Basically, I guessed that the next quests would end up being in Crossroads, and that's exactly where they were. There is a breadcrumb to Ashenvale and to 1 last quest hub to the west of crossroads.
Again, they need you to do some more culling of the centaur, firstly to the south near the entrance to Wailing caverns, the horde want you to kill Centaur here. Pretty functional quest really, nothing wrong with it, the named npc is fairly strong because he comes with a couple of adds, but pretty easily beatable compared to the others in the zone. It is a little annoying how the bracers aren't a 100% drop rate though, because there are only just enough centaur to get your bracers unopposed.
After handing this in you get this really cool quest (which happens to be a group quest) to kill the leader of the centaur. Basically, using phasing technology, the area phases and now you are under attack by centaur, you basically have to kill like 20 or so centaur and the boss guy appears who you have to fight. Luckily I was fortunate and there was a Tauren Paladin questing here aswell and we teamed up to kill the elite, however I want to firmly state that this elite is far too tough.. I had to pretty much heal 100% of the time and cannot imagine 3 pure classes soloing this elite.
However, I feel the need to comment on this quest, I HATE group quests, why? because they require somebody else to be on the exact same stage of quest as you, and be willing to help. Like, that doesn't happen unless they want to do the quest themselves. Whilst the concept of group questing is overall sound, it seems silly to me that they exist, I know this is an mmo and interaction is obviously encouraged, but you have the dungeon finder for that. When you are questing I like to feel empowered and basically anything "non-instanced" should be soloable, maybe it has an elite tag but it should still be a pretty weak elite every class can solo.
The only type of group quests I can really get behind are like ARENA style group quests, they make sense and usually players are willing to help out because a) they have no pre-requisites b) are at a centralised questing hub and c) they make much more sense of wanting to be in a group.
I just feel like, especially for this quest, you are with an army of orcs and some trolls here holding off the centaur, why do I need a group to hold this off when I have a horde army supposedly supporting me. More horde troops need to spawn or there needs to be a buff that makes you more powerful so you can take out this guy without help from somebody else in the area imo.
This is also the first quest where I really disagree with the quest rewards.. they are blue but its like 2 shields and a wand.. basically that means alot of classes get no reward from that quest, which tbh if you are going to make it a group quest needs to change or nobody will do it unless 2 players happen to finish the quest at similar times and are just there.
Now this, as far as I can tell, is the end of the zone in terms of quests. Now note I am like level 19 at this point and I started the zone at level 11 and a half. So I mean I guess the zone is incomplete OR the early quests in Ashenvale (mor'shan ramparts) are meant to count as the northern barrens zone. I don't know what happens when you go from Azshara->Ashenvale, so I can't comment on that yet really. I could make an argument for either, you aren't ever sent to the north-west of the northern barrens and after doing the opening quests in Ashenvale you are around level 20 and a bit, you also still end Ashenvale at lvl 25.
My thoughts on the zone overall though: functional, there is no real OVERARCHING PLOT of the zone, or even direction, it's just a series of good functional levelling quests. I personally prefer zones with a story or interesting plot to it. However, this zone is more of those huh? I want to level quickly zones, which I guess have to exist to cater to those players. From what I hear, silverpine and Azshara, the 2 horde alternatives to this zone, are much more story driven but less quest optimised than this zone, so it is nice that this zone is a more functional alternative than the 2 aforementioned zones.
IF the ashenvale starting quests are meant to be the end of the northern barrens in terms of experience, then I agree that the zone has a worthy conclusion, however if that centaur quest is meant to be the conclusion to the zone, then I feel it's rather lacklustre.
With the levelling experience as it is, you are sort of "funneled" into doing Ashenvale->Stonetalon if you want to stay in Kalimdor whilst levelling, so it makes much more sense that the Mor'shan Ramparts quests are the end of the Northern Barrens, although hard in difficulty now, these could easily be tuned to be more in line with the level 19 experience or so.
So yeh, I feel like the zone is just really functional, I would like some more interaction with say WHY U WANT TO DO WAILING CAVERNS as a dungeon type quests, at the moment there is merely a breadcrumb and no real overarching story as to why you want to do the instance, like there is for like Blackfathom deeps or like Deadmines. I feel like zones with an instance should definitly be wanting you to explore the area and want to do that instance, to promote socialising and well instancing at a low level.
I've already done Ashenvale and laid down the areas, I feel like I have to split Splintertree into 2 different posts because well there are just so many quests sparking from that hub. I also want to mention how BUGGED Ashenvale is right now, and how unfinished it is, to me. So my feedback will be quite critical in places of the zone.
However, slideshow of the final quests and my overall questing experience in the Northern Barrens O:
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