This week, we look at the aftermath of the Second War and the years between it and the Third. A lot happened in this intermezzo between the drums of two wars, because in general it seems that Azeroth basically reels from crisis to crisis. I should also point out that in at least one case, a major lore figure dies in one source and yet is said to be alive later in a previous source. If you pay attention to Warcraft lore this will no doubt not surprise you terribly.

At the end of the Second War, the Alliance forces destroyed the Dark Portal in a rather impressive bit of CGI for the time. Generally, it was hoped that Khadgar’s little bit of pyrotechnics would end the threat of the Horde forever, as (the theory went) there would be no more reinforcements coming in through the portal. This act effectively broke the back of orcish resistance to the Alliance of Lordaeron’s forces, and in so doing ended the war, as even Orgrim Doomhammer found himself captured and chained by the Alliance. Only Kilrogg Deadeye and those few forces directly under his command managed to evade capture and remained free. This would come back to cost the Alliance. However, in the immediate aftermath of the War, the nations of the Alliance found themselves divided on the question of what to do with the orcs, many of whom had sunk into a strange despondent lethargy with their defeat. Should they all be killed? If not, what else could be done with them?

The Alliance was also divided on the question of Alterac. Following that nation’s treacherous alliance with the Horde that allowed Doomhammer to nearly sack Lordaeron, the kingdom of Alterac had been shattered by Alliance forces and its rulers deposed. This left Alterac a nation in name only, a lawless, broken rump state in need of stability. Was it to be annexed into neighboring Gilneas or Stromgarde? Thoras Trollbane of Stromgarde was certainly in favor of annexing his neighbor, or carving it up between the other Alliance nations. The debates between the leaders of the Alliance nations grew ever more heated and little was decided between them.

So things stood. The Horde was broken, its troll and goblin allies having returned to their own affairs, the orcs eventually imprisoned in internment camps. This decision was hardly a popular one: while a young Varian Wrynn went along with what his elder monarch and former host Terenas Menethil ultimately wanted, Genn Greymane felt that this was the last straw and pulled his nation of Gilneas out of the Alliance altogether. Similarly, Thoras Trollbane of Stromgarde argued bitterly with Terenas that the orcs were too dangerous to allow to live and also eventually pulled out of the Alliance over this issue. Still, Terenas refused to simply butcher the orcs. This debate and its fallout, however, took years. Before it could be decided, a new threat arose.

While the Alliance was mired in these issues, the remains of the Horde on Draenor was not so idle. As the Horde collapsed, former Gul’dan supporter Teron Gorefiend, also known as the first of the Horde’s death knights, made his way back through the Dark Portal and found himself on a world spiraling towards complete destruction, tainted and corrupted by the warlock magics Gul’dan had used to secure his power. If you read the novel Beyond the Dark Portal, you’ve read how Gorefiend was met at the portal by Ner’zhul, who had found himself effectively leader of the Horde remnants on Draenor itself. Unfortunately Ner’zhul was injured in the backlash when Khadgar destroyed the Dark Portal, and so for two years things remained at a standstill.

We covered some of this in the Ner’zhul KYL of course, but we’ll recap and expand pertinent bits now: Ner’zhul and Gorefiend, despite their mutual distrust and distaste for each other, eventually came up with a plan. SInce Draenor was dying, it was necessary for the orcs of the Horde of Draenor (as they now called themselves) to find a new world. Azeroth had proved itself to be someone intransigent in that regard, but they could make use of the dark portal and of various magical artifacts to construct new portals to other worlds, hopefully finding one in the process that would be suitable to their needs. And so, two years after the destruction of the Dark Portal, they launched an audacious plan. Of course, as desperate as they were, only an audacious plan would really have any chance of success. In order for it to work, they had to reopen the portal to Azeroth and make contact with Kilrogg Deadeye, who for two years had managed to evade the Alliance forces with his Bleeding Hollow clan.

Soon, Deadeye, Grom Hellscream and the Warsong clan, and Kargath Bladefist of the Shattered Hand were making strategic raids into Azeroth, attacking Nethergarde Keep, and retrieving magical artifacts for Ner’zhul’s use. Before this, however, Ner’zhul’s Shadowmoon Clan (led by Dentarg, the Ogre-Mage who was fanatically loyal to the elder shaman) raided the Bonechewers and retrieved the Skull of Gul’dan itself. Ironically, Bonechewers led by Tagar Spinebreaker would lead a raid to the Tomb of Sargeras to retrieve one of the artifacts Ner’zhul required, the Jeweled Scepter of Sargeras.

While the Jeweled Scepter, the Eye of Dalaran, and the Book of Medivh were all necessary components in the ritual to create new portals (presumably the Book of Medivh contained the knowledge Medivh had imparted to Gul’dan in the creation of the original Dark Portal while the Scepter and Eye were both artifacts whose power Ner’zhul could tap, since he himself had long since been abandoned by the spirits of Draenor) it appears Ner’zhul just wanted the Skull of Gul’dan as a symbol of his former apprentice’s death, to gloat over. It’s also possible that the Skull whispered secrets of demonic magic that Kil’jaeden had vouchsafed to Gul’dan, (Beyond the Dark Portal certainly seems to imply as much) and so helped lead Ner’zhul down the path of corruption and madness he’d long since started on. Eventually, Ner’zhul traded the Skull away to Deathwing, no longer needing it for his purposes.

The raids on Dalaran and New Stormwind (what we now just call Stormwind) for the Eye and Book, respectively, helped galvanize the moribund Alliance into action. In the two years that had passed since Khadgar had destroyed the Dark Portal the fear had always been that the orcs would return, and clearly now they seemed to be doing exactly that. Terenas took premptive action, ordering Turalyon and Khadgar to find out just what, exactly, was going on. If the orcs were invading again, why didn’t they try to keep any of the places they were attacking? Hit and run raids like the ones Grom Hellscream and Deadeye were leading simply weren’t the way the Horde had operated before, was this just the opening stages in a new invasion or something else entirely? Since these questions were originally forced to the King’s attention by Khadgar himself, the mage was a necessary member of this new expedition (and it was a given that he’d probably have gone with them even if he hadn’t been included) and Turalyon, as Lothar’s lieutenant and successor was the only one imaginable to command it.

Soon other Alliance heroes were assembled… the elves of Quel’thalas represented by Alleria Windrunner, famed for her ability to track and kill orcs, the dwarves by Kurdran Wildhammer of Aerie Peak and his loyal mount Sky’ree, while Danath Trollbane demanded to accompany the expedition to expiate the guilt he felt for having failed to prevent the orcs from opening the Dark Portal again. Danath’s men had bravely held the line against Grom Hellscream and the Warsong (as well as death knights serving Gorefiend) so that their leader could warn Khadgar and Nethergarde of the new orcish threat, and Danath took their deaths personally. For her part, Alleria hated the orcs so passionately that, for her, killing an orc was reflexive, as easy as killing an insect, and she had no intention of being left out of the mission. Kurdran, for his part, was eager to go because he’d heard rumors of black dragons aiding the orcs, and he was hoping for a shot at Deathwing himself. Kurdran was nothing if not ambitious in his dragon killing.

These heroes and the forces under their command pursued the orcs (who had never intended to stay on Azeroth at all, not that there was any way for the Alliance to know this) through the Dark Portal. In so doing, they were the first people born on Azeroth to set foot on the Red World, formerly a lush and verdant planet before the rise of the Horde.

Next week, the Alliance Expedition battles the Horde. Heroes apparently die on both sides, and in the end one world is saved at the expense of the other. Who escapes and who perishes, well, that’s all part of the story.

A month after patch 3.3 and Icecrown Citadel dropped, Lume the Mad weighs in on its raid content with mixed feelings. Icecrown’s story, art, music, and general encounter design are all fantastic, he observes, but Blizzard’s approach to “gating” content is having an ugly effect on raids. When you’ve only got 10-15 shots at killing specific bosses, small issues rarely stay that way for long. “I have to pressure people with lag to sit so as not to potentially lose a shot at killing the boss,” he writes. “And when someone makes the most innocent of mistakes, people get pissed off. It’s not fun for them. And it’s not fun for me as a result.”

That’s the part of the gating system — “Raiders (having) the fear of God struck into them for wiping just once,” as Lume puts it — of which I’m not overly fond myself. A key raider lagging or disconnecting can result in a wipe on much of this content, and more particularly on the two bosses (Putricide and Lana’thel) for whom limited attempts currently exist. Both command very high DPS requirements, so even if you can easily afford the loss of a laggy DPS or two on something like Festergut (which is pretty baldly a DPS check in its own right), a single person going offline on Lana’thel-25 can wreck both the attempt and peoples’ nerves. Losing 4 Blood-Queen Lana’thel attempts last week due to the bug with Kinetic Bombs aggroing her through the ceiling during the Council fight was equally frustrating.

To play devil’s advocate, the gating system does have a few things going for it. As I’ve written previously, any honest player would admit that blowing through content isn’t an ideal way to experience it. The gating mechanic also pressures people to fix their mistakes more quickly, and that’s something raid leaders like a lot (let’s be honest, we’ve all been in raids where at least 75% of the wipes were due to really dumb mistakes). And Blizzard isn’t really restricting your ability to kill these bosses so much as it’s punishing raids that attempt to brute-force a kill without fixing strategy flaws.

Unfortunately, this has the side effect of punishing raids for more innocent mistakes or technical problems. Ultimately, I’d guess that gated content has a different impact on each raid, and it’s a bit irritating that some of this impact is out of the raid’s collective control.

Hundreds and hundreds of applications later, we have selected (most of) our newest columnists. It was quite difficult to choose among the top entries and we want to thank all of you who applied. Your enthusiasm for both the game and our site was truly awe-inspiring.

Now, on to the new hires. As you will see below, some things changed during the application review process. There was much debate over the final choices, and we think the new writers we are bringing on are the best of the best.

Legal Columnist: We’ve decided to add a legal columnist to WoW.com, covering various aspects of the law as it relates to WoW and online gaming. Amy Schley, a third year law student at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, will be joining our staff and provide her insights in the area once a week. Additionally, expect Amy to weigh on hot button legal issues as they come about, like the recent string of arrests made through WoW.

Paladin: When we put out the call for a holy paladin writer, we were approached by our rogue columnist, Chase Christian. He has been raiding as a holy paladin for quite some time and wanted to know if we would consider him for the new column. We asked him to submit an application and compared it to all the others we received for the position. He rocked it. Chase will continue with the rogue weekly column and will be starting The Light And How To Swing It – holy paladin edition next week. Gregg Reece will continue to cover retribution and protection paldin topics on a weekly basis, but will be posting his column on Thursdays instead of the weekend.

Shaman: Turns out asking for an odd spec combination didn’t work out for us. We were hoping to find someone who could cover both restoration and enhancement for us, but, while we received applications that attempted one or the other, we weren’t hugely impressed with any that attempted both. We were very impressed with one particular enhancement shaman application. We couldn’t pass up on Rich Maloy aka Stoneybaby from Big Hit Box and so we decided to hire him to focus purely on enhancement shaman.

Unfortunately, we didn’t see any equally stand-out resto apps — so we’re still looking for a resto shaman. We feel that many good candidates probably did not apply due to the requirement of being an expert on the enhancement tree. Now that we are going to have three separate weekly shaman columns, we are now accepting applications for pure resto shaman. You have until Sunday, January 31, 2010 to apply. Details on our LFM page. If you’ve already applied once, you are welcome to reapply.

More writer selections after the jump!

Druid: You may not know the name Tyler Caraway, but any moonkin who has ever read the official class boards will know his forum handle. Yes, boys and girls, we hired Murmurs! Tyler has been the voice of balance druids on the official forums since vanilla WoW and we are very proud to bring him on to write about our feathery friends. As you may recall, we originally put out the call for a combo resto/balance druid writer. However, we couldn’t pass up on Tyler and so Allison Robert, who currently plays a resto/feral dual spec, will continue to cover both topics.

AddOn: Writing about AddOns is tricky business. You need to take something dry and technical and transform it into something accessible and entertaining to read. And no one approached it with more enthusiasm and flair than Mathew McCurley. Once he gets AddOn Spotlight back on track, he’ll be tackling Reader UI of the Week and few more of the crazier ideas he had.

Lore: Lore applications are still being discussed. We will have a decision soon ™.

With the exception of Chase, all the new writers will take 2-3 weeks before they will start writing for the site. Once we get them contracted and set-up in our system, expect to see their work for yourself.

For those of you who applied and have any questions about your application, feel free to email me at

Last week we discussed a set of achievements likely to drive the average player to the poorhouse. This week, in the spirit of consoling people who may not necessarily have a Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth in their immediate future, I’d like to present a series of 5 achievements where at least one of the following is true:

• They’re an unusual means of making gold in a way people wouldn’t necessarily expect, or:
• It would be almost impossible not to make a pile of gold while doing them.

Now, a disclaimer; the most obvious picks here would be achievements like Got My Mind On My Money or The Bread Winner, but they’re more a record of your previous looting and questing rather than being something you really have to go for consciously. I’m on the lookout for slightly more interesting ways to grow rich from achievements that are not so directly concerned with moneymaking:

Frostbitten

Hunting down a series of maddeningly elusive rare spawns will net you this achievement, a nice bit of lucre, and — if you accidentally kill Loque’nahak while a hunter’s camping her spawn elsewhere — an enemy for life (try not to do this last part). Unlike their classic and Burning Crusade counterparts, who typically drop greens or blues of varying worth, each of the Northrend rare spawns drops gold, cloth, and a bag containing a potentially valuable blue BoE. Assuming you complete the entire achievement by killing all 23 rare spawns, you’ll net 345g outright on the low end to 575g on the high end, in addition to whatever else you can make by auctioning the cloth and BoE’s.

While hunting down rare spawns in Storm Peaks (and more particularly Vyragosa), you may even hit the motherlode and happen across the Time-Lost Proto Drake, who also drops a bronze proto-drake mount. While the Time-Lost isn’t among the criteria for Frostbitten, the mount’s certainly a nice incentive toward adding him to the kill list.

The addons NPCScan and SilverDragon are often used by players hellbent on getting Frostbitten finished (although both will require you to clear your Cache folder in the WoW subdirectory if you want to use the addon to find the mob again ingame). Rare Spawn Overlay can also be helpful, but unfortunately it hasn’t been updated since June 2009.

100,000 Honorable Kills (or most variations thereof)

Put plainly, there are no immediate rewards for the honor you’ll pile up from battleground wins and honorable kills. What makes the various Honorable Kill achievements lucrative is that all that honor you’ll be getting from those kills can be converted into gems with Jewelcrafting Quartermasters available to both factions. The Alliance can visit Captain O’Neal in the Champions’ Hall in Stormwind; the Horde can visit Lady Palanseer in the Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar.

Both will sell you all of the raw epic gems now available from Northrend (e.g. Cardinal Ruby, Majestic Zircon) at the steep price of 10,000 honor each. However, for anyone grinding honorable kills for the 100,000 Honorable Kills achievement (or anyone who just really likes battlegrounds), getting honor-capped while running out of ways to spend it is pretty routine, and converting honor into gems is a great side income while working towards your “of the Alliance” or “of the Horde” title. On my realm, it’s usually possible to make 150-200 gold per raw gem on the auction house, and you’re going to get honor-capped many times over while reaching the 25,000, 50,000, and 100,000 Honorable Kill achievements.

Loremaster of Northrend (Horde) and Loremaster of Northrend (Alliance)

With the introduction of the Dungeon Finder, it’s become easier than ever to level solely in instances (it’s how I’ve gotten a Restoration shaman from 71 to 79 with just a dungeon or two a day). If you so desire, leveling through dungeons means the entire array of wonderful Northrend quests can be done at 80, rewarding extra gold for your troubles rather than experience. I had saved all of Icecrown questing as a kind of lore treat for my main at 80 (and was not disappointed), and not only did I get the luxury of enjoying the quests’ stories without the added pressure of leveling, but I was also rewarded with a nice little pile of gold for my troubles without the need to spend any of it at the class trainer.

Even if you level (or have leveled) mostly by conventional questing, it’s still eminently possible to have an entire zone or more’s worth of quests still available after you hit 80. You can easily maximize your profits by: a) using the Dungeon Finder to assist leveling, and: b) remaining in one zone until you’ve exhausted its offerings, and only then moving on to the next.

1000 Fish

Something odd happened in Wrath — not only did fishing get cool, it also started paying (especially if you’re an accomplished cook). The Well Fed buff is considered mandatory by min-maxing raiders (particularly by those miserable souls now occupied by Blood-Queen Lanathel…./shudder), and no small number of valuable foodstuffs come directly from Northrend waters. Now, while you can get 1,000 Fish quite easily by just parking yourself at any coastal byway and yanking up whatever unlucky fish happens along, I find that to be both exceptionally boring and a short-minded means of getting the achievement. There may be gold in that there fountain, but there’s also an awful lot of it to be had elsewhere.

In general, there’s a good market for Fish Feast materials (Musselback Sculpin from Borean Tundra, Glacial Salmon from Grizzly Hills, and Nettlefish from Sholazar Basin — or all three from Wintergrasp), because it’s a convenient mass raid buff but time-consuming for a single person to farm. Check your local AH to see what else is selling well, then fish accordingly. As always, El’s Extreme Anglin’ is a highly-recommended site for all your fishing needs.

40 Exalted Reputations

I’m not going to lie — some reputation grinds (I’m looking at you, Shen’dralar and Darkmoon Faire) are very likely to cost you way more than you’ll ever get back from them. But, taken as a whole, getting yourself “the Exalted” title is going to be a significant benefit to your coffers. The game doesn’t care which reputations you get to exalted so long as you get 40 of them, and that means that a financially-astute player will cannily avoid the more costly among the grinds.

Most of the BC reps are linked to dungeons/heroics or dailies, and Wrath reputations can be done easily through the Dungeon Finder or dailies, so you can reasonably expect to make money from these. However, the most lucrative reputation-related achievements I’ve had so far have been:

• Hero of the Zandalar Tribe: Most classes can comfortably solo or duo Zul’Gurub at 80, and the place is a treasure trove of drops, rare profession materials, and bijous/coins that you can always sell on the auction house once you’re exalted.
• The Argent Dawn: Save yourself some trouble and combine the reputation grind for the Argent Dawn with Stratholme runs for the Deathcharger’s Reins. Hopefully, you’ll see the mount drop within a reasonable period, but even if you don’t you’re likely to be swimming in runecloth, drops, and things like Pristine Black Diamonds on a really good run. If you already have the Baron mount, I found Scholomance to be better gold per hour.
• Steamwheedle Cartel: There’s no independent achievement linked to the goblin cities, but you’ll be running an awful lot of Dire Maul in order to get to exalted with all four. Not only does this put you within a stone’s throw of the DIre Maul arena and within easy to range to check on the rare spawns there (Orbs of Deception still sell for a lot if you can manage to get a drop), but you should also be able to loot Knot Thimblejack’s Cache nearly every run (barring those on which you’ve been massively unlucky with a key drop). The cache will give you a number of tailoring and leatherworking materials, and every so often you’ll also get rare or epic patterns like Belt of the Archmage. The goblin reps were easily my most pleasant surprise while grinding to “the Exalted.” a

• From Pocketkitten: Cooking Fail.
• NPC: Teaching 101. NPC: Chickens Gone Wild. NPC: Fear of Projection.
• Torment of the Week.
• Check out the latest from Guilded Age and Teh Gladiators.
• Daily Quests: Lasherweave Bites.
• LFG #321 and #322.
• Beyond the Tree: Walking the Diggers.
• Dark Legacy Comics: Surgery.
• Complex Actions: Fairy Tales and Wet Dreams.
• Equinox vs Chillwinter.
• WoW eh: Mr. Know-it-All. Love that last frame! I also love how you did a better job at rendering the Taunka than Blizzard did.
• Sparkly Doom: If WoW Was Life.
• The Daily Blink: Save Illidan!

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

The community of WoW is not best known for its courtesy. The bar for what constitutes civil behavior has been set pretty low. We as officers don’t expect much from random people, but we’d like to think our members and counterparts are better than the average player. That’s why it’s always so disappointing when we discover we are wrong.

Dear Scott,

I have been an officer in my guild for quite a while but one thing I am noticing more and more is the lack of courtesy between members. I along with several of the other officers and members think of our guild as a family and it kind of cuts us when we have members leave without any word, explanation, or a simple “goodbye”. Just today we had a member (we will call him Bob for simplicity) just up and leave without any word and one of the officers made a hasty remark in the trade channel. Probably 4 hours later Bob gets on an alt still in the guild and starts smarting off which gets others responding likewise (including officers) so much so that I have to step in and stop it.

Unfortunately our GM logs on at that moment and sees the drama going on in gchat and promptly kicks Bob and his other alt. Bob then whispers me and asks why everyone was acting the way they were. I tried to explain the lack of courtesy employed by Bob but he just didn’t quite understand. How can I as an officer and member of my guild help to promote courtesy and how do I explain to members/officers they are not being courteous?

Man of the Peace

Hi, MotP. First, let’s take a moment to lament how the dungeon finder system has affected guilds. As if guilds weren’t disposable enough in WoW, it is now entirely possible for a player to gear up to Tier 9 — and prep themselves for the Wrath equivalent of Sunwell — in random Heroics alone.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s great that we are no longer required to run earlier dungeon tiers to gear members up (though it can still be helpful to do so). And I have nothing against making raiding more accessible. However, it’s just one less incentive, from a list that’s startlingly short, for staying loyal to a guild.

Fortunately, Cataclysm’s guild overhaul seems like it could change that. But for now, officers across the board should expect more guild-hopping now than ever before.

I can’t say why “Bob” decided to quit, but keep in mind that you can now jump from fresh 80 to endgame raider in a matter of weeks. If your guild doesn’t raid or isn’t very successful with raiding, you are going to lose players who want to see Icecrown, because they are fully capable of gearing up for it with or without you.

However, I wouldn’t say Bob is the most at fault in this situation. Yes, he quit without notice or reason, which is certainly dispiriting to the officers. Even so, making a snarky comment in the Trade channel is only going to make the situation worse.

Passive-aggressive Trade channel remarks (or openly hostile ones) are useful for one thing: starting a fight. If that’s what your officer wanted, he or she sure got it. I doubt Bob would have gone on that tirade without provocation, since he seemed to want to slip away quietly.

Officers who want their players to be courteous need to lead by example. That is the most effective way to encourage civil behavior. If your officers have a problem with Bob, the best way to handle the situation would be to speak with him privately about why he left. They shouldn’t be confrontational about it. They should talk to him as a human being and try to assess the decision from his point of view.

From the perspective of guild survival, your top priority should be finding out why Bob quit so that you can prevent people, if possible, from leaving for similar reasons.

To address the question you asked, it’s difficult when officers are put into the role of the “courtesy police.” No one wants to be that person. Sometimes, situations will arise when you must step in. Only you can decide when to do so. When you do, don’t respond by insulting or talking down to the players who are involved. Rather, attempt to defuse the situation by mediating the argument. Try to get each person to see the situation from the other person’s point of view.

They may not ever agree, but at least you can bring the argument into a civil context and allow for some meaningful dialogue.

We can’t teach our members to be courteous. How a person behaves develops from the moment they can interact with other people. If parents, family, and friends haven’t succeeded in encouraging someone to be courteous, what chance do we have?

The best we can do is to remind our members that behind every character in the game is a person that deserves respect and consideration. That begins with all of our officers acting accordingly.

Let’s be honest; the best lore-related achievement is without question Loremaster, which requires you to do the vast majority of the game’s quests. But that’s pretty self-evident — “To get the best lore experience in-game, do the quests, which contain virtually all of the actual lore!” — and thus kind of a cop-out from my perspective. So what I’m going to do with this edition of OverAchiever is pointedly ignore the fact that Loremaster is the most important thing you should do as a dedicated lore junkie, and turn to some other options that tend to be overlooked.

As with our article on Twenty-Five Tabards, this is not an exhaustive guide on how to do each achievement, but simply a starting point if you’re either interested in Azeroth’s history, or interested in your character becoming more deeply involved in the developing story. As an early warning, 1 of the following 5 achievements is no longer doable, but I’ve decided to include it as I think the inability to do it at this point in time could be considered part of Azerothian history.

Higher Learning

This is a somewhat time-intensive achievement that requires you to find and read a series of chapters on arcane magic written by Archmage Ansirem Runeweaver scattered around Dalaran. The reward is the Kirin Tor Familiar, itself a reference to the familiar “pets” of the magi that can be seen in Warcraft III (although, for the sake of accuracy, I think all of the pets you’ll see there are technically water elementals).

The catch? Dalaran being a place built and run on magic, you can’t count on any of these books even existing at a given time. They spawn in set locations around the city at 3 to 4-hour intervals, but the books that spawn in these locations aren’t even guaranteed to be the arcane magic tomes you need. Some of them are random books just for flavor, but you will eventually get lucky and find the various chapters on — among others — Necromancy, Divination, and Illusion. Apparently this is Dalaran’s less-convenient but more eccentric version of a mobile library.

Of most interest from a lore perspective are the Necromancy and Abjuration chapters. In the former is a reference to Kel’Thuzad’s “current” status as a lich, and Abjuration narrows it down further with an approving-to-neutral reference to Kael’thas that (unless Runeweaver is simply glossing over a lot of history here) would seem to place the book’s authorship in a nebulous time-frame around the midpoint of Warcraft III, or at least well before the events of Burning Crusade. Conjuration also contains a sly in-joke for all those of us who have visited the Shade of Aran in Karazhan.

WarcraftPets.com has a great guide on how to do this achievement here that I highly recommend.

The Coin Master

I’ve written about the Dalaran fountain previously, and it’s really nothing but an avalanche of material from a lore junkie’s perspective. 53 major and minor lore figures wished on coins that were subsequently thrown into the fountain, which has an uncanny knack for remembering all of them. Now it’s your job to fish ‘em up, and in your quest to do so you’ll run across what’s on Thrall’s mind these days, the darkest part of Fandral Staghelm’s history, a perfectly-valid question from Archimonde, and — my personal favorite — Jaina Proudmoore’s private wish.

Question for the lore junkies among us — when do you think Jaina tossed that into the fountain? As I’ve observed previously, that coin could mean one of several very different things.

El’s Extreme Anglin’ has a great guide here on what to expect while working on this achievement.

The Diplomat (Alliance) or The Diplomat (Horde)

Your own faction is comprised of several disparate races who don’t always see eye to eye with each other (both physically and figuratively), but to other, unfriendly races in-game you’re all pretty much the same. The vast majority of NPCs you’ll happen across in Azeroth, Outland, and Northrend are all willing to start at neutral with you, but the Timbermaw, Sporeggar, and Kurenai/Mag’har don’t have much reason to trust you right off the bat. All three factions are pretty hard up, and to them you’re just another would-be hero who’s going to have to prove his/her intentions are honest. Doing so is a sort of low-level diplomacy on behalf of your faction that convinces them to extend the hand of friendship (and some…interesting tabard designs) your way. “If you are a representative of your people,” the Timbermaw leader will (finally) tell you, “then your people are ones we would work to make peace with.”

While there’s no specific reward apart from the “Diplomat” title you’ll receive for reaching exalted with all three factions, the in-game event that’s triggered when you turn in the final quest for the Timbermaw has always heartened me, and I hope that Blizzard does more things like this in the future.

Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian

I went back and forth over whether or not to include this, as it’s no longer doable (and thus a Feat of Strength), but finally decided — why not? Atiesh was the weapon of the last (…sort of) of Azeroth’s Guardians, an otherwise unbroken line of caster-warriors who battled the creeping demonic influence in the world, and you can’t deny that holding this thing would have been a supreme achievement (no pun intended) for a lore geek. Not only did you have to reassemble the staff from 40 different splinters held by denizens of the original (and extremely difficult) Naxxramas, but you also had to battle the Old God C’thun (one of the most legendarily difficult encounters of its own day, and considered impossible in its original incarnation) for its base. In the end, you had Medivh’s own staff, and could portal anyone you liked to the original, mysterious Karazhan before it ever became a raid.

Now? With the disappearance of Naxx-40, Atiesh has also vanished. As much as this disappoints me (I think the Atiesh model is one of the most beautiful weapons in the game, and would kill to see it reappear somehow), it’s not entirely inappropriate given the relentless march of Azeroth’s history. People die. Things disappear. Legends fade, as Medivh himself observed.

Hindering Kil’jaeden (otherwise known as Sunwell Plateau)

As if this needs description, but you fight Kil’jaeden. He’s one tier of Burning Legion management below the ultimate Big Baddie himself, Sargeras, who we probably won’t see (if we ever see him) for several expansions. You fight Kil’jaeden.

OK, it’s a shadow of the actual Kil’Jaeden, insofar as he’s nowhere near his full power attempting to squeeze his way into Azeroth through the Sunwell, but still.This remains one of Blizzard’s best and coolest raid encounters, with one knockout punch of a lore moment immediately afterwards. The Shattered Sun contingent shows up (you guys couldn’t have helped earlier?), as does Velen, and the Sunwell — long since defiled by Arthas — is reignited in a burst of holy energy. You helped to right a wrong that was one of the driving forces of the Warcraft III storyline and the reason for the general malaise of the blood elves.

Anyone with an interest in Warcraft lore should really see this cutscene, and these days, the fight is considerably more accessible than it once was. Get some ’80’s together, read up on the fight, and hit it up — you won’t be disappointed.

With Winter’s Veil behind us, it is not too long until Valentine’s Day is here. Between these two holidays, I’m frequently left pondering the best gifts available for our loved ones . . . in game. There’s a subtle art to simulating gift-giving between characters, since there’s obviously a few factors to be considered.

First, it’s difficult to be creative. Everyone has the same access to the items and gifts in-game, so you’re going to be incredibly challenged to pull off something “no one else has considered.” Second, it can be difficult to pick out just the right gift, since it can be a little hard to get excited over a trade window. Still, when it comes time for one character to give something a little special to his or her in-character spouse, it’s good to have some ideas ready to go.

Take a look behind the jump and let’s talk about 5 of my favorite in-game gifts.

5. Vanity Pets

Beginning with patch 3.0.2, your character no longer has to devote bank space to their vanity pets. This obviously opens up dozens of options for the gift-giver, since you can now start trolling the pet vendors for a mewling, purring gift for your loved one.

Still, I think the work behind a gift is often as meaningful as the gift itself. It’s even a little better if there’s a bit of story behind the pet. For that reason, I favor the Captured Firefly from Zangarmarsh. In the same patch that effectively turned pets into spells, the Firefly lost a very special quote: “Still flying.” That quote is an obvious reference to the end of the first episode of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, where the captain says “We’re still flying.” The ship doctor comments, “That’s not much,” and the captain replies, “It’s enough.”

That little story about the Captured Firefly is obviously a little too out-of-game to be roleplayed in game. But the sense of genre and theme surrounding the vanity pet helps color the in-character interaction. After all, we’re all in a story about a fateful fight against the Lich King, and our own desperate story of survival isn’t too different from Whedon’s story about eking out survival. It lines up nicely.

Lastly, the Firefly isn’t exactly easy to come by. The pet drops from the Bogflare Needlers in Zangarmarsh at a rate of about 0.1%. That means, on average, you’re going to have to kill 1,000 Needlers to get one to drop. (Insert your usual caveat here about statistics being blind, and all that.) There’s only about 30 of the Needlers on the map at any given time. You’re looking at hundreds of hours of farming, here, to pull off this little gift. And nothing says “I’m thinking of you” like raw, unadulterated effort.

4. A reminder of the homeland

There are usually little reminders of your character’s racial starting area. Nothing screams Elwynn Forest to me like a lucky Rabbit Foot. These rabbit feet actually show up in all the starting areas, but I encountered them most often in Elwynn. Maybe it was just luck or karma, or maybe something about how the Human starting experience forced me to mass-kill wolves.

Like my Captured Firefly suggestion for Vanity Pets, I have a favorite little homeland reminder gift. If you’ve leveled a Draenei through Azuremyst Isle, you may recall the Blood Elf Bandit Mask. This clever little masks were quite the hot item when Burning Crusade came out, and they are the more notable for coming only from Azuremyst.

You’d need to frame the romance pretty carefully, but this is one of those very unique gifts one character can give another. The wrong way to give this gift includes, “Remember when Velen drunk-drove the Exodar into Azeroth? I totally got you a handkerchief from some dead belfs out there.” The right way might include, “Your ship was a falling star bringing me my favorite gift. I purchased this from a trader bringing fine silks out of Azuremyst, near where you started your life here.”

3. Mechano-hog

The previous two gifts are pretty cheap, in terms of cash. You have to exert some effort to get the items to drop, but there’s not a lot of cash involved in getting there. The gift of a mechano-hog, however, is on the completely opposite side of that scale. They are expensive. Even without the regular crafting materials (like Titansteel), the vendor materials you must purchase to make the mechano-hog are going to run you well over 10,000 gold.

The gift of a mechano-hog, however, is not something that screams romance to me. Instead, I think of the mechano-hog as being a wonderful gift from a parent to a son or daughter. In the fantasy world of Azeroth, the usual coming-of-age vehicular gift would probably be a mount. But I can see the new generation of Alliance or Horde becoming enamored of the increasingly popular engineer movement. The gift of a mechano-hog wouldn’t just be a new mount, but would be an indication of a parent’s subtle understanding of their child. Maybe even a little nod of approval.

2. The Rock

You know, I actually hesitated to put The Rock on your gift options for an in-character loved one. The Rock is neat and all, and was probably one of WoW’s original cash-sink vanity items. The Rock was an item from way, way back in the time before daily quests (and their lucrative repetition), back when 100 gold was a lot of money.

If you choose to explore The Rock as an in-game gift, invest it with some unique, character based history. If you’re a Paladin giving the diamond to a loved one, flesh out the story of how this diamond came from the hilt of your great-grandfather’s sword. The diamond was all that’s left after an immense dragon burned that sword into a molten puddle . . . and your great-grandfather with it.

Or, if you’re an orc, perhaps this diamond was originally from Draenor. You brought this diamond with you while under the influence of demonic taint. As you slowly broke free of the demonic energies, you unclenched your first. With slowly clearing vision, the first thing you became aware of through clear, sober sight was this very diamond. You mounted it on a ring, and have carried it with you ever since. And now, you’re bequeathing it your lover.

1. Handpicked Clothing

There are immense options for roleplay clothing in World of Warcraft. Not only are many greens viable for roleplay clothes, but vendors in every city provide even more options for your character to play dress-up. The options are so wide and variable that there are entire blogs devoted to roleplay clothing.

Since your character doesn’t have to worry about whether or not clothing gifts are going to fit, the world is your oyster. Check out some favorite digs from the Threads of Fate in Dalaran, and see if there’s anything that would look great and fit your partner’s personality. I especially like the martial shirt series, finding their tailored design interesting and engaging. They definitely raise the bar for roleplay clothing, even if most WoW players will never purchase one.

Summary

These are just five of my favorite possible gifts to give a character in-game. Gift-giving may not be appropriate for all roleplayers, but I think it definitely helps enhance and illuminate the relationship between two characters. There’s obviously a lot more available gifts than the five I’ve listed above — but then again, if our roleplay stories weren’t unique and complex, then we probably wouldn’t be interested in the hobby in the first place.

What gifts have you been eyeing over this Winter’s Veil season? What ideas are you considering for Valentine’s Day?

As thousands of screaming Alliance and thundering Horde storm the very gates of Icecrown Citadel, the Ashen Verdict is working hard to supply us all the only logical weapons and armor to fight Arthas. That is to say, they’re taking the very essence of an Old God, his very bile and blood, and turning it into weapons and armor. There’s absolutely nothing that could go wrong with that plan. So, charging nobly forward, let’s take a look at the Icecrown recipes, how you get them, and how good they are. However, more importantly, whether it’s worth your time and money to make the items, or simply sell the materials.

All of the recipes from Icecrown Citadel are learned by turning in Primordial Saronite. As has been mentioned before all over the site, you pick up Primordial Saronite for the cheap-at-twice-the-price cost of 23 Emblems of Frost, or by having the Primordial Saronite drop from the 25-man Icecrown bosses. You have to complete 12 random dailies in order to buy them through the Dungeon Finder, though doing the weekly raid quest will cut that time down significantly. Each recipe costs 1 Primordial Saronite. However, in addition to the Primordial Saronite, you also need to have a certain reputation with the Ashen Verdict.

The real advantage to all these patterns is that they provide item level 264 gear without having to do the 25-man raid content. That’s going to make these Icecrown craftables highly valuable to exclusively 10-man raiders, but the gear will still be somewhat attractive to the 25-man raider who’s trying to get caught up to a gear curve.

The limiting factor for most of the recipes is the same currency that you used to buy the patterns in the first place: Primordial Saronite. While a few recipes don’t require any Primordial Saronite, like the Iceblade Arrows, most of the Icecrown recipes require either 5 or 8 Primordial Saronite per creation.

Okay, so let’s break that down. Without any raid drops bolstering your supply, it’s going to take at least two weeks to get each Saronite. You can pick up 19 Emblems of Frost a week. (That’s by using all of your Emblems of Frost in this fashion, we should note, as well as your weekly raid quest Emblems.) In a month, then, you’ll be able to pick up 3 Primordial Saronite. That’s enough to make absolutely nothing.

For this reason, level 80 alts have stormed the Dungeon Finder tool. I don’t have the insight to know whether this was a purposeful dynamic by Blizzard to help keep PUGs full of people. If it were a purposeful action, though, it was a pretty clever one. I don’t know anyone who isn’t doing their best to pick up as many Emblems of Frost as possible, and then turning surplus Emblems into Primordial Saronite.

Very few Auction Houses have much (if any) Primordial Saronite available. I did a quick survey of 30 servers to get an idea of how much Saronite might be out there. Of them, only 1 server had more than one Primordial Saronite on the Auction House at the time of my snapshot. About half the servers had one Primordial Saronite available. The average price for Primordial Saronite was about 5,000 gold across these 30 servers. The highest was 15,000 gold. And, what’s more, I’m pretty sure it sold — I watched the Saronite disappear from the Auction House while doing the survey.

(Edit: As a note, since the time of the original writing, this price has come down significantly, with many servers reporting between 2k and 5k.)

I suspect many 25-man guilds will be using the rare material to fund guild banks, providing their raiders guild repairs and similar perks from selling the drops. However, like I said, the quality of these Icecrown craftables will make many 10-man or 5-man players quite willing to part with cash to get them.

Being an old tank fan, I’ll evaluate the general idea of the new gear by looking at the plate tanking pieces. Like all the other “types” of gear available as Icecrown craftables, the plate tank items are for feet and legs. (Apparantly, Tirion’s drawing the line at turning the blood of an old god into any gear worn above the waist.) The two magic items here are the Boots of Kingly Upheaval and the Pillars of Might.

Both items are made with Titansteel, Eternal Earth, and Primordial Saronite. If you’re picking up both items for your plate tank, you’ll be spending a total of 20 Titansteel bars, 32 Eternal Earth, and 13 Primordial Saronite. Farming up the Eternal Earth is pretty much a breeze, and many players have stacks of Titansteel sitting around anyway. But 13 Primordial Saronite is one heck of a task (representing 16 weeks of dailies and weekly raids.) What do you get for this kind of investment?

Both the Boots of Kingly Upheaval and the Pillars of Might are item level 264, which is the equivalent of gear drops from 25-man Icecrown Citadel. (Eventually, you’ll be able to do Heroic 10 mans which also drop item level 264, but you’ll have to have killed Arthas at least once before then.)

Comparing the Pillars to the Legguards of Lost Hope, which drop from Lord Marrowgar, we can see both leg items carry similar stats. While the Legguards sport quite a bit of defense and hit, the Pillars are much more streamlined in their interest toward Dodge and Parry. Now, everyone’s going to be looking to make their own gear choices, but I think this shows that the Icecrown craftables are going to be worthwhile to everyone — at least until they start seeing 25-man gear dropping.

What does all this mean for the enterprising crafter? In summary, it means that the craftable gear is pretty nice, but it’s not going to long-term replace 25-man gear drops. This gear is (like I’ve said) mostly going to be useful to people who never go into 25-man Icecrown raids.

With Primordial Saronite being such a premium item, I can’t see it making much sense (from a profit perspective) in burning even a single Saronite to learn the recipes. Instead, once you do have Primordial Saronite, I’d turn around and sell it to the people who actually want to use it. At 5 Primordial Saronite for the “cheap” craftables, that could easily be 15,000 to 50,000 gold in your pocket.

My final advice, then, would be to fire up your level 80 alts through the Dungeon tool, and get the Saronite out on the market. Later in the patch, when the prices have dropped and stabilized after 25-man raiders no longer are finding the patterns remotely attractive, you might want to re-evaluate whether the final, crafted items are going to be worthwhile.

An obvious exception to this rule is the arrows and bullets. Since you don’t use Primordial Saronite to make those final items, I think that those patterns will still be a solid investment. At only a couple Crystallized elements per stack, you can churn those out very quickly. Even if you only make 5 gold a stack, you’ll make up the cost of a single Primordial Saronite over time.

As we’re heading towards the final confrontation with the Lich King and the end of this chapter of the World of Warcraft saga, we end up reminded of how much of Wrath of the Lich King was designed and never used, or used sparingly, or even resurrected later, fittingly enough. But not only do we have loads of models that either weren’t used at all or were used later in places completely unrelated to where they were supposed to drop, we have entire zones that either didn’t happen at all, or did but which don’t seem to go anywhere.

We’re all familiar with the strange case of Azjol-Nerub. Originally it was intended to be a complete underground zone that players were to level in, do quests, and so on. Then that was scrapped and we instead got two instances and an NPC who was clearly the remnant of a once far more expansive plot. It’s a shame, too, because those two instances are tantalizing hints at how vast and expansive an Azjol-Nerub zone could have been. Frankly, I found (and still find) the Nerubian architecture in those instances far superior to Naxx both in design and its surprising color palette. And when you look around Ahn-Katet and realize how vast the cavern is and how little of it is actually seen in the instance, or run Trial of the Crusader and fall into yet another astonishingly vast and underused space, I don’t see how you can not wonder why the Azjol-Nerub zone never manifested itself. Perhaps we’ll see World of Warcraft: Underground at some point.

But while in Azjol-Nerub we have a zone that failed to materialize, in Crystalsong Forest we have a fully developed zone with floating, magically altered forests of shattered crystal trees filled with ruins and NPC’s and… no real point. There’s two flight points, one for each faction, but you could easily miss them because why would you go to them with Dalaran floating right there overhead anyway and no quests to drive you down to them? Why does each faction need its own flight point in the region? Are they fighting over some objective? What is it?

Likewise, Dalaran’s presence is intended to somehow oppose the Blue Dragonflight but aside from erecting yet another giant purple bubble (man, they love giant purple bubbles) they don’t really seem to be doing anything to all those Blue Dragonflight mobs floating around on flying platforms in the zone. You get sent to Crystalsong by the Argent Crusade a couple of times, first off when they’re pushing into Icecrown and then after they’ve erected their tournament and want you to kill satyrs for scrying crystals or knock out the Black Knight’s squire.

This just begs the question: why is the Black Knight’s squire in Crystalsong? Why are the satyrs there? There are ancient night elf ghosts haunting the ruins, the Blue Dragonflight, this zone should be positively bustling with player activity and instead it’s a ghost town because there’s no actual content here, just hints at it. There’s a really interesting bit of backstory hinting at a war between the Black and Blue Dragonflights here that made the trees turn to crystal, and the Lich King’s attempt to harvest the forest’s power, but it doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the game that I’ve seen. Crystalsong is basically just a very elaborate backdrop to fly over to get to Dalaran at this point.

Another thing that’s interesting when looking through the data files is how many items that ended up in Naxx and (more recently) the new five man instances were, at least during the design process, intended to drop somewhere else. For instance, here you can see various familiar shield designs but also at the top and bottom you’ll notice two designs you’ve yet to see. One of them, the bottom design, has an art style that clearly matches the Hate-Forged Cleaver which drops in regular Halls of Reflection, and which you can find in the item files as ‘axe_1h_draktharon_d_01′.

I’ve always wished they’d forgotten about Wintergrasp and its weird Titan structures and done AN as the PvP zone. Man, imagine mass battles crawling through the depths, fighting both the other faction and hordes of faceless ones? I’d be so down for that. Alas, as we approach the Fall of the Lich King and the oncoming Cataclysm, the possibility of seeing any of these underdeveloped or undeveloped ideas becomes ever more remote.