Im not sure if this is connected, but does the Quel'Serrar - questline from DM have anything to do with quelthas. If so, yall think there will be a continuation/extension of the questline?

The changes coming in 2.2 or 2.3 (I forget which) to Kael might very well be the turning point for quite a few guilds to rocket forward in progression as it is.

@Stefan - if it does, it won't involve the old item itself at all. Blizz has said a few times now that they don't want to punish people by excluding them from a quest if they did something like vendoring the reward item. (See Gurgthock's pre-TBC requests for a quest continuation to the Horde-side RFC quest chain)

At Blizzcon, they already showed a -armor enchant for weapons (proc), so it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to put in some new crafting items as well.

I really hope that Bilzzard has learned from Naxx. If they push Sunwell out before the new year then there should certainly be a LONG break before WotLK. I am one of those who never got to see beyond the first boss of Naxx and by all accounts I am very sad that is so. Either way there is almost no chance given that Blizzard is likely to but ZA and Sunwell on the PTRs that we will get both before the holidays. My guess is ZA before the holidays (maybe Oct- mid Nov), and Sunwell later (maybe March?) with WotLK to follow in the summer or early fall.

As an aside, I'm really curious to see how they connect the lore of the Sunwell to Silvermoon City. It would be a very bizzare juxtaposition to have the elves in Silvermoon directing new players to Outland to assist Kael'thas while level 70 players were porting into Silvermoon to assault Kael'thas' forces who happened to be camped over the ridge with Kil'jaeden and the Legion.

Well its no different than turning in Onyxia's head in the Alliance capital while a lowbie is doing the quest that exposes Onyxia as manipulating the crown, is it? The story just operates in parallel for everyone. Your actions do not impact someone else's version of the story.

The travel arguments are fairly tedious. I've played and raided on both factions (Horde to AQ, Alliance from then) and they both have a hell of a time getting *somewhere*. Horde have much nicer flightpoints in Kalimdor I'd argue while Alliance have it easy in Eastern Kingdoms. That being said; I much preferred the Zeppelins to Boats even though they had a tendency to fall through the world and make us find our corpses in Stonetalon Mountains somehow.

I've never even been in Ghostlands though. I should level a Blood Elf on some server and take a look I guess.

At this point I think most people have accepted that lore went out the window once spaceship crashes came into play.

Keep in mind that they have separate teams/people working on separate issues. If most of the 2.2 delay stuff is just the sound then I'm sure everyone not involved in the sound is already working away at whatever is in 2.3. I'm sure it'll cause some delay but you can't necessarily just look at the release date of 2.2 in determining when we'll see 2.3 go into testing.

It'll certainly be interesting level new blood elf alts, with two major 70 raid instances right around the newbie areas. Heck wouldn't the Sunwell be literally right behind the level 1 blood elf starting point?

I hope they change the blood elf goodbye blurb, "Remember the Sunwell!" seems kind of... redundent... if the sunwell is 100 yards away.

Oh I agree, having also raided on both sides of the fence. In my round about rambling way, I was merely suggesting Summoning Stones essentially destroy the entire issue, if indeed it can even be considered one.

Oh... have they announced specific planned changes already? I must have missed it, I'd be interested in seeing what they plan.

I hope they plan to do something to Vashj as well. Yes, she's lower tier etc etc, and she's obviously not as hard, but probably something like 5 or 6% of all raiding guilds, and nearly 25% of the raiding guilds who've ever entered SSC or TK appear to be stuck there. (going off WowJutsu)

I know a lot of people may disagree with this sentiment, but it's a very good idea to make sure that old content gets substantially easier over time. It lets more people see it, for one thing, and it puts the guilds at the tippy-top at a less untenable position in terms of recruitment. Cross-server recruitment really helps, don't get me wrong, but I wish they hadn't made it so close to our only option. Not only that, even the cross-server pickings are pretty slim. : / Something like 250 US Horde guilds have downed Vashj, and I have to figure at least half of those are on PvE servers, and probably a lot of the rest raid on schedules incompatible with our own.

I think we could see a well balanced, "end game" 5 man instance if blizzard delivers a more diverse instance than we're used to. Give us a good mix of target types (humanoid, undead, beast, etc), a good mix of trash mob pack formations (hard single/double pulls, standard 3 pulls, 6+ pulls) and set-piece/NPC involvement on boss fights, and you can pretty much ensure that any combination of classes in appropriate roles (tank, healer, melee, ranged, generalist) should be able to win reasonably.

I mentioned this in my OP actually - but it was payback in AQ40.

Quel means High in the Elven tounge. Serrar can be assumed to be blade, hence the flavour text on the weapon "The High Blade".

Quel'Thalas means the High Kingdom and is where the night elves who refused to cease using magic moved when the well of eternity blew up.

So other than it being an elven blade and having an elven name, no connection.

God, I hope so... it's been on long enough.

That would surprise me given how long the zero content 2.2 has been up. My guess would be later October or November.

Christmas/January sounds about right.

How long did the TBC beta last? I think March is a bit early for the expansion.

They need around 6 months between Sunwell and Wrath, I think. 2 months means that only a couple will see it. And that is a big break.

It is different. You have to run down from Silvermoon, that's enough time to get unflagged, and if you summon people in from Shatt they will be unflagged. It will be pretty easy to get an unflagged group. They you all call out a couple of targets and bam the allies have no healers.

Anybody wondering what is likely to be found at a "sunwell" raid should probably look at the "sunwell" comic/manga trilogy that blizzard put out.

Sunwell Trilogy - WoWWiki, the Warcraft wiki

(Skip below if you plan to read that and hate spoilers)

Briefly, the sunwell's leftover energy/power is now a human named Anveena created by Korialstrasz (red dragon) and is hiding out where the sunwell used to be, along with a few companions. (and cover from the blue and red flights)

Several NPC's from that manga have shown up in game, including Dar'Khan (in Deathholme), Tyri and Jorad Mace (in the netherdragon area in northeast netherstorm) so I'm fairly confident in assuming that events from it are "canon"

I'd guess that any raid in the area involves either the Scourge or the Burning Legion finding her and going after her. Maybe even both!

Depending on how that's arranged, It's fairly easy for blizzard to "lore" justify a portal to the area for people to help, either by the red or blue flights or by the sunwell itself, so that would make travel easier.

This. I *so* hope that future Heroic dungeons will use this sort of unlocking mechanism. It means you don't have to run an instance a bazillion times to get the rep unlock it, *and* ensures that anyone with Heroic access is likely to have a certain minimum gear/skill. Backflagging late starters means a single run, not half a dozen. And so on.

Will they be adding a new outdoor zone with the plateau or will they just instance the whole thing? I don't remember how big the plateau was but surley doesn't sound like something as small as ZG, unless they instance the whole peninsula/island like old AQ was supposed to be.

It really wasn't. AQ wasn't raided by nearly as many people, nor was it raided as long as MC and BWL were, and most Horde were bound in Orgrimmar so the flight was ridiculously long anyway.

Regardless, since the Sunwell is sitting inside the city limits of Silvermoon in a section that isn't currently accessible, you can just about bet there will be a device for characters of both factions to get there quickly-- possibly even a direct portal from Shatt. I don't think they are going to repeat the mistake of the Caverns of Time being so much less accessible than all the other instances in TBC. Certainly, they aren't going to put a door to the most high-level raid zone in the game within spitting distance of level 6 quests.

Honestly, the amount of time that 2.2 has been up is irrelevant in terms of trying to predict when a content release patch is going to hit. While 2.2 will introduce very little in terms of content, it's a complete overhaul of a portion of the client and the introduction of new technology (not just an extension of existing technology, like adding a new dungeon would be), so there's alot of work to be done under the hood. Like any other major systems change, the assorted bugs and delays it brings is going to make it seem like it's longer than it should be for so 'little' added to the game. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Zul'aman is ready to be slapped on the PTR the second 2.2 goes live.