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Posts with tag retcon

Know Your Lore: Lore 101, Part 2

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.

In the last Lore 101 segment, I went over resources -- the novels, manga, comics, source guides, games and everything else that make up the story behind World of Warcraft. It's a lot of material to follow, and the sheer volume of it can be daunting, but there's no better way to sort out the story and what happened to who, when and where, than by following the original sources.

While this is all well and good, today's post covers why everything in part one may or may not be... well, invalid. That's right, the novel you just picked up and read through may very well not count in the long run. The comics may not actually apply. A later novel may wipe out the timeline of existing events in one fell swoop, and the information you thought you had a solid grasp on might be invalidated in an instant.

And that's perfectly okay. Let's take a look at what makes a story like Warcraft tick.

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Filed under: Lore, Know your Lore

Breakfast Topic: Loremaster for a day

It's been a pretty alright time to be a lore nerd the past few days. Not only have we had some intriguing spoilers about the new goings on with the gnomes and the trolls, but we've had a look at the Ruby Sanctum, and with it had some hints of whats to come with the Cataclysm. Of course, at the same time, there's frustrations as well. Having had a chance to peek at Stormrage, I can tell you I'm not completely thrilled with the way they chose to advance certain portions of the lore there. I generally give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt on lore and retcons, but there's some stuff in there I just did not like.

That brings me to a thought. Let's say Chris "God" Metzen comes up to you on the street. He doesn't need a reason, he's Chris Metzen. He's awesome. And he says to you, he says, "Hey, I heard you like WoW lore. So I'm going to let you make a choice. You take any existing lore thread, and you tell me how to change. I can retcon whatever you want, or I can just make it go forward any way you want. You name it, I'll do it."

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

The Queue: It's just a game

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky be your host today.

I might be wrong with this one, but I think World of Warcraft is just a game. I mean, it's something we all do in our spare time, and have fun with, right?

And it doesn't really matter, because at the end of the day everything is just pixels on the screen.

But maybe I'm off base here, and WoW isn't a game. Maybe it's real. What is real? Is there a spoon? I see dead people.

Retadinman asked...

"Why are draenei hated so much? The "lorelol" retcon wasn't really that big, but since my main character and posting avatar on the Forums (who are the same) are draenei, I get a lot of hate. Why is this?"

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Filed under: The Queue

Breakfast Topic: Race Change, your personal retcon

Just about every wall has been broken down now. The only thing left is the ability to change one's class, which probably won't happen anytime... soon®. Yesterday, the highly anticipated Race Change service went live, and I'm sure a lot of players rushed to get their makeover. Take Gregg, for example, who went on and changed his Level 70 Tauren Hunter into a weed-loving Troll. I mean, he's wanted to do that for a while. I know I've been hankering for race change myself, but now that the service is here, I haven't exactly jumped the gun. Why? I said I wanted to turn my Blood Elf Death Knight -- I'm quite happy with just one Sin'dorei -- into an Orc, but now I'm kind of wondering.

I still want to change my character's race, I'm just not quite settled on which one to switch to. Race change is kind of like a retcon in the World of Warcraft, more so than name changes or customization of appearance. It's right up there with gender changes. Faction changes are different because it kind of take away your character's entire continuity, and I'm sure a lot of RP'ers made completely different back-stories for faction-changed characters. Race change allows you to have essentially the same character but with a major difference.

We asked what race you'd switch to about a month back, but now that the service is here, we're going to ask who's up and done the change? What race did you switch from and what race did you switch to? Tell us why! Personally, I'm just kind of bored with another Blood Elf, and I want one of each race (I know, I should've thought of that to begin with). Lame, right? On the other hand, I'm holding out for that Undead Hunter I've always wanted. Now that World of Warcraft's personal retcon is a paid service, have you taken advantage of it? Have you changed anything else besides your race such as gender or name?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Breakfast Topics

The Five Rs of Character Revitalization

http://toomanyannas.com/feature/five-r%E2%80%99s-of-character-revitalization/So I've talked recently about life as an RPer, and how we seem to interact with our characters just a bit differently. Sometimes, whether we like it or not, a certain character and their back story just grab hold and won't let go, and we find ourselves coming back again and again, just to see where the story leads.

Of course, sometimes the character goes just the opposite way, and no matter what you do, your stories fall flat and you don't feel enthusiastic about logging on. It may be because you can't stand the character's personality anymore, it may be because your normal group of friends has hit an RP rut or even taken a break for a while themselves, it may be a variety of other things. Recently, Anna of Too Many Annas wrote a pretty awesome article about how to refresh a flagging RP character using 5 Rs: Relax and Rest, Reintegrate, Refresh the Character, Retcon, and Reroll/Reskin.

What's sort of cool about this list is that you can even apply a lot of the principles to characters in general, even if you're a non-RPer. Anna's covered the RP angle pretty well, so I'll mostly focus on this other angle.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, RP

Why all race Death Knights make sense from a lore standpoint

It seems like one of the biggest problems a lot of people have with Death Knights is the fact that they can be all races. Me, I say: Why not? The lore really isn't as bad as you might think. Sure, some of the retcons can get a little annoying, but despite the fact that non-Paladin races will get to be Death Knights, I don't think you really consider it a retcon, but rather an evolution in an ever-evolving story that opens up a lot of great story ideas and RP opportunities, and I'm really looking forward to it.

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Filed under: Horde, Alliance, Human, Night Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Orcs, Tauren, Undead, Trolls, Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Blizzard, Expansions, Draenei, Blood Elves, Lore, RP, NPCs, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King

All the World's a Stage: Raiding and RP don't mix, or do they? -- A question of continuity.

All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the mysterious art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.

The Warcraft storyline is part of a great tradition of fantasy literature, and, as with any form of storytelling, the entire span of WoW lore involves a series of events and changes. Arthas wasn't always the Lich King, Illidan used to be able to wear shoes, and your character was once a little child, with no spells or epic weapons at all. All these things fit together in a single story universe, in which the progressive changes taking place in the story made the world what it is today.

But what is it today? Is Illidan now dead or alive? Is VanCleef dead or alive, for that matter? As a gaming environment, any boss you kill today has to be there for me to kill tomorrow. The WoW game world needs to remain basically unchangeable -- but over time this can stifle a roleplayer's sense of immersion in its narrative. To illustrate the impact this sort of immutability has on storytelling, let us take a page from a certain fantasy story you might have read, and see how it might work as a WoW raid instance.
Welcome to Mines of Moria! This raid instance will reset in 6 days, 10 hours and 41 minutes.

[Raidleader] [Gandalf]: Beware! There are older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world. Follow my glowing staff!
[Raidleader] [Gandalf]: ... and um... get ready to pull that first group of orcs. Kill order is skull, x, circle... Gimli, can you offtank that cave troll?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Instances, Humor, Raiding, Lore, RP, All the World's a Stage (Roleplaying)

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