That Chart of Magical Elements and Classes

So, there's a cosmological chart that is at the beginning of both existing (and presumably will be in the upcoming third) volumes of Warcraft Chronicle. I'm kind of obsessed with it, as it details the way that magic and the grand forces of the games' cosmos interact with one another.

We essentially have three layers of magical realms or forces before we get to the material plane, also known as "reality."

The Emerald Dream and the Shadowlands stand just outside - and while there are pockets of unique areas in both - like the Heart of the Dream or Helheim - much of these realms are mirrors of the existing world.

Then as we travel out we get the elements. The four primary ones have Titan-crafted planes, namely the Firelands, Skywall, Deepholme, and the Abyssal Maw. Spirit and Decay don't have their own planes, though one could make the argument that the aforementioned Emerald Dream and Shadowlands could stand in for those.

The outermost circle is what I like to think of as the Primal Forces. And we get the name of the force, the magic affiliated with that force, and the entities who best seem to embody the force. The Light and the Void are both also "realms" of a sort, though probably so alien in their purity that it would be hard for mortals to survive within them, or at least remain who they are. Disorder has a realm in the Twisting Nether, which seems to be where Light and Void collide and annihilate each other to produce destructive energy. Life and Death, again, don't have full planes as far as I know, but they could very well claim the Emerald Dream and Shadowlands, respectively. Order does not seem to have its own equivalent of the Twisting Nether. If anything, though, I'd think that the Arcane is tied to the physical cosmos, as unlike the Nether, Order seems to be a careful balance of Light and Void.

Many of the classes, particularly those with any kind of magical ability, can fit into one of the six primal forces.

Paladins wield the Light, and are thus pretty firmly associated with the top of the chart, allying with the Naaru and using Holy magic. Of course, as we're learning on Argus, it seems the Light "in a vacuum" so to speak, is not automatically good, even though when it comes to mortal affairs, it tends to be a highly beneficial tool.

Priests also call upon the Light, though they also delve into Shadow. In fact, with the Legion design (and probably going forward,) Priests are almost perfectly at 50/50 between the Light and the Shadow, with Discipline becoming much more thematically hybrid between the two. Again, on Argus we're learning a bit more about the Shadow, and how it is not necessarily evil, even though, again, when it comes to mortal affairs, it's often a threat.

Demon Hunters are pretty pure practitioners of Fel magic, putting them in that Disorder domain (oddly not called Chaos. I wonder if there's a particular reason for that.) As beings that are nearly demons themselves, it makes sense that they'd affiliate with Fel, though we also do have to throw in a little Arcane/Order there, as the tattoos on a Demon Hunter are actually Arcane wards to contain the chaotic magic within them.

Warlocks are also, of course, masters of Fel magic. On the other hand, I wonder to what extent they dip into other types of magic. Shadow Bolt and the Voidwalker minion seem tied much more to Shadow and Void - the Voidwalker is classified as a demon but really ought to be labeled an aberration; it's not clear if there's been some kind of fel corruption to make your Voidwalkers actually into demons, though I'd suspect it's kind of grandfathered in as they probably decided to make Voidwalkers distinct from demons only relatively recently. Still don't know what the Legion is doing using them. Also, I'd argue that some Affliction abilities, like Unstable Affliction, seem like they could be Necromancy, rather than Void or Fel magic, though there's not a ton to support this except that the Old Horde's Necrolytes seemed to be Affliction Warlocks. And then one might even wonder if Warlocks also use some Arcane magic, though perhaps Fel can do things like gateways and summoning portals just fine.

Death Knights are obviously, firmly in the Necromancy realm, though it gets a little more complicated as one goes into the inner rings. One of the two "binding" elements is Decay, which is used by Dark Shamans to force the elements into servitude (we saw the effects of Decay in the Barrens and the Kor'kron Dark Shaman fight, where the elements were all polluted and toxic.) It's not entirely clear if Death Knights are using "decay" in that same sense, though having an ability like Death and Decay does lean me in that direction. Likewise, Death Knights have some control of the elements - though really just frost. Is this a combination of Air and Water, with Decay as the "binding agent" used to control them? Perhaps, though perhaps the chill of the grave is not exactly tied to the elements, but is more just pure necromancy. Finally, Death Knights are tied to the Shadowlands, the dark opposite number of the Emerald Dream (though having nothing to do with the Nightmare.) The Shadowlands have not been explored much in game, but I would guess that both the ghost-realm where you have to run to your corpse to revive and also Helheim are both in the Shadowlands - as are the areas you visit in some Wrath quests like the Alliance ones in Howling Fjord and the Horde one in Dragonblight. Apart from the note on Warlocks above, other classes don't seem to be in this territory, though you could argue Hunters actually get in there a little bit with abilities like Black Arrow.

The only class that very explicitly deals in Void magic is the Priest, and that's obviously primarily Shadow Priests and Discipline Priests. That being said, Rogues have always been said to employ some mysticism in their arts, allowing them to use their Stealth ability, and Subtlety in particular seems to employ Shadow magic to aid in striking from darkness.

Mages are very clearly practitioners of Arcane magic. The "arcane" spells used by Mages clearly draw from this power in a pure form, but while they employ Frost and Fire spells as well, it seems that they are conjuring these elements not through any kind of shamanistic request but through manufacture. It's possible that Mages are actually creating tiny portals into the Abyssal Maw for frost and the Firelands for fire, but I'd suspect that they are simply employing Arcane magic to create these elemental effects (I've even wondered if they are actually manipulating time to create heat and cold, given that temperature is technically just the speed at which particles within a system are bouncing around.)

Druids are probably the most obvious "Life" magic users, and their deep ties to the Wild Gods (in the form of Ancients or Loa) puts them pretty firmly in this category. They're also tied very closely to the Emerald Dream, which seems to be where the Wild Gods call home. Of course, Druids (particularly Balance) do seem to draw on the power of the Stars, which appears Arcane in nature. Given the mysteries surrounding Elune's nature (is she a being of Light or the Arcane, and is she connected to the Titans or the Naaru, or both?) it's possible that Druids are actually more like Mages than they might like to think they are.

Now what's interesting is that both Shamans and Monks are kind of tied into this Life magic, but not quite as directly.

Shamans negotiate the balance between the four primary elements: Earth, Fire, Water, and Air. Good shaman employ "Spirit" in order to maintain this balance, though destructive Shaman employ its opposite number, Decay. It's not exactly clear what the connection is between Life/Nature magic and Spirit, or Death/Necromancy and Decay, but what is kind of interesting is the way that Shamans may focus on the primordial elements, but they also have a strong connection to the spirits of ancestors long since dead. Might shamans actually have a more benign connection to the Shadowlands? Also, bizarrely, the ability Ancestral Recall states that it yanks the Shaman through the Twisting Nether, even though there does not seem to be anything else in the class that relates them to that chaotic realm of Fel magic.

Monks are less focused on the elements in general, but employ that same "Spirit" element as their primary fuel, which they call Chi. Of course, with abilities like Breath of Fire, a specialization called Windwalker, and a host of healing abilities themed with Mist, it's possible that a Monk is actually not all too dissimilar to a Shaman, except that the focus is far more inward - mastering the self rather than calling upon spiritual allies.

Rogues and Warriors are largely classes of the material plane, simply using physical training to do what they need to do, though as I mentioned before, Rogues may employ some Shadow magic to aid in their stealth.

Hunters are probably also in this category, though they seem to also like to pick up skill from various areas as well - a handful of nature magic, as well as some Arcane shots and even possibly Necromancy (in the form of Black Arrow.)

So that seems to cover all the player classes. It's pretty clear that some primal forces are represented more than others, but it's a fairly good spread. I think this would be a good place to start both in brainstorming new classes and also in creating new figures and threats for the future of Azeroth.

Tomb of the Nine Gods

D&D's latest published adventure, Tomb of Annihilation, is inspired by the original Tomb of Horrors, a dungeon created by Gary Gygax (or, in-game, created by the evil-even-by-Lich-standards Acererak (thankfully only pronounced as three syllables: As-SER-ak) to massacre even high-level players.

The eponymous Tomb in Tomb of Annihilation is actually canonically compatible with the Tomb of Horrors, as Acererak apparently likes to travel around the multiverse creating these death traps for various nefarious purposes. Even though I'm going to get a little spoilery in this post, I'll keep the purpose of this new Tomb secret for those who might want to play this adventure.

Tomb of Annihilation (as mentioned in a previous post) has the party explore the jungles of Chult, encountering plenty of other ruins and adventures as they search for the source of a curse that has interfered with resurrection magic. Not only are the recently dead unable to be brought back to life, but those who had previously been raised from the dead are beginning to waste away (this does not seem to apply to the undead, except that Liches haven't been able to feed the spirits of the dead to their phylacteries.)

After searching the jungle, players will finally find the lost city of Omu, home of an ancient Chultan civilization that was destroyed mysteriously hundreds of years back. The Omuans initially worshipped Uptao, but at some point they traded that god for nine animal trickster gods. Later, Acererak would come to Omu and slay the nine gods, using the Omuans as slave labor to construct a horrific death trap that served as the gods' tomb, before slaughtering his slaves by forcing them to run through the tomb as, essentially, playtesters.

The Tomb of the Nine Gods is thus the main dungeon of the adventure, and nearly every room has some kind of lethal trap.

There are monsters to fight within, and certainly some might indeed be highly dangerous, but the main threat is going to be the traps, which require the clever solving of puzzles to navigate in any semblance of safety - and even when done correctly, there's often still great danger or dark prices to pay.

While the pre-Tomb adventure has some highly dangerous parts, the Tomb is going to be a total horror show - one in which player characters are highly likely to die in sudden and gruesome ways. The book actually contains plenty of suggestions for how to incorporate new characters players will be forced to roll after their old ones are killed, because that's kind of the expectation.

The only real counterbalance to the deadly, often unintuitive, traps is that players can receive assistance from the dead gods within the tomb - though this comes with a price as well, as the gods will impose their personality flaws on players who receive their gifts (though this is a fantastic opportunity for very silly roleplay.)

It is not impossible to break the global curse and it's even possible to escape the tomb alive, but it will not be easy.

D&D's Tomb of Annihilation

While I've only been running my own homebrew D&D campaign (with a setting I invented myself) I've been somewhat addicted to buying adventure books on the off chance that I might run them (or even play in them) some day.

The latest to come out and the latest I got is Tomb of Annihilation, and man, I've got to say I'm really enjoying what I'm seeing.

ToA is built around an open-world map that will eventually lead into the eponymous tomb - one of several built by the ancient lich/demilich (he seems to go back and forth) Acererak - who is most famous for creating the legendary kaizo-Mario like Tomb of Horrors (created by Gary Gygax to take high-level players down a peg or two or all of them.) While the Tomb of Horrors was created for top-level players, Tomb of Annihilation is a full adventure/campaign intended for 1st level players that gets them to about level 11 (I know some have complained that the D&D books tend to only have adventures that go up to about level 15, but as a relative neophyte, I'm glad to have tons of stuff designed for players who can't just scry a bad-guy, teleport into their lair, kill them, and take their stuff.)

The structure of the adventure is interesting - players start in the city of Port Nyenzaru, where they can do a few fun city things (including betting on or participating in dinosaur races) before they head into the jungle, where there are a whole bunch of mini-dungeons that look like they can all be done in a single session. There's a high level of humor built into the adventure (Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward was a consultant on this one) which off-sets the fact that this adventure is built to grind through player characters.

The entire focus of the adventure is that resurrection magic isn't working - which is a big problem in a world of fantasy adventurers. That means if a PC dies, they ain't coming back (at least until the player defeat the "final boss.") There's even an optional Meatgrinder mode where death saves have to beat a 15 rather than a 10. They recommend that players doing this adventure be prepared to roll new characters, though thankfully the setting and premise make it relatively easy for new characters to be integrated into the party.

There are some very silly things out there, like a mini-dungeon where players get an advantage for riding on each others' backs or one in which you have to fool a frog-person into falling in love with a painting. I haven't gotten to the eponymous Tomb yet (which looks like it takes up about half the book) but there is a big Indiana Jones vibe to the whole thing (in fact, there's a new character background called "Archaeologist," which has a suggested ideal of "It belongs in a museum!")

I'm really enjoying this so much that I'm tempted to put the main campaign on pause once we get out of our current adventure so that we can run this (I also want to run the catch-up dungeon Death House in Curse of Strahd as a Halloween one-shot.)

Leaks and Speculation

In prior years, we've gotten occasional leaks to clue us into the next World of Warcraft expansion. This time around, it's no different, so let's look at what we've got:

Right now the only really believable leak is a bit of datamining that we found in the 7.3 PTR patch. This was a set of textures related to armor and "doodads" (aka bits of decorative stuff for in-game environments.) The textures included maps (again, not for the player map screen, but rather for in-game objects) as well as what appears to be cloth gear. The gear textures were labeled "Kul Tiras quest" which is generally how the game denotes the green and blue quest rewards from the leveling process. Now, I don't know if the quest gear in Legion was labeled as simply "Broken Isles Quest" or tied to specific zones, like "Highmountain Quest." Given that each zone had its own color variant, I would guess the latter, which would suggest that Kul Tiras will likely be a zone, rather than the whole continent for the next expansion.

This is not the first time that a texture proved promising for a future expansion. In 5.4, the Siege of Orgrimmar patch, we got a texture (in this case just a nondescript grey square - nothing as detailed as what we've seen this time) that was labeled "Iron Horde." While many of us assumed this had something to do with Garrosh's "True Horde," it of course presaged the Warlords of Draenor expansion.

This Kul Tiras stuff is much stronger evidence that that had been. The armor textures even have a rope-like motif, which would tie strongly into the nautical country of Kul Tiras, and given that we'd be likely to see simple color variations for different zones, would point strongly to a nautical-based expansion.

We are less than a month away from Blizzcon, but so far I don't believe we've had any other major leaks. In the past, people have discovered trademark registrations by Blizzard that gave away expansion names: Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, and Warlords of Draenor were all "announced" this way. We did not see this in Legion, though I suspect Blizzard has gotten better at keeping these under wraps, such as registering the trademark in other countries first.

Beyond this leak - which to be clear, is a substantial one - the rest of our speculation is based on the strong hints that Blizzard has made over the course of the Legion expansion. The past two expansions have had clear segues between them - Garrosh carried us from Mists to Warlords and Gul'dan carried us from Warlords to Mists. Legion has had many references to the Void and the Old Gods, and so the general consensus is that we'll likely be dealing with something at least connected to the Old Gods.

With Kul Tiras likely featuring in the upcoming expansion, it seems likely that we'll finally be getting the long-rumored "South Seas" expansion involving Queen Azshara and the Naga, who are of course tied to N'zoth, the last living Old God we have not yet faced.

An expansion featuring Kul Tiras would likely involve Jaina Proudmoore, who is featured prominently in the Blizzcon art. Alleria's recent connection (well, recent from our perspective) to the Void and its magic would make her a key player to have in an Old God expansion as well. In fact, there's a Blizzcon panel featuring female voice actors, which would make a lot of sense for an expansion that could feature Jaina, Alleria, and Azshara as prominent figures.

If this is truly a "South Seas" expansion, I would then further speculate that we'd likely be seeing Zandalar, with King Rakastan and the Prophet Zul (whom I have always theorized might be an avatar of N'zoth - a kind of Nyarlathotep figure.) We could also see a return to Kezan and perhaps the goblin capital of Undermine (I'd actually love to hear more about the history of the goblins, as they were supposed to at one time have a super-advanced civilization.)

I will of course be keeping my ear to the ground for any credible leaks - though I should also point out that the most accurate leak I saw for Legion looked like total BS at the time - a poorly-translated Chinese post that featured such wild ideas as Sylvanas becoming Warchief, Deathwing's Lair featuring prominently, and a whole new race of elves... which all turned out to be true.

Speculating on the Blizzcon Schedule

Well, Blizzard released the schedule for Blizzcon. Let's take a look and speculate wildly!

I'm going to focus on WoW stuff here, as I get a sense that it'll be the big franchise this time around. Unfortunately for Diablo fans, it doesn't look like there's anything going on with them (something a Blizz representative already posted about earlier.)

It's an odd-numbered year, so we're due for a WoW expansion announcement. I believe these have all been announced at Blizzcon except for Legion, which I think they pushed earlier to Gamescom because Warlords had basically finished in early summer, releasing it's 6.2 patch without any third raid tier coming.

There are six separate panels (not counting the Blizzcon opening ceremony, where the announcements proper are generally unveiled.) These are What's Next, Voices of Blizzard: The Powerful Women of Warcraft (which is apparently going to be a panel for voice actors, specifically the women,) a Deep Systems Dive, and then on the second day The Art of Warcraft, World of Warcraft Q&A, and a Boss Design Workshop.

A "What's Next" panel is usually about new expansions (though not always.) I'm curious about the systems deep dive, which I'd guess means we're going to see some very different new gameplay features coming with expansion seven. Many have speculated for a while now that the next expansion could be a nautical adventure, and some have speculated that the Vindicaar might be a dry run for ships we might command from like a Garrison or Class Hall.

While I'd be happy for them to simply give the spotlight to the female voice actors and characters of WoW (even though I get the sense that the creators of the franchise began as a real boys' club, there are quite a few memorable women in the Warcraft cosmos who aren't defined by their relationships with men, much to Blizz's credit) I also wonder if this could be pointing to an expansion where a number of women play very prominent roles. The theoretical nautical expansion would likely involve both Jaina and Azshara as key figures, and if it also ties into N'Zoth and general Old-God-ness, I could see Alleria also playing a big role in bridging the expansions.

Again, the Gameplay Deep Dive suggests to me some big system changes. I think that most specs are pretty good where they are in terms of gameplay - maybe some tweaks to the new (or essentially new) specs like Havoc, Vengeance, Survival, and Outlaw, but I don't think we need yet another overhaul. But plenty of other systems could see changes, and I never put it past Blizzard to do something wildly unexpected. One key thing I could see them looking at is level scaling - using that tech to allow players of wildly different levels to play together or maybe even doing a level squish along with an almost inevitable stat squish.

Art of Warcraft will probably showcase art for the new expansion. Meanwhile, the Q&A will be whatever it is. I'm curious about the Boss Design Workshop, but I imagine this will be less about unveiling new stuff than just talking about their philosophy and showing the steps it takes to come up with boss mechanics.

I'm sure we'll find out about new Heroes for Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch and new expansions for Hearthstone. But it looks like there's not a ton for the other franchises. As someone who favors WoW over the other Blizzard stuff, though, I think this Blizzcon's for me.

A Thousand Years of War and the Complex Questions of Light and Shadow

Many of our questions were answered in the recent audio drama, A Thousand Years of War, which tells the story of Alleria and Turalyon from the destruction of Draenor to our current interactions with them.

The revelations here are really interesting, and certainly make my feelings about my Paladin, as well as the Naaru and the Light in general, a little more complicated.

First off: We find that the reason for the weird time discrepancy is something to do with the Twisting Nether and something akin to real-world relativity. It seems that spending more time in the chaotic Twisting Nether has stretched out (or rather, compressed - depending on where you're standing) time so that Alleria and Turalyon have really experienced a thousand years in what for our characters would have only been about 40. This means that when we defeat the Burning Legion, they have far longer to prepare for a new attack than we have to prepare our defense (though this makes me wonder why they waited ten thousand years between the War of the Ancients and the First War to attack Azeroth again.)

Alleria manages to survive based on the residual quasi-immortality granted by the Sunwell (I guess that even when it's cut off by Arthas and Kel'thuzad, the effect is still on her.) Turalyon, on the other hand, become Lightforged, much like the various Draenei characters we see on Argus as well as Lothraxion.

We do learn a little more about this character. Lothraxion was a truly evil demonic dreadlord before his capture by the Army of the Light. But his role was actually hunting down the Void and its spawn even during his Legion career. We know that the Nathrezim/Dreadlords were servants of Old Gods before their capture by Sargeras, which makes this a pretty interesting history for him. We don't know how he converted, but his evil past make him somewhat more sympathetic to those who aren't 100% Light-Focused.

Alleria is very much the protagonist of this story, and she has a very complex and difficult path to walk - one that seems to end in her doom.

X'era knows somehow that she and Turalyon will survive their first journey to Argus, but she cannot see how. What Alleria discovers is that this is because it is the power of the Void that saves her. Later, she encounters the ethereal known as Locus Walker - a longtime thorn in the side of the Legion that even Lothraxion remembers hunting - she sees a strange new perspective on things:

The Void sees the Light to be as horrifying as those who follow the Light see the Void. It considers the order and tranquility of the Light as enslavement and stasis. As Locus-Walker explains, the Light sees only one path forward and everything else as a lie, while the Void sees all possibilities as equally true. This makes the Void seem insane, and its logic useless, but it also explains how the Light can seem blind.

This seems very on-theme for Warcraft in general - much as the Pandaren innkeeper explained at the end of the Mists legendary chain - you need both halves of the equation for a healthy life and a healthy universe.

Alleria sees many visions of potential futures granted by the void - one in which she submits to N'zoth, another where she slays it and takes its place as a queen of monsters, and another where she and her son Arator slay each other. This last one rings false, because she knows more than anything that she would never do anything to harm her husband or their son, even if she walks a very different path.

The creepiest vision she has, though, is one of her diving off some precipice into the Void with a smile on her face. This appears to be her true fate, or so she believes. This path she walks may allow her to defeat the Legion, but it looks like it will ultimately claim her. And what does that mean, exactly?

Simply rejecting the Shadow in favor of the Light does not seem possible: X'era (setting aside the fact that she's dead thanks to Illidan) is more of an elemental force than a sentient being, and just can't seem to even conceive of a nuanced view where some mixture of Light and Shadow could be the proper path forward.

Anyway, I recommend listening to the audio drama (it's on the World of Warcraft Youtube channel.) The voice-acting is superb (even though it's weird to hear Alleria and Turalyon speak with English accents - I actually like that Warcraft, a fantasy setting created by Americans, has medieval-style knights and such who speak in American accents. Though I far prefer the audio-drama's version of Locus Walker's voice.)

The Wound (Spoilers)

So there's a 7.3.2 PTR build up. We're going to be talking post-Antorus spoilers here. So let's... um... let's put up that spoiler warning.

SPOILERS AHOY!

Ok? Good? We all ready for the spoiler ride? Ok.