Posts with tag fandral-staghelm

Before we begin, in the interest of full disclosure, we will make it clear that Simon and Schuster did forward us free copies of Stormrage for this review. They did not, however, dictate any of the opinions held in this review. In addition, our network has a policy against keeping 'giveaways' sent to us, so our copies of the novel will be given away on our site sometime in the future. With that out of the way, let's get to the review.

The last book we reviewed here on WoW.com was Arthas: Rise of the Lich King. It was written by Christie Golden and was a little over three hundred pages of Prince Arthas Menethil's personal history, from his childhood to his fall to the Scourge. If that's what you're expecting out of Richard A. Knaak's Stormrage, drop those expectations. All of that can be found in the War of the Ancients trilogy. Despite the similar naming scheme, Stormrage is a novel that takes place at the same time as the events going on in Wrath of the Lich King. It's specifically stated that the Wrath Gate incident has already happened by the time the events in this novel begin. This isn't backstory, this is buildup to Cataclysm.

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.

Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

You know, Archdruid Fandouche Toolhelm Fandral Staghelm sure does ask for a lot of Morrowgrain ... So what's up with that?

Shade: He constructed a World Tree without the blessing of the dragon flights, causing a tree that is warped and corrupted enough that it's being invaded by harpies, grell and grelkin, and corrupting the furbolgs that are supposed to be living happily on it. A tree that invites the invasion of satyr -- and the satyr are referenced in the War of the Ancients trilogy as being products of Sargeras, warping some dude with a god complex.

Silithus? He defended Silithus once, yes -- and watched his son ripped apart before his eyes in the process. That broke him. He shattered the Sceptre of the Shifting Sands, the key to opening the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj, when the dragon flights asked him to keep guard over it in the event that the Qiraj returned. He said he was done with the dragon flights and done with protecting the place.

His last words upon leaving the scene were as follows: "My son's soul will find no comfort in this hollow victory, dragon. I will have him back. Though it takes millennia, I will have my son back!"

You want to know what he's doing with the morrowgrain? He's trying to find a way to use it to bring his son back from the dead. He may have been a "leader" at some point, but after the War of the Shifting Sands, everything -- and I mean everything -- that man does is somehow related to his son's death.

... well, at least, that's what I'm putting my money on.

WoW.com's prestige in the community has afforded us the opportunity to speak to major Azerothian leadership figures on any subject, and we're letting you, the reader, Ask A Faction Leader!

We recently spoke to Nexus-Prince Haramad, leader of the ethereal Consortium, and he shed light on several key issues, including goblin rearrangement, investment opportunities, bad business practices, proprietary bandage technology, and static cling. In this installment of Ask a Faction Leader, we'll be sitting with Archdruid Fandral Staghelm of the Cenarion Circle.

Our first reader question:

Dear Fandral Staghelm,

Over the years, I have many times assisted your morrowgrain research. I have found many weird plants in my quest for that elusive herb. I have been awarded many (useless but, I am sure, heartfelt) scrolls and pieces of food by your research team. My question is: Where is all this effort ending up? What end does all this morrowgrain research lead to?

Sincerely,
Bowjób-Lightbringer EU

Staghelm responds:

Look, pal, when I send you on an errand, you say "how high." You don't ask "what exactly do you need all of this eldritch herb for." I need it, you need to get it for me. You know the saying? Yours is not to question why, etc?

Oh, wonderful. See her, over there? My handler is signaling me. I guess that means "answer the poorly-named hunter's (yes, I know you're a hunter) question, you magnificent king among kaldorei." I guess it's just as well, I got a dozen emails about what I was doing with morrowgrain.

Fine. The big reveal. What am I doing with morrowgrain?

Lorecrafted is one of my favorite blogs these days. If you've been reading this site for awhile, you probably know that one of the things I enjoy most is geeking out about lore, both positively and negatively. I love picking things apart, speculating on random story snippets, and all of that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to spend much quality time with Know Your Lore due to other commitments, so Lorecrafted replaces that void in my life at least a little bit.

Just recently, Greyseer (the author behind Lorecrafted), finished up a three part speculation series on what he would like to see come out of a Maelstrom expansion. Reading over it, you realize just how many different forces could be at play in the expansion. I don't think everything will play out the way that he thinks they'll play out, but that just lends more weight to just how much could happen in the Maelstrom.

There are plenty of people that think Warcraft dies with Arthas, but when you look at the game world beyond the events of Warcraft III, Arthas is actually relatively small character. He's not even the most dangerous thing Azeroth has seen. The threats that lie within the Maelstrom have proved themselves to be far more destructive... as in, caused Azeroth to sunder into the various pieces that make up the world today. Let's see the Lich King do that.

The idea of a six word story has been around for a while -- Ernest Hemingway famously wrote one that went: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." But Pink Pigtail had the idea to bring the format into the World of Warcraft, and challenges her readers to write some six word stories about Azeroth and/or its inhabitants. Larisa's "Last mage quits. Working as intended." is probably my favorite of hers, but you WI readers are pretty creative, too. Here's a few of mine:

"Fandral Staghelm is angry. Nobody cares."

"Lich King laughs, teleports away. Again."

"For sale: Gnomish capital. Slightly used."

Ok, that last one is pretty bad. Surely you can come up with some better ones, right?

The official WoW website has put up a preview for issue 16 of the World of Warcraft comic. I have to say, this one doesn't look nearly as facepalm inducing as the last few. In fact, aside from a few art oddities (did Valeera just trip up there?), it looks like a pretty good start for this arc.

It looks like this arc is not only focused on Garona's half human, quarter orc, quarter draenei son, but a few other things, too. It looks like this arc will focus somewhat on Fandral Staghelm and the state of Teldrassil, what's happened to Ahn'qiraj since we were there last and potentially the relationship between King Varian and Valeera. To avoid spoilers, I'll stick a few more things behind the cut below.

Level up fishing so you can fish in the Dalaran fountain.

I'm serious. This completely nonsensible and illogical statement is brought to you by the 53 tiny lore moments you'll get if you'll just sit yourself down somewhere and level up fishing. Yes, it's boring having to fish up dozens of useless fish to get to the good stuff in Outland and Northrend. Yes, you could be farming up gold or materials that will help you level in Wrath. I don't care. Go fish.

You see, while you'll be fishing up a lot of equally useless fish in the Dalaran fountain, you'll also get coins. No, not in the sense that you'll be fishing up ingame money, but you'll fish up coins tossed into the fountain of this very old city by 53 people, many of whom will be known to you if you've played the game for any length of time. Some of them, perhaps most of them, are funny. Some are serious. Some are heartbreaking. I admit to a touch of being a lore geek, and it was wonderful being allowed a peek into the irreverent or hopeful or sad heads of Jaina Proudmoore, Thrall, or Stalvan Mistmantle. It is idiosyncratic little touches like this that make WoW hopelessly fun to play, and it is my fondest wish that whatever person at Blizzard who thought this up is pulled off whatever they're doing right now and chained to a desk until they come up with more stuff like this.

So, if you don't do anything else with your time between patch 3.02 hitting and Wrath going live...level up fishing so you can fish in the Dalaran fountain. But don't read any further if you're not interested in Wrath spoilers, because there are a few here...

We're all busy people, so let's jump right in here. Sorano asked...

Has Gelbin Mekkatorque ever done something to contribute to the world around him? Poor little guy seems to do nothing nowadays. I'm sure as leader of the Gnomes, he could do a lot to help the people of Azeroth.

He does things, but they're not portrayed in WoW very well. It's mostly things you will find in the RPG books. Mekkatorque helps design the various siege weaponry the Alliance uses (steam tanks, etc), and works heavily on figuring out ways to take back Gnomeregan from the ferocious level 30 elites and, more importantly, clean up the radiation.

So it's Father's Day, the time when we all pay homage to the fathers or father figures in our lives, and thank them for all that they do. While we can't say for sure if they celebrate Father's Day in Azeroth, too, there's a lot of people in Azeroth and Outland who have reason to think back on their dads today. Many dads of Azeroth have affected their children's lives or been affected by them. The ramifications of the interactions of these fathers and children have then in turn affected the lore and story of Warcraft in ways great and small.

Therefore, in honor of the holiday, let's look at 10 famous and not-so-famous dads of Warcraft lore (listed in no particular order).

I love what Kre's doing on the forums: he's calling for NPC assassination targets. And he's not all talk -- when he gets asked to take a target out, whether it be Katrina Prestor herself or the Ironforge bread vendor (who will not... shut... up!), he and his assassination crew get the job done.

My choice for a kill has already been done (Die, Fandral Staghelm!), but there are all kinds of great requests in the thread -- unfortunately, due to the code of the assassin, Kre can't kill the little kid who stole that dolly in Stormwind, as children are not viable targets. But even Drysc has been sent to meet his maker by these guys. Hilarious. If an NPC has been giving you trouble lately, they'll make sure there are no more problems, if you know what we mean.

Not all the war in Warcraft can be fought on the battlefield -- some of it has to be fought in the back alleys and in the shadows. Glad to see that Kre and his crew (Aelas has pulled off some excellent kills here, too) are going a little guerilla in the constant fight against NPCs.

If you've been following along with the podcast, you've heard of the Fandral Staghelm killshot thread over on WoW Radio-- it's a place where those who hate Fandral Staghelm, Archdruid of Darnassus and generally obnoxious jerk, can get their kicks seeing the guy dead on the ground. Originally, the thread was supposed to be a compendium for killshots, but Rembrant on the Moon Guard server has taken it to a whole new level-- he's created a Flash-based kill simulator of the Archdruid. Don't have a whole raid of Horde to go into Darnassus and take him down in game? Just click the "Die Staghelm!!" button, and you get a surprisingly satisfying animation of Staghelm's demise.

I love it (and wish I had seen it sooner-- looks like it was posted last week sometime). All day today I've been randomly killing Staghelm, and it has a relaxing effect. Bad day at work? Kill Staghelm. Fight with your girlfriend? Kill Staghelm! Couldn't get your raid to kill Staghelm? Kill Staghelm anyway!

I only hope the site survives the masses of people who will jump onto it to kill Staghelm. Because there certainly are a lot of them.

Update: Yup, looks like we burned it. Sorry, Rembrant, everybody hates Staghelm. Here's the new link to the simulator he gave us in the comments. Hope that holds up.

Episode 21 of our official podcast is now online and ready for your ears to take it all in. We finally lay to rest one of the biggest debates on the show-- yes, we finally pick an Alliance cry (and you can probably guess what it is). Also, we answers lots of viewer email, and:

• Talked about David's great post about the AV imbalance
• And the ghost wolf debacle
• Chatted about the unwritten rules of raiding and where they come from
• And we had two good conversations about overhealing and the coming gear reset in the next expansion

And we also declared war against Fandral Staghelm in Darnassus-- if you kill the guy (and you should), be sure to post your killshot over in the WoW Insider Show forums. When we get a bunch of them together, we'll roll them all up into a gallery on the site here.

If you've got feedback on the show, feel free to drop us an email at theshow@wow.com. And don't forget that we do this every week-- we'll be back on the air this coming Saturday afternoon at 3:30pm EST. Mark your calendars and enjoy the show!

The 20th episode of our podcast is now live for your listening pleasure over on WoW Radio's site. On Saturday afternoon, Turpster, John Patricelli (our Druid blogger) and I sat down and talked about the last week in WoW. We hit on:

• A little listener email, including more Alliance slogans, and we helped a listener compare the different DPS caster classes.
• We talked a little bit with John about his other blog, Big Bear Butt, and how he started blogging for us here
• Playing the game in weird ways, including my idea to play a mute character
• If last week's AV changes will finally fix things
• Drama in a column about drama
• World PvP and how Blizzard could reward it

And we just generally got a little silly in the second half-- Turpster recorded a funny gnome voice, and we all made our predictions for the year that's coming. Definitely give it a listen, as I think this is one of the best podcasts we've done yet. If you've got feedback of your own (or Fandral Staghelm downing pictures, because I hate that guy), send it along to theshow@wow.com.

And don't forget that we do this every week. If you couldn't tune in to listen last Saturday, mark your calendars for this coming Saturday at 3:30pm EST to show up at WoW Radio and check the show out.