As a few of our readers have noticed, Blizzard has fixed the old problems with the Harvest Festival this year -- the new races of Blood Elves and Draenei can now do the quests that start outside of Orgrimmar and Ironforge. Last year was the first time the races had a chance to run them, and Blizzard hadn't implemented the quests for them yet. But this year, things are A-OK.

Unfortunately, there's no acknowledgement that they're new to the game -- while the quests do mention the character's class, they just see BEs and Draenei as just other members of their faction. It was a little weird running to honor Grom Hellscream with my Blood Elf, but if you want to be a good member of the Horde or Alliance (and pick up that nice food dispenser in the mail), have at it.

Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, the column that answers your questions about the story and lore of the Warcraft universe. Click the Comments link below (or e-mail us!), ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer your question in a future installment

Cowbane asked...

Is there a Heaven or Hell in any Warcraft lore? Or is the swirly clouds when you die about it.

That's a good question, and my answer isn't going to be very clear, because Warcraft itself isn't clear on it. Warcraft used to be based much more heavily on Christian concepts. There was a Heaven and there was a Hell, there was God and Angels and all that jazz. It's much more vague and nebulous now. It seems that the Twisting Nether is the current concept of Hell, but that might just mean it's a really bad place and not somewhere that sinful dead people automatically go. I have no idea if there is still a Heaven, but the Priest quest for Benediction/Anathema has you escorting souls of Stratholme's dead to the afterlife. So do they exist? Probably, yes. It is suggested that they definitely do exist. What are they like, exactly? We don't know.

Blizzard promised us more titles and boy, it looks like they're going to deliver. WotLK Information Wiki and MMO Champion have dug up some information on what appears to be a plethora of new titles. Unfortunately, most of the them are Feats of Strength that can only be obtained by one person ever per server. Daunting? Most certainly. But what are titles if they aren't special?

First off, though, there are a handful of titles available to more than just one person. 'Arena Master' is obtained by everyone who completes the Arena Achievements. It's not quite a Feat of Strength, but there aren't too many players who will obtain a Rating of 2200 in all three brackets. Of all the Achievements required to unlock the title, those three are about the toughest ones and if you're capable of hitting 2200 in all three brackets, the rest should be cake.

One title that sounds pretty cool is 'The Hallowed', which is obtained by completing all 18 Hallow's End Achievements, the hardest of which might just be obtaining the rare Sinister Squashling. Then there's 'The Diplomat', which many players will already receive at the launch of Beta -- it simply requires getting to Exalted with Timbermaw Hold, Sporeggar, and the Kurenai or Mag'har. Obsessive questers will eventually achieve 'The Seeker' after completing a whopping 3000 quests.

Finally, there's the odd and quirky 'Salty' which can be obtained by completing all the Fishing Achievements. This is a pretty tough one that has some difficult feats like getting Mr. Pinchy, fishing up Gah'zranka in Zul'Gurub and The Lurker Below in Serpenshrine Cavern, and winning the Fishing extravaganza in Stranglethorn Vale. Pretty tough feats just to be called Salty! After the jump, we'll take a look at all the titles that only one person can get.

[UPDATE] Tigole supposedly confirms the existence of an Ambassador <Name> title for players who achieve Exalted reputation with all 5 racial factions of the Horde and Alliance. It's a nice little nod to old school players out there.

Okay, it's time to come clean. One of the writers here at WoW Insider biased. He prefers one of the factions in World of Warcraft over the other. He's tried both factions... has 70's in both... and has played out most of the quest content and raided most of the 60 and 70 raids both Horde and Alliance side, and in the end, he's come to one conclusion.

I've no doubt fooled all of you with my cunning use of the second person pronoun here (note: it was third person, genius), and... I didn't? You all knew I was talking about myself? Dang. Well, on with it: while I love my tauren warrior and have a blast playing my orc shaman, I really prefer Alliance over Horde. I personally have no difficulty leveling on one side or the other of the factional wall, but in general, I find the Horde quests can veer into unpleasant, even outright evil extremes that I don't like participating in. What's funny about this is, aside from a few quests I really don't like, I can't find any functional reason for my preference. I have met and played with good people on both factions, which is why I leveled two toons to 70 and another into his 60's over there (Consummate Vees, woo hoo!) and I really can't say that I prefer one faction's cities over the other. My two favorite races in the game are Tauren and Draenei, with Orcs and Humans as my second choices partially out of tradition and partially for stature reasons since I play warriors a lot.

Death Knights are in the unique position of being open to every race (Warriors can choose any race but Blood Elf). This means you will have a lot of options for trying to pick the best racial bonuses for your new DK; complicating the matter is the fact that DKs can both tank and DPS. Milkgas, of Anvilmar (US), recently wrote in with the opinion that Dwarves would be optimal for a tanking DK, due to their frost resistance (speculating that frost will be prevalent in Wrath). But let's go over the options (listing only the racials that seem relevant to DKs):

• Horde:
  • Orc: Blood Fury would be handy for DPS, not so good for tanks; Hardiness, on the other hand, would be nice, if not essential, for a tank to have; and Axe Specialization is helpful, given that axes will be available for DKs to use as rune weapons (as well as swords and maces)
  • Tauren: War Stomp is great for PvP. Endurance is probably the best overall tanking racial out of all the races. And Nature Resistance will probably be handy somewhere, though it's not a huge deal.
  • Troll: Berserking is a useful, if occasional, boost.
  • Forsaken: I still contend that Will of the Forsaken is overpowered. May certainly come in handy while tanking, and of course in PvP. Shadow Resistance, like Nature Resistance, is a marginal benefit.
  • Blood Elf: It remains to be seen how the Mana Tap/Arcane Torrent system will work with DKs' Runic Power, but this has the potential to be very useful. Magic Resistance is, numerically, stronger than any other race's inherent resistance - you wind up with 25 points of resistance overall.

I have to agree with Michael on WoW LJ: it would be nice to have a little more variance in the types of races that we choose at character creation. Of course, due to lore reasons, all the trolls we create are Darkspear Trolls, and likewise, all of our Taurens are of the Bloodhoof variety. But it would be nice to have a few more options, especially since we now know that some of the "foreign" tribes and clans might have a member or two interested in joining the Horde.

None of Michael's suggestions would really work -- the Taunka are almost a completely different race, the Forest Trolls can't be very happy that we've killed their leader, and neither the Dark Iron Dwarves or the Iron Dwarves are very friendly to either Horde or Alliance. But there are possible variants out there -- the Zanadalar tribe might have some members interested in joining the Horde, and certainly the Mag'har Orcs are friendly to players. Alliance doesn't have as many options come to mind, though all players are Bronzebeards, I believe, and surely the Stormpikes are Friendly by now.

We've got new hairstyles coming in the next expansion, of course, but it would be nice to vary up the races a little bit, and have even different backgrounds within the race choices. RPers would love it for sure, and even for other players, it would give a little more meaning and power to playing through the various racial areas in the game.

In addition to all the other info dropping today (apparently Blizzard held an event this last week at their HQ to show off some new Wrath information), GameSpy got to chat with Jeff Kaplan, WoW's Lead Designer, about Death Knights and what they're going to be for in the next expansion.

• Apparently Kaplan says Blizzard has designed "zero" raid bosses for the next expansion yet, so he isn't sure where they'll fit among Pallies, Druids, and Warriors as tanks.
• DKs will have a disease-based DoT, as well as the creature and ghoul summons we've posted about previously
• As we heard before, Death Knights will serve as a "Fury Warrior" type of tank -- damage based rather than protection based.
• Blizzard hasn't determined exactly whether there will be faction differences in the epic class quests, but they won't be too different for races or factions, just because the stories, he says, should be the same
• Finally, Kaplan clarifies again that Death Knights will be available to all races, and that Arthas himself became not Undead, but Scourge

In case, maybe, Arthas wants to come back? We'll let you read the rest into what Kaplan said -- he unfortunately didn't tell us too much new information, but he did clarify a few points we already knew about Death Knights. And the news about Blizzard's nonaction on raid bosses so far is interesting -- has Blizzard really not made any raid bosses yet, or are they just not ready to tell us about them?

In the comments Censorman said, "I've heard China won't allow Pandas to be killed in games." Fanryn responded that "no one has ever found any reference of an actual Chinese law that forbids 'depictions of violence against pandas.'" I decided to investigate and see what I could come with for a reliable resolution to this debate.

Corpsebride of Nordrassil made a suggestion that Naga should be a playable race in World of Warcraft. She gives a list of reasons why Nagas should be a playable race such as: they're highly intelligent with their own language; they have a unique architectural style; they have permanent underwater breathing as a built-in racial ability. The author pointed out that Naga would fit in better with the Alliance than the Horde due to their lore and relationship to Night Elves.

I would make Goblins a playable Horde race if I were in charge of recruiting playable NPC races from the existing environment. The Horde needs an annoying little race to balance out gnomes. While they're neutral, goblins already have an inhuman look to them that tends to be characteristic of the Horde. They might have racial traits that help them to get better deals on goods from vendors, perhaps even if they were not skilled in engineering, they might be able to use player-made bombs such as the Exploding Sheep. I would have Goblins play Warlocks, Mages, Hunters, and Rogues.

If you could play any race in the game, what would it be?

I'm one of those odd players who likes to play multiples of the same class. I've got a tauren, human, night elf and draenei warriors at 70 and to be honest, my human currently way out-gears them all. Not only does he sport T4/T5 level gear for tanking, his DPS gear is also at that level even though I rarely DPS with him. Now, this isn't a problem, exactly. It's not that I dislike having good gear for the content.

It's that I hate playing my human.

When I first started playing World of Warcraft, I started a paladin, and then switched quickly to this warrior. I've been playing him on and off ever since, he's got close to 170 days played on him. I've come up with a personality for him (I wouldn't actually say I roleplay him so much as I emphasize my curmudegonly side when I play him... I like to roleplay, mind, but I don't really put enough effort into it) but while he's got a lot of sentimental attachment for me, his major flaw is that he's a human, and Blizzard gave humans the dumbest emotes and /silly jokes in the game.

Well, okay, a couple of towers is funny. But the rest really just doesn't work for me anymore after having played the other options. In fact, what I really want to do is play my 70 draenei warrior instead. The problem there is, while he's on the same server, he's nowhere near as well geared for the content my guild is doing, and it's hardly fair to ask them to gear up another warrior for me.

Yes, I realize this is a really minor problem. But since WotLK is promising us more cutomization in the form of dances and haircuts, my pipe dream is that they'd allow me to either pay to transfer my soulbound equipment between my level 70 toons or allow me to pay a similar fee to a server transfer to change my race. I know there are PvE and PvP balance issues to be considered here, and I got myself into this situation by playing all these characters to 70, so I don't ever expect to see it happen. But man, I'd really like it if it did.

What about you? What one ridiculous, you know it's never going to happen but you can't stop wishing it would dream do you hold dear for the game?

Slowly and steadily, the official Wrath of the Lich King site is getting fleshed out with some actual information. Today, they added a page about the walrus-inspired Tuskarr, a new neutral race in Northrend. The Tuskarr are nomadic and peaceful, with tribal affiliations inscribed on their tusks. Despite their pacifistic nature, they are frequently attacked by taunka and those pesky murlocs. They are excellent fishers, and catch whales, giant squid, and "unnamed leviathans."

Although the info box at the right says "both" under "Horde/Alliance," the body of the text says "with the Horde's recent arrival they have found a new ally in the ongoing struggle against the hostile forces of Northrend." Not quite sure how to interpret that. Nethaera clarifies by calling them neutral in this forum post. Their faction name is "The Kalu'ak" (what is it with Blizz and apostrophes?), and their main settlement is called Kaskalka, in the Borean Tundra, with outposts at Kamagua in the Howling Fjord and Moa'ki Harbor in Dragonblight. Aside from a few bits of art and screenshots, that's all the new page contains; you can check it out here. More information on the Tuskarr is also available at Wowwiki.

It happens a lot: you see some random NPC in the world wearing a certain item or clothing and you wonder "hey! Can I can a polearm like that somewhere?" You might even do some searching and find it's not available for players, only NPCs. Most often it's a weapon of some kind, but sometimes it's a particular set of shoulders, or a matching set of armor the like of which doesn't actually exist. Sometimes it's a unique item with a really powerful pizzazz.

I always liked the nifty scarf featured here on Baron Rivendare, as well as on the death knight pictured in yesterday's breakfast topic. It probably would be hard to make this sort of scarf work for tauren, but all the other races could wear it pretty well, it seems. It would definitely be a match for death knights who want to look the part, or anyone who wants that certain dastardly debonair look.

What items have you seen NPCs wearing that you wish you could wear too?

Just a quick question this morning, from Indigo on Livejournal: if you compared the way you look in real life to a WoW race, what would you be? Indigo would be a Female Dwarf, and I'm sure lots of people would be human. Who would be a Tauren? Actually, now that I think about it, Samwise Didier, lead singer of Blizzard's L70ETC, would be a pretty good Tauren. But only because Pandaren aren't in the game yet.

No doubts here-- I'd be an Ogre. Just the one head, but considering my height and size, you can call me High King Mike. I can definitely break out the dance, though, at a moment's notice.

There's a rather atrocious radio station that I pick up sometimes when I'm "station surfing" in the car that has an equally annoying jingle that advertises itself as playing "The Music of Your Life." I'll pause here so you can all run to the medicine cabinet to grab the nausea medication of your choice. Personally, I like the pink stuff, but I digress.

It's no great secret that World of Warcraft players usually turn off the in-game music within moments of installing the game. Some listen to mp3 players while they play, or perhaps they have a stereo blaring nearby in the background.

But what about the music of your class? What about a class theme song? What do you listen to when you're staring at the big boss at the end of the raid and you want to get your groove on? I posed this question to some paladin friends on another server. Their suggestions for the paladin class were "I Can Go The Distance" sung by Michael Boulton (the theme song from the Disney animated "Hercules") and – more amusingly – the chorus from "The Power" by Snap!

That's just a couple of ideas for one class, but what about the rest? What about races? It's time for you to sound off with your suggestions.