My Blizzcon Thread

It’s late. I’m tired. I’ve got another day ahead of me.

Read this thread. Everything will be made clear.

http://www.scrollsoflore.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4972

Mkay? Now, let me sleep.

I’m calling MMO-Champion’s Bluff.

I’m sure all of you have read the news by now.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=92919.0

I have nothing against MMO-champion. Boubouille has been a great source of information for many years and I wish him no ill will, nor do I wish to vilify him. However, this “leak” is, as my senses tell me, bullshit. First of all, let’s look at his source.

A private post on Something Awful. The trolliest of troll sites, the creme de la creme of bullshit. Perhaps you’ve heard of the “Goon Squad”? That’s there home base. And all of the information posted in that thread seems very, VERY familiar.

As in, it is all theories that have been posted by various, unrelated posters right here on SoL. Baine replacing Carin? Happened at SoL. Thousand needles being flooded? Sounds like a theory posted by a user known as “RobLore”. Hell, I even remember some people theorizing the level cap will be 85 rather than 90, right at SoL.

I am not claiming credit for these ideas- in fact,  none are “mine”, instead, they are from disparate and unrelated users of SoL, and unless we’ve been stricken with prophetic abilities, I doubt many, if any, have even a hint of truth to them. SoL has, very recently, come to the forefront of the Warcraft lore community, in no small part thanks to Handclaw and his discovery of both the new races and classes. For that, I am thankful. And I do not claim MMO-Champ “stole” these ideas from us- rather, the poster on Something Awful did, compiling a bunch of ideas he found on this very forum and presenting them as a “leak”. Unfortunately, MMO-Champion, be it Boubouille or someone else, did not fact-check, and basically fell for some epic troll bait. It happens to the best of us- and this will be proven either right or wrong in a week, but I’d bet my money that this isn’t a “blizzard leak”, but someone who reads SoL and liked some fan-ideas. MMO-Champion should not have posted this as news, and the rest of the WoW world should not have jumped on it without digging a little deeper.

More information can be found at my Scrolls of Lore post.

Loresclusive: First, new races, now… new classes?

The impeccable Handclaw strikes again! First, he uncovers potential new races and now… new classes?

No, no, not new classes in the vein of deathknights, new classes for old races! Let’s take into consideration these two quests, a Tauren questline that was added in 3.2 that hints at Tauren druids following the “sun”, which some people interpret to mean the holy light, and now with 3.2.2, we have a highborne from eldre’thalas coming to Tyrande to offer his services as a mage. Hrm… tauren priests and paladins, night elf mages… what could this mean?

Oh haiz. Handclaw has uncovered some NPCs in the patch 3.2.2 files named “Race+Class”… all of them being classes not normally associated with that race. The list is as follows.

• Human Hunter
• Orc Mage
• Night Elf Mage
• Blood Elf Warrior
• Dwarf Shaman
• Undead Hunter
• Tauren Paladin
• Tauren Priest
• Gnome Priest
• Troll Druid

Some of these make a lot of sense with existing lore- the wildhammer dwarves already have a history of shamanism for example, and there are plenty of human hunter NPCs already in game (who’d continue hunting into undeath, as Nathanos Blightcaller showcases), plus there’s no reason a blood elf COULDN’T become a warrior. The aforementioned questlines provide plenty of lore as to why Tauren Preists and Paladins and Night Elf mages. Some strike me as a tad odd, Gnome Priests and Orc Mages being the most prominent (though people who listened to the show, especially the one regarding the elemental plane will recall that I am quite in favor of Troll Druids). A good many of these “logical” classes were cut simply because the races had the maximum amount of classes already (six, not counting DKs). But it seems blizz may have expanded their technology and are softening their stance, and/or writing new lore to justify new classes. These could probably help us pinpoint the new classes for the supposed upcoming worgen and goblin races… they’d probably be adding these to help balance the amount of classes on both sides, which has the added bonus of giving people who pay for a faction switch more options (for instance, a shaman transferring from the horde wont be shoehorned into being a draenei, but could now possibly be a dwarf).

Episode 13 (Elementals and the Elemental Plane) is up.

Just a heads up- finally got the (much maligned) podcast of Ep 13 up. Had to actually rerecord a bit, anyone who listened to it live knows why.

Patch 3.2 and the “acts” of WotLK.

So, patch 3.2 went live for American servers yesterday and should be going live for Europeans shortly. This patch is, for all accounts, filler, and Blizz is obviously saving their big guns, both in terms of lore and raid content, for 3.3, the supposed “final” patch of WotLK.

One thing that has been brought to my attention is that WotLK has actually had a lot of content cut. There are entire towns (such as the outpost in front of Ulduar or Unu’Pe in Borean Tundra) that completely lack quests or content, entire zones bereft of quests (Crystalsong) and even zones cut out of the game completely (Azjol’Nerub). And yet, Blizzard took on a rather interesting and ambitious new way to storytelling in WoW after the lore debacle that was TBC.

This interview from IGN with Jeffrey Kaplan goes into discussion about the “acts” of WotLK. He says the first act ends at the Wrathgate, where bliz’s first and only ingame cinematic takes place. It’s a great event which is followed by a great series of quests that then… well… after Wrathgate, it seems all the races within the alliance and horde kind of become homogeneous. They made a big stink about Forsaken having new architecture in WotLK, and there’s not a single important Forsaken character after that part of the game, and all characters seem to disappear behind Garrosh, Varian and Tirion.

WotLK has been out for 9 months now, and we’ve been in the “2nd act” for two whole patches. I’m assuming that the Ulduar and Nexus war storylines don’t count (while important, you must remember that the expansion is called Wrath of the LICH KING, rather than Wrath of the Titans or Wrath of Malygos), but even so, it seems like the lore has pretty much ground to a half after wrathgate. I suppose act 2 will conclude with the release of patch 3.3 and be tied to a cinematic, perhaps regarding an assault on Icecrown Citadel and/or your character entering it, and the final cinematic will play with the death of Arthas.

But do you think this “act” system has been good or bad for the game? With predesigned lore landmarks, it seems like the storyline moves in erratic bounds rather than evolving fluidly from the beginning to end of the expansion. Do you think the focus on “acts” has caused them to neglect parts of the lore for specific events? Or do you think Blizzard has scrapped the “act” system altogether sending it the same way as the Crystalsong Forest content?

Well, it was fun while it lasted.

MMO-Champion has uncovered some more masks in the wake of the goblin/worgen fiasco. In addition to the goblin and worgen masks, we also have murloc, vrykul, ogre and naga masks.

Still, something seems up.

The Worgen and Goblin masks were completely new textures. They even added a female mask for the Worgen. All of these other masks are direct copies of preexisting race’s textures, save for the female Ogre, which is actually a direct copy+paste of an old drawing from one of the RPG books (Thanks to SoL’s Nene for pointing that out)!

So, it could’ve been our worgen and goblin masks were a red herring, or it could be that these NEW masks were thrown up to put us off the scent.

Hot crap on a plate!

Wow. I’ve been away at a writer’s convention all weekend- and when I got an emergency call from my Finnish friend about Handclaw of SoL making the WoW discovery of the year. I hastily stole my friend’s laptop and set up a wordpress blog to start up the long planned BWTL blog to slap this on as an exclusive. And a day later, well, we’re the 8th most viewed wordpress post.

Also, I’d like to clear the air. Today, normally, we’d have gone live on our podcast at 12 EST. But, since I was away, me and Pride sat down to record the week’s episode on Wednesday. But, Friday night… the power went out in Pride’s podunk little town. So, he wasn’t able to post it until around 7:30 today, and I was sans computer for most of it. Fret not, however, for he was able to get episode 11- the Naaru, up as soon as possible. Listen and enjoy.

Loresclusive: Worgen and Goblins and Halloween, oh my!

Goblins and Worgen and Masks, oh my

A very, VERY hearty thanks to my GOOD friend Handclaw and all the guys down at Scrolls of Lore.com… they may have the biggest lore discovery this side of blizzcon! Handclaw has  uncovered evidence that worgen and goblins may just be the next expansion’s races… if I were to guess, I’d say the goblins would be joining the horde and the worgen would be joining the alliance. “But wait, Oma, you lisping madman, what does this have to do with the new races?”

When was the last time Blizz added new Halloween masks? When the Draenei and Blood Elves joined the playing field. And look at those worgen textures. So detailed! Not to mention there’s evidence of a FEMALE worgen… they don’t even have female taunka or forest trolls! Blizz is obviously putting a lot of work into this… and I think they just spilled the beans. Well, we’ll know at blizzcon, eh?

Welcome!

Welcome to the first post of the official But Wait There’s Lore blog, here to bring you breaking news (which should be in the next post- it’s a surprise!) about the lore of the world of warcraft, as well as a place for me, Omacron, to cover any of the lore that isn’t enough to fill an hour.