The Pride of Kul Tiras

At the level cap, Alliance players get a quest chain that largely involves going through several of Kul Tiras' dungeons, capping with Siege of Boralus, the mythic-only dungeon on the continent.

There was a bug in this chain that gave instant credit for beating the dungeon, meaning you got to see the epilogue before the climax. The story actually ties together just about the whole story of all three Kul Tiras zones and seemingly leaves the whole continent's stories - other than the war with the Horde - more or less resolved.

Given that we're only a few days into the expansion, this is all under big spoiler warnings, so here's a cut!

SPOILER AHOY

120, Heroic Dungeons, and Giving My Shaman the First Stormstrike at Zandalar

After the usual leveling binge, I got my good Paladin to 120 by the end of Tuesday. I did a bunch of top-level content, including the conclusion of what I imagine is Jaina's 8.0 storyline (though a quest bug had me skip the Siege of Boralus dungeon. I've only run a couple heroics at this point, so I'm not quite ready for SoB (ha!)

Aside from some pants and his ret weapon, my main is now in full rare gear (though some are not quite up to Normal dungeon level.) So far I think I've gotten an item from every dungeon I've run, making me wonder if there's a sort of guarantee (does that make it more likely for you to get one of the last boss? Not sure how those statistics work out.) At the moment I think that's his best gearing option, but of course I'm trying to slow down after the initial sprint to the cap.

My Rogue has been the first Horde to the cap in every expansion since Cataclysm, but while his undead-sneakiness ties into the war storyline quite well, especially given Nathanos' increased role (though I think he'd be pissed that Sylvanas lost Undercity and isn't all that enthused about killing Alliance,) my Shaman seems like he'd fit in better among the Zandalari, and I actually really like how Enhancement feels these days (ask me again when I'm only in questing greens though.)

So I've done a few big quest chains in Nazmir, and the Shaman is sitting at 111. I'm definitely planning on taking it slower for him. To help stave off questing burnout, I'm probably going to alternate Alliance-Horde-Alliance-Horde, at least for the first five characters. So after the shaman, it'll go Death Knight, Rogue, and then Demon Hunter.

One thing I've noticed is how there's sort of parallels going on between the three zones on each continent. Drustvar and Nazmir are about how an ancient foe is cultivating a creepy cult that threatens stability of the continent. Tiragarde Sound and Zuldazar are about conspiracies within ruling class to try to usurp power from the local monarch. Stormsong Valley and Vol'dun are about seeking out missing military assets (that's more of a stretch for Vol'dun, to be fair) and discovering a connection to the Old Gods.

So far I'd say I think Zandalar is hands-down the cooler-looking continent, but on the other hand, Kul Tiras has some really cool things going for it (just about everything Drust-related is pretty awesome.)

Questing feels a lot more free-form than it has for a while - the model seems to be to have a main story, but then tons of shiny exclamation points to lure you away from it. This does make for a lot of truly optional quests, but it does lead to some odd pacing issues. For example, Stormsong Valley has its most exciting quest chain, which leads into the zone's dungeon, all happen as more or less a prerequisite for the rest of the zone, which tends to be lower-stakes stories (until you get to the west coast and Fort Daelin.)

One note: at the level cap, Alliance players get a quest sending you to a manor south of the Shrine of the Storm, and a series of quests that are all one big deep-cut reference to Darkest Dungeon, a game I've written about on this blog. I don't know what people who haven't played that game will think of it, but as a fan, it's pretty delightful to see how many very specific references that whole area is making.

Velen, the Naaru, the Light, and the Draenei Post-Argus

No race has struggled more with the demonic Burning Legion than the Draenei. Fifteen thousand years before the Night Elves had even heard of the Legion, the Draenei were forced to flee their own home planet - indeed, their race's name is a product of this fact.

Draenei is not actually the name of their species. The Draenei, along with their Lightforged kin and the shadow-cursed Broken, and even the Lost Ones (whom we haven't really seen since BC) are all Eredar. In fact, the Draenei - those who haven't been transformed by Light or Shadow magic - are what the Eredar race was before the coming of Sargeras.

The history of the corruption of the Eredar and the Legion's annexation of Argus might start with an Eredar mage named Thal'kiel. A master of summoning magic, he was one of the masters of the Conservatory of the Arcane. Thal'kiel had his own dedicated followers who studied under his instruction, called the Wakeners. Among the Wakeners was Thal'kiel's top student, Archimonde.

Delving into the mysteries of the cosmos, Thal'kiel began to hear a voice answer his inquiries - the Dark Titan Sargeras. Teaching him to summon demons rather than arcane constructs, Thal'kiel grew more and more obsessed with demonology. He eventually went to the duumvirate - the dual leaders of Argus, Kil'jaeden and Velen. Summoning legions of demons to destroy his older arcane constructs, he expected congratulations. But Kil'jaeden made no comment while Velen forbade him from continuing this line of research.

The rejection led Thal'kiel to sequester himself while he practiced summoning more and more demons. Eventually, he brought his Wakeners into a conspiracy to overthrow the Duumvirate and become the rulers of Argus.

However, Archimonde, ambitious and eager to prove himself a hero of Argus, revealed the plan to the authorities and led the attack to nip Thal'kiel's rebellion in the bud. Personally decapitating Thal'kiel, Archimonde parlayed his heroic status to political power, eventually joining Kil'jaeden and Velen as the third member of a Triumvirate.

Keeping Thal'kiel's skull as a grisly trophy of his moment of ascension, Archimonde had the skull gilded and encrusted with gems and kept it on display outside his quarters at the Conservatory. Little did he know that Thal'kiel's consciousness remained within the relic, and the skull functioned as a conduit for Sargeras to poison his mind.

Thus, when the Dark Titan arrived at Argus, Archimonde was the first to agree to his proposal.

Sargeras surely would have tried different tactics to corrupt the Eredar, but without Thal'kiel, history may have gone very differently.

Velen and his Draenei have been defined by their relationship with the Burning Legion for eons. The War of the Ancients is recent history compared to the flight from Argus.

In that conflict, the Draenei have held onto the Holy Light and the guidance of the Naaru as the sole path to survival. Traveling with a number of Naaru, the Draenei have never had a reason to question their faith - their god-like protectors are near to them, and through their grace they have been able to survive all this time.

But in what must feel like the blink of an eye to a people who live so long (remember that many living Draenei personally remember the flight from Argus) their world has been more or less turned upside down.

Consider that a mere thirty-five years ago or so, the Orcs banded together to form the Horde and immediately set about killing Draenei wherever they could find them. The slaughter was a shock, and one that left most of the Draenei dead. But some of those who were not killed were given what might be an even worse fate: the Horde altered the void-tainted blood of Seethe to use as a sort of biological weapon that mutated those it affected but also cut them off from the Light. Much as the Arrakoa who were touched by this blood were twisted in form, so too were these Draenei broken - Krokul in their language. (Little did they know, but those Draenei who stayed behind to fight the Legion on Argus seemed to fall to a similar fate thanks to the void power of the Dark Naaru L'ura.)

The notion that they could be cut off from the Light sent shockwaves through the surviving Draenei society. The Light had been the Draenei bulwark against the Legion - so how were they to trust these former friends and family who were now hideously mutated by the very opposite of the Light? In paranoia cultivated by the shocking turn of the Orcs, many Draenei turned their backs on the Krokul.

Thankfully, Velen is a thoughtful and nuanced person, and not a zealot. Speaking with Nobundo - once a heroic paladin, who had lost his power due to his transformation - he invited the former paladin and future shaman back into society, and forced his people to take in their brethren.

Nobundo introduced a very new type of spirituality to his people: while he waited in vain to hear the Light speak to him once more, it was the elemental spirits of Draenor that approached him. Eager to commune with mortals after the Orcs had abandoned them, Nobundo was able to bring this new tradition into Draenei society, and even some non-Krokul began to take it up, considering it a sort of alternate path to the Light.

Upon discovering the Alliance, which counted many worshippers of the Holy Light among its members, the Draenei resolved to travel to Azeroth and join them. Despite some early complications (it didn't help that they looked a lot like their demonic brethren) their initiation into the Alliance has gone rather smoothly, and Velen himself has developed a close relationship with the current High King, Anduin Wrynn.

But again, after what had to feel like a shockingly short amount of time, the Draenei found themselves fighting the Legion once again. But there was something different: with the allies they had found, they were finally able to stand their ground. The Legion was turned back.

Of course, their frustrated attack led to the careful manipulations that would allow for a full-scale invasion a few years later, which is where we get to the Legion expansion.

However, due to the maverick impulses of Illidan Stormrage, the ultimate battle that Velen and the Draenei had been anticipating for all their thousands of years was forced - a portal opened up between Azeroth and Argus, and it would mean the ultimate victory of one side or the other.

Illidan was certainly an ally in this fight, though his methods were profoundly different from what the Draenei had deemed acceptable. When the fragments of Xe'ra were assembled, it seemed that the Light would secure their final victory.

But Xe'ra revealed herself to be something less than pure benevolence. The Prime Naaru attempted to forcibly Lightforge Illidan - we know of something similar happening in the past, namely Lothraxion, who had been a wicked Dreadlord in service to the Legion prior to his conversion. And while Lothraxion is now a champion of the Light and a good friend and ally to mortals, Illidan was not exactly an evil demon. He had done bad things, to be sure, but his goals had always been admirable. And as Xe'ra pumped him full of the Holy Light, Illidan - someone for whom free will might be the most important value - struck back, destroying Xe'ra.

What's kind of fascinating is that Velen did not seem to blame him. Turalyon, the sole Lightforged human, was horrified, seeing this as grasping defeat from the jaws of victory, as it were. But Velen had the perspective to look at this event and see the truth - Xe'ra had been wrong to ignore Illidan's wishes.

The Light has the potential to be used as a force for good, and it often is. But as we've seen with the Scarlet Crusade or Kael'thas' Blood Knights, it can also be used for evil. And Xe'ra's actions toward Illidan showed that even the Naaru are not immune to the Light's zealous, authoritarian tendencies.

Meanwhile, we're also finding that the Void is not necessarily a force of pure chaos and evil. We saw how the Arrakoa Outcasts used shadow magic to protect themselves from the genocidally zealous Adherents (who were themselves wielders of the Light.) And now we've got the Void Elves, who, aside from a little creepy glowy tentacle here and there, seem to be good people for the most part (well, we need to see more of them to get a better sense of their culture and attitudes.)

But larger even than this realization, the fact of the matter is that the narrative has moved onto a new chapter. For eons, the Draenei knew their destiny was to return to Argus. When they arrived, though, they found a shattered husk. The Titan Argus, whom the Eredar probably didn't even know about until Sargeras took over (the Draenei certainly seem to be surprised to learn about it) is dead, which means that in a rather literal sense, their home world is dead (though given how the other Titans were able to come back, I'm not sure if we should count Argus out forever.) The point is, the Draenei end-game, which would have been "we defeat the Legion and move back home," is not going to happen. That means that the Draenei now have to commit to another world as their new home, and it looks like it'll be Azeroth.

So what, then, of the Naaru? What then of their grand purpose as a people?

The Lightforged, who have spent the last twenty-five thousand years (or the last million, if they've experienced the same time dilation as Turalyon and Alleria for the full duration) at war with the Legion, are just transitioning to new threats - currently the Horde.

We haven't tended to see the Draenei all that aggressive in previous Alliance/Horde conflicts, but that might be due to the fact that many expected that their place in the Alliance was a temporary one, and that they would eventually return to Argus, leaving the Alliance behind.

That option is off the table, and that means that they now really do need to carve out a place for themselves on Azeroth. The Alliance is the best option to secure that place, and the Horde now stands as the biggest threat to their safety.

The Draenei have managed to be deeply spiritual without zealotry in the past, but the Lightforged seem unlikely to show the same sort of restraint that Velen has. Remember that Velen saved the Blood Elves by reigniting the Sunwell - that's not bad for someone who is hypothetically your enemy. Would the Lightforged have forgiven the Blood Elves for what they had done to M'uru?

Now if you're looking for internal conflict within the Alliance, let's recall that many of the Void Elves very easily might have been the same Blood Elves who had tortured M'uru into a Void State. Now the Draenei and their Lightforged kin are going to be fighting side-by-side with these Ren'dorei.

All this, even when the idea of the Naaru and the Light being pure good are coming into question, and you've got a race that has a huge challenge set before them: who are they? What do they believe in? What is their purpose? What cause can unite them? There's no home to go back to. The dichotomy of light and shadow is in doubt.

What does it mean to be Draenei?

The Jailor of the Damned and the Banshee Queen

Bolvar Fordragon was a hero of the Alliance. In Varian's absence, Bolvar actually served as the Human racial leader during Vanilla and Burning Crusade, as Anduin was only a child at the time. In many ways, Bolvar is actually the Alliance equivalent to Saurfang - a stone-cold badass whose reputation within the Alliance was unassailable. His only great failing was in not recognizing Lady Katrana Prestor for who she really was - the Black Dragon Onyxia. Yet when the truth was revealed, Bolvar ensured both that the young King (later prince again, later king again) was safe and that Stormwind survived the infiltration by the Black Dragonflight.

That equivalence between Fordragon and Saurfang was reinforced by Bolvar's presence at the Wrath Gate, along with Saurfang's son (a son who appeared every bit as brave and honorable as Varok, but who had not sinned as his father did in the days of the Old Horde.) It was that moment - the moment of clearest, closest cooperation between the factions - that Varimathras' coup pitted the factions against each other and made Sylvanas' blight production known to the world.

However, perhaps even more than putting the factions into a conflict that would convince Thrall to give Garrosh the title of Warchief, the most significant consequence of this event may be the death - or rather, the horrific non-death - of Bolvar Fordragon.

In Chronicle III, we find out that much of Arthas' actions as Lich King were born out of a twisted version of his impulses as a Paladin. He wished to conquer the world as a way to unify it - to silence all dissent so that a global Scourge would be able to defeat the Burning Legion.

Arthas' plan to effectively audition the greatest heroes of Azeroth as his greatest lieutenants backfired due to his underestimation of the Light. But let's never forget that had Tirion Fordring not been there, the Lich King would have won, and with us at his command, he would very likely have been able to sweep away all opposition with relative ease.

Arthas used fear as a tactic to great effect - in fact, some of the most fascinating in-game books in WoW are essays written by Kel'thuzad about the Scourge's use of appropriated culture and sinister symbolism as a way to demoralize foes. The Scourge's actual stance on morality was that there is no such thing, but they were happy to play the part of an unstoppable evil juggernaut in order to incite panic in their foes. There's definitely some "be careful who you pretend to be" elements to this, but I think the Scourge just didn't care about coming off as villainous.

Arthas played his cards close to the vest, and had it not been for the miracle of the Ashbringer, he'd have won. But Bolvar has a big advantage over Arthas:

We don't know what he ultimately wants.

It was pretty clear that Arthas wanted the whole world converted into Scourge. He'd happily slay the Forsaken and raise them again to bring them back into the fold. He'd happily kill, well, everyone. To Arthas, enemies are just minions you haven't killed yet. Or rather, the living are just minions you haven't killed yet.

But Bolvar? Theoretically, his coronation as Lich King was meant as a way to keep the Scourge from going wild and attacking in all directions. The thought was that without a single mind directing them, the Scourge would be more of a virulent infection than a force that could withdraw and respect peace.

Do we know that's what he's doing? Death Knights (and to a much smaller extent Mages) get some exposure to the Lich King in Legion, and he definitely does not seem like the nice Bolvar Fordragon we once knew. He commands (well, requests from (well, commands)) Death Knights to raise various people to become the new Four Horsemen, and seems to gradually be planting various people in the Ebon Blade that are tied directly to his will rather than having their own.

During the Legion invasion, the goals of the Ebon Blade largely line up with that of the Scourge - namely the defeat of the demons - but we're putting a lot of trust in a guy who could very easily flip his organization's mission statement to "zombie apocalypse." He has us attack Light's Hope Chapel in the interest of raising Tirion Fordring as a death knight (something we thankfully fail to do) and then also has us kill a number of red dragons in order to raise one of their ancient ancestors.

Assuming Bolvar is still a good guy is very naive at this point. Arguably, he has already crossed into villain territory, but at least for the moment he does not seem to be the kind of global threat that Arthas was, and may in fact be a potential ally against worse threats.

Now let's talk Sylvanas.

You could argue that she hasn't been good since she was alive. As a Banshee used by the Scourge and later as the leader of the Forsaken, she has done extremely questionable things: she betrayed Garithos (not that the guy didn't have it coming,) and she has overseen the development of the Blight as well as experiments on captives. She has had human towns like Hillsbrad and Southshore wiped out. She invaded Gilneas, using Val'kyr to raise defenders as Forsaken who are clearly being at least a little bit mind-controlled (either through magic or psychological manipulation,) she tried to enslave the Val'kyr in Stormheim, and of course most recently, she burned Teldrassil along with thousands of Night Elf civilians.

One could argue that some of these actions had noble motivations behind them, but doesn't any good villain think they're the good guy?

Bolvar and Sylvanas have a connection, despite the fact that I don't think they've ever properly met. It was the vision of Bolvar encased within the Frozen Throne that led Sylvanas to jump off the top of Icecrown Citadel, which of course then led to her resurrection by the Val'kyr.

Sylvanas was far from perfect before that point, but she does seem to have gone down a more villainous route since then.

And now, as Warchief of the Horde, team red has been employing a lot more necromancy in their fight against the Alliance. We saw this at the Siege of Lordaeron, when Sylvanas was able to raise hundreds of skeletons of those slain by the Blight to attack the Alliance.

When did she get this power? And more importantly, how much is she going to use it?

One of the biggest critiques against Sylvanas is that, as she raises fallen humans as new Forsaken to help her, you know, kill more humans to raise as Forsaken, the distinction between her and the Lich King is growing thinner. Indeed, when Garrosh (of all people) asks her what difference there is between her and Arthas, she responds that she serves the Horde. Now that she's in charge of the Horde, that distinction becomes almost meaningless.

The Forsaken are starting to look more like the Scourge. What does the Lich King think of that?

Consider that Bolvar's self-appointed duty was to essentially regulate the undead. He doesn't want the Scourge to break off and sew mayhem across the world.

And what is Sylvanas if not a rogue Scourge agent sewing mayhem across the world?

Bolvar and Sylvanas are on a collision course. Each are becoming more powerful with each passing day. Sylvanas has the Horde at her back, but a Horde that is worried about the direction that she is taking them. Bolvar has been far quieter in his actions, first establishing an alliance with the Ebon Blade, yes, but how much else is he doing behind the scenes? Is Darion Mograine, who was re-killed and then re-raised and is thus, presumably under the Lich King's control once again, just the tip of the iceburg?

The spirits that pushed Jaina to raise her father's flagship from the depths could simply be metaphorical, as the folks at Blizzardwatch have suggested, but what if they're not?

Are we going to see Sylvanas forced to reckon with the Scourge proper as she attempts to become the ultimate undead badass on the globe? And if Sylvanas and Bolvar do begin a war, who wins, and who amongst us survives?

Where is Warbringers: Azshara?

We got Jaina's awesome sea-shanty (I think technically a sea-dirge, but oh well) the first week of the War of Thorns, and then we of course got Sylvanas' at the moment of the Burning of Teldrassil, given that it was directly part of that plot. So when do we get Azshara?

One thing I'm curious about is its subject. The brief snippets we saw in the trailer seem to indicate that it will show her transformation into a Naga, but something I realized is that the previous two primarily took place at about the same time.

Jaina raises her father's ship roughly around the same time Teldrassil is burned. How do I know that? It's admittedly circumstantial, but when Anduin and company goes to confront Sylvanas in the Lordaeron throne room, he lays the crime of destroying Teldrassil out as the main reason they've come for her. If you watch Jaina in the background, her reaction seems to be one of shock and surprise - it seems very clear that she did not know this had happened.

This makes her entrance a bit more of a surprise. It's possible she found out the Alliance was sailing north to attack Lordaeron, but if she were able to find out that, why not Teldrassil? Was it pure coincidence that she decided to attack Undercity right as the Alliance was besieging it?

Anyway, the timing makes it plausible that both Warbringers shorts we've seen are set at the same time. They each, of course, also talk about defining moments in their subjects' past - Sylvanas losing all sense of hope when she sees how fruitless her efforts to defend Quel'thalas have been, and Jaina reckoning with the sacrifice of her father for a peace that turned out to be hollow - which could suggest that we'll be seeing Azshara's transformation, but also check in with her in the modern day to see what she's up to.

We know that Azshara will be a major villain in BFA - though not its final boss. So we need to learn about her activities and motivations soon.

I look forward to it. Jaina's Warbringer short was one of the best things they've ever done, and Sylvanas', while certainly making controversial character choices, was very effectively dramatic. So I'm looking forward to what's coming.

Two Days Out until Battle for Azeroth

With a global launch in 48 hours and twelve minutes (as I write this sentence,) we're already in the biggest state of upheaval lore-wise since WoW launched. Two of the original six vanilla capital cities are gone (accessible via Bronze Dragon Zidormi as they've tended to do with removing old content post-Cataclysm.) While we didn't lose any major lore figures the way that we did in the beginning of Legion, many Horde players may have lost faith in theirs. Saurfang has had a hard time living up to his honorable ideals and has now been captured by the Alliance, while Sylvanas has gone into full super-villain mode with her genocidal actions and her willingness to blight-bomb her own troops if it means hitting the enemy.

On a game-mechanics side of things, we've also seen our artifacts de-powered to the point of being generic weapons - and some of us have replaced our beloved weapons with new generic ones from Darkshore world quests.

Transmogging new weapons to look like your artifacts is more flexible than it has been previously. Two-handed weapons (like a caster staff) can be transmogged to look like two-piece sets (like the Skull of the Man'ari and Thalkiel) though these are still limited to spec (sadly no awesome Judgment-themed Silver Hand for your Ret spec, unfortunately.)

Every spec has seen some changes, but a handful (Survival Hunter is the one I'm thinking about the most) have undergone extensive changes.

Some of those changes involve integrating ideas from the artifact weapons into the spec, while others have been your standard between-expansions re-works.

In terms of game systems, most players have yet to experience Island Expeditions and Warfronts, the two new major group content features of the expansion. Expeditions will largely be similar to the three-player scenarios from Mists of Pandaria, with a theme of competing against a group from the other faction to secure Azerite. There will be a PvP version of this, though most follows a PvE model.

As with any expansion, we have new zones, dungeons, and raids to look forward to.

Unlike any other expansion (other than vanilla, which technically wasn't an expansion,) we're getting two continents. The leveling experience for Alliance and Horde will thus be entirely different (a kind of expansion of the Shadowmoon Valley/Frostfire Ridge separation.) The Alliance will navigate islands of Kul Tiras, investigating the supernatural and political threats to the safety of the island nation as they try to secure their legendary navy. The Horde will attempt to defeat the evil cult rotting out the heart of the Zandalari Empire to secure the Empire's fleet for their purposes.

It's debatable whether you would consider the first four allied races as a Legion or BFA feature (though given that they require a pre-purchase of the expansion, I'd say the latter,) but BFA brings two more in 8.0 with another two promised in a subsequent patch (I'm assuming 8.1.)

In 8.0 we'll get two of the three most-requested Allied Race options (before the term "Allied Race" had been introduced): Dark Iron Dwarves for the Alliance and Mag'har Orcs for the Horde.

Professions are also undergoing a change, with each expansion block counted as a separate skill, meaning that if you pick up, say, Blacksmithing upon your arrival in Zandalar, you should be just as ready to start smithing as the guy who's been pumping out Fel Core Hound mounts for the last year and a half. The one downside here, though, is that if you want to go and produce stuff from older content and you had not reached their skill threshold, you won't be able to rely on low-requirement but high-skill-up recipes as we had in Legion.

Honor is now an account-wide stat, meaning that you can feel free to switch characters as you like when working on honor rewards. It's retroactive, too, so if you did even moderate amounts of PvP or their associated world quests in Legion, you could very possibly have the PvP artifact appearances (at least the first tier.)

One small detail for transmog farming - raids from expansions before the previous one will be subject to "legacy raid rules," which means that even on flexible modes, they should drop the maximum amount of loot. I'm not entirely sure how this will work, as currently Warlords of Draenor raids still shrink the loot tables to the minimum, but it's possible that the rules don't go into effect until we're 120.

Leveling should work the following way:

If you've done the Battle of Lordaeron, you'll be able to move on to the starting quests for the new continents. Both involve prisons, and the Horde actually has a mission to Stormwind before they go to Zandalar, while the Alliance heads directly to Kul Tiras (though the events a little messy, as the Alliance intro is technically a response to the Horde one.)

Questing will be broken up a little on the main continents with shorter quest chains to establish bases in enemy territory, so your human can go do a little questing in, say, Vol'dun between completing whole quest chains in Drustvar and Stormsong Valley.

There are four level-up dungeons per continent, with the other continent's dungeons opening up at the level cap. Finally, there is a pair of Mythic-only dungeons that I believe will cap off the stories of each continent and are, of course, limited to the cap.

Finally, about three weeks after the expansion launches, we'll be getting Uldir, BFA's first (and actually the only announced) raid. Uldir is in the center of the swampy Nazmir zone in Zandalar, and is a corrupted Titan facility in which a hideous creature called G'huun has emerged as a "Blood God."

From there, we don't know exactly what we're getting, but we do know that Azshara will be the final boss of a subsequent raid, though not BFA's last one.

There are a lot of big questions about the plot of the expansion - will we see the Horde fractured once again as their Warchief's villainy turns on her own people? Will we see the Alliance sacrifice some of its ideals in the name of survival - or revenge? Will we discover that there is some darker, more supernatural force that is manipulating things behind the scenes?

Alliance versus Horde After Lordaeron

In one way, the destruction of both Teldrassil and Lordaeron City has balanced things. Aside from Azuremyst and Bloodmyst Isles in the west and Quel'thalas in the east, each faction more or less has control over one of WOW's original two continents.

It's an idea that less genocidal/ambitious Horde leaders have sometimes proposed as a solution to their conflict - if the Horde were given total control of Kalimdor and left the Eastern Kingdoms to the Alliance, perhaps things might settle down between them. Good fences make good neighbors, the logic goes, and putting an ocean between the factions could theoretically let each side find satisfaction with the territory available to them.

There is, to be fair, a kind of elegance to this as a solution. If each side simply resigns themselves to understanding one continent as belong to the Horde and one to the Alliance, it would deter aggressive action and potentially allow for tensions to cool off to the point where diplomacy could start being more of a thing.

Unfortunately, while this looks decent on paper, there are a lot of problems with it.

First off is the ever-present issue of grievance. Sylvanas just committed an act of genocide against the Night Elves. The Night Elves would be very unlikely to accept their historic territories in Kalimdor even if the War of Thorns had been won with whatever Saurfang considers honor. If the Horde had won without massacring thousands of civilians, you'd still see Kaldorei resisting Horde domination of that territory. But after the burning of Teldrassil, I imagine many Night Elves, even those who wanted peace, would now accept no other outcome than the dismantling of the Horde, the death of Sylvanas and Saurfang, and maybe even the destruction of Orgrimmar.

This is just the latest in a series of grievances the various Alliance races have against the Horde. Its first act as an organization, after all, was an unprovoked war against the Draenei in which just a fraction of the exiled Eredar survived. Add to that the, again, unprovoked war on Stormwind that left the city in ruins, followed by the unprovoked war against the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms. There's the death of Cenarius (which, ok, stings less now that we know he can come back from the dead,) and the... again, unprovoked invasion of Gilneas, and then the destruction of Theramore, attacking the city of a person who had, until that point, always been an advocate for peace with the Horde.

The Horde does have its grievances with the Alliance, and while a lot of them pointedly ignore the reasons (the internment camps, for example, were the bad choice in a bad and worse set of options. They couldn't send the Orcs back to Outland. Would the ideal solution have been to integrate them into human society? I'd play a tabletop RPG set in that alternate history,) some are more legitimate. Take Garithos' treatment of the Blood Elves following the Third War for example, or the Dwarves' unauthorized archaeological excavations in Tauren land. The Forsaken complaint that the living have treated them as if they were just as bad as the Scourge used to hold a lot of weight, though more recently that's like Billy Idol complaining that people act as if his hair is bleached (to be fair, at his age it might not be now. Maybe that's a bad metaphor.)

Likewise, the Blood Elves remember how their ancestors were exiled by not just the Night Elves as a people, but their actual existing leadership, for practicing Arcane Magic, despite the fact that they later embraced it.

Bad blood is, more than anything, the problem at the heart of it all. It's unfortunate that the two sides never seem to let their periods of cooperation wash away that animus, and an area where I think players sometimes feel railroaded by the game's makers (but I digress.) But on top of that are also some less emotional and more practical issues.

Territory is a big one. Let's take the relatively simple one of northern Kalimdor first:

The Tauren lived in central Kalimdor for generations as nomadic tribes, but it was a hard life that required them to constantly fight for survival against marauding centaurs. When the Orcs arrived in Kalimdor, they introduced a more sedentary lifestyle that was also somewhat new to their culture. But such a culture required a system for farming and building. The areas they had were arid, lacking wood for construction and fertile land for food. To the north, however, were lush forests that had been cultivated through druidic magic for thousands of years. Utterly enormous trees were plentiful, meaning easy resources for construction, and presumably the area is also rich in arable land.

The Night Elves did not share that land.

Now, we could debate back and forth whether they should have. On one hand the Horde never once tried asking politely, saying "hey, we're here to fight the Legion. Mind helping us get settled before we do?" On the other hand, why hadn't the Night Elves already extended their resources to help the Tauren, a people they had historically been on good terms with?

You could argue that the Horde was foolish to build Orgrimmar without the resources required to maintain it, but it's not clear there was anywhere else for them to settle. Whose problem that is depends on your point of view.

But when we get into the northern part of the Eastern Kingdoms (interesting that the clashes all tend toward the northern parts of the continents,) we have issues that are less about resources than history.

Lordaeron was one of the most important human kingdoms. It was second only to Stormwind in population (if I recall correctly) and was the founding member of the Alliance, using its resources and political sway to get the other kingdoms along with Dun Morogh and Quel'thalas together to face the Horde.

Lordaeron is undeniably historical Alliance territory. But the undead plague and the rise of the Scourge, followed by that of the Forsaken, super-complicates that matter. Generally, we tend to think the Scourge does not deserve any territory - they're evil and should be destroyed. When the people who are now Forsaken first became undead (not counting those who were raised later,) the living humans of Lordaeron were, I think we'd all agree, justified in fighting them and destroying them wherever they could in order to try to purge the undead from the kingdom.

What complicates this is that when they regained their free will, what exactly did that mean for their identity? Were they simply the same people who had always lived there, only rotted and stinky? Were they still the kingdom of Lordaeron? And did they still have a claim to that land?

Setting aside the ethical/moral complications of that, imagine just the logistics. Say your uncle dies and he leaves you his house. You go there, you move in, and you sign the deed to the place. Then your uncle comes back as a rotting corpse. He's still your uncle, but legally, once he died, ownership of that house transferred to you. Are you obligated to give it back - legally, I mean, not morally?

Now, let's imagine that you've actually heard about people rising from the grave as zombies, and not the mindless Romero zombies, but clever and cruel and murderous Scourge who are capable of deception.

Do you even give your uncle a chance to make a case for himself? And if you do, do you believe him?

So that's where we start - living humans have a, frankly, understandably hard time taking the Forsaken at their word. Now let's move forward:

Your uncle, infuriated by the fact that you won't give him your house back (or so he claims,) gathers up a bunch of other zombies and tries to break in, then gets a bunch of plague together and bombards the house with it, trying to kill you.

At this point, do you even care if he's Scourge or not? He's undead, using necromantic weapons in an attempt to kill you.

From his perspective, all he wants is his goddamned house back, but the methods he has taken, which he rationalizes as simple pragmatism, are making it impossible for you to concede that, yeah, technically, this should be his house.

So yes, if the Forsaken had been treated with more trust early on in their development, things might not have gotten nearly so bad. But on the other hand, for the Forsaken to expect such a level of trust is utterly unreasonable. Still, each side sees themselves as the aggrieved, and even though the Scarlet Crusade was largely rejected by the Alliance (their partial acceptance of them was primarily based in ignorance,) the Forsaken couldn't help but see the Scarlets as representing all of the Alliance, and the Alliance couldn't help but see the Forsaken as little better than the Scourge.

Now, to finish things off, let's talk Quel'thalas.

There's bound to be resistance fighters - Night Elves in Kalidmor, and Forsaken in Lordaeron. But one area that is in the middle of some crazy upheaval is Quel'thalas.

Lor'themar is in a really, really bad situation right now. Let's explain:

Silvermoon's biggest ally was Undercity, and while the actual loss of life at the Battle of Lordaeron was small (Sylvanas herself was responsible for a significant fraction of Horde losses,) her relocating to Kalimdor, and indeed the whole potential plan of separating the factions by continent (I assume most people don't know Sylvanas' plan to plague-bomb Stormwind and turn every last human into Forsaken) leaves Lor'themar high and dry. There is basically one tiny pocket of Horde territory left in the Eastern Kingdoms.

So that would be pretty bad. But that's not all.

Given that it's a playable race, we can probably assume that the Void Elves are actually a significant chunk of the Blood Elf population who have rejected the Horde and joined the Alliance. And they're led by Alleria Windrunner, former Ranger-General of Quel'thalas. Throw in the High Elves under Vereesa Windrunner, who never accepted Kael'thas' embrace of fel magic (I don't really know why Vereesa and her Silver Covenant folks didn't suffer magic withdrawal like the Wretched, but maybe the Kirin Tor helped them out with that,) and at least in terms of "number of High Elf factions," the Alliance is currently leading. The Alliance also has two out of three Windrunner sisters.

But the most important thing is that Lor'themar has no home-field advantage. Generally, when fighting a defensive war, you can use your knowledge of the terrain as a big advantage over invaders. You have people who spent their entire lives in your territory and who know every hidden valley to stockpile weapons, or every mountain cave in which to hide out. You know where to force your enemy to strike to put them at disadvantage.

But Lor'themar can't do that. Even if you take the fact that the High Elves and Alleria have been away for so long that Lor'themar had been able to build new defenses and anticipate their potential strategies, the Void Elves have been part of Horde society up until very recently.

In fact, the Void Elves are the only example we have of former Horde members joining the Alliance. The notion that trusted friends and colleagues could use their knowledge against you is not something that the Horde has ever had to deal with.

The Horde's advantage should they ever wish to take Azuremyst and Bloodmyst Isles is primarily that the Draenei would be unlikely to fight too hard to keep them. I imagine that if it became clear that they were coming for the islands after Teldrassil, Velen would pragmatically evacuate, and the Draenei are very well-practiced in pulling up stakes and leaving - only this time they'd only have to go to the other side of the world rather than find an entirely new one. Frankly I'm surprised that Sylvanas hasn't just raised the possibility to see if she can get them essentially for free.

But the Blood Elves are much more settled down in Quel'thalas, and an evacuation would cause a lot of logistical problems, but also a lot of political ones. The Alliance has proven itself capable of welcoming Sin'dorei back into the fold with open arms. I highly doubt that they'd only let those who embraced the Ren'dorei's weird void magic in either, as those who didn't could just call themselves Quel'dorei.

If the Alliance wanted to play smart in Quel'thalas, they would have Vereesa leading the efforts to re-take Quel'thalas and pitch the Alliance to every Blood Elf she saw. The Void Elves might put some off, but they'd have every tactical advantage they needed, and if Anduin basically says "hey guys, if you join us you'd be under our protection. We're disappointed you went Horde before, but you know there's always a place with us if you want it," it might not convert every last Blood Elves, but you can bet there would be more and more defections, and such a thing could cascade into the Alliance taking Silvermoon.

Lor'themar, I think, has two potential tools he can use to fend such a thing off, but it's no guarantee they would work. First, he'd put the creepiness of the Void Elves center stage. Not only did these elves defect, but they're also harnessing powers that are even less understood than the Fel. The Blood Elves are still trying to cleanse themselves of the Legion's brief but terrible influence on them (and given that some Blood Elves are getting Holy-golden eyes, it seems to be working,) and drinking deep of void-insanity that even gives you weird hair-tentacles sometimes is probably a terrible, terrible idea. The other note, one that I think Lor'themar would be more hesitant to use, is that Sylvanas Windrunner would make it her sworn duty to kill every last elf that defected from her Horde.

But make no mistake: every Ren'dorei or Quel'dorei that shows themselves happy and welcome in the Alliance is going to make it harder for Lor'themar to keep his Sin'dorei loyal to the Horde.

The balance of power has been thrown for a spin, and we're obviously still trying to figure out where it ends up. Undercity was a gambit that did not really pay off for Sylvanas, but I think that Teldrassil, while a moral atrocity, is certainly a strategic gain for the Horde in the short term.

Still, the Horde is poised to lose territory now, and not in a position to gain very much. We'll have to see where things go from here.