Upcoming WoW Quest Involving A Character's Abuse Has Players Demanding Change

Content warning: The following contains mentions of sexual assault and abuse.

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight's upcoming Fractures in Time update will have players traveling back in time to preserve the timeline of the Warcraft universe, but one quest related to ensuring a major female character's abuse takes place has players demanding it be changed.

A quest titled "A Missing Soul" recently appeared on the game's public test realm, where players can try out upcoming features and changes to Blizzard's MMO. The quest transports players to the time of Warcraft II, where the dragon queen Alexstrasza is enslaved by the Dragonmaw orc clan. A powerful relic, the Demon Soul, is responsible for keeping Alexstrasza in chains, and she is forced to give birth to an army of dragons for use in the Dragonmaw war machine.

In the quest, the Bronze dragon Chromie informs players that the Demon Soul has gone missing and needs to be returned to the Dragonmaw clan before Alexstrasza notices and "breaks out too early." Players are then tasked with bringing back the Demon Soul to ensure the timeline of the Warcraft universe remains intact.

Chromie tells players that the grim task of aiding in Alexstrasza's continued enslavement is a "tough one" and that they shouldn't tell Alexstrasza in the present about what transpired. When turning in the quest, Chromie says to keep what happened "on the down low" and that "no one needs to know about it." Later, when players can talk to the present-day version of Alexstrasza, it seems clear she knows what players did. Though she is clearly uncomfortable and is described as clenching her jaw and grinding her teeth, she tells players that keeping the timeline intact is "important work," even though she doesn't have to like it.

Though it didn't generate controversy when the lore was originally written almost three decades ago, fans today understand Alexstrasza to have been sexually assaulted, forced to lay eggs against her will. Players, then, are questioning why Blizzard would have their characters, who are supposed to be heroes, be complicit in Alexstrasza's abuse.

Backlash on Twitter to the quest has been swift. Players are simultaneously calling for changes to the quest or its removal, while also wondering how the quest made it so far into production without someone at the developer noticing how it makes light of such a traumatic event for one of the game's most prominent female characters. Alexstrasza is featured heavily in the marketing material for Dragonflight. It could be argued she is currently the main female character of the MMO, leading the dragons in reclaiming their ancestral home and battling against the forces of the Primalists. That only serves to make Blizzard's lack of awareness around the quest and its subject matter even more baffling.

Traveling back in time on behalf of the Bronze dragonflight in order to ensure terrible events happen in WoW as they originally did isn't new. However, as players have pointed out on Twitter, sexual assault is an extremely serious subject, especially in light of recent lawsuits that have accused Blizzard of having a culture of sexual discrimination and harassment. While players in the past may have traveled back in time to ensure the success of a zombie plague or the opening of the Dark Portal, those major events in WoW's timeline do not have real-world parallels.

In response to the allegations, Blizzard has made an effort over the past two years to make WoW more inclusive and welcoming. Those efforts include the removal of certain lines of insensitive dialogue, renaming achievements and items that could be viewed as insensitive, and getting ride of crude or suggestive emotes, just to name a few examples.

It should be reiterated that the controversial quest is on the PTR and not on the live version of the game. As such, it is subject to being removed or re-written. Blizzard has not officially commented on the matter. WoW's Fractures in Time update does not currently have a release date but is expected to arrive sometime this summer.