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The Queue: Virgin sacrifices, Throne of Thunder progression, and old gods
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Dawn Moore will be your host today. I was supposed to ritually sacrifice some virgin olive oil yesterday but I completely forgot. Fortunately the sports game the sacrifice was intended for hasn't started yet, and even if it had, it wouldn't be over for days. As it turns out though, I'm a Queue virgin -- that's right, I've never done a Queue before in my three years writing for WoW Insider. Go figure, right? So how does this being sacrificed thing go? I assume there are cookies. RussHada asked: So once Throne of Thunder is released, what will be the official path of progression? Should my group (11/16N) run normal ToT after all 5.0 normal is cleared? Or are there some heroics (MSV?) we should do first, then ToT?
The Lore of Ulduar
One of the things I really love about Ulduar is how interconnected it is to the lore of older Azerothian instances and new Wrath content like the Storm Peaks. (I have no idea who that mermaid is, though.) If you ran Uldaman back in the day, or even as you leveled characters more recently, you got to see a smashed, ruined installation of the Titans with lore characters like Ironaya and Archaedas (both of whom even have nice little shout outs in the Ulduar-10 loot table) and got a nice dose of the backstory for the creation of Azeroth. I think it was my lovely and talented wife who pointed out that Ulduar references lore from Ashenvale (the Master's Glaive), the Badlands (Uldaman itself), even Ahn'Qiraj and all of that lore is not just evident in the massive construction of Ulduar (you could even call it titanic, if you wanted a lot of people to groan at you) but in the sheer scale of bosses available. Only Naxxramas has more, and Ulduar has the edge in that several of its boss encounters have hard modes as well. Ulduar also does a really excellent job of making you part of the lore of the place. If you leveled through the Storm Peaks, you most likely took part in the extended and rewarding quest chains that allowed you to interact with the Sons of Hodir, took part in the Hyldsmeet, and eventually raided the Halls of Lightning themselves to slay the Prime Designate himself. I'm trying really hard not to spoil anything, so suffice it to say that if you played through all of that content, you are directly responsible not only for the presence of one of the watchers within Ulduar itself, but for the potential upcoming end of the world. I find that to be rather motivating for going into the place, and they did a really excellent job of tying it all together.
Yogg-Saron, Old God of Death speculation
One of the things that caught my eye in the Ulduar preview that was posted awhile ago is the description of Yogg-Saron. The flavor text describes him as 'the Old God of death.' Considering our big target in this expansion, the Lich King, that's extremely interesting.Wrath of the Lich King has heavily hinted at some sort of connection between Yogg-Saron and the Scourge, though we never quite find out what it is. The Scourge make heavy use of Saronite, an ore with Yogg-Saron himself as its origin. When the Alliance investigates this ore in the Dragonblight, they discover the Scourge says Yogg-Saron's name with some degree of hate and contempt.A lot of people fear there's a "puppet of the master" thing surrounding the Lich King, that he's not actually his own power, he belongs to Yogg-Saron. I find this unlikely for one really big reason: The Scourge hates Yogg-Saron, and everybody else that we've run into that have fallen under Yogg-Saron's will either love him utterly or serve him faithfully. If you go to the Saronite Mines in Icecrown and do the quest Slaves to Saronite, you see just how faithful some of his servants become once they've been controlled. If Yogg-Saron were controlling the Lich King, we'd see a very different Scourge.
Overview of the Grizzly Hills
Like the Dragonblight, we've learned a little more about the Grizzly Hills in the last few days. A few old friends make a comeback in this zone, and I'm willing to say here and now that it's going to be awesome. Read on to see what we know! The Grizzly Hills will be a low to mid 70s zone. The setting is very much like a redwood forest, Warcraftified. Home of the Grizzlemaw Furbolgs, one of the largest furbolg tribes in Azeroth. The furbolgs seem to be under attack on a few fronts. The first front being... The Venture Co. This organization, founded by a bunch of jerk goblins, is working endlessly to clearcut the great Grizzly Hills forest. Second, the furbolgs are also having trouble with... Corruption from the Old Gods. Or maybe just one Old God, we're not sure. I would be willing to guess this is the Old God in Azjol-Nerub.
