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. They burn worlds to ash. They render the verdant uninhabitable. Theirs is not the evil of mad chaos, leaping to corrupt for amusement or decadence. They are the means by which the mad Titan seeks to unmake everything. They are the Burning Legion, and it is their purpose to end existence. Nothing less will satisfy Sargeras. Yet even within the seemingly monolithic forces of the Legion, there’s room for political intrigue of a sort. While Sargeras has seemingly caused his own exile from the seat of power, his former lieutenant Kil’Jaeden now leads the Legion, a position he seemingly aspires to hold indefinitely. And Azeroth is directly in his crosshairs. Sargeras starts his war The Legion was born out of the decision of the Titan Sargeras. Whatever we believe about his motives, his actions are clear enough. Once the champion of the Pantheon, Sargeras’ long struggle to protect the Titans’ work in ordering the universe led him to battle demonic forces from the Twisting Nether that sought to consume the life and magic from creation. While Sargeras battled and defeated the entities that he faced, their very existence and the fathomless evil they displayed
One of the most common complaints surrounding Cataclysm is the extremely linear nature of questing, both in the 1-to-60 experience and from 80 to 85. For levels 1 to 60, this linear nature almost works for me, largely because presumably new players heading through this content would like to do so as efficiently as possible. With a multitude of zones to choose from, the replay experience with Cataclysm isn’t too bad — particularly because it’s really not that hard to level from 1 to 60 at the moment. And that’s especially nice for new players trying to get the hang of the game. However, when you hit level 80, there is one distinct path to follow to level 85, and each zone in that path has been carefully laid out. Quests are divided into hubs, and each hub must be completed in order to move on to the next. If you’re taking an alt through these areas, you must replay through the same set of hubs and the same set of quests. If you’re replaying several alts, this gets incredibly tiresome incredibly quickly. Thankfully, we’re about to say goodbye to that leveling model. Let’s look at Mists, shall we? No spoilers, I promise! Mists of Pandaria is divided up into several monstrous zones and several smaller ones — but don’t let the smaller zones fool you. While Jade Forest is one gigantic leveling experience and the place where new players will start out, these smaller zones are far more fluid as far as your leveling
Sargeras starts his war
The Legion was born out of the decision of the Titan Sargeras. Whatever we believe about his motives, his actions are clear enough. Once the champion of the Pantheon, Sargeras’ long struggle to protect the Titans’ work in ordering the universe led him to battle demonic forces from the Twisting Nether that sought to consume the life and magic from creation.
While Sargeras battled and defeated the entities that he faced, their very existence and the fathomless evil they displayed troubled him. When he faced and defeated the Nathrezim, the shadowy magic and corruption of the dreadlords were baffling and enraging to him. If the cosmos could birth such horrors, what point was there to imposing order on it? In the end, the Titans were doomed to fail.
So Sargeras turned his back on the Titans and their grand project. Now, as relentlessly powerful as Sargeras himself is, he is but one of the Titans. Although the Pantheon let him leave, hoping that in time he would be restored to the champion they once knew him as, he knew he couldn’t undo all of the Titan’s creations alone. It’s a vast universe, after all.
Luckily for Sargeras, his time as the fist of the Pantheon had been spent in defeating and penning up several of the most depraved and evil forces in existence. Sargeras sought out the prisons he himself had penned the dreadlords and other such foul demons up into and shattered them, impressing the demons into his service.
One of the most common complaints surrounding Cataclysm is the extremely linear nature of questing, both in the 1-to-60 experience and from 80 to 85. For levels 1 to 60, this linear nature almost works for me, largely because presumably new players heading through this content would like to do so as efficiently as possible. With a multitude of zones to choose from, the replay experience with Cataclysm isn’t too bad — particularly because it’s really not that hard to level from 1 to 60 at the moment. And that’s especially nice for new players trying to get the hang of the game.
However, when you hit level 80, there is one distinct path to follow to level 85, and each zone in that path has been carefully laid out. Quests are divided into hubs, and each hub must be completed in order to move on to the next. If you’re taking an alt through these areas, you must replay through the same set of hubs and the same set of quests. If you’re replaying several alts, this gets incredibly tiresome incredibly quickly.
Thankfully, we’re about to say goodbye to that leveling model. Let’s look at Mists, shall we? No spoilers, I promise!
Mists of Pandaria is divided up into several monstrous zones and several smaller ones — but don’t let the smaller zones fool you. While Jade Forest is one gigantic leveling experience and the place where new players will start out, these smaller zones are far more fluid as far as your leveling
Plague Leech and disease issues
There’ve been a few changes to death knights, but the most interesting one comes with Plague Leech. This first-tier talent, which replaces Vile Spew, will allow you to generate a death rune by canceling the diseases from your target.
The nice thing about this skill is that it gives us another much-needed Blood Tap replacement now that Blood Tap itself has been turned into a somewhat more restricted talent. The bad thing about this skill is that it’s probably going to become mandatory for min-maxing DPS death knights. If your diseases are about to expire anyway and you can eat them for an extra death rune, it’s hard to see how that won’t become a DPS increase. Once we all reach level 90 and the math has been sufficiently mathed, it seems relatively obvious that Plague Leech will be considered mandatory by the hardcore PvE community, for better or for worse.
Coupled with this is the Glyph of Outbreak, which takes away the cooldown on the ability but makes it cost 40 runic power. While this seems like a nice, handy way to solve our disease-spreading issues in general, the 40 runic power is what makes this a bit hard. That makes it impossible to use as an opener, which means it’s out for unholy death knights unless they want to have the awkwardness of spending runes to apply diseases and thus having an orphaned blood rune in their rotations. In addition, runic power regeneration has been cut down in a myriad of ways
When I hit the new skill cap in archaeology on beta and achieved Zen Master, someone in my beta guild remarked that 600 skill points in archaeology sounded painful. But it’s not — it’s actually better! Archaeology got some buffs in Mists of Pandaria.
There are only two new races to worry about, the pandaren and the mogu, and you get nothing but these two on the continent of Pandaria. As usual, players get four random digsites across the entire continent, though it’s currently bugging out to three or even two sites only. But Pandaria is so huge, you say. We’re restricted to no flying until 90. How can it not be painful?
The digsites have been greatly improved. They’re better positioned for traveling in between digsites, whether by being actually near each other or just by being closer to flight points.
Also gone are the gigantic digsite areas. On beta, all the sites I dug at fit inside my minimap at max zoom. Players can complete six surveys per site instead of three, and each survey grants the player five to nine fragments.
I strolled the Jade Temple Grounds or darted between bears below the Gong of Hope in Jade Forest, collecting pandaren fragments. I journeyed to Winter’s Blossom and Lao & Son’s Yakwash in Kun-Lai Summit. Behind the rolling hills in Valley of the Four Winds lies The Heartland, where I completed pandaren artifacts with Pandaren Oracle Bones I’d collected.
The ruins where the mogu still patrol in
