maelstrom
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Creative posts World of Warcraft teaser
Computer audio manufacturer Creative Labs sent us a note that their Soundblaster page has a brand new teaser on it, which appears to be hinting at... something. Something World of Warcraft-related, apparently: the Lament of the Highborne song plays in the background while an image of the Maelstrom and some circular hardware gives way to a glowing Horde symbol and the message "to be continued..."What is it? Given that Creative makes audio equipment, it's probably something audio-related, and given that BlizzCon is later this week, it's probably something released in partnership with Blizzard. But other than that, the guessing is up to you. A new WoW-branded sound card? Something music-related? It's anyone's guess. Stay tuned to WoW.com to find out more soon.
Blizzard headed back to PAX this year
Can't make it to BlizzCon but still want to check out Blizzard's latest offerings? Blizzard has appeared on the list of sponsors for Penny Arcade's PAX convention, which takes place later this year on September 4-6, 2009 in Seattle, Washington. PAX is a great time and a ton of fun -- I went a few years ago, and really enjoyed it. In addition to a terrific lineup of geeky musicians and demo panels from game developers, they always have a nice open floor full of the latest games to check out and play. And since PAX will be going down after BlizzCon (which takes place in two weeks), if you go, you'll likely have a chance to check out whatever Blizzard wants to put on display, be that Starcraft II or Diablo 3, or, you know... anything else they might announce.Plus, tickets to PAX are cheaper and even easier to get than BlizzCon tickets anyway, not to mention that you'll be seeing way more games and companies than just Blizzard. In fact, why am I going to BlizzCon again? I'd almost rather go to PAX this year. I'd love to see Freezepop!Oh, right, I can't miss our legendary meetup (wait until you guys see the giveaways we have planned!). But even if you're going to Penny Arcade's show because you can't make it to Blizzard's convention, stay tuned here to WoW.com -- we'll make you feel like you're there anyway.
All the World's a Stage: Possibilities for worgen and goblins
All the World's a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one man in his time plays many roles.Ever since word broke about the possibility of playing either a worgen or a goblin, I've been thinking a lot about how it would be to roleplay them. In terms of lore, each one fits in very nicely -- the goblins have the neutral city of Undermine not far from the great Maelstrom at the center of the world, and the worgen have lots of connections to other dimensions, possibly the Emerald Dream. Assuming the expansion is in fact going to be a combination of the Maelstrom and the Emerald Dream, each race could have a lot to do with why the Horde and the Alliance are eager to go and continue the adventure after Northrend.Some others are talking about how and why these races would join either faction. The goblins seem a shoo-in for the Horde, since they've already got so many connections with one another above and beyond the ostensible neutrality the goblins maintain between the Horde and the Alliance. The worgen connection to the Alliance is a bit tougher to figure out, but there are two apparent possibilities: either the humans of Gilneas have become worgen and wish to rejoin their former brethren, or the original worgen from their own dimension somehow join up with the Alliance in order to fight off a shared enemy such as the Burning Legion or the "Nightmare" of the Emerald Dream.Today we'll discuss both of these possibilities and stake my claim on which I think is more likely, and look at a number of the story hooks that worgen and goblins could create for roleplayers if and when we get the chance to play them.
Tamed Worgen have become Winterskorn Worgs
And here lies the final chapter in the Taming of the Worgen saga: Mania reports that, just a little while after the troublesome Worgen Garwal was hotfixed to be untameable, Blizzard has magically changed all of the already-tamed Worgen to level 68 (or Hunter's level minus five) wolves. Why level 68? Because, Mania says, they've all been turned into Winterskorn Worgs, a level 63-69 NPC that wanders around the Howling Fah-jord.So that's the end of that. Obviously, no one really expected to keep those pets as their own, and especially with all of the Worgen-as-playable-race speculation flying around, it wouldn't do for Hunters to have one of those humanoids at their beck and call. Some Hunters who went to the trouble of taming probably won't be too happy. But the good news is that the new white wolf in your stable is completely fixed -- it has all of the normal talent trees and abilities that wolves are supposed to have. Guess you and your pet Garwal were just never meant to be.
The Queue: Snape, snape
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.In celebration of the recent release of the new Harry Potter movie, I've decided to expose the two of you out there that have never seen the above video to... well, the above video. I'll say no more, folks. Watch it, then read on! Probably in beat with a metronome!Mannas asked..."With the new feature to switch factions, will we finally have a way to "mail" items across factions by making a toon, sending the item there, switching factions and then mailing on? Or will they somehow limit this?"
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?
Lorecrafted tackles the Maelstrom
Lorecrafted is one of my favorite blogs these days. If you've been reading this site for awhile, you probably know that one of the things I enjoy most is geeking out about lore, both positively and negatively. I love picking things apart, speculating on random story snippets, and all of that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to spend much quality time with Know Your Lore due to other commitments, so Lorecrafted replaces that void in my life at least a little bit.Just recently, Greyseer (the author behind Lorecrafted), finished up a three part speculation series on what he would like to see come out of a Maelstrom expansion. Reading over it, you realize just how many different forces could be at play in the expansion. I don't think everything will play out the way that he thinks they'll play out, but that just lends more weight to just how much could happen in the Maelstrom.There are plenty of people that think Warcraft dies with Arthas, but when you look at the game world beyond the events of Warcraft III, Arthas is actually relatively small character. He's not even the most dangerous thing Azeroth has seen. The threats that lie within the Maelstrom have proved themselves to be far more destructive... as in, caused Azeroth to sunder into the various pieces that make up the world today. Let's see the Lich King do that.
The Queue: Full of it
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com'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.Since today's first question in Maelstrom-themed, we've decided today's edition of The Queue was a good time to link the supposed leaked trailer of the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, to be announced at BlizzCon '09. We haven't embedded the video to try and dodge waking up to a DMCA tomorrow, so just check it out on YouTube. We'll let Google deal with the mess, eh?Revan asked... "What instances would you suggest for a Maelstrom expansion?" All of the things you suggested yesterday would work pretty well. Nazjatar and the Tomb of Sargeras would definitely be raid zones in a future expansion. I suspect we would also have a hella fun time in The Eye of the Maelstrom, which is the center of the whole storm there. Maybe we'd even visit Mak'aru, which is where all the gross crab people live. It probably wouldn't be a raid, but I could see a 5-man there. That is, if we don't ally with the gross crabfolk. Did I mention they're gross? Gross. I'd also lay down money that we'll get an Onyxia/Gruul/Malygos-style raid with a sea monster of some sort. The Lurker Below v2.0, now with eye lasers?
Finding Blizzard's Cataclysm
The other day, we posted that Blizzard had trademarked the name "Cataclysm," and right after that, the community exploded with speculation: is it the name of WoW's next expansion, Blizzard's next-gen MMO, or some other project? Nothing is guaranteed yet (is it ever with Blizzard?), but the Internets have pretty much landed on the new expansion as the answer. "Cataclysm" actually means "a momentous and violent event marked by overwhelming upheaval and demolition," but it also has a pretty specific relation to water, and that's got lots of people thinking that it's the name of the Maelstrom expansion. In fact, The Sundering, or the world event in Azeroth's history where the Well of Eternity was destroyed and the Maelstrom (that swirly thing in the middle of the map) was created, was referred to as "the Cataclysm." So there you go -- pretty solid evidence, even though, as I said, nothing is guaranteed until we hear it from Blizz.Stropp's got an interesting piece of speculation that says though "Cataclysm" is still probably the next expansion, the event the word refers to has yet to happen. He claims that if Blizzard really wants to speed up the 1-50 leveling process, they should just destroy Old Azeroth as we know it, and just have all the new characters start at level 50. That would be pretty nuts, but then again, Blizzard's never shown a real affinity for the old content, and by the next expansion, we'll be heading up to level 90 or even 100.
The Maelstrom: Lore behind the possible next WoW expansion
Many of you have likely heard the theory floating around that the Emerald Dream might be the next expansion pack, but you may not have heard about the other popular theory: The Maelstrom. How would you feel about an expansion where the naga are the villains, the murlocs do their bidding, a powerful queen emerges, and dormant gods awaken? We've braved alien lands and the cold, harsh climate of Northrend, so how would you fancy going out to sea, discovering new islands and diving down to sunken cities?I have to admit, my first reaction to the concept was an inner groan of disappointment, but when I read into it further over at Lorecrafted, I became intrigued. After all, who hasn't dreamed of drifting off to explore the Great Sea? I've wanted to see a sunken city ever since my first character, a female Troll Shaman, discovered that she had no home city. Deep down, she was sure that there simply had to be some lost troll city, perhaps beneath the sea, or at the very least, a place to rebuild, reconnect and start anew. What do you think, folks? If this were to be our next adventure, do you think you could get excited, or are you itching for the Emerald Dream or something else entirely?
The Queue: These are a few of my favorite things
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. Adam Holisky will be your host today. Today's musical selection for the queue will be the late great John Coltrane playing My Favorite Things in 1961 opposite the piano stylings of the equally great McCoy Tyner. Yes, some people may cover their ears and scream "omg soprano sax!" but others will no doubt spend 10 minutes watching and listening to these master musicians partake in this performance of a quintessential jazz song.Kayri asked..."A question about the speculation on the next expansion; everyone thinks it will be either The Maelstrom or The Emerald Dream. How will we quest in The Maelstrom? Are we going to swim around all the time?"
The Queue: Battle.net
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. So we said that we would have a special edition of The Queue this past Saturday. It never happened. Why? Well, the intent was for it to be entertainment while we all sat in the queue for BlizzCon tickets. Yammer about BlizzCon, get excited, all of that sort of thing. Adam and I put ourselves in the ticket queue, were getting ready to push the post out, and then... ticket sales were over. It was kind of a pointless post at that point! So it never happened. We apologize for that.The ticket sales went surprisingly smoothly. We're always going to find something to gripe about (holy crap why don't they have more tickets) but the whole thing didn't come tumbling down this year, and that's such a massive improvement over last year. It was a good thing.Dusseldorf asked..."Is there any benefit to converting my account to a Battle.net account? I see problems with Battle.net users logging in all the time, and was just wondering the point of converting."
Ask a Lore Nerd: Holy Warriors
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.Insert snappy preamble here.jealouspirate asked... "I have a question about the Draenei. Mainly, why have they stayed in Azeroth? I mean, I know for the sake of gameplay this is how things are, but is there any justification for it? Shouldn't Velen be in Shattrath?"
Jarod Shadowsong, the biggest hero you've never heard of
Call me a lore noob (and that's fine, Alex will heartily agree with you), but like Loregy.com suspected, I had never before heard of Jarod Shadowsong. We pretty much all know about his sister Maeiv, thanks to her little tirade against Illidan and the big part that played in the last expansion. But Jarod might be Azeroth's biggest unsung hero. And considering that all of the rumors point to the next expansion diving into the Maelstrom and/or the Emerald Dream, not to mention an eventual showdown with Sargeras, he could also play a very important part in Azeroth's future.Jarod led the charge in the War of the Ancients, a huge battle thousands of years ago in Azeroth's past that culminated in Jarod's taking full command of the Kaldorei Resistance, a one-on-one battle with Archimonde (players have faced him, too), and eventually the collapse of the Well of Eternity. An event that led directly to, you guessed it, the creation of the Maelstrom. See how it's all coming together?Loregy has more speculation: just like during Jarod's time, the Horde and Alliance are growing apart, and if Sargeras decides to bite back after what happened in the Burning Crusade, we'll need a leader to combine the troops. Thrall and Wrynn are each powerful leaders in their own right, but Jarod is the big daddy of generals. And if big trouble goes down in the next expansion, he could be the key to saving the world again. And the guy doesn't even have a picture on WoWWiki!
Where next in the World of Warcraft?
Michael Sacco over at our sister site WoW Insider has been looking into his crystal ball. He's written a fascinating post on why we should expect a new World of Warcraft expansion announcement at this year's BlizzCon. But he doesn't stop there, oh no. Using his powers of deduction he also hypothesizes where said expansion will see us going. So will it be the Maelstrom? Will it be the Emerald Dream? Will it be somewhere else? We don't know for sure but guessing is certainly a lot of fun. Blizzard have already started dropping hints and we will know something this year, it's just a matter of time.Click here and see if you can figure where in the World of Warcraft we'll be visiting next.
Why we should expect an expansion announcement at Blizzcon
We're almost six months into Wrath's lifespan. Patch 3.1 is just around the corner, and before too long we'll be talking about 3.2. I anticipate 3.2 will come out quicker than most content patches and that 3.3 will be on its way soon after. After that, I'm willing to put good money on an expansion following it. We've had a lot of hints and solid information ready to back up a Q4 2009 expansion release, and even hints about what the content in it would be. Here's what we know.
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.
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?"
The Queue: I like fire
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. Yesterday we had a question about the little fiery looking thumbnail I use at the end of almost every edition of The Queue. What the heck is it? Well, it's pretty hard to make out the details as a little thumbnail, but it's a picture of Volkhan from Halls of Lightning. The big red flare is a fireburst that comes up when he wangs his anvil with his hammer. I thought the bigger version looked pretty cool, so I kept using the thumbnail.alpha5099 asked... I keep seeing references to EU-Magtheridon, and I'm absolutely fascinated by a server with such a ridiculously unbalanced player ratio. Does anyone know how that happened? Is there some reason an insane number of Horde players are there? Did the Horde just start getting the edge and the Alliance players left for less ganky pastures, and it's gone out of control since then?
