Ah, another classic quest. Some good early dialogue that gave me a chuckle:
Twoie doesn't understand goblins, part one.
Twoie doesn't understand goblins, part two.
Ah compromise: the art of resolving disputes so that both parties are equally unhappy.
No witty remark here, I just wasn't expecting this joke so it made me giggle.
Anyway, onto the quest itself. Short version: nostalgia factor aside, I didn't like it very much. I mentioned in the Diamond in the Rough post the challenge of making a player interaction that's doomed to failure. This quest is an exercise in that idea: the entire quest is a shaggy dog story, where your actions don't have any meaningful consequence on the world. The goblins are wearing brown armour again, which is where they started. The only thing you've done is stop them arguing about red or green armour, which is a conflict that didn't impact you in any way.
Okay, so the narrative arc of the quest is unsatisfying, so what else can we salvage from it? What is it meant to teach us?
Well it teaches us that Goblin Village exists, which isn't nothing, I suppose. It also teaches us:
- That Aggie in Draynor will make dyes, which can be combined to make secondary colours
- Where to find redberries
- Where to find onions
- Where to find woad leaves
The problem is that none of those things are terribly useful. Outside of a handful of quests, Aggie's dyes don't serve any real function anymore; considering the direction fashionscape has gone, they almost feel quaint. Of the rest, redberries are arguably useful, since they have relevance in another quest, but they could be easily tutorialized in that quest instead. Woad leaves are more useful, but not at our level; they're only relevant in Player-Owned Farm, and as sort of a hidden feature.
The only other thing the quest teaches us is what goblins are like, which is narratively valuable but either not worth a full quest, or just not worth this full quest. This quest is very much a product of its time, but its relevance in the modern game is negligible at best. It should either be downgraded to a miniquest, or re-worked into something more substantial.
Unfortunately I foolishly closed the "quest complete" dialog before I took a screenshot, so I can't do my regular sign-off. Twoie has 24 quest points, if anyone's wondering, because this quest is somehow worth 5 of the things.