Posts with tag orgrimmar

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

Oh, so pretty.

JeffLaBowski asked:

Now that Mists has been out for a while, what would you have changed storywise? From the way the Pandaren were introduced to how both major plot lines were dealt with? I know a lot was changed in Beta. Do you think it played out as well as was planned?

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.

As the expansion rolls on, we are lurching towards something that we've known was coming since the beta for Mists of Pandaria -- Garrosh Hellscream's downfall and the Siege of Orgrimmar. Yet what we didn't know that day that were were informed of the expansions focus, is just how the new Warchief's reign would end. And as the patches have continued to roll out, we have more of an idea and a solid picture of both the Alliance and the Horde's place in this conflict. Make no mistake, Hellscream has made far too many enemies in his short reign, both within and without.

Yet there are those who point out Garrosh's actions and the possibility that his actions may not be under his control. That perhaps he's been corrupted by the Sha while searching for power in Pandaria. Or perhaps the bones of Mannoroth that Garrosh uses as his throne still have some vestige of darkness that lingers within. Or that perhaps the Old Gods have been slowly leeching their influence into Garrosh. Regardless of the methods behind it, there are plenty of people all wondering the same thing -- is Garrosh Hellscream corrupt? Are we going to fight the Warchief, only to discover a far greater horror waiting for us?

I've been playing World of Warcraft for a very long time. Since it was closed beta, in fact. Back when the game was still brand new, I mean right when the servers first opened up, I played for team red. I was a Horde shaman, and proud to be so. My first shaman was not named Lodur, in fact it was what I thought at the time was the ever clever name of Rum. I played with one of my buddies who named his warrior Coke. We played with a bunch of coworkers and friends from college until partway through Classic WoW when they either got promoted at work, graduated or stopped playing. Some of our group though decided to move to another server and see how things were going on the Alliance side of things.

Off to Zul'jin we went, and with moving servers and factions in a time before server transfers or faction swaps were around, came a new toon. Abigail, the night elf hunter was born. She's traveled servers, and been race changed multiple times since she was born. I finished Classic WoW on her raiding with friends all the way through the original Naxxramas. I still gave a lot of love to Rum though, and even found time to run him through Ahn'Qiraj 40. When Burning Crusade released, though, Rum fell to the wayside as Lodur was born over with my Alliance family. I hadn't returned to horde except for a brief tour with the Choose My Adventure here on the site, that was until this past week when I server and faction changed my long time hunter over to play Horde side again with friends.

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.

Garrosh Hellscream is almost an enigma in his own right. You wouldn't think that, by first glance -- after all, right now he fits the bill of brutal orc bent on global domination. But Garrosh's story has had so many moments between the depressed and unwilling would-be leader of Garadar, and the bloodthirsty warleader of Mists of Pandaria that it's difficult to determine where, exactly, he went from point A to point B. I've been asked about it before by many, but KyleCaligiuri phrased it really well, so I'll reprint the question here.

Is there some piece of lore I'm missing explaining Garrosh's actions between Cataclysm and Tides of War? Shattering helped put a *bit* of a positive light on Garrosh after WotLK, I felt, since he was remorseful about what happened with Cairne (in that he didn't want to win by cheating...) and I felt his leader short story did as well, if I remember correctly. I'm now playing through the Horde campaign finally, and the events in Stonetalon further point that he is all about honor and pride in the Horde. Also, Ragefire Chasm is all about defeating the dark shaman so that they don't end up with another threat like the Twilight's Hammer or Burning Blade. Yet, this is all contradicted in Tides of War, where he drops a bomb just as Krom'gar did in Stonetalon, and embraces the dark shaman. I'm only up to Desolace right now in the Horde campaign, so do we see his progression toward the more corrupt Garrosh, or is this still yet to be explained?

It's that disconnect between moments that confuses people. Garrosh may be many things, but two-dimensional is not one of them. Who is Garrosh Hellscream, and how did he find his way to this path that flies in the face of his previous actions?

Nestled on the eastern half of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, players will find two nearly identical shrines, the Shrine of Two Moons and the Shrine of Seven Stars. In the next expansion, these two locations will serve Horde and Alliance players as miniature capital cities, conveniently located in the heart of Pandaria for easy access to the rest of the continent. Both shrines currently offer most of the usual commodities you'd find in a capital city: Auction House, bank, profession trainers, and arcane reforging. Unfortunately, the shrines also appear to lack other basic essentials, such as class trainers, portals, transmogrification, void storage, and the ability to mount up on a flying or ground mount.

The good news is the shrines still appear to be under significant development. City chat channels (such as trade chat) were only just added yesterday with the latest beta patch, and most of the vendor and trainer NPCs still can't be interacted with. Additionally, you're not currently considered at rest while within the confines of a shrine, meaning you have to sit through that annoying pop-up for 20 seconds before you can log out. It also looks like the mount issue will be handled by an NPC in the shrines who casts Cyclonic Inspiration on you, allowing you to move about the city at high speeds, but the buff doesn't always take and falls off before you can run simple errands between the bank and Auction House.

Since I didn't participate in the Wrath of the Lich King beta, this is the first city I've seen while it was in development, which got me wondering: What would the perfect city be? What would I want a new city in the game to have? Maybe a transmogrification ethereal right next to the bank so it's easier for me to swap outfits? I bet players who deal in lots of buying and trading on the Auction House would want the bank right next door, if not inside the Auction House itself. What kind of features do role players want? How about raiders and PvPers?

What do you want in a city, and why?

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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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Two weeks ago, we took the Stormwind Guard on a shopping trip and got them a whole new wardrobe. This week, we're giving the Orgrimmar Guard the same treatment and then stopping at Gallywix Pleasure Palace on the way back for mai tais.

When I first started planning a new look for the Orgrimmar Guard, I thought I'd look to Garrosh Hellscream for inspiration. Both his outfits in Wrath of the Lich King at Warsong Hold and now in Cataclysm as the new warchief show off a darker look to the Horde that I wanted to capture. Walking through the streets of Orgrimmar these days, you see a city that has become more militaristic and uniform, and the old guard outfit doesn't quite fit in anymore. Even the Horde banners are a darker red than they once were, which doesn't match the red shoulders and accents of the old guards.

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we are grateful to play Horde.

This past week, I was tabbed out of the game writing an OverAchiever on Bloody Rare as a follow-up to our guide on Northern Exposure when something interesting started happening in the background. In the sliver of laptop screen dedicated to WoW, the chat channels exploded with warnings that the Alliance was attacking Orgrimmar. Given that the Midsummer Fire Festival is still going on with lots of players busy stealing enemy fires, this isn't particularly unusual. I shrugged and went back to work.

And yet, the warnings just kept coming. Curious, I tabbed back into the game to discover that a full 40-man Alliance raid was fighting its way to Garrosh Hellscream. Other players said that none of the other Horde leaders had been attacked, so I can only assume the raid was starting For the Alliance! with the toughest foe among them.

Now, Garrosh is by no stretch of the imagination anywhere near as popular as Thrall was, but lots of Horde players are still willing to defend him from attack because, well, he's got his moments. Orgrimmar's central district quickly became a lagfest of epic proportions as dozens of players who'd been gossiping in trade or loitering around the Auction House rushed to defend Garrosh. The Alliance raid was ultimately defeated, but they rallied and tried again -- unsuccessfully -- an hour later.

This was the first of three days that I saw the same Alliance raid desperately trying to kill Garrosh, and something started to niggle at me by day two. Namely, For the Alliance! and For the Horde! are among the very few achievements that are significantly tougher if you play one faction over the other.

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 King of Stormwind wears the crown on a troubled brow. He inherited the mantle as a child, not through a peaceful succession but through bloody violence and the destruction of his home. He wore it in exile and only came home with the death of the man who saved him and carried him away from the sight of his entire world burned to the ground. His entire life has been shaped by violent loss, by tragedy and death -- his mother dead before he even knew her, his father murdered and butchered in front of him, his replacement fathers cut down, his wife taken from him in a moment's passing by an errant rock thrown from a mob.

His early rule was most notable by his lack of desire to actually do much rulership, busying himself by riding the land in search of his father's killer or drifting though a haze of loss after his wife's death, a haze seized upon and manipulated by someone who was supposed to be a close advisor. The circumstances of his disappearance from the throne and his return have been discussed in detail. For now, all we need to do is accept that they did little to encourage him to view the throne as anything but a responsibility to be maintained in the face of constant peril.

Following the Northrend campaign and its heavy cost both to King Varian and the kingdom as a whole (Bolvar's death, as well as the many deaths at the Wrathgate; the invasion of Undercity and the destruction of Putress; Horde troops ambushing Alliance forces engaged with the Scourge; the astonishing cost in lives and resources), it would have been difficult for either the King or the kingdom to quickly recover. The eruption of Deathwing and the Cataclysm he caused did not allow the luxury of time. Reeling from one blow, they suffered another and another.

Wouldn't this be cool? With the most recent lore news from Blizzard that the Siege of Orgrimmar will result in Garrosh's removal as Warchief of the Horde at the end of the campaign portion of Mists of Pandaria, speculation has run rampant as to how or why both factions would want to end Hellscream's reign. The Alliance has plenty of reasons to storm the gates of the Horde capital and remove Garrosh, given his numerous victories at any cost. The Horde, while upset at Garrosh and the wedges he's placed between the many Horde factions, does not yet have the impetus to assassinate its leader Julius Caesar-style.

What could send the Horde -- the very same Horde that drank the blood of Mannoroth and marched through the Dark Portal -- into such a fear and concern over their leader? The very same threat that the orcs succumbed to on Draenor, that's what.

Chris Metzen kicked off the Mists of Pandaria press event by explaining the tone and narrative goals of the expansion. Players have voiced concern because Mists of Pandaria does not have a clear, global threat in the vein of the Lich King or Deathwing. Rather, the conflict in this expansion is war itself. We will see the war between the Horde and the Alliance boil hotter than it has in years, and we will see the repercussions of that war, whether they be physical, spiritual, or something else entirely.

The format of how Blizzard tells its story will change in this expansion, too. Mists of Pandaria itself, the game that comes in the box, will be a full, contained story. The entire arc of Mists of Pandaria will be there when you install the game, before any content patches at all. The content patches will be treated as sequels to that story. We will arrive on Pandaria when we install the game, have our adventures, and then see that story end. When the first patch hits, we will see Pandaria begin to be truly ravaged by our war.

While the steps taking us there are still unknown, Metzen did reveal that the war waged in those patches will reach a massive conclusion: We will lay siege to Orgrimmar to remove the mantle of warchief from Garrosh Hellscream's shoulders. It didn't sound as if it would be an Alliance-only venture, so it seems the new Warchief of the Horde will get a little too Old School Grom for their taste. However, there is a possibility that the Horde will get to deal a similar blow of their own ... Knowing the fate of Garrosh Hellscream, it's possible nobody is safe this expansion.

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