We can sit here and talk power levels all we want, but thing is one of the best know, if not the best known character in the world of WoW. Sure, he's not extremely original, but you've played him through several campaigns in WC3 - bringing him from heir to the throne to fallen prince to "god of death" or whatever he seems himself as now. Additionally, ner'zhul has been around since the beginning of the franchise.

While he has changed quite a bit from an orc shaman, he has appeared in all the games.

So in terms of big names, Arthas is as big as it gets. Deathwing? I barely know who that is and I've been playing since warcraft 2 was released. Queen Azshara and the titans and the old gods are all well and good, but if you mentioned them to a random WoW player I'll bet 'ya 98% of them have no idea what you're talking about.

I mean, come on, Arthas has been sittin on top of Northrend for years, plotting something devious. The world seemed his for the taking at the end of TFT so he must be up to something.

While I do find it kind of crazy that some magically morphed orc and a fallen prince can somehow rival these thousands upon thousnads of year old entities, it is typical for the strength of humans in fantasy settings to be way outa proportion to anything else.

You barely know who Deathwing is? One of the original dragon aspects?

Arthas is the central character of WarCraft 3. Deathwing appears briefly in the WarCraft 2 expansion and that's it. For someone who hasn't read the assorted manuals and backstory but merely plays the games, why would they know much of Deathwing?

But to the general topic: running out of bad guys does not look like a pressing issue to me. There's plenty of names out there, and they can always make up more. An impressive trailer will do more to sell a boss to the average player than pre-existing lore connections.

I agree that Deathwing (and many other "major lore characters") are not particularly high profile either in the Warcraft RTS games or in WoW. You could very easily kill Onyxia and Nefarian without ever really understanding that they're children of Deathwing, or that the black dragonflight is commanded by him (is this even true? I guess I'm assuming).

And this highlights some of the difficulty of building lore inside the MMO incarnation of Warcraft. It's rather easy to craft monumental events in an RTS, and rather difficult in an MMO (at least without discarding tons of old content). Blizzard would really need to figure out some good ways for making some quests stand out, even for the vast legions of players who just click through any and all quest dialogue.

I liked the idea of something seriously disastrous befalling a player city, I think it could be done well within WoW, especially if you execute one of the cities everyone hates, like Darnassus. The end of the Emerald Dream plotline could result in the corruption of Teldrassil (which has always been hinted at in existing lore...), turning the entire island into an end-game area full of severed sleepers & corrupted ancients, and maybe open Gnomeregan as a player city to compensate (putting old Gnomer into CoT, as previously mentioned). You'd also get the chance to revamp SW/IF as starting areas for new NE characters.

Just an example, but it could be done, and Blizzard are the ones with enough dev resources to toss out old content with dramatic flair. There is no shortage of possibilities for this game.

But in all reality, how hard would it be to introduce the players to Deathwing's lore. Remember we got the Caverns of Time, we went back to Durnholde, we can go back to the Demon Soul storyline, including helping that group in recapturing and destroying the Demon Soul and that would help establish Deathwing as a major lore figure.

That would of course be a prequesite to the big Deathwing raid.

Kalecgos' scrying orb in Magister's Terrace looks to me like Blizzard's way of implementing in-game cutscenes into the game for WotLK. People are a lot more likely to watch something like that than to read a quest log. I hope we see a lot more of that in the future. (But not so much that every time I help key someone for a level 80 raid I have to wait 15 minutes for them to watch a video...)

I remember the first time my guild summoned Ragnaros, everyone had to be quiet on vent so that people could hear the dialog, heh.

I wonder what races the expansion after WotLK will focus on. TBC gave a ridiculously huge amount of story to the Blood Elves, while the Draenei, despite Outland being covered in them, actually had very little lore to them. The vast majority of the Draenei story was covered in Rise of the Horde. I'm glad 2.4 actually mentions Velen again, it seemed the Exodar and its inhabitants are pretty much forgotten after you finish Bloodmyst Isle.

The Orcs also got a big chunk of story in Nagrand, but that was pretty much it. The Alliance had their Expedition found again, but that ended up as a much smaller deal than I had imagined it would be (though I guess Blizzard not having enough time to add Turalyon, Alleria and the other portal-worlds didn't help that much).

WotLK seems to give a lot of story to the Dwarves and Tauren, while the Humans and Forsaken get a nice amount as well.

Personally I'd like to see the Trolls get some more story. And I mean the Darkspear Trolls, not Trolls in general. Zul'Aman had potential for a great story, but it just ended up as a bunch of Trolls turning into animals again, while Zul'jin, legendary hero of Trolls everywhere, was killed off rather unceremoniously (the only story we got there was that some Indiana Jones wannabe owed a Shattrath con-artist some money).

The Night Elves could use a lore-boost again too, and an expansion with either the Emerald Dream or the Maelstrom could incorporate that quite well.

And Gnomes of course. Everybody loves Gnomes. But having Gnomeregan as your only source of lore is a little depressing.

But the Nightelves have the MOST lore... War of the Ancients... but beisdes that the entire Ahn'Qiraj storyline has to do with the Nightelves. And of course the events of Warcraft 3... and well the fact that half the damn races of Azeroth came from the elves (okay, I exaggerate).

Gnomes on the otherhand... the fact that we can kill Illidan and C'thun and yet we can't retake Gnomeregan annoys the hell out of me.

Apparently swords and sorcery have got nothing on the deadly power of radiation.

I think Trolls on Horde side and Gnomes on Alliance side will remain the least lore-rich stories.

I also think Blood Elves lore will continue into WoLTK, after all the scrouge destroyed them too.

http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/

Forbidden now, before it wasn't loading, soon we shall enter alpha.

Isn't alpha the phase when all the mobs are just cubes?

It all depends on your development philosophy.

Don't get me so excited

I think you have it in reverse. Alpha phase is the first working model of a program, whose testing is usually done completely in-house.

Beta follows alpha, when the program is fleshed out enough to have the public test it (whether open or closed testing).

This is really similar to what happened to worldofwarcraft.com/wrath right before Blizzcon 2007, This doesn't seem to out of place considering 2.4 is out and now they are clear for WotLK content wise.

*Boggle* I take it you all missed Burning Crusade's Alpha when all the talents and new abilities were leaking and such? It's something worth getting excited about, that's what I'm referring too.

She*. And I know some previous testers, they basically said watch that space. That domain wasn't loading before, now it's forbidden, which like Ret mentioned above, means it's being prepared for their testers.

I personally don't see any major developments until the Blizzard WWI in June, as that is the closest big event that blizzard has to announce stuff. TBC details didn't come out until guilds were well into late naxx (I don't remember if guilds were still stuck on 4h or had past it yet before the alpha details started leaking), and imo Blizzard would be a bit foolish to release WoTLK details and even more foolish to start friends & family alpha testing before Sunwell has been cleared (although I'd admit this will certainly be before June, unless the last gate is made to be a major cockblock). We all know the hell guilds will go through once people start seeing screenshots of iLvl 180 green 2 handers with 150 dps. I was in a guild that broke up because half the officers started playing F&F alpha instead of live...not a pleasant experience.

While I have no doubt that looming and concrete data on WOTLK loot may discourage guilds from raiding regardless of how much better they may be, I think you're exagerrating a little too much here.

The [Might of Menethil] from Kel'Thuzad is a 95.3 DPS two-hander. The earliest TBC items that surpasses it would be a crafted BS epic like the [Lionheart Blade] (which was very expensive at release), a very rare BOE epic like the [The Hammer of Destiny], the [Despair] from Kara, or a [Gladiator's Bonegrinder] (also very expensive at the time).

DPS-wise, a Warrior could basically ignore everything else he picked up when leveling from 61-69, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same held true for someone with Apolyon, The Soul-Render.

I expected the FFA to start after 2.4 PTR, it looks like this is the case and WotlK FFA will start soon. At least it's in preparation.

For those not knowing, beta.worldofwarcraft.com is the server that enables one to download FFA/closed beta client version downloaders as well as having the char copy pages to actually get a char to the designated test realms if you are actually eligible/invited to the test. The server was firewalled from the greater internet for some time now and this changed yesterday. Although the server does not give out any page and only says "access forbidden", it has become reachable again, which simply is the only sign that something moves there.

Iff Blizzard has the same schedule as with TBC, then we will see a lot more information about Wotlk about 1 month into the FFA and probably a closed beta starting 2 to 3 months after the FFA. This would mean a release window in late-summer/autumn.

FFA or Friend & Family Alpha is just what Blizzard calls the very limited, strongly NDA'ed beta test that includes some external people. It is a beta-test in the sense that it's not a basic "does it even run on hardware" test. It's just the first wave of tests that includes non-Blizzard people. Wotlk was beyond Alpha stage and stable back in August 2007 when I had a chance to playtest a bit at the GC in Leipzig.

Considering it's now early april, and apparently we can expect wotlk public alpha to start in 1-2 weeks, I'd guesstimate wotlk release in september-october. Little early for xmas markets, how is the latest release date for conan/warhammer? I'd not be surprised if at least either came out same time.