The Dragons Guild Scavenger Hunt

Being that it's the end of the content cycle, the officers of my guild are trying out a lot of different things to keep people interested and active in the game. Earlier this week we ran a scavenger hunt that was put together by our uber-Huntress.

All the participants were randomly divided up into teams by way of gift-wrapped shirts of different colors. Unfortunately we only had 5 participants, so it meant a team of 2 and a team of 3. They were then given a riddle to solve to find their first "quest giver." (We sent them along slightly different paths so that they wouldn't run over each other.)

Upon finding the quest giver, they had to complete the quest (involved finding various items) and then they would get the next riddle/clue. All in all there were 7 quest givers, the last being our GL.

Prior to the start of the hunt, a bunch of officers hopped onto (or started) alts. Any alts in the guild dropped out so that their locations wouldn't appear on the guild roster. We made our way (or were summoned) to our positions, and then we waited.

(The best was the level 6 gnome hanging out on top of the Sunken Temple. She got a lot of stares and comments.)

I ended up on my Dwarf Hunter. The clue that led to me was this:

Find me in a rainy and solemn woodland,
watching the falling of hourglass sand.
Standing in the cold wind has made me stiff,
comes from standing on one of the 2 tallest cliffs.
In Kalimdor, find me on the top of one of the twins
where I'm serving my days and repenting my sins.

Hanging out on top of the Twin Colossals, contemplating my sins.

The quest items I needed people to go collect were a Hippogryph Egg and Bean Soup.

Being the nerd and storyteller that I am, I kinda went all out with the quest. I put it into a bunch of macros so that I could just go through them one at a time to tell the story.

Augh!
Oh, sorry. Ye startled me. Just...go away. Leave me alone.
/sigh
Alright. Since yer here I might as well tell me story.
There's a place south o' the High Wilderness where Hippogryphs gather. Beautiful creatures, them. I was told they couldn't be tamed, but after years of tryin', I managed. Had to raise her from a hatchling to do it, mind ye. But I did it. Rawn, I named her.
Then I went and got captured by ogres. They took all me gear and almost killed me. Rawn showed up and saved me. Held them off while I ran. But she died doin' so. And now I'm up here 'cause I don't know what else to do.
/stand
/e stands up.
Wait. I know. I could start over. Do it again. Could you help me? Back where I found the egg the first time, south o' the High Wilderness. I bet there's more. See if you can find one. A new [Hippogryph Egg].
I'd do it meself, but...I'm ill equipped at the moment...
Also, this is kinda embarassing...but I haven't eaten in a while. There's a Night Elf lass on th' island to th' west. She makes the best [Bean Soup] I've ever had. Do ye think ye could bring me some?
/thank
/sit

With that, they were off to get the stuff.

I have a whole new appreciation for the people that write the quest text for WoW, incidentally. It's really, really hard to tell a good story 255 characters (max length of a macro) at a time. And also keep it all short enough that it doesn't go beyond the attention span window of the average WoW player.

At least I had the benefit of being able to do it all in macros that I could just click though. They usually have to do it whole quest at a time.

Anyway, when they got back they'd have to trade me the Bean Soup and show me in the trade window that they found an Egg. (Since those are soulbound, they couldn't actually give it to me).

When they did this, I had a few more macros set up to end the quest and then send them on their way.

Oh, ye found it all. Excellent! Thank ye!
Hmm. It looks like whatever in that egg has already bonded to ye. Maybe ye should keep it for yerself. I think I'll be okay now. Before ye go, though, I have this story I memorized, but I can't make sense of it. Maybe ye can.
/e clears his throat.
I met a man, his name was Mister Biggs. I asked him where I could find a warm place to dry and rest. He sent me to this direction, a "dry" place he said.
On my way there I almost drowned in the deep waters. But I made it, I have found a small place to rest at this Temple. The only thing missing is the warmth, and it takes forever to dry my clothes too!
/shrug

Then I'd build a campfire, sit down, start eating the soup they brought me and say "mmm...soup..."


Group 1 heading away after having finished the quest.


Group 2 arrives just a few minutes later.


One of them had to reincarnate after not surviving the trip back down.


Acting gig is done. Geared back up and ready to go.

After I was done handing out my quests, I hopped over onto San and waited with Dinaer and Cheres at the finish.

Upon completion, Cheres gave each participant a Frostweave Bag and I gave them an uncut epic gem of their choice. (All 5 picked red, completely depleting my stock of those.)

Din gave each member of the winning team a Primordial Saronite.


Dinaer (Violet Proto), Cheres (Black Drake), and Saniel (Nether Drake) awarding the winning team their prizes.


Dragons!

It was a really good time and everyone involved--both quest givers and hunters--had a lot of fun. Several people chipped in to collect all the prizes to give out, as well as to make the shirts to divide up the teams. Cheres, especially, put in a ton of work figuring out where all the quest givers would be, the quest items they needed to ask for, and the clues that would lead to them.

This is definitely something we're going to try again in the future.