matthias-lehner
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The dilemma of Darrowshire and Warcraft's creep factor
I remember my first encounter with Pamela vividly. It was vanilla, years and years ago, and I discovered a quest in Winterspring offered by a woman named Jessica Redpath, who had very little else to say. In between all the usual round of Winterspring quests was this woman, who asked that I go check on the town she grew up in called Darrowshire. It was all the way in the Eastern Plaguelands, but I figured for a change of pace from all the snow and desolation I'd go check it out. Not only were the Eastern Plaguelands exceptionally creepy and bizarre in terms of architecture, especially compared to anything on Kalimdor, but the sounds and music for the zone were incredibly eerie as well. And when I finally found Darrowshire, I found a deserted collection of dilapidated buildings, and one lone question mark off in a corner -- belonging to the ghost of a very dead little girl. And every hair on the back of my neck simultaneously stood up.
WoW Moviewatch: The Ballad of Matthias Lehner
Regular lore fans are probably pretty familiar with good old Matthias Lehner. It seems the little ghostly boy has some connection to the Lich King, and that story is one that's sparked the imagination of many World of Warcraft players. Melvenor is helping to immortalize the young chap with the creation of The Ballad of Matthias Lehner. The video itself is actually relatively short. Its scenery and composition are both beautiful, drawing on the stark Icecrown landscapes to help highlight Melvenor's story. The voice-acting was also pretty good, which made the video relatively easy to follow. It probably could have used a little more plot action to help keep the audience involved, but if you take the film as a genre piece, it all works out fairly well. At the end of the day, this is a nice addition the machinima about Lehner, so I'm curious to see what Melvenor will do next. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.
The best zone of Wrath
Spinksville, following up to an earlier post concerning a great lore moment in Vengeance Landing, concludes that as a Horde player, Howling Fjord has emerged as the single best overall zone in Wrath. The more I consider it, the more I'm inclined to agree with her. The Fjord has a mostly unified questline that slowly splits off into sub-plots concerning the Kalu'ak and Taunka, and the farther you get, the more you realize the impact your previous actions have had on that little slice of the world (and most of it's not good). As Spinks observes, it's a very immersive experience that does a great job of conveying both the moral ambiguity of the Forsaken's position, and the fact that Northrend's a continent without a lot of good options. "Forced to choose between the lesser evil and the greater evil," she writes, "... you had better hope that the greater evil is very bad indeed because it is the only way to justify the things you have had to do."That said, I have to admit that Icecrown is also pretty tough to beat lore-wise (with the Matthias Lehner quests being a particularly good touch, and please don't click that link if you haven't run into him yet). I haven't yet played an Alliance toon through Northrend, and Spinks is also a Horde player, so I'd like to get some input from Alliance-side players too. Is the Fjord as good for Alliance as it is for Horde, or are your best questlines elsewhere? If you're Horde, do you agree that the Fjord was your best questing experience?
