Project Lore

Warning! This post is speculative and potentially spoiler-heavy. I won't lie. I've been cringing inside at the thought of Garrosh Hellscream replacing Thrall. How could he? What would this mean for the fate of the Horde? And why would Thrall allow it? Amatera's recent post on glimpses of the changing Horde on the PTR solidified that even more. I am not a fan of Garrosh, to put it lightly, and based on the comments on that post, plenty of others aren't, either. In fact, it's easy to name plenty of other Horde leaders who would make a better Warchief. Among the contenders, on one humorous forum thread: Cairne Bloodhoof (which would be difficult if he's dead), Saurfang, Sylvanas, Hogger (/chuckle), Westfall Chicken or a Sickly Gazelle. And with all this mounting contention against Hellscream, it was only time before the issue would be addressed via Blue Post. Kisirani took the call in a thread questioning Hellscream's ability to lead the Horde. Here's what was said:

"Garrosh is a character with a lot to prove. I realize there's a great deal of consternation out there concerning the tales of what's to come, but I want to reassure you that we understand that concern. We know where you're coming from. Why are we still going this route? With all respect, you haven't seen the entirety of who Garrosh is. You've seen a great deal of his faults, certainly, but people grow over time, and you may find, come Cataclysm, that he is not quite the disaster you portend. :) (Mind you, that doesn't mean he's Thrall, either.)"

Can you hear the collective sigh of relief? No? Well, I'm still not exactly crazy about the idea, either. But it does remind me that what we're hearing so far is only bits and pieces of what surely will be a much larger, more complicated story. If you think back to the Burning Crusade, we did see a slightly different side of Garrosh. Before he knew of his father, Grom Hellscream's heroic death, Garrosh is portrayed as ashamed, intimidated at the thought of becoming a great leader, and even a little depressed. Thrall's news that Grom had fought valiantly to his redemption is a huge part of what transforms Garrosh into the strong, confident, belligerent being that we now know. But at least we see that he is capable of growth and change as a character. My guess is that there's going to be some massive world event leading up to the Cataclysm, or it may even be the Cataclysm itself, that forces Garrosh to grow as a character once again. Let's hope that by the time Garrosh leads the Horde, if this indeed is to come, that he is a multi-dimensional character with more layers than the surface one we've seen up until now. And if that's not the case, then may Thrall (or one of those other potential leaders - I'd root for Sylvanas) overthrow him and retake the Horde!

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Blue Stew is a new semi-daily column bringing you a delicious concoction of developer news, thoughts, and opinions straight from the boiling pot that is the official World of Warcraft forums. The highlights of each day include additional commentary by Project Lore staff. PvPvPvE Would you look at this pair of winners... In one thread, Paladin extraordinaire, Feanorion, wonders:

"why are PvE concerns being trumped by the concerns of such a miniscule portion of the subscriber population? "

And in another, posted the same day, Fireweed puts on her frowny-face:

"Since the Illidan kill in TBC I swore I would not touch PvE ever, ever again. It's mind numbing, forces you to deal with people you never want to deal with on your free time, it requires way too much dedication in the scene/too many people and to stay in a guild that is capable to handle it and so forth... What I really enjoy about this game is arena, even some random battlegrounds here and there with a small group."

This, friends, is a microcosm of all that is wrong with the average complainer's mentality towards the game : "I don't like it, so it shouldn't be there!" I've said time and time again that I'm not particularly in favor of PvP, at least not to its extremes, but that's the way I prefer to play. I'm not going to outright deny the ways in which other people might have fun. But the fact of the matter is that if any decisions to change the underlying structure of Warcraft, it would be based on an entirely different group altogether, as Ghostcrawler so handily points out:

"If you expect us to balance around the most popular way to play the game, then you'd see most of our changes aimed at low level alts and very few end-game raiding tanking changes. "

I think we all get so caught up in the endgame, that we forget most people who subscribe to WoW simply enjoy tooling around, by themselves, or with a couple of close friends, in the lower levels of the game. These are the people that like to level up over a week, not a couple of hours. And these are the people that enjoy picking herbs just because they enjoy picking herbs, not because they need to make flasks for the next raid. And that's why I think Cataclysm is going to be such a big hit with the community. It refocuses the game on these types of players without entirely forgetting those at the level cap. You see, WoW is a lot like this scrum-diddly-umptious cake... (image courtesy of http://www.mmmmbrains.com/blogg/) But even ignoring this group of players, can't we just all accept that PvP and PvE are integral parts of the game? I used to be a nay-sayer, too, but I've long since learned that both styles are like two delicious flavors coming together to make World of Warcraft just as enjoyable as a tasty little peanut butter cup! Ghostcrawler explains in a seperate thread why you will never see them split:

"Internal consistency for belief in the game world is part of it. Just keeping complexity down is another part of it. We don't want to see every spell or talent have two tooltips and players having to keep all of that straight. It just feels like two games with one art set at that point, which isn't what we're going for."

Please Explain Argent Tournament Reset Seems like the Faction Change service includes everything but the kitchen sink. Or, in this case, Argent Tournament progress. Kisirani gives a simple enough answer:

"I'm responding to this thread because it's written in a calm and concise manner, so thank you for that. Simply put, while it was not a decision we enjoyed making, due to the way the Argent Tournament functions it was not feasible on a technical level to properly switch progress between factions. I am sorry we were unable to offer a better solution."

I wish he would've expanded a bit more on that, but then again, that's due to my own curiosity. I'm always intrigued to know how the game is built, how its underlying systems are structured to allow certain things and not others. While I have no way of being specific myself, I imagine it's the case of simply coding, or constructing, the Argent Tournament in a certain way at a time before the requirements for the Faction Change service were fully laid out, leaving the two aspects of the game incompatible with each other. So for those of you still considering a Faction Change, please keep this in mind. You'll have to do the Argent Tournament all over again (though, presumably, the earned reputation with each home city will remain intact, even if the quest progress doesn't). And for those of you who already did, without realizing this caveat, I'm sorry! That's potentially months worth of daily work down the drain! Earthen Power Nerf: Overkill Oh, it's the weekend. I'll throw you guys one more bone to look over! This one's for the Enhancement Shamans out there, in response to the most recent PTR patch update, which makes changes to the way in which Earthen Power works, potentially affecting their performance in Arena teams:

"The 3.2.2 PTR change to earthen power will be crippling to Enhancement Shaman, I am not saying that this talent isn't a bit too powerful, but granting the shaman short term immunity to movement impairing effects is not the issue, the issue is it granting the shamans team mates the immunity. Removing the immunity from the shaman themselves will do nothing but cripple a spec that has just recently regained viability, without showing any form of dominance, except as a part of a counter RMP team in one tournament, a tournament which doesn't well reflect the state of play on live (nothing over item level 213)... I would propose that if you feel earthen power is overly powerful, you remove the snare immunity from allied targets, but leave it on the shaman, else we will see a return enhancement shaman being unable to stick to a target. We already suffer greatly from a lack of controllable damage, reliance on long cooldowns (bloodlust/heroism, spirit wolves), and inability to kill healers. Returning Enhancement Shaman an easy to kite class will severely undermine everything you have done to give us arena viability."

Ghostcrawler explains that they favored Ghost Wolf as a reducer of movement-impairing effects instead:

"We think Earthen Power and the Ghost Wolf change were trying to solve the same problem. Together they felt like overkill to us, and we thought the Ghost Wolf change was more interesting so we kept that one. Your mileage may vary and I would be surprised if many shaman agreed since they were the target of the nerf."

Alright, folks! Have a fantastic weekend, but don't forget to respond and let us know what you think about all of these different subjects before you do!

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Blue Stew is a new daily column bringing you a delicious concoction of developer news, thoughts, and opinions straight from the boiling pot that is the official World of Warcraft forums. The highlights of each day include additional commentary by Project Lore staff. Welcome to day two of Blue Stew, everyone. A lot of you seemed interested in what this column has to offer, so I'm going to do my best to bring you its brothy goodness every day this week. Now, on with today's serving...

• Oh man, what is it with Druids? It seems that poor Blizzard just can't get a break from their polymorphic prejudice! Veere has set up an obstacle course made out of Winchesters so that he can get even better at jumping the gun. Wanting to test his progress, he decided to post this gem on the official forums: "NE Mages = The Death of Lore?" I don't know what it is that makes people think that lore exists in a vacuum. Moving forward with the timeline and shaking things up a little bit doesn't equal a retcon, people! So the arcane has been forbidden from Night Elf culture for thousands of years? OK, that's fine, but I'm sure you've all heard this phrase before: "Desperate times call for desperate measures!" Look at it this way, when the world is as threatened as it is by a force like Deathwing, each and every race on Azeroth is going to take a good, long, hard look at themselves and figure out what they can or need to do to overcome that destruction, and sometimes that means breaking taboos and sharing resources with each other. If that means paths once closed need to be re-opened, well, I see no problems with that. But, of course, there will be ramifications for doing so. Blue poster Kisirani reminds us that Blizzard is not ignorant of such things: "I'd like to reinforce that we're perfectly aware of the way Night Elf society has viewed arcane magic over the years. We are similarly aware that Night Elf Mages have been in the game since patch 1.3. Not all Highborne became the High Elves and Blood Elves of today. As evidenced in the screenshot linked, patch 3.2.2 begins the explanation. We're not ignoring what came before, but we are moving the storyline forward, and at times, that means change and a shake up in the status quo." So, please, where Cataclysm lore is concerned, be aware that these things have been announced long before they actually occur within the game world.
• Lyresse spends most of her days inside a giant, plastic bubble. Not because she's sick, but because she's always wondered what it was like to be a hamster. She's also curious about WoW's shoulda-beens and coulda-beens, and asks if phasing technology could be used to breathe new life into old quest lines. Her given examples include finishing the bridge in Redridge Mountains and the remote nature of Marshall's Refuge in Un'Goro Crater (how the heck did they manage to get a flight path out there?). Wryxian responds with a tight-lipped answer, admitting that he knows little of what the development team plans to do with the technology, but that "the main issue will be deciding on when to stop using it." It doesn't seem like we'll be getting any real answers on this subject anytime soon, and while I have no doubt it will be used to make new quest lines more exciting, I'm not sure what can be done for old ones like those Lyresse is interested in. The fact of the matter is that we have to consider Cataclysm as a quantum leap forward in the WoW universe. Everything is moving forward, and many of those old quests might not even be available any longer. That is to say that we likely won't get another line dealing with the bridge in Redridge, because either it will be finished at the start of the expansion, or it will be utterly destroyed. So, I'm not entirely sure that we're going to see old areas of the world that could've benefitted from it in the past actually incorporate phasing now, but rather that they all will from here on out.
• Grand Apothecary Putress I think Lindra can read minds, because she's asked a question that I've been itching to ever since being clued into the massive changes of Cataclysm: "What's going to happen to the Plaguelands?" Wryxian answered the call once again, expressing his own interest in the possibilities: "It's really intriguing wondering what exactly will happen to places like the Plaguelands. Will they be kept much as they are, even despite the nailing we all expect Arthas will receive, or will they be liberated and thus potentially becoming hotly contested by all the various races that may be interested in re-claiming the area for their own?" With Arthas most likely gone, the Scourge will lose their power. Like a bee hive without its Queen, they'll become listless and without direction. With production of new Scourge at a halt, they become easy pickin's for the likes of the Argent Dawn and Scarlet Crusade, eventually allowed the Plaguelands to be reclaimed by those who seek to call it home. Will the Blood Elves want to rebuild Quel'Thalas? Do the Humans want to reclaim their former capital of Lordaeron? And what about the Forsaken? They still need a place to call home (and, in fact, they seem intent on expanding their influence with the sacking of Gilneas). It seems to me that, with the spirit of open contention between factions at hand, that the Plaguelands will once again become a battlefield. So, what of the Scourge? Just because Arthas is gone doesn't mean they've lost all of their masters. In fact, there are a couple traitorous Forsaken who might see the Lick King's death as an opportunity. Despite their disdain for the Scourge, who could resist controlling an instant army?

Well, that wraps it up for today, folks. Add your thoughts below and, as always, keep those suggestions flowing!

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Most people know by now that I love Achievements. I also love world events. Adding new and interesting things to do during world events and tying them to achievements sounds just great to me. Initially when I saw that Patch 3.1 would add achievements to Noblegarden, I thought that must mean 3.1 will come out before the event, which is currently scheduled for April 12-18. Makes sense right? Well, I was wrong. Kisirani has let us know via blue post that the developers' plan is to simply delay Noblegarden should 3.1 not be ready before then. That makes more sense. What has me excited, though, is that after the patch, Noblegarden will be a true world event, Blizzard style. Looking at the list of Noblegarden Achievments and seeing a hint that egg hunting will be "a wee bit different this year," the event seems like it is going to have much more interactivity than in previous years. Before, players would have to find eggs hidden in the starting areas in hopes of finding a dress. Not a great reward, but something that is good for collectors and roleplayers. According to the achivement list, this year's Noble Gardeners are going to hide eggs, place rabbit ears, plant flowers, find love, and of course eat chocolates as part of the event. As the meta-achievement for Noblegarden is going to be part of the meta-meta-achivement, What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been that rewards a 310% speed Violet Proto-Drake, I'll be ready to hunt down eggs all week long, whenever 3.1 comes out.

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