Pasco

Edit: The post I responded to caused a misunderstanding, sorry.

 

• Tsook

Not to mention, I have it on good authority that Ashtongue are absolutely abysmal at not standing in the fire.

I think the core issue is that Akama has no way of knowing which of the Ashtongue have really drank the kool-aid and believe in his ruse and think they really are under Illidan's control. Illidan obviously is a pretty impressive/persuasive character so some of them may have been won over without his knowledge.

 

Malleus

Please read posts before you reply to them. I already said that Akama is asking us to carry out Illidan's orders because he can't trust his own people to do it.

The point is, apart from the Deathsworn the Ashtongue all serve Illidan. So what Akama is saying is that while he commands a vast army of Illidan's devoted servants, he can't trust any of them to carry out an order given by Illidan because they are devoted servants of Illidan. In fact, according to him the only ones he could trust to carry out Illidan's orders are the Deathsworn rebels. I can't be the only one seeing the complete and utter failure of logic here, can I?

 

Sydane

It's a classic example of using a lame excuse to get someone else to do your dirty work. Akama knows the "hero" player is just itching to go out and do whatever he is told, provided with a semi-believable reason. What I think it actually comes down to is, Akama doesn't know if he can trust us, so he sends us to kill Al'ar, if we pull it off, great, saves him the time and trouble, and he knows he can use us further. If not, he has plausible deniability both with Illidan and Kael. He could be seriously considering turning to Kael if things don't work out with the player heros, and he doesn't want to ruin that chance by sending his own people in against him.

Do I think Blizzard was thinking that complex when the quest was written? No, not really. My guess is they didn't think it all the way through. But I like filling in the blanks, and it works pretty well.

 

◊ Zerchi

Sometimes the designers are just going to take some creative liberties to get the player involved. Another take on the situation could have just been that he didn't trust another Ashtongue from taking direct credit for the kill rather than attributing it to Akama... and the whole plan was meant to strengthen Akama's cover afterall.

 

Thanaomira

Lore in TBC is pretty poorly explained. For someone who didn't play WC3 and TFT, I have very little idea of who these people are. Who the heck are Illidan and Kael, and why do I care about them again? Vashj at least has the lead-up of "she's killing the Zangramarsh ecosystem", so that's cool -- but hardly epic.

Then again, given all the "you fool, I'm secretly evil and have tricked you, now I shall rise to power!" quests in vanilla, I don't really have any basis to expect better writing.

 

footloop

I dunno, doing the attunement quests gave me a decent picture of Kael and Illidan, and I've never played any of the Warcraft RTS. And it's not like there aren't other quests in the zone apart from the attunements letting you know what's going on. For me Vashj wasn't very well explained; I know the naga are draining water, I dont know why, and I don't know why Vashj is there other than to be an end boss.

 

rhea

I wonder how much draeneis and blood elves are going to run around in Northrend. As in any base of operations, major plots?

 

◊ Zerchi

Guess I'll put this in a spoiler tag just in case...

 

Aonea

Well, the Blood Elves have a pretty big bone to pick with Arthas over his razing of Quel'thalas and defiling the Sunwell, so I would assume well see them there looking for revenge.

As for the Draenei, I can guess that since they hold the Light in such regard, haing Draenei Death Knights will probably be quite a blow to them and we may see some in Northrend attempting to help cure those affected by the Plague.

 

Shadout

To be fair, that could be a storyline they simply want to expand on later. All in all we really got no idea what Azshara is up to.
Although its more likely they just didnt integrate Vashj well, its an omission they can easily rectify later on.

Nagas are supposedly doing something with the ice in Northrend too, so at least Blizz might be consistent with whatever it is Nagas are doing. Hopefully they wont forget the storyline.

 

Kumar

Blood Elves want a dead Arthas.

 

Mynea

The Blood Elves are going to have to take a back seat on that one, the Forsaken are driving.

I wonder whether the Iron Dwarves and Taunka (and the mechano-gnomes, do we know anything about those yet?) were added to pull Dwarves and Tauren further forward in what would otherwise be an almost entirely Forsaken- and Human-driven story line.

 

Kumar

They are both now close allies, BEs and the Forsaken. My guess is the Forsakes base will have BE representation.

 

Addled

We're probably going to see a joint Horde anti-Arthas force. BE hate Arthas because of the Sunwell incident, Forsaken hate the Scourge, Tauren druids hate the corruption of the land, shamans of all races hate the defiling of elements by the scourge, etc.

As for the dwarves, Northrend was always going to be a bastion of dwarf lore, considering their origins, and the quest in Uldaman that takes you to Uldum. I expect Ulduar will have more quests that will tie back to Uldum and Uldaman, and perhaps to even more Titan strongholds/treasure vaults/sites of great battles.

 

Dancing Wu Li Master

Probably. Story-wise there wasn't too much to drive some of the races to Outland in TBC. Draenei, Blood Elves and Orcs have obvious links, and some of the Alliance probably wants to know what happened to Khadgar's expedition, but for many races the motivation wasn't any stronger than "explore and fight evil". It's probably on their list of things to fix for Wrath. Easier to do too, given that all but 2 races originated on Azeroth.

Also this dialog from Garrosh (possible spoilers) would seem to suggest that there are reasons for the other races to get involved. I can't think of any previous event it refers to either.

 

flyingtoastr

Well now that is interesting! I think that could be a sign that there will be some major world event before Wrath launches. I would guess from the magnitude of that statement that this will be a lot larger than the "kill demons at the dark portal for a week" thing.

Some people's minds are like cement: all mixed up and permanently set.

 

Jagiya

I'd say Garrosh is referring to the Naxxramas/Scourge Invasion when Kel'Thuzad decides to make his move to Northrend.

I don't know what the Horde experience was like, but I recall Scourge mobs appearing in the middle of Stormwind and Argent Dawn/Stormwind City Defenders fighting them off regularly during the first Naxxramas invasion.

Another such event sure would make more sense than, "Oh, that huge Necropolis in EPL disappeared. I guess it teleported to Northrend."

I envision something like this;
The Lich King orders Kel'Thuzad to launch another invasion upon the Horde & Alliance capital cities. Similar to the original Naxx Invasion, Scourge Citadels will float around the world, assaulting each region before eventually being driven to the safety of Northrend. The player response is, "Well, everything in Northrend is stronger than us, so it's time to improve our abilities & gear so that we can take the fight to his turf and counter-attack."

I mean, Arthas has been chilling out on his throne at Icecrown Glacier for over 4 years now. It would strike anyone as slightly odd that we suddenly decide to get up and hunt him down of our own initiative; simply because we happen to be "in town" at the time, dealing with Malygos. At least by commanding a Scourge invasion; it gives us a reason to strike back and get revenge. We may even be lucky enough to be graced by Arthas' presence during the invasion.

Either way, there's a lot of potential story to fill. Looks like it's going to be a lot richer than "Hey, the Dark Portal is open, let's go through it and plunder, 'cos we're adventurers and it's what we do!"

 

Dancing Wu Li Master

The previous city attacks were by very low level mobs; I'm guessing (and hoping) they'll be beefed up for the next one (even temporarily). Having the last 12 / 24 hours before 3.0 / Wrath filled with level 70+ Abominations and Frost Wyrms attacking major cities would be a fairly impressive sight.

 

Bullshot

It's all clear now!

 

Starfire

Entire city going? Probably not... but using the razing as the reason to rebuild or build something new? Like oh I don't know... Stormwind Harbour? (bad example though, since there are clearly npcs "Working" on the harbour, and as someone pointed out, ironic this will be built but the inn in Westfall still wouldnt).

 

Lysara

I wouldn't read too much into the whole "razing" thing. Lore-wise maybe, but I seriously doubt we'll have anything major happen in-game, certainly not the destruction of a capital city.

Remember the last time there was a relentless Scourge invasion brutally assaulting both Horde and Alliance cities? Yeah, that ended up with a handful of yellow Undead running around Stormwind trying their best not to attack any actual players, a few dozen lvl 8 Undeads standing outside the city gates waiting to be Whirlwinded to death and Faxmonkey running around Tanaris trying to beat his AoE record.

 

thedopefishlives

Not having been around for that particular event, I can only assume that Blizz's intention was to make sure that low-level players didn't get discouraged because of suffering ridiculous abuse from the invading mobs. I'm fairly certain that they could make Scourge Invasion 2.0 be a lot more of a threat without ganking the newbies. I for one think it would be kinda cool to have something like that to do in my off time - "Bbl guys, gotta go save the little lowbies from the devouring plague."

 

Cranberry

I don't have the link handy, but blizz was approached by IRL epidemiologists after the Corrupted Blood plague about doing something like that again - it would fit rather well. Say, an uncurable disease that deals 1% of your hp per second for a minute, spreads to anyone within 10yd. Raises complete hell for the 70s ("dammit, who brought aids!"), while not really affecting the lowbie who loses 3 hp/sec.

 

Veneda

I wouldn't mind Blizzard using experience of ZG plague hysteria as a base for WotLK event - after all, it was real, although a bit unexpected "world event" in vanilla WoW. Releasing plague (maybe not so deadly, but similarly infectious) on the realm population (with quests ending it in various ways - either in Northrend or, for those without expansion pack, in Old World) would fit the whole undead/forsaken theme using WoW very own "lore" at the same time.