Hyjal Dreams

[Lahire]

Hi,

Though I see topics about ideas for Outlands, I have personally zero interest in the place, as I find it ugly and unappealing since WC2. There is another place that triggers far more my imagination, and was done more dirty by Blizzard in retail than Outlands : Mount Hyjal.

Here are some constructive suggestions to do something with it, based on what we have in the vanilla files, and what we know of the place.

1. What we have :
Here is Hyjal in its vanilla glory : https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwi ... 0727214242
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Hyjal_Summit

The zone's topography is complete, but empty. It needs to be populated with characters, villages, quests, storylines, etc. A good zone should have consistent gameplay and storyline themes ; not just a juxtaposition of random quests. So what could be those themes ?

2. Gameplay general pitch :

• I suggest making Hyjal a strict 60 zone. The first true end game zone. The idea comes from FF XI : zones dedicated to push max level players above the edge not with more levels, but with gear, reputation, tokens and other grinds/rewards. In FF XI, these zones only have elite mobs. But here, we can have a mixture of solo progression and sub-zones with elites. Like the open-door dungeon of Arathi Highlands. It follows the layout of Hyjal, as there are demon-wasted parts and more welcomy parts.

• This 60 zone should be difficult to access. I suggest 2 doors. The first one is from Winterspring and is already in place. It lies among 60 elite demons. It would be the only open door accessible to a new player. The second one is the locked door in the Timbermaw Tunnels, as depicted in this research post : www.reddit.com/r/classicwowplus/comment ... d_tunnels/ The player could unlock a key during his adventures in Hyjal to authorize him to return from a safer passage (Timbermaw).

3. Storyline general pitch :

• The aftermath of the third war let Hyjal in a dire situation. Nordrassil has been deeply wounded. The water from the Well of Eternity is corrupted by fel magic and its consumption made most wildlife and furbolg denizens go mad. The remnants of the Legion are still walking around the place, digging tunnels (wow rpg book), and infiltrating Winterspring from Hyjal (Darkwhisper Gorge).

• With the help of his allied npc and players, the Player must investigate the demonic activities, find their causes, and try to heal the mountain and its world tree.

4. Into Hyjal : our allies

• Our point of attack is this existing quest : https://classicdb.ch/?quest=4842 it is an elite quest asking you to investigate demon activity in the south of Winterspring. These demons come from the corruption of the Hyjal Well of Eternity, which water is making wildlife and furbolgs go mad and reinforces the remnants of the Legion's army. This quest should be expanded into an introductory quest chain that leads you into Hyjal.

• Timbermaw Furbolgs are strongly linked to Hyjal. These furry dudes are the last non-corrupted furbolgs. During WC3, the furbolgs inhabited the tunnels under Hyjal (the Barrow Deeps). They also guard a door to Hyjal. The clan has also a direct interest in purifying Hyjal : the place is ridden with their corrupted kind, and is to this day slowly corrupting them through bad water. Timbermaw could serve as an allied faction, and quest givers, for the Hyjal adventures

• Allied to the Timbermaw and players are, ofc, the Cenarion Circle. Nelf druids have also a direct interest in purifying Hyjal and should be quest givers. But I thought, as they already have the Silithus Hub, it would be less interesting to give them this entire Hub. Half/Half Nelf and Furbolg would be more thematic.

5. What about Illidan's Prison ?

• The vanilla map contains a nelf den. Players have made the theory it could be Illidan's Prison, but it's not instanced.

• I suggest making it the end of the storyline told during quests. After your long investigations about demonic activities, all clues point to this place as one of the points of origin. You discover a giant demon has slained all the nelf who occupied the den and made it into his lair. This is a 5men dungeon, or open-door dungeon, with a demon boss at the end, a step more difficult than Scholo/Strat in tuning (MC tuning ?).

6. But... why would I go there instead of raiding ? Am a reward-trained player, I don't explore if there is no carrot!

• Timbermaw Reputation : the easiest way to make Hyjal relevant is to give it a reputation grind with rewards. We can invent one (like : "Cenarion Expedition Extraordinaire Band of Cool Chads Dudes" or whatever). Or we can flesh out an existing, relegated and sad reputation grind : our friends the Timbermaw (yes I am a bit furbolg obsessed, but it is consistant with Hyjal). If Hyjal quests give reputation for this faction, and the vendor recieved more interesting rewards, you have a solution.

• Second solution : grind hyjal tokens to obtain offspec T1-like sets. I call them : T1B set. I love the idea of horizontal gear progression, by giving the player new gear sets aimed at non-meta specs. My reward system idea is to leverage elite outdoor demon mobs : the players receives a signet (like argent dawn one). If equipped, elite hyjal mobs loot tokens. Then, the players can give a NPC T1 pieces and X tokens. He receives in exchange the corresponding T1B piece, which is a recolor of the T1.

• Example : the druid T1 set is only for healers. You give it to the hyjal npc, and then receive a version... for Moonkin! (with +spell instead of +heal). Or for cat! Same for war tank->war dps ; or for arcane mage, etc

• The ability to obtain the T1B set could be hidden behind the Timbermaw reputation grind (some pieces at friendly, others at honored, etc... need exalted to have the 8/8).

TL;DR of our Hyjal Dreams :

A lore-rich zone made into a strict-60 endgame zone. It emphacizes outdoor elite grinds, quest chains and rewards as powerful as MC (Raid 1 tier), but different in flavour. It encourages team up for grinding, like Silithus or FF XI. It makes relevant a niche reputation, and has perhaps 1 or 2 dungeons, or raids (but that's not the focus).

Enemies could be : demons, crazed furbolgs, fel wildlife, nelf ghosts, (fel red orcs remnants ?). A fel orc camp could be really cool init.

What I like about outdoor elite grind is : it is easier than a dungeon to make for the turtle team. Copy-paste elite mobs, put the adequate vendors, and done. And it is a gameplay loop very oldschool (everquest, FF XI, etc), but not really usual in wow vanilla (designers didn't like grinding). So it would feel different in this particular game.

[Cervantes]

Really cool idea :)

[Bayanni]

Horizontal gear progression seems like a great way to lure in players to explore the content. No critiques initially, sounds amazing.

The hubs focused on Timbermaw will be ultimately prohibitive even with quests at neutral reputation due to just how boring the rep grind to neutral is. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually for it, but there are no quest hubs that require a rep grind to utilize. The closest you have is Brood of Noz, and one quest giver outside of AQ is hardly a hub. CoT is changing that, possibly, but still it's a huge grind for that rep and you get some near BiS rings out of it. It's unlikely we'll see the bulk of the playerbase choose to do a long grind here as well just on the nature of grinds.

I'd rather the furbolg quest stuff be relatively smaller; a reward for those who've earned it but not a mandatory part of the zone. If you choose not to grind timbermaw, you should still be able to access and enjoy the bulk of the content.

I could see the Cenarion Circle there, but would it be unreasonable for the horde and alliance to have left a garrison behind to try and clean up as well? Jaina and Thrall both had bases that, lore-wise, were destroyed but, also lore-wise, there were survivors from each of their armies. If we wanted new factions, it could stand to reason they'd each have their own in the region. This would also give good markers for flight paths.


Demons of course need to be the primary antagonists of the region, but it would be equally likely for the scourge to still have forces present. Additionally, you have the corrupted furbolgs the Timbermaw were probably sealing their tunnels to keep out, the dark trolls, probably some hippogryphs, and animated trees of various sizes as possible enemies or at the very least killable mobs. I'd stay away from making most of these elites, however, and would instead make them 60-62 mobs with elite status reserved for demons and choice enemies of the other species like frost wyrms and corrupted furbolg champions. I get some people might like grinding, but WoW isn't really great for that with it's emphasis on more casual gameplay progression. Avoiding it being pervasive isn't easy but it would lead to more people interacting with the setting.

[Lahire]

Thank you for your response. I have opinions about your post ; some parts I agree with fully, some I don't.

The hubs focused on Timbermaw will be ultimately prohibitive even with quests at neutral reputation due to just how boring the rep grind to neutral is. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually for it, but there are no quest hubs that require a rep grind to utilize. The closest you have is Brood of Noz, and one quest giver outside of AQ is hardly a hub. CoT is changing that, possibly, but still it's a huge grind for that rep and you get some near BiS rings out of it. It's unlikely we'll see the bulk of the playerbase choose to do a long grind here as well just on the nature of grinds.

I'd rather the furbolg quest stuff be relatively smaller; a reward for those who've earned it but not a mandatory part of the zone. If you choose not to grind timbermaw, you should still be able to access and enjoy the bulk of the content.

Your pov would be convincing for any other zone than an endgame strict 60 post-leveling zone imo. The point of this kind of zones is to be difficult to access, to give players a fantasy/goal of accessing it and to discriminate between players who do it and those who just dream of doing it. It is comparable to all the other post-leveling content : there are those who have UBRS or Scholo key, and those who don't. There are those who have Nozdormu's rep, and those who don't. There are those who have Ony's attun, and those who don't.

This segmentation of players is quite important in a classical mmorpg. The point of these games are not to give away all the content to everybody who just show up. The classical design prefers to lure you with litteral dreams and goals. The game taunts you : "you *could* become the guy who can go to hyjal. You just have to grind a bit mate. Do it. Dooo it."

This kind of roadblock is beneficial for multiple reasons :

1. It gives players a personal assigned goal. Personal assigned goals are more rewarding when one achieve them. It feels better to check a goal you decided to do than an in-game achievement. Because you felt like you had agency, even if the goal was designed to be done.

• It stratifies the playerbase between those who have it and those who don't. This stratification creates social interaction. Those who don't are like "whoa where did you get that ?" "How ?" "You're cool dude" "I'll do that when I grow up", etc. That's classical mmo social gameplay.

• The slowburn frustration is actually a good thing. While one grinds up to neutral, they think about the next step. "When I'll be neutral, I could do this, this and this." It's exactly the same feeling as waiting for your next talent point while leveling. It's a gameplay feel intended and pursuited by the vanilla designers ; this kind of timed frustration before reward makes the reward more enjoyable.

• All content hasn't to be for everyone. Let's be honest : the timbermaw neutral grind is really quick and easy to do, not a problem at all. If one doesn't want to do this little of a grind, they will not enjoy a FF XI-like post-leveling zone. So this minimal roadblock can also be viewed as a warning, or a taste of what comes after.

• The content shouldn't adapt to all kinds of players ; vanilla design postulated that it was more intelligent to put in the game things that were not for all people (not everybody pvp, not everybody raids, not eerybody does the long grinds, nobody likes all the classes equally, etc). It's like a themepark : if you design the attractions to be liked by everybody, you design for the lowest common denominator and at the end of the process, the attractions are flavorless, mediocre, bad. You instead want 1 slow attracton, 1 horror, 1 very speedy great loop, etc. And people choose between them. Most will love one and hate the other. That is good design.

I could see the Cenarion Circle there, but would it be unreasonable for the horde and alliance to have left a garrison behind to try and clean up as well? Jaina and Thrall both had bases that, lore-wise, were destroyed but, also lore-wise, there were survivors from each of their armies. If we wanted new factions, it could stand to reason they'd each have their own in the region. This would also give good markers for flight paths.

Yes why not. I haven't think too much about the villages and places yet. All that is in WC3 should be reflected.
I'm not really up for a "contested" mentality though (horde and alliance each to their own). Like with a sub-faction for each faction. Because Hyjal's fate is analog to the world's fate, and merits that faction become united to cure its Tree. Like in WC3, like for AQ, it's a global threat that surpasses faction quibbles.
Ally/Horde remnant camps with some npc, why not.

Demons of course need to be the primary antagonists of the region, but it would be equally likely for the scourge to still have forces present. Additionally, you have the corrupted furbolgs the Timbermaw were probably sealing their tunnels to keep out, the dark trolls, probably some hippogryphs, and animated trees of various sizes as possible enemies or at the very least killable mobs.

Yes 100% to that.

I'd stay away from making most of these elites, however, and would instead make them 60-62 mobs with elite status reserved for demons and choice enemies of the other species like frost wyrms and corrupted furbolg champions. I get some people might like grinding, but WoW isn't really great for that with it's emphasis on more casual gameplay progression. Avoiding it being pervasive isn't easy but it would lead to more people interacting with the setting.

Here we have a clash of vision. I would answer to that : all the game is already designed for people who hate grinding. Leveling can be done solo, all the dungeons are sweatless and all but 2 raids are grindless to access. The grind gameplay is limited to marginal things, like some reps for a mount. Designers were in accordance with you : all the game has been done to be far less painful than EQ or FF XI.

I say : lets expand the design by incorporating a gameplay loop absent from it but usual in classic mmorpg. Again the argument is : all content shouldn't be for everybody. And as all the zones (there are what... 30 or 40 ?) are made to be effortless, why not have just 1 designed in the classical grindy post-game way ? That would add diversity of gameplay instead of adding the same stuff again. That would be more fresh and enjoyable.
The important part is : is there a core playerbase who is madly enjoying it, even tiny ? That's a mark of great design.

Grind activities are madly enjoyed by some players, and madly hated by others. As I suggested the reward to be of MC equivalency, it makes Hyjal activities not "obligatory" for gear progression, but just fun side additions. So, only those who want it will engage with it. Nobody forces the hand of players ; but the activities are here for who enjoy them. I really think that is how a theme-park mmo is correctly done. If you design for the lowest common denominator, or (worse:) force engagement with the content, you obtain retail design at the end of the line.

I understand the suggestion I made has a specific gameplay vision, and that some players could find it repulsive ("yuk I hate grinding"). But I believe sticking to a clear vision, for a non-obligatory activity, makes it more enjoyable. Because some players love it, and most will at least feel that it is a different activity, and so a fresh one, which encourages new interactions. The main new interaction it encourages is : outdoor grouping for grinding, like you do during leveling for Arathi's troll city.

[Lahire]

I would like to assess some principles of RPG design to make my pov clearer:

I recon there are players' intuitions, like "I wanna do all the content, get all the rewards, with minimal effort", that go against good (mmo)rpg design and shouldn't be catered to.
Rpg design is constructed around the process [assigned goal]->[effort]->[(feeling of) reward].

This gameplay loop has strong co-dependencies: the more effort is put in, the more the reward feels good. This effort has multiple faces: loot RNG is effort (because it produces repeated tries). Grind, and time spent in general, is effort. Traveling the world is effort. Making the player think (puzzle, treasure hunt) or read (quest text) is effort.

Usually, the correlation is [time]->[reward], because [skill] is internalized by the avatar in a rpg, and not by the player. But not always, as a purely [grind for reward] gameplay is not enjoyable for all players. There is a sweet spot though: vanilla wow still asks for 6 to 7 days of play to get a lvl60, which could be considered as a massive grind. It doesn't feel like it because it is divided into hundreds of little adventures (quest system).

There is also co-dependencies between [assigned goal] and [reward]. It has been discovered that a series of tiny goals is usually more enjoyable than a big far away goal. The quest system is built around this assumption. It is also commonly admitted that self-assigned goals are more enjoyable than game-assigned ones, because it makes the player feel in control and growing by themselves. It's harder to design, though.

So, the classical rpg design is :

• Divide the huge grind into tiny time sinks

• Each time sink is a goal. If the design doesn't point to it explicitly, but nudges the player to it, it is more enjoyable (gives feeling of discovery, agency and self-growth).

• Effort should be enough to make the player feel they worked for it. Not too great so it seems unobtainable, but each player has a different frustration threshold. The more you want the reward to feel good, and feel special, the more effort there should be.

• This effort is not always time investment, but in a rpg, it should be, as the character progresses in skill more than the player. Time investment can be obtained by grinding, time-gating (like raid timer), drop RNG, traveling, or making the player think.

• The reward is proportional to the effort asked. Tiny effort = tiny reward (some EXP from a quest), big effort = big reward (Sulfuras for example).

WoW has all these components and philosophies, but they are so ironed out and well put together that it feels less grindy than it actually is. It is an illusion produced by the division of the great grind into smol bite-size grinds.

It means a post-game grindy zone can feel effortless even if it actually requires a lot of effort. If it is designed correctly. So perhaps the word "grind" is not appropriate, as it has a bad reputation.

[Augustfenix85]

Sounds great

[Bayanni]

Ultimately my issue with the philosophy of locking a zone behind a grind wall is that, as you said, "Divide the huge grind into tiny time sinks" is a core philosophy of RPG design and I disagree with the assertion that "the timbermaw neutral grind is really quick and easy to do, not a problem at all". It's biggest issue is that it's boring and takes time, especially if you're not the only one doing the grind.
This is the kind of rep you're looking at per mob:

- Deadwood Furbolgs: 5 reputation
- Winterfall Furbolgs: 5 reputation
- Chieftain Bloodmaw: 15 repuation
- Overlord Ror: 15 reputation
- High Chief Winterfall (Elite): 25 reputation
- Grizzle Snowpaw (Rare Elite): 25 reputation
- Ragepaw (Rare Elite): 25 reputation

You can get a grand total of 680 rep for all of the Timbermaw quests before neutral, so you're going to be clearing out a lot of mobs. If you're 60, at least it will probably not be an issue to kill each mob (10 seconds for a normal depending on class, 20-30 for an elite again depending on class), but you'll still have downtime, and you will be killing the same 15 or so mobs for several hours.

Sure, it's not difficult, but there are no marginal rewards along the way and it's joyless, hence the term "grind". WoW design uses rep grinds as cheap time sinks and was meant to keep players playing the game and paying for a monthly subscription. Ultimately, it is designed to waste your time, which isn't inherently bad in and of itself, but becomes bad when it offers very little of the stimulation the rest of the game provides.

Grinding for rep to enter Naxx is a lot more engaging, mainly because there's a lot of ways to do it. You can run dungeons like Strat or Scholo, grind mobs for stones if you want, or do a heap of quests across two different zones plus some spares here and there in desolace and BFD. The Timbermaw rep grind is just killing bears in loincloths. It takes decidedly less time but the Argent Dawn grind "feels less grindy than it actually is" thanks in no small part to the multiple methods to achieve the desired rep level.

If you want Timbermaw to be the primary faction for a quest hub, you need to make getting rep for that hub more entertaining to get. Dungeons, more quests, and maybe a few early quest givers in Darkshore and Ashenvale, or utilize Azshara (it needs so much) for some alternatives. Right now the faction sucks, the rewards are largely boring and not worth it for the level of player we're asking to complete this grind to access an endgame zone. The reward is not proportional to the effort asked, unless you think you'd be able to flesh out the Timbermaw hub enough to make it worth it for an endgame leveled and geared player. After all, if we want everything to be elite every player that enters the zone needs to be raid geared, not pre-BiS, to actually go far, or get into groups. Groups will happen, sure, but it'll be sparse. It's hard enough on this server to get groups for current end-game content like strat, scholo, LBRS, etc., adding another queue to the mix will thin those numbers a little more and make it less likely to occur.

I don't think everything should be for everyone, of course. However, I do think purposefully making an entire zone a slog to get through will just make people avoid it. There's tons of rich thorium in Darkwhisper Gorge, but you will rarely see anyone, even very well geared raiders, mine there. Barely anyone on this server has done "A Crew Under Fire" because it's hard and out of the way and there's very little on offer even if you do it. You could come up with an amazing questline, great impactful rewards, and a whole slew of interesting lore, but if no one plays it the effort will have just been a waste for you and the turtle devs.


TL;DR: Tone down the grindset and it could be great imo. We'll have to agree to disagree.

[Mac]

I think this is a really well written, well researched, and well thought out suggestion, so kudos for putting the time and effort into it. Here are my two cents on the ideas presented.

• Like the OP says, Hyjal really is a finished zone beyond being empty of NPCs. If you've never been, the zone is huge. I'd say it's about the size of Ashenvale. It's set on a linear horseshoe path up the mountains from Winterspring to the remains of Nordrassil, which looks awesome and it's a shame they cut it from vanilla because again, it's essentially complete. That said, despite being linear, there are tons of off-shoot areas that branch off from the main path where you can add enemy encampments and quest hubs. The zone in-game is also somewhat different from the TBC Cavern of Time version.

• Hyjal being "strictly 60" makes 100% absolute sense when the entrance is from Winterspring, an end-game zone, and is guarded by a bunch of level 59-60 elites. Adding more content to 60 is a good idea because I know a lot of people get bored at 60. Something they've never even done before would alleviate at least some of that boredom.

• Having the bread crumb trail to this zone be added to a pre-existing quest is another really smart idea. You could add a follow up quest that tells the adventurers to journey beyond Darkwhisper Gorge and into Hyjal to see what's going on in there, and that could lead into Hyjal quests. At the same time, I also think players should be allowed to skip the bread crumb trail if they want and just walk into Hyjal and start the quests without it (but they'd miss out on getting faction). That's how it works in quite a few zones.

• As for what faction it would be on, as much as I like the Timbermaw, I think creating a new faction would be a better idea. Timbermaw Hold isn't a hard faction to get to Neutral, and I believe a lot of players just do it as they level because it's good XP and it makes entering Winterspring easier, and the associated quests give decent rewards. Thing to keep in mind is, unless you're going for max rep and want to save them for later, you can get to Neutral quick by turning in feathers and beads, which will drop as you do the other quests and if you grind any. The reason I'd be against it is because there are players who have already ground out the Timbermaw faction because it gives some really great tradeskill recipes, particularly for enchanters if I'm not mistaken. It'd be kind of broke to a bunch of tier one equivalent gear to a faction some players already have, and let them all buy it day one and skip all your cool new content. Creating a new faction sets the playing field to almost even for everyone. I like the "Cenarion Expedition Extraordinaire Band of Cool Chads Dudes" idea where it's a new faction made up of Cenarion Circle guys, Timbermaw Hold furbolgs, and other appropriate creatures (dryads, treants, mountain giants, some good boy taurens, some Shatterspear trolls, maybe some uncorrupted wildkin). Have it be a real coalition where they've all come together with one singular clear cut purpose: to cleanse Hyjal of demons by giving it a full body exorcism.

• I also really like the idea of having to fight your way into the zone first but then once in the zone you can do a quest for more convenient travel. Maybe you could tie the Timbermaw Hold faction in here and have a Timbermaw representative offer players a quest where they have to do a thing and also be Neutral or greater with Timbermaw to get access to the backdoor. Like other Timbermaw representatives in the game, this one won't be on the faction and thus won't be hostile to anyone with poor Timbermaw faction. Maybe he could also offer ways to improve your Timbermaw faction in Hyjal as well, like there's some Hyjal corrupted furbolg tribe and you can collect feathers from them for Timbermaw Hold faction. But then if you don't want to be buddies with Timbermaw, you can always run through Darkwhisper Gorge.

• As for enemies, good choice with demons as the Burning Legion is the natural choice here. Zone has several demon-charred areas, and Hyjal itself is guarded by Burning Legion demons. Other enemies could include corrupted beasts, corrupted wildkin, corrupted furbolg, slimes and/or entropic elementals since there are a couple slime pits, and maybe even corrupted druids. Maybe even corrupted wardens from Illidan's old prison. I feel like I've said corrupted a lot but the theme really is demonic corruption.

• I really love the idea of a tier 1b set for alternative specs. I like them being a recolor of T1. TBC had T1 recolors that could be used in lieu of creating all new ones (it also had T2 recolors that I'd love to see added to the game). In addition to the tokens and tier 1 piece, I think they should also require a third item you get from killing a specific mob or mobs. Example: for the wrists items, you just have to collect twenty demon butts from trash demons. But then for the gloves, you need to kill General Imabadguy, who is a dreadlord with a demon crew meant to be killed by a full group, on par with someone like Araj the Summoner. And then for the chest item, you'd need to kill the big bad demon boss man, who is a world boss.

• Speaking of a big bad demon boss man, the way the zone is set up really does seem to culminate with a final fight at Nordassil against an Archimonde-type demon guy. Maybe you could port one of the demonic Eredar models from TBC for the battle.

• I'd kind of like to see this zone be like an open world, non-PVP Alterac Valley where, while doing quests to build your reputation so you can get your T1b set armor and other cool rewards, you're also helping bolster the forces of the "Cenarion Expedition Extraordinaire Band of Cool Chads Dudes" and weaken the forces of the Burning Legion demons, which all builds up to a final encounter with a world boss. For example, you're given a repeatable quest to gather ten shards of wild corruption for corrupted wildkin. Once players do this say a hundred times, the good guys gain a troop of wildkin that will help attack the big bad demon boss man during that fight. Or maybe you summon a massive ancient guardian like in Alterac Valley who helps with the final fight. Or maybe you gather pelts from bears and wolves to upgrade the main army's armor so they don't just die in the first wave of the fight. Heck, maybe even players have to do a quest a bunch of times just to make the boss attackable, and other quests to remove buffs that make him ridiculously hard to fight. Then you have the zone reset with maintenance once a week so players always have a chance to experience it fresh.

• If you do add in NPCs that join the final fight, they should probably wait until a bit of damage has been done (like the raid boss is taken down to 95% of its health) before joining in to prevent a solo player from engaging the fight early and then wiping out all the friendly NPCs. Maybe also let them respawn after some time in case of a wipe.

• If you want to make this a three act story, it could start with Hyjal, lead to Illidan's Prison, and then finally culminate with the Emerald Dream.

Those are my thoughts on the idea anyway. Hopefully not too long winded or rambling. But basically, I like the original idea and hope Turtle Wow really listens to this thread and its OP, and use the ideas as a springboard to create cool new, custom content.