Level 8 – Of Runestones and E-Peen.
One of the last quests you do in Eversong Woods has you defend this. It’s a Runestone, which you use an arcane-infused crystal to reactivate, and then defend from a few waves of undead. It’s to the south of the zone, near the Ghostlands, which is teeming with trolls and plagued beasts and undead zombies and loads of stuff like that, so it feels like a dangerous area – I’ll be writing about that tomorrow.
I mentioned the Runestones in my Sin’dorei lore post – they’re magical monoliths that provided a kind of arcane shield against invaders. The Scourge destroyed a lot of them, and others have been stolen – another symptom of the decay in blood elf society since the defiling of the Sunwell by Arthas, since presumably they’ve been stolen so that desperate blood elves can sate their magic addiction by siphoning their energy. It’s quite an easy quest, but I have great memories of it because it’s one of those that puts you right in the middle of the action and makes you the hero.
Ancient runestones once powered a protective barrier across the Eversong border. Many were destroyed during Arthas’ attack; others were stolen.
Of the three that remain, only this one has retained its powers. The runestone to the east might be salvageable, though.
Take this crystal and instill its energy on the Eastern Runestone. The process should take but a minute. Beware though, nearby Scourge will be drawn to it and will seek to destroy it. Do not let them!
This kind of quest doesn’t seem so cool when it’s your first character and you’re attempting to kill two mobs at a time (remember, this is me, who couldn’t cast Shadow Word:Pain, turn around, and run away so that the DoT would tick on the mob for a bit before it got to me until I was at least level 20 – I just didn’t have the dexterity to be able to turn) but when you’ve quested for a bit outside of the areas implemented in the Burning Crusade – eg anywhere that isn’t Eversong Woods or the Ghostlands, for the Horde – you soon come to appreciate them. Mostly because there’s a real improvement on how Blizzard design their quests – if you compare the Ghostlands and the Barrens, there’s far less of the ‘Bring me 80 raptor beaks’ kind of quest in the first zone, and far more of the ‘Great hero, please accomplish this essential task for me!’
The second kind of quest is far more rewarding, both in terms of time invested – killing tigers over and over, some of which magically seem to have no hearts or tongues or whatever you’re looking for, is not exactly fun after the first five minutes – but also in terms of personal pride, or what’s sometimes called e-peen. E-peen is what you get a boost to if you accomplish something tricky – get a Frostwyrm mount, kill the last boss in the game, clear Sunwell, etc etc – and although objectively getting a Frostwyrm and completing this quest would seem to be completely different levels of achievement, subjectively, they aren’t. To some new players, killing single mobs is easy enough, but managing to kill two mobs at the same time gives them a real sense of pride – I know, I was one of them. I’d imagine it’s the same for those who are really skilled at Arena – being able to kill other players is easy enough, but being able to kill lots of them, using different tactics, and being so good at it that you get a special mount as a reward is different. The only real difference between the two, in my eyes anyway, is that the game chooses to give the Arena player a physical item to recognise their achievement, whereas for the newbie the warm fuzzies are the only reward.
Even better, from the point of view of a lore-lover, these are important tasks your character is accomplishing – you’re helping to reconstruct the defenses of your kingdom, it’s hardly the kind of job that gets given to just anyone. For these players, so the sense of achievement is on two levels. The quest, which is technically challenging enough to new players to at least be fairly difficult, gives you the glow when you’ve done it, and your character is also being venerated in the game world for taking on such a difficult and dangerous task and succeeding. For players that identify strongly with their characters, that’s double the pride.
Incidentally, it’s fairly widely accepted that, in the old world at least, the Horde have a lot more ‘Kill 300 of X’ quests, and the Alliance have a lot more of the kind where you personally have a very important task to do, whether you’re patrolling with the Nightwatch in Duskwood or defending the Dark Portal in Nethergarde Keep. There could be a lore reason behind this – members of the Horde are seen as mere peons compared to their commanders, whereas the Alliance have a lot more respect for individuals and their achievements. Alternatively, the quest designers could have just had more ideas for the Alliance, or preferred the Alliance, and designed the Horde quests as an afterthough. Who knows?
What is certain is that Northrend has some of the best quests in the game. Maybe I’m just thinking about quests a lot recently, sicne I’m not far off completing Loremaster, but there is a huge differnce between the quests in that zone and how complex they are compared to the original game. If you haven’t played through it, and you have a level 72+ character, go and do the Wrathgate quest chain right now. Again, I’ll be blogging more about that later – suffice it to say for now that Wrathgate, with the possible exception of the Ahn’Qiraj opening questline (another one you should go and start right now) is the best questline in the entire game and is a real culmination of all those little points at which you’re playing the hero of your race and faction. Th e same applies to the Death Knight starting quests.
Anyway, I’ve got to go and collect 27 hyena fangs for a tauren in the Barrens, so I’m leaving it here for today.
~Farf
Anathema or Benediction? Class variety in WoW.
Ranger blessed: 1/4.
Yesterday’s post seems kind of well-timed now because last night I finally accomplished something that I’d wanted to do ever since I picked up the game. My server finally had its instance servers fixed, meaning you can run them now, and so last night I headed into the Molten Core, WoW’s original raid instance, with a couple of guildies to see what we could take down. We cleared the place pretty quickly, and to my utter delight, I picked up a couple of pieces of Tier 1 and the Eye of Divinity from Majordomo’s Cache.
The Eye of Divinity is a priest-only trinket that, when you equip it, allows you to see NPCs you couldn’t see otherwise (including Ricole Nichie, ex-Socialite, standing next to Haris Pilton in the World’s End Tavern in Shattrath.) However what I was most interested in was heading off to the Eastern Plaguelands so I could see Eris Havenfire, who offers you a quest.
The lore behind this quest is utterly amazing. Basically, Eris Havenfire was a priestess who attempted to save residents fleeing the town of Stratholme while Arthas Menethil destroyed it after being taunted by Malganis. She failed when she was overwhelmed by the corpses of the villagers she was trying to save, as they were reanimated as the Scourge. Now you have to seek redemption for her, by accomplishing what she failed at.
You equip the trinket and accept the quest The Balance of Light and Shadow.
You must do what I could not: Save the peasants that were cut down while fleeing from Stratholme.
They will walk towards the light, you must ensure their survival. Should too many fall, our cursed existence shall continue – you will have failed.
Every ability, prayer, and spell that you have learned will be tested. May the Light protect you, Farfalla.
You have to do this on your own – if anybody else helps in anyway, a demon spawns that hits for about 8k and cannot be killed, which obviously promptly wipes the party.
So you do the quest (and can I just say, I cannot imagine how hard this would have been at 60? It was still a test at 80). Villagers spawn, some of which have diseases on them, and they’re being attacked by spectral archers (who can’t be killed) and skeletal warriors (who can.) They walk from the mouth of a cave towards a pool of light about fifty yards away, and you have to save 50 of them before 15 are slain. You cure the disease on the diseased ones, Renew them all, Holy Nova the skeletons, and then dash back to the start where more waves are spawning (I found out the hard way that if you don’t, if you stay with them to the end, you lose too many of the new wave.) I failed it once (probably because I was busy taking screenshots) at which Eris Havenfire despawned and didn’t come back for 20 minutes (and I was stuck in combat, which meant no mana potion for the next try.) When she respawned, however, I knew what I was doing, and I completed the quest.
!!!
What do you get as a reward? A Splinter of Nordassil, Nordrassil being the World Tree. When combined with the Eye of Divinity and the Eye of Shadow (which I already had, it drops off high-level demons and Doom Lord Kazzak), they get combined into Anathema/Benediction.
Anathema/Benediction is the iconic priest weapon, so you can imagine I was absolutely psyched to get it. Benedicton is the holy side of the staff, and looks like this:
Farfalla in her Tier 6 with Benediction.
Whereas Anathema is the dark side, and looks like this:
Anathema.
Obviously, the two sides reflect the two sides of a priest’s powers: shadow magic and holy magic. You switch between the two by clicking the staff.
Now, the reason I think this is interesting (other than being a gigantic lore dork and feeling very strongly about my priest, having played her for two and a half years) is because yesterday I wrote about class quests, of which this is the ultimate, in my opinion. These quests are closely tied to the class design and philosophy of WoW.
Things like the Anathema/Benediction questline point to Blizzard’s original intention when designing classes. They all had their niche, mostly being drawn from other fantasy genres like Dungeons and Dragons. Warriors were tanks, priests were iconic healers, rogues epitomised skill with weapons, warlocks were demonic summoners, mages were masters of the arcane, shaman were masters of the elements, paladins were attuned to the Light, druids were at one with nature, hunters lived in balance with the land. Like I said yesterday, all these classes had special questlines and lore behind them. Warlocks spend levels 1-60 learning how to summon different kinds of demons, increasing in power all the time, until at level 60 they’re able to take part in a long, difficult questline to summon a demonic steed to ride. Similarly, paladins go on a journey that teaches them how to use the Light to help others – a questline that involves helping a wounded soldier, at the end of which they’re worthy of using the Light to resurrect the fallen; a questline that has you defend a woman whose husband was sent away by war and who is now defending their farm from invaders, at the end of which you learn to sense undead. Finally, you master the light enough to call a Charger from it, which is also obtained via a long and time-consuming, difficult questline. Even better, with the introduction of Horde paladins, Blood Knights, Blizzard were careful to differentiate the lore between the Blood Knights and the Silver Hand – members of the Silver Hand worship the Light, while the Blood Knights subjugate it. The paladins of the Silver Hand have a questline which gives them a weapon – they have to collect a purified Kor gem, along with some lumber and refined ore. The Blood Knights, on the other hand, have to collect a corrupted Kor gem, the blood of the wrathful, and the insignia from a dead paladin. There’s a real difference between the two factions.
The thing is that questlines like this are now, for the most part optional. You learn Redemption as a paladin without doing the quest; the same with Sense Undead. The same again with the mounts for both warlocks and paladins. Similarly, druids no longer have to do a long questline to learn Cure Poison. Priests used to take part in two quests to learn their racial abilities – these have now been removed. These racials were great, tiny little bits of lore – blood elves had Touch of Weakness, a magical debuff which weakened the melee power of their enemies, and Consume Magic, which consumed a magic buff on the priest to return mana, both of which fit perfectly with their dependency on magic. Night elves had Starshards, calling down the stars of Elune, their goddess, to harm their enemies, and Elune’s Grace, which temporarily reduced their chance to be hit by attacks, perfectly in line with the night elf ability to stealth and their increased dodge chance. Forsaken had Touch of Weakness and Devouring Plague, a disease DoT – perfect lore-wise since the Forsaken were mostly killed by the plague themselves. And so on.
With Wrath of the Lich King, these racials were removed. Instead, all priests were given a nerfed version of Desperate Prayer (the Dwarf/Human racial which gave an instant heal) as a talent in the Holy Tree, and Symbol of Hope (the draenai racial which restored mana over time), renamed to Hymn of Hope and made a level 80 channelled ability, restoring 3% of mana over time for up to 3 nearby friendly low mana party or raid members. The justification for this was that the racials were too difficult to balance.
It was true that there were certain racials which were more useful and powerful than others. Dwarves originally had their racials as Desperate Prayer and Fear Ward, a ten minute buff with no cooldown which would consume one fear effect. Certain fights (Nightbane in Karazhan, Archimonde in Mount Hyjal) were immeasurably easier with this buff, which eventually led to Blizzard reworking the spell, giving it to all priests as a 3 minute buff with a 3 minute cooldown. Certainly Chastise (the racial they replaced Fear Ward with, and also available to Draenai, a 2 second root) was much more useful in PvP than Consume Magic, which could actually be dangerous in both PvP and PvE because you had no control over what buff it dispelled – if it dispelled Power Word: Fortitude, you’d have to rebuff it anyway, wasting two global cooldowns and most of the mana you’d got back. It’s also true that Blizzard looked at their game at the end of the Burning Crusade and decided that it was too class-based, and that instead you should be able to ‘bring the player, not the class’.
As such, at the same time they removed priest racials, Blizzard decimated the class-specific abilities they had created. Totems became raid-wide rather than party-wide, so that you didn’t specifically need an enhancement shaman for the melee party but could have a restoration or elemental shaman drop Windfury totem instead. Shadow priests lost their niche (restoring mana to their party as a percentage of their damage done), as a new effect, Replenishment, was added to the game, restoring a percentage of mana on up to 5 targets every five seconds. This effect could be procced by survival hunters, shadow priests, retribution paladins and now destruction warlocks, too. Salvation, a blessing that paladins could buff on the raid that reduced threat, and which was an absolute necessity for DPS players, as well as the ability to manage threat, was removed, as tank threat generation was far increased. Certain fights were also changed – the main one being Illidan, who had his Shear effect removed. Shear did a massive amount of damage to the tank and had to be Shield Blocked, which meant only Paladins and Warriors could tank him – Druids, originally, were out of luck. To make up for their loss of niche utility, which had historically been compensated by the unique buffs they brought, hybrid classes had their DPS increased. And, most importantly of all, certain buffs were made identical, so that only one of them could be on the target at a time. Improved Divine Spirit was identical to Totem of Wrath, so the one would override the other, just as Improved Blessing of Wisdom is overwritten by Improved Mana Spring Totem.
You can sort of see why Blizzard would do this. The amount of class stacking in Sunwell was, to be fair, a bit insane. Shamans were wanted for their Bloodlust, and you’d bring three at least, for their amazing ability to heal the high amounts of raid damage going around. Similarly, holy priests were in a good place, because they could both tank and raid heal, whereas paladins were more limited in their abilities (although they were still excellent tank healers, much better than priests; they just couldn’t do both.) Two or three shadow priests were ideal, despite their low DPS, to bring the mana restore effect. There was no real place for mages, because warlocks synergised much better with shadow priests and their shadow damage debuff placed on the boss. Specs like ret paladins were only really useful on niche fights like Brutallus, because their Judgment of Light did so much healing on the melee; their DPS wasn’t good enough to justify bringing more than one, and then only if you had enough rogues to make up for their loss. Rogues! Rogues did insane damage whereas arms and fury warriors lagged behind, as did cat druids and moonkin. All this meant that raids were bringing classes rather than players, and those who were playing an underpowered class were being passed over, which was not a state Blizzard wanted the game to be in.
So they homogenized a lot of stuff. There are just two problems with that, from my point of view.
Firstly, the amount of class stacking being done by guilds like mine (which was 5% off being 2/6 in Sunwell when it disbanded in July 2008) was not, repeat not, that insane, when you take into account that we were a raiding guild. Sure, Nihilum were bringing 10 warlocks, 5 shamans, 3 priests, two warrior tanks and the rest rogues to their raids, so that they could get world firsts, but we weren’t because we weren’t interested in that. For a semi-serious raiding guild, we went with what we had. We never had a shadow priest in our raids until Sunwell, and we only had one then, because we just couldn’t recruit one. Similarly, we used a druid to tank Illidan before his Shear ability was removed, because we didn’t have a warrior available that night. I promise you, if you were skilled enough, there was nothing that the lack of one class or the other prevented you from doing. Of course, we weren’t saying ‘Retri paladins! Come raid with us, we’ll bring you all!’ We were a raiding guild and we had a good class balance in most of our raids. But we weren’t incapable of working with unusual specs if that was what we had, and when Ghostcrawler said that tanking Illidan with a bear was impossible, we proved him wrong. So when you see it being stated that class balance was out of control in the Burning Crusade, I promise you that it’s hyperbole.
And secondly, what about the lore? What about all the things that distinguish your class, your race, from all the others? Maybe it’s because I identify so strongly with Farfalla, but I play my priest as a Blood Elf because I love the lore behind her and what her skills stand for. I don’t want to see her turn into the same as all the other races; I don’t want to see her abilities turned into the same as what every shaman, paladin and druid can do. I don’t want her to be any more powerful than other healing classes – I used to want priests to be the best healers, but I’ve lost that opinion – but I do want her to be distinct from all the others. Blizzard removed a lot of the class quests because they saw them as not consistent with the current content – they don’t want people to have to work too hard in the old world, so that they’re there for too long and don’t get to see enough of their latest work. Their latest expansion is what they want people to be in, after all. But I don’t agree with the idea that these quests are too difficult. They are time-consuming quests, but they’re not impossible – I appreciate that there are less new players than there used to be, so the group parts can be tricky, but that’s beside the point. People roll alts, and if on those alts they had to do the quests, groups would be easy enough to find.
There were a few buffs that remained specific to class – Power Word: Fortitude, Blessing of Kings, Gift of the Wild – but Blizzard announced yesterday that they’re making buffs that are equal to those available via leatherworking and inscription. The justification is supposedly that it’s hard to make sure you have all those buffs available in a 10 man. Besides the fact that this misses the point – if you can’t guarantee a druid, how can you guarantee a leatherworker? – that’s simply not the case. How many ten man guilds consistently push new content which is made difficult without these buffs without one single priest, one single paladin or one single druid? I’m willing to bet not many, especially since paladins and druids can fulfil three roles in a raid.
I’ll play my priest even if they make her a carbon copy of every other character out there, because I love her and she’s the only character I’ve ever been able to log onto and feel excited about. But that doesn’t mean I like what Blizzard is doing. Bottom line for me is that MMO’s need some diversity to work – players need to feel like their character is special. Luckily, it looks like Blizzard may have recognised this, with the introduction of the Path of the Titans feature in Cataclysm – it seems they want players to be able to progress down the path they feel suits their character best. Could this be a compromise between the high class diversity of vanilla WoW and the homogeneity of Wrath of the Lich King? We’ll just have to wait and see.
~Farf
Level 6 – Training.
Another short post today. One of the most annoying things about WoW when I began playing the game, and which remained really frustrating until fairly recently, was that when you made a character, you had to hit level 6 to learn the last set of spells that your initial class trainer (the one in the starting zone) would teach you. Your level 8 (and beyond) spells and abilities were taught by the trainer in the second area you move to. Obviously, the quests were designed so that you’d level to 6 and then be ready to move on and leave the area. But by the time you’d been through them a few times, and knew your route pretty well, it was entirely possible, if you were a player like me who doesn’t kill anything unless she has to (I’ve spent more time running away while a herd of ferocious skeletons/bears/mammoths/night elves/murlocs gallop after me than I can count) to finish all the quests and be level 5 and a quarter. So you’d head off to the next zone, sighing because you knew you’d do one quest, level up and then have to trek allllll the way back to the starting zone to train your final skills.
Luckily, it seems they fixed this a while ago, and I no longer bang my head against the desk every time I decide to roll the new flavour of the month class as an alt, giving me more time to roll my face against the keyboard instead, as demonstrated by this guide to elemental shaman keybindings! Which is in no way intended as a way of annoying my good friend Guntar.
Just kidding, though, Gunt – I don’t really play on a Mac.
~Farf 
Level 3 – an Introduction to Lore.
Just me, or a strangely phallic choice of memorial?
The Shrine of Dath’Remar is one of the quests you receive on Sunstrider Isle as a newbie blood elf; you get it at the same time as the quest I discussed yesterday, where you have to collect the quest-giver’s belongings. This is a different kind of quest, though, as is apparent from the flavour text when you accept his task:
Day after day I stand here, watching, waiting. I’ve been accused of dwelling too much on our past, while my eyes look to the horizon. But it is my firm belief that each visitor to this island should honor those who have sacrificed all so that they may continue to do so.
Dath’remar Sunstrider was our first king. He led us here from Kalimdor through the Maelstrom.
Seek out his shrine to the west and do not return to me until you have read the plaque upon it in his honor.
The shrine lies up a hill to the north-west of the island – you have to battle your way through hordes of hostile mobs (who for some reason look a lot like mouldy broccoli) to get there. To complete the objective, there’s a small plaque on the front of the monument, which, when you click it, says:
Here lies the shrine of Dath’remar, a fitting tribute to a noble elf. Let all who gaze on this monument remember his sacrifice against the Scourge and his dedication to the cause of our continued survival. All who prosper in Quel’thalas do so thanks to him.
Quest complete. This is your first introduction, really, to the lore behind the Sin’dorei as a race. Granted, it doesn’t give you much more than the fact that Dath’remar Sunstrider led the elves from somewhere called Kalimdor across something called The Maelstrom until they landed in Quel’thalas, but that’s the whole point – it leaves you asking where Kalimdor is, what The Maelstrom is, why they chose here, why they left in the first place. If you find this interesting, you’re then free to look at the official WoW website (which is what I did when I finished the quest) or just google ‘Sin’dorei’ or ‘Dath’remar’ and see what happens. When you do that, you realise what a complex world Blizzard has created, and just how big the story of Azeroth and her races is. To illustrate that to the uninitiated, what follows is a (very) brief history of the Sin’dorei as a race.
———————————————–
About ten thousand years ago, one of the three principle civilisations on Azeroth was that of the Night Elves. These nocturnal elves were ruled by Queen Azshara, a fiercely beautiful and proud leader. Under her rule, Kaldorei society was divided into two castes – the Kaldorei, or working class, and the Quel’dorei, or Highborne. Azshara, Highborne herself, favoured the Quel’dorei, but was still held in awe by her Kal’dorei subjects, because of her beauty and famed wisdom. Azshara was not impressed by their love and respect, and famously disparaged the Kaldorei as lesser beings. All Night Elves, Kaldorei and Quel’Dorei alike, also revered the Well of Eternity, a well of magic tapped into and used by the society as a part of every-day life.
Encouraged by Azshara, the Highborne began to use the Well of Eternity more and more frequently. Azshara, together with her chief advisor, Xavius, finally decided to purify Azeroth and make it perfect, at least in her eyes, using the power of the Well. This attracted the attention of Sargeras, a huge Dark Titan, who had helped create Azeroth, but had been driven insane by the chaos and disorder he saw in the universe. Sargeras entranced Xavius and finally Azshara herself, tricking her into making a portal, through which he planned to enter the world. While the portal was being opened, his Burning Legion, an army of demons and other monstrosities, entered the world at the city of Zin’Azshari, the capital city of the Kal’dorei civilisation. After the capital had been decimated, the second largest cultural centre, Suramar, was next in line; thousands of Kaldorei were slaughtered, while Azshara and the Highborne Quel’dorei laughed.
Certain Kal’dorei mustered a resistance; amongst these were Tyrande Whisperwind (the leader of the Night Elves in WoW). Along with the Stormrage brothers, Malfurion and Illidan, and three heroes from a future timeline, Tyrande destroyed the portal as it was about to open, an event which caused the Well of Eternity to explode. This cataclysm caused 80% of the landmass of Azeroth to sink below the sea, and created the two continents of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, plus the Northrend landmass we know of today.
After the horrific events (which became known as the War of the Ancients) the Highborne Quel’dorei were exiled by the newly-formed Kaldorei society, which reviled arcane magic in all forms. As such, 7,300 years ago Dath’remar led his exiled people across the ocean, striking land at what later became known as the Tirisfal Glades. The elves settled here for a time; however after a while something below the land began to drive them mad, and they headed north by sea, until they reached what would become known as Quel’thalas. Here they evolved as a result of being completely severed from the Well of Eternity, losing their immortality, their skin becoming pale peach instead of purple and their waking cycle being reversed, as well as shrinking slightly.
6800 years ago the Quel’dorei built a new Well of magic, the Sunwell, in their new homeland, using a phial of water from the Well of Eternity given to them by Illidan, who had turned traitor. The Sunwell was neccessary to satiate their hunger for magic, and helped them to construct a large, elaborate city, where magic supported the buildings and defended their lands via elfgates and runestones. Their society continued in this way for four thousand years, until they came under attack from the Amani trolls whom they had displaced when founding their homeland. The Troll Wars took such a toll on their people that they allied with the nearby human kingdom of Arathor, receiving military aid in return for instructing 100 humans in magic, which had previously been unknown to them. A thousand years later, when the human kingdoms of Gilneas and Alterac discovered dwarves in Ironforge to the south, the high elves became allied with the dwarves through the humans; this alliance was one of the principle catalysts to the dwarven War of the Three Hammers.
Peace continued for just under 3000 years, until the Second War, when the Orcish Old Horde came through the Dark Portal from the Outland and attacked the human kingdoms. An alliance was proposed between the seven human kingdoms, the Wildhammer and Ironforge dwarves, and the high elves, who participated only reluctantly under the leadership of Anasterian Sunstrider until the Orcish campaign in the North burned down the edges of the forests of Quel’thalas, destroying a protective runestone and slaughtering many Quel’dorei. This enraged Anasterian and he participated fully from that point, and eventually the Alliance triumphed.
However, the Quel’dorei king blamed the poor leadership of the humans for the deaths of his people, an attitude rejected by King Terenas of Lordaeron as foolish, pointing out as he did that many more elves would have died had human lives not been given to save Quel’thalas. Nevertheless, from this point the Quel’dorei all but withdrew from the Alliance, causing fractures in Quel’dorei society – the House Windrunner being a good example. Lady Sylvanas Windrunner, Ranger General of Quel’thalas, supported Anasterian, but her two sisters, Vereesa and Alleria Windrunner, sided with the Alliance, and left Quel’thalas behind.
The Quel’dorei once more became reclusive for the next 15 years, until the Third War. Arthas Menethil, the son of King Terenas Menethil of Lordaeron, had been corrupted. In his desire to save his kingdom and people from a plague that was mysteriously killing them, he had allowed his mind to be clouded by rage, and the demon Mal’Ganis had taunted him and drawn him to the frozen continent of Northrend, where had been tempted into taking up the evil sword Frostmourne, which stole his soul and forced him to put on the crown of Nerz’hul, destroying his humanity and turning him into the undead Lich King. Granted huge power, he had returned to Lordaeron and murdered his father, and then proceeded, together with his undead army of Scourge (zombies and skeletons, mindless corpses of those he had killed and raised to fight in his service) to ravage Quel’thalas, murdering 90% of the Quel’dorei population, including Sylvanas Windrunner, whom he raised as a banshee to fight for him. The forests of the kingdom were decimated, with a huge swathe of death and destruction, known as the Dead Scar, being cut up the continent and finishing at Silvermoon City, the capital, which was half destroyed. The massacre was only stopped when Sylvanas, showing incredible strength, managed to overturn Arthas’ control of her mind and plot against him, finally stopping him with the aid of Varimathras, a Nazrethim (demon) overlord. Once Arthas was defeated Sylvanas was able to return to her body, but she left Quel’dorei society forever, taking up residence in the ruins of Lordaeron where she became queen of the Forsaken, the cadre of Scourge who had followed her in overthrowing their mind control.
Prince Kael’thas Sunstrider stepped into the breach. The Quel’dorei renamed themselves Sin’Dorei, or ‘children of the blood’ in Thalassian, and swore to avenge their fallen. However, the Sunwell, upon which all had been dependant, had been tainted during the siege and was no longer usable. The blood elves were unable to survive without their magic, and many became sick and died. Desperate, Kael’thas allied himself with the Naga, the remnants of Quel’dorei society led by Azshara, who had survived when she and her Quel’dorei sank under the sea and now existed as twisted aquatic creatures, crosses between elf and fish. When this alliance was discovered, the Sin’dorei were branded traitors, and Kael was imprisoned and almost killed in Dalaran city – he was rescued by Illidan, who took him to Outland and taught him how to siphon magical enemy from the Twisting Nether, a reality inbetween the fabric of Azerothian reality and the Elemental Plane, to which the Burning Legion had been banished. With this knowledge, the Sin’dorei were able to rebuild Silvermoon and Quel’thalas, which took the next two years – however, they altered physically, their eyes going from blue to green to reflect their addiction to Fel (or demonic) magic.
Many Blood Elves wished to rejoin Kael in the Outland, and were unable to rely on the Alliance to help them reach the Dark Portal and cross the ravaged continent once they arrived – they instead turned to the Orcish Horde, now free of their demonic corruption and living in Kalimdor, led by Thrall. Breaking their silence, the blood elves asked Sylvanas to vouch for them, and were accepted into the faction and welcomed also by the Tauren and Trolls. When the Dark Portal opened, many blood elves began to make their pilgrimage to join their Prince.
However, Kael’s actions began to seem more and more erratic, and slowly, secretly, they began to be questioned in Silvermoon. Meanwhile, in Shattrath a multicultural city in the Outland, rumours grew of a Sin’dorei army marching on the city. Preparations for war were made by the Aldor, a faction of Draenai at odds with Kael’thas, but A’dal, the Naaru (a being of pure Light and goodness) leader of the city, refused to allow anyone to attack. When the Sin’dorei arrived, led by a powerful magi named Voren’thal the Seer, they surprised everyone by throwing down their weapons and pledging alliegance to A’dal. When Kael unexpectedly appeared to have taken up residence Tempest Keep, a satellite spaceship that belonged previously to the Draenai, and began pumping huge amounts of magic out of the Twisting Nether, the rumours grew. Voicing suspicion of the Prince publicly in Silvermoon was punished with execution, but rumour continued – and was proved right, when it was revealed that rather than supporting Illidan as he claimed, Kael had been in contact with the Burning Legion and had captured a Naaru, M’uru, and imprisoned it in the Sunwell, where it was being used to summon Kil’Jaeden, Sargeras’ right-hand demon. It was also, shockingly for Sin’dorei society, revealed that the new-found ability of blood elves to channel the Light so that they could become Paladins (or Blood Knights) was in reality feeding off the captured Naaru, which had been held under Silvermoon City before being moved to the Sunwell and corrupted so that the demonic portal could be opened.
The Sunwell had to be destroyed, and was, with the Sin’dorei helping even though they knew it would plunge them back into the depths of magical addiction without respite. Kil’Jaeden was turned back, with M’uru sacrificing himself in the process. However, the Prophet Velen, the leader of the Draenai, a race of exiled Eredar, a race of which he had been one of three rulers (the other two, Archimonde and Kil’Jaeden, were corrupted by Sargeras and became his lieutenants), had become a member of the Alliance when Tempest Keep, his ship, was attacked by Kael’s forces, causing the escape section of the spaceship, The Exodar, to crash into Kalimdor. Velen was able to purify the Sunwell and did so despite Kael’s genocide against his people.
This was a year ago. Today, the Sin’dorei are in a state of disarray, and society is changing. They are now accepted members of the Horde, but retain more loyalty to Sylvanas than Thrall. It was revealed that M’uru knew of his fate, as did A’dal, and willingly accepted it; the leader of the Blood Knights, Lady Liadrin, has pledged loyalty to A’dal. The forests are recovering, although the land under the Dead Scar is completely desolate and incapable of supporting any life; the southern regions of the forests, known as the Charred Woods or Ghostlands, were burned and destroyed by the Elves themselves, to stop any further corruption, and the wildlife there is tainted by the Plague. Many blood elves have followed their Horde allies to Northrend, to take the fight to Arthas; these include the Sunreavers, a faction of Sin’dorei in Icecrown itself.
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All that is a brief summary of the lore of just one race. There are nine other races (currently, with two more to be added) in Warcraft, and innumerable other unplayable races (Titans, Old Gods, Naga, several Goblin factions, ogres, Murlocs, Pandaren, Dragon Aspects, elementals, many tribes of Troll, some kinds of dwarves, some kinds of gnomes are just a few) in existence, all of which also have lore of a similar depth and complexity behind them, as well as countless wars, disasters, captures, corruptions and triumphs concerning two or more races. As you can well imagine, that amount of history was something I’d only ever encountered in novels before this point. And that’s just up to the end of the Burning Crusade – every expansion furthers lore and extends the story.
I know I keep going on about Sonic, but really, it was the only gaming experience I had, and at every turn it was becoming clear that this was a kind of game on a totally different scale.
Okay, conclusion: lore is big. Why is that a part of my record of Farfalla in Azeroth? It’s not as if I was on an RP server, so none of this really mattered to my character. Well, that quest was my introduction to something that would become my favourite aspect of World of Warcraft – and it’s for that reason that I’m recording it here. It reminds me of a stage where I knew so much less about the game, and every new discovery was exciting. That happens again when an expansion comes out, but it never really matches being completely new to the game and entranced by the tiniest things. It also reminds me of the intricacy of the game – the smallest of things in WoW are related to much larger stories, and there’s detail everywhere. That was something that amazed me about the game when I began playing, and still does today, years later.
Incidentally, it was also my first introduction to what’s known as a ‘lorelol’, or in other words ‘Blizzard screwed up the lore here.’ Remember the inscription on the monument?
Here lies the shrine of Dath’remar, a fitting tribute to a noble elf. Let all who gaze on this monument remember his sacrifice against the Scourge and his dedication to the cause of our continued survival. All who prosper in Quel’thalas do so thanks to him.
Dath’remar fought the Scourge? Not unless that was one seriously long-lived Quel’dorei – he’d have had to have been about seven thousand years old. Quel’dorei live longer than humans, but nowhere near as long as that – they’re real pensioners when they’re two thousand. The age of Sin’dorei is less certain – some say the same as High Elves, others say Sin’dorei are old at 350. We see these mistakes through WoW a fair bit, either on purpose – where Blizzard changes the lore to fit something new they want to implement, as they did in the Burning Crusade with the introduction of the Draenai, who had been considered an evil race up to that point – or accidentally. Still, for lore that was considered secondary to the games, and which would be at least as big as Tolkein’s work when written down in one place, I don’t think they’re doing badly.
Wow, that’s a big old post today. Something much shorter tomorrow, promise.
~Farf
Level 2 – Questing.
*Opening*
The idea of questing was another thing that was new to me when I picked up WoW. In my previous gaming experience I’d been used to the idea of collecting as much of something as possible – rings in Sonic and gems in Spyro – and then a bigger objective, like the Chaos Emeralds in Sonic or the eggs in Spyro. So the idea of completing lots of little tasks as you moved through the world, rather than just collecting resources for which you’re awarded points, was completely unknown to me. This quest in particular has you collect three items for the quest-giver, and in return he gives you a new bag.
There are a few things that make questing in WoW seem more appealing than grinding, at least from my point of view. Perhaps the most important is the fact that you’re rewarded for your hard work instantly, be it a new bag, new armour or just some money. This is one of the things that makes you want to keep playing – the fact that you’re constantly able to get new stuff and become more powerful. Amongst my WoW friends, I’ve found there are two types of players – there are those like me, who level via questing and run to the Auction House every time they level to see if there are any upgrades available (or sidegrades that look better *blushes*), and those who level by killing mobs over and over and perhaps occasionally upgrade their weapon, if they’re a melee class and it’s about 20 levels lower than they are.
How easy it is compared to other games also has to factor in somewhere. Although challenging often means fun, having absolutely no idea where to go or what to do is more discouraging than inspiring. I began playing WoW on a computer which was set up with addons, because my friend already played, so I’ve never grappled with the default UI as most new players do. Similarly, I was introduced to www.wowhead.com really quickly – I always had it open in the background, so I just looked up every quest I did. To this day I’ve never quested ‘properly’, ie without help. Sites like wowhead and thottbot allow you to concentrate less on quest objectives and more on exploring the world around you, as odd and contradictory as that may sound. Still, I think it holds true – if you already know where to go, you can look at things on the way, rather than wandering around aimlessly. On the other hand, when I played WoW originally, there were no in-game hints as to where quests could be completed other than those given in the quest text, so if you preferred to discover everything for yourself, you were perfectly able to do so. Now, we have quest drops listed in the tooltip when we mouseover mobs, and there are further updates to come on the minimap. I do wonder whether this ruins the questing experience for some people.
Finally (and this only applies to a certain kind of person!) the way questing is tracked in WoW really appealed to me. I’m the kind of person that, when she sees a list, gets excited and begins to cross things off it. Dorky, I know (I also get really excited about stationary, which strikes even me as a bit odd) but perfectly enabled in WoW, where when you loot a quest item, the message ‘Plucked plainstrider leg, 1/20′ flashes up in yellow at just about eyelevel on your screen. This gives you a sense of achievement, or at least it does if you’re weird like me.
People often complain about the quest design in vanilla WoW, and certainly comparing zones in Azeroth to Northrend you can see how Blizzard have evolved and improved their quest philosophy. There are a lot less ‘Bring me 30 raptor heads’ and ‘Travel halfway across the world on foot to deliver this item’, and a lot more ‘Use this powerful artifact to defeat this enemy’ and even ‘Help save the Horde alongside Thrall and Sylvanas’, as you’ve seen if you’ve done the Battle for the Undercity questline in Dragonblight (and if you haven’t, you really should.) Still, I never minded ‘Bring 15 harpy bracelets and three rugged leather’ quests. I prefer to see a mix of both kinds. Now daily quests, on the other hand…don’t get me started on everything that’s wrong with those.
And with that, I’m off – the daily dungeon quest is Utgarde Pinnacle, and the call of seeing ‘Ymirjar Beserker slain: 1/7′ on my screen is too strong to ignore.
~Farf
