Ultimate Quest: Chapter Three - Eastern Plaguelands

Welcome back to the Ultimate Quest, where I 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, Ian Clark joins us once again, as our dwarven duo rides off into Lordaeron's sunset: the Eastern Plaguelands.

It is difficult not to compare Eastern Plaguelands to its western counterpart, perhaps for obvious reasons, but also because the Western Plaguelands was so effective in telling a story of a land lost to an undead nightmare that is now attempting to recover from that nightmare. Travel east, however, and you find a land without identity, filled with a people who do not seem to know what they are, lost in a zone that does not seem to know what to do with itself.

Examples range from interrogating animated skeletons (do they even feel pain?), a fetch quest for a clearly-mentally-ill merchant in a forgotten town (his illness being played for laughs is in rather poor taste), to an initiation to join the Argent Dawn (an organization dedicated to fighting the undead) hosted by, of all things, someone dead - a ghost.

And yet.

In the corner of Light's Hope Chapel, the local headquarters for the Argent Dawn, are a pair of men engaged in a debate about the merits of a crusade versus humanitarian relief efforts. Interrogating the former reveals something surprising: respect for his (undead but sentient) interlocutor. In fact, his dialogue does not even acknowledge the other man's race. He notes only that they disagree and that he enjoys the friendly debate.

It is a rare and mature example of racial tolerance not often seen in World of Warcraft, otherwise so fond of using racial tension as an excuse to generate (frequently violent) conflict. But beyond that, it reveals a motif of a people facing an altogether new challenge: determining their identity in a land not-yet healed, but no longer without hope.

If only we spent our time with people like this, and not some idiots in a caravan.

The tragedy of the disease-ridden Eastern Plaguelands is almost immediately undercut by an introduction to a caravan. Comprised of a long-suffering merchant and a pair of rambunctious paladin trainees, the caravan travels from outpost to outpost, providing supplies to Argent Dawn soldiers while picking up other travelers along the way. You travel with it, completing quests for the people you visit along the way. It is an interesting narrative structure that cleverly reuses the old watch towers from classic World of Warcraft as checkpoints in a rather long storyline.

It's just that the paladins are just so insufferable.

It could be the irreverent jokes that undercut the tragedy of the plaguelands. Or it might be the way they treat their mercantile friend as both mother-figure and sex object. But it might also be the way they punctuate the aforementioned recruitment quest with the terribly written line, "I can't believe we're actually fighting for the Crusade!"

Or maybe it is just the way that, when some level of gravitas is finally imparted to proceedings when the dwarven paladin is kidnapped and nearly killed, the entire arc ends, as Ian observed, like a Saturday morning cartoon. There is no boss fight; the entire sequence ends with a cut-scene where all of your caravan pals show up to knock down an out-of-nowhere villain and celebrate the power of friendship. And let us not forget to mention how the dwarf dances for joy on the table where he was to be ritualistically murdered.

Ian put it best when he noted, between bizarrely dumb jokes cracked by the boys (I struggle to call them men, though their models indicate they are), "I want a level of gravity in the plague lands." And Ian rightly went on to observe that the caravan-as-quest-structure, while interesting, fails to execute on its potential. After all, is the Eastern Plaguelands really the best place for a slapstick comedy and "day in the life of" tale?

Well.

It might be.

There is a way in which the refusal of these characters to engage with the tragedy of the land is intentional.

This is best exemplified in the Tyr's Hand sequence. Once a bastion of power for the violent and racist Scarlet Crusade, it is now host to its own tragedy. For reasons not revealed in the sequence itself, the crusaders in Tyr's Hand have all been cursed with undeath, and now the Brotherhood of the Light has gathered to put an end to them once and for all.

It is an anticlimactic end to a once terrifying faction, a fact not lost on the Brotherhood, who remark on how the Scarlet Crusade ends not with a bang but a whimper. It feels less like an epic, desperate struggle against an old enemy and more of a pity killing. But it was in Tyr's Hand that Ian and I stumbled upon the Eastern Plagueland's true theme: the banality of tragedy.

Consider this exchange between Argus Highbeacon, a war veteran traveling with the caravan, and the aforementioned paladin duo.

Gidwin Goldbraids says: If you don't mind my askin', what do you do that requires walking so much?

Argus Highbeacon says: I service the five Argent towers. Mostly repairs and maintenance, and some minor magical work.

Argus Highbeacon says: Without proper upkeep, buildings within the plaguelands tend to... waste away.

Tarenar Sunstrike says: Noble work.

Argus Highbeacon says: I find it satisfying. I enjoy working with my hands.

Argus Highbeacon says: By the way, if any of you need anything repaired, let me know. I am at your service.

Gidwin Goldbraids says: So you're part of the Argent Crusade, eh?

Gidwin Goldbraids says: Think you can put in the good word for us? We're looking to join the order.

Argus Highbeacon says: Certainly. I don't make it out to Light's Hope very often anymore, but when you arrive, tell Max Tyrosus that I sent you.

Argus is a member of the Argent Dawn who does so little military work that he rarely visits the headquarters. He is not fighting a battle that, once won, will gain him anything at all. Instead, he is doing that altogether-critical but altogether-boring work of maintenance, quietly and without complaint. Even more interesting, he appears to do this work in full awareness that his work may not end, for as far as we can tell, this land will never permanently heal.

As we traveled with the caravan, we continued to see these same stories play out. We aided isolated people, disconnected from each other, struggling with tiny victories that seemed to amount to nothing beyond that person's limited, and impermanent, gratification. Only one thing united them, as each tale revealed itself to be quietly but forgettably tragic in some way.

And that is the point.

It was here, in northeastern Lordaeron, that some of the Scourge War's greatest tragedies played out. But beyond the political (and more easily attainable) prize of Andorhal in the Western Plaguelands, its complete reclamation is not worth the attention of the distant kingdoms of Stormwind, Ironforge, or Lordaeron. For all that the paladins celebrate joining the crusade and the power of friendship, there is also a sense that these small, silly victories are all they, as denizens of this land, have worth celebrating.

Devoid of a global threat in the undead plague, the world beyond the Plaguelands has turned back to its own, local concerns. And so the Eastern Plaguelands is a land lost, because it is a land forgotten.

In the end, that last little quest with the troubled merchant in the forgotten town is the perfect ending to the zone. It is as is all life in the plaguelands: quietly tragic, frustratingly arbitrary, and, ultimately, entirely meaningless.

Cataclysmic Emptiness…

… wherein we note classic Azeroth’s propensity to be enormous but empty, even in the wake of the Cataclysm expansion’s restructuring.

There are definitely empty houses, but this is almost always justified by the war that devastated this land in the first place.

Loading World

... wherein we observe some of the more subtle, effective, and not-so effective means at world-building for the zone and the greater world through this place's environment and characters.

A Forsaken (sentient undead) apothecary working with the Argent Crusade is a wonderful acknowledgment of the character arc of Sylvanas in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (which we will explore in Chapter Four of this series). He has rejected her methodology and turned to work for the Crusade. This is even more interesting in light of the Forsaken's refusal to question themselves, as we saw in our first chapter, and will see again in other Forsaken-focused quest zones. Evidently, some of the Forsaken do question the methods of their leader and their peers - and so this one has joined up with a faction more actively concerned with opposing the horrors of the unholy undead Scourge.

Nerubian crypt lords - undead spiders in service to the Scourge - make an early but unexplained appearance. In general, there are plague-ridden beasts and Scourge soldiers everywhere. The message is clear - this is a land still tainted by the horror of undeath and the Plague. This is backed by the quiet fields of grass spewing forth from the Argent Dawn watch towers planted throughout the region.

Meanwhile, the Cenarion Circle makes a brief cameo at one of the watch towers dotting the land, but they make no reference to the druids' efforts in the Western Plaguelands. This serves as another reminder of how desperately the Eastern Plaguelands cries for someone to say, "We are forgotten here."

Then again, one camp where the undead-worshipping Cult of the Damned hide out is called "Death Camp". Do undead cults really go for such straight-forward names for their hideouts?

Tale as Old As Time

... wherein we observe some of the more stereotypical and amusing aspects of Azeroth.

At one point, you are asked to put some degenerate high elves out of their misery. They had apparently been corrupted, not by undead plagues, but some arcane device. As we completed our grim task, Ian was forced to remark at just how susceptible elves seem to be to corruption of any kind. What fragile creatures! Always turning into this wretched husk, that magic-addicted sap, or the other bizarrely mutated creature.

Basilisk Urethras

You are asked to find plague hound blood for a worgen merchant. Is she drinking this stuff? Isn't that a completely terrible idea?
Asked to rescue seemingly saltwater-fish from a freshwater pond, also by simply looting them? The quest at least acknowledges that this kills the fish, but I have so many questions for that quest giver.
Later asked to find carrion worms for food. Gross, but subtle - this is what constitutes living off the land in the plaguelands.
Worst of all, following the zone's natural quest line leads to a penultimate sequence involving... picking flowers for an apothecary. Bold.

Obligatory Pop Culture References

Quest title to retrieve bandages for a goblin, never really explained: "Smokey and the Bandit"
Quest title to kill elven degenerates: "Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy"

Patch Notes

The old Darrowshire quest book is unchanged and describes the old method of obtaining the time-magic artifacts. Sadly, it also describes a quest that sounds imminently more involved and interesting than the short fetch quest errand it has been reduced to.
Crusaders marching through a summoning portal placed on a stone table are stuck on said table, unable to path onto the floor 3' below.
An Alliance banner is left displayed in an abbey, otherwise dressed up in the colors of the Scarlet Crusade

The Eastern Plaguelands is an enormous zone, united by an interesting caravan-as-quest idea that could have been much more than it becomes. Yet, there is a theme in the consistent banality of life in the zone, and that theme proves even more interesting than the political post-war reconstruction in the Western Plaguelands.

Problematically, however, it is nevertheless inconsistent with its characters, and features some of the worst writing we have yet to encounter - writing that is not just dull but actively stupid. Not even a nihilistic theme can justify the juvenile antics of the paladins - nor the fact that their behavior is ultimately rewarded, rather than bravely punished.

V. Tirisfal Glades

Tirisfal Glades also asked interesting questions of its people, but its refusal to engage with these questions is difficult to read as intentional. The Eastern Plaguelands, on the other hands, makes an answer out of its refusal to ask any questions.

V. Western Plaguelands

As interesting as the Eastern Plaguelands' theme is, it is too often undercut but misplaced jokes and atrociously-written dialogue. Both zones present interesting problems, and both present interesting answers, but ultimately the Western Plaguelands triumphs in the comparison by refusing to undercut its own themes by its characterization. In this case, underdevelopment comes out over actively offensive and stupid development.

Conclusion

Another quest completed in the backlog. And now we know:

Eastern Plaguelands is the second best World of Warcraft zone.

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