Firstly I want to state a few things, 1) This zone looks fairly incomplete, I mean the quests seem to be all implemented and inplace but the quest flows are way off, alot of quests lead to dead ends or are just "hey lets randomly travel for 20 years to get to a quest objective". The zone definitely needs a lot of work.
2) Like darkshore this zone needs more flightpaths, but unlike darkshore this zone NEEDS them, in Darkshore the questing was very linear and in 1 direction whereas in Ashenvale the questing is all over the shot so needs the flightpaths for stability.
3) I probably did the quests in the wrong order that they would be intended, I may also have missed some quests because of some horde boomkin killing quest givers in Astranaar. (Sometimes I question why these people bother to play a beta test, it's pretty sickening to just down right deny beta testing for some people). I'll try and list some sort of optimum quest flow in my last post on the area.
4) I probably am slightly too predjudice on my zone, the fact that shadow was so bad and I had to drink after 3 mobs and ended up using 55 drinks in the zone (and I only bought them when I first got to astranaar) is pretty bad, I apologise if my feedback is somewhat skewed by the dreadfulness that is Shadow levelling right now.
Ok, with those points out of the way lets crack on. Firstly I want to comment on how.. unintuitive it is to go ahead and purchase a ground mount. You obviously should be dinging 20 when entering or just before entering the zone and since Ashenvale is a good 20 bazillion miles from Darnassus it's really really annoying to go and purchase a ground mount, and it really is necessary for this zone. I would suggest that there be a riding trainer plus mount vendor at Maestra's post, I'll get onto this questing hub later, but there is a "sentinel station" there and it would be really streamlined if you could purchase a mount there. Even if it was just a temporary one for the zone (because of how big it is) it would be a great bonus.
Actually entering the zone we end up at Orendil's Retreat. You are given 2 quests in Bathran's Haunt and an extra quest once you get there. The quests to kill horde and collect Bathran's hair are well synergised, I feel like there are slightly too many horde in the area though and perhaps toning down on their number would be ideal, it was especially annoying by the Bottle of Wildfire objective. I also appreciate the change in model to the Bathran's hair, since before it was really small and white on live and the thick bushy brown item is much easier to see and collect. The quest is pretty intuitive though, grab a bottle of wildfire and burn Bathran's corpse and then return, it synergises well with the other quests, if there were slightly less horde as previously said.
Regardless handing in these quests gives you a choice between heading to Maestra's post "as quick as possible" or going to Zoram Strand, I don't really know how I feel behind the text on the item that is the breadcrumb to Maestra's post.. it implies that is the most optimum place to go whereas in reality it is always going to be more optimal questing wise to head towards the Zoram strand. Perhaps adding in an extra quest for the "saving the girl" type quests to collect some items in the zoram strand and then delivering them as soon as possible to Maestra's post would be the most ideal way of linking these areas together.
Heading to the Zoram Strand we see there is a new alliance encampment here, and a flightpath.. it's nice to have a flightpath right outside the instance entrance to Blackfathom deeps ^^. The quests here are to collect 10 items and kill 15 naga. There was a distinct lack of statues nearby the quest camp and only really near the Horde base to the south could I really find an abundance of statues. I feel like this is because some worgen had just finished questing here and had taken all the statues that spawn nearby so I was forced to head further south to the Horde encampment, regardless though the quests have reasonably good synergy. The Wrathtail Wave riders had an annoying "bladestorm ability" that meant I could not mind flay them. I don't know if you can mind flay when a warrior is bladestorming on live but I feel like, just because I cannot slow them I should be able to do damage with my "signature" abiltiy.
I know this is a little offtopic but I'm going to discuss my feelings about quest numbers in this next paragraph, maybe I should discuss it in another post but really I'm still going to discuss it in the Ashenvale posts so I'm going to discuss it now. Firstly, I feel like kill quests should only ever have a maximum of 15 kills, beyond 15 it is quite demoralising to kill 20 random npcs. If the quest objective calls for more than 15 it should be because the enemies are really weak or you are using a vehicle/have some external buff etc. Note though this only applies to individual objectives in a quest. For example in the naga quest above you could say ask to kill 10 Wrathtail Wave Riders and 10 Wrathtail Sorceress' to bump the amount needed to kill up to 20 and that is better than asking to kill 20 outright. Obviously there is a point where this breaks down, but I prefer small and numerous objectives rather than one massive chunk you have to swallow.
My second point here is drop rates.. This is a big issue, especially with this zone, with questing in wow. I feel like there are some "golden numbers" that you need to follow when assigning drop rates.
1-3: Minimum 25-50%
4-7: Minimum 50%
8+: 100%
I feel like once I get told to collect 8 items or more they need to be a 100% drop rate, since anything 50% ish is pushing you above that 15 mark I talked about, which is just demoralising. I would rather see a quest that told me to collect 20 items and them being 100% drop rate than do a quest that asked me to collect 8 items and them being on a 50% drop rate. Even if it means I take longer with the 20 items quest I at least know exactly how long it's going to take me rather than setting me up to be disappointed by the drop rate and the quest feeling longer than I expected it to. This isn't exactly related to this area specifically but I feel like random chance drop rates only have a place sub 7, and even then only 50%+. I feel like on some quests it makes perfect sense that they have a random drop rate but just make them require less than 7 rather than asking for something like 10 and putting a drop rate of 50% on them.
Anyway, back on topic of the zone these quests are basically carbon copies of Vanilla quests, down to the interaction upon hand-in requiring more help. I presume this quest should still be here in cataclysm, since it flows well and obviously the alliance have an encampment here so there needs to be some quests flowing out of the hub. Regardless you are told you need to kill a named naga npc.. Lets be frank here she is ridiculously tough for this level, she has about 100% more health than any mob in the area and has a ridiculously frequent knockback that knocks you back pretty far. You can't even use the pillars to stop you from being knocked back because she knocks you onto a ledge and she evades. I can understand knockbacks, they are a pretty fun feature really, but they need to be far less frequent. There are some mobs, like this one, that knockback like every 8 seconds.. a knockback should be a 30 second cooldown.. even on mobs, otherwise its just really unfair on casters trying to kill them.
Anyway that's it for this starting area, I want to note that my comments for quest flow only really start to kick in when we get to Astranaar this area flows really well, other than the silly choice to choose between the Zoram Strand and Maestra's post this zone has a nice flow about it.
