Ultimate Quest: Chapter Six - Arathi Highlands

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!

Today, we ride the Thandol Span with our spirits high and our hearts ready for adventure. Will we have the time of our lives, or will we walk away with less than we started? Let's find out!

Highlands, ho!

The Thandol Span is a feat to marvel at, for sure, and someone in the neighboring Wetlands is arguing with us for counting it as part of the Arathi Highlands. (They've had a tough time of it, as we will see later.)

Beyond the bridge, there are other marvels as well. There is a quiet, beautiful aesthetic to Arathi that is difficult not to appreciate. Every new hill offers a new overlook, and the sight of the crumbling city of Stromgarde hints at all manner of intrigue and war. Later, we offer a hand to a ship's crew, and are greeted with a rare glimpse of the continental coast. World of Warcraft, of course, has no tides and no waves, especially in these more ancient (from a development perspective) lands, but we can hardly fault a (as of this writing) 14-year old game for leaning on 14-year old tech.

But surely, a touching tour through this aged land awaits. Surely the walls of Stromgarde hide a stirring saga within.

They don't.

The Arathi Highlands is a smorgasbord of unconnected dots. The essential plot beats of the original zone remain - fighting various factions within Stromgarde, rescuing the Princess from her elemental prison, tussling with witherbark trolls - but they have been stripped of their more inconvenient elements. Time-spent in the Highlands has been greatly reduced, which is to its benefit, but what was taken was not replaced with anything else.

There is just nothing happening here. There is a sub-plot about recovering some reagents and artifacts for a wizard (whom you never meet), possibly on behalf of his master (whom you never learn anything about). What use any of these items are to this distant wizard is a mystery. And that is the sole purpose of Stromgarde, that towering city on the coast.

Beyond the wizard, there is not much else going on. You tangle with a variety of foes, wander around looting stones from every corner of this over-large zone, and help that aforementioned ship crew recover some equipment. It's little more than a series of bottles, but although the bottles are arranged on a somewhat pretty shelf, they're ultimately empty. The sum is hardly better than the whole.

Worse, this refusal to engage with a greater plot or purpose leads to passive, accidental racism - if not overt.

Consider those trolls. There is no mention of them doing anything ill-toward by anyone in the region, but you are nevertheless asked to invade their camp and murder them. Another sequence has you murdering Forsaken farmers, but there is little explanation beyond revenge for Southshore - a tragedy that is not even remarked upon in the story here, and would really only be known to Horde players who also traveled through Hillsbrad Foothills!

It is taken for granted that both races are a threat on the simple face of them being non-human (non-dwarven, non-elven are effectively the same, in this context). And not only do you oppose them, you actively murder them. It's disturbing and somewhat inexcusable, especially in light of its contemporaries.

Elf Corrupted! In Other News: Water Wet

Is casual racism a Warcraft stereotype?

Novelty Games

Pretty much every quest in the region involves killing something and looting their corpse, if not just tallying a kill count. One water-bound sequence asks you to recover items from the ocean floor, but that is best forgotten.

The Arathi Highlands oscillates between being miserably boring and actively offensive. It's a beautiful enough place, but the gameplay leaves it ultimately forgettable.

I dimly recall having to stop and nap halfway through our quest.

It doesn't overstay it's welcome, at least.

V. Durotar

Almost no contest. Durotar is rife with studies of the orc and digs into their warring natures. If sometimes uneven, it is never boring. And it has the decency to suggest that genocide is maybe not the best activity.

Conclusion

Well that was a journey. But at least now we know:

Arathi Highlands is the worst World of Warcraft zone.

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