Many of these quest descriptions contain spoilers –Ed.
For 10 million World of Warcraft players, Sunday marked 10 years of epic stories.
Quests rank among the main reasons why players keep coming back to the massively multiplayer online role-playing game for a decade: the missions that tell the story of the game and its characters while helping players figure out their place in the virtual world.
To mark World of Warcraft’s 10th anniversary, I asked players and Luis Barriga, lead game designer at Blizzard Entertainment, to name their favorite adventures of all time. Find them, along with my own picks, below. With only a few exceptions, the quests below are still around, and players of any class and both factions can experience them.
While most of these quests are from earlier expansions, two are from the new Warlords of Draenor release. We’ll warn you accordingly.
(Don’t forget to read our story on the anniversary events going on in game.)
Above: Maximillian of Northshire, the white knight of comedy.
10. Maximillian of Northshire
When Blizzard designers create a knight errant, they make sure he’s … errant. This series of missions in the Land of the Lost-style jungle zone of Un’goro puts you in the service of Maximillian of Northshire as his new squire. You probably don’t want to know what happened to the last one.
You’re in charge of helping Max save damsels in distress throughout the zone through unusual means, including throwing a woman standing peacefully on a hill to her death to “save” her from the height, helping a “damsel” (who turns out to be a male Blood Elf) retrieve a crate that is literally a single step away, and endlessly killing dinosaurs he calls dragons.
You can see the series, read in Monty Python-style voices, here.
The series ends with you riding on the back of Max’s horse as he gallops away from a tyrannosaur, helping him to throw pieces of his armor at the beast. (“This is quickly becoming humiliating … and drafty.”)
“When Max calls the Blood Elf a damsel in distress it cracks me up. And when Max kills the hunter’s pet to ‘save’ her … I about choked on my own spit on that quest line,” said player Mystwhisper, a shaman, one of the many who offered her favorites when asked in-game.
Above: Players completing the Gunpowder Plot objective can use the gunpowder to create smiley faces… and other pictures.
9. The Gunpowder Plot
This quest from the starting area of the Warlords of Draenor expansion (which released last week) is notable not because of its dialog and content, which are fairly typical. Rather, it’s what the mechanics allow you to do.
The NPC asks you to fetch a barrel of gunpowder from a building being guarded by a bad guy. You kill the guy, grab the gunpowder, and that’s when the fun starts.
The objective of the mission is to get the leaky barrel of gunpowder back to a detonator, then hit the plunger and watch the fire trace your path of gunpowder back to the enemy HQ. Thing is … that supply of powder appears to be infinite, so you can draw whatever you like.
Blizzard undoubtedly knows this. Even the NPC comments that the player wouldn’t be out doing anything else with that gunpowder (or would you) when you click on him. Players take no time at all to catch on.
“We’ve all had fun on these starting quests in [Warlords of Draenor], where you get a barrel of gunpowder on your head and then run back to base,” Leslie Fatlin said. “We’ve all tried to write our names as we run, then light [the powder] on fire. The kids have had a blast with that, practicing cursive.”
8. The Drakkensryd
Blizzard lead game designer Barriga chose this as one of his top two. As part of helping the titanic watcher Thorim regain his memories and fight his evil brother Loken, you compete in the Hyldsmeet, a kind of valkyrie contest against Norse-style warriors.
The Drakkensryd is the culmination of that battle, as you make your way in flight around a towering spire, leaping from winged drake to drake as you defeat your rivals before harpooning your way to the next fight.
“The epic feeling of flying up the mountain on a proto-drake and then sending other combatants down to their death was amazing,” Barriga said.
Above: Light’s Hope Chapel, after you help to nearly destroy — and save — it in the Battle for Light’s Hope Chapel.
7. The Battle for Light’s Hope Chapel
This is the first of the “battle” quests on this list. Designed to be the epic conclusions of lengthy storylines, most “battle” missions are large set pieces with cinematics, large-scale conflicts, and frequent chances to interact with some of WoW’s most famous NPCs.
The Battle of Light’s Hope is the climactic conclusion of the Death Knight starting area, available to anyone within a few hours after creating a new Death Knight character. As a player, you spend several hours performing terrible deeds, wiping out entire cities as one of the heartless undead Scourge under the control of evil boss Arthas, the Lich King. In this battle, you are redeemed.
You attack Light’s Hope Chapel as part of an epic 10,000-creature army of undead Scourge invaders, fighting against 300 Argent Dawn crusaders. You soon discover that you are fighting on holy ground, the final resting place of many of Warcraft’s epic heroes of the Light, and are doomed to fail.
Darion Mograine, your commander in the Death Knights, meets the shade of his father — a powerful good knight. Darion then wrests himself from the Scourge’s control, aiding the hero Tirion Fordring in driving out Arthas.
Your Death Knight joins the Horde or the Alliance as an ally after the battle is over. This video does a nice job depicting the battle.
“It’s the setting and voice acting,” said the player Clorana, a priest, in game. “Plus the story links, to flesh out Darion Mograine, by bringing in his father. At first, you stand there and wait for the event, and Mograine has some cool lines. Blood rain starts to fall, and you have your whole undead army there. Then, you go and crush the Argent forces until Tirion and the Lich King square off. Having played undead a lot in [the strategy game] Warcraft 3, I could really appreciate the strength of the undead.”
Above: Shattrath remains a city under siege even after The Battle of Shattrath.
6. The Battle of Shattrath
This battle is the massive conclusion of the Talador zone quests in the new Warlords of Draenor expansion, so don’t read on in this one if you’re avoiding spoilers. It’s one of my favorites, and was mentioned by other players in forum posts for this story.
Throughout the zone, you have been working against the invasion of the Iron Horde Orcs, united by big bad guy Garrosh Hellstream. (The Iron Horde is not to be confused with the just-plain Horde, the faction that players can choose in the game.)
Finally, it comes time to set foot in the capital city under siege: Shattrath. Players confront Hellscream and drive out the Iron Horde Orcs occupying the city. You’re helped by the Archmage Khadgar, a powerful Alliance hero who doesn’t mind working with Horde players; Vindicator Maraad of the Draenei, one of the Alliance leaders; and Frostwolf Chieftan Durotan, one of the Horde’s Orc leaders rebelling against the invaders.
It is a wonderful area for longtime WoW gamers, as the Burning Crusade expansion used Shattrath as the main capital city for players. In Warlords of Draenor, the latest expansion, players are in an alternate timeline set in the same place. Here, the city is a ruin, wracked by the fighting between the Iron Horde and friendly forces.
Not only does this story line allow you to roll around in the city in a giant Iron Star (sort of a monstrous metal bomb combined with a hamster ball), crushing every last enemy, but the multi-step cinematic/battle stages at the end build enormous suspense, as characters that had been in the Warcraft storyline from the beginning fall and others struggle to finish the fight against Garrosh.
You can watch the climactic closing cinematic here. It contains huge spoilers for players who haven’t completed the series yet.
For Horde players in Draenor, I’d also highly recommend The Battle of Thunder Pass, which completes the Horde Frostfire Ridge starting area.
Above: “I was wondering if you’d show up,” human hero Bolvar Fordragon tells the orc Dranosh Saurfang during the Battle of Angrathar the Wrathgate. “I couldn’t let the Alliance have ALL the fun today,” he replies.
5. The Battle of Angrathar the Wrathgate
In this battle, Horde and Alliance heroes join together to attack the Wrathgate, driving for a chance to kill Arthas, a paladin who betrayed his people and became the Scourge leader the Lich King. It’s the first time players in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion could see the end boss, and it features a cinematic with some of the best dialog, music, and voice acting ever created for the game.
The Lich King faces down the Horde and Alliance champions, striking down the Orc leader Dranosh Saurfang (whom he would later raise as an evil boss in his citadel) and moving on the human Bolvar Fordragon, until an Undead army intervenes.
The Undead attack both the Lich King’s Scourge forces and everyone else by lobbing poison bombs, betraying everyone, cutting down Bolvar, and driving out the Lich King to fight another day.
The sequence is especially stunning for Horde players, who have been unknowingly helping the Undead alchemists create the poison used in the attack (Undead is one of the Horde races).
“Did you think … we had forgotten,” the Undead commander Grand Apothecary Putress roars. “Did you think … we had forgiven? Behold, now, the terrible vengeance of the Forsaken. Death to the Scourge! And death to the living!”
“The first thing I think of is that final cutscene,” said player Christopher Lehr in-game. “Such a huge reward for going through the whole long line of quests. It had direct ties with the dragonflights, and with my personal favorite family of orcs in WoW.”
Above: My mage (note the exclamation point over her head) takes the role of a quest NPC and prepares to give a quest to NPC “player” Johnny Awesome.
4. Welcome to the Machine
Blizzard frequently incorporates player feedback and complaints into the game as funny items or NPCs, but never more so than with this series for lower-level Horde players in the Hillsbrad Foothills zone. This objective puts you in the place of a quest giver at the Southpointe Gate outpost, handing out missions to other “players” — NPCs that depict the worst behavior players had to offer. This is another of my favorites.
The whole series is hilarious. High Executor Darthalia tells you what to do. “I want you to take these orders and dispense them to the lowly scrubs that come along looking for work,” she said. “Who you give what to is wholly at your discretion.
“When you’re ready, mount up on my trusty skeletal steed — so they don’t miss you — and start living the life! Which means just stand there and wait.”
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.