World of Warcraft - Lore & Storyline discussion [SPOILERS] - Page 13

Alerian · 08/31/08, 2:30 AM

Originally Posted by Azurai

I'm going out on a limb here, but Blizzard did introduce the new phasing system for content that allows for players to view things only when flagged.

This is something I was thinking about just a bit ago and it does get interesting. It could be that when they placed the "new" Sylvanas in UC, they also flagged her to be a phasing character. It would certainly be very cool to see that scripted event and then Sylvanas goes off into hiding somewhere and she's no longer in UC. Probably worth mentioning that just because she says "[kill] the living," that doesn't necessary mean that they are successful in doing so.

Terp · 08/31/08, 2:57 AM

Originally Posted by Azurai

However, it could just be that Arthas was leading an attack with a large contingent of Vrykul as well (who are decidedly still living for the most part).

There's only one line of horde text too, it might be that they are all wiped out before Sylvanas shows up so she doesn't feel the need to mention that some of the living are kinda okay. Hell, there's no reason to assume that's her line in the first place.

Kumar · 08/31/08, 3:06 AM

The apperance of the Legion in Northrend is a surprising and also a great thing Lore wise and to extend that aspect of the lore.

I would not be surprised, if just like TBC, the final boss for WoTLK patches also turns out to be another Legion entity. This would be a good way for Blizzard to let the people of Azeroth know, that even while we achieve victories over Illidan and Arthas, the main enemy, the Legion is still out there and looking for new ways to conquer Azeroth every day.

Azurai · 08/31/08, 3:07 AM

Originally Posted by Alerian

This is something I was thinking about just a bit ago and it does get interesting. It could be that when they placed the "new" Sylvanas in UC, they also flagged her to be a phasing character. It would certainly be very cool to see that scripted event and then Sylvanas goes off into hiding somewhere and she's no longer in UC. Probably worth mentioning that just because she says "[kill] the living," that doesn't necessary mean that they are successful in doing so.

To be honest, there is so much they could do retroactively with this new technology that it is difficult to know where to start. Regrettably, as with flying mounts, I doubt there will be a large impetus on the Blizzard end to correct more than the glaringly obvious things (like when Prestor used to watch you hand in her head to Bolvar...). I think to some extent people have been jaded into a state where they expect nothing tremendous to ever occur unless on patch day or in the extremely rare live event. Continuity was always a very peculiar problem with unpersonalized content delivery; we could be seeing some crazy revelations in person which were relegated to the narrative before. From the DK starting experience it appears even buildings can be phased'n'razed (or conversely, rebuilt). It's just become more 'dangerous' to quest.

Terp · 08/31/08, 4:01 AM

Originally Posted by Azurai

To be honest, there is so much they could do retroactively with this new technology that it is difficult to know where to start. Regrettably, as with flying mounts, I doubt there will be a large impetus on the Blizzard end to correct more than the glaringly obvious things (like when Prestor used to watch you hand in her head to Bolvar...). I think to some extent people have been jaded into a state where they expect nothing tremendous to ever occur unless on patch day or in the extremely rare live event. Continuity was always a very peculiar problem with unpersonalized content delivery; we could be seeing some crazy revelations in person which were relegated to the narrative before. From the DK starting experience it appears even buildings can be phased'n'razed (or conversely, rebuilt). It's just become more 'dangerous' to quest.

I believe you just provided an answer to the "How do you raze Orgrimmar without grieving lowbies" dilemma. Not that I'd expect anything near as developed, but Org suddenly getting attacked when you hit 68-70 would be incredible. And instead of just ending the invasion and reverting to normal in some later patch, it could be stopped/rebuilt as you level/quest... Takes care of the limited-time only content problem that's always brought up against world events too.

Hell, that'd even be incentive to buy the expansion. Go pay your $40 and save the day or your capital is going to be a permanent hellhole.

Emeraude · 08/31/08, 6:08 AM

It's really not so much that the Legion sent Balnazzar and Mal'Ganis to Azeroth, it's more like they're agents of the Legion, and they're here just doing what demons who work for the Legion do(Cause turmoil).

I don't think it's a stretch to say that the Legion has been crippled for the most part following the events at the Sunwell. While I can't get into Icecrown to confirm it just yet, the Legion's presence in Northrend is....well..non-existent. Mal'Ganis is the only agent of the Legion we know about, and even he doesn't have an army of demons supporting him, his support is in the form of Humans he's manipulating(Scarlet Onslaught).

Regarding Sylvanas and the New Plague they've been working on. The Plague itself is supposed to destroy the Scourge, as we all know. It's the second part of the plague I'm a little shaky on, we all know that the Forsaken has been using all sorts of different brews of poison and testing on captured Alliance members(Tirisfal/Silverpine/Hillsbrad), and the idea is definitely to wipe them out along with the Scourge. I've never actually seen the Forsaken use their New Plague on their allies, but we know that they're not to be trusted either within the ranks of the Horde(Infiltrator Marksen - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft for more fun with this one). So we know for a fact that the finished product is definitely deadly for Scourge/Humans/Dwarves, we don't know if the Forsaken would be crazy enough to also wipe out their allies at the scene we see described up above. It would be beyond awesome if it did, and I'm sure it would happen if this was Warcraft 4 :P, but for this MMO I don't see how it would work, your faction leader making a move of this magnitude is something you'd have to support, especially one so highly revered as Sylvanas.

Speculation part:

I imagine the event in question occurs at Dragonblight's entrance to Icecrown since a huge event is supposed to take place there, featuring multiple major lore characters.

It would be beyond amazing if she DID wipe out the Scourge/Alliance/Horde forces in this scene, of course, based on what I said above, I doubt that will actually happen. There's so many ways you could go with this if it happened though, my head spins around the thought of it.

It would be amazing if she wiped out the Alliance/Scourge forces, and not the Horde, this event would act as a catalyst for a new war between the Alliance/Horde forces, could you imagine the absolute pandemonium this would cause? The Horde would be seen as much as a threat to the Alliance as the Scourge, not to mention the inner turmoil it would cause within the Horde with the Forsaken unleashing a weapon of such magnitude.

If she wiped out just the Scourge forces, it wouldn't be a total loss, because we know that she could wipe out the Alliance forces there too if she so wanted. We've seen small portions of Sylvanas's morality come to the surface at times, but it's been hard to imagine a happy ending for her in any way. Her path is one of the hardest to read in WoW, because she's cursed to be Undead, we just don't know what she's capable of doing or how her hatred for the Scourge will twist her judgment.

Anywho, I'm done ranting I think, that is until more lore-related stuff leaks.

Inversion · 08/31/08, 9:35 PM

Originally Posted by Emeraude

It would be amazing if she wiped out the Alliance/Scourge forces, and not the Horde, this event would act as a catalyst for a new war between the Alliance/Horde forces, could you imagine the absolute pandemonium this would cause? The Horde would be seen as much as a threat to the Alliance as the Scourge, not to mention the inner turmoil it would cause within the Horde with the Forsaken unleashing a weapon of such magnitude.

If she wiped out just the Scourge forces, it wouldn't be a total loss, because we know that she could wipe out the Alliance forces there too if she so wanted. We've seen small portions of Sylvanas's morality come to the surface at times, but it's been hard to imagine a happy ending for her in any way. Her path is one of the hardest to read in WoW, because she's cursed to be Undead, we just don't know what she's capable of doing or how her hatred for the Scourge will twist her judgment.

If Sylvanas destroys the Alliance and Scourge forces and becomes the catalyst to a renewed war between the Alliance and Horde, those gunships in Icecrown would be an interesting World PvP objective. They could also have dailies to make bombing runs at the opposing factions gunship, etc.

As a general note this entire event could open up an entire new section of lore/game play for Blizzard to explore. My question though is where someone says "No escape...", it would be extremely helpful to know who actually says this.

If its Arthas is he taunting them, or almost conceding to the Alliance and Horde (which we know isn't happening because Icecrown Citadel is going to be the last raid zone)? If its an Alliance leader it could be that the Horde (Sylvanas) betrayed them and they were crushed between the two forces (Scourge and Horde) or do the Scourge flat out overwhelm them? If its a Horde leader are they betrayed, crushed or something else entirely (the possibility of taunting is still here)? So many more questions to be answered with this particular event.

Spink · 08/31/08, 11:27 PM

The idea of Nozdormu as the leader of the infinite dragonflight is certainly interesting, it's worth looking at the different events that they have been (and will be) involved in and what the implications might be for the world if they'd been successful. It's sort of tempting to think that Nozdormu isn't trying to prevent just his death but actually the death of the entire planet.

As far as I can recall the major infinite dragonflight/Nozdormu time travel incursions are:

That whole thing during War of the Ancients with Illidan, the Old Gods, Sargeras and the getting of Neltharion's scale in order to destroy the Demon Soul which lead to freeing Alexstrasza.
Prevent Thrall from escaping Durnholde.
Prevent the Dark Portal from being opened.
Prevent Stratholme from being culled.

This all seems like a pretty big Anti-Lich King tie in to me, well Anti-Lich King and pro-Alexstrasza just incase.

The Orcs being able to access Azeroth at all is a big part of Ner'zhul becoming the Lich King.
The culling of Stratholme is a big part of Arthas and Ner'zhul becoming better friends, and Arthas being lured to Northrend by Mal'ganis in the first place.
Neltharion and Ner'zhul were pals during the second war and worked together with Teron in order to get the artifacts required to turn Ner'zhul into the Lich King (accidentally).
Thrall re-united the clans and caused the Horde to exist at all but this link to me feels sort of tenuous. What does stopping Thrall stop in the bigger picture today?

Dancing Wu Li Master · 08/31/08, 11:59 PM

Originally Posted by Spink

Thrall re-united the clans and caused the Horde to exist at all but this link to me feels sort of tenuous. What does stopping Thrall stop in the bigger picture today?

Thrall not forming the Horde would have probably lead to a loss at Hyjal. Of course, Hyjal's connection to the Infinite Dragonflight was never developed properly; instead it's not much more than a sight-seeing safari run by the Bronzes.

There's the potential for a big(er) lore trainwreck with the Caverns of Time / Infinites, if they ever get around to resolving it. It'd be a lot easier to rationalise it as something like "trying to break the continuum by causing a mass of paradoxes" than to assume they're trying to prevent / cause a certain event by altering continuity.

Crossbones · 09/01/08, 1:04 AM

Yes, if Hyjal actually made sense then the TBC CoT instances would be wrapped up nicely. No orcs / thrall means azeroth gets destroyed by legion / loses at hyjal.

• Chicken · 09/01/08, 5:04 AM

Originally Posted by Crossbones

Yes, if Hyjal actually made sense then the TBC CoT instances would be wrapped up nicely. No orcs / thrall means azeroth gets destroyed by legion / loses at hyjal.

It'd also fit in well with the Culling of Stratholme if Hyjal made sense. Jaina would've most likely kept following Arthas around if it weren't for the Culling, her horror at the acts of the Culling is one of the biggest reasons she was open to Medivh telling her to go on an expedition to Kalimdor. And no Jaina on Kalimdor would've been bad news for the Orcs as it'd mean the Warsong clan would stay under demonic control (And of course, one of the more powerful Pitlords would still be alive today), not to mention that the Alliance forces played a large part at the battle of Hyjal.

Dancing Wu Li Master · 09/01/08, 5:41 AM

Originally Posted by Chicken

It'd also fit in well with the Culling of Stratholme if Hyjal made sense. Jaina would've most likely kept following Arthas around if it weren't for the Culling, her horror at the acts of the Culling is one of the biggest reasons she was open to Medivh telling her to go on an expedition to Kalimdor. And no Jaina on Kalimdor would've been bad news for the Orcs as it'd mean the Warsong clan would stay under demonic control (And of course, one of the more powerful Pitlords would still be alive today), not to mention that the Alliance forces played a large part at the battle of Hyjal.

The Legion only moved to Kalimdor once they'd secured Lordaeron though. (Death Knight) Arthas was responsible for summoning Archimonde, and it was only after this that Mannoroth left to re-enslave the Orcs. So it's really up in the air as to what effect "preventing" the Culling of Stratholme would have on Hyjal. This is why I really doubt there's a consistent plan for the Infinites.

The Culling itself always bugged me: the two options presented to the player / Arthas were to let Mal'ganis masacre the city, or to euthanise the population. I don't mind a Kobayashi Maru situation, but it seemed that Uther was exceptionally short sighted about the whole thing. The city was doomed either way, and Arthas' option at least limited the long-term effects.

Tirin · 09/01/08, 9:42 AM

Arthas was proven right in the time following the Culling, but they had no way of knowing that then. They had the world's greatest paladin, a mage of enormous power, and another excellent paladin right there. They could have found a way to reverse the plague, to contain it, maybe even turn back those who have already been Scourgified. Arthas doesn't even consider this though, just orders the city destroyed. In the last 6 years I don't think any Scourge have been turned back, but Arthas had no way to know that at the time. He murdered everyone in the city without even trying to help them first.

Ochiba · 09/01/08, 4:27 PM

Originally Posted by Tirin

Arthas was proven right in the time following the Culling, but they had no way of knowing that then. They had the world's greatest paladin, a mage of enormous power, and another excellent paladin right there. They could have found a way to reverse the plague, to contain it, maybe even turn back those who have already been Scourgified. Arthas doesn't even consider this though, just orders the city destroyed. In the last 6 years I don't think any Scourge have been turned back, but Arthas had no way to know that at the time. He murdered everyone in the city without even trying to help them first.

I think Uther and Jaina were more concerned at what that act would mean for their own humanity. Killing innocent humans, even if they were doomed, was too high a cost.

RangerSix · 09/02/08, 1:43 AM

About the culling of Stratholm...anyone else chuckle when Uther is refered to as this great Paladin, while he just stood there at first and then ran away while Arthas was marching on to Stratholm to slaughter all its people?

He should have been kicked out of the ranks of the Silver Hand right there to be honest, instead of being regarded as this great Paladin after his death. He could have avoided all of this mess perhaps, but chose to neglets his duties as a Paladin and abandon his people to their death.