Farwatcher's Glen

Finally we reach the conclusion of this zone, which is actually somewhat incomplete seemingly, we arrive in Farwatcher's glen after taking vengeance on the horde and get given a series of quests to complete up the exploded volcano in the south west of the zone. One of these quests is meant to take you via rocket-pack to the questing area, however obviously this isn't implemented and you have to run around the long way, not exactly an issue since this is beta but obviously something that should be fixed for live.

The quests on the mountain are pretty standard and I would like some sort of interaction with the elite black dragon on top of the volcano, I mean she is just sitting there and you end up killing her eggs and whelps and she does nothing and you don't fight her which is somewhat disappointing, like I said the conclusion to this zone is weird in a sense that it doesn't feel like a conclusion, it's not like the Horde area where it really felt like you could conclude with the bomb exploding and the truly epic lore with garrosh and Krom'gar, the alliance version just isn't a great ending point, personally I would have liked to see some form of attack on the horde with Garrosh having to choose whether to apologise to the alliance or still be made out to be an awe-inspiring warchief, would have had some good dialogue.

If that isn't possible then definitely this last questing hub needs to be expanded somewhat to include a fight with the dragon here, that could easily fit for a nice conclusion to the zone and showing where the true threat should be lying rather than the on-going battle with the horde in this zone.

My overall thoughts on this zone are really good, this zone isn't as good as the horde version, and well it was never going to be, you can't compete with the insanely epic questline of the horde version, but this zone still manages to deliver a pretty good questing experience and some epic moments within it, which is great. The conclusion of this zone needs some work along with decisions about the south east of the zone and the Northwatch area, but other than that I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this zone for alliance.

Mirkfallon Post & Thal'darah Overlook

Heading back to the main story with the bomb we are told to make haste to Mirkfallon post where the bomb has been spotted, cool story really immersing you in a common theme through the entire zone, whereas in the horde that was advancing through the horde ranks on the alliance side it's about saving lives and stopping the bomb, both of these ideas however give you a great sense of progression throughout a zone and a sense of purpose, which I personally really love.

The actual questing here is also really interesting, we get a standard kill quest and another quest which is like, blow up some oil-pumps, which basically involve killing a controller next to it and then using the item dropped by them. Firstly, the controllers call down an orbital shredder, which is pretty damn cool I might add, but it's marked as an elite which is pretty scary and completely and utterly wrong since they haven't got the health nor damage to be classed as elites so I presume this is a bug. What makes this quest note-worthy though is how using the item basically causes a nuclear holocaust from what I can tell, you use it and about 5 seconds later there is a massive explosion!! I think it even pushes your character away when the wave hits you, that's just so awesome.. really I cannot put into words how good that interaction is.

We were also given a quest to meet minx inside, I really love this "Goblin" Pump controller as a gnome wearing a goblin male mask.. classic :D. Basically you are told to grab this log book, nothing too special about that but.. the mobs on the platform are incredibly annoying mainly because of the Orbital shredders they call down, because these come from above if you pull the goblin controller at the top of the ramp they call down the orbital shredder and it lands on the above platform and basically pulls the entire area. Luckily I have shadowmeld and was able to kill the controller regardless though this needs to be somewhat fixed.

Handing in these quests though we have to rush to Thal'darah Overlook because the bomb is headed for the grove, upon hand-in you are swept immediately onto a hippogryph. Fortunately as an experienced wow player, *cough* by luck *cough* I handed in the other quests before the quest to head to the overlook so wasn't left with quests to hand-in here. Needless to say this needs to be an "activate on talking to" type quest rather than it immediately transitioning you to the next quest hub, although that's good for story purposes it really is annoying if you didn't hand in the other quests here first.

Upon landing it seems like it's a race against time before the bomb hits and you are dispatched franticly on a vehicle pick-up quest, similar to the dragonblight quest for alliance. I feel like the gryphon needs to go faster speed whilst sped up, this quest is good for the first 2-3 fly-outs then it just seems like a total chore, really fun quest though and great for the immersion factor here, which I definitely appreciated. The follow-up quest really surprised me though, and god is it awesome, you go out for one last effort to save druids and you basically are just watching a cut-scene of the bomb falling on the grove, but my god is it epic having a massive explosion in front of you crushing your hope of rescuing druids.

There was a slight bug with these quests where I was "stuck" in a parachute whilst on the hippogryph watching the bomb, I actually didn't notice this until reviewing the screenshots I had made because this scene is epic but obviously this is bug and needs to be fixed ^^. The follow-up to this is to exact revenge on the horde and take a glaive-thrower and reap havoc on the horde in what is a mirror of the horde quest with the catapult, I don't do this quest until after but I will just comment on it now, obviously the "bug" id is still on the glaive thrower as it was on the demolisher. The quest was good other than the fact that the number 2 button seemed totally redundant, why would I use it when I can just spam glaives every second using number 1 button. I also liked how this area neatly transitions you to the final area, but I will cover that after this last bit.

The other quests you can pick up after the somewhat epic cut-scene involve trying to cleanse stonetalon peak, which has seemingly been taken over by old god corruption and, tentacles!!! Oh, how I love you tentacle missions. What is better is the fact that these tentacles grab night elf sentinels and dryads, oh hentai references perhaps :). Regardless the quests here have perfect synergy and are really lovely, I always love tentacles and they really have a great aesthetic with Stonetalon peak. Nothing much is explained as to who the old-god corrupting this place is, but regardless it's nice to see tentacle missions :D.

A pretty epic conclusion to the main storyline of this zone I thought, I mean it's no "you are dismissed", because my god that is seriously awesome, but it does a pretty good job of itself on the alliance side.

Northwatch Expedition Camp

Right, so this is one of the breadcrumbs you are given from Windshear Hold, I chose to do this for a few reasons: The breadcrumb only really works taking it from windshear hold, the "vehicle" needed to get to the place is located near here and it is in the opposite direction of the story meaning I know you will not get directed back here, whereas you are more likely to get directed back to the main story.

Continuing on from my point in my previous post, I wholly disagree with giving a breadcrumb against the flow of the story, the quest text about the bomb is really urgent like you need to follow it asap, but its not logical for questing xp to do this, which really goes against the story flow of the zone.

Lets crack on with the area though, firstly I don't know if I agree with the positioning of this vehicle, it's pretty far away from Windshear hold and is the second set of crossroads you come across, which isn't exactly the most logical of areas to look. However the vehicle cut-scene I suppose you should call it is pretty damn awesome and a lovely way to transition to this area.

Firstly we get, what I think anyway, is a great answer to the question of why the cave is so damn big on the horde side, turns out that its a double-ended cave with somewhat mirror quests on the alliance side who "accidentally" opened up a back-door to the horde stronghold. So this time we get a different set of quests, the alliance want to shut off the cave so they can't be attacked by the horde, but before doing so you need to plant explosives save some miners and kill horde assassins.

The actual place for the explosives was really confusing, I feel like some sort of direction was needed for this objective because the sparkles weren't all that helpful and although the pillars were in somewhat logical places I don't think it is really clear enough, especially how inaccurate map objectives look in caves.

The miners quest is basically a pure mirror of the orc peon quest so I won't go into too much detail on that, the other quest is to kill assassins utilising the infra red goggles stolen from the goblins ^^, in a similar quest to the start of the horde version of Stonetalon putting on these goggles marks the assassins on your mini-map and killing them is rather elementary, once killing them however you get a cool auto-quest from the gnomecorder, not sure how he got a hold of it but regardless, to kill their leader.

I really, really think that the leader needs to be shown-up on your mini-map I was running around looking for her, then realising she was right in front of me because I thought she would be marked on the map like the assassins, so yeh.. was rather confused :<. After doing these quests and handing them in you get a nice phase where the roof comes down and the mine collapses :). Pretty nice effects tbh, the only bug was that the infra-red goggles effect kept on until you left the cave, I presume this is a bug and they should be removed once you hand in the quest, but it's a pretty minor qualm.

Now, I particularly liked this next quest since it sort of brings a paradox in the questing world, the alliance want to ally with the grimtotems because the horde have fallen out of love with them, which is true if you go through the mulgore zone, however as the horde you are told to fight the grimtotems because they allied with the alliance, so it seems rather paradoxical and which came first, which I actually like and gives the player whos played as both races an extra immersion of the zone.

The quest though basically gives you a "collect lots of items quest", I like the npc name of Mcweaksauce and seemingly he has been promoted from azuremyst isle to the best chef in all the alliance and has ended up in Stonetalon, pretty nice evolution of characters.

This quest sort of mirrors the horde version, with the exception of killing Kobolds... the drop rate on the Boulderside Cheese is extremely poor, it definitely needs to be 100% like I've argued in previous articles, I would like to add how lonely this quest is, it could use a companion to do whilst out here. The hand-ins though require some cool interaction with the grimtotems, who are like we need big weapons!

So what do you do? you go into the horde mine and collect some alliance crates and kill horde there, great synergy with these 2 quests really, having looked at the area though you can see why there isn't a horde mirror quest here.. I mean what would they do here, theres even a Zeppelin tower here which is un-climbable, so I'm not sure if this area if fully implemented or not. Regardless though, after collecting the weapons you get to go and interact with the grimtotem chieftain, perhaps this is why there is no horde quest to kill him ^^.

He basically asks you to do the alliance version of "buff up the troops", however this version is 20x better, one because it's not a humongous cast time and two, because when using the weapons the grimtotem weapons turn into alliance level 60 pvp weapons, which are just so iconic and awe inspiring. I also like how there are plenty of grimtotem just standing around the chieftain you can just use the item on really quickly.

The follow-up to this is also really awesome, you basically have to kill a series of horde generals, 4 in total, all big named mobs. This quest was really challenging and I don't know if it was too challenging and perhaps there should be slightly longer between the waves but I really loved the feel of this quest, perhaps it could have been enhanced by having a grimtotem strike force with you, which would have been even more immersive, but this quest was a pretty lovely conclusion to this area.

Now from the end of this zone you get a quest that leads you into the southern barrens naturally, obviously I've already stated my opinion on this but yes this does make sense but if this is to make sense this area should be mutually exclusive xp wise with farwatcher's glen or share experience pool with the southern barrens.

That's the end of this post though, obviously I flew back to Windshear hold and cracked on with the main storyline of the zone, "the bomb".

Windshear Hold

Urgh, huge internet problems at home meaning I wasn't able to get these out yesterday and am having to cope with near dial-up speeds most of the day, seriously annoying T_T. Regardless, lets try and crack on with the rest of this zone.

After the epic conclusion of the previous area we find ourselves in windshear hold, which is kinda a mirror version of Krom'gar fortress, we get similar quests so I won't go into too much detail of those (other than the fact that its so cool that the large daddy was replaced by big papa on the alliance side, lovely name twisting for mirror quests.

The difference here is that instead of incinerating the northwatch tents, instead we have to release huntress'. Pretty standard key quest with a pretty decent drop rate. I particularly like how you get a big army of sentinels to help you, what is particularly awesome about that though is they help you kill the elite fish, so the alliance have a much easier time of killing cragjaw than the horde. Now, Cragjaw's interaction with the sentinels did seem buggy, since he decided to grab one of them instead of grab me which may or may not be a bug, regardless I really did appreciate that awesome synergy and would hope for some sort of equivalent on the horde side.

Following-on from this the Big Papa quest seems to have mostly been fixed, or at least it works out for the alliance version, and the sucking up goblins and launching them grants you credit, which is nice :D. Now this particular area is much better constructed as alliance, obviously we don't have a mine to go to so you get told to go to some highborne ruins unearthed in the cataclysm and do the horrible spider quests.

Since I've commented on the spider quest (and how horribly terrifying it is) I only want to make a comment on how I love the debuff effect Queen Silith, I don't think I mentioned it in my previous write-up because I was in total shock and horror about the event, but the fact she launches like mini-spiders and they attach to you and try and nibble and kill you, becoming a debuff, is seriously awesome and a great way to implement debuffs like this.

Moving on to the Highborne area though you have these quests where you have to launch a box at them and they either turn good or evil and you get your credit on the good ones. They seemed to work like every other was good, maybe it was just luck that made it occur that way for me but yeh a pretty nice touch. Now what I particularly liked in this area was the abundance of Relics in the lake itself, whilst I was disappointed with the lack of relics on the surface there were plenty in the lake, which is always a good tactic if quests just can't work in synergy. I.E theres an area free of mobs where you can collect relics.

I would say however there definitely needs to be more relics on the surface, I ended up with like 3 once I had the spirit bound quest completed, which is obviously not enough really, I appreciate there is an area with little to no mobs to complete this quest but I would rather have close synergy and then that synergy being perfect wholly dependent on rng.

Now, in this area there are a lot of named highborne and you aren't ever told to come back to this area, I presume they are linked with a horde version of this area quest that hasn't been implemented yet, they have some interesting lore quotes here and it would have been nice to have been given a reason to listen to all of these, either through a "disguise" type quest or just through having to listen to all of their conversations, maybe it's a horde version of the quest but still.. highborne are probably more associated with the alliance than the horde and it would be nice to have a quest to take in the lore surrounding this area.

From here we get given 2 breadcrumb quests, I'm going to take a time to discuss this because I feel like I'm very torn between them, firstly I like the fact that say the breadcrumb to southern barrens involves you doing a certain questing area in Stonetalon, thats nice because it means you can offer the breadcrumb earlier and it still be relevant later when you want to leave the zone, however I feel like because this is an area you want to actually quest in, in the actual zone, you should be directed to this area first then told to move on or at the place after the bomb events you should get the choice to either go south-east to Northwatch or south to Farwatcher's glen and have them as basically mutually exclusive areas for experience allocation of the area.

Regardless the rest of the area is to follow :)

Windshear Mine

So this zone starts off by having a few quests preceed it from the Ashenvale zone, I made the cut-off point here because all the quests from this point onwards are in stonetalon mountains so it makes perfect sense to include them in said write-up.

I just want to say how great this zone is, even though it doesn't have the epicness of the horde version it is still very well done.

So we get some nice flavour quest text from the gnome, I was amused at the very least I mean it would be amazing if at some point quest text could become audio, I know that is nowhere near in cataclysm's plans but I mean it would do so much for the immersion factor, theres such a difference between reading and hearing in my eyes, reading is a chore and hearing is a pleasure.

Regardless we are told to shoot down some horde windriders, pretty standard quest really perfectly good control on the vehicle and a fun quest though, I particularly enjoyed how you could shoot 2 cannonballs at the same time and shoot down the wyvern and the windrider at the same time.

Handing this in gives follow-ups to press forward the advantage and head into stonetalon, now obviously I was blind and didn't pick up the quest from the gnome, which obviously you should at this point, this gnome quest is particularly interesting as it gives the zone access to auto-questing throughout its entirety, I particularly enjoy it because it "makes sense" theres no Oh lets throw in an auto-quest somewhere to make the quests flow better, theres already a precurser for having auto-quests throughout the zone.

I also appreciate how riding through into stonetalon presents obstacles like do the "night elf killers" from the horde quest actually activate if you go near them riding through, would be particularly great immersion if they did but I'm not sure since no horde were questing here at the time. The actual quests here though are very interesting though, they involve killing elite incinerators by killing a non-elite oil canister on their back and blowing them up. This is really lovely, great way of spicing up kill quests by making your killing more ingenious than simply targetting the mob you want and killing. The incineration of the horde supplies is pretty simple realistically and has good synergy with the other quest because there is just about 1 incinerator per crate.

Handing these in we get up to windshear mine, where "the bomb" has been spotted, I mean this zone is really good at giving you a sense of story and progression and throwing you right in at the deep end. Regardless though we have to do a simple kill and gather quest, but again with a nice twist on the gathering quest. We have to kill orcs and they drop their pay-load, not exactly a unique quest in cataclysm but certainly appreciative of the change up. Now one of the orcs dropped a starting-quest item, I presume the overseers for synergy purposes, personally I would have preferred this quest to be told to go straight to Minx inside the mine instead of going outside then fighting all the way through to minx who is really deep inside the mine.

Heading back outside, there is suddenly panic apparently the bomb is going to blow up an alliance stronghold and we need to stop it, this quest is just so epic really you feel a great sense of urgency, running over to the balloon you can enter it via the enter vehicle setting and you have to blow up the power coupling *before* reaching windshear hold, I just love how you have a sense of time-limit for this quest, sure its a very very conservative time limit but that is also good, you feel like you need to kill this thing asap but you aren't in any real danger of failing the quest.

I am not sure if you are meant to be attacked by the overseers, I feel like you probably are but I aggrod one before entering the vehicle and they continued to attack me so not sure if thats a bug, also it took a *long* time for the balloon to crash after I destroyed the power coupling, again that might be intended I just felt I was standing around waiting for the balloon to crash and me to parachute outta there.

The hand-in is in Windshear hold where the next write-up will continue from.

Discipline Priest

Right, so before I crack on with the stonetalon write-up for alliance I wanted to take a post to talk about discipline priest levelling in cataclysm. I could probably sum it up pretty easily by just saying its about 20,000,000 times better than shadow, but I want to go ahead and explain that, by level 23 you have 4-5 spells you are using on every mob, the rotation is dynamic, engaging and actually really fun. It is pretty skill capped, if you forget to archangel properly you run oom - that's an amazing feature. Let's just analyse a few bits at a time.

Firstly, the biggest perk of the discipline tree is that all the "levelling" talents, or at least the talents that enable the player to dps effectively are all in the first few tiers of spec. This is important, the main problems that shadow has is that you don't get a "feel" for the actual rotation until a much higher level, but as discipline by around level 20 you basically have all the tools you need to be able to dps effectively and level. I mean, that's just great I mean sure you need to have "progression" through a tree so you feel like you are becoming more powerful, but you can do that by spicing rotations up through talents like Pain and Suffering, the fact that your "core" is available so early on is just great.

The fact that discipline is such a good tree and actually you could see alot of merit in it's rotation could spring some arise of a "need" for a discipline dps spec, similar to feral tank/dps. I don't know whether it would necessarily be popular but a dual healing/dps spec similar to feral could have a great place in wow. The necessary tools are there and if you wanted to, I feel like you could easily make the discipline dps tree actually viable in raids. Now I realise this is highly unlikely, and tbh I prefer the playstyle of shadow, but I can see the attraction of discipline and see other people perhaps wanting the spec to become competitive.

Now, the only downside to the tree, although actually I wouldn't call it a downside to the tree persay but more so the others, are the talents arcangel and evangelism. Like or not they are designed for shadow priest mana viability and dps, it obviously has a discipline equivalent so that its a great talent to pick up for discipline in cases of downtime of healing and for overall levelling. Right now though, it is like.. well I need this for all 3 specs whilst levelling, I cannot imagine levelling as shadow or holy with this talent available in discipline and the other trees having no active source of mana regen until level 66 or so when they get access to shadowfiend.

Whilst this talent obviously fits the design for discipline quite well I feel like, it needs to be made baseline if you do not want to implement some of my suggestions for shadow in my other post. 15% mana regen every 15 seconds or so is very big for all 3 specs and at low level it just feels mandatory.

I've stated my feelings about discipline tier 2 already and there is just way too much going on, so making evangelism/dark angel baseline would free up the tree immensely.

That's probably all I have to say on discipline other than the fact that OMG I LOVE HOW PRIESTS HAVE WINGS NOW, this is awesome :D. Gonna finish all the stonetalon write-ups today and the supplements and hopefully start my Dwarf Shaman later.

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.