Gilneas City and Gilneas, the two parts of the Worgen starting zone. The Worgen are one of the races that will need to quest to get out of the starting zone, but once you make to Rut'theran Village the questing party is over and you'll need to start following the new Blood Thirsty rules.
Now, those of you who know me know I have voiced several times that I will not run a worgen for ANY of the challenges. It's not that I loath them, it's just that in the past I have had several quests in there bug and have died a few times to it. The deaths and bugs happened on normal toons so no big deal, but having that happen on a challenge toon was not something I wanted to deal with that early in the game.
Originally I was just going to post for the Worgen starting zones a photo of the map with a big red x over it and just write NO, but after some thought, that did not seem fair. Some people have managed to get through those starting zones just fine, so for you guys I ended up doing a run through of the starting zone. It will be the last time I run a Worgen in regards to the challenges. It took me about 3 and a half hours to get out of the starting zone.
The first part of the zone went pretty smoothly. There were never any issues with the first part that I remember anyhow. After the cut scene where you wake up in the stockades is where you have to really start watching yourself, more so if you are not familiar with the starting area.
One of the first quests you get has you looking for something called manadrake essence or something, fine whatever, it's in a box near a fence with some forsaken around, just kill them and click on your box. Clicking on the box brought up a cut scene. A really short cut scene to signal impending danger. For me, this cut scene got "stuck"and looped about six times, though could have been more/less as I stopped counting after the first few. I was not really sure what was going on, so I let it go and eventually it popped me out of it. A similar glitch happen with a second short cut scene as well, ended up hitting the escape key to get out of that one.
From here on out you need to watch how close you get to mobs. Around here you'll start seeing gold dragon elites running about that have quests tied to them. There are also several vehicle quests throughout the entire starting zone, and they can't be avoided, just hold your breath and hope nothing glitches up on you.
I had heard from a challenger in our WoW Challenges Discord several months back that they had a problem with a quest called "Take Back What's Ours". In this quest you are given a horn and have to go up to a well guarded house and blow the horn, then some NPCs show up and are supposed to keep the mobs busy while you run in and grab the item in question from a chest in the house. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? The person in the Discord had said they blew the horn and no NPCs showed up and they ended up dying. Keeping this in mind I proceeded with the quest and had something else a little odd happen. The NPCs did in fact show up for me, so when the showed up I charged forward thinking they were going to hold aggro. That did not seem to be the case and I was quickly becoming swarmed and overwhelmed. In fact, had I not been on a priest, I probably would have died. Red ring of death was flashing and all. So I was like "oh shit" and started to try to kill some of these mobs to cut their numbers down hoping the NPCs would taunt them off or something. Finally the NPC helpers did something to stun all of the forsaken mobs that were guarding the house so I quickly ran to the chest and grabbed the item. On my way out of the building the stun wore off and the Worgen NPCs that were helping me vanished. I was not amused to say the least. That quest needs to be handled with a lot of care. Not sure what was going on with it, but I was not happy and got the hell out of there as fast as possible.
You will also come across a quest that will require you to drink a potion at least two times, I ended up using it three times because I did not feel like hearthing and running back. You need to do that quest to move forward to get out of the starting area, but it will not flag you normally. Just make sure you turn the quest in before logging out just in case to avoid any potential miss flagging.
In the past my biggest problems would come from the taking back the city quest, which involves escorting the prince through the city. I have had the prince seem to vanish on me. Don't know if I just lost track of him and he was still there somewhere or not, but in losing him, I'd be eaten alive by the hostile mobs and would die. This time through, I made sure to stay on top of the prince at all times. Him and his citizen militia will kill mobs and then run backwards, resetting like any other escort quest. The prince kept running behind buildings and in all sorts of odd directions. I did manage to stay with him up to the prison, where you have to use a vehicle to help take down a skull monster. Got through that fine, but then the prince and his militia kept running out of the prison and back in a few times and just as I was starting think, "Oh great, it glitched", a different NPC told us all to go somewhere to help deal with another problem. Glitch dodged, yay!
The rest of the zone went on pretty normally from there, thankfully.
Would I stop you from running a Worgen for the WoW Ironman and Blood Thirsty Challenges? No, not even if I could. If that's the race you want to play go for it. Just keep in mind there are some issues with the starting zone that could be problematic for your challenger. Plus, it took me longer to get through these starting areas then it does for the panda starting zones, but that could just be me. When I did finally get out of the starting zone I was just a little bit shy of hitting level 14.
So, good luck if you try the Worgen out. Hopefully everything will go smoothly for you. Challenge onward and challenge safely!
