Questing: Schnottz’s Cultural Hilarity

Questing is a column dedicated to highlighting the best quests in MMOGs. We’ll slog through all the horrible “Kill 10 rats,” FedEx and slow escort quests to bring you a collection of the funniest, best-designed, story-rich or original quests that companies have to offer.

It’s widely known that Blizzard loves poking fun at or being inspired by popular culture. Heck, Chris Metzen ranted about the subject for 15 minutes at BlizzCon 2010. Surely the geeks at Blizzard drop The Simpsons quotes and interject “That’s what she said!” in to casual conversation as much as the rest of us. But they’re uber-geeks. This enables them to one-up us all – jerks – by not-so-subtly referencing various cultural tropes in products played by millions of people.

On my journey to level 85, which I capped off last night, no single NPC made be bust out laughing more than the perfectly-accented Schnottz.  Schnottz is an arch-nemesis of Harrison Jones, everyone’s favorite Uldum archaeologist. The references to Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark are blatant for those that have seen it (everyone?), but there’s so much more in his multiple chains. Blizzard needs to win some sort of award for putting me in stitches with its parade of Nazi jokes, among the other parodies that were stuffed in this line.

Absolutely classic.

Other Lore Hounds have already written about their love of Uldum. If you’ve skipped the zone, or haven’t finish it, be sure to tackle Zhe Chommandar’s tasks. It kicks off with The Desert Fox.