Correct, he's floating somewhere in the Twisting Nether, bodyless. Though it would require a ton of energy to bring him back, I can see it done in the Maelstrom expansion. Queen Azshara is hiding SOMETHING down there and the original place of the Well of Eternity sounds a nice place for summoning (his tomb being quite near helps too).

Screw the model, just make sure he doesn't have the same retarded/horrible voice Archimonde has and I'll be happy.

After his defeat in Tempest Keep, Kael'thas (after being empowered by demonic energies!) has regathered his loyal followers and take the majority of the power that the Manaforges in Netherstorm have collected to Quel'thalas in a last ditch attempt to repower the tainted Sunwell.

Of course, he can't do this on his own because channeling that much power into the Sunwell would destroy him so, he's trying to bring Kil'jaeden to help him.

Kil'jaeden is eager to help because of the massive power the Sunwell could provide him (maybe even the means to tether Sargeras to the mortal plane??!).

I think that'd be a decent story for the Sunwell.

I'd like if the sunwell was tied to northrend in some way.

Kiljaeden is nearing death, freezes the raid ala Illidan fight. Blood elves and demons swarm into the area, ready to kill the raid. Suddenly, undead show up all over the place and start fighting with the others. Arthas shows up and finishes off Kiljaeden (who, I remind you, was trying to kill the Lich King in the Frozen Throne via Illidan). Too cheesy?

I think it's funny how the Highborne, or Sin'dori haven't learned from their mistakes.

This group of Elves are basically the same people who tried to open a portal for Sargeras 10,000 years ago.

Now they're using a lesser Well of Eternity in the Sunwell to attempt to bring over Kil'jaeden.

It's nothing overly complex if you think about it, might be a great backstory for Malygos in Wrath of the Lich King, it's literally the same exact thing as last time. Elves become addicted to magic, elves use magic recklessly, elves attempt to summon giant demon lord into our world.

Stop me if I'm missing something on the lore express train.

I wonder how we will unlock heroic mode on 5 man. While some kind of "skill" attunment would be nice, if Blizzard will put reputation in it, i hope it wont be some new rep grind, but aldor/scryers. This will make perfect sense and add nice way to grind to exalted for new players.

Technically the Legion invaded Azeroth as well. Demons started pouring through the gate, Highlord Kruul was tearing apart Azeroth searching for the Aspect Shards(Whatever the heck that was supposed to be). In retaliation to this Alliance/Horde forces made their way through the Dark Portal and set up fortifications in the aftermath on the other side(The battle you see @ the Stair of Destiny). Once you arrive in Outland, depending on your faction, the story changes.

Alliance forces find their long lost Alliance Expedition that went to Outland so many years ago

Horde forces find their old clans, and rampaging Fel Orcs, and establish bases to deal with the Legion/Orcs, and to assist their former clansman who aren't tainted.

BC's story isn't that bad, as you make your way through Outland you learn slowly of what's taking place. The Fel Orcs are a mystery, then you learn about the Blood Elf involvement in Terrokar Forest, you move over to Zangarmarsh and learn about the Naga involvement.

From what I can gather, there was already war happening in Outland long before our involvement. Shattrath vs Illidan's Blood Elf/Naga forces vs Legion Forces vs Alliance Expedition vs Remaining Orc Clans. When they Legion invaded Azeroth they dragged us into the conflict, perhaps when the Demons were able to claim Kael'thas' loyalty they felt they were in a good position to attack us.....Yes, Kazzak opened the portal again from this side, but he was following somebody's orders.

Im pretty sure Kazzak takes his orders for good'ol KJ. Him residing at the Throne of Kil'jaeden reinforces this to me.

As for the aspect shards ( Aspect Shards - WoWWiki, the Warcraft wiki ) kind of implies they are either fragments of the Demon(Dragon) Soul or even the dragon aspects souls.

As for heroic mode for the 5 man - I second (maybe third or fourth by now) the idea of Aldor/Scryer as the responsible faction. Lore wise, whilst the Sha'tar are the most actively opposed to the Legion they may not have the resources (or ability) to deal with the problems on Azeroth and have delegated to their allies.

Yeah, TBC had a decent story. Especially the frantic atmosphere in Hellfire Peninsula (at least at Honor Hold for Alliance) was very nicely done. But that aspect of the storyline sort of dissolves once you go into the Zangarmarsh, only to be picked up somewhat in Shattrath and Netherstorm/SMV. Furthermore, I suspect Kael is getting better lore than Vashj. I still don't understand the point of her whole Coilfang operation. It would be cool if they wrap it up by saying the Sunwell is getting energy from Netherstorm *and* Coilfang.

I got the impression that Vashj merely wanted her own indoor pool, but then why are the Naga in Northrend trying to melt glaciers and shit? I find it unlikely that the Sunwell needs to be refilled with water from Outland...

Well, maybe she's trying to create her own personal well of eternity?

It would of been nice for some more information regarding Vashj yes, I was quite annoyed that for one of the core bosses in TBC, with more than a whole zone and instance related to her and some wierd thing happening, it never seems to get explained.

Cant say the same is different from Kael though (yet), I remember him saying something in one of the early quests (Hellfire perhaps) about how hes working on the power of crystals and he'll show us etc... I think I must of missed the show?
We have the sketchy lore of him taking over TK.. hes mentioned quite alot in several quests... and still nothing is really known..


Hopefully the tie into Sunwell will make things click and you'll go "ahh.. so thats why..." and atleast give a nice finish to the storyline, as it does really need one.

Does anyone know the supposed 'level' of WoTLK bosses? will Malygos be our Onyxia/Gruul level encounter? or will he rightfully be somewhat higher up in the chain.

I think that's Pathaleon the Calculator rather than Kael'thas, isn't it?

He crops up both in HFP (Natural Remedies Quest) and also at that quest in Terrokar Forest with the mana-bomb - which we later find out is something that was used against both the Cenarion outpost in Terrokar and the Kirin Var Village in Netherstorm. Seems to be a closed off segment of the story at least, not directly tied to Illidan/Vashj/Kael (and not really neatly tied off itself).

I'm not sure I remember seeing Kael'thas at all when levelling, isn't he exclusively found in Tempest Keep?

I cant imagine fight with Dragon Aspect on Onyxia/Gruul level honestly. But probably we wont kill him, and red dragonflight will help us in fight. If this help means essence of red kind buff (again, dont think that we will have enough power to fight Malygos on our own) Malygos can be Magtheridon level encounter.


As for Vashj lore. When you click on bridge console you can hear her speech about controlling all sources of pure water (simple and clever, all armies need to drink something or die). Also from attunment quest you find out that nagas at war with Neptulon, and can power some twisted magic from water sources, corrupting it. Thats probably why enslaved Hydross purge water elementals there. Illidan gave Vials of Eternity to both Kael and Vashj. Apparently they both worked on recreating Well of Eternity, but on some point Kael'thas realised that he can recreate Sunwelll instead, and without Vashj or Illidan help.

Essence of the Red! Kirion, you're a genius, and are now setting me up to be let down when Alexstrasza doesn't give us that buff.

Essence of the Red... and burning adrenaline... Vael is still among my favourite encounters. Bring back the red dragons.

(What would essence of the blue do? Something magicky or maybe anti-magicky I would guess...)

big post full of grammer mistakes because i am in a big hurry and english is not my main language.
Deleted because i can do better than that

Bah edited when I was about to reply lol, was gonna point out that Leotheras was far from one of illidans most trusted men! He was a demon hunter gone mad during his training and too dangerous to be let loose so he was basically dumped on Vashj to deal with and kept imprisoned there in SSC.

Correct. In a way its a shame that the player is more involved in their movement through outland with a random boss in Mechanar than with any of the main bosses.

I made a post a while back on the WoW R+D forums about wow lacking an Antagonist in TBC but it got very little response as those sort of threads tend to do over there.

The basic idea was that bosses should have been more involved as we progressed through Outlands. I'm not expecting Vashj to turn up at every quest end to say how she woudl have gotten away with it if it weren't for us pesky players, but an odd cameo would be nice. Also the more frequent sending of her officers would be good. Seeing Karathress and his entourage turn up in a quest line that tried to explain about CFR would have been fun.

We also talked about Pathaleon. I suggested that it would have been nice if he had escaped at the end of Mechanar via a Naruu escape pod or something, and then had reappered in The Eye as one of Kaels advisors. When hes about to die the second time in the Kael fight, he could once more run away, whilst Kael curses him for being a traitor. Then he either picks up the reigns of Kael's empire once we slay him, or if they continue the Kael story that hes still alive somehow, he could come up against him in the future.

Ideas like that are cool, I only chose Pathaleon for that because the player has a lot of contact with him throughout their questing, more so than any other boss.

But on the bright side it seems Blizzard are learning from this, they've promised that players will feel involved in the war effort the moment they step foot on Northrend and that we'll see Arthas and his chums often as we do quests aimed directly against their operations there.

I think the logic of having Pathaleon rather than Kael is precisely that casual players will, in fact, defeat him. You can't have the conclusion of all of the interesting story elements be reserved exclusively for the top 5% of raiders or whatever.

It sounds like WotLK will have Arthas be more involved with average players but I wonder if most will be disappointed that there's no resolution to the story, for them.

Well on the flip side, its a massive anti-climax when you go in and eventually fight and kill Pathaleon because he is so easy.

You can have a resolution to the story, only to find him reappear later on. The villain doesn't have to die for the storyline to be resolved.

You know, what could be fun for Sunwell might be something like this:

Kil'Jaeden is somewhere getting summoned, someplace where you can actually access him the whole time, but if you go there right away he will wtfpwn you, no questions asked. Throughout the instance there are various energy channels being sent to aid in his summoning. As you kill the bosses, "good" blood elves agree to stay and watch over these, weakening the flow they're sending to Kil'Jaeden and waiting for a cue.

As you proceed through the instance, Kil'Jaeden grows more and more irritated and suspicious about his energy cutoff, but doesn't actually quite figure out what's up.

So, ya know, you go through this process with all the sub-bosses, then you get to Kil'Jaeden. Phase 1 is just about staying alive as you try to kill guards on consoles to the different areas. Kil'Jaeden's more or less just toying with you. In utterly fatal ways, yeah, but he's not seriously intimidated about you.

Then you need to have someone in your raid click each console simultaneously, sending messages to your buddies back in the old boss rooms. Your buddies then flip some switches and turn the beams around so that instead of channelling energy TO Kil'Jaeden, they're blasting him with the energy.

Kil'Jaeden gets all angry and stuff and weakened and THEN you fight him for real.


Weakened? Yeah, okay. But it's more fun than say, Ragnaros or whatever because it's not a matter of him just "being" weakened, or just having NPCs helping you... You and your raid are the ones responsible for weakening him, even if you did use the energy of the Sunwell and not just Blades of Azzinoth or whatever to nuke him down.