Ultimate Quest: Chapter Eight - The Wetlands

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!

(Note: We fully discuss all aspects of these zones. Spoilers abound.)

This week, we unite the clans for group therapy and help dwarves do dwarf things in that most moist of all World of Warcraft zones, Khaz Modan's Wetlands.

Did you pack extra socks?

Before the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm update to Azeroth, the Wetlands featured a small night elf outpost near a tiny crossroads. For many Alliance players, this would have been their first contact with the erstwhile Kalimdor elves, and it was a vastly understated one.

Today, that tiny outpost has grown into a village in its own right, and the Green Warden, a friendly elemental who once lived in the swamp, has moved in. For players of the original Wetlands, it's a neat touch. For players of this Wetlands, it provides a solid introduction to the druidic race and their true-hugging concerns.

Menethil Harbor is the population center here, of course, and fittingly, it brings together a number of races. Boats still run to distant Kalimdor (a "show not tell" explanation for the night elves' presence here), but humans, dwarves and gnomes are all seen toiling through the devastation. Here, the Alliance truly act as allies.

Of course, the Wetlands are situated in old dwarven territory, so it is no surprise to be working with dwarves through most of this zone. But when you confront the Dark Iron dwarves at the conclusion of the zone's storyline, you are joined by leaders from every dwarven camp you aided along the way. It isn't the first time we have concluded a zone with a reunion of old friends, but unlike the Eastern Plaguelands, this fight is not a cut-scene. It ingests meaning into the "fetch questing" you had been up to in a clever but understated way.

In the end, the Wetlands here does a rare thing: it makes itself about the people who live there, not the mystical villains driving inane plots.

But it's about the place itself too.

As mentioned before, and as we will no doubt mention many times hence, World of Warcraft has a bottle problem: the events and characters within a particular zone often have no affect on the events and characters outside of it.

It's a curious problem that has made this science not only possible but interesting. Quest structure and writing quality vary so wildly, even between adjacent locales, that we begin to see the seams of the project's budget. Some clearly got very little; others clearly benefited from quite a bit. From a plot perspective, the end result of all this is an epic version of syndicated television's famous "Monster of the Week" trope. Problems that arise within one zone tend to be resolved within that zone.

The Wetlands does not totally break free of this problem, but the destruction of the Stonewrought Dam in Loch Modan has resulted in a great deal of problems in the Wetlands, and our first exposure to this new land was to find it partially underwater.

It's a jarring image that is reinforced by the initial quests asking you to deal with the ecological fallout. Following that, we travel to Menethil Harbor to reveal an equally horrifying image: the entire city is flooded, and again work there centers around the aftermath of the disaster.

As terrible as these moments are for the characters involved, the Wetlands benefits from a sense of place and purpose with them. It's a feature that Loch Modan completely squanders, as we will examine later, but here it works in the Wetlands' benefit. They aren't simply terrain updates; the story is entirely about the disasters.

Unlike the Eastern Plaguelands, however, the Wetlands has nothing to say about these disasters or the people living through them. They are motivations for fetch quests, but little more. And as much as we see the Alliance in full swing here, aside from rubbing shoulders, very little connects the races in the story.

Everyone has their own agenda, but given the cataclysmic events shuddering the region, we might expect them to at least acknowledge each other's plight. Menethil Harbor is entirely destroyed, but the nearby night elf village doesn't even mention the problem. The dwarves contend with the conspiratorial Dark Irons but seem unaware of the disasters looming everywhere else.

The writing does no work to make these oversights intentional. This is not a story about people caring only about what's 5 feet in front of them. It's barely a story at all. So while the Wetlands does a good job of introducing these disparate elements into the world in a sensical way, it squanders the moments.

And moments are the problem here, because all of these moments I have described are just that: moments. They are without a doubt the highlight of the Wetlands, and they give it a greater sense of place. But without an overriding theme, they are pointless. Although the reappearance of your old dwarven friends at the conclusion wants us to feel united and connected, we ultimately leave the experience empty.

The Wetlands' sense of place is strong enough to see it through boredom, but is sadly lacks a coherent core to bind itself together, leaving it altogether more forgettable than it could have otherwise been.

V. Arathi Highlands

However disconnected its plotting, there is at least some purpose to the activities in the Wetlands. And it's varied locales keep it from being boring. The quest hub design is much tighter as well, keeping you focused on activities in a smaller range of questing.

The Wetlands is better than Arathi Highlands.

V. The Badlands

The Badlands has a strong sense of place as well, featuring that great Scar of the Worldbreaker, and the understated tension between towering New Kargath and the nearby Alliance outpost. It also, unlike the Wetlands, has a plot with a complete five-act structure, introducing you to Rhea, slowly escalating the tension, until a final climax with Deathwing himself.

But the Badlands undercuts and contradicts nearly everything it does. As much as the Wetlands lacks greater purpose, it does not betray the scene-setting with atonal flashback sequences, walk you through genocide for the sake of bear, or leverage poorly scripted cut-scenes whose ambition outruns their budget. In short, the Wetlands is a solid, consistent experience.

The Wetlands is better than the Badlands.

V. Durotar

Yet Durotar also maintains a sense of purpose and consistency with its quests. It acknowledges the Shattering (the apocalyptic events that presage the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm plot). It too lacks a greater plot, but it's goal is not to tell a story, but setup the framework for one. Our science must judge these places not for what we want them to be, but for what they aim to be. And as much as Durotar misses the mark on occasion, it still succeeds. You leave with your chest out, ready to lok'tar ogar, zug zug, and dabu all over Kalimdor.

Leaving the Wetlands, on the tail of a fantastic conclusion, you are left asking, "Wait, what was the point of all that? What was I trying to accomplish here?" Further, the Wetlands climactic fourth act is all the more jarring for its lack of a preceding three, and it drops victory on your lap with a pile of gold, a slap on the back, and a "Ok, well, good luck then! Bye!" The Dark Iron are dead, but to what end?

A closer battle, but the data is conclusive.

Durotar is better than the Wetlands.

Conclusion

It was a long slog, but we made it through to dry land. And now we know:

The Wetlands is the sixth best World of Warcraft zone.

Complete Rankings