You serve missions to Dumass (“Hi! I’M NEW! BIG WHITE LIGHT CREATURE WITH WINGS MADE ME ALIVE! I SERVE THE BANSHEE QUEEN! YAY! HELP! HI!”), Kingslayer Orkus (“Yes, cowardly quest giver, sit atop your pale horse while Orkus brings glory to the Horde! I shall return with a thousand skulls!”), and Johnny Awesome (“I will do this ONE thing that you ask of me, quest giver. Pray I find more menial tasks to accomplish or you will be hearing from me again, and I assure you that my commentary on forums of public opinion will be most unkind.”).
Rewards include Cue Cue Gloves, a play on the “QQ” crying eyes of player complaints.
Above: Die in a fire, gnomes. Mwahahahaha.
3. Gnomebliteration
I’ll attempt to describe the intricacies of this quest line in the proper amount of detail.
You get in a big fiery ball. You run over a thousand crazed leper gnomes in the Uldum zone, sticking some of them to the ball. You profit.
“Because who doesn’t love running over 1,000 gnomes with a giant fireball,” asked player Maria Pumyea on Facebook. Who, indeed. Gnomebliteration is flat-out exceptional fun.
You can see the action in this video set to appropriate music.
Above: The three tall-talesters of “The Day that Deathwing Came.”
2. The Day that Deathwing Came
This little mission hub popped up in the Badlands after the launch of the Cataclysm expansion. All three of the NPCs at the camp swear they can tell you exactly what happened when the evil dragon Deathwing escaped from his underground prison, cracking the world and becoming the big enemy boss of the expansion. Each tale is taller than the next, and you play through each one in turn.
“Not only was this quest hilarious, it pulled off [an] unreliable narrator in a video game. How rad is that,” game designer Barriga asked, making this his second pick.
You start by playing the role of dwarf Theldurin the Lost. “If it weren’t for me, he’d probably still be here, layin’ waste to all the good people of the Badlands,” he boasts. “What, you don’t believe me? Fine, let me tell you the whole story.”
As Theldurin, you slay rock elementals and then punch Deathwing in the face.
“I’m gonner punch that dragern in ther face,” player Pixie Erskine said on Facebook, imitating Teldurin’s Scottish accent.
Above: The scene as you prepare to punch Deathwing in the face.
No, protests Theldurin’s companion, the tiny gnome Lucien Tosselwrench, who gives you the quest “The Day that Deathwing Came: The Real Story.”
“Not only was Theldurin’s story wrong, it was boring, unimaginative, and slow,” he says. “I’ll tell you how things really happened on that day.”
His story involves growing big enough (or as he puts it, shrinking the world enough) to search the clouds for Deathwing. The player then gets to run around Badlands as a gnome the size of a small city. After you search the clouds, you find the evil dragon hiding in the sun.
“The sun burned me bad, but I got my hands around his slimy neck,” the gnome says. And then, he throws Deathwing to another continent.
Pshaw, says the third NPC, Orc Martek the Exiled. He gives you “The Day that Deathwing Came: What Really Happened.”
“These two have no idea how to tell a story. Theldurin’s story was too short, and Lucien’s tale was a little too tall, if you catch my drift,” he says. “Also, neither of their stories had hot babes in them.”
His story involves choosing an adoring babe to rescue (one choice is a dude) and riding off in his motorcycle, avoiding rocks raining down from the sky. “When I reached the end of the canyon, I remembered that my motorcycle could fly,” he says midway through the adventure. “…That would’ve been helpful to know earlier.”
He flies to the top of a pillar, starts to fight with the dragon, then … gets interrupted by the other two. “Fine,” he says grumpily. “You don’t get to hear how I beat Deathwing in a knife fight.”
Above: Pamela Redpath, the ghost of the little girl who starts the story for The Battle of Darrowshire.
1. The Battle of Darrowshire
I challenge anyone with a heart not to tear up during the climactic finish of The Battle of Darrowshire, Blizzard’s very first “Battle of…” quest and the best. Someone even made an impressively good song about it (see video below).
This is a small side hub in the Eastern Plaguelands area, not a zone-finishing cinematic. It starts with a simple quest: The ghost of a little girl, Pamela Redpath, wants you to find her doll. As you fight off the Scourge that have invaded what’s left of her village to obtain the pieces of the ripped-apart doll, you start to learn the story of what happened.
The girl pleads with you to find out where her family has gone. You track them down, slowly unfolding the story, and in the dramatic ending, discover that her father was twisted by the Scourge and betrayed their town, killing everyone. You then trigger an event to defend the town from the Scourge, fighting off wave after wave of enemies, until finally you reach the corrupted Joseph Redpath and slay him … allowing his spirit to return, unencumbered, to his daughter.
This is one of the first stories in the game to truly require a group to complete, and every step packs an emotional wallop.
“The feels,” player Rosemarie Kind said on Facebook. Another player, Chuck Johnson, agreed. “The old Darrowshire quest line was totally epic in every regard!”
For a terrific overview, watch the video of Cranius’ song “Darrowshire.”
“Daddy told me to give you this key. He said it opens a chest out back behind the house,” Pamela Redpath tells you at the end of the series. “He also wanted me to thank you. Did you do a favor for him? Did you tell him you found my doll?”
Sniffle.
This quest’s dialogue and plot are the very best the game has to offer.