A few weeks ago on Phat Loot Phriday, I wrote about the Essence of Eranikus, a cool little trinket from the dragon in Sunken Temple. It's actually part of an unfinished questline-- a few steps after you get the gem from Eranikus, the questline ends in Winterspring with no explanation as to what happened with the rest of the story. Like many players (including myself), Falandan wants to know if Blizzard has any plans to finish up this series of quests.

Tseric answers on the forums, and says that while Blizz is leaving their option open, the main problem with returning to unfinished quests (The Missing Diplomat/King of Stormwind is another) is that they'd have players of a high level doing low level quests. Either that, or they'd have to interrupt the normal leveling game, and you'd be doing quests in the same line with ten (or more) levels between them.

But while that's an obstacle Blizzard is considering, apparently it's not going to stop them from revisiting some old questlines: reader anobolic (thanks!) sends a link to this flickr account, with what looks like an extension of the Quel'serrar questline!

If you've got Quel'serrar now (not sure yet if Blizzard will give it back to you if you've sold or destroyed it for some reason), you'll be able to do another set of quests (rumored to involve another dragon, and maybe even an Undead Onyxia-- she's back?!?) that will either get you the Daughter of Quel'serrar (more purple for paladins), the Son of Quel'serrar (for warriors), or, if you're the first person on the server to complete the quest, Quel'serrar Reborn (and apparently you get a "dragonslayer" title with that as well). Oh, and there's also a rumor of a Quel'serrar shield to come. Very cool! Of course, all this is rumor so far-- it's not even certain that this is coming in patch 2.1 is real at all (see Update) -- but if Blizzard is rewarding those who worked for the High Blade with another questline to work through, it's a good sign that we might see updates to the old unfinished ones as well.

Update: Commenters are casting doubt on the authenticity of the pictures. Stuff like this could be easily photoshopped, and we have no other source for it, so take the info about Quel'serrar with a grain of salt.

Update2: Commenter Leggend (thanks!) says this is proof the images were just adjusted in Photoshop. Oh well. Maybe someday Blizzard will actually finish off some of these old questlines.

Big swords are cool, and this one is no exception. Plus, it gives you a reason to run an often overlooked endgame instance. A lot. Like, over and over again.

Name: Quel'Serrar a.k.a. "The High Blade"
Type: Epic Main Hand Sword
Damage / Speed: 84-126, 2.00 (52.5 DPS)
Abilities:

• Only obtainable by Warriors and Paladins, sorry Rogues
• Chance on Hit: Grants the user 20 defense and 300 armor for 10 seconds (an ability like that just screams Main Tank Weapon)
• Looks pretty, like an Epic Elven Blade should.

How to Get It: This one actually has a quest behind it-- before you start, you'll need to be in or with a guild that is running Onyxia. Nowadays, that's actually hard to find, so make sure you've got that before you start the quest off.

What you'll need is actually another item, called "Foror's Compendium of Dragon Slaying." It's a book (about dragon slaying, natch) that drops in Dire Maul-- reports say it's about 1% random drop from all the bosses, but in reality, it's probably less than that. As in, this is a really, really rare drop. However, it is not BOP, so you can sometimes find it in the AH-- usually it'll run you about 300 gold, but it's been known to sell for thousands before.

Once you've got the book, you want to go to Lorekeeper Lydros in the Dire Maul Library-- it's inside DM North, and he's the same guy you get the Dire Maul enchants and the Mage water quest from. He'll give you something called an Unfired Ancient Blade, and that's where Ony comes in-- you've got to get her to breathe on the blade to forge it for you. In combat, you drop the blade in front of her, and then when she's dead, you use the blade on the corpse, and then boom, you've got... the Treated Ancient Blade. One more FedEx quest back to the librarian, and you've got the shiny sword. Now hit stuff with it!

Oh, and I forgot-- all the quests involved give some pretty good XP. So you might make a note now, and then look this one up on your way to 70.

Bonus Useless Trivia: If the name of that book looks familiar to you more veteran players, it's because yes, the name comes from Blizzard's Furor: he's a former Everquest player who now works as a WoW Quest Designer. He must know a lot about slaying dragons.

Getting Rid of It: The quest item itself is BOP, of course. Sells to vendors for 7g 59s 70c.