Project Lore

Mythology, folk lore, legends, all words to describe ancient stories.  These tall tales were created to explain the unexplainable, scare children, hail fallen heroes and even to just entertain.  Every civilization has them, from perhaps the best known - of the Western world - stories of Ancient Greece to the Samurai, onto the homegrown tales of Native Americans.  And to me, every single myth is captivating, no matter how similar they may be.

While much of the Warcraft lore is based on more recent, or original, stories, Wrath of the Lich King added an entire race dedicated to a civilization that has been plundered by the video game industry, Norse mythology.  Final Fantasy, Tales of Symphonia, Odin Sphere, Too Human, Viking: Battle for Asgard, and even earlier parts of WoW (World Tree as well) have lifted from stories of the long dead viking culture.  Players can see the Norse influence on WoW all over Northrend, from Howling Fjord, The Storm Peaks and the final zone of Icecrown.  No matter what soil you step on, there is a good chance that the Vrykul, or their Undead version, the Val'kyr, have made it their home. If you want more than mobs based on oversized vikings, then the Sons of Hodir/Thorim quest line is for you.  Without spoiling the experience, allow me to whet your appetite a bit.  The quest line is one of the longest currently in WoW and contains some of the best lore, that has its own twists on the ancient story.  For better or for worse, the lengthy chain is not required for anything too substantial, unlike the exhausting Onyxia chain, meaning many players may have dropped the line, or skipped over it entirely.  Not all of the 40+ quests are worth the time, but the culmination of the events your toon has taken part in are something that should not be missed.  Plus, it gives you a reason to tackle Halls of Lightning, other than helping out a guild mate. I am no Norse expert, but there are many obvious references to their deep tales.  Here is the basic, spoiler free, tip of the iceberg information for the adventure:

• Dun Niffelem - Niflheim is one of two places that existed before the known world.  It is intensely cold and likely the basis for Dun Niffelem's name.
• Thorim - Thorim, the protagonist of our long quest line, is based upon the God of Lightning, Thor.  Lending credence to these claims is that the name of Thorim's wife, Sif, is the same name as Thor's beloved.
• Loken - Loken is based on the tricky bastard known as Loki, and in this telling, happens to be Thorim's brother.  Constantly up to shenanigans in Norse mythology, Loken follows his basis well, upsetting Thorim so much as to send him into a deep depression.  His acts are the start of our quest.

Believe it or not, this is actually the third time I have touched upon this quest line.  I revisited it for my favorite area in all of Northrend, an area that was created by Thorim's butterfingers.  There is plenty more to the quest than what we touched on here, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't tackled the full line.  Anybody who hasn't finished the line should avoid visiting the comments section until they do so - but feel free to leave a comment if you have the willpower to skip reading everyone else's thoughts.  If you enjoy lore in general, then this is one quest chain you should not miss.  It has everything, love, betrayal, deceit and epic battles.  It makes me want to dig up some more books, anyone know a good Norse mythology collection?  Preferably one that isn't incredibly difficult to grasp.  I recently read the Divine Comedy, so I need a break for the difficult stuff!

Probably worth noting that Thorim is actually a Titan, while Loken is a Dark Titan serving the Old God Yogg-Saron.  Not exactly a spoiler, more of a setup for Ulduar.

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Initially, I was going to discuss the purported patch notes for Wrath of the Lich King's first content patch.  As it turns out, the "leaked" Patch 3.1 notes that began floating around this weekend are fakes according to most sources.  How fake?  That remains to be seen, but it is likely that the creator - Aurelius of Forlorn Legacy on Windrunner-US according to WoWInsider - got some changes close to correct. Thankfully there was another interesting topic to crop up late last week, BlizzCast Edition Seven.  The latest podcast of all things Blizzard focused on one universe for the first time since the developer began the series, Rock N' Roll Racing World of Warcraft.  The episode was designed as a wrap-up to Wrath's release with J. Allen Brack, Jeff Kaplan and lore master Chris Metzen, all stopping by to give their thoughts. The first part of the cast featured JAB and Kaplan discussing Northrend's creative process, things learned from the previous expansion, the hard choices and how they turned out.

• Northrend was one of the first lands to be prototyped for the MMORPG, during the development of The Frozen Throne.
• Northrend & Outland were both in the running for the first expansion.
• A group of five people, lead by Metzen took care of the awesome quests.
• Implement multiple starting zones for expansions.
• Throw the antagonist in everyone's face at all times, in as diverse a fashion as possible.
• Moving to 10- and 25-man raiding was validated as a solid decision in the first month.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things to be revealed in this section of the BlizzCast was the amount of Hero classes that were in the works.  Blizzard narrowed down the choices to 29 separate classes before beating that number down to just three.  None of which were the long-rumored Arch Druid.

• Rune Master - Melee archetype like a rogue or monk (Pandaren ftw!).
• Necromancer - Ranged caster with "a lot of corpse explode."  Many ideas incorporated into the Death Knight.
• Death Knight - Umm, well, I hope you know what this class does by now...

The second half of the Q&A has Cygil questioning Blizzard's Senior Vice President of Creative Development, Chris Metzen.  Being the creative mind that he is, Metzen's answers are incredibly long and descriptive.  Cygil leads the discussion in all sorts of directions and storylines, covering Illidan's demise, the distracted Dragonflights, Medivh and even the newly introduced Order of the Ebon Blade.  For the lore lovers out there, the second half of the podcast is incredibly interesting with future plot points being danced around by Metzen. If you haven't checked it out already, Episode 7 can be read, downloaded or streamed at the official BlizzCast site.  The total runtime is just under 40 minutes.

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