An Essay on Peace with Dalaran

In light of the Purge of Dalaran, what should Quel’thalas’ course be in regards to relations with the Kirin Tor?

“Given the de-escalation in Alliance-Horde relations since Garrosh Hellscream’s defeat, I think it is a natural course of relations that Quel’thalas must similarly lessen its personal hostilities with the City-state of Dalaran.

While I recognise that deep personal embitterment has occurred due to the brutal removal of Horde members from Dalaran and the deaths and imprisonment of Sunreaver members, as well as the alleged involvement of Sunreaver members in the Divine Bell Incident, the state of burgeoning peace between Alliance and Horde under the efforts of Warchief Vol’jin will be put at risk if significant military action occurs between Dalaran and Silvermoon.

Given Silvermoon’s recent re-establishment and the persistence of internal issues such as the Wretched, the barren status of the Dead Scar and Ghostlands and the management of the Sunwell, there is no way to say definitively that Quel’thalas would be victorious in a full-scale battle with Dalaran, particularly given the city’s mobility and the possession of centuries’ worth of Blue Dragon artefacts that it may now possess given Archmage Proudmoore’s ties with the Blue Aspect Kalecgos.

While I agree that our people have been mistreated and humiliated on repeated occasions by the Magus-Senate, and in particular by specific members of the Council of Six, any further retaliation on behalf of the Blood Elves poses a significant risk to the future of our nation, as well as relations with the Alliance and Horde. Additionally, it would be likely to create a vicious cycle which would ultimately not rectify any of our grievances with Dalaran, as we cannot count on the Horde or Alliance to fight a proxy war on our behalf due to the intentions of Warchief Vol’jin and King Wrynn to restore a state of ceasefire. In fact, such destabilising efforts would likely lead to estrangement from the Horde, creating a worse internal situation due to a decline in trade.

Instead, I propose that long-term negotiations between the leadership of both nations must be key to restoring peace. While it is clear that Archmage Proudmoore is a far more reactionary leader than her predecessors Rhonin and Antonidas, her interests in peace were notable prior to the appointment of Garrosh Hellscream, including two Horde-Alliance peace summits which significantly reduced hostilities prior to the outbreak of the Northrend War. Given such efforts, I am hopeful that with external pressure from Alliance and Horde leadership, we can accomplish initial negotiations.

In terms of issues to be addressed, there must be compensation, both for the violation of Dalaranese neutrality by alleged Sunreaver agents – to do so, the agents responsible must be located and trialled – and the violation of the rights of Sunreaver and non-aligned blood elf citizens who suffered during their expulsion from Dalaran, as well as their immediate release provided they are guilty of no crimes. In addition, the Kirin Tor must recognise the innocence of the majority of Horde forces within Dalaran of the events concerning the destruction of Theramore and the Divine Bell incident.

While I realise that there are considerable feelings on both sides of this conflict, I am confident that both sides can eventually find common ground, given the knowledge that destruction has not brought resolution to our past ails and thus cannot be expected to solve our current ones. With luck, we may find peace within a few years, and if there is a longer-lasting peace, perhaps we can begin to heal older divisions between the mages of Dalaran and those of Quel’thalas.”

Changing Perspectives

Change is death and death is change. Death of the old, and death of the new, and change is order and death is order and death is perpetuity.

I surface from the pool, gulping in the air.

So many dead, and I’m still here, and I almost forgot what to fight for, and so. Many. Dead.

Auchindoun is quiet in the cool morning air. The spirits are here, somewhere. I could go and apologise. Would they ever forgive me? Would I ever find them? So many dead.

The spirits would stand and watch; eternal, yet ephemeral. The Legion knows not their stories. The demons revel in their pain, rewatching their deaths over and over like in some shitty goblin play.

Above, the call of a bird breaks open. It swoops down, a Kaliri, long gold feathers and long brown tail, picks up a mouse, disappears.

Still it all goes on. Still I am alive. Still we fight.

Home has never felt more far away.

I failed. I failed the draenei and yet tens of thousands more live now than ever will on Azeroth and Outland. We won and we lost and I don’t know how to feel.

The trees stretch out overhead, the bright colours of eternal autumn. They are like those of Eversong, yet more. Every twisting olemba here is natural, a wonder; every tree in Eversong a magical creation, a throwback to a land lost ten-thousand years prior.

Do I miss home? Do I miss the safety? The people? Am I doing a good job here?

The legends say that Velen sees every world in the cosmos the Legion touches – that he considers it his mission to ensure every ruined planet is remembered.

And still we fight. Taleberaite kills a century of demons, Khairan another; there are more now than there were before.

I can see the faces of the draenei spirits in the water; briefly, they shimmer, and are gone, passing through to the inner ring. The spirits are constantly nearby, but never present.

And still we fight. Some fall, and some keep going. And the Pandaren said to remain balanced and taught me their lessons and still they died. Had the Horde been formed, they likely would have died anyway. Should we shed tears for lives that were lost long ago?

If Auchindoun falls, they say the Legion will win, though Auchindoun fell once and the Legion eventually lost, at the cost of a planet.

The forest shifts, quietly.

When we kill more than the orcs kill, who is to blame? Did we do the best we could? Will we be allowed a second chance?

Wasn’t this already our second chance?

I am on the shore, now; my legs cross and I look at the sky. The moons of Draenor show no change; the world may be destroyed but the sky is eternal.

The monks said to be a leaf in the wind; the leaf is blown far and wide, left and right; it is turned and thrown upside down; it may land in a place far different from where its home once was.

Cell

The wound went deep. To my pride, I suppose. Elves have a thing with pride. Even when you think you’ve gotten rid of it, it persists. I try my hardest. I’m certainly no Anrithen. But can I take pride in that?

The light coming in the cell isn’t natural. It’s too consistent to be sunlight, although I have no idea what direction my cell points in. A way of keeping you awake, perhaps. I’m coping well enough. The lack of mana’s starting to bite – indeed, it had been starting to bite when we reached Wor’var. Now it was more like having a foot gnawed off.

I stay in meditation most hours, trying to regulate my flow. The cell’s too suppressive to take anything from the lighting, or indeed to try chip away at the incantations keeping the cell suppressive. It’s like a miniaturised 7/7 party.

The blasted ring’s gone as well. If I’d had the forethought I would have hidden it somewhere decent – swallowed it, perhaps. Dragon technology will at least stump Highmaul for long enough to keep me alive.

The question is what happens when and if they figure out the ring. I’m no use as a gladiator, at any rate. I could end up in Maltinius’ posse – he’s certainly never had any elves before – but he seems to prefer the draenei.

I’m contemplating weaning myself off the magic at this rate. Goodness knows I’ve no idea when a rescue will come about, since Aleck stormed off. Khairan is… somewhere. That’s about it for potential rescuers.

Everyone is quiet. I don’t know if they’ve lost hope. I came to terms with death a fair while ago. I wouldn’t like to end up dead here, but I’m not going to be idealistic about it. Occasionally there’s screaming. I just try to meditate through it. The more mana I have… Well, I don’t really know what I’m going to do with it.

Aftermath

“Bring her forth.”

The two attendants laid the body at Keliera’s feet, the muscular frame draped in a thin layer of cloth. The plate still looked battered in places, but Taleberaite had worked it into a bright enough shine that any damage was eclipsed. The attendants had worked neatly, and what was exposed of the girl’s pale face looked peaceful, the shrapnel injuries to her skull obscured by well-groomed hair.

She sighed. “I suppose we were lucky to escape the casualties of others. Still, to lose someone in our ranks only a few months… It bodes poorly. Place her in the back. I’ll secure her before we set sail.”

Muttering a final prayer to the Sunborne, the two attendants bowed and left, heading outside. Keliera was left alone with her thoughts and the young girl, covered by the sheet.

The last few weeks still could wake one up at night. The memories of the cannon-fire, the siege weaponry and the shrapnel – all the horrors of Garrosh’s last siege, doubled in power and tripled in size. In a way, the peace of death for Tomaa would be a relief from that.

Keliera said a prayer for the girl before leaving the room, heading up onto the top deck of the Sunchaser. Peons bustled around the makeshift harbour established at Surwich, some tending to the ship. Gulls whirled overhead, their whistles echoing in the early morning quiet. The sounds of the siege had floated away since the portal had been secured.

Soon, they would head back to Silvermoon, to lick their wounds and mull over what to do next. The Iron Horde meant change was coming. They would have to be ready.

 

Change on the Wind

“This world is changing.

I have been to Northrend and Pandaria, Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. For years, we have had war. And now it has changed.

We have been stuck in Draenor, fighting a war that ended decades ago, trying to change the past. But the future is different already.

I have been to Orgrimmar and heard goblins talk about trade deals with Ironforge and Gnomeregan. I have listened to druids talk about making Gilneas fit for human habitation again. I have seen society rebuilt in Pandaria, Alliance and Horde walk the same streets.

Things have changed. The peace we haven’t known for decades is here, right here, surrounding us, building a life without us to live it. There are commoners in Silvermoon talking – not venting propaganda, but actually talking – about how there might be peace with Dalaran and how the prisoners of the Violet Hold might be freed this year.

I have watched as the logging camps of the orcs moved from Ashenvale to Azshara and as the tauren moved in to teach the orcs agriculture. I have watched the last holdings of the Scourge torn down and replaced with farms and villages across the Eastern Kingdoms. The world has changed and we are no longer in it.

Even on Draenor, you don’t see it. But Vol’mar and Lion’s Watch hold the peace better than Thrallmar and Honor Hold ever did. There is no skirmish, only a focus on the true enemy. The draenei and the orcs are learning to live together. They fight side-by-side in Tanaan and Shattrath and Gorgrond. We have helped the races of a world stand together, and we have inspired the same back home.

I have seen shipments of Horde goods pass through Booty Bay en-route to Stormwind and I have heard rumours of High Elves being let back in to inhabit Western Silvermoon. I have heard of draenei towns being built across Kalimdor and the Exodar travelling the world to offer the Prophet’s wisdom. I have heard of Pandaren travellers accompanying orcs and dwarves to spread the word of Brewfest.

The world we live in changed. It changed without us. Even the Reliquary considers us an extremist faction, collecting artefacts to prop up a nation that doesn’t need them. The sin’dorei live now, in peace; they trade with the Horde, and the Horde supports them – a parasitic relationship has become symbiotic.

I want to be part of this world. I want to build peace and meet people and have friends in the Alliance; I want to close the door on the wars of the last four decades. I will be trapped in the past no longer.”

World Events and You: Grind or Go Home

WoW’s holiday events come round once each per year – a period of anytime between a weekend and a month in which the whole game has decorations, fun NPCs pop up in capital cities and limited-time quests and events can be embarked on at all levels for costumes, mounts, pets and toys. A fun time for all.

Except when it’s not. And recently, it’s become less and less fun.

The first time I noticed that a world event was less a fun, unique occasion was 2014’s Day of the Dead. Usually a caricature on the Latin American Dia de los Muertos, this year’s weekend-long festival included new content and achievements: several costumes at 100g each which transformed you into a colourful celebrant. The achievements?

Kill 1, 20 and 50 people also wearing the costumes.

I would have been content enough had the achievement been just to buy a costume, but I attempted it anyway – and did not get a single kill after half an hour of farming in the Stormwind City graveyard.

Needless to say, I gave up. It was not worth the stress, the endless time spent as a ghost, or the repair costs. It was definitely not fun and it did not involve much of me celebrating the dead, more cursing my own death.

This behaviour was mirrored by the inclusion in 2015 of new Love is in the Air content – namely a prism of love, costing 40 tokens, and an achievement to have 50 stacks of the buff it gives you.

I similarly attempted this achievement, and after spending 2 hours in a group, it collapsed before my turn. In fact, it collapsed less than halfway to my turn. It was again, not fun, and I don’t think it was much in the spirit of things.

So I question why on earth an achievement wants me to spend so long on it during a time of festivity?

It seems completely at odds with the traditional view of world events in WoW – low-intensity, lots of fun items to share with your friends, and the occasionally challenging – but by no means impossible – achievement. No world event content has before been so mind-numbing as to force me to stand in a circle, pressing one button every minute, for hours.

It beggars belief, and it cannot be allowed to continue. I am fairly confident that Blizzard has their own metrics that’ll show just how engaged people are with this content, but if this is the way it’s going to be, then I’ll just stop doing holiday content. I refuse to do content that isn’t fun.

There are, of course, other ways they could re-tune these holidays to have a festive rather than a grindy spirit. Calavera, for example, could instead of killing 50 people, be killing 5 – 1 of each colour of costume. They Really Love Me could involve various coloured beams instead of just pink, and require you to be under the effects of each colour beam.

Either achievement could have you do it to different races or classes, in different locales. This would be far more in tune with what holiday content usually involves.

But it does not. And it’s for that reason that, until it’s changed, I’m going to opt out of holiday content. Because it doesn’t make me want to celebrate whatever occasion it is. It makes me detest it.

Into the Wilds: WoD Questing Review, Part 2

I feel like talking some more about the WoD questing model, so I’ve done a little on the middle zones, Gorgrond and Talador. I found enjoyable, and they both really seemed to recapture the old feeling of ‘you have multiple areas to go’ that was a real railroading problem through Cata and Mists. The fact that you’re no longer pointed towards a specific quest helps a lot, though I felt it meant the conclusion to Gorgrond lacked cohesion in tying everything together.

Gorgrond

Going into Gorgrond, I felt… a sense of trepidation. It was, from first glance, completely different to the Blade’s Edge of old, and I wondered how Blizzard could tie it together. They did brilliantly. Gorgrond, more than anything, embodies the ‘savage’ persona that Blizzard has been hammering us with for the last year, and it actually makes sense without being offensive in this zone. It comprises an elaborate and subtle story of a civil war, effectively, between the creatures of the wild forests – genesaur, ancients, botani and their creations; and the beasts of the earth – gronn, ogron, goren and all they command. In this ancient land, we are thrown into this war and left to do as best we can. The Iron Horde takes a significant backseat as the struggle for resources really comes into play.

Alliance-side, I loved the storylines of the Rangari and the Thorium Brotherhood in this zone. The dwarves and the draenei play off each other well, and their struggle to find their missing troops and complete the objectives they are there to do is well-structured. The fantastic landscape goes well with the questing, although Yrel and Maraad perhaps sit back too much. Thaelin and Rangari Kaalya were stand-out characters in the Alliance questline and I hope we’ll be seeing them again. On the side of the Horde, the Laughing Skull provided interesting, if a bit one-dimensional characters who just really loved bones. While there were probably better clans to ally with (given how the Laughing Skull consisted of around four orcs at this point) they were a good laugh. And the Crimson Fen, on both factions, was exceptionally creepy.

I was originally going to criticise the inordinate amount of giant elite monsters compared to the prior zones – but I realise that it makes complete sense. Gorgrond is ancient and unknown, and it’s also heavily suggested to be Titan-related  – it needs guardians, and the mysterious ancient giants and genesaur that patrol the land provide an interesting perspective. I loved the fact that, unlike some past zones where the Horde and Alliance have achieved the exact same thing, here the Horde gained an artefact for controlling the magnaron, and the Alliance one for the genesaur. It adds an interesting twist, and as with the capture of the power of the Mogu in 5.2, I hope it’ll be referenced again.

My main criticism would be the finale of Gorgrond’s main questlines. While we spend a lot of time on the wilds of Gorgrond, the Iron Horde are rather irrelevant until the final quests – and they end very anti-climactically. The artefact is damaged beyond use, we kill another Son of Gronn – but why? What’s the point of the Iron Approach? We destroy the Iron Docks in the dungeon and the rest of the fleet goes to attack Talador. Was it a failure? I feel much like we did at the end of Vashj’ir – you’re not sure if you’ve won or you’ve lost – and ultimately, you have to work it out from what you do next.

Talador

Upon entry to Talador, the music was vivid and beautiful. It’s easily the best music of the expansion that I’ve heard so far. The music matches the landscape perfectly. The autumnal and earthy colours are different from Terokkar, yet the landscape is similar, and I like the way – much like with Shadowmoon and Gorgrond – that there is a hint of what will one day be Outland, but it’s something much deeper.

I’d like to know who had creative jurisdiction over naming my outpost ‘Fort Wrynn’. It’s not my own preferred choice, I have to say. I was not expecting Zangarra at all – and Khadgar being angry at Jaina is quite funny (though where she gets off on calling me an outsider after I helped purge her city and steal Lei Shen’s power for her, I do not know). Maraad is also kinda starting to grate on me, Alliance-side. Why did we take the most violent of the Vindicators with us? Seriously, first he starts beating up the homeless in Azuremyst, and now he’s advocating for genocide against the orcs. You’ve seen where that goes, buddy. It’s not somewhere to go. Horde-side, the questing was again very well-done, and I loved seeing Liadrin make an appearance. I was a bit confused to see Durotan referring to Orgrim with more affection than, you know, his actual brothers – considering Orgrim is with Blackhand, and we’ve seen nothing of him in this timeline, it came out of the blue. The absence of Thrall was also a relief.

I found the various draenei areas I went to very interesting – but each time, I felt as though it was a little short. Admittedly, everything was very dramatic – the Iron Horde was attacking and we needed to move fast – but I thought Talador was a lot shorter than Gorgrond. Tuurem, Telmor and Shattrath were all done with in a handful of quests. Still, that doesn’t detract from the fact that I loved seeing all the areas of Outland in this form.

Again, Blizzard have outdone themselves with Auchindoun and Shattrath – and again, I feel like they really go underused. It’s a pity, but there’s not much to be done about it now. However, I suppose there’s only so much story you can fit into one area. Talador definitely was a good zone, but I feel like it was missing something – there’s conflict in a great many areas and little to tie them together. You just appear to be playing whack-a-mole. Another criticism: Both my Alliance and Horde mains did not get the ‘Establishing your Outpost’ checkpoints – and I have no idea why. It needs fixing, but it was the only bug I came across here.

The final quest, if over a little fast, led into an absolutely fantastic cutscene. I loved how Yrel and Durotan teamed up against Blackhand (especially notable is how they co-opt each other’s weaponry), and I like seeing that the faction differences are lessening due to the necessity of co-operation in Draenor. Maraad’s death was.. poignant. I’m still not sure whether it was our Maraad, but it was a noble sacrifice. The triumph of Blizzard’s cutscenes is really stellar here – you can lip-read Khadgar at this point, which shows how far cutscenes have come since Wrath. The final battle was climactic and well-done. Talador was, all in all, a triumph.

A Remarkable Thing: Early WoD Questing Review

A remarkable thing happened last night while I was getting ready for bed.

I felt excited for what was to come in the day to follow – and excited to play Warlords of Draenor. I can’t exactly say why, and I still have some critiques, but the storyline has so far been engaging.

In an expansion where I’ve struggled more than any other to build up excitement, to the point of not caring when I actually installed it, I think this is a good thing, and it says a lot about just how well-crafted lots of the story in Draenor is.

My opinion changed, I’d say substantially, when I finally got to Draenor. I’d like to list my thoughts on the introduction zones, where they rise high and fall flat, and hopefully there are some lessons within.

Assault on the Dark Portal

My initial impressions of this section were that the jungle was very beautiful. Though Khadgar is prominent, he’s not overly-talky and I feel like a lot of the issues of Thrall’s Mary-Sue-ism are avoided. He stays back, only attacks when necessary, and generally lets you steer the ship. Also, he sasses Thrall, which I like a lot. I loved the way that you go through the portal and immediately are thrown into things. You hit the ground running, which is something that always works well for the start of an expansion. It’s engaging and you get a rough idea of who is involved – I’m not convinced that the giant bold text is completely necessary, though.

Shadowmoon Valley

Shadowmoon Valley is a world and then some away from its BC counterpart. It is completely different and yet still recognisable in some aspects. It is beautiful, eerie, dark and mysterious, and one of the centres of draenei culture.

I found it absolutely fantastic. The questing flow was smooth, the zone was incredibly immersive, the lore of the place was fantastic. I loved the ties to BC with the exarchs, as well as new lore such as the expansion of the draenei defence crystals. Questing was very engaging – I found any ‘kill x’ to be smoothly integrated, and there were plenty enough quests not of that variant to make up for any I encountered. Ashran, while it very much captures the ‘Alliance’ feel like the Garrison does, is no Karabor. Karabor is unquestionably draenei; beautiful, whole, magical on another level.

I also loved the feel of exploration. Quests were a surprising encounter and reward, and bonus objectives were interesting distractions, though I’d perhaps like some exposition to go with them (they seem very much to fit a ‘kill x’ format, and I’m not really sure why I’m doing them).

A negative of the zone to me, especially when levelling herbalism and archaeology, was that a lot of the zone often had small ledges that you had to run round when objectives were extremely close. I would much rather see an expansion of our ability to scale such things – jump boosts, wall-climbing, even jumping puzzles – rather than them just be an arbitrary obstacle due to our lack of flying.

All-in-all, the story was put together very well – though I could perhaps see the ending coming, Yrel was built up very well, Maraad didn’t feature too heavily, the scenery and music was fantastic – especially the occasional riffs of BC music. I loved the way the Shadowmoon exiles fit into the storyline, as well as Rulkan’s appearance as a follower – the blurring of faction lines in Draenor is a positive for me. Shadowmoon Valley was a strong starter zone and a good base from which to continue.

Frostfire Ridge

Frostfire, while very good.. felt lacklustre in some places. Particularly in the start, I felt like it was substantially less coherent. Whereas in Shadowmoon, we set up our garrison and then go to the native villages to set up trade and good relations, in Frostfire you set up your garrison and then go invade a citadel.

Part of this disappointment comes down to the fact that the quests were buggier than in SMV – I encountered several where objectives would complete at random, and where enemies would change phases without reason.

However, I felt like the zone hit its stride after Bladespire Citadel was taken. There was a real sense of desperate survival, both for the Frostwolves and the Thunderlords, though I was a little off-put by how there seemed to be less flow than in Shadowmoon. I would have liked more direction, but both quests and characters were engaging. While I wasn’t crying my eyes out like at the end of Shadowmoon, I got clear senses of character from the major players – Draka, Durotan, Ga’nar, Lokra, etc.

I think that the real let-down of Frostfire was the scenery, because while it was intended as a barren place where survival was hard – nothing stood out to me. Bladespire was a large rock. Everything else was snowy crags with hints of lava. The best scenery appears to have been reserved for the mountainous level 100 areas, which I have yet to access, and I found that disappointing. Nothing is noteworthy about Frostfire’s scenery, and I felt that it didn’t fully stretch the fantasy that the rest of Draenor appears to do. If anything, I feel like the Horde’s Ashran base more accurately captures the Horde + Draenor feel.

Oh, and there was Thrall. He appeared, was emotional about his parents, displayed a complete lack of understanding of his culture and shamanism, and had three random aunts and uncles introduced.

Plot-wise, I think the major disappointment was the end. We didn’t see much of an Iron Horde threat at all, compared to the assault on Karabor – you defeat a Son of Gruul and Drek’thar throws some rocks at a few siege engines. The lacklustre reveal that the Thunderlord leader had been Durotan’s older brother all along was not only inexplicable and unexplained, it was poor storytelling. I feel like the Frostwolves were let down and that the potential of the zone was not fulfilled by the focus on the Thunderlord story.

None of this, IMO, makes Frostfire a bad zone – it is a good starter zone. But comparatively, Shadowmoon is exceptional, and I hope there’s improvement as the Horde storyline progresses into Gorgrond.

Gaming Philosophy and Warlords of Draenor

Or: Staying in Pandaria and Avoiding Queuecraft

It’s been a few days – less than a week – since Warlords of Draenor’s launch across all servers, and I suppose I feel validated in my decision to hold off – at least, initially, until Christmastime – by the severe lag and server issues that are plaguing American and European realms.

I’m not exactly averse to ever getting Warlords of Draenor. WoW is still a game I love and it’s provided me with some wonderful memories. But I still can’t shake the hesitancy, the feeling that this isn’t what we should be focusing on that has plagued me since Blizzcon ’13. The graphics are pretty. The dynamics of the game look engaging. But the story feels inherently flawed, just as much as it felt flawed when it was announced.

That’s why I’m reluctant. I’ve always had apprehensions when expansions have been announced – Cataclysm in particular I initially thought would be horrible – but those thoughts are usually abated by the beta’s trickle of information.

Draenor still feels wrong to me. I don’t know if that’s intentional or if I’m in a minority here. It feels like a distraction. It feels inexplicable, like the only way to distract from the military and economic issues that would inevitably follow the wars of the past few years is to throw our characters into a universe where they have to work with an army entirely separate to the one in Azeroth’s, because we’re cut off from our homeworld entirely.

It intensely aggravates me. It reeks even more of Blizzard’s consistent avoidance of consequences. I can still tell that, when the threat of the Iron Horde is over, we are probably going to re-open the portal, head home, and forget it all happened. The contained issue of a Draenor that we were never meant to encounter is solved by the fact that we will cut it off from our own reality once we’re done with it.

That’s why I have found it so hard to invest in the story of Warlords of Draenor, as pretty as Shadowmoon Valley and Talador and Tanaan Jungle are, and as cool and innovative as the bosses may be. It’s not our story.

I… want to know what happens after Mists of Pandaria. I want to help out with the rebuilding, to see the effects we’ve had on the ecosystem of the Valley of Four Winds. To show Orgrimmar being slowly turned back into the multicultural hub of the Horde it was meant to be. The ramifications of changing the orcish position of Warchief into a trollish one. The political effects of Dalaran’s shift from neutral to Alliance – and possibly now back to  neutral. Whether Theramore will be rebuilt, whether the Mana Bomb affected the wildlife like it did in Terokkar Forest.

These are not stories that will be told. They are never told. Blizzard cannot maintain coherence between the old worlds of expansions past and the modern changes of the new worlds. We see them go back to old continents once or twice per expansion – 4.1, 5.3, the occasional quest chain – if we are lucky. Blizzard is great at a contained story – but at tying their stories together, they have so far fallen short. I don’t want to make a blanket statement that they won’t succeed in Warlords. But I cannot build the optimism. So I’ll wait until the verdicts on 6.0’s story come in.

Otherwise, I’m now at university. My time for World of Warcraft usually stretches to maybe 1 hour per day. I’m holding off on Warlords of Draenor – for better or worse – until Christmas, l have the time and resources to play and enjoy Warlords of Draenor, if I do buy it. I hope that I’ll be proven wrong when I do eventually join in. And that the servers will look a bit better. Until then, I’ll be doing whatever takes my fancy in-game and wishing the best of luck to those trying to access Draenor.

Alternate Universe Azeroth 2: Lor’themar

There’s public outrage after Theramore comes to light in Silvermoon. Because it will, of course. The sentries haven’t been updated since Kael’thas’ betrayal, so they’re not monitoring conversations on human kingdoms – there are no people to update them, which is another cause for anger. Hundreds of families haven’t seen their relatives in years because of wars the Sin’dorei shouldn’t be involved in. Almost all of the Ghostlands are relying on the Forsaken to keep the Scourge at bay even after the Lich King’s defeat, and the Horde is forcing the Sin’dorei to keep fighting.

There are protests beyond anything seen before, about the military, the Ghostlands, the lack of food, the lack of transparency, the fact that the palace was rebuilt but there are still refugees in Quel’danas and the ruined western quarter. Lor’themar is forced to hold emergency meetings with the military brass because of the risk of riots. Protests devolve angrily into pro- and anti-Horde camps, and the Sunreavers become public enemy number one for allowing the blood elves to be complicit in one of the worst war crimes in recent history. During all of this, Thalen Songweaver and Fanlyr Silverthorn… disappear.

Aethas is held accountable, of course, but even he has no idea where the pro-Garroshians have fled to. The Sunreavers are hastily disbanded and re-absorbed into the Magisters, and Lor’themar forced to allow a people’s assembly to be elected to negotiate with a power-sharing council to avoid such heinous misdemeanours being repeated again. Relations with the Horde tremble, even if briefly.

Eventually, to sate the public, Lor’themar begins negotiations with Vereesa to allow the Quel’dorei an embassy. Lady Liadrin is sent to aid Horde forces, with more golems than guards, because the guards need a face more than ever, and the golems weren’t helping the case. In public, the reason is to aid the war effort and the draenei whom the elves owe a debt to. In private, Lor’themar is desperate to recapture Songweaver and Silverthorn before their escape turns into another public scandal.