My overall thoughts on Operation: Gnomeregan

As you know if you read my last post, I have quite a few thoughts on Operation Gnomergan. Having already given my thoughts on the sudden nature of the event, I think it's time I give my general thoughts on it: what went right, what went wrong, and all that jazz. I'll start with what I thought went wrong, then end with what I thought went right so that this post can end on a high note. Obviously, I won't discuss the fact that the event came out of nowhere in the first section, since that was covered by my last post. I warn you now that this post has spoilers about the entire event, so if you plan on participating in the event yourself, please don't read on any farther.

The bad:

-We test tanks that we never end up driving
As part of the questline for Operation: Gnomeregan, we perform diagnostic tests on mechano-fighters before the battle starts. We tests their weapons, their attacks, and the ejection seat, all of which are mapped to different buttons. The whole thing felt like something we had seen before at the Argent Tournament: a training mission. Those quests felt like they were preparing us to take those tanks into battle. And then the battle came... and we fought on foot. Now, I had no issue with us fighting on foot, and fighting on foot was very fun, but after testing those tanks to make sure they work and practicing with them, it's a bit disappointing to never use them.

-Underwhelming ending
This where the spoilers really come in. At the end of Operation: Gnomeregan, Mekkatorque and his adventurers reach a radiation bomb like the one that originally poisoned Gnomeregan. Turns out Thermaplugg put it there hoping to wipe us out, but rather than telling us that himself, he sends his "Brag-Bot" to tell us about it. The fact that we never get to lay a finger on or even see the infamous traitor is disappointing enough, but it gets worse. The event ends with the bomb going off and us players being teleported back to Tinker Town before it does, as we are greeted with a cutscene of the entrance of Gnomeregan with radiation flooding out. Once we are back in Tinker Town, the event ends with this monologue:

High Tinker Mekkatorque says: Curses! We had to fall back. But Thermaplugg's lost, and he knows it...he's only bought himself time.
High Tinker Mekkatorque says: We hold the surface, and when the radiation clears we'll assault and recapture Gnomeregan with a force twice this size.

A short but sweet ending? Hardly. If the bomb is twenty six times as powerful as the one that first decimated Gnomeregan, as Thermaplugg claims, then we haven't won. After all, wasn't the radiation the exact reason why we haven't been able to take back Gnomeregan for good thus far. And now that there's twenty-six times as much of it, with all of it concentrated in the exact part the gnomes were trying to retake, how can we make any use of the city? How can Mekkatorque say that he holds the surface when the radiation would make going in there dangerous for him and his gnomes, but still safe for the irradiated residents of Gnomeregan? These plot holes make it very difficult to believe that Gnomeregan is any more in the Gnomes' grasp than it was before. This leaves the ending feeling pretty empty, and very disappointing. We put in all this work for so little payoff? And now Mekkatorque is telling us it was a success? Hardly a way to end the only thing to tide Alliance players over until Cataclysm.

Of course, the event wasn't a complete failure, or even a major one, or else I wouldn't have enjoyed it. With that said, let's move on to the good:

-Invincibility during the invasion
As we stormed Gnomeregan, Doc Cogspin cast the following spell on us: "Surgeon General's Warding: When the "Doc" is on the clock your health won't drop." In other words, as we stormed Gnomeregan, there was no risk of us dying. I know I've spoken against this kind of risk-less-ness in other areas of the game, but with a mobile event like Operation: Gnomeregan, death would have been a huge inconvenience. In the time it would have taken to run back to our corpse, Mekkatorque could have moved on way beyond where we were when we died, making finding the event difficult and making us miss crucial developments in this event's story. Since we can only participate in this even once, to make a player miss a large chunk of it would be quite cruel, so Blizzard did the right thing by putting Doc Cogspin in.

-Ending with an AoE-fest was a great way to see off the expansion where AoE reigned supreme.
Using AoE to bring everything down isn't going to be a viable tactic once Cataclysm hits, so it was only appropriate to see off AoE's dominance with a massive AoE-fest, which is exactly what Operation: Gnomeregan was. As the event wore on, more and more enemies attacked our motley crew, making focusing on one at a time simply impractical. It may have been mindless at times, but it was nice to give AoE one last "Hurrah!" before it went back to something we only use situationally.

-The quests were just plain fun and humorous.
The Gnomes' personality really shined through in these quests, from the fact that a machine was used to test potential speeches to the fact that the Motivate-a-tron could backfire and turn gnomes into critters, as well as the fact that one quest involved emotes. And while testing tanks we never got to drive did lead to disappointment, it was fun while we did it, and the scouting allowed for some nice views of Gnomeregan from the air. Of course, the final quest where we zerg-rushed our foes was all sorts of fun, and considering that it was Wrath of the Lich King's last hurrah, it's a nice way to end the expansion.

So what did you think of Operation: Gnomeregan? Were there any points I listed that you thought were good points when I listed them as bad points or vice-versa? Also, for my Horde-exclusive readers, did Zalazane's Fall suffer from similar problems and have similar high-points? And for those who play both sides, how did the two events compare?