Hearthstone's new expansion is going to be 1920s gangland themed.
It seems that after the Cataclysm, the goblin town became a real city and of course, being a Goblin city, naturally there are plenty of bootleggers and protection rackets. There are three major gangs represented in the expansion. Each gang will have tri-class cards that can be used in any of the three classes associated with the gang.
Grimy Goons are a big protection racket who use crazy inventions like piranha guns and walk around in the open.
Jade Lotus are secretive assassins who seem to be mostly Pandaren in flavor.
Mage, Priest, Warrior: The Kabal are a secret society that uses illicit potions.
The Kabal leader legendary minion will allow you to create custom spells, choosing a cost and two effects (that are proportional to that cost.)
Friday, November 4, 2016
Varian and Ragnaros Coming to Heroes of the Storm, Plus Blackheart's Revenge Brawl
Two new Warcraft figures are getting added to Heroes of the Storm.
First, in just a couple weeks, we'll be getting Varian Wrynn, the recently-departed and High King of the Alliance.
Varian will be a hybrid warrior/assassin, who appears to be able to go Arms, Prot, or Fury depending on the talents you take, which should be a great versatile option for adapting to other teams' compositions.
Ragnaros is, I'd assume, a Specialist, who has massive wave-clearing abilities and can even take over a fortress (whether it's been destroyed or not) to get huge and smash things.
Blackheart's Revenge is a brawl in which one side will attack while the other defends. It appears the attacks will need to keep Blackheart's ship from getting destroyed.
First, in just a couple weeks, we'll be getting Varian Wrynn, the recently-departed and High King of the Alliance.
Varian will be a hybrid warrior/assassin, who appears to be able to go Arms, Prot, or Fury depending on the talents you take, which should be a great versatile option for adapting to other teams' compositions.
Ragnaros is, I'd assume, a Specialist, who has massive wave-clearing abilities and can even take over a fortress (whether it's been destroyed or not) to get huge and smash things.
Blackheart's Revenge is a brawl in which one side will attack while the other defends. It appears the attacks will need to keep Blackheart's ship from getting destroyed.
Blizzcon 2016 Happening Now
Yes, it's Blizzcon!
I'll confess that I haven't been quite as invested in this one this year as I have been in the past, given that most of Blizzard's games have been updated rather recently. Legion launched about two months ago, Legacy of the Void isn't that old. Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm get regular small updates.
With the opening ceremonies happening now, any huge announcements are imminent, so I'll post anything really big that's coming.
I'll confess that I haven't been quite as invested in this one this year as I have been in the past, given that most of Blizzard's games have been updated rather recently. Legion launched about two months ago, Legacy of the Void isn't that old. Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm get regular small updates.
With the opening ceremonies happening now, any huge announcements are imminent, so I'll post anything really big that's coming.
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Tanking Competence and You! A Beginner's Guide
I just ran heroic Neltharion's Lair on my Enhancement Shaman. Our tank was a Vengeance Demon Hunter who seemed perhaps a little inexperienced. We wiped on Dargrul several times, largely due to some mechanics that he was either ignoring or just not dealing well with. Unfortunately, he and our healer were antagonizing each other, and so when we got a new healer and managed to down the boss, he declared in the party chat that it was clearly just the healer. I tried to explain in a polite and helpful way that there were some things he could work on, but he left before I could give him examples (some of which were advice he had ignored after previous attempts.)
Anyway, given that I play four different tank characters, I figured I'd put down a bit of advice.
1. Tanking is not as hard as it seems
First off, tanking can seem difficult, as it's a bit like DPS but with more responsibility, but in fact it's a pretty different set of skills. As long as you can maintain threat (and unless you severely undergear your DPS, you generally can) you don't really need to worry about damage numbers.
Your healer has your back. All you have to do is make sure that the enemies are in the right position and that you do what you can to reduce incoming damage or heal back your own depleted health.
Basically, remember that you're not competing to top meters. If you survive the fight and you don't get your party members killed, that's a victory.
As a tank, it's your job to try to make the healer bored.
2. Situational Awareness
Healers usually just ignore enemies as long as they're not pulsing some AoE that you can't stand inside of. DPS can focus down individual enemies. In general, a Tank can't afford to do this. Any enemy that is in combat with your party needs to get at least a bit of your attention. Thankfully, just about every tank class uses the same ability rotation for single-target and AoE. So just make sure that you get your AoE attacks on everything you're currently in combat with. Sometimes that means moving, because if a party member strays off the path or hesitates long enough to draw some patrol you avoided, you're going to need to pick it up.
Most tanks have abilities I call "snap threat," which are instant-cast abilities that hit multiple targets and that are almost always available. DKs' Blood Boil, Paladins' Blessed Hammer (a talent, but a recommended one,) DHs' Infernal Strike and Throw Glaive, and Druids' Thrash are all good examples. Monks and Warriors might have a little harder time, but while they're less often available, Warriors' Thunder Clap and Monks' Breath of Fire or Keg Smash are also great for picking up adds.
3. Positioning
Because enemies pay attention to you as the tank (assuming you got number 2 above right) you're going to have the power and responsibility to care about positioning.
First, there's the obvious: if an enemy has a big cone-attack that hits everyone in front of it, make sure you're facing the boss away from the group. Likewise, if it has any sort of tail-swipe ability that hits players who are standing at a particular angle, make sure that you're not wildly swinging the boss around. Whenever you can, plant your feet.
However, sometimes you can't. And you'll have to recognize when those situations arise. Some bosses make it obvious - like creating some big pool underneath them that you need to move away from. Sometimes it's less obvious - they might create a pool under one of your melee party members, and while you might be sitting high and dry, you'll still want to move the boss to make sure that everyone has a safe place to stand during the fight.
When moving a boss, be aware of effects that can be exacerbated by your movement. If the boss knocks you back periodically, don't back yourself up to a ledge that you can fall off of. If the boss has a tail swipe or frontal cone attack, make sure that you're not turning it to face your party or spinning that tail right into your friends' faces.
Also sometimes the boss will do something that even you shouldn't be standing in. If there's a frontal cone that they'll do without turning, quickly sidestep out of it, but be sure to get back into your position once the area is safe again to minimize how much your party needs to move.
4. Active Mitigation
Regardless of the fight, you'll always want to use Active Mitigation early and often. This takes a few forms, from increased avoidance to straight-up damage reduction to powerful self healing. In most cases, the effect is good enough on its own to be worth using. On certain bosses, however, there will be abilities that will specifically have extra effects (often doing significantly more damage) they hit a tank that does not have its active mitigation up. For bosses like this, you'll want to pool resources (and cooldowns) to make sure that you have the ability ready for when the thing goes off. (Though you also don't want to cap cooldowns or resources, as you'll still benefit from AM abilities during other parts of the fight.)
I highly, highly recommend using an addon like Weak Auras or something similar to track whether you have these effects up. Weak Auras allows something called "Progress Textures" which will allow you to have an icon that can either fill up or empty out as the buff wears off.
Let's go through each tank's active mitigation abilities:
Warriors: Both AM abilities are self-buffs. Shield Block has a set duration and will increase your block chance to 100%, which effectively causes you to take 40% less direct physical damage during its duration (or more thanks to Critical Block.) You also have Ignore Pain, which is a damage-absorption shield. This can be powerful when dealing with magic damage (that would usually go right through your shield) but can also wear off prematurely if the entire shield is used up. I'd recommend using Shield Block on any boss ability that cares about Active Mitigation, as you'll be guaranteed that it lasts long enough to still be up when the ability goes off.
Paladins: Shield of the Righteous is your main AM ability, reducing damage taken by a significant amount (based on mastery.) This is simply a 4.5 second buff that reduces incoming damage. Its effect (both the damage it deals and the reduction in damage you take) are increased if you're standing in your Consecration, so you should try to keep that up at all times. Additionally, Paladins have Light of the Protector, which heals you for a percentage of your missing health (again affected by Mastery.) This becomes more powerful the lower on health you have, but even if you're not dipping below 30%, it can still help out your healer. This heal does not grant any real buff, so it won't do anything for boss abilities that care about active mitigation, so make sure to use Shield of the Righteous for cases like that. Note that Shield of the Righteous requires you to be in melee range, as it's technically an attack that grants the defensive buff, so if there's a big hit coming in, make sure you can hit them first.
Death Knights: This one's a bit weird. The only official active mitigation buff you get is Blood Shield. If you're searching your spell book for this, you should stop, because it's actually your mastery passive. Instead, you'll want to be using Death Strike, which heals you for a big portion of the damage you've taken over the last 5 seconds (or 10% of your max health if you haven't been taking more than that amount of damage.) Your mastery will then generate a damage absorption shield that is proportional to this heal, and it's that shield that counts for active mitigation boss abilities. You do have other defensive abilities you'll want to use, but unfortunately these don't count for that type of boss ability. The main one is Marrowrend, which is a melee strike that generates three charges of Bone Shield. Each time you get hit with a melee attack, one of the charges on your Bone Shield will be spent to reduce the damage of that attack. Thus, you want to try to maintain at least one charge of Bone Shield at all times (or 5 if you have the talent Ossuary.) However, if you are sitting pretty on many charges, you'll instead want to use Heart Strike, which generates more Runic-Power-per-Rune-spent (15 for 1 or more if there are other targets to hit instead of 20 for 2) and thus means more Death Strikes.
Monks: Primarily, active mitigation for Monks is handled by your Brews, particularly Ironskin Brew. You can maintain very high uptime on this brew, which doubles the amount of damage you stagger from 40% to 80%. While this doesn't actually reduce the damage you ultimately take on its own, it will significantly smooth out the damage that you get, making the healer's job a lot easier. However, if you start to get a lot of staggered damage, you'll want to use Purifying Brew, which reduces your staggered damage by 50%. Be sure to use Keg Smash and Tiger Palm to reduce the recharge time on all your brews, but also be aware that Ironskin and Purifying share a cooldown, so if you use Purifying a lot it will make it harder to keep Ironskin up at all times. Ironskin Brew will be the buff you maintain in the event of boss abilities that care about active mitigation. I recommend taking the talent Black Ox Brew, which is a cooldown that restores you to your maximum Ironskin/Purifying Brew charges of 3 and also gives you full Energy. Because Black Ox Brew is a brew, its cooldown will also be reduced by Keg Smash and Tiger Palm, meaning you can use it very frequently. Aside from your Brews, you should also use Expel Harm to absorb any nearby Gift of the Ox orbs for a rather sizable heal, but again, the only real "active mitigation" buff you get is Ironskin Brew (actually, Fortifying Brew, your long-term defensive cooldown, might also count, but you can't use that rotationally.)
Demon Hunters: Your primary AM ability is Demon Spikes, which, much like Ironskin Brew, Shield of the Righteous, and Shield Block, is simply a buff that lasts a set amount of time. You get two charges of this and it only costs 20 Pain, so you'll have access to it pretty frequently. It also lasts a long time. However, another big part of Vengeance Demon Hunter survival is the use of Soul Cleave. This not only does a lot of damage to targets in front of you (and thus is good for threat in both single-target and aoe situations) but also heals you for a significant amount. It also draws in any nearby Lesser Soul Fragments generated by Shear, potentially healing you for a lot more than just its base healing. Basically, any time you've already got Demon Spikes up or on cooldown, you want to spend your Pain on Soul Cleave. Do not wait to amass soul fragments - while those will increase its healing by a lot, you'll be better served by getting the base healing of the ability and building up for the next one. Again, Soul Cleave does not give you an active mitigation buff, but its healing is a significant piece of the Vengeance survival strategy. You can pool Pain (though try not to cap it) before using Soul Cleave as it will heal you for more based on how much Pain is spent, I believe from 20 to 60.
Druids: I'll confess that my Druid is still sitting in the Dreamgrove having done almost nothing after getting the Claws of Ursoc, so this one's going to be a bit more sketchy. The primary AM ability for Guardians is going to be Ironfur. Unlike other tanks, there's actually a benefit to overlapping multiple applications of this ability, as you'll get the benefit of each stack (with each stack lasting its own separate duration.) Ironfur increases your armor by 100% for a few seconds, which of course will reduce the physical damage you take by a lot. This is the buff you'll want up when a boss hits you with one of those special attacks. Druids also have Frenzied Regeneration, which heals you for an amount based on the rage spent, but again, while this is a buff (it's a heal-over-time effect) I don't think this counts as true Active Mitigation for abilities that care.
5. Situational Awareness Again
As a tank you'll mostly be worried about enemies. But you'll also want to keep an eye on your party. Before charging on to the next fight, make sure that your healer has enough mana. Some healers will be fine with 50% or less, but if you see them struggling, it's ok to slow down a bit. If you see that the party is basically always at full health, you can pull a little faster or even take on two trash packs at a time (though make sure that these trash packs don't interact in dangerous ways - like having multiple healers or enemies within them that can cast fear on your group.) If instead your party is constantly at 50% health or dying, slow things down and try to employ stuns or crowd control to ease the burden.
Also, make sure that your party hasn't accidentally pulled something. Especially in Legion, there's a lot of dungeon trash that you can and should skip when possible. But all it takes is for one person (or one pet) to stray a little too close to them, or for some errant AoE ability to pull an enemy that normally is neutral, and you'll have some extra stuff to fight. Don't get too far ahead of your group.
6. Keep a Cool Head
Some players are awful. You don't need to do a ready check before every trash mob, but it's ok to take a second or two to assess your next fight. If you have a player who is pulling for you, you have a couple options. You can simply roll with it and pick up aggro on the things they've pulled, or you can politely ask them to stop doing that. If they keep doing it, you can try to get them kicked out of the group. You can also drop out of the group yourself if the party isn't cooperating, though this is definitely a last resort.
Ultimately, regardless of whether you're tanking or doing anything else, try to cultivate patience. Mistakes happen, and sometimes people are really just learning the ropes. Offer advice, but be sure to keep it in a helpful tone. If someone's being an ass, there's not much you can do about that, but if someone just genuinely doesn't know something - like boss mechanics or the optimal rotation for their spec, keep your advice friendly.
Anyway, given that I play four different tank characters, I figured I'd put down a bit of advice.
1. Tanking is not as hard as it seems
First off, tanking can seem difficult, as it's a bit like DPS but with more responsibility, but in fact it's a pretty different set of skills. As long as you can maintain threat (and unless you severely undergear your DPS, you generally can) you don't really need to worry about damage numbers.
Your healer has your back. All you have to do is make sure that the enemies are in the right position and that you do what you can to reduce incoming damage or heal back your own depleted health.
Basically, remember that you're not competing to top meters. If you survive the fight and you don't get your party members killed, that's a victory.
As a tank, it's your job to try to make the healer bored.
2. Situational Awareness
Healers usually just ignore enemies as long as they're not pulsing some AoE that you can't stand inside of. DPS can focus down individual enemies. In general, a Tank can't afford to do this. Any enemy that is in combat with your party needs to get at least a bit of your attention. Thankfully, just about every tank class uses the same ability rotation for single-target and AoE. So just make sure that you get your AoE attacks on everything you're currently in combat with. Sometimes that means moving, because if a party member strays off the path or hesitates long enough to draw some patrol you avoided, you're going to need to pick it up.
Most tanks have abilities I call "snap threat," which are instant-cast abilities that hit multiple targets and that are almost always available. DKs' Blood Boil, Paladins' Blessed Hammer (a talent, but a recommended one,) DHs' Infernal Strike and Throw Glaive, and Druids' Thrash are all good examples. Monks and Warriors might have a little harder time, but while they're less often available, Warriors' Thunder Clap and Monks' Breath of Fire or Keg Smash are also great for picking up adds.
3. Positioning
Because enemies pay attention to you as the tank (assuming you got number 2 above right) you're going to have the power and responsibility to care about positioning.
First, there's the obvious: if an enemy has a big cone-attack that hits everyone in front of it, make sure you're facing the boss away from the group. Likewise, if it has any sort of tail-swipe ability that hits players who are standing at a particular angle, make sure that you're not wildly swinging the boss around. Whenever you can, plant your feet.
However, sometimes you can't. And you'll have to recognize when those situations arise. Some bosses make it obvious - like creating some big pool underneath them that you need to move away from. Sometimes it's less obvious - they might create a pool under one of your melee party members, and while you might be sitting high and dry, you'll still want to move the boss to make sure that everyone has a safe place to stand during the fight.
When moving a boss, be aware of effects that can be exacerbated by your movement. If the boss knocks you back periodically, don't back yourself up to a ledge that you can fall off of. If the boss has a tail swipe or frontal cone attack, make sure that you're not turning it to face your party or spinning that tail right into your friends' faces.
Also sometimes the boss will do something that even you shouldn't be standing in. If there's a frontal cone that they'll do without turning, quickly sidestep out of it, but be sure to get back into your position once the area is safe again to minimize how much your party needs to move.
4. Active Mitigation
Regardless of the fight, you'll always want to use Active Mitigation early and often. This takes a few forms, from increased avoidance to straight-up damage reduction to powerful self healing. In most cases, the effect is good enough on its own to be worth using. On certain bosses, however, there will be abilities that will specifically have extra effects (often doing significantly more damage) they hit a tank that does not have its active mitigation up. For bosses like this, you'll want to pool resources (and cooldowns) to make sure that you have the ability ready for when the thing goes off. (Though you also don't want to cap cooldowns or resources, as you'll still benefit from AM abilities during other parts of the fight.)
I highly, highly recommend using an addon like Weak Auras or something similar to track whether you have these effects up. Weak Auras allows something called "Progress Textures" which will allow you to have an icon that can either fill up or empty out as the buff wears off.
Let's go through each tank's active mitigation abilities:
Warriors: Both AM abilities are self-buffs. Shield Block has a set duration and will increase your block chance to 100%, which effectively causes you to take 40% less direct physical damage during its duration (or more thanks to Critical Block.) You also have Ignore Pain, which is a damage-absorption shield. This can be powerful when dealing with magic damage (that would usually go right through your shield) but can also wear off prematurely if the entire shield is used up. I'd recommend using Shield Block on any boss ability that cares about Active Mitigation, as you'll be guaranteed that it lasts long enough to still be up when the ability goes off.
Paladins: Shield of the Righteous is your main AM ability, reducing damage taken by a significant amount (based on mastery.) This is simply a 4.5 second buff that reduces incoming damage. Its effect (both the damage it deals and the reduction in damage you take) are increased if you're standing in your Consecration, so you should try to keep that up at all times. Additionally, Paladins have Light of the Protector, which heals you for a percentage of your missing health (again affected by Mastery.) This becomes more powerful the lower on health you have, but even if you're not dipping below 30%, it can still help out your healer. This heal does not grant any real buff, so it won't do anything for boss abilities that care about active mitigation, so make sure to use Shield of the Righteous for cases like that. Note that Shield of the Righteous requires you to be in melee range, as it's technically an attack that grants the defensive buff, so if there's a big hit coming in, make sure you can hit them first.
Death Knights: This one's a bit weird. The only official active mitigation buff you get is Blood Shield. If you're searching your spell book for this, you should stop, because it's actually your mastery passive. Instead, you'll want to be using Death Strike, which heals you for a big portion of the damage you've taken over the last 5 seconds (or 10% of your max health if you haven't been taking more than that amount of damage.) Your mastery will then generate a damage absorption shield that is proportional to this heal, and it's that shield that counts for active mitigation boss abilities. You do have other defensive abilities you'll want to use, but unfortunately these don't count for that type of boss ability. The main one is Marrowrend, which is a melee strike that generates three charges of Bone Shield. Each time you get hit with a melee attack, one of the charges on your Bone Shield will be spent to reduce the damage of that attack. Thus, you want to try to maintain at least one charge of Bone Shield at all times (or 5 if you have the talent Ossuary.) However, if you are sitting pretty on many charges, you'll instead want to use Heart Strike, which generates more Runic-Power-per-Rune-spent (15 for 1 or more if there are other targets to hit instead of 20 for 2) and thus means more Death Strikes.
Monks: Primarily, active mitigation for Monks is handled by your Brews, particularly Ironskin Brew. You can maintain very high uptime on this brew, which doubles the amount of damage you stagger from 40% to 80%. While this doesn't actually reduce the damage you ultimately take on its own, it will significantly smooth out the damage that you get, making the healer's job a lot easier. However, if you start to get a lot of staggered damage, you'll want to use Purifying Brew, which reduces your staggered damage by 50%. Be sure to use Keg Smash and Tiger Palm to reduce the recharge time on all your brews, but also be aware that Ironskin and Purifying share a cooldown, so if you use Purifying a lot it will make it harder to keep Ironskin up at all times. Ironskin Brew will be the buff you maintain in the event of boss abilities that care about active mitigation. I recommend taking the talent Black Ox Brew, which is a cooldown that restores you to your maximum Ironskin/Purifying Brew charges of 3 and also gives you full Energy. Because Black Ox Brew is a brew, its cooldown will also be reduced by Keg Smash and Tiger Palm, meaning you can use it very frequently. Aside from your Brews, you should also use Expel Harm to absorb any nearby Gift of the Ox orbs for a rather sizable heal, but again, the only real "active mitigation" buff you get is Ironskin Brew (actually, Fortifying Brew, your long-term defensive cooldown, might also count, but you can't use that rotationally.)
Demon Hunters: Your primary AM ability is Demon Spikes, which, much like Ironskin Brew, Shield of the Righteous, and Shield Block, is simply a buff that lasts a set amount of time. You get two charges of this and it only costs 20 Pain, so you'll have access to it pretty frequently. It also lasts a long time. However, another big part of Vengeance Demon Hunter survival is the use of Soul Cleave. This not only does a lot of damage to targets in front of you (and thus is good for threat in both single-target and aoe situations) but also heals you for a significant amount. It also draws in any nearby Lesser Soul Fragments generated by Shear, potentially healing you for a lot more than just its base healing. Basically, any time you've already got Demon Spikes up or on cooldown, you want to spend your Pain on Soul Cleave. Do not wait to amass soul fragments - while those will increase its healing by a lot, you'll be better served by getting the base healing of the ability and building up for the next one. Again, Soul Cleave does not give you an active mitigation buff, but its healing is a significant piece of the Vengeance survival strategy. You can pool Pain (though try not to cap it) before using Soul Cleave as it will heal you for more based on how much Pain is spent, I believe from 20 to 60.
Druids: I'll confess that my Druid is still sitting in the Dreamgrove having done almost nothing after getting the Claws of Ursoc, so this one's going to be a bit more sketchy. The primary AM ability for Guardians is going to be Ironfur. Unlike other tanks, there's actually a benefit to overlapping multiple applications of this ability, as you'll get the benefit of each stack (with each stack lasting its own separate duration.) Ironfur increases your armor by 100% for a few seconds, which of course will reduce the physical damage you take by a lot. This is the buff you'll want up when a boss hits you with one of those special attacks. Druids also have Frenzied Regeneration, which heals you for an amount based on the rage spent, but again, while this is a buff (it's a heal-over-time effect) I don't think this counts as true Active Mitigation for abilities that care.
5. Situational Awareness Again
As a tank you'll mostly be worried about enemies. But you'll also want to keep an eye on your party. Before charging on to the next fight, make sure that your healer has enough mana. Some healers will be fine with 50% or less, but if you see them struggling, it's ok to slow down a bit. If you see that the party is basically always at full health, you can pull a little faster or even take on two trash packs at a time (though make sure that these trash packs don't interact in dangerous ways - like having multiple healers or enemies within them that can cast fear on your group.) If instead your party is constantly at 50% health or dying, slow things down and try to employ stuns or crowd control to ease the burden.
Also, make sure that your party hasn't accidentally pulled something. Especially in Legion, there's a lot of dungeon trash that you can and should skip when possible. But all it takes is for one person (or one pet) to stray a little too close to them, or for some errant AoE ability to pull an enemy that normally is neutral, and you'll have some extra stuff to fight. Don't get too far ahead of your group.
6. Keep a Cool Head
Some players are awful. You don't need to do a ready check before every trash mob, but it's ok to take a second or two to assess your next fight. If you have a player who is pulling for you, you have a couple options. You can simply roll with it and pick up aggro on the things they've pulled, or you can politely ask them to stop doing that. If they keep doing it, you can try to get them kicked out of the group. You can also drop out of the group yourself if the party isn't cooperating, though this is definitely a last resort.
Ultimately, regardless of whether you're tanking or doing anything else, try to cultivate patience. Mistakes happen, and sometimes people are really just learning the ropes. Offer advice, but be sure to keep it in a helpful tone. If someone's being an ass, there's not much you can do about that, but if someone just genuinely doesn't know something - like boss mechanics or the optimal rotation for their spec, keep your advice friendly.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Were We Missing Something in Highmountain?
Of the stories in Legion, I suspect that the one of the Drogbar and Dargrul's theft of the Hammer of Khaz'goroth is probably one we're not going to be revisiting any time soon. We have, I think, quests coming up to tie up the story of Odyn and Helya in Stormheim. We've had the Emerald Nightmare serving as a serious climax to the stories in Val'sharah. We've had and are getting weekly updates on the story of Suramar and the Nighthold. And Azsuna's story might be wrapped up, but Azshara remains a presence in the world that we'll have to deal with at some point - whether as a raid boss or the headliner for an entire expansion, who knows?
But Highmountain's story is probably done. We had a once-cooperative group of people who fell apart. Dargrul rejected the idea of giving the Hammer to outsiders (the player characters and our compatriots) and so he stole it apparently to keep it safe. The Bloodtotem reacted to this loss of unity by selling out to the Burning Legion, and we dealt with both groups pretty definitively in the Highmountain quests.
But there's something that has been bothering me about all of this, and it's Highmountain's absent player: Deathwing.
Obviously Deathwing is over and dealt with - we not only killed him at the end of Cataclysm, but apparently did a massive "all timelines intersect here" spell (well, Nozdormu did) to ensure that Deathwing couldn't survive through the manipulation of the timeline (to be fair, this isn't entirely explicit, but if you beat Madness of Deathwing and Nozdormu gives the little speech before firing the Dragon Soul, he more or less says this is what he's doing.)
Deathwing was once a good guy, granted power by the Keepers to guard over the deep places of the world. He was well-liked - trusted by Alexstrasza and close friends with Malygos. This was back when he was called Neltharion.
The thing is, spending so much time deep below the earth, he was closest to the prisons of the Old Gods, and they were able to slowly, gradually get into his head and begin to corrupt him. Eventually, the corruption manifested physically, as Deathwing's primal fury threatened to erupt out of his body. He had to get metal plates attached to his body just to keep him from blowing apart, and the corruption spread through his entire dragonflight.
And where was it that this corruption happened? Well, we don't know for sure. Presumably it was a slow and gradual process, and one would imagine that the place Neltharion spent most of his time was his own home - in other words, Neltharion's Lair.
So right inside the core of Highmountain is where Neltharion was corrupted by the whispers of the Old Gods.
While it was the goblins who were tasked with applying the plates that covered his body, it was the drogbar who fashioned those plates, and Deathwing kept the drogbar in his lair as slaves to force them to do this labor. After Deathwing departed, the drogbar kept the lair as their own capital city, and it is from there that Dargrul ruled over his clans.
In Highmountain, the Highmountain Tauren often caution you to "beware the deep places of the earth." Often when drogbar attack, they shout "darkness gonna take you!" We even find a vignette enemy in a cave (this one populated by kobolds) that is a void-walker like being, who is summoned by blowing out several candles.
Isn't it possible, or indeed likely, that Dargrul's mind was being manipulated by the Old Gods? Dargrul is often referred to as the "mad king" during quests in Highmountain, and who is better at driving people to madness than the Old Gods?
Dargrul's actions drive a once-united Highmountain into deadly conflict and war, which certainly seems like the Old Gods' MO.
But is this chaos enough to motivate the Old Gods?
I've talked before about a theory surrounding the Pillars of Creation - specifically that while they might successfully seal the portal that is allowing the Legion to invade, they might simultaneously unlock the prisons holding the Old Gods captive.
The theory is that this invasion was actually orchestrated by the Old Gods through extraordinarily complex means that I described in that earlier post.
But doesn't this contradict that theory? Why would the Old Gods drive Dargrul to steal the Hammer if they really wanted us to use it in conjunction with the other four pillars to crack open their prisons? It would seem that taking the Hammer would impede that plan, and it would be better to just let us take it from Thunder Totem.
But that's assuming that using them as intended would release the Old Gods.
Perhaps instead they needed to introduce a flaw into the system. Just as the Curse of Flesh was essentially a computer virus uploaded into the Forge of Wills, perhaps there is a flaw that the Old Gods needed to introduce into one of the Pillars before they could be used.
All we know of what happened with the Hammer of Khaz'goroth while it was under Dargrul's control is that he went mad with power and learned he could smash entire villages into smithereens. But what if while the Old Gods were driving Dargrul's bloodlust up, they were also subtly and carefully recalibrating the Hammer to do what they needed to do?
Dargrul's aggression would be sure to draw the attention of the heroes of Azeroth - the ones they expected to use the Pillars of Creation.
And now, the Hammer of Khaz'goroth sits in Dalaran like a bomb waiting to go off, possibly spreading its new flaw into the other four pillars all the while.
But Highmountain's story is probably done. We had a once-cooperative group of people who fell apart. Dargrul rejected the idea of giving the Hammer to outsiders (the player characters and our compatriots) and so he stole it apparently to keep it safe. The Bloodtotem reacted to this loss of unity by selling out to the Burning Legion, and we dealt with both groups pretty definitively in the Highmountain quests.
But there's something that has been bothering me about all of this, and it's Highmountain's absent player: Deathwing.
Obviously Deathwing is over and dealt with - we not only killed him at the end of Cataclysm, but apparently did a massive "all timelines intersect here" spell (well, Nozdormu did) to ensure that Deathwing couldn't survive through the manipulation of the timeline (to be fair, this isn't entirely explicit, but if you beat Madness of Deathwing and Nozdormu gives the little speech before firing the Dragon Soul, he more or less says this is what he's doing.)
Deathwing was once a good guy, granted power by the Keepers to guard over the deep places of the world. He was well-liked - trusted by Alexstrasza and close friends with Malygos. This was back when he was called Neltharion.
The thing is, spending so much time deep below the earth, he was closest to the prisons of the Old Gods, and they were able to slowly, gradually get into his head and begin to corrupt him. Eventually, the corruption manifested physically, as Deathwing's primal fury threatened to erupt out of his body. He had to get metal plates attached to his body just to keep him from blowing apart, and the corruption spread through his entire dragonflight.
And where was it that this corruption happened? Well, we don't know for sure. Presumably it was a slow and gradual process, and one would imagine that the place Neltharion spent most of his time was his own home - in other words, Neltharion's Lair.
So right inside the core of Highmountain is where Neltharion was corrupted by the whispers of the Old Gods.
While it was the goblins who were tasked with applying the plates that covered his body, it was the drogbar who fashioned those plates, and Deathwing kept the drogbar in his lair as slaves to force them to do this labor. After Deathwing departed, the drogbar kept the lair as their own capital city, and it is from there that Dargrul ruled over his clans.
In Highmountain, the Highmountain Tauren often caution you to "beware the deep places of the earth." Often when drogbar attack, they shout "darkness gonna take you!" We even find a vignette enemy in a cave (this one populated by kobolds) that is a void-walker like being, who is summoned by blowing out several candles.
Isn't it possible, or indeed likely, that Dargrul's mind was being manipulated by the Old Gods? Dargrul is often referred to as the "mad king" during quests in Highmountain, and who is better at driving people to madness than the Old Gods?
Dargrul's actions drive a once-united Highmountain into deadly conflict and war, which certainly seems like the Old Gods' MO.
But is this chaos enough to motivate the Old Gods?
I've talked before about a theory surrounding the Pillars of Creation - specifically that while they might successfully seal the portal that is allowing the Legion to invade, they might simultaneously unlock the prisons holding the Old Gods captive.
The theory is that this invasion was actually orchestrated by the Old Gods through extraordinarily complex means that I described in that earlier post.
But doesn't this contradict that theory? Why would the Old Gods drive Dargrul to steal the Hammer if they really wanted us to use it in conjunction with the other four pillars to crack open their prisons? It would seem that taking the Hammer would impede that plan, and it would be better to just let us take it from Thunder Totem.
But that's assuming that using them as intended would release the Old Gods.
Perhaps instead they needed to introduce a flaw into the system. Just as the Curse of Flesh was essentially a computer virus uploaded into the Forge of Wills, perhaps there is a flaw that the Old Gods needed to introduce into one of the Pillars before they could be used.
All we know of what happened with the Hammer of Khaz'goroth while it was under Dargrul's control is that he went mad with power and learned he could smash entire villages into smithereens. But what if while the Old Gods were driving Dargrul's bloodlust up, they were also subtly and carefully recalibrating the Hammer to do what they needed to do?
Dargrul's aggression would be sure to draw the attention of the heroes of Azeroth - the ones they expected to use the Pillars of Creation.
And now, the Hammer of Khaz'goroth sits in Dalaran like a bomb waiting to go off, possibly spreading its new flaw into the other four pillars all the while.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Thrice-Usurped Death in Azeroth
While we get a few specific examples when it comes to the afterlife in the Warcraft universe, generally it's kept vague. This is actually a rather common fantasy writing convention. If you make it very clear that there is an afterlife, the stakes of a character's death become a bit lower. In most genres, this wouldn't be an issue because the question of life after death is an inherently unanswerable one. Just as in real life, some might have faith in a benevolent god or simply a benevolent universe that will provide people with post-mortem continuity, but the mystery and ambiguity around it allows the death of a character to have impact. Obviously on a video game blog I don't really want to get into a deep philosophical discussion on the real-world existence of an afterlife or the lack thereof, but this is where fantasy gets a little tricky.
In fantasy, generally speaking, we have a rather complete sense of the cosmos - who the god or gods are and what their attitudes are toward us mere mortals. But because we want to relate to the struggles of those in any story, including those in a fantasy story, it's best if we allow death to remain the scary and mysterious thing it is in the real world.
In Warcraft, we know that some, and possibly all people who die go to a realm called the Shadowlands. This place is a bit like the Emerald Dream, only on the opposite end of the life/death spectrum. It's clearly related to the Dungeons and Dragons idea of the Shadowfell (which is itself the opposite of the Feywild, D&D's Emerald Dream antecedent.) But in Warcraft, the Shadowlands are very clearly associated with death.
In fact, it's heavily implied that the ghost realm we find ourselves in when we die in-game is actually the Shadowlands, and that our spirits are there briefly as we seek to reclaim our bodies. Why is it that we're allowed to do this - beyond the necessities of game mechanics?
Well, it's because of Odyn. Odyn was the Prime Designate - the leader of the Keepers. The Keepers were the leaders of the Titanforged on Azeroth, with the next rank down being the Watchers. Odyn was effectively the ruler of all of Azeroth as designated by the Titans after the Ordering and the war against the Black Empire.
While he was in a position of great power, he was not allowed to rule unilaterally. The other Keepers could overrule him. When Tyr related to the other Keepers the power and bravery of the dragons against Galakrond, he moved that they empower the dragons (or at that point, proto-dragons) to serve as guardians of the world.
Because the proto-dragons were not Titanforged - they had evolved naturally from elementals native to the planet - Odyn rejected this idea. He did not think that they should grant Titanic power to anyone except the Titans' own creations. He was overruled, and in a huff, he had Helya - a powerful Vrykul sorceress who was something of an adopted daughter to him - remove his portion of Ulduar and set it in a demiplane apart from the rest of the Keepers. (This portion of Ulduar is the Halls of Valor.)
Odyn decided that he would create his own order of guardians to protect Azeroth, done in the way that he felt was wisest. He decided that the greatest heroes of Azeroth were those who had died in glorious battle. The Vrykul (this was pre-curse of flesh) were created specifically to serve as the Titans' armies, and so naturally he favored them to serve as his new Valarjar. But there was an obvious problem - if proving yourself to be one of the world's greatest heroes required you to die in battle, how then was Odyn to recruit you?
Odyn solved this by creating the first Val'kyr. The souls of the dead were in the Shadowlands, and he needed to have someone who could go back and forth between the worlds of the living and the dead to retrieve the souls of the fallen, after which he would place these souls into new metal bodies.
The person he chose to become the first Val'kyr was Helya. She did not want to become this, but against her will, the sorceress was horrifically altered and put in a state of half-life and half-death so that she could straddle the living world and the Shadowlands.
Eventually, Helya rebelled, using her own immense power (she had helped Ra-Den create the Elemental Planes, as an example) to lock the Halls of Valor away, trapping Odyn with his Valarjar. To spite her "father," she began to collect the souls of the dead herself, but rather than sending them up to the Halls of Valor, she took them to Helheim and transformed them into her own Helarjar - creating a new quasi-race called the Kvaldir.
Even if Odyn had not cut off ties with the other Keepers, they were in no position to help him, as by that point Loken had already been corrupted by Yogg-Saron and had imprisoned his colleagues, save for Thorim, who sank into a deep grief over the loss of his wife, Sif.
So Helya now had control, taking the souls of the dead and denying them to Odyn.
As a side note: while some Val'kyr went with Helya (I think - we haven't seen any Helya-loyal Val'kyr in game), some remained loyal to Odyn. Still others took no side, and rather than focusing specifically on the vrykul, they decided instead to raise heroes of all kinds to help protect Azeroth. You might know them better as Spirit Healers. So when you die, the Spirit Healer rescues your spirit from being stuck in the Shadowlands, giving you either the opportunity to reclaim your body or going out and getting your body for you at the cost of suffering resurrection sickness.
Flash forward thousands upon thousands of years later. The Horde had been defeated on Azeroth after Gul'dan had abandoned them, and with an angry Burning Legion threatening revenge against the Horde's failures, Ner'zhul did whatever he could to try to escape their wrath.
Using the Scepter of Sargeras, Ner'zhul - one of the Horde's last free Chieftains - tore open several portals all over Draenor, looking for a world on which he could be safe from the Legion. Little did he know that by tearing portals through the Twisting Nether, he not only doomed his planet to be torn apart, but he was also effectively trying to escape right through Kil'jaeden's front lawn.
The Deceiver caught Ner'zhul and tore his body apart. Kil'jaeden saved the soul, however, and attached it to a suit of black metal armor that was then encased in a crystal of magical ice. Kil'jaden charged Ner'zhul with using his necromantic powers (something we now know he possessed before his affiliation with the Burning Legion, thanks to our glimpse at his Draenor B doppelgänger) to create a new vanguard for the Legion - not of barbaric orcs, but of ravenous undead.
As Ner'zhul transformed into the Lich King, and later was absorbed by Arthas Menethil, who came to embody the Lich King far further (actually literally embodied, as he granted the Lich King a body,) the Scourge seemed to take control of the Shadowlands.
In fact, the Scourge seemed to take much of what Odyn and Helya had once fought over. The Lich King raised the Winterskorn vrykul in Northrend from their long slumber - a punishment that they had earned for their warmongering and brutality. He then set about re-enacting the rituals created by Odyn - having the vrykul battle against one another and elevating the victors to serve as his elite soldiers. Thus, the Valarjar and Helarjar were replaced with his Ymirjar, named presumably for their king, Ymiron.
But the Scourge is resourceful, so rather than allowing the fallen to simply be left behind, he turned them into the Var'ghul, to serve as rank-and-file troops beneath the Ymirjar.
So we see that each of the "something-jar" orders gets usurped by another. The land of the dead is a resource for those who want great champions, but there's competition. In my headcanon, the Kvaldir we see assaulting the shores of Northrend are actually trying to attack the Lich King for stealing Helya's position.
But this raises an interesting question: to whom do the dead belong in the first place?
The Scourge, Helya, and Odyn all disrupted the existing dynamic of life and death. So who established that in the first place?
Well, with all of this talk about death, it seems like we're missing a pretty important figure: Yogg-Saron, the God of Death.
Yogg-Saron was referred to as the Old God of Death throughout much of Wrath, but it wasn't really all that clear why he was associated with death more than, say, C'thun (who at the time was the only Old God that had been named.)
We're starting to get a little more in support of that title, though. Yogg-Saron was behind some very important things in Azeroth, and perhaps the biggest impact was that he was the one who infected the Titanforged with the Curse of Flesh. As Yogg-Saron was manipulating Loken into turning against his fellow keepers, one of the things he did was subtly alter the commands Loken put into the Forge of Wills, thus creating Titanforged races that carried a flaw in the "programming." This flaw would gradually cause their metallic or stone bodies to soften into flesh, and not only that - it would spread to other Titanforged who had been created earlier.
The Titanforged were immortal by some definitions - they could die in battle, to be sure, but they did not age - they were made of immutable metal and stone. By introducing the Curse of Flesh, Yogg-Saron introduced the idea of inevitable mortality among the Titanforged.
We know that Yogg-Saron was the one who infected the Emerald Dream with the Nightmare (even if N'zoth seems to be more affiliated with it these days.) Turning a place of tranquility and beauty into one of twisted horror is obviously monstrous. But wouldn't it then make sense that Yogg-Saron may have been associated with the Shadowlands as well?
Old Gods are beings created of pure darkness - they aren't quite as much embodiments of the Void as their creators, the Void Lords, but they're about as close as you can get within physical reality.
Might the Shadowlands truly then be the domain of Yogg-Saron? We don't know the origin of the Shadowlands, but we know that the Emerald Dream is one of two things - it's either a plane created by Freya or it is a literal dream being dreamt by the Titan Azeroth that Freya was able to tap into.
Could the Shadowlands be the creation of Yogg-Saron? Or alternatively, if we go with the second interpretation of the Emerald Dream, the Shadowlands were another part of the Titan Azeroth's subconscious, then perhaps it was a realm that Yogg-Saron managed to corrupt. Perhaps the Shadowlands were not so shadowy originally, but when the God of Death began doing his part to corrupt Azeroth, he started by filling the Shadowlands with darkness.
While a compelling and fun villain in Wrath of the Lich King, there were some questions about his connection to the Scourge (though I'd argue it's fine and even good to have more than one single threat per expansion.) The Scourge and Yogg-Saron's forces were opposed to one another, fighting in Icecrown and Ahn-Kahet. While you could simply explain it as a turf war, I think it would be more interesting to think of it as Yogg-Saron's attempts to wrest control of his domain from this third usurper.
In fantasy, generally speaking, we have a rather complete sense of the cosmos - who the god or gods are and what their attitudes are toward us mere mortals. But because we want to relate to the struggles of those in any story, including those in a fantasy story, it's best if we allow death to remain the scary and mysterious thing it is in the real world.
In Warcraft, we know that some, and possibly all people who die go to a realm called the Shadowlands. This place is a bit like the Emerald Dream, only on the opposite end of the life/death spectrum. It's clearly related to the Dungeons and Dragons idea of the Shadowfell (which is itself the opposite of the Feywild, D&D's Emerald Dream antecedent.) But in Warcraft, the Shadowlands are very clearly associated with death.
In fact, it's heavily implied that the ghost realm we find ourselves in when we die in-game is actually the Shadowlands, and that our spirits are there briefly as we seek to reclaim our bodies. Why is it that we're allowed to do this - beyond the necessities of game mechanics?
Well, it's because of Odyn. Odyn was the Prime Designate - the leader of the Keepers. The Keepers were the leaders of the Titanforged on Azeroth, with the next rank down being the Watchers. Odyn was effectively the ruler of all of Azeroth as designated by the Titans after the Ordering and the war against the Black Empire.
While he was in a position of great power, he was not allowed to rule unilaterally. The other Keepers could overrule him. When Tyr related to the other Keepers the power and bravery of the dragons against Galakrond, he moved that they empower the dragons (or at that point, proto-dragons) to serve as guardians of the world.
Because the proto-dragons were not Titanforged - they had evolved naturally from elementals native to the planet - Odyn rejected this idea. He did not think that they should grant Titanic power to anyone except the Titans' own creations. He was overruled, and in a huff, he had Helya - a powerful Vrykul sorceress who was something of an adopted daughter to him - remove his portion of Ulduar and set it in a demiplane apart from the rest of the Keepers. (This portion of Ulduar is the Halls of Valor.)
Odyn decided that he would create his own order of guardians to protect Azeroth, done in the way that he felt was wisest. He decided that the greatest heroes of Azeroth were those who had died in glorious battle. The Vrykul (this was pre-curse of flesh) were created specifically to serve as the Titans' armies, and so naturally he favored them to serve as his new Valarjar. But there was an obvious problem - if proving yourself to be one of the world's greatest heroes required you to die in battle, how then was Odyn to recruit you?
Odyn solved this by creating the first Val'kyr. The souls of the dead were in the Shadowlands, and he needed to have someone who could go back and forth between the worlds of the living and the dead to retrieve the souls of the fallen, after which he would place these souls into new metal bodies.
The person he chose to become the first Val'kyr was Helya. She did not want to become this, but against her will, the sorceress was horrifically altered and put in a state of half-life and half-death so that she could straddle the living world and the Shadowlands.
Eventually, Helya rebelled, using her own immense power (she had helped Ra-Den create the Elemental Planes, as an example) to lock the Halls of Valor away, trapping Odyn with his Valarjar. To spite her "father," she began to collect the souls of the dead herself, but rather than sending them up to the Halls of Valor, she took them to Helheim and transformed them into her own Helarjar - creating a new quasi-race called the Kvaldir.
Even if Odyn had not cut off ties with the other Keepers, they were in no position to help him, as by that point Loken had already been corrupted by Yogg-Saron and had imprisoned his colleagues, save for Thorim, who sank into a deep grief over the loss of his wife, Sif.
So Helya now had control, taking the souls of the dead and denying them to Odyn.
As a side note: while some Val'kyr went with Helya (I think - we haven't seen any Helya-loyal Val'kyr in game), some remained loyal to Odyn. Still others took no side, and rather than focusing specifically on the vrykul, they decided instead to raise heroes of all kinds to help protect Azeroth. You might know them better as Spirit Healers. So when you die, the Spirit Healer rescues your spirit from being stuck in the Shadowlands, giving you either the opportunity to reclaim your body or going out and getting your body for you at the cost of suffering resurrection sickness.
Flash forward thousands upon thousands of years later. The Horde had been defeated on Azeroth after Gul'dan had abandoned them, and with an angry Burning Legion threatening revenge against the Horde's failures, Ner'zhul did whatever he could to try to escape their wrath.
Using the Scepter of Sargeras, Ner'zhul - one of the Horde's last free Chieftains - tore open several portals all over Draenor, looking for a world on which he could be safe from the Legion. Little did he know that by tearing portals through the Twisting Nether, he not only doomed his planet to be torn apart, but he was also effectively trying to escape right through Kil'jaeden's front lawn.
The Deceiver caught Ner'zhul and tore his body apart. Kil'jaeden saved the soul, however, and attached it to a suit of black metal armor that was then encased in a crystal of magical ice. Kil'jaden charged Ner'zhul with using his necromantic powers (something we now know he possessed before his affiliation with the Burning Legion, thanks to our glimpse at his Draenor B doppelgänger) to create a new vanguard for the Legion - not of barbaric orcs, but of ravenous undead.
As Ner'zhul transformed into the Lich King, and later was absorbed by Arthas Menethil, who came to embody the Lich King far further (actually literally embodied, as he granted the Lich King a body,) the Scourge seemed to take control of the Shadowlands.
In fact, the Scourge seemed to take much of what Odyn and Helya had once fought over. The Lich King raised the Winterskorn vrykul in Northrend from their long slumber - a punishment that they had earned for their warmongering and brutality. He then set about re-enacting the rituals created by Odyn - having the vrykul battle against one another and elevating the victors to serve as his elite soldiers. Thus, the Valarjar and Helarjar were replaced with his Ymirjar, named presumably for their king, Ymiron.
But the Scourge is resourceful, so rather than allowing the fallen to simply be left behind, he turned them into the Var'ghul, to serve as rank-and-file troops beneath the Ymirjar.
So we see that each of the "something-jar" orders gets usurped by another. The land of the dead is a resource for those who want great champions, but there's competition. In my headcanon, the Kvaldir we see assaulting the shores of Northrend are actually trying to attack the Lich King for stealing Helya's position.
But this raises an interesting question: to whom do the dead belong in the first place?
The Scourge, Helya, and Odyn all disrupted the existing dynamic of life and death. So who established that in the first place?
Well, with all of this talk about death, it seems like we're missing a pretty important figure: Yogg-Saron, the God of Death.
Yogg-Saron was referred to as the Old God of Death throughout much of Wrath, but it wasn't really all that clear why he was associated with death more than, say, C'thun (who at the time was the only Old God that had been named.)
We're starting to get a little more in support of that title, though. Yogg-Saron was behind some very important things in Azeroth, and perhaps the biggest impact was that he was the one who infected the Titanforged with the Curse of Flesh. As Yogg-Saron was manipulating Loken into turning against his fellow keepers, one of the things he did was subtly alter the commands Loken put into the Forge of Wills, thus creating Titanforged races that carried a flaw in the "programming." This flaw would gradually cause their metallic or stone bodies to soften into flesh, and not only that - it would spread to other Titanforged who had been created earlier.
The Titanforged were immortal by some definitions - they could die in battle, to be sure, but they did not age - they were made of immutable metal and stone. By introducing the Curse of Flesh, Yogg-Saron introduced the idea of inevitable mortality among the Titanforged.
We know that Yogg-Saron was the one who infected the Emerald Dream with the Nightmare (even if N'zoth seems to be more affiliated with it these days.) Turning a place of tranquility and beauty into one of twisted horror is obviously monstrous. But wouldn't it then make sense that Yogg-Saron may have been associated with the Shadowlands as well?
Old Gods are beings created of pure darkness - they aren't quite as much embodiments of the Void as their creators, the Void Lords, but they're about as close as you can get within physical reality.
Might the Shadowlands truly then be the domain of Yogg-Saron? We don't know the origin of the Shadowlands, but we know that the Emerald Dream is one of two things - it's either a plane created by Freya or it is a literal dream being dreamt by the Titan Azeroth that Freya was able to tap into.
Could the Shadowlands be the creation of Yogg-Saron? Or alternatively, if we go with the second interpretation of the Emerald Dream, the Shadowlands were another part of the Titan Azeroth's subconscious, then perhaps it was a realm that Yogg-Saron managed to corrupt. Perhaps the Shadowlands were not so shadowy originally, but when the God of Death began doing his part to corrupt Azeroth, he started by filling the Shadowlands with darkness.
While a compelling and fun villain in Wrath of the Lich King, there were some questions about his connection to the Scourge (though I'd argue it's fine and even good to have more than one single threat per expansion.) The Scourge and Yogg-Saron's forces were opposed to one another, fighting in Icecrown and Ahn-Kahet. While you could simply explain it as a turf war, I think it would be more interesting to think of it as Yogg-Saron's attempts to wrest control of his domain from this third usurper.
The Purpose and Future of LFR
Wrath of the Lich King saw tons of players raiding. Raiding was considered more accessible than it had ever been before. For context: before Wrath, there was no such thing as a difficulty setting for raids. Burning Crusade introduced Heroic dungeons, but when it came to raids, there was only one version of each instance. Karazhan was a 10-player raid. Most of the BC raids were 25-player only.
And in terms of difficulty, raids were basically all either on heroic or mythic. Granted, that's my memory speaking. The truth is that if we were to revisit these raids we might actually consider them simpler than what we get now. But difficulty was achieved in different ways, like requiring certain raid compositions (for a time you had to have a Shaman in every DPS group so that each could benefit from Bloodlust/Heroism, as well as the various totems that they brought.) You also needed to farm potions (they used to simply have cooldowns, meaning that players would chug them over the course of a fight rather than use them at one specific point.) There was also resistance gear that certain boss fights needed.
Wrath launched with the revamped Naxxramas, which was considered a far easier raid than what had come before. While not all the raids were so easy (Ulduar was a big jump up in difficulty,) the ease of Naxxramas seemed to give players a real leg-up into raiding.
Complaints about how easy the raids had been in Wrath (most likely by a vocal minority) led to Blizzard greatly increasing the difficulty of raids (as well as dungeons) in Cataclysm. Raiding fell off significantly, with far fewer guilds making meaningful progress.
Blizzard felt that they wanted some method to ensure that players would be able to at least see the story's conclusion, and so they implemented LFR - a system built on the LFG tool that was introduced in the final patch of Wrath that would allow players to easily get into raids and fight easier versions of the bosses.
LFR made these epic encounters far more accessible. The difficulty of LFR has undergone some tuning over the expansions. Mists was the first expansion to have all of its tiers with LFR, and I would argue that LFR raids in Mists were actually more difficult that Wrath's version of Naxxramas. This meant that they were a challenge, yes, but also a slog when players did not have the patience to learn the mechanics. And a progression of dungeons like in Wrath and Cataclysm, there was no real option for alternate progression.
In Warlords, LFR's difficulty was significantly reduced, and it went on to serve its initial purpose quite well - allowing players without the time to spend doing "proper" raiding to see the raid environments. However, to prevent people from feeling they were forced to raid in order to complete tier sets and get powerful trinkets, the LFR rewards were made intentionally unappealing - trinkets had flat stats on them and there was an alternate tier set that had simpler bonuses. The appearances of the gear was also significantly drabber.
In Legion, we seem to have the best of both worlds - gear coming out of LFR is now once again just a less powerful version of what exists in the normal and higher difficulties, and they are just a re-color of that gear.
So why, then, am I not really running much LFR?
This may be a temporary problem - right now only one raid is open. The LFR gear that one gets out of it is 835, which is inferior to both Mythic dungeons (which is an admittedly small 5 item levels higher) and also the cap on world quest rewards, which is currently 845.
We're also not yet into raids that have tier sets - the gear out of Emerald Nightmare is just plain gear, with no real need to collect pieces to fit together.
Probably the biggest thing, though, is that we no longer have an expansion-long legendary chain. In the past, running LFR was a great way to ensure that you downed every boss and thus were able to maximize the quest items you could get out of a raid for these legendary chains.
What appears to be the equivalent to this: the "Balance of Power" quest chain given by Kalecgos, is only completable in Normal mode or above. So running LFR provides little benefit to players who have equivalent or better gear beyond getting together item appearances for transmog.
The thing is: is it more trouble than it's worth?
It's a hard question to answer, because honestly it's not a lot of trouble. While you'll get people who still don't know how to get out of a tree before Ilgynoth re-forms its eye, generally the fights are not that bad.
Emerald Nightmare is situated in a strange place on the power curve of the expansion, but I suspect that we might see LFR become a bigger deal as time goes on if things stay the way they are.
Right now, Mythic dungeons give better gear than LFR by a small amount. But in order to get beyond 840 gear (other than with lucky warforge/titanforge upgrades) you need to start running Mythic Plus. And while there are certainly plenty of people doing that, I suspect that the majority of players are not really interested in it. Once we start having LFR that rewards better gear than Mythic dungeons, I think that the system will become more attractive.
But then, do we really want to return to the dynamic of Mists and Warlords, where raids totally supplant the role of dungeons?
Obviously, Blizzard has already walked back the notion that new dungeons would have the same rewards as old ones, given that Return to Karazhan gives gear that I think is even better than Normal-mode Emerald Nightmare.
And in fact, the Dungeon Journal no longer even lists Raid Finder rewards (a bug I'm sure,) but using Atlas Loot to look up that gear, it appears that Trial of Valor and Nighthold LFR gear may actually be stuck at 835 - making it no better than Emerald Nightmare gear (except for the set bonuses in Nighthold.)
I don't really have the solution here. Ultimately I'm hoping to get past the issue by getting my guild back into regular Normal-mode raiding. I only hope that LFR can retain enough interested players to ensure that queue times don't get absurd.
And in terms of difficulty, raids were basically all either on heroic or mythic. Granted, that's my memory speaking. The truth is that if we were to revisit these raids we might actually consider them simpler than what we get now. But difficulty was achieved in different ways, like requiring certain raid compositions (for a time you had to have a Shaman in every DPS group so that each could benefit from Bloodlust/Heroism, as well as the various totems that they brought.) You also needed to farm potions (they used to simply have cooldowns, meaning that players would chug them over the course of a fight rather than use them at one specific point.) There was also resistance gear that certain boss fights needed.
Wrath launched with the revamped Naxxramas, which was considered a far easier raid than what had come before. While not all the raids were so easy (Ulduar was a big jump up in difficulty,) the ease of Naxxramas seemed to give players a real leg-up into raiding.
Complaints about how easy the raids had been in Wrath (most likely by a vocal minority) led to Blizzard greatly increasing the difficulty of raids (as well as dungeons) in Cataclysm. Raiding fell off significantly, with far fewer guilds making meaningful progress.
Blizzard felt that they wanted some method to ensure that players would be able to at least see the story's conclusion, and so they implemented LFR - a system built on the LFG tool that was introduced in the final patch of Wrath that would allow players to easily get into raids and fight easier versions of the bosses.
LFR made these epic encounters far more accessible. The difficulty of LFR has undergone some tuning over the expansions. Mists was the first expansion to have all of its tiers with LFR, and I would argue that LFR raids in Mists were actually more difficult that Wrath's version of Naxxramas. This meant that they were a challenge, yes, but also a slog when players did not have the patience to learn the mechanics. And a progression of dungeons like in Wrath and Cataclysm, there was no real option for alternate progression.
In Warlords, LFR's difficulty was significantly reduced, and it went on to serve its initial purpose quite well - allowing players without the time to spend doing "proper" raiding to see the raid environments. However, to prevent people from feeling they were forced to raid in order to complete tier sets and get powerful trinkets, the LFR rewards were made intentionally unappealing - trinkets had flat stats on them and there was an alternate tier set that had simpler bonuses. The appearances of the gear was also significantly drabber.
In Legion, we seem to have the best of both worlds - gear coming out of LFR is now once again just a less powerful version of what exists in the normal and higher difficulties, and they are just a re-color of that gear.
So why, then, am I not really running much LFR?
This may be a temporary problem - right now only one raid is open. The LFR gear that one gets out of it is 835, which is inferior to both Mythic dungeons (which is an admittedly small 5 item levels higher) and also the cap on world quest rewards, which is currently 845.
We're also not yet into raids that have tier sets - the gear out of Emerald Nightmare is just plain gear, with no real need to collect pieces to fit together.
Probably the biggest thing, though, is that we no longer have an expansion-long legendary chain. In the past, running LFR was a great way to ensure that you downed every boss and thus were able to maximize the quest items you could get out of a raid for these legendary chains.
What appears to be the equivalent to this: the "Balance of Power" quest chain given by Kalecgos, is only completable in Normal mode or above. So running LFR provides little benefit to players who have equivalent or better gear beyond getting together item appearances for transmog.
The thing is: is it more trouble than it's worth?
It's a hard question to answer, because honestly it's not a lot of trouble. While you'll get people who still don't know how to get out of a tree before Ilgynoth re-forms its eye, generally the fights are not that bad.
Emerald Nightmare is situated in a strange place on the power curve of the expansion, but I suspect that we might see LFR become a bigger deal as time goes on if things stay the way they are.
Right now, Mythic dungeons give better gear than LFR by a small amount. But in order to get beyond 840 gear (other than with lucky warforge/titanforge upgrades) you need to start running Mythic Plus. And while there are certainly plenty of people doing that, I suspect that the majority of players are not really interested in it. Once we start having LFR that rewards better gear than Mythic dungeons, I think that the system will become more attractive.
But then, do we really want to return to the dynamic of Mists and Warlords, where raids totally supplant the role of dungeons?
Obviously, Blizzard has already walked back the notion that new dungeons would have the same rewards as old ones, given that Return to Karazhan gives gear that I think is even better than Normal-mode Emerald Nightmare.
And in fact, the Dungeon Journal no longer even lists Raid Finder rewards (a bug I'm sure,) but using Atlas Loot to look up that gear, it appears that Trial of Valor and Nighthold LFR gear may actually be stuck at 835 - making it no better than Emerald Nightmare gear (except for the set bonuses in Nighthold.)
I don't really have the solution here. Ultimately I'm hoping to get past the issue by getting my guild back into regular Normal-mode raiding. I only hope that LFR can retain enough interested players to ensure that queue times don't get absurd.
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