The 7.3.5 PTR carries with it some pretty huge features. Right now the PTR is focused primarily on making sure level scaling works - while the system is relatively well-known at this point thanks to the Broken Isles, this is a pretty massive re-working of the power level of enemies throughout most of WoW's territory, and the kind of thing that little bugs could pop up in very easily - sending a bunch of players through the strainer that is the PTR to find said bugs is a wise move.
One of the most exciting elements of Battle for Azeroth is the addition of six new playable races. And while most of us I think imagined that we'd not be seeing these guys until at least 8.0, there's a ton of data related to these guys in the patch.
Specifically, Nightborne, Lightforged Draenei, Void Elves, and Highmountain Tauren are all getting a lot of data added in the patch.
According to the Battle for Azeroth website, we'll need to go to Zandalar in order to recruit the Zandalari Trolls as an Allied Race (makes sense) and we'll need to go to Kul Tiras to recruit the Dark Iron Dwarves (less obvious.) And these are the two excluded from the list, as well as being the two races we have the least data on (like what classes they can be.)
But for the other four races, there's no such specification. That could mean they're going to be available in the 8.0 pre-patch before the expansion, but what's on the PTR suggests they could debut way earlier than that.
Specifically, what do we have?
Models: We have the actual models for the races - perhaps with only some of the customization options, but we appear to have skin colors, hair colors and styles, facial variants, and other standard customizations (again, not necessarily all of them for all four races.)
Mounts: We have models for mounts for each of the four races - generally they're variants on the races they're based on. Lightforged Draenei appear to have a color variant on the infuriatingly rare Felcrusher Elekk models. Void Elves have a void-themed Hawkstrider. Nightborne have a Manasaber with a different model than the store mount or the Arcanist's Runesaber one gets at the end of the 7.1 Suramar campaign. Highmountain do not have a Kodo, but instead have a Moose mount, similar to the Elderhorn mount Leatherworkers can get (the Highmountain Tauren Druid travel form is a color variant on this.)
Voice Emotes: This is the thing that really drives the possibility of early release home for me: we generally don't hear the voice emotes for new races (or new classes in the case of Demon Hunters) until a ways into the Beta. For these four races, we appear to have all the voice acting done (with some really raunchy /flirt emotes.)
Now the big caveat is that even with all this data in the files, Blizzard could simply have it all ready and not flip the "on" switch until 8.0. I think Blizzard really wants to have as much of this stuff ready as soon as possible so that they can get the expansion out without the year-long wait that we generally get. I imagine the departments that would work on these elements would move straight on to this as soon as they were done with the new models for Antorus, which means that they could get a head start while the encounter designers were focusing on fine-tuning the Antorus fights.
Still, there's a big advantage to letting people create their Allied Race characters early, as it will allow players to bring their new characters to Zandalar and Kul Tiras at expansion launch, getting them into the mix.
Given the level boosts and the fact that Demon Hunters were able to jump into Legion content more or less immediately, I think Blizzard wants everyone getting in the "current expansion" pool as soon as possible.
The level-scaling revamp is going to make leveling up less painful, and it's the headline feature of 7.3.5. Wouldn't it also be nice to have a reason to start new characters who could experience that content?
There's no announcement as of yet, but again, I'm convinced that if they aren't in 7.3.5, we'll still probably get these four races before 8.0.
Friday, December 1, 2017
Void Elves - a Fraction of a Faction
Since Blood Elves were introduced to the game nearly eleven years ago, many players have wondered when the Alliance would get High Elves as a playable race. After all, the High Elves had been one of the member races of the Alliance in Warcrafts I and II, so it seemed that Quel'thalas would make a natural addition to the Alliance.
But the High Elves had a complicated history. They had mostly mutually beneficial interactions with humanity since the Troll Wars, and there are a reasonably large number of half-elves - specifically half-human, half-High elf - including the first Guardian of Tirisfal, Alodi (how elvish, which derives from Troll ancestry, genetics and physiology are compatible with that of humans, who are descendents of Titanforged Vrykul, enough to produce healthy offspring is beyond me.) But there was always a little tension there - the elves were put off by how rapidly the humans expanded and how relatively barbaric their culture was, while the humans resented how secretive the elves were with all their ancient knowledge. It wasn't huge, mind you, but it allowed for bigots on both sides to project their ugly feelings onto another group.
The High Elves were devastated by the Third War. While the humans of Lordaeron arguably were hit harder than anyone - the kingdom was destroyed, betrayed by its own crown prince - unlike humans, the high elves didn't have anywhere else to go. And while Lordaeron probably suffered over 90% mortality, the refugees were able to flee south to Stormwind or Southshore and be integrated rather seamlessly into other societies. The High Elves were not so easily accepted.
It was at this time that Prince Kael'thas renamed his people Blood Elves. Though his father, Anasterian, had died, he refused to take on the title of King, feeling he was not worthy to take on the mantle, and that perhaps their society could not tell the lie that it was back to normal enough to have a true King. While Kael'thas in known now as a villain, newer players should know that before his heel turn in Burning Crusade, Kael'thas was generally considered a very sympathetic character. Was that darkness lurking within him all that time? Or was his acceptance of Illidan's gift of fel magic - to substitute for the loss of arcane magic from the Sunwell - enough to corrupt him? If so, why did Illidan not succumb as Kael'thas did, after he definitely had been filled with far more of the energy for a much longer time? (That might tell you more about Illidan than it does about Kael'thas, though.)
Kael'thas' adoption of Fel magic as a cure for his people's magic addiction created a physiological change within his people. While the High Elves had historically had blue eyes (associated generally with Arcane magic - though also Necromantic, but that's a whole other can of worms,) the Blood Elves now had Fel-green eyes, something they carry to this day even after the Sunwell was reignited to be a font of both Arcane and Holy magic.
Even then, though, there was a divide. Some of the High Elves did not follow Kael'thas in his acceptance of Fel Magic. While the loyal Blood Elves would eventually have their own schism between those loyal to the Horde under Lor'themar Theron and those who embraced the Burning Legion with Kael'thas, some retained the name High Elves and did not partake in the Fel. While some succumbed to withdrawal and turned into the deformed Wretched (the equivalent of the Nightborne's Withered,) some retained their sanity and generally rallied behind Vereesa Windrunner, settling mainly in Dalaran with their human allies.
These High Elves, the Silver Covenant (perhaps referring to their ancient alliance with the humans) are a small faction. But then, for a population with so many subdivisions, one must recall that the entire population of Quel'thalas was utterly devastated by the Scourge - only 10% of those who were alive before the Third War are still around.
One might have expected that the Alliance would get Vereesa's High Elves as an Allied Race, but that's not who is going to be playable.
Instead, the faction we'll be getting in the Alliance is the Void Elves. While the other Allied Races have shown up in-game before - in fact, half of them were introduced in Legion - we know very little about the Void Elves.
However, we know who is going to bring them into the Alliance. Alleria Windrunner, eldest sister of Sylvanas and Vereesa, has been on a time-warped journey of a thousand years fighting alongside the Army of the Light. And while her husband Turalyon will be the one to bring the Lightforged Draenei into the Alliance, Alleria has had a much less conventional tenure within the Army. While Turalyon, already a historically powerful Paladin, happily accepted X'era's gift and became Warforged (which allowed him to survive those warped thousand years,) Alleria began to learn more about the power of the Void, using its mercurial power to fight the Legion. Alleria, more than possibly any other mortal (depending on how we count Locus Walker on the mortal/immortal spectrum,) has control over her connection to the Void, and at least for now, seems safe from going insane the way that such people tend to.
What very little we know about the Void Elves is that they seem to be a group of Blood Elves - not High Elves, meaning that they are likely former members of the Horde - who were cast out for their experimentation with the Void, an act that could be considered hypocritical given the fact that the Blood Elves are sort of defined by their dalliances with Fel magic - who are rescued from the corruption of the Void by Alleria.
While I'm sure a lot of people are disappointed not to get straight-up High Elves, personally I find the Void Elves have a lot of interesting elements. First off, they're the only playable race who have a serious and direct connection to the Void, and could present an opportunity to explore the Void in a nuanced way. The other notable thing is that they're the first Alliance race to have broken off from the Horde, rather than vice versa. Consider that the Undead and Blood Elves are former Alliance members. This is the first time we're seeing people go over to the Alliance rather than abandoning them.
While I do think that four elf races is quite enough (though I'm glad to see variants on other races, which softens the blow of having such an excess of elves,) one of the interesting things about these Allied races is that both factions effectively have Dark Elves now. Dark Elves as a concept actually date back to Norse Mythology (though in that, Dark Elves are literally just Dwarves,) but if you want to go up to the grand-daddy RPG, Dungeons and Dragons, the Dark Elves, aka Drow, have been a pretty big element for a long time.
While neither Nightborne nor Void Elves look like they'll be evil the way that the Drow (with some exceptions) generally are, they each take on some elements of them. The Nightborne look like Drow, with charcoal-dark skin and white hair (not to mention that some of them turn into half-elf, half-spiders, like D&D's Driders) while Void Elves clearly have a culture and society built around the Void, which I think literally qualifies them as "dark."
The question is to what degree we'll get a real story with these guys. We got plenty of story for the Highmountain Tauren, Nightborne, and Lightforged Draenei in Legion, and we've had Dark Iron Dwarves since Vanilla. The Zandalari, also there since Vanilla, have periodically come in to places of significance, are clearly going to get a ton of stuff in Battle for Azeroth.
Where will the Void Elves fit in? I do suspect that the Old Gods (specifically N'zoth) are going to play a huge role in Battle, which might make the Void Elves the perfect people to help us understand our foe. The key, I think, is creating some interesting NPCs to represent the race. Having a small cast of characters is a really important part of establishing a population, and we're going to need more than just Alleria (who is not a Void Elf herself, or at least is not yet.)
But the High Elves had a complicated history. They had mostly mutually beneficial interactions with humanity since the Troll Wars, and there are a reasonably large number of half-elves - specifically half-human, half-High elf - including the first Guardian of Tirisfal, Alodi (how elvish, which derives from Troll ancestry, genetics and physiology are compatible with that of humans, who are descendents of Titanforged Vrykul, enough to produce healthy offspring is beyond me.) But there was always a little tension there - the elves were put off by how rapidly the humans expanded and how relatively barbaric their culture was, while the humans resented how secretive the elves were with all their ancient knowledge. It wasn't huge, mind you, but it allowed for bigots on both sides to project their ugly feelings onto another group.
The High Elves were devastated by the Third War. While the humans of Lordaeron arguably were hit harder than anyone - the kingdom was destroyed, betrayed by its own crown prince - unlike humans, the high elves didn't have anywhere else to go. And while Lordaeron probably suffered over 90% mortality, the refugees were able to flee south to Stormwind or Southshore and be integrated rather seamlessly into other societies. The High Elves were not so easily accepted.
It was at this time that Prince Kael'thas renamed his people Blood Elves. Though his father, Anasterian, had died, he refused to take on the title of King, feeling he was not worthy to take on the mantle, and that perhaps their society could not tell the lie that it was back to normal enough to have a true King. While Kael'thas in known now as a villain, newer players should know that before his heel turn in Burning Crusade, Kael'thas was generally considered a very sympathetic character. Was that darkness lurking within him all that time? Or was his acceptance of Illidan's gift of fel magic - to substitute for the loss of arcane magic from the Sunwell - enough to corrupt him? If so, why did Illidan not succumb as Kael'thas did, after he definitely had been filled with far more of the energy for a much longer time? (That might tell you more about Illidan than it does about Kael'thas, though.)
Kael'thas' adoption of Fel magic as a cure for his people's magic addiction created a physiological change within his people. While the High Elves had historically had blue eyes (associated generally with Arcane magic - though also Necromantic, but that's a whole other can of worms,) the Blood Elves now had Fel-green eyes, something they carry to this day even after the Sunwell was reignited to be a font of both Arcane and Holy magic.
Even then, though, there was a divide. Some of the High Elves did not follow Kael'thas in his acceptance of Fel Magic. While the loyal Blood Elves would eventually have their own schism between those loyal to the Horde under Lor'themar Theron and those who embraced the Burning Legion with Kael'thas, some retained the name High Elves and did not partake in the Fel. While some succumbed to withdrawal and turned into the deformed Wretched (the equivalent of the Nightborne's Withered,) some retained their sanity and generally rallied behind Vereesa Windrunner, settling mainly in Dalaran with their human allies.
These High Elves, the Silver Covenant (perhaps referring to their ancient alliance with the humans) are a small faction. But then, for a population with so many subdivisions, one must recall that the entire population of Quel'thalas was utterly devastated by the Scourge - only 10% of those who were alive before the Third War are still around.
One might have expected that the Alliance would get Vereesa's High Elves as an Allied Race, but that's not who is going to be playable.
Instead, the faction we'll be getting in the Alliance is the Void Elves. While the other Allied Races have shown up in-game before - in fact, half of them were introduced in Legion - we know very little about the Void Elves.
However, we know who is going to bring them into the Alliance. Alleria Windrunner, eldest sister of Sylvanas and Vereesa, has been on a time-warped journey of a thousand years fighting alongside the Army of the Light. And while her husband Turalyon will be the one to bring the Lightforged Draenei into the Alliance, Alleria has had a much less conventional tenure within the Army. While Turalyon, already a historically powerful Paladin, happily accepted X'era's gift and became Warforged (which allowed him to survive those warped thousand years,) Alleria began to learn more about the power of the Void, using its mercurial power to fight the Legion. Alleria, more than possibly any other mortal (depending on how we count Locus Walker on the mortal/immortal spectrum,) has control over her connection to the Void, and at least for now, seems safe from going insane the way that such people tend to.
What very little we know about the Void Elves is that they seem to be a group of Blood Elves - not High Elves, meaning that they are likely former members of the Horde - who were cast out for their experimentation with the Void, an act that could be considered hypocritical given the fact that the Blood Elves are sort of defined by their dalliances with Fel magic - who are rescued from the corruption of the Void by Alleria.
While I'm sure a lot of people are disappointed not to get straight-up High Elves, personally I find the Void Elves have a lot of interesting elements. First off, they're the only playable race who have a serious and direct connection to the Void, and could present an opportunity to explore the Void in a nuanced way. The other notable thing is that they're the first Alliance race to have broken off from the Horde, rather than vice versa. Consider that the Undead and Blood Elves are former Alliance members. This is the first time we're seeing people go over to the Alliance rather than abandoning them.
While I do think that four elf races is quite enough (though I'm glad to see variants on other races, which softens the blow of having such an excess of elves,) one of the interesting things about these Allied races is that both factions effectively have Dark Elves now. Dark Elves as a concept actually date back to Norse Mythology (though in that, Dark Elves are literally just Dwarves,) but if you want to go up to the grand-daddy RPG, Dungeons and Dragons, the Dark Elves, aka Drow, have been a pretty big element for a long time.
While neither Nightborne nor Void Elves look like they'll be evil the way that the Drow (with some exceptions) generally are, they each take on some elements of them. The Nightborne look like Drow, with charcoal-dark skin and white hair (not to mention that some of them turn into half-elf, half-spiders, like D&D's Driders) while Void Elves clearly have a culture and society built around the Void, which I think literally qualifies them as "dark."
The question is to what degree we'll get a real story with these guys. We got plenty of story for the Highmountain Tauren, Nightborne, and Lightforged Draenei in Legion, and we've had Dark Iron Dwarves since Vanilla. The Zandalari, also there since Vanilla, have periodically come in to places of significance, are clearly going to get a ton of stuff in Battle for Azeroth.
Where will the Void Elves fit in? I do suspect that the Old Gods (specifically N'zoth) are going to play a huge role in Battle, which might make the Void Elves the perfect people to help us understand our foe. The key, I think, is creating some interesting NPCs to represent the race. Having a small cast of characters is a really important part of establishing a population, and we're going to need more than just Alleria (who is not a Void Elf herself, or at least is not yet.)
Thursday, November 30, 2017
7.3.5 on the PTR and Speculation on Allied Races
7.3.5 is on the PTR now, and there are a few major things of note:
The biggest new feature is the implementation of level scaling in pre-Legion content. Let's break it down:
Starting zones (like Elwynn Forest and Durotar) will scale from level 1-10. The other "Old World" zones appear to only scale up - you'll still need to be level 35 to go to Western Plaguelands, but the quests and enemies you encounter there will all scale up to level 60.
I think this is actually a pretty good way to do it - you don't want someone going through Burning Steppes before they do Redridge Mountains, and while that's still technically possible, keeping the minimum levels roughly where they are helps preserve a sense of flow.
The problem that scaling is meant to solve is the way that you could be doing the quests in a zone like Ashenvale and out-level it before you were done with half of them. Now, you can finish the story there before you move on and not feel like the challenges and rewards are trivial.
Outland and Northrend will both be accessible at level 58, and they will both scale to level 80, allowing you to do them in either order (or, I suspect, doing most of that leveling in one or the other.) Likewise, the Cataclysm zones and Pandaria will scale from 80 to 90. Draenor then takes you from 90 to 100 and the Broken Isles are unchanged.
I don't know quite how precisely the minimum levels will be handled with overlapping expansions - given that you could do Northrend before Outland, I don't know if there is scaling within the continents to make sure you do the zones in any particular order.
Moving on:
Another interesting piece of the patch is that Embassies in both Stormwind and Orgrimmar have opened up, where all the faction leaders (or nearly all of them - I only saw Muradin as the dwarf representative) are gathered, apparently discussing recruitment of the Allied Races.
Notably, Baine Bloodhoof, Nathanos Blightcaller, High Overlord Saurfang, and Trade Prince Gallywix have new models (we saw Gallywix's way back in the Legion beta, but given that he hasn't had a permanent location, we never saw it.) Sylvanas also has new voice lines referring to her position as leader of the Horde and the war against the Alliance. Likewise, Baine has new voice lines referring to his eagerness to recruit the Highmountain Tauren. Rolkan appears with a generic Troll model and voice, apparently the representative of the Darkspear.
Each faction seems to be discussing two allied races, with Baine arguing for the Highmountain and Lady Liadrin advocating for the Nightborne. On the Alliance side, Turalyon seems to be advocating for the Lightforged Draenei while Alleria stands in front of a symbol for the Void Elves.
I would assume that you'll have to complete one quest chain before doing the other.
Where the Dark Iron Dwarves or the Zandalari Trolls fit into this, I don't know. Moira is not seen in the Alliance embassy.
To me, this gets the speculation-engine turning. Given that three out of the six allied races are deeply tied to the plot of Legion (and four if you count Void Elves through their connection to Alleria,) and that we're getting references to them in the 7.3.5 patch, when the expansion is probably not coming out for about a year, I wonder if the plan is to allow players to create members of these four represented races well before Battle for Azeroth comes out.
Blizzard has incentivized leveling up these new races from level 20, and the level-scaling feature is perfect for that, which means that a lot of the pieces are already in place.
With Legion, we actually got Demon Hunters before the expansion proper, though it was in the pre-patch. Might we be seeing these new races added far earlier?
Allowing us to create characters of the new races early would allow those players who want to have, say, a Void Elf main, to level them up and have them ready for when Battle for Azeroth comes out. Rather than splitting attention between new races and the new content, they could let them come in right off the bat - much as they did with Demon Hunters. But while Demon Hunters only had two levels and about two or three hours (if that) of questing to be caught up, the Allied Races will probably have a far longer way to go.
Now, what about the Dark Iron and Zandalari? Well, unless there's extensive pre-expansion stuff around the Zandalari, I expect that we're not going to be able to do their quests until we actually get to Zandalar. While the Dark Iron are not tied to Kul Tiras the way that the Zandalari are to Zandalar, I imagine they might be the "mirror" to the Zandalari, and thus will have some relevant stuff to do on Kul Tiras.
This might explain why there's no mention of them in the embassies. It also might explain why we know fewer details about them, like what classes they can be.
Keep an eye on this: if we wind up getting some of the allied races before the expansion launches, I want to be able to say I told you so!
The biggest new feature is the implementation of level scaling in pre-Legion content. Let's break it down:
Starting zones (like Elwynn Forest and Durotar) will scale from level 1-10. The other "Old World" zones appear to only scale up - you'll still need to be level 35 to go to Western Plaguelands, but the quests and enemies you encounter there will all scale up to level 60.
I think this is actually a pretty good way to do it - you don't want someone going through Burning Steppes before they do Redridge Mountains, and while that's still technically possible, keeping the minimum levels roughly where they are helps preserve a sense of flow.
The problem that scaling is meant to solve is the way that you could be doing the quests in a zone like Ashenvale and out-level it before you were done with half of them. Now, you can finish the story there before you move on and not feel like the challenges and rewards are trivial.
Outland and Northrend will both be accessible at level 58, and they will both scale to level 80, allowing you to do them in either order (or, I suspect, doing most of that leveling in one or the other.) Likewise, the Cataclysm zones and Pandaria will scale from 80 to 90. Draenor then takes you from 90 to 100 and the Broken Isles are unchanged.
I don't know quite how precisely the minimum levels will be handled with overlapping expansions - given that you could do Northrend before Outland, I don't know if there is scaling within the continents to make sure you do the zones in any particular order.
Moving on:
Another interesting piece of the patch is that Embassies in both Stormwind and Orgrimmar have opened up, where all the faction leaders (or nearly all of them - I only saw Muradin as the dwarf representative) are gathered, apparently discussing recruitment of the Allied Races.
Notably, Baine Bloodhoof, Nathanos Blightcaller, High Overlord Saurfang, and Trade Prince Gallywix have new models (we saw Gallywix's way back in the Legion beta, but given that he hasn't had a permanent location, we never saw it.) Sylvanas also has new voice lines referring to her position as leader of the Horde and the war against the Alliance. Likewise, Baine has new voice lines referring to his eagerness to recruit the Highmountain Tauren. Rolkan appears with a generic Troll model and voice, apparently the representative of the Darkspear.
Each faction seems to be discussing two allied races, with Baine arguing for the Highmountain and Lady Liadrin advocating for the Nightborne. On the Alliance side, Turalyon seems to be advocating for the Lightforged Draenei while Alleria stands in front of a symbol for the Void Elves.
I would assume that you'll have to complete one quest chain before doing the other.
Where the Dark Iron Dwarves or the Zandalari Trolls fit into this, I don't know. Moira is not seen in the Alliance embassy.
To me, this gets the speculation-engine turning. Given that three out of the six allied races are deeply tied to the plot of Legion (and four if you count Void Elves through their connection to Alleria,) and that we're getting references to them in the 7.3.5 patch, when the expansion is probably not coming out for about a year, I wonder if the plan is to allow players to create members of these four represented races well before Battle for Azeroth comes out.
Blizzard has incentivized leveling up these new races from level 20, and the level-scaling feature is perfect for that, which means that a lot of the pieces are already in place.
With Legion, we actually got Demon Hunters before the expansion proper, though it was in the pre-patch. Might we be seeing these new races added far earlier?
Allowing us to create characters of the new races early would allow those players who want to have, say, a Void Elf main, to level them up and have them ready for when Battle for Azeroth comes out. Rather than splitting attention between new races and the new content, they could let them come in right off the bat - much as they did with Demon Hunters. But while Demon Hunters only had two levels and about two or three hours (if that) of questing to be caught up, the Allied Races will probably have a far longer way to go.
Now, what about the Dark Iron and Zandalari? Well, unless there's extensive pre-expansion stuff around the Zandalari, I expect that we're not going to be able to do their quests until we actually get to Zandalar. While the Dark Iron are not tied to Kul Tiras the way that the Zandalari are to Zandalar, I imagine they might be the "mirror" to the Zandalari, and thus will have some relevant stuff to do on Kul Tiras.
This might explain why there's no mention of them in the embassies. It also might explain why we know fewer details about them, like what classes they can be.
Keep an eye on this: if we wind up getting some of the allied races before the expansion launches, I want to be able to say I told you so!
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Anduin's War
When World of Warcraft first came out, the King of Stormwind was a young boy of about 7 or 8. In Stormwind Keep, Anduin had a generic human boy model and a little star-shaped wand. He was flanked by Bolvar Fordragon and Lady Katrana Prestor. In quests that I never got around to while it was still possible, Prestor was revealed as the black dragon Onyxia, sewing discord within the kingdom and aiming to weaken the Alliance by creating the environment in which the Defias would come about as well as kidnapping King Varian.
Bolvar Fordragon was Lord Regent while Varian was away, and while it was odd that Anduin would hold the title of King while his father was still alive, it's possible they just assumed Varian was dead. It's this oddity that means that Anduin is now in his second term as king of Stormwind.
But while the child-king Anduin had Bolvar truly running the show - the honorable Paladin may not have prevented all the crises that befell the kingdom, but he could be trusted as a faithful Knight of the Silver Hand - Anduin, now an adult of roughly 20 years, is truly in a position of leadership, even as he governs people who can be as much as over a thousand times his age.
We have not yet seen a great deal of King Anduin - truly king now, with the death of his father - because Legion has focused primarily on the class orders, the Kirin Tor, and the inclusive expedition led by the Draenei. But we can talk about what he has inherited and what challenges lie before him:
The Alliance suffered some heavy losses in the war with Garrosh's Horde, but emerged triumphant by the end of it. Varian allowed Vol'jin to lead the Horde following the war in the hopes that they could forge a lasting peace. He did so largely to honor the vision his son Anduin had for the world.
Anduin did not live through the First or Second Wars, and was relatively safe in Stormwind during the Third War, if he even remembers it (he was a very small child at the time.) He knows that the Horde had committed grave atrocities in the past, but he came of age in a time when figures like Thrall were in charge, and the chance of peace between the factions was at an all-time high. He got to know Baine Bloodhoof, and came to the conclusion that the Horde was ultimately composed of people, not monsters, and that as long as the two sides could see the shared humanity within each other, peace was not impossible.
Anduin has suffered for those beliefs. He attempted to reason with Garrosh, only for the then-Warchief to nearly kill him. Yet he retained his faith even in the face of this event that there was a future in which the two sides of the old conflict could see eye-to-eye.
Varian's offer of peace was, I think, an effective one. While we did have Ashran as a point of conflict between the sides, things slid far back into a mostly-cooperative state, where Alliance and Horde came together to decimate the Iron Horde easily.
The shock of the Broken Shore invasion was that the consistently proven idea that cooperation between the two factions would yield an unstoppable force was finally rebuked. And it cost Anduin his father.
In the Battle for Azeroth cinematic, we watch Anduin lead the Alliance armies in an assault on the Undercity - an assault that will presumably end in victory, given what we know of the fate of the Forsaken capital. As a lifelong advocate for peace, what makes Anduin take up the sword to fight the Horde?
It seems most likely that this is a direct response to the burning of Teldrassil. Such a devastating and probably surprising blow would mean that a swift response was required, and taking the Warchief's own city from her would allow the Alliance to turn a massive defeat into a crucial victory.
Though massive in scale, an attack on Undercity is still a proportional response - if you know about the history of the real-world Cold War, you'll know that this was a sort of policy to deter the other side from doing bad things while carefully avoiding escalation. That being said, destroying Undercity to respond to the destruction of Darnassus is probably too large to let the conflict die down.
And if the conflict does not die down, where does that leave Anduin?
In the Horde's history, there have been two out of six Horde warchiefs that have been capable of making deals with the Alliance. Removing Sylvanas might allow someone with more honor (specifically the kind that allows for binding peace agreements) to take over, but the tricky thing with diplomacy is that the deals you make have to carry through regardless of who is in charge. Vol'jin agreed to a peace treaty, but he only lasted a couple years as Warchief, and his successor seems to have torn that up (at least from the Alliance perspective.) So even if someone else takes over after Sylvanas is removed, what guarantee does Anduin have that her successor won't simply be replaced immediately by a Garrosh-like warmonger?
This is where practicalities get in the way of what I think Anduin really wants to see in the world. Malfurion was dedicated to faction-neutrality when it came to the Cenarion Circle, but that meant he had to stand by while Orcs massacred Night Elves in their native lands. Anduin cannot afford to do such a thing, nor does he have an organization like the Cenarion Circle that he could claim to represent. He is King of Stormwind - there's no one else to stand up for Stormwind.
He also has a rather depressing example of where idealism can lead a person. Jaina Proudmoore once occupied that role of peace advocate - and she paid even more dearly than Anduin did for that ideal. She saw her father killed to preserve the nation of Durotar in its infancy, and her thanks for such a sacrifice was to see her city obliterated at the hands of the same nation. So often has Horde aggression torn apart the peace that she fought for that at this point, she no longer believes in it. What vision she has for the people of the Horde, I can't say, but at this point she does not believe that the Horde as a political structure has a right to continue.
Jaina's anger is proportional to her old faith in peace, because if there was anyone who had made an earnest effort to co-exist peacefully with the Horde, she was that person. Surely if the Horde could not simply leave Jaina in peace, no one is safe.
And yet, for someone like Anduin, this must be so frustrating. There are so many greater cosmic threats that demand a forceful response. The Horde have it within them to be peaceful co-inhabitants of Azeroth, and yet they never seem to do it.
And so, a response is required. We see Anduin leading the assault on Undercity. But where does that war end? What allows the Alliance to declare victory? What does Anduin hope to accomplish? Can it truly be over with Undercity's destruction? Not if Sylvanas remains Warchief. Can it end with Sylvanas' ouster? Well, look at how long-lived the peace after Garrosh's removal lasted. Must it, then, end with the destruction of the Horde and the conquest or scattering of its people?
How, then, does that leave Azeroth prepared to face the greater threats to its existence?
Anduin needs to decide what war it is he wants to win.
And then he has to win it.
Bolvar Fordragon was Lord Regent while Varian was away, and while it was odd that Anduin would hold the title of King while his father was still alive, it's possible they just assumed Varian was dead. It's this oddity that means that Anduin is now in his second term as king of Stormwind.
But while the child-king Anduin had Bolvar truly running the show - the honorable Paladin may not have prevented all the crises that befell the kingdom, but he could be trusted as a faithful Knight of the Silver Hand - Anduin, now an adult of roughly 20 years, is truly in a position of leadership, even as he governs people who can be as much as over a thousand times his age.
We have not yet seen a great deal of King Anduin - truly king now, with the death of his father - because Legion has focused primarily on the class orders, the Kirin Tor, and the inclusive expedition led by the Draenei. But we can talk about what he has inherited and what challenges lie before him:
The Alliance suffered some heavy losses in the war with Garrosh's Horde, but emerged triumphant by the end of it. Varian allowed Vol'jin to lead the Horde following the war in the hopes that they could forge a lasting peace. He did so largely to honor the vision his son Anduin had for the world.
Anduin did not live through the First or Second Wars, and was relatively safe in Stormwind during the Third War, if he even remembers it (he was a very small child at the time.) He knows that the Horde had committed grave atrocities in the past, but he came of age in a time when figures like Thrall were in charge, and the chance of peace between the factions was at an all-time high. He got to know Baine Bloodhoof, and came to the conclusion that the Horde was ultimately composed of people, not monsters, and that as long as the two sides could see the shared humanity within each other, peace was not impossible.
Anduin has suffered for those beliefs. He attempted to reason with Garrosh, only for the then-Warchief to nearly kill him. Yet he retained his faith even in the face of this event that there was a future in which the two sides of the old conflict could see eye-to-eye.
Varian's offer of peace was, I think, an effective one. While we did have Ashran as a point of conflict between the sides, things slid far back into a mostly-cooperative state, where Alliance and Horde came together to decimate the Iron Horde easily.
The shock of the Broken Shore invasion was that the consistently proven idea that cooperation between the two factions would yield an unstoppable force was finally rebuked. And it cost Anduin his father.
In the Battle for Azeroth cinematic, we watch Anduin lead the Alliance armies in an assault on the Undercity - an assault that will presumably end in victory, given what we know of the fate of the Forsaken capital. As a lifelong advocate for peace, what makes Anduin take up the sword to fight the Horde?
It seems most likely that this is a direct response to the burning of Teldrassil. Such a devastating and probably surprising blow would mean that a swift response was required, and taking the Warchief's own city from her would allow the Alliance to turn a massive defeat into a crucial victory.
Though massive in scale, an attack on Undercity is still a proportional response - if you know about the history of the real-world Cold War, you'll know that this was a sort of policy to deter the other side from doing bad things while carefully avoiding escalation. That being said, destroying Undercity to respond to the destruction of Darnassus is probably too large to let the conflict die down.
And if the conflict does not die down, where does that leave Anduin?
In the Horde's history, there have been two out of six Horde warchiefs that have been capable of making deals with the Alliance. Removing Sylvanas might allow someone with more honor (specifically the kind that allows for binding peace agreements) to take over, but the tricky thing with diplomacy is that the deals you make have to carry through regardless of who is in charge. Vol'jin agreed to a peace treaty, but he only lasted a couple years as Warchief, and his successor seems to have torn that up (at least from the Alliance perspective.) So even if someone else takes over after Sylvanas is removed, what guarantee does Anduin have that her successor won't simply be replaced immediately by a Garrosh-like warmonger?
This is where practicalities get in the way of what I think Anduin really wants to see in the world. Malfurion was dedicated to faction-neutrality when it came to the Cenarion Circle, but that meant he had to stand by while Orcs massacred Night Elves in their native lands. Anduin cannot afford to do such a thing, nor does he have an organization like the Cenarion Circle that he could claim to represent. He is King of Stormwind - there's no one else to stand up for Stormwind.
He also has a rather depressing example of where idealism can lead a person. Jaina Proudmoore once occupied that role of peace advocate - and she paid even more dearly than Anduin did for that ideal. She saw her father killed to preserve the nation of Durotar in its infancy, and her thanks for such a sacrifice was to see her city obliterated at the hands of the same nation. So often has Horde aggression torn apart the peace that she fought for that at this point, she no longer believes in it. What vision she has for the people of the Horde, I can't say, but at this point she does not believe that the Horde as a political structure has a right to continue.
Jaina's anger is proportional to her old faith in peace, because if there was anyone who had made an earnest effort to co-exist peacefully with the Horde, she was that person. Surely if the Horde could not simply leave Jaina in peace, no one is safe.
And yet, for someone like Anduin, this must be so frustrating. There are so many greater cosmic threats that demand a forceful response. The Horde have it within them to be peaceful co-inhabitants of Azeroth, and yet they never seem to do it.
And so, a response is required. We see Anduin leading the assault on Undercity. But where does that war end? What allows the Alliance to declare victory? What does Anduin hope to accomplish? Can it truly be over with Undercity's destruction? Not if Sylvanas remains Warchief. Can it end with Sylvanas' ouster? Well, look at how long-lived the peace after Garrosh's removal lasted. Must it, then, end with the destruction of the Horde and the conquest or scattering of its people?
How, then, does that leave Azeroth prepared to face the greater threats to its existence?
Anduin needs to decide what war it is he wants to win.
And then he has to win it.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Is Argus the Appropriate Final Boss of Legion?
One of the big questions about the future of World of Warcraft since its inception was this: when do we get to fight Sargeras?
There was a sense, of course, that Sargeras would have to be the final boss of the final expansion, that everything in WoW would have to build up to the confrontation with the Dark Titan. It was Sargeras, after all, who turned Kil'jaeden's "let's genocide the Draenei" project into the army that would invade Azeroth. Sargeras is the architect of the First War - the war that started Warcraft as a series. His influence is seen through the history of almost all of the races, and the Alliance and Horde exist as they do today because of the machinations of Sargeras.
While the Void Lords and their servants, the Old Gods, are potentially a larger cosmic threat, none of them has had the kind of pinnacle position as Warcraft's primary antagonist the way that Sargeras has, and in an expansion called, simply, Legion - named for the Burning Legion, which was the instrument of Sargeras' apocalyptic crusade - it seemed only logical that we would face the Destroyer himself.
So when we discovered that the final boss of Antorus, the Burning Throne, would not be Sargeras, I imagine that many of us were somewhat puzzled.
Make no mistake: Sargeras is roundly defeated at the end of Antorus, and while he is not killed, exactly, it seems that killing a Titan is not necessarily possible, given that the other members of the Pantheon are there to aid us in our final battle.
A fight with the Dark Titan seemed the promise of the Legion expansion. What has been delivered is a fight with a Dark Titan.
Argus is actually the first final boss of an expansion that did not appear in previous games or expansions (C'thun has sort of become the final boss of Vanilla, but only after the original version of Naxxramas was removed, and Kel'thuzad was well established in Warcraft III.) In fact, we had not even heard of the Titan Argus until 7.3.
Now, granted, with the revelation that Azeroth has an embryonic Titan at its core (of the same name,) and the revelation that we were going to finally travel to Argus, perhaps we might have made the logical connection that Argus might have had a World-Soul as well. Indeed, if we count the planet and the World Soul as one and the same, Argus had, in fact, been a known character as early as Burning Crusade (and possibly earlier, as there was a Shadow-Council-offshoot in Alterac Mountains called Argus Wake.)
I don't mean to imply Argus is not an epic adversary to fight. Indeed, my Draenei Death Knight fighting and slaying the soul of his own homeworld is epic on a Dark Souls scale (almost makes me want to just have Gwyn's theme play when I get to that fight on that character.)
But one has to wonder why Blizzard decided to do it this way. Why not let us fight Sargeras directly? He does appear in the end cinematic in his full fiery glory (I like that his fire is standard orange/red, as if the Fel infusion could ignite his internal flames, but that he's still fundamentally an arcane being, and thus green flames wouldn't come out of him,) so why is it that we can't go toe-to-toe with him? What are they saving him for?
Legion has been an expansion of finally getting to do a lot of things we've waited for. We finally got to the Emerald Nightmare and killed Xavius (killing what we had previously assumed would be the boss of a whole expansion in Legion's very first raid,) and we got to visit some locations, like Deathwing's Lair and the Tomb of Sargeras, that we had been speculating about for ages. We got to go to freaking Argus - another example of something that could have been a whole expansion - so why, then, are we not getting to plant our feet and tank Sargeras himself?
There's no logical time to do so in the future. This is the Burning Legion expansion, and there's a degree of finality to Sargeras' imprisonment that would require making this whole expansion and Illidan's entire character arc totally invalid in order to bring him back as a threat.
If they're willing to let us fight not one but two Titans, surely it's not that much more of a leap to say that 10-30 of Azeroth's greatest heroes could't take on the Dark Titan?
And if fighting Sargeras is a mythic-only phase on the last fight, I'm going to be really pissed off.
There was a sense, of course, that Sargeras would have to be the final boss of the final expansion, that everything in WoW would have to build up to the confrontation with the Dark Titan. It was Sargeras, after all, who turned Kil'jaeden's "let's genocide the Draenei" project into the army that would invade Azeroth. Sargeras is the architect of the First War - the war that started Warcraft as a series. His influence is seen through the history of almost all of the races, and the Alliance and Horde exist as they do today because of the machinations of Sargeras.
While the Void Lords and their servants, the Old Gods, are potentially a larger cosmic threat, none of them has had the kind of pinnacle position as Warcraft's primary antagonist the way that Sargeras has, and in an expansion called, simply, Legion - named for the Burning Legion, which was the instrument of Sargeras' apocalyptic crusade - it seemed only logical that we would face the Destroyer himself.
So when we discovered that the final boss of Antorus, the Burning Throne, would not be Sargeras, I imagine that many of us were somewhat puzzled.
Make no mistake: Sargeras is roundly defeated at the end of Antorus, and while he is not killed, exactly, it seems that killing a Titan is not necessarily possible, given that the other members of the Pantheon are there to aid us in our final battle.
A fight with the Dark Titan seemed the promise of the Legion expansion. What has been delivered is a fight with a Dark Titan.
Argus is actually the first final boss of an expansion that did not appear in previous games or expansions (C'thun has sort of become the final boss of Vanilla, but only after the original version of Naxxramas was removed, and Kel'thuzad was well established in Warcraft III.) In fact, we had not even heard of the Titan Argus until 7.3.
Now, granted, with the revelation that Azeroth has an embryonic Titan at its core (of the same name,) and the revelation that we were going to finally travel to Argus, perhaps we might have made the logical connection that Argus might have had a World-Soul as well. Indeed, if we count the planet and the World Soul as one and the same, Argus had, in fact, been a known character as early as Burning Crusade (and possibly earlier, as there was a Shadow-Council-offshoot in Alterac Mountains called Argus Wake.)
I don't mean to imply Argus is not an epic adversary to fight. Indeed, my Draenei Death Knight fighting and slaying the soul of his own homeworld is epic on a Dark Souls scale (almost makes me want to just have Gwyn's theme play when I get to that fight on that character.)
But one has to wonder why Blizzard decided to do it this way. Why not let us fight Sargeras directly? He does appear in the end cinematic in his full fiery glory (I like that his fire is standard orange/red, as if the Fel infusion could ignite his internal flames, but that he's still fundamentally an arcane being, and thus green flames wouldn't come out of him,) so why is it that we can't go toe-to-toe with him? What are they saving him for?
Legion has been an expansion of finally getting to do a lot of things we've waited for. We finally got to the Emerald Nightmare and killed Xavius (killing what we had previously assumed would be the boss of a whole expansion in Legion's very first raid,) and we got to visit some locations, like Deathwing's Lair and the Tomb of Sargeras, that we had been speculating about for ages. We got to go to freaking Argus - another example of something that could have been a whole expansion - so why, then, are we not getting to plant our feet and tank Sargeras himself?
There's no logical time to do so in the future. This is the Burning Legion expansion, and there's a degree of finality to Sargeras' imprisonment that would require making this whole expansion and Illidan's entire character arc totally invalid in order to bring him back as a threat.
If they're willing to let us fight not one but two Titans, surely it's not that much more of a leap to say that 10-30 of Azeroth's greatest heroes could't take on the Dark Titan?
And if fighting Sargeras is a mythic-only phase on the last fight, I'm going to be really pissed off.
The Aftermath of Antorus
Now that the raid is open, the end cinematic is available to watch.
To summarize, it appears that the cloud of fel darkness around Azeroth as seen from the Seat of the Triumvirate is actually Sargeras himself in a kind of gaseous form. Defeating the titan Argus allows the Pantheon to channel their power and draw in Sargeras to imprison him within their space-palace, the Seat of the Pantheon. So yes, we finally get to see Sargeras fully-rendered in his fiery form, though only in a cutscene. Velen and the raid board the Vindicaar to escape and travel back to Azeroth, while Illidan, echoing Maiev's comments, says that the hunter is nothing without the hunt, and his quarry is finally within his grasp. Velen acknowledges that it was not fate that allowed them to prevail, seeing Illidan eye-to-eye. Sargeras is beamed into his chair at the palace where Illidan volunteers to be his eternal jailor. But as Sargeras is being pulled in, he summons his massive sword and drives it down into Azeroth's surface.
As Velen releases a sigh of relief that has taken him 25,000 years to get to, we see Sargeras' sword towering over Silithus.
To summarize, it appears that the cloud of fel darkness around Azeroth as seen from the Seat of the Triumvirate is actually Sargeras himself in a kind of gaseous form. Defeating the titan Argus allows the Pantheon to channel their power and draw in Sargeras to imprison him within their space-palace, the Seat of the Pantheon. So yes, we finally get to see Sargeras fully-rendered in his fiery form, though only in a cutscene. Velen and the raid board the Vindicaar to escape and travel back to Azeroth, while Illidan, echoing Maiev's comments, says that the hunter is nothing without the hunt, and his quarry is finally within his grasp. Velen acknowledges that it was not fate that allowed them to prevail, seeing Illidan eye-to-eye. Sargeras is beamed into his chair at the palace where Illidan volunteers to be his eternal jailor. But as Sargeras is being pulled in, he summons his massive sword and drives it down into Azeroth's surface.
As Velen releases a sigh of relief that has taken him 25,000 years to get to, we see Sargeras' sword towering over Silithus.
Sunday, November 19, 2017
Denizens of the Shadowlands
If you've been reading this blog roughly since World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume 1 came out, you'll probably already know that I'm obsessed with one of the realms of existence mentioned early in the book: the Shadowlands.
The Shadowlands are the opposite of the Emerald Dream - they're not the Nightmare, which is a corruption of the Emerald Dream, but still on "that side" of reality. Instead, while the Dream is a reflection of the natural world and the home of the Wild Gods, the Shadowlands are a realm of death.
We know very little about the Shadowlands, and while there are several elements in-game that seem connected to it (that this post will attempt to list,) there are actually two explicit places where the word is mentioned:
The Val'kyr within Skyhold, the part of the Halls of Valor that serves as the Warrior class hall, mention that they live in the Shadowlands. We get far more detail about how they were created in Chronicle. Keeper Odyn traveled to the Shadowlands and sacrificed one of his eyes to a powerful, as-yet-unnamed entity there for the knowledge of how to create the Val'kyr. He transformed Helya into the first of them against her will, which ultimately led to her alliance with the corrupted Loken and her rebellion against Odyn.
The description of benevolent rogue Val'kyr - those who decided not to serve Helya even though Odyn was trapped within his Halls - perfectly lines up with that of the Spirit Healers, and their mission to resurrect any heroes who might help safeguard Azeroth lines up perfectly with their in-game purpose, which to me suggests that the ghostly world we find ourselves in within the game if we die is the Shadowlands, full stop. It's a clever lore-justification for a mechanic that has been in game from the start, but it has never been 100% unambiguously confirmed by Blizzard.
And that's true for basically everything else we know about the Shadowlands. Aside from the Val'kyr traveling there to rescue the souls of the valorous, the only other confirmed mention of them in-game is the Death Knight ability, Wraith Walk.
But while the specific word "Shadowlands" is used very rarely, we've heard about the Realm of Shadows and the Death Realm plenty of times, and there are places we've gone that seem closely tied to the Shadowlands even if we never heard the word used.
One thing to wonder about is whether the Shadowlands have anything to do with the Void.
While it's certainly up for debate, I tend to come down firmly on the "no" side of that question. While the types of dark magic within the Warcraft cosmos are often used in tandem with one another, the truth is that there are really three specific kinds: Void/Shadow Magic is tied directly to a kind of cosmic non-existence, the hungering nothingness that is home to the Void Lords, who themselves gave form to the Old Gods. Fel Magic is literally the magic of chaos, and is hardly "dark" because it's actually extremely exothermic and fiery in nature - a kind of corruption of the Light (actually the result of Light and Void annihilating each other) that is like the nuclear fallout to the Light's warm summer day. Necromancy is death magic, and while we've typically seen in practiced by either adherents of the Void (like Ner'zhul on Draenor B - his universe A version is more complicated: see below) or demonic adherents of the Fel (like Balnazzar raising the dead Scarlet Crusaders to serve as his Risen,) it is apparently a type of magic unto itself, not reliant on Void or Fel.
The Shadowlands, thus, seem to be the perfect realm for Death and Necromancy, where Fel has the Twisting Nether and Shadow magic has the Void.
But what is in there? Other than some Spirit Healers, Death Knights who want to move faster, and a big vortex in the sky everywhere, what does one find in the Shadowlands? Let's get this speculative list:
Helheim:
Given the description of the place as a land of the dead, Helya's realm, in which she resurrects dead Vrykul, turning them into Kvaldir, seems like a pretty obvious spot within it. While generally, the Shadowlands and the Emerald Dream are a reflection of the physical world, we know the Dream has some locations that are not found in the real world (like the Dreamways that Druids gain access to or the Heart of the Dream that we see after defeating Xaivus,) and so it would stand to reason that Helheim is one of those parts of the Shadowlands that has no physical counterpart within the prime reality.
The Drust:
We know that Drustvar, the southwest part of Kul Tiras, will be plagued by witches using Death Magic. In an interview, we found that there was a population there known as the Drust, whom the early human settlers killed. The Drust didn't just go away, though, and instead stepped into the Death Realm, from which they have been corrupting humans and turning them into foul witches to plague the humans in the area.
Bwonsamdi:
Most Loa are Wild Gods, tied to the Emerald Dream - basically, what Trolls call Loa, the Night Elves call Ancients, and the Pandaren call Celestials. But Bwonsamdi, the patron of the Darkspear tribe, first off, looks like a Troll rather than some animal, and secondly, is very clearly died to death as a force (his real-world counterpart, Baron Samedi, is also connected to death.) It seems highly likely that Bwonsamdi has some connection to the Shadowlands as well.
The Lich King and the Scourge:
During quests for Alliance in Howling Fjord and Horde in Dragonblight, we cross over into the realm of death, where we see the Lich King, who informs us that he has total dominion over this "spirit realm." If the spirit realm is the land of the dead, it makes sense for a being like the Lich King to have a great deal of power there, and given that Death Knight have an ability tied to it (and they also seem to get their Acherus Deathchargers there,) it seems inevitable that the Lich King, probably the most powerful necromantic force on Azeroth, has got a very strong connection to the Shadowlands (my favorite tin-foil hat theory is that the Lich King, maybe under a different name, existed long before Ner'zhul, Arthas, or Bolvar, and that this entity is what Odyn traded his eye to.)
Azuregos:
This is mostly just silly, but when you quest through the post-Cataclysm version of Azshara, you discover that Azuregos, pissed at all the adventurers who attacked him during vanilla (something you can do again during the 13th anniversary event!) hid away in the spirit realm, and he's currently dating a Spirit Healer. (Given that both Val'kyr and Dragons are Titan-empowered beings, maybe that's not all that weird?)
The Val'kyr:
These we know the most explicitly, which ties into Helheim, mentioned above. Not much more to be said about these guys, except that we know that the Lich King also employs Val'kyr. When we first encountered them in Wrath, I think most of us just assumed that Val'kyr were a special type of female undead Vrykul that Arthas had invented. Instead, he seems to have co-opted a whole ceremony, replacing the Valarjar with his Ymirjar. But maybe we've got it backwards - if the Lich King is what Odyn gave his eye to, then perhaps it is Odyn copying the Lich King's ceremony (perhaps unwittingly.)
Yogg-Saron:
I know I said that I didn't think the Shadowlands was related to the Void, but I could be wrong. Yogg-Saron is referred to as the Old God of Death, even though there's no clear connection that he holds to that aspect of the cosmos more than the other Old Gods. We know that it was his infection of the Emerald Dream that created the Nightmare (which somehow N'zoth usurped,) but if he was connected to the Dream, was he perhaps also connected to - or even the creator of - the Shadowlands? If we assume that Helya and Helheim are within the Shadowlands, could this explain why a Vrykul-turned-Val'kyr has a whole bunch of tentacles? I mean, yeah, she's kind of Ursulla from the Little Mermaid, but what if her form mutated due to corruption from Yogg-Saron (we know she teamed up with Loken to lock Odyn away, and Loken's mind had been totally poisoned by Yogg-Saron.) Is it possible that the being Odyn gave his eye to was actually an Old God - the very Old God over whom Odyn had been meant to watch? And damn, if Yogg-Saron is the Old God of Death, that means his defeat in Ulduar might be, wait for it, only a setback (and a minor one at that.) We did, after all, see Old God minions appear within the facility right at the beginning of Legion.
The Shadowlands are the opposite of the Emerald Dream - they're not the Nightmare, which is a corruption of the Emerald Dream, but still on "that side" of reality. Instead, while the Dream is a reflection of the natural world and the home of the Wild Gods, the Shadowlands are a realm of death.
We know very little about the Shadowlands, and while there are several elements in-game that seem connected to it (that this post will attempt to list,) there are actually two explicit places where the word is mentioned:
The Val'kyr within Skyhold, the part of the Halls of Valor that serves as the Warrior class hall, mention that they live in the Shadowlands. We get far more detail about how they were created in Chronicle. Keeper Odyn traveled to the Shadowlands and sacrificed one of his eyes to a powerful, as-yet-unnamed entity there for the knowledge of how to create the Val'kyr. He transformed Helya into the first of them against her will, which ultimately led to her alliance with the corrupted Loken and her rebellion against Odyn.
The description of benevolent rogue Val'kyr - those who decided not to serve Helya even though Odyn was trapped within his Halls - perfectly lines up with that of the Spirit Healers, and their mission to resurrect any heroes who might help safeguard Azeroth lines up perfectly with their in-game purpose, which to me suggests that the ghostly world we find ourselves in within the game if we die is the Shadowlands, full stop. It's a clever lore-justification for a mechanic that has been in game from the start, but it has never been 100% unambiguously confirmed by Blizzard.
And that's true for basically everything else we know about the Shadowlands. Aside from the Val'kyr traveling there to rescue the souls of the valorous, the only other confirmed mention of them in-game is the Death Knight ability, Wraith Walk.
But while the specific word "Shadowlands" is used very rarely, we've heard about the Realm of Shadows and the Death Realm plenty of times, and there are places we've gone that seem closely tied to the Shadowlands even if we never heard the word used.
One thing to wonder about is whether the Shadowlands have anything to do with the Void.
While it's certainly up for debate, I tend to come down firmly on the "no" side of that question. While the types of dark magic within the Warcraft cosmos are often used in tandem with one another, the truth is that there are really three specific kinds: Void/Shadow Magic is tied directly to a kind of cosmic non-existence, the hungering nothingness that is home to the Void Lords, who themselves gave form to the Old Gods. Fel Magic is literally the magic of chaos, and is hardly "dark" because it's actually extremely exothermic and fiery in nature - a kind of corruption of the Light (actually the result of Light and Void annihilating each other) that is like the nuclear fallout to the Light's warm summer day. Necromancy is death magic, and while we've typically seen in practiced by either adherents of the Void (like Ner'zhul on Draenor B - his universe A version is more complicated: see below) or demonic adherents of the Fel (like Balnazzar raising the dead Scarlet Crusaders to serve as his Risen,) it is apparently a type of magic unto itself, not reliant on Void or Fel.
The Shadowlands, thus, seem to be the perfect realm for Death and Necromancy, where Fel has the Twisting Nether and Shadow magic has the Void.
But what is in there? Other than some Spirit Healers, Death Knights who want to move faster, and a big vortex in the sky everywhere, what does one find in the Shadowlands? Let's get this speculative list:
Helheim:
Given the description of the place as a land of the dead, Helya's realm, in which she resurrects dead Vrykul, turning them into Kvaldir, seems like a pretty obvious spot within it. While generally, the Shadowlands and the Emerald Dream are a reflection of the physical world, we know the Dream has some locations that are not found in the real world (like the Dreamways that Druids gain access to or the Heart of the Dream that we see after defeating Xaivus,) and so it would stand to reason that Helheim is one of those parts of the Shadowlands that has no physical counterpart within the prime reality.
The Drust:
We know that Drustvar, the southwest part of Kul Tiras, will be plagued by witches using Death Magic. In an interview, we found that there was a population there known as the Drust, whom the early human settlers killed. The Drust didn't just go away, though, and instead stepped into the Death Realm, from which they have been corrupting humans and turning them into foul witches to plague the humans in the area.
Bwonsamdi:
Most Loa are Wild Gods, tied to the Emerald Dream - basically, what Trolls call Loa, the Night Elves call Ancients, and the Pandaren call Celestials. But Bwonsamdi, the patron of the Darkspear tribe, first off, looks like a Troll rather than some animal, and secondly, is very clearly died to death as a force (his real-world counterpart, Baron Samedi, is also connected to death.) It seems highly likely that Bwonsamdi has some connection to the Shadowlands as well.
The Lich King and the Scourge:
During quests for Alliance in Howling Fjord and Horde in Dragonblight, we cross over into the realm of death, where we see the Lich King, who informs us that he has total dominion over this "spirit realm." If the spirit realm is the land of the dead, it makes sense for a being like the Lich King to have a great deal of power there, and given that Death Knight have an ability tied to it (and they also seem to get their Acherus Deathchargers there,) it seems inevitable that the Lich King, probably the most powerful necromantic force on Azeroth, has got a very strong connection to the Shadowlands (my favorite tin-foil hat theory is that the Lich King, maybe under a different name, existed long before Ner'zhul, Arthas, or Bolvar, and that this entity is what Odyn traded his eye to.)
Azuregos:
This is mostly just silly, but when you quest through the post-Cataclysm version of Azshara, you discover that Azuregos, pissed at all the adventurers who attacked him during vanilla (something you can do again during the 13th anniversary event!) hid away in the spirit realm, and he's currently dating a Spirit Healer. (Given that both Val'kyr and Dragons are Titan-empowered beings, maybe that's not all that weird?)
The Val'kyr:
These we know the most explicitly, which ties into Helheim, mentioned above. Not much more to be said about these guys, except that we know that the Lich King also employs Val'kyr. When we first encountered them in Wrath, I think most of us just assumed that Val'kyr were a special type of female undead Vrykul that Arthas had invented. Instead, he seems to have co-opted a whole ceremony, replacing the Valarjar with his Ymirjar. But maybe we've got it backwards - if the Lich King is what Odyn gave his eye to, then perhaps it is Odyn copying the Lich King's ceremony (perhaps unwittingly.)
Yogg-Saron:
I know I said that I didn't think the Shadowlands was related to the Void, but I could be wrong. Yogg-Saron is referred to as the Old God of Death, even though there's no clear connection that he holds to that aspect of the cosmos more than the other Old Gods. We know that it was his infection of the Emerald Dream that created the Nightmare (which somehow N'zoth usurped,) but if he was connected to the Dream, was he perhaps also connected to - or even the creator of - the Shadowlands? If we assume that Helya and Helheim are within the Shadowlands, could this explain why a Vrykul-turned-Val'kyr has a whole bunch of tentacles? I mean, yeah, she's kind of Ursulla from the Little Mermaid, but what if her form mutated due to corruption from Yogg-Saron (we know she teamed up with Loken to lock Odyn away, and Loken's mind had been totally poisoned by Yogg-Saron.) Is it possible that the being Odyn gave his eye to was actually an Old God - the very Old God over whom Odyn had been meant to watch? And damn, if Yogg-Saron is the Old God of Death, that means his defeat in Ulduar might be, wait for it, only a setback (and a minor one at that.) We did, after all, see Old God minions appear within the facility right at the beginning of Legion.
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