The Story of World of Warcraft

So talents are for another time. I'm going to take a stab at something else (credit goes to the hosts of the WoW Insider Show from WoW.com for the notion): summarising the story of the original World of Warcraft up until the release of The Burning Crusade.

Convoluted!

The story of the game is largely expressed in the broad strokes of the end-game dungeons and raid instances, so that's what I'll use as the basis for my summary.

WoW launched with two 40-player raid instances: Onyxia's Lair and Molten Core. The titular Onyxia was a malicious black dragon, daughter of the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing (originally Neltharion, the Earth-Warder). The storyline that led players to confront her in her lair in Dustwallow Marsh involved her having posed as a noblewoman in the kingdom of Stormwind (a trick her father had used before), using magic and guile to distract and corrupt the nobility and the regent, Bolvar Fordragon. In the current canon of the game, however, Onyxia was slain by Stormwind's king, Varian Wrynn, upon his return from captivity.

Molten Core has a more involved history, but one with interesting links to the black dragons. Three centuries before the game began, there was a civil war between the three branches of the dwarven race. Thaurissan, leader of the Dark Iron dwarves, sought to summon a powerful fire elemental in order to destroy the forces of the Bronzebeard and Wildhammer clans; instead he accidentally released Ragnaros the Firelord, master of all fire elementals, from his captivity within the earth. Ragnaros destroyed the capital of the Dark Irons and caused the eruption of a mighty volcano now called Blackrock Mountain. Beneath the volcano, Ragnaros and his minions occupy the Molten Core, and the Dark Iron dwarves are largely loyal servants of the Firelord. In the canon of the game, Ragnaros was defeated and thrust back to the Elemental Plane.

There's one obvious connection between Ragnaros and the Black Dragonflight, but before we come to it, there are others. Before he was corrupted, Neltharion was appointed by the Titans who created Azeroth as Earth-Warder: given dominion over the element of earth and the deep places of the world. Which race is most associated with earth and the depths? Dwarves, of course, who literally descend from the Earthen race originally created as servants by the Titans.

Who corrupted the Earthen with the "Curse of Flesh" to create the dwarves in the first place? The Old Gods. Who corrupted Neltharion the Earth-Warder and caused him to become Deathwing? The Old Gods. Who were the original masters of the armies of wind, tides, stone, and fire - this last led by Ragnaros the Firelord? The Old Gods. The hand of the Old Gods - C'thun, Yogg-Saron, and others yet unnamed - has been behind a great many of the evils which have plagued Azeroth right down to the modern day.

The obvious connection between black dragons and Ragnaros is related to the next 40-player raid instance introduced to the game, in patch 1.6: Blackwing Lair. Blackrock Mountain isn't just the lair of Ragnaros and his Dark Iron servants; its upper reaches, in the Lower and Upper Blackrock Spire dungeons and the Blackwing Lair raid, are controlled by the forces of Deathwing's son Nefarian and his servants, the Blackrock clan of orcs and ogres. Nefarian struggled with Ragnaros for control of the entire volcano, and also presented a threat to the Horde through his alliance with Rend Blackhand and his "Dark Horde". Canonically, Varok Saurfang was responsible or at least involved in the final defeat of Nefarian.

After the struggle against Onyxia, Ragnaros, and Nefarian occupied the attention of both Horde and Alliance heroes, new threats began to make themselves known in patch 1.7. In the jungles of Stranglethorn Vale, the troll god Hakkar the Soulflayer arose in the ruined city of Zul'Gurub, former capital of the Gurubashi troll empire. Zul'Gurub became a 20-player raid instance, as the Zandalar tribe of trolls sponsored the efforts of heroes to invade the city and defeat Hakkar along with the troll priests who had attempted to stop his rise but found themselves enslaved to his will.

The threat of Hakkar was soon eclipsed by a more serious danger stirring in the sands of Silithus and other locations in southern Kalimdor: the ancient qiraji, masters of the insectoid silithids already known to infest the region. Patch 1.8 introduced the efforts by the druids of the Cenarion Circle to investigate the phenomenon; patch 1.9 saw the Gates of Ahn'Quiraj open and provide access to the 20-player Ruins of Ahn'Quiraj and the 40-player Temple of Ahn'Quiraj raids.

It all comes back to the Old Gods. Hakkar the Soulflayer is also called the Blood God, and his strange power might be connected in some way to the Old Gods. The qiraji once sealed in Ahn'Qiraj were created by and still serve the Old God C'thun, who dwells at the bottom of the Temple. The influence of the Old Gods didn't end with the defeat of C'thun, although their involvement in the final 40-player raid instance of the original game is a little harder to tease out.

This final instance, Naxxramas, is most directly connected to the storyline of Warcraft III, especially its expansion pack The Frozen Throne. The demonic Burning Legion desired to invade and destroy Azeroth; to this end, they empowered the spirit of a corrupted orc shaman, Ner'zhul, as the Lich King, and commanded him to raise an undead army called the Scourge to assist in the conquest. Ner'zhul, ruling the Scourge from his Frozen Throne on the continent of Northrend, desired his freedom and conquest of Azeroth for himself, however, so he sought the corruption of the human prince Arthas Menethil of Lordaeron (who had, ironically, fallen into fanaticism as he sought to eradicate the Scourge) and turned him into a tool for taking ultimate control of the Scourge away from the Burning Legion. This was finally accomplished when Arthas merged with the Lich King, the two becoming one entity.

Prior to this, however, Arthas had been essentially a general of the Scourge, loyal to the Lich King. One of his closest allies was the lich Kel'Thuzad, who had been one of the architects of the very plague which had turned Arthas's people into Scourge. Kel'Thuzad's fortress was the floating necropolis of Naxxramas, which invaded the Eastern Kingdoms of Azeroth in patch 1.10 and occupied the skies above the Plaguelands - the former lands of Lordaeron.

So where do the Old Gods come in? Among the forces of the Lich King to be found in Naxxramas were undead members of an insectoid race, called nerubians; these nerubians are an offshoot of the same original race that gave rise to the qiraji of southern Kalimdor. The nerubians had an empire in Northrend that attempted to resist the power of the Lich King, but eventually fell as he raised their fallen against him.

Not only were the nerubians themselves descendants of a race created by the Old God C'thun, new developments in Wrath of the Lich King would reveal that their empire in Northrend was destroyed not only by the fight with the Lich King but by their uncovering the Faceless Ones as they dug deeper into the earth in retreat from the Scourge. Who are the Faceless Ones? The ancient servants of Yogg-Saron, the Old God of death, of course.

It's clear that the influence of the Old Gods is behind much of the threats facing Azeroth in the original World of Warcraft. It's interesting to contemplate how this changed quite radically in the first expansion.

Raiding Achievements

In the past week, I've achieved two of the goals I had remaining for myself in Wrath of the Lich King.

Success!

Last Thursday, Free Company finally defeated the Lich King after two months of weekly attempts. I'll quote what Andrew, our raid leader, posted on our guild forums about it:

We first faced the LK on the third of June
We killed him on the fifth of August
I have logs from seven days worth of attempts
We killed the LK on our 76th attempt
According to GuildOx we are the 56th guild on our server to kill him
GuildOx claims that only 36.61% of the guilds in the world have done that
Using their 10 man casual ranking we are ranked as the 15th best guild on the server

It's a good feeling to finally be able to call myself Ascanius the Kingslayer. It's also funny to note, as Kate did, that our other tank - Lexa's gnome warrior - was carrying the ilevel 200 Titansteel Shield Wall when we killed the Lich King.

We didn't stop there, though! On Monday night, we ventured back in to Ulduar, and look what happened:


Yes, we finally defeated Algalon the Observer. The amusing thing about this attempt was that Ian came along - the first time he'd ever faced Algalon at all - and we succeeded on our third attempt of the night. He commented afterward that he didn't really feel like he'd earned it!

This leaves me with, really, only one more raiding achievement that I'd like to earn before Cataclysm: Glory of the Ulduar Raider and its Rusted Proto-Drake reward. Fortunately for me, Ascanius only needs two more achievements in order to attain that: I Love The Smell of Saronite in the Morning and One Light in the Darkness. Unfortunately, plenty of other people still need much more difficult achievements like Firefighter, but I don't mind helping them get there.

My next post will probably address beta talents for Fire mages again, now that we've had some time with the redesign.

Add-Ons

Although I enjoy raiding, there is definitely one word that neatly describes my attitude towards add-ons used for raiding or any other purpose.

Minimalist!

The list of add-ons I use is really quite short. Let's start with those unrelated to raiding. I use BankItems to keep track of what I have stored in the bank and bags of all my characters - with four 80s and another two in their 70s, this saves me a lot of time switching between characters. I also use GatherMate to keep a record of gathering nodes like herbs and ore.

Really, that's it. I don't use Auctioneer because I rarely use the auction house - what my characters gather and craft is for their own use or the guild's use, and I prefer to make money through daily quests when I need cash. I've never used a quest add-on like Quest Helper, although while I was earning my Loremaster title I did use EveryQuest to keep track of what I had and hadn't done. I don't use any map mods.

Raiding add-ons, I keep very simple. I use Quartz because I raid on my mage and a lag-sensitive cast bar is very useful. I use DeadlyBossMods for alerts and timers. I use Omen for a threat meter. I have Decursive for the rare occasions when it's necessary.

I don't have any kind of action bar mod. I don't have any kind of damage meter. I don't use anything besides the default raid frames (although I am cognizant that this is purely and simply because I have the luxury not to use them, since I raid as DPS). I don't even use something like PowerAuras (although I have tried it out) to alert me to Hot Streak procs, since between the sound, the visual around my mage, and the flashing icon on my list of buffs, I never miss one.

So that's me. I raid pretty light on add-ons; I only use a couple of macros, too, and most of them are just adding /cancelaura to Ice Block so I can hit the same key to come out of it (I do the same for Blink so I can use it in situations where I need to de-Ice Block and Blink immediately), or /stopcasting to Counterspell for when that's necessary.

On the other hand, you should see the tweaked UI that Lexa uses . . .