Greetings all,
Since Vanilla WOW I have been driven to only play end game content and pvp. I would rush through quests, speed through zones just to get raid ready in a hurry. With a family growing and less time to raid, I decided to buy the books and read the lore (currently reading Day of the Dragon). I fell in love with them!
My question is this, in Classic there is the quest chain to find out the King Varian was kidnapped. I remember in Pandaria there was a quest line where the teenager Anduin helped out. Now that we are past those expansions, are those quests still around, are they removed or are they altered?
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The questline in Vanilla is called The Missing Diplomat. It was never actually finished, and it was removed in Cataclysm. But you can still experience it in Classic. In addition to that, you can also do the Marshal Windsor questline (in Classic again, it’s not in Retail anymore) that culminates in Onyxia’s Lair - in the comics released around the time of Wrath, it was revealed that the one who canonically participated in these events was Varian, as a conclusion to the scenario posed in the Missing Diplomat.
In Pandaria, the opening questline for the Alliance in Jade Forest involves finding Anduin Wrynn after his ship wrecks on the continent, and several other questlines after that (most notably the Kun-Lai Summit quests and the Operation: Shieldwall quests) also have heavy involvement from him. The only removed one (as far as I can remember) is the Legendary cloak questline, in which both Anduin and Wrathion work together. Much of that, however, can probably be experienced online. It’s largely auditory.
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Even in Classic, I’m fairly certain Varian can’t be found on Alcaz Isle anymore. He was removed in a patch at some point before 1.12. Furthermore, the conclusion to “The Missing Diplomat” (along with the conclusion to the Theramore Deserters quest arc), which didn’t address freeing or helping Varian in any way, was added in an update to Dustwallow Marsh questing in Burning Crusade.
Both of those latter two are still present as separate questlines post-4.0.3, even though the original Missing DIplomat questline is now removed. The Missing Diplomat continuation has been modified multiple times, as the original conclusion involved warning Bolvar that the Defias Brotherhood were both involved with Varian’s kidnapping and their alliance with mysterious members of the Black Dragonflight, though Lady Katrana Prestor claimed that the Defias couldn’t possibly be the ones involved in this. Since Varian was obviously freed and Prestor unmasked as Onyxia, the questline was changed so that Varian was informed that the Defias were the ones who planned out his kidnapping. And now the questline ends with Anduin, and the text was barely changed to just include his name, so he talks about “his kidnapping” now.
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I am just here to say it’s ironic af, Windsor is answering
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Yeah… I know I told you before, but for the sake of everyone else who reads this, Marshal Windsor completely slipped my mind when I named this character.
He really wasn’t the inspiration for the name, which is an irony of its own considering he’s an important player in the Onyxia endgame.
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The Missing Diplomat chain was the start of that story but it was never finished in game. there’s a big gap between there and the unmasking of Onyxia which occurs after you free a certain prisoner in Blackrock Depths.
That gap would later be filled in the Warcraft comic book series, which introduces Varian as Logash, Broll Bearmantle and a certain expatriate blood elf rogue whose name I can’t recall.