With 5.1 out, a lot of attention has been turned to 5.2 (I like this faster pace of patches, even if we didn't get new dungeons or raids this time around. I hope they can keep it up.) 5.2 will be bringing the tier 15 raid, and unlike 14, this appears to be a single raid, but also a gigantic raid, in the tradition of Ulduar and ICC.
We know it can't be the Siege of Orgrimmar already (no expansion has had fewer than three tiers, even if Cataclysm's later two were somewhat thin.) What seems the obvious direction for 5.2's raid to take is that it will be the raid in which we take down the Thunder King. For those of you who did not do the Lorewalker Cho quests in Kun-Lai Summit, here's a spoiler: While investigating the ancient tombs up in the mountains, we arrive just in time to witness the Zandalari show up and abscond with Lei Shi's corpse. The Thunder King was not the first Mogu emperor or the last, but it sure sounds like he was the greatest and most powerful. Basically, if you ever hear about a seriously badass Mogu Emperor, it's probably the Thunder King. And given how easily the Mogu can transfer souls from body to body, we can assume that his reign was freaking long.
The Zandalari seem very happy to renew their ancient alliance with the Mogu, and even rose Lei Shi from the dead as a show of good will. The Mogu have proven quite powerful, and the Zandalari aren't exactly slouches themselves.
There are two figures of prominence in Zandalari society that we know of. King Rakastahn is the leader of the tribe, and certainly considers himself the king of all the trolls in Azeroth, given the Zandalari goal of reuniting the tribes. Yet, only a few years ago the Zandalari were peaceful, looking back at their violent past with a historian's distance, and enlisted the aid of adventurers like us to avert the disastrous actions of the Gurubashi and Drakkari tribes (the Amani we merely plundered out of greed.) Yet the Zandalari would make a 180 and suddenly embrace these violent tribes to help build their empire. The reason for the change in heart? A prophet named Zul.
We know nothing about Zul except that he's rallying the Zandalari to reunite the trolls into a world-dominating empire. Here's the thing: in a world like Azeroth, prophets can be a bit of a crap shoot. Sure, you occasionally get those like Velen or Medivh (during the Third War,) but then you also get people who call themselves prophets and are actually the mouthpiece for Old Gods, the Scourge, the Burning Legion, or some other malevolent ancient evil.
Given the bloody methods of the Zandalari and their dramatic transformation, I'm not exactly convinced that Zul's on the level.
It stands to reason that the 5.2 raid is going to have us confronting the Mogu at their strongest. Sure, we've had Mogu'shan Vaults, but this was more of a dusty ruin (the only Mogu we find there are either ghosts or soulless constructs) than a functioning base of operations. I expect the Thunder King will be the final boss of the instance, but given the alliance between the Zandalari and the Mogu, I would not be shocked if we also got a good number of trolls in there as well.
The Zandalari claim their home was destroyed by the Cataclysm. To what extent, we're not sure. If the Zandalari have fully moved to Pandaria, then I would think we would also have to confront Zul and Rakastahn as well. Still, I almost hope that we don't. While I don't think the game really lacks for troll instances or enemies, I think developing the mystery around Zul could be interesting.
For a while now, the Old Gods have been center-stage as the bad guys in WoW. Wrath was, of course, primarily about the Scourge, but Yogg-Saron's machinations in Ulduar were the next biggest threat there (the Blue Dragonflight kept up the rear - very happy we're friends again.) Cataclysm was, of course, very Old God-themed. Even though we did not fight one directly, you had Twilight's Hammer and Faceless Ones all over the place, not to mention the fact that Deathwing felt less like a dragon and more like an eldritch mutant. Finally, we get to Pandaria, and we have what appears to be a totally new villain in the form of the Sha, until we discover that they are actually the residue of a dead Old God.
So Zul turning out to be some kind of Nyarlathotep-type Old God in humanoid form would not be terribly unreasonable, but it also seems that there's been another group of bad guys we've not seen for a good while who are due for a comeback: the Burning Legion. Like the Old Gods, the demons are known for working both boldly and subtly. Sometimes, we get something like the Third War, where demons and undead poured through the forests of Kalimdor to destroy the World Tree, but sometimes we get things like the Scarlet Crusade, an organization that seems to oppose anything unholy, yet goes about their mission with such reckless fervor that they actually wind up causing more evil in the world - all by design.
If the Zandalari are being spurred on by the Burning Legion, what purpose might they be serving? Well, there's a couple ways to look at it, but here's my tin-foil-hat theory:
Notice how just as the Alliance and Horde are landing in Pandaria, so are the Zandalari? We don't know quite how much they've got in terms of resources, but the Gurubashi, Amani, Drakkari, and Farrakashi all seem to be supporting them, which is not something to sneeze at. Now, sure, it might seem like they're going to Pandaria to hook up with their ancient Mogu allies after the whupping we gave them at Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub, but what if that isn't why they're there?
The Vale of Eternal Blossoms is home to an incredible source of power. Wrathion and his people are well aware of this fact. If you hang around the lake in front of Mogu'shan Palace, you'll occasionally see a two-person surveying team looking at the water and discussing how the Pandaren must not know what they've got there. To me, the answer seems to present itself that this is the last remnant of the Well of Eternity - not the copy made by Illidan on Mount Hyjal, or the one the High Elves created in a similar way and called the Sunwell. We're talking about the original, Titan-built Well of Eternity. Now, we don't see the ruins of Azshara's palace anywhere in the Vale, of course, but perhaps the Vale's Well was something like another part of the system, or a back-up. The point is, we're looking at possibly the most potent source of power in all of Azeroth.
Now, let's think about something. The Burning Legion has invaded Azeroth in full force three times. The first was the War of the Ancients, where they attempted to use the Well of Eternity to summon Sargeras to Azeroth. The Well was destroyed, ending the war and causing the Sundering, which is why Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, and Northrend are not just one big continent at this point. The second time was the Third War. The Legion marched through Kalimdor, having used the Scourge to cripple most of humanity and serve as an ever-growing and implacable army. Archimonde was killed when the magic of the World Tree was detonated, draining the tree of its power (and thus ending Night Elf immortality) but also stopping the Legion dead in their tracks. The third time was the invasion of Sunwell Plateau. While we were distracted off in Outland, Kil'jaeden rallied the Legion to attack Quel'danas and attempted to use the Sunwell to get in and start wrecking the place up. Ultimately, Kil'jaeden was beaten back, and the Sunwell, rather than being destroyed, was imbued with Holy Energy by Velen. The Sunwell may still be a font of incredible power, but most of that power is directly harmful to demons.
The point is, the Legion is running out of Wells to use for their purposes.
Perhaps Kil'jaeden's defeat at the Sunwell was actually a greater victory than we realized. Maybe we had finally closed the last door that the Legion could get in through? Now, sure, Mal'ganis (sad that the demon Arthas sold his soul to kill managed to come back nonetheless. Stupid rune blade!) and Varimathras were still able to cause some havoc, but it seems that the more powerful a demon, the more power is needed to bring them to Azeroth. Without a Well of Eternity-like power source, the Legion either couldn't get here, or couldn't do what they wanted to do when they did get here.
Yet when the Mists parted, suddenly we realized that - oh ho, we've got another one! And it's the best-preserved of the bunch. So while we adventurers are taken by this cool new land with all its new people and assholes like Garrosh are obsessed with using the Sha to create super-soldiers, Wrathion's the only one who seems to feel that this sudden access to Pandaria is about to land us in a whole lot of trouble, and he's going to want us to get ready.
So how to the Zandalari fit into all of this? Well, let's take a leap and suggest that Zul is actually a demon, or is possessed by a demon. Suddenly, it makes perfect sense that he's rallying the trolls to Pandaria. Like the Scarlet Crusade, the Zandalari are given understandable motivations - they are provided with an Empire to protect their various civilizations that had been falling into ruin. Yet just as the Horde was bound together as a way to protect the Orcs against a perceived threat (when in fact they were used to commit genocide against said threat and then set loose on Azeroth as a precursor to an eventual Legion invasion,) the Trolls will probably only realize when it is too late that the Legion is using them to get to the Vale. We just need to be there to stop them.
In the future, I'll talk a bit more about the Mogu. Are they far less or far more sophisticated than they let on?
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