Loreslaughter.

[Saturo]

Well, Kara, in the lore, resurrection is hard and time consuming, not just a five second cast that costs 16% of your mana... That's just for gameplay reasons.

It seems that your line between static lore and gameplay reasons is fairly mutable then. Where then is the difference between bringing in lore characters for the sake of a narrative or quest chain and gameplay for the sake of having an interesting, nostalgic or just fun experience or challenge for the players? WoW is a game first, it happens to have a great fiction behind it, but it is a game. If you want to get picky about lore characters and death, how do you justify the repeated killings of the same lore characters time and time and time again just to get their loot?

Everything happens for gameplay reasons.

Then you missed my point, if it is absolutely necessary for the game I can stand something like resurrections the way they are, and they REALLY are necessary for the sake of the game. And you can't call bringing someone back from the dead for the sake of a quest a gameplay reason. My fun and nostalgic experience would be better if they weren't blatantly changing lore for things like this.

Call it semantics all you want, it's still true.

[Anansi]

But it is not a lore change to bring Cenarius back.

"Since his father Malorne was said to have a strong connection with the Emerald Dream, due to its connection to nature, Cenarius' spirit was able to live on in the Emerald Dream as a spirit of nature. The night elves believe he sleeps in the Emerald Dream while his wounds heal, and that he will some day join them again.

The only clue to Cenarius' current activities comes from a conversation his son Remulos has with the spirit of Malfurion when players complete a particular quest. It appears Cenarius is now helping Malfurion combat The Nightmare that is disrupting the Emerald Dream, causing the corruption of The Four Dragons among other things.

It is believed that he will manifest a new body and return to the world if given enough time to recover. " ( Source )

[Saturo]

Aye, but it's been, what? Ten years since he was killed? It is IMPLIED that it would take much longer than that. Besides, as Palladia has continously pointed out, that's not the problem. It's that EVERYTHING is coming back at the same time. Besides, it took ten thousand years for the other slain eternals to come back, but Cenarius manages in ten years? Likely. -.-

[Anansi]

There is no accurate linear time in WoW. Time is impossible to measure in the game and the passage of time is solely in the hands of the writers to establish. The events that occur in the playing of WoW are impossible to correlate to an actual timeline because those events are utterly impossible happenstances. Meaning, if you want to measure an accurate flow of time, how do you factor in the repeated killing of the same bosses week after week (not to mention how do you explain that via "lore"), how much time has actually passed during the events of Wrath? Weeks? Months? Years? Days? Don't forget to account for the fact that we know there are temporal saboteurs at work. Remember that as far as the game goes, Illidan is still up to his plots, Kael'thas is causing mayhem, Ragnaros is still in Molten Core, the Lich King is still alive and so on and so forth. Is it up to you or I to say how events should or should not occur? Do we determine what is the correct timeline and passage of time? Did the killing of Arthas technically occur at the time of the world first kill? How do you measure linear time in a game like this?

The lore of WoW is excellent and provides a wonderful backdrop to the game. But if you are going to play this game to must accept a number of things, one of which is that because we kill lore characters all the time, and Blizzard doesn't really invent new villains on the fly, so something has to give in order to tell the story the writers wish to tell.

The players are not the keepers of the lore, it is not up to us to dictate what is and is not right and it is not up to us which stories we are intended to play out. So far I see nothing wrong with the figures making appearances in Cataclysm, they do not seem out of place, backwards, retconned or rewritten.

[Saturo]

The players are not the keepers of the lore, it is not up to us to dictate what is and is not right and it is not up to us which stories we are intended to play out. So far I see nothing wrong with the figures making appearances in Cataclysm, they do not seem out of place, backwards, retconned or rewritten.

Feel free to let me know when you realize what they are actually doing to the game. Until then I won't bother.

[Anansi]

So because I disagree with you I must be uninformed?

[Saturo]

No, because you simply don't seem to understand WHAT they're doing. -.-

[Kalliope]

No, because you simply don't seem to understand WHAT they're doing. -.-

Adapting the Warcraft lore in ways you don't like, it seems.

WoW is not exactly a sequel to the Warcraft games; it's an interpretation, an adaptation. Things like the Caverns of Time exist only as nostalgia trips (there was no reason for the Hyjal raid, for example; it was purely there for the sheer coolness of it).

WoW != the original Warcraft games. While it would be nice if there was some consistency in the lore, it's not really how multiple adaptations of these worlds work. Different media lead to different stories. Some work out better than others.

[Anansi]

No, because you simply don't seem to understand WHAT they're doing. -.-

Yes, I DO understand what they are doing and I don't see a problem with it, due to many of the reasons I already set out that you seem to disregard because it doesn't fit with your opinion. And that's fine, it doesn't bother me that we disagree, but to assert the position that I must be ignorant of what is being done because I do not agree with your stance is really a bit preposterous.

WoW is not exactly a sequel to the Warcraft games; it's an interpretation, an adaptation. Things like the Caverns of Time exist only as nostalgia trips (there was no reason for the Hyjal raid, for example; it was purely there for the sheer coolness of it).

WoW != the original Warcraft games. While it would be nice if there was some consistency in the lore, it's not really how multiple adaptations of these worlds work. Different media lead to different stories. Some work out better than others.

Right, and it's impossible for WoW to essentially be Warcraft IV because of reasons I've gone over. In the Warcraft games, the story plays out in a very specific, controlled and limited way, with only designated events occurring. When a central character dies, it is specifically by the hand of another, and that is the story. In WoW, specific characters are killed repeatedly every day by thousands upon thousands of players. The Lich King has been killed how many times now, by how many people? When does the Wrath story end? When did the Burning Crusade story end? They haven't, these stories are still played out daily.

The lore certainly crosses over and events in Warcraft inform and guide the stories in WoW but the way in which this happens is different between the two styles of game. Warcraft is static, WoW is fluid.

[RimeCat]

No, because you simply don't seem to understand WHAT they're doing. -.-

I know. The next thing you know they are going to retcon the Eredor so that they were good, peaceful people who were corrupted by the foul, evil Sargeras instead of the unimaginably evil Eredor driving Sargeras mad. And they'll do it just to add another playable race. Just wait and see.

Without the sarcasm, nothing to see here. LOLORE was a staple of complaint back in vanilla. Why would they change it now?

EDIT: Because 'stable' and 'staple' have to be different or there will be some really unhappy pets come Cata...

[Acherontia]

ARE YOU A GOD?

[Kalliope]

ARE YOU A GOD?

The above post leads me to believe that the first raid boss of Cata will be the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

[Sharilar]

There is no accurate linear time in WoW. Time is impossible to measure in the game and the passage of time is solely in the hands of the writers to establish. The events that occur in the playing of WoW are impossible to correlate to an actual timeline because those events are utterly impossible happenstances. Meaning, if you want to measure an accurate flow of time, how do you factor in the repeated killing of the same bosses week after week (not to mention how do you explain that via "lore"), how much time has actually passed during the events of Wrath? Weeks? Months? Years? Days? Don't forget to account for the fact that we know there are temporal saboteurs at work. Remember that as far as the game goes, Illidan is still up to his plots, Kael'thas is causing mayhem, Ragnaros is still in Molten Core, the Lich King is still alive and so on and so forth. Is it up to you or I to say how events should or should not occur? Do we determine what is the correct timeline and passage of time? Did the killing of Arthas technically occur at the time of the world first kill? How do you measure linear time in a game like this?

Actually I thought that had been covered several times. Your leveling is the timeline.

1-60 happened during X amount of time, then you go to Outlands, and all the stuff that's supposed to happen then is done in X time after the Vanilla content, and then the 70-80 stuff chronologically happens after that. The ability to revisit and redo stuff(or do stuff way after you leveled past it) is purely gameplay-related. So once you hit Outlands, Ragnaros has been dealt with, and by the time you hit Northrend, as far as your character's timeline is concerned, BT, Sunwell, etc has all been dealt with. (You even visit the cleansed Sunwell in a Wrath quest.) When the Cata 80-85 stuff starts, the Lich King will be dead officially.

The only hitch will be new new post-Cata 1-60 will take place chronologically after Outlands, but they don't want to redo BC, so have said to just ignore that you're essentially going back in time for those 10-levels for gameplay reasons.

And as for the killing of bosses an all that, sometimes it's the band of heroes, but they can change that at any time for the sake of the story... for example, the players never entered the level 60 Naxxramas and Darion Mograine and a group he led did that. We didn't kill Onyxia; Varian Wrynn did.

[Slickrock]

Things like the Caverns of Time exist only as nostalgia trips (there was no reason for the Hyjal raid, for example; it was purely there for the sheer coolness of it).

Yes, but Hyjal gave us excellent stories like http://www.flinthammer.org/2008/06/15/fathers-day/

And the above is a small indicator of what some of what Blizz is missing. There's too much in the way of demi-gods doing this and that lately, and much less of stories like Darrowshire.

There's a anti-casual statement that the "leet" raiders like to say.. "When everyone's a hero, no one is". The same goes for NPCs "When every NPC is a demi-god, none are".

It a world ripped apart by Deathwing, there could be many Darrowshire storylines, but it's doubtful there will be, based on what we've seen sofar. Blizz is busy ripping off cheezy cop shows instead. They aren't putting in the effort they used to. (And they certainly won't be spending that time in the armour-modeling department either, but that's another rant.

I'm less concerned about the recycling than I am about the lack of orginality. I'd like to see new power rise up. Who stepped into the void when Cenarius "died" the first time? If nothing much changed when he did, then he must have not been that great to begin with.

But we should have seen it coming.. "Patches 1.9.7 through 3.4.5 were merely a setback".

[Palladiamorsdeus]

Pretty much, Slick. Anyone remember Nazan, the dragon from Hellfire ramparts? Yeah, he's not dead either. Just another setback!

[KeemZ]

....so who wants to goto the Dreadlords home world and kick their vampire asses!?

[Slickrock]

Pretty much, Slick. Anyone remember Nazan, the dragon from Hellfire ramparts? Yeah, he's not dead either. Just another setback!

Yeah, if I was a decent cartoonist (I can draw, but not cartoons), I'd start a comic strip about WoW from the npc perspective. NPCs complaining about buffs to players, rezz sickness, holiday events, etc.

Basically, the NPCs are like us, they never die either.

[Palladiamorsdeus]

Oh yeah! I forgot to mention, Hogger make's a return. He is now a boss in Stockades. When you aproach him, he yells "Elwynn forest was merely as setback!"

[Saturo]

That's the kind of change I like. He finally gets the reputation he deserves!

[Kalliope]

Oh yeah! I forgot to mention, Hogger make's a return. He is now a boss in Stockades. When you aproach him, he yells "Elwynn forest was merely as setback!"

What part of this is NOT awesome?

Better be Pyramid Hogger.