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Know Your Lore: Lore and Story Q&A highlights
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. I have to be honest here -- while I love the Q&A aspect of the Lore and Story Q&A panel, I was really hoping we'd see some sort of lore panel devoted to Mists of Pandaria this year. That said -- hey guys, how about those Pandaren? For those thinking that Pandaria is going to be all and end all of this expansion or that Pandaria sounds like something that could be potentially boring, I would suggest that you wait patiently here. We didn't get a lore panel dedicated to Mists, and therefore we don't know all there is to know yet. However, the Lore and Story Q&A panel this year did deliver some interesting tidbits of information, even if there really weren't a lot of Pandaren-centric questions to be had. I wouldn't be annoyed by this if I were you -- after all, those asking questions had no idea Pandaria even existed until 24 hours before the panel, so formulating questions for the upcoming expansion would be a little premature, to say the very least. That said, in between all the questions we did manage to weasel out a few chunks of Pandaren lore, as well as some other interesting info.
Know Your Lore: The clever ins and outs of Ask CDev Round 2
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. Creative Development is one of those tough jobs that doesn't seem that difficult until you really start to think about it. Creative Development is responsible for the world of Azeroth as we know it -- every story, every lore point, every moment of an NPC's life is documented and written by the folks over in Blizzard's Creative Development. Without the world, we wouldn't really have a game to play, would we? But it goes beyond merely writing the story as it stands today. The Creative Development team also has to figure out where the story is going in the future. Then they have to keep track of the miles of story that have already been written and figure out whether or not, in the context of what has happened already, the thing that they would very much like to happen can actually happen. If it doesn't fit, they have to write it to make it fit. That's where it gets tricky and devs have to start being clever regarding what they say, because anything that is said to players is set in stone as "this is something that in the story of the game actually happened." Some players (like the guy in the video above, or -- let's face it -- like me) are notoriously anal about keeping these facts straight, and when the story doesn't line up with what they were told, these people are very, very quick to point it out. When you're simply writing a book from beginning to end, you can catch these inconsistencies before the novel hits the printing press; when you're working on an ongoing story like Warcraft, it gets much harder. Enter the Ask a CDev 2 thread, a thread created in February that didn't get its answers revealed until yesterday, four months after the fact.
Round 2 of Ask CDev questions answered
Ask Creative Development is the developer series that gives WoW lore buffs answers to their most pressing questions. The answers for this particular Ask CDev session took a pretty long time, but they're finally ready for primetime. We've got some pretty good answers this time around, and the questions range from serious and heavy lore discussion to some of the more fun or interesting, like, "where do the Forsaken get their ships?" Some key things to take away are that the "there must always be a Lich King" mantra is specifically talking about how the scourge would run rampant otherwise; that death knight characters have an addiction to causing others pain, and that Elune is definitely not a naaru (to the night elves, at least). Super lore nerds might take particular interest in the fact that Blizzard does not consider all of the expanded universe and the RPG books canon. Hit the jump for the full set of questions and answers. Ask CDev Round 2 questions answered The moon recently sent some irate emails to our Creative Development team, threatening to vacate Earth's orbit if we didn't divulge the answers to the "Ask CDev #2" thread soon. Rather than calling the moon's bluff, the CDev team stepped up its timetable and is now ready to present the answers to your questions! In an effort to efficiently disseminate as much information as possible, many of these questions are amalgamations of several slight variations asked by the US, EU, Korean, and Chinese player bases. In addition, a few unanswered questions from "Ask CDev #1" are included as well. Enjoy! source
WoW celebrates four years in the EU
Slorkuz posts that yesterday, February 11th, marked the four-year anniversary of World of Warcraft's release in the EU, and Blizzard is throwing a few contests to celebrate. You can see all of the giveaways over on their site -- there's some nice Swagdog and Dell gear to win for coming up with a great t-shirt slogan, a piece of fan art, or answering some lore questions. Unfortunately, participation in the contests is limited to only a few countries, due to local rules, but if you're interested and able, have at it.Congrats to Blizzard and the EU for four full years in Azeroth! North America had our anniversary late last year, and WoW Insider put together a look back at what it was like for us. We all (including the EU) got the anniversary pet as well, so apparently, other than these contests, Blizzard is just giving this date a nod rather than a big in-game celebration. But there's always the ten year anniversary -- we'll see you in 2014!
