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I finally managed to do some poking around on the PTR today after two days of trying to get my characters transfered over, and so far it's been a pleasant surprise. My alliance shaman hasn't made it over yet, but my horde paladin, shaman and warrior all did, and so I spent some time exploring the new quest content in Dustwallow Marsh. The Shady Rest Inn quest chain is finally completed!
So far, any fears that there aren't quests for the Horde in the marsh are overstated. I've found plenty on my Belfadin, between quests to blow up oozes with electricity, quests to wrangle raptor feathers, escort smelly people on flowerpicking expeditions, and kill Grimtotem Tribe who are acting suspiciously. There are suspicious hijinks afoot, let me tell you. (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here.) The quest drops are about dead-on for the level, decent greens that seem to plug up some itemization holes (including a nice mail chestplate, featured in the screenshot, that a newly 40 enhancement shaman would like as well as a nifty pally sword for up and coming paladin tanks) and while they're not crazy or overpowered, they're about just right for their level all told. Starter greens, yes, but solid ones.
Hopefully I'll get my alliance on soon, I want to follow up the Missing Diplomat quest chain. (Note, don't follow that link if you don't want to be spoiled.) So far, Dustwallow seems to be shaping up nicely for those of us looking for new mid level content.
Update: As my draenei has just popped into existence on the PTR, I have an awesome change to report: the boat from Menethil to Theramore now has a crew, complete with a vendor who even sells reagents. This, my friends, is really awesome.
Hard to believe that this friendly soul over to the right stabbing what appears to be an entire planet was once not just a good guy, but indeed, the goodest of the good guys, huh? (Goodest of the good guys? What, am I a drunken five year old all of a sudden? Sheesh, that's just horrible.) But it's true: the ultimate big bad guy in the Warcraft Universe, the ultimate evil, the guy who comes up with plans that involve possessing babies was once the champion of the Titans themselves, before he started stabbing planets and possessing babies.
I guess there's no evil, be it big or small, that Sargeras won't engage in personally. He's a real hands on villain.
So what's the deal with Sargeras, exactly? How did he go bad? Why did he assemble the Burning Legion in the first place? And what's he up to nowadays? With the Legion running around being killed for loot and Marks of Sargeras in Outland (seriously, what is the big plan for Outland, exactly? So far all the Legion seems to be doing is being mad at Illidan because he promised to be Kil'Jaeden's BFF and then went back on it. Did they pinky swear? I bet they pinky swore. That seems like the kind of thing Kil'Jaeden would do) you'd think ol' Sargy would be in the thick of it, but instead his sidekicks are running the show and he's nowhere to be found. Why?
It doesn't help that some of Sargeras' history has changed in the telling. (Hey, I like the Draenei a lot, but you guys really changed the lore around.)
Well, you may have a hard time believing this, but it turns out that his whole baby possession scheme wasn't such a good idea after all. I know, I know, how could picking on an infant have gone so horribly wrong? But rather than dwelling on that, why don't we start talking about Sargeras' early days.
World of Raids and MMO Champion both have lists of new gear on sale, come patch 2.3, in exchange for Badges of Justice from the heroic instances, and now Karazhan and Zul'Aman raid instances as well. That's exciting, of course, but let's stop and look at these pics of the new gear for a moment, shall we?
Now, naturally, this gear is designed to fit with the general trollish theme of the patch, which lots of people are understandably excited about. The armor looks pretty good as armor goes, and it definitely brings some new visual design elements to the game that haven't been represented in any previous armor sets. But, let's stop and consider for a moment just where this armor is coming from. It looks like trollish Zul'Aman armor, but do we find it in Zul'Aman? No, it's up for sale by the only known Naaru retailer, G'eras. Does its method of acquisition have anything to do with Zul'Aman whatsoever? Well... it might if your guild has finished raiding Karazhan and gathers the heroic badges in Zul'Aman soon, then yes; but if you still focus mostly on Karazhan or heroic instances, then you might very well acquire some of these armor pieces without ever visiting those Amani trolls even once.
What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is the appropriation of the Amani clothing design brand by the Shat'ari Naaru in Shattrath, copied illegally by G'eras, and put on sale with no proprietary settlement with trolls they are mimicking. Who knew that the Naaru could be capable of copyright infringement? If the trolls were down with that whole "I'll see you in court!" thing, their lawyers would be all over this right now.
Seriously, why is a being of pure holy light selling trollish armor with skulls and tusks and voodoo dolls on it? -- or does nobody care?
All the World's a Stage is a weekly column by David Bowers, published on Sunday evenings, investigating the explorative performance art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.
We've talked before about roleplaying as an art form, whether you think about it as acting or puppeteering, fiction or improv, there's definitely something creative going on here. But like any art form, roleplaying is best when it means something; that's to say, when it expresses something ultimately "true" about human experience, and perhaps even illumines the minds and hearts of the roleplayers in some way.
Roleplayers all want to achieve that creativity, of course, but one problem often stands in our way: it's a rare work of art that really works for everyone. That's why the regular old art world is such a complete mess -- one man's fingerpainting is another man's post-modernist masterpiece. People constantly disagree about what subjects make for acceptable art, whether some art pushes extremes too far and becomes obscenity, and whether real art actually requires talent and skill. One person may curl up with their favorite Jane Austen novel and read it for the 10th time, while another may come home from the comic book store with the epic adventures of the Bone cousins. Each story conveys very different things to the reader -- but then the people who want to read these stories are looking for different things to get out them as well. Each form of storytelling speaks its own language for its own special audience.
We have the same problem in roleplaying. To illustrate, imagine there's a teenage boy going through public school and not getting along with his peers very well. When he roleplays, he plays an intimidating character who likes to try to get in your face, pick a fight with you and insult you to show how very powerful he is. That power fantasy may be very annoying for you and me, but for him it really means something. That's not to say it's high-quality art by any means, but nonetheless, his feelings are important too, and he has his right to play a character on an RP server the same way we all do. It's just that for us, the "/ignore" command starts to look really tempting every time his sort comes along.
Is that him in the WoW comic book, or is he going to be in Northrend?
The answer, according to Stormgaard of Se7en Samurai, may be 'both'. And to be honest, I agree with him. Not because of the strength of his evidence, good as it is, but because his argument makes sense. One of the things we've seen with World of Warcraft tie-in media like the manga series and novels is that they all flow back into the MMO, help develop and direct the lore forward. As much as players like to chant 'lorelol' it is clearly important to the folks at Blizzard, and Stormgaard's argument that the comics and movie may well be setting up a new age of hostility between the horde and the alliance centered around a new lore figure who is connected to, if not the 'star' of the Missing Diplomat quest makes a lot of sense to me.
Plus, having the comic star a human who washed up without his memory on the coasts of Durotar... well, if you look at the map you'll see why that could well lead to the exact scenario Stormgaard posits. It makes sense to me. What do you guys think?
Malikoi generously offers to buy Dalaran's old location over on the forums, and says he plans to create a new city, complete with flight path, graveyard, and even an arena. It's not like the Kirin Tor are going to need it any more, right? They're moving the magical city of Dalaran up to Northrend, so Malikoi should be able to pick up the old land.
Bornakk, however, says the Kirin Tor are not selling the land, which of course begs the question: what are they going to do with it? They could only take part of Dalaran up north, and leave part of it there in the Alterac Mountains (to serve as a new quest hub for lowbies, perhaps?). Or maybe Dalaran will have to fly up north under duress and what's left behind in Alterac will be the remains of some battle the mages had to fight?
It will be kind of a shame to not have that purple dome there any more (and it would be cheating if Blizzard just left it there when they've already told us the mages have made the decision to move the whole city). There's a lot of wonder to be found in Azeroth, but I can't think of any other experience that has matched up in exactly the same way to turning a corner from Hillsbrad and seeing a gigantic pink dome in the middle of nowhere. Hopefully whatever replaces it will inspire that same sense of magical amazement.
We've talked quite a bit about Sylvanas and her history with Arthas in the past, but let's not forget that there is another woman Arthas has a nice long history with on the opposite faction: Jaina Proudmoore. Jaina's biggest moment in WoW is probably the Missing Diplomat quest-- after a long goose chase to find out where the lost King of Stormwind is, all you do is end up finding the man who betrayed him, and then Jaina thanks you and wishes you farewell. Wha? Players have always though the quest ended a little too quick, and Blizzard has admitted that they plan to continue the storyline at a later day.
As in, during the next expansion. When a player asks what happened to Jaina and the Missing Diplomat, Drysc mysteriously says "Northrend holds many secrets, and many answers." So it's a good guess that we'll find out at least another piece of the puzzle to where the Lost King of Stormwind has gone.
And it's also a pretty good guess that Jaina will be there, somehow. Despite the fact that she's pretty much the strongest leader the Alliance has, she's also pretty buddy-buddy with Thrall, and she's got that history with Arthas-- they were friends (and possibly romantically linked) before he went all power-crazy and possessed. There's no question that some of the answers we uncover in Northrend, whatever they may be, will involve Jaina Proudmoore.
All the World's a Stage is a weekly column by David Bowers, now published on Sundays, investigating the explorative performance art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.
For some, the whole process takes 5 minutes. They log in, click on "create new character," choose a race, a class, painstakingly compare each and every face and hairstyle, type in a name, click "accept," and they're done. Some take their time by paying a visit to the forums of each class, or asking their friends about which race is best -- but who sits down and makes up a story idea, a personality, and actual characteristics for characters these days?
Roleplayers do, of course. But how? What if you'd like to try out roleplaying but you just don't know where to begin creating an actual character, rather than just an avatar for yourself in the game? Each roleplayer tends to have his or her own way, but there are are a number of things they have in common. One of the first things to remember about designing your character concept, is to make your character essentially human, relatable, based on real experiences that you know about.
Mine your life. Think of what kinds of experiences you are familiar with, and which of them could be used as the foundation for another person's life, a new character with a story to tell, and a personality to engage other people's interest. Today, I'll give you a couple examples of how I tried to do this, and explain some of the pitfalls people often fall into when trying to make up an interesting character.
Sorun is a rogue who loves his Horde-Alliance conflict. As he posted on the forums, he feels that every action and little quest in the World of Warcraft should reflect the reality of War that exists in that world, not the good old intra-faction get-together that Shattrath has turned out to be. If Dalaran is going to be a neutral city in Wrath of the Lich King, however, it could really mess up the lore and war-filled feeling of the game:
Neutral Dalaran? How does that even make any sense when horde to this day have quests to go attack the ruins of dalaran and can and have been freely killing the wizzards [sic] all around that area.
He's got a point there. What is Blizzard really going to do with Dalaran in the next expansion? Read on to see what Blizzard says about it.
Well, now that Elizabeth has given me her deceptively large shoes to fill, I must step up to the bat and deliver a KYL. The injunction against egg throwing is in full effect.
Since Elizabeth is working on the dragons, I decided to talk about everyone's favorite life-making, ruin-scattering, not-gods-but-capable-of-killing-them meddlers, the gals and guys who created the Dragon Aspects, gave the Old Gods a whupping, banished the rowdier elementals to the elemental plane where they could get their brawl on with each other and leave Azeroth alone and who kinda, sorta let Sargeras go nuts and wander the cosmos corrupting and destroying everything in his path. Oops. Yes, I'm talking about the Titans, who I'm sure would hasten to remind you that batting .750 is a damn fine average.
For folks who like to just show up on a planet and fix it up so that mortals, like every single person playing the game, can live on it, we don't know a heck of a lot about the Titans. Where are they from? Why do they travel the cosmos, straightening up the place? Are they stricken with a case of OCD or is there some purpose to their pursuit of order? The Titans themselves aren't telling and if anyone else knows, they haven't shared yet. But we do know that they are divided into two 'races', the Aesir and the Vanir. (Norse mythology alert #1, there will be more.) The Aesir are more into storms and oceans, think of them as your classic 'sky gods' while the Vanir are the more cthonic ones, with interest in and power over earth and stone. As a result, the Aesir are the ones who created the mountain and sea giants to take care of the mountaintops and sea floors while the Vanir are the ones who made the Earthen, and if you have ever run a group through Uldaman you know why that's important.
Basically, the Titans are the reason that your character has places to go and things to do on Azeroth instead of starting gameplay underneath the tentacles of a horrible elder monstrosity. Sure, some of you might enjoy that, but for those of us who like our tentacles safely battered and fried up calamari style, it's safe to say that we all owe the Titans a solid. So let's talk about when the big guys showed up on Azeroth and what they did from there.
We've talked before about the question of what exactly will happen to Arthas, but it's looking pretty likely that we are going to be able to actually kill him in Wrath of the Lich King. This raises another interesting question however: Sincast asked over on the forums, "When Arthas is killed in-game does that mean that undead will be no more?..." Nethaera popped in right away to answer him... sorta:
Interesting concept to think about isn't it? But does killing Arthas really mean the undead cease to exist? They existed when he was just a paladin didn't they?
There are things to ponder here but most importantly...
Does the Lich King cease to be when the vessel is destroyed?
Although we have seen that Arthas and the Lich King are now "one," it remains to be seen what "one" really means for them. Are they two souls in one body? Is Arthas the flesh and the Lich King his armor? What kind of state would the Lich King exist in after Arthas was killed? What sort of threat would the Scourge pose at that point -- just fodder for new characters leveling up in future expansions perhaps?
Before we get into this week's KYL, we have a little bit of business to take care of. Some of you may have noticed that this feature has been rather inconsistently published in the past month. This is due to my beginning a new job and classes at the same time. So to keep up our publishing schedule, and to bring a fresh face to the column, Matthew Rossi will be taking over KYL every other week, beginning next week. Please do not throw eggs at him.
And, now, on with the show! It's pretty much a given that in any fantasy game, you're going to have to kill a dragon or two, and WoW is no exception. There are tons of dragons hanging around, so much so that it becomes a problem to tell exactly what they're doing. Because of this, a concerned (and confused) reader wrote in a few weeks ago asking us to do a piece on the different dragonflights that were sent by the Titans to guard the world of Azeroth. As you wish, reader. As you wish. However, there are a LOT of dragons, so today we'll cover the "good" dragonflights: Red, Bronze, Green, and Nether. Next time we'll get the "Bad Dragons": Black, Blue, Chromatic, and Infinite.
Our friends at Blizzplanet have a video interview up with Richard Knaak, author of the Warcraft novels Day of the Dragon, the War of Ancients trilogy and the upcoming Night of the Dragon, as well as the Sunwell Trilogy and upcoming Burning Crusade manga. For those of us who can't watch video due to work or other issues, they've even thoughtfully presented a transcript of the interview here.
What I found especially interesting are the little hints Knaak dropped in the interview about Malygos, Rhonin and his role with the Kirin Tor, what effects the characters of the upcoming Burning Crusade manga have on Wrath of the Lich King, and the sputtering response to the Diablo 3 question. Is there something fishy going on there? (Probably not.)
Additional tidbits of note: we will probably see Vereesa again, and no, she's not big on the Blood Elves (may we dream of a sisters Windrunner family reuinion?), Knaak would like to use a Draenei in the upcoming book, no word yet on if Hakkar the Houndmaster was an eredar or what relation he has to Hakkar the Soulflayer (perhaps identical cousins?) and finally, Knaak's contracts with Blizzard keep him from saying too much, which for a lore junkie like myself is very maddening.
Savor the interview and let the rampant speculation commence.
Malygos is a new kind of antagonist for the Warcraft universe in that he's probably the enemy with the least actual evil we've seen so far, in sharp contrast to the Burning Legion, the Scourge, the Old Gods, and a host of others. As we've already noted, some players think he may actually be right: he wants to protect Azerothians from the magic they're dabbling in, for fear that they might end up bringing the Burning Legion back with it, except that he goes about "protecting" the people by waging war on them, which somehow eerily familiar....
Anyway, Malygos is just the latest example of an antagonist in WoW that we can almost sympathize with, a bad guy that isn't all that bad. Malygos' particular place at the other end of our attack buttons can be attributed mainly to his conflicting point of view rather than an evil and corrupted soul. His ultimate aim is still the greater good of all life -- he just believes (wrongfully, we hope) that he needs to destroy the minority of magic users in order to save the remaining majority of all other life on the world.
Last week, Blizzard released a new machinima movie called Lament of the Highbourne, featuring Sylvana's performance of the old Quel'dorei song and a retelling of what went down between her and Arthas Menethil, now known as the Lich King. WoW Insider, being the extreme lore geeks that we are, has put together a video analysis of the movie that Blizzard released, featuring an almost frame-by-frame commentary about Sylvanas' story. You can see the finished product above-- prepare to be lore-geeked out.
Two things that didn't make it into the commentary above in time: reader Lift sent us a bit of insight about Arthas riding an Undead mount-- does that mean, he asks, that Death Knights will get their own Warlock/Paladin-esque mount? And one more thing we noticed-- the spectre behind Arthas as he resurrects Sylvanas may well be the Lich King himself. By all means: discuss.
I finally managed to do some poking around on the PTR today after two days of trying to get my characters transfered over, and so far it's been a pleasant surprise. My alliance shaman hasn't made it over yet, but my horde paladin, shaman and warrior all did, and so I spent some time exploring the new quest content in Dustwallow Marsh. The Shady Rest Inn quest chain is finally completed!
Hard to believe that this friendly soul over to the right stabbing what appears to be an entire planet was once not just a good guy, but indeed, the goodest of the good guys, huh? (Goodest of the good guys? What, am I a drunken five year old all of a sudden? Sheesh, that's just horrible.) But it's true: the ultimate big bad guy in the Warcraft Universe, the ultimate evil, the guy who comes up with plans that involve possessing babies was once the champion of the 
Malikoi 
We've talked quite a bit about 
