Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: We're doing what now?
by Matthew Rossi 
Dec 31st 2009 at 8:00AM
But I always had a terrible time understanding why I was running Maraudon. Okay, there's some centaurs, and they're... bad? I guess? And then there's one of Cenarius' two sons buried here, and he and an earth elemental named Princess Theadras had sex which, okay, I guess that's bad? And we're going to kill her for having centaur babies with him, and... there's a pretty decent set of plate legs in there? The instance itself isn't poorly designed, mind you, and there's a nice lore element when you bring Zaetar's seed to his brother Remulos in Moonglade, but in terms of why your characters run Maraudon at all, well, it's really hard to come up with anything like a compelling reason. Unless you're a tauren, I guess. Tauren don't need a reason to kill a bunch of centaurs. They just need to be told where they are.
This is always my biggest problem with Zangarmarsh and Coilfang: why are the naga stealing all the water? Just to have it? How does this benefit Vashj or Illidan? I don't really understand that part of the plan. I'm sure someone, somewhere explains it, but I guess I missed that part. (Dread Lord Ziebart hastens to mention that she does have a throwaway line basically saying 'Dudes need water, so we're gonna have all the water and then y'all will have to do what we say' but it conveniently ignores places like Nagrand and Terrokar.)
So now I turn to you, Breakfast Topic readers. What instance or quest most made you say "huh, why is this even happening" and why?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Breakfast Topics, Instances, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 8)
Mr Shinra Dec 31st 2009 8:59AM
"The instance itself isn't poorly designed"
I respectfully disagree, at least most dungeons have one entrance, this thing has two or three, and then you have twisting caverns, multiple levels (Fall off a cliff and its a LONG trek back, especially if you missed/passed any trash along the way), a high number of bosses for a 5-man dungeon that isn't a NR heroic, and to top it all off, should you die/wipe in the dungeon, you have to run ALL the way back... but that's just my two cents. At least with the Blackrock dungeons, the layout makes navigation somewhat possible (it has its own problems but I'd rather go to BRD or LBRS then Mara any day of the week) even with the "dungeon inside a dungeon" thing its got going on (Which actually is a raid iirc)
......
Getting to the topic at hand though: I always wondered why exactly we were going to Sunken Temple. Its remote, its not well maintained (Submereged in the water partially) and all the bosses seem to either be crazy cultists or some angry dragons and from reading the description of it on the wowwiki, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of motivation for players to go there aside from 'phat lewtz' and "oh btw those guys are teh evilz".
Another one is Hellfire Citadel/Magtheridon's Lair: If Illidan took over Outland as he claimed, why do we need to slay the previous "Management", who's already under lock and key (or fel magic and binding glyphs more likely)-- which raises another question: why didn't illidan kill Magtheridon outright, instead of imprisonment ? (Only thing I can think of is that Illidan wanted to give Mag a taste of his own 10k year seclusion)
oomu Dec 31st 2009 6:21PM
>Hellfire Citadel/Magtheridon's Lair
it's all orc obeying illidan
they siphon Magtheridon for his blood, to create more crazy strong orc for the Illidan's army.
So Horde and Alliance need to kill the source of blood : magtheridon.
-
BRD is one of my favorite instances.
Rubble Dec 31st 2009 9:11AM
They've got magtheridon in there because they're stealing his blood, and using it to create fel orcs. Remember all those fancy machines in the blood furnace? Yeah, makin' dem orcs.
Sunken temple is reasonable, a green dragon has gone bonkers. He was evidently (WoWwiki) sent to deal with the troll threat in the temple by Ysera, but did a bad job and got captured, and corrupted by the old gods.
Cyrus Dec 31st 2009 9:14AM
"Getting to the topic at hand though: I always wondered why exactly we were going to Sunken Temple."
Mainly because of Hakkar. There's a quest chain in Tanaris where you fight the ghost of the blood god but the whole quest chain is really a trick to help someone free him, and part of it takes place in the Sunken Temple. Everything else in there - the six priests, the dragons, killing the prophet Jammal'an - is just mercenary work or treasure-hunting.
"Another one is Hellfire Citadel/Magtheridon's Lair: If Illidan took over Outland as he claimed, why do we need to slay the previous "Management"... why didn't illidan kill Magtheridon outright, instead of imprisonment ?"
Because Illidan is using Magtheridon to make fel orcs - physically stronger than normal orcs, and slaves to Illidan - and Illidan isn't our friend.
Marbles Dec 31st 2009 1:59PM
Sunken Temple is part of one of the more foreboding quest chains in the game.
You start with a simple quest at level 40: http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=3520, and then get sent through Zul'Farrak, Jintha'alor, Sunken Temple, Zul'Mashar and Lower Blackrock Spire, before discovering that you were instrumental in supplying the Hakkari with the means to resurrect Hakkar into a corporeal body.
You then get sent to Yojamba Isle where, instead of berating you, the Zandalari Tribe aid you in your attempts to defeat Hakkar.
Cyrus Dec 31st 2009 9:04AM
The story behind Maraudon is: Centaurs are always chaotic evil. They especially bad to and for the tauren and therefore the rest of the Horde, but they don't like the Alliance either. In a world with C'thun and the Lich King they're easy to forget about, but the difference is a matter of strength and competence, not goodness. Well, there's their mother. Go kill her, just like in The 13th Warrior! And along the way, you might as well kill any satyrs you find, because they're all part of the Burning Legion, which, as the name implies, is bad too.
The story behind BRD is that not only are the Dark Iron dwarves bad according to the dwarves of the Alliance, but they woke up maybe the most powerful fire elementals there is, which is chaotic. No one wants big fire elementals running loose, we'd have a, um, cataclysm on our hands.
The story behind Auchenai Crypts, Sethekk Halls and the Shadow Labyrinth is that there are a lot of magical items in that ancient crypt, and Burning Legion worshippers or evil-bird-god-worshippers are trying to take them and they'll probably use the magic items to fight us with, we might as well get in there and get them first. In the Mana Tombs, there's a twist: it's not that the ethereals would use the magic items against us, it's that they'd sell them to the highest bidder. Why pay full price when we can kill the ethereals and take the magic items for the cost of ammunition and repairs?
OK, that one sounds pretty horrible.
Kharay1977 Dec 31st 2009 9:14AM
Most instances and raids make sense in their own way. For some, the storyline is, admittedly, a bit weak. Still, one example that always struck me as a bit peculiar... The Stockades.
I mean, OK, it's obvious what's going on there... rebellion of the inmates. But still... why doesn't the Stormwind Guard simply STORM the place? Why is it that a group of 5 random civilians (the players) are able to do something the Stormwind Guard are not able to do - to liberate the stockades and quell the insurgence?
chibispiff Dec 31st 2009 9:43AM
Bureaucracy, that's why.
Bear in mind that when this all first came out, Lady Prestor was essentially in charge of Stormwind. Being Onyxia in disguise, she wanted to keep the alliance destabilized. So keep a bunch of forces outside to "contain" the riot without letting the quell it draws troops away from the front lines and keeps people scared. It's just like with Westfall, Redridge, and Duskwood. Keep the troops in the city doing busy work, don't support the places that actually need it.
The adventurers, on the other hand, can cut through the red tape. When they succeed, Lady Prestor can't exactly have them punished for quelling the uprising, so she has to grumble and go along with it. The story didn't really evolve well with Varian coming back as the whole thing would have been done long before his return.
Tabasa Dec 31st 2009 10:39AM
Stockades makes sense story-wise, that's not the problem with it. It just happens to be the most boring instance ever designed.
Eyhk Dec 31st 2009 11:19AM
@Tabasa Not to mention no loot worth picking up at all =/ I think there is like one blue drop and it's from a rare spawn.
macster Dec 31st 2009 9:16AM
The Kalu'ak daily in Dragonblight - "Soooo, you want me to take the children of your enemies, stick them in a sack and hand them over to you, no questions asked? Hmmm..."
"You'll give me a fishing rod? Why didn't you say? Here, puppies!"
Gimmlette Dec 31st 2009 9:47AM
^ This.
Doing that quest bothered me so much I did it just because it was a quest and then never went back when it became a daily. There was a huge discussion in Wowinsider about that quest/daily shortly after Wrath's release.
That the lore surrounding Mara was sketchy didn't bother me that much. So many quest chains in the game have dubious feet in lore or actually don't make a whole bunch of sense when viewed within the context of the world. To me, the best example is the Nesingwary quest chains. Exactly why am I supposed to kill 30 of each of these animals? Ooooh you're giving me a gun so I can kill stuff better. /shrug. Okay.
I think, for major plot points, sending us into Icecrown, there needs to be reasons grounded in the story and the lore. I don't have a problem with there being other places, even large places like Mara that simply exist to be cleared of trash the area locals don't like. These places become a diversion, a respite, from the "must continually kill scourge", of the regular game. We can take a step back, get some loot, and then go back to our primary job of being mindless drones for the good guys. "You want me to kill 15 cultists day after day and you'll give me 10 gold and maybe an extra piece of paper? Sure."
Moeru Dec 31st 2009 10:13AM
"Exactly why am I supposed to kill 30 of each of these animals? Ooooh you're giving me a gun so I can kill stuff better. /shrug. Okay"
If you remember Borean Tundra, this is EXACTLY why you're expected to do his quests. There's no lore. He's a big game hunter. He hunts for sport. And as his willing apprentice, who wants some rewards for your hard work, you help him do it. Basically, you're not better that the Loot-Crazed Hunters that roam around eastern Borean, if you take the viewpoint of DHETA.
On another note, if you look hard enough and read supporting articles on Wowwiki, or even the WoW official site, you can paint a good picture of any lore. There's also educated guesses that come into mind. For example, Auchindon (since someone already explained it). They're in Mana Tombs, (Mana is a source of energy), they have equipment everywhere, there's mana wyrms (reinforcing the fact that there's some kind of mana ressource there), and the quests from the neutral Ehtereal faction help you dismantle their operation there (incurring that they're harvesting *something*) With this, you can assume the Ethereals there simply have their own, business agenda there.
Sometimes stuff isn't written down word per word what the lore is. If it was, no one would be interested. But since it isn't, you can paint your own picture of what's happening. One thing that helps, is to not storm places like a truck going 200 miles per hour. If you have an 80, or a guild group, run a dungeon at a slower pace, and have someone who knows their lore come along to explain stuff you want to know. Of course, if you're not into lore, then there's no point and you can keep ramming dungeons down for loot and exp.
vanye111 Dec 31st 2009 9:17AM
Why are you running Maraudon? It depends on what quest you have. If you've just gone in for the heck of it (or for lewtz) you don't have a reason aside from that. However, you may have come across:
The centaur Pariah, who wants you to kill the Nameless Prophet and complete the amulet which will signify that he has the right to lead the entire nation of centaur.
Willow, the undead scholar who wants to study some ancient carvings that are found in Maraudon, hoping to unlock their secrets.
Possibly a dryad or a keeper has asked you to delve into Maraudon and slay the elemental Princess who lives there, so that they may recover the remains of Zaetar, an ancient kinsman, and bring his body home to his people.
Or you could just be a wandering murderer, killing people and taking their stuff, just like90% of the people playing the game. :)
jasonkidd1234 Dec 31st 2009 9:18AM
I always thought we were going to sunken Temple to stop Hakkar. Or whatever his name is.
That's at least one quest. not sure about the other ones.
Phil Dec 31st 2009 9:45AM
Got it in one.
Most of the questlines involve stopping Hakkar from being summoned; at least one (I've only done the shaman questline completely) actually accelerates his summoning and leads (in a really roundabout way) to Zul'Gurub.
Ringo Flinthammer Dec 31st 2009 11:35AM
Yeah, Sunken Temple and Zul'Gurub make sense, even if (spoiled already) it turns out that one of the quest givers is tricking you into actually helping release him in ZG.
Sunken Temple still sucks, though.
ben Dec 31st 2009 9:24AM
Vashj was trying to make a new ell of eternity. thats why she needed the water and thats why the druids got involved.
Josh Dec 31st 2009 1:52PM
This. It was for Illidan though, and had to do with the vials of the original well that had been given to Vashj and Kael. I forget where this was brought up, Zangarmarsh was painful enough to get through without wasting time reading quest text.
Blondies Jan 4th 2010 6:47AM
@Josh
It's the prequest to Mount Hyjal that talks about the vials of eternity, since you need to hand over the ones Kael and Vashj holds to enter.