Visiting: Coldridge Valley

Lore Story Forum
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I hadn’t rolled a Dwarf before in a post Cata world. Nothing against them I just think Gnomes are the more interesting Dun Morogh residents so that’s what I usually went with. So I was both pleasantly surprised by the content, and rendered completely speechless by one questline and trust me we’ll get to that.

Coldridge Valley is actually pretty good as tutorial zones go. I like how it’s been actively impacted by the titular Cataclysm. In addition to feeling aftershocks, the valley’s been sealed off by a tunnel collapse so there’s a big focus on rounding up supplies to feed and cloth the people trapped there.

To make matters worse the earthquake also unleashed a bunch of troggs who are rampaging in the area. The place you start is actually already under attack by them which is an interesting choice that I wish Blizz would do more often. The other nursery zones start out in an area of relative safety, and from a meta perspective so do Dwarves as the troggs aren’t flagged hostile. But it really is cool to create a new character and immediately jumping into the action.

I also love how it hints at how there’s more going on. The Coldridge residents express some bafflement at receiving no aid from Ironforge. The zone ends with the only good exposition quest I’ve experienced. You have to leave via gyrocopter due to the aforementioned tunnel collapse, and it gives you a pretty scenic tour of the region while also updating you on the situation. I also love how it drops you in Anvilmar. Both Tirisfal and Durotar put their first hubs a good distance away from the nursery zone so it’ll be about an hour until you get to a rested place to log off.

You’re updated on the situation via radio as you fly over scenic Dun Morogh. Turns out the Coldridge residents have been pretty ill informed in their isolation and I love how it gives you the low down on both the severity of the Cataclysm and all the problems Dun Morogh is facing. More troggs, Dark Iron saboteurs, and of course the Frostmane Tribe.

Yeahhh, about them…

I’ve mentioned before how it never feels great to kill the Amani. Yeah they’re hostile and don’t really give you an option. But they’ve pretty legitimate greviances and the lore shows the Quel’Dorei aren’t exactly trying to meet them halfway.

But hey at least you’ve the Darkspear on hand to assure you these people are indeed bastards, and it’s not like you do anything really crazy like butcher their children.

So anyway in Coldridge Valley you butcher Frostmane children. Now they’re called welps and have shrunken down models of adult trolls. So perhaps these are some sort of pygmy adult Trolls?

Nah it uh. It makes sure to clear up any confusion about that. You’re also tasked with listening to their Soothsayers. Because the Trolls aren’t actually hostile. They seem more confused, so you’re tasked with eavesdropping on their spiritual leaders who refer to the welps as children;

“Soothsayer Mirim’koa says: Our land be a land of ice an’ snow.
Soothsayer Mirim’koa says: But beneath the earth, child, there always be fire.
Soothsayer Mirim’koa says: De spirit come from deep down to talk with Grik’Nir.”

That’s also where you learn the Frostmane pose a threat as their leader is communing with a fire elemental Deathwing woke up. Other than stealing a gnome’s tools they hadn’t take any hostile action against the ‘good’ citizens of Coldridge Valley. In fact they seem more confused than anything else, probably because of the Categoty 5 Dragon Tantrum. You’re sent to murder 10 children just to show them the Dwarves aren’t overrun by the troggs and are still capable of defending themselves. Against uh, non hostile children. Again; you preemptively kill at least 10 children to avenge a Gnome’s lost tools.

So I’m standing there going;

“So can I help them with that fire elemental or?”

Really is the grimest quest in game. Mostly for how matter of fact it is. Now I haven’t gotten done with the rest of Dun Morogh so maybe this is a brilliant set up that shows Ironforge’s many enemies are not acting unreasonably and that you in fact the villain of our piece. But I kinda doubt that’ll be the case.

I do find it interesting though as the Forsaken also have a quest where you’re tasked with disposing of murloc children. So what do you drop Blight on them? Unleash hungry darkhounds?

No. You scare them away. They’re marked friendly, you couldn’t hurt them even if you wanted to. Cmon they may look spooky but the Forsaken aren’t monsters. Unlike those soulless flesh automatons hiding in the mountains.

Otherwise one of the better starter zones tbh but Good God. I’d heard of the quest before and thought perhaps people were exaggerating. But they’re literally referred to as children by adult Frostmane Trolls. So. That’s gotta be the darkest quest I’ve played.

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I think out of all the races in the game, the Ironforge Dwarves are by far the most… disappointing? If one subscribes to the idea that no development is the worst kind of development.

I mean, seriously. When is the last time that the Bronzebeard Dwarves had any meaningful development outside of Magni begging champions to deal with the Woonzs :tm:? The only time the Council of the Three Hammers does anything at all is to send either the Dark Irons to deal with the problem, or sending individual agents at times to help the PC. It’s literally been like this since Mists of Pandaria, and only Dark Irons get any sort of real attention.

I don’t even think Khaz Modan has been touched by the faction conflict other than… Twilight Highlands? Which was allegedly mostly destroyed during Legion, scattering the Wildhammers, and like that one Horde outpost in the Badlands. In fact the only reason the Horde has a presence in the Badlands isn’t even in response to the Alliance, it was established to deal with Rend Blackhand’s Dark Horde. BFA did jack all for the Dwarves, even the gnomes had a greater showing against the Horde.

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Honestly with the quality of writing from the last two expansions in mind, stagnation might be preferable as Blizz’s new approach to story development is breaking all your stuff.

But yeah it is weird how little they come up on the Horde. The Stormpike are one of the main antagonists of Hillsbrad. And the Bronzebeards turn up in Southern Hillsbrad.

But outside of that you really don’t see much of them. Which is a shame Dwarves are pretty cool. Particularly these ones as they’ve an airforce and armored divisions. You’d think they’d be a real menace now with the Dark Iron in tow as subterranean warfare is in their wheelhouse as well now.

Come to think of it is there even a Dwarf in SL?

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Do you doubt the Dwarvish imperial mandate? You sound like a hill dwarf. Fun fact the Dwarves are the OG less than honorable faction within the Alliance. Before Worgen. Before Void Elves. Before Dark Irons. There were Mountain Dwarves, and they bashed the skulls of children. May their glorious beards and ale flow red with the blood of their victims…

They never get enough screen time. Alterac Valley Dwarves are really imperialistic and canonically not very nice. I wish we had seen the dark side of the Dwarves more often, especially the Bronzebeards.

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The only ones I saw were in Bastion as ghosts waiting to be trained. Dwarves never get screeen time.

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That much I figured. In S.Barrens they run the Stonespire Tribe of Tauren out of their homes to construct Bael’Modan. Then kill them when they protest about how this will absolutely piss off earth elementals. Which it does.

Tauren do get the last laugh though. Blow the place to smithereens with the help of their own diminutive demolition expert friends.

Just kind of amusing though. I’m picturing Anduin weeping softly because he never in a million years thought the Alliance military would loot Dazar’Alor and assassinate it’s king.

And the Dwarves are just in the background going;

“Why’d we leave afair settin’ th’ orphanage oan fire?”

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Dwarves are precocious scamps! I’m sure our “holy” king of the Alliance forgives all their transgressions. I just wish they showed Dwarves doing more criminal things against the Horde and third party factions. Looting gold from the Zandalari vault. Conquering more innocent troll villages and killing their children. Least the Forsaken have the decency of ensuring they have “planned deniability” for their crimes. Dwarves just laugh and roll their eyes.

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I’ve seen it brought up before about the dwarves killing troll whelps. I’ve leveled a bunch of characters through that area and never thought they were children. I get the reasoning because of their size and name, but I always took whelp as simply being derogatory. As for their size, Blizz has a habit of shrinking some mobs. Take a look at the Ogres in Loch Modan. They used to be big and elites. The main reason I don’t think they are children is the ESRB rating would probably take a considerable hit, meaning no more T for Teens.

I don’t think she’s referring to them as children. Soothsayers, shamans, etc… are usually older and often refer to those under them as children or that we are all children of the elements, wilds…

Overall, glad you enjoyed Coldridge Valley and all it had to offer! Really like it when people talk about dwarf stuff. :smiley:

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Killable children have definitely been a thing before. You can attack and kill the Wolvar pups in the Dragonblight, or the numberless Dragon hatchlings that have been ganked over the years but have been stated to be intelligent and self-aware. It’s iffy on Blizzard’s part that when there are cases such as this, or a population is glassed before the PC, it’s just some ‘savage’, ‘inhuman’, or some uncivilized Azerothian race. So really, who cares?

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Your average gamer sure doesn’t think too deeply on the matter. Especially considering most people don’t read the quest text :wolf:

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The stuff with the trolls is pretty iffy, I agree. That said, the reason they’re not hostile to the player (ergo neutral mobs) is due to game mechanics added later on, prior to that change they beat the tar out of you for even getting near them. Many a newbie dwarf player met the sweet embrace of death trying to collect that stupid gnome’s tools, both pre- and post-Cata.

That said, it’s certainly not a ‘good guys and bad guys’ thing, which honestly I appreciate. I really like these posts about starting areas by the way, I plan on making a similar long form post regarding Azuremyst and Bloodmyst soon, maybe even today.

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Trolls in Alliance lands are basically treated like a pest to be eliminated. Same for Blood Elves!
Except for Night Elves… ironically.

Back in Vanilla when I played Alliance I saw the trolls no differently than I saw Troggs or Gnolls who made human tents… literally… like with skin.
Just another monster to destroy.

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And to a point it’s a MMO. On some level it’s going to be a mass murder simulator. RPGs in general are. It’s not like in Skyrim you can try to remedy the socioeconomic problems that are pushing people toward banditry. You kill them all. It’s fine. They weren’t exactly going to live on and invent a cure for rockjoint. Not if they’re picking fights with dudes wearing dead dragons for armor.

And that’s fine. I didn’t feel weird about massacaring ogres in Dire Maul on my Nelf even though I can’t really blame them for squatting in an abandoned structure that’s large enough for them to live in. Because they’re big stinky fatbois who are as dumb as the rocks they’ll hurl at you as soon as look at you.

Where it gets uncomfortable, for me at least, is when you’re massacaring a race who’s mad because you stole their land. And they’re styled after IRL cultures who were massacared by ruthless imperialists. And all of this is framed as perfectly morally good. Because I feel like I’m playing some lunatic’s fan fic where the Tasmanians had it coming.

Like compare the Frostmane to the Shatterspear. In Darkshore you wipe them out in truly spectacular fashion. It’s far and away the best Nelf quest I’ve played. About time they let you stomp around on Treebeard and vaporize bastards with Elune’s orbital satellite lasers.

I didn’t feel at all weird about that. Because the Shatterspear are Jungle Trolls. This isn’t their home, it’s the Kaldorei’s, they actually let the Trolls stay here after ish went belly up in Stranglethorn. They signed a non aggression treaty with them. Which the Shatterspear violate after being goaded into war by Garrosh. So everything’s jake, far as I’m concerned.

Likewise the Forsaken’s content never bothers me as;
A. Their claims to Lordaeron are as rightful to their living cousin’s, arguably moreso as the majority are undead.
B. There’s an anarchic sense of gallow’s humor to their antics that keeps things from getting any meaningfully darker than say Beetlejuice. And
C. They’re not shown as morally correct. Drek’Thar even finger wags at them in Hillsbrad and isn’t that rich coming from a guy who helped pave a road with genocide.

But out the gate here in Dun Morogh you straight up shoot the Frostmane’s children. And I’m unsure what else they’re supposed to be. You don’t encounter pygmy Trolls anywhere else, they’re referred to as children, and welp is just another word for puppy. So. Not sure what else I’m supposed to take away from that.

Even though again they are not hostile. And not in the sense of they’re just flagged neutral for gameplay purposes like the attacking troggs. They’re not attacking anything, you preemptively attack them just to show off that Coldridge has not been weakened by the Trogg attack.

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It’s one of the most uncomfortable quests in game and one of the reasons I won’t level a bronzebeard dwarf. :wolf:

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First off, I wanna say that Dun Morogh is my absolute favorite Alliance starting zone, full stop. The music is so beautiful, and the snowy terrain is just gorgeous (I may be biased as a Canadian, mind you) and there is just a simplicity to it that I absolutely love. Dwarves are my favourite Alliance race alongside Night Elves and Worgen for sure.

That being said, the ‘kill a bunch of troll children’ bit is pretty effed up and I think this trope really lands on the unfortunate narrative that trolls are to be perceived as vermin and nothing more.

Something I always wished they had pushed in the narrative is the pure savagery of Dwarves. From the Dark Iron being enslaved by the Lord of Fire and generally just being scheming Old God worshipping cultists, The Bronzebeards having tenuous leadership and claim to Ironforge after the War of Three Hammers to the Wildhammer straight up coming at the Revantusk with their Gryphons, it would be the golden opportunity to actually make an Alliance race seem threatening, savage and dangerous for once.

Instead of making this weird ‘kill a bunch of kids’ quest with little to no explanation other than ‘they may be a problem’ they really should have painted the Dwarves to be territorial, suspicious and outright aggressive for the sole reason of painting them in that light. But unfortunately, all we got was this weird and out-of-character child murder quest that feels awkward and frankly a bit uncomfortable to go through.

All in all, I still continue to yell ‘KEEP YER FEET ON THA GROUND’ to friends that I play with, so that counts for somethin’ I guess.

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Dragons and wolvar are considerably less human, regardless of their sentience.

Like there’s a reason why we don’t kill each other’s kids during faction wars.

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The Horde players being given quests to bomb schools or burn certain trees certainly arent restricted

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The horde player didn’t personally bomb the school or burn the tree. Even if they did, there’s a difference in collateral damage and actively hunting children.

Even assuming the worst about blizzard, wouldn’t this be more widespread against the trolls or horde races? Wouldn’t this be removed by a more socially conscious blizzard by now?

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