Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King

While recording the WoW Insider Show this week, my two co-hosts Anne Stickney and Olivia Grace were discussing heroic five man dungeons and made the interesting point that, while Cataclysm used new heroics to help people catch up in gearing as new raid tiers were released, the advent of the Raid Finder might mean that it isn't necessary anymore. If you're running LFR as your primary way to see/experience raid content, then you'd simply run previous LFR's in order to gear up and collect valor points for the various reputation vendors. This would allow you to get geared enough for further LFR as new raid tiers are released, and keeps the previous LFR's relevant. If you're running the current 10 or 25 man raids, you can use the LFR's for those raids to bootstrap yourself appropriately if you're not already geared well enough from the previous tier of raiding.

Either way, you don't need new heroic dungeons for the task - between daily quests, scenarios and LFR, the Cataclysm model which placed new five mans in patch 4.1 and 4.3 might no longer be necessary. Challenge modes keep the heroics that launched with Mists of Pandaria evergreen, since you can't outgear them, but is that enough for fans of five mans? While both Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm introduced post-launch dungeons, Burning Crusade really only introduced Magister's Terrace in its last content patch. This makes me wonder if we really need any new five mans, and if we do, what would/should they be?

If you're the kind of person who enjoys building set toys, like World of Warcraft Mega Bloks, then this contest is for you. To quote the contest instructions:

Take your Mega Bloks World of Warcraft sets and stack, rearrange, redesign and recombine 'em into never-before-seen creations. We want to see how big, impressive and creative you can be with your sets. Once you're ready, snap some pictures of your masterpiece and submit them through our official "Build Big, Win Big" Facebook Contest.

So if that's you, head over to the Facebook page and see if you want to enter. Time is short - the contest ends in two days. The grand prize winner will get five CE's, one for classic World of Warcraft and one for each of the expansions. There are plenty of other prizes to win as well, check the official rules here for details.

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One of the things that Mists of Pandaria has really brought home for me is how time progresses in a persistent world. World of Warcraft is now 8 years old, and certain locations like Stratholme, Molten Core, and Darnassus have existed for the entirety of that eight years. Still other places introduced at the time of the game's launch have changed dramatically, or even been removed entirely. A great deal of the world itself has been remodeled as time has progressed - The Burning Crusade added new islands off the coast of Kalimdor, Wrath of the Lich King changed the plaguelands by adding a whole new coastline to the area, and Cataclysm reshaped both continents. This doesn't even take into account adding whole swaths of explorable content like Outland, Northrend, Deepholm or now Pandaria itself. And Mists of Pandaria has advanced the story of World of Warcraft in ways that changed everything, from the removal of Theramore to the coming war of patch 5.1 between Alliance and Horde.

Interestingly, the persistent world of the setting persists through these changes, or more accurately, it persists because of them. Not only do they provide impetus for our adventures, they also contrast what we've come to know with what is new and unknown to us. Pandaria's secrets draw us deeper into exploring what was, to us, a forgotten land, and in so doing make the world we've already known continue. Anyone who leveled before Cataclysm and then leveled a character after it can attest to the wide variety of changes to the world, and anyone exploring that world on a new pandaren or monk is benefiting from those changes. But those changes work entirely because they're changes to the world we've already come to know. We care about Pandaria because it's a new place, yes, but we also care about it because it's a mirror through which we can see ourselves, our characters, our factions. We bring the World of Warcraft we've known for years to its shores.

As time marches forward, so too does the digital edition of the WoW Battle Chest. Not only are new purchasers able to get all the content from World of Warcraft and its first two expansions in one easy purchase, but in addition, all current World of Warcraft subscribers, even those that have never bought either Wrath of the Lich King or The Burning Crusade, will have access to all the content available in both expansions.

This is an extremely positive change for a variety of reasons, including (but not limited to) those of you who want to use Refer a Friend on a second account for the Obsidian Nightwing, or giving the game as a gift to a friend or loved one to check it out. With so many expansions under the bridge (we're up to four as of next week) it's good to give players a leg up on the content.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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When World of Warcraft launched, we were told that one of the features that would make it into the game was the hero class, although at the time there was no definition of what, exactly, a hero class would be. We ultimately found out when Wrath of the Lich King gave us the game's first hero class, the Death Knight, a class that started at level 55 and had unique mechanics, blue gear to start with, and a starting experience unique to the class.

Neither Cataclysm nor Mists of Pandaria have introduced another hero class. The former instead chose to bring us two new races, the goblin and worgen, while Mists of Pandaria added the pandaren race and the monk class, but the monk starts at level 1 like any other class. Forum poster Lobster asked point blank if monks were a hero class, and the answer was a definitive no from Ghostcrawler.

Ghostcrawler - The Term "Hero Class"

"Hero class" meant that the DK started at higher level (and also with a lot of blue gear and so on). We thought it made sense for the DK story because you're treated as a high-level character and veteran of past events. We didn't think that made as much sense for the monk, especially when there were so many low-level pandaren running around, and the (perhaps flimsy) justification for non-pandaren monks learning how to be monks from the pandaren. We might very well use hero classes again if it makes sense for a future class though.

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This got me thinking: do we want another hero class? Clearly, Blizzard isn't ruling it out. As the game continues, max level increased, and we all find ourselves having to get from 1 to an ever increasing number, the idea of starting at level 55 (as per the DK) or perhaps even higher starts to have some serious appeal.

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.

It's hard for it to be reflected in the lore, and sometimes it's not even applicable (for instance, Wrath of the Lich King moved right into Cataclysm in terms of lore, since Arthas wasn't even officially dead yet when Halion made his attack on the Ruby Sanctum), but right now, we're in a fascinating period for game lore. Deathwing is dead, the world is saved, and the brewing conflict hasn't erupted yet. In essence, while we're used to the interexpansion periods as players in terms of patches and gameplay, this is for some purposes the first real period of peace (relatively speaking) in years.

Yes, the Alliance/Horde conflict endures, and it is about to escalate. But that event is still in the future. When patch 5.0.4 drops today, we are officially in the post-Deathwing world, with that all-too-brief feeling of accomplishment, as the elemental forces that have threatened us for the past year calm themselves and life turns its face away from its potential destruction.

Being that this is the World of Warcraft, of course that's not going to last. Personally, I'm ecstatic at the chance to go over all the new lore coming to us in the expansion, both in terms of that aforementioned escalating conflict and the brand new world we'll all swarm across like locusts, the formerly mist-shrouded land of Pandaria. We've talked before about how the real end boss of the new expansion is us, how we bring our conflict to a peaceful shore, but what I find most interesting about the lore of the game is how, in its cyclical nature, it plays variations on a theme.

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We know that Mists of Pandaria is coming out Sept. 25, because they told us that's when it's coming out. But when's the pre-expansion patch? We know it won't be as early as patch 4.0.1 was, because that came out on Oct. 12, almost two months before Cataclysm on Dec. 7, 2010. (It would have had to come out this week to have a chance of being that early.) But patch 3.0.2 came out on Oct. 14, 2008, and Wrath of the Lich King released the next month on Nov. 13, 2008. And Patch 2.0.1 launched on Dec. 5, 2006, which was a little over a month before The Burning Crusade launched.

This leads me to speculate that the pre-expansion patch will go live the week after Gamescom, so the week of Aug. 19. That Tuesday will be the 21st, which fits in with the general one-month-before-expansion launch window of BC and Wrath. It also makes sense because it gives them time to debut the cinematic at Gamescom and then patch it to use the following week. Of course, I'm just speculating, and am keen to hear your thoughts. Whenever we get the patch, it'll be a pretty big game changer as new talents and abilities, a fourth druid spec, and new stat caps as well as several changes to how established talents and abilities work (and some being gone entirely) and active mitigation tanking.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Anyone who raided back in late Wrath remembers the year we all spent in ICC. By the end of that time, it got pretty hairy. However, in the lead up to Cataclysm, we got a surprise raid, The Ruby Sanctum. It wasn't meant to replace ICC as the end raid of Wrath or the Lich King as the end boss of the expansion. No, the Ruby Sanctum and its boss, Halion the Twilight Destroyer, was intended to serve as an introduction of sorts to the Cataclysm that was coming.

At the time, I was fairly derisive of Halion. What was the point of another small raid when we already had ICC? I remember doing heroic Halion attempts in July and feeling like the whole thing was a complete waste of time and a sidetrack from ICC. But now that we've had the same experience in Cataclysm of a long time in our end raid, and this time no intermediate raiding to tide us over until Mists of Pandaria, I'm rethinking my position.

Halion served two purposes. First, he introduced us to new mechanics we'd bee seeing again in Cataclysm. Both Valiona and Theralion and later Ultraxion used elements of the Halion encounter's mechanics. But second and more importantly, he served as a bridge between the ICC fights, with their Scourge, undeath and plague motifs and the coming expansion's introduction of Deathwing and his Twilight's Hammer cult minions. A third but related purpose was to give us something to do that wasn't ICC after six months in the place.

So now I wonder: Did Mists of Pandaria need an intermediate raid? Was it a missed opportunity that we didn't get one? And would it have made sense if we had?

I started playing World of Warcraft with no real idea of the Warcraft universe. I'd played a lot of RPGs, but I wasn't a big RTS player and I was generally more into tabletop play. My gateway drugs for the MMO genre were games like Planescape: Torment. (Man, I loved Planescape.)

As a result, my first time through the game, I barely paid attention to what I was doing, who I was fighting or why. It wasn't until I got to Molten Core that I started really thinking about what was going on. How did Thaurissan summon Ragnaros when he clearly had not intended to, and what was the Firelord up to? At the time, Ragnaros seemed astonishing to me, an entity of pure fire older than the whole world. The war between his Dark Iron servants and the dragons and orcs atop the Blackrock Spire became a central part of my game as I moved on to Blackwing Lair. I started paying a lot more attention to the dungeons and quests I was running.

Once we hit Outland and I got to Shadowmoon Valley, I ran the Cipher of Damnation quest line (a quest that is all I could hope for in a long quest chain, frankly), and the end of that quest line raised so many questions that I often point to it as the beginning of my lore nerd status.

What is the Cipher of Damnation? If it's the spell Kil'jaeden taught to Gul'dan that he used to raise the Hand of Gul'dan and sever the connection between the orcs and the elements, it's clearly not all it can do. Since using it summons Cyrukh the Firelord and since Oronok Torn-heart says it has been used "in the history of our worlds," I am now convinced that the Cipher is the spell that Thaurissan used to summon Ragnaros. But where did he learn it? It was also the spell Kael'thas used to try and summon Kil'jaeden through the Sunwell, which continued past Kael's death in Magister's Terrace.

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.

Seriously, what's up with all the things threatening to destroy Azeroth outright?

The Old Gods seem to want to destroy Azeroth to get out from their prison within it. Algalon wanted to reoriginate the planet, which would have effectively destroyed the planet entirely and remade the whole thing, entirely to prevent the Old Gods from getting out. Now, with Algalon sitting back to observe, we had to step up and stop Deathwing from destroying Azeroth as well.

Granted, Deathwing was all tied up in the Old God's agenda, but you get the sense that old Neltharion wanted Azeroth destroyed because, ultimately, he couldn't take his connection to the planet's soil and rock, its very earth, for one more instant. Killing Deathwing almost seems merciful, since at the end he was nothing but a destroyed ruined pile of mutated flesh erupting from his elementium armor.

It is a concept long familiar to World of Warcraft players: the hardcore raider. The women and men who were on the cutting edge of raiding content, who had the absolutely best gear, who played the most and knew the most about the game. Back in classic WoW, I was absolutely this person. I raided. It was all I did, really. My tanking gear was so good that players would stop me in Ironforge to comment on it. We killed everything first up until a new guild came to our server, then we traded kills with them until the end of the original game and the launch of The Burning Crusade.

Cut to the hunt for BC kills. A lot of people I knew were burning out. Some of the encounters were seen as having been tuned too high, while others lamented the loss of 40-man raiding and the shift to 25s, especially with Karazhan as the 10-man raid having caused a lot of guild drama. "Raiding is too easy now. You can go with 10 people to some raids. It's lost the epic feeling of 40-man raiding. Look at how much faster raiding goes now than it did. We used to struggle to learn each boss; now the only real challenge is in end bosses like Kael and Vashj. Gimmicks like legendary weapons and orbs have replaced knowing your role and class."

What am I getting at?

Nostalgia is poisonous. The people who bemoan how easy raiding is now are the same people who defended BC raiding from the old curmudgeon MC/BWL raiders who felt like the BC raid game had dumbed down raiding. It's always better in the past, because the past has passed and become perfected by memory. At the time no one would have said it was the pinnacle of raiding -- far from it. People were still going back to Naxx-40 at level 70 and still having a hard time running it. People sang its praises as the ultimate raid right up until it was removed from the game.

The Blizzard Store is having a sale for this week only: The BattleChest (which includes vanilla WoW and The Burning Crusade), Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm are $10 each. These prices are for either the boxed games or the digital downloads. For those of you in the EU region, the European Blizzard Store has them each on sale for EUR 10,00.

Blizzard did something similar just before the release of Cataclysm. Severely reducing the barrier to entry for the coming expansion was obviously a success.

So if you are trying to get friends and/or family to join you in Mists of Pandaria (or want another account), now's the time to do it. The sale ends July 9.

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