest.

The second most awesome thing about this quest, is the fact that when you use the 4 button to return home persay you get catapulted across the zone inside the vortex, it's so awesome. It means you don't have to travel back to the quest givers and well it just really fits in with the like awesomeness of the quest.

This is the actual end of this questline, and it really epitomises the theme of Desolace, which is like 4-5 awesome quest-chains with no overarching story, which is just as effective as the Stonetalon way of doing things. There are plenty more quest chains to write-up but there was really not much wrong with these initial quests, fun stuff.

I might add also the armor set in Desolace is just AWESOME, in comparison to the ones before it, although I haven't got it now the shoulder piece for this set is like a 1-shoulder thing, you will see it in subsequent screenshots, I think it's pretty awesome and the color-scheme works really well with the aesthetics of the zone.

Also, I would like to see a repair vendor at this mini-questhub here at Furien's Post, otherwise you are going for like 2 hours or so in this zone without a repair vendor, which is a bit long if you forgot to repair (LIKE I DID :<) in Stonetalon. You are given 2 choices here, to go to Ethel Rethor or Thunder-axe Fortress, like all things I'd always prefer to go towards the coast than in-land, so I went Ethel-Rethor first. It doesn't matter what order you do them in though, so feel free to look at either :).

Stonetalon Final Quests

Alright, so you head back to Krom'gar obviously via the flightpath, so the travel-time is fairly short. After our sort of meander in the south of the zone to make sure we wouldn't get flanked. We get to move on with the grand master scheme of the zone WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!

Firstly, we get our well deserved promotion of course, we are now a Krom'gar Champion in his army. Then we are told to head into the balloon with "THE BOMB" attached to it, and head to the Sludgeworks to refuel it on the way to it's final destination, Cliffwalker Post. This quest is pretty cool, the vehicle mechanic to get in, is kinda unique since you have to get on using the rope ladder, then you get to see an overview of everything, of course it's quite surprising you aren't being shot down since you have A MASSIVE WMD attached via tether to your flimsy goblin hot-air balloon. Regardless though :) you end up at the Sludgeworks.

Whilst the Balloon is being refueled you are asked to do a couple of menial tasks. One is to deal with the wyvern who apparently have bad bowels, and need putting down. It's a pretty nice quest, although again very isolated since there is only 1 quest giver here. Plenty of Wyvern in the area, and you only need to kill 6. I'm just glad it wasn't one of those CLEAN UP TURDS quest, which I suppose makes sense since you are a Champion in the army now!

The other quest here is to route out loads of spies, this is a really nice quest, they have a little glint where they are and you use a choking bomb to aggro them and engage them. My only trouble with this quest, and again it wasn't really trouble with the actual quest, it was the fact that when you weren't on this quest or even on it. If you happened to walk near one of the spies you would hear the "A STEALTHED PERSON IS NEAR AND YOU HAVE VISION OF THEM" sound, which is inherently annoying since you can never see them in proximity without the use of bombs. It's a minor thing really, but I would still class this as a bug.

After handing in this quest, we are able to continue onto cliffwalker post, same quest as the krom'gar to sludgeworks quest really, get on the balloon and fly to Cliffwalker Post.

We then arrive to an awesome lore conversation between General Grebo and the tauren druid representative here, High Chieftain Cliffwalker, of which the post is named of course. Definitly this text is worth reading, awesome lore material here and sort of sets the scene for what is about to happen :D. Before this though you are told to KILL ALLIANCE ::DDDDD, that's what I signed up for in Ashenvale!!!!

Basically you get control of a demolisher which basically can 1 shot everything in site, fun quest to just kill shit with. Obviously the name tag is bugged with the "BUG ID XYZ" on it, but I think that's a pretty obvious bug ^^. There was only one other issue with this quest, which was that the demolisher went REALLY slow uphill, now whilst this was good realism, it was kinda dumb having to dump my demolisher before heading uphill so I could go at more than like 2 mph :D.

Back to the quest hub, and we are told to go meet up with the Chieftain's son at the Tree. Upon arrival at this zone, we see loads of Druids running around in sheer terror, pretty ominous tbh. Climbing the tree we find the son is dead!!! Nice twist imo, I do love those quests which sort of "lie" in their quest text so you expect to see an npc and maybe a quest in the area, but find them dead or just not there. Really awesome little quests, but regardless. HE HAS A KROM'GAR'S GENERAL INSIGNIA ON HIM, hmm i really wonder what is going to happen when I go back to cliffwalker :D.

We break the news to the Chieftain's son is now dead :O drama. Now onto the next quest, with the simple description: DEFEND YOURSELF, pure awesome rp here, check the screenshots below, in the slideshow, everything is there. Basically you end up fighting the General and 2 adds, I presume this RP will be voiced, and if it isn't it definitly SHOULD, it is awesome and definitly worthy of voice acting.

It's a pretty easy fight, the 2 tauren do a good job of tanking 1 of the adds and the general so you can take out the other add and then lay waste to the other add and the general with no real danger of over-aggro. After the quest the tauren are unsure what to do, and ask you to go and plead to Krom'gar for mercy. You set off back to the fortress.

As a side note, the rocket flight path is just awesome, it makes no sense really, there isn't even a goblin here?, but regardless it's just awesome to have a flightmaster, which isn't the generic wind-rider master.

Whilst this travelling may seem slightly unnecessary, I do like the fact that it makes the phasing in cliffwalker post happen when you are away so the changes are seemless and really polished. Krom'gar is obviously angry at this development and tells you to fly back to Cliffwalker post to meet him there and be promoted to take the place of the general.

What follows, is some of the best RP I believe Garrosh is already voiced for this RP but Krom'gar or the High-Chieftain are not. They definitly need to be, the RP is just epic. The quest you get here just epitimises it imo. The Description of the objective is simply: LEARN WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HORDE, which is just so ambiguous, and really the lore and phasing is just so polished. It is all in the screenshots below, and I don't know how many more times I can say awesome before it just isn't as effective, but still this is like.. the best conclusion to any quest zone in wow at the moment, definitly better than wrathgate because YOU are making a difference here.

After this insanely good RP you are told by Garrosh you can basically either go Southern Barrens or Desolace (THIS IS WHERE THE SOUTHERN BARRENS BREADCRUMB SHOULD BE!). Note there is a bug where when you are in the RP phasing, after the bomb blows up on the tree, you get a message THE BATTLE TO FREE HYJAL FROM RAGNAROS HAS BEGUN, definitly a bug here. Garrosh also mumbles his lines, it makes no sense that he asks krom'gar I ASK YOU AGAIN WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, after letting go of him, pretty sure that is a bug.

This zone is just insanely good in terms of FOCUS ON THE STORY ARC, and the actual story arc being insanely good. It also ends in a great conclusion of that sole story arc. Which, was started at the end of Northern Barrens and culminated in this zone. Definitly soooo worth it.

However as I mentioned in my previous posts this zone is VERY skimpy on quests, there really just aren't that many, it probably has less than Durotar, I was also a good level, perhaps 2 levels off in terms of XP that I should have got from this zone. This just tells me that more quests will be added.

You are also never sent to sun-rock retreat, which I did check, is still horde controlled but there are no quests here and only a flight path. Like said in my previous post, I feel like the questing should be The Fold->Krom'gar->Malaka'jin->Sun-rock Retreat->Krom'gar->Cliffwalker.

I mean the fact that the entire charred vale is completely ignored by the horde through quests just seems wrong, along with a couple of quests in the unearthed quarry thing in the south you have to go through for the kobold area, the zone would be fine on quests.

I have to commend blizzard on the quests so far implemented for this zone, they are all pretty polished and the zone is just very enjoyable, if not for the "quest lightness" I would have 0 complaints about the zone. I hope the alliance version is just as epic tbh :D.

I've already done Desolace as a zone so the write-ups for that will be started tomorrow hopefully, the zone is really long though, probably around 2-3 times the length of Stonetalon in terms of time in the zone, that isn't really because of that many bugged quests either, the zone is pretty damn good aswell.

Anyway Slideshows for all the RP and the Stonetalon Zone here:

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.

Krom'gar Fortress

So we have just got promoted to Sergeant, and now seemingly have a right to speak to Krom'gar, awesome stuff and realistic of the new horde regime. Nice immersion, you get given a bunch of quests, including a daily to just kill soldiers in the area, not sure how I feel about having a daily here in this area, I mean sure I can understand the purpose of the daily.. but its a level 25-30 zone and I don't the idea, especially on a pvp server, of level 35-40's coming back here to do this daily for money or like free xp, and be able to gank lowbies.

I have never minded dailies near to say max level, where it is more expected that high level players should be at, especially dailies with like a pvp backdrop, say the dailies in Grizzly Hills for instance, but this daily seems out of place imo.

The other dailies involve incinerating some tents, killing a named npc and gathering some materials. I love the quest giver clarissa here, if only because it was the name of my boyfriend's alias :(, but its a kewt blood elf child who loves ice cream. I mean the quest doesn't really have anything to do with the major story arc.. yet it contributes to it, this is what I like to see with these sort of off-shoot quests, stuff that doesn't have to do with it but contributes. I'll discuss this a little later when we get the follow-up.

Firstly, I went to collect the parts for clarissa, since they were spread out and it made the most sense to do so.. Easy enough to find the parts and made you go through the whole area, I can only think that their should be a quest up via the venture company place, since you have to kill alot of them to reach the quest part and it seems silly to direct you up there only for a part for the clarissa quest.

Whilst out here you get a "recommended 2 player" elite quest, my thoughts on this though: In my experience blizzard quests that say recommended 2 player are code words for you can solo this if you are good at your class, however I really don't know if I could solo this as a class with a lack of self healing. The fight is against like an enormous fish, you fight for like 70% or so, and he hits pretty damm hard tbh, after that he grabs you in his mouth and deals 5% of your hp every 5 seconds or so, my problem is that for a class like a rogue or warrior he hits like a truck before grabbing you, and then pathetically little as you are crushed by him, since its 5% of your hp.

Whilst I do LOOVVVEEE the uniqueness of this type of solo quest, I feel he is really a little too strong, especially since the idea is surely that you want to be able to pump out around 2k damage before say a minute when he should kill you, so tune it that he only does around 30% or so of your hp in damage before biting you, so that this challenge is there, I would also reccommend disabling healing when he grabs you, to make it less easy as any healing class. This quest has alot of merit to it though, so overall very positive.

After collecting 3/4 of the parts, which most look like goblin totems.. don't know if that is intended but I suppose they look cool and sort of fit in with the grand scheme of the quest of these things being "MECHANISED". The last part is in the area for burning the tents. Now, really, the incineration graphic at the moment looks like you are spewing out plague, when clearly you are meant to be burning these tents, a nice addition would be to make these flamethrowers in animations.

I also don't like how if you aren't close enough to trigger a completion you are allowed to channel the incineration, I always hate it when quests tell you to channel or use a quest item that has an incessantly long cast time and then fails at the end of it. I would advise just being able to only use this quest item if you are in range of the tents. The mechanised air is also in the nearby hut, so that's cool aswell in terms of synergy.

The named npc is right at the end of this area, he is a paladin dressed in 60 pvp gear, gotta love that item set, or at least I think its the alliance 60 pvp set, might be wrong though. He is pretty easy to kill but the look is nice. He drops an item that starts a quest, which is sort of Integral to the storyline of the zone. I mean, you are inclined to loot this since, well you should loot pretty much all the time anyway. However I do like when you go to hand in this quest the quest-giver makes specific note in the "hand-in quest" to check the body for plans and such.

If you are adamant about keeping in STARTING QUEST ITEMS, which personally I am not a major fan of unless you are told to loot corpses anyway and happen to find this extra thing, I digress though. If you want to keep this feature of questing on then yeh the quest is fine, otherwise I would just strongly suggest making the quest to kill him include looting the plans, it makes sense and well I just don't like the STARTING QUEST ITEMS, personal opinion or w/e but regardless.

Anyway, handing all these quests in you learn that the alliance is mounting an attack and low-and-behold the cannons are broken and people sent to get parts haven't reported back, incompetence! You also get to hand in the parts to Clarissa who revives large daddy and you get this awesome quest for killing a bunch of gnomes, what is ever!!! wrong with that :).

The controls are intuitive for this vehicle, but the frost beam seems somewhat superfluous, since the fire beam does more damage and the frost beam doesnt freeze anything. Also the magnets that attract gnomes and flings them again (BTW THIS IS SO FRIGGING AWESOME, OMFG I LOVE IT) is broken, in terms of, it works but it doesn't register the kills you get for using it. So you only get kills from using the beam, which is quick but its not like as cool as the awesome flinging :D.

I also like how kills here count towards the daily and obviously this thing always contributes to like the HORDE VS ALLIANCE theme of the entire area, even if the quest is sort of nothing to do with the overall story. The quest hand-in to Krom'gar text is just amusing "I DONT EVEN KNOW WHERE SHE CAME FROM", which is just hilarious since she turned into some bloodthirsty little kid, don't think I mentioned how whenever you kill anything she whispers you encouraging you :D.

Anyway, after this we like go into the mines to see the incompetence, which is just hilarious, they are all like WELL IF WE GO UP THERE AND REPORT THE SITUATION WE DIE AND IF WE GO IN THERE WE DIE, so they just stay put and send you in to clean up all the shit. The quests here have great synergy, kill elementals all around, save peons (which have some hilarious /say opinions) and collect some items for the actual quest to fix the damn cannons. All these quests are pretty easy, and low-stress value, so that's nice.

Heading back up to the surface after the various comments on the fact you should be promoted, hint hint :P, you fix the cannons and bam the Alliance are attacking, I would really like the phasing to appear when you accept/are on the quest and not just when you are in the cannons, just so the quest looks much more smooth instead of just a massive attack then leaving cannons = no more attack. The actual attack part of this quest is also pretty epic, loads of damn aeroplanes and gnomes parachuting in, it's just a really great feel and I love these sort of quests that put you in the centre of a moment.

After this quest you get promoted to a Krom'gar Legionairre, and like get told to head to Malaka'jin, going to comment on the travelling to this area in the next area, but regardless, this is the end of this zone, things are heating up! you held off an alliance attack and now need to prevent the army from being flanked by the allied grimtotems to the alliance.

The Fold

New day, New zone. Ok, before getting started I'm going to add a few provisos to my coverage of this zone.

1) This zone is INCOMPLETE, I mean there is nothing definitive that tells me the zone is incomplete, however the lack of quests in certain areas and the fact that I was around 1 level short of xp from this zone tells me right off the bat that there needs to be more quests in this zone.

2) This is without doubt my favorite of all the zones so far, despite the fact it is incomplete the actual zone is just awesome, I'll get onto it in a bit but it suffice's to say that this zone is just exactly what I love about questing

3) Oh, I cba with a 3 lets get on with the awesomeness!

Alright so basically we have entered the zone and got promoted to Krom'gar Grunt. This is basically a rank in the Krom'gar army that you carry around with you wherever you are in the zone. When you have one of these buffs activated, ie in the entire zone, you get a special Horde-emblazoned tabard. I didn't actually notice this at first, because as you will note I decided to go back to feral because lack of starsurge made me hate life :<<.

However, this touch is lovely, the tabard itself is of pretty awesome design with the Horde insignia emblazoned upon your chest, you really feel like part of the Horde fighting force. I also like how the rank gives you a sense of how far you are through a zone, and a great sense of progression: Hey, I just did something pretty awesome= promotion. Which, tbh, is an awesome touch. I mean going by how much you have left on your bar or left to explore in the zone is one way to show progression, but this way of arbitrary ranking of yourself throughout an entire zone is just awesome.

Onto the actual questing, as a grunt in the army you are given the menial tasks to do, such as arming bombs, dubbed "elf-killers" in the entryway to stonetalon from Ashenvale. I was kinda disappointed these elf-killers didn't 1-shot the stealthed night-elves in the area, but I do like the synergy between arming bombs and then luring the night-elves over them to kill them, even if it isn't necessary. They are pretty powerful these night-elves though, so the synergy is nice touch to help balance out that power. There are dozens of bombs in the area so arming 8 isn't a problem, they might take a little too long to arm, there was always a sense of OMG A NIGHT ELF IS BOUND TO HIT ME WHEN IM ABOUT TO FINISH AND WASTE 5 SECONDS OF MY LIFE, which isn't necessarily a good feeling on such a relatively long cast time that is cancelled upon damage and not simply pushbacked.

Regardless, you hand in the quest and are told to do more tasks, to find a goblin blastgineer. Kilag Gorefang is also here, who was in the Lost Isles if you did the Goblin area and like he gives you a similar quest to one on the Lost Isles, using infra red spectacles to spot stealthed night-elf and add them onto your minimap, lovely little touch this. There are plenty of night-elves to slaughter here and making your way to the goblin is pretty easy, I had a little trouble getting my camera positioned so I could interact with the quest giver, but that's a pretty minor point imo.

Anyway further to the east here is the objective for the follow-up: kill the named npc, she is actually a high elf: quite rare tbh, especially with this being Kalimdor, but regardless. She is nothing special, she comes with an add, her pet cat, which was actually more of a nuisance than she was to take down, but regardless a pretty simple quest and you get some attack plans.

Handing this in ends our first entering zone really with a trip to Krom'gar fortress, like I said this zone is pretty short, I'm going to comment a little about how I feel about this breadcrumb. I know in previous posts, and probably future ones too, how I like the idea of "travelling quests" i.e. quests that are breadcrumbs AND grant you free passage to the next quest hub, however these pure breadcrumbs here in this zone work.. I never mind having to travel to a place once, especially if you have to go through a battle and get to see the lay of the land.

Sometimes it just doesn't make sense to make every quest give you an automatic transport to the next hub, you are a grunt in this army at the moment and hey it makes no sense that any special treatment would be given to you, precisely because of that.

Anyway, you get told to go to Krom'gar and do this via land. It's pretty easy to just follow the road towards the fortress. Just going to mention that handing this in gives a promotion to Krom'gar Sergeant. I would also like to add how like, again it would be nice if Krom'gar's inspirational speech, which is like periodically repeated, was just triggered by this hand-in. Like with the blood-guard's speech in the previous area, it seems a waste to only catch half of it 90% of the time and not be able to trigger it with this simple hand-in and get to just see the speech.

Anyway, moving onto the Fortress.