I just got back, and I thought I'd post my thoughts on the adventure (and on 4E in general).
I pre-generated the PCs using Character Builder this morning. Overall, while there are still a few bugs (it doesn't show languages on the character sheet; some power cards are messed up in print; it doesn't auto-buy armor for characters), it's a great tool and it would be invaluable to me as a DM if I were to DM 4E (which I am not going to do). The party consisted of a half-elf cleric, halfling rogue, dwarf wizard, human paladin, and eladrin fighter.
I then selected minis for the PCs, minis for encounters, dungeon tiles for the first encounter, and fantastic location maps for the third, fourth, and fifth encounter. I also made a few notes on the adventure.
The above two activities took me about 2 hours, which is, IMO, too much prep time for a pre-generated adventure, with all the tools at my disposal. Still, it sure beats 20+ hours of prep time I usually need for my own games.
Five people showed up to play. Some had to leave during the game, but others jumped in to replace them.
As for the adventure itself, I made some small modifications. Instead of placing the PCs directly in an inn waiting for the cobbler to light the torch and then witness his arrest, I had the PCs role-play information gathering, and they noticed that the cobbler's house was being watched, so they were ready for trouble.
The first encounter worked nicely; I reduced the number of guards to 2 and halved their hit points, but left the agent's hit points as is. The players used a combination of role-play, clever tricks, and a few well-placed powers (e.g. sleep) and managed to complete the encounter pretty unscathed. One of the guards was dropped unconscious, the agent was tied up and pushed under a market stall, and the other guard was disarmed and then ran away to get more buddies.
The cobbler survived, so the party entered his house and they began the escape together. He told them to meet at a ruined keep NW of the city in case they got separated.
The chase that followed next was very fun and filled with role-play, but the skill challenge system itself (get 8 successes before 4 failures) is definitely broken. Even with the low DCs (which I further lowered to 11 due to the fact that they didn't kill the guards, i.e. I figured the pursuit was not as heated), I had to fudge a bit and give them various opportunities to avoid accumulating failures.
So, they escaped the city and met with the cobbler next to the ruined tower (I used the Keep of Fallen Kings map) who informed them that the tower was not empty. The rogue went to investigate and found the hobgoblins, and then returned to report this find to the rest of the party. They made a quick battle plan, circled around, and the battle began.
Despite the fact that I halved the HP of the warcaster and archers and turned soldiers into minions, the fight was VERY close. In particular, the archers are brutal, and the warcaster nearly killed the party rogue in 2 rounds. The PCs used their action points, used second wind, encounter powers, dailies, healing surges, and so on. What was lacking was teamplay, I guess, but, in my experience, even established groups have trouble with that, much less groups of random people who meet at the gaming store.
In the morning, they set out on the road (King's Road map) and were besieged by undead. I made a mistake here and didn't modify this encounter. At all. I wanted to see how the game plays as intended by the designers.
In brief, it sucks. Badly. The combat took forever (12 rounds) and ended with a TPK, and the players were actually relived when they died, since they couldn't stand it anymore. I even fudged a bit by having unded ignore PCs who were hidden in the forest, to give the PCs a chance to recuperate a bit, but in the end, Blazing Skeleton stood triumphant and the entire party was dead. I also ignored the ongoing necrotic and fire damage, since that would have been too brutal.
The adventure is a meat grinder, there's no second thought about it. I really don't see how any party could have survived that undead encounter - and this party had a cleric and a paladin which are both equipped to deal with undead.
Regardless of the difficulty, combat in general is a grind. This was visible in the hobgoblin fight, and painfully visible in the undead fight. A horrible, boring, uninspired grind. Even my worst 3.5 combats, which took 4 hours of real time to resolve 3 rounds, were more dynamic that this 4E combat. If the intent was to streamline the game, the design failed to achieve that goal miserably.
BTW, as the DM, it never took me more than 6 seconds to decide each creature's action and the players were likewise efficient. Monster stat blocks are very usable, but character sheets are not. Power cards could use work.
This was the second 4E game I ran, and I stand by my earlier decision that I don't want anything to do with this edition.
