World of Warcraft/Headscratchers

A small note - Headscratchers is not a place to ask for tips or complain about quests that have been removed, or mention bugs. You are here because there's something unusually crazy about a race or a class or some history or the story-line.

""Wait a moment, did you just bring a race full of space-faring goat-people to a Medieval Fantasy?"
 * During a quest chain leading up to one of the quests in the Nexus, you . Then, the dragon who set you on this quest burns body in front of the Nexus, with a handful of rather small dragons to assist her in attacking Malygos. They get their asses kicked of course, and she is . Why in the hell did they not get Alexstrasza, the Queen of the dragons and the most powerful Aspect (and the leader of the Red Dragonflight, who were the dragons taking part in the attack), to clean his clock when he was out in the open?
 * A cheap Women in Refrigerators ploy, of course. They've been fairly misogynist in this expansion, or so I feel (with one exception of a quest chain to keep male slaves of a matriarchy in The Storm Peaks in check, but two wrongs don't make a right.)
 * ...or maybe Alexstrasza wasn't fond of Moral Dissonance or just didn't want to play the Idiot Ball by before taunting him. So she had to do it without Alex's help.
 * The order in which you're intended to do the quests clarifies this. At the point that these events happen, Alexstrasza still believes that Malygos can be convinced to back down; the forces outside the Nexus are reds who've willingly gone to help the mages, possibly those who had lived among the mages in disguise before this point. The attack upon Malygos' mate is a personal thing by Keristrasza, who had been captured and tortured by her and only recently released by the player; some of her comments during the final quest itself imply that she expects and hopes for Malygos to kill her (and not to be captured, brainwashed and raped). It's not until you get to Dragonblight and reveal to Alex that Malygos is trying to use the magic he's stealing to super-empower his brood and wipe out all of the other dragons that she realises he's gone totally crazy and has to be put down.
 * What the hell happened to the Draenei? In Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, they were a race of warriors/seers that lived on Draenor. Fair enough. Then, you get World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade, and discover that they've been transformed into goat-men with futuristic technology... I thought it was supposed to be a fantasy game.
 * This troper can explain it....

"Yeah, so?"

"That's against the lore, isn't it?"

"Screw the lore-we have 6 million players.""


 * Their technology is as SF as Spelljammer, as another troper has said.
 * The Draenei from Warcraft III are the Broken (though they do resemble the Lost Ones to a point). They have formed the Ashtongue Deathsworn in Shadowmoon Valley, and the Kurenai elsewhere. The Exodar Draenei are supposedly the same race, except they were influenced by the Naaru rather than exposed to the demons of the twisting nether to become the Broken. This explains why the Broken can stealth and are comfortable being stealthy/rogue classes, but the Exodar Draenei stand by a moral code made by the naaru.
 * Gnomeregan, one of the earliest dungeons in the game, has machinegun-toting robot tanks. You're OK with Skynet armies in your fantasy game, but not the space goats?
 * I could snark here about people who confuse Draenei with talbuks. Instead, I will salute you, sir or ma'am, for pointing out that people who don't blink at Steampunk in their fantasy world (and applaud the inevitable addition of still more) should not throw stones at Magitek.
 * Agreed - Steampunk tech is pretty heavy for Gnomes, Goblins positively wade in it, and there are 1800s-based powder rifles posessed by half the population of Gilneas, not to mention they own cannons. Orcs have already been established as from another planet. While I'm not entirely satisfied with Draenei being from space, their technology is so badly explained (mostly with sparkly crystals) that it's a bit ridiculous to make any significant complaints about it.
 * Honestly, the problem is not with the technology (Dalaran can do pretty much the same things as the exodar). The problem is that it's the Draenei who get this technology. True, there is a pretty good canonical explanation, but when we were told that the draenei were playable, we expected to play the draenei we saw before. Instead, we got pretty much the complete opposite. Primitive? Nah, they live in a massive city of great magic and technology. Shamanistic? They are the most devout worshippers of the light on the planet. Stealthy? They can not play rogues nor stealthy druids. What do the draenei we got and the draenei we remembered have in common?
 * One explanation is that possibly the Draenei we see split off after the ship crashed. Some of the Draenei want to repair their ship and go home, while others want to stay. Everybody is different, even within their own race.
 * The Scarab Wall. Okay, it's a stone barrier about seven in-game humans high, by my approximation. Why didn't the Big Creepy-Crawlies fly over it? For that matter, why didn't anyone try flying into Gilneas to discover what's actually going on there?
 * A wizard did it. It's a magic wall, so, yeah. That pretty much explains it.
 * To be more specific, there's a line in the lore, I believe, that implicitly states there's an invisible wall of force above the physical one. It probably extends into a giant dome covering the whole thing.
 * "Shiromar concentrated her energies and called upon the blessing of Elune as the barrier erected itself before their eyes, rock and stone and roots from beneath the sands emerging to create an impenetrable wall. Even the winged soldiers who attempted to fly over the barrier met with an invisible obstruction that they could not pass." so yeah, magic bubble
 * Also, what the hell is up with Gilneas? Did Blizzard just forget about it?
 * By Word of God, yes, they did exactly that.
 * They apparently remembered enough to show a few plagued villagers by that large wall. The plague probably hasn't reached there yet but I'm surprised they haven't tried to contact them. They basically just sat back and did nothing, like the Swiss. And for all we know, that's probably why they haven't all become more of the 90 million undead Rogues that make up the horde.
 * Screw gilneas...what about Kul Tiras?
 * According to what's known about the next expansion, it seems like they've come back to explain what's been happening in Gilneas, amongst other things.
 * Even before Cataclysm was announced, Gilneas was said to have been extremely isolationist and built the Greymane Wall to shut themselves off from the world, which is why we've never been there in WoW. We've just got the explanation now that the Gilneans pretty much quarantined themselves because the population fell victim to the Worgen curse. As for Kul Tiras, Word of God says that the Cataclysm caused it to drift out a bit to sea, with some typically Blizzard cheekiness. The most popular current fan theory is that Kul Tiras will like be patched in some time during the Cataclysm expansion.
 * During The Reckoning questline in Storm Peaks we see Loken completely decimate Thorim with the incredible power that Yogg-Saron has granted him. Now this is fine and all, but why is it that Loken suddenly can't use these same powers to tear apart a group of five people in the Halls of Lightning instance?
 * According to Blizzard, Loken is the deadliest mob in the game - see the That One Boss entry. I don't know about you, but this troper has seen many, many a group wipe on him repeatedly. He's more than difficult enough not to need any insta-kill attacks. Besides, it's pretty obvious that he's tasked with capturing the other Guardians of Storm Peaks for, so he presumably has powers that are specifically designed for that purpose. And I've said this before, but Gameplay and Story Segregation comes into play here. Having a boss that instakills you no matter what is not fun. However, I will go ahead and add my own beef: why is it that NPCs suddenly get so much more powerful when they get captured and thrown into a raid dungeon as a boss? Thorim picks up something like fifteen million extra health in Ulduar - been working out, has he?
 * Well, assuming he's being controlled by, then chances are that at least some of power is in some respect flowing through Thorim, so it's understandable that Thorim would get a major boost.
 * If you think Loken is tough, you haven't heard Blizzard's nickname for the new hard-mode-only raid boss. The quote (again, from a blizzard dev) goes: "Hard mode is hard. Some hard modes are harder than others. Then there's Algalon the Raid Destroyer. He feeds off of your tears."
 * As I recall, you can only face him after downing ALL the bosses on hard mode, and he himself? He doesn't have a normal mode. Then again, he's some kind of Titan sentry, who's basically there to decide " Hmm... Destroy the world and start over, ooooor not?".
 * Oh and you only have an hour to defeat him.
 * Supposedly, the "statistically deadliest boss" title has been claimed by the Black Knight (although it's unclear whether it's the one you face at the end of his quest chain or the boss of the Trial of the Champion instance). Loken seems somewhat overrated as far as difficulty goes, since it's not hard to heal through Lightning Nova, making it easy to stay close and minimize the damage from Pulsing Shockwave.
 * So you joined the game relatively recently? At the start of WOTLK when we were all gearing up, that fight was screamingly painful. The gear we have now because Blizzard drops Frosties and Triumphs like rain allows parties to kill him before the first lightning nova somtimes, and definitely before the second, and have hp to soak the pain with ease. This was definitely not the case when players were trying to gear to gain entry to Naxx.
 * Even when leveling up to 80, that fight was not especially difficult, and the main killers of my party were Ingvar, Keristraza and Ley-Guardian Eregos.
 * One theory is that enemies' strength in the World of Warcraft world is how much threat they present to the number of players typically required to defeat them, and their level shows how they compare to other enemies of their type. For example, while Edwin Van Cleef is far weaker statistically than The Damned in Icecrown Citadel, (who, alone, present hardly any threat), and nowhere near as much of a threat to Azeroth than the Lich King, he's more difficult for players who are the level required to face him. Loken's the final boss of a 5-man dungeon and more prominent in the story than the other Keepers (who are mid-bosses of a raid instance), so he's presumably ranked higher on the power and threat scale.


 * The titans in the Storm Peaks/Ulduar are cleverly disguised Norse god's names. Hodir=Odin (the H is silent), Thorim=Thor, Lokem=Loki. Why is it that they just named the last one Freya? They didn't even try to disguise that name.
 * Probably partly because each of the Norse god's names could be translated several different ways, so the god we know as Odin could be translated as anything from Odin to Wotan(!), so that's probably the argument Blizzard would use here. Yogg-Saron and C'thun are rather poorly disguised too, given that they're based on the Cthulhu Mythos' Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu respectively.
 * I thought C'thun was based off of C'thun?
 * Actually, I'm fairly certain that Hodir is named after Hod, brother of Baldr. But anyway, I did wonder about the same thing; it doesn't really bother me, but I did wonder why they didn't bother to even try to change her name.
 * Because Freya is a very nice-sounding name?
 * Because the actual Norse goddess is called "Freyja" and is pronounced differently to how you would pronounce "Freya" in English. So yeah, her name is 'disguised' as well.


 * How is Sam Raimi going to make a movie out of this? I mean, Warcraft sure, but World of Warcraft doesn't really have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
 * Simple: he'll make a movie about something that happens during WoW, like a quest line, or something entirely new. BTW, I think I've read somewhere it would take place one year before WoW or something.
 * Well the early scripts for the movie were about an enslaved human rebelling against his evil Orc captors to become the hero of the Aliiance - I can't imagine that going well with 50% of the player audience. The best thing to do would be to adapt one of the major questlines (such as the Lich King's attacks) and come up with some suitably engaging characters on both sides to follow.
 * It's for this reason that the movie should've been what it was originally planned to be: a movie adaptation of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. It would feature Garona, Lother, Khadgar, Medhiv, and Llane as main characters. Possible main villains would be probably be Gul'Dan and Blackhand the Destroyer, as well as his nefarious sons Rend and Maim. And part of the movie would detail a bit about the rise of Orgrim Doomhammer... Why the hell did Blizzard cut that idea!?
 * Two reasons: most people discovered the Warcraft universe with WoW, so they wouldn't know about what happened 30 years before in universe; and the first Warcraft game, while not bad, was a stereotypical heroic fantasy story (good humans fighting evil orcs and an evil sorcerer), which could make people think that Warcraft is just a ripoff of another story adapted in movies a few years ago.
 * Just to point out, it has been labeled (at least by Blizzard's PR folks on the forums) as explicitly a Warcraft movie and not a World of Warcraft movie.


 * How do Draenei lifespans work? Are only the original Eredar from Argus immortal with the later generations posessing a normal lifespan? Do they keep themselves in suspended animation to live so long? Or are they just naturally immortal?
 * Well, one Draenei in Bloodmyst claims to have been alive during the flight from Argus, which was millenia ago. So the Draenei (and Eredar in general) are either very long lived, or immortal.
 * True but he could've been in suspended animation, or maybe only the original eredar are immortal. Has Blizzard released any official information on their ages?
 * Blizzard has revealed that draenei are very long-lived, but that's about it. (For example, we don't know how quickly they mature.) There's one comment about having "been in suspension" in the first quest, but it's never mentioned again.


 * Why the hell do so many people support Malygos' omnicidal crusade in WotLK?! Yes, his life sucked in the backstory, but that's no excuse for trying to blow up the world because mortal spellcasters don't meet his increasingly warped standards.
 * I personally found it hard to sympathize with him after what he did to Keristaza. Granted, she did send the player out to kill Saragosa, but Saragosa and Malgyos were responsible for having her imprisoned in the first place, and the player ultimately winds up having to kill her in the end.
 * Do the quest chain that involves killing him. He was right about magic causing imminent doom for the world.
 * Except that Malygos was using magic himself to cause the imminent doom for the world. If he had his way, Azeroth would have exploded. Nevermind the fact he has likely mentally scared several innocent magic users thanks to Mage Hunters capturing and torturing them because they used magic, and likely broke up several families by forcibly conscripting unwilling people into the group. He was also leading a full on assualt on the Wyrmrest Temple. Where Alexstraaza was. In the end, it was obvious Malygos had never truly recovered from his insanity, and he drastically overreacted at the magic usage seen in Azeroth. Like I said - if he wasn't stopped, he would've destroyed everything.
 * A lot of it has to do with the pre-release material explaining the Nexus War. It didn't mention a lot of the more insane things Malygos was up to; i.e., the world blowing up. In fact, Blizzard was pushing the fact that Malygos wasn't going insane(this was, of course, back at the height of the "Lore character X has gone insane and we have to kill him" craze), but rather that, having been infused with Netherdragon energy, had his insanity cured and was going very, very sane. With the information available at the time, it honestly sounded like Malygos was right and that the Kirin Tor were basically acting like a bunch of spoiled children were throwing a tantrum because their favorite toy was being taken away. Support for Malygos was huge on the forums. A few people suspect that some of Malygos' more Kick the Dog moments as well as the crazier aspects of the war were added during development to put a stop to this.


 * So there are both Horde and alliance Death Knights in the Death Knight Quest chain. Yeah fair enough. Makes sense. But just one small thing... how were they communicating with each other? Do they speak Scourgish or is everyone multilingual and speaks Common and Orcish? (And due to Gameplay and Story Segregation, players speaking to each other in common through Death Knights would just be annoying now wouldn't it?)
 * They are multilangual. After all, every race except the orcs and humans already speak two languages in game. The language limitation is just a gameplay thing.
 * The quest The Flesh-Bound Tome confirms that the Scourge has its own language.
 * They also forget one of the languages when they join either side, it would seem.
 * The language issue is a huge gameplay/story problem. For WoW to make sense you have to assume Horde races only speak or understand Common when it's spoken by friends or when it's very important. This is in spite of the DK-related issues, as well as the fact that the Blood Elves and Forsaken should by any measure be able to communicate with humans.
 * So with all the massive instances that are already in Blackrock Mountain, including the intended new instances like Blackrock Caverns...Will it collapse in Burning Crusade?
 * Wait for the beta and you'll see!
 * There's a discrepancy between how large an instance is on the outside and how large it is on the inside; the Scarlet Monastery in particular has four instances, but looks smaller on the outside. It could be that Blackrock Mountain is larger (and more structurally sound) than it appears in the Burning Steppes zone.


 * Setting aside the "new character models involve work" argument - however valid it may be - why is it that with ten races to choose from, we still have only 4 types of children? Tauren don't have babies? Gnomes and dwarves too? Blood elves can have kids but not night elves? And what's with all the kids having the same age - it's like they're some sort of crazy clone.
 * Can't have too many kids running around for ratings reasons, I guess.
 * In the page for the system that helps parents restrict how much time their kids spend on WoW, all the "kids" seem to be dwarves and gnomes.
 * There are tauren, nelf, belf and orc kids in the game in the Orphanage of Creepy Children. There are also some other race's kids in Shattrath, including gnome, dwarf and humans.
 * As before, try the Shattrath city orphanage. There's babies of every race, and children of most, including draenei and blood elves.
 * It seems you've been listened to. Varian's kid is now a teenager and I see a young dwarf (Other than Shorty) standing in Ironforge.
 * Strangely enough, in Leyara's flashbacks, her daughter Istaria has a blood elf child model. It doesn't make sense, especially considering that Istaria was 1,000 years old at the time of her death, and was likely an adult by then.


 * Is it me, or do the worgen models look a bit leonine?
 * Its the anime hair.
 * If it wasn't for the anime hair, they'd look more like some sort of domestic dog to me than wolves. But that's another matter.
 * Since these new Worgen are humans turning into beast-men and playable, they have a more "noble savage" look to them than the evil Worgen.


 * Why does any character stay dead for any amount of time? There are plenty of ways to resurrect and if those don't work, there is the Spirit Healer
 * Captain Obvious, but Gameplay and Story Segregation (unless you want to loose definitely your level 80 characters each time you die because a moron in your pick-up group cast the wrong spell).
 * Because we serve the all-powerful blizz-gods and are granted immortality through them, whereas none of the NPCs do.
 * Because Griftah sends a package of nifty doodads to every new player character. His store in Shattrath is only there in case you lose one.


 * Why can't trolls have beards? The Shadow Hunter in Warcraft III had a prominent one, many pieces of artwork show them with beards, and even the icon on the race select screen shows them with a beard.
 * Male trolls can't have beards for the same reason female trolls can't have face paint: The designers just didn't bother.
 * Why exactly doesn't Saronite affect the players in any way? To elaborate, it's been explictly stated several times that Saronite's the blood of Yogg-Saron, and that those exposed to the mineral for prolonged periods of time go insane. What about the vast portion of the WoW playerbase with, say, Saronite armor? No one's asking for a constant Interface Screw, but a few malign whispers every now and then would be quite appropos....
 * Same reason that every single miner and blacksmith in Classic WoW didn't develop cancer.
 * Having spent last night in Dalaran watching trade chat fill up with variations on spells, achievements and talents combined with the word "anal", I'm not so sure saronite hasn't wreaked its awful curse already.
 * It would also be somewhat unbalanced, as while Saronite is often a component in making items, many of the items that are made out of Saronite, such as Saronite Swordbreakers, are for plate-wearing classes.
 * Player characters are adventurers. In the middle of training and preparing to defeat the worst evil ever, an adventurer will drop everything to kill pigs for a demon to eat and crap out a set of keys. Adventurers are already insane. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
 * the "adventurers" are just the meat puppets we, the players, work through to interact with azeroth, they dont have a mind to drive insane


 * How is WoW an Expanded Universe? It is the core around which the franchise revolves. Even the RTS games that came before WoW are known as "Those games that came before WoW" to most players.
 * Expanded Universe means books, manga, and all the other supplemental material that surrounds the main franchise.


 * Not exactly the most profound JBM of all time, but... of all the odd positions they could sit in and all the races that could sit that way, why do humans /sit in seiza?
 * ...why wouldn't they?
 * No reason, it's just a weird position to sit in.
 * Not that weird. Maybe it's because I studied martial arts in my younger years, maybe it's because I have a chronic bruised tailbone, but when I sit on the ground, that's how I sit (at least until my feet fall asleep).
 * Least humans can actually sit - I've never met a troll in my life who has known how to sit. They just squat.


 * What happens when an achievement that is part of another one gets affected by a game change? For example, Blackwing Lair will apparently be upgraded to a Cataclysm-level raid, leaving the question of whether players will still need to do it for the Classic Raider achievement (This is especially relevant for this troper, as it is the only raid he still needs to do for Classic Raider). Additionally, Gnomeregan will be removed from the game (and thus, most likely from Classic Dungeonmaster's list of requirements). Considering that, the For the Alliance! and For the Horde! achievements may see some changes, as well as most likely creating additional requirements or achievements for the new faction leaders.
 * It could become a Feat of Strength, or have its requirements removed. There is some precedence that some of them might go the former route, although there's no doubt in my mind that FTH/A will be updated to reflect the new leadership. Onyxia's Lair (Level 60) was made a Feat. The Fifth Element was added as a Feat once they removed the questline for the Aqual Quintessence. Timear Foresees was also made a Feat when he was removed from Dalaran. And on another note, Blackwing Lair isn't getting touched. There is a new raid coming out that features Nefarian as the end boss called Blackwing Descent. Second, Gnomeregan.
 * How do the Darkspear maintain their population? Already described as the smallest of the Jungle Troll tribes, there was enough of them to fit on the Horde’s stolen boats in the Warcraft III demo, several of them blow themselves up as their unit ability in the same game, several must have been killed in their Horde’s missions in Warcraft III, and Admiral proudmoore viciously attacked the Echo isles in Warcraft III which must have killed a dozen Darkspear.
 * Most significantly Zalazane is said to have brainwashed most of the Darkspear population in World Of Warcraft, which makes the Darkspear population much lower the in Warcraft III. There’s been no indication that Vol’jin freed any in Cataclysm and he hasn’t recruited any more tribes like the orcs and tauren. Additionally they’re shown to have a large civillian population in the troll starting quests despite the constant trauma they continually face. Even if they had been screwing like rabbits when on the orcs ship and somehow raised their young while moving constantly to Kalimdor, there hasn’t been enough time for their hypothetical kids to grow to adulthood. TLDR version:How do the Darkspear continue to be a noticipable population in Azeroth when they’re a small tribe that has had its numbers totally devasted repeteadly(including most of their population being brainwashed and killed) and have had no time to grow?
 * This problem actually applies to the entire horde, the darkspear are just the most prominent example. The orcs consist of the small group that fit on the ships thrall managed to capture, as well as the Mag'har, who were already facing extinction back in TBC. It's pretty doubtful many other orcs managed to find a way around the world. Not to mention the fact that many of the orcs that joined the horde were agents of the shadow council or twilight hammer, which further brings down the population after their respective questlines/events. The tauren, like the Mag'har, were fearing extinction back in WCIII, and their military power was so small that they couldn't even flee without the help of Thrall. The forsaken originally consisted of a small group, are surrounded by enemies, and only replenish their numbers very slowly. The blood elves first had most of their members die during the scourge attacks, then had a number defect to the alliance, then lost a significant portion to mana madness, then had a majority leave to join Kael'thas or Illidan, then lost the isle of Quel'danas to demonic invasion(though they're probably still the largest faction). The goblins that joined the horde all had to escape a friggin' volcano.
 * The Alliance has the advantage of numbers but isn't doing much better. The humans are composed of Stormwind and the refugees of Lordaeron who didn't become Scourge, Forsaken or Scarlet Crusaders. The majority of the gnomes died in the trogg invasion and the radiation bomb. The dwarves were, until Cataclysm, only one out of the three major factions. The Night Elves had fewer population crises, but most of the battle against the Burning Legion's demonic forces in the Third War took place on their territory. The Draenei lost many to the Burning Legion and the Orcs. And the Gilneans suffered losses from the out-of-control worgen even before the Forsaken invasion. This just goes to show that Azeroth is quite a Crapsack World.
 * You forgot Kul Tiras. And Stormwind already was one of the largest factions in the world and has suffered very little damage in the last 47 years. The dwarves, while only one out of three factions, were a very large one out of three factions, and had several hundred years to build population. You are right regarding gnomes and gilneans though.


 * Why did Blizzard miss the chance to implement Blood Elf Druids? Canonically, there were high elven druids and there is even a blood elf druid in-game, so it wouldn't be too hard to try explaining it.
 * Lore wise, Blood elf druids would make sense. Gameplay wise, the Developers were probably listening to the complains about too many blood elves and wanted to encourage people to play the classic Horde races.
 * Because if Blood elves could be any class at all, the horde would be composed entirely of Blood Elves or undead with the Token Minority trolls and tauren. Yeah, I know you guys dislike having race-class restrictions, but it's to keep out what I call "Drow syndrome" and despite a whole ton of cool races, everyone wants to play as the "cool looking" race or one's overpowered as hell and everyone ignores the other racial advantages and picks those. (Remember Clasic World of Warcraft, where The Horde was just The Horde In Name Only because it was 90% undead and the other 10% were Shamans, Hunters, and Druids?)
 * Lore-wise, the high elves with nature powers were mostly slaughtered during Arthas's assault, and the remainder had set them aside for more "practical" skill sets in the interim. (This is explained in quests relating to the now out-of-control animals and treants in Eversong.) Also, there's no indication that high elven "druids" had access to the sort of shape-shifting and Elune-based powers druids have in game. Also also, their lack of participation in the Cenarion Circle would have to be explained somehow.
 * The explanation could simply be that the blood elves did fine without them for 10000 years. And there are plenty of racial classes that should have different abilities, like undead priests, troll priests, night elf priests, orc priests, tauren priests, tauren paladins, goblin priests. In fact, druid seems like a more logical choice for blood elves than priests. We know the paladins get their power from M'uru. But the priests aren't members of the blood knights, and don't follow any deity. Where do they get their powers from?
 * You know they did used to have their own racial abilities...they got removed for obvious reasons. (Anyone remember when dwarf priests would get easy guild invites simply on basis of being a dwarf priest?)


 * So the elements of Azeroth are going crazy. Thrall recognizes this and heads to Nagrand, because Outland's elements have been through a similar catastrophe and may be able to help. Because it's not like there are any shaman on Azeroth that learned directly from those elements after Draenor shattered, and there's certainly not one who was their only shaman for years afterward, and would already have some idea of how to deal with it. Really? Is a little important draenei involvement too much to ask for?
 * Draenei shamanism is a relatively recent and still fairly ad-hoc movement (the first draenei shaman, Nobundo, only turned to the ways of the elements after the orcs sacked Shattrath) -- nothing compared to the orcs, whose shaman traditions span centuries. Which, of course, brings the question of why none of the older orc shamans can go to the Maelstrom in place of the effing Warchief...
 * By my count (I really really wish we had an official timeline) Nobundo and Thrall have been shaman for about the same number of years. And Thrall has only been to Outland once that we know of, probably not many more times considering how busy he must be. So Nobundo would be more experienced with the Draenor elements. But of course we're sent after this random Dwarf guy, because Blizz has to promote Dwarf shaman.
 * Unless Thrall started training as a shaman a lot earlier than he logically would have had the opportunity, Nobundo's got him beat for experience. And Muln Earthfury almost certainly has Nobundo beat. So Muln holding the world together would probably have made more sense. (I half suspect Thrall got the role because he's a staff favorite.)
 * The nightmare of Iso'Rath and Twilight of the Aspects indicate that Thrall is just one of many shaman at the Maelstrom, along with Aggra, Muln, Nobundo and Rehgar.
 * In The Shattering, it's shown that Thrall's first choice was his old teacher Drek'thar, but he was getting senile, so Thrall decided to go to Greatmother Geyah, who sends him to Aggra. The dwarf never appears, which is one conflict between the pre-Cataclysm game events and the book (similar to how Vol'jin wasn't present when Thrall told Garrosh he was appointing him warchief in the book).
 * Lord of the Clans seemed to indicate that Shamanism is something of a Hard Work Hardly Works situation. While study and dedication are necessary to become a shaman, once you've actually become one, natural aptitude and how much the elements and spirits like you seems to be the deciding factor. Once Thrall received the blessing of the spirits, he surpassed Drek'thar, who'd been a shaman at that point for the better part of fifty years, almost instantly.


 * Why do the fights with the Faction Champions in the Trial of the Crusader have to be to the death? At the end of the fight, Tirion laments losing so many champions for little good reason, and in the boss fight against the three champions in Trial of the Champion, the enemies kneel down when defeated and retreat. Tirion wanted to ensure that the winners were strong enough to fight in Icecrown Citadel, but it seems wasteful to have them kill each other when there were many non-lethal fights before.
 * Flat-out bad writing, probably. That entire raid seems a rather patchy to me -- the bosses are all reused models, even the arena itself is shared with another instance, and the whole ordeal doesn't make much sense and screams "written by programmers". My best guess is that they were under tight time constraints and needed to make up a raid quickly, with not much time to think over quality.
 * I don't think it was written by programmers. If it were written by programmers, there'd be a lot of vague stuff you need a PhD in whatever to figure out combined with lots of Guide Dang It instances, and if you asked for help they would only give incredibly vague answers and refuse to help.
 * So what's everyone here going to do when Cataclysm is released? My guess is that half the playerbase is probably going to reroll worgen and flood the starting areas, and that the other half will probably level to 85 as fast as possible and then complain that there's no content in the game, ignoring all the nicely rewritten quests, storylines...
 * I made the race/class combo I've always wanted to, a Blood Elf Warrior, and leveled through Kalimdor. Currently I'm at level 60 and in Outland, and let me tell you that there are a LOT of awesome and epic quests on the Horde side (and quest chains; not gonna spoil anything, but you definitely want to visit Thousand Needles) to go through. I'm unsure if I'm gonna immediately roll a Goblin or Worgen, or keep working on my Belf Warrior, but I'm certainly going to check them out soon after Cataclysm comes out.
 * I took a mixed approach, leveling my main to 85 relatively quickly (within a week of release) to gear up for raiding, while spending part of my time after doing so leveling up a Night Elf druid and playing through the Worgen starting experience.
 * So now you have to get tokens from raiding to get gear. I hope this doesn't turn into Burning Crusade - I really don't want to see people who made the unfortunate mistake of joining a couple months too late or made the unforgivable sin of enjoying the ride to 85 instead of leveling up as fast as possible so they can catch the rush to get ready for raiding and PvP. I ran on Dentarg and Andorhal so this may have been just because of that, but if you weren't rushing as fast as possible to 70, then it was your own damn fault that you couldn't get attuned - even though attunements required PEOPLE to run. And what do you do when people refuse to lift a finger to help? I was always told "Get people who haven't run it yet". Uhm...gee...we're bloody trying. We were in Shattrah and had messages out on the LFG tool for days and nobody's answering - then we're just told to "just PvP or GTFO". I quickly left the game and didn't look back until I was told they finally removed attunements - If I wanted social elitism, I'd go back to bloody high school. Or I would go to a Baldur's Gate forum. Sad thing is, I hear people say they'd prefer it this way. Please don't start catering to the Vocal Minority again...
 * You only need tokens for two pieces of your Valor Point class set, which will enable you to get the first set bonus, and there's the chance of getting good equivalent gear, or of having them drop somewhere else (like how Toravon drops the T10 hands and legs on 10 man and 25 man respectively). It was quite difficult to get the Marks of Sanctification, but most of it was because in a 25-man group, there was virtually no chance of not having anyone who could use your type of mark who still needed to sanctify at least one of their items; 10 man groups should make it easier, as should the fact that each token is for a specific item.
 * Okay. I guess I'm just worried about Burning Crusade getting repeated because the players declared themselves "done" with the previous dungeons and left those of us who still needed half their sets in the dust and wouldn't lift a finger to help.
 * It Got Worse; in 4.3 all five pieces of a tier set will only available from the second through sixth bosses in Dragon Soul. This will likely pose problems for PU Gs, since while guild teams will ultimately gear up, enabling players who just joined to gear up easily (if they're fair about distributing loot) once everyone else on the team has the gear, in PU Gs, the question is not whether anyone else will need on your emblem, but how many will.


 * Is it just me or do I expect to hear some variant of "Brooklyn Rage" coming from a Goblin?


 * Just out of curiosity:If there is a Pit of Sauron in in Northrend, does that mean Middle Earth has a Pit of Arthas?
 * I thought it was Pit of Saron as in Yogg-Saron.
 * It is, as the slaves are mining saronite, Yogg-Saron's blood.

"Baine: My father issued the mak'gora, and the argument between you and he is settled, ven if, due to Magatha's treachery, the fight was no fair one."
 * Near the end The Shattering, Garrosh meets up with Baine. Hammul Runetotem was there! This would've been the perfect opportunity to bring the attack on the druids earlier in the book! Especially since the reason why Cairne challenged Garrosh to a duel in the first place was because he thought that he had ordered the attacks on the druids! But there was no mention on it. He could've brought it up, and Garrosh could've attempted to explain that he didn't order the assassinations! But no mention of it was ever made! Just a passing plot point.
 * Garrosh didn't exactly do a good job of tactfully or convincingly denying his role in the massacre when Cairne confronted him the first time, and it's unlikely that Hamuul (who met with Baine after he fled Bloodhoof Village) learned anything more. Baine seems to indicate the meeting is less about Cairne's grievances against Garrosh, and more about his own.

Hopefully, Blizzard will eventually figure out that said loud fans are not, in fact, in the majority (even if they tend to fraudulently present themselves as such) and stop listening to them. But that's not happening yet, and looks unlikely to happen in this expansion pack.
 * What's with the mood swings in the Tranquil Wash base in Cataclysm? The NPC's are laughing one moment, then crying the next, then the cycle starts around again. But why?
 * I've seen this happening with the people in the Silver Covenant's PVP portal area, albeit not as suddenly switching. Perhaps it's some sort of post-traumatic effect?
 * What exactly is the official logic behind having Alliance and Horde players fight over Wintergrasp and Tol Barad? It results in access to PVE content being dependent on how good your faction is at PVP, which means at best, that if you're planning a guild run on Baradin Hold, you can't know for certain who has it and at worst, means that you have hardly any opportunities to do it. The only recourse for many PVErs is to compete in the battlegrounds, which they may not wish to do or be prepared to win.
 * Word of God stated specifically the idea for world PVP objectives is exactly that, to "persuade" PVErs to PvP by baiting them with PVE content.
 * Why do they call them "Faceless Ones" when they clearly have faces? No mouths that we see, yes, but there are eyes and a nose-analogue (at least appearance-wise). Either give them no faces or call them something else.
 * The Faceless Ones are servants of the Old Gods, to the extent that whenever Faceless Ones appear it is guaranteed an Old God is involved. Not much is known about them, but it's plausible that they are all the mindless hand of whomever is controlling them and individually are completely "faceless". But that's mostly speculation.
 * The cultists in the Scarlet Monastery instance will scream about how you are impure for not following the ways of the Light even as you slaughter them with holy magic.
 * They're insane fanatics who think only they are true followers of the Light and everyone else is a heretic. What else would you expect?
 * Perhaps just as we see them as a case of Light Is Not Good, the same applies to us from their point of view. Plenty of bosses use holy magic, such as the other members of the Scarlet Crusade, Sir Zeliek in Naxxrammas (a special case among death knights) Anhuur in Halls of Origination and in the Hour of Twilight.
 * Speaking of holy magic, the Paladin spell Holy Shock. Hurts enemies, heals friends. But how does it know which is which? If it's going off the intention of the caster, then what's stopping me from using the much more powerful Holy Light to hurt enemies instead? Holy magic is holy magic, I should be able to channel it however I wish.
 * Possibly for the same reason a tank can stand in the middle of a mage's Blizzard without being hurt while the mobs that he picked up take damage, or why fellow party members are unable to use their offensive abilities to hurt each other. There's presumably an identify friend or foe feature on magic, even if there's no in-universe explanation and side works (especially Rhonin's backstory) raise the possibility of friendly fire.
 * In the Icecrown, there is a quest chain that leads to conquest of The Shadow Vault. You assist a Death knight named Baron Sliver, who is pretending to still be under Lich King's control. In the second quest in the chain (after you destroy The Ocular) he says something like "Don't think that we are safe yet, The Lich King can still see through his Scourge minions". Wait, what? If he can see through Scourge under his control, how come that he isn't aware of Sliver?
 * Death Knights were special amongst the Scrouge. They had there own sense of self and much greater freedom then the rank and file Scourge, which was why the Ebon Blade was able to break free from the Lich King's hold like they had. The ones he claimed the Lich king could see through were the mindless ghouls/geists/zombies etc...
 * It could be as though the Lich King's minions are like security cameras and the Lich King is sitting in the monitor room. He may be able to look into any one of them if he suspects something is amiss (and teleport there if necessary), but if nothing is happening, he might not even think to look, and thus overlook Baron Silver.
 * Have the Forsaken even considered the possibility of recruitment? It seems to work fine for the Cult of the Damned and Twilight's Hammer, why aren't there Forgotten Shadow missionaries preaching and handing out pamphlets in Horde and neutral towns? There's a quest chain focused on helping a plague-infected paladin who doesn't want to become undead, where's the quest chain about helping someone who's mortally wounded or fatally poisoned and wants to become undead?
 * In the RPG this is pretty much what they did. The forsaken had necromancers that would raise dead into fresh forsaken(with care and respect, not in a manner of violation like the lich king), and the cult was very big on recruitment(problem being it was also extremely fractured and couldn't agree on anything). Thing is, Blizzard seems to have about as much respect for the rpg information as they do for the paper they wipe their ass with(and the two may indeed be one and the same), so if the rpg presents a good idea, it's likely Blizzard's going to go in the other direction.
 * Eh, the RPG had a lot of lore problems too. Tauren tech-mods are the most obvious example. Also, the weird thing where half-orcs, children of two warring races, are more accepted than half-elves, children of two races that have been allied for about a thousand years. The manual of monsters dedicating the entire third section to putting stuff from Dungeons & Dragons in the Warcraft universe.
 * I liked tauren tech-mods.
 * Fair enough. However, since that comment, I finally read all the first edition RPG books and there are plenty more problems, mostly concerning weird and inconsistently applied retcons. I'm not sure which is more blatant; alliance armies driving Illidan off Azeroth (rather than what we see in the frozen throne) or all warcraft undead being sentient and independent. I actually did a review of all first edition RPG books here.
 * Admittedly the first edition had a lot of issues. Also had quite a few good ideas, such as Jaina's half elf half sister that Blizzard decided to retcon out, and a lot of the magic items and technological devices were really cool. The second edition is generally an improvement on just about every front, though. But really, the rpg and WoW have two different focuses; the rpg is there to give players the tools to tell a story. WoW is there for people to collect loot. That's not a jab; a lot of people like raiding and pvp and couldn't care less about the story. That's there prerogative and they're the market blizzard is selling to.
 * In Mekkatorque's short story,  So why didn't Mekkatorque check the numbers on the radiation himself? Why trust Thermaplugg?
 * Gnomes typically have a "crazy" inventor who pushes the devices as far as they can go (Thermaplugg) and one who actually makes them workable (Mekkatorque). The problem seems to be that Thermaplugg thought he could do it alone, hence his jealousy, and Mekkatorque thought the bomb was a workable idea.
 * What exactly would a Tauren Shadow Priest be? Tauren Paladins are explained as being part of the Sunwalkers, but Tauren Shadow Priests do not seem to have an explanation.
 * Dark side of the Moon?
 * Draenei and Night Elves don't really have an explanation for them either. I think it's just a side effect of the way the priest class was implemented. There are too many types of priest to stuff into one class, but they really didn't want there to be four or five race-specific specs. Thus, every race ends up with the Forsaken's shadow spec and the humans'/dwarves' holy themes.
 * Additionally, the Forsaken shouldn't be able to use Holy magic as undead, but they can in the game, possibly because otherwise the Horde would have few options for priests in vanilla.
 * Actually the Forsaken can use holy magic (well, at least the Light), it just hurts them like hell.
 * Why don't the Alliance just teleport their army to right in front of Orgrimmar? They have mages. In fact, the Horde has mages too, so why doesn't Garrosh just have a bunch of mages teleport his army to Stormwind's gates? Why even bother with troop movement? I mean, Jaina can teleport several people from the Undercity to Stormwind. The war would totally be over by now!
 * Just because one of the most powerful mages in the world can teleport several people doesn't mean that they have enough mages strong enough to teleport an entire army. It's an awful idea for a number of reasons - win or lose, they'd be in the middle of now-enraged enemy-territory, with no supply lines or line of retreat! But you're right that the war would totally be over by now if someone tried it - having thrown away a large part of their army on an idiotic gamble, they'd be easy prey for the other side.
 * Presumably, there's something about the destination that only enables people to teleport to friendly territory, likely due in large part to Gameplay and Story Segregation; Jaina is allowed to teleport to Thrall's throne room because she's friends with him, and Varian and Jaina teleport to Deathbringer's Rise in Icecrown Citadel only after Deathbringer Saurfang is defeated.*
 * Archaeologists can find pieces of a "canopic jar", and then open it, which on rare occasions contains a valuable alchemical recipe. So, you're assembling the scattered remains of some ancient urn, and then taking it apart to see what's inside? This sounds like a poor usage of time.
 * What's even stranger is that the digsites in which you find pieces, sorted by the race that created the artifact, can be miles or even continents apart; you could find half of the fragments of a Troll artifact in Tanaris and the other half in Stranglethorn Vale.
 * Seeing how the Forsaken only regained free will because the Lich King was weakened, shouldn't they have fallen back into his thrall after Arthas, so to say, "repaired" him, or at least after that battle of the will of his was finished and he gained full control?
 * Perhaps the Lich King would have to somehow re-establish control, which is presumably given at the same time as they're animated as undead. There are some Forsaken who joined after Arthas merged with the Lich King, as it's said in the RPG that Grand Apothecary Faranell was of little importance to the Lich King because he couldn't raise the dead, enabling Sylvanas to recruit him.
 * The RPG also made it clear that this was, in fact, happening. As soon as a year prior to the start of world of warcraft, some forsaken were developing a condition similar to dementia where their minds would deteriorate and they would eventually become enslaved again. The standard procedure for this was euthanasia. It also made it clear that forsaken were vulnerable to being enslaved by necromancers, so working on ways of countering that was one of their main areas of research.
 * What was the point of inventing Aggra just to give Thrall a mate?
 * To give Thrall a mate.
 * Doesn't make it any less headscratching...
 * One imagines one of the devs hates Thrall/Jaina.
 * Pretty much the above. Deliberate Ship Sinking, combined with the idea that all of the 'Shipping meant that Thrall clearly needed a mate. (Seems to me like they could have hooked him up with, say, Gorgonna. Or, if they needed a Tsundere shaman, Sergra Darkthorn. Aggra is scarcely a distinct character.)
 * 3.1 Ulduar trailer: Varian and Garrosh fight. More or less evenly matched. Wolfheart:  He tracks down Garrosh and they fight. And they are still evenly matched. Uh excuse me what the fuck was that, Knaak? Do you really expect me to believe Garrosh is that good? Has improved that much since 3.1? Do you actually think this makes sense or has playing a mage rendered you unable to operate a keyboard in any way other than rolling your face across it?
 * Varian didn't quite get the Arms rotation down as well (Garrosh had Saurfang to teach him). That being said, the scene in the book is more like "fight for a few seconds, something else intervenes, try to find each other again, fight for a few seconds" ad nauseaum.
 * As a player with a Warrior main, isn't Arms typically much better for PVP than Fury (which is the preferred PVE spec for warriors, and has a bit of Fridge Brilliance in how Garrosh goes from fighting off mob invaders in Nagrant to fighting the Alliance)? And shouldn't Varian be Fury if he's dual-wielding, which would put him at a disadvantage against Garrosh?
 * The fight in the 3.1 trailer lasted maybe four seconds. That's not really enough to tell anything about the two fighters. And in Wolfheart,
 * Exactly: he only
 * I haven't read the book(nor will I, I refuse to read anything by Knaak after war of the ancients), one could posit that Varian's super speed and agility are actually handicaps; he isn't used to moving that fast, isn't used to his body having those capabilities, so he's making mistakes. I'd throw out the analogy to Drizzt Do'Urden trying to use super speed braces and finding that they made his swings too fast to control and thus incredibly straight and predictable. Then again, I'm probably giving Knaak way too much credit with that one.
 * Garrosh points out that he got Gorehowl since his last fight, which is an upgrade to his combat capabilities.
 * Teldrassil bugs me. At the start of vanilla, the entire thing is at most 4 years old, probably only 3 or 2. It is not a natural area. So how the hell did all the furbolg get on top of the miles-high tree? And how did the ancient highborne structure suddenly appear? Did the night elves, despite growing all their other structures from trees, just decide to go retro and import marble? And how the hell does a tree grow mountains (with caves no less) on top of it anyway? Did the night elves just decide to import all the wild creatures?
 * Yes, they did import all the plants and animals and dirt, because it's important for their giant druidic tree to have life on it. The real question is why the newly-founded city of Darnassus is apparently so rooted in their culture that it's the name of their faction and language. Although, WMG warning here... it's possible that Darnassus was an ancestral capital of the night elven nation that was sunken under the sea during the Sundering (like the tomb of Sargeras). In which case, the elves could grow their tree on it intentionally, knowing it would raise the city out of the water. All of which would be potent symbolically, until it started going to hell..
 * How about Talindrela? She's supposedly a dryad of the forests, and people act like she has vanished for ages... but it has been at most 3 years at this point, even if you accept that the growth of Teldrassil and the growth of the forests on the tree only took a few months.
 * I know Blizzard's trying to ramp up the Alliance/Horde conflict and all, but... why does it seem like they're also trying to make the Horde look worse than the Alliance? As of the changes in Cataclysm, it seems like the only two competent leaders left in the Horde are Vol'jin and Baine. Other than them, we've got Gallywix (a backstabbing traitor who even his own people can't stand), Lor'themar (so insignificant he might as well not even be leader), Sylvanas (who's taken a very dark and unsympathetic turn as of late, what with using the val'kyr to raise new Forsaken), and war-crazy Fantastic Racist Garrosh Hellscream running the whole asylum. On the other hand, the only Alliance leaders who come close to being as "bad" as the Horde leaders are Varian Wrynn (debatable), Genn Greymane (also debatable), and Moira Thaurissan (but she's one of three leaders, so she's not that big a problem). I just can't shake the feeling that Horde's going to lose the next big war with the Alliance, and Blizzard's just trying to justify that by making them really unsympathetic.
 * You forget that the Alliance launched a completely unprovoked slaughter of Camp Taraujo, despite the fact the Tauren are the most peaceful race in Azeroth. To say nothing of Varian insulting Thrall and his ideals every chance he gets.
 * The Tauren, peaceful or not, are full fledged members of the Horde, a military union at war with the Alliance. Camp T was about as "unprovoked" as the Battle of Gettysburg (in fact, the "unprovoked" incident which started the recent war, if the whole seven year history of Horde/Alliance conflict doesn't count as "provocation" in some form or another, was done by the Horde). Also, I don't think it's Thrall's ideals that Varian is insulting, but rather his indifference and/or incompetence when it comes to applying those ideals to his own people. And as for the grandparent, Metzen has already stated that Thrall will be warchief again, and the incompetence of the Horde leaders in his absence is really just another way for him to beat us over the head with how utterly awesome Thrall is.
 * Except that Camp Tauarjo wasn't even a military outpost or anything of importance. It was just a small, peaceful camp that traded with heroes traveling between Mulgore and the Barrens. Literally the only thing military about the camp at all was the Chimera Master, and every town or city has one of those. Slaughtering every man, woman and child and torching the remains to the grounds served no point to the Alliance besides pure sadism.
 * Look at the fluff text (particularly the Alliance side). 1.) Camp T was a training center for future Horde infantry (i.e., player characters questing through Southern Barrens) 2.) the general responsible for the assault left openings in his lines so noncombatants could escape. Granted, many still died because it's a war, and in war, shit happens, but it's not like the Alliance went all Genghis Khan on the place. 3.) The atrocities that were commit there, (burning, pillaging, killing civilians etc..) were not intended by the Alliance leadership, but the result of some of the troops in the assault going to far, and Ally characters are given a quest to go kill them for it.
 * A "training center," in the sense of "a place where warriors in training happen to pass through and do a few odd jobs." The point about the general is correct, though -- he did not order any atrocities. That does not excuse said atrocities, as it only removes HIS culpability.
 * As for the Forsaken, their alliance with the Horde was quite tenuous (it's stated that they were "befriended", not official members), and a good number of the members, Garrosh included, are uncomfortable with what they're doing. With the way things are going it's possible another civil war could break out (between those loyal to Sylvanas and those loyal to the Horde) or the Forsaken might defect from the Horde entirely.
 * Seems doubtful that the Forsaken would completely defect, mostly for meta reasons. For one thing, it would create a balance issue between the Horde and the Alliance, unless either one of the Alliance races also left (doubtful) or a new race came in to take their place. Forsaken leaving also wouldn't work because of Forsaken player characters... they'd have to either go through a race change or be their own independent faction. There's also at least one in-lore reason, though: the Forsaken joined the Horde because they needed allies and no one else would tolerate them. They may have found a way to bolster their ranks thanks to the val'kyr, but it'll probably be a really long time before their strong enough to break away from the Horde.
 * Honestly, I have always found the idea of a full-fledged war between the horde and the alliance utterly ridiculous, especially with the horde as aggressors. Canonically, the alliance pretty much outnumber the horde 10 to 1. In addition, the three most powerful humanoid neutral groups, the cenarion circle, dalaran and argent dawn, are all alliance factions that became neutral only to achieve a specific goal(which have now been reached), and would probably help the alliance if stuff ever got serious, especially the cenarion circle for the night elves. It gets even weirder when you consider the power Velen is supposed to have, as well as the newly ressurected Cenarius. Why are all the horde people so eager to get into a war with the alliance?
 * The neutral factions that were formerly Alliance also have quite few Horde members in their ranks, and their members seem to be more loyal to their organization's goals, which typically involve the greater good of Azeroth, than their own faction. Tirion Fordring, while Alliance-affiliated as a human, is mainly working to clean up the Scourge in the Plaguelands post-Wrath; his work isn't necessarily over even though the Lich King has been defeated. Malfurion Stormrage is, oddly enough, not flagged for PVP and thus can't attack or be attacked by Horde players raiding Darnassus, even if they're killing his wife in front of him. He also states that a new Firelord might rise up even after Ragnaros' death, and some of the daily quests in the Molten Front involve making a permanent foothold with the Sentinel Tree. There's also an Earthen Ring shaman in Vashj'ir who warns you that if you try to start any trouble with people of the other faction, he will kill you himself.
 * And that last one was part of my point. If the horde would ever execute a full-scale attack on the alliance, it would be utterly silly for all those 90%alliance-10%horde factions to do nothing. Malfurion and the other night elves of the cenarion circle are not going to sit by as their people are slaughtered and it is unlikely the green dragons or the ancient guardians would sit by in that case either. Rhonin and Tirion grew up as members of the alliance and are unlikely to just sit back while the horde sack stormwind.
 * If you want to get technical on that point, Tirion was in his late twenties, early thirties at the youngest(more likely in his forties) by the time the Alliance was formed. He's from Lordaeron, was a citizen of Lordaeron, was the Governor of a province of Lordaeron. His only real connection to the people of Stormwind are that they're humans. Likewise, Rhonin was a grown man when the Alliance was formed; was already a somewhat accomplished mage of the Kirin Tor by the time the second war was over. His ties were to Dalaran and Dalaran was never particularly committed to the ideal of the Alliance as anything more than a temporary thing. So again, their only real sympathies to Stormwind are that Stormwin's population happens to look like they do, and that his wife is very racist against blood elves. Still, he might not be particularly keen on the idea of Varian using his people as artillery if they're not being directly threatened. Basic point; this isn't a race war. Just because they're humans doesn't mean they're on the same side. Malfurion stepping up for the night elves is fairly likely, but the flip side of that is Thrall getting back in and bringing the Earthen Ring to counter the Cenarion Circle. The dragon flights don't want any part of any war right now, having had the hell beaten out of them this last expansion(and really, they've been taking hits throughout all three expansions).
 * In Mists of Pandaria, and the Alliance fully commits itself to the war with the Horde. Additionally, Varian seems to be getting some Character Development in keeping his Lo'Gosh side in check more, and appears to be becoming a bit more reasonable, one has to wonder whether the Horde is now becoming portrayed more and more as the antagonist. Then again, (at least in my opinion), much of the pre-Cataclysm World of Warcraft consisted of the Horde making good faith efforts at demonstrating their desire to live in peace with the Alliance, only to be rebuffed by people like Admiral Proudmoore and Varian who are bitter about what the Old Horde did.
 * Two things bug me about the worgen, even though I love them as a playable race option. First and foremost... worgen druids. I understand that they wanted to add an extra druid race for each faction, and that druidism isn't exactly an easy class to find races for, but why worgen? Worgen were all human until just recently, and their status as druids is made particularly jarring by the in-game implications that there were Gilnean druids even before they made contact with the night elves. Seems to me that the draenei would have been a better choice for druids, and the worgen could have gotten paladins instead (since the Horde got a new shaman race with the goblins, but the Alliance didn't get a new paladin race). The second thing is the fact that Blizzard is planning on giving the worgen actual mounts in patch 4.3... bareback horses. I get that they're really only adding the mounts because people were complaining that the lack of worgen mounts was due to players complaining that it was easier for Horde to get mount achievements now, and that they want the worgen players to stick with Running Wild, but... given the level of creativity that Blizzard usually puts into these things, bareback horses seem really lazy and unimaginative.
 * The problem for the mounts is probably that Gilneas is pretty well-established lore-wise. It was a faction in the earlier warcraft games and it was seen quite recently in the comics. Any strange or fantastic beasts would really have felt out of place.
 * This seems to be the main reason, especially since Gilneans were, and some still are, human. It thus makes sense for them to also use horses, although I've found Alliance racial mounts less interesting than the Horde's, as a whole.
 * It could be a case where Blizzard had to do something that they never planned on. The mounts weren't added because Alliance players would need to find two more mounts to get an achievement, but because Horde players who had the Goblin trikes and faction changed (a paid service) to Alliance would run into the issue of having nothing to change the trikes into. Therefore, they had to do something, but did not budget any time to do something special or proper, so they did the fastest, cheapest thing they could.
 * Say, remember when Tauren didn't have a mount and got Plainsrunning for free?
 * Draenei getting a new class, especially druid (appropriate as it probably would have been, all Fan Wank aside) would require Blizzard to stop shuffling them under the rug and give them relevance to the metaplot, rather than focusing the vast majority of the Alliance's lore on humans. And if that were to happen, certain loud fans who still feel personally affronted by BC would rage.
 * The funny thing is; the other members of the alliance are self-aware. Tyrande didn't invite the Draenei faction leader(s) to vote on whether or not the Worgen should join the alliance because they were so centered on the burning Legion and Outland that they thought they went back to Outland, and that the only other draenei left were shamans in the earthen ring or warriors in the Argent Crusade. If you ask me, that's a good "Hey guys, forgot about them?".
 * Worgen Druids actually do have justification to them. The Worgen curse itself is Druidic magic, it was created when a group of Night Elf Druids attempted to use the Scythe of Elune to create a wolf form, and indeed it's Druidic magic that allows the Gilneans to retain their human minds as Worgen rather than going feral. The preexisting Gilnean "Druids" are Handwaved as being harvest witches in the early levels, and by the time you get your first form the Night Elves have arrived so presumably you've started learning from them. With Druidic magic having such a heavy impact on their culture, it's not unreasonable to assume some Gilneans would want to study it.
 * So apparently because they put an option to see the cutscene of the Lich King being replaced, it's a response to the bawing. Am I the only one who saw this as just taking away a bit of trouble? You just KNOW that if that statue wasn't there in the middle of Dalaran, that cutscene would have been uploaded to YouTube the second the patch went live and data-miners found it.
 * Wouldn't it make more sense if the final raid of Cataclysm was called "Hour of Twilight" and the third Patch 4.3 5-man dungeon was called "Dragon Soul?" The raid is essentially set in the Hour of Twilight that you're trying to prevent from happening, while the dungeon involves escorting the Dragon Soul, and most of the enemies are specifically trying to kill Thrall and retrieve the Dragon Soul.
 * Does it strike anyone else as strange that some bosses are based around parts of the game that are practically obsolete now, especially with regards to statistics?
 * Ragnaros in Molten Core used his ranged knockback on targets with a mana bar. As of Cataclysm, hunters now have Focus.
 * Nefarian in Blackwing Lair uses quite a few abilities that interfere with people's abilities, such as forcing a warrior into Berserker Stance (based on the old assumption that warriors could only tank in raids) and Druids into Cat Form (again, assuming that druids could only heal). Granted, they added a new class ability for Death Knights, but it's mainly a simple "pull the raid to the boss" move.
 * General Vezax in Ulduar is in some ways, more difficult after Wrath, because mana conservation is more important, and it's thus more difficult to heal through the achievement with the limited supply of mana.
 * Because people rarely went in there, anyways. Blizzard probably thought of this (hence adding the Death Knight ability) but they probably didn't see any reason in "updating" any bosses. Even though there are some bosses that were still difficult because they required specific mechanics. Yeah, Molten Core was easy as hell if you went in at 70 (or 80) but right now, we have five-man dungeons more complex than Molten Core.
 * If dragons are sentient, how does using one as a mount work? I could see a dragon giving you a lift somewhere because you're friends, but basically acting as a full time personal servant? No way. So, what goes on there? Do dragons just give away mentally damaged children that don't have the self-awareness to protest being used as mounts?
 * Drakes are said to be of less intelligence than dragons. Some might be sentient, but others, like mounts and trash mobs, might not be.
 * I guess wowwiki could be wrong, but it says drakes are just much younger dragons, and there are many drakes that speak completely normally.
 * How exactly are Alexstraza and Ysera sisters? In the Thrall Twilight of the Aspects geneaology guide, they are the only Aspects noted as being siblings, even though some of the Aspects address the others as "brother" or "sister".
 * While the dragon aspects were the first of their species, they were created from the protodragons (and those from the elemental dragons). So the titans could have taken two protodragons who happened to be sisters.
 * Or it may simply be a term of endearment; they've known each other for thousands of years.
 * In the War of the Ancients trilogy, an orc and a human mage travel back in time and fight in the war of the ancients on the side of the night elves. Tyrande meets them personally. At the end of the trilogy, the timeline is not reset. Yet neither of these factors appear to have any effect on the events of warcraft III. Why did the night elves (who have lived since the war of the ancients) and Cenarius still attack the horde without warning in the altered timeline?
 * Because Richard Knaak is an idiot, and used the Timey-Wimey Ball to have his author surrogate influence major plot events without thinking of the established storyline.
 * Wait, when was the Timey-Wimey Ball used? As far as appearances go, the new timeline has been adopted in all places. Except that Malygos randomly went crazy again, but since he still had his flight, so even that story was changed.
 * Is End Time really random? I've run it a good twenty times and every time has been Tyrande and Baine Bloodhoof.
 * Yes it is random, you've just been very, very unlucky.
 * At the end of Wrath Of The Lich King,  makes himself the new Lich King, in order to keep a leash on the Scourge. As Lich King, couldn't he simply have ordered all the Scourge to jump off a cliff or something? Problem solved!
 * While I definitely agree that the Worgen are cool, I can't help but wonder: why is Gilneas the only Human kingdom based on a real-world place? All the other Human kingdoms seem kind of generic.
 * Dalaran is less generic as well. As for why? Gilneas has always kept its culture seperated from the other kingdoms, so while those developed simultaneously in roughly the same direction, the gilneans developed their own unique culture.
 * Where did the massive population of stormwind come from? Only 40 years before the start of world of warcraft, the entirety of the kingdom had been conquered by the orcs. Most humans still present were killed or kept as slaves (and orcs were very cruel to slaves). The only people who escaped had to escape by ship, so unless there were a few hundred massive ships just standing by, there should have been no more than a few thousand survivors, many of which also fought in the second war, resulting in even more deaths. Yet now, a single generation after its retaking, its suddenly the largest, most populous and most powerful nation on the face of the planet. How did they rebuild so quickly? Where did the population come from? What were they doing during the third war?
 * Stormwind's population probably exploded after the Third War. Since Gilneas was closed off, Kul Tiras was out at sea, and everything else was destroyed, anyone who survived the Scourge would have run down south. The Beyond the Dark Portal book outright states that Stormwind was rebuilt at the same time they were building Nethergarde Keep, just after the Second War. During the Third War, I doubt any Scourge got down that far, but they were probably fighting demons. The Legion's focus was in Kalimdor, but there are still scenes where they're shown attacking the Eastern Kingdoms.
 * Where does the scourge get its massive army from? After Warcraft III, I just assumed that the scourge had scourged most of the continent of lordaeron, but that is evidently not the case. In fact, the only nations they really scourged were Azjol-Nerub, Quel'thalas, Lordaeron and Dalaran. While a significant number of people lived (or were buried) in those states, they fought a large number of wars afterwards. First, they failed their main purpose in the invasion of Kalimdor. Then, a civil war was fought between the dreadlords and Arthas. Then the forsaken broke free. Then the blood elves and forsaken freed much of Quel'thalas. Then they failed assaults on all major cities. How are the scourge still numerous enough to overthrow the world if set loose?
 * When your main source of recruits is death, you can expect quite an inflow when anything alive exists, let alone fights other living things.
 * The bulk of their forces actually comes from mass graves and tombs. The bodies of the long dead pile up. With the plague, they can also turn a substantial number of enemies, both combatants and noncombatants into loyal soldiers without losing a single one of their own. On top of that, not only do they raise the bodies of their fallen enemies, but their own fallen can either be raised again or used for spare parts. On top of all of that, the threat the Scourge poses isn't based completely on numbers(though they do have the largest single army on Azeroth), but rather in the advantages of undeath. Their forces don't have to sleep or eat, they don't have to be outfitted or equipped. They can march continuously. They can't really be demoralized. Put all that on top of their abilities that make recouping their losses so easy, and you're left with a force that can win just about any war through attrition.


 * In terms of lore, what is the justification for the Blood Elves joining the Horde? They wouldn't even be Blood Elves, if the Undead hadn't ravaged their homeland. Before that, the Orcs did their best to burn Quel'thalas. And the Trolls have been doing the same since before then. And these might not be Forest Trolls, but they still shouted "Revenge for Zul'jin!" in Warcraft III. So, the Blood Elves are so unprejudiced that they ally with three races who worked to destroy their homeland?
 * The undead of the horde rebelled from the ones that destroyed their homeland and are led by Sylvanas Windrunner, ranger-general of Silvermoon, probably the single highest ranking elf still friendly to the blood elves.
 * The troll headhunters in warcraft III were used for both jungle and forest trolls (see blackrock&roll 2), so the zul'jin quote likely only applied to the forest trolls (especially considering the darkspear lived on some isles in the south sea and would likely never have heard of Zul'jin)
 * Different orcs. The orcs of the new horde seem to mostly be of the frostwolf, shattered hand and warsong clan, who weren't part of the horde when Quel'thalas was burnt. The bleeding hollow, which also has a significant presence, was part of the horde, but was active in Khaz Modan.
 * Furthermore, the sin'dorei had essentially three choices: stay allied with the faction that most sin'dorei feel has abandoned them, go it alone, or join a new faction that is coming into its own.
 * The BC-era blood elves likely didn't see their membership in the Horde as a long-term thing. Bear in mind, their presence in Quel'thalas was essentially a rearguard left behind to facilitate transporting the younger blood elves into Outland. Then they start making their way there and it's like "oh fuck, everything here wants to kill us and the people we were following are CRAZY". So their marriage of convenience becomes the real deal.


 * As a playable Worgen, you used to be human, right? And you didn't CHOOSE to become a Worgen. Forsaken used to be humans and can be the same classes as humans, except for Paladins (for blatant reasons; the story indicates you choose to become a Forsaken and a Paladin just wouldn't do that). But as a Worgen you still act pretty honourably most of the time. If Blizzard wanted more races to have Druid options, they should have tacked it onto Gnomes (who currently have four classes you cannot be). So how come Worgen can't be Paladins, like humans can be, but they can be druids, while humans can't?
 * What do you mean by choosing to become a Forsaken? In the lore, Forsaken can become paladins or use the Light, but it just hurts them so much that most don't bother. But about your question: worgens are from Gilneas, an isolationist nation that walled itself just after the end of the Second War, at which point the paladin order had just been created and only a hanfull of them existed, and they were all from Stormwind or Lordaeron. Now if the fact that you can play a Gilnean druid before becoming a worgen is never really explained, it still makes more sense to give druids to worgens (as the worgen curse is originally a druid thing) instead of to gnomes (who have never been related to ancients, nature, dragons, the Emerald Dream or anything druidic whatsoever).
 * I believe the lore mentions somewhere that the personal connection Paladins have to the Light protected them from coming back as undead. It doesn't really apply anymore since newer Forsaken are revived by the Valkyrur. As regards druids, the idea within the Gilnean opening is that Gilneas had a more traditionalist culture than Stormwind, with more people worshipping pagan-style druid religion than the Light-centric Stormwind. The major difference between Forsaken and Worgen is that the Worgen are from an entirely different and isolationist culture, while the Forsaken are the standard humans of the setting post-death.
 * I find both these explanations fairly useful. I suppose that means that if a Paladin was bitten by a Worgen, they would either die, or not be affected, rather than Turn? Admittedly, having a noble Paladin who sounds like they're choking on a cockney would be a little odd... Also, the reason I suggested Gnomes for Druids was because right now there are four classes they cannot be, while all the others have at most three.
 * More of a general blizzard that a World of Warcrat specific question, but did the dialogue in world of warcraft get in general more cliched and over the top as more new expansions were added? (I ask because of the large gap between starcraft and Warcraft 3's "often cliche but still fun to listen to" and starcraft 2 and diablo 3's "cringe worthy, shove a cliche out with every line" style of dialogue.)Presumably, Warcraft might fill the gap, so am curious how that transition might have taken place.