Northrend’s Lack of Inter-Zone Fluidity

Is it just me, or do the quests in Northrend seem much more disjointed than in the Outlands and the Old World?

In the original game and in Burning Crusade, as you worked your way through a zone’s quests and came to outgrow the zones, some of the last quests would take you to the next zone. They might be trivial little quests like, “We’re concerned about This and That; go talk to So-And-So over in the next zone and see What’s Up.” These quests wouldn’t be difficult at all, nor would you get a large reward or a lot of experience. But they served a very important purpose: they kept you going on to the next zone. They kept you moving about as smoothly as possible from the zone you just outgrew to a new one that would test you even more and hone your skills to an even sharper edge.

Northrend doesn’t seem to do this. Several times now, I’ve had to ask in General chat, or look online to see where I was supposed to go next. I would work through the quests in an area, and that would be it. There wouldn’t be any “Go talk to That Guy over there” kinds of quests. There would just be no more left.

There have been quests that move me between different settlements in the same zone, but the transitional quests have been severely lacking.

I’m wondering if this is by design, or if it’s just poor quest planning. They could have done it this way to try and promote exploration; getting players to new life and new civilizations, and find quests on their own. But this goes against the gameplay they developed throughout the rest of the game. Or is it a simple lack of communication between teams assigned to different zones?

Whatever the case, it’s caused me a fair amount of frustration and confusion. My only solace is in the hope that I’m not alone.