Are you pleased with this content tier?

[Fordel]

The Lich King has already mocked my efforts to foil him in a dozen quest chains!

Ya, my first thought to this was, WTF? You can't finish a quest without banging into the Lich King ranting at you about something. He's been around more than any other boss I can think of.

Anyone ever try to go up the steps to Utguard Keep when you have that shadowworld buff on you?

I did better, I Moonfired the prick. 

[proudft]

I mean, his most notable evil act in Wrath so far is to create an army of Death Knights who promptly rebel and join his enemies. GENIUS PLAN THERE, BRANIAC! 

I'm not sure what genius you're expecting from Dr. Claw.

[kildorn]

Again, the only annoyance I have with Arthas showing up every 10 minutes to kill one of his officers is that he has no alternate text for death knights.

He acts like he doesn't remember your outright betrayal, implies we don't know the power of the scourge, and that some day we will be death knights in his service. <3 All I want is a "YOU? Oh, an extra fuck you to you, bitch!"

[Khaldun]

Yeah, consider Illidan in contrast. One "You are not prepared" and then the guy just goes and hides out in his temple, mattering about zip and nada to everything in Outland. I couldn't even really tell what it was that he'd done that made him the Badass That I Should Want to Kill Someday: it was that obscurely buried in the lore. The Lich King is Snidely Whiplash by comparison: dude is everywhere, twirling his mustache. (Plus, hilariously, when he's reduced to the size of most player toons, he looks seriously pudgy.)

[Ingmar]

Yeah, consider Illidan in contrast. One "You are not prepared" and then the guy just goes and hides out in his temple, mattering about zip and nada to everything in Outland. I couldn't even really tell what it was that he'd done that made him the Badass That I Should Want to Kill Someday: it was that obscurely buried in the lore. The Lich King is Snidely Whiplash by comparison: dude is everywhere, twirling his mustache. (Plus, hilariously, when he's reduced to the size of most player toons, he looks seriously pudgy.)

Yeah in general they did a much better job with it than they did in TBC. Things I would be targeting for improvement if I were them:

1) there is no quest lead-in to Naxx at all at level 80. The closest thing is remembering it hanging around there from when you were doing quests at level 72-73. Not good. This was acutally done better in TBC, even if Kara made very little sense, at least there were quests having you do stuff there for *some* reason.
2) Another thing TBC did slightly better, was provide lead-ins and reasons to go to the one-shot encounters. The Hellfire Peninsula instances built up to Magtheridon in a clear obvious way; likewise there was a LONG series of quests that set up Gruul. Contrast to Malygos, who we largely forget about after we run Violet Hold at 75, and Sartharion who we don't know why we're killing at all unless we read their shitty tie-in fiction. I think this needs to be worked on for future patches/expansions.

[Vash]

1) there is no quest lead-in to Naxx at all at level 80. The closest thing is remembering it hanging around there from when you were doing quests at level 72-73. Not good. This was actually done better in TBC, even if Kara made very little sense, at least there were quests having you do stuff there for *some* reason.

There is a major quest chain that explains how KT and goons are back in action in Dragonblight, but it is Alliance only from their quest hub there right next to Naxx.  So it's only a half fail since only Horde has no clue what's going on with Naxx, instead they get to initiate a new variety of cow into the horde and have a ton of quests beating up the Scarlet Onslaught.

2) Another thing TBC did slightly better, was provide lead-ins and reasons to go to the one-shot encounters. The Hellfire Peninsula instances built up to Magtheridon in a clear obvious way; likewise there was a LONG series of quests that set up Gruul. Contrast to Malygos, who we largely forget about after we run Violet Hold at 75, and Sartharion who we don't know why we're killing at all unless we read their shitty tie-in fiction. I think this needs to be worked on for future patches/expansions.

The whole point for most of those lead-ins is that they were part of the horrendous cock-block attunement scheme that TBC started out with.  If there's no attunement process a majority of the playerbase won't bother with specific lead in quests and will be just as clueless lore wise as they are now.  I'm not sure if creating special lead in quests in the Wrath era is justifiable in a player use per dev. time sense if they aren't just part of the normal leveling quests in a particular zone.

[Ingmar]

1) there is no quest lead-in to Naxx at all at level 80. The closest thing is remembering it hanging around there from when you were doing quests at level 72-73. Not good. This was actually done better in TBC, even if Kara made very little sense, at least there were quests having you do stuff there for *some* reason.

There is a major quest chain that explains how KT and goons are back in action in Dragonblight, but it is Alliance only from their quest hub there right next to Naxx.  So it's only a half fail since only Horde has no clue what's going on with Naxx, instead they get to initiate a new variety of cow into the horde and have a ton of quests beating up the Scarlet Onslaught.

Those are the level 72-73 quests I am talking about (the ones that eventually lead into Wrathgate.) IMO, not good even for Alliance. There should be at least some lead-in quests at 80 I think. It gives a chance to hand everyone a nice bit of setup loot too, or whatever.

2) Another thing TBC did slightly better, was provide lead-ins and reasons to go to the one-shot encounters. The Hellfire Peninsula instances built up to Magtheridon in a clear obvious way; likewise there was a LONG series of quests that set up Gruul. Contrast to Malygos, who we largely forget about after we run Violet Hold at 75, and Sartharion who we don't know why we're killing at all unless we read their shitty tie-in fiction. I think this needs to be worked on for future patches/expansions.

The whole point for most of those lead-ins is that they were part of the horrendous cock-block attunement scheme that TBC started out with.  If there's no attunement process a majority of the playerbase won't bother with specific lead in quests and will be just as clueless lore wise as they are now.  I'm not sure if creating special lead in quests in the Wrath era is justifiable in a player use per dev. time sense if they aren't just part of the normal leveling quests in a particular zone.

The stuff I am talking about was unrelated to attunement. You didn't need to attune to either of those encounters; they were part of the attunement for others, but the setup content I'm talking about is the whole blood-of-Magtheridon stuff that runs through the 3 Hellfire 5 man instances, and the long chain in Blade's Edge killing Gruul's kids etc. If you do it through 5 mans like they did with Hellfire you don't even have to have quest lead-ins necessarily.

[Vash]

Well the only reason a majority of people did the long quest chain in Blade's Edge killing Gruul's sons was to .... open up daily quests in O'grila.

As for the intro to Magtheridon via the Hellfire instances, you have basically the same thing for Malygos with the Nexus, the Occulus, and the lead in quests in Coldara that introduce you to the whole Red dragonflight trying to stop the Blue dragonflight. 

I guess I don't have a problem with them doing that sparringly since it would get old really fast if they did it for every raid instance, not to mention it's not really feasable to do it in cases like Naxx and OS where there isn't any related 5 man content.

I'd rather there be a cool intro event inside the new instance (like they seem to be doing in Ulduar with the first boss) or a related world event to spice things up when they introduce raid content than just a new generic quest chian that hands out the related lore in paragraph format. 

I think its because after reaching max level, and having leveled so many different characters over my time in WoW, and now doing dailies for money is the norm, I get sick of normal quests by the time I'm ready to raid on a given character.

[Sjofn]

I do think Ingmar is not giving the Malygos lead up enough credit, although I don't recall being given a REASON to go the Occulus besides the daily quests. Even one feeder quest to go in there (and does it really count as a "regular" quest if it's a dungeon quest? I say no!) would be a nice refresher.

However, the Sarth instance is idiotic for giving not even a tiny whiff of why the hell you would be in there. Again, even one quest to send you in there would be a big improvement. It doesn't have to be a giant quest chain, but someone actually sending you there with a goal would be nice. I do wish Naxx had a Kara-like quest chain (minus any attunement of course), where you need to go in there multiple times for more steps, simply because you are going to be going in there multiple times ANYWAY, and I doubt it really would eat up that much time to write.

[Soulflame]

Isn't Sarth linked to the black dragon that visits the commander on netherwing ledge?  I recall her coming in there and berating the guy about needing more netherwing eggs, and I believe the twilight drakes are a result of tampering with the netherwing eggs they were grabbing on netherwing ledge.

[Chimpy]

Sarth is linked to the whole Dragonblight dragon aspect questlines. I think there may even be a random dragon NPC or two that talk about the Chamber of the Aspects and such underneath the temple.

I think if people were to pay more attention to the quests and what the various NPCs say in those chains, it would make more sense. But most of us blasted through them while levelling and did not even realize that they were actually an attunement chain for O.S. (at least one person in the group has to have completed it for people to zone in).

Though overall, I think it is more that they need to get the Black dragons back into the villain business after a long hiatus.

[Ingmar]

I read every word of those quests and there was not peep #1 about Sarth. There's plenty about Malygos, and oddly a whole chain about the magnataurs, but even the black dragon quest givers don't mention Sartharion. I'd be surprised if there was an attunement involved, but I guess that's easily tested.

You might be right about the random flavor text NPC, though, I will have to check for that.

[Fabricated]

Sarth is tied to one of the WoW novels I think. Yech.

Playing around on the PTR I'm pretty happy with the 3.1 patch. The Zul'Aman patch had less content IMO and I loved Zul'Aman despite it being yet another troll raid.

[Trebes]

Sarth is tied to one of the WoW novels I think. Yech.

Playing around on the PTR I'm pretty happy with the 3.1 patch. The Zul'Aman patch had less content IMO and I loved Zul'Aman despite it being yet another troll raid.

Zul'jin was just that awesome.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, I definitely read my quest text more than (apparently) most, and there really is no mention of Sarth at all. And I ain't reading no shitty-ass WoW novel to find out his deal either.