Off the Rails

I'm now about a quarter through the Dragonblight. I'm seeing level 77 people in a zone that's supposed to be level 72-74 and I actually ran out of quests at one point. Doing both the Fjord and the Tundra before the Dragonblight certainly seems to be the expected path. I eventually found a rather large Taun'ka village at the western edge of the zone, which is obviously the starting point for those who finished the Borean Tundra. Doing their quests opens up the main questlines for the zone: the integration of the Taun'ka to the Horde, their war against the Nerubians, the Wrath Gate and the Wyrmrest Temple. So yeah, Horde is definitely expected to clear the Tundra for the storyline to work.

I keep having the feeling that I'm doing something wrong. I get a quest to defend a Taun'ka chieftain against a Crypt Lord.. except that I don't need to do anything. The Crypt Lord just literally drops dead. Then I get a quest to disrupt the resurrection of Grakkarond, the forefather of the Dragons.. except that I don't need to do anything. Finally, I get to the main attraction in this theme park, the Wrath Gate. The cutscene is nice.. but the dragons just finish talking as the cutscene ends, so I have no idea what they were supposed to say. I start the Undercity siege questline and get a nice buildup at Ogrimmar, where Sylvanas, Thrall and Jaina are talking about sieging Undercity. They make me a portal and instruct me to join Vol'jin outside Undercity, which I do.

At Undercity, it seems that there's a siege going on. The orcs are cheering and the catapults are pummeling the outer walls.. but there's no defenders. I talk to Vol'jin and he tells me to talk to Thrall. There's an Orgrimmar portal behind me, which I cannot use. I'm guessing that Thrall will arrive soon. Any minute now.. Zzz.. I wait about half an hour. Maybe he's already inside. There's some more orcs there and even some at the Trade Quarter. I get to fight a few patrols of renegade Forsaken, but this siege is definitely less epic than advertised. I finally make my way to the Royal Quarter and.. nothing. No Thrall, no Sylvanas, no Varimathras. I get a momentary buff from both Thrall and Sylvanas, so they're around here somewhere.. and then everything respawns. An Abdomination pulls me to him and promptly twoshots me. I think I had been walking on the tracks of this particular rollercoaster and just got run over by the next set of cars. I do a corpserun, resurrect as far as possible from the Abdomination and keep mashing Blink.. but he pulls me back to him and oneshots me. I try again, with the exact same results. I double-check that I'm actually running the release version instead of the beta and log off. If I'm going to have to burn some experience points to get away from this mess, I might as well get some rested experience first.