War-of-Ancients
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Know Your Lore: War of the Ancients, part 4 -- Time wizards and tinfoil hats
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. In the past few weeks, we've rather exhaustively gone over the War of the Ancients. Parts 1, 2 and 3 of our series of WotA posts covered the major events. However, while the basic outline of those events remains, we must now content with the effects of time travelers upon the events of the War -- specifically, the human mage Rhonin, the red dragon Korialstrasz, and the orc warrior Broxigar are all sent back either directly or indirectly by the actions of Nozdormu, the bronze dragon aspect of time. We know that the timelines differed in various ways (for instance, Hakkar the Houndsmaster died not during the War of the Ancients but the Third War itself in the original timeline), but how exactly did they differ -- and more importantly, why?
Know Your Lore: War of the Ancients part 1 -- Azshara's love story
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've mentioned it, referenced it, and discussed it before, but we've never featured it in a KYL column. The War of the Ancients, the epic first battle between Azeroth and the Burning Legion, is the conflict that shaped the world we adventure in today. Deathwing first became known as a malevolent force during the War of the Ancients. The Burning Legion first appeared. Figures like Malfurion, Illidan, Tyrande, and Alexstrasza all made momentous decisions that shaped the world and everyone who lives in it. Before the war, there were no druids, no high elves. The continent of Kalimdor stretched to include the lands that are today Northrend and the Eastern Kingdoms. There was no Maelstrom. There were no naga, and Azshara was queen of the kaldorei entire, and entirely beloved. Also, there was a whole lot of time traveling, but we'll talk about that next week. This week, we'll cover the War of the Ancients as it was before time wizards. The biggest difficulty in discussing the War of the Ancients is knowing which one you're talking about: the one before Nozdormu sents Rhonin, Korialstrasz, and Broxigar back in time, or the one that resulted from their trip. This week, we discuss the history and background of the war. And yes, I am fully aware of the irony of using words like "before" and "after" to discuss time travel. Pre and post-incursion still have the sense of before and after attached to them, or I'd use those. Simplicity demands we make use of the most basic terminology and just grapple with the difficulties. Still, in either timeline, certain things happened. At the heart of it all, the reason the Burning Legion found Azeroth was that a beautiful, intelligent, powerful woman who was queen of all she surveyed fell in love.
