The Gnomes have long been the butt of many Alliance and Horde jokes.  After all it is pretty hard to take them seriously.  They talk in squeaky voices, come up to your ankles and couldn’t even hold on to their own capital city of Gnomeregan.

mekkatorque
The King of Gnomes is looking for help

All that is about to change as King Mekkatorque readies his assault on the forces occupying Gnomeregan to retake the city.  Well, ok, not everything will change, they will still be small and annoying, but hey, they may have their city back.

The event to retake Gnomeregan is now live on the servers and you can help retake the city, or at least the first part of it.  Players can participate in a quest chain that allows you to retake the surface of Gnomeregan and then more quests will likely follow later.  According to Blizzards statement on the matter it sounds like these initial level 80 quests will allow future created Gnomes to then start in the retaken area and their new starting zone is likely to be Gnomeregan itself as they fight to retake it. This will of course not happen just yet, but likely in Cataclysm.

Nethaera - Operation Gnomeregan

The gnomes have been long without a home to call their own. As a young gnome you are told that the benevolent dwarves who have taken you in will aid you in your bid to grow strong so that you might reclaim Gnomeregan once more.

To that end, we are introducing a new quest line and event by which players can take part in taking the first steps to do just that by recapturing Gnomeregan’s surface and reclaiming a small portion of their former home. Once this area has been reclaimed, all new gnomes will start in this reclaimed territory.

***Please note spoilers below!***

posse
Please don't let any of my friends see me with them

To start the quest chain to retake Gnomeregan you need to head to Ironforge and go to the Gnome section called Tinkertown.  There you will be able to get a quest called A Few Good Gnomes which starts the chain and the many bad movie puns that it uses.  The quest is simple, all you need to do is use the motivate-a-tron that is provided on five Gnomes in the area and then have them follow you out of Ironforge and south to Steelgrill’s Depot.

Once there you will find Captian Sparknozzle which will take in your recruits and give you another quest called Basic Orders.  To complete this just head across the road and follow the orders of Drill Sergeant Steamcrank.  All you need to do is wait for him to call out instructions and then type in the appropriate slash command.  They are in order: /salute, /roar, /cheer, and /dance.  The only issue with this is that at the end you see several Gnomes dancing, my eyes still hurt.

Return to the Captain and he will give you a series of simple quests to try out the Gnome battle tanks.  They are In and Out,  One step forward…, and Press Fire.  All they require you to do is mount up in the appropriate battle tank and press a few buttons.  The hardest is the last, since you actually need to target the range target to be able to complete the quest.

testing
Testing the weapons

Once you are done with the captain, you need to talk to Pilot Muzzlespark to get Vent Horizon (see what I mean about the bad movie puns) and mount up in a flyer to drop radiogeigatrons on Gnomeregan.  It is a simple auto pilot flight over the city and all you need to do is watch for the vents leaking green gas, they will be marked as well, and toss the items at them.  There are only a few though and they go by quickly so be careful not to miss them.

Once you land it is time to talk to Toby Zeigear and help him by Prepping the Speech. To finish this quest you need to talk to 3 different gnomes and get their reaction to the speech.  They are found nearby in Steelgrill’s Depot and nearby Kharanos. The speeches of course contain more bad clips from movies, none worse than a clip from the speech in Independence Day. Once you are done it is time to get the Words for Delivery and take them to King Mekkatorque.

You can jump on a flyer that takes you directly to the king and you talk to him to turn in the speech.  Once you have you will gain the last quest in the chain, Operation: Gnomeregan.

posse
AOE players will love the waves of Troggs

This last quest is a group quest that everyone in the area gets in on.  It does not start right away though, instead it starts on a timer and you have to wait for it to start.  The quest has several phases but all you need to do is follow Mekkatorques instructions. Phase one has you destroying rocket launchers, phase two you destroy tankbusters, and in phase three you head into the tunnels of Gnomeregan.

Once in the tunnels you are confronted by large waves of Troggs that need to be defeated before a giant trogg named Gasherikk appears.  If your group can defeat him you get to move further in and face irradiated gnomes and Thermaplugg.  While Thermaplugg doesn’t appear in the flesh he sends a alarm bot to harass you through. 

The quest ends with him detonating a bomb in the entrance and further irradiating Gnomeregan. Mekkatorque orders you teleported out just in time.  Even though you seem to have lost the batte, you earn the achievement Operation: Gnomeregan when you are back in Ironforge and the Gnomes have now retaken the surface of Gnomeregan and are preparing to launch another offensive soon.

achievement
The achievment for helping the Gnomes

That is the end of your involvement though.  More will be added in the future, however as mentioned above it may be for low level Gnomes from this point on.

The quest chain was fun, but somewhat painful listening to all the bad puns throughout it.  It was also a chore having to help the Gnomes, since I can’t stand them, however I feel the quest chain works well.  It explains to everyone what is going on and why, and it expands on the storyline in regards to the Gnomes.  If you haven’t tried it out yourself, what’s stopping you? The event is live and in the game right now, get playing!


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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