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Patch 3.2 PTR Tier 9 set names
Even though Blizzard already said that they'd be introducing a whole new set (or sets) of tier gear, it's still a little overwhelming to see information for Tier 9 gear considering that Tier 8-8.5 has only recently been unleashed with Patch 3.1 and Ulduar. Still, Patch 3.2 looks like some ways off and we can't get too excited about the Call of the Crusade just yet.As soon as the PTR went live yesterday, Alex and Adam scrambled to put together a whopper gallery of Tier 9 gear which might've overwhelmed the whole lot of us who were all too eager to find out what goodies are in store with the new patch. While a lot of things can still change now until the patch goes live, we do know a few things. Check out the Tier 9 sets in the gallery below, which has been re-organized by class and spec (because we love you all that much), and let's take a look at the Tier 9 sets after the jump. %Gallery-66710%
Ask a Lore Nerd: Of Nerubians, Dwarves and Titans
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. I'm going to get this out of the way right off the bat since I know I'll get a dozen people asking again this week: Yes, Know Your Lore will be coming back, it is not gone forever. I promise. I will pinkie swear on it, even. Come on, who wants to pinkie swear? Anybody? Anybody?Aler asked..."On the topic of the Nerubians and the Qiraji, is there any relation in the lore between the two? Or are two insect civilizations coincidental?"There's absolutely a relation between the two. They hold a common ancestry. Both the Qiraji and the Nerubians are offshoots of an even more ancient race, the Aqir. Way back when Azeroth was still very primal, and Trolls were the top dogs. There were three major players in the world: The Amani Trolls, the Gurubashi Trolls, and the Aqir. They warred for thousands of years. Thousands. It was a war of attrition on the grandest scale possible, and all involved more or less broke under the weight of their losses.
The Queue: Buzz buzz
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.Today's edition of The Queue is a pretty short one, but it's an important one. I'm making a change to the format of this column, which will be explained in our very first question of the day. Why is it so short? When you read the answer to the question, you'll understand. I just ran out of steam after pulling that off. elstor asked... "What's with the music lately? Why did you have to start this?!" It's something we did for giggles once, people liked it, we kept doing it just for kicks. I'm pretty bored of it though! We should pick a new Whatever of the Day instead of songs. Extreme Stunt of the Day?Read this edition of The Queue while doing a kickflip out of a burning building and through the moving blades of a helicopter, then land in the middle of the ocean where you will wrestle a shark. While covered in bees.
Why Varian Wrynn is a fool (and why it may not matter)
For a while now I've been mulling over points raised by Daniel in his much-discussed article, "Why Varian Wrynn Is Right," and we've received a number of requests to address the issue from the Horde's point of view. Well...this article isn't going to do that. It started off that way, and then I realized that Varian's personal issues and the Horde's approach to the problem are really two entirely separate matters. At some point in the future, I'd like to examine the Horde's take on the newly-resurgent antagonism between the factions, because it's not something I can adequately address here without turning this into a 10,000-word tract. Today, we're going to deal almost exclusively with Varian and his share of responsibility for the current mess. I'm a little ambivalent over Blizzard's decision to include most of the backstory and explanations for Varian's behavior in a comic series, because I think it's one of the factors that's resulted the character's being poorly received by most players. Choosing to include so much of his characterization out of the game in a product most players will never read necessarily impacts how Varian's motives are going to be evaluated. If all you've got to go on is what you see of the king from ingame events...he doesn't look so great. This isn't a defense of Varian so much as a commentary on the somewhat inconsistent approach to his character that's resulted. I haven't read each of the comics, but I'm familiar with the storyline, and this article doesn't assume that you need to have read the out-of-game books or comics in order to follow the argument.
Blizzard previews issue 19 of the WoW comic book
Blizzard has posted an online preview of the next edition of the World of Warcraft comic book, issue number 19, and it's full of something we love doing: Scourge killin'. Actually, not to spoil it for you (it's only a few pages long), but it looks like the book is revisiting the old attacks on Stormwind (well at least the planned attack on Stormwind) and Ogrimmar right before the last expansion.I haven't been following the comic book super closely, but it looks like the comic's timeline has just now caught up to the Scourge invasion. It's still fun to see what was going on then, from the big throwdown (that we never actually got to see in-game) on the docks to the other big throwdown between Thrall and Garrosh. Give it a look and if you like it, keep an eye out for the new comic book issue, which should be in stores right now.
Varian Wrynn is Right
Warning: This article contains spoilers of varying intensity for the Wrathgate world event, the new Arthas Novel , and the Warcraft Comic Series. It is also 3 pages long. Be sure to click the links at the bottom to head to the next part!Among WoW players these days, it seems to be a popular opinion that King Varian Wrynn is a narrow minded short-sighted bigot who will lead the Alliance to ruin. This is an easy opinion to have, since he does show a considerable amount of anger at times when dealing with the Horde, and it's long been the general opinion that "no-one is truly evil" in the Horde and Alliance conflict. This is even the opinion of some of my fellow writers.Here's my problem with this: The underlying causes of Varian Wrynn's anger are all unconditionally justified. Varian Wrynn is not angry at the Horde because of a series of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. He's been witness to or victim of multiple wrongdoings and atrocities perpetuated by the Horde time and time again, both the new Horde and the Old. Most, if not all of these times, the wrongdoings have been the result of outright maliciousness on the part of the Horde or its members, and in the case the so-called "peaceful" New Horde, there's been no sign whatsoever that Thrall is punishing or disciplining the perpetrators of these acts, and at the least, it is clear that he is not properly dealing with the consequences.
The state of the Horde and the Alliance
Once upon a time, when the World of Warcraft was all shiny and new, things were simple: the Horde hated the Alliance and they, in turn, despised the Horde. It was a simpler time, but this wasn't just some game mechanic to facilitate PvP and hours of ganking, oh no, it was integral to the lore of Azeroth.Now, it's also worth remembering that there's no black and white in Azeroth either. The Horde aren't evil for just being the Horde, neither are the Alliance all pure as newly fallen snow. Each faction has done its fair share of pure and evil acts depending on the actions of individual heroes and the motivations of their leaders. But now we're post patch 3.1, it's time to rexamine the state of relations between the two factions. Times have changed quite drastically since we first entered Azeroth and the addition of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King have only made things much more complicated. The Wrath Gate cinematic gave us some glimpse of how the two factions are getting on in the continually evolving lore of Azeroth. While the recent trailer for the Secrets of Ulduar offered an even more promising glimpse at the deterioration of that tenuous peace.
Official Ulduar cinematic revealed
Patch 3.1 is looking more and more likely to be dropping tomorrow, now heralded by the official Ulduar trailer. No, not the preview trailer from awhile back, but the official cinematic, complete with story-progressing goodness. Go give it a watch, then come on back. Did you see it? Good!The first thing that struck me is the new face on Jaina. It looks... unpleasant. That's just me, though! It might just take some time to get used to it. Beyond that, the trailer is very very cool, and keeps the Alliance/Horde conflict in the forefront despite the departure from it for the raid zone. It reinforces my thoughts that Varian's hatred of the Horde is never going to be repaired until Garrosh is out of the picture. It also displays that the war on Ulduar isn't being supported by either the Horde or the Alliance: We're in this thing on our own. I also seem to hate Rhonin much less when Blizzard is writing his dialogue.Thanks to everyone who wrote in about this!
Christie Golden chat transcript posted
As planned, Medievaldragon hosted a live chat with author Christie Golden last night, and even if you didn't tune in, you can see the transcript right over on WorldofWar right now. It's a very interesting read, especially if you're into the lore of the book and these characters -- Golden talks about how she built up Arthas' life and relationships, and turned him from the Human prince he started out as into the (her word) "monster" he is today. And she mentions a few fun tidbits about her influence on the game -- she created the Taretha character in the Old Hillsbrad instance, and there's an NPC in the Plaguelands that bears a striking resemblance. There's also something in the Balnir Farm that she suggested they put in. You'll have to go and see for yourself what that might be.And even if you're not interested in the book and the lore, we get another little pull on the line in reference to Gilneas -- when Golden is asked what's going on at the Greymane wall, she says that she "really can't comment as to that." One more little breadcrumb in the trail leading us to either the next big content patch or the next expansion.Definitely give the chat a look if you've got any interest at all in the Arthas book (which comes out in just over a week on April 21st) or the history of the game's current big bad.
PETA to hold WoW rally to protest seal slaughter
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/PETA_to_hold_WoW_rally_to_protest_seal_slaughter_2'; Following a trend set by Ron Paul supporters and scientists who held a conference in WoW, PETA's busting out the digital chops to protest the slaughter of Canadian seals. As the in-game rationale goes, the Alliance has many times asked Warchief Thrall to stop the senseless killing. However, motivated by the sizeable and profitable fur-trade, Thrall has so far refused to take action. The Horde has continued in their efforts to farm seal fur.This is where you come in. There's a small team of four Horde seal-killers harvesting their prey in the Howling Fjord. You can join PETA in saving lives by hooking up with other activists, and stopping the Horde seal hunters cold in their tracks. This is taking place on Saturday, Aprill 11 at 1pm EST on the Whisperwind server. The PETA group doesn't have any registration requirements, but you do need to be able to access Northrend content to get there.By holding an in-game event to help promote awareness of the seals' plight, PETA may find themselves on the list of WoW's most notable political contributions. The World of Warcraft reaches entire demographics that might otherwise be inured to political commentary, so it's a pretty good move on their part. PETA's blog does not directly reference any in-game equivalents to PETA, but you can imagine any activists in attendance will make a few jokes about being the legitimate P.E.T.A.'s Little P.I.T.A.
Golden's Arthas delivers the lore goodness
A note from Alex Ziebart: When Simon and Schuster sent Daniel and I a pair of free, early review copies of Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, we immediately went about planning how we were going to handle a 2-man review. We've been good friends for years, and one of our favorite past times is debating things like this back and forth. We rarely agree on books, and we can argue our sides until we're blue in the face. We were going to write an Alex vs Daniel knock down, drag out argument about Arthas and it was going to rule. Unfortunately, things didn't go our way.When we finished reading the book, we got together to talk about it. It was... unsettling. We completely agreed with each other on almost every point that was raised. The high points and the low points, we were completely on the same spectrum. That's just not right. We decided that, rather than write two reviews parroting each other, we would just go with the one. Daniel's review says everything I want to say better than I could have said it, so once you read what he says, just pretend you can hear me say "Ditto" at the end. Take it away, Danny! As WoW Insider's self-proclaimed junior lieutenant Lore Nerd, when Simon & Schuster so generously offered to send us a couple of free advanced copies of Arthas, the new World of Warcraft book by Christie Golden, I was all over that. As soon as the book showed up on my doorstep, I turned on the answering machine, grabbed a soda, popped some popcorn, curled up in my favorite chair, and pretty much read the whole thing straight through. The only breaks I took were to discuss various scenes and their ramifications for lore with Alex. And by discuss, I mean "fanboy out." But I am being completely serious when I say, of all the Warcraft manga, comic books, and novels I have read, Arthas has the most solid, balanced writing and best realized characters. It's not a perfect book, but it's a very worthwhile read for anyone who has even the slightest interest in the why and how of that big armored dude up on the Frozen Throne.
The Queue: Extreme Edition
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. Welcome back to an extreme late night edition of The Queue. What's so extreme about it? Read on after the break. Why is it coming out so late at night? Well, I've been busy today. I've finished up leveling my last two characters while two of my accounts are linked via the recruit-a-friend program. Now my Paladin and Warlock are level 60, and my set is complete. WTB account wide achievements now, please. "K. Thx. Bai," as the kids like to say.Dan Asked... "Does anyone know who the three characters in all the BlizzCon announcement graphics are (see posting earlier this week)? One looks just like Thrall, but the other two seem pretty vague... a paladin and some sort of demonic rogue looking thing (maybe an Orc)?"
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Shaman
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twentieth 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. Long long ago, human beings all around the world (of Earth, not Warcraft) investigated different ways of describing how the world around them worked. Many different cultures found that the materials they encountered seemed divided into four or five separate elements, each with its own properties: earth, fire, water, and air. Space, "void," or "aether" was often noted as the fifth element, or, as in the case of China, the understanding of these elements looked a lot different but in the end produced a similar sort of system.In Azeroth, however, these ideas about the elements never got swallowed up by modern science and the periodic table of elements. They turned out to be real forces in the world, each with its own set of elemental spirits, which people could communicate and cooperate with. Shamans are the masters of this magical task, charged with helping to maintain the balance of nature in a very different way from druids. While druids are focused more on nature as a system of energy, life, and growth, shamans focus more on the spirits of the land, flames, waters and skies as they all interact with one another. They gain great wisdom by learning of the different characteristics of these elements, and in turn bring this wisdom to the people they serve.
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.
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?
Varian Wrynn hates the Horde
It really can't be disputed at this point: Varian Wrynn is not fond of the Horde, at all. There will be no Jaina-style mash notes to Thrall coming from Varian any time soon.If you saw the brief window of time before the launch of Wrath where Varian and his allies talked about the onslaught of Northrend and thought maybe Horde and Alliance could cooperate to take down Arthas, think again. As long as Varian is the King of Stormwind and de-facto leader of the Alliance (since neither Tyrande nor Magni seemed particularly interested in the gig, and nobody likes Frandal) then there's not going to be anything even remotely resembling peace between the Alliance and the Horde.Is that bad? Is how Varian is going about his leadership inherently wrong? As someone who plays Horde and Alliance fairly equally, and tries to at least keep my characters personalities distinct (I don't actually RP much, but anyone who plays with me knows that I tend to play my tauren warrior very differently than my draenei shaman, for instance) I find the addition of the former Lo'Gosh to the mix of world leaders a very interestingly divisive one. Varian is not here to make friends, he's here to kick ass.The discussion that follows behind the jump is going to be hugely spoiler heavy. Please be warned.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Yogg-Saron and Warchief Garrosh Hellscream
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. Wrath of the Lich King is finally here, and with it comes a whole load of new lore and stories to discover. I hope you guys are reading your quest text! I imagine all of these new quests will bring up a lot of new questions as well, and to that I say bring it on. For now, though, let's field some questions from last week.Rosa asked...Personally, I'm tired of Outland and demons and fantasy-tech and I'm glad to see Warcraft going gothic again, buuuut there's one thing that I love about Outland and I'm hoping it's not gone forever. Ethereals are, like, totally awesome, and my favourite unplayable race in WoW. The question I have is, do we see these guys anywhere in Wrath? And if not, do you think that we'll see them ever again?
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Horde Warrior
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the thirteenth 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. The Warrior is not merely a well-trained fighter who loves his weapons and armor and takes great care to wield them well -- inside each one is a boiling cauldron of rage and passion. By and large, warriors feel at home on the battlefield because it is the one place where they can express themselves, where they can finally let go of all the restraint society imposes on them and unleash all their emotions. Without his raging passion, a person would be much better suited to some calmer form of work -- it is this unquenchable fire which sustains a warrior, driving him into action in the midst of mortal peril.Alliance warriors tend to focus more on training and weapon mastery, sometimes downplaying their rage so much that you hardly even see it. Some warriors like this (even in the Horde sometimes) may be so stoic that even they do not believe that they have any emotions whatsoever, although I doubt anyone who watched them fight could really agree. Something's got to make you willing to put on all that armor and risk death every day.But Horde warriors are more likely to display their rage, bloodlust, and other aggressive emotions much more freely. Of course, it's possible that a Horde warrior could have a collection of stuffed animals, write poetry, and even play hopscotch with children, but their rage lurks deep within, and the essence of their profession is to let it loose.
Horde plans attack for Northrend on a map without Northrend
Reader Dale from Grim Batol-EU (I don't think that's his character name) sent in a screenshot of the war map the leaders of the Horde stand around while debating their assault on Northrend in the latest (and probably final) stage of the Scourge Invasion. He sent it to us wondering if it holds any hints of future expansions, because the map includes a number of land masses we haven't seen in-game and have only appeared on a few maps of the world we've seen. I think there is something much more dire in the image.There is no next expansion. Why? Because Northrend isn't even on that map. The Horde is using a map that lacks Northrend to discuss an assault on Northrend. I think I have some idea of how their conversation really went down at their war council. Check it out behind the cut below.
Top ten reasons Thrall got pwned by Garrosh
So, there's this Wrath-release event happening. One of the side-plays during the event is a duel between Thrall and Garrosh Hellscream. And while Thrall was busting out all the Shaman mojo he could, he ultimately loses to Garrosh. Over and over. Why, Thrall? How could it come to this? Where did we go wrong? In an attempt to understand how the Warchief could be struck low by the young pup, we here at WoW Insider bring you the Top Ten Reasons Thrall got pwned by Garrosh:
