Indiana Jones and the Quests of Uldum

That title came out much more “logical” sounding than I intended. Cataclysm brought with it 5 more levels and 5 large complex zones to gain them in. As always, controversy has sprung up around some of the content Blizzard has included. (This makes me wonder, what was the vanilla WoW equivalent?) In Wrath it was a quest that required you to torture a bad guy for information. I made my stance perfectly clear on that point. In WoW things are quite a bit more cut and dried than real life. In addition to *knowing* I was on the right side of that battle, I also had just finished a quest that had me slaughter dozens of little creatures, on top of the 73 levels worth of killing I had done to reach this point. Not to mention that he was trying to destroy the world, and you can always choose *not* to do the quest. The furor died down and then in Cata they even gave an answer to that controversy by allowing the player the option, when you have captured someone for information, you are given the option to let them go once you get it.

After reaching level 83 players are given the option to go to a zone called Uldum. Uldum has been referenced in game since the beginning, so for me, it was something of a long awaited journey for me. I really wanted to see what was in this zone. The fact that it’s art style strongly mimicked Egypt and it’s plot lines revolved around pyramids, tombs, and archeology was enticing to me. I couldn’t wait.

The lush oasis, the massive pyramids, the sky scraping obelisks, all of it just tickled my fancy. As anticipated they pulled out the well used Harrison Jones NPC (Indiana Jones) and made him the focus of about half the quests of the zone. I was shocked! No, not really. In fact I am actually a bit surprised he was only half the zone.  Anyway, you step into the role of sidekick and proceed to follow large sweeping sections of various Indiana Jones movies. They don’t even try to hide it. Plane chase where you are the gunner and shooting the tail of the plane? Check. Fighting a bald dude next to an airplane that then runs over him and kills him? Check. Artifacts? Check. Jumping into trunks (fridge) and getting blown across the area? Check. Evil dude in white hat trying to take our stuff? Check. Nazis? Check.

That last one is the one everyone is all up in arms over. Okay they aren’t real Nazis. They are goblins all following this guy named Schnotts, so they are Schnottzis. But that’s the general idea. When I encountered them, I stopped for a moment, realized I was going to be doing quests for them, was like, “Well that’s odd, I would have expected these to be Horde quest. *shrug* Oh well, what do you want me to do?” About 20 minutes later, I had destroyed the guy’s entire operation from within, freed a bunch of prisoners, and was skipping back to the north to help Indy, I mean Harrison again.

But if you read these two blogs:

http://spinksville.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/tell-me-why-i-dont-like-uldum/

http://murlocparliament.com/2011/01/05/keep-your-history-away-from-my-internet-dragons/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MurlocParliament+%28Murloc+Parliament%29

This was a horrible horrible thing and Blizzard should be SHAMED! Wait, what?

They say that Schnotts is Hilter… which is just weird. I mean, yes, he has the little thin mustache thing, but I just assumed that was making fun of it. (It was a fashion at the time.) I always felt like Schnotts was a caricature of some commander. Bad German accents… isn’t that the joke? It would never have occurred to me to even think they were spoofing real German accents. I assumed they were spoofing the TERRIBLE German accents from those kinds of movies.  Silly puns… This is Blizzard after all, do you even remember All You Can Eat? (The achievement.) Bad puns are kind of their bread and butter for being funny.

The one author claims that this is fantasy and should not include such things. Well, yeah, but this is also the game with motorcycles, helicopters, and shotguns. They argue about history and loss of immersion. Last I checked, Indiana Jones, not exactly a history lesson. History… seriously? You think this even remotely ties to truthful history at all? Of course not! It’s just a ripoff! The author even goes on about the turkey, Gobbles… To which I am perplexed. Did I miss a reference, cause when I did the quest (both times) it seemed to me it was a setup for getting Schnotts to say Nine! repeatedly. (Which did make me chuckle.) As for immersion… Well, that’s you. Personally, I never once thought twice about it. Nazis in an Indiana Jones quest? Sure, that makes sense. Wearing a Schnottzi uniform to spread discord among the ranks? Worked for Indy, why not me? Personally it breaks my immersion every time I see “Istabyoudead” and the 50 bazillion other weird and non-fantasy names that people use. It breaks my immersion every time I do a quest like “Gather hooves from these horses.” and I managed to find the 10 horses that don’t have any hooves. Even the Desert Fox quest (where you literally go find a fox) made me giggle, though as a former history major I was well aware of the obscure reference. It’s a massively multiplayer game. The other people are going to be breaking your immersion.

(Really after reading the second blog a bit more, I am just confronted with the feeling that this person is very annoyed with WoW as a whole. The ranty style mixed with the very specific and person arguments versus other players just makes it feel like someone’s blog, much like this is mine. And I really feel it isn’t a valid source for WoWInsider to pull from to talk about the controversy of Uldum’s Indiana Jones hard on.)

Are these people overly sensitive? I don’t think so. Does that mean we should remove the quests? Again, I don’t think so. Is it going to bother a specific population (ie Jewish players)? Didn’t seem like it to the guy I asked, he thought it was pretty funny. Is it going to bother a large portion of the game? I doubt it. Most WoW players don’t even read the quest text and are likely far more annoyed by the cut scenes throughout the entire zone. (I know I was. I mean, I liked some of them, but one after every quest, REALLY?) Is it “too soon”? To spoof an action movie from the 90s? No. Does it make WoW worse? Debatable, but I also believe that open world pvp makes WoW worse. I believe Tol Barad makes WoW worse. I believe having the wrong item level number on the heroic access makes WoW worse. Everyone has their opinions and with 12 million of us, we are likely going to have every opinion covered.

They have a valid complaint. They didn’t like it. That’s fair. But, as always, no one is forcing them to do it. (I love when they complain they need to do it to get the achievement or the levels, at which point I am like, both are optional.) I despise Vashj’ir from the bottom of my cold cynical heart and yet will likely do it on every toon for the rep and gold. I hate everything about it. The water, the music, the submarine, the caves, the naga… there isn’t a single redeemable quest in the zone as far as I am concerned. Do I think it should be removed? Nope, because someone else is gonna love it.

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