greymane-wall
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All the World's a Stage: Plot points for worgen roleplayers
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW. The worgen are the newest race to hit Alliance side, and though they are humans affected by a curse, they aren't exactly the same as your run-of-the-mill humans we've been playing since vanilla. Worgen roleplayers have a ton of information thrown at them during the starting levels, but after the fight is over and everyone's moved on, it seems as though there's not much in the way of excitement or roleplay potential. That isn't necessarily the case. The main issue I have with worgen -- and to a degree, their Horde counterparts the goblins -- lies in the fact that you are inundated with so much information in those first few levels. The story moves at a frenetic pace, and unless you're paying close attention, it can quickly become an overwhelming experience. Despite the relative lull after the starting experience is over, there is plenty for worgen roleplayers to use, even at level 85.
Know Your Lore: Darius Crowley, Lord of Silverpine
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. I said last week that we'd be covering Broxigar Saurfang this week. I lied, just like when I told Sully I'd kill him last. This week, we're going to talk about an honest to the Light Gilnean hero. A patriot, a rebel, a lord who cared for his land but could see beyond it, a killer, a father who would die for his daughter without hesitation. Alone among the lords and ladies of Gilneas, Darius Crowley saw that without the Alliance, his nation was doomed. By his hand, civil war raged across the land behind the Greymane Wall. Forced to see his holdings in Silverpine truncated by a wall he opposed, he lost everything -- even his freedom -- fighting his misguided king. In the end, he cannot even take consolation in having ultimately been proven right. Made a beast, he fights on for his homeland and his ancestral lands, stolen by Sylvanas Windrunner and the Forsaken. Forced to choose between his daughter and victory, he chose her and retreated into contested Gilneas. While the king of that land tries to rally Alliance support to retake the homeland, Crowley does battle in the moors and the streets of his homeland. Whether Gilneas is ultimately saved or destroyed by the Horde, one thing is clear: Darius Crowley will be found fighting there.
Is the Alliance aiming to retake lost lands in Cataclysm?
Derthelz on the official forums asked a good question -- why is the Alliance prepared to kill Arthas but not to try to retake their lost city of Lordaeron? After all, the upper half of the Eastern Kingdoms is almost completely lost to the Alliance, despite the area being the former home of some of Azeroth's most powerful nations. Why doesn't the Alliance try to take them back? Crygil says that, actually, they just might: "Who said that the Alliance wouldn't attempt to reclaim these lands? That is a very dangerous assumption to make, especially if you're of the forsaken persuasion. The Lich King is a threat to all the inhabitants of Azeroth and, as such, he needs to be put down before territorial disputes can be resolved. Leaving those claims for the future only makes sense; far easier to fight one war at a time. For now, it's better to focus on the task at hand."
Know Your Lore: World of Warcraft Cataclysm Gilneas
Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week WoW.com brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? Leave a comment below! The nation of Gilneas is one of the oldest human kingdoms that still exists. Founded after the breaking of the human empire of Arathor, Gilneas was considered one of the great Seven Kingdoms, along with Kul Tiras, Alterac, Dalaran, Lordaeron, Stromgarde, and Stormwind.Gilneas is located on a rocky peninsula that juts out over the Great Sea on Lordaeron's west coast, southwest of Silverpine Forest. High seaside cliffs keep the kingdom safe from attack by water and the foreboding Greymane Wall keeps it locked safely away from the struggles of modern Lordaeron and, by extension, Azeroth. No one has been allowed in or out of the kingdom for nearly ten years, and no one has seen or heard from the burly, gruff, self-sufficient Gilneans in just as long. The source of this isolation is none other than Genn Greymane, hereditary ruler of the kingdom under the Greymane Dynasty for decades.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Speculation station
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.Be warned, ladies and gentlemen. This week's edition of Ask a Lore Nerd is almost purely discussion and speculation on the next expansion and what it might include. Why? Because it's fun! We'll get back to covering anything and everything next week, but this week we're just in an expansion sort of mood.alpha5099 asked... "So, most of the speculation is that the next expansion will be the Maelstrom. Would you agree with that assessment? What all do you expect to see in a Maelstrom expansion? What would you want to see? Any place you're dying to go?"
Breakfast Topic: Would you play a Worgen or a Goblin?
So it might just be some fanciful speculation, the product of rampant imaginings after digging through some game files. It could mean something, it could mean nothing. But yesterday's bombshell discovery of Halloween masks, traditionally reserved for playable races, threw a whole bunch of us into a tizzy. Goblins as playable races? That wouldn't be too surprising considering they've had models in the game that could wear player armor, anyway. But Worgen? I mean, wow.It's not that far-fetched, either. The Undermine, the home of the Goblins, is situated near the Maelstrom. Remember how Blizzard trademarked Cataclysm, which in Azerothian terms actually refers to the events around the Maelstrom? That means we just might see The Undermine in the next expansion. So Goblins aren't such a wild idea. But what about the Worgen?
Are we being teased about the next expansion?
So there's been a feeling in the air lately that some of the blues have been in a bit of a teasing mood. Sure, that's not neccessarily new, but what is interesting is what exactly they may be teasing us about. For example, here's a recent post in which one Sulmus of Aerie Peak asks for the Greymane Wall to be opened. Zarhym soon jumps in to say that they would be "out of their mind" to open the wall... then follows up with random ellipses. To top it all off, Bornakk and Crygil jump in with silly punctuation of their own. Now when Alex and I were discussing this the other day, Alex insisted that they were basically admitting that the Greymane wall would be opened, likely in conjunction with the next expansion. He says it's already in the planning stages, and the blues are just waving the knowledge tantalizingly out of sight because they're not allowed to officially announce it yet. Now, at first I wasn't really on board with it, but then I noticed another post Zarhym commented in.
The Queue: Genn, you're such a jerk
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Be warned that the very end of today's edition of The Queue contains minor spoilers for the upcoming Ulduar raid zone. Everything is perfectly safe until the very last question, and even then the spoilers are very minor. Minor as in it describes a couple of the bosses found within the zone. It doesn't give away any story or plot. If you want your experience to remain pure, stop at the last question. If you don't care so much about knowing who you'll see in Ulduar, it's perfectly safe.I warn because I love.mindor asked...What is the deal with the Greymane wall in Silverpine forest? Is there an old raid set in there? What is on the other side of that monstrous wall?
The funny, morbid, and sad coins of the Dalaran fountain
Level up fishing so you can fish in the Dalaran fountain. I'm serious. This completely nonsensible and illogical statement is brought to you by the 53 tiny lore moments you'll get if you'll just sit yourself down somewhere and level up fishing. Yes, it's boring having to fish up dozens of useless fish to get to the good stuff in Outland and Northrend. Yes, you could be farming up gold or materials that will help you level in Wrath. I don't care. Go fish.You see, while you'll be fishing up a lot of equally useless fish in the Dalaran fountain, you'll also get coins. No, not in the sense that you'll be fishing up ingame money, but you'll fish up coins tossed into the fountain of this very old city by 53 people, many of whom will be known to you if you've played the game for any length of time. Some of them, perhaps most of them, are funny. Some are serious. Some are heartbreaking. I admit to a touch of being a lore geek, and it was wonderful being allowed a peek into the irreverent or hopeful or sad heads of Jaina Proudmoore, Thrall, or Stalvan Mistmantle. It is idiosyncratic little touches like this that make WoW hopelessly fun to play, and it is my fondest wish that whatever person at Blizzard who thought this up is pulled off whatever they're doing right now and chained to a desk until they come up with more stuff like this.So, if you don't do anything else with your time between patch 3.02 hitting and Wrath going live...level up fishing so you can fish in the Dalaran fountain. But don't read any further if you're not interested in Wrath spoilers, because there are a few here...
WoW maps past show present
It's a good week for posts at DwarfPriest.com, it seems. In this look at the manual for World of Warcraft, we get to see that the maps included in the original, 2004 release (which hasn't been updated since... four years later, and we're still using the same increasingly inaccurate manual) are at times surprisingly accurate to what we see in the game today. Interesting inclusions and omissions abound: the fact that Maraudon isn't on these maps but Dire Maul is just fascinates me from the perspective that Maraudon was a full patch ahead of the Maul.I remember riding around Silithus way before the AQ release trying to get inside and see what was back there, and have been to both Hyjal and along the Greymane wall with my lovely wife who always wants to see the zones that are the hardest to access: I like the idea of Gilneas coming into the game so much that I've mused about releasing the whole zone as an instance before. For these reasons I found this look back at the game manual's maps and what has and hasn't made it into live yet to be grist for the mill of my naturally speculative brain. Will we finally see Uldum when Ulduar hits in WoTLK? Maybe Hyjal will finally go live? Will those islands off the coast of Gilneas make a reappearance on the world map? I've been wondering for years now what's up in Kul Tiras. Anything on these maps you're surprised to see? Anything excluded that you'd expect? The very detailed map of Quel'Thalas, years before it went live, was one of my big 'woah' moments looking over these maps, which shows how easy it is for me to forget just how much lore the RTS series packed in.
Around Azeroth: The Greymane Wall
No quests send you here, but If you've thoroughly explored Silverpine Forest, you may have encountered this, the Greymane Wall. Reader Sheldon sends in this shot and wonders what's on the other side, and whether we'll be able to see some day. Fortunately, I can answer part of that question -- in Warcraft lore, this wall was errected after the Second War as the nation of Gilneas broke off from the Alliance and decided to avoid "other people's trouble." The fate of the people of Gilneas, however, remains unknown, as the gates have never opened. (To my knowledge, Gilneas is not a planned addition for the Burning Crusade, though we may see it at some point further in the future.)So do you have a unique shot of Azeroth that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! You can attach a picture file or send us a link to one -- and don't worry about formatting, we'll take care of that part. If yours isn't posted immediately, don't fret! Shots are posted (more or less) in the order received, and yours will come up eventually.[Update: Several people have corrected me -- there are quests that send you here, I've just apparently never done any of them.]
