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Posts with tag burning-legion

Proudmoore server hits Phase 4 first

Scant hours after the false alarms from the Burning Legion and Area 52 servers, it looks like we have a true winner in the race to Phase 4 of the Shattered Sun Offensive on the Isle of Queldanas. Continuing their streak, the Proudmoore Server activated phase 4 early this morning. Currently, it looks like they're the only ones legitimately at Phase 4, with Cenarius 2nd with 86% accord to us.gorgonnash.info.

Congratulations to Proudmoore on continuing your streak. Be sure to check out our Phase 4 daily guides for all the information you'll need to finish strong. The rest of you, check out our Phase 2 and Phase 3 daily guides to get the edge you need to power up to Phase 4 yourself.

Gallery: Badge vendor open for business on Proudmoore

All the World's a Stage: Writing what you know

All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, commentary, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening.

Many people don't realize it, but every time you put your fingers to the keyboard to spell out some words, that's the same writing skill that authors and poets take years and years to practice and master. Of course there's a big difference between a simple text message and an epic fantasy novel, but any form of writing shares many of the same the fundamental skills - skills which one must then adapt to suit the particular medium you are using to communicate.

As a roleplayer, in particular, one can benefit a great deal from many of the basic principles any writer uses when putting their ideas down on paper, especially principles of good communication within a storytelling medium.

Today, we'll explore a particular aspect of the writing craft as applied in roleplaying: Writing what you know vs. writing what seems cool.

Continue reading All the World's a Stage: Writing what you know

Are we the bad guys of Azeroth?

After publishing a recent Breakfast Topic on whether there should be a sense of personal honor in PvP, I wasn't really all that surprised to see a few comments echoing the sentiments of "If it's red, it's dead" and "Don't roll on a PvP server if you don't want to get ganked." These crop up in any discussion about PvP, and while there's an undeniable sense to them -- why would you roll on a PvP realm unless you wanted to, I dunno, PvP? -- I've always felt that they did actual PvP a disservice. You can't frame ganking as true PvP. There's no such thing as strategy, skill, or even combat when a player one-shots another, so I've never considered ganking to be defensible along the same lines that actual PvP is.

Continue reading Are we the bad guys of Azeroth?

Know Your Lore: The Scythe of Elune

In today's Know Your Lore, we're going to take a look at something that has been requested by a few readers(and a blogger). It's not a very well known topic, it comes from a quest line tucked away in the far corners of Ashenvale that sends you running all over the world as if you had absolutely nothing better to do with your time, much like any other quest line in Kalimdor. Regardless of the annoyance of the quest line, it is probably one of the more intriguing side stories in the Warcraft universe.

It begins shortly after the destruction of the World Tree. Archimonde was gone, but a great number of demons remained. Like the Scourge, the Legion doesn't simply stop when you tear the head from the beast. Priestess and Sentinel Velinde Starsong was the Night Elf in charge of leading the forces of the Kaldorei in these regions, assaulting the Legion and pushing them back as far as they could. This held up well for quite some time, pushing the demonic hordes as far back as the borders of Felwood. Unfortunately, the Night Elves were only level 20-something at that point, and the mobs in Felwood are like level 50, so things stopped going so well.

In all seriousness, the Kaldoreian advance was slowing more and more as they pressed into Felwood, their numbers being utterly decimated. Velinde grew desperate as so many of the Night Elves fell to the Legion, and called out to her final hope: The goddess Elune. She begged the goddess for strength and power, the ability to avenge her fallen comrades.

Continue reading Know Your Lore: The Scythe of Elune

Does Kil'jaedan's defeat animation hint at further lore?

Tipster Kronack sent us a link to this video, which shows the Sunwell Plateau's final boss, Kil'jaedan. The animations look to be his initial summoning and his final defeat. I'm pretty impressed by how awesome he looks, but what really intrigues me is what these animations could reveal about the lore behind the encounter - and what follows it. We still don't know much about the Kil'jaedan encounter, since Blizzard is mostly focusing testing on the Eredar Twins these days -- when the dungeon is even activated -- so most of what we have for now is speculation. That said, there's still some pretty good things I can see in these animations.

Anyway, I'll be using Black Temple and Sunwell Plateau lore spoilers to explain what I think, so If you don't mind that and want to speculate along with me, please, do join me after the jump.

Continue reading Does Kil'jaedan's defeat animation hint at further lore?

Know Your Lore: Oshu'gun


Oshu'gun, the largest known diamond in the universe, means many things to many people. To the ethereals of the Consortium, Oshu'gun means profit. To the Orcs of old, it was holy ground. To the Draenei and the Naaru, Oshu'gun is a transdimensional spaceship that was used to save a dying race from their doomed homeworld which had been overrun by demons. Sweet.

We all know, or should know, the story of the Draenei by now. It's been beaten into our heads in many different ways in the World of Warcraft. If you don't know the story, let me sum it up for you: About 25,000 years ago, Velen, Archimonde, and Kil'jaeden were the top cats of a race called the Eredar. Sargeras approached them with promises of power and whatever else, with a hidden malicious intent. Archimonde and Kil'jaeden jumped on it, but Velen, being a prophet, had bad feelings about the arrangement. He and those loyal to him avoided falling into the grasp of the Destroyer of Worlds until a savior(...sort of) in the form of K'ure came along. K'ure explained the nature of the Naaru to the Prophet, and Velen gathered the Eredar loyal to him. They loaded up into a ship(later named Oshu'gun by the orcs) and escaped Argus, taking the name "draenei" meaning "exiled ones" in the language of the Eredar.

They rocketed around space for awhile, all was good. Then they crashed on some random planet. That's okay though, it was a pretty cool planet so they decided to name it after themselves. They named it 'Draenor' which translates to "Exile's Refuge." It beats me how 'or' means 'refuge' but who am I to question galactic fantasy languages? When Oshu'gun crashed, the Naaru that dwelled within and powered the vessel were severely damaged or outright killed. K'ure was severely wounded and still dwells within the vessel, sitting on the brink between life and death. D'ore, the other Naaru involved in the crash, died on impact. He was relocated to the area now known as Auchindoun and buried there, the first to be buried in the area later known as the Auchenai Crypts.

Continue reading Know Your Lore: Oshu'gun

Know Your Lore: The Titans

The Sword of the Titans had to really, really hurt going in like that.Well, now that Elizabeth has given me her deceptively large shoes to fill, I must step up to the bat and deliver a KYL. The injunction against egg throwing is in full effect.

Since Elizabeth is working on the dragons, I decided to talk about everyone's favorite life-making, ruin-scattering, not-gods-but-capable-of-killing-them meddlers, the gals and guys who created the Dragon Aspects, gave the Old Gods a whupping, banished the rowdier elementals to the elemental plane where they could get their brawl on with each other and leave Azeroth alone and who kinda, sorta let Sargeras go nuts and wander the cosmos corrupting and destroying everything in his path. Oops. Yes, I'm talking about the Titans, who I'm sure would hasten to remind you that batting .750 is a damn fine average.

For folks who like to just show up on a planet and fix it up so that mortals, like every single person playing the game, can live on it, we don't know a heck of a lot about the Titans. Where are they from? Why do they travel the cosmos, straightening up the place? Are they stricken with a case of OCD or is there some purpose to their pursuit of order? The Titans themselves aren't telling and if anyone else knows, they haven't shared yet. But we do know that they are divided into two 'races', the Aesir and the Vanir. (Norse mythology alert #1, there will be more.) The Aesir are more into storms and oceans, think of them as your classic 'sky gods' while the Vanir are the more cthonic ones, with interest in and power over earth and stone. As a result, the Aesir are the ones who created the mountain and sea giants to take care of the mountaintops and sea floors while the Vanir are the ones who made the Earthen, and if you have ever run a group through Uldaman you know why that's important.

Basically, the Titans are the reason that your character has places to go and things to do on Azeroth instead of starting gameplay underneath the tentacles of a horrible elder monstrosity. Sure, some of you might enjoy that, but for those of us who like our tentacles safely battered and fried up calamari style, it's safe to say that we all owe the Titans a solid. So let's talk about when the big guys showed up on Azeroth and what they did from there.

Continue reading Know Your Lore: The Titans


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