As long as we don't get another Faction Champions...

I'd like to think we can get an insect race once in a while that isn't marching to the drums of the Old Gods. Nothing so far suggests they are, and I think it would downplay the Alliance vs. Horde (supposedly the primary theme) aspect if they were to show up. The Sha, for example, work perfectly with the theme because the conflict between the Alliance and Horde would be the very reason for their rise.

I think the best explanation would be that the Mantid are taking advantage of the chaos and trying to make a grab for dominance while the Pandaren are occupied with choosing sides. They're supposed to be intelligent so even if they regularly make an attempt every thousand-years it wouldn't be that strange for them to try and seize the opportunity, and most importantly it would be because of the Alliance and Horde.

I'm looking at this from the perspective that we, as the instigators of war, are the antagonist of this expansion.

Vanilla did have various different foes, and I am going to assume this will have a similar approach in regards to the raids. The first tier in this expansion is all about the various other races living there. That being said, the Sha may end up being the final guys we have to stop, which is fitting since they are going to get powerful in the first place thanks to both factions fighting each other.

My gut feeling is that they will try to introduce more Azshara stuff in the next Xpac, even though they aren't talking about it. While people who read the books or other out-of-game materials know she is very powerful, people ingame only have had some very limited exposure to her. Some of the quests talk about her and she referenced by the night elves every now and again, but the naga have never really felt like some "omg, we're doomed!" threat ingame, primarily because they usually just chill out in the ocean. Pandaria is an island afterall, so it would be a perfect opportunity to shoehorn that in later on.

The next major patch will probably go a long way in shoring up some of the ingame lore shortcomings by basically letting players go back to the War of the Ancients and getting a better idea of the type of person Azshara is and hopefully they will also showcase that there is an old god connection that comes into play.

Them going into this expansion without a figurehead "big bad" makes sense, because Azshara currently lacks the name recognition that came from the WC2 and WC3 characters. While the lore nuts would think it's cool, your average player isn't familiar enough with her to really be able to provide any sort of meaningful reaction to that. By not having a "big central bad", they can introduce lore much like they did in Vanilla: Raid dungeons provide more ingame lore, which they can then build upon later to get players excited.

The whole MoP expansion is leaving me with a big, "meh."

On a slightly related note, there must be a big bad guy at the end (eg, Deathwing) otherwise it farks up the whole game storyline. A factional conflict at the end just doesn't work at all. In previous tiers it can be reasoned that the bad guy is dead at the hands of "NPC" and now that bad guy is worm food, never to trouble us a gain.

But if the final boss is factional, who is actually dead? Is it Margaux Alliance or Bilbo Horde? Not only are you ending up with multiple NPCs who kill them but it's confusing who actually died. And that's before you even think about the fact that both occupy the same stronghold and have the same abilities.

Hell, it doesn't even have to be a raid setting to make that crazyness. If factional conflicts end up taking center stage then more than one dungeon is going to float that way. Kaejin hit the nail on the head in that we're going to end up with more than just one, probably more than just a few "faction champion" fights.

Taking that a bit further, they almost have to introduce the main villian at the start or it becomes K'J all over again. New Expansion -> 3+ patches with no meaningful interaction to set him up -> Ohai Sunwell. And no, before someone says anything, having a good and honorable figure turn evil at the eleventh hour is crap, and having a constant schemer within your own faction is transparent (ie, hidden as he is from "Billy EveryNPC", all players know he's the bad guy or the end doesn't make sense).

The bad guy doesn't need the opening cinematic, but from Day 1 we need to know who they are and we need to interact with them regularly. (And if that's the case, why not put them in the cinematic?)

I think you missed my point, the point wasn't that there has to be a Deathwing, my point was that there has to be a non-factional/3rd party bad guy (or several). The whole factional conflict dies very quickly in PvE content. Quickly enough in fact, and with so many conflicting issues, that you couldn't even make it the focus of a single patch.

As for K'J being at the head of the over-arching storyline in TBC, yes, you can easily make that argument in hindsight but the in-game reality is that he's (almost) never mentioned anywhere before IoQ'D and 95% of the WoW playerbase thought that Sunwell was tacked on when development for Northrend ran long. Couple that with how Blizzard themselves say that the lack of interaction he had throughout TBC was a major failing of the expansion and it's easier to say that he wasn't the central antagonist.

I think it can work. You could have a raid called the 'Battle for X Valley'.

It takes place outdoors and you have to defend a series of positions by either killing or forcing retreat from various opposite faction generals and other high ranking military type folk, hell maybe toss in a racial leader or something as the final boss for the instance so horde have to fight Varian and alliance fight Garrosh, blizzard can decide beforehand who lives and dies and just design the end of the encounters accordingly so that if alliance get Garrosh to 0% he doesn't die but something happens to end the fight (say for example the horde sound the horns of victory so Garrosh just mass cleaves the raid, stunning us while he runs off to glory in his victory or if horde get Varian to 0% alliance suddenly sound the retreat and a canonball goes off between Varian and the raid and when the smoke clears he is gone.

Also can I be the only one who thought faction champs was a kinda fun fight? Wouldn't like to see it replicated too often but I thought it was a blast.


Lore Q&A was pretty disappointing. I guess we have semi-confirmation of a Zandalari themed storyline in MoP but the standard of questions asked was generally pretty poor (a theme throughout all Q&As this year).

I'm reading it as a 99.99% probability that we'll get a Zandalari themed storyline in MoP. What I don't like is the "They are crazy and being driven by something just now". Sounds to much of Old God corruption and I don't want the Old Gods to be behind every single enemy that we're facing. I just wish that there could be someone that's a villain just because he's evil and not because he's corrupted or crazy or "driven by something". Hopefully "driven by something" = "driven by their lust to start a new and glorious Troll empire" and not "Driven by an Old God".

Q: I love trolls. They are awesome. They are the best race ever created in WoW in my opinion. You gave us the new heroics and they were great and fun to play. But will we ever see a return of the troll empires?
A: *Chris looks like he got the best idea ever just now* If the troll tribes could ever unite, look out world! We are going to continue the troll storyline in MoP. We will probably actuallize the Zandalari. They are not done yet and they are crazy. They are being driven by something just now.

But they didn't explain the inconsistent number of Val'kyr required for a resurrection, which is what I thought the question was getting at.

The most disappointing in my opinion is this:

it reminds me BC. Tons of new lore, but we will have to wait until after MoP to find out what happened with Old world heroes and enemies.

Kind of a misleading answer since she didn't use the fifth one as a res, the fifth one died at the Battle for Andorhal, but good to know.

Unfortunately, as Fnar says, it doesn't explain why she had to use three up in Silverpine. I mean I had my theory as to why, but now I want to know if I was right or if it was some other reason.

Dave Kosak mentioned that in the game it was 3 lesser Val'kyr that sacrificed themselves while in the short story it was a single elder Val'kyr that sacrificed herself. He didn't explain why the disparity was there in the first place, even though he started the answer by saying he wanted to stay true to what happened in the game. It was probably something that slipped through the cracks.

Also, I'm becoming more convinced that Alexstrasza will die at the end of this expansion. I'd made a post about this a year ago after the Lore Q&A panel of Blizzcon 2010 (World of Warcraft - Lore & Storyline discussion [SPOILERS]) and this year, the way the question about Alexstrasza's grief regarding Krasus was answered leads me to believe that she won't be grieving for too long.