Thursday, March 5, 2015

Topics Ahoy! Orcs, Hemet, and Much More

Do you think that orcs are being used as a distraction?

In an idea that is more tin foil hat than anything else I've come up with an interesting idea on where warlords is leading.  We know that the black price had a hand in helping garrosh get away and he also has a major bug up his tiny dragon whelp butt for the burning legion so maybe this entire expansion is a test.

The iron horde threat doesn't really seem to be a threat at all.  Not after all the things we, as the heroes of azeroth, have handled over the years.  The iron horde is something better handled in a quest line or maybe a five man if need be.  The iron horde is in no way worthy of their own expansion.  These orcs are nothing special at all.  The troll empire in ZA or ZG was more dangerous than the iron horde could ever dream to be based only on the fact they are on our world.

Maybe the black price knew where garrosh would be taken.  Knew that he would stop his father and the orcs from drinking the blood.  Knew that this would get the attention of the burning legion.  Maybe he did this all in an attempt to draw them out, to draenor, so we could confront them on a planet that is not ours.  A testing ground if you will.

The orcs are merely a means to and end.  We are killing them not because they pose a treat to us, because as we have noticed they aren't, but because we are trying to draw the legion out so we can fight them in an area where if it gets destroyed it means nothing to us.  It is not our world and it is not part of our reality.

Maybe the orcs are just a minor distraction to keep us busy while we are waiting for the real fight.

Where is Hemet?

We know there is a bonus objective quest in nagrand with hemet at the helm but he really is a no show this expansion, sort of like he never popped up his head in cataclysm.  Am I the only one that misses his quest line?

Cataclysm saw hemet as a no show.  He made a return in mists but many could have easily missed his quest line tucked out of the way in the valley of the four winds.  It was not a major quest line like it had been in the original release and first two expansion.  Now he gets a bonus objective to the area he is in but no actual quests.

I miss hemets quest line, do you?

And where the heck is hemet as a follower.  You would think with many other reoccurring characters appearing as followers that hemet would have been a sure thing as a follower.

Are Hemet, Nat and Harrison the original lone wolves?

Everyone knows hemet is a great hunter, a hunter extraordinaire, the hunter all young hunters would love to be when they grow up.  But hemet has no pet.  Do you think he was using lone wolf before us heroes of azeroth even learned to be lone wolves?

So far this expansion we have found out that two other high profile reoccurring characters in the history of warcraft are hunters.  Two people we might have never thought to be hunters.  People we have a long and storied history with.  People such as nat pagle and harrison jones.

Who would have thought they were hunters too?  It does make sense however.  Nat can be said to hunt fish and being a fisherman is not a huge difference from being a hunter.  He is hunting fish so he makes sense.  Harrison might be a little more of a stretch.  Call him a relic hunter and everyone in the game will agree he is a hunter in that sense.  But I guess his collection of adventuring skills had to come from somewhere and only a hunter could be as skilled at things like that, so he too makes sense.  I guess I just never thought of them as hunters.

We have known both of these bit players in the warcraft universe for a long time.  We have worked with nat on countless occasions and the same can be said for harrison.  At least for me, I never once realized they were hunters until they joined me as followers and I looked at their resumes and saw that they were indeed hunters.  That makes it even more of an honor to have them working with me, for me.

I do not recall ever seeing either of these fine men with pets.  Are they like hemet and part of the original lone wolf club?

Trap launcher not a bug any more?

It might only be a little thing, an inconsequential one at that, but it was really bugging me that every time I changed a talent I needed to set my trap launcher again.  With the amount of talent changes I use on a near daily basis this expansion that means I was always forgetting to reset the darn thing one time or another and not noticing it until I actually needed it, which of course was too late.

It was a general annoyance but one that since the patch doesn't seem to be happening.  When I switch talents my trap launcher stays lit.

I figured I would mention it because I think it is a cool quality of life change and I do not recall ever seeing it mentioned anywhere in the patch notes for 6.1 or prior.  Maybe I missed it, that is entirely possible, would not be the first time that has happened.  But if I didn't I have to ask why does blizzard not mention good changes like this?  You would think with all the bad press over 6.1 that mentioning even the little things that are good would or could help their image some.

This is one of those undocumented changes I am liking.  Most undocumented changes suck, that is why they do not mention them, because they know people will complain about them.  Who would have ever complained about this?

What to expect next?

Fun speculation time on where we are heading next.  I know we have not finished this expansion yet, but it is fun to think about what the future brings and not just the near future of more orcs.  Oh, surprise.

I think the leading candidates right now are, one, the naga expansion.  One where when we manage to get back from what was possibly this one way trip queen azshara and the naga have made major advances in our home world while all the major heroes of azeroth were gone.  It makes sense both from a story perspective and a lore perspective.  She has been a looming big baddie for a very long time and this is one hell of an opportunity to step up being most of the people that could stand up against her were elsewhere dealing with other issues.

The second leading contender would be based off the first topic I mentioned here.  A battle with the burning legion on argus, but the argus of the alternate universe.  It is the next logical step.  Something we should do next before we have to go back and deal with the issues of aszhara on azeroth.

The one thing backing up an idea like this would be the new store mount.  Just like the enchanted fey dragon came in mists and we see them all over draenor, the mystic runesaber does seem to have an argus sort of feeling about it.  More so than an aszhara one.  If we use store mounts as a telling factor, and it could be, this could mean we are staying in the alternate time line for another expansion.  The one thing going against that idea is that people are not liking this alternate timeless and blizzard might write off that idea because they could fear people dropping subs if they stick with a concept they do not embrace.

There are other options for what could come next and I have had different opinions over time, but right now these are my leading two, what about you?  What do you think is coming next, and no, I do not more more orcs in 6.2.

20 comments:

  1. Grumpy I chuckled out loud over your comment about the trap launcher bug being fixed. It was the one of first things I noticed about 6.1, and when I discovered it I did a fist-pumping "Hallelujah!" That stupid bug caused me to dump hundreds of traps ignominiously at my feet, usually when I was trying to cc a mob in a raid. I knew it was a bug, I knew I had to check for it every time I changed talents, specs or even glyphs, yet I almost always forgot.

    This bug fix, along with the vastly shortened time you remain in combat after trapping for barn work orders, are two of the best features of the patch!

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    1. I must have dropped my fair share at my feet too. With our talents being so great in terms of there are many reasons to change them that means there was bound be to a time or three I forgot to reset my launcher. Was nice to see they fixed it.

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    2. Now I'm constantly disabling my TL because I got used to the bug...

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    3. I did that the first day, don't any more however. But I do tend to look for it a lot more often than I used to. Maybe because I am not sure when it is going to turn itself off again for not reason.

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    4. I'm not 100% sure but it looks like it's still bugged for me. Had to turn it on a few times last raid.

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    5. I have not had that happen yet, but that would be even more annoying now. Now we will never know if it is working or not, at least before we learned to just click it back on after each change. I think I would rather it not work at all than work but only sometimes.

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  2. Whatever folks say good or bad about WoD, I have never had anyone express the feeling that this expansion has a "Big Bad" woven through its every thread. Garrosh is hardly a presence, much less an 800 pound gorilla in the room.

    This truth is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Kargath, an orc who so wanted to leave ogre oppression and the arena that he cut his own hand off, seemingly returns for shits and giggles to that very arena in an effort to die in under six minutes as entertainment for said ogres. To say that I have my doubts about this bunch as hoodlums is putting it mildly.

    I'd gladly take the BL in the next expansion and would love it doubly if that happens on Argus. Follow that up with the naga running rampant on Azeroth upon our return and I'll be happy for a long time to come.

    But not too long. Let's not have any 18-month patch cycles again please!

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    1. spot on about kargath. i hadn't given it any thought, but yeah, that just doesn't make much sense. The background dialog of the fight also seems to downplay the gravity of his background story.

      he was pretty flippant about us killing 100 orcs on the intro quest as well. seemed like the opposite of his dramatic short.

      Lords of War Part One – Kargath
      --
      regards,

      regardsanon

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    2. @To Bee

      I think that would be the best set up. An alternate BL and then returning for the naga. Not sure what blizzard has in mind but that fits in terms of story and has some playing value. It also allows them to do a BL expansion without burning off our own, which is supposed to be, as many see it, the last expansion of wow.

      @Anon

      Yeah, I thought that was weird too. He fights for his life, cuts off his hand, goes through hell, and then comes back to die for their entertainment? Not exactly a warlord, more like someone with some serious issues.

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    3. Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:

      I really do hope that Blizzard does not make the mistake of having alternate Burning Legions. That would cheapen any expansion featuring the main time line Burning Legion into being a second best effort, a johnny come lately whose value has already been spent. Yes, I know that it would be possible to pull it off and make the real Burning Legion expansion better than the alternate Burning Legion expansion, but I do not have any confidence that Blizzard is capable of such a feat.

      On the other hand, if the Blizzard writers/developers are crafty for once, the Burning Legion of Draenor is the same one that invaded Azeroth twice. This would enable the obviously not the iron horde end game villain to be the first of the Burning Legion expansions or basically a two in one deal for WoD. First the player housing expansion, and then the first of the Burning Legion invasions in the last major pre-expansion patch. That would change the nature of the WoD expansion greatly.

      The fight will spill over to Azeroth and Outland in the next expansion and when the Burning Legion (the one and only) is driven away from all 3 worlds, comes the expansion where the fight is taken to other planets conquered by the Burning Legion. The fight through Burning Legion territory to Argus does not have to be consumed in a single expansion and could be the thing that keeps WoW alive and well for a generation or more past the current date.

      Again, the writers at Blizzard have a choice to make. They can go the many world Burning Legion or they can go one Burning Legion astride many worlds. I think the latter makes a better story. I doubt Blizzard will.

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    4. This is BC 2.0, in a way, what do you think would stop them from going to the legion well multiple times if they can. Blizzard had been out of original ideas since wrath, and even that was not original, it was from the RTS, just very well done.

      I do not think blizzard has developed on deep story line ever for the actual MMO.

      I still like my idea of having to fight "us" in the alternate world, as we have already been beaten and enslaved by the legion many years ago in that world. Might be nice to see what our world looks like if it had been legion controlled for the last 10,000 years.

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    5. I think the real linchpin to an expansion where we fight ourselves is making my character the Big Bad of this world. That makes sense to me!

      /chuckle

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    6. I had a "vision" post some months back on how I would like to see this expansion play out and the end of it had us fighting our alternate selves in the final battle. It would be interesting to say the least.

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  3. I dunno what to think about the alternate timeline stuff. I thought that the new Draenor is our "real" timeline now, and Outland is, like, gone, or obsolete?? Whatever is true I hope for some Burning Legion action.

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    1. Nah, this is not in our real time line. It can't be or everything we have ever known would be changed. No orc invasion means no orcs on azeroth and the face of azeroth will look nothing like what we know of it.

      So with that said, this can not be part of our timeline now.

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    2. yeah alright i see your point. i was under the impression that everything has to stay the same as it was (with portal, invasion ~30y,is it?, ago etc) or we would never gotten to draenor in the first place because no portal, no orcs, and no garrosh+that time dragon to open a new timeline that is now part of ours.

      whatevs. time travel and alternate universes are topics a tad too complex for a game, better not think too much about it!

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    3. Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:

      To date, Blizzard has established two separate timelines for the game. The one we are playing in is the primary timeline, with both Azeroth Prime (our Azeroth since the original game Orcs vs Humans) and Outland (the broken remnants of Draenor in our timeline) as the two worlds we have played on.

      We know of at least one more world in that time line, Argus (the original Draenei home world). It can be reasonably inferred that other worlds exist, including what ever is the name of where ever the Burning Legion first came into existance. That certainly is not Argus as Velen's vision saw the Eradar becoming demons and joining the ranks of the Burning Legion, already a worlds spanning army.

      For timeline number two, the same worlds exist: Azeroth-2, Draenor, and Argus-2 but it seems things went differently on all three worlds.

      Azeroth-2, who knows? At a minimum, there has been no disruption of the pre-"Orcs vs Humans" societies. Possibly there is a chance that Azeroth has spent the last 10,000 years as an outpost of the Burning Legion. The Well of Eternity never exploded in that case and the Azeroth-2 terrain would include all the lands sunk in that cataclysm. Likely it would also include Night Elf demons beyond just Satyrs, as well as a variety of the other Azerothian races in demonic forms or as undead.

      But that is not the only possibility for Azeroth-2 and in fact the divergence with the Azeroth-P may well have occurred at any number of points, including 10,000 years ago there never having been the War of the Ancients on Azeroth-2.

      The WoD expansion is a collision of those two separate timelines. The Dark Portal Garrosh was using on Draenor was attuned to the timeline of Azeroth -P which implies no Medivh was around on Azeroth-2 to initialize it or that he was around and was never corrupted to do so. Anyway Garrosh's Dark Portal was different from the original in that in crossed not only space but also penetrated between the two time-lines.

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    4. @Ril

      I've been saying that since they first teased the idea. I said this alternate universe different time line thing would go over like a lead balloon. For the most part it seems I was right.

      @ Anon

      Kadgar IS Medivh...

      Trust me here.

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    5. Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:

      While I do tend to trust you, why in this case? What makes you so certain sure that Kadgar IS Medivh? And if so, do you mean the Medivh of timeline prime or timeline two?

      :)

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    6. Which one I am not sure but there are some minor details that make me think it is quite possible. Things such as khadgar using abilities well beyond his scope, him turning into a crow and flying away, which we have only ever seen medivh do before, and the constant insistence that he "knows" gul 'dan well when in fact khadgar and gul 'dan never once met before. Yet even in the legendary quest line gul 'dan speaks of how well they know each other.

      Medivh "knows" gul 'dan very well and would have the knowledge they both speak of. Medivh has some of the powers khadgar uses even if khadgar dos not and last but not least, medivh always turned into a crow and flew away, something khadgar had never done or ever even showed that he might have the ability to do.

      There are other small factors. But no matter what, one thing is certain, khadgar is surely not khadgar.

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