KWPro.net

A few days ago I finished up Thousand Needles. At this moment, I need only a few more zones before I can say that I've done most of the accessible revised Horde questing zones. Based on my experience though, I found and have a suggested optimal path in terms of questing that's possibly the least painful:

• Starting Zone (Any; they're all easy)
• 10-20 Ashzara or Silverpine Forest
• 20-25 Ashenvale
• 25-30 Stonetalon Mountains
• 30-35 Southern Barrens
• 35-40 Western Plaguelands
• 40-45 Eastern Plaguelands
• 45-50 Felwood
• 50-56 Winterspring
• 50-56 Un'Goro Crater
• 56-60 Blasted Lands

Why did I choose this path? It's the least irritating in my experience. Some areas like Feralas or Desolace aren't that bad and there's always at least one annoying quest per zone. But thus far, these areas proved to be the most fun as far as I'm concerned. You could exchange some areas like Hillsbrad Foothills for Ashenvale or Desolace and Feralas for the Western/Eastern Plaguelands, but it really depends on your class, professions and general taste for questing style.

Now, spots I recommend avoiding are the following:

• Northern Barrens (contains some old quests that do not show up on the new quest helper feature and feel less organized and more grinding)
• Arathi Highlands (only 16 quests for the achievement, but there's more in the zone. The ones that are from the Horde fort I believe are remnants from the old questing system. Also, when you go to the castle, you'll be facing quite a number of mobs that have a high spawn rate. So if you like killing, this isn't a bad place)
• Desolace (some annoying underwater quests and the demons in the first questing spot have a high spawn rate. Not so bad for rogues and herbalist though. The Burning Blade fortress wasn't a fun spot though)
• Thousand Needles (again lots of underwater quests. You get gear to help you, but it's the Grimtotems questing spot that's awful. If you're a class dependent upon stealth, you'll be paired with someone to help you. That basically takes away from your stealth ability).
• Badlands (I hated this area the most of the new, highest anticipated revamped zones. There's a series of quests where you have a small party to control, but it's a little hard handling them. Also, the shooting quest and the two little underground puzzles just made me never want to visit this spot again).
• Searing Gorge/Burning Steppes (I didn't care for either region)
• Silithus - Didn't feel revamped at all. Blasted Lands is far more rewarding and has more quests for the achievement.

This is just my preference based on my playing style. So far, I've taken a hunter, protection paladin and now a druid through these areas. Each of them had the three different gathering skills (skinning, mining and herbalism respectively). Now, I didn't go through the exact same route each time. I made my questing selection based partly on gathering opportunities (except for my hunter, whom I leveled fast without making any assumptions about each zone). When I play my druid, I like to stealth past all the mobs and just perform the primary quest objectives, maybe killing 1-2 along the way if they're near some herbs. In the case of my paladin, I could easily drill through multiple mobs, but my aggro would be higher. In my hunter's case, I found her to be the toughest in spots where I would have to control another party member (or more). But whenever I'd find beast type of mobs, I'd be more inclined to kill them for the leather. So again, everything boils down to your preferences.

While questing in the revamped questing zones, I never once queued for an instance. So my overall experience is based off of doing pure quests, killing mobs and the occasional gathering. I didn't use heirlooms either. Lastly, the experience levels are based on the suggested zone level. In truth, after all the mob killings and quests, if you generally attempt to go for the achievement, you'll find that up until around 50 or so, you'll be exceeding the suggested level for that zone. However, I found that once you hit around the 50's, you'll still need another zone before hitting the upper 50's range. That's why I suggested both Winterspring and Un'Goro Crater. Probably when you're around 56-57 or so, you should hit the Blasted Lands last for the final levels to 60.

Why 60? Why not 58? It's all about the flying mount, especially when you hit Outlands. Outlands isn't as friendly quest-wise now that Blizzard has revamped many of their zones. So having that extra help to get the flying mount by doing a few more quests works well, imo. You can theoretically just instance grind for a while. But for soloist like myself, you can use a spot like the Blasted Lands to get that extra push to 60.

One thing I have to say is that all these quests were done on a PVE realm (Saurfang). Your mileage might vary on the PVP variants.