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Know Your Lore: Breakers and Primals
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. What is Draenor, exactly? It's a world beset by war on many different levels -- there's the threat of the Iron Horde, of course, and battling clans among the orcs, fighting with the ogres, skirmishes between orc and draenei. But beyond that, there's another layer of conflict on the world, one that seems like a much larger struggle, one far more ancient and primal than anything the orcs, ogres, draenei, or even the arakkoa could conjure up. In the wilds of Gorgrond, a struggle is taking place that almost seems to serve as a backdrop to the main Iron Horde-centered story we're concerned with. While we struggle with the Iron Horde and their plans, massive creatures both plant and rock are embroiled in a constant battle with each other, either unaware of our presence, or so intent on their purpose that we are simply being ignored. Or, to turn that around, we are so insignificant in the face of this conflict that to these giants of the world, we don't even register as being anything of importance at all.
Know Your Lore: Wrathion and Draenor
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. We may have helped him in Pandaria, but we certainly didn't fulfill whatever it was Wrathion had on his peculiar wishlist of things to do in regards to his plans for Azeroth. The Black Prince has stated on more than one occasion that he seeks to protect the world from some kind of impending attack by the Burning Legion. He even showed us the vision he'd seen as part of the expansion-long legendary quest chain in the last expansion. Yet when the chain came to a close, Wrathion was less than pleased with the results -- he wanted a clearly defined winner in the battle between Alliance and Horde, and he didn't get it. It was his next plan of action that was perhaps the most surprising, however. In the novel War Crimes, Garrosh Hellscream is placed on trial, and the end result for the former Warchief was a trip back in time to an alternate version of Draenor, courtesy of the bronze dragon Kairoz. But Kairoz wasn't alone in his efforts to take Garrosh back. Wrathion helped him out. And that's pretty strange when you think about it, because unleashing the Iron Horde on Azeroth seems like a really funny way to protect the planet. So what gives? More importantly, where is Wrathion now?
EverQuest Next video talks about Ogres and Dwarves
When you talk about basic fantasy races, Dwarves and Ogres are up there as the classics. But which do you find more interesting to learn about in EverQuest Next? The latest episode of the game's Workshop Show is available now; art director Rosie Rappaport and creative director Jeff Butler are joined by lead content designer Steve Danuser to show off the style and lore of both races while players vote over which one should be the next workshop focus. Dwarves, for their part, are fairly familiar to anyone who has played EverQuest or EverQuest II (or pretty much any fantasy game from 1967 to the present): short, stocky, bearded, ancestral, and traditional. Ogres, meanwhile, have changed a lot, with a renewed developer emphasis on making the race more appealing to players in general whilst offering a wider range of available style options for players. You can watch the full show past the break, but be forewarned: It's a long one.
Warlords of Draenor: Frostfire Ridge preview
So far we've had official previews of Shadowmoon Valley and the Tanaan Jungle, and today Frostfire Ridge joins that cohort. Game Designer Ryan Shwayder and Associate Game Designer Zachariah Owens are the interviewees leading us through this glimpse of the zone and giving us an idea of what we can expect when we arrive there. If you had access to the Warlords alpha, you're likely already somewhat familiar with Frostfire Ridge--it's the Horde's starting zone, the zone where Horde players will build their garrisons, and was the first zone available for alpha testing. In Frostfire Ridge, the Frostwolf clan stages the defense of their ancestral homeland against the other orc clans who have thrown their lot in with the Iron Horde. The overarching story of the zone, as summarized by Zachariah Owens, is thus: survive. The choice to put pieces of zone music at the beginning of these previews is one of my favorite things about them, and Frostfire Ridge is no exception. The zone music, titled "Magnificent Desolation," is haunting and, well, magnificent. It really does capture the scale and harshness of the zone--cold, snowy mountain peaks, frozen lakes, and constant struggle. In Frostfire Ridge, players will find the Thunderlord clan, Iron Horde loyalists who seek to prove themselves by wiping the Frostwolf off the face of the planet. In addition, two groups of ogres: the Bloodmaul and the Bladespire, cling to the remnants of power that the ogres once possessed in Draenor by any means necessary. In the eastern part of the zone, the masters of the gronn, the magnaron, plot and scheme to their own ends. I didn't expect to be all that interested in Frostfire Ridge--I play Alliance-side, after all--but this preview, plus the music, kind of has me sold! Head on over to the official site to see what Zachariah Owens and Ryan Shwayder have to say about this hostile, fascinating zone.
5 things I'm amazed WoW still doesn't have
World of Warcraft's tenth anniversary is this year, and with that milestone we've seen a lot of changes, additions, and growth -- the game now spans 90 levels (soon to be 100) and sprawls across the original two continents, Outland, Northrend, Pandaria and places like Deepholm. We'll be traveling to an alternate dimension soon. The game has auction houses, flying mounts, the Brawler's Guild, Proving Grounds, dungeons, raids, scenarios, transmogrification ... a lot has been changed and added over the years. Yet there are some things WoW never did that I admit, I expected it to do before now. With the level 90 boost incoming, they added one I was wondering about (and which our own Adam Holisky basically predicted based on what other games were doing) but there are still features other games have had over the years that WoW doesn't. Some have seemed like real no-brainers, while others might just be based on my own weird ideas. None of these are things I necessary want or think are good ideas, they're just things I expected. 1 - User Generated Content When I read up on Neverwinter's user generated content, I immediately found myself wondering why World of Warcraft hadn't taken a bite out of that. The Warcraft RTS was so infamous for player created maps that it spawned a whole sub-genre of games (if you play League of Legends now, that game wouldn't exist without the original Defense of the Ancients mod to Warcraft III) and yet, we've never really seen anything like that in WoW. I understand why Blizzard might want tight control over the game's story and content, but even something where players could submit generated content to be evaluated has never manifested, and I'm kind of astonished. To be honest, after Neverwinter announced its Foundry, I expected something like it for WoW, but I was wrong.
Know Your Lore Tinfoil Hat Edition: How is flesh a curse?
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Please don your tinfoil hat - all that follows is speculation based on in-game evidence. It is not canonical lore endorsed by Blizzard. One of the big reveals of Wrath of the Lich King is the Curse of Flesh. Upon our arrival in Ulduar's Halls of Stone, we escort Brann Bronzebeard to the Tribunal of Ages, a repository of Titan knowledge. After a fierce battle with the Tribunal's defense systems, Brann manages to access the Tribunal's information and learns the history of Azeroth, including how the Titans created Azeroth and how the Old Gods came to infest it, and how the Titan's creations of stone and iron were infected by the Curse of Flesh, making them more easily assimilated by the Old Gods. After defeating and imprisoning the Old Gods, the Titans re-engineered their creations to ensure they were no longer susceptible to the Curse... leaving the ones they'd already created to suffer it, and slowly change into the dwarves, gnomes, humans, troggs and their offshoots. Thus was Azeroth peopled in many cases. It sounds plausible enough. But there are some problems with it - namely, not all of the Titans information sources agree with it. For instance, the first Titan trove accessed by the mortal races of Azeroth was in Uldaman, in the Badlands. This Titan complex, lying in the heart of the Eastern Kingdoms, is potentially the source of the dwarves and gnomes who live nearby in the mountains of Khaz Modan. The Lore Keeper of Norgannon we meet at the end of Uldaman tells us that the Titans deviated from their normal plan when creating seed races. A cross-section of Azeroth's crust was used as the foundation for the Earthen's synthesis rather than the typical biomass construction foundation used by the Creators. Research on the world's composition led the Creators to theorize that an enhanced being could be synthesized that would epitomize the resiliency of this world's essence. This was accomplished by choosing to use a blend of Azeroth's various stone core compounds as the foundation. What does this mean? Rather than the typical biomass construction foundation used by the Creators implies that the use of stone and other materials in the Titan constructs of Azeroth is not standard. This is not what the Titans usually do. Why did they do it on Azeroth, then? They appear to have done it quite extensively as well - the Earthen, the Mechagnomes, the Vrykul, the Mogu, the Tol'vir - a whole host of inorganic entities, using 'a cross-section of Azeroth's crust' to construct them. And why is the resilience of Azeroth's essence so remarkable?
Know Your Lore: The others of Draenor
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Draenor, like Azeroth, is populated by more than just one sapient people. We've talked at length about the orcs who were born on Draenor, and the draenei who landed there and named the world as their refuge. But there were others. Some have vanished entirely since the creation of Outland, while others escaped to Azeroth or continued to exist on the remnant continent itself, floating in the Twisting Nether. Thus, our trip to this new Draenor will allow us to come face to face with beings we barely know, as they were before the destruction Ner'zhul unleashed, and with beings we've never met or seen, entities of legend. While we still don't know exactly what we'll find on Draenor (I'm sure it will be savage) we have enough clues to start talking about the denizens of that unknown (to us) world. So, who were these others?
My Warlords of Draenor dreams
I worry that I'm getting too excited for Warlords of Draenor. Letting my head run away from my heart, so to speak. I've done it before - pretty much before every expansion, I got super excited and imagined up a whole host of ideas for what the expansion was going to be like and all the cool things we were going to get to do and sometimes they came true and sometimes they didn't. Wrath of the Lich King ended up disappointing me greatly, because the Northrend I'd imagined wasn't even close to the Northrend we got (and to people who loved Wrath I probably sound like a crazy person) while Cataclysm ended up going so far beyond the revamp I expected that to this day I'm still very fond of it as a 1 to 60 experience. It started the transformation of the Horde/Alliance balance to one of much closer parity. Mists has been an interesting experience in that regard, in that I simply didn't expect the Pandaria we got at all, but I'm fairly happy with that - the hozen, jinyu, mogu, grummies and saurok are all far more interesting to me and did a lot to make Pandaria far from a monolithic experience. And so, I sit here imagining all sorts of things for Warlords and wondering how much of any of it I'll get to see.
Neverwinter offers players excerpts from a manual of monsters
Some players of Neverwinter will no doubt be reminded of long nights with the Monster Manual and graph paper as epic dungeons were plotted out. The game is borrowing a bit from that classic format with two Monster Manual entries on the official site. No, the entries don't feature Activity Cycles or Hit Dice, but they do give players an idea of what to expect from the enormous Ogres and the diminutive Goblins. Of course, familiarity with the tabletop game means that these entries will have few surprises. Ogres are large, dumb, and possessed of enough physical strength to still get their way. Goblins are nuisances individually and murderous hordes collectively. If you're unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons, this may count as novel. Either way, it's a look at some of the more mundane threats that adventurers will face as they wander through Neverwinter, and no adventure ever got more boring with the inclusion of Ogres.
The Game Archaeologist and the What Ifs: Climax's Warhammer Online
Let's begin with a little personal history. Back in 2008, I decided to get into the blogging scene by jumping on board the latest MMO hotness -- in this case, Warhammer Online. As I was growing increasingly tired of World of Warcraft, WAR seemed to offer a refreshing alternative: a darker world full of brutal PvP and awesome new ideas. So I joined the elite ranks of bloggers (hey, stop laughing so hard) and spent the better part of two years jawing about Mythic's latest fantasy project. And while Warhammer Online was, in my opinion, a solid product, it certainly failed to live up to the extremely high expectations held by both the development team and the players. No matter how it turned out, I really enjoyed talking about WAR, especially in the days leading up to its launch. One of the first articles I ever wrote for my blog WAAAGH! dealt with the first attempt to bring Warhammer Online into the MMO genre (as a fun aside, it was one of the first times I got my name on Massively!). It's a "what if?" tale that's tantalizing to consider -- an entirely different studio, Climax Online, creating a much darker version of Warhammer than we've ever seen online. The tale of the game's rise and fall (and subsequent rise and fall again) captivated me, and I wanted to expand my old article as part of our recent series into exploring MMOs canceled before their launch. So what if Climax had brought Warhammer Online to bear? Would it have eclipsed Mythic's vision or been its own animal? Hit the jump and let's dive into the pages of ancient history!
The Queue: Zordon, no!
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.A lot of people were confused about the picture I used in The Queue a couple of days ago. You know, the one with the German writing on it. That edition of The Queue was titled Mercenaries, and the person depicted in that picture was Götz von Berlichingen, a German mercenary from the early 1500s. He literally had an Iron Fist. As in, his hand was crafted out of iron. Go read up on him, he rules.idkanything asked..."A question on guild leadership. Our guild leader has decided to stop playing WoW but he didn't transfer the guild to someone else before he left. (It's a long, not very exciting story.) We don't want to just disband and reform under a different name because of the gold in the gbank. Does anyone know the procedure for getting the guild transferred to another person? Is there a certain amount of time that has to pass?"
Behind the Curtain: Too much emotion
Oh Richard Bartle, you so crazy! So, the rantings of an out-of-touch academic, desperate to grab attention, or astute observations from a true pioneer of MMOs and virtual worlds? I'll go with the latter – partly because it's true, and partly because I'm scared Dr Bartle might hunt me down and shout at me. Going by some of the comments I've seen here on Massively and elsewhere in the past couple of days, not everyone agrees with me. That's cool though, it's the Internet, and you have a right to be face-slappingly stupid hold an alternate viewpoint. Don't worry though, I don't plan on dissecting the good Doctor's words today, not only has that been done to death elsewhere; I simply don't want to. Instead, I'd like to talk briefly about emotion and our emotional investment in MMOs. To be specific, I'd like to talk about emotions which arise moment to moment, as we play.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Nagapalooza
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, WoW Insider's newest weekly feature column. Have a question about the story and lore of the Warcraft universe? Click the Comments link below, ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer you in a future installment!Thanks to the overwhelming popularity of Ask a Lore Nerd's first installment, we are now a weekly feature! I hope you enjoy it, because it's here to stay. This week we're fielding a large number of questions from a few contributors. A number of you have taken full advantage of this opportunity and posted an avalanche of questions. Good! That's what I like to see! Let's jump right into it, shall we?Matt said: Not a lore question, but lore speculation. Blizzard hinted at a major event would cause the uneasy-peace of Horde and Alliance become not on uneasy. What could cause tensions to rise? Also in the real world alliances crumble, and are reformed. What races of the Horde and Alliance do you see possibly switching sides?Answer: From what I understand, Garrosh Hellscream will be following in his father's footsteps and the good ol' Orcish bloodlust will color his actions in Northrend. Additionally, I'd be willing to bet the Alliance is mighty nervous about the Forsaken's new plagues, considering they had been thoroughly tested on Alliance citizens in the past. The Lich King may also play a substantial role in the rising tensions, playing the two factions off of one another. As far as switching sides, I don't see it happening. If anything, factions would splinter further but not switch sides. The Forsaken and Blood Elves might go off on their own. The Night Elves might go off on their own. Pretty unlikely in both cases.
[1.Local]: This week in WoW Insider comments
WoW Insider serves up a smattering of reader comments from the past week, from the sublime to the ridiculous.PvP was very much on readers' minds this week: Blizzard's balance of focus on PvP vs. PvE content, new Arena gear requirements, the e-sport aspirations of WoW's PvP system ... We bring you a sampling of those, as well as plenty of other tidbits that readers poked at over the last week: meanie players who kill ogres, loot drama, even roleplaying coverage.As always, be sure to dive into the comments area and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk.
Killing ogres and feeling like a jerk
I wrote about dropping Mining to take up Enchanting, and I'd like everyone to know it's going fine. I'm now at 357, being patient with the last few points to 360, opting to sell enchantments and save what little money I have after blowing quite a bit on all the materials up to 300+. Of course, now I feel somewhat compelled to acquire Enchanting formulas just so I have more options to use as I level up. The tips are a nice bonus.Anyway, one of the formulas I wanted to go after was the Formula: Enchant Bracer - Spellpower, which drop off the Bloodmaul Geomancers in Blade's Edge Mountains. So off I go to kill these ogres, I figure it'll take maybe an hour of so of farming. Easy, right? Well, what I didn't expect was that these ogres still paid fealty to me after I completed the chain of quests to unlock the quests in Ogri'la. I didn't make much of all the yelling those fatties did when they made me king, but since I didn't bother going around Blade's Edge much after that, I didn't notice that the Bloodmaul had turned yellow, or neutral, towards me. So it took me by surprise that upon killing these ogres, they say mortifying things like, "Me honored, King kill me," or "King <name>, me die now."Thanks a lot, Blizzard. Now I feel like a total jerk. These ogres consider me (and I'm sure millions of other players... but anyway...) their king and now I'm cutting them down like some maniacal despot. They also reference Ogri'la, which is kind of like paradise to them and a Blizzard reference to the Utopian haven of Shangri-La. It's heart-wrenching when they keel over saying, "King really think... there is... an Ogri'la?" or "Me go to... Ogri'la." It's like having some distant friend with Down Syndrome die in your arms with dreams of shiny, happy places. It's tragic. I know, it's a silly video game, and I'm not even on an RP server. But still, you have to wonder how you can keep killing those who consider you their king. After a while of killing and not getting the formula to drop, I called it a night and took a break. I probably shouldn't feel so bad. After all, if I'm truly their king, why don't they just hand over the stupid formula?
All the World's a Stage: Turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones
All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the mysterious art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.It is an art to turn any negative situation to your advantage, and no less so when roleplaying in WoW. In the fine tradition of "turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones," it pays for a roleplayer to reconsider a number of in-game situations which seem to get in the way of roleplaying, yet which actually offer a special opportunity to showcase your creativity.The biggest stumbling block WoW roleplayers trip over is often some aspect of the game mechanics themselves. Your roleplaying may lead your character into a deadly conflict with another player, for instance, and yet even if you kill the other in a free-for-all PvP arena, he or she can just resurrect and be back to normal in a few minutes. Alternately, you may find an epic BoE drop off a Skettis Kaliri and be hard pressed to explain how a rainbow-colored owl was flying around with a huge sword inside its body. You may even ponder why every single ogre you've ever seen is male.Naturally, of course, there are ways around all these problems -- it's just a matter of finding plausible reasons for things. You may say to your bitter rival, in the event of a deadly conflict: "I do not kill fellow members of the Horde! We shall duel for honor and be done with this!" Likewise, when recounting your discovery of your BoE epic sword, you might explain: "As I killed the strange owl, I suddenly noticed something gleaming in the grass just next to its corpse! This [Blinkstrike] was lying there, sticking out of a stone in the ground!" Your character might even make an effort to explain away in-game oddities: "I have deduced that the entire race of ogres must be hermaphrodites -- both male and female at the same time! They are so ashamed of this that they all hide the fact, pretending that ogre females are hidden away somewhere!"
Around Azeroth: Ogre, Ogre everywhere!
Reader MG sends us this screenshot of the Ogre in Blade's Edge Mountains. When they're congregating like that, you can be sure there's trouble brewing, and MG explains that these Ogres have gathered to elect a new champion of their people, a king (or queen!) of the Ogre.Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth. %Gallery-1816%
