Posts with tag alexstrasza

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.

The dragonflights may have been created at the same time, but for the thousands of years they've existed on Azeroth, they've hardly been friendly with one another. It started with the Black Dragonflight and Neltharion's betrayal during the War of the Ancients. In the moment that Neltharion took the name Deathwing, in the moments thereafter during which he destroyed nearly all of the Blue Dragonflight with the Demon Soul -- in those moments, the dragonflights were introduced to a new concept: deception. It was unthinkable that any dragon would deliberately seek to harm another, and yet it happened.

The fallout was immediate. Malygos, driven mad by the betrayal of one of his closest friends and the loss of his flight, fled to Northrend. In his madness, he split the Nexus from the rest of the land, separating Coldarra from the rest of the Borean Tundra. And then he stayed there, alone in his despair and insanity, refusing all visitors in his grief. The Blue Dragonflight crumpled, held up only by those who stood and tried their best to hold together the shattered remnants of the flight.

From the leaked information about the potential legendary staff from the next tier of Cataclysm raiding, we are slowly processing the information we have and coming to some pretty neat, yet speculative, conclusions. From images of the staff, we see what looks like a wooden body with an elaborate head, very much reminiscent of the Firelands motif we have seen so far. However, the staff components, labelled in the model view in stages, give us the ultimate clues that lead us to believe that the next tier of raiding will include the War of the Ancients, or at least deal with going back in time to when Malygos, Ysera, and Nozdormu were at their strongest.

SPOILER WARNING: The video below contains spoilers for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. If you do not want to be spoiled, do not watch the video.

This is Alexstrasza by Sharm and Tyranno. Sharm did the singing, while Tyranno did the lyrics and the machinima. It's fairly obviously a parody of Lady Gaga's Alejandro, but this version takes a second to get rolling. I highly recommend taking the time to let it get started in earnest.

I just happened to be in the WoW.com war room when this video hit the internet, and I was able to collect some quotes from your intrepid WoW.com staff about Alexstrasza. In lieu of my usual blathering, I thought I might share those today:

Matt Low called it "the best thing since chopsticks," while Ziebart himself said, "I love it, it's hilarious." By comparison, Mathew McCurley said, "I went from hate you to love you almost weirdly fast." I think we were all struggling with initial Gaga-related revulsion, but couldn't help be won over by the good time parody. But I assure you that this song is insanely catchy, and it will stay with you. Robin closed, saying, "I really, really love that video."

Also, please welcome Deathwing to his first musical performance on Moviewatch.

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Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at machinima@wow.com.

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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.

WARNING: The following post contains spoilers for the novel Stormrage by Richard A. Knaak. Readers still in the middle of the novel may want to veer away from this post, as I'll be discussing events covered over the course of the book.

Now that we've established what happened to Tyrande and Malfurion (in the midst of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey ... stuff), we can begin to pick apart what happened in between the Sundering, the Third War, and present day. Tyrande Whisperwind is currently leading the night elves along with Archdruid Fandral Staghelm -- and Staghelm has a history that also stretches back thousands of years, one that's led him to his current less-than-friendly leadership.

Fandral Staghelm was born about 1,000 years after the Sundering and studied the druidic arts under Malfurion Stormrage, soon rising in ranks and becoming one of Malfurion's top lieutenants as well as training many of the new Druids of the Wild. Where Malfurion was even-tempered and kind, Fandral was hotheaded and aggressive, frequently clashing with Malfurion, and nowadays Tyrande over how night elf society should be run. He holds many strong beliefs that echo the beliefs of ancient night elves, including the belief that night elves are the supreme race on the planet, all other races are inferior, and night elves are the only "true" druids. Charming, isn't he?

I want to kick off this edition of The Queue by thanking you guys for submitting your armories to the reboot of Pimp My Profile. Our first edition will be hitting this upcoming Wednesday. In an ideal world, we'll have one for you every single Wednesday after that.

On to the Q&A!

RogueJedi86 asked...

"Why were the Dragonflight Aspects created/assigned if they can be killed with no repercussions whatsoever? Killing Malygos didn't do so much as give Mages a nosebleed, despite being the Custodian of Magic. And I doubt killing Deathwing will do anything to the earth either."

Back-channel discussion here at WoW.com central has, while not occupied with the question, "What happened to those socks I was going to pack for BlizzCon?", concerned itself with who we'd like to see in the WoW movie. Our Twitterers got in on the act and started sending in a number of suggestions for actors and actresses they'd like in certain roles. Bruce Campbell -- well, he's a given, but there doesn't seem to be any agreement on what he should be playing. Ditto such popular picks as Summer Glau and Judi Dench, although Alexstrasza was often floated as a character for the latter.

The Alexstrasza talk got me to thinking about having seen Mission Impossible on an idle evening recently. While it's your basic (though slick) action flick, the standout character was Vanessa Redgrave's Max-the-arms-dealer. Not only was her entrance thoroughly unexpected, but she was cool, controlled, overflowing with sardonic amusement, and unaffected by the thought of having someone killed. While I would love to see her fight Judi Dench's M from the Bond movies, that won't happen, but now I've wondering who would make a better dragon (black, not red).

Of course, all of this is entirely academic because we have no idea what the movie is even going to be about, but I am entirely certain that Vanessa Redgrave is a dragon (although possibly this is not news). We've talked a lot about a possible plot and the music for the film, but if you got the opportunity to cast it, who would you put in which role?

Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week Alex Ziebart answers your quests about the lore in the World of Warcraft. If you have any questions, no matter how big or small they might be, ask them in the comments section below and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.

On this very special edition of Ask a Lore Nerd, we're going to look into the future, at what's to come in Wrath of the Lich King. There's a lot on the horizon, and a lot of questions about what's to come. We're going to try to be light on spoilers, but give some idea of what's going down.

Yeah yeah, so there's a Troll zone, we learn the origins of Humanity, we meet some Tauren relatives, there's some junk about Dwarven royalty and all of that crap. Who cares? What about the Gnomes? Where's the Gnome lore!?

If you're a regular reader of Know Your Lore, you've probably noticed that it's been missing for... oh, a month or so. As I've been going through potential topics, I keep finding myself going, "No, I can't do that, that gets updated in Wrath. No, I can't do that, it'll be a spoiler for Wrath." So, thanks a lot Wrath. Thanks for bringing us rich and interesting lore. Gosh, couldn't you be more boring so I don't feel bad spoiling everyone!?

So what we're going to do today instead is prepare you all for the expansion. We have a lot of Know Your Lore entries already for many of the characters and stories that'll be moving forward in Wrath of the Lich King, so here are some suggestions on what you should read so you have some background as to what the heck is going on in Northrend!

All of us here at WoW Insider are staggering around somewhat zombie-like in the wake of BlizzCon with the patch (probably) coming tomorrow and the amount of information we're hoping to get out in the next 24 hours. So in all truth I don't know whether the answers to today's questions are completely factual or just stuff that started swimming in front of my eyes at 1:00 this morning. Arthas is actually a girl underneath all that armor, just like Samus Aran. The zone music to Icecrown is "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who. The Hateful Gladiator cloth belt is a pink tutu. Flying bunnies will be available in the next expan-

(Sound of a short scuffle in the background, followed by a whip crack)

Thank you, Dan, a little perspective is always useful in these difficult times.

Jason asks...

Will Northrend be accessible at 68 like Outland was accessible at 58? Or do I need to be a solid 70 to quest and instance in Northrend?

Technically, Northrend will be accessible to anyone with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion installed; you can hop a boat or zeppelin on any character of any level. There's no "You must be THIS HIGH to cross through the portal to Outland" restriction, but you won't be able to pick up any of the quests available in Northrend until level 68. Could you grind your way to 68 in Northrend from the mid-60's? Maybe, but I wouldn't recommend it.

We certainly enjoyed the model changes to Varian Wrynn and Sylvanas Windrunner, and now Blizzard's finished the unique models for Alexstrasza (human form, that is; you can see her dragon model update here) and Varimathras, as befits their key roles in the storyline for Wrath. I'm a tiny bit disappointed with Alexstrasza's model; her armor is mostly a red copy of Sylvanas' new threads, which are admittedly all sorts of awesome but makes me wonder if there's some kind of Armor Barn in Azeroth for hipster bosses. Alexstrasza does, however, show even more skin than Sylvanas does, so from some peoples' perspectives this might be a feature rather than a bug.

Varimathras is a nice update although he retains his old animations and emotes (you can't really see it from the perspective of the screenshot above, but I think his legs and hooves are a significant improvement on the shaky anatomy of the current dreadlord model). Both he and Alexstrasza's changes are somewhat less shocking than the complete overhaul to Wrynn and Sylvanas, but we're still pleased to see Blizzard taking an interest in the visual badassery of major faction leaders and NPC's. I would tend to agree with Zach Yonzon's contention that it would be amazing to see an update to all the faction leaders if Blizzard could swing it at some point, although I have the sneaking suspicion, judging from what CM's have said about the difficulty of programming in new Druid forms, that this is a fairly lengthy process. However, after seeing the model changes in the beta, I don't think anyone's going to argue it's not worth it, and a number of people have argued for player model changes as well. The extraordinary design work in Northrend will probably add fuel to that fire.

Meethan asked...

What are Liches raised from? When encountered, Liches have sorceror and somewhat necromatic powers. Can they be raised from anyone or must it be a mage? Would you consider Kel'thuzad to be "Lord of the Lich"?

As far as Kel'thuzad goes, I believe the title that was given to him is "Archlich." Almost all liches were raised from necromancers, warlocks and mages, though the Lich King pretty much does whatever the hell he wants and can raise other people as a lich if he really wants to do that. That's probably rare, because turning someone that isn't skilled at spellcasting into a being that is built for spellcasting would just be silly. The Burning Legion used to employ a lot of liches as well, but they lost most of them when the Scourge betrayed them.

We'll get started with Gareth's question...

How is the Storm Peaks coming along? Seems like it has a lot of history and culture behind it.

This zone has been closed off more than it's been open. There are a few hefty bugs that they're trying to iron out that forces them to seal it off now and then, since the bugs bring the entire world server down. That and there was an XP exploit that the beta testers found and needed to be dealt with mighty quickly, so it was sealed off for that as well.

As far as the history and culture, I loved what I saw. A lot of Titan lore, a lot of Dwarven history. The introduction to the zone is pretty awful, though. Your first quest hub in the culture-rich zone is a Goblin town (K3) full of whimsy that has little to do with the zone's overall story. I guess you need to keep the mood light sometimes, though. Still, despite the silly Goblins, it was one of my favorite zones while I could get in there. Blizzard has thrown around the term "epic scale" quite a bit, and I think Storm Peaks really displays that. The place is absolutely massive, in the good way. Watch the video above if you want an example of the quests you'll be seeing. Be warned, it's kind of a spoiler in that doing this quest for the first time really leaves you in awe. Watching it beforehand might take that away a little.

dotorion asked...

Does Northrend have a 'level requirement' like Outlands?

Nozdormu is the fifth and final dragon aspect, since the filthy Netherwing aspect doesn't count! Silly mutant spawn of Deathwing, thinking they're special or something. Anyhow, Nozdormu the Timeless is the aspect of the Bronze Dragonflight, and was given his power by the titan lord Aman'Thul. Nozdormu has power over time and can, technically, alter it to his whims. Though he's capable of doing such, he is meant to watch over the timeline and prevent it from being altered by outside forces.

Nozdormu, more or less, oversees the Caverns of Time. Or rather, he has in the past. Currently Nozdormu is preoccupied with some uberpowerful anomaly in the timeline, and has left his prime consort Soridormi in charge. You would think the Timeless One would have all the time in the world to get things done, but his history in Warcraft thus far says otherwise.