The quest in "World of Warcraft:" Patch 10.1.5 of Dragonflight is now playable on the MMO's PTR server, but has been heavily criticized by fans for its glib attitude toward controversial aspects of the MMO's story.

In a thread about the quest, Blizzard acknowledged players' concerns and wrote that they are "working on adjusting and removing the quest" for the next PTR build. However, they did not specifically mention the quest, nor did they say how they would address the feedback.

The quest, titled "A Missing Soul" (as described in a forum post), is part of next month's Fractures of Time patch focusing on WoW's time-travel dragons. This quest works much like many time travel stories: something goes wrong in the past and you have to solve it to prevent problems in the present. Specifically, to ensure that the artifact used by the Dragonmaw Orcs to torture and sexually assault Alexstrasza, a major character in WoW's history and Dragonflight expansion, is used, the lost artifact must be located and returned.

Fans took issue with players being complicit in a disastrous piece of lore for a simple daily quest, while others were particularly disturbed by its goofy tone. Chromie, the NPC who gives the quest, seems conflicted about what she wants, but tells her to keep it a "secret." When you finish the quest, she congratulates you loudly, but you suspect that Alextraza knows what you did. She does, and when you talk to her, she grits her teeth and tells you it's important to keep the timeline intact, even if she doesn't like it.

"I really hate making players do these things, especially something so blatantly horrible like this," Twitter user Portergauge wrote in a thread about the quest.

Players raised other events in WoW lore (including genocide and war crimes of all kinds) that are treated at least somewhat seriously compared to this new quest. One Reddit commenter wrote, "I've never seen an NPC make jokes about those timelines in-game, and you shouldn't see it here either."

"I always found it disturbing how much of the early WoW lore was based on [sexual assault]. At the very least [player characters] should not be allowed to participate," wrote popular WoW influencers Tailiesin and Evitel on Twitter.

Earlier this year, WoW players noted that the name of a group of trolls introduced in the 2010 Cataclysm expansion used a word with a derogatory meaning in the Jamaican patois language and another word meaning "foreigners" in the Namwanga language used in Zambia. The name was acknowledged by a Blizzard developer on Twitter and renamed in the PTR a week later.

Following allegations of sexism and harassment at Activision Blizzard in 2021, WoW created a list of insensitive NPC and quest name changes, each detailed on Wowhead. Blizzard wrote in a blog post at the time, "In short, we want to make sure our jokes are inclusive and don't punch down."