No its not, lmao. I didn’t do a single bit of pre-questing for Phase 2. I got to lvl 40 in about 30 hours by running BFD into dungeon spam. I did my first Gnomer lockout with my guildies three days into the Phase.
Phase 3 will be no different. We’ll run Gnomer for a lvl, run Cathedral until 42, and then probably run Zul’Farrak all the way to 50. Pre-questing is not and has never been mandatory.
EDIT: Sorry, I admittedly misread OP’s post and didn’t see it said ‘server first’. Thought they meant ‘first lockout’. But in my defense, the idea of pushing for server first anything in SoD is so laughable I can’t even begin to describe it. Lol. Lmao even.