In WoW’s best quest: Dragonflight, you just sit and suffer

WoW: Dragonflight has many quests that are really engaging. But one thing remains in memory: because the story of Veritistrasz is heartbreaking.

World of Warcraft Dragonflight is packed with quests. In fact, there are so many missions that most WoW players should be level 70 long before they reach the last or even the third area. While many of these quests are standard “MMO fare,” there are also some quests that are more memorable — but only if you’re patient. I would like to present one of these quests to you and strongly recommend that you complete it.

We’re talking about the quest “Stay A While” and you can encounter it quite early on, around the same time you unlock dragon riding as well. You meet a somewhat absent-minded dwarf named “Veritistrasz” who overlooks the Dragon Isles and just seems to enjoy the scenery.

The quest goal is quite simple – you can sit down and also look at the landscape. However, it is possible to interact with the dwarf and simply listen to him as he slowly tells his story.

In the beginning, the dwarf – a dragon in dwarf form – is still cool and talks about the “nice view” and that to us adventurers this view may look nice, but it reminds him of the past 20,000 years ago… at least it should.

The reason I’m here, overlooking this landscape…that’s because I’ve wished for so long…to finally go home.
This was my home. I never thought we’d be gone for so long. After a while I thought we would never return.

The truth is, however, that Veritistrasz no longer recognizes this place properly. He explains in great detail what this sight triggers in him. And it seems a bit like he’s not only talking to our character, but also to the person behind it, us.

A particularly nice detail is that Veritistrasz even refers to your respective people. He has different texts for humans than for elves or dwarves. In the case of my draenei, he said:

Maybe you think I’m being overly sentimental. But try living for ten thousand years, never visiting your homeland, and when you finally can, find it very different. Then come back and we’ll talk again.

Although… I’ve heard of Argus. Whether you were born on the planet or only after your people fled, I think you can understand what I mean.

It was such a small and beautiful detail that I really liked it. Blizzard occasionally references your character’s race in quests, but this time it just “cut in deep” and I felt like he was actually talking to my draenei.

But even after that, the story is far from over. Because Veritistrasz continues to tell what has happened over the years. He tells of the betrayal of the black dragons and how it tore friendships and loves apart. He tells of silly pranks in which he once “rubbed honey on Alexstrasza’s cock” with his girlfriend. He was in love with a black dragon and “can still remember her face and the way the light reflected off her scales.”

But he forgot one thing: your name.

However, he has not forgotten that one day she stood over the corpses of his family and he ultimately had to kill her himself.

For over ten thousand years he has lived with the uncertainty of whether he could have saved her if he had tried harder and confessed his feelings to her.

I remember the horror of coming home to see her standing over the bodies of my family, her family as well.
I remember the desperation as I drove my claws down her throat, and I remember the hate in her eyes as the light drained from them… but I can’t remember her name.
I’ve always wondered, if I had been a better friend to her, could I have avoided this? Didn’t she feel like she could talk to me when the corruption started?
Ebyssian was purified, so surely there must be something that could have been done? But she didn’t come to me, so she must have felt like she couldn’t talk to me about it.
If I had been a better friend… if I had told her… Oh titans, if I had told her how I felt… could it have ended differently? … I loved her … and I can’t remember her name.

I know. At the end of the day, this is “just text in a video game” and this quest doesn’t even have voice. But I couldn’t help but just silently read through the quest, even blocking out the “launch hype” entirely for a moment. The quest goes on for quite some time, only getting more devastating and sadder with each sentence.

But it’s worth it. Because such stories, such small and yet so important details, make the World of Warcraft really, really good.

Dragonflight is motley, but deadly serious in all the right places

Of course not everything in Dragonflight is so dark and sad – even if that shines through from time to time. Many characters have struggled with the choices they made over the years and now have to live with the guilt or the consequences. The fact that this keeps coming up – sometimes dark, sometimes funny – is pretty good and provides a nice continuity in the history of the world.

• You meet an orc of the Dragonmaw clan at the end of his life who, seeing all the peaceful dragons, regrets his decisions.
• You see a proud dragon soldier who sacrifices everything to save just one egg and ultimately even dies willingly.
• You see a lot of betrayal, which I don’t want to spoil here.

Dragonflight is jam-packed with quests to remember. For some because they consist of “boring babble” – for others because they are just really well written and show fates in an intensity and richness that is otherwise rare, at least in World of Warcraft.

Blizzard has taken its time for the beautiful and important stories. And that’s pretty good.

Which quest from Dragonflight do you remember most? Did you discover a quest that particularly excited you?