I'm still pissed over the gnomeregan event. Damn thing was doable in 30 fricken minutes and couldn't be replayed once complete. Personally I'm holding out for a full blown raid at some point.

Absolutely. The "event" accomplished nothing. A very nicely written quest chain that ends precisely where it began. Gnomeregan's irradiated and Thermaplugg's still inside.

The Gnomeregan event did at least establish that the gnomes have a starting area and a faction-oriented goal. You have to consider that actually purging Gnomeregan would mean removing content (the Gnomeregan 5-man), and I understand why Blizzard would be loath to do that, even for an instance they've admitted had too much trash and was in sore need of a second look.

Consider Blizzard's goal: create an event that helps to catalyze the creation of unique starting areas for Trolls and Gnomes. That mission got accomplished, and while the catalyzing event itself (Gnomes want to retake Gnomer from Thermadork) was NOT accomplished, Blizzard's goal (Create a Gnome starting area) did.

Do I think Gnomer is near the top of the list for dungeons to get a Heroic Mode in order to bring that story to a close, as they did for Deadmines? Sure. But aside from fulfilling the promise of Heroic Deadmines/SFK from the Cataclysm announcement trailer, I don't think they're in a rush to re-design ALL of the Classic 5-mans.

Time will tell.

I would like to see Blizzard entertain cross faction races. Taurens fighting with the Alliance or Humans with the Horde would be cool.

Operation Gnomeregan while maybe not successful was fun as hell. Plus you got the token to transform yourself into a gnome for 30 min every 4 hours. Not my fault you guys didn't have 6-7 toons to do it on like I did ;)

I think Gnomeregan could have received a revamp closer to what the trolls got, without replacing Gnomeregan the instance. There's already a rather large non-instanced area leading to the dungeon - just throw that whole section away, put in a brand new pretty version that feels semi-town-like, and make sure there's still spots that connect to the "Irradiated Gnomeregan" instance.

Then again...didn't the Gnomeregan Invasion quest only take you into the non-instanced portion? My memory isn't really helpful today.

I miss the old deadmines. I hope they don't change gnomer any more than they have. I am one of the few who likes it. The Gnomes need a new city, something befitting of their engineering prowess. Something unique. We already have floating cities, skyships and barges.

It was way too short. I'm die-hard Horde (but do have a few draenei that I play from time to time) and so none of my Alliance chars were high enough to do it. However, my fiance plays both sides, so I watched over his shoulder as he did it.

Aside from some funny dialogue at the end of the final fight, it was disappointing. Now, the Retake the Echo Isles event (which my troll hunter main did on the first day when everyone was doing it, which made it more epic) was awesome and gave a totally revamped starting area that doesn't feel like it was shoehorned in. We don't, however, have our own dungeon the way the gnomes do (it's in Orgrimmar, the Orc stronghold).

Yeah, there's definitely no troll-lore centric dungeons... ZF, ZG, ZA, ZD, Gundrak... nope, none at all.

@Buran

What level were they? I seem to remember running almost all my toons thru there including a lvl 12-14 alt I recently made at the time. The only thing they couldn't do was the last couple quests where you got the token to change yourself into a Gnome. You had to be lvl 75 to do that. Otherwise you could do 90-95% of the content. And as far as the horde one being more epic because "everyone was doing it" the first couple days on Alliance (at least my server) not only everyone was doing it but I ran into friends who were running thru it a 2nd 3rd time on their alts as well. Pretty much everyone was doing it on both sides for i'm guessing the first 4-5 days. And from what I can remember it was a pain because the Gnomer finale was bugged so that one person could cause a restart of the last phase.

Matt, I think the new ZG is different enough that it technically counts as two troll dungeons. :)

I probably could have done it, true, as they range (now) from 10 to 45, roughly, but I'm still content with having gotten to see it. And a friend from Alliance (this was before realID) whispered me once from a lowbie troll he'd rolled to try the Troll event.

Ah well. I don't regret it much as I did get to see it. I do think it's a real shame that everything reverted back to the status quo (still irradiated, still not entirely "there" yet) but the new starting area is definitely an improvement.

Whatever races they add in the expansion after next (the next is the caster heroic class) you can be rest assured that the Alliance will be screwed again.

So very true. I was so excited to play a Worgen, but as soon as you leave (make that, run away from) Gilneas, you never go back there.. you land in darnassus and pretty much level like a night elf. Don't get me wrong, I love the night elf starting area, darnassus is my main's stomping grounds. But the worgen story kind of ends there.

However, leveling an undead and getting to see the other side - totally awesome! They actually have quests and flights and such in Gilneas. I thought the Worgen should have something going on there too, it would have been nice.

I leveled my Goblin to 20, picked up my trike in Org.. and haven't played it in a while. I will go back to it.. not sure how fully integrated the Bilgewater story goes. Though I do remember doing quests in Twilight Highlands for some of the Bilgewater goblins, so thats nice to see.

THIS.

Unfortunately, according to Blizzard's new system it is doubtful whether they will do this, as they are trying to spread the functionality of the entire system to all races. This is why they eliminated class quests; this is why new quests all contain equipment that is pretty much equalized to all races/factions, minus a few points here and there. This is why so many random events happen so infrequently now (when bosses could actually be dragged to capital cities) and even the economy is controlled with an iron fist.

Obviously this has all been done to cure the disease of players stripping the game of any fun factor by taking advantage of these kinds of events or quests, and with Blizzard's increasing focus on PvP balance (with class-specific skills) as they move toward a more casual gamer environment (PvP), it's doubtful they will do anything but small implementations to assuage dutiful subscribers. Even turning leveling into a weekend chore (from 80-85 in three weeks for many people) it is quite apparent where the focus is going.

If they ever decided to add material to the current races, only the sky is the limit. Being able to return to Kazan (and fighting in the infested (one would assume by elementals) Kajamite power plant dungeon), putting a quest chain for both factions that leads up to the Battle of Gilneas which has you tromping across the whole continent, putting in heroic versions of older dungeons (heroic Maraudon, woot) and instead of offering just weapons and armor, offering mounts, collectible items, and reputation rewards, putting level 85 quests in lower level areas to encourage going back to older areas not only with alts, and so on.

Honestly speaking, there is so much they could do for end-game players and sprucing up older areas, there isn't any need to continue adding new areas the way they have been. Just giving more options to level 85ers that doesn't require stress but entertains, the way most games should be, is definitely something to strive for.

I currently have a level 85, but really the only places for him to go are either doing lower level quests for the second or third time, grinding rep, or sloughing through heroics which most of the time don't actually reward him with much (unless he does it for a long time). Raids are impossible as no player is willing to have a casual player take part in a high-level raid who has never done it before.