We've told you before about Nihilum's new planned broadcast of a Sunwell Plateau raid, hosted by XFire. We just wanted to remind you that the big day's right around the corner -- the broadcast starts live on Wednesday, June 25th at 19 CEST. This time around, there's 4,000 view slots available, and you'll be able to watch the raid over the shoulder of a Warrior, Hunter, Druid, or Warlock. The broadcast is set to run about 3 to 4 hours.
As Natalie warned you before, make sure you have the Dyyno plug-in installed and ready to go ahead of time. (Dyyno runs "best" under XP on Internet Explorer, but should work fine with Firefox.) Check out the event's web site for more instructions. Nihilum doesn't promise a Kil'Jaeden take-down -- but why risk missing 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, ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer you in a future installment! Travis asks...
What can you tell me about the other portals around Outlands (the only one that springs to mind right now is the one in Zangarmarsh)? They look just like the one you get to Outlands through, but are just standing there doing nothing.
Answer: Those portals were once used by the Burning Legion and their lackies to travel between Outland and various other worlds. Those portals were also used to send Legion reinforcements to Outland. Before Illidan and his posse usurped Magtheridon, they went around shutting down these portals to prevent Magtheridon from being reinforced. Further, they've been kept closed so Kil'jaeden can't come stomping back into Outland to punish Illidan for not being able to kill the Lich King.
So we know that Arena seasons are intended to match PvE progression. Drysc a few days back said what some of us have feared over at the forums, stating that "(Arena) Seasons match PVE progression," and pointed out that the last gate in Sunwell Plateau opened only last May 20. He went on to explain that they "want that gear to be circulating a bit before the next season starts." By "that gear" he must have been referring to items that drop from Kil'jaeden, particularly weapons such as Apolyon, the Soul Render. Although a full 10 item points above its Season 4 equivalent, the Brutal Gladiator's Greatsword, they are very nearly visually identical.
When Season 4 starts, many players will have the maximum 5,000 Arena points banked for Season 4 item purchases. Some teams will be able to hit 2050 Rating on their first week, making it likely that more than a few players will be sporting S4 weapons as soon as the Season starts. Because of the way the current Arena system works, more players will have access to Season 4 gear than those with access to Kil'jaeden or even Sunwell Plateau. What does this imply, exactly?
Drysc gave a little insight into how the Arena seasons are scheduled over on the forums -- I had always thought that the Arenas were running on their own schedule (with the spaces in between augmented by when patches got released). But apparently the timing of Arena seasons has more to do with PvE content than anything else.
Strange, no? But true -- Drysc said that they want Sunwell Plateau gear to "circulate" a bit more before introducing a new Arena season. That means that the players running PvE content are actually calling the shots for when the Arena season ends -- if guilds take their time getting through the Sunwell raid, it may be a long time before we see any signs of Arena season 4.
That's interesting -- obviously a lot of players consider PvE and PvP to be completely different parts of the game, but not so with Blizzard. Apparently they consider them very much two sides of the same player base, so much so that even something as arbitrary as PvE gear distribution determines timing of the Arena seasons.
Recently WoW Insider caught up with Neg, a restoration-specced Orc Shaman who raided with Nihilum before leaving recently for SK Gaming. An experienced player who has seen all of Blizzard's raid content, from Molten Core through Sunwell Plateau, Neg's talked to us previously about high-end raiding and what Sunwell was like on the PTR. As he's become one of a small group of raiders worldwide to finish the whole zone, we've asked him some follow-up questions about guild stability during the transition to Wrath, what Sunwell was like going live, why there are so many Shaman nowadays in high-end raiding, and the best and worst raid content on offer in WoW.
If you didn't catch our first interview with Neg, you can find that here, but read on for an inside look at the toughest raiding you'll find in the game:
To tell the truth I'm kind of surprised this happened so quickly -- apparently The9, who runs World of Warcraft in China, were able to drop the Sunwell Plateau patch pretty soon after it came out in the US and Europe. Burning Crusade, we know, took a long time to release over there (it came out months after it did on this side of the world), but either The9 is responding to pressure to release content closer, or patch updates are much easier to localize and distribute.
Either way, grats to The Seven and all of the other guilds worldwide able to topple The Deceiver. Next up, Northrend!
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, WoW Insider's newest weekly feature column. Have a question about the story and lore of the Warcraft universe? Click the Comments link below, ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer you in a future installment!
We have no reason to delay, so let's get right into the meat of things!
Jere asks: I might be wrong on location, but why is there a member of the Argent Dawn stationed in Dun Morogh just southeast of IF?
Answer: Unfortunately, we have no idea. Father Gavin might just be an emissary or representative from the Argent Dawn to Dun Morogh, but he has no quests or dialogue attached to him. It's possible he'll be used for something in the future, but it seems unlikely. He simply exists. Nothing more.
Be sure to dive into the comments area of each thread (not this one!) and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk.
Let's give a quick timeline on what's happened with respect to Kil'jaeden (as a boss) so far in WoW. When patch 2.4 went live, on March 25th (26th in Europe), the Sunwell Plateau, the 25-player raid of which KJ is the last boss, was opened, but several "magical gates" were interposed between would-be KJ-killers and the demon himself. The last of these gates, giving access to KJ, was opened on May 20th/21st. SK Gaming got the world-first kill on him on the 24th, and Method and Nihilum quickly followed; and Deus Vox got the US first on the 27th, with Exodus following the day after (thanks, hyos). Nobody else has killed him, as far as I (and WowJutsu) know.
That may or may not be about to change, due to a new hotfix just implemented last night. According to Lead Encounter Designer Daelo, a change has been made to KJ's Soul Flay ability. It now uses "a much simpler rule" to determine its target: the target of Soul Flay is the player with highest threat against KJ (typically the main tank, I would think). Daelo notes that this is not intended to make the encounter easier nor mor difficult, but rather to produce "a more consistent, more understandable, and more enjoyable Kil'jaeden fight." Folks who have done this fight, do you think this is a good description of the change? Or is it a nerf, in the long tradition of nerfing raid bosses?
Unfortunately for some players, very likely not. While Kil'jaeden was definitely one of the driving forces of the Legion (and I'm sure we'll see more in the lore cutscene that apparently takes places at the end of his fight, whenever SK posts the video of it), he's nothing compared to Sargeras himself, and we'll definitely need more than a raid to topple the World of Warcraft's biggest big bad. Throw in the fact that there are still demons running rampant all over Outland (not to mention portals from all kinds of various places bringing them in), and even though we've just spent a whole expansion trying to kill the Burning Legion, odds are that we'll see them again soon.
But not too soon -- hopefully, as Morbosa says, the next expansion will offer a return to the old swords, sorcery and politics that high fantasy lovers love so much. It's not that we don't enjoy fighting demons -- they're fun. But nothing feels as good sometimes as a mace cracking some skeleton heads towards the goal of beating a king of the undead, and hopefully that's what we'll find in Northrend.
There's a lot of the usual stuff that you hear from guild after a big down, but there's a few new things in there, too -- apparently SK and other raiding sponsors are actually paying "premiums" for world first kills. Doesn't sound like a lot, but they do say they'll be able to do a meetup this summer thanks to their run in Sunwell, so that's a fairly substantial amount for playing a game. Both M'uru and Kil'jaeden are on their top 3 encounters in the expansion, along with Magtheridon, apparently. And the Sunwell "gates" system gets a pretty good review -- SK says it kept some guilds going even when they might have been burned out on the tougher fights.
All in all, an interesting interview. They dive into drama a bit when talking about the friction between SK and Nihilum, but mostly, they just stick to what it's like raiding as a professional guild in the Sunwell. It will definitely be interesting to see how these kinds of guilds react to the 10/25 man change in the expansion -- raiding has come a long way from the 40-man runs in vanilla WoW, and these guilds may have a lot more competition for the 10man world firsts.
They've done it again. The first guild to kill M'uru, SK Gaming (of Vek'nilash EU), is now the first guild in the world to kill Kil'jaeden himself, the last boss of the Sunwell Plateau and of The Burning Crusade. The gate to the encounter has been open for three days in Europe. As Nihilum notes, SK's kill does end Nihilum's tradition of taking down every end boss in WoW since C'Thun. This is almost certainly the last world first we'll see until Wrath of the Lich King. The US first on Kil'jaeden is, of course, still up in the air.
The winning raid has one feral druid, three hunters, one mage, two paladins, four priests, three rogues, five shamans, four warlocks, and two warriors (Thanks to Nihilum for this info, and thanks to Eiel for corrections). SK promise that a video is in the works; as always, we'll keep you posted. Grats to SK!
I'm surprised it took this long for a tip to come in to us about this: the final gate in Sunwell Plateau is open today on the North American realms. This means all the raiding guilds who can down M'uru now have a chance to test their skills against Kil'jaeden, boss of the Burning Legion and, more than likely, the final baddie of TheBurning Crusade. How long until we see the world-first Kil'jaeden kill? The gates should probably open for the European realms tomorrow, which is their maintenance day.
Not much is known for sure about the fight, since nobody's actually done it yet -- the PTR testers of patch 2.4 didn't manage to down M'uru, and if they had the gates probably wouldn't have been open -- but we do have some pretty solid speculation on what raiders might be rewarded with when they eventually do manage to drop the guy. And yes, I am very happy that I get to use that image of KJ in a top hat again.
With M'uru now apparently substantially nerfed, and several guilds having been past him for a few weeks anyway, the top guilds are now biding their time until they can face off against Kil'jaeden himself. Before they can do that, one last Sunwell Plateau gate needs to be opened; my guess on when that will happen is May 27, two weeks from yesterday, but no-one knows for sure.
So I thought I'd jump the gun a little and give you all a preview of the loot we should be able to expect from what will almost certainly be the final raid boss of TheBurning Crusade, thanks to MMO-Champion. None of this is confirmed, of course, because nobody has actually fought him yet, but given the item levels, and the fact that we haven't seen them anywhere else yet, we can be pretty sure these are KJ drops. And an odd number of them are helms.
All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, commentary, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening.
Some people don't want to worry about staying in character; they just want to come home, play a game and chill out. That's fine, they have the choice to be a regular player and do what they enjoy. But for those of us who seek the path of the roleplayer, we ought not to stop there.
We spend a lot of time in WoW doing all the same things other non-roleplayers are doing, whether it's questing, instances, or PvP. In the process, it can be easy to let one's character slowly drift away from a genuine personality, and into a mere avatar for your own personality as a gamer in a computer game. After all, your character must do a lot of things in order to progress, many of which are game-oriented goals rather than story-oriented goals. You need boss loot, Badges of Justice, Arena points and a bunch of other things that don't always translate well into very interesting character motivations.
It's easy to rely on old standby motivations so much that they become excuses. We might say, for example, "I'm trying to help the Shattered Sun Offensive to prevent Kil'Jaeden from entering Azeroth!" or "I'm hoping to attack Pathaleon the Calculator and take from him his prized sword: The Sun Eater!" And these are fine reasons for characters to do things, but we must remember, there's nothing really new or interesting about them. Every one wants to prevent disaster, or acquire new weapons -- but what about such a desire reveals who your character really is? How can you make normal gaming goals and activities into an opportunity for interesting performance and immersion in a fantasy world?
We've told you before about Nihilum's new planned broadcast of a Sunwell Plateau raid, hosted by XFire. We just wanted to remind you that the big day's right around the corner -- the broadcast starts live on Wednesday, June 25th at 19 CEST. This time around, there's 4,000 view slots available, and you'll be able to watch the raid over the shoulder of a Warrior, Hunter, Druid, or Warlock. The broadcast is set to run about 3 to 4 hours.
Drysc gave a little insight into 
[1.Local] serves up a smattering of reader comments from the past week, from the sublime to the ridiculous. 
So Kil'jaden is dead
Frostshock is 
I'm surprised it took this long for a tip to come in to us about this: the final gate in Sunwell Plateau is open today on the North American realms. This means all the raiding guilds who can down M'uru now have a chance to test their skills against Kil'jaeden, boss of the Burning Legion and, more than likely, the final baddie of The Burning Crusade. How long until we see the world-first Kil'jaeden kill? The gates should probably open for the European realms tomorrow, which is their maintenance day.
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