Bird Brains: What's Going on in the Spires of Arak?

Skyreach, in the tippy-top of the Spires of Arak

I've run several characters through the Spires of Arak now but had all sorts of problems really getting the details of the conflict there worked out in my head. Honestly, I like the Arakoa and I appreciate their history being expanded in Warlords of Draenor. But it's not been easy.

So, today, dear readers, I'm prepared to tackle all this Arakoa lore and maybe figure out why we should care.

The Gist

The real problem today in Draenor is that a severe caste system has sprung up among the Arakoa that has moved to a point of genocide. Whatever the reasons for this are, I think we should all agree that genocide is bad, okay. And that putting an end to genocide broadly falls within the range of things that heroes like us would work towards. To that end, we are faced with defeating the Adherents of Rukhmar in order to save the mangled, cursed brethren we find in the lower forest.

How Did All This Start?

Way way back a long time ago, there were three eternal bird beings: Rukhmar was a free-spirited happy demigod, Sethe was a nasty thing full of jealousy for Rukhmar. Anzu was a deity known for his cunning. Sethe tried to get Anzu to assist in taking down Rukhmar, but tricky Anzu pulled a double-cross that led to Sethe undoing. With her dying breath, Sethe uttered a curse on the world to cause it to rot in shadow. Anzu bravely consumed Sethe in an attempt to contain this curse, but there were two problems. First, a little bit of the curse got out and fell on the area of Spires known as Sethic Hollow. That land was left bereft and any Arakoa setting foot in there receives Sethe's curse. Secondly, Anzu was warped and wracked with pain from the curse that he contsined. Soon after, he retreated to "a place of shadow" that seems like suspended animation in order to heal. Rukhmar, was horrified, seeing what happened to Anzu and ran the hell away. She stayed gone until Patch 6.1.

Warlords Story

Books and lore, books and lore, gotta read me some books and lore.

Well, we've had a bunch of weeks with our shiny Warlords of Draenor. As the world gets rid of its holiday hangover and buckles down for a new year, I thought it was time to look at one of my favorite parts of Warcraft: the story!

All things considered, I think the narrative is doing pretty well here. There are things I'm uncertain of but ought to get to the bottom of with a bit more questing/raiding. There are things I'd like to see happen and things that I'd rather hadn't.  Let's hope I can edit all this into some semblance of order:

The following are some observations I've made in the past few weeks

Why Do Orcs Pick Such Crappy Places to Live?

Even in a place as nice as Nagrand, orcs pick the one barren hillock to settle.

I remember reading in one novel or another Thrall's explanation of why he chose the lands of Durotar to settle as orcland when he came to Kalimdor. He felt the barren land would make his people harder, tougher. The desert there would keep his people from becoming spoiled by luxury.

It Was the End of the World As We Know It, Part 2

This is Not Our Story

It's his story.

Here on Summer Holidays, I've been able to catch up with a few titles on my XBox, in addition to WoW-- particularly the new content for Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim.

These two titles and so much WoW makes me think a lot about how games do a story. There's a lot of questions that come up in regards to the story the developers give us and how much of that story belongs to the players.

That last one is a doozy. Many game writers would hear me ask that question, sit up straight, aim their nose at the ceiling and tell me to go to hell. The whole controversy revolving around the ending of Mass Effect 3 has put writers in a corner trying to take control of their artistic license and come up with polite responses like the one suggested above. "We should be able to tell the kinds of stories we want to tell and make the games we want to make." There is some approach being taken here to suggest that the story in a game is inviolate as the printed words of a book.

I want to be sympathetic to that. And I don't suggest story-building by committee is the way to go, but these writers are forgetting the first lesson I learned in media classes a freshman in college: each medium for presenting a story or set of information has its own set of rules, its own strengths and weaknesses. The media are all different and you mustn't come to a new medium with the expectations of the old.

The History of the World, Part 2

"Hey, skull. How's it going?" "I'm good, Illidan. How 'bout you?" "I dunno. I'm bored." "Feel like messing with the naaru, maybe?" "Are you sure that's a good  idea?" "Sure. What could go wrong?" "OK, skull. Let's do that." "Alright, let's do a warm-up by corrupting some more orcs first."

For Part 1 of this series, originally written about a year ago, click here.

"The Problems with Elves"

The Burning Crusade felt like a big bait and switch story. What was our primary objective in Outland? Doom Lord Kazzek reopened the Dark Portal so we go running through to deal with the demons...

... Only to find that the most significant power threat in Outland is really Illidan Stormrage. So we refocus and spend A LOT of time taking apart his forces...

...Only to find that somebody had a secret agenda and ZOMG!! Kil'jaden is about to stroll through the front door, back in Azeroth!

Why Cataclysm Couldn't Top the Lich King

Nice try, DW, but no cigar.

I think Blizzard made a mistake trying to "top" The Wrath of the Lich King.

One of the problems that I have sensed in the past several months is that many players aren't as invested in the story Cataclysm has brought us. In one regard, we could probably look and say that players may be getting jaded, and there is probably some truth in that. But on the other hand, there are some principles of story-telling that didn't line up well in this tale of the Black Dragon that destroys the world.

The company line is that "This Cataclysm is like... the most dangerous thing that has ever happened in the world! Everything's all broken! Fire! Fire!" But, the structure of the video game doesn't support such histrionics. The day that Patch 4.0 hit, we all logged on and all the worst destruction had already occurred and the world was still there. Our immediate reactions were not "Oh noes! Must... fix... world...!" For most of us, it was just curious amusement and the knowledge that the world was going to persist, because if it didn't... what were we going to play in?

And, for the lore student, it's easy to see the Cataclysm isn't the most horrible thing that ever happened to the world. The Sundering, 10,000 years before, that split the Pangea-like super-continent into the major landmasses we have now (as well as the full-fledged demon invasion immediately preceding it) clearly altered the face of the world more than Deathwing did.

Another of the key storytelling problems this expansion is just simply that The Lich King was a tough act to follow.

Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects

Since when did orcs get noserings?

I finished reading Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects the other night. It was a good enough read. First, I'll share some proper thoughts that might be called a "review" with the meat of the post, that might be called "spoilers" appearing after the break.

Warcraft stories in general are paced much more like action movies than real books, and I routinely wish, when reading them, that they would slow down and say a bit more about relationships. They rarely delve much past the most glaringly obvious of "feelings."

Yah, yah, Thrall is totally in love with Aggra(vation). Who cares. Tell me something I didn't know, like how Farseer Nobundo can stand to be in the same room as the leader of the creatures who decimated his people and severed his personal connection with The Light with their fel corruption. In this book, all we get is Nobundo patting Thrall on the back and being glad to see him, and are left to imagine the intense conversations that should have happened before such a thing could be possible. Stuff like that would tell us so much more about Thrall then reading about him getting all gloopy over the chick he's fallen for.

Twilight of the Aspects is a moderately decent chunk of plot for Warcraft, taking place between the start of Cataclysm and the launch of Patch 4.2. The real meat of the story has to do with Deathwing's attempts to remove the Dragonflights from his quest to destroy the world.  Deathwing has a minion called The Twilight Father attack Wyrmrest Temple and for some reason, they are all coming after Thrall as well. Ysera has had visions in which Thrall is important to the future of the dragons, though I'm not sure how Deathwing or the Hammer would be privy to such information.

Thrall has a good romp through time, trying to locate the Golden Aspect Nozdormu. The Twilight Hammer also goes about trying to revive Nefarion's plan from Blackwing Lair to make a Chromatic Dragonflight.

There is a subplot in which the Leader of the Infinite Dragonflight siccs an Adelus Blackmoore from an alternate timeline on Thrall which is completely pointless other than to have Thrall get sidetracked with an arch-enemy who he must eventually kill (again). I really wanted Adelus to yell out: "Durnholde Keep was merely a setback!" Really, why not make... a new enemy for Thrall to face, rather than recycle an old one again?

I'm actually not the biggest fan of Christine Golden. I think her characters move more like paper dolls through the familiar scenery we know as Azeroth than they should and what amounts to Deep Insight (TM) in her stories are fundamentals of eastern religion that I learned the first time somebody taught me about meditation. I wish she'd give us something that we haven't really seen before. Her heroes are mighty, her villains craven. The stories go from point A to point B to point C without much else going on in between.

Anyway. It's a lot of plot and a relatively upbeat ending that suggests the Doom of the Aspects may be averted. I'm not a slobbering Thrall fanboy like some (cough, Chris Metzen, cough), but I do basically like the guy and it is good to see him in the world. I just think it'd be more interesting to see him really challenged. Aggra(vation) seems to have been inserted into his story just to push his buttons, but she's in love with the guy and still ranks with all the rest of the backslappers that surround Thrall.

Follow the jump only if you are not offended by spoilers and analysis as to what these plot points bring to our Azeroth.

Blood Elves. Just Blood Elves.

The reasons are better than just that this guy's hair bugs me. Though, this guy's hair does bug me.

Yerp, we're not mincing words in this blog.

Actually, I will mince words. I think I shall write a sonnet on this topic:

Why dost I hate blood elves?
Let me count the ways:
They think too much of themselves
And magic addiction leaves them in a haze.
Their hearts, filled to the brim with spite,
Leaves no space for friendship.
Though, the Alliance, their Sunwell did light,
Their loyalties, they hold out like a bargaining chip.
Though the Belf women be cute
Their attitudes are quite fissilingual.
The Belf men, from veteran to raw recruit,
All seem, really, to be very metrosexual
But if there is one supreme reason for loathing a Belf
Is that there are no greater tools on the continental shelf.

Does that clear things up?  No? Well, I had fun writing it anyway. And look up "fissilingual" to figure out what a good job I did choosing my rhyme scheme!

I wrote in the sidebar recently that I try hard not to hate Belves more than most bunches of pixels that appear on my screen. However, the former followers of Kael'thelas have come to deserve some special attention. A great deal of this is based on my interpretation of WoW lore, while some of it is sort of meta-game thinking:

PvP! Rage! Fire! Brimstone!

This week, Boubouille at MMO-Champion presented some data-mining regarding the win/loss rate among the Alliance and the Horde.

I'll reiterate a point that he made while presenting these two charts: there is no claim to 100% accuracy here. Even a large sample size could not provide that. The only people with 100% accuracy on this matter are Blizzard Developers, and they aren't telling.

In fact, I'll soon be arguing that developers ought to be ashamed of this, so it's no wonder they don't want to talk about it.

So, check these charts: (and please let me apologize for the weird blur. This always happens when I post charts, and I just don't know what to do about it).

Courtesy MMO-Champion.com

This first shows BG activity prior to 2011. Note that the percentage range is only between 40 and 60%, so the wide distance between bars isn't really as sharp as it might first appear.

Courtesy MMO-Champion.com

The second seems to include data only since the start of 2011. It also encompasses new battlegrounds.

Quite simply, this is unacceptable.

Who's the Big Bad of Warcraft?

??????????

For anybody not familiar with this Joss Whedonism: the Big Bad was from Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Each season, Buff and her pals would have some adventures but ultimately, there was always one hideous entity behind everything. Usually, the Big Bad was going to try and destroy the world, or at least Hill Valley High School, and would get foiled. Nexseasonson, there would be a new Big Bad, and Willow would even say things like, "Dont worry, Buffy, we've taken out worse Big Bads than this."

I think it might not be possible to identify The Big Bad of Vanilla WoW, but each expansion has definitely had its Big Bad even if Blizzard muddled it up a bit. The clearer easiest example of The Big Bad is definitely The Lich King. Arthas was the renegade mastermind behind each piece of the Scourge, we stopped him and then one of the greatest threats to Azeroth was destroyed.

But who, or what, is the Ultimate Big Bad of WoW? Who is really manipulating everything as we know it into the conflict we have now? Y'know... the the Guy behind the Guy, behind the Guy. Let's look at some candidates: