That's what several people in my guild had theorized - that an event dangling from the novel or comics would be tied into the raid as a surprise. However, I think that making an intentionally flimsy and mockable preview just so they can (only weeks later) say "Hah, fooooled you!" is somewhat spiteful and potentially damaging since some people aren't going to wait patiently for the clever reveal. I'm sure Blizzard recognizes this and I'm actually going to put my bet on taking the preview at face value. The only story twist we're likely to see here is an end boss or two that turns out to have let themselves be captured to try and assault the Crusade from within.

Plus they likely have started with at least the concept stage stuff for whatever will be the first major raid in the upcoming expansion. At both Blizzcons when expansions where announced, we learned what the first raid will be. Karazhan got a little more attention Naxx did, but Naxx was old news at that point.

If the pattern holds true, then we should get the same deal this year, even if it just during the Raid panel. If we get a Maelstrom expansion, this would be a good place for Grim Batol, imo. They could even open the place up as a zone in addition to a raid, maybe go back to that whole underground zone idea they wanted to do with Azjol-Nerub.

Not sure of what else could be a good opening raid, other then Neptulon.

War of the Merchant Princes. Where we spend a L80-82 zone doing some quests for the Goblin Union explaining about a wicked Merchant Prince holed up behind locked doors in Undermine.

Then at 90 a key to this Merchant Prince's area randomly drops off of a Naga employed pirate captain who is the 2nd to last boss in the first raid dungeon, the S.S. Minnow (a three hour raid... a three hour raid...)

We are then free to assault a Merchant Prince in Undermine to break his evil monopoly on Pupellyverbos Port Production. Or we can walk into Grim Batol (which suddenly will have an instance portal and no quests to direct us to go in and do anything) and kill Neltharion.

But seriously - Blizzard learned in Vanilla, learned in BC, and learned in Wrath. Arguably their product is getting better every X-pac because they have better "technology" (I love how coding is technology in their press releases/blue posts) and are create more story. They can hit plot points with quests that lead up to bigger ideas, since the whole X-pac cycle is pre-planned. Not knocking AQ or Naxx - both had nice opening events (AQ arguably better), but there was no knowledge before the patch. Knowing Icecrown is coming from day one is like knowing AQ was coming when vanilla released - all those Silithid quests would mean so much more.

The next X-pac should be even better than Wrath has been, and hopefully they can avoid pitfalls like the Sapphiron Key to the Focusing Iris or questless Obsidian Sanctum. I like to at least feel like I'm not simply justifying slaughter and robbery by claiming anyone living in a cave/magma field is evil and deserves it. I mean, our characters don't know Neltharion is behind the Obsidian Dragonflight, etc - all we're doing is going in unprovoked, killing 3 drakes, a dragon, and their whelps and stealing their stuff. I expect less lore bobbles in the future - we get more Lore ever release.

Some of the achievements are out for next patch. Patch 3.2 Achievements
Some that stand out lorey wise

Argent Confessor - Experience 5 different memories, if these are as good as Yogg's it's something to look forward to.

Double Time (10 player) - Defeat the Twin Val'kyr within 2 minutes in 10-player mode, there's our twin fight we've been waiting for. Sadly it's not Bolvar/Suarfang. :<

The Traitor King (10 player) -Kill 12,000 Swarm Scarabs with spikes in 10-player mode, so it involves Scarabs, and the title is The Traitor King? Clearly Azjol-Nerub was just a set-back!

The Nerubian is Lord Jaraxxus most likely.

World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King Achievements

Or perhaps he is the final boss? The traitor king is pretty damn specific really.

Really? We don't have to wear our pants on our head?

I'm guessing this is a placeholder from a developer with a good sense of humour.

As to Traitor King - it sounds like Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare (getting Razorscale to burn Rune Guardians). 12,000? I'm hoping they're "bugs", not actual creatures which can hit people. Also, exactly how many are around at a time? I could see even 500 bugs on the floor causing some lower video cards FPS issues. And that would be 24 wipes (or 24 weeks) if you could kill every one of those 500. Hopefully 12k is another placeholder number.

Edit: I think we're overthinking who it might be. Most likely it's a "friendly fire" achievement - killing his own bugs, hence "traitor."

I suspect a lot of numbers are placeholders, just as they were during Ulduar PTR.

Here's hoping "The Faceroller" gives me a title. Ret, DK, <insert your class here> all need it as an option.

The numbers are obviously placeholders.

"Final Boss" sounds like the final encounter may involve lore characters. Given that Blizzard plans to unlock the characters on a weekly basis, they may be trying to keep this boss a secret through the PTR. Theoretically, they could patch him in (as well as related achievements) the week he's unlocked to prevent datamining from spoiling it. In terms of lore characters that could fit the bill for this, the Lich King seems too obvious (and premature) of a choice, maybe an evil Fordragon/Saurfang encounter. One can hope.

It seems you eventually end up in some Azjol-Nerub caverns in the Argent Colliseum. Although it looks like the the images on MMO-Champ are showing mostly placeholders.

Naz'anak the Forgotten Depths from MMO-Champ and the screen shots they have posted. Ta-dah! I don't care if I get reported for this, I want to be excited about spider tunnels.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...oliseum_01.jpg
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...oliseum_02.jpg
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...oliseum_03.jpg
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...oliseum_04.jpg

Heh, called it. Figured something would go wrong although I was expecting more of an above-ground assault rather than a plunge to the depths of the world.

And it's not necessarily Scourge-alligned, as anyone who has gone far underground (Old Kingdom, the Arthas' heart quests) can attest to.

I just had this amazing hope that Arthas will rock up at the Argent Tournament, he will completely obliterate the Argent Tournament camp on his doorstep, burn the Coliseum and the marquees and eat all of our mounted combat daily ponies.
He will then issue some sort of threat and back off again into the citadel. I can dream...

The name I think is just from them copy and pasting whats under Icecrown initially unless that's just the general name of that section of Azjol-Nerub.

I'd be very surprised if the final boss wasn't Anub'Arak

Sure you can say not all the achievements are totally genuine, and Blizzard is trying to make us think it's him so they can surprise us, but why would they do that?

Making players think a raid is going to be nothing but a boring story-less kill-fest with not one, but TWO worms, then hitting us with an Azjol'Nerub Lorenado at the last minute, is an awesome bait'n'switch.

Hinting that the final boss is someone players really want and have been hoping for ever since the first time we realised he was relegated to some ridiculous level 74 instance only to say, 'HAHA, he's not really what you were hoping for, he's just some random crypt lord that no-one gives a f*** about! Gotcha!' is a shit bait'n'switch.

Haha, 3.2 is Azjol-Nerub after all! Well, maybe kinda. Wonder what the Final Boss will be. I really doubt Anub'Arak, but.. maybe.

Too bad it is just a single boss encounter in there though. Makes it seem like the floor will cave in after the first 4 encounters.

Any idea why the kill credit achievements seem to list 8 or 10 bosses? Perhaps the first 5 are upstairs then the remainder downstairs?

I believe earlier in this thread someone even specficially said "I bet the Nerubians bury up through the floor of the arena". Pretty good call right there. It makes sense really, they obviously would have had art assets left over from the Nerubian instance/zone and probably already had the Anub Arak (or another crypt lord) done and dusted much like YS.

It's as if an achievement for killing the Iron Council were to include all 3. I'm sure it will still be 5 encounters, but the two before the Final Boss can be lumped together since they're probably the Val'kyrs. Then you have a couple Jorumungars, probably coupled with the first listing as an encounter.

So, browsing through some quests on Wowwiki, looking at some of the lore rich quests that I didn't get to experience as Horde, i ran apon the one with the three Bronzebeard brothers reuniting.

I wonder, will there ever be one for the three Windrunner sisters? (Sylvanas, Alleria, Vareesa) and how would it turn out? And on Sylvanas general character...I'm really, really pulling for her to be one of the good guys.

What are some of the other lore heavy quests on the Alliance side I may have missed?

Warcraft Comic #20 came out, it was fairly short, and I don't want to write up this giant summary so I'll just point out the cliff-notes:

Alliance/Horde/Theramore Forces beat back the Scourge invasion.
Garona is freed by somebody and taken from Theramore, no idea by who.
Veleera drains the power from Med'an/Meryl to fight Cho'gall.
Valeera in desperation agrees to allow the demon from earlier in the series to possess her to save everyone.
The demon turns out to be a Dreadlord that Meryl knows, but the demon cannot defeat Cho'gall.
Meryl teleports them away from Cho'gall, but now they have to deal with a demon infused Valeera/Dreadlord.
The Dreadlord says that he would like to make Med'an his new host.

It's a very short issue, most of the issue focuses around the action at AQ with Valeera facing off against Cho'gall, there's also some very nice artwork of Valeera with the fel-taint washing over her as she starts giving into the demon and fighting.

Alleria needs to come back into the picture for that to happen, maybe if WoW lasts long enough we'll end up going into some of those other worlds Blizzard talks about on occasion.

The Bronzebeard Revelation was the biggest one, as there were hints of it, but you the player probably didn't know fully beforehand.

In the Tundra there's a questline that involves Tharassian's sister, and kind of sheds some light on the political climate of the Death Knights in the Alliance(Word on the Street - Quest - World of Warcraft, Finding the Phylactery - Quest - World of Warcraft). There's also the mechagnome explanation up north, which foreshadows the much deeper curse of flesh. The Mechagnomes - Quest - World of Warcraft

In the Dragonwastes, there's An End And A Beginning - Quest - World of Warcraft, in which you kill Father Malroy with Bolvar's help before the Wrathgate. And of course the Frostmourne Cavern where you can see Arthas take up Frostmourne, as well as the Forgotten Beach where you can see the ghosts of Arthas's men find out he betrayed them, these are alliance exclusive.

Most of the ones aside from the ones above aren't faction exclusive to the Alliance.

Logged into the PTR this morning and stumbled upon a (unfinished) questline, leading to some Tauren Druids having an interesting conversation.

It starts with the Quest "An Injured Colleague", accepted from a Tauren at the Dalaran portals.

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/2236/69196195.jpg

Once at the Elder Rise you aren't able to complete the quest, but you can follow two taurens having a discussion about the druidic teachings given to the Taurens. The red line marks a cut in the discussion.

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/8507/86611861.jpg

Both Tauren have something to say if you directly talk to them.

Aponi Brightmane, the female who you are to give her shield back as soon as the quest starts working:
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/7905/36251802.jpg

Tahu Sagewind, the male Druid standind besides her and talking philosophy:
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/2187/53931230.jpg

What do you guys make of this? And is there an Alliance Counterpart to this line on the PTR?