Project Lore

First? Pretty cool artical! :D

Article*** XD

First! Heheheh

first yay!!!!!!

damn forth

TRIPPLE FAIL @ bloodraptor,Kwon,Destellin

One of the pictures from BlizzCon showed an overview of the northern Eastern Kingdoms, and one of the changes were that the Western Plaguelands had been dropped to, IIRC, level 35-40 and the Eastern was split in two parts, one marked 40-45 and the other 45-50. Also, Western was marked green, just like Tirisfal Glades, Silverpine, Hillsbrad, and most of the other zones, with Eastern being marked yellow and Gilneas, IIRC, red. That gave me the impression that Western will be dominated by the Forsaken (maybe with the help of the Blood Elves) and Eastern will be more neutral. Though I'm sure the green areas will still be considered "contested" for mechanical purposes, just heavily Horde-dominated (sort of like the current Barrens).

Haha brutal three-way fail. We should just have a circle jerk.

LOL, @Kwon, most uber epic fail, took u 6hrs 1min to realize how much the 3 of u failed.

On topic, excellent post. Keep it up Amatera. Also, 1 thing to keep in mind, is that they had also shown in some of their vids, that places such as the Barrens and Durotar will become an inferno, and places such as the PLs will once again thrive with life.

Jist my 2silver

BTW, this was the picture I was thinking of:
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/august/cataclysmpreviewpanel_045.jpg. Though on second thought, given this picture (http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/august/cataclysmpreviewpanel_046.jpg ) I don't think the color-coding has anything to do with factions, given that the Barrens and Mulgore have different colors. Perhaps a better guess would be that the colors show how much the zone will change in Cataclysm: green meaning not much (though it will still need adaption for flying), yellow meaning quite a bit, red a total revamp, and blue being a zone that's actually new.

funny thing, i was just having this discussion with a buddy yesterday. I'd like to point out that no one has ONCE suggested changing previous lore i.e. retconning. Ama's right folks. Things change and desperate times call for desperate measures. I blame BoA gear personally.

I'm currently working on both a shaman and druid and blowing through pre-TBC content without much attention being paid to lore. Given further thought, and the nature of the Cataclysm, I think that's a baaaaaaaad mistake. Sure nelf mages, and dwarf shaman and tauren pallies all make sense (at least as much sense as Belf pallies do) but at least we're not getting a ridiculously overpowered, underconsidered Hero class!

I would love to see the blood elves and the Forsaken do some serious damage to the plague lands. With the threa of the scorge gone they should rebuild their city and expand thei domain back into ghostlands wiping out those pesky Armani trolls. Granted this would all have to be phased so newbie blood elves can still see the origina content but I think this would be cool for vet blood elf players. Also with the Forsakens rebellion it just makes sense they will want to expand their domain beyond that of undercity.

With the horde about to lose orgrimar I think we deserve sone kind of cool territorial expansion to make up for it.

Also humans taking back strath seems to make sense. I'm sure blizzard could come up with some story about how dalaran mages 'cureing' the tainted land putting life back into the area around the city (possibly curing the scar in silvermoon city as well). That way as expansions... Expand more land can be 'sanctified' in the plaguelands opening up space for current races/factions to expand.

Another thing they could do with this is expanding the Deep Run Tram to include Strath using a "Ten years Later" kind of scenario for an expansion/patch. During a time of peace the Alliance, realizing that it lost many of it's cities due to the lack of being able to defend itself from enemy forces. Since they got Strath back, and are rebuilding it to include new defenses, connecting it to the Dwarfs of IronForge and the Human Capital Stormwind would just make sense, especially with it being so close to enemy forces(Forsaken and the Blood Elves) This could open up a second starter place for humans(choice on selection of making a human, you can either be a Stratholme citizen, or a citizen of Stormwind, maybe minor differences in the character selection design screen could open up some customization among the Human race, maybe others can follow suit)

There is much potential they have bringing this game back to it's "Roots" and I'd hate to see the developers miss out on many opportunities to expand on so many things that have happened since the game was originally released.

@Staffan

That's an interesting way to think of the color-coding, and you may just be right about it. Sadly, they never cleared up the reasoning behind it during or after the panel.

"we have to consider Cataclysm as a quantum leap forward in the WoW universe."

Funy thing is a quantum leap isn't that big a leap at all:

"In real physical systems a quantum leap is not necessarily a large change, and can in fact be very insignificant."

But I know what you mean and another great blog!

@Tom

Now that I really think about the terminology, you may be right. That same wikipedia entry does state that it signifies a change that happens all at once, which it what it will certainly feel like when log in for the first time after installing the expansion!

@Dan: While I think the Blood Elves and Forsaken would definitely team up to expand into the plaguelands, I don't think they would take out the Amani, simply because that would involve deleting an entire instance. The same thing applies to Human's taking back Stratholme. If the Amani were taken out though, there's no reason to phase it so people can see the old content when none of the other zones will get that treatment. The idea is that the world was permanently changed, and the old stuff won't be coming back.

Getting back to the actual content of the article, Veere's argument is very flawed.

Flawed Argument 1: Druidism was started because of a distrust of arcane magic.
My response: Malfurion started learning about Druidism from Cenarius before the first demon ever set foot on Azeroth. The three main Night Elves in the War of the Ancients trilogy were a Mage, Druid, and Priest fighting together.

Flawed Argument 2: Azshara and the Naga fell because of a distrust of arcane magic.
My response: Azshara didn't fall because of a distrust of arcane magic; she fell because she was a lunatic who let her advisor set demons loose on the world and then thought she would become Sargeras's queen and rule the world. A person sacrificing their entire race would be killed no matter what they did. Also, the Naga didn't even exist until long after Azshara fell.

Flawed Argument 3: Illidan's original imprisonment was because of a distrust of arcane magic.
My response: Illidan was imprisoned for the same reason Azshara fell from power: He was insane! He became addicted to magic the same way Blood Elves did. His long string of crimes included attempting to kill a prisoner of the Night Elves, draining the power of people supporting him in battle until they were almost dead, leaving Tyrande and Malfurion to die because Tyrande chose Malfurion over Illidan in a love triangle, and using demonic magic. The final straw was when he tried to recreate the well of eternity, which was the portal the demons used to get to Azeroth in the first place. He was originally going to be executed for endangering everyone instead of imprisoned, but Malfurion saved him.

Flawed argument 4: Due to past events, Night elves can't possibly turn back to magic
My response: They never turned away from it. They simply didn't trust the Highborne because some of their users brought in demons. The surviving members of the Highborne were brought back into society until they lost control of their addiction to magic. At this time, the remaining Night Elves simply chose to practice Druidism. There was never a ban on arcane magic, but nobody used it anymore.

Flawed argument 5: Troll Druids will destroy lore.
My response: ...Does this guy pay ANY attention to troll lore? They worship animal gods for crying out loud. Zul'Gurub, Zul'Aman, and Gundrak all have trolls transforming into animals, while one boss in Zul'Farrak has control over animals, basilisks to be specific. These are all Druid powers. How in the world can he take all of this information and still say Troll Druids don't make sense?

That was ridiculously long! Thank you to anyone who actually read through all of it.

Also @Dan and everyone else who said this:
Name one time that Blizzard said the Horde was losing Orgrimmar. I may have missed a post where Blizzard mentioned this, but I doubt it because if I missed it, then a whole lot of other people missed it too. First, there are the people at Project Lore who CERTAINLY would have said something about this before now. Next, there are the people who post content from Cataclysm on the World of Warcraft website, since they haven't said anything about it. I'd be shocked if they didn't know about it considering they work for the company. Following that train of thought, Blizzard would have also had to not mention it to the art designers, because the official trailer for Cataclysm has a shot of Orgrimmar with reinforced metal put on by ORCS based on the ORCISH architecture of the ORCISH outpost Warsong Hold. The shot also includes ORC guards, as well as a giant HORDE banner. If you don't believe me, watch the trailer at 0:30, right after the "lasting peace" line, and then come back and tell me how the Horde can be losing Orgrimmar.

I know I'm being a jerk when I say this, but I can't stand when people make things up just so they can complain to Blizzard about how bad they are at game design!

@Felaryn

Some of the pre-Blizzcon rumors stated that Orgrimmar would be destroyed in the apocalypse, but that turned out to be false. Rather, a slide shown at the Preview Panel depicts the gate to the city being reinforced with Dark Iron. Reportedly, these "renovations" are Garrosh's doing. So, we'll likely see a transformed Orgrimmar, but not one that has been demolished or "lost" by the Horde.

Thank you for clearing that up Amatera. To be honest, I should have considered fake "leaks" coming from Blizzcon before going on my rant. Sorry to anyone who got offended.

It's fine. :) Most of them turned out to be true. A few did not. The destruction of Orgrimmar was one of those.

The way I see it a city isn't completly reinforced or redesigned if it wasn't sacked in the first place. Why fortify something that was doing fine.

They may not be wanting to confirm that part of the story line right now but I remember back before wotlk hit blizzard had said org was going to be sacked and rebuilt to resemble it's northrend counterpart. Just because it is happening an expansion pack later does not nullify that it was sacked.

Also no offense taken. It's a friendly discussion going on here :-)

Oh and them saying it was going to be sacked may have been back in the beta, and I also could be wrong. But I swear when I was in it they said org was to be sacked they just didn't want that to be released at the time because they were working on the quest or something. Perhaps the Sacking of org evolved into the battle of undercity, I don't know.

Also these are just things I'd love to see them do. Org being destoryed isn't the worst thing that could happen to the horde, just something to add fuel to the war fire. And with garrosh supposedly set to kill the leader of thunder bluff he is going have to come up with a sneaky way to pin the death and the sacking on the alliance, or else what Tauren would follow a warchief that murdered their leader. So much stuff that is rumoured to happen just doesn't add up, but since mmo-champion was right about everything else so far(unfortunatly) why should we start doubting them now?