The Darkspear Trolls of WoW are one of the most unique and interesting interpretations of Trolls. They’ve been my favorite race since I played WC3 twenty years ago. That’s why I’m so heartbroken about what Blizzard delivered with their heritage quest line.
After finishing the Darkspear heritage questline, here are my thoughts. (Spoilers Ahead) At the end I have offered some specific ideas I think could have improved the experience.
The quest line is … OK. It is mostly shallow and is almost an exact knock off of the starting quests for Darkspear trolls, lacking the emotional weight and stakes of the starting questline with Vol’jin and Zuni.
Criticisms:
- There really isn’t much Darkspear heritage in the quest, as much as it is a continuation of the bigger LOA lore from BFA/Shadowlands. What little actual world building involving the Darkspear’s religious and cultural identity is pretty shallow, and quite literally reflects grade school level art projects like making Native-American masks out of paper plates.
- The Zandalari overshadow still exists within the questline. Zandalari are a cultural powerhouse in comparison to the Darkspear, and sadly the dev’s lean into that undermining any classic Darkspear Identity.
- There is no meaningful reference to “Heritage.” Vol’jin and Sen’jin are both missing from the questline. It’s bad enough that the majority of Darkspear lore we have is built through these two characters, the idea that they are completely missing from the questline is bad.
- Rokhan has no personality, then steals our spotlight after we do the work. Yup, another cutscene where an NPC jumps up and does the deed while our character stands idly by… (in that awful armor.)
- The heritage armor is inaccurate (in pictures of Troll’s wearing the cloth mask, the mask never covers a distinctive Troll feature, their noses. This mask just looks silly and lazy in its design.)
- The most iconic Rush’kah mask is the one on the Darkspear coat of arms… why didn’t we get that mask? Also, there are the Rush’kah from the BFA cinematic… which look better than the options we got. Lastly, the “extra masks” look like they were designed for burning crusade classic graphics, not modern WoW standards.
- The two colors for the heritage armor are Brown and Red. The Darkspear tabard is green. Would have been cool to have at least one set work with the tabard.
- The sets themselves are bugged, being that only some bits show up outside the complete set option. As of completing the quest, I could not transmog the “red” left shoulder separate from the whole set. (This may be fixed in a later patch, but then again, Rogues still haven’t gotten boots for their Tier 21 Antorus set.)
- The back piece is good, but should sit higher up on the male Troll model, it looks like its floating and doesn’t quite work.
- The shoulders are great. The chest piece is good, but not particularly distinct. It fits with a lot of the art, but could also be associated with a ton of other races.
Summery: the whole experience (quest and armor) to me, feels shallow. Who was this questline for? It doesn’t reveal or expand anything about Darkspear fantasy. It feels like a grade school art lesson on culture, surface aesthetic without any meaningful connection.
A couple of ideas that I think could have improved the experience and quest.
- More story around why the Darkspear chose Bwonsamdi, and why they worshipped those specific LOA. Integrate the creation of the Rush’kah masks into the quests to discover the LOA instead of an arts and craft session at the end.
- There is no escaping Zandalari overshadow, but this could have been an opportunity to investigate the difference from the Darkspear path and the Zandalari, while potentially creating a merging of the two cultural identities… by:
- Fleshing out Rohkan’s personallity through his relationship with Talanji. Imagine if we actually got a Troll wedding ceremony? Or if they are just friends, Rohkan could have shared the stories of Sen’jin and Vol’jin with Talanji, so she could get a better understanding of who the Darkspear are.
- Take the time to make the armor accurate to the lore and art. A unique cloth mask that doesn’t hide the distinct features of the race is exactly the kind of love Heritage armors should be about. Take the leggings for example. If I’m being generous, they could’ve been modelled on the female Troll body, but actually seem to be based on the same leggings the Night Elf heritage armor used, that half skirt, half shirt tale style. If the Kul’Tiran can have a unique chest piece for their heritage armor, why can’t Darkspear Trolls have unique legs? Or a unique cloth mask? Something that actually works with their unique model.
- The over all aesthetic of the armor reflects the overall experience of the Questline. Yes there are clearly Darkspear (or at the least Troll) elements in both, but instead of celebrating and expanding their identity and culture, they just seem to be purely superficial and shallow interpretations.
Conclusion:
In a game as large as WoW, I understand that not every niche content will get equal attention and there is no doubt that some effort went into this questline. The end result, however, lacks any real heart, feels rushed, and does a thing that I’ve been vocal about a lot lately. It’s only paying lip service to an idea, instead of putting in the work to flesh out the idea. I appreciate the work the Dev’s put into the questline, I just didn’t find it compelling.
Afterthought:
The Heritage weapon should have been a Darkspear. It’s in the name, after all.
And can we get troll assets that aren’t from 2004!
Problematic: After the recent controversy over Zekhan’s disgusting portrayal as an uneducated savage being taught by the white coded blood elf, the idea that one plot point in the Darkspear heritage quest is the Darkspear apologizing to a Loa for neglecting them is kind of gross. There is something to be said about cultural coding of fantasy races and then the way they are portrayed in the fantasy. The idea that peoples who are consistently coded as “evil” for plot purposes are then forced to apologize for a plot device that doesn’t seem natural…. Just feels wrong. I will need more time to think on this and may need to do a deeper dive in a different post about “not seeing color” politics erasing identity. Anyway, I feel like this was important to add.
