Horde issues: Thrall

Ok. Big things happening in the WoW community. NDA lifted on the information from MoP press event and we have good amounts of info flowing through the web. Check out Wowhead and WoW Insider for great coverage on the event, new zones, dungeons and monk class among other things!

But now it's time for the final part of Horde issues lore entries. These Horde issues have been about different things that pop out from the current status of story in WoW. Now it's time for the true leading character of Cataclysm:

5. Thrall

Ex-warchief, world shaman and, in the final moments of Cataclysm, even the acting aspect of Earth, this orc has come a long way from Warcraft III. In this expansion his story arc expanded and had an ultimate climax with the events of the Dragon Soul raid. Thrall was the hero here, he stood up for everyone and defeated the ultimate evil threatening the world. He got the girl and they are on their way to be a happy little family. Ok. Done. Now what?

The story of Thrall has been an interesting one. It is the ultimate story of achieving great things. He's the generic figure of fairytales, an orphan who becomes king. He is a well written character, not everything is visible in the game. Reading the novels you see real doubt and struggles within him. He's not an ultimate baddass hero, but an actual person in the world. That being said, Thrall has a huge risk of being what is commonly known as a Mary Sue. He sometimes seems to be too perfect. I'm fine with melodramatic storytelling, but we've seen the Thrall story now.

Aggra is an interesting personality and she could be developed further, but with Thrall we have achieved the climax. Everything from now on can be only anticlimatic or just plain bad storytelling. We know that in MoP things will accelerate to the point where Garrosh becomes the enemy and he must be overthrown. I sincerely hope that we won't be seeing Thrall coming back to being the warchief. He might step up against Sylvanas or just be the general wise shaman figure in the backround. There can be things happening, but the story must move on. With Thrall we can't go back, he must be developed further so he can be utilized. He's not old so there's plenty for him to do, but we shouldn't see BC or WorLK Thrall anymore. He is the hero of the Horde and remains so (unless they do the ultimate b-class plot twist where Thrall becomes the bad guy...), but he's grown up now and achieved so much already. Dear Blizzard writers, just be careful with Thrall!

Horde issues: the Forsaken

3rd entry on Horde issues, now it's time to talk a little about the Forsaken and where they are standing in the overall story right now. I'd say that no other race has so interesting and well developed story with a great deal of  tension at the moment. While many races are pretty much standing still or just suffering from somewhat lame personalities, the Forsaken are not. Why I want to bring this up right now is because there's so much lore potential in the Forsaken now that can be utilized to make great storylines or to waste completely.

But what is the situation? If you're committed Alliance player or just ignorant Hordie, you may not have noticed what is happening with the jolly undead. The whole story and reason to exist for the Forsaken was built around revenge on the Lich King. Arthas killed Sylvanas and destroyed Lordaeron and Quel'thalas. Many inhabitants of those nations were turned undead, including ranger general Sylvanas Windrunner. I hope you know the story: While Arthas was busy in Northrend, Sylvanas and some other undead broke away from Lich Kings grasp. They could think themselves and they were horrified seeing what was happening around them. Before Cata, making an undead character, you first regained your consciousness when you were freed from Lich Kings control. Sylvanas, the queen of the Forsaken, swore revenge on the person who did such horrible things. The whole motivation personally for Sylvanas and for all Forsaken was to revenge. Eventually Lich King was destroyed. Sylvanas came to the Frozen Throne to see herself that her archenemy was truly destroyed. Sylvanas would have killed herself there, everything was done, and in a manner of speaking she did, but the valkyr allied themselves with Sylvanas and there was a new beginning for the Forsaken.

Sylvanas was humiliated, after the Wrathgate battle, where the new Forsaken plague was used on allies and enemies alike, Horde and Alliance invaded Undercity. There wasn't much trust left for Sylvanas. And with Lich King destroyed, there wouldn't be more undead to become Forsaken. The alliance with the valkyr changed it. They had the power to raise corpses to become undead, undead who are absolutely obedient and totally under Sylvanas' control. And Sylvanas has a new mission, to make whole norther part of Eastern Kingdoms Forsaken land. The Forsaken are expanding, they invaded Gileneas and Sylvanas wasn't afraid to use her new plague against the living. The tension between Sylvanas and Garrosh is overwhelming. The rest of the Horde don't agree with Sylvanas' methods and views, and the raising conflict is unsettled.


We are in a truly delicious situation, anything can happen. Possibly the lamest solution would be Garrosh outlawing Sylvanas and players would have to hunt her down. Might be a nice raid yes, but then there would be some puppet ruler in the Undercity and no more further possibilities. Other bad solution is doing nothing. The Cataclysm story builds up beautifully, it would be shame if it was left there. Thinking different solutions for the Forsaken and possible story developements, I came up with one question that might sum up somthing about the current state of story:

Is there more to the Forsaken apart from Lady Sylvanas? 

Whatever happens, I think that question will be answered.


Next time it's the final post about the Horde issues.

Horde issues: Blood elves and Tauren

Continuing from the last post where I discussed current status of Garrosh Hellscream, I will now talk about two other Horde races and their current status. They both have enormous lore potential and story-wise I'd love to see more.

2. Blood elves

They had their own expansion, you could say. Burning Crusade storyline is awesome, the whole story of addiction, solutions, dissapointments, betrayals and the ultimate redemtion, that was really nice. The problem is similar to what the Alliance is experiencing with Draenei: nothing is happening. What's the problem? Blood elves have much potential. Personally I would like to see something happening within their hierarchical structures. Prince Kael'thas is no more and Lor'themar is only a regent lord. Blood elves need to sort out their leadership. In other words: They need a king.

Imagine this: A power struggle. Magisters start to arrange that Lor'themar would be properly enthroned to be the new king of Sin'dorei. There might be a more extremist group of magisters, who don't support Lor'themar and his pro-Horde policy, they'd like to see Blood elves independent from everyone else. You know, the basic isolationist thing. They might recieve support from other groups. What do Blood Knights do? And what about Farstriders? A true struggle within Sin'dorei society. That would offer them something to continue with from the climatic ending of BC. What do you think?

3.  Baine Bloodhoof and the Tauren

Baine doesn't like Garrosh. That's understandable. Garrosh killed his father, Cairne, in ritual duel. The death was really an accident that was caused by secretly poisoned blade. The one responsible is actually Magatha Grimtotem, leader of the Tauren Grimtotem tribe. In the Thousand Needles questline Horde players need to do the nasty thing and help Magatha since there no better alternative at that stage. The story culminates in Magatha getting artifact of enormous power. Things are unsettled, Grimtotem are a real threat. The stage is set, but then......nothing happens. That's the problem. That story needs to continue. We are left in the air. We have the Grimtotem threat with what we can't really do anything and we have Baine, leader without proper personality. His character needs to develope. Grimtotem tribe attacking Thunder Bluff? Something, anything!

Two more blog entries with Horde issues remaining. Then it's back to the glorious gold making.

Horde issues: Garrosh

Last week I wrote about the Alliance overall story developement in Cataclysm. I think it's good to have something similar about the horde as well.

I think Horde is currently doing better from the story point of view. And I don't just mean that Cataclysm has been huge military victory for the Horde. Alliance lost Southshore, big chunks of Ashenvale and we know that Theramore will fall. I don't really care if one or other has the upper hand in the Horde-Alliance war, but what I do care about is the overall story. Of course from gameplay perspective Alliance players need to feel that what they do has some meaning. Alliance has been crippled during Cata. New human introduction says it clearly, Alliance was just recovering from the war against the Scourge when Deathwing came. Horde just was more prepared and took the advantage when it was possible. But now it's time to examine some major issues in Horde storyline. This entry will be about a major figure in Cataclysm:

1. Garrosh Hellscream
They love him, they hate him, he's the ultimate warmonger and many players would like to see him gone. It's not just as simple as that. Who is this Garrosh anyway? If you don't know about the lore let's do a quick recollection:

Garrosh is the son of legendary Warsong clan chief Grom Hellscream. Grom was the first to drink Mannoroth's blood that caused the orcs to sink to demonic bloodlust and from wich the first war against the humans followed. Garrosh was too sick at the time to leave Nagrand to the wars with his father so he was left behind. He didn't drink the demon blood and his skin remained brown. Garrosh was devastated as he would have been bery eager to fight. Grom and most of other orcs were imprisoned after the second war. When Thrall freed the orcs from the camps he befriended Grom. In Kalimdor Thrall and Grom fought Mannoroth. Grom managed to slay the pit lord, but he lost his own life as well. By killing the demon the blood curse over the orcs was lifted. Orcs were free and Grom was remembered as a great hero. In BC Horde players got to make contact with the brown skinned Magh'ari orcs who were not corrupted in the first place. Garrosh and the other Magh'ari joined the Horde and he travelled to Orgrimmar with Thrall. Thrall made him to lead the Horde campaign in Northrend. Afterwards when Thrall went to continue his training as a shaman he laid down the mantle of warchief and he appointed Garrosh to be the new warchief.

But what is it with Garrosh then that pisses people of? I think the problem is that people see him as very shallow, one-sided personality. It is true that Garrosh is a warrior from inside out and he really does care most about the survival of the Horde and his people, by any means neccessary. Horde needs timber and farmland to survive? Ok, let's invade Ashenvale. Many see Garrosh only as a hot head who wants war at every turn. If you play Stonetalon mountain storyline as Horde character, you will see that there's more to him. In the culminating events we learn that the campaign is necessary, but destroying druid grove is too much for Garrosh. He strongly disapproves the massacre of innocents. We see that Garrosh fights a war, that's true, but he's also an orc that holds honor in great value. Honorable orc doesn't kill innocents.

Garrosh is an epitome of the orc slogan: strength and honor. But how do his people see him? Think for a moment yourself: He is leading a succesful war campaing and claiming more land which secures the survival of his people. He also is brown skinned, a living symbol for overcoming the corruption and for the new beginning of orc race. What do you think, do his people want him to continue as warchief?

What's up with the Alliance?

Ok, this entry isn't about gold making, today it's lore time. I absolutely love good stories and Warcraft universe is filled with them. To be honest, there are also a lot of bad storytelling, but hey, Azeroth is big enough to have many kind of things.

Ineterst in Warcraft lore isn't just a thing for roleplayers. If you raid, you are always in the middle of the important lore events. I'm sincerely shocked that so many people don't care about the storylines and don't even want to understand what is happening in the game around them. And then there are of course the quest texts, personally I just love the immersion that happens when I involve myself to the events of Azeroth. These days quite a few people just sit in Stormwind or Orgrimmar and spam dungeon finder or battlegrounds to level. Oh they miss so much of the game world. There have been and are some absolutely brilliant quest chains that have brilliant stories written in them. Many have played the worgen and goblin starting zones, they offer a good feel to the whole race, what they really are about. Then if you haven't already, spend some time and level a forsaken character through Tirsfal glades and Silverpine Forest, that is some nice storytelling! For me there are some truly memorable quest experiences: Wrathgate in WotLK, the missing diplomat -quest chain in the old days, Hyjal quest chain, Horde Dragonmaw quest chain in Twilight Highlands and the Shady Rest inn quests in Dustwallow.

But enough of memorizing, what I want to talk about today is the status of Alliance in current state of events. Cataclysm has been very much about Thrall and quite a lot about Horde or neutral factions. Malfurion has been more a neutral npc than an Alliance leader. One of my favourite WoW fansites, WoW insider, had recently couple of podcasts where they discussed the Alliance status. What's the problem then? The truth is, Alliance seems to be pretty boring at the moment. Many people dislike the fact that Alliance seems to be losing all the time to the Garrosh's Horde, but I don't really care about that. The problem is, Alliance doesn't seem to do much about it. I now present a few ideas that I think would improve the overall story developement from where we are at the moment:

1. Tension. We need it. And I don't mean just war between Alliance and Horde that has been in a focus in Cata and will be likely even more in MoP. I mean tension within factions. The Horde has it, it remains to be seen what happens between Forsaken and the rest of the Horde. But Alliance is just lamely united and their only leader seems to be Varian Wrynn, who in my opinion is quite a shallow character. We need different point of views. There are many possibilities, like hot headed Varian vs. other Alliance leaders or maybe even tension building within night elves which takes us to the second point.

2. Malfurion and Tyrande. Oh boy, there's a huge wave of complaints that Tyrande is too passive and acts now just to be arm-candy for Malfurion. She just doesn't seem to do anything. We need something more alike to Warcraft III where she had strong opinions and would say them openly also when that'd mean disagreeing with Malfurion. Malfurion is too much out of this world to be interesting all by himself. We need something to happen to him,  some sort of character developoment.

3. Jaina Proudmoore. We haven't heard anything of Jaina since the end of WotLK. And we know Theramore will be destroyed by the Horde. This offers a good chance to develope Jaina. Will she feel betrayed? What will she do? Some proper drama would be in order.

4. Draenei. We need something from draenei. They also have been too passive. What are their plans within the Alliance?

5. Difficult moral dilemmas. This is really the point that makes the story interesting. Alliance vs. Horde isn't a battle between good and evil. Both factions do good things and both fanctions do terrible things. And war is never nice. I'd like to see that in story developement as well. I want stories to make us think about our choices, and we need situations where there are only bad alternatives. That forces characters to think about their actions. Warcraft universe have many stories about corruption and redemtion. Let's have more of that.

6. Less comedy. Ok. Occasional comedy is good, but not when whole zones are built over pop-culture referrences. I'd like to see slitghtly more serious themes.

What do you think? What in your opinion would improve the Alliance from the story point of view?

A very basic principle

Browsing through official WoW forums there's something that always seem to pop up no matter how much me and others there try to say. There's this one little thing that somehow is really difficult to grasp. Here goes, in big and friendly letters:

TIME IS MONEY

Yes, it really is. So learn it now so you don't need to do silly mistakes later. A lot of players think that when they farm materials for their professions, they are free. "I mined this myself so it's free for me!" To keep it simple, that is just not true. Every minute you are farming something is a minute you could spend doing something else. I don't mean that you necessarily should, but indeed you could be doing something else. To calculate the time spent you simply need to know how much you would earn if you'd sell everything you farm in the auction house. 

There. You're time is not free. Everything you gather, has a value. That value can be cashed out by selling the raw material and thus receiving its value in gold. Other option is to craft it into something else and by that add some more value to it. Let me make an example here. Let's say we have ten stacks of elementium ore. If you mined it, you can choose if you put it in auction house or process further. Elementium ore would sell for something like 50g/stack so for ten stacks you would earn 500g - 5% ah cut = 475g. That's the value of your time mining them. But then if you don't just sell them, but prospect them instead. The value of elementium is usually about double the raw price when prospected. Prospecting will give you gems. A lot of green quality and some blue quality gems. Then you can sell the raw gems in auction house or process them further by cutting them. You sell the cut gems, the final product of jewelcrafting for nice profit. With ten stacks of elementium, you're likely to end up to something like value of 700g-900g when processed through jewelcrafting. Why is it more value then? Well, you've obviously put some more time into it and time always converts into money. And not just the time you spend by prospecting and cutting but also the time you've spent in leveling your jewelcrafting and obtaining the recipes for cutting the rare gems. It's only natural you'll end up with more value.

The trick in gold making is to learn to calculate that how to convert smallest possible amount of time to biggest possible amount of gold. Auction house pros quite often calculate their income not just as simple amount earned, but as a value of gold per hour. It's not a way to show of how awesome you are, it's a tool used to determine most effective gold making methods. Let's imagine you have two reliable ways to make 4000 gold every day. One of them takes you 2 hours each day (literally the time you spend in front of your computer performing all the actions required to have the gold in your pockets) and the other one 45 minutes. Which one would you pick for your regular daily gold making routine?

Getting started on the goldmaking

Everyone is a noob when starting something new. That also happens when you are starting WoW and dream of fortunes. Sorry, can't do it in an instant. Ok, so you begin your search in the wonderland of internet and find several ways to make gold. But when starting, do you have several maxed out characters with maxed professions and 50k spare gold? No, you don't. You need to start up somewhere and that's what todays entry is about.

Starting on a new server or being completely new to World of Warcraft? The truth is, getting your professions rolling you need some starting capital, a reasonable amount of gold. There's no way around it, some professions are expensive to level and take initial investment to get enough materials to start crafting seriously. No worries, though, there are easy enough ways to build up your wealth so you can start to play the serious gold making game. 

Even if you're an experienced player it's good to try once in a while to start a new character on a new realm without support from alts or guildies. If you know what to do, getting gold in lower levels is easy. I will give some tips first for lower levels and then for 85s who just don't have the money to start heavily in professions.

But let's imagine that you have a fresh lvl 1. Any race, any class, it doesn't matter here. First thing to do when entering the world is to have a look around the starting area if there's an another character getting names for his guild charter. Do him a favor and sign his charter, but at ask at least 5g for it. Easy gold! Then the basics you'll continue through the whole leveling process: loot everything. It's simple enough, especially if you have the auto-looting option turned on, but it's still surprising how many people don't loot the corpses. Vendor all grey items. Green quality boe items can always be sold in auction house for more than their vendor price. One thing you will run into is of course bag space. If you can, try to get four Netherweave bags to start with. They are cheap enough if you have a  higher level alt to get them for you. If that's not possible yet, luckily these days starting quests offer some 6-8 slot bags so you have something. Update to bigger bags when you can, they make life a lot easier.

At level 5 you can have learn your professions. To maximize gold when leveling, always take two gathering professions. Which two out of three you get is up to you. These days you can track both herbs and ores on minimap so you can take mining/herbalism-combination if you feel like it. Whatever you pick up, use it while leveling. I recommend mostly questing, feel free to fill in some dungeons and battlegrounds but stick mostly to questing so that you will explore the world and gather things. Everything you get from gathering professions you want to list for sale in auction house. Don't bother with the crafting professions at this stage. When leveling, keep your gathering professions in level with the zone you're in. I recommend taking dual gathering for every single new character you make. The exact point when to change profession or two to crafting ones can be tricky. On your first character I recommend you level all the way to 85 with dual gathering. By the time you reach max level you should have artisan flying skill and continue gathering until you have a comfortable amount of gold to continue to crafting. 

Most meat you pick up from mobs while leveling can be sold in auction house. If you want, you can level cooking and fishing while leveling your character, but most gold you'll get if you just sell everything you don't absolutely need yourself at that stage. And remember to kill a rare mob if you run into one while leveling. They always drop some boe gear that can be sold. 

Other thing to remind of is of course cloth, sell it. All of it. Wool cloth goes usually for insane prices. There are several maps to point good farming locations over the internet, if you're into farming. When you get into Northrend, Frostweave cloth will net you huge profits (downside of which you will of course face again when leveling tailoring...).Characters with high enough tailoring skill will loot more cloth from Northrend corpses.

What if you're already at 85? Still, gathering is the way to go if you don't have much gold. But at this point there's many possibilities. With gathering professions, you should check out which ores, herbs and leathers are most profitable to farm. Quite often these are not the endgame ones where the competition can be fierce and profits low. Usually mithril, thorium, adamantite and cobalt will net you much more than elementium. You can also solo low level instances and sell or disenchant what you loot (if you happen to have enchanting already that is). You can also farm different types of elemental materials required for crafting. Herbalists gather volatile life from all Cataclysm herb nodes and volatiles net good gold as well. Same goes with lower level elemental materials like crystallized/eternals (WotLK) or motes/primals (BC) or even Vanilla ones. 

A good option for casual gold making for level 85s are daily quests. I believe that dailies are at the moment the most common way to make gold for average players. There are dailies available at level 70, level 80 and level 85. Molten front dailies at Hyjal were released with patch 4.2 and they are still a nice way to make gold. Level 80 dailies at Argent Tournament in Icecrown give nice gold as well plus with the special currency you earn there you can buy pets that sell for good prices in Auction house. Combining gathering and daily quests is very efficient way to make a good starting capital for level 85s. Then it's time for the serious business.