Filed under: The Burning Crusade

When I haven't played a character for a long time, the contents of their bank become something akin to the one piece of Tupperware that drifts into the back of the refrigerator. After awhile, you completely forget what's in there -- and you'd really rather not look. It's best for everyone involved if you continue ignoring its existence entirely. However, potentially caused by flu-induced delirium, I decided to crack open the Tupperware that is my rogue's bank to see what lurks within.

I actually do play my rogue quite a bit nowadays. In fact, midway through Cataclysm, she became my main. However, the contents of her bank remained completely off-limits, as I hadn't played her since early Burning Crusade. I simply did not want to chase down that rabbit hole. Until now. The very first item I saw in there? A stack of 42 Minion's Scourgestones from my days of farming the Western Plaguelands' Sorrow Hill back in 2005. This is going to be rough.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Last week, we covered Deathwing's shortcomings and the non-reappearance of Kul Tiras. This week, we'll talk about my biggest beef with the run up to Mists of Pandaria, and then segue into a general complaint I had about Cataclysm as a whole. Some of this actually predates 2012, but it's easier to see in the hindsight we all get once enough time passed, so it serves us as well to discuss it now as it would at any other time.

So let's get started by saying this: I really disliked the lack of a pre-expansion event. The ones for Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King and even Cataclysm weren't always spectacular, but they did a really good job of giving you the feeling that everything was about to change. The lead-up to Wrath with the zombie plague was controversial at times, but it was memorable, it served as a really clear line of demarcation and set up a lot of elements that would be taken up later. Garrosh Hellscream went from 'whiny dude crying in Nagrand' to 'warrior willing to challenge his warchief to Mak'Gora' in a pre-expansion event. The Cataclysm pre-launch event had some excellent little moments in it, the return of Rexxar, and gave us the first new AQ content in years.

I understand that Pandaria didn't pose the same kind of situation - instead of Pandaria hosting a threat that comes forth to affect the wider world, the Horde and Alliance bring their war to Pandaria and threaten it - but I still lamented this lack. Something as simple as a Horde/Alliance airship battle that ended with us crashing on the new continent could have worked.

While recording the WoW Insider Show this week, my two co-hosts Anne Stickney and Olivia Grace were discussing heroic five man dungeons and made the interesting point that, while Cataclysm used new heroics to help people catch up in gearing as new raid tiers were released, the advent of the Raid Finder might mean that it isn't necessary anymore. If you're running LFR as your primary way to see/experience raid content, then you'd simply run previous LFR's in order to gear up and collect valor points for the various reputation vendors. This would allow you to get geared enough for further LFR as new raid tiers are released, and keeps the previous LFR's relevant. If you're running the current 10 or 25 man raids, you can use the LFR's for those raids to bootstrap yourself appropriately if you're not already geared well enough from the previous tier of raiding.

Either way, you don't need new heroic dungeons for the task - between daily quests, scenarios and LFR, the Cataclysm model which placed new five mans in patch 4.1 and 4.3 might no longer be necessary. Challenge modes keep the heroics that launched with Mists of Pandaria evergreen, since you can't outgear them, but is that enough for fans of five mans? While both Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm introduced post-launch dungeons, Burning Crusade really only introduced Magister's Terrace in its last content patch. This makes me wonder if we really need any new five mans, and if we do, what would/should they be?

I'm bored of Northrend. It is beautiful and has lovely music and is full of lore and I'm bored. It's the new Outland for me and my alts. Other ways to level abound, of course, but they all have their drawbacks and are various levels of "Been there; done that." as well. So I took Tizzi, the bored goblin mage, to a place where my aged druid spent many grindful days: the Isle of Quel'Danas.

We complain about dailies now, but Quel'Danas (also known as the Sunwell Isle) was the land of too many dailies for our quest log. Grind, grind, grind we ancient Burning Crusade players did, so we could be of the Shattered Sun and get some lovely loot besides. When Quel'Danas was the in-thing, everyone was max-level, so there was no XP -- just the cash, gear, and camping. Oh, so very much camping.

The Isle of Quel'Danas is vacant of players now, but is otherwise unchanged. It resides in a bubble in time, much like Outland, and the NPCs are still there to give quests or be slaughtered.

If you're the kind of person who enjoys building set toys, like World of Warcraft Mega Bloks, then this contest is for you. To quote the contest instructions:

Take your Mega Bloks World of Warcraft sets and stack, rearrange, redesign and recombine 'em into never-before-seen creations. We want to see how big, impressive and creative you can be with your sets. Once you're ready, snap some pictures of your masterpiece and submit them through our official "Build Big, Win Big" Facebook Contest.

So if that's you, head over to the Facebook page and see if you want to enter. Time is short - the contest ends in two days. The grand prize winner will get five CE's, one for classic World of Warcraft and one for each of the expansions. There are plenty of other prizes to win as well, check the official rules here for details.

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One of the things that Mists of Pandaria has really brought home for me is how time progresses in a persistent world. World of Warcraft is now 8 years old, and certain locations like Stratholme, Molten Core, and Darnassus have existed for the entirety of that eight years. Still other places introduced at the time of the game's launch have changed dramatically, or even been removed entirely. A great deal of the world itself has been remodeled as time has progressed - The Burning Crusade added new islands off the coast of Kalimdor, Wrath of the Lich King changed the plaguelands by adding a whole new coastline to the area, and Cataclysm reshaped both continents. This doesn't even take into account adding whole swaths of explorable content like Outland, Northrend, Deepholm or now Pandaria itself. And Mists of Pandaria has advanced the story of World of Warcraft in ways that changed everything, from the removal of Theramore to the coming war of patch 5.1 between Alliance and Horde.

Interestingly, the persistent world of the setting persists through these changes, or more accurately, it persists because of them. Not only do they provide impetus for our adventures, they also contrast what we've come to know with what is new and unknown to us. Pandaria's secrets draw us deeper into exploring what was, to us, a forgotten land, and in so doing make the world we've already known continue. Anyone who leveled before Cataclysm and then leveled a character after it can attest to the wide variety of changes to the world, and anyone exploring that world on a new pandaren or monk is benefiting from those changes. But those changes work entirely because they're changes to the world we've already come to know. We care about Pandaria because it's a new place, yes, but we also care about it because it's a mirror through which we can see ourselves, our characters, our factions. We bring the World of Warcraft we've known for years to its shores.

As time marches forward, so too does the digital edition of the WoW Battle Chest. Not only are new purchasers able to get all the content from World of Warcraft and its first two expansions in one easy purchase, but in addition, all current World of Warcraft subscribers, even those that have never bought either Wrath of the Lich King or The Burning Crusade, will have access to all the content available in both expansions.

This is an extremely positive change for a variety of reasons, including (but not limited to) those of you who want to use Refer a Friend on a second account for the Obsidian Nightwing, or giving the game as a gift to a friend or loved one to check it out. With so many expansions under the bridge (we're up to four as of next week) it's good to give players a leg up on the content.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

It's hard for it to be reflected in the lore, and sometimes it's not even applicable (for instance, Wrath of the Lich King moved right into Cataclysm in terms of lore, since Arthas wasn't even officially dead yet when Halion made his attack on the Ruby Sanctum), but right now, we're in a fascinating period for game lore. Deathwing is dead, the world is saved, and the brewing conflict hasn't erupted yet. In essence, while we're used to the interexpansion periods as players in terms of patches and gameplay, this is for some purposes the first real period of peace (relatively speaking) in years.

Yes, the Alliance/Horde conflict endures, and it is about to escalate. But that event is still in the future. When patch 5.0.4 drops today, we are officially in the post-Deathwing world, with that all-too-brief feeling of accomplishment, as the elemental forces that have threatened us for the past year calm themselves and life turns its face away from its potential destruction.

Being that this is the World of Warcraft, of course that's not going to last. Personally, I'm ecstatic at the chance to go over all the new lore coming to us in the expansion, both in terms of that aforementioned escalating conflict and the brand new world we'll all swarm across like locusts, the formerly mist-shrouded land of Pandaria. We've talked before about how the real end boss of the new expansion is us, how we bring our conflict to a peaceful shore, but what I find most interesting about the lore of the game is how, in its cyclical nature, it plays variations on a theme.

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We have a little more than a week until the talent system that we've had in one form or another since 2004 finally dies. It has had dizzying highs and terrifying lows, it has defined us and been the means we used to explain ourselves to others. There have been cookie-cutter builds and unusual, unorthodox builds. Cataclysm saw it get pared down after growing twice in The Burning Crusade and again in Wrath of the Lich King, but it was still basically the same fundamental system. Now, after all this time, it's going away.

Some old standby talents will be gone forever, others baked into our abilities, and still others have been made into specializations that inform our choice of role without requiring us to choose them directly. Our new talent system doesn't have a progressive tree, doesn't use a descending system, and doesn't give you a point every level or every other level to serve as a kind of carrot keeping you moving forward. For better or for worse, we've had this talent system ever since WoW went live, and this is the end of the road for it. When patch 5.0.4 goes live, we'll have a whole new talent system to kick around.

So share with us your favorite memories of the talent system that was or your fondest hopes for the talent system to come.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

These posts about the naaru are mainly speculative. I hesitate to use the Tinfoil Hat title, because I'm not postulating that they're secretly evil or anything. But the fact remains, we know very little about the naaru. We don't know where they come from, how long they live, if they can enter their Light/Darkness cycle indefinitely, if they ever die naturally or even if they can be really killed. The only one we've ever defeated in combat ended up part of the Sunwell, and who's to say what he's doing in there now? Is M'uru still alive in the Sunwell, or did his mind die with Entropius? We currently have no way of knowing.

We know that despite what we experienced in The Burning Crusade, for the naaru, entering the void phase of their existence is an exceedingly rare and perilous event, at least according to the Ask CDev threads. It is this unknown quality that fascinates me about the naaru.

As we discussed last week, the Ata'mal Crystal that Velen used to create the barrier of Light and hold off Archimonde and Kil'jaeden's followers was an ancient mystery of his people. We don't really know where it comes from or if the naaru gave it to the ancient eredar or if the eredar constructed it somehow. What we do know is that at some point in the distant past before Sargeras came to Argus, the eredar and the naaru had some form of contact. This implies that the naaru may well predate the Titans. What we do know is this: Somehow, in some way, the eredar and the naaru met, and the Ata'mal Crystal was left in eredar hands until Velen came to call upon it for guidance.

We know that Mists of Pandaria is coming out Sept. 25, because they told us that's when it's coming out. But when's the pre-expansion patch? We know it won't be as early as patch 4.0.1 was, because that came out on Oct. 12, almost two months before Cataclysm on Dec. 7, 2010. (It would have had to come out this week to have a chance of being that early.) But patch 3.0.2 came out on Oct. 14, 2008, and Wrath of the Lich King released the next month on Nov. 13, 2008. And Patch 2.0.1 launched on Dec. 5, 2006, which was a little over a month before The Burning Crusade launched.

This leads me to speculate that the pre-expansion patch will go live the week after Gamescom, so the week of Aug. 19. That Tuesday will be the 21st, which fits in with the general one-month-before-expansion launch window of BC and Wrath. It also makes sense because it gives them time to debut the cinematic at Gamescom and then patch it to use the following week. Of course, I'm just speculating, and am keen to hear your thoughts. Whenever we get the patch, it'll be a pretty big game changer as new talents and abilities, a fourth druid spec, and new stat caps as well as several changes to how established talents and abilities work (and some being gone entirely) and active mitigation tanking.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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