The Greatest Quest in World of Warcraft (imo)

[Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello I'm Haslam and this is my new channel very good very good is a chance for me to do three things one to share the experiences I've had in video games that are special to me two to examine the intricacies of game design that allowed these experiences and three and to flex my own dormant creative muscles for years now I've really enjoyed listening to other people's stories on their own channels and so I think it's finally time I tried to give back to that creative space I wouldn't dare try to compete with the articulation that the big video essays have or the detail that a lot of documentary videos do or the assistance how to you guys would give but instead to try and sit between the three of those genres and focus on the little things this following story is perhaps my favorite in recent memory it's also the namesake of this channel so it had to come first and I hope you like it foreign [Music] thank you [Music] in the older versions of World of Warcraft such as wow classic every class had ability trainers abilities are fundamental to how you play the game and you needed to visit a trainer often to upgrade and expand your character's skill set almost always I played a human Paladin so my trainings of choice were occupied in the cathedral in Stormwind City the capital of the alliance jog through the city streets you're seeing now up to the cathedral steps became routine and a welcome break between adventures all players of all classes would have a ritual like this and it helped populate the city streets as someone always had to go somewhere and it fed into the wider illusion that the world felt alive as we went to the Nave of the cathedral the three paladins that will teach you new abilities are on the left but today's blonde Adventure doesn't come from them it comes from this man in front of us the thorian roll we've just reached level 20 and saw our Mentor dethorian believes we're ready for our next trial in our Paladin training the test of Valor the autumnal region of Westfall has a critical Bandit problem and it's left innocent people isolated and defenseless Jordan Stillwell a man with ties to the church has requested a visit to his home to check in on his wife and as we are a paladin GT Falls to us [Music] as a level 20 human we've already explored much of Westfall and so we can take the flight service over to Sentinel Hill where the local militia is courted the Stillwell Orchard is a quiet getaway far from here to the South well nestled between the dagger Hills and the Longshore it really is quite hidden not the place you'd simply stumble across making it quite exclusive to paladins I love the existence of hidden Nooks like this it makes me think of the many places unique to other players in their Journeys I'm never going to find everything this game world has to offer making it feel less like a game and more like a world Jordan's wife Daphne Stillwell might be a Scooby-Doo reference though if so I'm not sure I want to know what happened to Scooby when we meet her we find out she's already repelled several waves of the bandits that have come to take her land and the next wave will be here any minute George [Music] [Music] now I must admit my first ever attempt at that part got me killed a couple of times I remember I had to get a friend to come over and help me out but I got there in the end once the home invasion's over we can then go talk to Daphne again and chill thank us and tell her to go back to death Orion and let him know that she's safe so Upon returning to the cathedral and to the Thorin we get thanked for our Valor and he rewards us for passing the test with a new spell and a new item the new spell is called sense Undead which when cast will show all Undead enemies as dots on the minimap I'll be honest I don't think I ever used this the new item is called the Bastion of Stormwind it's a big shiny shield with quite impressive stats if like me you prefer swinging around two-handed weapons instead you can instead sell it for a nice bit of money which will definitely help with upcoming repair costs and there will be upcoming repair costs so we've completed the test of Valor but to Thorin also tells us that someone should head to ironforge and let Jordan know that his wife is safe us he meant us thankfully though it's not a very long journey as the Gnomes have built an underground tram line connecting the two cities if you haven't played World of Warcraft before you're probably surprised hundreds of hours in frankly even I haven't gotten used to it public transport can be quite awful in real life but in MMOs it can be different I'm not an incredibly social person so in online games it can take some time for me to coax myself out of my shell but one of the first if not the first times I actually spoke to someone else in this game was right here while sitting on a bench waiting for the tram and this happened simply because other people were here with me and just like me they had nothing to do but to sit and to wait when multiple people border the tram together they wouldn't always give small talk but at the very least they'd give each other a wave do a little dance or expect each other's gear and all of this no matter how small was social interaction in this online space which wouldn't have happened otherwise and there's something about that I really cherish sadly though the Deep Run tram is one of the only forms of public transport in World of Warcraft which really is a shame the developers of project Epoch however a private server currently in development are working to correct this wrong starting with carts that take players up and down the local Road Network surrounding Forest oh look we're here [Music] foreign [Music] Jordan is a blacksmith who prefers to do his work out in the cool Mountain Air just outside of the city Gates he's relieved to hear that his wife is now safe and deeply thankful that we came to her rescue feeling indebted to us Jordan offers to craft as a new weapon his greatest work to date and a symbol of our paladinhood the catch though is that he doesn't actually have the required materials and he needs us to go get them for him Jordan needs the following four items White Stone Oak Lumber a refined ore shipment his old smithinghammer and a purified core gem the previous test of Valor was merely to get us to this point and proper Quest Starts Now Jordan also gave us some notes on the whereabouts of each item we'll start with looking for the refined or shipment as according to page three it should be the closest not far from Loch Madan a large body of water up in the mountains not too far from here is a settlement called felsimon the local area is equivalent level wise to Westfall and on my first character I'd already been there for a short while to help out a friend of mine who played a dwarf Hunter therefore I already had the flight Point unlocked so we can just fly over for my own vulture Jordan wants us to meet with an older blacksmithing friend of his bail or stonehand Baylor specializes in Alloys of which one would be perfect for a new weapon Jordan has in fact already placed an order but this shipment never arrived When we arrive at his home Baylor tells us that the ore never reached elsimar for refining the Caravan transporting the shipment was ambushed by the mogrush a clan of ogres who terrorized the local dwarves from their stronghold to the northeast of lochman they get across to this stronghold you'd perhaps be tempted to swim the distance this can work but as the water is infested with all sorts of nasty stuff I don't really recommend it you can instead take a detour north across the stone wrote down it's much safer and it provides a nice Vista you really shouldn't miss out on the mogrush ogres are Elite enemies marked by the gold border around their portrait this means that an assault on their encampment cannot be done alone thankfully for us though delsma offers good Bounty work for wiping them out so there's often other players grouping up to attack the place together said groups could also make an excellent distraction as they plow through allowing you to sneak in get the shipment and get out without taking a single scratch as a footnote I'd also like to highlight the lack of the highlights on the ore shipment it's this wooden crate right here took me a couple of minutes to find first time around so shipment in hand we can go back over the dam and back down to Thailand Baylor is surprised of your return but also elated he somehow manages to refine the or instantaneously great for us and hands it over that's one item down three to go the next thing we need is a purified core gem perhaps the most exotic item on the list according to page six these gems can store magical energy and to learn more we should consult with thunderous windweaver a night elf in Aberdeen who'll know more unfortunately for us Aberdeen is on the other side of the planet more specifically it's in darkshore on the Northwestern coast of kalimdor the game's other continent thankfully despite the incredible distance it won't take equally long for us to get there this is because the main Port taking passengers across the Great Sea is in the neighboring Zone the wetlands where the stone wrought Dam routes its water to so heading north out of Baltimore again this time we'll stick to the road follow it past the algaz station and further into dunagars tunnel system that winds down the mountains something important I've until now neglected to mention is how traveling Works in this game just after our first battle in Westville I used my Hearthstone you combined your Hearthstone to any Tavern and can then teleport back there but only once an hour so during the cool down you have to pay a flight Master to fly you from settlement to settlement if you've never spoken to a settlement's respective flightmaster though you can't fly there and so when in the lower levels like we are it means you have to Traverse this massive World primarily on foot I'd also like to take a moment to point out how cool these tunnels are it's common for game worlds to be tailored to the cultures populating them as both were likely developed side by side but it's nice to see where civilized infrastructure has had to properly tackle the terrain around it it has this kind of novelty that I really appreciate the other end of the tunnel system empties out into the flat Wetlands beneath the mountains and a long road is paved between us and our destination menethil Harbor relative to where we've been before it's a quite featureless Journey but it's a welcome change of scenery regardless my first time here in the wetlands was actually a harrowing experience when classic World of Warcraft launched a friend of mine made a night Elf character and it fell to me need to find him on the other continent and escort him all the way to Stormwind so we could level together we were both level five because of that night the chronologists that stalked this road will forever haunt me menethil Harbor is the little Port Town on the coast and it has a couple of incredibly useful shipping lanes the ship that docks on the left will take you to theramore a human settlement across the pond that's a good 15 levels out of our league and the ship on the right takes us straight to orbiting ships take a while to arrive to depart and they also take a while in transit so there'd always be a few people along for the ride just like with the deeper and tram though the ships have added Furniture so you can either sit down and have a chat or engage in activities Oh look landfall aubergine is a little Port Village in the same vein as medical Harbor but it's a lot darker has a lot less walls and a lot more elves our contact thunderous windweaver is actually the village Elder of Aberdeen and he remembers Jordan and so interests us with where the coral gems can be found the black fathom deeps a sunken Temple along the coast of the south of here he sends us on our way but warns us not to go alone and we really shouldn't black fathom deeps is actually a dungeon a five-person instanced experience that requires teamwork to complete back in the earlier versions of World of Warcraft no matchmaking system existed for the game so finding a group with something had to do yourself this usually would involve asking your guild Whispering other players you've met on your Journeys or shouting at the top of your lungs in the middle of Stormwind the road South along the dark Shore is quite a long one but really quite safe for someone of our level the final part of this jog however when we enter the next zone ashenvale is contested territory this means that the other faction of the game the whole board also have quests here and so are allowed to attack you and you them and they want to visit the black fathom deeps just as much as you do sadly on my first character I followed this road all the way around met a group of hordes and got murdered several times but I later found out that there's a couple of extra ways the alliance can get there that are far safer like several of classic wild dungeons black panther deeps is a really cool entrance that you have to descend down into the Naga that dropped the core gems can actually be found on the outside of the incident as well as the inside so technically you don't have to do the dungeon but you've crossed continents to get here so you may as well make the most of it as a human character you typically have absolutely no reason to be so incredibly far from home which is why I'm a big fan of quests like this that take you on globetrotting adventures you're sufficiently encouraged to play through the game's content despite it being stretched over such a huge surface area the feeling of arriving at new Shores for the first time is pure magic and the entirely inscripted Mano which is done makes it all the more authentic the opening sequence of the modern dragonfly expansion I recently experienced was great don't get me wrong but looking back I won't remember that I will remember this the black father deeps is an intense half underground half underwater encounter but frankly has no real relation to this story so moving on once the dragon has been conquered dragon once the dungeon has been conquered we can take the road back up north to Aberdeen thunderous will tell us we've got the right kind of gem though the evil Magics of its previous owner have corrupted it not to worry though Thunders will instantaneously purify for us that's two items down two to go let's head back to the Eastern kingdoms the natural thing to do in that position is to use a Hearthstone its cooldown is probably ended by now and we're ready to go home but for our third item Jordan's old smithinghammer taking the ship back is actually the quicker route pages 4 and 5 of Jordan's notes talk about his hammer which he left behind when he and his wife fled from their old home during the scourge Invasion The Scourge was essentially a zombie apocalypse and it wiped out most of the human population during the events of Warcraft 3. a few years before World of Warcraft takes place Jordan used to live in pyrewood a village that was once a part of the kingdom of gilneas most of gilneas was sealed off from The Invasion but the southern parts of the Silver Pine Forest didn't make the cut he trained under his father as a blacksmith in a key lumbering over the settlement so that's where he would have left his hammer behind but as with our previous Journey the issue isn't so much what we're doing but where we're going the Silver Pine Forest is far to the North of the wetlands and it's incredibly dangerous with most of the human territories haven't been claimed by The Forsaken the undead faction within the horde the following journey is the pivotal point of this questline if a paladin were to quit it would probably be here this is because the long journey to Silver Pine must not only be taken on foot but it must be taken through very dangerous areas and it must be done with a group which we'll get to later the time investment involved in simply getting to the Hammer can be a filter so let's not waste any more time first traveling across a long muddy road towards menethil Harbor we came to a Crossroads and kept going forward but this time we're taking the path northward most open World Games massively multiplayer or otherwise would provide for you a mount for Journeys like this and World of Warcraft does but not for a lowly level 20 something like us you need to train your riding skill to use mounts in this game and that can only be done at level 40. not to mention both the training and the mount itself are incredibly expensive in fact if you didn't know you needed to it's likely you wouldn't have saved up enough gold the second tier of mounts available at level 60 were considerably faster but the cost for these were simply insane and in the earlier stages of the game they were quite the status of the high requirements make the first time you Saddle Up in World of Warcraft feel absolutely amazing but until that day comes we're stuck to trudging along on foot won't be too long before we reach their thandal spam one of the great wonders of this world but unfortunately it really has seen better days so be careful where you step and don't look down the span takes us into a place called The arathi Highlands an ancient human land that has since become infested with all sorts of all stuff like Elementals ogres trolls The Horde and even dinosaurs this area is for players from levels 30 to 40 and so it's way out of our league and Incredibly dangerous we're entirely helpless if any of the monsters along the road decide to attack us but still let's push on successfully evading dinosaurs and enemy players we can reach Refuge points a secluded safe haven for the alliance and unlock its flight point after taking a bit of a break to de-stress we can finally get back out onto the road again heading west the big structure coming up on the left looks like it might be safe but it's actually full of elite Bandits so if you're being attacked don't go in there things will just get worse eventually we hit a wall hopefully not a metaphorical one but a physical one a really big wall this is thoradin's wall an equivalent to our Hadrian report and though it's seen better days it's still up there with the founders band it's one of the coolest structures in the game passing through the walls huge Gatehouse we enter the Hills Brad Foothills a beautiful land much more appropriate for our level but The Verdant landscape is just a disguise for the deadly Battleground it actually is hillsbrad is one of the areas where the alliance and The Horde first meet and ultimately come to blows is arguably the birthplace of world PVP in World of Warcraft and for that reason we need to be just as careful as we were in the Iraqi Islands South Shore a nice little town on the coast is the New Frontier of humanity and it's relatively safe so we should head there and get the fly point the Hillsborough Foothills is one of my favorite places in the game and is important for a lot of reasons of which many are explored when you go back in time to visit it in the game's first expansion but the video is already quite long and that'll be too much of a tangent so moving on after exploring South Shore we can hit the road again and keep heading west until eventually reaching the border to the Silver Pine Forest the greens become noticeably darker and the atmosphere all together spookier and this is a clear indicator that we're entering the land of the undead Silver Pine is an early leveling zone for Undead characters a direct equivalent to Westfall and so it's marked officially as horde territory this means that enemy players can't be attacked but we still can be our best hope is to follow the road all the way to pirate Village and if we pass any horde players give them a polite wave but don't stop running no matter what the place where Jordan left his hammer has since become an evil tainted place now known as shadowfang keep just like the black fathom deeps it's a dungeon instance only this time the item we need is quite deep in so we definitely shouldn't be alone a great place to recuperate and repair our gear though is in pywood Village just down the hill but be careful The Villages are Pleasant enough during the day but during the night you see another far less Cooperative salty sadly I've rarely seen this Village in its daytime State as the server time in this game is tied to real time and I'd often play games in the evening regardless I find stuff like this really cool and I don't remember seeing anything similar in other games what would be a normal leveling Zone for one half of the player base is a useful if not time limited hub for the other and attaching significant things to the day night cycle of the game in general is really cool partially related is a nearby Merchant called Wallace the blind who is at the sealed entrance to the rest of gilneas he sells the interesting items including a really nice sword and will only trade with members of The Alliance who as you've seen really have no business being here at all NPCs like Wallace are the nice hidden details that really fill out the world and add novelty gameplay wise there is absolutely no reason for him to be here but he is and I think the game's better off for it up the snaking path we passed the meeting Stone I keep stopping but I want to talk about the meeting Stone before going in these Stones were actually the game's first looking for group Tool simply interacting with a Dungeons Associated Stone would put you in a group with other players that did the same thing they later added the ability to search for a group for any dungeon at innkeepers though this wouldn't actually teleport you to the dungeon so nobody used it and by the game's first expansion the entire mechanic was completely revamped crossing over the drawbridge and into the instance we quickly find that the keep has been appropriately named haven't been Infested by both shadows and fangs the place has been taken over by a mad Mage called aragal who's turned everyone into rabid worgens World of Warcraft stand-in for werewolves Jordan's Hammer is at the far end of the courtyard but the metal gate bar in the way is firmly closed so we'll have to go this way instead a short time later we hit the locked door to the courtyard and just down the stairs as the person with the key this seems to be the keep jail and all three cells are occupied horde players needed through the person on the right Alliance the person in the middle and in the leftmost cell is the blacksmith London silwell added to the game during the burning Crusade expansion alongside blood elf paladins He is needed for their quest to forge their powerful weapon mirroring our adventures Landon's relation to Jordan is unknown but as he is also a blacksmith and is a bit more gray they're probably Father and Son but that's never explored tangentially there is actually one other Stillwell in the game Marissa she lives in either North Shore Abbey or goldshire depending on the version of the game and will provide owners of the World of Warcraft collector's edition with their free pet opening the middle cell we can freeze order he was sent by the other Wizards to check up on aragal not knowing that he'd since gone he goes over to the locked door unlocks it with his magic and here we are the courtyard after the slow process of clearing it of all the enemies we can go over to the stables and lying on top of a crate is Jordan's Hammer that's three items down on to go shadowfang keep is one of my favorite dungeons though and it's worth seeing through to the end on I think my second ever run of the dungeon an Assassin's plague dropped and I wouldn't if I recall correctly this is the best in select weapon for Rogues wanting to do the PVP Battlegrounds in this level bracket and because of this I managed to sell it on the auction house for well over 100 gold which at this level felt like winning the lottery also the final boss dropped some really good Caster gear and the robes are incredibly stylish I can imagine a 12 year old back in 2004 dropping their jaw in awe after seeing a player wearing it in stolen okay so that's the longest journey of the entire Quest done there's nowhere we're heading back on foot so let's half the stone back the final item Jordan needs is some White Stone Oak Lumber which he tells us about back on page two the Whitestone Oak is a rare and exotic tree and its wood is known for its strength so Jordan thinks a good handle could be made for our weapon this step in the quest is typically the first step you'd actually take not the last but I saved it for last because it'll take us all the way back to Westfield and it's always more poetic when things end close to where they started the White Stone Oaks resilience makes it very useful as supports for mine shafts and Jordan happens to know that the dead mines had a large amount stocked when they were operational with any look there should be some left for us landing in Westfall again this time we're off to moonbrook an old Bandit ridden town and Into the Dead mind secret entrance at the back the dead Minds is yet another five-person dungeon but after returning from our world spawning Adventures we're powerful enough to not need a proper group and can probably get by with just the help of a friend or two the mines can prove a bit of a maze for newer players and even getting to the instance caused me a bit of grief initially I'd elaborate more on the story of this place but at our level we'd have been here before several times already and this video is already quite a lot longer than intended eventually we reach a big door on the other side of the door is the big chamber where the lumber is stored and guarding it is a group of goblin wood Carvers led by their Mech mounted boss Sneed once the room is cleared and Sneed is dead we can loot one of the Lesser goblins and get our final item the White Stone Oak Lumber that's four items down and not to go let's get out of here so that's all four items in our inventory we fought through mines keeps ogre strongholds ancient temples rode on trams walk through mountains trudged along wetlands and tiptoe through Highlands we've been across a lock across a continent to a different continent underneath both of them and Back Again being chased by Bandits ogres crocolisks worgens Naga ghosts goblins dinosaurs and now we're here at the final stretch after taking the four items to Jordan he doesn't waste much time before getting to work on the hammer oh wow that didn't take long he hands you your new weapon ferrigan's fist named after a late friend of his a dwarf Paladin called Bosch ferrigan statistically it really is quite a nice weapon it's got a nice amount of stamina a lot of magical stat increases and a really Hefty amount of bass damage paladins usually won't find a replacement for this weapon for at least 10 levels and the Damage upgraded in using it is very very noticeable sadly for me as a retribution palette there's no strength or agility on it but I'm just splitting hairs and as everyone has said at some point in their life it's not about the destination it's about the journey or is it it's about the journey not the destination one of those two why is this Quest the greatest in World of Warcraft classic in my opinion as much as I do enjoy the narrative frame of getting a big hammer the aforementioned journey is why it makes a perfect Showcase of everything I love about this game Azeroth is a huge fantasy world that you can share with thousands of other people in real time it doesn't really ask you to explore it but instead subtly nudges you into wanting to the two continents have a collection of incredibly diverse environments and despite the game's maintained popularity for nearly 20 years the world is still full of hidden corners and details that will make your journey feel unique the game will let you fly solo but even people like me who traditionally play single player games are drawn into its communities through exposure to other people you even share down time together and it puts everyone on the same approachable level a level from which you can then build relationships with other people maybe even join a guild learn more about the game and even go on rights together and even if you don't want to talk to anyone the knowledge that everyone you pass on the streets of Stormwind is a real person on their own unique Journey just like you is so so special very good fist major spear Hammer but the path to getting it is a path through everything brilliant about this game and when you see its distinctive symbol on the backs of other paladins you know that they know that too so there it was my first video though I only properly discovered World of Warcraft relatively recently in my life it's one of the best games I've ever played and it's let me meet many new people some of which are still my close friends to this day this isn't to say that World of Warcraft is a focus of very good though I already have a few ideas for small details I can obsess over from all different sorts of games besides if you want to hear more stories coming from this game the channeled Mad Season show more than has you covered he was a big inspiration and if you wanted to hear about the grandest quest in World of Warcraft look no further than Barney 64's Scarab Lord adventures I'll put a link to both of those channels in the description if you enjoyed this video please leave it a like and if you'd be more interested in seeing more videos like this on verrigan you can subscribe comments are also very much appreciated as is any feedback you can give me because frankly I've got no idea what I'm doing goodbye thanks for watching

Channel: Verigan

Views: 156,999

Keywords: verigan, verigan's fist, haslam, documentary, opinion, review, retrospective, slow-paced, edited, story, tale, nostalgia, memories, safe for work, calm, peaceful, gaming, video games, pc, immersive, game music, soundtrack, game design, cinematic, secrets, easter egg, hidden, esoteric, world of warcraft, world of warcraft classic, wow, wow classic, vanilla, levelling, mmorpg, mmo, rpg, massively multiplayer, dungeons, raid, combat, magic, spells, paladin, class quest, quests, eastern kingdoms, kalimdor, westfall, wetland

Id: opqZWJTE4j0

Length: 30min 57sec (1857 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2023