What’s your favorite super-long questchain from the history of WoW?

In World of Warcraft‘s most recent expansions, we’ve seen a model take shape where players will have a concise zone-specific narrative. Consider Drustvar for the Alliance in Battle for Azeroth, where the fight to reclaim the support of House Waycrest becomes a literal witch-hunt. Generally speaking, the zone narrative tells a complete story in itself, with its own beginning, middle and end. In the case of Drustvar, you defeat Gorak Tul’s machinations and successfully restore House Waycrest’s last remaining heir. This plays into the greater Alliance narrative of reuniting the disparate houses of Kul Tiras behind House Proudmoore, which is key to the expansion’s War Campaign narrative.

And yet, back in the old days of WoW, you’d sometimes come across quest chains that were less a part of the expansion’s overall narrative and more a side story; something that would take you from one zone to the next, looking for clues, sometimes with a reward at the end (like access to an otherwise inaccessible raid) but sometimes just for the sake of telling a story. Sometimes you got the entirety of that story, and sometimes you didn’t.

The Missing Diplomat is a perfect example of an epic quest chain, which ostensibly started in the Deadmines dungeon, took you all across the Eastern Kingdoms, and eventually landed you in Dustwallow Marsh. It ultimately wasn’t resolved until late in Burning Crusade with the update to Dustwallow, which coincided with the reintroduction of Varian Wrynn to the WoW narrative in advance of his prominent role in Wrath of the Lich King. 

So, these very long quests often served a clear purpose — eventually. And sometimes it was part of the chain to open the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj, which involved delivering takeout to a Gnome who was the object of a love-struck Naga seawitch‘s affections so that the Gnome could learn draconic and make you the world’s most expensive fishing bobber so you could attract the attention of a minnow and kill it to get a magical artifact because the dragon who was appointed guardian of that artifact was sick of people hassling him about it. Whew.

With that in mind, what’s your favorite super-long quest series from the history of World of Warcraft?