Prelude to & Silverwind Refuge

Leaving off from my previous post you are now presented with 3 breadcrumb quests to the last 3 questing areas of the zone. I decided to include them all in 1 post because they are all relatively short and well I already have like 6 different posts on this zone, and certainly didn't need another if I could help it.

The first breadcrumb leads you to like the massive volcano that has sprung up in the zone, of course this is an elemental invasion zone and the earthen ring are on-hand to clear up the area of the rogue elementals. You are given 2 quests, 1 gives you access to a personal pet to help kill elites in the area, awesome idea for making the player feel more powerful, and one is for closing up lava fissures to stop the volcano from doing more damage to the land.

Awesome couple of quests here in terms of both synergy and actual enjoyment. You get access to basically a guardian water elemental for these couple of quests to help you combat the elite fire elementals of the zone. It would be nicer if like the elemental didn't just instantly run out of mana and was able to tank the fire elements so you didn't have to worry about it, they are pretty powerful and the fact that the water elemental is constantly oom and not tanking them means you get hit alot if you are a melee class especially. Since you can't take advantage of the freeze the water elemental does periodically.

Other than that though both these quests are nice and fairly easy to complete, plenty of fissures and fire elementals in the area so, completing them isn't an Issue at all. I also love the fact that the leader constantly yells stuff here, it gives a real sense of danger and imminence of this elemental attack. Great for the immersion in this little quest chain.

After handing these in, there's only one thing left to do, DESTROY THE BIG FIRE ELEMENTAL OF COURSE, I mean seriously its a frigging massive fire elemental... that's so cool. You get a vehicle for this quest which is basically an air-elemental which you don't control movement wise, just ability wise. You have a dot, a direct damage spell and a dispel yourself button at your disposal.

There are a few problems I have with this guy though.. 1) the fact that the fight is justWHOLLY unforgiving, the dot that he does does serious damage on the first tick meaning if you let it tick even once you are probably going to fail the quest.

2) The actual spell he casts, Infernal Conflageration IS NOT the spell you are meant to dispel, that is just highly confusing, you are given a spell to dispel fire from yourself and he does 1 spell that he actually casts and you do nothing to it? that's just highly stupid imo

3) The actual spell you need to dispel is highly unclear when it's cast, if you don't have game-sound on it would be incredibly hard to notice you were afflicted with it. This definitly needs some BIG EMOTE if the immolate spell is going to remain instant cast from the elemental boss.

However, the actual theory of the quest is awesome, I don't mind quests that are a little un-forgiving, but they should be because they are hard and not because of slightly dodgy mechanics which are confusing. I also feel this quest is certainly worthy of a blue reward, it was certainly worth it from the difficulty of this quest imo.

The next breadcrumb, which is the one I would have logically skipped if I didn't know silverwind was the absolute last area, was the quest to go to Raynewood Retreat, you simply have to kill a named keeper dryad here, which is a nice and simple quest, and is basically a complete 1-off, nothing really to complain about the quest here, although perhaps he is a little strong coming with 2 adds, but he wasn't that hard to handle. You could easily just put the breadcrumb to silverwind refuge here, even if it makes sense from a story to be coming from Hellscream's watch.

I don't know, but it needs to somehow be worked around otherwise this quest should just be cut.

Finally we get to Silverwind Refuge though, bam theres a massive amount of night elf corpses in the area since this is an Alliance town in Vanilla. There are several quests in the area, and this basically is another one of these PRELUDE TO STONETALON type quest areas.

I'm going to comment on the fact that you get 2 breadcrumb quests here towards the end of this post.

Firstly you hand in your bomb package to these goblins and they are like WAHHAHEHHAHHAHHEHAEHAHEHEAHEHAEHE we can make an awesome bomb out of this, so you are sent out to help the goblins at their production factory. However they need more parts and are being plagued by Night-elf assassins (They really have loads of these don't they). I do like how the assassins only aggro if you are wearing the Goggles, which are pretty suave btw :D. Anyway there are plenty of assassins round where the pieces are and plenty of pieces.

Like I mentioned in a previous post I was attacked by Ursangous here, who is apart of the old ASHENVALE HUNT vanilla questline, whilst the quest text is right for the hand-in here, compared to the other 2 which actually say take them to Splintertree Post, even though they hand-in at silverwind. Like said in a previous post, unless there is an overarching quest to kill them or inform the player you want to look out and kill these animals, they need to be cut as quests. I mean, whilst the quest text now makes sense for Cataclysm, it makes no sense why the player should automatically be killing mobs they don't need to.

Anyway, you also got quests to kill water elementals in the lake right next to silverwind.. along with killing the named. The named npc drops an extra quest, which involves going to see the npc who is now inside blackfathom deeps and not in Zoram'gar. I'm going to say this quest is unintended, it really breaks from the story-line flow (having to go back to splintertree and then to zoram'gar) and well it's not like the zone needs this extra quest. Overall there are plenty of these elementals, but their knock-back is seriously annoying at times :<.

Handing these in leads to the YOUR THE BOMB quest, which is currently bugged in the beta, obviously you are meant to be riding in the shredder basically and killing night-elves as you take the bomb into stonetalon, but I'm going to comment on this later.

Lastly in this zone we are told to kill the local furbolg who are causing trouble and then kill their leader. These are carbon copies of vanilla quests, and again whilst they make sense in terms of MAKING THE PLAYER VISIT THESE AREAS, they are also sort of detracting from the story of the zone. In terms of the actual quests though, they work well if you just kill furbolg working from west to east you clear a direct path to the next quest area, and they don't respawn in time for you to get the next quest complete. Which is to just DEFEND THE HILL till the boss shows up and you kill him. Overall nice quest, but like I said a little detracting from the story.

Now here is my only real beef with both this zone and well the preludes here. Firstly, you are given access to breadcrumbs before finishing the quests in the zone, 1 is to stranglethorn vale and 1 is to Stonetalon. Now whilst Blizzard wants to promote the fact that you can do ANY ZONE regardless of which other zones you have done, I feel like those breadcrumbs should be in Orgrimmar and not in the middle of my questing experience. If I want to go somewhere like Stranglethorn I am going to go through orgrimmar. The newer player will appreciate the linearitty of only being offered breadcrumbs to go to Stonetalon than being told OH U CAN GO TO THE OTHER CONTINENT AND DO SOME QUESTS HERE, which just doesn't make much sense imo.

I'm also really confused as to how transitioning into Stonetalon is going to work. You HAVE to take the wagon to go to Stonetalon, for both the first promotion and so that people who haven't quested in the zone can transition seemlessly to Stonetalon, btw that quest is awesome, I unfortunately encountered some phasing bugs whilst doing this, shown on the screenshots, resulting on some of the text not being shown and not full interactivety on the wagon. Also I had to exit and re-enter the fold zone in stonetalon. However I digress a little from my rant.

My main point is that doing the "YOU'RE THE BOMB" quest is going to mean you end up in stonetalon when you finish this quest, however you aren't going to be able to start the area because you need the promotion quest, both quests are also important in terms of story. This bomb quest is like THE ONLY REASON the story exists in stonetalon, yet it is optional. Also the fact you are a recruit in the stonetalon army at the beginning and work your way up the ranks throughout the zone is also integral. I really don't know how this is going to work.

My only suggestion is that you use phasing, and heres how I would do it: Like if you quested in Ashenvale, IE you did all the quests at Hellscream's Watch, you can't get the breadcrumb into Stonetalon from the commander.. you have to do the goblin quests and make the bomb. Once the escorting bomb quest isn't bugged and is actually do-able, then what would happen is you would deliver the bomb and the wagon that you would have taken arrives and you get enlisted into the army that way.

Likewise if you enter the zone from an orgrimmar breadcrumb you simply take the quest from the Blood Guard and you get enlisted as a volenteer, whilst you see SOMEBODY ELSE deliver the bomb before you arrive, this way the fact the bomb exists isn't so bad. This breadcrumb quest wouldn't lock out the player from doing those ashenvale quests either, and wouldn't count towards loremaster. It would just be a way of allowing people who didn't quest in Ashenvale to be able to just do Stonetalon.

I'd like to also say that the Blood-guard's speech in Silverwind Refuge should only be triggered by you accepting that breadcrumb, and not on like continuous repeat, I never liked those continual speeches which you always end up only catching halfway through, rather than ones triggered by accepting or handing in quests so you can experience the story better.

Anyway thats the end of the zone, A few comments, despite the fact that alot of the quests in this zone are buggy and some mobs are out of place etc, the story and overall feel of the zone is awesome. I would like warsong to be a little more fleshed out, but other than that the quest distribution is great. There are good mixes of awesome and generic quests, and also quite a few unique quests here.

I would prefer if the armor associated with the zone was say more green and foresty, so that it would sort of go with the zone. Like, it made sense the Northern Barrens' armor set was yellow cos well it's the barren's but it seems silly that the Ashenvale Armor set is just a duller yellow, as it really doesn't blend in well with the overall feel of the zone.

Definitly a good zone, and it serves it's function as really just a prelude to Stonetalon, which btw is just an Insanely awesome zone, without doubt the best so far in terms of story, but I'll come onto that in future posts. A perfectly good zone and with the bugs sorted out it will be fine imo.

Hellscream's Watch

Ok, firstly the name of this quest hub is awesome, lore to do with like HELLSCREAM being the leader of the horde and finally back into the action of fighting those alliance-scum out of their precious city of Ashenvale. You get various quests here, 2 are to do with the area behind Hellscream's watch and the Furbolgs, whilst the other focus on the Horde-Alliance conflict.

Whilst I agree that the quests with the Furbolgs sort of warrant being here, I mean close proximity and such, I feel like it detracts from the story arc, perhaps raiding their camp would give us a benefit against the alliance or unsettle the nightelves or something, but I would like it to have good prevalance to Horde-alliance conflict as it sort of detracts from it.

As such, I decided I would to the Alliance-Horde Conflict quests first, because well thats far more awesome than killing furbolgs :). On the Shores of Ashenvale, right below Hellscream's watch is where the quest objectives are, this is really nice although perhaps a little confusing as to how to get down without just simply jumping, which I just did the first time because I'm lazy and can heal :D. There are plenty of spawns of both the clay and the alliance scum, I mean male night-elves :). I would perhaps like the clay to have a few more sparkles so it's a little bit more obvious. However the quest is functional. I feel like they respawn a little too quickly the night-elves though because I had to fight my way back up to the way back up to Hell-screams watch, but that's a pretty minor point.

The next quest is like BAM THE GOBLINS HAVE MADE AN AWESOME BOMB LETS USE IT. Basically the clay you collected, always awesome to see you contributing, has lead to the creation of a powerful bomb. Of course you test it on some beaten down wagon and bam it blows up, pretty decently tbh. You hand it in and you are given an awesome quest of course: BLOW UP THE ALLIANCE IN ASTRANAAR

Basically you bomb Astranaar, which is just simply put awesome. You get to see the glaive throwers from warcraft 3 of alliance and they the archers take shots of you on your vehicle. The quest is overall simple vehicle technology, simply pressing 1 for bomb and selecting the area you want to bomb, simply awesome quest. I also like the introduction of this "FLY BACK" button so basically you aren't limited by like 1 run and having long fly-in's and fly-outs and basically can just cycle until you are complete, especially helpful if there was more than 1 person on that quest at the same time.

I'm going to add here as a sort of bug, although I don't know if you would call it that. My internet decided to die during this quest the first time I did this, a regular dc and not a world server is down message. When I logged in I spawned without a vehicle and fell-down into a fully packed astrannar with loads of nightelves basically trying to kill me. Luckily I was close to the edge so I could Ress without aggroing any night-elves, but like said I don't know if thats a bug or a limitation with the Vehicle Implementation.

Some of the animations for the fly-in and fly-back are just wrong, you sort of continually "jump" in elevations and paths, and it doesn't look very natural, obviously the quest is functional, but of course it would be nice to see this polished.

Anyway, after completing this you are given breadcrumbs to like 3 different areas of Ashenvale, going to come back to this as I discuss the Furbolg quests first though.

Heading North out of Hellscream's Watch we reach the furbolg village and proceed to massacre everything in site. We also need to head into a cave and collect some troll charms. The mobs in the cave do not count towards the other quest, which is really annoying synergy-wise however there are just soo many of those troll-charm boxes that the quest is fine regardless. There are also like a billion furbolg outside in the village, so that isn't a problem either, it's just some synergy between the 2 quests would have been much appreciated.

There is also a friendly furbolg in the area outside of the cave, not sure if he is meant to give you a quest or something, but it seems really strange that he would be there. If he was an alliance quest-giver I would suggest phasing him or making him neutral and non-attackable rather than friendly and attackable.

Now, like I said you get given breadcrumbs to the 3-final quest areas of Ashenvale here, in my opinion this is at least 1 too many. I don't like how there is a breadcrumb to silverwind refuge here, because this is naturally the last area of the zone and well I feel like you should definitly should be led to do the other 2 areas first before heading to silverwind refuge, whereas logically you would skip at least one of them in terms of quest-efficiency routes.

Regardless though, last post of Ashenvale coming up!

Zoram'gar Outpost

Ok, so we get a nice way of travelling between the horde quest hubs here, just simply talking to the flightmaster to get a flight out there. This is just so great in terms of not interrupting the questing experience and well a unique way of bypassing the alliance quest hubs in-between the 2 Questing Areas.

Here, we are given a look at the new look Zoram'gar: and isn't it just awesome, loving the new Horde architecture of war-driven looks and well more crisp instead of say the huts of like a rag-tag disorganised horde, which wasn't so threatening or just awe-inspiring.

Here, we are sort of given a break off the front-lines of the horde-alliance conflict and are instead focusing on securing supply-lines and troops and well investigating blackfathom deeps, onto this later.

Arriving into the zone we get a bunch of quests, 1 to light a lighthouse, unique type of quest afaik :O, 1 to collect some stuff, 1 to kill a load of Naga and 1 to do a sort of Escort.

I'll start with the escort first, because well accepting it makes it automatically trigger. This escort is well... it's exactly the same as it was in Vanilla, down to the handing it into the Warsong runner (apart from you don't gain his report this time for it). Seems a bit weird you would be handing in this quest to him. Onto the actual quest, he takes a painfully long time to get to the actual area we are fighting. He is quite a powerful escortee though, so the waves of Naga are fairly easy to handle, although somewhat annoying that if you don't do enough damage to his target you won't be able to loot the heads of the naga for the other quest. (I would really have loved this quest escort to involve killing exactly 20 naga, it would have been awesome for synergy purposes).

The final guy at the end of the escort isn't too tough, I mean it makes no sense his quest description I mean it made sense when zoram'gar was a small outpost and was highly vulnerable to attack because it was just basically a camp outpost, but now its a ful-fledged fortress pretty much and it sort of makes no sense that this hydra would be able to seemingly decimate, as implied, zoram-gar on multiple occasions. Regardless he's a uniquely colored hydra and falls rather easil.

Now, the next quests involve killing Hydra and collecting parts, both of which happen to be at the bottom of the ocean here. They really need to give a water-breathing buff and/or a swim-speed buff (yes I forgot about water form I suck :<<<<). Really though, the ocean here is really deep and you have to come to the surface around 3-5 times whilst doing this quest, which makes the quest exceedingly annoying. I do like these sort of COLLECT ITEMS TO MORPH THEM INTO THIS NEW ITEM, however some way of tracking them would be nice other than looking into your inventory.

The area is also *REALLY* close to the edge of the zone in terms of fatigue, Reef sharks patrol the edge here, which are like elite creatures designed to deter players from heading into fatigued zones. I could see people accidentally aggroing them, which is always a concern to me. Anyway after killing all the hydra, which there are plenty of spawns of, along with the parts at the bottom of the ocean, it's just they are too spread out if you aren't given access to water breathing and/or a swim-speed buff.

You find yourself returning to Zoram'gar to hand in the quests and like cook your hydra blubber to make oil. A few things, when I had 10/10 blubber it showed me where the lighthouse was on the map for me to go and hand that in, rather than like the forge where I cooked it. Then when I made the oil the quest objectives map was showing I needed to go collect more blubber. I don't know if this is a limitation with the quest objectives, but it would be nice to be shown where to do the quest with the oil aswell as where to collect the hydra depending on what part of the quest you might be on.

After climbing the lighthouse and lighting it, which tbh didn't make enough of a difference to the flame, maybe somebody else had just been here and lit it but I don't think so. It definitly needs to be MUCH brighter when you light the flame to just add to the realism of the quest and of course the immersion aswell.

Now, you get one last quest here to like... get some venison for the soldiers at Zoram'gar a nice quest that makes sense in the story of the lore, it's just its timing is a litte ><, I mean the problem here is you get given all the quests to do with like the Blackfathom Deeps area before the venison quest, and so logically you would be doing these and heading to Blackfathom deeps before going back to do the venison quest. So it just seems rather isolated, having all the blackfathom deeps area quests unlock when you unlock this venison quest would make much more sense in terms of quest cycling.

Onto the actual quest though, there really are nowhere near enough stags. I'm sure there might be loads like heading into alliance territority, but they need to be more concentrated on the edges of the beach in my opinion, I don't want to be heading into alliance territory to get some venison if I can just get it here. Also the drop rate isn't 100%, it's like 50-75% or so. Increase it to 100% please, I hate killing stags in the first place and the fact there aren't really enough and the drop rate isn't 100% is just irritating.

However, yes this is part of the area I love, the fact they kept the Blackfathom deeps outside quests in the game. It's just overall nice to be sort of led into the area of Blackfathom deeps by quests outside the area, allowing any person questing in Ashenvale to unlock the dungeon in the dungeon finder, and well do some quests. I question actually entering the instance to hand in like 2 quests but yeh. The actual quests themselves, plenty of spawns of those Sapphires on the walls, plenty of tide priestesses and the drop-rate on the QUEST STARTING piece of paper was perfectly reasonable. Overall these quests were very nice and easy to complete, whilst giving the player an actual reason as to why you would want to go and do Blackfathom Deeps as an instance, it's lore and story etc.

But yeh, that's it for this zone, you get a breadcrumb to go to Hellscream's Watch after handing these quests in.. so ONWARD!!!

Splintertree Post #2

Alright, so moving onto the second half of this area, on retrospect I probably could have put this in the other post and like it been ok, but I think 3000 word posts are a tad too long compared to like 1500 word posts, which are sort of like READABLE :D.

Having killed the dreadlords of the previous zone, I want to note here how kinda annoying it is to exit the zone of dreadlords, I kinda died whilst trying to run out of here mounted and was like Urgh, did I mention how much I detest the daze mechanic for anything less than 5 levels above you, whilst it makes sense it is incredibly frustrating to play with and would happily see it removed if I could.

Moving up to the road to the brazier for the next little bit of quests, I'd firstly like to point out that this sort of COVERT MEETING type spawn of the quest giver is like insanely awesome, especially the comments he makes about it being totally not secret in anyway :D. However, I feel like the quest Item to make him summoned should be on the objectives pane. It seems silly that it isn't I thought the quest was bugged the first time I tried it because I couldn't find the quest hand-in even though it was indicated on the map and he wasn't there. Adding the Quest Item would at least make the quest somewhat more intuitive.

Anyway the guy is like WE NEED TO KILL SOME NIGHT-ELVES, awesome stuff of course, and chop down some trees. Again, pretty nice series of quests here, the chopping down the trees is especially amusing. The named npcs all fight differently, one has Bladestorm, the other Starshards and the last one is a Rogue with say Evasion. Pretty nice diversity on the mobs. There are also just plenty of mobs so overall this quest was very easy to complete.

Afterwards you are told THIS IS THE BEST TIME TO BREAK INTO WARSONG THROUGH THE NIGHT ELVES, and are told to head over there, I would have liked some phasing with like panicking night elves here to back up his claim, since obviously it is just as hard to break through their lines as it was before.

Arriving at Warsong we see that elven assassins have killed a blood elf diplomat that was supposedly important here. This quest btw is actually really nice, having to sort of walk around and be snuck up on by the assassin you are sent to find is just... so Awesome. The assassin is also really strong, but not strong enough to really kill you, which is nice and realistic and makes you feel some sense of accomplishment. I am not sure if she can only spawn in one position or whether it's purely random, but regardless the emotes and everything make this quest quite entertaining.

However, this zone again feels, urgh incomplete somehow, this is the only quest in the area before sending you away, which just seems wrong considering this is somewhat of a major front on the battlefield of Ashenvale. You are sent to deliver the message the diplomat had, but are given no clue as to what this is, instead you are given a sort of breadcrumb back to Splintertree by collecting roses.

2 points here: 1) There are nowhere near enough roses, I was having to go around for ages to look for them and kill a fair few elves to do it.

2) The roses are damn small and really hard to see, I could imagine colour blind people especially having real trouble with this quest, either make them more distinct or increase the sparkles so they are visible.

However the story of this quest is nice, and is a simple breadcrumb to Splintertree.. I think (might be wrong) that this is the breadcrumb you get from Azshara, completely ignoring Mor'shan Ramparts, but regardless it's a pretty quest.

On a sort of side note.. the map for this zone on beta is incredibly bugged, it's like 3 different versions of the map picture were all overlayed at different offsets, you can see some sort of icons for flightpaths and well it's just a buggy map, most of the pathways are off and the mountains for the borders of the zone are off aswell.

Now, I cannot remember, but I tried to do Rain of Destruction again, and I only got the Satyr quests showing up for me after phasing out of this quest and in again, and not on the quest hand in to Draaka. I presume this is a bug with the phasing of this zone or something, but regardless these 2 quests make you do satyr quests, which are really low level for the level you get them at. I presume they are meant to be starting quests for Goblins when they enter the zone if my hunch is correct, but imo this needs to be streamlined somewhat.

I would also have liked to be able to do these quests whilst out in the warsong area, just so I can minimise travelling time, it's not like there were any major pre-requisites to them as far as I could tell. Anyway, the quests are pretty generic, kill around 16 satyr and close some demonic Portals. I do like the closing the portal quest, it really makes sense considering that's how demons get into azeroth and simply culling satyrs isn't going to stem the flow of demons here.

Anyway, from here we are left with one choice to Zoram'gar! (slideshow)

Splintertree Post #1

Ok, lets crack on with the Ashenvale write-up: I've done the Stonetalon zone, so that will be done soon with the pictures at the very least uploaded to my gallery.

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 :).