On the issue of Loken biting the dust in HoL. As much as I've "liked" his character as a well-built new (super)villain, it seems that from the point of view of Yogg-Saron he had only two purposes (supposing this Old God really wants to take revenge on the Pantheon):

1. Freeing his master - this should be well under way and be finished without Loken personally overseeing the digging or whatever.
2. Call in the Titans with his "distress beacon on death" - we have done him this favour in HoL, yay for us.

Duskwood, eh? Hope this means we'll get to see the Night Watch in action. Also, just looking at the WoWWiki page for Duskwood is turning up a few names that could turn this arc into something awesome if used correctly -- "Scythe of Elune", "Karazhan", "Black Riders" and "Morbent Fel".

Just wanted to throw out there how cruel the Forsaken have become in WOTLK. I'm halfway through Dragonblight (having done both BT and HF intro zones). Even in HF I thought the Forsaken had taken things up a level beyond vanilla WOW--their constant poisonings and all. Then came the "No Mercy for the Captured" quest. That was gut-wrenching.

So are hers - on the left side you can see her forehead ridges.

In general, WotlK has its share of nasty quests. I remember - for example - the one in the Fjord where you have to maim the corpses of the Vrykul you kill so they aren't raised. I like the more grim tone that overall the expansion has (we are battling an army of Undead afterall).

Let's not forget the daily quest for the Kalu'ak where you have to kidnap a bunch of wolvar children -- and possibly orphan them in the process -- then hand them over (Presumably in a big sack) to a community of carnivores who always seem to need more meat -- I mean children. Wait, that's potentially worse...

Or the Frenzyheart quests where you have to poke baby gorillas with a sharp stick so you can go and kill their mom.

Or the Icecrown quests where you kill fallen alliance troops who can't defend themselves.

Sure. Here in the USA we just have government contractors do it.


About Ulduar bosses: I think the 4x corrupted watchers are a very good possibility, as mentioned earlier. I saw the videos too and it looks like there is an ice area for Hodir, a forest'y area for Freya, an arena looking area for Tyr and the last area for Mimir.


Another thing I wanted to mention was Saronite. Icecrown Citadel is made of it, Frostmourne had it all around it when Arthas got it, it's everywhere. Assuming we fight and somehow defeat YS, could this weaken the Lich King, Icecrown Citadel (and related structures) as well as the Scourge's war machines? It seems that Sarnoite / YS is a large source of power for the Lich King and perhaps putting an end to that power source would be another necessary step to defeat Arthas.

Or the whole Deathknight intro, culmulating in that quest were you have to slay an old friend. I almost stopped right there and I've seriously disliked deathknights ever since (if not before). They're monsters, not heroes.

These evil quests are over the top. Don't put stuff like that in a (somewhat) roleplaying game. We're already murdering everything that stands in our way, if you take away the thin veil of doing it for Good (TM) then what distinguishes us from the Evil (TM) we're fighting?

That's the point.

Stefan Vadu in Zul'Drak said it rather plainly. "Fight fire with fire."

One thing that always amused me is that we're what, 10 years max, from the the end of the RTS games? Arthas has managed to build himself one nice citadel with walls and a nice navy of crash prone Necropoli in the time since fleeing to Ice Crown. I suppose undead hordes needing no sleep can easily expedite construction, but the scale just seem far too large.