The champion NPC's from the pavilions are bosses in the 5 man. It is Garrosh and Varian we fight along with NPC's most likely considering there are voiceovers for when Varian and Garrosh kill things.

So does something like this look like the correct progression / storyline for the raid?

1) Magnataur + Jormungar wyrms

2) A gnome warlock somehow summons an Eredar prince, which tries to destroy the Colosium (and you)

Interlude: Garrosh accuses the Alliance of summoning the demon

3) Twin Valkyr, Arthas' lieutenants

Interlude: Tirion announces that the next fight will be against the Argent Crusade champions. However, [Garrosh / Varian] demands that they be allowed to fight for the glory of the [Horde / Alliance] instead

4) Alliance fight Garrosh Hellscream, Horde fight Varian Wrynn. Not sure if you kill them, but it's doubtful.

Interlude: Tirian berates the Alliance and Horde for fighting, but is interrupted by Arthas rocking up and collapsing the Colosium floor.

5) Anub'arak

I don’t understand this Argent ‘tournament’- we fight Eadric and he says ‘I yield! I submit! Excellent work... and run away now‘
And then Tirions allow us to kill the opposite faction and then complains about it.

Maybe we’re missing something critical that hasn’t yet been revealed, but it seems a bit silly on Tirion’s part.

The Black Knight Monty Python joke isn’t funny anymore.

And Anub’arak, please just leave him alone..

What? Again? Well it’s lucky they made him blue and put some icicles on him otherwise it would be like the old fight!

Massive Spoilers!

So I finally got into the MPQ, and like a kid in a candy factory I jumped right in. :^)

Anub'arak's new dialog isn't particularly interesting, nothing lore heavy at all, just battle cries and such for abilities during the encounter. The Black Knight isn't anybody of interest as you were all speculating, just a random minion of Arthas. Jaina's voice actor has been replaced(or maybe just re-enacted), all her voice work has been redone as well from caverns of time and her greetings/aggro in Theramore.

This is my interpretation of the sound files, if anything is off, again it's just my own interpretation, don't want a repeat of "Sylvanas was at Wrathgate and they took her out omg!"

Tirion Alliance Arrival Dialog:

Varian: Tirion.
Tirion: King Varian, Lady Jaina, welcome to the tournament, your place in the Coliseum is waiting.
Jaina: Thank you, it's the least I can do to support this, we need to stand together.
Varian: You ask much of me Tirion, to sit and watch...trusting the savages to keep themselves in check.
Jaina: I'm sure Thrall will have his people under control
Tirion: My people are here to make sure that they honor the rules of engagement, it will do your subjects well to see you in the stands.
Varian: Perhaps, I doubt the effectiveness of this gambit, it would be better served preparing our armies for the final assault, but if my presence is required in these games to gain your support in the battle...then I will remain...for now.

Tirion Horde Arrival Dialog:

Thrall: Garrosh, I expect you to control yourself here. I do not want a repeat of the Violet Citadel.
Garrosh: Pah! That was a show of strength worthy of a leader, I only regret I did not kill that human before the mage interfered.
Thrall: We are guests here Garrosh, and you will conduct yourself honorably.
Garrosh: What honor is there in thrashing about with bludgeoned sticks, this is a waste of time.
Tirion: Welcome Warchief Thrall, Overlord Hellscream.
Thrall: Thank you for the invitation Lord Fordring, we look forward to observing these games.
Garrosh: Speak for yourself Thrall.
Tirion: I hope you will see the merit of these events in time Garrosh, we cannot win against the Scourge if we continue to war against one another.
Thrall: Wise Words
Garrosh: Words of a fool you mean! The Horde will destroy the undead without your aid human, or that of a pompous king!
Thrall: Garrosh! Enough!
Garrosh: Pah!
Tirion: Under my roof gentlemen, I trust you will behave.
Thrall: Of course Tirion, I apologize for his outburst, it will not be repeated.
Tirion: If you will follow me then.

Argent Tournament Intro/Generic Monsters Fight(s):

Tirion: Welcome champions, you have heard the call of the Argent Crusade, and you have boldly answered. It is here, in the Crusader's Coliseum, that you will face your greatest challenges. Those of you, who survive the rigors of the coliseum will join the Argent Crusade on it's march to Icecrown Citadel.

Tirion: Steel yourselves heroes for the twin terrors, Acidmaw and Dreadscale!
Varian: Your beasts will be no match for my champions Tirion.
Tirion: Hailing from the deepest/darkest caverns of the Storm Peaks, Goremoc the Impaler! Battle on Heroes!
Garrosh: I've seen more worthy challenges in the Ring of Blood, you waste our time Paladin.
*They die*
Tirion: The air itself freezes with the introduction of our next combatant! Icehowl! Kill or be killed Champions!
Tirion(You lose): Tragic, they fought valiantly, but the beasts of Northrend triumpthed, let us observe a moment of silence for our fallen heroes.
Tirion(You win): The monstrous minsarory(SP?) have been vanquished!

Jaraxxus Event:

Tirion: Grand Warlock Wilfred Fizzlebang will summon forth your next challenge, stand by for his entry!
Wilfred: Thank you Highlord! Now challengers! I will begin the ritual of summoning! When I am done, a fearsome Doomguard will appear!
Wilfred: Prepare for oblivion!
Wilfred: Ah ha! Behold the absolute power of Wilfred Fizzlebang! You are bound to ME demon!
Jaraxxus kills Wilfred: Trifling Gnome, your arrogance will be your undoing!
Wilfred: But I'm in charge her- *Anguished and wonderful Gnome Death cry*
Jaraxxus Aggro: You face Jaraxxus, Eredar lord of the Burning Legion!
Tirion: Quickly Heroes! Destroy the Demon Lord before it can open a portal to it's twisted demonic realm!
Jaraxxus Death: Another will take my place...your world...is doomed!
Garrosh: Treacherous Alliance DOGS! You summon a Demon Lord against Warriors of the HORDE?! Your deaths will be swift!
Varian: The Alliance doesn't need the help of a Demon Lord to deal with Horde filth! Come PIG!
Tirion: Everyone calm down, compose yourselves, there is no conspiracy at play here, the warlock acted on his own volition, outside of influences from the Alliance, the tournament must go on!
Tirion: The loss of Wilfred Fizzlebang....while unfortunate...should be be a lesson to those of you who dare to dable in dark magic! Alas, you are victorious, and now must face the next challenge.


Alliance PvP Battle:
Tirion: The next battle will be against the Argent Crusade's most powerful knights! Only by defeating them will you be deemed worthy!
Varian: Our honor has been besmirched, they make wild claims and false accusations against us! I demand justice! Allow my champions to fight in place of your knights Tirion! We challenge the Horde
Tirion: Very well! I will allow it! Fight with honor!
Garrosh: Show them no mercy Horde champions! Lok'tar Ogar!!!
*Alliance Victory*
Varian: Glory to the Alliance!
Tirion: A shallow and tragic victory, we are weaker as a whole from the losses suffered today, who but the Lich King could benefit from such foolishness. Great Warriors have lost their lives, and for what? The true threat looms ahead, the Lich King awaits us all in death.

Horde PvP Battle:
Tirion: The next battle will be against the Argent Crusade's most powerful knights! Only by defeating them will you be deemed worthy!
Garrosh: The Horde demands justice! We challenge the Alliance! Allow us to battle in place of your knights Paladin, we will show these dogs what it means to insult the Horde.
Tirion: Very well! I will allow it! Fight with honor!
Varian: Fight for the glory of the Alliance heroes! Honor your king and your people!
*Horde Victory*
Garrosh: That was just a taste of what the future brings! For the Horde!
Tirion: A shallow and tragic victory, we are weaker as a whole from the losses suffered today, who but the Lich King could benefit from such foolishness. Great Warriors have lost their lives, and for what? The true threat looms ahead, the Lich King awaits us all in death.

Twins Encounter:
Tirion: Only by working together will you overcome the final challenge, from the depths of Icecrown come the Scourge's most powerful lieutenants, fiercesome Valk'yir, winged harbingers of the Lich King!
Twins: In the name of our Dark Master! For the Lich King! You will die!
Twins Death: The Scourge cannot be stopped!
Varian(If you're Alliance): Not even the Lich King's most powerful minions can stand against the Alliance! All hail our victors!
Garrosh(If you're Horde): Do you still question the might of the Horde Paladin? We will take on all comers!
Tirion: A mighty blow has been dealt to the Lich King, you have proven yourself as able bodied champions of the Argent Crusade! Together, we will strike against Icecrown Citadel, and destroy what remains of the Scourge! There is no challenge we cannot face united!
*Arthas appears to wreck the party, no sound files. *
Tirion: Arthas! You are hopelessly outnumbered! Lay down Frostmourne and I will grant you a just death.
*Arthas mocks them some more I imagine and this is when he takes out the arena, and we go down below to fight Anub'arak*

Anub'arak: Mhhhhhhhaaaaa, our guests have arrived, just as the master promised.
Anub'arak aggro: This place will serve as your tomb!
Anub'arak death: I have failed you...master...

I don't think they started digging in the LK's throne room or anywhere in the citadel, even the Scourge wouldn't dig straight through all of Icecrown, they probably started at or near Sindragosa's Fall.

Thanks for the info, Emeraude.

After cringing at yet another round of Garrosh stupidity, I have to wonder just what Blizzard is trying to do with him here. I mean, the rational thing for Thrall to do, after all those outbursts, would be to say something like: "you know what, kid? Enough. Go back to playing with clefthooves in Nagrand, let the grown ups deal with the situation here." And yet he doesn't, which only increases the tension with Wrynn. So I guess either Thrall still has some vain hope that Garrosh will learn something, or he's hoping that Garrosh will do something really stupid that will get him killed. Or maybe Blizzard is trying to set up something major for Garrosh in 3.3 - either a major act of idiocy to make the Alliance and Horde engage in full-out war for the next expansion, or a major act of redemption to calm things down.

I just wish Horde gets to fight him someday. Alliance can't have all the fun

Horde have Garrosh, Alliance has Varran.

The best thing that can happen to Garrosh is that Thrall is able to show him how the bloodthirst affected his father and Thrall's good friend and Grom would not have wanted Garrosh to be how he is behaving today. Also, the main reason Thrall is tolerating and keeping with Garrosh is that apart from everything else he is Grom's Son. You have to realize the importance of Grom to Thrall, evident from the Battle for UC dialouge:
The Old Friend he refers to is Grom Hellscream.

The other alternative for Garrosh is for Saurfang to do what he says he would,
I don't know what can be done for Varian as I have not played an alliance character.

Personally, after all the focus on how a divided Alliance and Horde can't take on Arthas, if that is exactly what happens in the end, I will be dissapointed. Which also reminds me that if Sylvanas is not there at the end of Arthas, it would be my biggest dissapointment yet.

No doubt Thrall tolerates Garrosh for the sake of Grom, but I always assumed he was talking about Doomhammer in the Battle of UC. Grom may have been a good friend of Thrall, but I would like to think any advice about running the Horde would be taken from Doomhammer (someone with experience in the matter) rather than Grom (someone who was about as subtle as his son).

Yea I think he was referring to Doomhammer considering how much he started Thrall on his current path.

I got my hands on some of the 3.2 sound files, and there is a folder in there named Sargeras, containing one sound file. You can hear Sargeras saying "You have failed me Varimathras". So, the being Varimathras was trying to summon in Undercity, was Sargeras himself? Odd.

To summon Kil'jaeden it took weeks and the Sunwell. Yet Sargeras' summoning was handled by a single Dreadlord? Something doesn't fit here. Or it was yet another Avatar of Sargeras? Now, I haven't played the Horde version of the Battle of Undercity, so I don't know what the throne room looks like during the summoning.

3.2 Sound Files.rar
Sound files, whoever wants them.

Well, you have Broll and Valeera, to the extent they could moderate him a bit. The equivalent to Saurfang would be Jaina. She's the one who can throw you a continent without your consent and blow up a necropolis. It would be more interesting to see her try to smack sense into Arthas rather than Varian; that's how disparate the power levels are.

Of course, Theramore's leader beating up or sheeping Stormwind's leader has its own consequences. That's independent of the whole "I don't like to actually use my powers" issue that seems to plague Jaina. She'll flit around with teleports but it takes an awful lot for her to actually use magic against people. Varian and Garrosh were trying to kill each other and she still just stood there pleading with them until Rhonin broke it up.

Honestly, Jaina has one of the most incomplete and underwritten characterizations in WoW; probably the worst for any major lore character (well, other than Tyrande, but they haven't even written anything there...). She really should be beyond things on the order of "Arthas, I can't watch you do this" by now. See Admiral Proudmoore; Jaina is supposedly able to make tough choices.

And Varimathras has had years and the full (possibly unknowing) co-operation of the entire Forsaken faction. Who cares if he needs rare ingredients or blood sacrifices. Just because he started the portal when Putress gassed the Wrath Gate doesn't mean he hasn't been preparing for the moment. With the Undercity firmly in his control at that point it seems reasonable to start his grand summoning. The counter-coup by Thrall and Sylvanus was stronger and/or faster than expected (I should hope a Dreadlord didn't anticipate it) and foiled him. I'd imagine if Thrall and Sylvanus had been an hour later it could be an entirely different story.

WoWwiki has it identified as Grom. Even I originally thought the referring to Doomhammer was the logicical conclusion, maybe wowwiki is mistaken.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Quest:The_Bat...dercity_(Horde)

From what I remember of the Battle, by the time we reach the Royal Quarter, Varimathras has summoned countless portals with Demons overflowing into the room. He has been preparing it for a while.

I knew I shouldn't have brought him those damn books.

I was hoping Variann and Garosh killed each other in the story line at the Argent Tournament.


As for the fights, it looks like the beasts fight is one encounter, Phase 1 is worms, Phase 2 is Magnataur, Phase 3 is yeti. It makes sense for the achievement too, to have some of the P2 adds up when you kill P3.

I'm excited that Sargeras' name is popping up more lately. Hopefully it is a sign that he will have a starring role in the next expansion.

His voice acting is great: reminds me of James Earl Jones' deep basso tone. Fits perfectly with what you'd want the ultimate bad guy, like Sargeras, to sound like.

With the next expansion likely being the Maelstrom then I can see him making a appearance in some form since I doubt Azshara has totally gotten over him.

In regards to the theory that the Nerubian caverns below the Argent Tournament will provide a backdoor of sorts into Icecrown Citadel, the region is currently labeled as Naz'anak the Forgotten Depths, the same name as that cavern directly under the citadel. So it's feasible that one could probably use the caverns to get across Icecrown underground to the citadel, but it would seem the caverns would just get us to a place that has been accessible this whole time.

In TBC, the Aldor and Scryers assaulted the Black Temple as a distraction for you to sneak into the sewers. While it's feasible we could use a similar backdoor tactic with Icecrown, it feels like Tirion is trying to build an army to actually assault the citadel, not just create a distraction.

It really does, espeically when Garrosh continues to do it not only in general, but in public in front of people like Tirion. It just gives the impression that Thrall is impotent as a leader and can't even control Garrosh, let alone the rest of the horde.

I think they're letting this aspect of the story play out too long. How many scenes like this do we need to see before Thrall actually does something? It's like others have said, at some point even Thrall would say "Look, this has gone on long enough, you're obviously not going to change, go home." I just hate the way Blizzard is trying to manufacture tension between the alliance and horde with Garrosh, it just seems like lazy writing at this point.

WoWwiki is just the player interpretation of WoW lore stated as fact and info for the masses, sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong(Oh the arguments I had trying to show intellect increases the rate you learn weapon skill for melee classes).

The reason they assume Old friend = Grom is due to this:

* Grom: Thrall... the blood haze has lifted... the demon's fire has burnt out in my veins....I...have...freed...myself...
* Thrall: No, old friend...you've freed us all.

My prediction is that at some point Varian is going to kill Garrosh and Thrall is going to end up losing his cool over it. Come on, even Thrall has to have his breaking point. At which point we will get all-out war between the Alliance and the Horde.

Or, worse, Thrall intervenes to try to break up a fight which leads to either Varian or Garrosh killing Thrall (probably Varian, giving Garrosh a good reason to whip the Horde into a frenzy). In any case, I feel like they are actually doing a good job with one thing they'd set out to do - showing how the dedicated pursuit of the Lich King is driving even these great heroes to desperate and depraved ends. I wish it were a little more explicit (so it doesn't sound so much like Varian and Garrosh having a catfight), and I wish Jaina and Thrall were a little more active as a third point of view. I kinda wonder, given the Arthas' heart thing, and these datamined things from Tirion, whether Arthas might not actually be bending Our Favorite Paladin in a rather effective manner.

I wonder if we will get any details on Anub'arak as a lore character, and why/how he is back? Whether it be from a quest item, a yet-to-be-implemented event, or whatnot.

I don't want to waltz in there and just kill him again with little to no background on it.