Snapshots from Betaland

Naralie had an encounter with the Kirin Tor recently.  There were many of the sorts of mobs there that you might expect: warders who carry shield and sword, watchers who are offensive casters. And witchaloks. Witchaloks?  What is a witchalok? There is clearly meant to be a reference to "warlock" with a name like that. And these mobs are all female.  I wasn't really paying attention at first to whatever I was ganking and then the witchalok started talking:

"Tremble in fear as I call forth the mighty Doomskull!" she said. And sure enough, a large yappy skull with pink particle highlights appeared and started circling around. Not attacking anything, much less me, just circling around. "Behold the sheer size of it! Are you not afraid, mortal? Have you ever witnessed doom of this magnitude?"


I kept my eye on the "Doomskull" but he didn't bother me so I finished off the witchalok and the skull disappeared. Then suddenly, I was surrounded by about ten baby wolvar.  I glanced at my combat text.

"Cower, monster, as I summon a veritable army of Wolfoids!" said a second witchalok I had not noticed aggroing. "Now you are surrounded by Wolfoids! What will you do? Where can you run?"

The "wolfoids" were all friendly green, and just milling around. If they were going to do anything, I think it would have been to say "Hey! Howya doing?" The second witchalok died.

After that, I looked around a bit more and found some male Witchaloks, so, there went that theory. One of them conjured up his Doomskull again and I took a better look at it: an 18 elite with about 2k health. Very formidable for a lvl 17. And it died when I hit it one time.

Sylvanas Windrunner leading the troops
in Silverpine Forest (artist's concept)

And then, Naralie reached the end of the Silverpine Forest cycle. And it ended with a good deal of "Wow!" and a fair amount of "Meh!" as well, unfortunately. Here There Be Spoilers!

It all builds up to a large, full-scale battle between the Unforsaken, led in the field by Sylvanas herself, and the Worgen of Gilneas, led by Lord Crowley, an NPC you have been bumping heads with throughout this entire region.

But the battle resolves with you capturing Crowley's grown daughter, Sylvanas threatening to turn her undead, and Crowley saying "No! Don't! I'll do anything!" And basically giving up, just like that.  I know Naralie is undead and all that, but an Alliance heart beats within and I was extremely disappointed with that kind of a resolution.

But then, what should my Alliance heart next behold? ... One of Sylvanas' generals shooting her in the back and the words appearing on my screen "The Banshee Queen has died!"  One of Garrosh's sycophants fights with the general and his two buddies, but they both retreat to Shadowfang Keep nearby. (Guess who the bosses of Heroic SFK are going to be).

So I start doing my happy dance on the body of Sylvanas, completely thrilled with a lore turn like this, as well as just.. y'know, the fun of seeing an opponent laid low.  And along come two of the val'kyr Sylvy has been hanging out with who discuss the matter between themselves a moment, and then sacrifice their own existences to bring the Banshee Queen back to life.

Talk about letdown!