defias-brotherhood
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Know Your Lore: WoW for Dummies, Act I: Alliance
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. World of Warcraft was originally released in the US on November 23, 2004. That is eight years of our lives that we've been playing this game ... for some players. For many players however, their experience with WoW began in Burning Crusade, or Wrath, or Cataclysm -- or even right now with Mists of Pandaria. And because of this, it means these players have missed out eight years worth of lore and story from before they began to play. One of the questions and suggestions I see pop up most frequently, be it on Reddit, Twitter or even WoW Insider, is what happened during all of that time? What was the story behind these expansions? Sure, there are novels and comics aplenty available for reading, but these are side aspects to the original games that didn't really tie into the game so much. The game itself had its own story going, particularly in those first couple of expansions. So let's step back in time and take a look at WoW and the basic ongoing story that has kept it going all these years -- not the novels, but the game itself. Get ready for WoW for Dummies: the vanilla years.
Know Your Lore: The VanCleefs, the rise of the Defias, and Westfall
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. Hope? Is that what I was supposed to feel when I saw my father decapitated by your henchmen? Hope is a cruel joke, played upon us by a harsh and uncaring world. There is no Hope, there is only Vanessa. Vanessa VanCleef. A little girl watches her father's demise, manages to escape, survives, and then dedicates her life to rebuilding everything her father stood for. It sounds like the sort of story heroes are made of, doesn't it? Ordinarily it would be, but the villains in this particular story are the nobility of Stormwind, including its king, Varian Wrynn -- and heroes just like you. The story of the Defias Brotherhood begins during the First War, when the orcish Horde first burst forth from the Dark Portal into Azeroth with the help of Medivh. From there, they launched an assault on the kingdom of Stormwind. With the help of a cleverly mind-controlled assassin, the Horde took out King Llane Wrynn, and with his death, the city crumbled. Lord Anduin Lothar, forced to make a decision, led the people of Stormwind and young prince Varian Wrynn north, retreating to the kingdom of Lordaeron to recoup and grieve. The once mighty city of Stormwind lay in pieces.
The Queue: Hey, pretty lady. Nice ... hair.
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. How about that Dragon Age II demo? How many of you have checked it out already? While playing through it, I couldn't help but notice that the women of Thedas all seem to have huge ... Monty Python jokes. It's a bit much, isn't it? Joakim asked: Is the Defias Brotherhood terrorists, and if so, why or more to the point, Who branded them as terrorists?
Why Varian Wrynn is a fool (and why it may not matter)
For a while now I've been mulling over points raised by Daniel in his much-discussed article, "Why Varian Wrynn Is Right," and we've received a number of requests to address the issue from the Horde's point of view. Well...this article isn't going to do that. It started off that way, and then I realized that Varian's personal issues and the Horde's approach to the problem are really two entirely separate matters. At some point in the future, I'd like to examine the Horde's take on the newly-resurgent antagonism between the factions, because it's not something I can adequately address here without turning this into a 10,000-word tract. Today, we're going to deal almost exclusively with Varian and his share of responsibility for the current mess. I'm a little ambivalent over Blizzard's decision to include most of the backstory and explanations for Varian's behavior in a comic series, because I think it's one of the factors that's resulted the character's being poorly received by most players. Choosing to include so much of his characterization out of the game in a product most players will never read necessarily impacts how Varian's motives are going to be evaluated. If all you've got to go on is what you see of the king from ingame events...he doesn't look so great. This isn't a defense of Varian so much as a commentary on the somewhat inconsistent approach to his character that's resulted. I haven't read each of the comics, but I'm familiar with the storyline, and this article doesn't assume that you need to have read the out-of-game books or comics in order to follow the argument.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be an Alliance Rogue
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twenty-fourth 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. Many of the most famous rogues outside of the Warcraft setting have been nuanced and exciting characters. Bilbo Baggins, the Prince of Persia, and James Bond, could all be reimagined as rogues if they had existed in Azeroth instead of their own settings. As an Alliance rogue, you have a certain amount of freedom to borrow from other settings, or from the real world, since the Alliance races tend to be more similar to heroes of other stories we've heard before. To a certain extent, Blizzard has already based its Alliance rogue guilds on stories from other settings, and left some aspects of these institutions rather vague. There is certainly enough room for roleplayers to fill in a bit of the blanks with their own creative inspiration. The only danger is that it could be easy to overdo it and descending into Mary-Sueism: one ought to feel free to reach for a bit of the flavor of James Bond, for instance, without ever believing your character is the single best secret agent Stormwind could ever have.
WoW Moviewatch: Defias Mightiest
It might help if you know a bit about the Defias Brotherhood. (Lapdogs! All of you!) Defias Mightiest by Myndflame was originally featured (in part) at the opening of the epic Illegal Danish: Escape for Orgrimmar. This is a pretty neat stand alone music video in its own right, however. I wanted to draw attention to it, especially, because I'm excited about the upcoming release of Death Knights Ride Bikes. It's created by the same folks, and I like their WoW-inspired music. The pacing and music are both pretty awesome, in my humble opinion. I will admit to being a little disturbed by how long I spent looking at Van Cleef's tushie, but that's kind of part and parcel of the joke. I want to note, however, that the final shot of the video's protagonist overlooking the spires of Stormwind is a strong image for anyone who knows the lore. It's funny that the moment captures the essence of the Defias story so strongly even while taking place in a comedy music video. That says something about the strength of both WoW's lore, but also the power of the machinimist responsible. If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
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).
The best of WoW Insider: May 20-27, 2008
This picture above, if you believe YTMND, is basically how endgame raiding in World of Warcraft works. We especially like the AFK hunters, and all the DoTs all over the boss. For this and all other news and views (humorous or otherwise) from the World of Warcraft, count on Joystiq's sister site WoW Insider. Here's our most popular posts from the last seven days -- whether you're an overnuked 'lock or an LOL healer, we've got the inside story on everything in Azeroth. News SK-Gaming downs Kil'jaeden for a world firstAnd the game is beaten yet again. Mass bannings strike Glider usersBlizzard drops the hammer on people who've used the botting program they're fighting in court. Why all race Death Knights makes sense from a lore standpointWhen Death Knights enter Azeroth, they can be any race you want them to be. Here's why. Druids solos OnyxiaThe big bad, 40-man raid dragon gets toppled by one Druid. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Blizzard artists join Laguna art school facultySome of Blizzard's best artists are now teaching at an art school. Features Breakfast Topic: Addon requests and recommendationsOur readers go all out on addon-finding. Know Your Lore: The Defias BrotherhoodKYL examines the red-masked gang that's been terrorizing Alliance lowbies since '04. Azeroth Security Advisor: Preserving your online privacyOur new security column takes a look at how to keep your private information private. Ask WoW Insider: Casual raiding -- does it exist?Can you really raid the endgame and stay casual? "An armed society is a polite society."Could Heinlein have been right about PvP servers?
Know Your Lore: The Defias Brotherhood
Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week Elizabeth Wachowski and Alex Ziebart bring you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm.The Defias Brotherhood is something that I'm sure both factions have at least a little familiarity with, though the Alliance most definitely has more exposure to them. There aren't many Horde questlines that will give you a brush with this faction of bandits, but even my Horde friends take a trip to Westfall to check out the Deadmines every now and then.I don't blame them, either. Not only is the Deadmines an awesome instance, the Defias Brotherhood also has quite the interesting background. While there are superhuman entities involved in their story, it isn't laid on as thick as in other Warcraft plotlines. Theirs is more a story of political and social unrest, and the power of manipulation. I would go as far as to say this is part of the single largest plotline in Warcraft currently, spanning half a dozen zones, three expansions, a comic series, and involving at least five different major factions.
Best starting race
I've been leveling a few Draenei alts off and on and finally figured out just why it is that I keep rolling the damn things in addition to my beloved Tauren; their starting quests rock. You wake from stasis, meet the locals, save a princess, make early ties to the Alliance and find out why there's a good reason the some of 'em won't trust you right off the bat, discover nefarious deeds afoot, fight a dragon, and then save your people and get a cool tabard. "Find your way back to the Outland, Hero of Argus," Exarch Admetius tells you, in a nice preview of things to come, and Velen has a good lore moment with you shortly afterwards.Having leveled a toon out of every starting area to at least 20, it's hard not to notice that some areas make it a lot easier than others. I don't mean the general ease of leveling per se, but just how fast the time seems to fly by. For all that a certain percentage of the playerbase frowns on RP on non-RP servers, most peoples' favorite quests do have an element of RP to them, or at least the RP sense of being fully engaged with the world. And in that respect the Draenei starting zones are, in my opinion, unparalleled. If I had to rank them --
