World of Warcraft - Lore & Storyline discussion [SPOILERS] - Page 499

Nathanyel · 02/03/10, 4:10 PM

Originally Posted by Leviathon

The source for both the weapon and armor is the Nathrezim. The initial lore in Warcraft 3 was that the Lich King made Frostmourne but that was retconned in Arthas: Rise of the Lich King.

sigh, third time I'm writing this, now in Notepad, because FF keeps crashing...

Wasn't it at least implied even in WC3 that both the armor and the sword were created by the Legion?
So, I'm surprised I never thought of this before, what if this concept wasn't that new to the Legion? Binding a (native) soul to an armor/item to create a warlord/infiltrator to help conquer a world?
Sure these items wouldn't be that common due to a difficult production with rare materials, but there could be other "Lich Kings". Probably still loyal to slash controlled by the Legion, and not as powerful as the one of Azeroth, which had lots of magic to feast on - after all, the Legion is so interested in this world because it is so rife with arcane energy, as supposedly opposed to other worlds.

Leguaran · 02/03/10, 4:23 PM

Two things.

First, since Blizzard is going for the whole "Arthas' humanity was never completely destroyed, part of him was still there, being why the scourge never truly annihilated the world, and why he was able to "revert to his old self" in his final moment -- Go with me on this one: During CoT:Stratholme, the Infinite Dragonflight boss (whose name eludes me right now), prefaces his battle with Prince Arthas by saying "On this day, a powerful evil has taken hold of your soul". How manipulated had Arthas truly been at this point? We all know what he did was dreadful, but also right in a way. Those he killed were not raised as scourge, because they never died from the plagued grains. Did something push him in towards that reasoning, before he ever grasped Frostmourne?

Second, the infinite dragonflight knows of future events, just like the bronze. We know now that Arthas as the Lich King is defeated, so you must assume the infinites knew that he would be stopped, and never come to take Azeroth over, yet, they still tried to prevent him from becoming the Lich King. Why? Did they know Arthas would fall, and that Bolvar would pick up the crown, and if they knew that was the ultimate fate of the Lich King, could they really be thinking ahead, of not attempting to stop Arthas, but Bolvar? Why would they want to prevent Bolvar from becoming the Lich King in the future? From previous CoT instances, we know that every disruption attempted was made to try and weaken/not allow to be fortified against the burning legion.

In CoT:Stratholme, they attempt to stop Arthas (or ultimately, Bolvar). If we take the same line of thinking, that each attempt at time disruption is to benefit the Legion, and they know that Arthas is destined to be killed, what harm would Bolvar present to them? Is Bolvar's part not over, and maybe we can expect him to play a role in an upcoming invasion?

ciopo · 02/03/10, 4:25 PM

There is also the point that we are speculating just on the video, more could be explained during the lich king encounter itself.

Exemplar · 02/03/10, 4:29 PM

Originally Posted by Nathanyel

sigh, third time I'm writing this, now in Notepad, because FF keeps crashing...

Wasn't it at least implied even in WC3 that both the armor and the sword were created by the Legion?
So, I'm surprised I never thought of this before, what if this concept wasn't that new to the Legion? Binding a (native) soul to an armor/item to create a warlord/infiltrator to help conquer a world?
Sure these items wouldn't be that common due to a difficult production with rare materials, but there could be other "Lich Kings". Probably still loyal to slash controlled by the Legion, and not as powerful as the one of Azeroth, which had lots of magic to feast on - after all, the Legion is so interested in this world because it is so rife with arcane energy, as supposedly opposed to other worlds.

Regardless of production difficulties, I'd think more logistics. Why build a new gun when the old can fire more bullets. Conquer/dine on a world. Move your Lich King to a new world. Either with same old non-native spirit driving (with the experience involved) or with a new native bound to it.

If you want you could say there's just the one set of armour (due to truly insane production requirements) and that's part of why the Legion is pissed. It cannot reuse that weapon because it's tied up out of their control. Or there could be hundreds currently active. Two on one planet would be ineffective - the first already bound all the undead to its will, the second has nothing to do but sit around and look stylish. Unless Blizz says something it's just us coming up with more neat ideas we wish they'd use.

Regarding WC3 - there's no reference to the armour in-game. Reference in the game manual (which holds a lot more lore related material than gameplay itself) is quite possible/probable. During gameplay you more or less know the armour is the Lich King because it shows the picture when it talks to you - why it's just empty frozen armour isn't covered.

Originally Posted by Leguaran

In CoT:Stratholme, they attempt to stop Arthas (or ultimately, Bolvar). If we take the same line of thinking, that each attempt at time disruption is to benefit the Legion, and they know that Arthas is destined to be killed, what harm would Bolvar present to them? Is Bolvar's part not over, and maybe we can expect him to play a role in an upcoming invasion?

Or without Arthas Illidan would have succeeded in reaching the armour in WC3, thus bringing the Lich King again under direct control of the Burning Legion. They'd have two weapons they currently lack (LK and Illidan - he only ran and hid because he failed).

Vyra · 02/03/10, 5:01 PM

Not to be too much of a spoilsport, but I suspect that when the Infinite Dragonflight's endgame is finally revealed to players it is likely to be as disappointing as the "replacement Lich King" plot. So far the only coherent pattern to their actions is that they attack points in lore that might appeal to fans. I suppose that the Burning Legion's constant involvement in Azeroth's history does make several of the Infinite incursions beneficial to the Legion (though sometimes in fairly convoluted ways), but with exceptions (Aeonus, for instance) the Infinites profess that they're acting for the benefit of Azeroth.

The whole thing just seems too disjointed to come together in any satisfying way.

Leviathon · 02/03/10, 5:07 PM

Originally Posted by Vyra

Not to be too much of a spoilsport, but I suspect that when the Infinite Dragonflight's endgame is finally revealed to players it is likely to be as disappointing as the "replacement Lich King" plot. So far the only coherent pattern to their actions is that they attack points in lore that might appeal to fans. I suppose that the Burning Legion's constant involvement in Azeroth's history does make several of the Infinite incursions beneficial to the Legion (though sometimes in fairly convoluted ways), but with exceptions (Aeonus, for instance) the Infinites profess that they're acting for the benefit of Azeroth.

The whole thing just seems too disjointed to come together in any satisfying way.

I think their issue is more that they only look at the immediate changes their actions cause rather than what will happen in the big picture like your non corrupted Bronze Dragons. For example stopping Arthas would of prevented much of the fall of Lordaeron, stopping Medivh would of prevented all the wars, and stopping Thrall would of kept the Horde from ever becoming a large force again (clearly future Nozdormu favors Alliance). Now Hyjal is just one confusing mess that had it's entire Infinite Dragonflight story dropped so I'm not going to look too into that since we don't know exactly what they were trying to do there.

Zaniel · 02/03/10, 5:23 PM

From a purely theoretical standpoint, Hyjal really isn't such a mess if you look at it from the perspective of single-timestream causality.

Basically, the Bronze flight had to send us back to Hyjal because we were at Hyjal and helped defeat Archimonde and his armies. Since clearly we weren't there in our normal lifetimes, it is obvious that we had to use the Caverns of Time to go to Hyjal. Thus the Bronzes had to send us through the Caverns to Hyjal.

Not sending us isn't/wasn't possible, because that would be paradox: we were always there, we will always have been there, and there's no other way to do it. The Bronzes just had to make sure we stepped through the portal to keep time going.

Mr. Crow · 02/03/10, 6:48 PM

Originally Posted by Zaniel

From a purely theoretical standpoint, Hyjal really isn't such a mess if you look at it from the perspective of single-timestream causality.

Basically, the Bronze flight had to send us back to Hyjal because we were at Hyjal and helped defeat Archimonde and his armies. Since clearly we weren't there in our normal lifetimes, it is obvious that we had to use the Caverns of Time to go to Hyjal. Thus the Bronzes had to send us through the Caverns to Hyjal.

Not sending us isn't/wasn't possible, because that would be paradox: we were always there, we will always have been there, and there's no other way to do it. The Bronzes just had to make sure we stepped through the portal to keep time going.

There has been blue text on multiple occasions (which I will now endeavour to find) stating that Mount Hyjal's lack of an Infinite tie-in was intentional. Ultimately, they wanted to do that instance because it was a great mission in WC3 and the Caverns of Time afforded a means for them to re-do it in a cool way. It's much like the Onyxia re-tune: it's a cool thing, no lore involved.

The Infinite storyline is definitely one of the big things that Blizzard's been cooking in the background of the game for a long time, so I think we can expect to see that come a head... most likely not in Cataclysm, but likely after that.

Leviathon · 02/03/10, 7:35 PM

Originally Posted by Mr. Crow

There has been blue text on multiple occasions (which I will now endeavour to find) stating that Mount Hyjal's lack of an Infinite tie-in was intentional. Ultimately, they wanted to do that instance because it was a great mission in WC3 and the Caverns of Time afforded a means for them to re-do it in a cool way. It's much like the Onyxia re-tune: it's a cool thing, no lore involved.

The Infinite storyline is definitely one of the big things that Blizzard's been cooking in the background of the game for a long time, so I think we can expect to see that come a head... most likely not in Cataclysm, but likely after that.

They say a lot of things to placate people (especially CM's and that's who made the comment) but we know from NPC text that the original plan was to have the Infinite Dragonflight doing something. It's pretty likely that they focused all their attention on Black Temple and just didn't have the time to do more for Hyjal.

Cranberry · 02/03/10, 10:00 PM

While I don't have the faith in Blizzard's story-writing at this point to believe it's important, I do think it's interesting that ghost-Terenas uses the same phrase Yogg-Saron does regarding the LK:

Terenas: "No king rules forever, my son"
Yogg: "He will learn! No king rules forever - only death is eternal!"

Emeraude · 02/03/10, 10:20 PM

Well, that's just a fact, even Mufasa from the Lion King knew that!

Kings come and go.

Bierzkrieg · 02/04/10, 6:18 AM

I believe that repetition is a "wink wink" to Yogg's speech, I wouldn't say it holds any kind of meaning, not with both the Old God and the Lich King dead.

Not sure what to think of the Infinites' storyline, we were shown Nozdormu is the supposed leader of the Infinite Flight, but there are a million ways that could be a deception. If I had to risk a theory, perhaps Nozdormu has also been "tag, you're mine'd" by an Old God - he's been attacked by a black mass of tentacles, during one of his journeys.

Blizzard may actually have it easier here. The Bronzes' Aspect is the perfect character to play some sort of Tzeenchian plot, full of twists and even some ass-pulls. Time-controlling beings have that habit of attacking the heroes or acting in ways that seem counterproductive to themselves just because "that's what's supposed to happen".

Nozdive knows when he'll die, too, and that's the trickiest part, perhaps. Should we end up trading headbutts with him, I hope he reveals that to be his time of death (unless it's a "Repent!" kind of fight). Things like a bunch of epixx-hunters going against the time-stream are kind of mind-boggling.

Blayze · 02/04/10, 9:22 AM

but we know from NPC text that the original plan was to have the Infinite Dragonflight doing something.

In which case, they're either there to help us (Very unlikely), there to hinder us (Hence a Legion victory) or there for something else. God help us all if their entire purpose for being there was to get Illidan killed by giving us a means to acquire the quest item for the Black Temple quest chain.

shed · 02/04/10, 9:25 AM

Regarding the final cinematic and Bolvar, the only thing that bothers me and confuses me is his player model and face. What exactly is Blizzard trying to show us? Is he supposed to just be a burned up guy infused by some power from Alexstrasza? The actual quality of his model looks really poor and cheap, especially the face.

Did he actually die at the Wrath gate after being burned by the reds and then risen by Arthas? Or was he 'saved' but deformed by the reds and they let Arthas take him and was that their plan?

The text from Alexstrasza and the other red dragon at the gate makes sense about 'they must never know what happened to him' if they mean we must never know he's still alive and the new Lich King.

Dancing Wu Li Master · 02/04/10, 9:56 AM

Originally Posted by Bierzkrieg

Not sure what to think of the Infinites' storyline, we were shown Nozdormu is the supposed leader of the Infinite Flight, but there are a million ways that could be a deception.
...
Nozdive knows when he'll die, too, and that's the trickiest part, perhaps.

A somewhat cliched option is that he's trying to prevent his death by breaking the timeline. It allows for a lot of room for Infinite activity, since their general goal can be just to cause as many paradoxes as possible.