This conversation seems to come up whenever a new raid instance is announced, and it looks like the Sunwell will be no exception. Vulpe from Venture Co. sends a shout out to Blizzard.. for killing all of our heroes. In Burning Crusade alone, Illidan, Kael'thas, and now Zul'jin have fallen to our raids, and in the coming future, we're going to see Kil'jaeden and maybe even Arthas bite the dust. And later in the thread, Melynda comes up with an even longer list of people deep in the lore whom we've seen fit to off.

Sure, as Bornakk says, everyone who's gotten some has pretty much deserved it (and even though we don't know what's happening with Arthas yet, let's not forget that he murdered, y'know, all those people, including his father). And Blizzard has told us before that they feel that they have more than enough lore to go around-- even if they kill off the Warcraft stars, they've got other folks on deck to rise up into the storylines.

But the most interesting thing to come from this iteration is that we have to kill these people-- if we didn't, we wouldn't be the heroes of Azeroth that we're supposed to be. Back when WoW first came out, the devs told us that it would take a raid of level 80s (this was back when level 60 was the max) to take down Arthas, and guess what-- when we see Arthas in a combat situation, we will actually be level 80. We may be killing off all of the heroes of Warcraft III, but it's only to make room for the new heroes of World of Warcraft-- namely us.

It's a fact that the majority of what we do in World of Warcraft is kill things. Nearly all the supplementary activities we engage in, from shopping to crafting, are all basically to help us improve the effectiveness of our violent capabilities. Many players have noted that if WoW were at all real, then nearly every one of our characters would be considered a genocidal maniac for all the people and creatures we have killed, and yet we view ourselves as heroes.

The idea is, of course, that most of the lives we take are really evil anyway, so we're actually doing the real good guys a favor. We kill tons of demons, ghosts, zombies, dragonkin, giants, and rabid beasts -- even most of the humanoids we kill are bandits or wicked cultists of one sort or another. This way we do lots of killing, but still feel as though we are heroes.

There are some situations in the game, however, that turn things around for us, in which our character is not the hero. While there are some higher-level instances such as the Black Morass, or the new Caverns of Time: Stratholme, in which one could argue either way whether what we're doing is good or evil, most of situations in which you are clearly the bad guy, as far as I am aware, have to do with the undead, and to a lesser extent the blood elves as well. Of course, you can argue that in general, undead are just misunderstood, and the blood elves are just tragically misled, but as in the case of quests in Hillsbrad that ask you to go slaughter human farmers, or help develop a new plague, there's really no denying that your character is doing something "morally wrong."

There's been a lot of talk recently about how twenty-five "unnamed peons" shouldn't be able to take down lore figures like Vashj, Illidan and Arthas. In many people's minds, we're all just rank and file soldiers in Azeroth's armies, killing boars and cleaning up the streets while the real lore heroes do their work.

But they're wrong. You are a hero. Even if you've never killed Illidan, saved Zangarmarsh, or stopped the plans of the Black Dragonflight, you've done some pretty extraordinary things in your time. Unless you just grinded to 70 on buzzards, and even then, you could probably win a medal for buzzard extermination.

I'm not a hardcore raider -- the biggest boss I killed before the expansion was the Twin Emperors, and my guild is currently starting SSC and TK. But now that I think about it, my rogue has done a lot in her 70 levels of existence. She's defeated two of the children of Deathwing and hung their heads up by the gates of Orgrimmar. She's become the Queen of the Ogres, showed Thrall his true heritage, and saved Stonebreaker Hold from Illidari invasion. She's killed the servants of Illidan and has been personally challenged to face him. She's helped keep the world together by stopping the timestream from being altered. And she's the hero of numerous small, Horde-oriented tribes and encampments in Azeroth and Outland, where she's saved babies, cured diseases, killed enemies and stopped environmental destruction.

Do you think your character has accomplished a lot, or will you still consider yourself unworthy until you slay that big bad boss you've been working on? Are we heroes, or just foot soldiers?

At the Lore panel at BlizzCon Chris Metzen mentioned that some old faces will appear in new ways in future content. We can expect Sylvanas to make an appearance, Bronzebeard will lead us to unlock the mysteries of the world's creation, Hellscream will lead the Horde into Northrend. Keeping this in mind, what heroes would you like to spend more time with? Is there anyone you would especially love to see again?

Ketsumei of Bleeding Hollow makes a pretty good point on the forums: we're killing off Horde heroes, and Alliance are getting a pass. Actually, the Horde heroes point isn't quite a valid one-- yes, we've taken down Kael'thas, Rend Blackhand, and eventually Zul'jin, but we've also killed off Emperor Thaurissian, the Architect of Stormwind (many, many times), and Mekgineer Thermaplugg, not to mention that eventually we'll be killing the number one figure in Alliance lore, Arthas himself. Oh, and some lady named Katrana Prestor, usually found sitting on the left hand of the throne in Stormwind, has been killed as well. But it's true that more instances, especially raid instances, are featuring the deaths of Horde races rather than Alliance races. Especially in the endgame, we're fighting Trolls, Orcs and Blood Elves, not Humans and Draenei.

So what's with the imbalance? This Horde-heavy enemies list is actually a very recent thing-- Scarlet Monastery is full of Humans, as are the Deadmines, and BRD is full of Dwarves. But as we've headed to Outland, the Burning Legion seems to have a thing for recruiting Blood Elves and Orcs, and Zul'Aman will bring about the death of many, many Trolls. Far many more Horde cries of death are being heard lately, and that's just racist.

There's only one thing for it-- as players suggest, we should be allowed to kill a corrupted Malfurion Stormrage in the Emerald Dream expansion. No arguing now-- let's say he's gone insane from fighting the Nightmare and he's got to be put down. We need an instance full of Night Elves to kill over and over again. Oh, and while we're at it, let's have Arthas bring Uther back as a Scourge, and kill him, too! And what's the King of Stormwind up to-- isn't time he died, too?

Hero classes were in the "on the horizon" section of the Under Development page for a long time, though they have since been removed. Tseric has said that they are still looking into "alternate character advancement," but we should maybe forget the term "Hero Class." At any rate, they've been since release one of the most desired improvements for the game by many players. So when someone comes forward claiming to be working for Blizzard and to have the inside scoop on how they're looking at hero classes these days, it gets me excited. Now there is, as the poster rightly points out, no credibility whatsoever to this information, aside from the fact, as Tobold says over at his blog, that it's just boring enough to be something Blizz would do.

Basically, each class would be able to specialize as one of the three different hero classes, each corresponding to one of the class's talent trees. Then, by spending "Hero Points," which will be earned in unspecified ways (but will be indefinite (!)) in a fourth, linear talent panel, they could gain access to special abilities. The hero classes would also have some passive benefits. It actually sounds pretty decent to me, except for the fact that, supposedly, your choice of hero class would be absolutely permanent, like profession specializations used to be. I think it would be much better to do it how profession specs are now -- you can re-specialize, but only if you completely unlearn the profession. With hero classes, I'd make it so you could choice a new one, but you'd lose all your invested Hero Points.

Anyway, that's the rumor. My question for you: how do you think they should do hero classes? Or is "hero class" just an outdated idea and we should focus on novel methods of character progression?

[via Tobold's MMORPG Blog]

Today's Ask WoW Insider brings us a philosophical question to ponder and stroke our beards over (should you play a male avatar, or perhaps a dwarf female). Jesper, editor of Outland Post, wonders what it takes to become a real hero within the WoW community:

I am currently writing about the possibilities of becoming a hero within the WoW community, both IC and OOC. With anti-heroes like Leeroy Jenkins in mind, I am discussing on my realm forum and let players post comments about this topic. Have you guys written anything about this that I might be able to read?

Yes, you can become a hero in-game by completing certain quests or downing certain bosses, but what special achievements, attitudes, or accomplishments make one respected on one's realm or in the WoW community at large? What are your thoughts?

And don't forget -- Ask WoW Insider needs you! Send us your questions for your peers to answer, and we'll choose one to publish every week. Send your questions to ask AT wowinsider DOT com. Thanks!