Ultimate Quest: Chapter Thirteen - Burning Steppes

(Spoilers for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.)

Welcome back to the Ultimate Quest, where we play through every zone in World of Warcraft to determine, through an exacting and rigorous science, which quest is truly the greatest of them all! This week, we leap out of the Searing Pan and into the Burning Fire, featuring Ian as Claude the dwarf warrior, and myself as Solais the dwarf priest.

Killin’s as easy as breathin’!

Ian and I are offered a taxi from Searing Gorge to the Burning Steppes, but we choose the scenic route instead. This means treading through the halls of Blackrock Mountain. We pass between glowering faces carved into stone doors that tower over our dwarven bodies. Beyond the door, a vast chamber glows with the fires of churning lava, and stone dwarves hold a floating island aloft, straining to hold their iron chains in place. It is truly a wonder to behold, and we gasp at the sight of it, even 15 years later.

But this is not our destination. We pass through, crossing around the lava pit, passing beneath the eternal goliaths, and making our way to the steppes beyond. Finding ourselves at the foot of Blackrock Mountain, surrounded by raging lava lakes and unknowable, ancient architecture, we are almost as impressed. Surely, great adventure awaits us here in the most dangerous of lands!

But in classic World of Warcraft fashion, that great adventure turns out to be another turn at slaughtering local fauna for spell components for no critical reason we can discern, except to keep the experience grind rolling.

And worse, for Ian, this is his (out of game) reunion with an old friend, a veteran of the humans versus orc wars named John J. Keeshan. Ian had spent time with the human fighter in Redridge Mountains, where John elevated himself from Rambo parody to honorable hero. But Post-Redridge, it appears that John J. Keeshan has settled into just Rambo parody, and his character is reduced to a thin, bloodthirsty vagabond. He is the consummate Dungeons & Dragons hero, colloqially known as the “murder hobo”, and he will be our star for this adventure, for better or (more likely) worse.

If we’ve a mind for massacre in the Steppes, however, we are disappointed. Encounters here are few and far between, and they are certainly not threatening. We are told about the dire threat posed by the Blackrock orc clan, but we certainly never see one. There just is not much here to do, few enemies to fight, and not much excitement to fill the gaps.

There are some highlights. We help train golems at a friendly dark iron dwarf camp, and they quip clever lines after their defeat. “Battle result: embarrassing failure,” one bemoans, before heading back to camp for a tune-up. “Defeated. Shame level: high,” says another. It is worth a chuckle.

But these moments are rare exceptions, and they are nestled inside a quest line that strains credulity. The only way to combat these orcs (very threatening, we are told) is to take out their leaders by disguising ourselves and infiltrating their encampment. How a pair of dwarves are expected to disguise themselves as orcs is beyond us, but the answer is, it turns out, just a joke: Halloween party masks.

Once we arrive at the base, we are given free reign. We are even able to kill orcs in front of each other without throwing off our disguise. Orcs are bloodthirsty creatures, I suppose!

It is difficult to read this place. Most of it is played as a joke, stripping the region and story of any tension. This was once a deadly place to visit, visible to Alliance adventurers poking their heads out of Redridge, guarded by inconceivably strong orcs.

So much for that. There are no stakes in the Burning Steppes, and the jokes are not all that riveting either. If this place has a plot, it is not tense or exciting - just stupid.

Moving on from our assassination attempt (successful and all the more stupid for it), we meet up with a local Alliance base and start taking orders from a colonel. He, like just about everyone else we have met so far, is eager to utilize our talents for reagent gathering. He is a keen economist, it seems, noting that “demons are easily resurrected,” which makes collecting their detritus all the simpler.

We have little more to do here than we did anywhere else, although the plot does at least begin building into something here. The local Alliance are certainly upset by the Blackrock Orc, shall we say, “presence”, and they have a plan to take care of it. Against our better judgment, we march through endless fetch quests in service of this plan, not sure if removing this last bit of color from the steppes would actually be an improvement.

And wherever we go, the maniacal John J Keeshan goes with us. Because what is an orc good for if not dead? His characterization rings hollow, the definition of “one note.” It was clearly not written in conversation with the preceding zone, Searing Gorge, which actually argued against mindless murder.

Fortunately, this does eventually lead to… well, something.

It turns out the random fetch questing was part of a plan (one whose purpose was for some reason hidden from its executors up until now) to take out the leaders of the Blackrock army. Why tangle with an entire snake, when you can just take out the head?

There are two problems with this. One, we never actually saw this army pose any threat to the region. In fact, we had been slaughtering orcs and ogres by the dozens up until now. Is this really a snake we’re dealing with, or a snail?

Second… well we will get to that.

So the plot against the orc leaders has two phases itself. The first phase, which we have been working towards, involves tricking them into bungling a demonic summoning. They get the pit lord they bargained for, but it fails to heed their commands, and a battle breaks out between the Blackrocks and their would-be doomsday weapon. Meanwhile, we climb aboard a friendly dragon and rain fire and death from the sky.

A climax then! A rousing victory!

Except for the second phase of the plot, which is also my second problem here: after it’s done, we still have to march up to the hideout and actually kill the leaders. Nevermind that a pit lord (pictured) just eliminated the snake body we were so worried about. (Wait, what about that pit lord? Shouldn’t someone take care of it?) Nope, we still need to kill our way through yet more orcs to assassinate yet more orcs.

If only the Burning Steppes knew where to quit. But John J Keeshan is not a quitter, I suppose.

I am though.

Onward to the ranking!

V. Arathi Highlands

Well there is some excitement, in the end. The Burning Steppes is better than Arathi.

v. Loch Modan

And there is at least a climax. The Blackrock orcs do exist, after all, and no one pretends they are not a threat. The mountain of their namesake is hard to miss. But John J Keeshan’s characterization flies in the face of the good will built up by Redridge, and the Burning Steppes manages to bungle every good opportunity it creates for itself. No one expected Loch Modan to change the world, but the Burning Steppes should be a watershed moment for burgeoning adventurers. Alas, it is not. So Loch Modan is better than the Steppes.

Conclusion

The Burning Steppes is yet another missed opportunity to do something special. There is no tension and limited excitement, which is then immediately undercut anyway. There are a handful of clever quest mechanics, but like John J Keeshan, while we scramble madly for the blood of our enemies, our purpose is ultimately empty.

Burning Steppes is the eleventh best zone in World of Warcraft.

Complete Rankings