Heh, it would be great if world firsts not only ment something to the community, but to Blizzard as well. War4 will talk about the great deads of The Nihilum Scouts and the Risen Patrol who, tossing aside their horde/alliance differences, valiently charged through the Necropolis and stopped Kel'Thuzud's evil plans, and whatnot.

that wouldn't exactly fit with the Alliance quest chain that ends when you turn in Onyxia's head, though. Nor for the Horde when you turn in Rend's head. Onyxia is not only the Broodmother, she is also attempting to infiltrate the human royal hierarchy.

Onyxia was actually the first time you'd have to think of the Alliance and Horde working together to defeat a threat, sort of like the AQ opening. If you're looking at it from a lore perspective, the only way a Horde raid could kill Onyxia without marching through Stormwind is: The Alliance has to escort Marshal Windsor out of BRD so that he can return to Stormwind and expose Onyxia so that a Horde raid can stand outside Onyxia's lair and camp Alliance.

This is one of the things that has always confused me about RP servers. How do the hardcore raiders square with killing the same, named bosses over and over again? I just can't see maintaining immersion while looking someone you killed last week dead in the eye.

Well, I don't play on a RP server in WoW, but I did in EQ. Basically, when roleplaying we just counted the first time we killed the boss as being the "lore" killing of him, and every time after that was just for farming up etc.

It really requires a stretch of the imagination to force roleplaying and raiding together though in any game.

The RPers mostly don't raid, but they generally handle it in one of two ways:

1) The first time you killed the boss, and after that you're just killing a random person who took the boss's place and happens to drop loot.
2) You killed them, but then they got rezzed. There's a pretty strong precedent in warcraft history that death is far from permentant. If you just accept it as lore instead of a game mechanic, it also means you don't have to worry about the fact that your character keeps dying, too.

I hope we don't kill Kael/Illidan/etc, but I think WoW should impact the lore that it created. Van Cleef, Arugal, Balnazzar, Mograine, Nef, Vael, C'Thun last incarnation and Sapphiron are all dead as a doornail. Rend and Dagran's armies are in disarry and chaos after losing their leaders(and in the case of the Dark Irons, their god). As evidenced by some really cool scripts in Light's Hope, Taelan is dead and the Order of the Silver Hand has been re-founded. Ragnaros has finally been banished back to the Elemental Plane. That's all fine. But Illidan and Kael'thas deserve better than to get taken out by Guild X.

The idea that Blizzard will use guild names in lore would be quite awesome. Were all the first-kill guilds fairly 'immersive'? Ascent got Rag, Drama got Nef, Nihilum Kel...who killed Onyxia and C'Thun?

C'Thun was, again, Nihilum.

Ragnaros being banished back to the Elemental Plane doesn't mean he can never return, btw...

Personally, as long as the story remains relatively consistent, I'm pretty much fine with whatever they do, because it's just like any book you look forward to. Since you're sort of at their mercy, you just have to trust that they make it into a good story - otherwise, we won't buy the next novel.

Nihilum got C'Thun as well, but barely. Of course, if they did add Nihilum into Lore, it'd take about 2 seconds before the screams that they only took him down because C'Thun was Hotfixed before the European Reset, and after the North American reset. North American guilds had to re-clear AQ40, Nihilum just walked up to C'Thun and killed him.

People still complain about this now when it means practically nothing, if they added Nihilum to the Lore? Ouch, I can't imagine how many people will get their diapers in a twist. ;)

Obviously making kills mean something is not a simple thing at all, because that means only one person (or group, or raid) would be able to achieve it. Imagine completing your Onyxia chain only to find out she's dead, and that it's completely unnecessary. Or that you head to MC for the first time and there's nothing there, Ragnaros has long been vanquished. Seriously, what kind of game would that be?

That is why I think the new Lord of the Rings Online is going to bomb. The first version was completely scrapped, and restarted. Now you can only play on the "good" side. In the game, your actions do mean something, but only for you. The example they give is you freeing a town of bandits, but the town burns down. So every time you go back to that town, it's burnt to the ground...but if you're buddy hasn't been there yet, it's still there. Huh? So if you go together, you'll see two different things in the same game. Unless they've changed it again (and the game is about 3 years late, so they may have), I'd much rather prefer the way WoW does it.

EDIT: Can't spell today at all.

I look at the killing of raid bosses and major characters in the canon in a different light than most people. It's not so much that we kill them, but we are mercenaries for other, more powerful characters in the lore. As far as I am concerned, they can kill off anyone if they simply make the guild that did it mercenaries of whoever assigned you the quest. I see it more as the lieutenant in AQ20. He kills Rajaxx with your assistance and as far as the story is concerned, he could kill Ossirian with your help. It's similar to how Arthas used mercenaries to burn down his ships in Warcraft 3, except this time they could be a named group.

Ascent didn't banish Ragnaros. Duke Hydraxian along with a group of mercenaries known as "Ascent" banished Ragnaros. Nihilium didn't kill Kel'Thuzad. The Argent Dawn killed Kel'Thuzad.

I wonder how the lore junkies are going to handle the TCG and all the in-jokes that have been included in that game.

What the fuck is a samophlage!?