WotLK Beta Blog – The Event That Sold Me on WotLK
DISCLAIMER: If you plan on doing all the quests and enjoy being surprised by exciting events (like the Alliance Onyxia event or the Nagrand Thrall Event), DO NOT read the entry! This is going to be filled with spoilers of what I consider to be the most epic event in the history of WoW. This is the event Blizzard has referred to as the end of "Act 1".
I have made an image album for all the events if this questline that you can see here.
One major complaint people make about WoW is how static the world is. This event will be shocking for them.
Heroes rise. Battles are fought. People die. This questline has mystery, intrigue and betrayal.
Blizzard wants the encounter with Arthas to be the final culmination of WotLK. They want the fight to mean something. When Burning Crusade was coming out, all the hype surrounded Illidan, but he was mostly absent aside from a few questlines and finally the encounter in the Black Temple. Even then, many people felt that the whole encounter was shallow because we didn't get a chance to interact with Illidan much. It was made even more insignificant since his fight wasn't the final fight of the game. Instead, the Sunwell Plateau comes out with Kil'Jaeden. We've been told that the final raid of WotLK will be the Icecrown Citadel with Arthas. He is the focus of this expansion. The fight will have major impact on us because we will have seen him around the world, he will have spoken to us directly, beating us down every step of the way.
For the Horde, the event series is just a natural progression of the Forsaken's story from vanilla WoW. Ever since Sylvanas and the Forsaken broke free of the Lich King's grasp, they've been working on building a plague to wipe out the Scourge in vengeance (and if it wipes out all other life on Azeroth, oh well, vengeance is worth it). In Howling Fjord, we see the Royal Apothecary Society once more working on the plague and having both some minor successes and major failures (as usual, mainly failures).
Eventually this questline takes you to the Venomspite settlement in the Dragonblight. It is here that the Forsaken make a breakthrough. They finally stumble upon a blight string that seems to obliterate the Scourge (in the aptly named quest "The Forsaken Blight: How Not to Kill Yourself"). You take the Scourge blight to an apothecary in the main Horde settlement in Dragonblight, Agmar's Hammer. Overlord Agmar eventually sends you to the front lines to provide aid to Saurfang the Younger, who has now taken up the armor of his father and leads the Horde at the Wrathgate.
The Wrathgate is HUGE. It reminds me of the Black Gate of Mordor in Lord of the Rings. It is the barrier between Icecrown Glacier and the Dragonblight. The word is that it is infused with the blood of Yogg-Saron and the gate itself breathes.
For the Alliance, the questline is a progression of one of the Naxxramas quests in the Eastern Plaguelands. In the original incarnation of Naxxramas, once Kel'Thuzad was defeated someone got his phylactery to turn in for kill credit. The phylactery was turned in to Father Inigo Montoy in Light's Hope Chapel. The Argent Dawn never received the phylactery.
In the Alliance questline, the player finds out that Inigo Montoy was actually a lich in his own right, but more importantly, just another pawn of the Lich King. He brought Kel'Thuzad's phylactery back to Northrend to allow him to regenerate. You are sent to destroy Montoy in his lich form. After this, you are sent to the Wrathgate in support of Bolvar Fordragon and the Alliance forces in the area. Yes, Fordragon is leading the Alliance forces here. King Varian Wrynn has returned to Stormwind to rule his kingdom and has ousted Katrina Prestor. All of this transpires in the WoW comic book.
From here, both the Horde and the Alliance questlines are the same temporarily. Both sides go request the aid of Alexstrasza, the red dragonflight aspect. After gaining her favor, she tells you to return to the Wrathgate with the words that you will have the support of the red dragonflight.
At this point, words cannot even describe the amazing things Blizzard has done for this questline. So you should just watch this video and find out yourself.
Alexstrasza shows up to control the situation, but the damage is done. Here, the questlines split again.
The Horde take Saurfang the Younger's armor back to his father, who is in Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra assisting Garrosh Hellscream. You get to Overlord Saurfang and he warns you of an emergency. The city of Orgrimmar has been placed under martial law and a state of emergency has been announced. He orders you to report to Thrall immediately.
It was at this point in the questline that I started shaking with anticipation.
The Alliance take Bolvar Fordragon's armor back to King Varian Wrynn in Stormwind. He is thrown into a blind rage from the loss of his most trusted friend. He declares that it is an act of war from the Horde against the Alliance and the Forsaken have plagued the ruins of Lordaeron for far to long. He decides to muster the military in the region and march on the Undercity. Jaina Proudmoore arrives to ask what is going on and rushes off to go warn Thrall.
The Horde are teleported to the gates of Orgrimmar and the situation is grim. Armed guards are everywhere. As far as the eye can see, tents have been set up. Forsaken refugees are pouring into town from the zeppelin tower. In the center of town, all the trainers and shopkeepers have gathered, demanding answers to what is going on, but receiving none. You make your way to Thrall's chamber and Lady Sylvanas is standing beside him. Before he can debrief you, a giant portal opens up and Jaina emerges. She warns that King Wrynn has mustered the military and is planning aggressive action.
Thrall informs Jaina that it was not an attack from the Horde. The Horde was betrayed as well. The entire scheme was a plot by Varimathras and Grand Apothecary Putress. They reverse engineered the blight for the event at the Wrathgate. They have also taken control of the Undercity and almost killed Sylvanas in the process.
Yes, that is right, the Undercity is no longer accessible because it is FILLED WITH DEMONS.
From here, the Horde are sent to the front gates of the Undercity to meet with Vol'jin for the epic climax. The Alliance are sent to meet with the King's companions Broll Bearmantle and Valeera Sanguinar at the sewer entrance to the Undercity.
With seige cannons bombarding the walls, each side begins their charge into the city, not knowing the other faction is there.
The Horde, lead by Thrall and Sylvanas, begin their battle in the upper courtyard and head into the central city and eventually the Royal Sanctum. This is so amazingly epic. Due to buffs from Thrall and Sylvanas, every hit you make packs a punch and your health is boosted to about 50k. The battle is large. It is wave after wave of apothecaries, abominations and all sorts fo blight beasts. With each step of progress you make, Varimathras is there taunting you and sending giant bosses at the forces. The Alliance, lead by Varian and Jaina, head through the sewers, chasing after Putress. Battling through the bowels of the city, the fact the same type of attacks, only lead by Putress instead of Varimathras.
Finally, the Horde makes it to the Royal Sanctum and engage in a huge battle with Varimathras in which Varimathras falls. The Alliance catch up with Putress and slay him. But just before the Alliance can reclaim the city as their own, they hear the battle cry of Thrall and the Horde forces in the sanctum. Varian, determined to obtain victory, decides to now take the battle to Thrall.
Back in the throne room, the Horde forces are shocked at the arrival of the King and his forces. Varian, remarks upon how the "savages" have been allowed to remain in the lands too long and how it is now their fault that Bolvar is dead. In an effort to destroy them once an for all, he charges into battle with Thrall. Before the forces clash, Jaina acts. Mourning what has happened and what this means for the future, she flash freezes the Alliance forces and mass teleports them all back to Stormwind.
The Undercity once more has been taken by the Horde, but the day is not won. No longer is it a cold war between the Horde and the Alliance. No longer is it just proxy conflicts. By the hand of Varian Wrynn, the 4th War has officially started.
In the words of Thrall: "It ends like it began.... All that we have fought for in this world is lost. The hopes and dreams carried by my father and mother.... by Doomhammer... gone..."
Sorry, but I forgot to take screenshots of the gear you get as a reward, but you can see that at these two WoWWiki links: Horde. Alliance.
I apologize for writing this huge post, and to be honest, I hope very few people read this. This is such an amazing event though that I felt I just had to talk about it. This event resonated heavily with me because I guess that I had become very comfortable with the way things were. No matter how many times Lady Prestor was revealed to be Onyxia, the next day she was right back standing at Fordragon's side. No matter how many times the ogre leader of Brackenwall was scared off, he was always back the next day. I'm not used to the death of people having an actual impact on the world around me.
All of this is done through world phasing. None of it is from separate instances or anything. At one point, I had left the Undercity before the final quest to do some other things in beta and I forgot about the demons and accidently teleported back there through a Dalaran portal to respec and was instantly curbstomped by demons. Once you start the final part of the questline, both the Undercity and Orgrimmar are unavailable for services until you finish it.
I hate to sounds like a slobbering fanboy apologist, but this sort of event is just the kind of thing that sells me on the expansion and makes me forget any other complaint I could possibly have.
WotLK Beta Blog – World Phasing and You
In two months, the WoW buzz is going to be all about world phasing. It is JUST that good.
World phasing allows multiple people to see the same part of the world in different ways. Through quests and events, you can change the world (Granted, it'll be only for you, but that doesn't change the impact). It is basically it is like every person has their own reality of the world game world but all realities are compressed into one, with each player able to interact with other players there but every player sees their own reality.
I never played more than a half hour on a death knight character so I didn't experience that zone's phasing so my first encounter with it was in Grizzly Hills. The first Horde town in the Grizzly Hills is Conquest Hold, lead by the merciless orc Krenna. After doing some quests for her and other NPCs in the zone, you realize how brutal she is. Someone lied? Break their legs! There's a group of human wilderness hunters passing through? Slay them all. While she may be brutal and quick to anger, her level-headed sister Gorganna assists you in circumventing carrying out some of Krenna's orders. At one point you even get a letter from Gorganna in the mail warning you that Krenna's wrath may soon be upon you.
In the center of Conquest Hold is a giant pit for a Ring of Blood style quest chain that awards some nice blue quality gloves. You fight a couple various different enemies including a bear, a stone golem and a gladiator orc. The final event, however, is a showdown between Krenna and Gorganna in which Krenna falls. We've encountered plenty of events like this before, so I figured that this event was nothing special. It reminded me of the questline in Dustwallow Marsh where you challenge and defeat the ogre leader of Brackenwall Village and he runs off, only to be back standing there 5 minutes later. This time it was different though. When I went back into the main hold, Krenna was no longer there. Her sister had taken up the mantle of leadership from where Krenna used to be. Imagine if when you scared off that ogre in Brackenwall, he never came back.
This is one of the things many people have been wanting for ages. It is a world that changes with us. While not a fully realized changing world, this is a major step in the right direction for WoW. It almost seems like phasing hasn't been getting enough buzz, I haven't but a few people in the blogosphere talk about it so I wonder why Blizzard doesn't hype it up a little more. While it would be nice to see world phasing retroactively added to the past content, I understand what a monumental amount of man hours that would take to do that and how in all honesty, it isn't worth it. Though this all does make me very excited for any future expansions and whenever Blizzard DOES make a new MMO so we can see a ground up implementation of things like this.
P.S.
There was a major event I recently encountered in my questing that heavily relies on world phasing, but I am going to put that into a separate blog post because it is filled with HEAVY spoilers since it is what Blizzard considers to be the end of "Act 1" of WotLK and I don't want to accidentally spoil it for those that don't want to know.
WotLK Beta Blog – Grizzly Hills
The gallery for the Grizzly Hills images can be found here.
I know I haven't been blogging much lately and I really should write more. I would use the excuse that my work has blocked my website and because of that I've lost out on prime blogging time, but really it is just that I've been spending far too much time in game. I have all the content for a couple updates, I've just been too lazy to do them. Currently, I have completed all of Grizzly Hills, all of the Dragonblight and majority of Zul'drak. I'm just going to do updates of full zone now instead of partial ones just to get them out of the way.
With both Howling Fjord and Borean tundra being the 69-72 zones, Grizzly Hills and Dragonblight are the 72-75 zones. I figured Dragonblight would be more epic (it is), so I wanted to save it and headed to Grizzly Hills first.
Grizzly Hills is somewhat quaint. The zone almost seems far removed from the rest of the world. There is very little scourge presence and all of that is just at Drak'tharon keep, on the border of Zul'drak.
Within the zone there are four central storylines: the rise of Drakuru, the return of Arugal, the influence of Yogg-Saron, and the mission of the Iron Dwarves. Also, it is the first time that non-Death Knight characters will encounter world phasing. (I plan to write another entry to explain that and why it is so great.)
Of all of the questlines, the Arugal quest is probably the most minor. It's a by the books story of how Arugal was returned to life by the power of the Lich King and has been turning everyone in the zone to Worgen. This obviously culminates with you having to slay him once more.
For the Iron Dwarves, you finally get to see why they were taking control of the hill giants and sending them north. The giants in the region are locked in a war with the Iron Dwarves and have been trying to destroy the Iron Dwarf city of Thor Modan. This fight escalates and will hopefully culminate in the Storm Peaks.
As for the other two questlines, I wasn't able to the Yogg-Saron questline due to a bug with the world phasing at the time. If you do not know who Yogg-Saron is, don't worry, the name didn't immediately stick out to me either. Apparently it is the true name of the giant C'thun like Forgotten One that Arthas and Anub'arak faced in Azjol'nerub in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.
I did however do the Drakuru questline, which... well, this one is too good to spoil. This chapter of the questline has a jaw-dropping climax in Drak'tharon keep that has far reaching repercussions.
Drak'tharon keep on its own is a fairly fun instance. It was a quick run for us (about a half hour for a full run) with some enjoyable fights. While two bosses are just generic tank and spanks, the other two (a lich and an ascended prophet in skeletal Hakkar form).
While the Grizzly Hills overall are nice, I think that it will be the most overlooked zone. It is not as compelling as the Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra and doesn't have the epic questlines that Dragonblight. It is not a bad zone. In fact, I enjoyed it, but other than the Drakuru questline, I think Grizzly Hills will be overshadowed by everywhere else in the expansion.
How Many People Really Care About Lore?
Sorry about this post being so poorly written, I just hastily wrote it up at work today before my thoughts on it left me.
While questing last night in the WotLK beta, I struck up a conversation with a guildmate about the lore of the dragons in the Dragonblight. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ll let you know that I consider myself a well versed lore-whore for WoW. On the border of being an apologist, I can’t get enough of the lore. It’s one of the main reasons I play the game. I’ve always loved a good story. This all made me wonder… How many people don’t care about lore at all? How many just see some NPC with an exclamation mark over their head and just read what they need to do and none of the flavor text? I would bet that it is a lot more than you would first think.
It breaks my heart every time I strike up a conversation with someone in WoW and they say things like “Who’s Arthas?” or “Who’s Deathwing?”. I guess a lot of people just see the game as just a bunch of numbers of who or what they need to kill/rescue/destroy/recover. To that extent, it would not really matter where or what they killing/resucing/destroying/recovering as long as there was another quest beyond it. I just love the story. I don’t want to get into the whole “Warcraft is just a rip-off of Warhammer” argument, because while I think it may have started off that way, the Warcraft universe has really evolved into something unique and both IPs are filled with rich and unique lore.
Another reason I have been thinking of this subject is because I’ve been rewatching the Warhammer videos that they had been putting out each month. I could be wrong, but I think Mythic really overestimates how much people care about the lore. I don’t mean this in a negative way, it is just how I think people are. Granted, Warhammer will probably receive a huge following from the tabletop crowd, but beyond that, I think the interest in lore will be limited. In the videocasts Paul Barnett and Jeff Hickman do about the game, they talk as if all the players will have a deep pride in their side. I don’t think this will be the case. Most people will probably make their decision because of it’s the ‘side their friend plays’ or ‘these ones look coolest’ and nothing more.
The Tome of Knowledge has been one of the main features that people have been boasting makes Warhammer unique. It contains everything you could want to know about anything. If I recall correctly, it even has lore entry for every NPC you meet in game. I doubt this will get much use. Even for just the central lore figures in the Warhammer universe, I don’t think people are going to want to sit there and read pages of lore on NPCs. Just as they’ll skip past the quest dialog just to find their objective, I predict they’ll never read about the lore because it keeps them from the game itself.
As for the American/European playerbase of WoW, I would guess that at most, 5% of people even care about any of the lore. Maybe one of my future projects, if I don’t end up being too lazy, will be polling a bunch of people across different servers on if they know or even care about any lore.
WotLK Beta Blog – Initial Dalaran Visit
Just a short little blog post to tide everyone over before the Grizzly Hills stuff. As usual, all the images for the post are here.
Lady Sylvanas finally got her proper model.
I tried out the barbershop. My opinions are mixed.
A Kirin Tor agent in Howling Fjord had the quest for me to go to Dalaran. I assume this is the quest the one blood elf in Warsong Hold had that I could not get.
First impression of Dalaran: it looks freaking awesome.
A statue of Antonidas.
The Violet Hold (the instance in the city).
The new leader of the Kirin Tor: Rhonin.
This place really is beautiful.
My next couple posts should cover Grizzly Hills and my adventures there. Sorry I'm so slow to post entries. I'm just really, really lazy.
WotLK Beta Blog – Final Thoughts on Howling Fjord
If I had to sum up the Howling Fjord in three words it would be “beautifully, tragically serene.” From the moment you step off the boat or zeppelin, you hear what I think is the most beautiful music in World of Warcraft to date. In fact, before you continue reading this, you should go here and listen to the track. The soft sound of the music reminds me of a land crying out in sorrowful mourning.
While Borean Tundra still felt a bit like a foreign war torn wasteland, Howling Fjord felt a lot more like coming home. It could be because I used to live in northern Idaho and Howling Fjord looks like it is a little land tucked away in the Pacific Northwest, but going to the Fjord roused me in a way Borean Tundra didn’t. I felt like the very land was crying out for help. However cheesy as it may sound, it was very exciting.
Within the Fjord, the main Horde settlements are lead by an offshoot of the Forsaken’s Royal Apothecary Society named “The Hand of Vengeance” and their work to create a new plague as well as a Taunka settlement. The Alliance have settlements from the Ironforge Explorer’s League, searching for remnants of Titan knowledge, as well as a human settlement where they have captured a goblin zeppelin and its captain for their uses. There is also a large Tuskarr village. Unlike the diverse looks and multitude of enemies that Borean Tundra boasts, Howling Fjord is a little more focused in its content. The main two enemies found in the region are the Vykul, (think of large Vikings) in a brutal crusade to try to prove themselves worthy of the Lich King’s favor, and the Iron Dwarves, a violent offshoot race of the dwarves, that’s mysterious mission is nothing short of nefarious.
While not quite as large as Borean Tundra (which stands at over 150 quests), Howling Fjord sits just over 130 or so quests per side. Howling Fjord also a much more focused zone than Borean Tundra. While Borean Tundra is filled with multiple enemy fronts, the main focus of the Fjord is obviously the Vykul. I do think that Borean Tundra will end up being the more popular zone than the Fjord, but not by too much hopefully. Both zones offer great Northrend lore.
I can't say anything to what the quests for the Alliance consist of, but the Forsaken are back and more evil than ever. They're here for the cause of creating that plague and will stop at nothing to accomplish that. (Though as you can imagine, like always, it results in failure.) Some of their best quests include controlling a combustible abomination to wipe out the evidence of failed plague attempts and the aptly named 'BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAINS!' which has you killing dwarves from the Explorer's League and removing their brain with a hacksaw.
The missions for the Taunka mainly consist of fighting back against the Vykul and investigating the Iron Dwarves in the area and what they are doing to the local giants. While all these are great, I think one of the most exciting quests was being sent to fight against the white wolf as it provided a great 'OH SHIT!' moment and lead in to the Grizzly Hills.