Posts with tag emerald-dream

Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.

Just as a warning, today's Ask a Lore Nerd has a couple of spoilers for Wrath content. At this point, I assume that light Northrend spoilers isn't going to scare people off, but I figure I should mention it anyway. It's nothing major, so you won't ruin your experience by reading it anyway. Let's dig in!

Tarean asked...

Blizzard's said that there's enough material for plenty of more expansions after Wrath of the Lich King, and there's plenty of possibilities, but what expansion should come next lore-wise?

This installment of All the World's a Stage is the nineteenth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself.

Nature is a system of life energy in constant flow, peaceful one moment and turbulent the next. All living things draw their life from it, and depend upon its balance for their existence. Druids are the protectors of this balance, who harness the energies it contains and try to live their lives according to its laws and principles. In this way, they become intimate members of the natural system, embodying the very force that they seek to protect. The druid is not merely a spellcaster who draws on nature to do cool stuff -- he is nature, in himself, completely one with it in every way. The world is his body, and he is an inseparable part of the whole.

It can be rather hard for those of us living in the concrete jungles of modern city life to get a feeling for what nature really is, or what it feels like to be a part of it. Perhaps if you have ever ventured off the paved highway into the distant reaches of the world, you will know the feeling of connection to the greatness of the natural world in which the human race evolved, long, long ago in a state of mind far, far away from billboards and electronic devices, pop culture and prime-time TV programming. It may no longer be possible for human beings to simply return to its ancient state, nor would that necessarily be a good thing. Today, people look out at the world outside the closed-off bubble of material civilization and wonder their new relationship with the ancient balance of nature could be.

To play a druid in WoW as a class in a game is one thing, but to try and get inside the druid worldview and understand what they might be thinking is something else. To start, it would help to look inside ourselves and see what sort of connection to nature exists there. Is there a balance? What would balance look like? How would it feel to be in complete harmony with the natural world? What would it be like to channel all the power of nature through your body or indeed feel the world itself as an extension of your body?

I wrote a Breakfast Topic recently concerning the somewhat ambivalent effect that Death Knights were having on the usual tanking shortage, but wasn't too surprised to see a lot of people (perhaps most) write in to note that the healer shortage on their realms was even worse. Leveling as a healer -- even with all the changes to spellpower and shared gear -- is an unattractive proposition for most, and a lot of people who healed at 70 want the chance to do something different. Past a certain point you'd give anything to be doing something that doesn't involve staring at a series of dropping health bars, and that doesn't lend itself to a large and willing population of healers cheerfully offering their services for 5-man use in LFG.

My main's a Druid and I PuG a lot, so I have the luxury of being able to observe which spec is the most wanted for 5-mans (at least on my realm). As soon as dual specs become available, I'm going to have a PvE tanking and PvE healing spec set up and ready to go -- and after that, I'm going to keep a little notebook and tally how many times I get asked by a group to heal, and how many times I'm asked to tank ("But what if someone wants you to DPS?" you ask. What is this "dee pee ess" you speak of, strange one?). With an increasing number of Death Knights reaching 80, I'm willing to bet that the demand for healers is going to be even greater than it is right now, and that increasing pressure is going to be exerted on hybrid tanks (i.e. Druids and Paladins) to maintain a healing spec and gear in order to ensure that groups get off the ground faster than they do right now. I could be wrong, but I'd also be lying if that wasn't the dominant trend back on Wrath's beta with respec costs at 1c and a ton of Death Knights at 80.

Ghostcrawler just popped up on the beta forums with some good news for healers: while tanking has gotten the focus lately in terms of mechanics and tweaking, healing is apparently next on the docket.

It's nothing to hold your breath over (you'll pass out way before we see any changes on the realms), but Ghostcrawler says that healing is due for a revamp in terms of "fun," and while he says it'll be "a more challenging fix because what people think is fun about healing varies and some people are pretty happy with it already," he also hints that it'll be a pretty big change. Right now, healing is basically whack-a-mole -- when someone gets hurt, you cast a heal on them -- but Blizzard may be rethinking that mechanic completely. We'll have to wait (probably quite a while) and see.

It's also interesting to note that Death Knights are a tanking class, and tanking got the revamp in Wrath of the Lich King. While some healers probably won't want to wait all the way until the next expansion, could this be a hint that we're looking at an Emerald Dream expansion, with an Arch Druid healing Hero Class, and an accompanying revamp of healing mechanics? Obviously, that's a stretch, but it makes sense, doesn't it?

Patch 3.0.2 is out today, and so goes the ways of old. Buffs have undergone the largest change since release, Protection Warriors can now AoE tank like a pro, Retribution Paladins are all screaming "Don't nerf me, bro!" and casters around the world are getting their heads around spellpower.

All this change begs the question, what's in store for the future? Could this be the last great patch we see? Is this the beginning of the end of the World of Warcraft? Highly unlikely, and we already know that there is a bit in store for us in a few 3.x.x patches.

Read on after the break for what we know is coming, as well as for what my predictions of the future hold.

In response to one player's question, "After Arthas, what's left to kill?" Bornakk has revealed a surprising tidbit about the future of World of Warcraft. The answer is: Murlocs! That's right. After we kill Arthas, "instead of adding new creatures or new continents it will be just one area of endlessly spawning murlocs." Amazing fun! This is what I've been wishing for ever since I saw my first murlocs on the shores of Darkshore. Perhaps we'll be able to collect endless varieties of Murky pets, too! They could go by all sorts of cute names like Lurky, Quirky and Turky.

Ah... to dream. Anyways, later in the same thread, Nethaera stops by too and adds her own meditation on the possible death of Arthas, reminding us of a most ancient question regarding trees falling in the woods without anyone to hear them: "If Arthas dies, does the Lich King also die?" This seems to be a pretty clear indication that the death of Arthas will not mean the death of the Lich King, and that the story of the Living versus the Dead will go even after the big bad prince bites the dust.

Arthas and the Lich King has been a pretty huge part of the Warcraft story ever since before most of us were even familiar with it, and for some of us it feels strange that he might one day no longer be a part of it. In our interview with WoW's lead producer, he noted that both the Maelstrom and the Emerald Dream were once considered as possibilities for WoW's second expansion, but they chose Northrend and Arthas to come before them because it seemed like the strongest idea. But how strong is Arthas really? Could he ever compare to murlocs?

No, but seriously, do you think the Lich King is just way too cool not to perpetuate indefinitely as the ultimate villain? Would you like to see Arthas get killed in one patch, while the Lich King returned in another, kind of like Kael'thas showed up twice in The Burning Crusade? Or do you think we're going to get our fill of Lich Kinginess -- so much so that once Arthas is dead, the Lich King and all the Scourge should just die for good along with him?

Here at BlizzCon, we just got to sit down with the head honcho of our favorite game, J. Allen Brack, lead producer of World of Warcraft. And the biggest surprise of the interview wasn't a nice tidbit about the future of WoW (and its battlegrounds) or how class changes are made, though we did talk about both of those things. No, the biggest piece of news we got out of him is that he loves WoW Insider -- he told us that Blizzard is paying close attention to what not just us bloggers but you commenters are saying on this site, and that the community plays almost as big a part in directing the game's development as the developers themselves do.

But the WoW Insider love didn't stop us from grilling him on what's next for the Wrath release and the game beyond. We talked about what changes Blizzard aims to make to battlegrounds, what kind of ideas Brack and his team have for after the second expansion, and even what he wants WoW to do that it hasn't yet. And yes, we got the story on dance studios, and why we won't be cutting a jig quite yet in Wrath.

Click the link below to check out our exclusive interview with J. Allen Brack.

Recently in both Ask a Beta Tester and Ask a Lore Nerd, Druids have been asking a lot about their class. Not class mechanics and things like that, but their quests, story, and background. Will the old quests go away? (They won't.) Will we see more of Druid lore in Wrath?

Yes, yes we will. And there's video! If you don't want to be spoiled about upcoming Wrath of the Lich King quests and storylines, I would advise against reading the rest of this post and the video within. Like that cinematic-that-shall-not-be-named from last week, watching it could really spoil an awesome game moment, so consider that your final warning. Oh, and it's long, so free up some time for yourself.

This installment of All the World's a Stage is the seventh in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself.

The night elves are probably the most difficult race to roleplay well in all the World of Warcraft, which is particularly ironic considering how very popular they are. Many a roleplayer has been disappointed by seeing player character night elves who are 21 years old, who were born in Darnassus or Teldrassil, or whose mother or father is human -- all of which would be next to impossible according to the actual lore of the game. The only way to make things like this is to change the lore to suit your own preferences, or to rely on cliche devices such as time travel and special magics which really go too far into the realm of the abominably self-centered Mary Sue.

Night elves can also be difficult to understand, and full of contradictions: they can be over 10,000 years old, and yet they often do not possess the vast wisdom that would seem to come with such an age; they are deeply connected to nature, and yet they sometimes act without the blessings of nature; their women are supposed to be very fierce warriors, and yet their animation in the game has them bouncing up and down like teenage girls at their favorite boy-band concert.

And yet much of this is just the sort of thing that draws people to the night elves. There's a youthful passion combined with ancient grace and sadness that many roleplayers just love to get into. Also, for those who love to develop long and complex background stories for their characters, there is a great deal of history about the night elves' ancient past which can serve as good inspiration for many of your own character's life events. We won't go into every detail of ancient history today, however; instead we'll cover the basics that you'll need to know in order to start out with a night elf that fits in the Warcraft story, and direct you to some more resources if you'd like to make one with a really deep and complicated background.

Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week Alex Ziebart brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? E-mail us!

Last week we looked at Alextrasza, and this week we're going to continue the Dragon theme with the Aspect of the Green Flight, Ysera.

Ysera is a dragon that goes by many names. Ysera the Dreamer. She of the Dreaming. The Queen of Dreams. The Lady of Dr-- you know, forget it, I guess it's just that one name, really. Just take the word Dream and add a title to it and you can probably use it to refer to Ysera. Though, I guess Commodore of Dreams doesn't really work, does it? Hm.

Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week Alex Ziebart brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm.

Before we start this week, I'd like to let you guys know about a neat little thing we've set up for you. If you have requests for Know Your Lore or questions for that other column that I do, you can e-mail me at lorenerd@wow.com ! I can't guarantee that I'll fill all Know Your Lore requests, but I'll certainly do my best. Now, on with the show!

My original intent with Know Your Lore this week was to go back to our preparation for Wrath of the Lich King with Kel'thuzad. I was pretty excited, because I adore the Scourge and c'mon, Kel'thuzad has to be awesome, right? Uh... no, not really, he isn't. He was shockingly boring and was only interesting in the context of the Scourge as a whole. He's definitely a pawn. He didn't stand up well on his own, so we're stepping away from the Road to Wrath a little longer.

Instead, we're going to focus on a topic suggested by my buddy Danny Whitcomb. Today we're going to look at Malorne, which conveniently goes pretty well with this past week's Ask a Lore Nerd. Malorne is one of many demigods in Kalimdor's history, but is/was generally regarded as one of the greatest. This makes sense, considering he and Elune hooked up once upon a time

Ember on the Shattered Oath (US Emerald Dream-H) forums posted a photo documentary of how she hand-made a teddy bear Priest replica. The bear represents her Undead toon, complete with Staff of Immaculate Recovery. Now, I'm not so sure that I'd cast a teddy bear in the role of an undead anything, but in every other sense, Ember went out of her way to create a legitimate mini-me. She even went so far as to cut off the heads of some Barbie dolls and spray paint them silver to make the shoulder adornments suitably lifelike (undead-like?). The staff even glows in the dark.

She brands her creation with the tag Build-a-Priest, no doubt a nod to others out there. But who knows, she just might be onto something. If she'd make me a teddy bear shaman, I'd pay for it!

[Thanks, Gary Doyle!]

It's a relatively painless Tuesday Morning this time around for those who play in what are the early morning hours at Blizzard HQ. This time, most US servers will just recieve a quick rolling restart at 5 AM PDT, about half an hour from now, which should result in no more than 15 minutes of downtime. However, there are some servers that will get 2 hours of downtime: Agamaggan, Azshara, Baelgun, Dark Iron, Detheroc, Emerald Dream, Greymane, Kalecgos, Lightninghoof, Maelstrom, Malfurion, Moonrunner, Nazjatar, Sargeras, Staghelm, Twisting Nether, Ursin, and Wildhammer.

Also, here's something that should please a lot of Australian players: Their realms won't get the rolling restarts until 5AM AEST -- which translates to noon PDT. That should translate to lots of time for night owls to finish their raids before the restarts kick them off.

So in that 15 minutes to 2 hours of down time you'll have to go through, or if you're stuck at school or work, here's a few WoW Insider articles from the last week that are worth checking out. First, last week's major news and views:

• The WoTLK Friends and Family Alpha is underway, and we have the leaked patch notes.
• A Vivendi earnings statement gave us the first real official word on WoTLK's expected release date.
• The Hunter Growl and Scare Beast changes from patch 2.4.2 didn't turn out so great after all.
• Raiders rejoice: M'uru got a little easier, and those nasty Archimonde and Eredar Twin bugs got a hotfix.
• Death and Taxes, the premiere US WoW raiding guild, disbanded. That set a few of us to pontificating on the problems of raid guild drama here and here.
• We covered a few more tidbits of WoTLK info, such as Death Knight "reruning."
• Check out sister site BigDownload's interview with Blizzard on that whole eSport thing.
• In Hybrid Theory, Alex soothes your fears about Death Knights taking your jobs.

If these aren't enough for you, there's more after the break.

BlizzCon was announced on Monday, and ever since, there's been a question bouncing around the back of my mind: just what is it for? Blizzard doesn't just host an event because they love us or because they feel like it -- they host events to release news. WWI last year was where Starcraft II was announced, and Wrath of the Lich King got announced at the previous BlizzCon.

We do know that we're expecting Wrath in "the second half" of the year, and whatever we see at BlizzCon could depend on when that releases. If Wrath appears in August (before BlizzCon in October), we might be seeing the announcement of the next expansion (probably the Maelstrom or the Emerald Dream, or both) in Anaheim: Blizzard has said that they want to release them faster, and there'd be no time like BlizzCon to get an announcement out. If Wrath doesn't show up until November or December, though, Blizzard could use their convention to announce brand new features we haven't heard about yet -- maybe another Hero class?

Of course, we could be grinding the wrong quest mobs entirely -- remember that BlizzCon is about Blizzard, not just World of Warcraft, so anything they announce might have nothing at all to do with their MMO. Diablo 3, anyone? Or maybe they do just want to hang out with their fans and get some good press before the big release. We won't know for sure until they open the doors at the convention center in October.

Player Kerr on the Windrunner server was farming mithril in the Hinterlands when he decided to go exploring by the Emerald Dream portal in the area. The outdoor raid dragon Lethon appeared and Kerr beat a quick retreat, but stumbled on this dragon graveyard. As Kerr put it: "I wonder who the [dead] dragon was?"

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? Because we'd love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. We prefer full screen shots without the UI showing. And please, no more sunsets. No, really. Ok, only if it's a sunrise in new Patch 2.4 lands. We'll take those anytime. Oh, and no more shots of Omen killed in Ogrimmar. It's cool, we get it. A lot of it.