Currently, there is perhaps the most strenuous and lengthy questline of all time in World of Warcraft. And it’s really unnecessary.
Anyone who follows my posts about World of Warcraft knows that I am currently very satisfied with the game as a whole. The story of K’aresh was great, the current raid is really fun and even the shadow priest is currently in a pleasant state. But that doesn’t mean everything is rosy in World of Warcraft – there are always minor criticisms.
A “small” criticism can be found on K’aresh, in the form of a questline that just keeps going on and where nearly every single quest step was so infinitely monotonous that I absolutely have no idea how anyone at Blizzard could classify it as interesting.
The teaser for K’aresh:
The questline from Ve’nari cannot be played in one go, but every 3-4 days (every Wednesday and Saturday) a new part of the questline was unlocked. In the meantime, you search for new species to be settled in the bio-dome or take care of the already existing animals and their needs.
Constant Repetition
I can only speculate how this questline came about. On paper, it probably sounded interesting. You help Ve’nari fill her nearly extinct bio-dome with life again and look for new creatures every few days that you bring from all over the world into the bio-dome. That sounds basically interesting, but fails due to the design of the quest.
Because the quests are among the most monotonous and boring things that World of Warcraft has brought in recent years.
The worst part for me is that the steps repeat, even within the same species. Let’s take bees as an example.
After you have fetched the bees from the Stormsong Valley – which was still somewhat interesting – you bring them to a small bio-dome on K’aresh. There, you run around with the camera and photograph the bees to document how they get along with the fauna of K’aresh.
Subsequently, you bring the bees into a larger bio-dome and photograph them again to see how they harmonize with other species.
Then you let the bees move one more time, namely to the main bio-dome and – you guessed it – photograph them again.
And because that was so much fun, it will also become a repeatable quest that pops up every week.
Constant Repetition
This is just one of the examples. The entire questline is full of repetitions and most of it is completely interchangeable. The quests for almost every species in the bio-dome are a nearly exact copy. Over and over again, you run around, migrating the new species first into the small, then the larger, and finally the main bio-dome.
A bit, I had the feeling that there is no quest designer behind the quests, but some biologist who wanted you to replicate the actual steps of observation and research in World of Warcraft. However, it seems to have been lost that quests in an MMORPG do not have to be particularly close to the reality of research but should primarily be fun. And that was not the case.
If a quest pops up next week where I have to run around with the camera again and document the life of bees, snakes, or flying rays, then my priest wishes for the talent “Descent into Madness” to quickly end her own suffering.
Constant Repetition
I can guess what Blizzard was trying to do with this. The idea of a really long questline that continues every few days is a great thing. Having something new to do in the game every 3 or 4 days is, on the one hand, time-gating, but on the other hand, also a nice feeling of progress. At least that would be the case if these contents were not ruthlessly boring and the individual steps had offered more variety.
I am definitely glad that I have this behind me and I am sure: I have played this exactly once and will not repeat it with any other character. It’s a shame that this infinitely long questline fits into the many little flaws that make K’aresh a rather undignified final area of an otherwise great expansion.
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