Tirion-Fordring
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Ask a Lore Nerd: More Scourge love
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.We seem to be plagued with Scourge and Lich King sorts of questions lately, but that's to be expected. We're all playing Wrath of the Lich King, so it's far more likely we'll get Scourge questions than, say... Naga questions. I welcome your love of undeath with open arms.Nic asked...What do the tally marks on Highlord Bolvar's shield represent? Battles? Years in exile? One night stands? Or are they there to just look cool?
Ask a Lore Nerd: Hail to the king
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.Welcome back! This week we're mostly tilted toward Scourge questions, whereas just a few of weeks ago we were all dragons, all the time. Things just happen that way, I don't plan it! Really! Anyway, let's get this party started. Promethus asked... Does anyone actually know that Arthas merged with Ner'zhul? Any NPCs that is. Because there was no one besides those of the Legion like the Dreadlords and Kil'jadean who knew that the original Lich King was armor on a pedestal, everyone else like Thrall, Jaina, Rhonin, Bolvar, Wrynn, just know that Arthas was the one who marched to Icecrown and came back only to spread the plague and kill his father. No one but the player actually saw him walk up Icecrown Citadel and shatter Ner'zhul's prison.
Ask a Lore Nerd: The heads and tails of the Horde
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.This week on Ask a Lore Nerd, we're only answering a small number of questions, because they're really good ones and I want to dork out over them a little. Let's get started, shall we?Mornash asked...Speaking of Garrosh Hellscream, what do you think Blizzard has in store for us with his story. They're portraying him like his father was, a bloodthirsty, arrogant, loose cannon. Are they going to have him repeat past mistakes? Maybe bring about another downfall? Or will Saurfang and Thrall get through to him and have him ultimately become a hero?
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Paladin
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the fourteenth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. You might say that paladins are the guardians at the gates of hell -- they fight evil wherever it penetrates into their world and they take the fight to the evil's source in the hope of quenching it forever. Although they focus on guarding their people from undead and demonic forces on the rise, paladins actually stand against evil everywhere, including the evil in their own hearts.Being a paladin means that you have a relationship of some sort with the Holy Light, that mysterious force of goodness and faith that flows to some degree within all living beings with positive intentions. Most paladins (and many priests) believe that when you do something that you believe to be good, the power of the Light increases in you and your connection to the rest of creation is strengthened, whereas doing something evil (such as acts of greed, despair, or vengeance) will darken the universe and weaken your connection to it. Whether this belief system is a religion or a philosophy is open to interpretation, and seems to depend in some part upon which race you are.There are three sorts of paladins in World of Warcraft, aligned with the humans, the draenei, and the blood elves. All of these share certain similarities, but each has its own differences as well.
Ask A Beta Tester: AABT's greatest hits, part 1
Yep, we've shocked the ol' column back to gasping life. The good kind of reanimation, though, not the kind you're probably killing in Northrend.Wow, this took ages. We got a lot of standout questions while doing Ask A Beta Tester, and I went through all of them trying to pick out the best, funniest, most helpful, or most unintentionally prescient among them. To be perfectly frank, we had so many that I started splitting them into separate articles. I've eliminated the questions that I expect readers will probably have answered for themselves at this point (e.g. Death Knight starting faction reputation) but kept all of the questions that I'm pretty sure are still relevant to the first week of gameplay in Wrath. I've also made a few additions and updates based on what we saw both in the beta and now on the live realms. I hope you guys enjoy reading these as much as we did answering them.I'm going to start off with the earliest series of questions that Elizabeth Harper and Alex Ziebart took in July and August. To round out the rest of AABT's best in the next few days, we'll keep moving through August, September, October, and up to the very end of AABT.
Ask a Lore Nerd: What's coming our way?
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week Alex Ziebart answers your quests about the lore in the World of Warcraft. If you have any questions, no matter how big or small they might be, ask them in the comments section below and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.On this very special edition of Ask a Lore Nerd, we're going to look into the future, at what's to come in Wrath of the Lich King. There's a lot on the horizon, and a lot of questions about what's to come. We're going to try to be light on spoilers, but give some idea of what's going down.Yeah yeah, so there's a Troll zone, we learn the origins of Humanity, we meet some Tauren relatives, there's some junk about Dwarven royalty and all of that crap. Who cares? What about the Gnomes? Where's the Gnome lore!?
WoW Moviewatch: Ashbringer : The Return of Tirion Fordring
Have care! This movie has spoilers. Today's Moviewatch is also the featured movie for WarcraftMovies. It is Ashbringer : The Return of Tirion Fordring by Atraira. I didn't want to feature the same movie on the same day, but with the coming release of Wrath, the subject matter is pretty timely. This movie recreates the end of the Death Knight quest chain in video format. I really liked the story, voice acting, and lore. I watched the video once, enjoyed it, and then listened to the dialogue again while not watching the video. The script is very strong, and the dialogue fits the ambience of Wrath of the Lich King incredibly well. The camera work, though, didn't do a lot for me. I enjoyed the visuals, and there's only so much Atraira could have done recording scripted in game events. But they still felt a little static to me. We could have used some more dynamic shots, or maybe clever use of shooting angles to mimic the emotion we were hearing from the actors. Atraira admitted frustration while recording the events, and I definitely have sympathy for that. [Via WarcraftMovies.com]If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
Ask A Beta Tester: Questions I wish we'd been asked
Here at WoW Insider sometimes we go a little nuts around big news events due to sleep deprivation or sensory overload in conjunction with large hits of caffeine. When that happens while we are writing "Ask A Beta Tester," occasionally we ask ourselves questions ("Why am I not in bed?") that we later realize might actually be useful.As Wrath of the Lich King's release date creeps up and the beta becomes more and more deserted (seriously: Dalaran is a ghost town these days, not that my computer's wheezing hardware doesn't appreciate it), I find myself turning to a few topics that readers generally never asked about, but wound up being game-defining experiences in the beta. By necessity, most of them are a little more general -- overall impressions, things you wouldn't necessarily think to ask about unless you were a fresh arrival in Northrend and noticed the differences -- but I've included a few specific things that I hope people will find interesting. Unlike --Why are you not in bed?What makes you think I'm not?
Know Your Lore: Preparing for Wrath of the Lich King
If you're a regular reader of Know Your Lore, you've probably noticed that it's been missing for... oh, a month or so. As I've been going through potential topics, I keep finding myself going, "No, I can't do that, that gets updated in Wrath. No, I can't do that, it'll be a spoiler for Wrath." So, thanks a lot Wrath. Thanks for bringing us rich and interesting lore. Gosh, couldn't you be more boring so I don't feel bad spoiling everyone!?So what we're going to do today instead is prepare you all for the expansion. We have a lot of Know Your Lore entries already for many of the characters and stories that'll be moving forward in Wrath of the Lich King, so here are some suggestions on what you should read so you have some background as to what the heck is going on in Northrend!
Ask a Beta Tester: Raid zones, plot, and more on phasing
I decided to do something a little different with the image above for today's Ask a Beta Tester. Instead of beating you over the head with another of my awesome Dalaran screenshots, I've plugged in some music you can listen to while you read, if you'd like. Just hit play, and get in a Wrath kind of mood.Milkgas asked quite a few question, but many of them involve story spoilers that I don't think readers would appreciate seeing in this particular column. What I don't answer, you can truck over to Ask a Lore Nerd and I'll squeeze them in on the bottom behind my usual "spoilers be here, yarrrr" line. We can definitely hit a few of them though.Has there been any hints in the quest text of either the Uldum or the Karazhan Basement as a raid or dungeon in this expansion or the next?Nothing that I've seen! We'll have Ulduar as a raid zone in Northrend, so to me that seems like a definite no on Uldum. I don't think they would put two Titan raids in one expansion, unless Uldum turned out to be a 5 man dungeon. We've seen nothing about the rest of Karazhan.
Spoilers: Wrath of the Lich King's peek into Druid lore
Recently in both Ask a Beta Tester and Ask a Lore Nerd, Druids have been asking a lot about their class. Not class mechanics and things like that, but their quests, story, and background. Will the old quests go away? (They won't.) Will we see more of Druid lore in Wrath?Yes, yes we will. And there's video! If you don't want to be spoiled about upcoming Wrath of the Lich King quests and storylines, I would advise against reading the rest of this post and the video within. Like that cinematic-that-shall-not-be-named from last week, watching it could really spoil an awesome game moment, so consider that your final warning. Oh, and it's long, so free up some time for yourself.
Ask a Beta Tester: Murlocs, mounts, and minimaps
You want mounts? We got mounts. Just waltz on through the intimidating portal above flanked by deadly drakonids, and they're giving em out like candy! Actually, no, I'm lying. Kind of. Locke asked... Any word on new flying mounts or anything like that?A little, but not a lot. We're not seeing a cornucopia of mounts yet. The ones we have seen are pretty cool, though. As I mentioned yesterday in my post on the Obsidian Sanctum, they're running with the design of Zul'Aman and offering mounts as special rewards from completing 'extra challenges' in raid zones.The Obsidian Sanctum offers up a Black Drake Mount for completing the special challenge in the 10 man version, and it seems you get a Twilight Drake from the 25 man version, but I haven't seen that personally. Either way, these drakes are pretty hard to get, at least at first. They're not quite giving them out for nothing. Other colors of drake mounts have been datamined, but we haven't seen them drop yet.For more answers to your beta questions, read on!
Harvest Festival ends today
Just a friendly reminder for everyone: Today is the last day of the Harvest Festival, the annual event honoring the fallen heroes of the Horde and the Alliance. That means you have one more day to head to the front entrance of Ironforge and Orgrimmar to hang with some ghosts, buy some cheap fireworks (those Midsummer Ground Flowers are awesome, and I am totally stocking up), and go pay your respects to Grom or Uther. Yeah, it's a small holiday, and a weird one at that. I mean, you either honor Uther, who was a jerk to Tirion Fordring, ineffective against the Scourge and was betrayed and killed by his protege, or Grom, who betrayed the Orcish race to the Burning Legion at least twice, and whose clan is still one of the major sources of strife and bad Horde-Alliance relations on Azeroth today. And what about hanging out with all those ghosts? I mean, isn't anyone concerned that they could be scourge? And what about those Forsaken ancestors? Shouldn't they look like humans as ghosts, since they were humans in the first place? And wouldn't a good portion of those Orc and Troll ancestors come from the tradition of savagery and cannibalism and demon worship that the Horde is supposedly trying to break free from? Oh well, at least it's free fireworks and free food. Enjoy it while you can! Brewfest is a scant week away too, so be sure to review the new Coren Direbrew loot and plan your trip to the Grim Guzzler now.
Know Your Lore: Tirion Fordring
Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week Alex Ziebart brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? E-mail us! Or, if you have a question for our sister column Ask a Lore Nerd, e-mail us those, too!Despite how cool Tirion Fordring is, this was is actually one of the more challenging topics for Know Your Lore. It's difficult to write about Tirion without just giving a summary of the book about him, becase there's not much more to him until Wrath of the Lich King. Even after reading this, I'm still going to strongly recommend that you go out and find a copy of the Chris Metzen written book Of Blood and Honor.At the creation of the Order of the Silver Hand, Tirion Fordring was chosen to be among the first of the Paladins. Alongside him were people such as Saidan Dathrohan, Turalyon, Uther the Lightbringer, and Gavinrad the Dire (who!?). During the wars with the Orcish Horde, Tirion pretty much did what every other Paladin did: Kill a lot of Orcs and save a lot of lives. The real juicy stuff came a bit after that.
Breakfast Topic: Your Four Horsemen
On this fine Sunday morning, we're going to play a game of 'what if.' As you may or may not know, The Four Horsemen is an encounter in the Naxxramas raid dungeon, loosely based on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In the Scourge, the Four Horsemen are basically the top dog Death Knights, the best they have to offer. We don't know a ton about each of the Horsemen, but we know enough to know that they're pretty hardcore.What if the Lich King and the Scourge were to win the war in Northrend? What if they totally whooped our butts, and wash over Azeroth unopposed, then moved on to bigger and better things like taking out their adversaries the Burning Legion? With all of the heroes of Azeroth at their disposal to raise as the Undead, who do you think would be the new Four Horsemen? Pick from anybody in Warcraft history, alive or dead. Death is meaningless to the Scourge, after all.My picks? Highlord Bolvar Fordragon, High Overlord Saurfang, Anduin Lothar, and Tirion Fordring. Obvious choices? Yeah, probably. You gotta admit though, those four riding on the side of the Scourge would be pretty bad news for whoever is on the other side of the battlefield. I considered Uther as well, but personal preference puts the other four on top. So what are your draft picks? Don't worry about lorelol or anything like that. Comedy answers are fine. Picking people just because they're cool is fine, too.
WoW Moviewatch: Argent Crusade Salvation
Gnomechewer consistently dazzles the crowd with what he can put out in such a short period of time. He has such a gift for rewriting lore and putting a totally new spin on it. Argent Crusade: Salvation is no exception. Is it me or is he getting really good with his special effects?His latest story centers around Tirion Fordring overhauling the Silver Hand. He uses a voiceover by Caruu, as Fordring, to act almost as a transmission. Tirion voices his doubts about winning the war as the battle is waged on screen.[Thanks, Gnomechewer!]If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
The Death Knight starting experience
A couple of days ago, it was with a little good fortune and a lot of soul-selling by WoW Insider lead Elizabeth Harper that I finally got my grubby little hands on a precious Beta key. Over 2 Gigabytes worth of installer and patches later, I found myself creating a Death Knight. It is a fair certainty that every player who upgrades to the Wrath of the Lich King will create one. In fact, after playing the class for just a short time, I have to say that every single player should. The Death Knight starting experience is the single most immersive role-playing experience in the game.Don't get me wrong. I'm not too big on role-playing. I mostly skip quest flavor text and go directly to the objectives. But the Death Knight starting experience -- it's really called that -- is just game design at its finest. Blizzard mentioned that one design flaw in The Burning Crusade was not making Illidan's presence felt early on in the Outlands. In fact, aside from the raiders who managed to set foot in the 25-man raids, a large number of the player base never got to see the bad guys driving the story of The Burning Crusade. Well... when you play a Death Knight, you won't just feel the lore, it punches you in the face and knocks you off your feet the moment you log into the game for the first time.
WWI '08 Death Knight Demo: General Impressions
We learned at the Q&A panel on Saturday that Death Knights will be starting at a new area just off Eastern Plaguelands called Ebon Hold, but for now, it remains unimplemented. Thus, these demo Death Knights start at Tirion Fordring's house in the west of Eastern Plaguelands.On Death Knight Gear and Gear Mechanics: They start with a complete outlay of green gear with DPS Warrior type stats: strength, agility, critical strike rating, and stamina. Their sword itself is blue quality 2 hander named the Massacre Sword. It does 127-191 damage at at a speed of 3.1 seconds, giving it 51.3 DPS. It also provides 22 strength and 23 hit rating. It should be noted that the gear did not have spellpower, and it doesn't look like Death Knights will need it at all. Almost every spell that did magic damage specifically stated that the damage was modified by attack power. This is perfectly in line with Blizzard's recent trend to simplify and consolidate gear, which they discussed in relation to Retribution Paladins at Saturday's class panel. Perhaps we'll even see this mechanic show up on other magical melee hybrids in the future. The Death Knight came loaded with 6 runes on their rune weapon bar: 2 Blood Runes, 2 Unholy Runes, and 2 Frost Runes. Talents points were unavailable with this demo, although we could see the talent descriptions themselves. Death Knight Starting Spells and Playstyle: The Death Knights started with a few basic skills: Blood presence:Requires level 55Costs 1 Blood RuneInstant cast, 1 second cooldownDescription: Strengthens the Death Knight with the presence of blood, increasing damage done by 15% and healing the Death Knight by 4% of damage dealt. Only one presence may be active at a time. Blood Strike:Requires level 55Costs 1 Blood RuneInstant cast, 1 second cooldownMelee rangeDescription: Instantly strike the enemy, causing 60% weapon damage plus 55 for each disease effect on the target.Icy Touch:Requires level 55Costs 1 Frost Rune Instant cast, 6 second cooldown20 yard rangeDescription: Deals 217 to 235 Frost damage modified by attack power and reduces the target's ranged, melee attack, and casting speed by 15% for 20 seconds.Death Coil Requires Level 55Requires Runic PowerInstant cast 30 yard rangeDescription:Unleashes all available runic power, causing up to 460 shadow damage modified by attack power to an enemy target or healing up to 460 damage from a friendly undead target.Death GateRequires Level 55Costs 1 Unholy Rune10 second cast, 15 minute cooldownDescription: Returns you to Ebon Hold (Note: Since Ebon Hold is not yet implemented, in the demo it returned you to Tirion Fordring). Death GripRequires level 55Costs 1 Unholy RuneInstant cast, 35 second cooldown.30 yard rangeDescription: Harness the unholy energy that surrounds and binds all matter, drawing the target toward the Death Knight and forcing the enemy to attack the Death Knight for 3 seconds.Plague Strike Requires level 55Costs 1 Blood Rune and 1 Unholy RuneInstant cast Melee rangeDescription: A vicious strike that deals weapon damage plus 37 and plagues the target, dealing 350 shadow damage over 12 seconds. Casting these spells uses up the listed runes, which have a cooldown of 10 seconds. Our (lucky) play tester reported that the system felt a bit like having 3 seperate mana pools with their own spells, but that the pacing seemed to work well, and that she was now interested in actually trying one out in when beta rolls around where she hadn't been before. Introducing the Knights of the Ebon Hand After roaming about a bit and killing stuff, Elizabeth stumbled upon Light's Hope Chapel. This venerated base of the Argent Dawn had some new guests known as the Knights of the Ebon Hand, lead by a night elf named Siouxsie the Banshee, a Death Knight trainer. It's likely, of course, that these NPCs will be gone and moved to Ebon Hold once it's implemented, but for now, they gave us a sneak peek at the new Death Knight faction and some of the spells Death Knights will get post-55.
Father's Day in Azeroth: A salute to the fathers of Warcraft lore
So it's Father's Day, the time when we all pay homage to the fathers or father figures in our lives, and thank them for all that they do. While we can't say for sure if they celebrate Father's Day in Azeroth, too, there's a lot of people in Azeroth and Outland who have reason to think back on their dads today. Many dads of Azeroth have affected their children's lives or been affected by them. The ramifications of the interactions of these fathers and children have then in turn affected the lore and story of Warcraft in ways great and small. Therefore, in honor of the holiday, let's look at 10 famous and not-so-famous dads of Warcraft lore (listed in no particular order).
Poll: Are you looking forward to WoTLK more than you looked forward to Burning Crusade?
So recently, Tobold was saying that excitement around Wrath of the Lich King is visibly much less than the excitement that led up to the release of Burning Crusade. People are tired out by the 2 year wait, WoW isn't innovating, WoW isn't adding the content fast enough: there's just so many reasons that the Wrath of the Lich King is being greeted with ennui instead of excitement. My first thought upon reading that: Wait, people aren't excited over WoTLK?
