Filed under: The Burning Crusade

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

They burn worlds to ash. They render the verdant uninhabitable. Theirs is not the evil of mad chaos, leaping to corrupt for amusement or decadence. They are the means by which the mad Titan seeks to unmake everything. They are the Burning Legion, and it is their purpose to end existence. Nothing less will satisfy Sargeras.

Yet even within the seemingly monolithic forces of the Legion, there's room for political intrigue of a sort. While Sargeras has seemingly caused his own exile from the seat of power, his former lieutenant Kil'Jaeden now leads the Legion, a position he seemingly aspires to hold indefinitely. And Azeroth is directly in his crosshairs.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Draenor has always interested me. Note that I didn't say Outland, which is a part of the former world Draenor. While Outland itself is very interesting in its own right, one of the things I find fascinating about Draenor is that we do not know what it looked like. While we have a good understanding of one large continent (of which most survived as Outland), we don't know the entirety of that continent, nor do we know whether or not any other pieces of the lost red world survived.

What we do know is that Draenor died when Ner'zhul, the former elder shaman and de facto ruler of the Horde remnants that survived Gul'dan's treachery and Doomhammer's defeat, tried to use stolen magical artifacts to open portals to new worlds, hoping to find one to lead his people to settle on. He did this because the warlock magics taught to Gul'dan by Kil'jaeden had effectively rendered Draenor unlivable.

While Draenor was the homeworld of the orcish people, who evolved there, it was not named by them. Rather, it was the draenei fleeing the Burning Legion who gave the world its name. Draenor means "exile's refuge" in the eredun language. In addition, it was the arrival of the draenei and the naaru that led to the entrenched ancestor worship of the orcish people, as K'ure's tomb in Oshu'gun (the remains of the draenei vessel) attracted the spirits of the deceased to it. In turn, these spirits deliberately created a religion among their own descendents that would venerate K'ure's resting place, weaving orc and draenei together spiritually.

Draenor was a world of its own, and we barely knew it. And it's not the only world we know about in the Warcraft cosmos with strange, unexplained mysteries.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

When you think about Azeroth as of right now, in a way, the stage has been set for some massive changes to the status quo. I mean, seriously, contemplate the following:

• Ragnaros the Firelord, ruler of the Firelands and mastermind behind the invasion of Mount Hyjal and power behind the Molten Core, has been ultimately defeated in his own demesne, and the fire elementals are now scattered and leaderless. They pose little threat to the world for some time to come.
• Likewise, Al'Akir's servants can call for his aid, but he's not likely to answer, having himself been deposed and slain alongside his son Thunderaan and even powerful servants like the Conclave of Wind and Prince Sarsarun. The air elementals are even more disrupted than those of fire.
• Neptulon the Tidehunter may not be dead, but he's currently missing, having been seized by Ozumat and taken elsewhere, his ultimate fate as yet unknown. The naga invaded the elemental plane of water itself and may well still be there alongside the faceless ones.
• While Therazane the Stonemother herself endures (the only elemental lord to still rule a plane), Deepholm itself has suffered much throughout the Cataclysm. Not only did Deathwing shatter the World Pillar (it was repaired, but for a time the Maelstrom threatened to collapse into Deepholm and Azeroth along with it), but wars broke out between the Twilight's Hammer and the servants of Therazane as well as the stone troggs and the earthen. Meanwhile, a titan designed waygate leading directly to Uldum was found.
• With all of this, one might almost forget that the Destroyer himself, Deathwing, has met his own end at last. In addition, the four remaining dragon aspects (Nozdormu, Alexstrasza, Ysera and Kalecgos) have lost some measure of their former titan-bestowed power -- at least their immortality, and possibly more. With Deathwing's death, the Twilight's Hammer cult (the main instrument of the Old God's will on Azeroth) has also suffered greatly, their forces destroyed, their leaders such as Cho'gall, the Twilight Prophet and lesser lights like Warmaster Blackhorn.

I've admitted to my transmogrification habit on a few occasions now. One of the things that it's brought to my attention is that I really, really hate heroic lockouts on content I can easily solo -- like all The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King heroic 5-man dungeons, for instance. Let me tell you a true story.

I have been running heroic Azjol-Nerub once a day for a week now. Every day, I zone in, kill everything in my path like an unstoppable juggernaut of death, reach Anub'arak himself and crush his carapace with wrenching blows from my two gigantic swords, then peel open his husk to find the same exact drops, none of which are a plate helm. It's annoying because it only takes five minutes to do, but I can't devote, say, a half-hour to doing it six times because it's a heroic and locks me out for an entire day. I find this absurd. I especially find it absurd because it's not as if older heroics get a lot of at-level use nowadays. People who ding 80 don't queue up for heroic Azjol, they go to Hyjal or Vashj'ir.

Nowadays, these older dungeons serve purely as repositories of fashion, clothing dispensers we run in order to assemble a look. Well, OK, some of them also serve as a source of frustration when a mount doesn't drop. At any rate, what purpose does it serve to lock up these dungeons behind the mantle of "heroic" and apply the lockout to them when no one runs them when they're anything like a challenge anymore? There's already a system in place that keeps you from running a dungeon too many times within an hour; that should be sufficient for these dungeons. I understand leaving raid lockouts in place, but not 5-mans.

Yes, there could be twinking imbalances here for people who froze their XP, but frankly, if some level 70 or 80 twink can get a level 85 or 90 (in Mists) to carry him to gear, it doesn't really bother me. We've already stated numerous times that the game isn't balanced for PvP at lower levels, let's embrace it. These dungeons aren't heroic anymore. Let's let reality reflect the changing game -- and more important, let's let me get my freaking hat.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

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Truth is, I enjoy World of Warcraft's lore, which is why I write about it for the site alongside Anne Stickney. But I understand why a setting that's been around since the original Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans can be daunting to new people trying to understand what's going on. Why does the human king have scars on his face, and why is this orc with giant tusks on his shoulders so upset about everything? Never fear, it's really not all that complicated. Here, we're going to discuss some ways for people who haven't really had a chance to get invested into the lore to start figuring out who those people are and what they're on about.

My first suggestion to you is, when you're playing WoW, start clicking on books. There are books all over the game world, in various dungeons, out in the open, hidden away in corners in inns and cities. If you see one, click on it. Hidden in all these books are stories about the world of Azeroth. You can get surprisingly caught up on the basics just via this exercise. Also try to click on plaques on statues and in structures. The statues in front of Stormwind have small plaques on them that tell you exactly who these are statues of and why they were placed there.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a Know Your Lore about Varian Wrynn. This is guaranteed to get you guys worked up, by the by. Varian is one of those characters that sharply divides the player base. Some think he's an unthinking racist, others a brutal savage, still others an interesting character -- and yet again, some like him and think he's an excellent king for Stormwind and leader for the Alliance. In that post, I pointed out how active Varian has actually been since taking the throne of Stormwind, and a few of you made a good point.

A great deal of that activity has taken place in books or short stories or the comic. In game, he's only really left Stormwind three times. Granted, one of those times was the Battle for Undercity, where he and a dashingly handsome draenei warrior carved their way through tunnels full of undead. Still, it's a fair point. If you really want to know Varian, you have to do a lot of homework. Some players play WoW and that's it. If it doesn't happen in game, it doesn't happen. I can relate, as I'm still bummed that Cairne died offscreen, in a book. I wanted to be there to say goodbye to the character, and I still feel a little cheated.

On the flip side, of course, some people ignore things like quest text, flavor text, and cutscenes but will actually sit down and read a leader short story or a book. I know that I've had spirited lore discussions with folks in my guild, yet every time we jump down from the airship onto Deathwing's back, we're escaping out to get to the fighty bits. So having lore in a form disconnected from the gameplay gives those folks a chance to experience it without feeling like they have to choose between them.

So which do you prefer? Do you want it to happen in the game, or are you happy with tie-ins?

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

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You know me, always looking to kill stuff.

Hear me out, though: I'm not saying we should kill repeatable questing here. Repeatable questing, first given to us in World of Warcraft with the inclusion of the Skyguard and Ogri'la questing hubs, was later expanded upon with the Isle of Quel'Danas as part of the Sunwell patch and has been with us ever since. Throughout Wrath of the Lich King and into Cataclysm, we've seen new daily quest hubs come and go. (Cataclysm currently has both Tol Barad and the Molten Front as hubs, plus other dailies for reputation factions such as the Therazane ones.) I'm not specifically arguing against the concept of having questing hubs that offer repeatable quests for a reoccurring reward.

I'm asking why must they be daily?

It's very hard to imagine a Cataclysm without legendary items. Despite the fact that it wasn't introduced until six months into the game's existence, Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest has become a staple item in every progression raiding guild's repetoire. The Fangs of the Father, Golad and Tiriosh, have only recently started to actually appear in game, but every week from now on will see more and more being finished.

Coming hand in hand with these legendary items are the issues of imbalance that they cause. In PvE, terminology has started to crop up that puts legendary and non-legendary DPS into two separate categories of competitiveness. Concepts exist such as "enhancement shaman are currently one of the top non-legendary DPS specs..." -- a category that encompasses only 10 of the 22 DPS classes in the game. In PvP, concerns about burst damage have arisen, which was a big factor in the nerf to DTR that came in 4.3.

The issues with legendaries

Legendaries cause a balance problem, and that's a problem that's been exacerbated by two things in Cataclysm: a horrifically wide spread of specs that can use them, with 12 specs or five classes in total having access to legendary weapons right now, and incredible ease of access to legendaries (for the heroic raider).

This is neither a post excoriating nor exulting but rather simply contemplating the process of updating character models in World of Warcraft. I got to thinking about this when I realized that I'm always happiest when I get Well of Eternity because I like the night elf model. Tall, spare, muscular, it looks excellent in plate. There are certainly flaws to the model, but they're concealed entirely by my gear. Night elf males have large hands, but those hands look just fine curled around a weapon, and the faces are entirely concealed behind my helmet. As you can see above, the night elf male does an excellent job of showing off the textures and details of my armor set, especially the plated legs.

Redesigning these models will have a variety of effects. As a long-time player, I have my own stylistic loves and hates. Human females look astonishingly vapid and nigh-idiotic, and their animations in melee look ludicrous to the point that I expect them to fall over every weapon swing, while gnomes and blood elves have excellent combat flow. Female undead melee are awesome to watch, but I can't stand the bones poking through my gear. That's part of the complication here. The models you love, someone else hates, and the models you hate, someone else loves. That's often viewed as a cop-out -- but man, if you screw up my tauren, I will burn your world. (Note: Will not actually burn your world ... too lazy.)

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Because of the way we experience the setting, the story of World of Warcraft progresses in bursts. It's fair to think of each expansion as a new series, and the patches as episodic, in the same manner as British TV series such as Doctor Who or Turning Evil. Therefore, each expansion brings new settings, new dangers, and a new, overarching storyline, while each patch is an advancement of that storyline, bringing it to a conclusion with the ultimate patch of each expansion. In this way, Patch 4.3 is effectively a multi-part episode concluding the story of our confrontation with Deathwing.

I bring this up because with Mists of Pandaria, we're going to see a whole new place and explore it. In essence, it will be an expansion that introduces a great deal of new -- new lands, new peoples, new experiences. While it will still be part of Azeroth and still part of the unfolding storyline, it's also a change to switch gears and get away from the familiar. In a game like WoW, it's necessary to introduce new elements in this way to keep the setting engaging. It may be hard to relate now, but Ragnaros, Ahn'Qiraj, the Old Gods, the Silithid, all were introduced in World of Warcraft and not any of the RTS games. Look at the Warcraft III map of Kalimdor. You'll notice pretty much everything south of Feralas is blank on it.

This puts me in mind to speculate on the future of the game and where the lore is going to take us. Not just in Mists, of course, as I expect that much of the lore of the expansion is well and truly fleshed out already, and I'm as eager as anyone to see it. But we've got expansions down the road and trends to consider. None of this absolutely will happen ... but some of it might.

GameStop has announced a brand new bundle online that gets you World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King all for just $19.99. We don't know when the World of Warcraft Battlechest combo bundle is going to expire, but for now, customers who purchase the Battlechest from GameStop will get a copy of Wrath bundled along for free. The deals don't get much better than this, folks.

Many people, myself included, believe that WoW's barrier to entry is perhaps one of its most difficult challenges to overcome. With more deals like this, WoW can get into more hands at a lower price than ever before, hopefully adding on subscribers and new blood in anticipation of Mists of Pandaria.

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MMO-Champion recently released an incredibly interesting set of data about the most popular items used in weapon transmogrification, finding out that 62% of the top five transmog weapons across all classes are from The Burning Crusade. Only 20% of the top five items are from the classic WoW world, with 18% of the weapons coming from Wrath of the Lich King. 0% of the top five items are from the most recent Cataclysm expansion.

The Burning Crusade is heralded as the golden age of World of Warcraft, a time when the genre that WoW perfected hit a beautiful peak, a wonderful balance between difficulty and accessibility, that appealed to the hardcore MMO veterans who dominated the genre until the Wrath of the Lich King days. Others hated it entirely. No matter which way you lean, it's clear that The Burning Crusade had strong art direction, with otherworldly weapons and armor juxtaposed against traditional fantasy tropes. The fact that Burning Crusade items are the most popular right now does not surprise me in the least.

Check out all of the statistics, as well as each class' top five transmogged weapons, over at MMO-Champion.

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