Ahn'Qiraj War Effort

The Ahn'Qiraj War Effort was the realm-wide resource drive that came with patch 1.9 in January 2006. Before the gates of Ahn'Qiraj could open on a realm, its Alliance and Horde players had to hand over enormous stockpiles of metal bars, herbs, leather, bandages and food at collection points in Ironforge and Orgrimmar. Players of every level could take part, and for weeks or months the piles of supplies grew in the two cities until the armies were ready to march to Silithus. The scepter quest, the gong and the war that followed are covered in Opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj.

Background

In the game's story, the War of the Shifting Sands a thousand years earlier ended with the qiraji sealed behind the Scarab Wall. With the wall weakening and the silithid swarming over Silithus, the Cenarion Circle and the bronze dragonflight warned that the qiraji were about to strike again. The Alliance and the Horde agreed to prepare a joint army, and they needed their citizens to supply it.

Collecting supplies

The Alliance gathered its supplies in the Military Ward of Ironforge, and the Horde in the Valley of Spirits in Orgrimmar. Each kind of supply had its own collector and its own quest, and every turn-in took a full stack of ten or twenty items. Officers in the other capitals, through quests like [[forever:quest:8795]] and [[forever:quest:8792]], sent players to the collection points.

The list was built so that every player could help. Copper bars, linen bandages and peacebloom were within reach of new characters, while thorium bars, runecloth bandages and rugged leather came from the level 60 world. Each faction's targets ran into the tens or hundreds of thousands; the Alliance alone needed 800,000 linen bandages.

A typical quest was [[forever:quest:8492]], which asked for twenty copper bars from [[forever:npc:15383]]. The first time a player handed in a given item, the reward was ten Commendation Signets and a box of [[forever:item:21509]], whose contents matched the level of the item: green gear and scrolls. Repeats gave fewer signets for common goods and still ten for the scarcest ones.

Signets and reputation

Commendation Signets were the war effort's currency. Commendation officers for each race, such as [[forever:npc:15764]] for Ironforge and [[forever:npc:15765]] for Orgrimmar, stood by the collection points and in the capitals, and traded signets for reputation with their city through quests like [[forever:quest:8813]] and [[forever:quest:8821]]. Many players used the war effort to raise their standing with the other races of their faction, whose mounts required exalted reputation.

The commanders, [[forever:npc:15701]] for the Alliance and [[forever:npc:15700]] for the Horde, also took signets in batches of five to thirty for larger boxes of supplies, through quests like [[forever:quest:8846]] and [[forever:quest:8850]]. They could report how far each turn-in had come, and ambassadors in each city, [[forever:npc:15539]] and [[forever:npc:15458]], reported on the other faction's progress.

Raiders had one more way to help: the [[forever:item:20737]] that dropped in Molten Core could be handed in by the fifty in [[forever:quest:8530]] and [[forever:quest:8617]].

The end of the drive

On most realms the war effort lasted for weeks, and on some for months. Guilds organized supply runs, and players checked the commanders' progress reports as the totals climbed. Once both factions had filled every list, the supplies were shipped to Silithus over five days, and the stockpiles in the cities shrank day by day until they were gone. After that, the gates could open as soon as a player rang the Scarab Gong, as told in Opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj.

Later history

• In February 2009, Blizzard announced that the gates would open automatically on new realms, without a war effort.
• World of Warcraft Classic ran the war effort again in July 2020, and many realms finished it far faster than in 2006.

Sources

• Gates of Ahn'Qiraj, Warcraft Wiki (war supplies)
• Field Marshal Snowfall, Warcraft Wiki