Neutral Blood Elves

The other day's post about the factionalism of some Pandaren led to an interesting comment which, among other things, suggested that Blood Elves should be neutral. The idea intrigued me.

Lore
It's somewhat of an accident that the Blood Elves are in the Horde. As High Elves they'd been part of the Alliance. Their 'conversion' to Blood Elves was recent. Their joining with the Horde was even more recent, and was not inevitable. There were doubts, and justifiably, that this more-than-devastated nation would be little more than a burden. Surely a Horde that had only recently broken away from demonic influence would be wary of a race that was dependent on demonic power.

In terms of personality, it fits as well. Elves are generally arrogant, and high elves perhaps even more so. Why would they not stand alone, away from the savages and corpses?

They have their own problems, trolls and the Scourge. Remember, BC was long before the Lich King was defeated. Could they really afford to go marching off to someone else's war with the many powerful Alliance armies on the continent? But perhaps that's irrelevant, since they have a powerful buffer zone against the Alliance: the Plaguelands and Lordaeron.

Gameplay
Who would become paladins? I still think tauren paladins sound ridiculous, even though I also think that Sunwalkers are a somewhat logical extension of druidism. There has always been a bit of a push for Forsaken paladins, but those also have various problems, even if they sound cool. Perhaps they'd be the inverse of the Blood Knights: rather than being so dark that even their brethren shun them, they'd be rejected for their embrace of the Light.

Geographically, Silvermoon isn't of much use to Horde players. Undercity already gives good access the north of the Eastern Kingdoms.

Most importantly, it's too late for World of Warcraft. The story already happened, not that that has necessarily mattered; Cataclysm was more than happy to erase player actions, such as killing Onyxia. Players are Blood Elves and I suspect would not react kindly to a forced race change. A splintering, as we saw with Pandaren is possible, but also sets an annoying precedent, because what race could not be justifiably picked apart? Break off the Dark Irons again, divide the orc and troll races, might as well just have every character pick its faction. Someone probably likes that idea.

Future Story
This is where I think the idea shines. Or, gets exceptionally ugly.

Despite regaining the Sunwell, I do not believe the Blood Elves are particularly powerful still. They were hit far too hard and were never a populous group. If no longer under the umbrella of the Horde, they'd end up with a potential enemy: Sylvanas.

I'd love to see this dark... darker.... black hole swallowed by another black hole, but without the huge energy releases from gravitational waves... darkerest turn by Sylvanas. Why should her former brethren not rejoin her? Perhaps the Forsaken could find some use for the Sunwell.

This leads to her army marching right back up along the Dead Scar and her journey to becoming the Lich King-lite is complete. Might the Alliance, seeing the risks of the Forsaken gaining such a powerful source of magic, intervene? Things could turn out ugly for Vereesa.

Alternatively, they just get overrun by trolls and breakaway undead.

Finally got a pandaren off of Turtleland

Their quests made me angry. I'd make a monk, because frankly, a non-pandaren monk and non-monk pandaren just don't make sense to me. Then I'd play the monk for a bit. Then I'd get bored by the wonderful mix of "you are the greatest person ever" and "you must learn humility" and go play something fun.

I finally decided to go for it. I'm on my new server, so I have no shortage of character slots. I struggled through it all, until finally, I got in a balloon and talked to a turtle. This confused me for a couple of reasons. First, it was a bit out of nowhere. "Our turtle island is dying" didn't seem to come up much. There was some issue with the little element guys, but that struck me as being their own version of Cataclysm aftermath. Second, why had no one talked to him in so long? Surely a little check up would make sense. Maybe some small talk. Or big, slow talk. Perhaps ask permission to mine the copper nodes.

Then I went to a forest and suddenly... the trailer made sense. This was the strange island that the Alliance and Horde washed up on. Of course I then was wondering what ever happened to Turtle Island. Did it just go on its merry way and ignore all the problems in Pandaria? Did it get lost? Maybe I missed a bit of quest dialog somewhere along the line.

I greatly enjoyed getting to Stormwind and talking to Varian. He sold the Alliance very well, as what appeared to be an Azerothian NATO (an attack on one is an attack on all). The brawl, or the aftermath, was perfectly done.

It did leave me wondering through, is Pandaren society screwed? From the sound of it, there are a lot of Pandaren who are leaving to join the Horde or Alliance. Clearly joining one faction or the other, or being totally neutral, strike me as safer situations. In the former, there are allies to back them up. In the latter, each side has an interest in avoiding a conflict, since that could force them into the other faction. Being mostly neutral but losing new recruits to the factions surely must be causing some terrible societal divisions. When no one is joining anyone, then opinions about the factions don't matter too much. But what about when someone's offspring, siblings, or parents, want to leave to join a faction? Just the notion that they can leave, that they can abandon all they knew, can shake a society. Now make where to go not just a matter of choice, but of division, and things get messy. Even without outside manipulations, there would be those who want to promote or disparage a particular faction, and those people surely will not get along well. It isn't yet a civil war, but what is to suggest that it will not be?

Perhaps that's a good sign, when I'm left with more questions and caring what happens afterward.

Bring back the necromancers

I have a rather paladinish perspective on things. I believe in helping those who need a hand and beating the crap out of the undead. Yet today's undead are so... dull. All the zombies now are essentially just humans that have ended up on another team. That certainly has some interesting implications and comments to make on tribalism and paranoia, but the zombies themselves are still dull. Part of the problem is realism and the misguided attempt to have it. We end up with diseases of some sort, which can only do so much to distort the human form. What ever happened to good old fashioned necromancy? It gives so much more possibility.

Of course it can bring up your usual dead people walking around, and even use some mundane chemical or biological explanation for it. That can get the scientists in the story and reading very excited. Think of when the Plague of Undeath first appeared in Warcraft 3 and it seemed to be just that, a plague, to be contained with quarantine and inspections. It turned out to be more. In the modern telling it starts as some disease that turns out to be much worse than we thought and then society collapses. But that's just "bad thing gets worse". That's not a story, that's a physical process, like fire, or plate tectonics.

Necromacy allows for a villain: the necromancer, or his cult. Now you have the story of the people who created it and spread it. This isn't just "scientist was reckless and made a big oops." This is evil, and toward what ends? Maybe it is power, knowledge, revenge. There can be an even greater power behind it. This also helps reduce some of the nonsense about how every time someone dies it's another enemy, since raising the corpses does take some effort on the part of the necromancer. If it isn't much effort, well then that's terrifying. It's one thing for a recent graveyard to wake up again, quite another for the ancient kings to arise with a wave of the hand.

These undead aren't stupid; they are mindless, being controlled by another intelligence. This means that a zombie survival story isn't a glorified version of "stranded in the wildness surrounded by really stupid wolves". Killing one means that your presence is noticed. You can sneak around, but you have to truly sneak, totally unseen and unnoticed. If you fight, you fight them all.

These undead don't have to be plain humans. They can be rearranged and rebuilt into other terrifying creations. They can be joined by other evil things, such as gargoyles, or reanimated t-rex. Who wouldn't want to see some evil wizard go into the museums and after a lot of weird yelling and lights a herd of skeletal dinosaurs come rampaging out?

The classic line in the zombies movies is that you can't join them. The book (good) version of World War Z had quislings, insane people who tried to join the zombies, but that was literally impossible. But people can join a necromancer's cult. Bandits cannot compare to the evil of the person who helped create the problem in the first place. The societal exploration can be expanded further when people can join the evil. What could make them turn their backs on society? How did they even find out about the possibility? Why didn't Twitter shut down @evilnecromancer? How will the courts and legislatures handle soul stealing?

Bring back the magic and get all your ridiculous scienceish zombies out of here.

What took the dragons so long to retire?

Spoiler alert: Deathwing dies in Cataclysm.  Then the dragons quit and declare it the age of mortals.

A bit late to the show, aren't they?

I happened to be in Ulduar the other day.  You know how it goes, one minute you're threatening the Golden Lotus NPCs for giving so little rep for each daily, next thing you're in Ulduar.

While I was in there I remembered a little tiny detail from the expansion: we killed Yogg-Saron.  And the Lich King.  And Malygos the Insane Keeper of Magic.  And some mean black dragons.

Anyway, in Ulduar will kill an Old God, restore a bunch of corrupted guardians left by the Titans, and for good measure we're the ones who convince the Titans not to destroy the planet.  Total contribution of the dragons: nothing.

Speaking of killing Old Gods: Ahn'Qiraj.  Somehow I was in there too.  What did the dragons do for us in there?  Well let's see... They held onto the scepter bits, which is nice of them to do.  Except one was slightly off his rocker and gave it to a minnow.  In his defense, we'd been killing him for a while.  They gave us some neat gear in the raid, except we got the bits for it by killing the Qiraji and finally the Old God C'thun.  In other words, they 'helped' by giving us some gear after we'd already killed the threats.

We followed it up by fighting off the Scourge, eventually sending Naxxramas fleeing to Northrend.

Speaking of the Scourge, we killed the Lich King.  The contribution of the dragons was limited to saving Bolvar, because they happened to have not killed him when they strafed the Scourge.  They didn't save us from those Scourge; they were already beaten by the rogue Apothecaries, who we killed.

Oh, but who helped us kill Malygos?  Red dragons!  Aha!  Except the whole problem was that Malygos wasn't retiring, despite already being useless.  Instead he decided to fix the Burning Legion problem by destroying magic, and killing everyone, equivalent to taking a flamethrower to a server to prevent hackers (which I should acknowledge, might work pretty well).  Besides, we took on the blue dragons at the same time as the twilight, while working on the Scourge and Old Gods.  Meanwhile the dragons were busy with their kidnapping and murder and kidnapping and rape.  Productive!

Speaking of terrible black dragons: dragons.  Also, who killed Nefarian and shut down the chromatic dragonflight?  Us.  Contribution of dragons?  Well let's see: one was enslaved and used against us.  Another hid in Blackrock Spire and helped us make a key so we could go to the upper spire and fight bad orcs.  So I guess they helped a little.  The biggest contributors were the ones who died so we could pretend to be black dragons and sneak into Onyxia's lair and kill her, though she was only there because a certain badass scared her away from Stormwind.

While we're in Blackrock Mountain, we're the ones who banished Ragnaros.  Though admittedly, it was us mortals who summoned him in the first place (I'm referring to the dwarf clan wars, not us talking to Domo early and wiping the raid, not that the latter did not also happen).

Outland was pacified entirely by us mortals.  Though I recognize that the dragons' power power and responsibility may be limited to Azeroth, so I won't hold this one against them.  And a blue dragon did help with the Netherdrakes.

Caverns of Time: Infinite Dragonflight beaten with the help of us and the Bronze Dragonflight.

Notice the trend?  The only problems the dragons fix are the ones created by their own existence.  The rest we've been handling just fine on our own.  They should have dug up Deathwing, beaten him, and then all retired almost a decade ago, or longer, depending on whether you're counting World of Warcraft as when mortals first rose to power or if you're counting the Warcraft RTS games.

The Old Gods

In your day to day life, how much are you affected by the Old Gods?  Okay, badly-phrased question.  But let's face it, how much importance do we give to the Old Gods in WoW?  Oh sure, the lore nerds can tell us of the various nefarious schemes and their parasitic nature which corrupts everything, but who listens to them?  My point is that they too often seem to be behind the scenes, despite being present at all times.  It's strange to me.

In vanilla it was the Old Gods who had corrupted Deathwing and through him, the black dragonflight.  They were central to a raid and a few instances as well as several zones, ranging from the low-level Alliance in Redridge Mountains to the near-60 Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes.  Through Ragnaros, they controlled the Dark Iron dwarves, which were key to a level 50-60 instance and led directly into the raid against Ragnaros himself.  Most directly, there were the Ahn'Qiraj raids, the larger of which had us directly fighting the Old God C'thun.  Despite this, do we think of vanilla as being the Old God-themed time?

Burning Crusade was of course about the Burning Legion.  Even then, there was a brief, easy-to-miss sighting of something which seemed much like an Old God being summoned in Shadowmoon Valley.  Later, in the Arcatraz, we find an imprisoned minion of the Old God.  They're everywhere.  The Netherdrakes are descended from the Black Dragonflight, being from black eggs exposed to the nether, and are trying to forge their own identity, free of the corruption of Deathwing.

In the Wrath of the Lich King the Lich King took center stage.  And yet, his Vrykul minions were themselves victims of the Old Gods who turned away from their gods as they felt the Curse of Flesh had been inflicted by them, leaving them open to the accept the Lich King as their Death God.  As a human, Arthas came from the effects of the Curse of Flesh on the Vrykul.  Grizzly Hills and Storm Peaks were heavily based on the corruption of the Old Gods, leading into a pair of instances, which themselves led into a raid.  Dragonblight dealt with the Black Dragonflight, leading to the Sartharion raid, as well as the Old Kingdom instance where, rather than the Scourge being the main threat, it is the Twilight Cultists and the Faceless Ones who feature prominently.

Given this context, the complaint about Cataclysm that all this Deathwing and cultist stuff came out of nowhere is absurd.  We've been dealing with the Old Olds and Black Dragonflight all this time, both directly and indirectly.  If there is a complaint to be made, it is that we've had too much exposure, like a recurring background villain suddenly becoming the primary enemy.  Maybe that is the problem, that the entire expansion is so purely devoted to the Old Gods, Deathwing, and their elemental minions.  The Scourge gets some minor notes in the Plaguelands, mostly reinforcing the notion that it has been defeated and we're in the mop-up stages.  I don't remember anything outside of the Blasted Lands that dealt with the Burning Legion.

Previously the expansions had a variety of foes.  They even interacted.  We saw the Legion and Illidan in conflict as well as the Scourge and Yogg Saron going so far as to have a Scourge leader directly mention undeath as releasing one from the Curse of Flesh, which combined with the obsessive use of saronite (blood of Yogg Saron), leads to all sorts of interesting questions.

The Cataclysm is unique in its complete focus on one side and one event.  Vash'jir is about the Naga, minions of an Old God.  Mount Hyjal is about the elementals and cultists, also minions of the Old Gods.  Uldum almost has variety, bringing in a new race and culture, but that too is ultimately about us finding an ally, who is fighting minions of Deathwing and the elements.  Stonecore is also us fighting elementals and cultists to fix the damage caused by the Cataclysm.  And finally there are the Twilight Highlands, dominated by the Twilight Cultists, with a dash of Horde-Alliance conflict.

I don't think this singular focus is good for the game.  It reduces complexity, reducing the amount of interesting lore discussion and debate to be had.  Is the Scourge a greater threat to us than the Legion?  Is it even a potential ally?  What is our fate in the battle between the Old Gods and Legion?  Will we be wiped out if the Titans show up?  This last one is, for now, no, though we came pretty close.  Contrast that with the current battle, in which the Old Gods control Deathwing, the Twilight Cult, and the elementals.  It even seems as if the old conflict between Deathwing and the Old Gods has been pushed aside, as if he forgot that they tried to steal the Dragon Soul.  Now they're all best friends in blowing up the world.

Now Deathwing is defeated, the elements are all fixed, and happiness and sunshine forever!  There are no equivalent questions to what will happen to Bolvar, whether he can truly control the Scourge and avoid corruption.  No questions about what will happen if we keep killing Old Gods, given that the Titans thought destroying them would threaten the world.  Instead we have the dragons becoming mortal and declaring it the age of portals, saying that we're the protectors now, except by all indications, we always were.

Down the the Dictator, but not the extensive bureaucracy that maintains civilization

"There must always be a Lich King."  Lame, right?  Or is it?

The other day I watched Equilibrium, which is basically what would happen if you wanted to make the Matrix but couldn't legally do that, and replaced machine-driven illusion with drugs to block emotion.  For various reasons it irritated me, but one in particular stood out: the downside of ending the regime was never discussed.  The film of V for Vendetta had this same problem.

It might be because I'm a Stalinist*, but I'm not a fan of the pattern of "dictator falls, everyone lives happily ever after."  That's not actually how things happen.  Ever.  I can sense the objection rising up inside you, so I have these two things to note.

*according to my critics

First off, I don't think the downside to the fall of the dictator must necessarily be shown, at least not right away, but there should be at least some notion that something went wrong.  Take Star Wars for example.  After A New Hope we're all happy that the Death Star was destroyed.  Then the Empire strikes back in the appropriately-named The Empire Strikes Back in which the Rebels are stuck on a planet made entirely out of ice and wampas.  In the extended universe we learn about how just because the Emperor eventually died doesn't mean everything is great.  Instead, people go out to celebrate and are gunned down by the millions and a whole new form of civil war breaks out, which as best as I can tell, never ends no matter how many times they kill clones of the Emperor.

Compare this with real life where we celebrate the fall of a dictator, and then all go "so... now what?"  That's when every single suppressed grievance explodes and suddenly people start missing running water and streets paved with something other than unexploded ordinance.


Despite that, there is my Second thing to note: just because there is a downside does not mean it is bad that the evil regime has fallen.  Of course it's bad when the basic infrastructure is wrecked and rule of law breaks down, but that's something to consider when taking down the dictator.  This doesn't mean "oh well, things would be worse without them", but instead "let's have a plan for what happens when the Elite Guard of the Evil Government are all out of work."




The admission of a downside is part of what can make the story complex and interesting.  It makes the enemies, the villains, a little more understandable.  Sure the dictator is bad, but perhaps his supporters are just people who see stability as worth the occasional murder and rampant corruption.  Maybe they think it will be even worse without him.  This makes them people with different philosophical leanings and social predictions, rather than evil people.  That's what the world is filled with: people with different perspectives, who we may still find ourselves in conflict with, but who are not evil faceless goons.  After the rebellion they may even join the winning side, not because they are traitors or flip-floppers, but because they see it as the best way to protect what they value and to continue to do their jobs.





They are the bureaucrats.  They are the police and the army.  The judges and administrators.  Are they on the wrong side?  Perhaps.  But that doesn't mean they cannot be on the right side.  Nor does it mean that they are necessarily evil.

I remember an argument in a Star Wars novel in which the hero is arguing with his future father-in-law about smuggling.  The father was a smuggler, running Imperial blockades and bypassing their customs.  It paid well and seemed to be righteous work, sticking it to The Man.  But the hero points out that while the Empire was evil, those import taxes were what paid for roads and schools and healthcare for children.  So even as it is a blow to the Evil Empire, it is also a blow to those who are subjects of the empire and who have no choice in the matter.

Perhaps the best book I ever read that showed the downside, the cost of victory, the burden of maintaining civilization, was called The Star Conquerors.  It's an old science fiction novel in which humans are gradually getting crushed by an alien empire.  It is approximately a gagillion times bigger, which is not helped by a human population which isn't very interested in paying for the war effort that keeps them from being crushed in a week.  The hero does the sensible thing: rounds up what ships he can and goes flying off to kick some ass, which after a mix of luck and brilliance, results in him capturing the core planets.  The aliens hand over control of the entire empire, about a third of the galaxy.  Cool, right?  USA USA USA!  Er.. TERRAN EMPIRE TERRAN EMPIRE TERRAN EMPIRE!  Except for one problem: Before they leave the aliens explain that now we're responsible for administering it all, of managing the flow of trade, of preventing starvation, of keeping everyone in line so it doesn't all collapse into a giant civil war among the various species.

Should we have just given up and lost?  No.  But knowing that there is something after victory, some burden of leadership, of survival against entropy rather than war, makes the story that much more complete and interesting.

And so, when we hear that there must always be a Lich King, maybe let's go ahead and say that in the literal sense, that sounds ridiculous.  But let's not forget that there are still the Vrykul up there, who are going to wonder what happened to their Death God, who are going to need to be either crushed, assimilated, or some mix of the two, and better hope we don't get that wrong.  There are still Scourge agents, dedicated to various agendas of evil, power, and insanity.  In fact, we run into one in the Eastern Plaguelands, a spider who thinks he's going to start his own Scourge.  A joke, for now.  We should wonder, without the leadership of the Lich King, what will the mindless ones do?  What about the sentient and free agents?  What happens to the Plague?  The diseased and corrupted land?

Perhaps we should even be glad that Deathwing showed up.  Imagine the chaos, the destruction, if the greedy, amoral adventurers with incredible magical and combat powers backed with even greater magical artifacts and armor, found themselves bored.  Perhaps that's what was meant by the Scourge going on an even greater rampage of destruction.  With the Lich King, we had a target and that target was something everyone could agree on.  Without him, then what?  Perhaps he did not actually need to convert or corrupt us, merely step aside and let us do what we do: mass slaughter of anything which might be remotely profitable.

Maybe those daily quest givers aren't so bad after all.  I shudder to think what we'd do otherwise.

Levels are an abstraction, but the layer they cover is real-ish

Apparently Cynwise has a blog. Go figure. Anyone, the meercat makes this ridiculous statement.

What is to stop a young Tauren brave from wearing the mighty gear of his elders? Get your head out of WoW for a moment – what is to stop him from putting on the physical garb which conveys these great bonuses? What prevents him, exactly, from picking up an epic mace dropped by Deathwing himself and smashing opponents around him? Okay, let’s say the mace isn’t from Deathwing. Why not a level 60 mace? Or a level 35? How does that work, exactly?

Because a level one character has not yet developed the mental of physical strength to bear such items. These examples aren't just higher quality. They are magical. Magic does weird things. We know this. Magic can tear a person apart. It can drive them insane. It can unmake existence itself, on varying scales. Keep that in mind when you ask why a level one cannot wear a level 60 helm.

On one level, it may be a game mechanic, not a "lollevelupnub" mechanic, but a "we're not going to let you equip gear which will make your character instantly die" mechanic. There used to be an item that did that. It was an item for a fedex quest, but, but it could be equipped. It killed you if you were unworthy. You were unworthy. The item can no longer be equipped. On a side note, I think it would be great if players could equip higher level gear, with ever-increasing chances to cause serious harm to themselves.

Going deeper, we could see how it would be physically impossible to equip the item. A 'good' item might not let you equip it to protect you. Or to protect itself, because it's not generally a good idea to give powerful magical artifacts to people who don't have the ability to wield them, let along protect them from evil. Alternatively, a 'evil' item might not let you equip it because you're weak and unworthy. You are beneath it and may only ruin its evil plans.

Sadly, WoW never bothers to explain this to players. No NPCs, no quests, no cutscenes, or books are there to tell us that trying to use items that we cannot can have dire consequences. Oh sure, there are some hints here and there. The red text suggests danger. The reactions of group members when your hunter rolls need on everything are a sort of community warning. Yep, we're not angry at the hunter, we're worried for him, like when an infant finds your rusty nail collection. While you are upset that they might damage your precious collection, you're more worried about them harming themselves. Babies are such noobs.

It's about time Blizzard fixed this oversight. I don't expect a detailed explanation of exactly how magical items can kill us, I'm not a nerd or anything, but just explain a little why the item text is red.

I want to shoot him. Let me shoot him.

ESRB Warning: Any sense of choice is merely an illusion.

Welcome to Star Wars: The Old Republic. It has some great story-telling.

Meet Tyresius Lokai, a slimy rodent who I really want to kill. I think they did a masterful job with this guy. He's a serial scammer who has managed to piss off pretty much everyone. Bounty hunters are sent to go kill him. And off they set, guns ready, and hoping to catch the previous guy who failed to do the job. Well, we meet him, and guess what: he's been bought off. Sold his ship and now hangs out with sexy twi'lek babes, doing what anyone else would do if loaded with credits. He's not the first to get bought off, since Mr. Slimerat got pretty damn rich with his tricks.

Finally though, I have him. It's been a long chase, but his droid is dead and my gun is ready. He offers to buy me off, throwing me what I think was a box of credits. I'm immoral, but that doesn't mean I'm unethical. This guy is going down. Beside, he's annoying. Whoever wrote this quest chain did a masterful job of making me hate him. I refuse the offer and he sets dogs on me.

But he's out of time and space. His ship isn't ready to take off and my blaster is ready. Time to get paid.

By him.

Even if I really want to kill him, even if I have already rejected his offer in order to kill him, I cannot kill him. Nope. I am magically compelled to take him on as a companion. That makes perfect sense! Why wouldn't I suddenly drop all my hatred and take on a huge risk like that?

Of course the game won't let me break my story. I mean, their story. That's fine. But is this really the only possible way? Did no one suggest the option to shoot him and as part of my reward I get to hire (for free) a companion which is exactly the same as him? It felt like I'd been playing a racing game and suddenly they replaced the finish line with a wall.

Not happy.

I'm looking forward to the trial or f2p.

In defense of insanity

Blizzard's writers have a standard way of making new bad guys: take some good guys and make them go insane. Violin: bad guys. This method is criticized for being lazy and formulaic. I disagree. The nature of the Warcraft universe requires that any true enemies be either innately evil or have been corrupted/gone insane.

Look at it in context. Within the real world greed is a powerful driver. It pushes people to do stupid or evil things. But how powerful can greed really be, in the Warcraft universe? In the real world, greed can get you killed. That's nothing in Warcraft. In that universe, greed can get you tortured for all eternity, and I don't mean "I read in a book that if I am greedy I'll get tortured for all eternity", I mean that you have literally seen demons and magic and know quite well that eternal torture is a strong possibility.

When there are forces that seek to unmake reality itself, everyone is on the same side. This idea first came to me from the Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card, my number one writer for veiled homophobic writing. In the series the hero is in a fight against the Unmaker, a being who seeks to unmake everything, somewhat reminiscent of the Burning Legion. A wise old man tells Alvin that even Satan, the obvious enemy of God, would on his side in this, because Satan wants to rule something. Even evil hates chaos.

From this perspective, we can see how it makes no sense at all to ally with the Burning Legion. There is no reason to trust the demons. Given their propensity for cruelty, it is not hard to imagine them turning on all their allies and destroying them as well. Any alliance is merely putting off the day of personal horribleness while increasing the chances of it coming. It would be like guaranteeing you won't get cancer today by taking a drug that doubles you risk of cancer tomorrow.

One cannot ally with chaos, one can only join chaos. Think of when you see a protest. The protestors are thinking of a cause, a reason. You may disagree with them, but odds are, they are sane. Now contrast that with a riot, of broken windows and arson and police being attacked. Are those people thinking or considering the costs and benefits of throwing a rock through a window? No. They are chaotic. They are, temporarily, uncontrolled, inhuman, and insane.

Think of Kael'thas, who had once sacrificed everything to protect his people, and who then joined the Legion. It could be nothing less than corruption of his very nature, insanity. There is no future for his people in the Legion. Similarly, the Lich King could not be just an angry prince who went a bit too far. He had to be corrupted because only that would allow him to turn against his father, kingdom, and the very world. Merely being a little less empathetic and a little more fanatical would not do the trick. The Scarlet Crusade is another group which is not merely extremist, but entirely out-of-touch with reality. They would not otherwise attack anyone on sight as Scourge (note that I did not say "possible" or "suspected").

Beside the enemies, think of our own actions. When the world is at risk of ceasing to exist, are we going to quibble over small matters? We may argue strategy or tactics, but when there is a demonic army coming, it's not so important whether there is a troll standing over there. We're not going to go raid Stormwind just because Varian talked some smack while Deathwing is cataclysmizing the world.

On the other hand, there is also the "really stupid, short-minded idiot" method, of making someone a threat to the world not because they are evil or in league with evil, but because their sheer stupidity is threatening survival: for example, Garrosh and other orcs who kept picking fights during the campaign in Icecrown. I wouldn't call them evil, but we'd definitely have been better off killing them before they could do any more damage.

Either way, we're not likely to be flying off to a raid against a reasonable person with whom we have a legitimate disagreement.

NPCs, it's okay to not be gay

Jonnie of MMO Melting Pot seems to be unhappy about the absolute heterosexuality of virtual worlds of Warcraft and Star Wars.
http://www.mmomeltingpot.com/2011/09/editorial-why-i-love-being-gay-in-wow/
Blogger and my laptop are disagreeing about how to add links, so I hope you don't mind a bit of copy-paste.

Let's try the usual disclaimers to start off: I'm not gay and I'm not homophobic. But despite being called a fag more than a few times, I clearly do not have an insider's perspective, so maybe I just "don't get it."

That said, who cares? I think we may be making too much of this. By we I don't mean myself, since I disagree with him, and I can't speak for you, the reader, so it appears that we was a terrible word choice.

Azeroth is a fantasy world. This is important is several ways.

First off, the cultures and views within it are not necessarily those of the creators. Second, these are not necessarily idealized cultures. In fact, I'd say that the portrayal of every major race in WoW has gotten progressively less rosy. All of the races have major flaws, with only the tauren, in my opinion, being able to truly say that the evil is isolated to one group, the Grimtotem. In other words, this isn't a perfect world, made so by the lack of homosexuality. Not much is said on it one way or another, beside "me not that kind of orc." It's not shunned or accepted, just not there at all.

Why should it be? From what I can tell of the science, homosexuality is not a choice, but a matter of brain chemistry. Yea, I'm trying to tip-toe there, because "brain condition" and "mental state" all make it sound like something is wrong. Maybe in Azeroth the genetics and brains just don't work out in such a way that homosexual behavior or desire exists. Is this so different from how there don't seem to be dark-skinned humans or white orcs? It's all just biochemistry and it would be strange to claim that an alien universe should work the same way as ours.

Of course it would be equally strange to claim that an alien universe shouldn't work the same way as ours, given the fact that we (useless we, once again) created it. The writers could have decided that the chemistry exists to create black humans and white orcs (they come in several colors already, what is one more?). But why would they? Do these things add to the universe? Do they make the stories any better?

Potentially, yes. It could be interesting to see how various sexual or romantic attractions could change the sub-plots in a game like WoW. Variety can spawn variety. Maybe the tendency to not read quests could be fixed by a bit of gayness. After all, nothing quite catches the attention like an unexpectedly bit of tauren uh, beef.

I'm going to leave that aside for now, since I don't thin I'm getting anywhere on that path. Instead, let's think about how there came to be a lack of homosexuality.

Maybe the writers just never even thought of it. This seems unlikely. So then we have to wonder, if it came up, where did it go? I'm picturing a committee sitting around working out some quest chains.
"Alright, dragons captured his friend and he wants us to go free him. Anything to add to that?"
"Why not make it his boyfriend?"
"Make them gay?"
"Yes."
"No."

Why not? Maybe they don't want to anger the people who would be angered by that sort of thing. Maybe it feels forced to them. These are things I could understand. WoW seems to be aimed at a very wide population. Some of that population includes people who think that rescuing a girlfriend is romantic and heartwarming, while rescuing a boyfriend means that Azeroth Jesus is crying. As for the second, when does a gay character appear? I mean, when is it a natural part of the story for someone to be gay, rather than being a forced "hey look guys, we added a gay character for you, aren't you happy yet?" It's the paralysis of not wanting to do something wrong, so doing nothing at all.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who has the most double-standards of all?
I'm trying to imagine if WoW had been made by a majority gay development team and they acted the same way, creating a world in which everyone is gay. Would I play this game and think "oh yea, sure, everyone is gay, so what? Just coincidence and dev habit, not like it matters." I doubt it. I'd probably think it was a little strange. I mean, an entire world in which everyone is gay? How obviously forced! So maybe the reverse is the same.

But that's silly. Let's face it: an entirely gay universe would need some other means of reproduction, meaning that homosexuality wouldn't be the same. In the real universe, homosexuality is not "normal", is is the exception, not the rule. It is unusual. But that doesn't mean it is wrong. Somehow this distinction fails to sink in for many people, that different is not wrong. But by the same token, not wrong doesn't mean typical.

Games could benefit from a bit more gayness, not because it is politically correct or polite, but because it would allow for more variety in story-telling. And that's the key, it should be for the story, it should add to it, rather than being forced in. If it is going to be forced in, then it is just as ridiculous as the crusades of homophobes, who might be all in favor of gay relationships in TOR, as long as they gave dark side points.

In conclusion, I have no conclusion.

P.S. Upon a second reading, I noticed this phrase "When a personal choice is singled out" Why would anyone ever choose to be gay? It sounds pretty stupid, if you ask me. Who in their right mind would choose to be hated and discriminated against? Doesn't sound like much of a choice to me. Maybe the underlying self isn't a choice.

Better mechanics, worse everything else

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. There, I typed out all the damn periods. No more.

Okay, so here's Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. It has a pretty cool story. You're the "Marked One", an amnesiac who just barely survived a big accident on a horrifying truck, and you have only one piece of information: a PDA that says "kill Strelok". Who is that and who am I?

So you do the only sensible thing: wander off completing tasks for the local trader, getting into fights with bandits, mutants, and the Ukrainian military. And for reasons I forget, you decide that the smart thing to do is to try to get to Chernobyl. You know, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster. Except in this universe it's even worse, with a second disaster causing physics to stop doing what it is supposed to do, creating anomalies in space. Also, a strange device called the Brain Scorcher turns other Stalkers and soldiers into Monolith: aggressive, fanatical, brainwashed soldiers who kill anyone who comes near the plant. And because this chosen course wasn't sufficiently dangerous, you explore various abandoned, or less than entirely abandoned, laboratories which give you (by which I mean me) nightmares.

But along the way the biggest obstacle is the game. Strange bullet mechanics, weapons that wear out and break and cannot be repaired, no matter how much you liked a particular gun, weight limits, and the randomly scattered stashes of valuable artifacts, powerful items created by anomalies, but which are empty until you've found the correct randomly dropped PDA with the location. It's not a pretty game by any means.

In contrast is the third game in the series, a visually stunning and mechanically impressive game, Call of Pripyat. Guns can be upgraded, repaired, and customized to work just as you would want (putting bullets in scary things at various ranges). Stashes exist even if no one has told you the location. The inventory is easier to manage. Artifacts are more fun to acquire, being searched for between emissions (these are a once-a-day Everyone Outside Dies), rather than found purely by chance. On top of all that, there are far fewer loading screens, thanks to most of the outside world taking place in three maps rather than a dozen or so.

But the story...

It can be summed up as this: you're a soldier sent in to look at crashed helicopters and figure out why they crashed. Then you fight some monolith and get airlifted out. That's the main story. Did it sound a little lame? Well yes, it is. There are side-quests, and those add some flavor, but not much depth.

At the time I did not realize this, too busy being scared, or very happy, as I shot mutants and bandits. But after a bit of thought it struck me: Call of Pripyat has a pretty boring main story. Here, I'm going to spoil the big surprise for you, the mystery of the entire game, on why the helicopters crashed. Ready for it? Okay, here it is: the Ukrainian army made maps of the anomalies and the anomalies move after emissions. Wow. Big twist there! No conspiracies, no plots, no secrets to uncover, just "shit moved." Plus some open-ended "something may be going on but we're not going to tell you anything about it" bit concerning mercenaries.

Here's the thing to remember: I had fun playing both games. Sure, the second one had a rather lame story, but it was fun anyway. Does gameplay trump story? Almost certainly, since an unplayable game can never tell its story (which is what SoC was early on, before they fixed most of the really awful bugs). But can gameplay carry a game? Almost certainly, as most PvP can show. And PvE as well, since I doubt most raiders are lore nerds (I mean that affectionately) and most people aren't doing a whole lot of analysis of the quests that they're skimming for quest objectives.

And yet I still wish there were better stories.

The relative elevations of Stormwind and Ironforge

Did you notice the change on the Deeprun Tram? Look again. The tunnel on the Ironforge side is the same, but Stormwind now has a ramp part. No, not a rampart. I mean it has those, but not as part of the tunnel to the tram.

What I'm saying is that as best as I can tell, the tram goes down, then up, ending at the same elevation as it started. Factor in the ramp and lack of ramp and bam, we know the exact relative elevations of Stormwind and Ironforge.

There is one problem: levelness. Since Azeroth is spherical, or close enough, some sort of rounded three-dimensional shape (based on evidence in Halls of Lightning), then level is a constantly changing meaning. Obviously the tram is not level at either entrance, or else it would be sticking out the world. It could be level at an exact distance between them, meaning that at either end the angle with the group would be the same. This would make elevation measurements possible and could be tested: measure the distance of the tram tunnel and if at the midpoint it is level, there you go.

But the tram exits are not titled. This leaves one last possibility: both ends are level. This is impossible with a straight line and a curved surface. A flat surface (flat Azeroth theory) has no evidence (then again, a round Azeroth has very little). But given a round Azeroth, the tram must be curved. Yet it appears straight. How can this be?

Obviously the tram isn't in the normal world in any usual sense. This explains the mystery of being tangential to the ground (parallel) at two points. And it explains why it goes through a large body of water when there is only dry land between the cities.

The tram is inter-dimensional and utterly nonsensical. This is perfectly consistent with gnomish construction.

And I have no clue of the relative elevations anymore. If we knew the curve we could figure it out, but how does one measure the extra-dimensional curving of something when inside the curved space? It would appear perfectly flat, as it does!

I may have just wasted your time. I'm sorry.

Ants cannot comprehend the horror which is a boot

Deathwing is lame. Okay? He's lame. More specifically, his "I set the zone on fire" move is lame.

"Things are red. I guess I'm going to have to run to my body soon."

That's it. That is the entire event. Okay there are also the flames, which lose their effect when a mob wanders through one.

It is pretty impressive to fly over and set an entire zone on fire, instantly killing all the otherwise brave and powerful adventurers. But we're ants and he's a boot. We can't quite comprehend it.

Frankly I find it impersonal. Which yes, that makes sense from Deathwing's perspective, since we are ants after all. But maybe the devs could have done it differently.

How about have him personally torch a town and let some minions handle the rest of the zone, so we can all get personally clawed and burned?

One of my professors liked to say "everyone is the hero of their own story", his idea being that everyone thinks they have something worth saying, so it's good for morale to listen (it was a leadership class), but he clearly had not every played WoW. We're not really the heroes. Oh we get cursory applause, but ultimately we know we're just generic unnamed people who cannot even be personally slaughtered by the evil madness of the Black Dragonflight.

Excellent work, . Are you certain you haven't done this before?

I'm pretty damn certain I HAVE.

Remember that time that we killed Onyxia and then Blizzard said "lol no, our king has to have accomplished something", so then we hadn't killed Onyxia. Apparently that whole thing was uh... nothing? I'm not quite sure. I'm the sort who considers quests to be a source of canon. I mean, they are Blizzard's own writing. It's not as if I'm suggesting that Onyxia was slain my Sneakstab the gnome rogue. But what we do, happens.

I was even willing to set side all the strange repeated villains, with my own twist of illogic.

The NPCs with the same name are just that: the same name. To avoid the perception of a breakdown in leadership, someone else takes up the name.

But I'll be damned if little Pamela somehow forgot all about us and her doll broke again and her father was recorrupted. Was there some massive temporal time distortion of the timeline? I'd believe it! But apparently no. Just someone decided that anything we'd done in the Plaguelands didn't actually happen.

I'm not saying that new players shouldn't get to do the quests for Darrowshire. I'd rather they had the opportunity. It's a nice chain, even the trimmed down new version. But is it asking too much for Chromie to just casually mention that the Infinites did some tinkering, so maybe we can fix some stuff while we're here? A bit of offhand dialogue can go a long way.

When I get to Light's Hope Chapel I'll have to see if they're still offering to attune me for Naxxramas.

Creating a Scene

Spoiler alert: I talk about Jintha'Alor in the Hinterlands.

I'm running around the corner to the altar area at the top and three thoughts go into my head in this order:

First: Damn, I bet those were the mobs I needed for the kill quest.
Second: Uh oh, are there Horde around who just killed them?
Third: Holy shit, that is a lot of sacrificed trolls.

I'm talking everywhere, dead trolls. The stairs are covered. The grass. The stones. Everywhere. All sacrificed.

You can read all the quests you want that talk of the savagery of the trolls, but when I went around the corner and see it, that's when it hit me.

So I starting thinking back about my troll lore, both distant and what my characters have actually seen, and I realized that trolls are absolutely frightening. The Scourge and Twilight cults have their suicidal tendencies and doomsday prophecies and horrors, but can they really compare? Those are all recent. New kids on the block. Fads. The cult of today and gone tomorrow. But the trolls, for them worshipping murderous gods, sacrifice, and torture, those are not isolated events. Those are tradition. There's cult and then there's thousand-thousand year old culture.

Blue thread to read if you care about lore

Bornakk answers a lot of questions about many mysteries in the lore.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25626575587&pageNo=1&sid=1

Time for the Horde civil war

The Alliance is held together by some very old ties. The humans, gnomes, and dwarves have fought together for a long time. Generations. As much as I know there were ties even before the Orcish invasion.

In contrast the New Horde is young. The Orcs have barely been free of the demons. The trolls and tauren are about as recent. The undead even sooner. And the belfs, they got here yesterday it seems. There hasn't been time for alliances to be tradition and unquestionable, to be taken for granted and unshakable.

Really it is Thrall and his relationships which keep the Horde together. And safe. It was who brought in the Darkspear and the Tauren. While they swore loyalty to the Horde, at the time he was the Horde. With Garrosh replacing Thrall, a lot of loyalty will be lost. Not a split yet... until Garrosh starts doing what he does: run his mouth and start conflict.

As Garrish turns the orcs towards expansion against the night elves and away from their allies, the Horde will fragment. How much? I don't know. But I think it's high time we had a civil war to sort out some bad elements.

I can see it now: the trolls break away, at least some towns, and end up in conflict with orcs attempting to retake the territory. Quests on both sides would set Horde players against breakaway or loyalist NPCs. Eventually it is resolved, but tensions run high.

Two individuals are ultimately killed or dethroned: Magatha Grimtotem and Garrosh Hellscream. While the tauren consider breaking away, she takes the lead with her Grimtotem tribe. A combination of loyalist tauren and orcs put down the rebellion and kill her. Or do we? I see an opportunity for her to have a mere setback and end up with the quilboar, undead or otherwise, along with the renegade Forsaken who have previously been plotting with her.

Garrosh will meet his undoing at the hands of Saurfang, making good on his promise: "I will kill you before I let you take the horde down that dark path again". He might not kill him, but instead beat him into submission and take control of the orcs and reunify the Horde.

I think it would be for the good of the Horde. The tauren and trolls need a test of loyalty, and proof that they can and should be loyal. If they can stay without Thrall, that is the proof. The orcs need a cleansing, a removing of the reckless ones, and a civil war would reveal and kill them. Thrall somewhat kept them in line, but I believe Saurfang can be more direct. He was there and knows what the bloodlust leads to, like a former addict who can explain that actually no, slaughtering men, women, and children is not glorious.

Imagine a Horde which is formed not by murloc attacks and centaur marauders, but by removing all the dissidents: the Grimtotem and Zalzane and Garrosh. Imagine a Horde which is together because it chose, at cost of blood, to remain together. It would not be a pacifist Horde, it would not be a warmongering Horde, but it would be a Horde which would do whatever it needed to survive.

Meanwhile the Alliance can rebuild itself and take some of what it has lost: Gnomeregan, Stromgarde, and who knows what else.

Two factions, consolidating their strength, preparing for war over what is left of their world. My axes needs sharpening...

Did you know there are birds in Old Kingdom?

They appear to be ghost birds of some sort; translucent and blue.

My rogue just had a failed PUG in there, and I decided to look at the scenery a bit. It's quite an amazing zone. Visually, and by story. It's tells of the Nerubians, how they fled the Scourge by digging, and went too deep. The faceless ones are down there.

It looks great, the story is familiar but new: a three way war between Scourge, Old Gods, and Nerubians. But I don't like it very much. I don't know why not. The pulls aren't especially hard. I actually enjoy the spell flingers, a chance to put my silencing shield throw to good use. I love the last boss; the insanity mechanic is awesome.

Why don't I like Ahn'Kahet?

Garrosh is going to kill Nozdormu

Two of the caverns of time events are based on preventing the development of the current Horde. The culling of Stratholme creates the current world situation which eventually leads to the Wrathgate.

As we all know, and by know I mean have speculated, Nozdormu is the leader of the Infinite Dragonflight. He's altering time to prevent his death. What is his death?

What being is powerful enough and stupid enough to start a pointless fight with the Aspect of Time? Garrosh.

All of the infinite interferences come down to one thing: The development of Garrosh. He has foreseen the rise of a total fucktard. Garrosh is going to kill Nozdormu, probably for no good reason, and Nozdormu seeks to prevent that.

There will be one last attempt: Nagrand, an event which will consist of us killing dragons as they charge toward Garrosh and try to push him into the bonfire. I predict many people will never complete the instance.

Alexstrasza and her Scourge: Bolvar and Neltharion

Last year I predicted that, in fitting with the theme of the Aspects going crazy, Alexstrasza would create her own undead army as the only way to fight the Scourge.

What better way to protect life than to make it unending and persist even after death? She will see undeath as the solution and will create her own Scourge. Already it has been shown that the Red Dragonflight, having mastery over life, also has the same knowledge of death.

This seems to have come to pass, in a way. Bolvar was saved by the fires of the Red Dragonflight and persists as something which seems between life and undeath. She seemed to have a plan for him.

They must not discover the fate of the young paladin. Not yet.

With the defeat of Arthas, Bolvar takes up the crown to become the new Lich King. He controls it, or at least attempts to. Could the red flight control him in turn? He may be the path by which Alextrasza has her Scourge.

This may not be the end of the story of her and the undead. While Wrath of the Lich King is ending, we know what comes next: the reemergence of the aspect of the earth: Neltharion... Deathwing. I do not know what research he did into undeath, but Nefarian, the current (and thought dead) leader of the black flight had necromantic powers and was experimenting with different breeds of dragons. The crossover into a undead dragon breed is not unimaginable.

A plagued dragonflight seems possible. In Scholomance we saw the beginning: plagued whelps. I doubt Alextrazsa would have as much difficulty in transforming her flight to undeath. How long before we adventurers are sent to kill a new set of plagued whelps?

I was wrong predicting a red plagued flight, but I think we just might see a black plagued flight. Again the life vs. undeath battle will come, and Alexstrasza will have the Scourge at her command. What will she do with it?

On a related note, I will pretend I was brilliant for predicting we'd end up fighting the Titans. Or I would have been if we'd all wiped on Algalon.