Warcraft Lore for Dummies - Part V

PART FIVE – THAT WAR THING WAS AWESOME LET’S DO IT AGAIN

After the First War both the Horde and their human enemies went through many changes. King Terenas enlisted the support of the kingdoms of Gilneas, Stromgarde, Dalaran, alterac, and Kul Tiras. He also managed to gain the support of the Dwarves of Ironforge and Aerie Peak, and the Gnomes of Gnomeregan. He also asked the High Elves to join, but they said suck it and only sent a couple guys to watch. These groups banded together under one banner and were known as the Fellowship of – er, The Alliance.

Meanwhile, Orgrim Doomhammer took control of the Horde from Gul’dan and the Shadow Council and reinforced their ranks with orcs and ogres from beyond the dark portal. The Goblins saw that the Horde was mighty but dumb, so they joined in to provide some vital services for hefty profits. They also used the Demon Soul to enslave Alexstrasza and the majority of the red dragons. Gul’dan wasn’t happy about not being in charge, but he contributed also, creating the first Death Knights in service of the Warchief.

Six years after the end of the war the Horde got bored and decided to PvP. First they attacked from Blackrock Mountain to the dwarves in Khaz Modan, and secondly they launched naval attacks against Zul’dare, Tol Barad, the Wetlands, Arathi Highlands, and the southern coast of Lordaeron. They attacked Southshore, Tarren Mill and Hillsbrad with the aid of maps from the nation of Alterac.

Zul’jin and his champions were discovered in a prison near Tarren Mill, and Doomhammer had them rescued. In return the trolls offered to help the Horde take Lordaeron and reclaim their ancestral forests from the High elves.

The Horde crushed Loch Modan and pushed the dwarves back to Ironforge, but they couldn’t really do anything against a city inside a mountain, so they kept going north and invaded the Wetlands. There they established a base of operations at Grim Batol, and converted Dun Algaz and Dun Modr into Horde bases. Grim Batol also became a hatchery for the enslaved red dragons. At the northern shore of the Wetlands many battles were fought on the Thandol Span (big bridge).

Finally, after diverting Lothar’s army at Aerie Peak, the Horde succeeded in invading Quel’Thalas by going through the mountains (of what we know now as the Eastern Plaguelands) and got as far as Eversong Woods before Alliance forces arrived.

This pissed off the elves, so they finally joined the Alliance for real. They pushed the Horde back to shores of Hillsbrad, but not before Gul’dan could plunder elven runestones that he used to make Ogre-Magi for the war effort. Lothar split his army to push on two fronts. One half stayed in the Hinterlands to fight the trolls and destroy the Horde still camped there, and the other half cleared out the elven forests. The armies of Lordaeron and Quel’Thalas swept through the Arathi Highlands, pushing the Horde back to the Thandol Span. They pushed south and retook Dun Algaz, but were unable to siege Grim Batol. Even so, their offensive shattered the Horde armies and caused them to retreat from Khaz Modan.

After the defeat at Khaz Modan there was a brief cessation of fighting, during which the Alliance decided to rescue Lordaeron, so they called on Uther Lightbringer and his Knights of the Silver Hand to rescue survivors (at this point Paladins were mainly healers and didn’t have Ret or Prot spec yet). While there they discovered that Lord Perenolde of Alterac had been giving information to the Horde, so they arrested him and imprisoned him in Stromgarde.

Perenolde’s treason had led the Horde all the way to the walls of Lordaeron, and they started attacking the capital. Troops from Stromgarde cut off the roads south, and the whole Alliance army converged on the Horde, but they were unable to defeat them at first. Then Gul’dan, like an idiot, took the Stormreaver and Twilight Hammer clans with him to find Sargeras’ Tomb. They found it, but it was empty, aside from a bunch of imprisoned demons that tore them all to shreds. They all died, including Gul’dan, and they kept his skull as a souvenir for their dark rituals.

Doomhammer facepalmed and tried to stop Gul’dan and the clans from running away. The Alliance were like “LOL!” and used the opportunity to kick the Horde’s ass and retake Lordaeron. Doomhammer’s forces and the red dragons caught up with the traitors, and killed the ones that hadn’t already been slaughtered by the demons from the Tomb.

So with the Alliance crushing the Horde armies and the Horde factions killing each other, the Alliance facerolled them all the way back to Blackrock Mountain. The Horde defended it, with Doomhammer killing Lothar in a titanic duel that everyone forgot to Fraps. Turlyon took command and won the day, taking Doomhammer prisoner, and the orcs retreated to the dark portal. There the final battle took place, and a ragged Horde army was defeated by Alliance forces, with Horde commanders carried away in chains.

Khadgar, with an escort of brave warriors, destroyed the dark poral, officially ending The Second War.

Warcraft Lore for Dummies - Part IV

PART FOUR – ORCS ARE LIKE APPLES: THEY GO FROM BROWN TO GREEN TO RED

So the orcs are this peaceful, shamanistic race of brown people living in quiet and simple prosperity on Draenor, right? Well Kil’jaeden apparently sees them as a useful tool, so he contacts the shaman Gul’dan and fools him into thinking he’s a nice spirit with lots of power. Kil’jaeden slowly teaches him how to be a warlock. At first he’s all enthusiastic, but then he realizes what’s going on and refuses Kil’jaeden’s command to make the orcs drink demon blood. Kil’jaeden gets all pissed off and uses Gul’dan’s assistant, Ner’zhul, instead.

Ner’zhul doesn’t have any of Gul’dan’s cumbersome conscience or compassion, so he makes a great pawn. He convinces the orcs to drink the blood of Mannoroth the pit lord, and they all get corrupted and turn green (extended exposure and continued corruption turns them red, an irreversible condition). The orcs, along with their only allies, the ogres, attack and overwhelm the Draenei. This attack is the spark that unites the orcs under one banner, and the Horde is born.

Gul’dan is a power-greedy bitch, so in addition to manipulating the Horde he founds the Shadow Council, a who’s-who of the baddest of all warlocks. Together they manipulated the Horde completely. At this point the blood and fury of the Horde was rising and Gul’dan realized that they needed a new enemy or else the Horde would end up destroying itself in its bloodlust. Conveniently, he was contacted by Medivh, and together they opened a portal to Azeroth, and the orcs came through looking for new cultures to encounter and discover, interact with, and disembowel. The warchief of the Horde at this time is Blackhand, but the Shadow Council is manipulating everything.

First contact with humans provided easy victories, and bolstered the orcs’ sense of superiority. The orcs had expected every human settlement to be armed but found little resistance, so Gul’dan had them march on Stormwind to crush the human kingdom. For the first time they met resistance, but forced their way into the city – too late to realize it was a trap, and the human cavalry overran them. Using mounts in combat was completely foreign to the orcs and they were outmatched. The orcs were defeated so badly that the Horde might have been destroyed if not for a fog that Gul’dan conjured to hide their retreat.

Worried by this new threat to their existence, he mages of the Kirin Tor and the priests of Northshire added their power to the human army. They had the orcs on the run, but General Lothar disappeared, getting captured while trying to infiltrate the Deadmines, which was controlled by orcs. It took 20 months for him and his men to escape. While he was gone the human forces lacked leadership and retreated to Stormwind. Lothar then went with Khadgar and the orc Garona to kill Medivh, and while he was dying Gul’dan tried to grab the secret of Sargeras’ Tomb from his mind but failed, and suffered a mental backlash.

After Garona helped Lothar sneak into Karazhan she went to Stormwind and assassinated king Llane, and the humans were all sad and depressed, and Stormwind fell to the orc armies. Llane grabbed his men and retreated to Lordaeron, and the orcs won what has become known as The First War.

Orgrimm Doomhammer was an orc warrior who discovered that the Shadow Council was manipulating the Horde, so he killed Blackhand and claimed the title of Warchief, and led an assault on the castle where the Shadow Council was. They killed most of the warlocks and Gul’dan awoke from his trauma at Doomhammer’s mercy and was forced to swear fealty to the new Warchief.

Warcraft Lore for Dummies - Part III

PART THREE – EVERYONE GETS LAID AND KILLS EACH OTHER

For the first time, Sargeras’ mission to burn the Titans’ works had been thwarted. He didn’t have time to be pissed about it because he was in the middle of the portal when it imploded, so he imploded with it and ceased to be. But apparently if you are a Titan in charge of the largest army in the universe and you cease to be, you can still scheme and manipulate and mess around with shit… and get chicks pregnant too.

About 9,000 years later, Sargeras notices Aegwynn hunting down his demons remaining in Azeroth and destroying them. Sargeras lures her into a pretty pointless combat by attacking some dragons, but in the process they discover a rift that the Burning Legion’s agents had used in the Storm Peaks to infiltrate Azeroth. Using this portal, Sargeras used part of his soul to create an avatar of himself to enter Azeroth. Aegwynn attacked and defeated him, but Sargeras’ spirt left his avatar and hid inside Aegwynn’s body.

So eventually Aegwynn was asked to step down as Guardian of Tirisfal and pick her successor from one of the Dalaran mages, but she wanted her successor to be someone from her bloodline. So she hunted down the powerful mage advisor to King Llane, Nielas Aran, and seduced him, and got pregnant. Sargeras was like “I’M TOTALLY GONNA DOMINATE THIS FETUS” and entered the mind of Aegwyn’s unborn son, Medivh.

When Medivh hit adolescence his inherited powers as a Guardian put him into a coma for 20 years. While he was sleeping, Sargeras was tapping into the Guardian power and taking control of Medivh. Using this new body Sargeras/Medivh made contact with the orc Gul’dan, on the planet Draenor, one of the many worlds that his recruiting officer Kil’jaeden had discovered. Medivh/Sargeras went to the Black Morass in the Swamp of Sorrows and opened the dark portal that allowed the orcs to swarm into Azeroth.

Eventually, Aegwynn (who was banished for disobeying the Order of Tirisfal) figured out what Sargeras had done to her and got into contact with King Llane. Llane sent Lord Lothar to destroy Medivh. Together with the Orc assassin Garona and with the help of Medivh’s assistant (Khadgar), Lothar infiltrated Medivh’s castle (Karazhan) and killed him. Garona was a double-agent for a while there, long enough to have a son with Medivh named Med’an. She was also controlled by Gul’dan into killing King Llane with young (future king) Varian watching.

With Medivh dead, Sargeras’ soul/spirit vapored back into the Twisting Nether, and now he has no tangible body or spirit, but is still “out there” somewhere planning his eventual reconstitution and destruction of the universe.

Warcraft Lore for Dummies - Part II

PART TWO – MY BOYFRIEND LEFT ME AND I GOT TURNED INTO A FISH

So, Sargeras and his armies are burning their way across the universe and they notice Azeroth blinking at them, because the Elves were splashing around like drunken fools in a big lake of arcane magic called the Well of Eternity. Rather than destroy Azeroth, Sargeras’ armies hung out in the ether while Sargeras started charming the elf queen Azshara and she totally fell for it and thought he might end up marrying her (not!) so she allowed him entrance to Azeroth.

Sucker! Archimonde and Mannoroth tore apart Kalimdor while Azshara build a portal strong enough for Sargeras to enter Azeroth. It was almost done when the night elves (Malfurion & Illidan, Tyrande, etc.), with the help of Cenarius’ hippies and Alexstrasza’s dragons, rebelled against Azshara and the high elves, and attacked Azshara at the Well of Eternity to stop the demons from pouring out of it.

This was a massive battle, at the center of which was the biggest spell ever cast, to open a portal large enough for Sargeras to wiggle his epeen through. Malfurion and Azshara fought each other, and Tyrande was Malf’s pocket healer. Illidan, suffering corruption from using demonic power to fight demons, was pissed at his brother taking Tyrande away, so while this battle for the whole world was taking place he was ignoring it and sneaking water from the well, because he knew when the well was destroyed that all the elves would lose their immortality.

Tyrane was badly wounded but Malfurion beat Azshara and the spell the high elves were casting went haywire and blew up – an explosion that sunk the continent that the well of eternity was sitting on and ripped a hole in the world. In its place is now the big ‘ole twirly on the world map known as The Maelstrom. 80% of the world’s land mass was destroyed but somehow the elves survived.

Even more unlikely, somehow Azshara and the high elves survived too – but the broken spell splashed back on them and sucked them down into the Maelstrom and turned them into the Naga. At the bottom of the Maelstrom, under the ocean, they built the city of Nazjatar and stayed there for 10,000 years while Azshara cried over being separated from her crush, Sargeras.

This whole affair is referred to as the War of the Ancients.

Warcraft Lore for Dummies, Part I

VANBRACKEN'S WARCRAFT LORE FOR DUMMIES

The purpose of this series of posts is to give people as much of the basic facts of what's going on in the universe they are busy pwning and lewting with most of the crap cut out.

PART I: SARGERAS IS THE UNIVERSE'S BIGGEST EMO

So, in the beginning, a group of Titans called the Pantheon created the WarCraft universe and shaped the worlds in it. Individual members of the Pantheon granted some of their powers to different dragons. Aman’Thul for example, the Highfather of the Pantheon, bestowed some of his cosmic power to Nozdormu to guard Time and the pathways of destiny.

The Titans’ greatest warrior was named Sargeras. He was a good guy, but had a shitty job – he had to fight off hordes of demons from the Twisting Nether for millennia. Eventually he had to confront and defeat the Nathrezim, a race of vampiric demons. These demons would corrupt entire populations and use them to spread hate and wage war on each other and against the Titans. Sargeras defeated them easily enough, but witnessing their acts made him very depressed.

All the other Titans tried to cheer him up and tried to keep him optimistic, but he lost faith in their mission and gave up on the idea of an orderly universe. He left the Pantheon and was replaced by Aggramar, and everyone was sad as Sargeras set off to find his own place in the universe.

Eventually Sargeras came to believe that the Titans themselves were responsible for creation’s failure, and thought that their work to shape the universe was a mistake. He decided to undo their works throughout the universe. He resolved to form an unstoppable army to aid him in this task called the Burning Legion.

At first he roamed the Twisting Nether and released demons to aid him, but none of them were suitable to act as his lieutenants. Although the demons were cunning and capable of great malice, they weren’t really officer material. He needed tacticians and commanders, and he found them on the planet Argus – the home world of the Eredar.

The Eredar were highly intelligent beings with a natural talent for magic. So Sargeras went to the three strongest leaders of the Eredar and tried to recruit them. Kil’jaeden and Archimonde said OK, but Velen ran away with his followers, who became the Draenei.

So now Sargeras was ready to work. Kil’jaeden became his recruiting officer and sought out the darkest races in the universe to help them, and Archimonde led the armies into battle against anyone who would defy them as they marched across the universe undoing the Titans’ works and destroying worlds the Titans had created.

Azeroth is one of those worlds, and that’s where we play. So Sargeras sees it as his purpose in life – his place in the universe – to destroy the planet we live on. That’s what makes him the ultimate bad guy, and everything else we deal with is in some way the result of it.

Preparing for Pandageddon

The guild mentioned in the previous post disintegrated due to leadership failures.  Another one I tried after that was pretty much the same.  The one I'm in now is a great group of people, it's very well organized, and is successful and growing.

It's not a retro guild, but it has a different trick - level caps.  Currently we're at a L60 level cap, meaning that we can't level past that until the cap is lifted (about two weeks, from level 45).  Some people might think that going from level 45 to 60 in two weeks would be just enough time, but for us more experienced players it takes no time at all.  There's at least 20 of us now who are at the cap with a week and a half to go.

But being unable to level (you are required to turn your xp off so as to not hit L61) doesn't mean that there isn't anything to do.  In some battlegroups having your xp capped doesn't interfere with your ability to join battlegrounds because there are a lot of people who lock xp at your level - ours isn't one of these groups, unfortunately.  If this is important for your reroll, do some research first to see which battlegroups are the most active.

But in spite of not being able to level and not being able to pvp, there is a whole bunch of stuff to do.  Many of us are preparing our gear by hunting down BoE pieces or doing enough Hellfire quests to get quest rewards (without xp) to upgrade our gear at L60 as much as possible.  There are a lot of good enchants available, and the average player can get their stamina above 5000 (12 or more for tanks) to group up and do old-world raids with.

Our guild has a preliminary date set for tonight for Molten Core, with BlackWing Lair to follow sometime after.  Our main tank is a Death Knight with about 12.5k health.  I'm playing a rogue, and I'm decked out in full L60 PvP gear with the HWL daggers.  I don't usually run anything but subtlety, but I'm considering working on an assassination or compat spec for raids.

But aside from the main focuses, a funny thing happens when you work with level caps.  First of all, everyone gets hit with the "just don't have time right now" real life bug from time to time.  If you're not able to keep up this week, relax.  Next week you can put in some time and catch up easily.  If you like to "race" to the cap you'll have several chances to compete, in the different content expansions.  If you need all the time you can get to level, there's plenty.

And then there's the really cool benefits.  If you have extra time on your hands you can flush out your character.  Do professions, achievements, exploration, role playing, and grouping with your guildies.  There's lots of incentive for people to be online, but nothing on the schedule that maximizes their time, so people have time to chat on vent, get to know each other, and on a pvp server, prowl around in groups looking for fights.

I've done some pvp runs and they're fun, although we're limited at the moment because any terrible player at 60 can wipe us all out pretty easily.  What I've decided to do that takes up most of my time is to pursue the Loremaster achievement.  Between Loremaster and Battlemaster, those are the two achievements in the game that I can really respect because they require dedication and persistence, and mean something.  There's always The Insane title, but there's a reason why it's called The Insane, and I don't think it really has the worth of the effort required to get it.

Last night I finished the Eastern Kingdoms portion of the Loremaster achievement.  This morning I finished up the Bloodmyst Isle Quests portion of Kalimdor, and it was easily the worst zone I've done so far.  This content was built during the Burning Crusade, and it's quite creative, but at the time it was made there wasn't the same incentive to streamline the questing process for ease of play, and the quests have you jump all over the zone, and a few times you're making trips back and forth to the same place, sometimes across the water.  Not fun.

It's not much easier to do at level 60 either, since a lot of the quests have drops you need to collect, and there is no flying on Bloodmyst Isle, so you're running everywhere.  It was painful, and I had to hunt down hidden questgivers and dropped items that started quests, and barely scratched out the minimum 50 quests needed for that zone.  If I had done Bloodmyst first I probably wouldn't have continued with the achievement, it was just terrible.

But with that one behind me I'm sure the rest will get easier - and more interesting, since the Cataclysm has touched virtually every zone and created new things to see and do.  And when the level cap goes up in two weeks I can continue with Outland, and I know that there's content out there that I haven't touched in at least 5 years - and possibly not at all.  Good times!  And some day I'll be able to walk around Stormwind with my Loremaster title, proclaiming to everyone that I've been there, and done that.

Nudged back into the game

I wanted to play WoW again. I bought my two-month time card, and logged into my account, looked at all my characters, and logged out again.

A couple days later, I logged on to my 85 mage, ran around doing some archeology, and logged out again.

It was about two weeks before I found a real reason to log in. Someone had advertised a reroll guild, a casual bring-your-own-fun guild of people leveling for the fresh atmosphere of it. I decided that I'd never finished my tauren shadow priest, and started rolling with them. I picked up a good name (Lighthorn) and trotted out to pasture in Mulgore on the Frostwolf server, a horde-heavy PvP realm.

So far so good: I've been ganked twice, the people are nice, the economy is healthy, and leveling the priest is nowhere near as painful as it was back in vanilla. I might actually make it to 85. We'll see.