RIP Garrosh Hellscream, Warchief, War Criminal

This is a spoilery sort of article if you haven't worked that out yet.

It is with a relieved heart that we of the Alliance lay former warchief of the Horde, Garrosh Hellscream, to rest. Or, not really to rest, but more to slowly rot away, exposed on the plains of Nagrand after having been electrocuted and squished in a talon of earth by his former mentor and noted orc shaman, Baldy.

Hellscream, a noted war criminal and warchief of the Horde who was overthrown in a recent revolt, had most recently escaped justice in Pandaria using a botched time travel mechanism and is presumed to be at least partly responsible for the recent attacks of the so-called "Iron Horde" on the Blasted Lands of Azeroth. It was these actions that brought together a rare, mixed task force of Alliance and Horde heroes to storm the Dark Portal, protect our world from this new threat, and bring Hellscream to justice.

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.

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.

Random 4.2 Thoughts

Now, all can quiver with jealousy at my Cenarion Hatchling in the WoW Armory

Ugh!  Malfurion Stormrage and Thrall being BFFs on the slopes of Mt. Hyjal.

Mal:  Oh, young Thrall. I sense a great change in you! You have accomplished much since last we met!
Thrall:  Master Stormrage, it is good to have you in the waking world again.

Here's how that conversation should have really gone:

Mal:  Oh, young Thrall. WTF are all your #$%@ing orcs doing in Ashenvale. Why, I oughta ...
Thrall: Master Stormrage, I'm not sure what you mean, I've been kinda busy at the Maelstrom for a few months now, y'know, holding up the world and all.
Mal:  Real men don't make excuses, you green-skin punk. Have you been to Ashenvale at all recently?
Thrall: Well, no ...
Mal: Didn't you know your boy Garrosh was going ape$%#t all over the place there?
Thrall: Um...
Mal: [calls down some moonfire on Thrall's head] Did you even stop to think about what happened the last time you left a Hellscream in charge of something?  He killed Cenarius!  And by the way, i wouldn''t go down to the Shrine of Malorne, Cenarius is there now and really isn't into the whole "forgive and forget" thing. You may be the "World-Shaman" or whatever, but even that tosser Fandral is going to kick your ass here in another minute. Cenarius, he'll kill you, and then he'll go to work on you.
Thrall: Yeah, about that... you know, it wasn't really Grom who did that it was the vile demon Mano...
Mal: [drops more moonfire on Thralls' head] What did I just say about excuses?
Thrall: ...

What I Wanted to Know from the Lore Panel

Alex Afrasiabi and Chris Metzen try to not answer too many questions at the lore panel

Watching the lore panel this weekend, I sensed that there is a fine line Blizzard walks every time they do one of those things. There are relatively few questions one could ask that Metzen and Afrisabi would be willing to answer.

Spoiler Questions - Most of the unknown story is stuff we will see in the near future and they are not going to give that away.

Questions about favorite characters, like "Are you going to bring Illidan back?" The devs look at each other, cause they know the answer in Warcraft is that anybody could come back, but that one is not really under consideration.

Completely random questions that nobody ever thought about, like, "What clan does Saurfang belong to?" I think it's an interesting question, but as Metzen put it in that case: "Blackrock. As of ten seconds ago, it's Blackrock."

So, let's imagine that I up and flew my butt down to Anaheim and forced all the others out of the way so that I could ask the Lore Questions. This is what I would have asked: