Return of the Legion?

EDIT: Bam. Confirmed Eye of the Legion and Demon Hunter's Aspect are TCG items. Thank you WoW Insider.

Yesterday, MMO-Champion put up information they datamined from the upcoming patch (4.3.2), and some of the items they found really caught my eye.

The Feldrake, a flying mount (recolored black drake):

The Eye of the Legion, a companion pet (eye of Kil'rogg):

And the Demon Hunter's Aspect, which makes you look like a demon hunter for 5 minutes.

These three things are what I would expect to see in the best WoW expansion of all time The Burning Crusade. The Feldrake has the symbol of the Legion floating over its head and on its saddle, The Eye of the Legion is pretty self explanatory, and the Demon Hunter's Aspect screams Illidan. With Mists of Pandaria being the next expansion, supposedly focusing more on Horde vs. Alliance than any other expansion of WoW, what the hell are Burning Legion related things doing popping up in the files for the next patch?

Thone of Kil'jaden

Of course, when I saw these three things, I nearly had a heart attack. Burning Legion? Upcoming patch? Could this mean more Draenei lore? Seeing the Feldrake, I already started to come up with theories as to how it was possible. It's a black dragon skin, maybe it is one of the black dragons from Deathwing's clutch sent to Draenor? The Legion was pushed back, but not defeated in the Burning Crusade. After all, everyone knows Kil'Jaeden really slipped on a banana peel and fell back into the Sunwell. Sargeras is still floating around somewhere. Is the surfacing of this mount and the other two items along with it a sign of the Burning legion regrouping for another assault on Azeroth? WILL THERE BE DRAENEI LORE?!

Honestly? I don't think so. The mount, the pet and the use-effect seem like trading card game items, though usually the TCG themes follow what is going on in World of Warcraft. (Scourgwar for Wrath of the Lich King, Worldbreaker for Cataclysm, etc.) Perhaps the Legion will make a brief visit to introduce Mists of Pandaria, not unlike the scourge invasion and elemental events before the release of the previous expansions. If so, is that Blizzard's way of trying to tell us, "Hey, the Legion is still out there guys. Don't forget that while you're busy tickling pandas."? Perhaps. It may be part of the next Kil'jaeden or Halion raid that got released after the supposed 'end' of the expansion. (Though Halion was used as a pre-cursor to Cataclysm, followed by the elemental invasion.)

I'm excited to see where the Feldrake, Eye of the Legion and Demon Hunter's Aspect fit into the game currently. Hopefully it won't be stupid, but I'm prepared for a letdown. Blizzard did make a blue post about lore on the forums, and we'll see where it takes us.

Filling the Gaps of Draenei Lore

In my post about creating an RP character, I talked a bit about why I was drawn to play a Draenei, and since my Draenei was my main, it was inevitable that I would eventually look into them as a race of people just out of curiosity. When I began role playing within the World of Warcraft, I searched even deeper to find every single piece of information I could, including reading the novel Rise of the Horde.

The Draenei. They are benevolent, ageless creatures who look like demons and came from a different planet called Argus, and possibly a different dimension altogether. The number that followed Velen and the Naaru across the cosmos 25,000 years ago was only in the hundreds, and after the great majority of Draenei were slaughtered on Draenor with the orcs, even fewer remember Argus and what happened at all. Unfortunately, Draenei do not have the memory to match their lifespans (perhaps to have a 'reason' to the lack of lore). Two of my Draenei characters, Lycannon and Elicoor, are both from Argus, and they only remember the most impactful events from then, and even the several thousands of years after they fled are foggy at best. Of course, it would have been easier to RP characters that were born on Draenor or just before the Draenei landed there, but that's not something I wanted to do.

One of my favorite subjects to talk about regarding WoW is the lore of the Draenei (and the lack of it). If you have a Draenei and have speculated about what they were like as a culture before they left Argus and the arrival of the Naaru, or are just curious about their missing history in general, I highly suggest giving this a read. This is all speculation, as that's pretty much all you can do when regarding their lore, and it is just my take on it. Please feel free to comment, share and give your own opinions, as that's all we really have to go by.

I'll warn you, this is rather long. You can continue reading after the jump.

Making a (RP) Character, Part Two

Continued from Making a (RP) Character, Part One.

How did I create my main role play character? Those that know me know that my main on WoW is my warrior, Lycannon. When I first created her it wasn't for role play, in fact I didn't even know you could RP on WoW when I began playing the game.

I had RPed a lot before on forums using Lycannon across different genres and universes. Every time I rolled her she was always a warrior or something melee. I can thank The Legend of Zelda for that influence. It was the first game I played and playing a character that got up in a bad guy's face (most of the time) just felt right. She had a few different incarnations and I changed the name 'Lycannon' to fit into whatever universe I was playing at the time. Kate, Candy, Lycandra, Candryss - The list goes on. She originally came from a futuristic, post-apocalyptic sci-fi RP I had been doing with some online friends. She was a field medic of Middle Eastern descent with platinum, almost white colored hair. That is a nod to Storm, my favorite of the X-men and the first ethnic woman I can remember being in a leadership role. (I was like 3 or 4 at the time. 90's cartoon, if you were curious.) She had a spicy 'soldier type' attitude that I built her around, and she was proficient in martial arts and blasting aliens with her plasma gun.

Go ahead and ponder why the hell Forge is wearing a speedo. The rest is after the jump.

Making a (RP) Character, Part One

So you want to make a new character?

In World of Warcraft, creating a character to play usually takes a while for me to do. This is mostly because  when I create a new character I intend to role play it, so usually I make up a quick background, pick an alignment and roll with a general idea of how their attitude, personality, etc, will be. The character develops as I RP them, and sometimes they end up like Xena at the end of the TV series. No, really.

Sometimes people don't care what their character looks like, what its name is, and even what class it is, which is fine unless you seriously plan on role playing them seriously for serious. Banking toons are a good example of this, because usually all they will be used for is, well, banking. They run back and forth between the Auction House, mailbox and bank, happy to be slaves for the higher level characters they share server space with. On Moon Guard we experience an extra phenomena where people make level 1 (58 for Death Knights,) characters, and head straight for Goldshire to cyber at each other. Moon Guard is notoriously famous for it.

This video explains it better:

Now that you're scarred for life, I'll continue. How do you make a character that has seriously serious RP potential? To be honest, you could make a HERPADIN, run him to Silvermoon and start cranking out dialogue and emotes, but it probably wouldn't receive very good reception. You'll probably get ignored, told to go away, and/or maybe even reported for harassment. Really though, that's obvious.

I think one of the first steps in creating an RP character is thinking of an alignment, that thing that pretty much dictates how your person will act and react to others, and how they carry themselves in the world. It governs their judgement, actions and attitude, but really it just helps people figure out how to RP that character.

Alignment can change as you develop your character. Maybe you start out thinking your person will be Lawful Good, and later on down the road discover that Chaotic Good fits them better. There isn't anything wrong with that; it's just part of building and discovering your character.

Another first step is having an idea of what your character is, and alignment can help with that too. Maybe you always thought that making a Wildhammer Dwarf would be fun to play, or perhaps a Forsaken Priest. After you think of an idea (or a few), I would suggest doing research on the lore of those things. Even though all Dwarves and Forsaken start out in the same starting zone (with the exception of Death Knights, of course), that doesn't mean your character necessarily has to from a story point of view. Wildhammer Dwarves wouldn't start out in Dun Morogh with their Bronzebeard cousins so easily as it is, and they only recently rejoined the Alliance. I personally use Wowpedia to help me get my background correct since it is readily available, but there are also the Warcraft novels and information off of the World of Warcraft portal on the Battle.net site.

You really must do your homework on making sure you know as much about the lore behind your character as possible. Information on their race, their race's background, the background behind that, how they as a people respond to things, etc. For instance:

This character is pretty much screwed in terms of role play. Why? Besides the ridiculous name I made up for educational purposes, attaching 'strasz' or 'strasza' automatically tags the character as a dragon. A red dragon, to be more exact. Dragons are pretty much a 'no-no'. Not only is it kind of dumb for a dragon, a respected force of nature, to be strolling about in Stormwind (since they can take on humanoid forms) or any other major city just because it can, I shall quote a poster from the battle.net forums with whom I agree:

"I think the line has to be drawn somewhere before you get to RPing your character as being a race which is inherently more powerful than humanoids, lives forever, and has abilities and powers to which the character itself will have no claim."

So even though the idea of RPing a dragon or any other magnificent thing may be alluring, I highly suggest against it, tenfold if you are new to role playing.. You can come up with quite an original character just starting out with 'Wildhammer Dwarf', for instance.

Be sure to stay tuned for Part Two of Making a (RP) Character - How I came up with my main, Lycannon.