They'll probably allow both 10 and 25-man raids to "kill" him. I think the Metzen interview stated that both 10 and 25 man raids will kill the same things, lore-wise. However, he's far too important a lore character to really die, I think, especially if they want to make Warcraft IV. I think he'll pop up again.
And the lore reason for 10 people not being able to kill him is a bit far fetched, because it took 40 top-geared raiders to kill C'Thun, and Arthas solo'd something that looks like our tentacle spawning old-god overlord. Given that(and considering that Metzen stated that the Lich King is the most powerful entity in the warcraft universe at this time), does even 25 people sound like a good number for any reason other than gameplay?
Keep in mind that Arthas was a completely new character, written from scratch, introduced, grew, became corrupted and took his place as the Lich King completely within Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne.
He's no more pivotal to the lore than Uther was, a prominent Warcraft 2 figure who was killed off not even halfway through Warcraft 3's campaigns.
One only need to look towards Ragnaros and C'thun to realize that ultimately, even gods are all as disposable as the content demands them to be.
I think there are some issues at play that are in direct conflict with each other.
How can you tell a story in the context of an instance plow?
You can't. Most of the story in this game was told in WC3 (we are running out of those characters) or it gets told in prerequisite content that leads into the instance.
Well nowadays, and moving forward, nothing has prerequisites. The Kara story line was not bad but it can be completely bypassed now.
I am unconvinced that serving Illidan/Arthas on a platter to everybody makes any sense. What they need is an in game way to build their story that cannot be skipped. Then 5/10 manners can get interesting story and still have a carrot to chase.
Don't know whether this is relevant here and if any of you actually care about the lore side of things but for me it is still a continuing draw to WoW and raiding.
I was a little...disgruntled I guess, at the haphazard way the Blue Dragonflight has been not only cast as the bad guy agressors in the upcoming storyline, but also that the Red Dragonflight would so willingly turn to open war against them.
- I don't buy that Malygos in his new found sanity would implement a plan (shifting the Leylines of magic) that would destroy the world. What purpose would that serve him? What does he care if the Legion come back again if he has destroyed the world himself? Sure each aspect has its own area of responsibility but as a whole they were empowered by the Titans to watch over Azeroth and protect it, not tear it apart. All prior lore also suggests that Malygos takes a very back seat role in interacting with the younger races and will only take action as a last resort.
- This isn't some rash young upstart like Illidan (pft, 10,000 years is nothing) who is head strong. This is quite possibly the oldest being alive on Azeroth, certainly the oldest aspect. The plan is ridiculous.
- Malygos has had a terribly tough time since he helped Deathwing create the demon soul. But in defeating Deathwing he earned redemption and helped free Alexstrazsa who in turn helped to restore a small part of Malygos' flight, enough to repopulate to their previous numbers. This is a time that Malygos would be consolidating his forces and trying to get them back up to the strength of the other aspects, not leading an all out assault to end the world. It also seems that his bond with Alexstraza has been forgotten as they are now pitted against each other.
God only knows why that preview video shows demons in Malygos' inner sanctum either. If he has resorted to recruiting warlocks, practicers of magic as well as summoning Demons (and as his main aim in this whole crazy scheme is to avoid notice by the Burning Legion) then the story just went out the window.
Originally Posted by Shadowed
The best part is, not only were you late in linking it, that's an April fools topic from 6 months ago.
If I had to guess I would say the "warlocks" are these guys:
However, not all of the Kirin Tor stand united. Several members have opted to side with the blue dragonflight in the hopes of retaining power. Transformed and bolstered by Malygos, these mage hunters are tasked with rooting out and, if necessary, destroying magical artifacts; killing or imprisoning individuals who practice magic without Malygos' permission; and aiding in the redirection of ley lines using massive constructs called surge needles.
Felpupys are the natural enemies off magic wielders, so it does make some sense. I agree though, I think if Blizzard wants to really turn an aspect into a bad guy they need a lot more support than this (Deathwing has a massive amount of lore to support his corruption, here we're just getting a "Malygos is angry so he's gonna blow you up!" thing).
I think there are some issues at play that are in direct conflict with each other.
How can you tell a story in the context of an instance plow?
You can't. Most of the story in this game was told in WC3 (we are running out of those characters) or it gets told in prerequisite content that leads into the instance.
Well nowadays, and moving forward, nothing has prerequisites. The Kara story line was not bad but it can be completely bypassed now.
I am unconvinced that serving Illidan/Arthas on a platter to everybody makes any sense. What they need is an in game way to build their story that cannot be skipped. Then 5/10 manners can get interesting story and still have a carrot to chase.
On the contrary, I think Blizzard did an excellent job of weaving a story into new characters and dungeons:
-You're in contact with the Defias from word go. Fighting their low level thugs, working your way up the criminal ladder until it culminates in a showdown with Van Cleef in his rebuilt Ogre Juggernaut
-You see an ever growing infestation of Silithid from the Southern Barrens and beyond. They haunt you through Thousand Needles, Tanaris, Un'goro Crater, and finally Silithus itself
-Pathaleon the Calculator taunts you in Hellfire Peninsula, makes a Druid coven in Terrokar Forest guinea pigs for his mana bomb, establishes Firewing Point in the same region and makes his presence known in the Kirin Var village of Netherstorm. Slaying him in the Mechanar was one of the most satisfying moments of my early TBC experience, which is exceptional given that he's a completely new character.
You can't just skip through quest descriptions then claim you don't see the point in what you're doing in the Pools of Aggonar: Carinda suspects her husband is having an affair, and you're looking for evidence of his adultery.
I think there are some issues at play that are in direct conflict with each other.
How can you tell a story in the context of an instance plow?
You can't. Most of the story in this game was told in WC3 (we are running out of those characters) or it gets told in prerequisite content that leads into the instance.
And yet characters like Onyxia, Nefarian and Ragnaros have much better lore build-up in the game and feel more satisfactory to kill than Vashj, Kael'thas and Illidan himself did. Despite the fact that the latter three had their stories told in WC3, the first three were new for practically the entire playerbase; their only previous build-up was in RPG sourcebooks.
buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of
Deathwing has a massive amount of lore to support his corruption, here we're just getting a "Malygos is angry so he's gonna blow you up!" thing.
Well, Lore fan myself but, truth be told, Neltharion's fall from grace isn't much more than one of those "he went insane with lust for power".
Reading the War of the Ancients trilogy you see that everything was fine with Neltharion until he started hearing voices in his head and went crazy. We find out that the voices are an Old God manipulating him into releasing him from the prision where the Titans put him. And that's the gist of Deathwing's turn to evil.
Maybe after failing with Neltharion the Old God turned his attention to Malygos and is going for a similar plan.
Alextrasza having seen this happen before is more than willing to act before another Demon Soul happens.
We don't know, maybe even blizzard doesn't know.
Then again, maybe they do and Tier Malygos + 1 is Azjol-Nerub and the corrupting Old God that we discover after handing in "Malygo's Pristine Scale" to Alextrasza's Emissary.
Or maybe they're just pulling it all out of their asses to put together the next loot bag, at the moment you just don't know.
Anyway, since it's the same guy that wrote the "Original Lore", might as well give him the benefit of the doubt, even if you don't agree with some of the choices he did for The Burning Crusade.
Are we sure he's out to 'blow' up the planet? I was under the impression that the whole reason for this(and lets remember he only completely regained his sanity due to the netherwing) was so that those he deems to be misusing magic won't be able to anymore(and really with some of whats been going on is that really so crazy for someone who's supposed to be guarding magic?).
Not to meantion who said anything about killing him either or that he's evil, rather I think he believes he's doing good and he can make at least a decent case he really is, even if he's going a bit overboard. I dont' think we'll kill him but rather just fight him till Alexstraza can convince to change from this course. (or something close since it's been said that killing an aspect would be really bad for the planet.)
You missed something:
Tigole: What's more, with any luck, we'll see more Hero classes some time after release, the hot Zitron tip being some kind of Archdruid quest directly connected to Malfurion Stormrage and the much-anticipated Emerald Dream.
That MMO Champion post was misleading because while it seems like Tigole is saying those things, they are actually just conjecture Zitron (the author of the piece) came up with. In other words, the "quote" on MMO Champion is not actually a quote from Tigole (don't let the "blue" color confuse you), it is just a quote from the article written by Zitron without any actual backing.
The Malygos twist is pretty nice if done right, its one of the gray area heroes/villains where you can argue if he is crazy or not. Which isnt what we have been used to recently.
It will be rather silly however, if we kill him with Alexstrazas help. Killing an aspect, or just making it go crazy is supposed to have a rather big impact, it would be a letdown if they simply get rid of him in exchange for some items.
If I had to guess I would say the "warlocks" are these guys:
Felpupys are the natural enemies off magic wielders, so it does make some sense. I agree though, I think if Blizzard wants to really turn an aspect into a bad guy they need a lot more support than this (Deathwing has a massive amount of lore to support his corruption, here we're just getting a "Malygos is angry so he's gonna blow you up!" thing).
Or rather, the result of this:
Now Malygos uses the Arcanomicon to locate and tap into the ley lines, diverting the magical powers that course beneath the earth to his home base in Northrend, the Nexus. Once harnessed, the energies are focused through the Nexus' ascending rings and blasted into the Twisting Nether. Malygos's redirection of the ley lines has carried disastrous consequences, however, splintering the world's crust and opening unstable rifts: tears in the very fabric of the magical dimension.
I'm sure there's some extra-dimensional demonic critters out there with an appetite for destruction and magic, and the Nexus sounds like a damn nice place to be in if you're one of those.
The Malygos story doesn't strike me as too far-fetched. If Deathwing could be tempted away from his duties, why not an Aspect who's always been nutty in the lore? I'm sure (or at least I hope..) his rationale is made clearer via the lore, maybe they'll go with the ol' "Old Gods made me do it" excuse again. Makes a lot more sense than killing Illidan..
Those are all perfectly valid assumptions, I'm leaning towards the same.
But I was replying to a post that said "[Blizzard] were pretty clear...". And that, they were not.
Yes, looking at the current statements made about class balance one would think that the only reasonable time to add a class would be with a new expansion.
While they have never explicitly said that the only time they will add classes is in an expansion, this is a forum for rational discussion, not pointless speculation. They haven't explicitly said that their big blizcon announcement will be that D3 will be accessed through the portal in the back of Nagrand, that doesn't mean you should speculate about javazon/beastmastery synergy.
Originally Posted by Vaccine
Don't know whether this is relevant here and if any of you actually care about the lore side of things but for me it is still a continuing draw to WoW and raiding.
I was a little...disgruntled I guess, at the haphazard way the Blue Dragonflight has been not only cast as the bad guy agressors in the upcoming storyline, but also that the Red Dragonflight would so willingly turn to open war against them.
And yet characters like Onyxia, Nefarian and Ragnaros have much better lore build-up in the game and feel more satisfactory to kill than Vashj, Kael'thas and Illidan himself did. Despite the fact that the latter three had their stories told in WC3, the first three were new for practically the entire playerbase; their only previous build-up was in RPG sourcebooks.
Ony, for the Alliance(haven't done the Horde chain), has the best lore quest chain in WoW. And it's even better after the extension to the Missing Diplomat chain in 2.4-it directly ties to the Onyxia chain now. You get to see Nef quite a bit through the UBRS and LBRS questlines and related lore, and you see the same with Rag in BRD.
I think the main issue with the Outlands lore bosses is that their quest chains are all over the place. If you stop to read all of the questlines and quests, there's a TON of lore build up for Kael and Illidan, but not that much for Vashj. Most of the Netherstorm quests revolve around Kael turning away from Illidan to the Burning Legion, and Illidan has the excellent BT attunement quest line. But, since they're all over the place, it's a bit hard to piece them all together.
That said, I honestly think that the biggest letdown with Illidan is the encounter itself more than anything else.
The fact that it is, quite frankly, a boring encounter for everyone but the MT and P2 tanks-he doesn't hit exceptionally hard, P2's success is more dependent on the tank dance than the rest of the raid, and P3-5 are just more abilities thrown onto an easy P1.
I think there are some issues at play that are in direct conflict with each other.
How can you tell a story in the context of an instance plow?
You can't. Most of the story in this game was told in WC3 (we are running out of those characters) or it gets told in prerequisite content that leads into the instance.
Well nowadays, and moving forward, nothing has prerequisites. The Kara story line was not bad but it can be completely bypassed now.
I am unconvinced that serving Illidan/Arthas on a platter to everybody makes any sense. What they need is an in game way to build their story that cannot be skipped. Then 5/10 manners can get interesting story and still have a carrot to chase.
I think they've actually been doing a pretty good job building new storylines in WoW. I am intrigued to see where they go with the Garrosh Hellscream story, considering that there are intimations he will herald a return to older, wilder ways for the Horde. I suppose they mostly wrapped up the Blood Elf arc in TBC, but I think they did a good job with that, from the Wretched picking over the remains of Silvermoon to murdering Paladins in Stratholme to discovering the truth about their leader in Outland, to the Scryers and the redemption of the Blood Elves.
I was pretty pleased with the Malygos write-up, actually, since they were pretty clear that he's sane - I know a lot of people were worried that he'd be another crazy former good guy. You're asking why he would hurt the world to do this, and the best answer is because the damage he's doing doesn't really matter. To Malygos, the damage he's doing - some earthquakes, some lives lost, maybe some magical damage to the world (which he's probably pretty confident he can fix) is NOTHING compared to the fact that three times in 10,000 years stupid freaking mortal magic users have tried their best to invite the Burning Legion onto Azeroth on a red carpet. You think he cares about some human towns being destroyed or a few magic storms when Kil'Jaeden nearly managed to get through the Sunwell?
But, of course, that's what we are concerned about, as players. Malygos isn't nuts, and his actions aren't out of line with his job description -- it's just that he doesn't particularly care who gets smashed along the way. Alexstrasza is charged with protecting life, so it is her job to take a stand against the Blue in this.
I think they've actually been doing a pretty good job building new storylines in WoW. I am intrigued to see where they go with the Garrosh Hellscream story, considering that there are intimations he will herald a return to older, wilder ways for the Horde. I suppose they mostly wrapped up the Blood Elf arc in TBC, but I think they did a good job with that, from the Wretched picking over the remains of Silvermoon to murdering Paladins in Stratholme to discovering the truth about their leader in Outland, to the Scryers and the redemption of the Blood Elves.
I was pretty pleased with the Malygos write-up, actually, since they were pretty clear that he's sane - I know a lot of people were worried that he'd be another crazy former good guy. You're asking why he would hurt the world to do this, and the best answer is because the damage he's doing doesn't really matter. To Malygos, the damage he's doing - some earthquakes, some lives lost, maybe some magical damage to the world (which he's probably pretty confident he can fix) is NOTHING compared to the fact that three times in 10,000 years stupid freaking mortal magic users have tried their best to invite the Burning Legion onto Azeroth on a red carpet. You think he cares about some human towns being destroyed or a few magic storms when Kil'Jaeden nearly managed to get through the Sunwell?
But, of course, that's what we are concerned about, as players. Malygos isn't nuts, and his actions aren't out of line with his job description -- it's just that he doesn't particularly care who gets smashed along the way. Alexstrasza is charged with protecting life, so it is her job to take a stand against the Blue in this.
It does seem rather dodgy that the only solution is to kill Malygos though. I mean... seriously, the only way to justify this is for him to jump off the slippery slope completely. We don't have the *time* to adequately flesh out what could possibly happen here, so they're going to speed it up by just saying he went nuts. That always leaves a bad taste in the mouth, because it's silly... he's been in charge of protecting magic for thousands of years and instead of working towards a real solution, he goes nuts and we have to put him down.
While they have never explicitly said that the only time they will add classes is in an expansion, this is a forum for rational discussion, not pointless speculation. They haven't explicitly said that their big blizcon announcement will be that D3 will be accessed through the portal in the back of Nagrand, that doesn't mean you should speculate about javazon/beastmastery synergy.
Completely agree on the rational discussion. As such, I think it's preferable to not atribute to Blizzard statements not made by them.
Feel free to say "I think there's no way in hell Blizzard will release a new class in a content patch."
But it would be nice to refrain "Blizzard said they would not add a class in a content patch." That's how pseudo-facts get started...
It does seem rather dodgy that the only solution is to kill Malygos though. I mean... seriously, the only way to justify this is for him to jump off the slippery slope completely. We don't have the *time* to adequately flesh out what could possibly happen here, so they're going to speed it up by just saying he went nuts. That always leaves a bad taste in the mouth, because it's silly... he's been in charge of protecting magic for thousands of years and instead of working towards a real solution, he goes nuts and we have to put him down.
You don't think there's enough room in Northrend to build up a story of why Malygos is doing what he's doing?
I imagine that his storyline will play out like Vashj's in TBC, only hopefully... better. Dragonblight is a 71-74 zone, so you'll go there relatively early in the expansion, and you'll probably get the first hints of what Malygos is up to around then if not earlier. It'll be like how the CE quests in Zangarmarsh focused around figuring out what the Naga were doing there, leading to the investigation of the pumping stations and eventually Coilfang Reservoir... only replace Naga with "blue dragons", pumping stations with "leylines" or some other blue-dragon related structure, and CFR with "the Nexus".
The problem with the Naga storyline in TBC, though, was that once you exited Zangarmarsh at ~63, it was done. Okay, there were a couple of hints towards it in Nagrand (the enemy Broken there actually serve one of the Underbog bosses, that's easy to miss..), but other than that it was just a matter of going back at 70 and taking out the leaders of CFR, Kalistrath (sp) and Vashj. If Blizzard has learned from their mistakes at all, they'll find a way to tie in the Malygos story to the other zones, or maybe make a high-level portion of Dragonblight that would reintroduce players to the story before sending them off to fight Malygos. It seems that Dalaran itself will be tied to this story, but it's hard to speculate how that'll fit in.
In short, though, I don't think there's any reason to doubt that Blizzard can make the arc interesting. In fact, I wouldn't be too surprised if the impetus for the entire Northrend campaign is Malygos fucking around with things rather than another Scourge invasion... he just lost a blue dragon at the Sunwell, almost two, he's probably pretty pissed off. Well, then again, they've already got the template for a Scourge invasion ingame, I'm sure they'll reuse it..
The main question, ultimately, will be whether Blizzard learns from their shortcomings in the design of TBC's story. A lot of the parts of the story were great, they just didn't tie together that well largely because of the sharply-delineated zones. But I think Netherstorm is the quintessential example of how Blizzard can get these things right. With the exception of the Sunwell, they also didn't tie the raid encounters to the story very well, it was little more than "we've lead you through an epic story against faction X, but their powerful leader is still alive, I guess you can kill him/her if you feel like it." Mount Hyjal is definitely the low point of this, not even featuring the faction that had caused problems elsewhere..
Oh, and as something of an aside, is anyone else excited to hear that they're bringing back Arugal / the Worgen? I hate the unfinished plots in the old world, hopefully they'll do more here... finish the freakin' Scythe of Elune / Karazhan Riders story please. Oh, and the Ashbringer, for the love of all that's holy..
Oh, and as something of an aside, is anyone else excited to hear that they're bringing back Arugal / the Worgen? I hate the unfinished plots in the old world, hopefully they'll do more here... finish the freakin' Scythe of Elune / Karazhan Riders story please. Oh, and the Ashbringer, for the love of all that's holy..
The Dark Riders questiline in Duskwood is one of my favourite in the game, I *really* want to know more about that (preferably more than 'Oh the dark riders? Yeah, that was Attumen. I guess they put the scythe in the basement...').
"Blizzard are planning to bring out cool new items for players to spend all their money on, BEFORE Wrath comes out."
Anyone like to speculate what they will introduce? I'm thinking it's the Inscription system. It sounded like they were testing some enchantment changes in the latest patch, as well as having an inscription data-mined from an earlier one (2.4?). Was there anything about Enchanting before BC launched?
You don't think there's enough room in Northrend to build up a story of why Malygos is doing what he's doing?
I imagine that his storyline will play out like Vashj's in TBC, only hopefully... better. Dragonblight is a 71-74 zone, so you'll go there relatively early in the expansion, and you'll probably get the first hints of what Malygos is up to around then if not earlier. It'll be like how the CE quests in Zangarmarsh focused around figuring out what the Naga were doing there, leading to the investigation of the pumping stations and eventually Coilfang Reservoir... only replace Naga with "blue dragons", pumping stations with "leylines" or some other blue-dragon related structure, and CFR with "the Nexus".
The problem I see is that there's so much they want to fit into this expansion, and given the time frame that they have, I am almost certain that they're going to sacrifice the Malygos storyline for the Arthas storyline. You could easily build an entire expansion about the whole Malygos storyline and it would work just fine. All contrived stories about corruption and going insane aside, unless they somehow tie the Malygos story in closely with the Arthas story. If they do that, it's all great... but that's a pretty big if.
Look at the guilds on your sever. How many of them are happy simply farming Kara and the bear boss? How many have been sitting in Kara since last March?
The problem with raiding is it requires commitment and a decent amount of time. Joe McScrub doesn't want to do either or he won't be able to watch Gossip Girl every Monday night. He's happy to sit in the same content getting badge gear every 2 months. Even if they reduce raid sizes to 10 people, it won't make much of a difference. The first cockblock will stop the "casuals" and they will just farm the easy content for a year, just like now.
Either that or they will make all raid content so easy Joe McScrub can run in and 1-shot Arthas. Hey, everyone gets to experience content then, right?
It doesn't have to be one or the other. From the sounds of it, they're planning on making Naxx 10-man a sleepwalk once geared and ramp up the difficulty from there. There's also nothing stopping them from overtuning the top-end instances and dialing back the difficulty with successive patches and new dungeon releases.
In short, though, I don't think there's any reason to doubt that Blizzard can make the arc interesting. In fact, I wouldn't be too surprised if the impetus for the entire Northrend campaign is Malygos fucking around with things rather than another Scourge invasion... he just lost a blue dragon at the Sunwell, almost two, he's probably pretty pissed off.
I fully expect Kalecgos to be effusive in his thanks and offer to mediate for me with Malygos after I saved his sorry ass in Sunwell Plateau, killed the fellow who murdered his cohort, and helped put her undead soul back to rest. In fact, if he doesn't remember me and treat me more nicely than somebody who has never done Sunwell, I'll call his ungratefull ass for it.
On a serious note, it really would be nice if WotLK actually tailored some key interactions to people who successfully completed certain events and quests in previous days.
On a serious note, it really would be nice if WotLK actually tailored some key interactions to people who successfully completed certain events and quests in previous days.
It would be neat (similar to how Aran has a special line he gives if someone in the raid has an Atiesh). Wouldn't expect it to happen though.
And yes, I hope Kalec doesn't simply disappear and take no part in Malygos' situation. Whether he ends up siding with or against his liege, it would be a cheap way out for Blizz to just "forget" about him.
05/13/08, 12:00 PM
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