Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week Alex Ziebart answers your quests about the lore in the World of Warcraft. If you have any questions, no matter how big or small they might be, ask them in the comments section below and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.

We'll start off with Cole's write-in question...

Why can Rogues use Maces but not Axes? What's so sneaky about hammers but not about edged blades of death?

Well, this is likely more game mechanics than anything. They need to split up which weapons can be used by what classes evenly, or you get a severe loot imbalance. If you want to justify it in-character, maces are really, really good at stopping your opponent, rendering them unable to fight back, or fight ever again. A cut leaves a scar, a shattered bone leaves a cripple.

The Mace Spec that everyone hated so much in PvP? That's pretty much how it goes with maces in real life. You thonk someone on the head, and they're out of it. I could see a Rogue playing dirty like that. Coming up from behind, cracking someone over the head, then swinging low and shattering the next guy's kneecap.

Why can't they use axes? Probably no compelling reason besides game balance, though I'm sure they would be harder to use in a Rogue-y fashion than swords, daggers or hammers. Axes are probably the most unforgiving of all of the bladed weapons. You want a hard swing, not so much an elegant stroke, a well-placed shiv, or a busted joint. Axes tend to be more about being heavy and using momentum to cut, rather than sharp edges. Not always, but that's their tendency. Maybe they weren't graceful enough to make the cut*? Who knows.

Eternauta asked...

Why did they retcon the Draenei lore from WCIII to WoW BC? What was wrong with the original lore (ugly, thin, primitive Draenei).

Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week Alex Ziebart brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? E-mail us! Or, if you have a question for our sister column Ask a Lore Nerd, e-mail us those, too!

Despite how cool Tirion Fordring is, this was is actually one of the more challenging topics for Know Your Lore. It's difficult to write about Tirion without just giving a summary of the book about him, becase there's not much more to him until Wrath of the Lich King. Even after reading this, I'm still going to strongly recommend that you go out and find a copy of the Chris Metzen written book Of Blood and Honor.

At the creation of the Order of the Silver Hand, Tirion Fordring was chosen to be among the first of the Paladins. Alongside him were people such as Saidan Dathrohan, Turalyon, Uther the Lightbringer, and Gavinrad the Dire (who!?). During the wars with the Orcish Horde, Tirion pretty much did what every other Paladin did: Kill a lot of Orcs and save a lot of lives. The real juicy stuff came a bit after that.

Auchindoun is very much hit-or-miss on its lore, in my opinion. Some aspects of it are very cool, and others are quite... lacking. This is one area in which the retcons and alterations that accompanied The Burning Crusade are very apparent. The end result gave a proper 'feel' to the environment, but makes its history a little befuddling.

The city of Auchindoun was founded as a City of the Dead by the Draenei. It was a burial place for their fallen brethren, beginning the remains of D'ore, a Naaru who had been killed in the crash of Oshu'gun. It remained this way for some time, a beautiful(though macabre) mausoleum in the heart of Terokkar Forest, second only to the Shadowmoon Valley of old and its blessed Temple of Karabor in the hearts of the Draenei of Outland.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. During the rise of the First Horde, the Bleeding Hollow Clan of Orcs laid siege to the City of the Dead, much like what happened to the Temple of Karabor(now known as the Black Temple). The Bleeding Hollow turned Auchindoun from holy ground to a fortress. The Bleeding Hollow defiled the grounds of Auchindoun quite thoroughly themselves, and this was only made worse by their ceaseless attacks on the Alliance Expedition which had worked so diligently to force the Orcish Hordes from Azeroth. The expedition, with Turalyon, Alleria Windrunner, Khadgar, Kurdran Wildhammer and Danath Trollbane at the helm, took the fight to the Bleeding Hollow rather than allow themselves to be hassled. The Alliance Expedition took their turn to lay siege to Auchindoun. The Bleeding Hollow did not last long within their fortress.

As we continue down the road to Wrath of the Lich King, we get more and more information about what factions we'll be coming across. The Taunka, the Tuskarr, the Scarlet Onslaught, things like that. The one that seems to have gotten the most people excited is our beloved Silver Hand. The inclusion of the Silver Hand has even sparked a great amount of debate on the official Wrath forums, yammering for or against the Horde being welcome in the Order. Because of all of this, I've decided we'll take a little look at the Silver Hand this week!

Contrary to what most people believe/know, the Order of the Silver Hand was not founded exclusively by Uther the Lightbringer. At the time, Uther was actually still an apprentice. His teacher, Archbishop Alonsus Faol, was the true founder of the Order, though Uther was at his side, naturally.

A post I saw while crawling the forums during one of my 'no sleep' periods has me wondering the same thing the original poster is: where in the Outland are Turalyon and Alleria? We were told prior to The Burning Crusade's launch that we would discover the fate of the Alliance Expedition, but while we've found out about Danath (running Honor Hold), Khadgar (communing with A'dal in Shattrah) and Kurdran (he's running the Wildhammer Stronghold in Shadowmoon Valley) we've yet to see more of the fate of the two last members than the surprising fact that they have a son who is now grown up enough to wear Pally Tier 2. I wonder if anyone has told the Horde that Sylvanas is an auntie? (And man, I don't even want to think about the kind of gifts Auntie Sylvanas would give.)

Personally, although I can hardly pretend to be the lore expert around here (we all know who that is) I'm enough of a mark for the lore that I want to see what happened to the guy who picked up Lothar's fallen sword and kicked Doomhammer's ass up and down Blackrock Mountain. (My tauren would just like to tell me to stuff it here.) Not to mention all the possible drama of a Windrunner family reunion. Are there any in-game clues to where these two ended up? Does anyone think we'll find out more when the Sunwell Plateau goes live, or are we going to have to wait for Wrath of the Lich King, or maybe even beyond that?

Edited to add: I forgot to mentioin that, despite the Allerian Srronghold bearing her name and having several high elves manning it, Alleria is not to be found there.

Several realms (Andorhal, Anetheron, Archimonde, Dalaran, Dentarg, Duskwood, Executus, Haomarush, Khadgar, Mal'Ganis, Scilla, Steamwheedle Cartel, Turalyon, Ysera, Ysondre, and Zuluhed) were brought down tonight for urgent maintenance around 5:15 PST with a note that expected downtime was to be minimal.  The servers seemed to pop up online again not so long after but the uptime doesn't seem to have last - around 6:30 PST most (all?) are offline again.  Oddly, all of these servers appear to be those running on new hardware...

So reports CM Drysc.  Only sixteen servers (of the original thirty-two) remain offline, and these still could remain offline for the full 24 hours.  However, the progress with so many realms is promising news.  The remaining offline realms are as follows:

Andorhal, Anetheron, Archimonde, Dalaran, Dentarg, Duskwood, Executus, Haomarush, Khadgar, Mal'Ganis, Scilla, Steamwheedle Cartel, Turalyon, Ysera, Ysondre, and Zuluhed

Blizzard is rolling out new hardware for several US realms this Thursday, and the process of transferring the realms means - you guessed it, extensive downtime.  The migration will begin on Thursday at 12:01 AM PST and may last as long as 24 hours.  Those of you on effected realms will receive an extra day's credit to your account, which is, I suppose, better than nothing.  Following the migration, Blizzard plans to open character transfers from existing realms to new realms (yet to be opened) to further help with performance and overcrowding issues.

Realms transferring to new hardware are Archimonde, Dalaran, Khadgar, and Mal'Ganis.

Other affected realms include Aggramar, Andorhal, Anetheron, Burning Blade, Burning Legion, Dentarg, Duskwood, Earthen Ring, Eonar, Eredar, Executus, Gilneas, Gorefiend, Haomarush, Kargath, Laughing Skull, Lightning's Blade, Llane, Malygos, Scilla, Shadow Moon, Steamwheedle Cartel, Thunderhorn, Thunderlord, Turalyon, Ysera, Ysondre, and Zuluhed.  While these realms are not receiving a hardware upgrade, Tseric explains that current equipment configuration requires this.

Update: The schedule has been pushed back to Thursday.

If you're thinking it was just yesterday that Blizzard opened four new realms, you wouldn't be far off.  Hot on the heels of Monday's new realm openings, we have another four.  Still no RP-PVP, but at the rate they're rolling out new servers, can it be far behind?

Turalyon - PvE
Haomarush - PvP
Scilla - PvP
Ysondre - PvP