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Know Your Lore: The Eternals part one -- the Ancients
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. With Cataclysm coming up and the beta now up and running comes plenty of new information about what we'll be seeing in Cataclysm. One of the highly anticipated zones is Hyjal, where players will work with the Guardians of Hyjal to retake the mountainous peaks where Nordrassil has begun to grow anew. Parts of these quests involve the Eternals of Azeroth -- characters we've only seen in novels or game manuals, but never been exposed to in World of Warcraft. Today we'll be looking at some of the major players in the Eternal lineup, and how they relate to World of Warcraft. WARNING: Some of the descriptions and Eternals in this post are taken from Cataclysm content. While I will avoid spoiling any Cataclysm quest lines or events, there will be screenshots -- if you'd rather avoid all Cataclysm content altogether you may want to skip this post. To begin, we have to define what exactly an Eternal is as far as Azeroth is concerned. Eternals are the immortal, divine beings of Azeroth who wield godlike powers and are generally either revered or worshipped by the mortal races in one way or another. There are many different kinds of Eternals out there oddly enough -- the Titans, the Elemental Lords (who have been covered in great detail by Matthew Rossi), the Loa spirits, the Old Gods, and the Ancients. Today we're going to look at the Ancients -- Eternals worshipped mostly by night elf society as deities. The big Eternal in night elf society is of course Elune, but what about the other Eternals in the night elf pantheon? Let's take a look.
Breakfast Topic: Too powerful
I like Nibuca's little writeup recently from her blog asking what happens when we become just too powerful to care? Just like her, I've played a full, months-and-months, session of D&D before, and by the time your characters start to flirt with level 20 (the maximum level in that system), you're so powerful that the story barely makes sense any more -- you're crossing planes of existence, unweaving and re-weaving the fabric of reality, and taking down gods, more or less. Once you've vanquished evil from the earth four or five times, yet another threat doesn't bother you so much. And to a certain extent, that's exactly what's happening with World of Warcraft -- when the game first started, the devs casually threw out there that it would take 40 level 80s to take Arthas down, which was of course a guess based on what raiding was at the time. But nowadays, we're all level 80, you only need five people to go after Arthas, and very soon, even someone like Deathwing will seem conquerable. In the next expansion, we already know that we're going to transverse some planes of existence, and when you're a being that can do that, why bother fighting frost wyrms? Just escape their reality and/or will them out of yours.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Cenarius, C'Thun, and the Titans
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. Last week on Ask a Lore Nerd, I answered a question about sports. In short, does Azeroth have sports? I, foolishly, looked at it in a pretty narrow way. I was thinking baseball, basketball, things like that. However, it was quickly pointed out that not all sports are things like those. That's very true! Azeroth definitely has things like hunting, racing, fishing and the arena circuit. There's also a reference to Battle Ball but who knows what that is. So there's that! And with that out of the way...XvampyrexrisingX asked...My friend and I have been arguing recently over the death of the demigod Cenarius. I was hoping for some clarification. I (a diehard Nelf) say that Cenarius was only protecting the forest the orcs were cutting, while she (a Nelf turned Hordie) says that Cenarius attacked the Orcs for no reason and their only choice was to kill him. Which one of us gets the bragging rights?
Ask a Lore Nerd: Faith and religion
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, the column that answers your questions about the story and lore of the Warcraft universe. Click the Comments link below, ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer you in a future installment!Two weeks ago, when I was going through my queue of questions, one stuck out as especially complex. Sean Riley inquired about the beliefs and practices of the various Azerothian religions. This topic really excited me as I kind of have a thing for analyzing religion and faith. I would never claim to be an authority on theology, but it's stlil something that is very interesting to me. Warcraft lore combined with theology? Yes please! Obviously this isn't really the place to analyze and debate religion, but taking time out to research the gaps in my knowledge on this particular topic was incredibly fun for me.Unforunately, I didn't have the space in that week's column to fit the answer to that question in, nor did I really have the time. It was a broad question and needed to invest a hefty amount of time into it. This one question has filled today's column, and while that may be disappointing to some that are waiting their turn, I hope it's an interesting read regardless.
Gronn sculpture in progress from the EU forums
Varedis of EU Draenor is working on what looks like a neat clay Gronn sculpture, and while it's still a work in progress, he's posting pics of it over on the forums. Did you know the Gronn were Ogre demigods? I had no idea. But isn't there a Mountain Gronn killing Ogres in Nagrand? Looks like there's another lore line that dropped through the cracks.Anyway, what Varedis has so far looks pretty good-- you can see how the clay gets modeled around a metal frame, shaped into the basic pose, and then each body part is fleshed out and shaped. So far all he's got is a right hand, it seems, but what's there looks good.He's also working on a Tauren sculpture (concurrently, I guess), which also looks pretty good. Very good start, can't wait to see how the whole thing comes out.
