Posts with tag Thunderaan

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? What secrets does the game still hold? If you enjoyed Patches of Yesteryear, you're going to love this.

Last week, we finally escaped the morass of World of Warcraft's beta to discuss patch 1.2, the first major content patch of the post-release game. We're going to take a break from patches for a while to examine some other myths and legends that arose in vanilla WoW. Today, we're going to look back to one of the legends of Molten Core.

Molten Core is rather unique in that it's the home of more than one legendary item. Both Thunderfury and Sulfuras have their roots in Molten Core, though one does require items from Blackwing Lair to complete; Blackwing Lair hadn't even been implemented yet when players started receiving the first pieces of these legendary items.

Everybody knows about Thunderfury and Sulfuras, though. Not as many people know Molten Core once had a third legendary.

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.

Yes, it was an in-joke. Nevertheless, it can be fairly said that Thunderaan, prince of the air, is more than a bag of hot air and Mike Tyson quotes, and that the air elementals serving under Al'Akir the Windlord are more than just masters of wind and gale. Thunderaan himself was so powerful that it took Ragnaros and his two lieutenants Geddon and Garr to subdue and nearly destroy him, and even then the elemental lord of fire could not wholly consume the windseeker. And while each of the other elemental lords counts Al'Akir as the weakest among them, the lord of the air can counter by pointing out that they rarely if ever can lay an aggressive hand to him secure in his fortress of the Skywall.

But it's not just elemental lords and princes that boast affiliation with the element of air. Any warrior who leveled in classic WoW can probably regale you with tales of the Cyclonian, and air elementals can be found on the rampage in Silithus, as well as bound into service in Northrend by the servants of the very titans themselves (although it's an open question as to who Ionar truly serves, Loken or Yogg-Saron himself). Air elementals tend to disdain rather than directly antagonize their fellows, trusting to their higher mobility to immunize themselves from reprisal.

Reader Angie sent us a curious Armory profile of a Warlock who was able to obtain the classic legendary one-handed weapon Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker. Although no raiding guild in their right minds would've allowed such a travesty to happen no matter how much DKP the Warlock had back in the day, now in a time where Onyxia is visited every few days for some easy Gold, anything goes.

This news comes on the heels of what is reputedly a world first Death Knight obtaining the legendary sword. Here's the kicker, though... the left and right Bindings of the Windseeker have class restrictions (revised to include Death Knights)... and Warlocks aren't among those eligible to start the quest chain. Mages and Warlocks are both casters who can equip swords, but this doesn't explain how the Warlock obtained the item. [EDIT: Whoops. Looks like I dropped the ball on this one. Daniel already wrote that even though the Bindings have class restrictions on the tooltip, they're actually usable by any class according to Blizzard.]

The Warlock's guild seems to be a rather accomplished one (the 'lock has The Immortal title), so there's a good chance that getting the weapon was a guild effort. It's quite possible that the Dormant Wind Kissed Blade that drops off Thunderaan was assigned by Master Looter to the Warlock, who then started the quest.

A Discussion of the newly dropped Thori'dal bought up a lively discussion on Legendary weapons in my guild chat the other day, which has in turn set my own mental wheels turning. Looking at the difference between the pre-Burning Crusade Legendaries and the Burning Crusade Legendaries, there's one big difference that stands out (beyond the level difference): The pre-BC Legendaries were quested, while the BC Legendaries have been drops.

The clear-cut off seems to suggest that at some point, Blizzard decided that creating long, involved quests in order to obtain Legendary weapons just wasn't the way to go, and they'd rather let the RNG take care of distributing Legendaries. But the question is, did they make the right choice? There's good arguments for both sides.

Blackfoot from Dethecus (EU) sends in this shot and a story to go along with it. The image comes from the final step of the chain to craft the legendary sword Thunderfury, which requires you to defeat Thunderaan, a summonable raid boss. When defeated, he drops the giant sword you see in this shot, but usually only one... The multiple swords are due to multiple kills -- a raid alliance of Metus Mortis, Die Verlorenen, and Empire of Azeroth came out to finish the quest for two of their rogues, and because of one buggy encounter, ended up killing him three times.

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