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Know Your Lore: The Old Horde
Welcome to Know Your Lore, WoW.com's weekly column about the story behind the game we play. Last week we discussed the formation of the Alliance in response to the Horde invasion of and destruction of the Kingdom of Azeroth via the Black Portal, and the Alliance's eventual triumph over the Horde, expedition to Draenor, and the events of Warcraft III that saw the destruction of Lordaeron and creation of a new order. This week, we talk about the events that caused those events. Yes, this week we're discussing the origins of the Horde, that organization that began as the manipulated, deceived and then ultimately demonic blood addicted orcs of Draenor. It's not a simple tale: we've already told parts if it before when we discussed Gul'dan, Ner'zhul, Teron Gorefiend, Grom Hellscream and many others. It all really began untold thousands of years ago on the planet Argus, home world of the Eredar and their Draenei, or exiled, cousins. Thus, ironically, while the existence of the Horde caused the creation of the Alliance, it was an Alliance race that helped start the events that led to the creation of the Horde. Symmetry in origin.
Ask a Faction Leader: Prophet Velen
WoW.com's prestige in the community has afforded us the opportunity to speak to major Azerothian leadership figures on any subject, and we're letting you, the reader, Ask A Faction Leader! We recently spoke to Garrosh Hellscream, leader of the Horde's Warsong Offensive, and he shed light on several key issues, including moral dilemmas, basic campfires, faction changes, draenei donk, and the merits of getting eaten by sharks. In this installment of Ask A Faction Leader, we'll be sitting with venerable draenei leader Prophet Velen. Dear Velen, Being a prophet, you are probably aware of forthcoming cataclysm. With Thunder Bluff built on 4 mesas, I am worried about safety of the city and its citizens. Since you guys possess some kind of expertise in crashing things (specifically capital cities) I was wondering if you could lend some advice for case it gets struck down. Best Regards, Baine Bloodhoof Velen replies: Ah, it's good to see Horde leaders initiating a rapport. While I'm certainly not an architect or artificer -- trades better left to younger and stronger draenei -- I have been around for quite a while, so I can give some advice regarding the construction of your city.
Spiritual Guidance: Tier 9 healing bonuses
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new UI and addons blog for WoW. A brief look at the tier 9 sets and the origins of those who it is named after: Velen and Zabra Hexx. We're getting more news as the weeks go by. Last week, tier 9 information was released. As some of you may know, the upcoming Crusader's Coliseum is slated to drop tier 9 items. All classes are getting three levels of the latest tier. I'm assuming one set drops from normal (10-man), heroic (25-man), and heroic hard mode.
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%
Reader UI of the Week: Twigleaf's healer UI
Reader UI of the Week is back! Each week WoW.com will bring you a fresh look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@gmail.com. Let it never be said that I don't listen. After last week's sparse screenshot, many of you said you wanted to see a UI in real action, and especially a healer UI. I got a number of good submissions, but Twigleaf's (of Unity on Velen) stood out from the pack by being both very functional and very pretty. Everything has a place, the screen is information-packed, and nothing is ugly. If this was my UI, I would move the center scrolling combat text up a bit, since I like to keep the very center of my screen clear to watch for things. But hey, it's not my UI. Let's see what Twigleaf has to say about it.
Retaliation battlegroup down again
For the second Tuesday in a row around the same time (9:00-9:30 pm EST-ish), the US Retaliation battlegroup has crashed. Blizzard has confirmed that it's performing urgent maintenance on the hardware of the affected realms, and they'll provide an update at 11:00 PM EST/8:00 PM PST. Hmmm. Makes you wonder if whatever caused last week's crash was accidentally rolled back during server maintenance earlier today.The following are the affected realms: Area 52, Auchindoun, Azuremyst, Blade's Edge, Blood Furnace, Coilfang, Dawnbringer, Exodar, Fizzcrank, Galakrond, Ghostlands, Grizzly Hills, Shattered Halls, Terokkar, The Scryers, The Underbog, Velen, and Zangarmarsh. My guild's on Retaliation and has consequently found itself without something to raid for the second Tuesday running. Last week their solution was to take off to Mug'thol and do a level 1 Hogger raid, complete with designated tanks and healers, damage meters, and -- to top things off -- a bonafide ninja looter of the Malachite drop. Our server might be down, but our hallowed traditions remain.
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?"
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?"
All the World's a Stage: So you still want to be a Shaman
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twenty-first 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. There's something about shamans that gets us thinking and talking. Whether it's something as simple as the proper pronunciation of "shamanism," or something as profound as a shaman's humility in relation to the source of his or her power, the lore and ideology of the shaman class often resonates with players more than many others in the World of Warcraft.One reason for this is that shamans have been such a pivotal force in the lore, possibly more than any other class in the game (depending on your point of view). Other classes, such as warriors, or paladins, come as a sort of pre-defined archetype in fantasy games that don't seem all that different from their original forms in other fantasy settings. The actual beliefs of a priest, for instance, don't seem to matter so much to many players, so long as the class can heal like we expect them to. Even the druids, with their central place in night elf society, sometimes seem more like nature-based magic users rather than true philosophers in their own right.Shamans, however, have a major burden to bear in one of the central plot shifts of the Warcraft storyline -- namely that the orcs, who entered the Warcraft stage in the Warcraft 1: Orcs and Humans computer game as rampaging demonic evildoers bent on destruction, and actually turned out to be a peaceful race that just got tricked into being evil. Shamanism had to be much much more than just an archetype with some special powers -- it had to be a way of thinking, a system of belief that could be taken over by demonic corruption and yet at the same time act as a beacon of truth and goodness once that the demonic taint had been defeated. Shamanism has got to be complex and profound, or else the story wouldn't make sense.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Paladin
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the fourteenth 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. You might say that paladins are the guardians at the gates of hell -- they fight evil wherever it penetrates into their world and they take the fight to the evil's source in the hope of quenching it forever. Although they focus on guarding their people from undead and demonic forces on the rise, paladins actually stand against evil everywhere, including the evil in their own hearts.Being a paladin means that you have a relationship of some sort with the Holy Light, that mysterious force of goodness and faith that flows to some degree within all living beings with positive intentions. Most paladins (and many priests) believe that when you do something that you believe to be good, the power of the Light increases in you and your connection to the rest of creation is strengthened, whereas doing something evil (such as acts of greed, despair, or vengeance) will darken the universe and weaken your connection to it. Whether this belief system is a religion or a philosophy is open to interpretation, and seems to depend in some part upon which race you are.There are three sorts of paladins in World of Warcraft, aligned with the humans, the draenei, and the blood elves. All of these share certain similarities, but each has its own differences as well.
All the World's a Stage: So you still want to be a blood elf, part 3
The Sunwell Redemption The final tie between Kael'thas and Quel'thalas was broken when Kael'thas' minions returned to take back by force the naaru, M'uru, which he had once given to his kindred so freely. Lady Liadrin and her Blood Knights would have been left without any of their powers had the naaru A'dal not reached out a hand to save her and her people. Lady Liadrin was deeply regretful of what she and her Blood Knights had done to M'uru, but A'dal forgave them, saying that M'uru had known all along what his role would be in this unfolding drama. The naaru extended his own Light energies to Liadrin and her Blood Knights, and encouraged them to assist him to stop the terrible threat that Kael'thas now represented to all the people of Azeroth and Outland. The former "Lord of the Blood Elves," now quite insane, had brought the remaining strength of his forces back to Azeroth and taken over the Sunwell Island, just across the channel from Silvermoon City, and planned to use the hidden energies of the Sunwell's magic to try and summon Kil'jaeden into the world. The blood elves and draenei of Shattrath united to overcome this threat, and as their forces ventured deeper and deeper into the Sunwell fortifications Kael'thas had set up, they found that M'uru himself was enslaved as a guard the site where Kil'jaeden would be summoned. The heroes were forced to destroy his weakened body and stop the entropic energies which now began to vacuum up all life around it as the last of his Light energies seemed to drain away. At last, of course, the heroes faced Kil'jaeden himself at the site of the Sunwell (perhaps your own character was among them), and, with the help of some dragons, they drove him back into the Sunwell Portal, away from Azeroth. The draenei prophet Velen arrived, along with Lady Liadrin, and spoke to the heroes, as he placed the last remaining fragment of M'uru's body into the Sunwell. The result is one of the best scenes in Warcraft lore, which you too can look on, as the last spark of M'uru's life reignites the Sunwell with the energy of the Holy Light, restoring once and for all, that magical life energy the blood elves need, as well as something far greater, something with the power to rebirth the entire civilization of the blood elves: Faith.
Behind the Curtain: OH NOES POLITICS
Before we get started, a few caveats. I'm no more politically aware than the average person, probably a little less. I've never studied politics in any seat of learning past High School, nor have I studied it on my time for fun. I may have made mistakes below, or came to false conclusions regarding the nature of the political systems I've outlined, so any mistakes are the result of that. That, or the fact that I'm loaded with the cold, and I've taken so much over-the-counter medicine today, that huffing paint is probably the next logical step in my intoxication. What with Election Day fast approaching for my estranged colonial cousins across the pond, my thoughts have turned to politics of late. I got to thinking about the conjunction of politics and MMOs, and indeed if there even was such a thing. Do any modern MMOs have a recognisable political system? Is there even a place for politics to play a role in MMOs? What I thought I'd do is have a look at a handful of forms of government and imagine how they might be applied to MMOs, and see if that can't get a discussion going. In short, I want you to do my work for me.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Alliance leaders and strange mythology
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week Alex Ziebart answers your quests about the lore in the World of Warcraft. If you have any questions, no matter how big or small they might be, ask them in the comments section below and we'll try to answer it in a future edition. We're all busy people, so let's jump right in here. Sorano asked...Has Gelbin Mekkatorque ever done something to contribute to the world around him? Poor little guy seems to do nothing nowadays. I'm sure as leader of the Gnomes, he could do a lot to help the people of Azeroth.He does things, but they're not portrayed in WoW very well. It's mostly things you will find in the RPG books. Mekkatorque helps design the various siege weaponry the Alliance uses (steam tanks, etc), and works heavily on figuring out ways to take back Gnomeregan from the ferocious level 30 elites and, more importantly, clean up the radiation.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a draenei
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the eighth 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 draenei are one of Warcraft's more unique contributions to the realm of fantasy fiction, the one player race without no real precedent in earlier fantasy worlds. These are not your typical elves, orcs and dwarves borrowed from Tolkien or Dungeons and Dragons; the draenei are tall, with hooves, tails, horns and even face-tendrils -- but they are noble and spiritual people, the last remnants of an ancient civilization of magic and beauty.To begin thinking about what it must be like to live as a draenei, imagine how the human race might be many thousands of years into the future, maybe a quarter of a million years from now. Whatever technology those people might have would probably seem like magic to us. Our descendants might unravel the mysteries of biology to such a degree that they can halt the aging process and live as long as they want to. They may be able to tap on sources of power we haven't even imagined, and act with motivations and purposes we could scarcely understand.The draenei as a people were once like this, 25,000 years before the setting of World of Warcraft. Even at that time, they were already ancient in their history and advanced far beyond what you and I might understand. Their world, called Argus, was a prosperous society full of great achievements and magical wonders, quite unlike anything we see today. They had a different name then, however -- they were called, the "eredar" -- a name which now upsets the draenei as a painful reminder of everything they have lost, the corruption, the betrayal and the near extermination of everything they have ever known and loved.
Best starting race
I've been leveling a few Draenei alts off and on and finally figured out just why it is that I keep rolling the damn things in addition to my beloved Tauren; their starting quests rock. You wake from stasis, meet the locals, save a princess, make early ties to the Alliance and find out why there's a good reason the some of 'em won't trust you right off the bat, discover nefarious deeds afoot, fight a dragon, and then save your people and get a cool tabard. "Find your way back to the Outland, Hero of Argus," Exarch Admetius tells you, in a nice preview of things to come, and Velen has a good lore moment with you shortly afterwards.Having leveled a toon out of every starting area to at least 20, it's hard not to notice that some areas make it a lot easier than others. I don't mean the general ease of leveling per se, but just how fast the time seems to fly by. For all that a certain percentage of the playerbase frowns on RP on non-RP servers, most peoples' favorite quests do have an element of RP to them, or at least the RP sense of being fully engaged with the world. And in that respect the Draenei starting zones are, in my opinion, unparalleled. If I had to rank them --
Awesome WoW art by pulyx
Reader and artist pulyx sent us a link to his profile on Deviantart, and before I went, I wasn't sure to expect, as the stuff on DA seems to run the gamut. But once I got there, I was surprised to find some pretty amazing WoW art.Quite a few of his pieces are just colored by him (with line art done by someone else), but what's there looks great in terms of both lines and colors. Don't miss his own character (which I thought looked a little Hellboy-ish, and I discovered pulyx is no stranger to the work of Mike Mignola), as well as some great renditions of Arthas (before he got creepy), Uther's Tribute, Kael'thas, the Prophet Velen, Illidan, and even a rip-roaring Ragnaros battle that he did as a present for a guild he's friends with. Love the Thunderfury-wielding main tank.Good stuff. He mentions that he has done some character commissions, and his prices aren't too bad. He mentions that he can't send the original lineart (shipping problems), but it seems like either that won't be necessary, or that you could work something out with him. If you've been thinking about immortalizing your character with some great WoW art, this might be the guy to do it.
Six North American realms to open for BC
Blizzard has been telling us for a while that they will be launching new realms when the Burning Crusade hits (they'd be crazy not to). But what they haven't told us was how many, which kind, and most importantly, what their names will be. Haven't told us until now, that is. I present to you the following post from Drysc: We'll be launching the following six realms with the release of The Burning Crusade expansion on January 16, at 12:01 AM EST. Nagrand - PvE, Oceanic - Bloodlust battlegroup Velen - PvE, Pacific Coilfang - PvP, Pacific Terokkar - PvE, Central Exodar - PvE, Eastern Auchindoun - PvP, Eastern The majority of these realms will be placed in a new battlegroup, the name of which has yet to be announced. These are new non-transfer realms and as such the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj will be closed and they will not be open to character transfers for six months. Six realms seems a little skimpy to me; I think it's a safe bet that they'll be opening more either with the BC launch or shortly afterwards. The names follow the trend of BC-themed names that we saw with the European servers, which is cool. I like the new flavor they bring to my realm list. Speaking of the names, Drysc tells us that Auchindoun is pronounced "Aw-kin-dune." Good to know.Will you be rolling on one of these new servers when you get the expansion, or staying with your old home? Me, I could never leave Shadow Council, but I'm sentimental like that.
