The Dead at War: Wait, A New Take

Well, talk about leaping to conclusions. I'm going to leave the old post there for the hell of it, but I think a lot of my ideas were wrong.

So let's start over, shall we?

This is all a bunch of speculation based on datamined stuff, so take it with a grain of salt.

Right: Spoilers Ahoy!


Now that we have some datamined dialogue, we're getting a clearer picture of why we would be talking to Bolvar.

It appears that the Horde is going to get a lot more of Vol'jin's story here, and it sure as hell points to interesting developments for the future.

At some point we manage to finally get in touch with Vol'jin's spirit, and he has some rather horrifying news for us:

He does not remember which spirit told him to name Sylvanas Warchief.

Vol'jin, at least in spirit form, is returned to the world of the living, and when we ask him about those last moments, he can barely remember them. He was dying from a Fel-afflicted blade, which meant he was in a kind of dizzying haze.

So Horde players will apparently go to different persons of interest to see who might have brought him back and who told him to name Sylvanas his successor.

You talk to Bwonsamdi, the Lich King, and Eyir, none of whom back Sylvanas. Eyir claims that Vol'jin has been touched by something called the Hand of Valor - a purely good entity that has empowered him to become something more than just a dead troll's spirit. But both Bwonsamdi and Bolvar deny having anything to do with naming Sylvanas Warchief.

So who the hell did?

In case you couldn't tell from this entire blog, I love a good mystery, and we've got a twofold one here: Someone brought Vol'jin's spirit back from the dead (though I can't tell if he's corporeal) and someone - someone else - pushed him to promote Sylvanas to Warchief.

I don't actually think Sylvanas wanted the position, and I don't know that she could influence him this way. Sylvanas had a pretty good thing going with the Forsaken, and leaving Undercity allowed dissent to spread and threatened her with a dissolution of Forsaken identity. Now she's in the spotlight when in the past she always did better in the shadows.

Someone wanted this war.

Now, N'zoth's an obvious possibility. But if we're setting up for another expansion, I think we might be learning more about the Shadowlands and what beings might exist there.

I've already written a ton on this, but holy crap is this an exciting new quest chain to think about, and I can only hope that Alliance players either get to find out similar things or get something equally shocking.