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

So I was going to write about Med'an again this week, but with patch 5.4 on the horizon it felt like now was the time to talk about Y'Shaarj, the single most active dead god we've ever seen. In case it needs to be said, yes, there's going to be spoilers and lots of spoilers too. We will be talking about the patch 5.4 storyline, and pretty much everything other patch since Mists of Pandaria debuted.

It has been a presence in Pandaria since before it was Pandaria. The mantid served it - indeed, they still revere its memory. The Sha are a result of it. The Titans destroyed it, yet it will not be destroyed. Ancient and terrible, its seven heads proved immortal, its dread essence exhaled out across the very land, bringing the darkest emotions of the mortal heart into stark existence. It is Y'Shaarj. It is dead. And being dead has proved no hindrance. One of the Old Gods, Y'Shaarj has shaped the land in death, and even now, it threatens to return to life.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Lore, Know your Lore, Mists of Pandaria

One of the questions I see asked often is "Are patches coming too fast" and I'm not sure that they really are. Considering that the Dragon Soul patch (4.3) came out almost exactly a year after the pre-Cataclysm patch The Shattering (Patch 4.0) then we're on pace for Patch 5.4 to come out roughly a year after patch 5.0. If we get patch 5.4 in three to four months, which would fit what we've seen with other patch releases this expansion, then we're looking at one more patch per cycle this expansion than last, and both patch 5.1 and 5.3 brought content outside of new raids. So yes, the patch cycle is slightly faster now, but those patches tend to vary between large patches with lots of raid content and smaller patches with quest hubs or PvP changes.

Looking at previous expansions, I was struck by how little the cycle has changed between Cataclysm and the current expansion. The only real difference is that Cataclysm had one patch (patch 4.1) that was a smaller patch with dungeons and world changes, whereas Mists of Pandaria has had two, patch 5.1 and 5.3. (I say smaller, but that's not really an accurate term - it's simply more convenient than typing 'focused on non raid content' over and over again.) So when we talk about the rapid patch cycle of Mists, we're basically talking about one patch.

So, therefore I wondered to myself - why does it feel like we're getting patches fast and furiously? Why do I hear and see people discussing patch burnout and talk myself about feeling totally overwhelmed by patch changes? If, as we've demonstrated, Mists of Pandaria is in fact more or less on par with or at best slightly ahead of previous expansions in terms of patch frequency (to go back to Wrath of the Lich King, patch 3.3 came out roughly a year after patch 3.0, although we then had a full year before Cataclysm) then why does it feel so much faster?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Mists of Pandaria

Making sure to keep things up to date as we rush towards patch 5.4, the official site has not remained idle. If you're interested in the lore of the game and what's been going on, there's now three new features to take a look at. There's this synopsis of Patch 5.2's Thunder King storyline, which gives players an outline of why the Horde and Alliance forces are taking part in the operation. Then there's a round up of patch 5.3, explaining the Darkspear Rebellion and the Alliance's intelligence operations in Durotar.

Finally, if you're interested in the lore, there's this new character page which gives you a brief rundown of the various figures of import. Especially nice is that each individual's page has links to related characters and content that can tell you more about them. So head on over to the official site and take a look.

Filed under: Blizzard, Lore, Mists of Pandaria

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Okay, so let's look at what we're getting as of the most recent Patch 5.4 PTR build. What stands out?

Patch 5.4 PTR Patch notes

Warrior

General

• Enrage now also triggers on critical hits from Devastate and Shield Slam.
• Shattering Throw no longer costs rage.

Talents

• Enraged Regeneration now instantly heals the warrior for 10% of their total health (up from 5%), and an additional 10% over 5 seconds (up from 5%).
• Vigilance no longer transfers damage to the Warrior. The talent now reduces amount of damage the target takes by 30% for 12 seconds.

Arms

• Slam now does an additional 10% damage to targets affected by the warrior's Colossus Smash.

Fury

• Titan's Grip now works with polearms.

source

There are actually some other changes if you log onto the PTR itself that aren't in the notes: Bladestorm is down to a 1 minute cooldown on the PTR, for instance. I like to call this the Christmas in Pandaria. In fact, if you look at these spell changes on Wowhead, you'll see that a lot of spells got buffed - Storm Bolt's damage got increased, Impending Victory's heal got doubled to 30%. So now that we've looked at the changes, what do they mean?

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Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. Don't worry, this will be the last Queue he does for a while.

It's just occurred to me that I've never seen a Robin Hood MMO, or even really a Robin Hood CRPG of any kind. I mean, I don't have a universal knowledge of gaming, it's certainly more than possible that such a thing exists, but I don't know about it. There's been a fair number of Camelot/King Arthur games, but a surprising dearth of games about Robin Hood. It could be because the character has a fairly convoluted origin with a lot of interpolations, or maybe the idea of a heroic outlaw is too far outside of vogue nowadays. WoW has the Defias Brotherhood, but it's less the Merry Men and more guys who build a giant ironclad warship to blow up Stormwind.

I may be bringing this up because both Kevin Costner and Russel Crowe have played Robin Hood, and they were both one of Superman's dads in Man of Steel. I'm not saying I am, but it wouldn't surprise me. Anyway, on with the Queue! Some of these questions will undoubtedly contain spoilers for Patch 5.4.

Electresserin asks:
Question for the queue- I'm not sure if this has already been answered elsewhere: does Vol'jin want to be warchief? I understand that he wants revenge for the attempt on his life, and of course he wants the trolls to get out from under Garrosh's rule. But does he really want to take on the responsibilities of being the warchief? If he defeats Garrosh, does he automatically become warchief or could he refuse the title?

Well, one of the problems here is, there is no mechanism for determining who is the Warchief. Thrall appointed Garrosh, and Thrall himself was simultaneously appointed by a dying Doomhammer and acclaimed by the orcs at Hammerfall (which wasn't named that yet, of course). Doomhammer got the job by killing Blackhand and anyone else who might stand in his way, and Blackhand got it because Gul'dan manipulated the orcs into accepting him. So basically, in the history of being Warchief, murdering the dude before you has been the method of succession once out of the four times the job got passed down. So if Vol'jin is seen as having defeated Garrosh in battle, then yes, he may well become Warchief. Now, I don't see any reason he couldn't refuse the title if it was offered to him.

As to whether or not he wants the job, so far in game he hasn't said. I suspect we'll find out once Shadows of the Horde comes out. My suspicion is no, he's not really keen on it, but he'll do it if he thinks he has to. I wouldn't be surprised to see him and Baine try and create some kind of Horde Council to replace the position.

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Filed under: The Queue, Mists of Pandaria

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today.

I have absolutely no Danish heritage. Well, I might from my English ancestors, but none of my relatives that I can trace are from Denmark, so when I say I'm fascinated with Valdemar Atterdag aka Valdemar IV of Denmark, you know it's not out of any nationalist pride. My reasons for being fascinated with Valdemar Atterdag are threefold - first, that he came to the throne as a relatively young and untried man and through ruthlessness, guile, economic brinksmanship and naked war effectively reconquered Denmark. Second, he did so at a time when Denmark had been effectively parceled out and in the face of plague and powerful neighbors like Sweden and the Hanseatic League. Finally, he's become almost mythic as a consequence - Valdemar's name is actually used in connection with the Wild Hunt as the hunter himself, meaning that some people think Valdemar Atterdag was Woden.

What I'm getting at is that Warcraft needs more people like this, who achieve conquest through every means at their disposal and who create something when they're done. Also that name kicks ass - not many people get a last name that means 'day again'. Why doesn't WoW have a Wild Hunt yet?

Anyway, World of Warcraft questions! There will be Patch 5.4 spoilers in these questions. As a result, I'm putting the first question behind the break.

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Filed under: The Queue, Mists of Pandaria

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today.

Sometimes I just can't come up with a good intro to the Queue. I don't have any music I really want to play, I can't really do a huge post full of spoilers about Man of Steel, so it's basically just me, sitting here, trying and failing to come up with anything clever.

In lieu of clever, let's just answer some questions.

Pmarsico9 said
I bet Malkorak is actually a dreadlord.......that's my guess. You heard it here first. Remember how Balnazzar manipulated the entire Scarlet Crusade?

Well I hope this the beginning of the re-emergence of the Legion.

I have no evidence that he's not a dreadlord, aside from him seeming fairly orcish in his appearances in Tides of War and the expansion to date. I kind of hope he's not, because frankly we've done that bit twice now with Balnazzar and Mal'Ganis. Sometimes people do evil things for their own reasons, they don't have to be manipulated into it by demons.

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Filed under: The Queue

Sometimes you get hungry. And sometimes when you're hungry you want food that will give you 1007 in a useful stat for one hour. Apparently in patch 5.4, that food will exist, and it will be delicious noodles served piping hot from a noodle cart. Available in both 10 and 25 person varieties, the noodle cart (or Grand noodle cart) is taught by a recipe - where this recipe is learned is up in the air at this point, it could be on a vendor, it could be a drop. We know that both recipes are bind on pickup, so it probably won't be something you see on the AH.

Now, it's possible that the PTR is just giving out odd numbers for stat food at the moment - current Pandaria recipes are listed as giving far higher stats on the PTR than they grant on live. So always remember, it's the PTR, don't be surprised if it changes before it goes live. Still, even if it's just another way to make stat food, who doesn't love a noodle cart?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Mists of Pandaria

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today.

Yesterday was the huge Patch 5.4 infodump. Today, I'm going to see Man of Steel. So I'm all sorts of freaking out right now. Let's talk about WoW before I spin out of control and just start talking about Kryptonian Thought Beasts and the Jeweled Mountains of Krypton and Kandor and oh my Rao tonight is Man of Steel I am freaking out here.

And yes, a Thought-Beast was a big dinosaur looking monster with a screen on its forehead that showed you what it was thinking. In this case, it was thinking I want to eat that guy.. I don't know what possible evolutionary benefit that is, but there you go. Since a lot of these questions are about patch 5.4, expect many spoilers.

Thieren asks:
Any info on the Stromgarde Keep scenario that people are now talking about?
Please say it's true!

Anne covered the little we know about the Scenario in this post yesterday. All we know is that it exists, basically. Is it going to be the Alliance reclaiming it, the Horde taking it over, something else? We have no idea yet.

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Filed under: The Queue, Mists of Pandaria

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

Med'an is a controversial character.

Well, maybe not. If Med'an were controversial, that would mean that some people like him and some people hate him, but so far, if Med'an has fans they're being awfully quiet about it. Now, that doesn't mean they don't exist, but until I see evidence for them existing I'm going to assume that they don't. So Med'an isn't controversial because there's no controversy. People either hate him, or they don't care about him at all. But there's the rub. By nature, I tend to dislike just going along with the common opinion without examining it for myself. So now, I find myself forced to ask: is Med'an that bad?

Med'an is as far as I know the only character to get dismissed from existence by the Ask CDev responses. There's a vague response at the end of Ask CDev 3 that implies that he left Azeroth entirely, and that's the last word we've gotten on the character. And I kind of understand why - taking a look at Med'an's backstory, it kind of sounds like something you'd see in someone's FlagRP profile that got out of hand.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Lore, Know your Lore, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm