Blizzplanet has a new Wrath of the Lich King related video from G4TV. It has interviews with Jeffrey "Tigole" Kaplan and J. Allen "No nickname I'm aware of" Brack and very short previews of the new zones, the Death Knight hero class, quests and raids. It also has a very annoying soundtrack underneath the interview snippets which made me want to rip the speakers off of my computer when I watched it the first time, so be warned. A few notes of interest during the interview:
They definitely want to make sure that the Horde and Alliance experiences in WoTLK are different: "While some of the story threads will be the same, how you get there will vary for Horde and Alliance."
We will apparently not just ally with, but also have to fight some of the Tuskarr. This makes me sad. I don't want to kill the Wilford Brimley's of Azeroth. I mean, I'll do it if there's a shiny copper piece involved, don't get me wrong, but it still will make me sad as I rip that purse off of their blubbery corpses. I just dread the "Gather x Tuskarr tusks" quests I fear are coming. I saw tusks right on him! What do you mean he doesn't have any?
They're planning out all their patches in advance this time. I didn't actually know they didn't already do this, so it was news to me.
I've examined the Dragonblight before when Blizzard first gave us the preview of the zone, but some other news about the region has come into the spotlight in the last few days. I'm sure you've noticed, the Wrath news is everywhere, especially here on WoW Insider. Below I have a little breakdown of what we know so far.
The Dragonblight is both the beginning and the end of the dragon life cycle. The Titans granted the Dragonflights their powers here, and this is also where dragons go to die.
This zone contains a shrine for each of the Flights which surround Wyrmrest Temple. These shrines are under siege by the Scourge.
Alexstrasza herself is lending a hand in recruiting for the war effort in the Dragonblight.
The Scourge has been twisting the remains of fallen dragons into Frost Wyrms and potentially other monstrosities.
The Scarlet Crusade returns in this zone, renamed the Scarlet Onslaught.
Both Jeff Kaplan and Tom Chilton presented, with Kaplan showing off the Death Knight class and Chilton showing off the work they've done on Northrend.
The Forsaken-designed starting town Vengeance Landing was shown off -- this was the same area we got to play back at Blizzcon, as well as Utgarde Keep
They also got to see Valliance Keep (the other Alliance starting area), and Warsong Hold, a huge gothic iron structure run by Garosh Hellscream that Kaplan apparently called the "new look " of the Horde
Horde players will be taking a Zepplin up to Northrend
The Nexus, in the Coldarra part of the Borean Tundra, is the first instance on the western side of Northrend from Utgarde Keep, and it's a three wing instance with a raid dungeon where players will meet Malygos.
The Badge of Justice system will continue in Northrend, but there will be new tokens to act as Badges and be returned for loot.
With The Burning Crusade, Children's Week was given a new tier of quests, based in Outland. Either this year or the last, I'm sure most of you have done these quests. Rather than replacing the old ones, it was simply an addition to the holiday.
If Children's Week receives the same treatment in Wrath, I'm itching to see what the rewards will be, or who(what?) we'll be escorting. The rewards in TBC were based off of the new content, so I have my doubts we'll have any accurate guesses for Wrath's installment at this point, but wrong guesses are still fun to make. Penguins? Walruses? Baby Bornakks?
And what will we be escorting? A baby Tuskarr? A baby Nerubian? Who knows! Like I said, I doubt we can make any accurate guesses at this point in Wrath's development, but it's still fun to think about.
While 2.4 has been mostly concerned with the Sunwell and Kil'jaedan, there's still WoTLK to look for in the future, and still a few preliminary tidbits hidden away in the patch files. We've already showed you some shots of the Tuskarr that made it in, as well as the preview page for the race over on the official WoTLK site, and now it looks like someone's dug a bit deeper into the files and found the Tuskarr Animations. The animations are pretty straightfoward, mostly just running, fighting, and casting, but there is an animation in which the Tuskarr jumps up and slams his behind on the ground - perhaps a high powered War "Stomp" to make even Taurens envious? Enjoy this closer look at the gentle giants of the Borean Tundra!
Although it only went live a few days ago, Blizzard's Tuskarr page on their Wrath of the Lich King site has already been subtly updated. I don't have a copy of the old page, but it used to say something about being beset by Taunka and Murlocs. Here's what it says now:
...they are constantly beset by the Kvaldir and an arctic race of murloc-like creatures known as the Gorloc.
As Blizzplanet speculates, it's possible that the Kvaldir are just a specific faction of Taunka, but their name looks more Vrykul-ish, and in fact seems to be derived from an Icelandic word meaning "to afflict torment" (credit for this theory goes to Drakhzor, of Deathwing-EU). It's also interesting that the Gorloc are listed as "murloc-like;" hopefully this means they won't be quite so annoying. Do they say "mrgllrgll" in a Northern accent?
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.
We've already speculated a bit on whether Blizzard's been slipping some early WotLK stuff into the 2.4 patch files with Holyform, but World of Raids and a tipster of ours by the name of Verth have dug up something that's definitely straight out of Northrend: a Tuskarr Male.
What we know so far about the Tuskarr is that they'll be based primarily in the Borean Tundra and be fighting the Naga with help from Garrosh Hellscream, who will be overseeing the Horde settlement of Warsong Hold there. What we don't know is why we got a model in game so soon. Could it be that we'll start seeing preparations in-game for the voyage to Northrend soon? Maybe we'll see a Tuskarr Ambassador in Thrall's chambers. Either way, it's always nice to get a bit more new expansion news, and we'll be on the lookout to see if this guy's smiling face shows up soon.
More expansion news today as Blizzard has just posted a new bestiary entry and a set of screen shots to the official WotLK site. The new monster is a strange creature called the "Shovel Tusk," which the page describes as a territorial and cantankerous moose-like beast. The concept art looks a bit like some mad scientist tried to splice together a moose, a ram, and an elephant. We've seen these before at Blizzcon, where they appeared in Howling Fjord in a fashion similar to the Clefthoof packs near Oshu'gun in Nagrand, with one hostile "leader of the pack" leading a group of neutrals. Mike Schramm's speculation was that they might be a Clefthoof-like Beast of Burden for the Tuskarr, which seems to have been proven wrong for now. I'm actually thinking that this would make a pretty awesome quest or faction mount, sort of like the Talbuk, that other species over in Nagrand.
In addition, they've added some new screenshots as well, something I always love seeing, since I've been impressed with their clarity and detail. I can only hope my system can display those graphics half as well when the game (or beta!) makes it into my hot little hands. The screenshots on the bestiary page are primarily the Shovel Tusk in its natural habitat, though there's a ruined tower in the background of one shot that looks vaguely Elven, and in another, one of the possibly Vrykul-related Dragon heads of the Howling Fjord, and further in the background, a mining rig and a settlement. Over on the screenshots page, I can't help but notice that the first posted screen shot looks to be some sort of a fort fronted by flags with a dragon's head coat of arms. We already know we'll be dealing with the Red and Blue dragonflights and the Proto-dragons of the Vrykul, so that flag could point to a lot of lore possibilities as well.
Matthew posted the other day that Blizzard has posted a bestiary for Wrath of the Lich King, and noted that they've posted news about two new beasts we'll find in Northrend: The Nerubian Vizer, part of the spider people that follow an "unseen emperor," and a Plague Eruptor, the "most destructive" part of the Scourge's army. But what Matthew didn't mention was that there were eight other creatures mentioned in the bestiary. What, you might wonder, are these guys all about? We don't know (well, at least one of them we do). But we can guess. Get out the speculation salsa and chips!
Shovel Tusk: "Tusk" brings us to the Tuskarr, a race of Walrus-men in the Borean Tundra. And Shovel hints that this is a beast of burden or utility for the Tuskarr-- something like the Clefthooves in Nagrand.
Darkfallen: Your guess is as good as ours on this one. Sounds like something to do with the Scourge-- maybe someone that has fallen into ghostlike or demon form.
Ice Troll: No big surprise here-- we already knew there were trolls in Northrend. But it'll be interesting to see what trolls look like in the ice and snow-- surely they can't walk around with just those loincloths, right?
More, including the one member of the bestiary we at WoW Insider have already seen, after the jump.
Micromachine drops a question that I can't believe we forgot to ask at BlizzCon: Will there be murlocs in the next expansion? There definitely was a distinct lack of murlocs in Outland-- but for the few packs in Serpentshrine Cavern and the Dancing Murloc quest, we didn't hear that throaty gurgle almost at all. And as much as I hate it, I... kind of miss it.
It's not like they wouldn't fit, either-- Northrend has a coast that we'll be visiting, and while it's a little colder up there, Murlocs are pretty adaptable creatures. Plus, the Tuskarr are a race of fishermen-- errr, fisherwalruses-- and they'd probably love to have the Murlocs around, for dinner if for northing else. I'm not sure exactly what an Arctic Murloc would look like, but I'd definitely like to find out.
Then again, as someone mentions in the thread, we'll probably get our fill of Murlocs whenever Blizzard gets around to making the Maelstrom expansion and tells us what all the Murlocs are doing on land in the first place. But until then, while it's OK to leave Murlocs out of Outlands (because how are they going to get there in the first place), it's unacceptable to completely leave Murlocs off the northern continent of Azeroth. Bring on the gurgle!
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