Mount Hyjal Daily Confusion

there's some confusion surrounding the new mount hyjal dailies. players are missing marks and while blizzard has updated parts of the process to try and compensate for this, it's still irritating.

i'm especially curious about how many TOTAL marks people are earning if they chose the shadow warden set of dailies. total as in all marks earned from all dailies available each day, starting from the sanctuary of malorne, all the way to the molten front. regardless of the sub-faction you choose, you should be earning the same number of total marks per day. i'd like some confirmation on this, though.

first things first, yes there are "side quests" that are a bit obscure and some people may have missed them, putting them slightly behind.

the first easily overlooked quest that awarded marks is the quest that is handed out if you return to the sanctuary of malorne on the FIRST DAY of entering the portal into the molten front. after completing the set of dailies at malfurion's breach for the FIRST time, if you travel back to the sanctuary of malorne outside the portal, you'll discover a continuation series of quests for hamuul runetotem.

the second easily overlooked side quest is the escort quest available only to those that choose to turn in 150 marks to the druids of the talon. it's found within the underground cave system after escorting the druid through the fires. if you follow the path all the way down to the end of the caves, you'll see a night elf lying on some rocks in the lava. completing this escort quest will unlock an extra daily worth 1 mark of the world tree.

i'm unsure if there is an easily missed side quest for the shadow wardens or if it's more linear (it seemed pretty linear to me while on the PTR).

finally, although this will not be important until players have advanced further into the storyline, once on phase 3 (the vendor specific quests where you must turn in 125 marks three times to unlock three different vendors), an extra daily that awards 3 marks will not be available if you do not complete "calling the ancients". i'm not sure if they've fixed this since the PTR testing of the dailies, but i would still recommend completing this quest BEFORE the other two 125 mark quests.

if there are any other quests that i've failed to mention, please let me know. also, i'd really love to find out how many total marks of the world tree are earned daily for those that chose the shadow wardens over the druids of the talon. if you have any info on this, please leave a comment or send me a private message through my WarcraftPets profile.

missing a few marks here and there may not be a big deal for some, but there are those who will feel cheated and misled and i don't blame them for being frustrated. it's become pretty apparent that unless players went through the motions of the entire process on the PTR, they are more prone to missing out on some potentially crucial moments and quests of the new questing hub unless they did their homework which includes extensive research of all the possible quests involved. because of this quest design flaw, i would advise blizzard to produce a detailed guide on the new storyline to avoid further confusion and frustration.

but i doubt we'll see blizzard do any of that any time soon. i've done my best to keep my overview up-to-date and include as much detail as possible without listing every single quest and daily (i don't have the time or patience to write out an entire guide listing every quest and daily), but it may not be enough to keep players 100% on track. next best thing? i recommend wowhead AND wowpedia. both sources are highly recommended for research if you want a full and complete view of how the entire process should play out.

i'm all for the "give the player the power of choice" theme that blizzard was going for, but it's made things more complicated than need be and the overall design of this new area may just prove to be underwhelming and/or frustrating for some players.