There's a war on? Maybe it's just because I'm Alliance, but most of the time I could have sworn we were at peace.

I haven't played as alliance post-Cata, so I don't know what the experience is like there. But on the horde side, the quests in Silverpine, Ashenvale, Stonetalon, and South Barrens all centered around the war vs the Alliance. Maybe some of the other zones, too, I haven't seen them all yet. Desolace has at least a little of it, too, where you get to raze Nijel's Point as a firestorm (not that most alliance could even pinpoint Nijel's on a map).

I've heard that Swamp of Sorrows has an alliance quest line where you destroy Stonard. I suppose that otherwise, with Southshore gone, there aren't many spots in the eastern kingdoms where horde and alliance are directly interacting.

Aside from the conflict with the alliance, one element that appears in the questing that you didn't really get from vanilla is a sense of danger or urgency in the storylines. Like, we're under assault and you need to do this [b]now[/b] to save us! As opposed to, eh, kill some boars and get back to me when you're done. It makes the quests more compelling, IMO.

As Alliance, it depends on your route. If you head through Elwynn - Westfall - Redridge - Duskwood - STV - Dustwallow - Thousand Needles - Tanaris - Un'goro - Silithus, you should hit 60 without any real Horde/Alliance animosity, bar a few sniping comments in Tanaris for instance.

Horde on the other hand get filtered through either Hillbrad or Ashenvale (both 15-20 zones), so get at least one front of war (Stormpike or Night Elves respectively) introduced.

@Blayze It's not a war. It's peacekeeping operations.