Yes. According to Sylvanas's dialouge in Org, while the combined forces of Horde/Alliance assaulted the Wrathgate, there was a revolt in UC and demons took over. So Varimathras knew what was going to happen at Wrathgate and the events are tied together.

The way how they got killed can point to the possibility already discussed of Saurfang soul in Bolvar's body. I don't see Blizzard going to the "old idea of DK" but would be a cool boss.

Another idea that crossed my mind was an event with Saurfang as a Death Knight and Bolvar as a Undead created by the plague (the new plague could have unkown secondary efects), that could end with Thrall and/or Varian giving the killing blows and then helping the players in Arthas event

Seems pretty obvious to me that Arthas called out Sylvannas assuming it was her that was behind this (since it was the Forsaken), it also seems clear now that the survivors got the info back to Varian and said it was the Forsaken/Horde that did this.

Saurfang didn't die to the plague, he died in combat, so the previous argument of assuming Varian has gone mad is explained now, the plague only killed a few horde (nobody important horde side) and killed Bolvar and most of the alliance forces.

That cinematic... that is just amazing. It's one of the best cut-scenes I've seen in any game that I've played. I think that they've set a new bar for themselves here, and there NEEDS to be something like this when Arthas finally goes down.

But while Saurfang Jr's soul was rather pointedly taken, and I'm 99% sure now that we'll see him again in some form (probably the old school Deathknight version), I think this is the end of Bolvar. His body was, at least as I understand it, incinerated by the Reds. And I think that's part of what the Reds were doing there, incinerating the bodies so they couldn't be resurrected as Undead.

As an aside to my own personal hope, the dialogue near the beginning between Bolvar and Saurfang just gives me more hope that there will be some reconciliation eventually. Can I have my third Theramore faction yet?

This new patch today has a new graphic for King Varian:

That armor is great with all of the Lion motifs on it. I really do hope they get around to doing new ones for all of the faction leaders. It's a bit odd that in the cinematic, Bolvar had GM gear on and Saurfang had Might on, but then again both of those armor sets looked great, so I'm not really complaining.

Wasn't Sylvanas supposed to get a new model as well? Has anyone gone to check that out yet?

My apologies. I'd seen that model before, and somehow in my mind I just thought that it was the one currently used on Live. Getting Beta and Live mixed up in my head. Not quite as cool as Varian's though.

The Bolvar/Saurfang quest/event is finally fixed for those that were stuck. You'll have to go to Wyrmest Temple at the top and get the quest, once you hand it in the Bolvar and start the quest line you'll see the cinematic.

Actually, Darksaber is right, Sylvanas did receive a new model in this beta build. I dare even say she looks hot.

Ah, the graphics artists have really outdone themselves with these two. I hope this continues in the future.

I hope it continues with Blizzard putting that kind of time into player obtainable armour sets.

It would be nice to have faction-specific military gear back, especially with the new push on city raiding the achievements are putting in place and the increasingly bad blood/open warfare between Alliance and Horde. Everyone wearing the same Horde-style Gladiator armor takes some of the bite out of it.

It was interesting to see Arthas actually taken by surprise. He's set to calmly slaughter the lot of the Allliance/Horde force himself after one-shotting Saurfang and he goes "Wha..." along with all of them.

Wow, I thought Sylvanas's first remodel was okay, but the hair looked like a bad photoshop. But now she's probably got the best model in WoW. That is one scary undead queen.

It's quite clear that Saurfang the Younger's soul was sucked right up into Frostmourne. If the movie is canon, then Bolvar's corpse was burned to ash by the Reds.

It's good to see that I am not, in fact, delusional. Did anyone see Alextstrasza's (I can never spell her name) new model? I've been crawling through so many news sites today that I'm not sure which one I saw it on, but she actually looks like a Dragon Queen.

After watching the cinematic again, these are my impressions of it:

1. The choral Stormwind music still remains amazing and effective.
2. I see Priests in specific armor, and generic soldiers in new Northrend armor, gnomes, dwarves, and humans, but am I missing the Draenei / Night Elves?
3. I see some shamans (lightning shield) and some Tauren along with a troll, but not really any Blood Elves.

These are just some minor quibbles, it's still fucking amazing and it could be human-biased because Bolvar is a human hero.

Putress' armor and the apothecary models are neat. It looked like the head of a skeletal steed was his helmet to me, giving a distinct impression of 'Pestilence' as in one of the riders of the apocalypse, but looking at the picture above it could just be a reference to Guild Wars, or they could both be drawing from the same source material.

Either way, all of this gives me a lot of hope. They're paying a TON of attention to the lore/story in this expansion, and they're introducing many new tools (phasing, actual cut-scenes) to tell it. They're also doing a damn good job of building up their own new heroes.

Holy shit. That new Sylvanas model is breathtaking. Suddenly I feel compelled to defect...

It's quite amazing to see how rapidly this game is evolving. Whilst newly released MMO's are suddenly trying to break into the market with similar gameplay and concepts, Blizzard just blow them out of the water with advances such as these. When I opened up this thread to catch up on the last 3 pages of stuff I missed since yesterday, I had plenty of things to add to the discussion. Now I'm speechless. Bravo to Blizzard, they've really touched on a new plateau today.

That would make a pretty slick Death Knight armor set in terms of looks.

That armor was data mined back during the alpha to be a future tier of Warlock armor. A screenshot of it was posted on WotlkWiki.

That undead warlock guy looks like Grand Necrolord Antiok.

Looks like the Matthias quest ends with Arthas' heart being destroyed by Tirion because he believes that there's nothing left to redeem. But given the existence of Matthias, that's hard to believe.

Not many quests added this push, though, it seems. I expect they'll add more to Ymirheim and the Scarlet base, right now there are pretty much just dailies unless I'm missing something. Also the big fort that someone mentioned in Jotenheim.. nothing dealing with that yet.

[Edit]

I'm also somewhat alarmed that there's still nothing to do in Crystalsong Forest / Dalaran still. Just 1.5 months to release.

You're missing something pretty big at Onslaught Harbor. Hint: Do the lockbox daily.