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The Queue: Garrosh, Gul'dan, and other madness
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. For a Sunday, you all sure were talkative yesterday! That's a good thing and I appreciate it. MasterX asked: I'm interested in why Garrosh didn't slaughter Gul'dan when he had the chance in WoD. He should know full well he's solely responsible for betraying the Orc, their culture, and later their entire race to the Burning Legion. Just because Garrosh stepped in, doesn't mean he won't betray again.
Know Your Lore: A guide to the orc clans of Draenor
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. It occurred to me while writing last week's Know Your Lore about Zaela and the Dragonmaw Clan that there are a lot of orcish clans out there, many of which we'll be encountering in Warlords of Draenor. There are well over twenty different clans, each with different histories, and there may be just as many smaller, minor clans that we don't know about, or more. Players familiar with Warcraft lore likely recognize the names of these clans, even if they aren't exactly certain who's who. But for players new to Warcraft lore, or players that haven't played any game other than WoW, the giant list of various clans and the little notes we heard of clan history from BlizzCon may be pretty confusing, to say the least. Just who are all these orcish clans, which ones are we likely to see in Warlords, and which ones likely won't make an appearance?
What If: Clash of the Frozen Thrones
I love doing lore columns, and I really enjoy doing Tinfoil Hat Editions of Know Your Lore -- I like the process of finding all the loose threads from expansions past and pulling them together in a way that is just weird enough to feasibly work. Sometimes, however, I come up with ideas that are just a little too far out there for a Tinfoil Hat Edition. Certainly they're interesting enough, but feasible? Not in the slightest. When it comes to Warlords of Draenor, there are a lot of questions that haven't been answered. This is to be expected. We haven't even seen the beta for the expansion yet. We have absolutely no idea where that story is going to lead, other than commentary at BlizzCon suggesting that it will directly feed into the expansion following. Yet that tiny little comment, along with some thinking about Warlords itself gave me a theory regarding the next expansion. No, not Warlords -- I'm talking about the expansion after that. It's entirely implausible of course, which is why I'm not sticking it in the Know Your Lore column. But what the heck, let's take a moment and ask ourselves what if -- and consider the possibility of Azeroth's greatest villain reborn.
The Queue: Gul'dan IS.
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. Skipping straight to the questions today, because I have a long answer incoming. DanielMitchell asks: Do you agree with me that Gul'Dan should be the big bad of WoD? Every other end boss has had an excuse for their evil, they were corrupted. Illidan by fel energy, Arthas by Frostmourne and Ner'Zhul, Deathwing by the Old Gods, and Garrosh by the Sha. Gul'Dan is just evil, not sympathetic, just evil Garrosh wasn't corrupted by the Sha. He wasn't even corrupted by the Heart of Y'Shaarj - it had a kind of malevolent memory to it, but it was the heart of a dead thing, it was not applying its will to Garrosh. What Garrosh Hellscream did, he did of his own free will, without being controlled or possessed by an outside influence, out of the sincere belief that it was the best way to help his people. If anything, Garrosh's greatest failing is that he's myopic - he cares primarily, indeed almost exclusively, about orcs and the orcish people. So you are mistaken in your assumption that Garrosh was corrupted - to him, the Heart of Y'Shaarj was a weapon, it would be like you stabbing me and someone arguing that you were corrupted by the knife. As for whether or not Gul'dan should be the big bad of the next expansion - frankly, I would worry that the next expansion has too much already going on to give Gul'dan the focus he deserves.
Know Your Lore: Draka, daughter of Kelkar
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. Thrall named the ship Draka's Fury after his mother. It was the ship that should have taken him without trouble to the heart of the Maelstrom during Cataclysm, but the ship was intercepted by an Alliance fleet and destroyed. It's been stated here and there that Thrall named the ship as a tribute to his mother, and to the strong orc women in his life -- but there's a problem with that. Thrall didn't know his mother at all, really. When he was just an infant, both Draka and his father Durotan were killed, betrayed by their own kind, and Thrall left to die. He named the ship after the strength of a mother that he never really knew at all. But Draka was far from weak, in her prime -- and to her mate Durotan, she was the epitome of everything an orc woman should be. Strong, wise, brave, unwilling to bend or break, Draka spent the entirety of her childhood defying everyone's expectations, and continued to do so until the day she died. In Warlords of Draenor, we'll finally get a chance to meet Thrall's mother and father in person. We know who Durotan is, but who was that orc woman standing at his side, and what made her so incredibly special?
Who we will and won't see in Warlords of Draenor
Warlords of Draenor, the next WoW expansion, comes complete with a storyline that has players asking plenty of questions. Featuring an all-star cast of previous RTS characters, Warlords delves into an alternate version of reality, a version in which the orc chieftains never drank the Blood of Mannoroth, instead choosing to band together in the Iron Horde. In this version of reality -- a splinter of reality that shouldn't really exist -- the orcs and draenei are still at war, and that entire splinter of reality is being connected to our own via the Dark Portal. This has been raising all kinds of questions regarding who exactly we'll see on the other side of that portal. What about Azeroth, in that version of reality? What about Deathwing and his kin? What about the Velen leading the draenei at that point in time, what about younger Garrosh? Will there be duplicates of orcs who have since made their homes on Azeroth, after traveling through the Dark Portal? Will the Alliance Expedition be stranded on this version of Draenor? Just who are we going to see over there, and who won't be making an appearance? While we don't have all the answers, we have more than enough to start filling in the blanks.
BlizzCon 2013: World of Warcraft Adventure Continues Q&A
The World of Warcraft: The Adventure Continues panel during Friday's action-packed BlizzCon featured Lead Narrative Designer Dave Kosak giving a short presentation on the story behind the new expansion, Warlords of Draenor. Along with the history lesson, which was summed up by Matthew Rossi, the panel also featured a brief Q&A session that wasn't advertised in the program, but proved to be a pretty good list of questions and answers about the new expansion and what we can expect to see. Along with some clarifications on whether or not this is a time travel expansion (it isn't), there are also a few new lore reveals regarding the next expansion, and some tasty tidbits of odds and ends that have yet to be addressed. Read on for the full list of questions -- some of the answers may surprise you.
Know Your Lore: The warlords of Draenor
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. Originally, Draenor was a planet with a nigh-uneventful history until a series of progressively more incredible and unusual events, brought to the world from outside sources, plunged it into chaos. According to what we knew -- which was admittedly very little -- the orc clans of Draenor had no issues with the rest of the world, or with each other. There may have been the occasional squabbles between clans, but there was nothing remotely resembling full out war ... at least nothing that's been recorded in history as we know it. However, the announcement of Warlords of Draenor seems to indicate a big history lesson is on the way. Draenor's history, one distinct moment in time has been altered, creating a separate fork -- a bubble of time, if you will -- that has changed the fates of these old heroes. So who are the Warlords of Draenor? We have their names. What we don't have is the new history revealed in the expansion just yet. But even in the original timeline, these orc warlords each had different, unique histories that all tied in together, courtesy of the Burning Legion's meddling and influence.
Know Your Lore: The History of Draenor
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. It may not be Azeroth, but it's got a history just as rich and just as convoluted. In the Warcraft universe, the planet Draenor plays a secondary role to Azeroth in terms of storyline -- consider it something like a sister planet, one whose history is irrevocably entwined with Azeroth's. Although these days Draenor exists as a mere shell of what it once was, Draenor, its inhabitants, and its fate are all one of the most significant pieces of Warcraft lore out there. After all, if there were no Draenor, there would be no First or Second wars. There would be no Horde. Why is this planet so important? It certainly didn't have very much to do with the original inhabitants. In fact, Draenor would have likely lived on in obscurity were it not for the strange, peaceful settlers from another world. Peaceful they may have been, but they had a history they could not escape -- a past that forever linked them with the Burning Legion ... and the Burning Legion knows little of forgiveness or mercy for those that incur its wrath.
Know Your Lore: The History of the Warchief
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. This post exists because of the massive spoilers in this link, but the post itself will be spoiler free. As long as you don't click on that spoiler-heavy link, you will not see any spoilers in this post. (Edit - actually, there's one spoiler at the very end of the post - it's clearly marked as such, and it is a minor spoiler at best, but it is there. Let that guide your actions.) Instead, we're going to talk about the position of Warchief - how it came to be, how it evolved and then devolved, and how Garrosh Hellscream's reign as Warchief set the stage for what could be a completely new direction for his successor (whose identity I will not discuss). The position of Warchief actually began as a complete figurehead, and the first orc to hold that position, Blackhand the Destroyer, was placed in that position due to his combination of physical fearsomeness and egocentric self-aggrandizement - so easily was he misled and directed by Gul'dan, head of the Shadow Council and architect of the Horde, that he never once proved himself a threat sufficient for Gul'dan to ever consider replacing him. It's not that Blackhand was either a fool or an idiot, he was in fact a canny tactician and a respected warrior. He simply believed his own hype - so convinced was he in his own superiority that when Gul'dan presented to him that he would be a respected equal and his position as Warchief would be one of real power, he believed it, because he believed in himself. Throughout the war with the draenei and later, the invasion of Azeroth, Blackhand ruled as Warchief and allowed himself to listen to Gul'dan's words - allowed himself to listen because they were telling him what he wanted to hear. Even as the humans balked the orcs, and Blackhand's series of victories became defeats, he continued to listen to Gul'dan. This would be his downfall.
What If: Shadows of the Assassin
When we last left off with the what-if challenges, Rossi wrote up a perfectly delightful idea for the premise of Shandris Feathermoon being a main antagonist for an expansion, then left me with the notorious half-orc assassin Garona Halforcen for my next challenge. One would think it'd be easy enough to build an expansion around someone who makes a habit of stabbing people, but Garona has essentially been a non-entity since we last saw her, briefly, in the Twilight Highlands. Her absence from the final fight with Cho'gall was noticeable. One would think that she'd be more than happy to pitch in and help defeat the creature that had been controlling her the majority of her life, forcing her to do things that colored her fate in such a way that she's been forced into hiding. Yet ... Garona wasn't there. In fact, she's all but disappeared. Which makes one wonder ... how much of Garona is, in fact, Garona -- and what would she do if given the unique opportunity to change her fate?
The Queue: The Frenzy of Patch 5.3
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi has upgraded his gear and is now waiting for the first night of raiding in 5.3 to discover what got broke. I have this weird thing where, if I see a lot of people doing something (like heroic scenarios or the new Battlefront: Barrens stuff) I tend to say "Eh, I'll wait until the furor has died down a bit" before I take part as well. So yesterday, I did a fun interview, logged on to upgrade all my gear with the 3000 valor I had saved up, then ran Black Temple for a bit before logging off. I don't know if it's simple obstinacy or simply the knowledge that all of this stuff will be here for at least a couple of months and there's no hurry to see it all right now. Anyway, on to your questions. Thieren said: Also, since we're not quoting the Beastie Boys tomorrow's Queue should feature the Sabotage video. I went with Intergalactic instead.
Know Your Lore: Gul'dan, Doomhammer, and the nature of the Horde
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. Garrosh Hellscream is many things. He's brash, headstrong, arrogant, concerned for his people, determined to deliver the whole of Azeroth into their dominion no matter what anyone thinks about it, but one thing is clear. He's not Gul'dan. For all the grief I like to give Horde players (mainly because it's easy to rile Horde players up, I know, I raided as Horde for all of Cataclysm and a good chunk of Mists) It's true that on the surface, the Horde of today has changed greatly from the Horde Gul'dan created. The Horde as it exists today is the spiritual successor of the Horde that Orgrim Doomhammer created when he seized power. Was Doomhammer a kindly, soft spoken orc who loved kittens and rainbows? No. No he was not. He was an orc who had come to power as the right hand of Blackhand the Destroyer, a hunter and a warrior who had spent his entire life in combat. He was strong, devoted to his people, and absolutely committed to an orc victory no matter the odds. In a way, minus Garrosh's bluster and bravado, the orc he most resembles from the history of the old Horde is Orgrim Doomhammer.
Blood Pact: To summon or not to summon, that's the question
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill scraps another attempt at Kanrethad to discuss being a pet class instead. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous pet bugs in encounter design like jumping down into Nefarian's pit in Blackwing Descent so your pet then did nothing but stand in the middle, or to take up Doomguards against a despawning abyssal phase 3 in Throne of the Four Winds -- and by opposing end them: to die, to sacrifice. To sacrifice, perchance to DPS; Aye, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death, what meter-topping dreams of 5.0 may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil (no, not that one!), must give our developers pause. My terrible warlock Shakespeare adaptation aside, we've had the ponderings about how tied to pets warlocks should or shouldn't be. As I continue to throw myself at Kanrethad's own demonic stampede, I've had some thoughts about the subject.
Know Your Lore: Top 10 magnificent bastards of Warcraft, part 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. Last week, we talked about some magnificent bastards. At least one of those choices (Garithos) is, for me, kind of a controversial one, and I'm going to suggest a replacement for him in this post, because I think many readers made a valid point regarding him. Garithos is absolutely the second part of the equation, but there's no magnificence to him. He's a bumbler, a cretin, and his great impact on the world was entirely due to his utter inability to succeed at anything. MBs are more like Doctor Doom or David Xanatos; they have a kind of epic quality to them and a real feeling of threat. So there you go, readers -- you've already convinced me that one of my choices from last week was not the right choice. Therefore, this post will begin at #6 and count down to #1. Just take Garithos off of last week's list, and let Wrathion sit at #10. This moves Nathanos down to #7 and makes room for this week. You convinced me, guys. Garithos is out. Can you pull it off again this week? This week, we look at my top Magnificent Bastards in World of Warcraft. I will tell you right now, certain characters will not be appearing on this list because they're either not magnificent enough or not bastards enough. I'm looking at both the King of Stormwind and the current Warchief of the Horde here.
Know Your Lore: Why World of Warcraft needs evil
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. One of the real problems with the New Horde is fairly simple. A lot of the people attracted to playing it were not players of Warcraft or WCII. They discovered the game with or after WCIII -- and in Warcraft III, the Horde isn't portrayed as the group that came marching through the Dark Portal anymore. Trying to put the war back in Warcraft is hard for players who see the Horde as the group Thrall led, who first discovered the Horde in Warcraft III or in one of World of Warcraft's expansions. The Horde we have today, even after Garrosh Hellscream took over the reins, simply can't sustain the narrative weight of the Horde as the existed for two Warcraft games. The Horde that burned Stormwind, led by Gul'dan's puppet Blackhand and usurped by Orgrim Doomhammer, is not the Horde that Thrall led across the sea. It's a Horde composed primarily or exclusively of orcs with a few allies, a Horde that burns and rampages and murdered without remorse. It was to the Warcraft setting what the Empire was to Star Wars, a force of pure malevolence. The biggest difficulty reconciling that Horde with the current one is the idea of honor, which the Horde of WC and WCII could not have cared less about if they had tried. They were thieves and monsters, and their goal was to murder and steal. They were the villains.
Know Your Lore: What if Stormwind had won the First War?
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. What if ...? It's one of the most dangerous two-word phrases in the English language, my friends. What if leads us down roads strewn with nevers, could have and didn't after didn't. This week, we're going to look at what would have happened if a few decisions had been made differently. What if Stormwind had never fallen? What if the Horde had lost the First War? On the surface, it seems like an easy question to answer. Stormwind never falls and Varian Wrynn's dad Llane gets to stay king with his heart inside his chest. Everyone's happy, right? (Well, everyone but the orcs.) But the world would be vastly different without the rise of the Horde to prominence on Azeroth. Without the disastrous defeat of one of humanity's nations, there would be no Alliance of Lordaeron, no Thrall, no Second War, no death of Gul'dan at the Tomb of Sargeras, no Alliance Expedition, no destruction of Draenor by Ner'zhul's reckless sorcery -- the closer one gets to the present-day World of Warcraft, the more unrecognizable it becomes. We can't answer for every possibility. We can't establish an absolutely canonical scenario for what would have happened, and we'd be fools to try. But we can look at the ramifications of the First War and consider their immediate implications and what would have come from them.
Know Your Lore: The orcs, part 3
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. It's less important to go over the history of the orcs in terms of the wars of Azeroth. We've done it, many times. What's interesting to discuss is the orcish acclimation to Azeroth, and furthermore, Azeroth's acclimation to the orcs. The orcs have changed during their time on Azeroth from a nation of blood-drunk servants of evil to a people leading a faction that seeks global dominance in the name of a legacy they've invented for themselves. Orcs today have a warrior culture that comprises elements from Blackhand's Horde, their past on Draenor, and a great deal derived from Thrall's efforts to create unity and give his people a culture again. While the modern orcish nation is led by Garrosh Hellscream, a brown Mag'har orc, it cannot be said that most orcs of the Horde really understand Draenor. The Second War ended more than 20 years ago, and many of the orcs of today are the children of those who fought in it. This must be understood: Many orcs alive today on Azeroth have never even seen Draenor. Those who did last saw it 20 years ago. Azeroth is their home as far as they're concerned, either the only home they've ever known or the one they've known for decades. From the perspective of most orcs, Draenor is effectively gone. Oh, many of them are aware that Outland exists, and there are those orcs who have been there in recent years, but most orcs living today have never seen it at worst and saw it decades ago at best. To them, Draenor is nearly a myth, and Garrosh Hellscream becomes a mythic figure as a actual brown orc, an uncorrupted Mag'har who lived most of his life on that long-lost homeworld. It is this, as much as his lineage as the son of Hellscream, that has made him a legend among the orcs of the Horde today.
Know Your Lore: The orcs, part 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. One of the problems in covering the history of the orcs is that after the Rise of the Horde period, we've done it already quite a few times. The history of the orcs is the history of the Horde. Just in covering Orgrim Doomhammer's life, we've covered the formation of the Horde to a great extent. What's interesting when considering the orcs as a people is how they were betrayed by their own virtues. The orc tendency to revere the spirits, their genius at preserving clan individuality yet coming together in times of crisis, their willingness to respect their elders and heed their wisdom -- all of these traits were twisted under first Ner'zhul and then Gul'dan. While Ner'zhul was proud, even arrogant, his initial actions in kindling the war against the draenei were sincere. He believed that the spirit of his dead wife Rulkan had returned to warn him of the draenei threat, accompanied by a "great one" who would teach Ner'zhul new magics to use to protect his people. No matter Ner'zhul's flaws, it cannot be denied he was sincere. Yes, he hungered for power and respect (even though he was in fact powerful and respected) and yes, he prosecuted the war with the draenei when he really only had the word of Kil'jaeden that the draenei were evil and plotting against the orcs. And yes, Ner'zhul ignored for a time that he was losing the respect of the ancestor spirits and that the elements grew distant from him. He put himself ahead of his role as elder shaman. It cannot and should not be denied. But even in his most aggressive moments, Ner'zhul was neither blind nor a fool. He began to realize that his spiritual advisor, Kil'jaeden, resemble a draenei and hated Velen with a fervor the orc could barely comprehend. He began to wonder why the spirts would not speak to him. And so he made his way to Oshu'gun.
Know Your Lore: The orcs, part 1
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. Their name is on the freaking box. The very first Warcraft product ever released is called Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Orcs get top billing. In terms of pure history in the Warcraft setting, orcs have a lot to discuss. In their time, they've gone from a shamanistic society of hunters defending itself from the hostile gronn and ogres to a united war machine led by a figurehead, to a demon-blood drunk engine of genocide and finally out the other side, to a shamanistic society that keeps elements of the war machine alive.
