Burning Legion: Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil?

D&D is a foundational game for the way fantasy RPGs work, and even if its mechanical significance is less important than it once was (except at high tiers of play,) perhaps the most enduring contribution to pop culture is the notion of character alignment.

Most interestingly, D&D suggests not just the ordinary Western concept of Good versus Evil, but also the perpendicular struggle between Law and Chaos.

Traditionally, in Western culture (as well as plenty of other cultures,) the two are generally conflated, respectively, in part due to the way that systems of authority tend to define themselves as good compared to that which opposes them. Of course, the existence of tyranny, oppression, and authoritarianism all give us some clear examples where law and good can be in opposition with one another. (There is, admittedly, a more nuanced discussion to have about how a lot of totalitarian regimes are evil in part due to their incompetence as actual governors and administrators, but that's a whole other post in a different blog.)

D&D builds its multiverse around the idea of these forces in opposition with one another. In its greater, multiversal lore, the biggest conflict in existence is the Blood War, an endless conflict between the Lawful Evil Devils, who make their home in the Nine Hells, and the Chaotic Evil Demons, who are from The Abyss. The Blood War's consequences are complicated - on one hand, it's good to have these two massive forces of primordial evil focused on one another rather than on everyone else, but their conflict also spills out into other places (including the Prime Material Plane, where players are generally from) and getting swept up in it is a great way to get killed. (The recent adventure book, Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus, is kicked off when the city of Elturel is dragged down out of the Material Plane and into the first layer of the Nine Hells as a sort of byproduct of the fighting going on down there.)

Given that you don't tend to fight them as much, the good versions of the Lawful and Chaotic side of things are less fleshed out, but given that they're Good, there's no equivalent conflict - indeed, Lawful Good Angels are known to serve gods of any Good alignment, despite their difference in nature.

Warcraft, like any Western RPG (actually, like any RPG; I mean, Final Fantasy has Bahamut) takes a lot of inspiration from D&D. But its multiverse of primordial powers is a little different.

For one, there's fewer things to keep track of - in D&D, for example, Devils and Demons are just the two most prominent types of Fiends. There are also the neutral evil Yugoloths, who work as mercenaries in the Blood War, and there are seven evil Outer Planes beyond the Nine Hells and the Abyss (including the Yugoloth home plane, Gehenna,) each with its own native fiendish inhabitants.

In Warcraft, all "fiends" are just demons. But there's also no particular cosmic force that is labeled as "good" or "evil."

The closest thing we've ever gotten to a map of the Warcraft multiverse is the one at the beginning of each volume of Chronicle. Here, we see Reality flanked by the Emerald Dream and the Shadowlands, surrounded by the four ordinary elements and two sort of meta-elements, Spirit and Decay. (This echoes the D&D multiverse, with its Prime Material Plane, Feywild, Shadowfell, and Elemental Planes.) But the six outer parts of the chart are cosmic forces, each associated with a type of magic and a type of being, each arranged across from its opposite. At the top, you have Light, Holy Magic, and the Naaru, and then rotating counter-clockwise, you find Life, Nature Magic, and the Wild Gods, then Order, Arcane Magic, and the Titans, followed by Void, Shadow Magic, and the Void Lords and Old Gods, followed by Death, Necromancy, and the Undead, and finally Disorder, with Fel Magic and Demons.

It's odd to see, especially given that the chart puts Light and Disorder next to one another. If you look at it as being aligned with the elements, it makes a bit more sense - both are near the element of Fire, which can be both the cleansing fire of the Light and the destructive flame of Fel.

But we've gotten into the weeds here. Let's examine the question: is the Burning Legion Lawful or Chaotic?

I'm going to argue it's Lawful. But that goes against the nature of Demons, doesn't it? How can the unifying coalition of demons in the Warcraft cosmos be a Lawful institution?

Demons were clearly, originally, agents of chaos. In the eons before the Legion, Sargeras was the paragon of the Pantheon - not its leader, but its champion. And he spent his time hunting down demons, eventually learning that they had to be imprisoned, rather than killed, as they could always respawn in the Twisting Nether. (Notably, this seems carried over from D&D - for most extraplanar entities, you can only truly kill it if you do so while it's on its home plane. I've always interpreted this as if a demon appearing in the material plane is sort of a remote-controlled body piloted by their demonic soul back in the Abyss/Twisting nether, though that's just the way I imagine it.) Demons caused chaos and destruction, and Sargeras locked them up.

But when Sargeras encountered the Old Gods, he was so horrified that he turned his old enemies into his weapon to fight them - though rather than fight them directly, he chose instead to deprive them of their "food" (i.e. us).

Sargeras is a being of order, who turned demons into his worshipping subjects.

But, you might argue, destroying the universe is ultimately a chaotic goal, isn't it?

Indeed, I've always struggled with the exact definition of a chaotic end goal. In D&D, demon lords crave destruction, and it's implied that, for example, if the demon lord Demogrogon were ever to succeed in his goal of wiping out the rest of existence, that his two heads would ultimately turn on one another and destroy themselves, leaving all of existence barren and empty. Likewise, the demon lord Orcus wants to turn every other thing in the multiverse undead in service to him, so he can rule eternally over an undead empire... which actually sounds kind of lawful to me. (The Scourge, I think, is unquestionably Lawful Evil, to the extent that in my homebrew D&D setting I basically had an Undead Angel conquer the devils and make the undead the primary Lawful Evil beings in that setting.)

The thing is, the Old Gods are such a clearer example of Chaotic Evil. Yes, they build empires, and one might think that any tyrannical regime would be lawful. But first, remember that parenthetical we said we weren't going to go into more of about how some tyranny arises from a disinterest in the actual efforts of governance? But also, every description of the Black Empire suggests it was meant to be in total chaos at all times. The Old Gods were allies of one another, yet still went to war constantly, presumably because the chaos of war and carnage pleased them.

When we get farther into Warcraft lore, we've actually started to get a sense that Light and Void are the more cosmic representatives of Law and Chaos, respectively. We hear in 1000 Years of War that the Void is all about infinite possibility - it believes that everything is true, and thus it inherently leads to madness, because fully incorporating the void into one's thoughts causes one to be unable to discern reality from fiction. In the void, there's no difference.

But we've also seen how the Light isn't always so nice - when X'era tried to force Illidan's transformation, we saw how a being like a Naaru could become zealous and imperious. It's telling that Velen, a holy man if ever there was one, seems to be on Illidan's side when he blasts X'era to bits in self-defense. The Light is a great source of power for good, but it isn't actually just plain good on its own.

There's another moment in 1000 Years of War (I can't quite recall when) in which a void-aligned being describes the Naaru and the Light as horrifying - that the Light would have everything locked into a sort of crystalline stasis, nothing ever changing.

It's some real food for thought after having spent most of our WoW-playing careers merely thinking of the Light as good. And indeed, we've seen more sympathetic portrayals of those using the power of the void with the introduction of the Void Elves (that being said, it's troubling that the Horrific Vision of Stormwind shows the Ren'dorei seemingly going particularly crazy in a N'zoth-controlled world, though that might just be out of loyalty to Alleria and Umbric).

I think that the whole Light versus Void thing ultimately comes down to the notion that with one and not the other, nothing really has meaning. Pure, unchanging light will leave no room for the disparity that gives things form. But endless, infinite void never lets anything persist to take on meaning. (Incidentally, this is also a major theme of the Dark Souls games.)

Then, what's interesting, is that Fel magic is supposed to be the result of Light and Void annihilating one another. It's when the two burn away into pure energy that can be harnessed for power. If that's what the Fel is, what then do we make of its opposite number, the Arcane? If I had to guess, Arcane magic is all about the careful balance and arrangement of Light and Void, keeping them in a stable and very mathematically-determined matrix. (I don't really have a theory on how Nature magic and Necromancy fit into this. Maybe for another post.)

So, where does that bring us on Sargeras and the Burning Legion?

I'll confess this got me deep in the weeds, and I don't know that I really have the most satisfying answer. But I will say that Sargeras is kind of trying to enact that most horrific version of the "light's triumph" that the void fears. Sargeras envisions a universe burned to a crisp, with nothing but charred ashes remaining. That is static, and seems to fly in the face of the Void. He's looking for a static solution, so I'm going to call that Lawful.

Now, a few directions I could take this if I had the energy to keep writing an already super-long post:

First: in Legion, it seems as if Sargeras isn't exactly going for the scorched-universe goal anymore, and seems to want Azeroth to survive, but be "purified" with fel fire, and rise as another Fel Titan like himself. Might he prefer his demonic empire over universal extinction?

Second: If the Burning Legion as an institution is broken following the events of Legion, might we then see Demons return to their chaotic nature?

Third: Alleria gets whispers in the Three Sisters comic that say Sylvanas serves the "True Enemy." Does the Void fear undeath more than the Light or the Titans? After all, the undead also represent a stagnant stasis that seems anathema to the Void (again, reminds me of Dark Souls.) What, then, do they think of Life?

Shadowlands Time and What Goes On Back Home

Cryptically, mysteriously, Blizzard folks (including Game Director Ion Hazzikostas) have hinted that when we journey to the Shadowlands, the experience might not be quite in sync with the rest of Azeroth.

We know that time can move differently in different places. Turalyon and Alleria were gone from our reality for roughly 25 years, but to them the time that passed was 1,000, fighting at the heart of the Burning Legion (this is also why I think the Lightforged Draenei might literally be a million years old, if they spent their entire 25,000 year exile in the same time-dilated region.)

In Shadowlands, we're arguably going farther away than we've ever been before, into a literal other plane of existence. If a place like Argus, which was maybe kinda in the Twisting Nether but also possibly not exactly, can have that kind of time-warping effect, there's no reason to think that the Shadowlands could work very differently indeed.

The way I see it, if they want to play around with this concept, they could do it one of two ways:

The simpler to implement would be that our time in the Shadowlands is similarly shorter from an outside perspective. We spend two years on the inside, but to Azeorth, we're only in there for a short time, or it even looks instantaneous.

The consequence for that, of course, would be that we'd be falling back into a world that is still recovering from the massive Horde/Alliance war, and people might disbelieve the crazy travails we've been through.

The other, to my mind more interesting, but certainly harder to implement version, is that our two years gets elongated on the outside.

I doubt they'd jump super far into the future - there are enough NPCs that we're invested (that aren't super-long lived elves or draenei) that we wouldn't want to miss out on. Can you imagine getting back from the Shadowlands to find Anduin's half-dragon daughter is now Queen of Stormwind (stay with me, they've got to have some way to magically make Wrathion physiologically female so that he can be the royal consort, right? That's what we're all expecting, right?) One in which Genn Greymane has died of old age and Fenran Thaurissan is King of the Bronzebeard and Dark Iron Clans?

Still, what's more conceivable to me is that we could do a shorter time-jump. Maybe the two years we spend in the Shadowlands looks more like ten years outside.

What might that world look like?

Well, for one thing, Azeroth's been in crisis mode for the past three and a half decades. What other threats might have arisen in that time?

Missing a decade of Azerothian history could lead to some crazy situations. What if we arrive to find that Vanessa VanCleef (who is still alive, in case you didn't play a Rogue in Legion) has become a powerful crimelord and taken over half of Stormwind's territories? What if Night Elf fanatics burn down Orgrimmar? What if ex-Legion demons corrupt the Illidari, no longer devoted to Sargeras' plans, but just trying to spread chaos and destruction wherever they can?

What if the Alliance and Horde aren't even there when we get back? Fractured and broken?

Or, alternatively, what if our absence marks a time of remarkable stability?

Maybe the peace between the Alliance and Horde holds longer than it ever has before? Embassies are established, and peaceful summits and treaties are signed? What if we return to Orgrimmar, shocked to find human merchants and draenei artificers hard at work in the Valley of Honor?

Much of the Warcraft setting is built around the endless cycle of hatred, but I'm actually kind of intrigued by the possibilities of a serious, radical shift in the status quo.

This is all very speculative, of course. And given how difficult it was for Cataclysm to work, I don't expect another "old world revamp" is a likely form for another expansion to take.

But the game has also allowed its established locations to be more dynamic in recent years. Sure, I'm sad that I don't get to go to Undercity anymore (well, except via bronze dragon NPC,) but I also like that it allows the story to move forward in major ways.

Blizzard is taking us far away from anything established, and that allows for some things to change while we're not looking. Now, to be fair, the same could be said for Warlords of Draenor, in which it feels like everything on Azeroth basically just stopped while we were over there (which is part of why it felt like Vol'jin was Warchief for like five minutes). But I think there's an opportunity here, which I hope Blizzard takes.

Elden Ring - Why Miyazaki and Martin Make a Lot of Sense Together

11 months ago, also known as "The Before Times," FromSoft announced a new game: Elden Ring, which would be a collaboration between Hidetaka Miyazaki (definitely not to be confused with Hayao Miyazaki) and George R. R. Martin.

On the surface, a fantasy writer my dad's age and a Japanese video-game auteur might seem like an odd team to collaborate. Sure, Miyazaki makes games in the dark fantasy genre, and Martin is arguably the most famous name in the dark fantasy fiction (though I've always contended that Stephen King is more of a dark fantasy writer than a horror writer - admittedly, the work I associate most with him is The Dark Tower, so... you know. You could argue that the only difference between dark magical realism and horror is what you call it.)

But the more I think about it, the more I realize how perfect a match it is:

With... oh, you know, a bit of spare time for the past couple months, I've gone down a real rabbit hole, watching YouTube videos about A Song of Ice and Fire (Martin's books the show was based on, the first of which was "A Game of Thrones.") It's preposterous how much is going on in those books - and all the incredibly subtle details that exist below the surface.

For example, you remember how Sam goes to Old Town and studies to be a Maester for a couple episodes in the show? In the books, Old Town is fleshed out a lot more, and we hear about magical artifacts called Glass Candles, there's an ancient fort that might have been built by Deep Ones straight out of H. P. Lovecraft, and the Maester who is basically the "department head" of magical study has connections to Mirri Maz Duur (the lady who "cures" Khal Drogo at the cost of Dany's unborn child) and Quaithe (the lady with the wooden lacquered mask Dany meets in Qarth in season two, who herself seems to be magically communicating to Dany in her dreams over the course of the books.)

The point is, the books are filled with subtle clues and hints at plots going on under the surface. Euron's (way scarier and more interesting in the books) blue lips mean he's been in contact with the warlocks of the House of the Undying, and there's even some evidence to suggest that the Targaryens collaborated with the House of Black and White (the assassin cult Arya trains with in Braavos) to destroy Valyria hundreds of years ago, paying the assassins with gold they got from Casterly Rock (the Lannister hometown) in exchange for a Valyrian Steel sword.

None of this is stated explicitly, but it's all there if you know where to look (and maybe get the aid of other eagle-eyed readers putting their theories together.)

The thing is, the Soulsborne games do exactly the same thing, only in the language of video games.

Consider how the clothing worn by the Arianna, the prostitute, in Bloodborne seems to tie her to the pseudo-vampires of Cainhurst, which might explain why the pious nun, Adela, will murder Arianna if you take too many blood ministrations from her. It could also explain why Arianna gives birth to an alien baby once the game enters its third, Paleblood Moon phase - that maybe the corrupted blood of Cainhurst makes her more susceptible to the effects of the moon.

To be fair, Martin does have a far more straightforward plot going on in his books. Miyazaki's works tend to require that interpretation to understand what's going on.

But I imagine that Elden Ring, whenever it comes out, will probably be incredibly deep in terms of background lore, which is something I'm looking forward to.

Overlooking the Obvious: Hexadin Smite/Smite Build

On one hand, Paladins and Warlocks are, traditionally, radically opposed to one another flavor-wise. A Paladin is a solemn servant of a higher power whose strengths are bound up in an oath they swear to fulfill their quest. A Warlock has made a deal to gain personal power, often compromising morals and even their own future in order to receive power from entities that might be purely malevolent.

Of course, the existence of Celestial (as well as some good Archfey, and even good Undying in Eberron) patrons and the existence of darker shades of Paladin like the Oath of Conquest or even the Oathbreaker (officially designed for villainous NPCs, but playable at the DM's discretion) means that these two classes aren't necessarily as far from one another as one might think.

Mechanically, as well, both are Charisma-based spellcasters, which adds more of an opportunity for some effective multiclassing.

But what really takes the cake is Smites. Smiting is one of the defining features of the 5E paladin, letting them expend spell slots once they've hit something to do extra damage. One of the ways that make the Divine Smite feature so powerful is that you don't have to choose whether to do so until you know that you've hit - you never waste a spell slot unless it's just going to do way more damage than you needed to kill the thing.

Even more excitingly, Smites can crit, and again, you can wait until you've landed the crit to decide whether to smite. So if you're feeling like there's a 20 on your way (maybe your Divination Wizard friend foresaw it, or you've racked up advantage, or the target's paralyzed or unconscious - though in the latter case you probably don't need the damage) you can hold onto your smites and make them deal twice the damage.

Following? Ok:

Divine Smite does not require any additional action - you can do it any time you land an attack, be that your post-level-5 extra attack, an opportunity strike, or a bonus from great weapon master or haste. This also means that you can use it any number of times per turn as you have spell slots to burn.

Warlocks who go with the Pact of the Blade can take an invocation called Eldritch Smite. This allows you to spend a spell slot when you hit with a melee attack and deal an additional d8 of Force damage per spell level of the slot, as well as automatically knocking it prone if it's not gargantuan in size (like Repelling Blast, this is one of those fun "you can't save against this, it just happens" things Warlocks can do.)

Effectively, it recreates Divine Smite for Warlocks, though it's slightly less powerful in terms of raw damage (both do cap out at 5d8, though Paladins' Divine Smite can be boosted up to 6d8 if the target is a fiend or undead.)

Combining these two features might look, on its surface, redundant. You could just go pure Warlock and take Eldritch Smite if you want that gameplay, or you could just dip a little into Warlock - enough to get two spell slots - and just be happy to have two short-rest-recharging Smite Slots.

But here's where it gets insane:

Remember how there's no action required to smite? It just happens when you hit something, immediately, and with no reaction or bonus action or any of that crap?

Well, there's nothing saying that you can't use both Eldritch Smite and Divine Smite on the same attack.

Let's imagine a level 10 Paladin/Warlock. Say they're Vengeance/Hexblade+Pact of the Blade. The Hexblade half lets you use Charisma for both casting and attacks, and Pact of the Blade opens up any sort of weapon you want - take a Greatsword, for example. Also, you've got Hexblade's Curse, which allows you to crit on 19s, meaning you have a 1/10 chance to crit (and if you have advantage, that makes it just under 1/5 of a chance... technically it's a 19%).

Now, you swing at the big bad... dracolich, and you roll a 19 on your cursed target, letting you crit.

So, already you've got 4d6 from the greatsword crit. You then roll in your 2rd level Divine Smite, which deals 8d8 (2 baseline, 1 more for level of the slot, and 1 because it's undead, all doubled) followed by a 3rd level Eldritch Smite, dealing 6d8 (again, doubled for crit.)

That means you're dealing 4d6 + 14d8 damage (plus your charisma modifier and your proficiency thanks to Hexblade's curse.) The dice damage, then, is an average of 77, and it's knocked prone, giving you advantage for your next attack, which you have by this level.

And, of course, if you had used your bonus action to put on one of the various spell-smites on top, that gets doubled as well.

Not terrible for a single attack.

Blizzard Gives Alliance and Horde High Elves (Effectively) with Shadowlands Character Customization Options

Ah, the denizens of Quel'thalas!

In true fantasy RPG fashion, WoW has a lot of varieties of elf. Thanks to allied races, there are four playable elf races, the Kal'dorei (Night Elves - Children of the Stars,) the Sin'dorei (Blood Elves - Children of Blood,) the Shal'dorei (Nightborne - Children of... either Night or Darkness, though I'd assume the former) and Ren'dorei (Void Elves - Children of Void.)

But, ironically, the first elves to appear in Warcraft at all, the High Elves, who have been in the games since Warcraft II, haven't been playable... sort of.

Of course, that's kind of a subjective matter. The High Elves were officially renamed Blood Elves after the Third War by Kael'thas Sunstrider, taking the bitterness and grief over losing 90% of their population and enshrining it in the very name of their people. Effectively, the Blood Elves are the High Elves, and generally speaking, Blizzard's attitude is that that should satisfy the players.

But even in-game, there's a distinction. The Blood Elves, during their alliance with Illidan, started feeding on crystals of Fel energy, turning their typically arcane-blue eyes fel-green. Those who refused to comply with this, and who stuck with their old allegiances to the humans and the rest of the Alliance (and who didn't succumb to horrific magic withdrawal and become Wretched) kept their blue eyes and remained known as High Elves. Most prominent of these elves is Vereesa Windrunner, youngest sister of the Windrunners and head of the Silver Covenant.

Since Burning Crusade, many Alliance players have asked that the Alliance be granted the ability to play as these High Elves, given how they are clearly established in-lore. With the Pandaren breaking the old rule that members of each faction should be easily recognized by their silhouette, it seemed more and more practical for Blizzard to just give those Quel'dorei fans what they wanted.

When BFA came out, though, the Alliance got something... similar but different. The Void Elves, totally new to the lore (and also new in-lore) suddenly allowed the Alliance to play elves from Quel'thalas, but it was very different than the classic High Elves a lot of players were hoping for.

Now, personally, I actually find the Void Elves really interesting and cool (I guess I also just have a thing for any race that can be blue,) but I can also see how, to some, this felt like the rug being pulled out from under them. After all, if the Alliance was getting a second elf race, and one so clearly modeled on the Blood Elves, it made the likelihood of actually getting High Elves that much lower.

So... the announcements for new options to customize both Blood Elves and Void Elves in Shadowlands comes with a grain of salt.

First, let's talk about the new options:

In addition to new skin colors for Blood Elves, which allow you to be a non-white blood elf, you can also choose new eye colors. This started during BFA, when Blood Elves could choose holy light-colored golden eyes, which I think reflects the new, partially holy nature of the Sunwell. But, in addition, in Shadowlands, Blood Elves will be allowed blue eyes, which also reflects that the Sunwell is functioning once again as it did prior to the Third War.

So a Blue-eyed Blood Elf is actually physiologically no different than a High Elf. It's really just a change in culture and politics.

However, lest Alliance players who have wanted this for so long cry foul, the Void Elves are getting new skin color options - allowing all the skin colors granted to the Blood Elves, which notably includes many that, you know, aren't blue.

So you will be able to make a Void Elf who looks exactly like a High Elf. You will be able to make a character who looks like a High Elf, with human-like skin tones and blue eyes, and who is loyal to the Alliance, and who comes from Quel'thalas.

So we're done, right?

What this means is that both factions can now make identical-looking High Elf characters.

Now, I've never really needed High Elves to be a thing (again, I find Void Elves more interesting) but I wonder if this will finally satisfy those who want it. This is not another fully-fledged race, and if you mouse over your character, even if they have beige skin, it'll still say Void Elf. Your character's racial abilities and voice lines will still reflect that they're a Void Elf. But in terms of both aesthetic and factional alignment, you'll be a High Elf. (Which the Void Elves sort of are already.)

I think this does it, and I think that the vast majority of players will be ok with this, though I'm sure the most nit-picky will still find this underwhelming.

Still, in a roundabout way, they've effectively made High Elves the only other neutral race than Pandaren. I'd actually love to see what's going on between the various Quel'thalas elf factions following the end of the "Fourth War." Feels like there's potential for stories of reconciliation there.

Unsurprisingly, Blizzcon 2020 Cancelled

In a year when gathering large groups of people together in the same place is a recipe for the spread of a disease that has killed 100,000 people in this country alone, Blizzard has made the responsible choice and cancelled their company's famed (mostly) annual convention.

As someone who mostly interacts with Blizzard through WoW (though I do also play a fair amount of Hearthstone) I wasn't all that invested in this year's convention, given that we already know what expansion is coming next.

Still, I know that it's a big event and people often go there to interact with friends they've made online in person. In our current situation, all friends are online friends.

Blizzard has said that they are looking into ways to have the content one would expect at such a convention happen online (which, to be fair, is how most people experience the conventions anyway).

The War Council and Hopes for a Truly New Horde

You could argue that the Horde that existed in the First and Second Wars is not the same as the one that Thrall settled in Durotar, just as you could argue that the modern Alliance isn't the same as the one created to fight the Horde in the Second War after the destruction of Stormwind.

Thrall's reformation of the Horde was profound. Rejecting demonic magic, refusing the be pawns of the Burning Legion, and on top of that the embracing of pre-Horde orcish traditions, most importantly Shamanism, were keys to changing the character of the Horde.

Another was the inclusion of new races. While the Horde had made alliances with trolls, ogres, and goblins during the Second War, these forces were not really considered a part of the Horde itself. Thrall changed that, bringing the Darkspear (who, notably, did not fight in the Second War) and the Bloodhoof Tauren in, as well as (controversially,) the Forsaken. These people were made Horde, and officially, they had just as much of a claim to being "true Horde" as any orc.

But Thrall's nostalgia for the old ways was problematic. After all, even under Orgrim Doomhammer, the old Horde was still bent on domination and conquest, and Gul'dan was permitted to keep committing his atrocities (until he abandoned the Horde to go get himself killed at the Tomb of Sargeras. Sidenote: now that we've been inside, where exactly was he killed? Crazy to think that both versions of him died just across a narrow strait from one another.)

The Orcs had suffered during their internment, and it's clear that the humans who kept them prisoner were motivated by spite and vengeance to keep them low, rather than find a way to rehabilitate them. (As an alternative to genocide, the internment was surely the lesser of two evils, but it's clear that the Alliance failed to come up with a longterm solution that the Orcs deserved, so Orcish resentment of this treatment is certainly justified, though hardly worse than anything the Horde did to humanity or other Alliance races.)

Thrall whipped his people back up into a proud nation, but doing so required him to whitewash much of the Horde's history. Those founding fathers of the Horde - the Warlords of Draenor - were mostly genocidal war criminals, not to mention pawns of a warlock in league with demons. But because they were the historical figures Thrall had, he made them into heroes who had fought with honor. It's likely Thrall himself had only heard self-serving versions of these stories, and the version of Grom Hellscream he met as a young man was the beaten-down and broken version, not the arrogant bastard who drank demon blood so he could more effectively murder Draenei.

But I also think one of Thrall's greatest failures of vision was to retain a notion that the Horde was primarily an Orcish institution. While Vol'jin had been a loyal and effective ally since before they even arrived in Kalimdor, Thrall felt that what the Horde needed after he stepped down would be a classical Orc warrior, and who better than the son of the legendary Grom Hellscream?

Garrosh's reign as Warchief was a perfect example of how you should be careful what you wish for. His reign was built on Orcish supremacy and brutal, fascistic ideology, which considered violence and death the ultimate arbiter of power, fetishizing militarism and showing contempt for anything that would oppose it.

The lesson the Horde learned from Garrosh was that the Horde could not be such a thing and survive. It had become too heterogeneous to allow for a single strong personality to empower only those of his own race. Vol'jin successfully led a resistance against Garrosh that ultimately wound up drawing basically all the other leaders of the Horde. While Vol'jin was careful to avoid allowing his revolution to be seen as a puppet of the Alliance, the two fought in parallel and were able to secure a (sadly short-lived) peace following Garrosh's downfall.

Honestly, we don't actually see much of Vol'jin's time as Warchief. He's in charge basically only during Warlords of Draenor, and we spend that entire expansion (minus the revamped Upper Blackrock Spire) off-world. One assumes things went decently well under his rule.

Vol'jin's death after the Broken Shore is, of course, tied up with plots that we have yet to unravel, and will likely play a big role in Shadowlands. Indeed, the rest of this history is going to be somewhat tentative.

There's a moment, in the cutscene in which Vol'jin dies and names Sylvanas his successor, where it seems like she might rise to the occasion. Indeed, I'm almost inclined to believe Blizzard had been thinking of her arc as going in a very different direction, though given how briefly she seems to be on the level, I think perhaps this was a bit of false hope for her that might show Horde players how the Horde could once again be fooled into thinking a tyrant who relies on a cult of personality might be a good leader.

Sylvanas, we now know, was already part of a conspiracy with the Jailer, and she organized a massive war to feed souls into the Shadowlands.

Sylvanas' ultimate motivations remain murky (even if it might be cheesy for us to find out she was actually trying to serve the greater good all along, it might still be better than "she was just evil all along.") But after Saurfang died provoking her into showing her true colors, the Horde seems to have undergone a new reformation.

The Horde does not have a Warchief anymore, for the first time since Blackhand. What does that mean?

Well, it's funny, because on one hand, some members of the Horde - particularly the new Zandalari members - actually have a lot of reason to hate the Alliance. Indeed, the Zandalari have the most sympathetic case: they allowed the Horde into their city because Talanji (now Queen) knew how completely messed up things had become (about half of the Zanchuli Council were G'huun cultists) and even if things looked ok on the surface, the place was in total shambles. The Horde offered help, and she was in no position to refuse.

But because of that partnership with the Horde, Zandalar became a target for the Alliance, leading to the Battle of Dazar'alor and Rastakhan's death. Rastakhan, of course, proved to be short-sighted despite his long life, and his deals with Bwonsamdi weren't enough to save him from the Alliance forces (didn't prevent the breaking of the Great Seal either, actually.) With the war now ended because Sylvanas showed her true colors, the Zandalari were never given the opportunity to take retribution on Kul Tiras and the Alliance.

Of course, that's nothing compared to the Night Elves, who suffered an attack of truly genocidal proportions (indeed, most of the people who died were civilians, including children). So that presents another challenge for the Horde.

Still, it seems as if the truly warmongering leaders in the Horde are sort of all out. Lor'themar has been cordial with the Alliance when it's possible. Baine is good friends with Anduin (we even see him in the Stormwind throne room when the war comes to an end.) The Forsaken don't really have a leader right now, but if Calia Menethil steps in to lead them, that makes it really hard to imagine that they'll go back to their aggressive ways. The Orcs are kind of leaderless, though if Thrall were to return, he'd probably be an advocate for peace. Hell, even Gallywix is gone (finally!)

During the WoW era of the Horde, there have always been skirmishes here or there, but it was really the push of its more aggressive Warchiefs that drove the world into major conflict. (You could argue that the war that ended in Mists started with Varian's attack on Thrall and Sylvanas in the Battle of Undercity, though I think that didn't really ramp up into a full-fledged war until Cataclysm and Garrosh's aggressive actions.)

Naturally, any coalition like the Horde is going to still have some of its dark elements. Indeed, it seems that Sylvanas loyalists who finish the war campaign occasionally get whispers from Forsaken npcs who remain loyal to Sylvanas (this despite the fact that I'm pretty sure she's abandoned them.)

But it does seem like the Horde has really gone into a serious reformation to prevent the kind of warmongering aggression that we've seen in the past.

That being said, the Alliance is starting to show some cracks. We'll see if they develop into anything we need to be worried about.

Further Lore Hints as Oribos Opens for Testing

I'll confess I was hoping for Oribos, the city at the center of the Shadowlands, to be weirder. Admittedly, it does seem to be on a tower suspended above an infinite skyscape where the locals are strange beings that seem to be floating masks and clothes without any real body in them, so maybe my expectations were too high.

We know that the story of the Shadowlands expansion will be all about how the mechanism of death is broken. The way it's supposed to work, and how it apparently had worked prior to Sylvanas' swan dive off of Icecrown Citadel a decade or so ago, was that the soul of a dead person anywhere in the physical universe (though I also wonder if this happens to demons who die in the Twisting Nether, like Kil'jaeden, or elementals who die on their respective planes, like Ragnaros) is sent to Oribos, where they are judged by the Arbiter, who determines which realm of the Shadowlands they should go to. There is an untold number of these realms, and each is designed for different types of souls (I'd hope that souls can hop between them in normal times, given how unlikely any of your loved ones would be to wind up in the same realm as you).

While not necessarily pleasant, these realms are typically meant to be the proper place for a person to go, serving as a mostly good afterlife. Revendreth, one of the realms we'll be visiting, is more of a purgatorial stop on a soul's journey, though like any of them, a soul that finds they're well suited to the realm might choose to stay and join the ranks of the vampiric Venthyr.

The Maw, however, seems to be exceptional. The Maw is the ultimate dumping ground for the worst, most worthless souls. Those who are so tainted by evil are sent here, and the rest of the Shadowlands is just thankful to be rid of them. There, they are tormented by the Jailer for all eternity.

The problem, as it's revealed in Oribos, is that it seems the Arbiter has been silent since the crisis began. The massive stream of souls that flows past her in Oribos simply travels onward, going to the Maw, where absolutely everyone - good or evil - is damned.

Not only is this horrific for the souls experiencing this (think about any NPC who has died since the end of Wrath - Cairne, Varian, Rastakhan, etc. - but it has also disrupted the economy of the afterlife. Souls carry with them some sort of life force to the Shadowlands called Anima (something we saw the Mogu manipulating in Throne of Thunder). While the soul seems separate from this Anima, the Anima provides fuel to all the magic in the Shadowlands, and seems to be crucial to keeping its various systems working.

Now, however, if all the souls are going to the Maw, presumably the Anima is as well, which could easily be the motivation for breaking things like this. Perhaps the Jailer has pulled off the ultimate Anima heist by hacking the mechanism of death.

What we don't know is practically anything about the Jailer. The model we've seen of him looks mostly humanoid, even human-like, though he seems to be very large (initially I saw screenshots that depicted him as about four times larger than N'zoth as he appears in the final boss fight, though I've seen others that shrink him down.

It seems that the Jailer is likely the primary prisoner of the Maw, but what cosmic deed he performed to deserve such a fate is anyone's guess. Indeed, I had initially thought that we might have a big twist - that the Jailer is actually the one who is being wronged, and that it's the Arbiter who is behind all this evil. But if that's the case, it'll take a lot more backstory to explain how she could have planned to be put out of commission like this.

Oribos is known to be a place where soul-brokers meet to trade. I'm curious how this intersects with the Arbiter's instant judgments. I could imagine that they arrange for exchanges of Anima between the realms, even if the souls are sent where they need to go. Alternatively, perhaps this system has been broken long before the current crisis.

The following might be a little more spoilery, so I'll put in behind a cut:

The Dark Secrets of Kul Tiras

The story of World of Warcraft is alternately frustrating and stirring, shallow and deep. I've often complained at how the lesson we keep being taught - that the people of Azeroth aren't so different, and can set aside those differences to defend it from true evils - keeps getting forgotten (and usually by the side that always seems to start these conflicts,) but at the same time, the depth of the world sometimes stuns me.

I've been on a bit of a quarantine-kick lately of watching YouTube videos about A Song of Ice and Fire (the books upon which Game of Thrones was based) and the massive lore buried deep within hints and seemingly tangential stories. For instance, do you know that there are five forts in eastern Essos that seem to serve the same purpose as the Wall, but guarding against a different dreary wasteland that probably has some unspeakable evil within it?

Well before the show came out, the creatives at Blizzard were clearly big fans of the fantasy series (which, to be fair, was already up there among the most popular fantasy books) given things like the final mission in The Frozen Throne expansion of Warcraft III, A Song of Frost and Flame, or really the whole vibe of the Scourge in general, with its frozen death knights raising armies of the dead.

Being a T-rated digital game, Warcraft can't go quite as dark as George R. R. Martin's opus, but it plays with similar themes leavened by a more optimistic attitude toward human(oid) heroes.

I think the world-building in Battle for Azeroth has been quite good - with the benefit of three zones a piece worth of leveling content, we get a decent amount of time to get to know the Kul Tiran and Zandalari cultures.

Looking at Kul Tiras specifically, we had previously seen them portrayed primarily as just standard-issue humans like those of Stormwind or (pre-Scourge) Lordaeron, but with a proud naval tradition, as befits an island nation.

BFA brought us two important new factors to their culture: the Tidesages and the Drust.

And both of these cultural elements bring with them some subtle hints at darker, or at least untold aspects of Kul Tiran culture.

First, let's talk about the Drust.

The only "living" Drust we see in BFA are Gorak Tul and Ulfar. The latter is a druid Thornspeaker, and we never see him shift out of his Bear form, but he does identify himself as a Drust. Given their importance to Kul Tiran history, it's odd that we don't see more representations of them in the land. But even if their aesthetic has a bit more of a Celtic/British vibe than Viking, it seems quite clear that they are a tribe of the Vrykul.

The first hint we got of this was that Gorak Tul uses a Vrykul wireframe skeleton - the roar/shout that he makes during one quest looks just like one of the Lich King's Ymirjar soldiers in the Wrathgate cinematic.

Now, skeleton doesn't necessarily mean relation. After all, the Mogu use Draenei skeletons and aren't related, and the Mantid and Saurok use Worgen skeletons. But it's a potential connection. Later, at I believe the last Blizzcon (maybe the previous one?) Blizzard confirmed that the Drust are Vrykul, so there you have it.

But it goes further:

Kul Tiran history at first looks rather ugly - the humans arrive from Gilneas and settle around Tiragarde Sound, drawing the ire of the indigenous Drust. Wars begin, which ultimately lead to the Drust getting wiped out. Even if the Kul Tirans claim they tried to coexist peacefully, that seems like it could very easily just be a self-serving national history. Were the Drust really so wicked to begin with, or were they driven to their dark death-magic out of desperation to retain their homeland? And are the Kul Tirans just colonialists who drove the local culture to extinction?

My sense is that this is partially true. Indeed, there are hints at the Kul Tirans having a less-than-upstanding culture in general (the Zandalari regularly speak of them as slavers, though aside from some orphan kids rounded up by the Ashvane company to process Azerite - something that the other Kul Tirans see as horrible - we don't really get any examples of this behavior.) Humans in Azeroth do have a history of conquering territory from others - the Trolls in places like Arathi and Stranglethorn are seen as dangerous savages by humans, but those lands were, in all likelihood, originally troll territory. So the notion that Kul Tiras was conquered by humans isn't that hard to believe. Indeed, despite retconning them to have English accents, it actually seems not that much unlike American history - settlers arrive in the hopes of just building a colony, but have violent confrontations with the indigenous people as they push to expand throughout the territory.

But what's hidden in plain sight is that the Drust aren't actually gone - indeed, they are thriving.

Some Kul Tirans are much taller and beefier than your standard humans. You have folks like Catherine or Flynn Fairwind who seem to have the normal human proportions as found in other human kingdoms, but Kul Tiras seems to have a lot of 8-foot-tall giants running around, which includes the playable allied race characters.

Why are they so big? Because they're part Drust.

Yes, it would seem that they think of the Drust as totally dying out, but my interpretation is that it's only the hardcore people like Gorak Tul, who hated the humans (maybe even harboring the old disdain for them as sufferers of the Curse of Flesh) and rejected any sort of racial mixing. Within Kul Tiran society, however, some Drust were friendly and intermarried with the humans - and given that Vrykul and Humans are basically the same species, it makes perfect sense that they'd be genetically compatible enough to mix together (I mean, this is a world where you can have a half-Orc/half-Draenei, and those are two people form different planets.)

This actually makes the Kul Tirans seem a lot better than they might otherwise - after all, it's not as if the Drust are gone. The Drust are just part of their heritage. Even Jaina might have some Drust ancestors. And perhaps those who did mingle with the humans chose to abandon their Drust identity in the face of the dark path the nationalists like Gorak Tul took.

But I promised Dark Secrets, and if this theory is right, that's actually more optimistic than what we're given at face value.

So we come to the Tidesages.

Rather than worshipping the Holy Light, the Kul Tirans have a faith based on the Sea. This allows them to have Shamans among their ranks, despite this tradition not having anything to do with other shamanic traditions on Azeroth (to the extent that, when you meet a shaman in the quest to unlock Kul Tirans as a playable race, she has no idea what you're talking about when you mention the term.)

The Tidesages - which seem to be some combination of Priests and Shamans - worship a goddess of sorts called the Tidemother. Her whispers can be heard from the depths, and her blessings allow Kul Tiran ships to be the unsinkable dreadnaughts that they are.

And I'm about 95% sure that the Tidemother is Azshara.

I think it's sometimes easy to forget how utterly, profoundly ancient some of the living characters in World of Warcraft are. If you play a Draenei, you could be well over 25,000 years old (and if the Lightforged have been under the same degree of time dilation as Turalyon and Alleria but for the entire exile, your Lightforged Draenei could be a million years old.) Azshara was transformed into the first Naga 10,000 years ago, which is a number we toss out pretty easily, but that is an utterly massive amount of time. For perspective, in the real world, human history goes back about 5000 years. So this is a being who has been in her current form for all of that times two.

Given the eventual confrontation with N'zoth, BFA has had elements of cosmic horror (often called Lovecraftian horror, given the most famous author of the genre) threaded throughout. The Old Gods are very clearly inspired by Lovecraft, with names like C'thun sounding like Cthulhu, Yog-Saron sounding like Yog-Sothoth, and N'zoth possibly alluding to Azathoth or Nyarlathotep.

One of the major tropes of Lovecraft's fiction is the discovery that something familiar is, in fact, alien. In the Shadow Over Innsmouth, the narrator finds that the squalid down on the coast of Massachusetts (my home state!) is actually the realm of half-human hybrids who have been mating with creepy Deep Ones, who themselves worship an underwater deity. While the physical threat of the Innsmouth mobs is the main horror throughout much of the story, the stinger (spoilers for a super-old, classic horror story) is that the narrator discovers that he is, in fact, descended from people from Innsmouth, and that his own transformation into one of these creepy fish-men is likely to occur soon.

Another, much more recent example of such a trope is from Magic: the Gathering. In the Zendikar setting, the merfolk (one of Magic's common humanoid races in many settings) worship three deities - Kosi, Emeria, and Ula, who are depicted in classic humanoid, anthropomorphic forms. Eventually, it's revealed, however, that they are really the Eldrazi Titans Kozilek, Emrakul, and Ulamog, which are basically world-destroying eldritch abominations, and that the Merfolk religion is all based on a lie.

So it would be fitting for an expansion with N'zoth as its final boss to reveal this truth. We get plenty of Lovecraftian references in the story of Stormsong Valley, with the Ilithid-like K'thir rising from the depths and the horrible thing in the depths of the Shrine of the Storm, as well as Lord Stormsong's transformation. (Also the extended Darkest Dungeon-inspired quest chain for the strange nobleman elsewhere on the island with the Shrine.)

Most damningly, when assaulting the Shrine of the Storm (in the quests leading up to the dungeon,) we're forced to deactivate the Tidemother's Wrath, Pride, and Radiance. Elsewhere in game, starting in the Eye of Azshara dungeon, then in another quest chain on the other side of Stormsong Valley, and finally in the Eternal Palace raid, we fight... Azshara's Wrath, Pride, and Radiance.

So it seems very likely that Azshara has been shaping Kul Tiran culture for thousands of years.

The only hiccup I have with this theory of mine is why, exactly, she is doing so. Yes, the Shrine of the Storm is easily overwhelmed by her eldritch whispers, and obviously we can see in the Crucible of Storms that some massive part of N'zoth's physical body is actually under that same island (hey, have we checked on that since defeating him in Ny'alotha? Is his body still there?) so it seems like Azshara could be using the Tidesages to have a foothold in Kul Tiras.

But it's not like every Tidesage went evil - just... a lot of them. The organization itself doesn't seem to be entirely villainous - just the corruption of Lord Stormsong (who, himself, I suspect is more of a villain than an instigator.)

It's possible that Azshara allowed this tradition to develop as a kind of sleeper cell to serve N'zoth - clearly, the two of them made their move in this expansion.

But the ultimate purpose of the Tidesages is possibly tied up with the fate of Azshara. We free her in Ny'alotha, where she helps us in defeating N'zoth. I know a lot of people are convinced that N'zoth somehow won despite our apparent victory in the raid, but narratively, I also feel like Azshara must now at the very least be done with any feigned allegiance to him.

What's her goal now? And did she pull a trigger that can't be pulled again with Lord Stormsong? Or are the Tidesages now a convenient set of agents she has not just in Kul Tiras, but in the Alliance as a whole?

What I find interesting is that neither of these two theories, despite being - I think - pretty clearly true, are really remarked upon explicitly in the course of BFA. Is this just something for those of us paying attention can feel clever for having noticed? Or is it a potential narrative hook they might pull later on?

In the case of the Drust, I think the story just sort of resolves itself - it explains why there are so many super-burly Kul Tirans and also gives us the closest thing to playable Vrykul we're likely to get. For the Tidesages, it's all deeply (no pun intended) tied to what they do with Azshara.

That, in itself, is a big question, given that we've really gotten the obvious from her - as the final boss of a raid in Nazjatar.

Positive Versus Negative Accomplishments in Games

Though it feels like a decade, it's actually only been about three years since the release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. A lot of things have, obviously, happened since then. On a personal level, my mom died just a few months later, and more recently and less individually, the world has been rocked by a devastating pandemic, which has killed more Americans than the Vietnam War in just a couple months (revisiting this post in a year or so, that number may even seem surprisingly low.)

This is a game that got nearly universal praise, critical acclaim, and I believe outsold Ocarina of Time, the "Seven Samurai" of video games (because it's frequently and not terribly controversially considered the greatest example of its medium of all time) by a factor of two.

And I didn't really like it.

Don't get me wrong: the game is beautiful, and I played it for many hours, enjoying the various things I could do in it. But I also always felt as if it had succumbed a bit to the "open world curse" - namely, that by filling a massive map with myriad things to do, the game suffered from a sort of sameiness in its challenges. Going to a new location like a sun-baked desert or a snow-covered mountainside, you still found all the same sorts of things and the same sorts of monsters. To me, it killed some of the excitement of cresting that next hill or delving into that distant forest because, well, I know all that I would face there would be more of the same. And the interchangeability of the various puzzle shrines was, similarly, a reason for me to be less invested in discovering what lay within.

So I find myself wondering why, to so many people, this was a transcendental, mind-blowing, legendary experience. When so many people are enamored with something, you start to wonder if the problem is in you.

Growing up, I didn't actually have a video game console until I was 10, saving up allowance money to get myself an SNES. The next year, I did the same for a used N64 (I think I might have convinced my parents to come up with other tasks for me to earn the cash for them.) Ironically, the only video game console I ever got as a gift from a parent was a Nintendo Switch in 2018, when I was 32.

So the first Zelda game I ever got was Ocarina of Time (I remember having to convince my mom that it wasn't too violent for 12-year-old me when it came out). I'd later get Majora's Mask, and then A Link to the Past, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, and eventually Breath of the Wild, and then the recent Switch remake of Link's Awakening. To me, Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past were the really formative ones, and I loved Twilight Princess even as reviews had been sort of underwhelmed by it.

I remember one of my big accomplishments in Ocarina of Time was that I got all 20 heart containers, which I also accomplished in A Link to the Past. Zelda games tended to have these collectables - you didn't have to get every last one to beat the game, but you'd feel a certain sense of accomplishment if you managed it.

And I suspect that might be part of what didn't work for me with Breath of the Wild.

There's a sense that you can get in some games when it comes to these "extra credit" accomplishments. Take a totally different game: The Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within. Playing through the game, it's relatively linear, but you can occasionally find little hidden puzzle/obstacle course areas that will increase your maximum health (not unlike heart containers.) Throughout the game, you are hunted by a monster called the Dahaka - an embodiment of time that wishes to punish you for messing with the flow of time in the first game in that trilogy (The Sands of Time). In Warrior Within, you eventually fight against the... Lady of Time? Priestess... I don't remember what she's called, but she's the final boss, and by killing her, you find a way to change time or something. But what I hadn't realized when playing through it is that, if you got every health upgrade, you'd get the Water Sword, which then allowed you to save the priestess lady and instead fight the Dahaka itself - leading to a totally different ending.

My feeling after realizing that wasn't so much that I'd beaten the game and that there was more that I could get in an earlier playthrough, but rather that I'd actually failed the first time, and that I'd gotten the "bad" ending.

I've definitely got a perfectionist streak in me. And unfortunately, that makes me feel that when I don't do things quite perfectly, it's a failure.

Going back to Zelda, then, I think perhaps part of what I didn't like about Breath of the Wild was that, ultimately, I was just not going to get to do everything in it. Sure, I beat the four bosses in the corners of the world, but the game seems to resist allowing for "perfection." You can get the absolute best weapons and shields, but you're not going to be able to hold onto them, as they'll break eventually in an unrecoverable way.

Items are meant to be used up, chewed up, and replaced in Breath of the Wild, and it's hard for me to accept that on an emotional level. Accomplishments are temporary, for the most part.

Now, I stand by my criticisms about the sameiness of the monsters and the shrines, but I do wonder if I'd enjoy it more going in with fewer expectations. Letting the game be what it is, and not getting bogged down by what I feel I should be accomplishing in it.

There is a Breath of the Wild 2 coming, though I think we could see a different name (unlike Final Fantasy, I don't see Nintendo getting really into sub-series for Zelda) and I wonder if I'll do better approaching that with a new attitude.

At the same time, though, I also hope that we'll see some Zelda games more in the vein of Ocarina of Time/Twilight Princess again.

Opening Up the Sandbox in D&D

Being a DM can take different forms, and a different DM/GM will often have very different styles from the next.

I've been running a campaign set in Ravnica (and, later, the overall MTG multiverse) and things have transitioned significantly in the past session.

Through the early levels, players have mostly been given short adventures that are fairly on-rails. The intention was to have self-contained content that we could get through in an evening so that the large cast of player character could rotate in and out without feeling lost if they missed a session.

The problem, as I saw it, was that there wasn't really a lot of time for players to just be themselves and develop personalities. Things were on a strict timetable, and we needed to get through our typical two combats per session.

The campaign is built around tiers - players level up very easily to a tier's cap (4, 10, 16, and 20) because they get a new level every session. However, to progress to the next tier, the players need to get to the next portion of the story.

The players recently got to tier 2 a few sessions ago, but after a brief, linear adventure introducing the big bads of the campaign and a character-specific adventure (I forced the Dimir member of the group to out himself or be taken down by a group of horrors sent to assassinate him) the players have now been sent off to a different district (that I've invented) with a broad goal - to break into a heavily-fortified Simic laboratory that is secretly developing Phyrexian technology - but with several major obstacles that will prevent them from successfully doing so unless they can find ways to subvert them before they launch their attack.

What's interesting is that I think some players are struggling to grasp that they won't be able to get in so easily - some party members seemed to think they might be able to get in on their first session, which was very unlikely.

That being said, the free-form nature of this new chapter of the campaign is making me very excited. I think that as things go, they'll be forced to come up with creative solutions. Just in case they can't, I have a few ways to solve issues that they might hear about from some of the "rumor NPCs" I've come up with, but as DM, I'm also going to be flexible and allow for solutions I haven't thought of if they come up with something clever.

At this point, the party is only aware of two major obstacles - monster packs guarding the place that are about twice the recommended challenge for a group of level 10 players as well as enormous, indestructible walls around the place. They'll need to do some more recon if they want to know about the other defenses, and then work further to discover ways to deal with those issues.

I expect this to take a few sessions, and with random encounters to have in the district's own various precincts (it's a blue-mana district with precincts each leaning toward one of the four blue guilds) I expect there will be plenty of issues for them to deal with in the build-up to this confrontation.

What's fun is that the party sometimes comes up with problems you hadn't even thought of. There are eight potential inns/hotels for them to stay in here, and they chose the second-sketchiest one (a former Simic biolab that was very cheaply converted into rentable rooms that all smell like chlorine.) The party, wary of being tracked by the bad guys, chose this over a far nicer hotel (also in the Simic-heavy Sharkbite Precinct.) The Boros fighter made a point to pay the stoner-dude desk clerk not to tell anyone they were staying there, which the Rakdos bard pointed out was far more suspicious than a bunch of people just staying in a hotel together.

This stoner high elf, Doug, was just a purely functional NPC to take money from them for their rooms, but now, I think that his addled mind is going to probably let slip their location after a certain number of days. So, thanks, players!

We're transitioning to an alternating Monday/Saturday schedule, which sadly means that it's over a week until our next session. But I'm really curious to see where this goes.

The Arc of Shadowlands

The testing phase of a new expansion is always an interesting one in terms of lore.

The release of an expansion is always going to mean the biggest lore dump, the biggest addition of content. And yet, it's the beginning.

Almost every story is most interesting when it begins, because it's nothing but potential, and we can fill in what will come next with our imaginations.

That being said, the conclusion is not always obvious from the outset. While the first three expansions were built around a build up to a confrontation with its Big Bad (BC having to add on Sunwell Plateau after releasing Black Temple too early,) Mists of Pandaria began with Alliance/Horde combat spilling out onto this newly discovered land. Still, Blizzard told us before Mists released that, ultimately, Garrosh would be its final boss, and the expansion would conclude in Orgrimmar. But expansions that followed were a lot more coy. Warlords was set up to all be about the Iron Horde, only for us to instead find ourselves fighting the Burning Legion. Legion, admittedly, by its name, sort of had to have us go and fight the Burning Legion on its home turf, but the actual arrival on Argus and the existence of the Titan Argus were both fairly surprising, even after the expansion launched. BFA, while steeped in Old God lore, nevertheless seemed to be focusing primarily on the Alliance/Horde conflict before N'zoth became the focus of the expansion.

So, how do things begin in Shadowlands?

Things kick off when Sylvanas travels to Icecrown Citadel. She fights Bolvar, seemingly wiping out his most elite Scourge forces with ease (it literally happens during a title card) and then, while Bolvar puts up a good fight, she manages to best him thanks to the powers granted to her by the Jailer.

Though she, for a moment, seems as if she's going to claim the Helm of Domination for herself, she instead tears the artifact helmet apart. Whatever power was bound up in that helmet is released, and the destruction tears a rift between our reality and the Shadowlands.

I'm not in the Alpha, so I'm working from datamined stuff and impressions from those who have been able to play, as well as what Blizzard has told us.

To start, we're going to be dealing with five realms of the Shadowlands as well as its central city of Oribos. It appears we'll be finding corrupted figures in each of its covenants who are working for the Jailer (though I'm a little unclear on what exactly is going on with the Forsworn in Bastion - it's possible they're still good, but not as into the idea of abandoning their old identities to become Kyrians.)

Thus, it seems like the first major plotline is going to involve us going from realm to realm and defeating the various allies of the Jailer.

We know of the first raid, Castle Nathria, which will be in Revendreth, and is billed as a gothic vampire castle - basically Dracula's Castle (or Castle Ravenloft for you D&D fans.) Still, this is likely to be the Mogu'shan Vaults/Highmaul/Emerald Nightmare/Uldir equivalent raid - the starter, intro-raid that will, before long, be remembered as a quickie intro.

There are models for "Maw Raid" armor, though it's unclear if there's a raid set in the Maw coming so soon or if that will be stuff we earn in Torghast.

Blizzard claims they're being more forthright with the big bad of the expansion, which suggests that the Jailer will really be the final boss. That still leaves some questions: for example, who is the Jailer, and also, what role does Sylvanas play in all of this? (On the former, my current bet is that he's a dead Titan, possibly Telogrus of Telogrus Rift fame.)

In other expansions, we've often gotten new zones as patches have gone on. Legion gave us... well, the Broken Shore actually existed prior to 7.2, but it got actual content there with the patch, and then we got the three-zone world of Argus in 7.3. BFA's 8.2 gave us Mechagon and Nazjatar, and then 8.3 gave us new reasons to go to Uldum and Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

Blizzard has been very consistent in saying that there are many more worlds of the Shadowlands than the five we're visiting in 8.0. (Indeed, the Other Side dungeon seems to be another one, and I'd guess that Helheim and possibly Thros are also other Shadowlands realms.) So they have a lot of license to add new zones.

It seems to me that, as things stand now, we can predict that the Jailer will be the final boss of the expansion, likely with a raid in either the Maw or Oribos as the final one (the notion that the Arbiter is actually the villain has also crossed my mind, in which case a final raid in Oribos makes a lot of sense.)

If we assume there will be four raids, with maybe a fifth mini-raid (like we've had in Legion and BFA) we can place Castle Nathria in that first spot and the final raid... at the end.

In fact, let's imagine the Maw raid is actually the first "tier" raid, like Nighthold or Dazar'alor, and the Oribos raid will actually be the last one. That just leaves one more raid to fill in.

I'm getting very speculative here, but let's project the following:

Sylvanas has been working with the Jailer, but in fact, she's been double-crossing him at the behest of the Arbiter. So we go do Castle Nathria and take down... spoiler guy. Then, 9.1, we do a raid in the Maw, fighting the Jailer. In our victory, the Jailer reveals to us that, while he did have Sylvanas break open the Shadowlands, the actual anima drought isn't his doing, nor is the damnation of all souls to the Maw - its actually the Arbiter (after all, she's the one who determines where souls go, so she would be the obvious person to be behind this.) Perhaps we then fight an Arbiter-empowered Sylvanas in 9.2 somewhere else in the Shadowlands (or possibly even back on the material plane - maybe in a reclaimed Undercity?) And then, with all the truth laid bare, the final fight is against the Arbiter in a raid in Oribos - we go from spooky gothic castle to spooky death-metal raid to... the 9.2 one... and then the final fight is in a bright and heavenly Oribos raid.

It'll be a long time before we actually know all this, and having the questing experience of the expansion in hand will make it a lot easier to determine how likely all of this is.

If they stick with BFA's storytelling structure, there should still be plenty of story to play through even at the level cap and past the first patch.

Fate of the Fordragons

Bolvar Fordragon was, when WoW launched, the "boss" in Stormwind. Each major city had a figure who was in charge, and with Varian missing (he would be until Wrath of the Lich King) and Anduin at that point still just a little kid, Bolvar was the regent of Stormwind.

And all in all, Bolvar was considered a paragon. He was a Paladin, of course, which was pretty cool (in Vanilla, Paladins were exclusive to the Alliance and Shamans were exclusive to the Horde, so having Bolvar and Thrall as the major leaders in the two factions' main cities was a nicely symmetrical arrangement) and, as he was fleshed out, we learned that he was basically Varian's most trusted and best friend, a good avuncular presence in Anduin's life, and also that he was related to a character named Mara Fordragon (possibly his mother,) who was a great hero that had helped save the evacuating people of Stormwind in the hellish aftermath of the First War. Though he was deceived by Onyxia in her guise as Katrana Prestor, he aided heroes in defending the royal castle from the Black Dragonflight's attack, securing his reputation as one of the most badass Alliance figures in the lore.

With Varian's return in Wrath, Bolvar was sent to Northrend as the leader of the Alliance efforts to combat the Lich King. Heroically standing against the Scourge alongside the Kor'kron (hey, remember when they were good guys?) representing the Horde, Bolvar fell to the Wrathgate Incident, and his "death" was, to a degree, the spark that ignited the war that spanned Wrath, Cataclysm, and Mists of Pandaria. When we arrive in Icecrown Citadel, we discover that he's not actually dead, and has instead been enduring a year's worth of torture by Arthas, who seeks to corrupt him into a Death Knight.

But despite how easily the Lich King has done so with so many other people, he never succeeded with Bolvar. Perhaps it was the Red Dragonflight's flames that did this to him - rather than burning him to ash, the fires purged him of the Forsaken blight and instead preserved his life - even while his body was scorched and blackened with ever-burning flame. I actually wonder if he is incapable of dying - that Alexstrasza's fires have insulated him from death.

Ironic, then, that death is the power he would find himself ruling over - with Arthas slain, someone was needed to keep control over the Scourge, and to rein it in. Bolvar, normal life no longer within his grasp, volunteered to do the job. And if anyone seemed capable of resisting the corrupting power of the Helm of Domination, Bolvar seemed the best candidate.

Still, while sacrificing his old life seemed a big deal to begin with, in Battle for Azeroth we discovered just how big a deal this was: Bolvar is a father. His daughter, Taelia, was sent at a young age to foster in Kul Tiras, growing up under the tutelage of Cyrus Crestfall and under the protection of the Proudmoores. Given the threat of the Horde, and later the Scourge, it makes sense that he would want to send his daughter to the relatively insulated kingdom of Kul Tiras, and it's clear that sending children elsewhere for their upbringing wasn't an unusual thing - Jaina, as we know, grew up in Dalaran, losing her Kul Tiran accent as she studied under Antonidas.

Was Taelia a secret in-world, or just to us players? Obvioulsy, I suspect Blizzard invented her while developing BFA, but given how coy the game plays with her identity until later in its story, it seems as if her identity was kept a secret intentionally.

Now, granted, it's been 12 real-life years since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. (And two since BFA, so say 10 years between Bolvar's fall and Taelia's reveal.) So if Taelia is meant to be a young woman, maybe 20, 21, that would mean that she was very much a child when her father "died."

The opening events of Shadowlands, of course, will mean that Bolvar's status as Lich King is no more. We do know that he will be helping us navigate this new realm of existence, perhaps serving as "prime quest-giver" like Khadgar or Magni have in the past couple expansions.

Bolvar was certainly no mass-murderer like Arthas, but that's not to say that everything he did atop the Frozen Throne was in keeping with his paladin code. Arguably, he was working for a greater good, but he certainly resorted to some dark methods.

What, then, is Bolvar at this point?

Is he still a Paladin? Unlike Arthas, who carved out his own heart as he embraced undeath, Bolvar spent a decade with the Helm of Domination on his head, but then it was removed. How much has that changed him on a physical and spiritual level? And how has the Red Dragonfire altered him - and to what extent does it still dictate his nature? Is he a Death Knight?

Also, with the Lich King as a thing no longer... a thing, what does that mean for his future prospects? What is his purpose now, having failed his task of guarding the gateway between this world and the next?

I imagine that we will, in some way, triumph at the end of Shadowlands. There's always a final boss for us to defeat, after all. Will that victory solve the problem of how broken the Shadowlands have become? Will Bolvar have earned a break?

Will he be able to have any sort of relationship with his daughter?

Taelia was a big part of Alliance leveling in Kul Tiras, but it feels very much like this was an introduction for her character, and not a full arc. Indeed, her presence in Kul Tiras was one of the many hints before Shadowlands was announced that we'd be having a death-themed expansion next.

But what is actually in store for her and her dad?

Also, does anyone in this freaking world have two living parents? (I guess Arator.)

Dreams of Frost and Death: Hopes for Frost Death Knights in Shadowlands

Back in Wrath, I was Blood/Blood - I had a Blood DPS spec and a Blood tank spec, back when that was possible. When Cataclysm came and established Blood firmly as the tanking spec and Frost as a DPS spec, I went with Frost as my DPS spec. (Ironically, when original conceived, Frost was going to be the tanking spec, the notion being that the Death Knight was protecting itself with layers of ice and going with that whole "implacable man" vibe, while Blood made sense as a dps spec that got a bit of self-healing as a flavorful bonus.)

Frost has gone through a few reimaginings over the years, though at its core, it has kept three core abilities: Obliterate, Howling Blast, and Frost Strike.

There was always a difficult balancing act, though, regarding dual-wielding. Death Knights, iconically, were known for their big, two-handed swords, like Frostmourne. But Blizzard wanted to at least allow Death Knights to dual-wield, as some people enjoy that aesthetic.

Thanks in large part to the talent Threat of Thessarian, Frost became the spec that was capable of dual-wielding, but for a while, they wanted to allow those who preferred two-handed weapons the option to do so in a dps spec that didn't require the pet-management of Unholy. Hence, Might of Mograine, a counterpart to Threat of Thessarian, was introduced for those who preferred the two-handed style.

Then came Legion. Legion, with its artifact weapons, needed to make some firm decisions about the sort of weapons that players would use. While Feral and Guardian Druids wound up dual-wielding (despite not being able to do that, generally) for Frost, they decided that making the spec dual-wield only solved a couple problems. Gameplay-wise, they no longer needed to balance the spec for two weapon loadouts. And flavor-wise, it allowed players to wield Frostmourne without having their souls sucked into the sword - the Blades of the Fallen Prince were made from the shards of Frostmourne, but were created in such a way that they no longer drank the souls of anyone who even touched the things.

And so, in Legion and BFA, Frost has been a dual-wield only spec.

I'll be honest, my biggest problem with that is one of aethetics. One-handed weapons just don't look as impressive to me (except perhaps Demon Hunters' massive Warglaives) and for a Death Knight in particular, given the kind of special relationship they develop with their weapons by carving runes into them, it seems kind of cheap in comparison (though I'll grant the sheathed-on-the-back new starting weapons for allied race/Pandaren DKs look pretty good.)

From an aesthetic point of view, I like two-handers, and I also like Frost as a spec that delivers massive, crushing blows rather than a barrage of smaller hits.

So I'm very happy to hear that Frost is going to be allowing two-handers again in Shadowlands.

With that issue solved, let's talk about another issue:

Breath of Sindragosa.

BoS is a talent that really transforms Frost as a spec. For those unfamiliar: it's a 2-minute cooldown ability. You start spraying out a cone of Frost damage that costs a certain amount of Runic Power every time it deals damage (about once a second.) It lasts as long as you have the RP to pay for it, ending when you don't have enough. So, a build that focuses on it will be all about maximizing the uptime of this ability, ensuring that Runic Power generation is as high as possible so that you can get this burst of frost damage.

It's actually a bit like Void Form for a Shadow Priest. But while a SPriest can re-enter Void Form as soon as they build up enough Insanity, DKs with this talent have to wait until the cooldown comes back, and are just doing a more basic rotation while waiting for it to come back.

This means bursts of major damage if you can maintain uptime on your target (Obliterating as often as possible to earn more RP,) but also a chance to have wasted it if you, say, start it off right before a phase in a fight where you have to run away from the boss.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who really like the talent. I don't.

The problem, however, as with a lot of talents, is that there tends to be a cycle in each expansion where Breath of Sindragosa builds become unquestionably the most powerful version of the Frost DK spec. Rather than letting players who like it take it and those who don't to ignore it, it tends to be that at certain gear levels, it's unfeasible, and then at others, it's the only real way to play the spec.

I, for one, have enjoyed a build using Icecap and three stacks of Frostwhelps Indignation (which does a sort of mini-Frostwyrm's Fury and buffs your Pillar of Frost for each target the frostwhelp hits,) which served me decently until I hit higher gear levels, at which point it falls far behind BoS builds.

Now, if the game were designed specifically for me, I'd just say get rid of Breath of Sindragosa and we'd all dance on its grave. But I recognize that, to many, Frost DKs wouldn't be the same without it (they might argue the spec is too boring without it, which I disagree with, given the complexities of playing an Icecap build effectively.)

I don't know how to fix the issue, but I'd love for Breath of Sindragosa to become a truly optional playstyle in Shadowlands.

Of course, given the trickiness of balancing between dual-wielders and two-handers, I'm sure that they'll have a lot on their hands to keep two playstyles within a single spec (among 36) on par with one another.

I don't know that Frost needs a full overhaul like Unholy got in Legion (though I will say I've found Unholy far, far more fun to play since the Legion rework) but I do think there's a question about what, exactly, the fantasy behind Frost is.

To my mind, Frost represents the kind of eternal aspect of the Death Knight. You could imagine someone finding the DK frozen in a glacier after thousands of years, and they're ready to fight right away. Remorseless Winter is a pretty cool aesthetic for them as well, the way that they're surrounded by a biting wind that freezes nearby foes. They're an elemental force on the battlefield. I also love the aesthetic of Frostscythe. Frost feels like it should embody the kind of callous relentlessness of a Death Knight, the grimness of these reapers.

Given that Unholy's damage sources are all divided between many elements - diseases, wounds, ghouls, armies of the dead, and potentially other pets, it becomes something more of a death-of-a-thousand-stings specs. By contrast, I think Frost should be one of cold, bone-shattering blows. Obliterate should hit like a freight train.

Granted, one reason it doesn't these days is that the damage is divided between two weapons. With two-handed Frost coming back, we might start to see massive Obliterate crits once again.

With Shadowlands, I'd really like to see Frost as the sort of Executioner spec for Death Knights - one that maybe needs a buildup - getting your Killing Machine proc, and maybe even building up a debuff via one of the many new runeforging runes - but then taking things out with a felling blow.

Well, the Cloth Set for Castle Nathria is a Plague Doctor's Outfit, so I Have to Get That

I don't know what it is, but I love it when WoW goes in for a gothic horror vibe. Some of my favorite zones to level up in tend to be places like Duskwood, Drustvar, the bit of Val'Sharah that leads up to Black Rook Hold, and the Undead and Worgen starting zones.

It's funny, because I actually enjoy it more than games like Diablo, that put the Gothic feel at the forefront. I guess it's that, with all the fantasy kitchen sink context, the gothic horror has something to stand out from.

Anyway, ever since visiting Venice when I was 8 years old, I've found the Venetian "bauta" masks extremely compelling. These masks, I later found out, were created so that senators in the Venetian senate (this was, of course, before Italy was unified in the 1800s) could wear them and vote anonymously but still be able to eat (how truly anonymous the masks made you, I don't know.) The plague-doctor mask wasn't actually made for performance, though. In fact, it was sort of an early attempt at a protective mask.

Of course, people didn't understand how disease spread at the time, and the germ theory was still far off. At the time, there was a notion that disease was caused by a "miasma" of foul air, and that you could avoid getting sick by making sure that you were breathing nice-smelling air. The "beak" of the doctor's mask was thus stuffed with nice-smelling herbs.

It probably remained popular because the mask inadvertently worked as a partially effective air filter, and I bet those herbs caught some bacteria or airborne viruses.

Still, the super-creepy look of the plague-doctor's mask makes it a great fit for gothic fantasy, and I'm very excited to get that transmog for my Warlock and Priest (less so for my Mage, who's probably the one who will actually collect it.) Of course, the "elite" Horde cloth set for the Darkshore Warfront already has a bit of that Plague-Doctor vibe (I have nearly the entire set and use it on my Shadow Priest) but this is a lot more explicit and also is available to Alliance characters.

EDIT:

So apparently the Leather set is a straight-up witch-hunter set, with the sort of pilgrim hat with a divot like you see Solomon Kane wearing. Damn, I'm looking forward to Revendreth. Rogue is almost certainly going with their covenant.

Another Look at Firearms in D&D 5E

By default, guns aren't a thing in D&D, with the technology levels almost being based around the notion of pre-dating firearms.

Historically, one of the key advantages and changes that came about with firearms was the way that they negated the effect of armor. Indeed, it may have been a democratizing influence on warfare (though the longbow certainly had had a similar effect far earlier) as the heavy, plate armor that rich nobles could afford had previously rendered them mostly impervious to the simple spears the peasant infantry would use could be easily punctured with a bullet.

Granted, a longbow or heavy crossbow could probably also pierce plate if it hit directly, and a musketball hitting at a shallow angle could probably be deflected by plate, meaning that the notion of plate continuing to increase AC even against powerful projectiles isn't entirely outside of the realm of believability.

In a world where literal magic exists, of course, all bets are off.

But D&D does come up against a tough balance issue: it seems obvious that firearms ought to do more damage than bows and crossbows. There is also a very clear advantage to using ranged attacks, as you can do so from a safe distance if the target is incapable of firing anything back.

The way things are balanced, the very highest regular ranged weapon damage you can accomplish in D&D 5E is the Heavy Crossbow, which deals 1d10 piercing damage on a hit (plus Dex.) Having the Loading property is its downside, though an Artificer with the Repeating Shot infusion or anyone with the Crossbow Expert feat can ignore that. (The infusion also means never running out of ammo, which is pretty nice.)

The best melee weapon damage is the Greatsword or Maul, which both deal 2d6 damage. The average then comes out to 7 (or 8.33 if you have the Great Weapon Fighting fighting style) compared to the Heavy Crossbow's 5.5.

However, a couple things can come into play. Setting aside bonuses like a weapon that adds additional die rolls (like a Flame Tongue,) ranged weapons have an advantage which is that you can have both a magic weapon and magic ammunition. If you have a +3 Heavy Crossbow and some +3 Bolts, that gives you a total bonus in damage (and chance to hit, which is not insignificant) of 6, compared to a max of 3 for your Maul. The extra three damage makes up for the d10's lower average damage than 2d6 (even with the fighting style) not to mention that you're also hitting more frequently thanks to the significant boost in your to-hit rolls.

Now, granted, we're talking primarily about a classless character with out any significant class features that could alter this math like Improved Divine Smite or a Barbarian's Rage.

But if we look at, say, a Champion Fighter, this actually means that, with access to magic ammunition and weapons, they're actually going to be dealing more damage at range than they could in melee.

And that's before we even get to firearms.

Again, the highest damage ranged weapons by default are 1d10, or 1d8 for a longbow, which doesn't require using a bonus action to reload or another feature to negate that requirement.

Firearms, naturally, need to be more powerful than these to make any sense. Pistols (by which I think the game means flintlock pistols like what you'd see a pirate shooting) do 1d10 damage. Muskets deal 1d12. At that point you're catching up quite easily with melee weapons even before considering magic ammunition - a Musket is doing 6.5 average damage.

And that's just where things start. There are three more categories: modern firearms start being two-die weapons. Automatic pistols do 2d6. Automatic rifles, revolvers, and shotguns do 2d8, and Hunting Rifles do 2d10.

Finally, when you get into futuristic weapons, you get 3-die weapons, dealing 3d6 with a laser pistol, 3d8 with a laser rifle, and then the insane antimatter rifle which does 6d8 - oh, and none of these are physical damage.

Now, sure, if you're going to have laser rifles, they ought to be dealing way more damage. But how, then, do you introduce those to a campaign where your Barbarian, Paladin, or Strength-based Fighter isn't feeling like they made the wrong choice?

One option is to look to Star Wars.

Star Wars is, hands down, the ultimate science-fantasy property, and they managed to come up with a way to let people fight with swords in a world where there were all sorts of blasters and guns.

But how do we represent awesome sci-fi melee weapons like a lightsaber? We could step things up like the futuristic firearms did by adding more dice. If a laser rifle can deal 3d8 on a hit, compared with a longbow doing 1d8, maybe a lightsaber can deal 4d6, compared with a greatsword doing 2d6.

The consequence of this, of course, is that everyone's doing more damage, which means fights are faster and deadlier. That might work for your campaign (though I think 5E combat is actually pretty quick already, at least in-world if not in realtime.)

Another option is far simpler:

Ignore the DMG and just reskin crossbows as guns. Re-skinning is usually a good option if you don't want to upset the game's balance. Just let players buy a Musket for the same cost as a Heavy Crossbow, make it do 1d10 damage and let them buy bullets for the same price they'd buy bolts.

Another idea is one that I suggested in an earlier post:

Maybe firearms resist magical enchantment. So while a Musket or a Hunting Rifle might do a lot more damage than your Heavy Crossbow would, it's a lot easier to find a +2 Heavy Crossbow and some Bolts of Dragon Slaying than it would to be find equivalent guns and bullets. The downside to this, as I see it, is that you introduce an exciting and unusual element into your fantasy world and then pretty much tell the players not to play with the fun new toys.

I'd love to see Wizards introduce some Weird West or Steampunk official setting, and perhaps flesh out rules surrounding firearms, but I also know that a lot of fantasy purists hate the idea of guns in their fantasy worlds (mind you, I'm no fan of guns in the real world. But I'm so influenced by fantasy worlds that include more modern weapons, like the Dark Tower, World of Warcraft, and, apparently, Final Fantasy VII, that I find the medieval stasis embraced by most fantasy pretty limiting.)

Do Leveling Changes Mean Heirlooms Should As Well?

Heirloom armor was introduced a long time ago - I honestly don't know when - as a means to make leveling alts easier. If you never played pre-Cataclysm (though you can, easily, by making a character in Classic) you might not realize just the dearth of easily-acquired gear. Quests tended to offer just one reward, and you might go through an entire little story arc on your Warrior only to receive some Leather armor with Intellect on it.

So one of the major functions of heirlooms when they were first introduced (assuming I am correct in remembering them coming out during Wrath) was just to fill in several piece of gear that were unlikely to get upgrades over the course of normal questing and dungeon-runs.

But they also made things faster - today, with helm, shoulders, chest, pants, cloak, and ring, you can get a full 50% experience buff, and that, to be frank, feels like the primary advantage of the gear.

Vanilla WoW was originally created in such a way that the leveling really was the game. Raiding, while much more simplistic than it is now (remember how shocked Classic players were when they cleared Molten Core so easily?) was considered something for only the hardcore - equivalent to Mythic Raiders today. I think, as originally conceived, the things you were doing at level 20 were just as important as what you were doing at 40 and then 60, and there wasn't as much of a rush to the endgame because, well, there wasn't a ton of endgame.

The natural consequence, though, of a game being around for over 15 years, is that by now, anyone who has been playing this long certainly has their main character sitting at the level cap, and likely several alts (see name of blog).

As the playerbase coalesced at the level cap, WoW has become more and more focused on that endgame content. The last time we got a zone for single-digit-level characters was in Mists of Pandaria, which came out 8 years ago. The emphasis has been on getting characters to max level as quickly as possible, which is why we've started getting a free character boost with each expansion since Warlords. And that makes sense - with most of the players at the cap, you want to allow new players (or new characters) to get into the realm of WoW where things are actually social and you can do the cooperative content the game is built for.

And that's why the level squish, though controversial, is probably a big idea.

Even as they've nerfed the amount of XP needed to level up, and as they've implemented systems to make that nerf less awkward, like level scaling, the fact of the matter is that it takes a LONG time to get a character - even an Allied Race character that starts at 20 - all the way up to the cap. There was a time when the fact that Death Knights started at level 55 felt like a massive head start, but so much content has come out since then that it doesn't actually feel like a leg up.

So soon, you'll just need to get to level 10, then choose any expansion's original level-up range (or Vanilla/Cataclysm revamp) and just do one of those to get up to 50, at which you'll get into the new Shadowlands content.

The question, then, that I have, is this: do heirlooms still need an XP buff?

Leveling a new character is going to be ridiculously faster in Shadowlands. Do we need that 50% xp boost as well?

Now, sure, some people are always going to say faster leveling is always better. And I think there's also a very reasonable argument to be made that, with all the gold invested in upgrading heirlooms, it would seem cheap to remove what, to many, feels like their primary asset.

And yet, there's a kind of tyranny to heirlooms. I've gotten so used to using them on alts (especially after they implemented them as part of the "collection" system) that I'd feel wrong for not using them. It reminds me of the way they changed rested XP in the original WoW beta - originally, "rested" experience was considered normal, and if you went through it all, you'd have "exhausted" XP, meaning you weren't earning as much as you would if you were rested.

People hated this, because it seemed like it was punishing them for playing the game. But the thing is: Blizzard didn't actually change the mechanic. Instead, they made "rested" into a bonus you got for logging off for a while, and as a mechanic to help players catch up, while "exhausted" just became "normal."

The problem is that heirlooms now feel like "normal" when leveling, while not using them feels like it's "exhausted." Of course, Blizzard isn't really to blame here - there's no implied penalty to just using ordinary gear. But it's an easy trap to fall into, especially given the Everest-ian climb that is going from 1-120 (or 20-120) these days.

The level squish and changes to leveling are, effectively, going to be the most profound XP buff the game has ever experienced. Maybe, then, we might feel less compelled to use heirlooms?