A warning for spoilers on the Reclamation of Gilneas.
I’ll just say it directly: the questline for the reclamation of Gilneas City is some of the weakest content I’ve experienced in WoW. There’s very little redeemable about it, unfortunately, especially for content that ultimately exists for the enjoyment of those who keep up with the lore and story of the game, given it provides no real additional value. It speaks to me of a lack of care for the weight of what it represents, given it is an event that people who have more closely followed the developments of the story have been hoping for for a decade now.
The worgen starting zone has an amazing set of story beats, with the fall of the kingdom being shown as it is crushed under the Cataclysm and at the hands of the Forsaken. It leaves any worgen player raring to get out there and get their vengeance upon both Deathwing and the forsaken, and created one of my favourite rivalries with werewolves who cannot fall to undeath versus relentless undead who want them exterminated, which continues in the Silverpine Forest story quests. The rivalry endures with Genn, especially throughout Legion and, partly, Battle for Azeroth.
But of late, Genn’s relationship with the Forsaken changed, and he was written to mellow out. This happened – you guessed it – in a book! Twice, even! After Sylvanas fled the Horde, Genn began to consider that, actually, the Forsaken aren’t all that bad. Only Sylvanas is bad. But the player doesn’t really experience any of this, and they certainly never get their comeuppance in any way towards the Forsaken, who invaded their lands at their weakest point. Calia was introduced to tip the scales of this even further towards the opposite way, but the remainder of the Desolate Council is still composed of the same people that were in command when Gilneas was invaded.
The Reclamation
So with an unsolved grudge between the Worgen and the Forsaken that took their homes, we arrive at 10.2.5 with the reclamation of Gilneas. But rather than provide a closure of some sort to the legacy of Gilneas, the story instead take us to face… the Scarlet Crusade…?
It’s worth noting that the Scarlet Crusade isn’t without -some- ties to Gilneas – at the end of Shadowlands, propaganda pamphlets were distributed about how the Scarlet Brotherhood would attempt to work together with Genn to undermine the Forsaken, and once they were out of the picture, they would stab Genn in the back. A decent set up… that never sees a follow-up, nor is the story of the Reclamation in any way tied to these breadcrumbs of a story. Instead, the Scarlets are apparently only interested in vanquishing both Worgen and Forsaken outright, having amassed yet another army out of nowhere, even after being crushed by the Forsaken not so long ago in their Heritage questlines. I don’t know how else to describe this choice as anything other than mind boggling, given the fact that THEIR OWN SETUP for a story that would have followed up on the legacy of rivalry while still pitting them against a common enemy eventually was RIGHT THERE for the taking.
No, instead we arrive to Gilneas to find the Forsaken throwing BLIGHT at the city to combat the Scarlet Crusade, with nary a word being spoken about this by the Alliance forces. Why? When did the Alliance become tolerant of these methods, after being outraged by its use in Lordaeron? Who thought this was a good idea?
Calia is brought forward as though it provides some measure of comfort to the Forsaken being there, but Calia has always been a controversial character in the community. Her first act in power was the removal of the troops from Gilneas, despite even the characters manifesting hesitation about why she’d been selected to lead what is actually a council. It’s made even worse by the fact that, for once in this entire questline, Genn DOES have the appropriate reaction of mistrusting their presence, but is hushed by Mia, a character that barely existed so far, and Tess, whose brother had been killed in the Forsaken’s assault, regardless of who fired the arrow. She is simply readily willing to trust them. Again, it’s worth keeping in mind that the player, especially a worgen player, has had zero reasons to ever begin to question whether the forsaken armies were actually mere puppets of Sylvanas or not.
The questline is a big, uninspired mess from the intro onwards. There is no real sense that something is being recovered, and even the chance to call back to the worgen’s starting zone quests is ignored in favour of “Kill X scarlets to proceed” questlines. The writing is frankly infantile at best, but this is, unfortunately, a trend in Dragonflight.
When it finally concludes and Tess is made Queen, we don’t so much as see her again – much the same way we have barely seen her before then. Why? For what purpose has she been crowned, when she has exhibited zero traits worthy of leading a kingdom?
In the end, the Forsaken are hailed as this indispensable force without which the reclamation would not have been possible, even though we see with our own eyes that this is not the case. The forsaken do almost nothing to help, and the player is forced to accept that they are simply friends now. There is little to no implication of the opposite.
The Result
But the questline is only part of the problem. When the reclamation ends and Gilneas is back in the Worgens’ hands, we find Gilneas in… very much the state we left it in. Almost two decades will have gone by, and the city has remained static.
Some NPCs are sprinkled throughout the city, but for some reason, they are friendly to the Horde, who can simply waltz into this decidedly Alliance city, and make their home at the inn. Why? Could these NPCs not have been marked at least as Unfriendly towards a Horde player to show that this is not, in fact, their grounds? Is it a sign of the direction the narrative team intends to take the story, towards no factions, be it in gameplay or in story? Showing these small things goes a very, very long way for environmental storytelling, so if this is a deliberate choice, then I would urge the team to at least make this sort of thing clear.
It gets worse, then, because the reward, the fancy set of clothes, is either imported wrong to the game, resulting in only a flat onesie for clothes with poorly textured boots, or its design has been pushed to the lowest of priorities. It falls well beyond the standard set by the Amirdrassil questlines and rewards for the Night Elven players. In fact, everything surrounding the Reclamation does. It comes across as a footnote, a thing to get out of the way without a second thought. Why is it that every reward for Worgen players is a frilly suit, when their time is more often spent as, well, a worgen? Where are the ripped suits and clothes to demonstrate the ferocity of the curse, the sets inspired on the Bloodfang and the Sons of Arugal, or even the more moody, victorian coats just the same way Genn Greymane has them?
Gilneas has no flight point, no portal, no harbour, nothing beyond the minimum effort required to ship the questline as is. If this is meant for a future update, then I ask why isn’t this at least hinted at? I know a carrot on a stick can be a poor design choice, but when the track record for these sort of storylines that, of late, don’t involve the Night Elves, is this bad, you have to at least throw players a bone.
There’s a lot of “why’s” in this whole process. I would really like to ask the narrative team what their intention is going forward with this. Because any worgen player that will have followed the story thus far will come out of this unsatisfied, with no sense of recovering anything, and probably betrayed that they didn’t get to capitalise on the very thing that drove them out of Gilneas in the first place. The questline continues this trend from the Heritage questline of downplaying the curse as something truly awful, as if to make the player regret even being a worgen, when their success is derived from coexisting with the curse! I can’t even imagine the forsaken players will leave this feeling particularly pleased, because not only have lands been taken from them without so much as a word from a character many don’t particularly enjoy, they’ve also been forced to help their enemy in retaking it again! Where is the racial fantasy of this?
So to the narrative team, is the goal to remove these rivalries? Make the two factions blend together into some grey blob? Make the curse out to be an entirely negative trait of the Worgen? Because this questline has certainly succeeded in making it seem that way. There’s probably more I forgot to point out, because god knows there’s very little that was enjoyable in this, aside from the touch at the end with the special Gilneas Hearthstone for Worgen. Frankly, if the problem was time constraints, I’d rather have waited another five years than have dealt with this.
