Blizzard is looking into three bugged escort quests in WoW Forever
· ForeverDB
Wowhead reports that Blizzard Customer Support has started commenting on quest pages for Freedom to Ruul, Free From the Hold and The Defias Brotherhood, saying the escort NPC can disappear near zone and area boundaries and fail the quest, and that they're investigating.
Corrected 5 November 2026: our first headline said these quests were bugged "on the Forever beta". The beta ended on 23 October; Blizzard's comments are about the live game.
Wowhead reports that Blizzard Customer Support (BlizzardCS) has started leaving comments on its quest pages, flagging certain quests as bugged and saying the issue is being looked into. The three named so far are all escort quests: Freedom to Ruul, Free From the Hold and The Defias Brotherhood.
This reaches us through Wowhead, not a Blizzard forum or Bluesky post. The quote below is BlizzardCS's comment as Wowhead shows it, so we quote it word for word from there.
In substance, BlizzardCS, Blizzard Customer Support (on Wowhead quest pages, reported by Wowhead) said (source): We're aware that Ruul/Gilthares Firebough/Defias Traitor may disappear when moving near or across zone and area boundaries, causing the quest to fail. We're already investigating the issue.
What breaks, and why
An escort quest hands you an NPC to protect and walk to a destination. It fails if that NPC dies, and in these cases BlizzardCS says the NPC can simply vanish when it moves near or across a zone or area boundary. Once the escort disappears the quest fails, and you have to pick it back up and start the walk again.
The three quests
The NPCs in the comment line up with these quests in Classic Era:
- Freedom to Ruul in Desolace, where you free and escort Ruul Snowhoof.
- Free From the Hold in the Barrens, where you escort Gilthares Firebough out of Northwatch Hold.
- The Defias Brotherhood in Westfall, where you escort the Defias Traitor to Gryan Stoutmantle.
Zone and NPC detail here is Classic Era, used only to say which quests the comment points to. Our Forever client data lists The Defias Brotherhood chain in Westfall; we haven't extracted the Desolace and Barrens escorts yet, so we can't show their current Forever state from the files.
The NPCs disappearing at boundaries isn't something the game files can show either way, since where a creature despawns is decided on Blizzard's servers. For now the checkable facts are BlizzardCS's own words above and that they say a fix is being worked on.
Also mentioned
Wowhead's article also notes an early Undead Paladin quest, Rediscovering the Light, which has players rediscover how to use Holy Light. The detail we have on that one is cut off, so read Wowhead's write-up for what they say about it rather than take a guess from us.