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Christie Golden chat transcript posted
As planned, Medievaldragon hosted a live chat with author Christie Golden last night, and even if you didn't tune in, you can see the transcript right over on WorldofWar right now. It's a very interesting read, especially if you're into the lore of the book and these characters -- Golden talks about how she built up Arthas' life and relationships, and turned him from the Human prince he started out as into the (her word) "monster" he is today. And she mentions a few fun tidbits about her influence on the game -- she created the Taretha character in the Old Hillsbrad instance, and there's an NPC in the Plaguelands that bears a striking resemblance. There's also something in the Balnir Farm that she suggested they put in. You'll have to go and see for yourself what that might be.And even if you're not interested in the book and the lore, we get another little pull on the line in reference to Gilneas -- when Golden is asked what's going on at the Greymane wall, she says that she "really can't comment as to that." One more little breadcrumb in the trail leading us to either the next big content patch or the next expansion.Definitely give the chat a look if you've got any interest at all in the Arthas book (which comes out in just over a week on April 21st) or the history of the game's current big bad.
BlizzPlanet hosts a chat with Arthas author Christie Golden [Updated]
Our friend Medievaldragon over at BlizzPlanet is going fan-crazy about the new Arthas, Rise of the Lich King book, due out in bookstores any day now. And with good reason, too -- apparently both Alex and Dan are also nuts about the book, and it's basically a must-read if you're at all interested in the lore behind Arthas, Jaina, and the creature we all know as the Lich King. And Medievaldragon has set up an awesome opportunity for anyone interested in the novel: they're having a live public chat with author Christie Golden on Thursday evening, April 9th, at 9pm Eastern. She'll be sitting down in the CoverItLive widget there to talk with you about the lore behind the book, how she worked with Blizzard to figure out where Arthas is and where he's going, and whatever else you'd like to ask.Sounds like fun, but if you are in the EU you'll have to stay up late if you want to see it all happen live. It begins at about 3am in Paris, so it'll be a late night if you have questions you want to ask. The good news is that the CoverItLive widget logs the chat, so even if you can't make it to see everything go down live, you can scroll back through it later and read up on what happened.The book itself is due out April 21 -- you can preorder a collectible version of the novel if you want to right now for $32, which isn't cheap, or you can pre-order the non-collectible version from Amazon.com for $16.50. You can also support your local fantasy bookstore and wait until later in the month to pick it up there.[UPDATE: Corrected the live chat date to April 9.]
Breakfast Topic: Where did Thrall go?
So Thrall was gone for a few hours. The mighty Orc leader has pretty much been a fixture in the Valley of Wisdom for four years now. But yesterday, readers from all over sent us tips that the Horde's main man disappeared. Where he went off, nobody knows. Sure, he started showing up again on the servers several hours later, but the real question is... where did he go? It wasn't to Nagrand to visit his grandmother, that's for sure, even though he's been known to do that on occasion. Where do you think he went? I mean, I guess four years of standing around waiting for newbs to send him old news about the Burning Blade could get a little old. Maybe just like you guys -- I hope -- he went out to vote. Or maybe he made a quick jaunt to Theramore Isle. Did anybody see if Jaina was at her post during that time? Maybe it was just a glitch in the matrix, because he's back to standing around. What do you guys think?
The Lich King is Twittering
Fake Twitterers are all the rage these days -- you can sign up on the microblogging service Twitter.com as just about anyone and shoot out some parodic little "tweets," as they're called, for the instant amusement of anyone who wishes to follow you (I'm personally a big fan of the Mad Men characters tweeting). But now, the WoW community has its own fake twitter personality -- apparently the Lich King has found some time in between knighting Death Knights and plaguing the world to start up his own Twitter account.No idea who's behind it, but I know a few WoW bloggers who twitter pretty often, including a few WoW Insider contributors. Whoever's tweeting for Arthas, they're doing a nice job, promising "cold deaths" to everyone, and steadily counting down the days until his Wrath is upon us.I'm kind of surprised this is the first fake NPC twitterer we've seen -- sure, you'd think Thrall or Jaina would have tons of time to Twitter, and Kael'thas, assuming he's not quite dead yet, seems made for such an enterprise. If you are on Twitter, don't forget to follow our own WoW Insider account as well -- we won't offer you a cold death, but we will occasionally tweet about important posts and our own experiences with the game.
Christie Golden talks about Arthas, Rise of the Lich King
Our friend Medievaldragon (of Blizzplanet, who's now posting occasionally over on World of War) got a chance to talk to author Christie Golden at BlizzCon last weekend. She's working on a book about Arthas (which has a title now: "Rise of the Lich King"), and she chatted with MD about what kind of lore fun is going to be in those pages.The book starts with Arthas as a ten-year-old prince, and then obviously follows his path through what we saw in Warcraft III, including all of that bad business at Quel'Thalas, and Arthas' past with Jaina and Kael'thas (you don't think Blizzard would bring KT back again in WotLK, do you?). Golden promises some good looks as the High Elves, too -- "two very pivotal characters are elven," she says. Including Sylvanas? We can only hope.The book's due out in April, sounds like it'll be a good read, for Arthas fans especially.
The funny, morbid, and sad coins of the Dalaran fountain
Level up fishing so you can fish in the Dalaran fountain. I'm serious. This completely nonsensible and illogical statement is brought to you by the 53 tiny lore moments you'll get if you'll just sit yourself down somewhere and level up fishing. Yes, it's boring having to fish up dozens of useless fish to get to the good stuff in Outland and Northrend. Yes, you could be farming up gold or materials that will help you level in Wrath. I don't care. Go fish.You see, while you'll be fishing up a lot of equally useless fish in the Dalaran fountain, you'll also get coins. No, not in the sense that you'll be fishing up ingame money, but you'll fish up coins tossed into the fountain of this very old city by 53 people, many of whom will be known to you if you've played the game for any length of time. Some of them, perhaps most of them, are funny. Some are serious. Some are heartbreaking. I admit to a touch of being a lore geek, and it was wonderful being allowed a peek into the irreverent or hopeful or sad heads of Jaina Proudmoore, Thrall, or Stalvan Mistmantle. It is idiosyncratic little touches like this that make WoW hopelessly fun to play, and it is my fondest wish that whatever person at Blizzard who thought this up is pulled off whatever they're doing right now and chained to a desk until they come up with more stuff like this.So, if you don't do anything else with your time between patch 3.02 hitting and Wrath going live...level up fishing so you can fish in the Dalaran fountain. But don't read any further if you're not interested in Wrath spoilers, because there are a few here...
All the World's a Stage: Center of the universe
All the World's a Stage returns today after a week off due to reasons beyond the comprehension of mortal man. Mysteries abound in World of Warcraft, and roleplayers are there to enjoy them.In roleplaying, one's own character is never the center of the story -- this is true. But from another perspective, your character is always the center of the story -- and this is also true. It seems like a paradox, but it's actually a way of understanding your own relationship to the world.In most stories, the main characters are usually the ones who have the most impact on the world around them: they are the heroes who save the day, fall in love, and make the choices that determine the ultimate outcome of the plot. In a way, the whole story circles around them, like planets around the sun. The structure of Warcraft lore is built with the stories of characters like this, whose choices made the World of Warcraft what it is today: Arthas, Thrall, Jaina Proudmoore and the like.But the roleplaying community of imaginative characters is not such a centralized system. When immature roleplayers fail to understand this, they end up with a chaotic mess where everyone wants to steal the spotlight. But mature roleplaying environments are quite the opposite: they are cooperative rather than competitive, and quite unlike traditional storytelling patterns. Where traditional stories are like a solar system, with main characters around which all the other characters revolve, roleplaying in WoW it is like the expanding universe itself: a web of interconnected stories and characters in which the center appears to be nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Only a little broken
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, the column that answers your questions 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!skoll asks...Whats your speculation about the Burning Legion in the new expansion, since Kil'jaeden has been killed/defeated? IF he is dead.. will it that be the end of Burning Legion? If not, what you think their role will be?Answer: Well, Kil'jaeden isn't dead. Not at all. In the Sunwell Plateau, Kil'jaeden is being summoned but never fully makes it through the portal. We bop him on the head and he just falls back in. What presence will they have in Wrath? Well, it will probably be minimal. I am sure they'll have some presence, the Legion doesn't really have any love for the Scourge, but it won't be anything like what we've seen in The Burning Crusade. Kil'jaeden is alive and well, but I think they'll scale way back on demons just because we've seen so many lately. They will probably want to step away from thrusting the same thing on us for another entire expansion.
Happy birthday to baby Jaina
We'd like to officially welcome baby Jaina into the world -- born at 12:35am yesterday, Jaina Tiffany Bauer and mom Tiffany are both doing just fine. Dad Tim, who plays on Perenolde, sent us a note to say that he'd joked about naming the baby after the Lady of Theramore, but the name stuck during pregnancy, and now she's Admiral Proudmoore's daughter's namesake for life (as long as you don't name the baby Thrall). Very awesome, and very cute kid. Congrats to mom and dad both.Tim also jokes that she gets cold already, so he speculates that she's already grabbed Icy Veins, 11 points into the Frost tree. We'd like to know just how soon she can be leveling her Mage in-game -- after all, Jaina is supposed to be there to help us out against Arthas. Level 80 waits for no one (or baby, as the case may be).
The bad girls (and good girls) of Warcraft
I love this -- miladyhikara is working on a series of sketches featuring "Bad Girls of Warcraft," and the beginnings of the pieces are now up over on her deviantART page. They look fantastic -- I especially think this Shivarra looks good, but she's also got a female Naga, a Succubus, and Lady Barov herself. She says she's working on color palettes for most of them, so we'll have to wait to see the finished product -- if the sketches are any indication, they should look amazing.She's also still asking for suggestions apparently -- who else would go in the "Bad Girls of Warcraft" series? Sylvanas? (is she really bad?) Onyxia for sure (in both forms). And she's also thinking about doing a "Good Girls of Warcraft" series, too -- hello Jaina, Tyrande and Fandral Staghelm. Wait, he's not a girl? Then why's he wearing that dress?
All the World's a Stage: There's something about Mary Sue
All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, commentary, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening, (though it was delayed somewhat this time by technical difficulties).Mary Sue is extremely unpopular with roleplayers. She comes along pretending to be the only daughter of Illidan and Tyrande's one-night stand, secretly spirited away and raised by furlbogs until she underwent a mysterious transformation that turned her into a human, seduced Arthas away from Jaina, and learned from him more than you will ever know about how to be a Death (i.e. Retribution) Paladin. In fact, Mary Sue isn't just one person -- she is a demon-spirit possessing all those characters in roleplaying and fan-fiction, both male and female, who rely on clichés, melodrama, and/or supposed intimate relationships with one or more characters in the original story to such a degree that they actually try to upstage those characters, their fellow roleplayers, and indeed, the entirety of the original lore. Other roleplayers often see this sort of thing and get frustrated out of their minds.And yet there's something about Mary Sue: she keeps reappearing all over the place, from seductive blood elf hunters who claim to be Thrall's secret lover, to angst-ridden human warlocks who insist that they are the half-demon offspring of Kil'Jaeden. What is it that continually attracts people to these ideas, couched in phrases like "tragic past" and "missing one eye" and "emits a deep sorrow that makes you want to cry?" The answer is darker, more disturbing, than you can possibly imagine.
Goon Squad reunites Jaina and Thrall
Dipex from Goon Squad contacts us to report on the guild's having brought Jaina and Thrall together for a -- uh -- tempestuous reunion in Orgrimmar. The video above can be seen in a higher quality version here, and it's quite a sight. On occasion I've entertained thoughts of the stunts I'd pull as a GM in WoW, and high on that list would be pitting raid or faction bosses against each other for an ingame version of Two Bosses Enter. Well, Goon Squad actually pulled it off. I won't spoil the video for you, but apparently Thrall and Cairne aren't immune to Jaina's teleportation ability...I can't begin to imagine the kite job this must've been, but if you take a look at their video of Jaina going postal on Org, you get a sense of just how many people it took. Dipex writes toward the end of the first video that this is the quest-spawned version of Jaina, which I can only assume means they were kiting her from her spawn point in Dustwallow Marsh where the Alliance quest "The Missing Diplomat" ends. This certainly would have simplified matters; getting her out of Theramore would have been significantly more difficult, and I daresay this was an elegant solution. Elegant? Do I mean elegant? Maybe I mean something else.
Why is Kael a bad guy?
Lore-wise, I can't say I understand the direction they've taken with a number of characters from classic Warcraft games in BC, but I suppose that's the reason that the term "lorelol" was coined in the first place. Mike Schramm's pointed out that the canon can probably take the abuse, but there's one character in particular whose upcoming story arc kind of appalls me.If you're trying to stay unspoiled for patch 2.4 -- why are you reading WoW Insider anyway? -- I'll slap the rest behind a cut.
