Ultimate Quest Chapter Ten - Searing Gorge

(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 put aside our prejudices to save the world from Armageddon with the lowest body count possible.

By fire be purged!

The Searing Gorge's first and most consistent strength - the writing - is immediate. It begins as soon as you meet the Thorium Brotherhood, a mining guild run by underground-dwelling dark iron dwarves. Introducing themselves as miners, pioneers and explorers, they profess little interest in combat but find themselves backed into a corner by another group of dark irons who have a "join us or die" mentality when it comes to their religious practices. They need your help, then, and they ask for it. It's an intriguing turn for World of Warcraft, which is rife with characters sporting enormous, deadly weapons who exhibit no interest in combat only in order to allow there to be combat for the player instead.

On top of possessing clear, understandable motives for enlisting your help, the little camp of dwarves also exhibit a clear relationship and bond to each other. They talk about each other and banter together. You leave their site with some sense that they are real characters and not just dialogue boxes to click through to progress the game. It's effective writing that remains consistent throughout the zone.

The Thorium Brotherhood have a character arc of their own as well. What begins as skirmishes with the evil dark irons builds to a revelation that they have allied themselves with a villain named Archduke, whose mere presence in the area heralds the potential for Apocalypse. Left with little options, the Thorium Brotherhood decide to take a stand. "Very well," grimaces their leader, holding proof of the conspiracy in his hands. "With no Horde or Alliance forces anywhere near this godforsaken gorge, it falls upon the Thorium Brotherhood to stop this Archduke before he spreads any more of his evil."

It's a seminal moment for these hardy miners. They had come to the gorge for their own reasons, and they had good reasons to stay out of the conflict. Their decision to get involved requires them to take risks and, for most, to undertake an endeavor they had no training for and no talent in.

All of this just from the writing.

Sadly, the level design doesn't quite stack up. Thorium Brotherhood architecture amounts to a handful of bespoke towers, with little obvious explanation for how they eat, sleep, or play. We find more dark iron architecture and culture in the nearby Slag Pit, but the bulk of the region was built in 2004. It shows. World-building is painted in broad strokes and lacks subtle, lived-in details. Worse, the region is overcast with an oppressive salmon-orange skybox, and plays out to some of the more mind-numbing sounds of World of Warcraft's soundtrack. Its effective in setting a dreary mood, but dreariness cannot be an end in and of itself.

Meanwhile, the excellent, detailed writing runs aground problematic moments about halfway through with the arrival of the self-proclaimed Mountain-Lord, Rendan. Like the Thorium Brotherhood, he has little interest in the Archduke's apocalyptic sermons. Unlike the Thorium Brotherhood, he is content to keep to himself on his mountain, surrounded by dancing women and loyal men.

Rendan is meant to be a distasteful ally, and his writing follows suit. "I'm a rich dwarf," he admits. "However, I earned my riches through hard work and wise decisions, not through slavery... OK fine, very little slavery. Hardly any."

That Rendan is a bit of scumbag isn't an issue, though the writing could have done more to sell by giving us the Thorium Brotherhood's opinion of him. Sadly, such commentary is missing. Problematically, you must undertake less-than savory tasks to win his dubious allegiance.

One quest is particularly troublesome. Titled 'Sweet, Horrible Freedom', it involves a foray into the Slag Pit to free slaves from the clutches of the dark irons. "You should try to free them," Rendan notes, before admitting. "If they resist, treat them as enemies."

He goes on to explain that the slaves suffer from 'Durnholde Syndrome' (an in-world play on Stockholm Syndrome; Durnholde was an internment camp for orcs after the events of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness). The dark iron's slaves are evidently so inured to their fate that they actively prefer it and will actually fight back against any would-be liberators. It's a disgusting idea made worse when it is played for laughs.

The problem here is that World of Warcraft has little tools to make such a quest complex enough to be meaningful. There is no option to avoid conflict, and the game rewards you regardless of whether the slave is freed or murdered. It's a preposterous situation, especially given that Stockholm Syndrome has nothing to do with slavery whatsoever. Instead of offering insight into the horror of slavery, the Searing Gorge plays it as a joke and set-dressing for more combat.

It's a concerning development, and while the player may question the hypocrisy or senselessness of this violence, they have no in-game choice to make. They simply march forward on a tide of blood.

The senseless violence in the Searing Gorge is not entirely unintentional.

You meet Lunk at the first Thorium Brotherhood camp. His dark iron companions note his propensity to avoid fighting with a knowing grin, and it is no mistake that Lunk has no task for you at first. His first real interaction with you doesn't occur until after you return from your first venture, having slain a number of evil dark irons. "No! You are the same as Thorium Brotherhood dwarf," he cries. "Kill dwarf. Kill spider. Kill machine. Kill, kill, kill. Lunk come to gorge to go on adventure, not to go on murder spree."

Invective complete, Lunk departs, disgruntled and morose, leaving the player to wonder just what they have been up to all these months of questing.

Lunk's story does not end there, however. You encounter him several more times throughout the Searing Gorge when you are once again engaged in killing. Lunk arrives to stop you and, doing one better, to present an alternative solution that, even when it involves assault, never ends in death. He tackles spiders to coat himself in venom for the creation of antivenom; he lays down on upstart dark iron slavers to render them unconscious; he even starts a dance party to win the heart of Mountain-Lord Rendan.

Let us consider this last encounter in particular. When you first meet Rendan, he answers your call to action with a line every role-playing gamer has heard before: "Sure, I'll help you, but first you need to help me." Help in Rendan's case involves, as with most World of Warcraft quests, killing. When you return to triumphant to Rendan, however, he balks at the deal. "I know I said I'd help, but there's absolutely no way you can convince me to leave Iron Summit right now," he insists. "Absolutely no way."

Lunk provides the true solution: win over the stubborn dark iron with the joy of dance. At his urging, you instigate mirth amongst Rendan's followers, then bring the entire dance party to Rendan's platform. Impressed by your play, he relents and offers his aid. It would have been easy and perhaps expected for Lunk's pacifism to be mocked. "How silly is this ogre!" The game might have said. Instead, Lunk's pacifism is the answer.

In constructing this scenario and repeatedly presenting non-violent alternatives, the Searing Gorge questions the nature of the murderous solutions presented before. It is perhaps no accident, then, that the final confrontation with Ragnaros' Archduke likewise does not end in murder but banishment.

The Searing Gorge is a pleasant surprise. A depressing, mono-toned setting is uplifted by clever writing and a story of a hated people answering the call to fight the war no one else will, all the while examining just how necessary all the killing really is or is not. It's troubled by poorly-phrased confrontations with slavery, and it lacks the deeper scene-setting and world-building we will encounter in more contemporary World of Warcraft zones. But the quest design powers through a lot of the weakness, running a well-paced storyline that neatly unfolds its conspiracies. The final act of the zone is a thrilling dive into dark iron territory that escalates tension as you work your way deeper and deeper through the dark iron dwarf fortress - a classic dungeon crawl that suits the setting and is well played.

The Searing Gorge stands tall, and punches above its weight class.

We will endeavour not to compare to more than 8 zones, so let's start at the middle.

V. Tirisfal Glades

Tirisfal Glades asks interesting questions and flirts with clever writing, but its too-often unfinished and too-rarely insightful. It's certainly not much prettier either.

The Searing Gorge is better than Tirisfal Glades.

V. Eastern Plaguelands

The Eastern Plaguelands wraps a tragic slice-of-life story around a well-paced caravan structure, but it's high points are deeply undermined by the adolescent attitudes of its main characters. Too many of its threads are left on the table, and its conclusion diminishes any good will it generates during the final act.

The Searing Gorge, alternatively, weathers Mountain-Lord Rendan's unfortunate perspective to deliver on a satisfying dungeon crawl that ends with a satisfying final confrontation.

The Searing Gorge is better than Eastern Plaguelands.

V. Western Plaguelands

The Western Plaguelands makes good use of its expanded budget to tell a dynamic story about two nations fighting to retake a fallen city and win an ideological war. It leverages its setting to stick with an uplifting theme of hope and rebirth. Yet it's troubled by terrible character writing and leaves the meat of its character arcs off-screen.

The Searing Gorge makes good use of a diminished budget to tell a meaningful story about a people overcoming the world's dim view of them to nevertheless save that world from destruction. It takes care to question its paths to victory, and its characters are dripping with personality and life.

The Searing Gorge is better than the Western Plaguelands.

V. Silverpine Forest

Silverpine Forest is a mammoth of a zone. It does not squander its budget, and it does not back down in its writing. There are very few compromises and contradictions through its long arc, and it elevates a rote tale of conflict to ask deeper questions about racism and war.

The Searing Gorge stumbles in its writing a handful of times, and it suffers from a lack of attention to its setting. It begs for a larger budget, and although it makes good use of what it has, it simply cannot hold itself to the masterpiece of Silverpine.

Silverpine Forest is better than the Searing Gorge.

Conclusion

The Archduke is cast down but not as far down as we might have expected.

The Searing Gorge is the second best zone in World of Warcraft.

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