15 Days Through My Interface: Day 9

This whole 15 days thing was the brainchild of Saz over at World of Saz, and it was the catalyst for my return to blogging. This stop, in particular, caught my imagination.

What's you character's hometown?

It's a simple enough question, but it really got the wheels turning in my head. Things have to fit together in a story, and carving out a home for a character isn't as easy as taking a screenshot of a pretty building and hanging your hat there. No, we're peeking into the origins of our characters. We're not just looking at a house, we're looking at the memories that are etched within its walls. We aren't just looking at where they live, we're looking at why they live, where they came from, and what they've overcome to reach this point. We've already seen where Dämmerung lives. What I'm going to tell you here is how he got there.

I generally have a feel for characters when I create them. I have their race, gender, class, and spec mapped out from the beginning. There's a certain feel for each one, and the name I select usually isn't your standard Azerothian fare. This presents a problem for creating a viable origin story. What kind of mother names their child Dämmerung? But ultimately, what is a name? An identifier. A title. So that's how I've come to look at the names I've chosen for my characters. They're an abstraction of the essence of the character. They might not be the name their parents gave them, but they are titles that they earned before they ever set out from their starting areas.

This is the story of a Boy. A Boy who was born at the cusp of extraordinary times, and whose childhood was defined by the events that enveloped the world.

He was born in the Summer of the Year of King Llane, 589, to the captain of the palace guard of Stormwind. Those were fearful times. The Boy can't remember a time before the invasion of the Orcish Horde. A climate of dread slowly grew as it became apparent that what had originally been believed to be a series of bandit raids was something much more dreadful. As the alien creatures marched upon Stormwind, The Boy saw firsthand the strain that the mere presence of the Horde placed upon the citizens of Stormwind. Rationing became tight. The luxuries and pleasures of the more peaceful age had been stripped away. While The Boy's family, being responsible for the security of the Royal Person, never lacked for anything essential, others were not so fortunate.

Things became worse when the siege began. The armies of Stormwind, pushed back to the very bastions that they were sworn to hold, fought tenaciously. War takes its toll, however, and when the war is on your doorstep, you pay the price in blood. For several months, the orcs, with their ogre allies, assaulted the walls each day, although never in the same place twice. Each night, the Horde turned their siege engines loose, lobbing rocks, plagued corpses, and strange boulders over the city walls, smashing into the shops and homes of the people. The boulders were the worst. They glowed with a strange green fire that no one had ever seen before. The first person to touch it was a woman who lived in a house not a hundred yards from the Boy's home. It smashed the walls to rubble, and collapsed the structure. The woman crawled out over the smoldering projectile, desperate for clean air. She died three days later, in agony. No one understood what foul magic permeated those missiles, but after watching the woman's hair fall out, and the way that she hemorrhaged, despite no apparent wounds, no one would go near them. So it was that every night The Boy would cower in the cellar of their home with his mother telling him that everything would be alright.

King Llane held the city together, almost through sheer force of will. Every day, when the sun had rose, and the relentless shelling had ceased, the King would walk among the streets of the city. His presence unified the people, it empowered them, and it gave them hope. When the city burned, the King and his son were out in the streets, fetching water from the canals to fight the blazes alongside every common man, woman, and child whose homes and livelihoods were caught in the conflagration. When dead citizens were pulled from the wreckage, or dead soldiers brought down from the battlements, the King mourned with his people. They were hard times, and the people feared where they would be if not for the strength of Wrynn.

Then the King was taken from them, felled by the dagger of an orc the King had trusted, had held up as an example that even among the throngs of monsters howling outside their walls, there was still the hope for decency. The people were shocked, and the Horde, sensing victory's proximity, launched the largest assault yet, overrunning the defenses. As the King fell, so did Stormwind.

That day holds the most vivid memories for The Boy. His mother dragged him by the hand through the streets of the city. The smell of burning timber and scorched stone was just beginning to reach their noses, heralding the fire that had been set which would consume the city. The Boy's father had told them to make for the harbor should the city be breached. There a ship awaited them. The remnants of the Royal Guard stood guard at the dock, shuttling refugees onto the vessel, and prepared to hold back the rampaging orcs for as long as was needed for the ship to cast off safely. Those orcs were hot on The Boy's heels as he ran for the ship, the air burning in his lungs. The disciplined guards opened a minute gap in their line to allow the pair to slip through to safety, before swiftly reforming and greeting the orcs with the strength of their shield wall. Events were blurry for The Boy. The sounds of the battle were deafening. The crack of a blade shivering, the clang of the plate armor of the warriors, and the meaty thock, followed by cries of pain, that signaled a blade finding its mark, hacking into unarmored flesh.

A powerfully built man, the white of his armor matching the color of his beard, dragged the last defender onto the ship as it pulled away from the harbor. Lothar knelt down, and cradled the man who he had pulled onto the boat. It was The Boy's father. He had stopped to cut the last line free that was tying the vessel to the dock, and an orcish grunt had used the opportunity to sink an axe into the man's stomach, leaving him desperately trying to keep his innards in place as blood flowed from between his trembling hands. His mother wailed, and rushed to his side. His father whispered something to Lothar, who nodded to him, and then beckoned his son to come to his side. As The Boy approached, he looked at his feet, trying to hide the tears in his eyes. His father's hands ceased their shaking for a few moments as he lifted his son's chin up to look him in the eyes. He brushed a few strands of The Boy's hair back, and spoke his last words to his son.

"Thank the Light, you're safe. Take care of your mother."

With that, Lothar led The Boy below decks, before returning to ensure that The Boy's mother could mourn in what came as close to privacy as was possible on the overloaded vessel. Below decks, The Boy sobbed, echoing the cries of his inconsolable mother above. Another young man, who was a few years older than The Boy, sought to comfort him. They both shared the pain of losing their fathers that day, and while in later meetings, King Varian Wrynn did not recognize The Boy, he always respected his king for those moments of solace on that fateful day.

The boat traveled north, towards the remaining human kingdoms. It made landfall in the town of Southshore, in the kingdom of Lordaeron. For a couple years, The Boy and his mother had an opportunity to attempt to rebuild something of their lives. But peace is ever elusive. Shortly after The Boy turned 10, it was announced that the Horde was marching through the dwarven territories, and would set upon Lordaeron soon. In response to this, a Grand Alliance was being formed between the human kingdoms, and an army would be raised to stop the Horde before they could reach the heart of Lordaeron.

An army on the march is a different beast than an army on the defensive. It is a beast of burden. For every soldier who fights, there are five people supporting him, from the workers who craft his armor, to the squires who care for and carry his equipment in the field. When the Horde marched to Southshore, rather than fleeing with his mother, a refugee once more, The Boy volunteered to join the army, led by Anduin Lothar. The Boy served as a squire for one of the warriors in Turalyon's division, usually removed from the actual line of battle. He spent most of the war in the camp, washing the blood off his master's armor, and leading his packmule by the bridle on long marches.

The army fought the Hillsbrad, dislodging them from their initial beachhead, and pursued them into the Hinterlands. It was there where Lothar realized the Horde's intentions, to use their superior numbers to split their attack on both Stromgarde and the elven kingdom of Quel'thelas. The generals met in Turalyon's tent, and The Boy discretely listened to Lothar's planning from the entrance. Some of the generals argued passionately for the Army to dedicate itself wholly to the defense of Stromgarde, a human kingdom, and to leave the elves, who had regarded the Horde as a strictly human concern, to their own devices.

Lothar disagreed, and decided to bifurcate the army, dispatching Turalyon to defend Quel'thelas, along with the small detatchement of rangers who had joined the army with Alleria Windrunner, despite orders to the contrary from the ruling council of Silvermoon City. As the generals departed, Lothar found The Boy, despite his best efforts to conceal himself. Fulfilling the last promise he made to a dying man, Lothar led The Boy to the main encampment, where he gave The Boy the shield that had belonged to The Boy's father, as per the man's dying wish. It was battered and scratched, and the leather straps that weren't rotted or torn were stained with blood, it was not fit for battle, but none of that mattered to The Boy, it was a cherished memento. That meeting would be the last time that he saw Anduin Lothar alive.

They marched across Lordaeron, into the forests of Quel'thelas. The Boy had been told by a few of the elves who marched with them that Quel'thelas was a magnificent sight, elegant, lush, verdant, and aglow in the glorious powers afforded them by the Sunwell. When they marched past Stratholme and entered through the mountain pass that kept the Elves separated from the humans, the sight of Quel'thelas gave the entire army pause. The forests were aglow, not with the power of the arcane, but from the fires that had been set by the orcs and the trolls that they had allied themselves with. The Boy has never seen Quel'thelas in the glory that the ranger had described it. No one has since the Horde left their indelible mark on the forests.

It wasn't until the orcs brought the war to the very gates of Silvermoon that the elven government realize the threat that the orcs represented to not only humans, but all life on Azeroth. Without Lothar's foresight, the orcs would have razed Silvermoon City, and taken possession of the Sunwell. After a few days spent camped outside the elven capitol, the army turned its focus back towards the south. Turalyon now marched with the full force of Quel'thelas at his back, and The Boy marched with him.

They marched through Alterac. The human kingdom had been completely destroyed in the fighting. Their King, Aiden Perenolde, had offered the Horde free passage through Alterac in exchange for being left alone. When a division of Lothar's army, under the command of Danath Trollbane, sealed the gap in the mountains, the battle that Perenolde had expected to be fought in the fields of Lordaeron, were instead fought in the heart of Alterac, and the fires of war consumed that kingdom, just as it had Stormwind.

With the help of the elven armada, the arrival of Turalyon's forces broke the back of the Horde's siege on the capitol of Lordaeron. Turalyon's division knew only victory, driving the Horde south, out of Lordaeron, liberating the Bronzebeard Dwarves who were under siege in Ironforge, shattering the Horde at Blackrock mountain, and finally driving most of the remnants back out of the Dark Portal. While it would take years to pick up the pieces, the war was, for all intents and purposes, over.

King Wrynn returned to Stormwind to attempt to rebuild the ruins of his kingdom, but King Menethil, the King of Lordaeron, offered a place in Lordaeron for any who served in the war. The Boy, reunited with his mother, took advantage of the offer, and they settled in small town not too far from the capital, called Andorhal.

Those were peaceful times, and The Boy grew into a man, devout in the ways of the light, and hard working. Over the course of fifteen years, he learned the secrets of smithing and metallurgy from the town's workers. He worked to restore his father's shield, not to be used again, for he had seen the terrors wreaked by war, but as a way to honor his father's sacrifice. He earned a living for himself and his mother through those skills, initially making farm implements and other tools, but he eventually branched out into the more precious metals, becoming an accomplished jeweler as well. There was no more rationing, no more dark nights spent in the celler, fearing that the next crash would be the cursed stone that would take his life, and no more days spent in the camp, away from home. Andorhal served as the breadbasket for Lordaeron, they shipped food to every corner of the kingdom, and there was always plenty on the table.

A ragged old man changed all that. Some of the more learned in the village claimed to recognize him as a mage from Dalaran who had visited Southshore years ago, but he looked more like a corpse than a distinguished mage. Strange events happened in those days, rumors of the dead rising from their graves, and clandestine meetings of black robed strangers. It wasn't until the Prince of Lordaeron arrived to investigate, finding the cult leader tampering with the grain shipments. A representative from Dalaran recognized him as Kel'thuzad, a former leader of the Kirin Tor. They burned down the grain silos, and struck down Kel'thuzad and his cultists.

Word came back later that the tainted grain had led to the destruction of the city of Stratholme, to the northeast. Fearing more cultist action, Prince Arthas raised an army to go to Northrend to finish the cult leaders once and for all. The Boy, now a man, declined to join, he had seen his fill of violence. But a few months later, Prince Arthas returned from Northrend, triumphant, or so it would seem. The Prince slew his father, and marched once again, this time at the head of an army of the same undead monstrosities that he had sworn to vanquish. They marched on Andorhal, where a group of paladins, led by Uther the Lightbringer, had retreated, carrying with them the ashes of their fallen king. Again, home was under attack for The Boy.

But Andorhal is not Stormwind. There are no strong stone walls that must be surmounted. The Scourge surrounded the town, and swiftly overran it. The only way to escape the onslaught was by water. The Boy, his mother, and a few others from the town boarded a small boat, and cast off, hoping to make their way south, towards a rebuilding Stormwind.

They didn't make it very far. As they passed the island that the old castle of Caer Darrow was built upon, great chains lashed themselves to the boat. From the lake emerged an abomination of startling size that set itself upon their craft, tearing planks away and threatening to drag them to a watery grave. Knowing that everyone on the boat were moments away from death, so long as the abomination stayed attached to the boat, The Boy picked up the one possession he had allowed himself to bring, his father's shield. Working his arm into the leather grips that he had reworked countless times in the intervening years, he said a prayer to the light, recalling his father's last words to him. He felt the Light empowering him as he smashed his father's shield into the abomination's skull, jarring the monstrosity loose as both he and it tumbled from the crippled craft.

He washed up, alone, on the banks of the Thondoril River. The patchwork creature was no where to be found, nor was his father's shield. He was beaten, bloodied, and damn near dead from his tangle with the behemoth. His memories are hazy here. Maybe it was the way that he nearly drowned, maybe it was the concussion he got from the abomination, but even to this day, all he can remember are bits and pieces.

He lay half submerged, hung up on the roots of a tree that protruded from the river bank. He watched the undead armies shamble across the bridge over the river, walking the same path he had walked fifteen years ago. The path to Quel'thelas. He wasn't the only one watching the horrors moving through. After the Scourge passed, an old man, wearing old brown leather clothes concealing his plate armor, crept down to the river bank, and dragged the wounded man North.

At the old man's shack, it took The Boy a week before he could speak again. The old man had some experience in the ways of the Light, and as he nursed The Boy back to health, he felt the empowerment that had allowed The Boy to survive the confrontation. That blessing was the only thing keeping him alive. The old man, unable to accertain The Boy's name until the swelling went down, he took to calling him Dämmerung. In the old Arathi tongue, it meant the Fading Light of Day. It was a bit grim, but Dämmerung didn't know what it meant at the time.

It was months before Dämmerung was well enough to set out on his own. During his convalescence, the old man taught him a few things about the use of the Light. He taught him how to heal the righteous, how to judge the unfaithful, and to unleash his wrath against the undead and the demonic. He replaced Dämmer's ragged and torn clothing, still stained with mud and ichor from his flight from Andorhal, and gave him a wooden hammer with which to defend himself. Dämmerung was anxious to find out what had happened to his town, to his friends, and to his mother. They would both be different men when they next met, years from now.

Lordaeron had changed in the months of Dämmerung's recovery. Wearing nothing but the clothes of a civilian, and arming with a mere wooden hammer, he cautiously worked his way south. Everywhere the undead horde had walked had been blighted. There were still patches of greenery here and there, but they were rapidly being encrouched upon by the sickly brown grasses of the neighboring spoiled earth. Ghouls were out in force, scouring the land for anything left alive in these plaguelands. Every once in a while, one of those abominations trundled down the road, the ground shaking at their every step. They were often flanked by bizzare spider-like monstrosities that Dämmerung had never seen before.

Dämmerung traveled carefully. The dark forces animating the Scourge forces made them odious to the Light, and through that distaste, he knew when one approached. Even without the light, the smell and constant groaning would give them away from a quarter mile. The patrols were thick enough that it took him fully three days to hike down the Thorandil River until he reached its mouth, where it fed into Darrowmere Lake, with Caer Darrow's decrepit ruins sticking up out of the water, a monument to the horrors of the present, realized through the neglect of the past. He hid himself underneath the bridge at the mouth of the river, and for a time, he stayed there, like some common troll. He scryed the surface of the water, scrutinizing it closely for any sign of any hidden attackers the like of which he met when he last braved these waters. Another one of the abominations patrolled over the bridge, coming from the west. As it stomped over the bridge, the stonework shook, freeing dust that had been trapped in the masonry for the long decades since the bridge had been built, during the reign of Terenas the First. Dämmerung feared that the bridge might collapse under the strain, and thought about making a run for it. Then something even more frightening occurred.

The abomination stopped, right over his head. It sniffed the air, trying to recapture that whiff of a scent that had called its attention. Dämmerung listened to the bridge creak and groan as the abomination leaned over the side to see if anything was hiding next to the bridge. Foul gore spilled from the behemoth's open chest cavity, splashing into the mud next to the terrified man. Dämmerung clamped a hand over his mouth, trying not to gag as the stench of undeath became overpowering. He pressed himself deeper into the soft mud of the river bank, letting the cold water flow over him, and hopefully conceal his scent from the monster's senses. Seconds stretched into years, the whole of the man's life hinged upon his complete anonymity.

Suspicious but unwilling to dawdle any longer, the abomination strode off the bridge, and east, towards Darrowshire. Dämmerung waited until it was out of sight, and then, without hesitation, dove into the icy waters of Darrowmere. He made for Caer Darrow, hoping to take a moment's respite there, before continuing his swim south. Looking to the west, he saw the smoke rising from the smoldering ruins of Andorhal, grain houses burned for a long time, and Andorhal had all the grain for the entire eastern half of the kingdom stored there. It must be like a charnel house there. The ashes of their King lay there, and the hope for his kingdom had burned down upon them. Hardening his heart against the horror of watching his adopted home in ashes, he hiked to the southern end of the island. There he found one horror more.

The craft lay on its side on the beach, water lapping up against it, rocking it gently as it dug itself deeper and deeper into the soft silt. The aft bulkhead had been ripped free, and the gunnels had savage pieces torn from them. It was clearly no longer seaworthy. A quick inspection confirmed his fears. The inscription carved into the bowsprit identified the wreck as the boat that he had tried so desperately to save. A deeper inspection, however, offered a glimmer of hope. The life preservers were missing, and the boat had clearly been deposited on the island by the currents, rather than beached by her crew. Perhaps they had survived, and made it to Southshore. Hope; hope still lived, even if it was only a glimmer. Dämmerung held onto that fading light as he once again braved the cold waters of Darrowmere Lake, leaving the unsettling ruins behind him.

When he reached the point where Darrowmere Lake channeled itself back into a river, he noticed a wondrous thing, well, it was wondrous in hindsight. As he dragged himself back upon the banks of the river, he heard a growl. He had pulled himself onto the green grass, directly between a mother mountain lion and her cubs. As the lion hurled itself at him in defense of her offspring, Dämmerung gave a desperate prayer to the Light. The Light answered, deflecting the angry beast as Dämmerung launched himself back into the river, letting the current drag him away from his sudden brush with life, after days of hiding from death.

He pulled himself back out of the river near Southshore, after ensuring that there were only horses and turtles nearby, nothing that could harm him in his exhausted state. The Light helps those who help themselves, and he doubted that it would answer him again so soon after his last request.

He trudged to Southshore, looking not too unlike one of the ghouls that ran rampant through the northern portion of Lordaeron. He stepped into the inn, and requested a room. The innkeeper made him walk back to the river and clean his clothes before he would let him touch a bed in the inn. Upon his return, looking just as haggard, although somewhat less filthy, he saw two brothers drinking at the table in the lobby. Recognition flashed in their eyes when they saw him, and they called out to him using his old name. They were from Andorhal, and had served as oarsmen on the boat that bloody night. They kicked out the chair next to them, and invited him to sit with them. They bought him a meal, and a drink, and paid for his room. He had saved their lives, and they intended to honor that debt as best they could.

Dämmerung couldn't remember a meal that tasted as good as that one did. Then again, the cook at the Cathedral in Stormwind isn't exactly the finest chef in town, and most of the time when he's not in Stormwind, he's eating field rations, or those bland mage cakes that taste like nothing, and always left him feeling hungry again fifteen minutes later. Perhaps he hasn't had a meal that tasted as good since. However, as enjoyable as the food was, as famished as he was, all those pleasures were secondary to his need for information.

When broached with the question of the disposition of the others on the boat, the brothers uneasily cast their gazes towards the stone floor. After Dämmerung had driven the patchwork beast back into the depths of the lake, the ship had sustained too much damage to remain afloat. The life preservers were given out, and the passengers began to jump into the water, making a desperate swim for the river bank to the south. The brothers had been among those who landed on the west bank, and Dämmerung's mother had been in those who landed on the east bank. Fearful that the abomination would return, the two groups hurried south. The group on the east bank were slowed down, several men were needed to restrain the panicked woman, in order to prevent her from diving back into the lake to search for her son. The group on the west bank rushed to Southshore, and raised the alarm. The eastern group wasn't seen for several days, and they began trickling in one by one, telling tales of splitting up to avoid the southernmost Scourge patrols. One brother cautiously offered that many of those who fled with them had continued south, making for the newly reinforced Northshire Abbey. The other brother mentioned a grimmer possibility that he had overheard from the necromancers during Andorhal's fall.

Once again, Dämmerung clung to the glimmer of hope, still glowing in the black sea of despair that threatened to consume him. He slept fitfully and sailed for Elywnn the next morning; his fare paid for by the brothers, who gathered the other survivors who decided to settle in the area together to see him off. He left Stormwind for Southshore after having lost his father, and now he retraced those steps, having lost his mother, but, the Light willing, she would be found. He looked back from the stern of the ship, at all the people waving gratefully to him. He had been able to protect all of them, surely he had protected her too.

He arrived in Northshire three days later, shortly after noon. The grand structure had been rebuilt grandly in the aftermath of its sacking by the Horde, as had the remainder of Stormwind. Things were almost as he remembered them. Almost. The little details nagged at him. The stones had crisply cut corners, rather than the worn edges of blocks that had seen hundreds of years of weathering. There was a bridge before the walls now, with statues dedicated to the heroes that he had served fifteen years ago. The city was more secure than ever.

The Abbey was no different, in addition to the rebuilding of the actual abbey, a huge wall had been built in front of the community, allowing it to be sealed off in the event of another attack, unlike in the First War, where the Twilight's Hammer clan had moved right in and set up shop. Rumors abounded that the masons who worked in Northshire demanded triple pay to clean up whatever it was that the Horde had left behind in there, and that the King had taken one look inside, and immediately agreed. The masons had outdone themselves here.

Dämmerung didn't find any of the survivors here. Any that had passed through these walls had long since dispersed themselves to the outlying communities, Goldshire, Redridge, Westfall, and Duskwood. Dämmerung prepared to travel once again. The Horde had taken his father, the Scourge had taken his shield, and possibly his mother too, the Light knows what it would do to them. He intended to find out, to keep holding on to that fading light for as long as he could.

The Problem With Thrall

One problem that Blizz has somewhat on their radar is the irritation due to the overdose on Thrall in the current Cataclysm storyline. The Lead Quest Designer, Dave Kosak, posted a somewhat misguided developer blog, in which he touched upon the rising sentiments against the once and future Warchief of the Horde.

Blizzard feels that they made a mistake in assuming that Alliance players would enjoy the newly "neutral" Thrall, because he isn't a Horde character, he's a world character. That's part of the issue, although he doesn't understand the root cause of that particular sentiment, which stems from the treatment of other major lore figures who ostensibly went neutral, and how they compare to what happened with Thrall. That, however, is an issue that deserves its own post to lay out.

The majority of the backlash against Thrall in the recent expansion is, quite simply, because Thrall has been an incredibly poorly written character since the end of WCIII, and putting him in the brightest spotlight any previously defined lore character has ever stepped into put all those flaws on display.

Some of these flaws are incidental to concessions made by the story for gameplay purposes. One of the most dissonant experiences I had while exploring the Horde side of the game was taking my first Horde character, an undead warlock, over to Ogrimmar to get the quests for RFC. I embarked on a series of quest lines featuring Thrall trying to root out the warlocks from the midst of the city, and seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was employing one of those warlocks to do so. Despite the fact that from a lore perspective, Warlocks had nearly wiped out the orcish race, and condemned them to an existence of suffering, and as such were rightly banned from the Horde, people wanted to play as them, so in they went. These flaws are jarring, but they're ultimately a minor flaw, the pimple on the narrative that can be hidden with some discrete concealer, because the player character is but a single person in the narrative of the game, and not even a really important one anymore.

The flaws become much harder to conceal when they become part of major lore events. Thrall is not presented as a complex character. He's your standard feel good messiah stand in. He's wise, strong, capable, charismatic, fair, self sacrificing, and compassionate. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that. Not every character in a leading role has to be a morally ambigious Machiavellian schemer. It's OK to have the occasional character who's just a good guy. The problem is when you have the aforementioned good guy does something out of character, and no one calls him on his bullshit. At this point, you're not only undermining the character, you're undermining the characters who don't react, and the entirety of the story. If Aslan had given up Edmund in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and none of the Pevensies spoke out against it, then C.S. Lewis probably wouldn't hold his revered place in the pantheon of storytellers. The story worked because Aslan is the Jesus Allegory Lion, and he did what Jesus Allegory Lions do.

This is where Thrall falls short. He's the Jesus Allegory Orc, savior of his people, able to walk on water, and return from the dead. But he doesn't act the way his backstory and characterization have set him up. The driving influence in Thrall's backstory was his time spent as a slave and gladiator in Durnholde. So, when he fufills his destiny and forges a reborn Horde, does he outlaw slavery, as a just ruler would do? Nope, because one of the driving forces in King Wrynn's backstory is that he was captured and held as a slave by Rehgar Earthfury, and forced to fight in the gladiator pits in Dire Maul. Blackmoore was an uncharacteristic human, operating far from the oversight of authority, and was a drunk and morose man who plotted against his fellows and no one in the Alliance speaks well of. Perhaps, King Wrynn ran into a similar situation? Perhaps Thrall did take steps to stamp out slavery in the Horde, but its insidious nature persisted in the dark corners far from his steely gaze? This would be a bit of a stretch, but it's one that could have worked. But is it what happens? No. In the comic, Jaina convinces Varian to attend a peace summit at Theramore to attempt to build a peaceful relationship with Thrall and the Horde. Varian brings Valeera, a Blood Elf who escaped slavery with Varian, and his son Anduin. Thrall brings Garrosh, who from a chronological perspective, made the first of his asshat moments, and Reghar Earthfury, the orc who kept two of the members of the Alliance delegation as slaves against their will. Not only does he tolerate slavery within the Horde, he thinks it's a good idea to make the slavemaster a trusted adviser on the peace process. No one brought up how immensely hypocritical and bone headed this is, and yet people wonder why Varian doesn't like Thrall. It's completely out of character for someone coming from the backstory Thrall has, and it's completely out of character for everyone around him to not notice. Have the races of Azeroth simply not discovered the most basic of social prudence?

This leads into what becomes Thrall's most damning problem. He's a storyline singularity. A black hole that warps those around him such that even the most basic literary laws simply don't hold anymore.

The most egregious flaw in Cataclysm was the 4.2 quest chain which unveiled Fandral Staghelm as a traitor, and set the stage for the Aggra/Thrall love story that culminated with the probability of little green/brown babies in upcoming expansions. Staghelm was one of the best characterized and well written characters introduced in World of Warcraft. He's a seething mass of complexes and hatred and old wounds that refuse to heal. He was one of Malfurion's finest students of druidism, and after Malfurion went to travel the Emerald Dream, it was Staghelm who led the night elf forces against the Qiraji in the War of the Shifting Sands. The forces of the Old God C'thun poured out of Silithus, and the Night Elves alone stood against them. Fandral led the army in a brutal war in the deserts of Silithus and Tanaris. This conflict is the event that more than any other defines Staghelm. His only son, Valstaan, served with him in that harsh conflict. Staghelm recognized the threat that the Qiraji posed, not only to Night Elves, but to Azeroth itself, and he beseeched the dragonflights to aid him in his efforts to keep the Qiraji in check. The dragons deferred their entry into the conflict until the Qiraji had pushed all the way to the Caverns of Time. In one battle in the months before the entry of the dragons into the war, Valstaan was captured by a mighty Qiraji general. In front of Fandral's eyes, his only son, his pride and joy, was ripped in half, and left to die on the scorching sands of the desert.

One of the first short stories, and in my opinion, one of the best, that Blizzard made was in preperation for the AQ40 raid, and the opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj. It showed the true measure of the toll that the war had exacted on Fandral.

Fandral looked down, his face twisting in contempt. "I want nothing to do with Silithus, the Qiraji and least of all, any damned dragons!" With that Fandral swung the enchanted object into the magical gates — where it splintered in a shower of fragments — and walked away.

"Would you shatter our bond for the sake of pride?" the dragon asked.

Fandral turned. "My son's soul will find no comfort in this hollow victory, dragon. I will have him back. Though it takes millennia, I will have my son back!" Fandral then strode past Shiromar...

... who could see him in her mind even now, as if it were only yesterday and not a thousand years past.

Clearly, this is a man who has lost much, and harbors much resentment over that loss.

The time preceding the games themselves, Fandral spent clashing with Tyrande over the path that the Night Elves should take. It was Fandral who pushed for the creation of Teldrassil , and who eschewed the blessings from the dragons which had empowered its predecessor. He was arrogant. After all, he had fought the War alone. He knew what a threat the Qiraji were, even before the Bronze Dragonflight could scry it from myriad visions of the future. There were those who would take advantage of his wounds, and his pride.

Xavius, the first Satyr, condemned to live as a tree by Malfurion for 10,000 years after the Sundering of the World, saw Staghelm's flaws as a means by which he could exact his revenge upon Malfurion. He used his magic to plant the notion into Staghelm's mind that through certain actions, he could bring his son Valstaan back to him. This involved using large quantities of Morrowgrain to poison Malfurion, trapping him in the corruption of the Emerald Nightmare, where Xavius could torment him at his leisure. It also involved grafting the tree that Xavius had become onto Teldrassil, exposing the Night Elves home to the corruption of one of Sargeras' oldest servants on Azeroth.

During the events of the novel Stormrage, Malfurion broke free, and confronted Staghelm at the demonic graft on Teldrassil, which Staghelm had come to believe was his son reincarnated. In order to stem the corruption of the tree, Malfurion was forced to destroy Xavius, and the graft. Staghelm, however, was forced to relive the death of his only son. Watching Malfurion kill Valstaan broke Staghelm, and he was sent away to the caves in which Illidan had been imprisoned for thousands of years.

From there, during Ragnaros' assault on Hyjal, Staghelm was intended to be moved to a more secure area in Moonglade. The green dragon Alysra was charged with moving him. She instead defected to Ragnaros, who offered Staghelm a chance to strike back against those that wronged him. Against the dragons, who refused to aid him until his son had died. Against Nordrassil, which had succeeded where his project, Teldrassil, had failed. Against Malfurion, who took his son from him a second time. It's a compelling tale about how the indifference of the forces of good can break a good man, and how a good man can be brought low, despite great physical power, through the exploitation of the weaknesses of the mind. It was one of the stories that I respected most in the Warcraft Mythos.

I've talked a lot about Staghelm in a post that is ostensibly about Thrall, I promise there's a reason for this. Staghelm had a lot of lore behind him. More than most other characters that were introduced in WoW proper. More than even some of the characters brought over from previous games. He was well written, and well developed. The player knows what he's been through, who he hates, and who he serves. It all led up to his becoming Ragnaros' Majordomo, and a raid boss in Firelands, and most importantly, it did so in a manner that made sense, in as much as a story with dragons and giant ant people fighting elves can make sense.

Which brings us to the quest Elemental Bonds. One of the centerpieces of the 4.2 patch, Rage of the Firelands, this quest served as Staghelm's coming out party as an actual villain. Malfurion and the four Dragon Aspects unite to attempt to restore the World Tree. Five of Staghelm's most hated enemies, and Staghelm's hatred has brewed for millennia. Malfurion would go on to lead an assault into the heart of the Firelands, and eventually permanently destroys Ragnaros, Staghelm's new master. Not only does Staghelm hate Malfurion, but Malfurion is also a present threat to Staghelm's new employer. It's a two for one deal for vengeance, always a good move. So, with Staghelm's history, circumstance, and new found power, he crashes the ritual. His five most hated enemies, caught distracted and vulnerable. So what does he do? He attacks Thrall.

What?

A story that Blizzard has been brewing for seven years in real life, and spanning thousands of years in game, and they wreck the ending just to show how awesome Thrall is. That's how destructive Thrall has become to the fabric of the narrative of the game. He's creeping into story arcs that don't involve him, and ruining the endings. Characters are taking complete 180s to bow to the amazing Go'el.

There's a term for characters like this. They're called Mary Sues. They're generally reviled for being an extremely disruptive force in narratives. A lot of times, they serve as author inserts. A way for the writer to live out his story vicariously through the character. This isn't always the case, but they manifest as characters that lack depth. While this is OK for peripheral characters who don't impact the story greatly, when it's the main character, by dint of the amount of time the reader or player spends dealing with the character, they have to be believable. Familiarity breeds contempt. The more time you spend with a character the more the little flaws in the story irk you. It was fine back in Vanilla when Green Jesus could sit on his Throne in Ogrimmar and generally not bother anyone because the story at the time was about the player-character, and as such, it welded itself to the person playing that character quite well. It's the classic silent protagonist that worked so well for Link, Mario, and Crono in earlier games.

In the expansions, Blizzard moved away from the notion of the story really being about the player-character. They had to, because it was a persistent world, and having Bolvar greet me as the one who unmasked Onyxia when I did no such thing in game would be a jarring flaw in the game. As such, the players went from the driving force of events in game, to a more abstract ideal. They're "the adventurers". They're always there, but they're never the reason why the big events happen, because if your character didn't do a particular quest, or dungeon, or raid, some else did, and to keep the game on a single narrative track requires that those loose ends be tied up somehow. Blizzard opted to make NPCs drive the story. Illidan was defeated by Maive and Akama, with an assist from "the adventurers", Kil'Jaeden was banished by Kalecgos and Anveena, with an assist from "the adventurers". It continued into Lich King with Tirion, and Blizzard, in an effort to create a cohesive narrative, went as far as to retcon the Vanilla raids. Varian killed Onyxia, and Darion Mograine stormed Naxx. The players have been relegated to extras in the story that used to be about them.

This isn't a bad thing, per se. The problems have come to a head with Thrall in Cataclysm because Thrall is so poorly written. Thrall has been spoiled. The weight of the failures of the writers have ruined him as a character, and he is beyond redemption. He's been woven so tightly into the fabric of the game that a discrete retcon is impossible. Trying to continue Thrall's story will have ruinous consequences on the narrative, and trying to retcon the mess they've already published would be the most disruptive retcon in the history of the Warcraft Mythos. The time has come to give Thrall a good Wesley-ing. Well, the time came a while ago, but late is better than never. Retire him to Nagrand to raise his little green/brown kids. Kill him off. I don't care. But stop inflicting him on the story.

For $29.99, You Too Can Know Just What's Going On!

Another massive complaint that's been coming out of the dissatisfaction on the forums is Blizzard's insistence on using out of game mediums to conduct the heavy lifting in this expansion. There's a large gap between what Blizzard allowed to be used in out of game mediums in BC, and what they began to allow in Wrath, and what they proliferated in Cataclysm.

The earliest attempts at out of game mediums for Blizzard consisted mostly of backstory and sidestory. The War of the Ancients Trilogy talked about history of the Night Elf heroes. Tides of Darkness just rehashed the cannon plot of Warcraft II, likewise Through the Dark Portal did the same for the expansion. The Sunwell Trilogy just gave the specific minutia of the Magister's Terrace and Sunwell instances. Arthas: Rise of the Lich King rehashed a lot of plot lines from WCIII, and gave some insight into Jaina and Arthas, but it wasn't anything that wasn't also apparent in the questing in Icecrown or the ICC 5 mans. The Death Knight Manga told us the specifics of the backstory that was covered in quests in both the DK starting zone, and in Northrend.

This is an example of what out of game materials should be: supplemental, optional, an enhancement to the plot already in the game. They should cover stories that are already portrayed in game, or stories that don't have enough significance in the major narrative plots in the game to be done justice in game. The Death Knight Manga was a particularly good example in my opinion. Playing through the game, I knew that Thassarian was a cool character. I knew he became a DK when he shipped over to Northrend with Arthas' expeditionary forces. I knew he had a skeleton buddy named Lurid. I knew Falric and Marwyn were captains under Arthas' expedition. This is enough to know in game to propel the plot. It's still nice to know the little details, but that's what the Manga was for. It was in the Manga that you find out that Falric went searching for Arthas after they defeated Mal'ganis, and when Falric failed to return with the prince, Thassarian went looking for both missing men. He found Falric in a cave, already turned to the Scourge. Falric turned on his former charge, and slew him, raising him as a Death Knight. It's a good story about the fall of a good man, but Thassarian isn't as important to the plot to warrant having such small details handled in game, at the expense of moving other, more important story arcs along.

Then came the WoW comic. A comic is a different animal than a book or omnibus manga. In order to produce a successful comic, it has to be something that people are willing to purchase every week. In order to get a fresh weekly comic off the ground, you need a killer story. So Blizzard took one of the biggest hanging threads from in game, and sold it out to the comic, The Missing Diplomat. The Missing Diplomat was an Alliance side quest chain that led the character in search of a diplomat who was kidnapped en route to a peace conference with the Horde. It served a pivotal function within the game, it was the primary means by which non night elf Alliance characters made the transition from Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor. It was also known for its abrupt ending. There were little things here and there that led people to believe that it would be picked up in the end game, most notably that the Missing Diplomat, who was actually the King of Stormwind, was rendered in game in the basement of a building on Alcaz Island. All of the opportunities to revisit that quest line were cast aside, and if players wanted to know what happened, they had to go buy the comic.

This began a new era of Blizzard expanded universe media. This is a problem because story arcs that are begun in the game should be wrapped up in game. Jumping the story across multiple formats creates a jarring narrative that will be incomplete for the majority of the people who experience it. Blizzard then began doing this for every incomplete story line that they had in the game. Malfurion's been asleep since WCIII, and Fandral's curiously asking for more and more Morrowgrain while the Emerald Dream corrupts itself and Teldrasil is seeded with that corruption. Green Dragons are rampaging through the world, and Ysera is trapped in the Emerald Dream. That was the status quo through Wrath, and suddenly in Cataclysm, all those threads just disappeared. What happened? Stormrage happened. Cataclysm gets released, and major faction leaders have suddenly shifted, or died, or turned into a giant diamond. What the hell happened? The Shattering happened. The Horde and Alliance are suddenly back at war in Kalimdor? What happened? Wolfheart happened.

Throughout Cataclysm, Blizzard has been outsourcing their lore to books and comics. There are a couple possible explanations for this. They might simply feel like their story is too big to be constrained within the confines of an MMO, which has specific leashes on what you can try and accomplish. They might have made their story too ambitious to implement in game on their budget. A raid into the Emerald Nightmare to rescue Malfurion would have been amazing. Having the fight between Garrosh and Cairne play out like the Duel between Thrall and Garrosh before Wrath would have given some weight to the extremely weak pre Cataclysm event. Perhaps the most insidious possibility is that Blizzard looked at the Arthas, and the success that that novel had, and saw the opportunity to made money at a higher profit margin. It costs much less to produce and publish a novel than it does to do the same for an MMO the size of WoW.

Ultimately, however, by outsourcing the story to these other mediums, it alienates a large portion of the playerbase who do not purchase them for whatever reason. Be it a lack of financial security (cue players calling out "This game discriminates against the poor!" in Commander Shepard's voice), a lack of interest in the other mediums (Books just aren't for everyone), or they're simply busy spending their reading time reading better books (I'd rather read American Gods for the 11th time than read Wolfheart again.).

By What Measure is an Exploit?

There's been a bit of a Brouhaha occurring due to the exploitation of the Looking for Raid tool by many of the upper crust guilds, who utilized it to gain access to their 4pc bonuses much earlier than should normally be possible. This entailed one of several methods to circumvent the "one shot at loot per boss" rule which Blizzard had been extremely clear about. Some guilds simply traded items once they had been looted. Other guilds would zone out and zone back in once everyone had passed, and still other groups had their ineligible players DC before the loot was rolled out.

This has provoked a wide range of reactions, from those who blame Blizzard for launching a flawed patch, to those who believe that those who exploited should be permanently banned from the game. Blizzard's response fell in the middle. They stripped the offenders of all items gained through the exploit, and banned them for 3-8 days, dependent upon previous behavior.

I believe that Blizzard did the right thing here. My firm belief with regards to punishment of any sort, is consistency. Without the presence of precedence and consistency, any authority will break down into tyranny.

Of course, to establish consistency, one must have precedence, and one must have measures for the offences committed. In this case, Blizzard has employed the permaban before, and just as tellingly, they have opted to have limited suspensions or even no punishments before. However, Blizzard has been, for the most part, consistent in their punishments, and from that, we can draw conclusions as to what categories Blizzard views things.

Top guilds tend to be the most visible examples of glitches, exploits, and the dreaded "creative use of game mechanics". Ensidia, in particular, has had a laundry list of offences. They got the world first Lady Vashj kill when she unexpectedly died, despawned, and respawned with something like 5% health left. No one was quite sure what happened, but Ensidia, then Nihilum, received no punishment. Later, in Ulduar, in order to beat the insane two minute timer for Hodir Hard Mode, they kited mobs from Freya's room and had several mages spellstealing a damage buff from the mobs to deal obscene damage. The buff was hotfixed to prevent it from happening again, but Ensidia received no punishment. In ICC, on their first Lich King 25 kill, they used Saronite Bombs to rebuild the platform in Phase 2, rendering the Val'kyr mechanics moot. Ensidia had their achievement and loot stripped, and were given a three day suspension.

Of course, Ensidia does not hold the monopoly on questionable actions. In Ulduar, Exodus used a Holy Pally and Warlock to cause all the Immortal Guardians of Yogg-Saron to evade glitch, allowing them to kill Yogg+0 well before any other guild. They were stripped of loot, achievements, and given a three day suspension. Paragon, in addition to the current loot controversy, caught flak for their use of eleven feral druids on their world first kill of Heroic Nefarian. At the time, the buff worked differently, it only effected the next attack you made, so Paragon stacked feral druids, who, at the time, had the highest damage attack in the game, Rip. The buff was quickly hotfixed to not affect certain abilities, and was later changed entirely in favor of a simple +damage buff for a set duration. Paragon received no penalty for Nefarian, but it can be assumed that they have for the LFR debacle, considering that they issued an apology on their guild site.

Which brings us to the events that got Blizzard to hand down the permaban. Back in Vanilla, a guild called Overrated was the most progressed Horde guild in the world. They were farming AQ40 on a regular basis, and were rightfully sick of dealing with the stupid amount of trash and annoying bosses prior to C'thun, who was the only boss that they cared about. This led to them modifying the game files to remove a wall from behind the Prophet Skeram, alloying them to skip nearly the entire instance. Everyone who was there was permabanned. The other prominent permaban was back in Ulduar, where a disgruntled GM mailed a player an item call "Martin Fury", which had an on use which killed everything in 100 yards. It was an item that was never intended to fall into the hands of players, and he used it to one shot bosses throughout the raids available at the time. He was permabanned, and presumably the GM who gave him the item was fired.

From these examples, you can see that events such as these fall into three categories. "Creative use of game mechanics," these are acts where everything works the way it says it's supposed to work, but Blizzard didn't foresee the implications before the players did. These will be fixed, either through a hotfix or a patch, but those who used the technique will not be punished. Then there are exploits. These involve altering your behavior in some way that causes aspects of the game to break, be it resetting terrain constructs, evade glitching mobs, or circumventing loot rules. Exploits will be punished with a suspension, and the removal of all loot and achievements associated with the exploit. Then there are hacks. When you use something from outside the game to modify the working of the game, such as removing a wall, or getting an unobtainable item, then you will be permabanned. Those are the precedents, and there is no reason to break them now.

I laud Blizzard for sticking to their principles on the manner, and handing down a fair punishment to those who exploited the game. The guilds in question did not hack the game, everything they did was done through the game client, therefore, it is not a hack, and not something that warrants a permaban. They have had their loot removed, and they have lost their chance at multiple world firsts. That's punishment enough.

When Your Reach Exceeds Your Grasp: Rushed Development Hurts the Story

One of the prominent points I made in my previous post was that the rushed development cycle of Cataclysm was extremely destructive to the cohesiveness of the Alliance story line. I listed two prominent examples, the Twilight Highlands and Worgen starting experience. There's a prominent disconnect between the story that you could see Blizzard trying to tell, and the story they wound up producing.

Twilight Highlands is especially egregious. The Alliance story in TH is disjointed, and incoherent at times. After the wacky ride with Fargo, you wake up in the unfinished Alliance base (which never actually gets finished) under attack by the Horde. After fighting the Horde off, you go to the shore where you are attacked by the Horde again. After defending yourself, you then proceed to spend the rest of your time in TH planning a Dwarf wedding, trying to save your alcohol from the Horde, and eventually making it to the Red Dragonflight, who are really angry at you for some reason.

The whole zone is spent pushing to Bastion of Twilight and Grim Batol in an offensive against the Twilight's Hammer. The Horde attacks are barely acknowledged. The closest Alliance players come to replying to the constant attacks is when they steal a bolt of cloth from a goblin zeppelin, which is used in the Dwarf wedding. There's also the puzzling problem with the Red Dragonflight being so pissed off at me. What did I ever do to them, besides assist them against the Mad Aspect of Magic in Northrend, and rescue Calen from that dank pit in Silithus?

The problem lies in unfinished content. This video has datamined sound files from the Cataclysm Beta client. The first half are lines from Thrall that eventually made it into the Goblin starting zone. The second half are lines from Varian in what was supposed to be the Alliance's Twilight Highland's intro.

Varian was supposed to uncover Benedictus as a traitor in a quest line that echoed of the old Great Masquerade quest. A high ranking traitor using their influence to spread dissatisfaction among the people of Stormwind? That links together most of the internal problems that were faced in the Human starting zones, in particular in Westfall. Furthermore, note the direct instructions to not engage the Horde. That fleshes out Varian as a character, and most importantly, it ties the entirety of the Alliance questing experience in TH together. You're not lashing out at the Horde because your King commanded you to focus on higher priorities. That little scene was the keystone for pretty much the entire human questing experience in Cataclysm, and Blizzard dropped it for a cheap reference to the lead quest designer. Way to go.

This still leaves the unusual welcome you get from the Red Dragonflight. I'm a hero to Alexstrasza, Exalted with the Wyrmrest Accord, and I get treated like I've been associating with someone who kills baby red dragons for fun and profit like the Dragonmaw Clan. The quest makes complete sense for the Horde players, who just spent the whole zone rampaging with a group of orcs best known for imprisoning the Dragonqueen against her will and using her children as weapons of war, to be used until broken, and then discarded. Blizzard just never got around to making an Alliance version, and the Alliance story suffers because of it.

Just as painful was the treatment of the Worgen experience. Everyone remembers the plans for the Worgen District in Stormwind, it was planned to be in the park. It made sense, because after the Gilneas set, then the Worgen players could quest in Duskwood, WPL, EPL, and the Blasted Lands, you know, the parts of the game that have Worgen involved quest lines? Instead, Blizzard deleted the park, and sent them off to Darnassus where they sit in a tree and get handed green and grey quests in Darkshore, where the quest givers call them Night Elves. That was how rushed the transition was for Worgen players. They didn't even code the race into the drop box for some of the quests in the zone they exiled that race to.

What I find most frustrating is that they had the tech to make it a compelling story. Hell, they had the story to make it a compelling story. Instead of blithely shipping the Worgen off to Kalimdor, what they should have done was make the Worgen's next questing zone another phase of Gilneas. Instead of the Night Elves showing up, have the 7th Legion show up. Leveling through Silverpine, one of the most chilling moments was during the phased incursion into Gilneas, when you find a field strewn with shattered Elite Abominations and the dismembered corpses of Deathguards, with one survivor left, who recounts the story of the men who came and destroyed them without mercy, and left him alive just to spread fear among the ranks. Through the magic of phasing, the worgen players could have been there, fighting the ugly war, the guerrilla war. Give them phased incursions into Silverpine, just as the Horde players got into Gilneas. While the Horde players rez Godfrey, Walden, and Ashbury and tear through the Alliance forces, the Alliance players should be stalking them with Crowely and Ivar, seeing the damage they wrought, and seeing the story out to its conclusion, the forced withdrawl of the GLF to Stormwind. It would have been great, it would have set the tone for the Alliance quests in Shadowfang Keep, and it would have put the Worgen in a position to experience what little questing they had outside of Gilneas. Just a couple more phases, and a few more quests. That's all that was needed. But they ran out of time.

These mistakes break down the fabric of the story. They break immersion, and make things much less interesting for the players who have to deal with these jarring, fractured, and frayed transitions. Perhaps more damaging than the damage to the story is the damage that things like this do to Blizzard's reputation. Cataclysm took a lot of luster off Blizzard's good name. There was a running joke when it came to Blizzard, Soon™. Much like Valve's "When it's done!", Soon™ meant that Blizzard wouldn't do this. They wouldn't rush an unfinished project out the door to make it in time for the Christmas rush. When players asked a question and got Soon™ for an answer, they knew that they were in for a wait, but they knew that the wait would be worth it (Except for Starcraft:Ghost, but what's a little vaporware between friends?). With Cataclysm, Blizzard has lost the trademark to Soon, and with it, they've lost the trust of the player base.

Patch 4.3: Dragon Soul - First Impressions

So, Legacy took their first look at the new raid that we're presumably going to be spending the majority of our playing time in for the next eight to twelve months. I've got many thoughts on the instance. Blizzard did a lot of things here, some of them they did well, some things they did poorly, and some things seem to be ugly, but they work.

Let's start with the criticisms:

The big elephant in the room is the tuning. I can't speak for heroic modes yet, which is where my focus tends to go, but normal mode seems to be drastically undertuned. We walking in on our first night and one shot Morchak, one shot Yor'sahj, three shot Zon'ozz, one shot Hagara, three shot Ultraxion, and took three pulls on Blackhorn before running out of time. Seven wipes on the first six bosses. We wiped more than that on normal Halfus, normal Magmaw, and normal Shannox each. The instance feels like its on a level with the post nerf cataclysm raid instances in terms of difficulty, and closer to Raid Finder difficulty than it is to the pre nerf instances. I don't think this is a great move.

I fear that this will produce one of two scenarios when the transition to heroic comes up for most guilds in the coming months. Either heroic difficulty is akin to heroic difficulty in post nerf firelands, where it's six joke bosses and one brick wall, or its going to be like ToC, where 85% of guilds cleared the instance on normal, and less than 25% of guilds could take the next step in logical progression and defeat heroic Beasts of Northrend. Neither of these scenarios produce healthy tiers of raiding. T12 and T9 are pretty much universally reviled.

On lighter criticisms, the trash before Ultraxion is annoying, and the cinematic before Spine of Deathwing causes some annoyances, if someone cancels the cinematic early, the fight starts, which can be a problem if your tank, or all your healers are still watching Blizz recreate Point Break.

But all is not fail and anguish! Blizzard did some things well here:

I think that the instance itself is very well designed. I enjoy the multiple stages that it employs, and travel throughout the instance is quick and easy. Going across diferent thematic zones is very engaging, going from the war in Dragonblight, to the Eye of Eternity, to the Skies of Northrend, to the Maelstrom keeps the instance from falling prey to the orange on orange on brown malaise of Firelands.

Aside from the endless drake waves before Ultraxion, which I think is a decent concept, it's just twice as long as it needs to be, the trash in Dragon Soul is well done. It doesn't have the endless fields of trash we saw in Firelands. The trash is engaging, often informative about the boss it guards, and not excessively painful to two heal. I always thought it odd when the trash was routinely harder to heal than the bosses were.

All in all, I don't feel this instance is Blizzard's best work, and I think it would be a mistake to leave us here for an extended duration, it is a refreshing change of pace from Firelands.

Blizzard, Forum Angst, and the Confluence of Events

So my previous post on the implications of Theramore's destruction with regards to the narrative path of World of Warcraft took off. I'd meant to follow up on it sooner, but NaNoWriMo's deadline was bearing down on me. So I put things off so that I could hit my mark on my Novel. But it's no longer National Novel Writing Month, so I'm back at the blog.

Since Blizzcon, the forums have been absolutely on fire with disgruntled Alliance players. Accusations of Horde Favoritism abound, and speculation into the future storyline of Mists of Pandaria have been prevalent. CMs have been summoned, and it's drawn the attention of at least the Lead Quest Designer in the developer's camp.

This is essentially "Occupy Azeroth". It's a disgruntled and disenfranchised mass of players attempting to make their concerns known. There's one problem. Like the Occupy Wall Street movements, they're complaining about a host of concerns, many of them legitimate, some of them not so legitimate, and it comes out in a dissonant cacophony that, while great for snaring attention, does a poor job of actually conveying what they're upset about. So I'm going to attempt to enumerate some of the more significant issues that people are taking up arms about., at a later date I'll explain each issue in a more in depth post for that issue.

1) Content for Alliance players is not as compelling as it is for Horde players.: Horde players get far more face time with their leaders in the new leveling experiences. Garrosh and Sylvannas in particular are all over the place, and their characterization is pushed along by the content. Baine is decently involved in the Tauren starting zone, and Vol'jin got a heavy spot with both sides in 4.1. The Alliance, not so much. Varian never leaves his throne room, the Council of Three Hammers takes one quest, Velen shows up for 12 seconds in Swamp of Sorrows, Geblin never never leaves the starting area, and Tyrande got a cameo in one instance which is designed to show people how badass she used to be. Alliance players spend more time questing for Vol'jin and Thrall in Cataclysm than they do questing for their own faction leaders.

2) Content for Alliance players was unfinished at launch: This was most evident in the Twilight Highlands intro and Worgen experience. There were a lot of things that were planned in beta that got cut. I don't think Blizzard realized how important what they were planning to communicate in the Twilight Highlands intro really was. It was the keystone for the entirety of the Cataclysm leveling experience for Alliance, and they abandoned it for a wacky ride with a drunk dwarf.

3) The current story line in not sustainable, and has already been pushed beyond what the writers can control: I already covered this in the previous post. Blizzard isn't going to destroy either side. So portraying total war is very amateurish storytelling, because they can't end it in a logical manner.

4) Too much Thrall: Fargo touched upon this in his dev blog. Thrall was particularly poorly written during this expansion, and it made it very difficult for Alliance players to relate, or care, about his end of the storyline.

5) Extremely unprofessional corporate communications on the part of Blizzard: I'm astounded by how bad Blizzard is at communicating with their player base at times. All too often they make unprofessional, and often counterproductive press releases. I'm not sure if it's because they don't know any better, or if they just don't care, but it's a serious problem. This came to a head with the Corpsegrinder fiasco at the 2011 Blizzcon. That video managed to offend all but a rather small subset of their client base.

6) Excessive Reliance on out of game mediums for story progression: Blizzard has taken the books and comics and manga from being a supplemental means of story development, that is to say that they would advance side plots too small to be given fair treatment in game, to a seat of primary story development, which is to say that they are now covering aspects of story development that should be covered in the game, and it is diminishing the game's immersive quality in the process.

All of this has come to a head, and combined into a firestorm that's burning the forums to the ground. I find it interesting because it's not about numbers this time. It's not about content being too hard or too easy, or something being unbalanced in PvP. This is the first time that players are outright unhappy with the product being put out by Blizzard, rather than harping on minor tweaks to numbers within the game. This has been the biggest conflagration on the Forums since the RealID Fiasco, and it would behoove Blizzard to take a hard look at the product they're releasing, and the manner in which they're communicating with their player base.