Questing. The whole notion reeks of tedium. You want to topple patricidal despots, donkey punch dragons and collect the oh-so shiny spoils they drop; not gather windstrider tails and troll pubes in perpetuum for some guy you barely even know.
But not every quest in World of Warcraft makes you feel like an indentured servant to experience points or a shameless, gold-grubbing hussy. Some are so damn fun you never want them to end; so imaginative they send a tinge of giddiness down the spine of even your ninth alt; so masterfully architected they have you singing your own praises from rooftops and bragging about the size of your e-penis when you’re finished; or so engrossing that you rouse after what seems like years from your gameplaying trance a parodic Rip Van Winkle, wondering when the hell you grew a foot long beard, how you got an admiral’s hat on your head, or why the hell those damn goblins try to kill you every time you set foot in Booty Bay. Here are twelve World of Warcraft quests (in no particular order) that show sometimes Blizzard really knows their shit.
12. The Day That Deathwing Came
“What, you don’t believe me? Fine, let me tell you the whole story.”
We’ve all got that one buddy who likes to embellish and one-up a little bit. And by little bit, I mean if you just took your significant other out on a nice dinner date at a fancy restaurant, then he already ate there last week and nibbled grapes handfed to him by the owner wearing a toga. Or if you just got a raise at work, then he got promoted to CEO and teabagged the boss’s daughter on the boss’s desk while said boss shouted encouragements the whole while.
“The Day that Deathwing Came” is Blizzard’s tribute to all the bullshitters out there, as you relive Theldurin the Lost’s (supposed) feat of punching Deathwing directly in the kisser.
11. The Battle For The Undercity
Say what you want about Wrath of the Lich King from a game mechanics perspective: spammy heals with unlimited mana, over-the-top damage, aggro as a total afterthought, and “lol what’s CC” are all very valid arguments. But WotLK had the most badass storyline of any Warcraft iteration yet. The use of phasing technology (okay, they went a little overboard on it sometimes) created situations where quests could actually have a meaningful story rather than “‘Ey yo, I need 10 wolf flanks carved directly from living wolves. Can you perform this slaughter for me? I have to stand at this exact spot for the rest of time for reasons unbeknownst to me. Thanks.”
This quest is (was, as sadly it is no longer able to be completed) one of the finest examples of this. At the Wrathgate in Dragonblight on Northrend, a bunch of rogue Forsaken unleash their plague on every living being, be they Horde, Alliance or otherwise, claiming the world for the Forsaken. As a result of this, the Undercity has been seized by renegade Forsaken, and it’s up to you and your faction to reclaim it. If you’re Horde, you fight alongside Lady Sylvanas and Thrall in an attempt to restore order to the city. If you’re Alliance, King Varian sees this as the perfect opportunity to reclaim Lorderon (the ruined city underneath which Undercity is built), and you try to beat the Horde to the punch. They’re both similar in function, and you end up taking out Putricide (the leader of the renegade faction of Undead) and eventually, Undercity is returned to the horde.
10. Lazy Peons
“Rise and shine, asshole!”
Ever been frustrated with someone at the workplace? Perhaps that lethargic dipshit whose sole purpose is picking up a paycheck after putting in the least amount of effort possible all week while simultaneously giving everyone else a bad name just by association? What you wouldn’t give to crack a blunt object two, three, twenty times over his grill piece, right?
In “Lazy Peons,” you get to actualize this dream by clubbing orcish peons napping on the job with your trusty Foreman’s spade, ensuring that the denizens of Durotar’s hard earned tax coppers aren’t going to waste as well as preventing six months of community service and anger management classes for yourself IRL.
9. Wanted: The Demon-Hunter
This quest is one of the nice gems that was added for the Cataclysm quest revamp. While going for Loremaster (the achievement where you have to do almost every quest in the game) and further pissing away precious moments of my fleeting youth performing mundane tasks in a video game, I stumbled across this quest, delighted that Felwood actually had some remotely fun quests, rather than being the intellectually stimulating equivalent of staring at a pile of dog shit like it had been from patches 1.0 to 4.0. You get to relive memories of Illidan Stormrage before his transformation into The Betrayer, which ties nicely into the Well of Eternity heroic you get to do at level 85. Anything involving Illidan is usually fun and interesting, and this quest certainly doesn’t disappoint. Kudos to Blizzard for putting storyline-relevant quests like this so early on in your leveling experience.
8. Do the Right Thing
George S. Patton once said, “A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood.” In this case, a shovel to the head spills a gallon of it. If you want to further legitimize your loved ones’ claims that you should be in a padded room somewhere, sing “Pop Goes the Weasel ’cause the weasel go pop,” in the most deranged voice possible while accomplishing this quest’s objective. Or maybe just a maniacal cackle:
7. Divino-Matic Rod
“COME AT ME BROS!”
Apparently this quest can’t be done anymore, according to Wowhead. Bummer. This quest takes you into the strange temple of Zul’Farrak, and basically tasks you with standing atop a gigantic stairwell, freeing your allies, slaughtering hundreds of Trolls while essentially spitting in their face and saying derogatory things about their mishapen, tusk-faced mothers (my all-time favorite pastime), and then turning on said allies, grabbing your nuts and saying “WHAT NOW BITCH?!”
This is one of the first “encounters” you really came across in vanilla WoW, and it was definitely the first time I said to myself, “damn, this game is epic.”
6. The Drakkensryd
In this quest you are gifted with a Hyldnir Harpoon and get to hookshot Legend of Zelda style through flying tiers of proto-dragons. Sounds like a gay ol’ time, doesn’t it? But before you can hop from dragon to dragon, you have to deal with what’s saddled directly atop each one: an angry Hyldsmeet Drakerider. And you’ve got to throw down with them in close quarters. A mile above the ground. To the death.
The best part? If you’re lucky enough to win, your opponent is pitched to their doom, arms and legs flailing wildly as ungainly, fledgling birds. And for some perverse reason, watching this never gets old.
5. Army of the Damned
Imagine how bad-ass it would be to play as Arthas. “Yeah, we did that in Warcraft III already, douchebag author,” you say. Not like this you haven’t. We’re talking Lich King Arthas in all his dark, demigod-like omnipotence. Remember that scene from the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring when Sauron is tossing phalanxes of armored soldiers skyhigh left and right with every swing of his mace?
Well that’s the kind of untold destruction you wreak in Army of the Damned, only with “Death Knight all hopped up on cocaine,” powers like “Deathstorm,” and “Soul Cleave,” which do untold amounts of damage to everything within a ten mile radius.
4. Gnomebliteration
Blizzard has a sick obsession with embarrassing, torturing, and otherwise belittling the fine Gnomish denizens of Azeroth. In Uldum, you literally get to control a gigantic, whirring ball of death, capable of committing genocidal, wholesale Gnomeslaughter like you were playing some perverse, bloodthirsty alternate to Katamari Damacy.
“The King is pleased! Now, stare into my bulbous nether region!”
Happy-go-lucky Gnome killers have petitioned many times to actually get this quest turned into a daily, as if spilling the blood of a thousand Gnomes isn’t enough to satiate their incomparable bloodlust.
3. Oh Noes, the Tadpoles!
The following description is based on real life events. Sadly.
Some people play WoW to raid at the highest level possible and procure leet epics that they can one day never tell their grandkids about. Some yearn for PVP renown, to have millions of sycophantic ten-year-olds squeal their names while slapping their underdeveloped salamis to Arena streams. And yet others occupy their game time with truly baffling obsessions: like killing murlocs for hours on end and deriving sadistic pleasure from each gargled death cry.
People like this quest for the opposite of the latter. In it you free a polychromatic chorus of baby Murlocs from their bamboo-cage imprisonments and lead them to freedom. And each one you free follows you around until the quest is over like a lost kindergartner, amphibious doe-eyes blinking up at you the entire time. And when you click on them they emit a surprisingly endearing, dare I say, adorable gurgling sound that will have you questioning interspecial mating for the second time (the first being the time that trollop of a Night Elf /flirted with you in Goldshire on Moon Guard) in your life just so the cuteness will be yours forever.
2. Welcome to the Machine
“What did you dream? It’s alright we told you what to dream.”
Like the Pink Floyd song from which it draws its titular inspiration, Blizzard shows you what an average day in the life of a Horde Hillsbrad Foothills quest giver is like: not everything it’s cracked up to be. But that’s what makes this quest so enjoyable. Why? We get to see what Blizzard really thinks about us! Through their deconstruction of three common gamer types. Just like The Ages of Warcraft, you might fall into one of the following categories. Or all three. You poor, poor bastard:
Dumass, the suitably named nublet who talks exclusively in capslock and pays not one lick of attention to your carefully dictated instructions.
“HI!” (Click to enlarge)
Kingslayer Orkus, an ostensibly courageous warrior with phat loots and plenty of titles to brandish, but a sad, hollow existence that consists of ganking and other frivolous endeavors. Or as Blizzard describes him:
That’s right, they said it. A bottom feeding pansy preying on the helpless.
And last, Johnny Awesome, the supercilious, sparkly pony riding, self-aggrandizing doucher.
Click to enlarge.
1. The Light of Dawn
Death Knights may be akin to mouth-breathing, simplistic muttonheads in the endgame, not to mention so insanely prolific you’ll have a hard time walking ten feet without seeing at least one of them sucking their own decaying thumbs or staring at a wall with a soaked drool-bib on, but who can turn down the siren’s call of becoming an indestructible, undead juggernaut of a demigod as powerful as death itself? The good news is, when you’ve finally had enough of being 1v4’d by a Blood DK, break down and employ the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” mantra of creating one yourself, you’re treated to some of the coolest quests in the game. Not only do you get to find out what happened to you and your ilk to be risen as the abberation you currently are (it’s different for every race, too!), but you also get to live through turning on the Lich King himself and creating the alliance of what’s left of the Argent Crusade and the Death Knights free of Arthas’ grasp: The Knights of the Ebon Blade. The battle takes place at Light’s Hope Chapel, which if you ever ran the original version of Naxxramas you should be very familiar with.
The whole event takes about ten minutes, eventually ending with Darion Morgraine (the leader of the Scourge side of the battle) learning that the Lich King did not value his life or that of any of his minions’; he was merely a pawn. Tirion Fordring, the symbol of light and hope in the scenario, wards off the Lich King and vows to create the Knights of the Ebon Blade with his fallen friend, Darion. This sets up the majority of the WotLK storyline, and even if you don’t plan on playing a Death Knight in the long-run, it’s worth making one just to see this quest.
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