Ask a Lore Nerd: Yogg-Saron and Warchief Garrosh Hellscream

Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.

Wrath of the Lich King is finally here, and with it comes a whole load of new lore and stories to discover. I hope you guys are reading your quest text! I imagine all of these new quests will bring up a lot of new questions as well, and to that I say bring it on. For now, though, let's field some questions from last week.

Rosa asked...

Personally, I'm tired of Outland and demons and fantasy-tech and I'm glad to see Warcraft going gothic again, buuuut there's one thing that I love about Outland and I'm hoping it's not gone forever. Ethereals are, like, totally awesome, and my favourite unplayable race in WoW. The question I have is, do we see these guys anywhere in Wrath? And if not, do you think that we'll see them ever again?

They're in Wrath but in a very, very limited capacity. It's not the Consortium either, it's the Ethereum. I really liked the ethereals too, so I'm kind of sad they didn't come to Northrend en masse. At least one Ethereal town would've been neat. It's about time the Goblins had some real competition. Cooler, classier, smarter competition. Hell, let's just trade out the Steamwheedle Cartel for the Consortium. Sounds good to me.

Wolly asked...

Just how much Old God love are we going to see in the expansion? They've got to be one of the most compelling forces at work in the WoW universe and it'd be a real treat to see Yogg-Saron manipulating the scenes against the good guys and Arthas.

Yogg-Saron is an everpresent... presence. You feel his influence all over Northrend, and his ties are everywhere. Despite that, he somehow manages to be a little more behind-the-scenes. The Scourge is up in your face and at the top of your mind, but Yogg-Saron's influence is always right there. Those of you with tradeskills that involve using metals, you've been directly exposed to Yogg-Saron. It's called Saronite for a reason. I imagine he'll be a more direct threat once he's actually in-game in whatever raid zone is on the horizon, but right now it's primarily a "presence" and not an "oh shi-" kind of thing.

I very highly recommend running Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom as soon as you're high enough level. Not only is it just a beautiful instance, it's a good look at what the Nerubians were, have become, and at what lies beneath the kingdom. Plus, the last boss is the most awesome 5-man boss I've ever seen. Seriously. Go do it.

Sesquame said...

I was working on the exploration achievements when ( came across an island in Hillsbrad named "Purgation Isle" with level 58 elite undead. Any lore on it?

Nope, not really. It's a neat place so that's kind of a shame, but there's really nothing specific about it. It was populated with elites for the quest chain at level 60 that upgraded your dungeon tier set. You just kill the dudes and loot their junk. We can make guesses as to what's there, but that doesn't make it canon, you know? Maybe it was a little abbey, or a special little graveyard, or maybe an ice cream parlor.

Javierkaiser said...

What about the duel between Thrall and Garrosh? Why are they fighting?

Thrall is kind of a wuss and is often to slow to act. Garrosh is a jerk and doesn't think at all before he acts. Garrosh got annoyed with Thrall's hesitation to send troops to Northrend, Thrall wouldn't budge on the issue until they thought it over, Garrosh challenges Thrall's authority and drags him into a duel over it. It's just the result of the massive mess that is current Orcish society.

aw232 said...

In the Pre-Wrath Event Thrall loses to Garrosh Hellscream in a fight in front of high ranking members of the horde. What does this mean in terms of political standing and succession in the horde? If Garrosh had killed Thrall would Garrosh been the new warchief? How do politics work in the Horde?

Technically Thrall didn't lose, the duel was interrupted by the Scourge. He probably was going to lose, though. In the New Horde, we can't really be sure what would happen. In the Old Horde, Garrosh would most probably become the new Warchief. In the New Horde, while Garrosh as Warchief would get a lot of support from a portion of the Orcs, it'd probably cause a civil war or schism in the Horde. People like Saurfang would not tolerate that nonsense, but there are still a lot of Orcs that long for the days of old when they could just slaughter things for a living.

I doubt Sylvanas, the Blood Elves, et cetera would be happy about Garrosh as Warchief, either. Hell, if Garrosh killed Thrall, Saurfang might just Mortal Strike him into a fine mist before he could even try to claim Warchief. We can't really say for sure. The Horde's entire society is screwed up right now. Considering Thrall keeps people like Nazgrel around as his advisors, maybe the Horde wouldn't have blinked at all and welcomed their warlord with open arms.