illidan-stormrage
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WoW Moviewatch: The REAL Fury of the Sunwell Trailer
According to Ian Beckman, Blizzard has a trailer for the new 2.4 patch that they don't want you to see. In the Blizzard-issued version, Kael'thas believes that the Sunwell is the root of all evil and destroys it. When the destruction makes things worse, he turns to Illidan Stormrage for help.Ian's version, however, tells the story of monsters that overtake the "pool of awesome." Kael'thas has an identity crisis and it just gets really random from there. If you like all things fun and happy, then this is the Sunwell for you! I wonder why Blizzard would cover up something so cool?Previously on Moviewatch ...
One Boss Leaves: Illidan vs Twin Emperors wrap up
Last week, Illidan Stormrage the Betrayer, entered the arena against double threat of Ahn'Qiraj, the Twin Emperors. Did Illidan's Shear decimate the Qiraji brothers or did the Lord of the Outlands fall to the siblings' superior numbers?Reader Dierle summed it up well: [Illidan would] use his normal elf form to slice up the melee vulnerable twin, and his giant demon caster form to blast apart the magic vulnerable twin. Even if they DID get allowed to use their proximity heal, Illidan could throw down his warglaives and use his fire elementals to keep them separated. That would make it game over for the Twin Emperors. Illidan moves on to the Final Four. His opponent will be determined when the voting opens tomorrow in the death match of Ahn'Qiraj bosses: Princess Huhuran vs. C'thun.
Two Bosses Enter: Illidan Stormrage vs The Twin Emperors
Two bosses will enter... but only one will get to leave! Every week at WoW Insider, we pit two of the baddest bosses in the World of Warcraft against one another in a fantasy death match -- in the end to emerge with a single boss of bosses, victorious above all others. And the best part? You get to tell us who walks away the winner and who doesn't get to leave our arena at all. Today, the terror of the Black Temple, Illidan Stormrage throws down against Ahn'Qiraj's double trouble, The Twin Emperors. Who will survive to move on to the Final Four and who will face defeat at the hands of a superior foe? Read on for the details and the chance to cast your vote
Cinemassively: Burning Crusade The Movie
According to WoWJutsu, only 6% of WoW players can reach high-end raids in the Burning Crusade expansion. If you're worried about never seeing them, fear not! Jack, of Easy Productions, has come out with Burning Crusade The Movie.BCTM is an action-packed 30+ minute Machinima that features 25-man armies in four full dungeons with 24 bosses! Not only is it nice to see who you may be up against in the future, but it's presented in a cinematic way. Follow along as they work their way to the final boss, Illidan Stormrage, and then download the high-quality version on Warcraftmovies.[Via Warcraftmovies.com]
A year with no new 25-man content
Back in May 2007, when the Black Temple materialized in Patch 2.1, high end raiding guilds were drooling at the idea of taking down the infamous Illidan Stormrage, scourge of the Outland. Unfortunately for those guilds that achieved their lofty goal, there has been little else to challenge them. The telling fact is, when the Sunwell Plateau goes live in Patch 2.4 sometime this Spring, it will be the first new 25-man content to hit the game in a year!And this is where Lore, a level 70 Blood Elf Paladin whose guild has had Illidan on farm for the past three and half months, now sits. For 25-man raiders, clearing Black Temple hasn't been the real challenge. Finding a new goal worthy of their time, dedication and uber-gear has been the task just out of their reach. And Lore's guild has been suffering for it with attrition, disinterest and players leaving the game entirely.The news that new high end content is coming is great news, but it can't come fast enough for elite raiders who aren't quite the minority they used to be. WoW Jutsu shows that more than 6% of raiding guilds have entered Black Temple already.Has Blizzard made the right choice by ignoring this group of players in favor of cranking out PvP improvements, 10-man instances and Cooking Daily Quests? Or has Blizzard dropped the ball for a good chunk of its player base?
Is Illidan bad or simply misunderstood?
You can find all kinds of things on the forums. For instance, you can find a forum thread about Illidan. Back and forth the debate goes: does killing Illidan free him from his demonic taint or, well, just kill him? Will he come back or not? Is Maiev kind of a jerk? Bornakk weighs in on page two and continues to post throughout, which to be honest is what I like to see in a blue poster.The debate on whether Illidan was a hero to his people, a misguided power-hungry ambitious sort, or even out and out evil is interesting on its own, but what really interests me is to see this level of back and forth, even if Bornakk doesn't really say a lot in his replies. It may just be the lore geek in me talking, but I'd really like to take Chris Metzen out for a beer and talk turkey about Illidan, Arthas and the storyline in WCIII. How is it going to manifest in WotLK, did it work out in TBC the way they wanted? Might we see Illidan again or is he definitively dead on the floor of Karabor? Does Maiev have any purpose to her life now? This kind of stuff fascinates me, and clearly it does some other folks as well given the back and forth of this thread.What about you? Could you care less about lore? Do you want to see Illidan again? Was he a basically good but flawed hero or an out and out villain or both?
Action MMO powered by Crysis engine? That'll be The Day
Former employees of NCSoft and Phantagram have created a new studio to design a 'third-person massively multiplayer online action game'? And it's powered by CryENGINE 2, the same game engine used in Crysis? Tell me more. As it says in the press release: Reloaded Studios are a Seoul-based game company that seem to lack neither experience nor funding. Their first project is entitled The Day, and it aims to have a heavy emphasis on PvP combat plus a unique, immersive storyline involving parallel worlds and the destruction of all humanity. I also aim to solo Illidan Stormrage tomorrow.The Day joins a growing list of MMOs to use the Crysis engine, along with Entropia Universe and Blue Mars. They're both more virtual world than action MMO, though, and there's a lot of untapped potential in the latter. Planetside never made much of an impact, but games in a similar vein are a market waiting to happen -- even if it isn't a Halo MMO.
Phat Loot Phriday: Black Bow of the Betrayer
You want a bow that will make people sit up and say "whoah?" You want a bow with a neat mana proc? You want a bow that requires a really, really good PvE guild to get? Here you go.Name: Black Bow of the BetrayerType: Epic Ranged Bow (where are the Legendary Ranged weapons, by the way?)Damage/Speed: 201-374 / 3.00 (95.8 DPS)Abilities: Increases attack power by 26, always very nice On Equip: Succesful melee or ranged attacks will grant 8 mana and if possible drain 8 mana from the target. That's incredible-- it's basically 40-45 mana per five seconds, which allows any Hunter to keep up their DPS for almost twice as long as normal. And if you want even more mana, there is a set of mail gloves created by Blacksmiths (dropped by Moam in AQ, I believe) called Black Grasp of the Destroyer that have the exact same proc. And while I haven't tried it out in game, I'm told that the effects of both stack. So with both the gloves and the bow, you'll never need mana again! If only Shamans could equip bows... How to Get It: Such a bow isn't going to be easy to get, and as the name might have already told you, this drops from the Betrayer himself, Illidan Stormrage, at the end of the Black Temple. There is a good argument made that if you're a Hunter able to get to Illidan, you probably aren't going to be worrying about mana problems anymore anyway. But to the victors go the spoils, so kill Illidan, be a Hunter (the mana proc on the weapon makes it just for you animal lovers), and win the roll and the bow is yours. The rest of the world gets to stare in awe at how frighteningly pointy this baby looks.Getting Rid of It: As far as I can possibly tell, no one has. But maybe there's a guild out there who has Illidan on farm, and just doesn't need it any more. In that case, it's the usual Void Crystal, or 10g 82s 33c if sold to a vendor.
Azeroth's bad guys aren't always that bad
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.
WoW Moviewatch: Rise of Illidan Stormrage
Yesterday we saw the story of Arthas as he rose (or sank, some would say), from the holy paladin prince of Lordaeron to the most powerful evil person in Azeroth, lord of vast armies of mindless undead -- all recorded from the original Warcraft 3 cut-scenes. Today we bring you an similar piece that Sylvictus put together for The Burning Crusade, about Illidan's journey from down-in-the-dumps reject brother to the most powerful evil person in Outland, lord of mish-mashed groups of villians and misfits who really aren't as loyal to him as they seem. It doesn't actually begin from the real beginning of Illidan story -- you'll have to go to the Warcraft prequel novels to get that, but as far as the official in-game lore is concerned, this is real deal. Also keep in mind that the end isn't really the end for Illidan here. Illidan, too, is capable of doing a corpse run, and has acquired plenty of prime real estate in Outland to come home to. For those who are interested, the trailer for Blizzard's "Black Temple" patch also touched on Illidan's story, this time from the draenei Akama's point of view. It doesn't include Illidan's conflict with Arthas, but it sets the stage for the progression of the story within WoW.So if you've been playing The Burning Crusade all this time and wondering what the deal was with the big blind guy with horns and wings, here's the story of Illidan Stormrage straight from Warcraft 3.Previously on WoW Moviewatch...
Blizzard interviews Nihilum at Leipzig
In the last four days, we've reported on interviews with Lead Designer Jeff Kaplan at the European Game Conference going on currently in Leipzig, Germany. So far he has dropped many new bits of information about the Wrath of the Lich King and some new patch content coming before that. Turns out, Blizzard is reporting on its own activities at Leipzig on its official European page. In addition to the Wrath and Starcraft II demo stations, Blizzard hosted the demise of Illidan Stormrage. Uberguild Nihilum performed a Black Temple raid live at the Blizzard booth in front of 5,000 spectators. Afterwards, Blizzard gave away the keyboards signed by members of Nihilum to the crowd. Blizzard also interviewed the guild. You can read it here.With the convention wrapping up today, we'll have to start looking elsewhere for more news on the upcoming expansion.
Illidan has 72 friends and they're all on MySpace
I'm not sure who is behind this, but it's brilliant. Someone made a MySpace page for Illidan Stormrage. And its just as ugly as you know a MySpace page can be with a large, dark picture as a backdrop and unreadable type laid on top of it. The RP value is priceless. The profile information is written in character, from his point of view and makes him sound a little more sympathetic than I remember and a heck of a lot funnier. His MySpace friends list includes other Warcraft luminaries with their own page: Sargeras, Akama and Ner'zhul aka the Lich King. The automatic music that plays is, of course, the World of Warcraft theme.This has been going on since Blizzard made its presence known on the premiere social networking site. I suppose it was only a matter of time before the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King main players were parodied on the site. But, as one commenter on Illidan's page wrote, this one is "Full of win!"
PTR: Images of Illidan in the wild
Many of us have been curious to see just how Illidan would look when he was actually in-game as opposed to data-mined from the PTR client and then previewed through the WoW model viewer. Well, several brave souls from the PTR have managed to locate him in the Black Temple and have sent back the above screen shot of the man Night Elf-Demon himself in game. The reports are that he's roughly as tall as Onyxia large, but not overly so, yet extremely imposing when you're standing face-to-err ... hooves. The rumor from the peanut gallery says that when he gets to 20%, he despawns saying only "A terrible and costly mistake you have made. It is not my time, mortals." [via Curse, with a video size confirmation from Ysona]
