Only Onyxia reference I remember in WoTLK is line said by Bolvar during Alliance quest An End And A Beginning - Quest - World of Warcraft if you have completed The Great Masquerade - Quest - World of Warcraft. This is obvious nod the PCs who did Onyxia chain, not to Varian.

Highlor Bolvar Fordragon says: Good you see you still alive and kicking <name>. Don't think that I'd forgotten what you did for me in Stormwind, oh so long ago.

I think the fracture in the lore is not entirely unintentional. It would have to be in part a marketting ploy to make the books/comics more worthwhile to buy but also an attempt to be structured in a similar way to The Matrix™ lore was intended to be structured. ie. You can't get the full story from any one source and there is more to be learned from every source you go to. So they had the movies, the animatrix dvd, the video game (oh god D:) and a few other sources for matrix lore. So it is an existing model it just doesn't seem as well structured as the main existing example.

While I absolutely agree with the bulk of your message, I don't agree with this part. We learn from doing HF quests in the north part that we've killed King Ymiron's queen, he's really pissed, the Lich King gives him power and promises him his revenge. So while it sucks that we have to wait 8+ levels to go make sure he doesn't get his revenge, we definitely have reason to take him out.

Sartharion and Naxx lack of lore is a big disappointment though. Every single Vanilla raid encounter had more lore associated than these two.

Didn't Father Inigo Montoy at Light's Hope Chapel sorta hint at Naxxramas coming back at some point in time during Vanilla WoW?

Turning the quest in gets

And in Dragonblight, you get:



There was lots of lore with Naxxramas coming to Dragonblight.

There are none at all. The horde storyline of dragonblight focusses on the Icemist being overrun by the Nerubians, subsequently acceptance of the Taunka as members of the Horde and the background of the Scarlet Onslaugt in New Hearthglen. Naxxramas is hardly mentioned at all, you go there completely on your own.

Horde also didn't get a grand entrance into Northrend. It's just Blizzard's way of doing things. I guess Horde has gained a reputation of being filled with hardcore players, with no real interest in storylines. Or something along those lines! At least we're getting some Ulduar lore, and hopefully they don't screw us with Icecrown, the Matthias Lehner quests lead me to believe they will not.

But still, the storyline for Naxx in WoTLK is out there, even if only available for one faction.

On the other hand, the Horde get by far the best of the Battle for the Undercity sequence. The Alliance get to crawl around in the sewers and kill some random worm and assorted yard trash.

Naxxramas, and Northrend as a whole is much different from Onyxia, or Burning Crusade. It's more neutral as an area. The Horde had as much importance in Naxxramas in Vanilla WoW as the Alliance did. Blizzard was stupid to make it Alliance only, especially when there is the Argent Dawn/Crusade faction. Making it a neutral storyline would have been wise, but as we all know, Blizzard is not so bright. And I'm wondering why you feel the Alliance got nada in BC.

The Battle for Undercity is the Horde's version of Onyxia. Alliance got the daughter of Deathwing leading their faction astray, and the Horde had Varimathras pulling strings in the background, working for the Burning Legion all these years. So of course it makes sense that the Horde had the better experience with that storyline.

How so? Do you mean the addition or removal of scenery? If so, then Crusader's Pinnacle proved that could be done.

It wouldn't be far off to assume that Blizzard already planned reintroducing Naxxramas in the "Northrend Expansion" back then. Although, who knows just exactly how far they plan content and expansions -- they already knew who Darion was back then, as was hinted by the Eligor Dawnbringer & Scarlet Commander Marhjan dialogue about "a grieving child storming Naxxramas and failing to achieve anything" at the LHC inn. So they had all of this (WoTLK in general) coming, in one form or another. It's unlikely that they added that quest without any thought to it, as in to just get players confused about it, even if it did achieve that back then.

With regards to the above, Blizzard left all kinds of clues lying around hinting about the Northrend expansion. People had it coming anyway -- we knew we'd fight Arthas one day. I remember when someone discovered a doodad from Howling Fjord in these forums in the patch 2.1 data files, which confirmed the upcoming Northrend stuff well before Blizzcon '07. It's just a matter of time when people find similar clues about the next expansion.

I totally agree with you here, just to be clear. The point I was trying to make is that logically it would have made sense to lure everyone in with pre-existing big names, rather than new ones; and then follow up with the new characters. It's almost as though they were saving all of the historical characters for a rainy day, using these big names as their [Carrot on a Stick]. Nonetheless, what they're doing is clearly working for them.

Makes you wonder how the game might have looked if the first encounters were Naxxramas/Kael'Thas/Vashj/Illidan with their limited technology & encounter design, and the earlier developed villains such as Ragnaros, Onyxia, Nefarian and C'Thun made their appearances in a later expansion.

At times, I feel as though the Naxxramas story was underdeveloped because the designers pretty much took a step back and said, "It's recycled content, there's no need to re-introduce it." But considering their inspiration for reviving Naxxramas was the fact that a high percentage of players never had the opportunity to experience it in the first place, it doesn't really fit.

Also, in response to Grahamiam - you're correct. I forgot about that whole incident for two main reasons. One was purely because I hated the zone. I've completed both Borean Tundra & Howling Fjord as Alliance, and I just can't stand HF. The introductory quests are great, but beyond that, there's just endless running back and forth from one corner of the zone to the next, or spending 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get back to the top of the mountain you just climbed down for a quest. Preference aside, the Ymiron story introduced in those first few levels was so washed away by the 4-5 zones worth of stories and characters that I completely forgot about those events.

Remember this quest in Shadowmoon Valley? After defeating the Crimson Sigil, "Lord Illidan Stormrage yells: So you have defeated the Crimson Sigil. You now seek to challenge my rule? Not even Arthas could defeat me, yet you dare to even harbor such thoughts? Then I say to you, come! Come <name>! The Black Temple awaits..." Now let's just pretend for a moment that quest was a level 62 quest in Hellfire Peninsula. And let's also pretend for a moment that the entire BT chain didn't exist. So you reach level 70, and you're sitting around in Shattrath one day, and you think to yourself, "Oh yeah! Remember that time Illidan told us to come and fight him in his Temple? We should totally go and follow up on that since we're level 70 now!"

That's how the Ymiron/Pinnacle thing comes across to me. It really doesn't take much for them to have an NPC arrive in your local capital city, or standing out the front of the instance, or hell, even a letter in the mail, just to say, "Hey. Word has spread of your efforts lately. We've been trying to bust into Utgarde Pinnacle for months now, but Ymiron's forces are causing us far too many casualties. One of our generals is stationed outside Utgarde Pinnacle, and he could certainly use your help. I'm sure Ymiron has a stash of riches in his fortress, feel free to take whatever you find in there. Just bring back one thing for us - his head."

I dunno, maybe it's just me. But I really like it when I enter an instance for the first time, and no-one asks, "Anyone got any quests to share for this place?", because they were clearly presented before zoning in.

Something I forgot to post yesterday, amongst all the discussion of future content/expansions and being stuck in the middle of large-scale wars. Up until now, when a player is forced to "choose a side" (ie. Aldor vs Scryer, Oracles vs Frenzyheart, etc) it's typically a very small-scale decision which makes no real impact on the game. I'd personally love to see the Maelstrom expansion introduce a new concept, whereby each player has the opportunity to choose a side; whether it be Gnomes vs Goblins, or some other variance, but the entire way you play the game is influenced by this decision. (Which of course you could defect, ala Frenzyheart/Oracles)

So effectively you'd have two "neutral" capital cities, rather than two opposing factions sharing each half of a city. I mean, Dalaran is effectively a repeat of Shattrath, minus the choice. The two opposing factions are just Blood Elves vs High Elves, and we have no say in which side we'd prefer to represent. (Obviously due to the fire fuelled by the events at the Wrathgate re: Horde vs Alliance)

They could further extend this concept with PvP objectives aimed at each city, rather than Horde vs Alliance. For the sake of comparison, a daily quest similar to this, except the objective is to kill "Aldor" or "Scryer" players within a specified zone. Even a single dungeon in each city, accessible by your faction would be interesting, and would introduce the possibility of Horde & Alliance in the same dungeon. Hell, they could even create an objective to break into the opposing factions' Dungeon and steal some enemy technology as a daily quest or something.

All highly unlikely, but very fun to think about the possibilities.