Stardust Tower

Ok, so we at last arrive at the conclusion of this zone, and for all this zones flaws his conclusion is pretty damn good, as with the horde conclusion to this zone it basically acts as a prelude to Stonetalon Mountains and is required for said so, so I mean you could argue this is apart of Stonetalon Mountains but all the quests are in Ashenvale so ye, if you look at questing experience it probably does end up counting as Stonetalon allocation of xp, but in terms of write-ups: It's in ashenvale so I'm writing it up as Ashenvale.

Regardless we are given a few really interesting quests, first we have a gnome who like is trying to put on a sort of russian or german scientist impression, one of the 2 and wants us to collect goblin technology, we have to kill a named goblin, kill elementals in Mystral Lake and save a couple of gnomes from the horde. Getting the technology and killing the named is easy but you then discover the gruesome fate that is about to befall the alliance. A Giant Bomb! You get told to report this back to command, but obviously I'm going to do the quests in the immediate area.

You get the exact same quest as horde to kill the elementals in Mystral lake so I won't go over that, you don't get the drop that the horde do though, which is maybe a little confusing. The rescuing of the gnomes is pretty fun though, although the cart has some phasing issues, you have to catch it at certain points that the driver and the gnomes phase into the world.. a little irritating and presumably a bug but yeh. Once you get near to the cart the driver jumps off and tries to kill you, he is another pretty challenging but not overly so named npc, which are pretty cool I might add. After killing him the gnomes run off back to camp seemingly.

Whilst we are here we get to complete the Dartol's Rod questline, first we do the mirror quest for the horde to kill the chieftain in the village up north. Then we have to kill another chieftain down south, I do appreciate how they moved this named kill quest to right next to this npc, really lovely touch. I don't like however how many furbolg are in the area, there are way too many, there are about 4-5 furbolg literally surrounding this guy you have to kill and overall I think it's a little too many. Regardless killing him leads us to the final quest of this chain: cause a furbolg-uprising. You use the power of the rod to become a furbolg and convince the furbolg being held captive by the horde to go on a rampage, they break out of the cage and go around murdering horde.. awesome stuff :D. You then get a hand-in at Astranaar, since the best time to do this quest is whilst doing the stuff at stardust tower, I really think the hand-in should be there.. but it's inconsequential.

I decided to take the opportunity to hearthstone and spec discipline, I'm going to make a separate post on this because it deserves one really and perhaps isn't appropriate to this discussion. I have to saw though: wow, discipline is just... so much better than shadow for levelling.. my god.

When you eventually find yourself back at Stardust spire you hand in and get given a whole heap of cutscenes, you see the bomb being taken out of stonetalon on the balloon and they are all in serious panic mode and we get led into the Stonetalon series of quests.. basically this area is one giant prelude to Stonetalon and what is going to be happening throughout the zone.

Some final points on Ashenvale, the questing flow just needs some work, with a little bit of work this zone is lovely there are plenty of entertaining quests and with a cut-down on travel time the zone is definitely streamlined, I personally prefer the horde version of this zone, and I will definitely say the same about stonetalon, but the zone definitely works. Now in terms of xp this zone definitely gave way too much, if you don't include Stardust tower xp then I think the xp of the zone is pretty accurate.. maybe slightly too much though not sure.

As with the set item look of this zone, pretty good I feel, there are some vanilla items that haven't been reskinned or re-itemised (read the rewards of the dryad quest in forest song) but I do love purple/pink dresses and it does fit the night elf feel of the expansion, so overall I'm pretty impressed with the set-design.

As always slideshows of this area and the whole zone are here, hopefully they are working because they look somewhat buggy when I'm looking at them :S.

Forest Song

Again, I've previously stated this should probably be earlier in the zone, I admit that I went here too late realistically, but I only went at the logical time realistically. I'm probably going to be quite skimpy with my details for this area, it is basically a complete mirror of the horde warsong area, but in some areas worse and some areas better.

Firstly you are given quests to collect items in Satyrnaar and find a lost Dryad, I really feel like the Dryad quest should be first and then the other 4 quests should be given at the same time so you don't end up going through Satynaar once to collect 2 sets of items and then head back there to kill Satyr and gather more items.. it's a bit urgh. The dryad quest is the same as on live though, collect branch from named Satyr and head back to camp. The other quests are also the same as vanilla, although the Satyrnaar wood quest has been separated from the Warsong lumber and been made into 2 separate quests. Regardless though all these quests would benefit from doing them at the same time, they have great synergy together and I always love doing loads of quests at the same time.

Heading back we realise the hand-in for the Satyrnaar wood is down south by the Warsong camp. You get given a bunch of quests to do demons and kill Warsong. I probably should have done the Warsong first so I will discuss them first, also their quests are different than the other quests here. Firstly we have to collect Warsong lumber, like we did for the live quest, and we have to kill warsong horde and the leader here. Pretty standard quest. I feel like there needs to be much more lumber in the area where the overlord is, since I was a good 4-5 short, but the amount of horde needed to kill is pretty accurate.

Handing it in we get a cool unique quest which is basically steal a shredder and use it to destroy explosives. I really feel like the shredder blades need to 1 shot the hordes here, they aggro really easily to the shredder and the fire rate/repair is just atrocious. However the quest is pretty fun once you realise that if you aim the shredding blade at the explosives and not catch the horde's leg he won't aggro :D.

Handing this in leaves us with quests for felfire hill. These quests feel much better than the horde equivalent, you have to seal portals whilst killing the named demons at the very least, so that quest doesn't feel so "on its own". Most of the points I made in the horde versions of these quests still stand though.

Afterwards you are told to head to the Dor'danil Barrow Dens. I feel like this needs an auto-travel type thing to get there as its pretty far to run there and back. Regardless though this quest has some really nice touches. Firstly the markers on the ground inside the barrow dens are green and not red as they were for the horde. I think this touch is just lovely really, it's really small and you only really notice it if you play through on both factions, but I think thats such a lovely touch. Again you have to kill like the named druids here and collect some essences to allow the forest heart to be moved. I feel like this needs to be a better drop rate.. I don't know but it felt like it was less than 50% and it is on the cusp of 7/8 where I feel 100% drop rate is in order. The quests here are pretty nice though, I had some undead hunter in the cave with me so I had to go hunting for essences for the quest, but if he wasn't there I feel like the quests would have had near perfect synergy, which is always a good thing.

Heading back to Gnarl at the Warsong camp he cleanses the forest heart but like.. the quest just ends theres no follow up or anything and ye you have to just head back to Astranaar for the Stardust Tower series of quests. I feel like this quest needs some sort of travel back to astranaar breadcrumb and an auto-travel to there.. just to make the quests more immersive and flow much better.

Shrine of Aessina

I have already stated how I feel this quest should be in a different place to its current situe in the quest story arc. However, these quests are all really good though, it's just a shame it suffers from the bad quest flow of the zone, if anything I feel like they should be expanded upon.

Firstly you are sent via breadcrumb to see the edunes near the Shrine, he has some amusing dialogue with the human here about his adventures in azeroth.. I'm personally not sure who they are referencing, they were apparently added in TBC, but nothing has come of them on live.. not sure tbh I guess they are a reference to something but hey I can't really tell :<. Regardless though unfortunately that's all you get to see out of them, I did check later there were no quests to do with them :(. Regardless though you get sent down to find 3 night elves in the forest.

This quest is just utterly brilliant, a sheer stroke of genious. It's a Trap! You hand in the quest to chained night elfs you have been shackled by a demoness and bam she ambushes you, she has a lot of health and is like... huge. She is pretty challenging to take down but not overly so, I just personally love the epicness that is "ITS A TRAP" quests ^^. Always fun, regardless you loot her heart and they have to eat it "eww" and then they become free. They give you a follow-up which is to basically kill demons and then "warn" the ancient at the Shrine of Aessina. Killing these demons is pretty easy (other than the fact the fel puppies mana-burn an already struggling shadow priest :<).

However handing in this quest we realise the ancient is under attack by hordes of demons and you have to kill 30 of them, personally I find this number wayyy too excessive, especially since a shadow priest goes oom after killing like 6 of them :<. I feel like the quest needs to give you some form of aoe or "ancient power" to 1 shot these mobs so they go fast, I do really love this last stand feeling though the quest gives, you and the ancient alone against hordes of demonic invaders.. simply awesome :D.

This though ends this mini-questhub, he phases after the hand-in so all the demons are vanquished and you are a hero of the forest. However, again you are given no breadcrumb back to Astranaar, which is a little disappointing in my opinion.

Raynewood Tower

Right, so this is where the questing gets ugly.. firstly though we are told to go collect the tear of elune for the saving the girl quests, pretty standard gathering quest, I really love how they updated this quest for cataclysm, by adding soot to the tear and therefore rendering it useless, pretty cool in my books. This obviously is pretty near the Earthern Ring quests so I did these at the same time, I won't go over the quest really, they are identical to when I previously ran through the area other than I think the end quest was slightly more forgiving than before, or maybe I was just better at it. I'm not really sure ^^.

However, this is when the questing is bad, firstly you are left with no breadcrumb from the Earthern Ring place, that's fine right because you have the quest left to hand in for the saving the girl quest.. but this is where it gets ridiculous.. after handing in the saving the girl quest, after running to and from the earthern ring area, you have to run back to basically the exact same spot again. On top of that I missed the quest for the Dartol's rod questline because you don't have any quest that explicitly sends you to the inn and I simply thought this was the only follow-up, some quest that sends you to get that quest from Raene would be really appreciated, since not getting it makes this zone 20x more painful. This quest needs some sort of automated travel time, or make it so you cleanse the Tear of Elune in Astranaar and then get free transport to Raynewood Tower from the sentinel station after collecting the quest from Raene.. yes that would work pretty awesomely.

Instead though you have to run alll the way back to the area and cleanse this tear, fortunately you get a pretty cool auto-quest, which basically gives you a pretty unique quest to help a satyr seek atonement for his corruption, pretty awesome quest but we'll get onto that later. Now arriving at Raynewood Tower we would get 3 quests, 1) to kill Satyr's, 2) to collect Laughing Sister's corpses and 3) Get part of Dartol's Rod.

Now I have to point out that I did not have the last quest because of the bad quest directions in Astranaar/my blindness, which really made the quest flow bad, but ye back to that later ^^. Firstly collecting the Laughing Sister's corpses is very nice and simple, I also like the fact you need to avoid the patrolling elite guy to get to the retreat to hand in to the dryad.. pretty nice quest. However, the follow-up is pretty damn epic in my opinion. You basically become a spectral tiger and go on a massive killing spree. What makes it epic however is how skill capped this quest is, you die reasonably quickly if you don't realise how you are meant to use the 3 abilities you are given, but once you learn what to do you barely take any damage, have got to love and adore quests that have some sort of skill cap towards them.

Now if I had the Dartol's Rod quest, these 2 quests would have at least some synergy in terms of the area you have to go, I personally don't like how far north you have to go to do the Dartol's Rod quest, I don't like it on live and I don't like it now, it really needs to be much further south tbh. The Dartol's Rod quest is fine though in terms of drop rate and availability of the chest, I just feel it needs to be bought further south somehow or you need to be granted a buff that increases your movement speed for this quest so you can get their faster.

Now... this Satyr quest, boy is this quest annoying, firstly.. the drop rate is horrendous like said before with 5 I would expect a 50% drop rate at worst, but this drop rate is like 25% or something similar, really really too low imo. However, that isn't what makes this quest annoying. What makes this quest annoying is the debuff these Satyrs give you: -100 spirit. For a caster of my level that makes me go into the negative spirit.. I had around 50-70 spirit, so basically I was just going through my 1.4k mana pool in 1 and a half mobs, that's pretty bad, I mean I know my situation is exaggerated because of the fact that I was a shadowpriest and their regen is attrocious at the moment, but yeh this definitely concerned me.

The other thing that was really infuriating was that because I had specced into twisted faith (The Shadow Spirit->Hit conversion talent) the -100 spirit meant I had around a 50% chance to miss with my spells with the debuff up. I have no idea if this functionality is intended, that negative buffs of spirit affect hit rating in this way. But if it is I HIGHLY suggest removing it, it's ludicrous that I should be punished for spending points in a practical talent on 1 stupid quest that decides to debuff me with -100 spirit. However, the quest at least redeems itself with the hand-in, which is quite seemingly brilliant. The Satyr phases into a night elf upon "sacrificing" itself to save this girl. Truly lovely ending to this quest here, the phasing is near seemless. I mean I want to add that I personally would prefer to be a satyr over an ugly male night elf.. at least try and redeam yourself as a female night elf^^. Regardless though, the phasing is pretty sweet here.

The last quest here (again, if I had done this right) is another pretty unique quest.. you basically have a "feign death" item which basically means you lose aggro from the bears in the questing area, you use this feign death to grab the item and avoid fighting the elite located here, pretty awesome unique quest here. Not seen a quest like it really and I think it's just a lovely quest tbh.

Now a few things need to happen hear, Raynewood Tower needs something.. it either needs a sentinel station so you can travel on nightsabers back and forth between Astranaar and here or it needs a flightpath. I think for immersion purposes it should probably have both, but if I was to choose one it would be a sentinel station, just because you could have far more immersion by having one of these here rather than a flightpath. It definitely needs some form of travel between here and Astranaar though.

Heading back to Astranaar though gives you a follow up for Dartol's Rod and an end to the Saving the girl questline, where she is unsurprisingly saved.

Now, if all my points were followed this would work out perfectly and you would only have stardust tower to go to along with the quest with Dartol's Rod, which would really flow lovely in the zone, however because they aren't I have to do the Shrine of Aessina and Forest Song before then so ye ^^.

Astranaar

Ok, lets not beat about the bush, from this point on the questing experience takes a somewhat downward slide. I want to note this is not because the quests are in any way bad, it's just the fact that they don't flow together.. I'll say that it's much better to have bad quests that flow well together than good quests flowing badly together, since you end up forgetting they are good because of all the travelling you have to do to them.

So firstly arrive in Astranaar and are given a load of quests.. firstly I don't like this at all, considering some of the quests are about protecting astranaar it seems utterly ludicrous to be given quests to do other errands when they need your help to protect astranaar from the horde. I suggest phasing out all the breadcrumbs and make the "saving astranaar" quests the only quests you can do before proceeding onwards. I also feel that offering the breadcrumb to forest song *this* early is a bit urgh. Basically you offer it at a time when it's not prudent to head there, because you have quests in the immediate vicinity. So it gets relegated to "go there when you are done with the quests here, which is definitely not its place in the ashenvale questing experience. I'll come back to this point later.

Onto the actual cool quests though.. well astranaar is under horde siege and you need to... put out the fires!! Oh how the mighty have fallen seemingly ^^. Regardless the quest is pretty cool interactivity wise, there probably aren't enough "clear-cut" fires in the town, I was basically aiming at what I thought looked like fires and presuming they were. Also the aiming for this quest is a little off, sometimes you hit the fire and it goes out, other times it just stays there.. I also don't really like how your work goes un-noticed.. there's no phasing showing the buildings not being on fire anymore it's just.. hey you did all that for nothing, which is pretty disappointing.

However the follow-up is pretty damn cool you get to ride a Glaive-thrower and shoot down Horde wind-riders, nothing fancy with this vehicle quest just a shooting gallery really but it's pretty awesome imo just because the glaive-thrower controls are really nice and you only get one shot per rider because of the energy regen.. it sort of works out really well. Now this is when we should get the furbolg quests and the Elune's tear quest (although more on that quest later) once we have cleared the horde out. The area does phase now slightly so you don't see the fires (would have liked that one quest earlier) I don't think the wind-riders are still above Astranaar but I might be mistaken here.

I'm going to comment that the "Shrine of Aessina" Quest hub, (which I'll cover in a later post) *should* be here, It obviously isn't available now and only becomes available at a really weird point in the zone.. it would make so much sense to add that questline here so that the zone has better quest-flow. Regardless though you go and kill some furbolg and loot a quest starting item about troll charms.. pretty standard really. Handing them back in leads you to the quest you got on the horde side for troll charms. However, heading to this cave leads you to that green furbolg I commented on in my horde post, he does give a quest for the alliance. By the tone of his quest I can see why he doesn't give this quest to horde, but it is very strange that he is friendly towards them :S.

The quest is a simple "kill a named" quest where you have to kill the chieftain, he was actually pretty tough to be honest, however he was both tough, manageable and rewarding for doing so, which is definitely a good thing for any quest, the quest map shows him in the wrong position in addition to the points above. Now whilst in this chamber I came across a caged tauren druid seemingly, in bear form. I presume this is a horde escort, but if it is there definitely needs to be a quest pointing towards it, the place where the cage is, is miles away from the area where the troll charms are in the cave and if you don't have the map fully zoomed out (for which the default is fully zoomed in) there is absolutely no way you would see this escort. On a future run-through I'll add an addendum to the horde post regarding this quest.

Now.. handing these quests in leaves us with a breadcrumb to the "Earthen Ring Volcano" quests, which I have covered in my horde write-up, they are entirely identical to the horde quests however with the lovely touch that the goblin npc is phased out and a human "female" (presumably worgen) is in their place. I presume that the worgen npc in the Astranaar inn will be updated to cataclysm worgen model/textures and is simply an oversight using the old models.

Mostly the bad quest flow is in the next write-up :(, However I want to point out that the "Forest Song breadcrumb" should be available after both the Shrine of Aessina questlines and the furbolg corruption questlines are available. I also would like the Tears of Elune quest and the Earthern Ring breadcrumb quests to only be available after the forest song quests are completed. This would just lead to a far more streamlined and quest-friendly zone.

Maestra's Post

Cracking on with this area we are left with a quest to go to Maestra's post. This is a problem I have with most of the zone actually you get like left with a semi-conclusion to a quest and no breadcrumbs whatsoever to a new area, just quests in your inventory still. This is the "vanilla school of thought". It basically is like, hey lets give you lots of choices to go to different areas and quest but not link any of them together. I don't really like that.. I always feel there needs to be quests leading into other quests, even if its a simple breadcrumb leading back to the original quest-hub, it's just nice to have quests lead into each other.

However you arrive at Maestra's post and are given alot of quests.. pretty exciting :O, since Maestra's post is under attack from 2 fronts. I choose to do the against the horde series of quests first, since 1) It's right in front of you as you enter and 2) the horde are more menacing, you get a pretty nifty new cataclysm-esque quest where you are given a squad of sentinels to help. This seems to be one of those quests you associate with a new expansion, there are a lot of these quests that send you out with a squad of troops or quest givers in some cases and just have them help and kill shit :D. You just have to kill a bunch of hordes, but hey thats pretty fun and having a group of sentinels is awesome. I don't really like though how if you engage a pack of 3 all the sentinels attack the target you pulled and let the other 2 bash on you. It would be nice if they acted more like offtanks and just attacked the mobs you weren't attacking so you don't fall on your face and die :D.

The follow-up is just as cool you have to sneak through the horde and recover some items off fallen paladins who used to be here in the post, I didn't really feel that nostalgic because those guys gave awful quests, but regardless ^^ the quest mechanics are pretty cool. Feero Ironhand was incredibly hard to spot though, he definitely needs some sparkles to attract where he is, he basically just blends into the shrubbery and I was on low graphics settings so I can only imagine this gets worse as you increase in them. It's cool that you have to fight a warlock at the top to get the item. I would maybe appreciate a slow fall on the cloak, because any accidental drop down from the base of the tower at that small cliff gives you fall damage and basically results in your death since you cannot use the cloak in combat.

The follow-ups are also pretty synergetic. They involve you taking the battle to the other front against the furbolg, basically its a kill quest and an activate items quest. They are pretty synergetic and the animations on deactivating the moonstones are pretty nice with them visibly turning off. Good quests really nothing much further to add. The last quests involve you going west and killing tentacles.. oh how I love killing tentacle quests.. always fun :D. Basically the quests involve killing tentacles and the faceless one here. You get the quest in the field aswell from the keeper located here, which is always cool for immersion and a great way to hide the fact somebody is dead in the objective screen. I also really like the quest which involves you using an item in a beam of light, I feel like this is a pretty unique twist to using an item.. by having a massive bright beam to use it in especially in the dark surroundings of the area.

Now heading back you get 2 breadcrumbs to Astranaar, now in a future slideshow I actually come back to Maestra's post and realise there was a third breadcrumb, if you look in the pictures you can see there is a question mark located here and I was obviously blind and missed it. This third breadcrumb gives you free passage to Astranaar. Maybe Maestra's post should also have a flight path but I think that is either way considering you can use the sentinel station to travel to and from Astranaar, I was just too dumb to notice :(.

This area is pretty short but the quests are pretty exciting and engaging and the area went very quickly, which is always a good sign for a quest hub imo. I perhaps feel this zone needs a more climactic end with a fight against a horde leader at Maestra's post, but this isn't entirely necessary and the quest flow works here. This is the last point at which the questing flow is really good though :P.

Next up is Astranaar O:.