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Jeff Kaplan have forever become known as "Jeff from the Overwatch team," but once upon a time he was "Jeff from the World of Warcraft team." And he's sorry – sorry for those of you who had to deal with the infamous Green Hills of Stranglethorn quest. Nonetheless, it still holds "a really special place" in Kaplan's heart, both because of the writing he did for it and the lessons it offered to him as a young quest designer.
"The Green Hills of Stranglethorn holds a lot of emotional value for me because amongst WoW players back in the day it was unanimously hated as one of the shittiest, most annoying quests," Kaplan explains in an interview with Lex Fridman, as spotted by our friends at PC Gamer. "But it holds a really special place in my heart. First of all, it's one of the few times I just wrote a short story that's actually in the game. It's me paying homage to Hemingway."
If you've been spared the horror of dealing with The Green Hills of Stranglethorn yourself, the idea is that the author Hemet Nesingwary – no points for figuring out why he's named that way – has misplaced the pages of his manuscript. So you need to find them as drops from mobs throughout Stranglethorn Vale.
The problem, as Kaplan explains, is that "players had very limited bag space. And as they're fighting in Stranglethorn Vale, I'm just shitting up their inventory with all these pages. And they only needed so many! You might be unlucky and you have, like, three page fives that are just junk in your inventory, and I might have, like, eight page sixes.
"This was the goal – the designer trying to puppeteer everybody. Everybody in Stranglethorn chat is like, 'Hey, I'm looking for a page six!' 'Anybody got a page three?' That was my fantasy as a designer, of like, 'and then they're gonna be social and meet each other and players are gonna be appreciative of each other!' Eventually no one did the quest, they just were super annoyed or they went to the Auction House."
Kaplan cites a bit of wisdom from legendary Civilization designer Sid Meier, who said that there are three types of fun: fun for the player, fun for the designer, and fun for the computer. This particular quest, unfortunately, fell into the "fun for the designer" category. Players didn't enjoy it nearly so much.
"It was the typical hubris of a junior game designer who thinks he's clever but is actually a dipshit," Kaplan explains. "That's The Green Hills of Stranglethorn summed up."
