lich-king
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World of Warcraft iGoogle theme
More and more people (myself included) are starting to use iGoogle as their homepage, because it's incredibly useful. There's all sorts of widgets you can use to customize your homepage, from useful things like the weather and a feed of the top news stories, to goofy things like games and videos. I started using it awhile ago, so I was excited to hear about the addition of World of Warcraft iGoogle theme.The theme is pretty basic as far as its appearance goes: A little art on top, a little art on the bottom, and text colored to match. No absurd bells and whistles or major distractions. The cool thing this theme does, like a few other iGoogle themes, is it changes depending on the time of day in your region. When I first put this theme on my homepage earlier today it had a somewhat orange tinge to it all, the art being what I believe is Durotar. Orcs, all of that sort of thing. As of my writing this, it's only 2 PM Central and it's already switched over to the dark blue of the Lich King. It seems a bit early to be swapping to what appears to be the nighttime version of the theme, and it's somewhat depressing in an odd sort of way.
Forum Post of the Day: Chatroom of the Scourge
I don't know exactly what's so funny about this long chatlog between some of the more popular undead and evil NPCs of the game (maybe just how similar this crowd ends up being to us), but it is hilarious. Basically a sequel to the old boss chat, this one has "theLichKing" chatting with "Killzone'jaeden" and "An00barak" about everything from how cold it is in Icecrown to just where Sargeras is from. Very well done, Warraven of Ravenholdt. He even gets some nice lore in there even between all of the pony jokes.And this little chatlog reminded me of all the funny stuff over at Wowbash. If you've never looked through the archives over there, definitely check them out, but be careful. Browsing all of those funny quotes is almost more addictive than actually playing the game.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Speculative speculation
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.Today's edition of Ask a Lore Nerd is a bit heavy on the speculation side, so be warned before you start reading. We've had a lot of questions recently that we don't yet have answers to, but are asked frequently enough that I suppose I should see what I can say!vyx asked..."Okay, so speaking of life and death, this has bugged me for a while -- how do we explain the fact that some characters (Horde and Alliance legends for example) have died, but yet every Priest, Pally, Shammy and Druid can rez people anytime they want?I realize it's a game and it wouldn't be so much fun if you died and then had to reroll a level 1, but there needs to be some type of lore explanation as to why people can be rezzed, but also can 'really die.' Are we supposed to just not worry about this or is there an explanation?"
Ask a Lore Nerd: Life and Death
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. Today we're fielding a lot of questions on the Light and the Shadow, and Life and Death. I don't know why, really, that's just how things happened! Trends like that are always fun, like the week or two where we had nothing but dragon questions. It makes picking out themes really easy!Emorich asked... I was under the impression that C'Thun wasn't dead. I thought we simply stopped him. After all, we were attacking one of his eyeballs, hardly a vital organ. Is Kil'Jaeden dead too? I thought we basically just pushed him back through the portal and now he's really pissed.
The Queue: Hard mode is hard
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.Good afternoon, ladies and gents! Before we get started today I just want to thank everyone for participating in my Hawaiian Pizza poll. It was a silly, spur of the moment sort of thing, and it really made my day to see it creep up to around 11,000 votes! Thank you all very much for humoring me.Again, there are a few Ulduar spoilers in this post, but only minor. Be warned. Also, vote Alex.Adrexani asked...This has always puzzled me, Arthas is a Death Knight, Death Knights are dead, yet no where in lore do I see that Arthas died, so did he die or is he still alive?
Yogg-Saron, Old God of Death speculation
One of the things that caught my eye in the Ulduar preview that was posted awhile ago is the description of Yogg-Saron. The flavor text describes him as 'the Old God of death.' Considering our big target in this expansion, the Lich King, that's extremely interesting.Wrath of the Lich King has heavily hinted at some sort of connection between Yogg-Saron and the Scourge, though we never quite find out what it is. The Scourge make heavy use of Saronite, an ore with Yogg-Saron himself as its origin. When the Alliance investigates this ore in the Dragonblight, they discover the Scourge says Yogg-Saron's name with some degree of hate and contempt.A lot of people fear there's a "puppet of the master" thing surrounding the Lich King, that he's not actually his own power, he belongs to Yogg-Saron. I find this unlikely for one really big reason: The Scourge hates Yogg-Saron, and everybody else that we've run into that have fallen under Yogg-Saron's will either love him utterly or serve him faithfully. If you go to the Saronite Mines in Icecrown and do the quest Slaves to Saronite, you see just how faithful some of his servants become once they've been controlled. If Yogg-Saron were controlling the Lich King, we'd see a very different Scourge.
New World of Warcraft stein features Lich King
Remember those World of Warcraft steins you thought were way too expensive and passed on buying? There's another one. Three Point Entertainment has released a new stein, this one featuring everyone's favorite bad guy, the Lich King himself, brandishing Frostmourne and leading an army of the Undead in the way he's apt to do. We have to admit, it does look cool and all, but at $90, we'll be drinking our ale from the usual sippy-cup, thanks.And just in case you happen to be burdened with too much money in this horrendous economy, you can get a "Legendary Collection" version for $175 that's signed by the artist, is limited to only 750 steins worldwide, and includes "premium hand painting throughout." No idea why you'd want your hands painted, but if you're really spending $175 on a World of Warcraft mug, you're already nuts.The new steins start shipping in late April and May. Considering all of the bailouts lately, your house will probably have regained its value enough for you to afford one of these, right? We say go for it.
Forum Post of the Day: Get your mum to draw the Lich King
Adding your mom's worldly wisdom to any situation always makes it better, and clearly the EU forums agree with this sentiment! Elbonio of the European WoW forums wants you to ask your mum to draw the Lich King, even if she's never seen him before. If she asks what he looks like, just ask her to draw what she thinks he'd look like. I'm pretty sure I've seen this meme before, on the SomethingAwful forums, replacing Arthas with Homer Simpson, but the results are still pretty hilarious. Elbonio's been kind enough to compile a gallery of the kid-tested, mother-approved images that resulted from the experiment. If you get your mom or significant other to do it, but don't have an EU forum account, feel free to post it in the comments below and I'll assemble them for laughs at a later date. What are you waiting for? Go ask! But be nice, because after all, she's your mum.
The Queue: Legendaries are for suckers
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.What? Me lace a post title with jealousy? I would never do that! Never ever! Okay, okay, maybe there's some jealousy there. Can you blame me? Screw purps, I want me some orange. Orange is where it's at, cat.erogroth asked...I have a question about legendary items. Do we know what Legendary items are planned for WotLK? Are there currently any in the game? If not what are planned for the future or can we speculate? It sounds like Ashbringer will not be a item that a player will be able to get. Is that true? Also, what about upgrade quest for old world legendary items. It seems like so much work went into getting them (Thunderfury anyone?) that it seems a shame that they are worthless.
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?
WoW Moviewatch: REVENGE
Silverlined_Pro created REVENGE as a roleplay-based movie about his character Nixxiom. As the story goes, Nixxiom has "always had a hard life." The author doesn't spell out the details, but apparently he killed his own parents through some circumstance, his wife died, and then his daughter was violated and murdered by demons. As if that's not enough, he got turned into a Death Knight. Now, Nixxiom has broken free of the Lich King's control. He's amassed his own army of undead critters, and is marching on Arthas with the goal of deposing him and taking the title Lich King for himself. You only get that background and information from reading Silverlined_Pro's summary on Myndflame. The video itself, as a stand alone piece, doesn't really supply that story. I don't know what I would have thought if I were only viewing the movie. It contains mostly a series of undead characters staring at each other, and then the main character -- a Night Elf -- staring down Arthas. I think the basic jist that "these guys don't play nicely together" probably would have come across, but that's about it.For all that the story is vague, though, the video itself is fairly well done. The music is apropos (it's the Lich King theme), and the animation and screen capture is solid. My words of summary would be, "Nice first attempt, let's see what you do next." 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 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.
Rise of the Lich King excerpt shows the other side of the Lich
BlizzPlanet has an excerpt up from Christie Golden's upcoming Rise of the Lich King novel, featuring the back story of perhaps the lesser known (though no more less powerful) half of the Lich King, Ner'zhul the Shaman. Arthas has gotten banner credit for being the big bad in this expansion (because it's his form that the Lich King is possessing), but Ner'zhul is in there as well, being all evil and angry. And this little snippet from the book portrays very well just what exactly is going on inside that big spiky helmet. As much as little Arthas is lost inside the Lich King's power, there might still be a tiny bit of him that's still fighting back. Is he worth saving or not?I haven't been really interested in the Warcraft books, but given how timely this is (we're about to go knock that helmet off), and how interesting the story of Arthas has been, this is one that I plan to check out. It's due out later this year.
WoW Moviewatch: Northrend Wonderland
Some of the (many) great things about the holidays are the wonderful movies created by machinimists. Some are serious, some are heart-tugging, some are just plain hilarious. Northrend Wonderland by Firebolt Productions falls into that last category. It's such a strong holiday comedy piece (for WoW players) that I'm sure I'm going to be playing it repeatedly tomorrow. The premise is simple. It's Winter's Veil in Northrend, and Arthas has the blues. One of his loyal minions offers the Lich King a stroll through the torture chamber to help perk up. Song and comedy ensue. The production values are good. I enjoyed the scenes, models, and camera work. But the soundtrack is really where Northrend Wonderland takes the cake. The music is awesome and hilarious. I guess the only criticism would be that the Darth-sounding voices of Arthas and minions can be tough to understand without subtitles, but that's why the subtitles are there. Click here to see it for yourself! If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Death Knight
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the eighteenth 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. Originally I had planned to write about death knights only after I had written about all the other classes, as a way of wrapping up and rounding out this whole series of articles about the lore behind the playable races and classes of World of Warcraft. But then ZuWho posted a comment on my last article specifically requesting me for my thoughts on death knights -- and even used the word "pleeeaase!" So of course I'm always a sucker for such polite requests, especially comments like this with really insightful questions. Today we'll look specifically at these questions and see what possible answers come to mind.To a certain extent, we already covered a number of possibilities for death knight characters about 6 months ago. However, while most of those possibilities are still valid, there was so much we didn't know about the player-character death knight lore at that time, and there are definitely some points that need updating.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Priest
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the seventeenth 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. Priests in the World of Warcraft are a single class that incorporates a wide variety of characters. They are best known for casting spells that call forth the power of the Holy Light, but the priest using these spells in the game mechanics doesn't necessarily have much connection to the Light as such -- rather they have a connection with their own religion which grants them similar effects to those of the Light.When WoW was being developed, Blizzard realized that night elves and trolls, for instance, would not follow the Light in the same way humans and dwarves do, so they tried to represent a bit of this diversity through race-specific spells. It didn't work out, though -- some were too powerful, while others weren't worth reading about, much less putting on one's action bar. The end result was that they made some of these spells universally available to all priests, and completely removed the rest. Here the lore had to surrender to the game mechanics in order to provide the best game balance.In roleplaying, however, there is a lot of room for players of different races to behave differently, and draw their powers from totally different sources. Greater Heal, for instance, could come either from the Light or the power of Elune. A Shadowfiend could either be a spawn of the Forgotten Shadow, or a dark trollish voodoo spirit. If you are roleplaying a priest, the only thing that really matters is that your character have some sort of faith or profound belief, which could serve as the source of their divine magical power. A priest's magic revolves around his or her strong beliefs and ideas -- but what those beliefs are is entirely up to you.
Phat Loot Phriday: Leeka's Shield
Here's a shield for you tanks to try and get from a trip back in time this weekend.Name: Leeka's Shield (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDigger)Type: Rare ShieldArmor/Block: 7032 / 197Abilities: +37 Strength, +60 Stamina, which is quite a bit of Stamina for a shield. And we know there's almost nothing tanks love better Unless it's Defense rating, of which this shield gives 38. An exceptionally nice shield -- not the last one you'll ever get, but it's definitely a reason to check out the new Caverns of Time instance the second you hit 80. And yes, like most of the stuff in CoT: Stratholme, there's a little lore behind this one. There's a shop in Stratholme called "Leeka's Shields and Maces," so it's a pretty good guess that this shield came from shieldmaker Leeka back during her human days. Why do we say human? Because Leeka turned undead, and then apparently turned Forsaken -- she's an auctioneer in Undercity now. It would be awesome if she commented on this shield whenever you showed up wearing it, but maybe she doesn't remember -- do the Undead have memories of their previous lives? %Gallery-33600%
French WoW ads starring Alexandre Astier
Here's the last (or at least we think it's the last, it's all that's mentioned on Blizzard's official page) round of television ads for World of Warcraft in 2008. The ads come from France this time, and they both feature Alexandre Astier, star and creator of an Arthurian comedy show called Kaamelott, as a Human Paladin. While the German ads seemed to focus on PvP, these are very PvE based -- in one, he and his group run from a rampaging Frost Wyrm, and in the second (after the break, and apparently it's a "web exclusive," maybe because you can't show a virtual pile of corpses on television), he shows off his rezzing powers, and, err -- their limits.WorldofWar has translations for both of the ads. Is it me, or aren't these as funny as the others? I think Ozzy comes out the best in all of them -- not only is his ad hilarious (better than the Mr. T ad, my previous favorite), but he gets to co-star with the Lich King, and you can't really compete with that. But kudos to Blizzard's teams for putting all of these together. Maybe next year we'll actually get a female WoW player, or, you know, a whole new campaign.
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?
Forum post of the day: Best LOL moment in "Wrath"
Wrath is an odd mix. It's unquestionably darker in tone than both classic WoW and Burning Crusade, but it's not hard to find funny bits and pieces scattered around. Därkseid of Deathwing, after having a disgusted murloc refuse to be rescued by him ("Ewwww, orc!") during a quest in the Borean Tundra, started a thread dedicated to peoples' favorite humorous moments so far in Wrath. All the normal world PvP events can be found here (aggroing a Storm Giant while being attacked and Feigning Death onto your enemy? Check!) but you'll also find a growing catalogue of memorable quest text and great NPC dialogue, like Akini's entry on this page.For my money it's tough to exceed the tongue-in-cheek commentary you'll find in the books scattered around Acherus as you start a career as a Death Knight, including the one pictured above. Some of them are actually serious and give accounts of the Scourge's spying into the preparations made by the Horde and the Alliance for an assault on Northrend. Some of them, like The Death Knights of Acherus, are just hilarious, namely the entry concerning one "Harmony" whose period of service turned out to be extremely brief: "The name of this death knight was found in violation of common Scourge decency. Struck down by the Lich King." Well, Arthas, in such matters I defer to your excellent judgment.
