It’s a bit of a shame that one of the most emotionally engaging quests in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is one of the expansion’s many nods to Blizzard’s history in games, as the quest is “Stay a While” as a reference back to Diablo. But the quest itself is a solemn meditation in which the player just listens to the elder red dragon Veritistrasz slowly recount his history and the exhaustion that has come with the chaos across Azeroth. And it was originally a totally different lighthearted and even silly tour across the Ruby Lifeshrine, according to a deep dive into the quest’s creation.
The fact that prior quests already went into the history of the shrine and the tour meant that the quest slowly got expanded to its current form, in which the player just sits and listens to a story being told by a dragon who has lost quite a lot over the years. It’s a fascinating look at the way one of the most memorable and low-key quests in the expansion took shape, and if you were left with a profound sense of contemplation after the quest was over, you owe it to yourself to read through the full dissection.
