As far as I can tell a1 and a2 are 90% overlapped...
A2 starts when you enter moonrise towers or mountain pass. If you don't resolve the goblin problem before then, the grove gets closed off and tieflings die. I'm actually not sure what happens if you stop the druid ritual and go to act 2 without killing the goblin leaders. Once in a2 you have to resolve the harper stronghold problem before going back to act 1 or it gets nuked. Other than that you can freely move between a1 and a2 and do whatever quests you want in any order.