I have very mixed feelings on this design-set it's very.. pyjama-esque. I actually like the design alot, but it doesn't fit in with the zone really, this is a zone under rampage from alot of air elementals and the twilights hammer but I've decided to wear my pyjamas :D. The design though is really pretty, just I don't know what zone it would fit in, maybe a zone like Tanaris or 1k needles would fit in well, but here it just feels like the opposite of what my character should be wearing, don't remove the set though it's pretty and me being the fashion conscience guy want it to stay in the game :D.
Heading on to the actual quests you get told to head to Malfurion (OMFG FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP) in the middle of a cyclone, and I mean this cyclone/vortex looks pretty scary heading towards it and you have to head into it to speak to malfurion, I don't know but this felt pretty damn epic and the perfect place to have the Powerhouse that is Malfurion, I know I've mentioned this in the Teldrassil series.. but Malfurion is a sexy beast, I really would love male night elfs to get this type of model.. he is the only male night-elf (other than illidan for obvious awe reasons) who I actually like the look of, he looks "macho" and wise at the same time, the look is just really awe-inspiring.
I also want to say how I love the fact we get to interact with Malfurion in this zone, interaction with major lore characters, like in the stonetalon zone aswell, is always a good thing. I only wish Tyrande would get off her ass and be involved somewhere, maybe she does I don't know but not in any zone I have done so far :(. This area also has a really good quest setup, you have 3 mini-questing areas to recruit allies for malfurion, they each have their own great personal touches. We intend to invoke the help of the wildkin,furbolgs and Ancients in the area.
Firstly I went north, again since I picked up we were generally going in a linear fashion directly south towards ashenvale, it made sense to do the quest that involved going north first. Firstly, I love the name of this npc, I don't know if this is a reference to boomkins or not, but the name "Ar-oom" is just epic, maybe even add in that hyphen just for the amusement factor. Regardless all these quest places involve you doing a couple of quests in the area, this area involves collecting feathers first. This is a bit more annoying than it needs to be, although the feathers seemed to be in pretty plentiful supply they were pretty hard to spot since the sparkles just blended into the background and the model for these feathers is probably around 50% of the size it needs to be, they are pretty damn small.
The last quest here involves you killing a named npc and collecting a flame from his corpse, pretty standard quest really, nothing particularly wrong with it. The hand-in though is a bit annoying, the quest completion either phases or spawns in a flame right where you naturally stand to hand in this quest and this really fucked up my camera in the zone, perhaps making the flame spawn further towards the entrance so you avoid the camera issues I was facing with it spawning directly on top of me. The little interaction here is great though, with the added bonus that all the wildkin turn green once handed in to Malfurion (I was silly and didn't check/don't remember if the wildkin were friendly after doing the flame ritual or only after handing into Malfurion. Regardless its a nice little immersion, I also love how the wildkin gets phased into the area around Malfurion, regardless of the order you do the quests they phase into where Malfurion is... this is just such a lovely touch.
The next area I went to was the ancient of war here, he basically seems to have gone AWOL on the elementals here and wants you to kill even more of them, pretty easy quest but I don't like how the elementals patrol, it was far too easy to pull 2-3 accidentally here, and whilst they aren't particularly threatening it is just annoying :D. This is just a 1 quest area and heading back to Malfurion he again phases into the area, pretty simple quest design here and I actually really like this quest style though, where you do alot of meanless quests towards a larger goal.
Heading on over to the last questing area we see the furbolgs are under attack by fire elementals, so obviously you need to go kill them. Again a generic quest but the environment here is really nice with the scorched earth and fire elementals, plus theres a real reason you want to be doing this kill quest.. to save cute furbolgs :D. As a follow-up you get a typical defense/king of the hill type mission. This quest is pretty good though the fire elementals spawn pretty quickly to kill this totem but they are totally not threatening and you have just about enough time to kill them all before the final fire elemental shows up. Pretty nice quest and action-filled for a king of the hill, always better to verge on the side of "too-action packed" in a koth type quest rather than a waiting around for 20 years for spawns king of the hill quest.
Heading back to malfurion we now have all the creatures phased in to help protect Malfurion, but there is one more powerful ally.. a Green Dragon trapped in the emerald nightmare. Pretty nice quest here really, I feel getting to the actual cave is a little more annoying than it needs to be because of the cataclysm and having to drop down into the river and then up a small crevice, but it isn't exactly bad just maybe a little annoying. The quest here is pretty nice though, head through a portal, kill some nightmare fiends and then ride out on the emerald dragon. Pretty awesome ride out towards malfurion.. unfortunately though the world server decided to crash halfway through my ride so Idk if there was some cool rp on the landing, but hey :(.
You get a cool quest to conclude this area though, typical sort of bombing mission riding up on the green dragon and killing twilight drake riders and a portal, it's a little weird how killing the portal means it has to respawn immedietely otherwise you wouldn't get enough drake riders, perhaps make this somewhat 2-stage bombing run so you have to kill riders then kill the portal once you have enough for the objective. Also theressa is visible on the ground when flying down when you are supposedly riding her for the quest, obviously this needs to be fixed somehow so you can't see her whilst riding her, just for the added immersion factor.
Regardless though thats the end of the lovely immersive area, really I enjoyed this zone because it felt like a race-against time with the awesome lore figure that is Malfurion, pretty fun :D.