Reconstructing Thrall - Part 1

In patch 4.2, Blizzard made one of their single most ambitious questlines yet, and probably the one with the highest production values ever introduced in a content patch (and possibly ever, but I think that argument is beyond the scope of this article). I speak, of course, of the Elemental Bonds quest.

He is so tapping that.

The quest itself is pure soloing; a single player can do the whole thing themself, although I will admit that a fresh or just sort-of-blues-and-maybe-a-few-epics-under-their-belt player will have a little challenge pulling off the quest themselves, depending on class and skill. However, at no point do you ever have to set foot in an instance; at no point do you ever have to take on an elite mob or any mob that requires more than yourself to defeat, although they are present if you want to kill them, as elite mob killing speeds a quest along fast than the normal ones during the kill parts of the quest. This, by the way, is something I praise Blizzard for, as it gives a tangible and instant reward to players who either cooperate with each other to take down the big mobs or take them down solo, the latter option requiring at least average competence with one's class.

This patch, and the expansion in general, have had so many solo-based quests that teach good raid principles (like "don't stand in the fire", "run out of melee range to avoid being pancaked", "kite the huge horde of mobs", "interrupt the horrible death spell" and of course "avoid attacking it while its shield is up!") that frankly I'm surprised so few people acknowledge it. I think the playerbase average competence level has improved because of it. Training players while they level makes the raiding endgame feel more natural and congruent with the rest of the game. Players have been asking for such things ever since raiding began and people started having to teach every new raider how to not wipe the raid group, usually because they kept standing in things they shouldn't have, or didn't interrupt the mob's 1-second-long-cast-time spell of Incredible Death.

The quest even rewards some nice 365 ilvl cloaks, appropriate for your choice of class/spec, which has Firelands-gear-style graphics and also saves those of us who didn't gear during T11 for whatever reason about 1250JP on an ilvl359 cloak, which can then be put toward some other T11-level upgrade. Fairly simple quest, very little travel time needed, a little group encounter training on the way and a nice upgrade at the end to boot. Every PvEer should be pleased.

But this isn't really a PvE blog; this is an RP blog, as you may have noticed. We talk about lore like its serious business and mull over the mindset of elves and gnomes, and until the often-asked-for Appearance Tab is implemented (the proposal for it is on around its 7th incarnation on the official forums right now) that's all we really can do.

So let's get started on that, shall we?

It's all fun and games until someone pisses off an elemental lord.

The lore of the quest starts, to a small extent, in the patch trailer, which occurs roughly a week (I base this on pure reckoning) before 4.2 hit, I'd say; the above video explains it as well as the premise of the Firelands invasion questline, raid instance and dailies which were introduced in this patch as well. Basically, Ragnaros is back and he is pissed (and has a better model too).

The quest itself begins in-game from a breadcrumb quest from the Earthshrine Shaman attendant in either Stormwind or Orgrimmar. This leads you to Thrall (who now has the title of "World-Shaman" to the nerdrage of some and the mellow apathy of myself) on the shores of the Nordrassil lake/pond/reservoir thing, who greets you like the old buddy that you are (the dude is outgoing, what can I say?) and has invited you to witness the reinvigoration of the World Tree. You'll be attending alongside his girlfriend Aggra and such lore minor figures as every Dragon Aspect in the game who isn't named Deathwing (including the first-ever appearance of Nozdormu in humanoid form in-game).

Also making an appearance is Malfurion, and eventually even Maruut Stonebinder and Nobundo. Yes, that Nobundo; the one who brought Shamanism to the Draenei and by extension to the Alliance, who (along with other Shaman leaders from across the factional and racial spectrum) helped build out the Earthen Ring into a multicultural/factional entity and who hasn't been featured in any meaningful way since last Children's Week, when he found the young future Shamanic leader of the Draenei who might also become some sort of Hitler or something if I remember the questline right. But before that, nothing. The guy's magical Twitter feed must be depressing as fuck: "@marutpwnbinder hey dude wanna hang out i got sum sapta!! vision quest time! u bring da shimerweed im out"

Forever Alone.

So yeah, important bunch. Of course, before they can actually do it and save the world and stuff, the badguys show up to, surprisingly, actually do something.

And they blow up Thrall.

in ur base, sunderin ur world-shamans

Well, to be more accurate, they tear his soul apart into four elemental essences, each embodying one of his personality traits, which are each banished to their respective elemental planes where they will consume themselves utterly, obliterating Thrall beyond mere death.

This is a minor sticking point for some, as it echoes the overly-complex hero deathtrap scenarios of almost every James Bond villain ever and a healthy majority of comic book villains; why go to the trouble of this complex ploy to eliminate Thrall when just killing him seems to be within the realm of power you would have to be able to wield in order to execute this complex plan in the first place?

To be honest, I think this is a valid issue. After all, if you're a Twilight agent capable of wielding enough power to do this, surely you could have just stabbed the guy or something. However, there's something to be said about this plan; it fit the situation Thrall was in. This is Azeroth, where even disregarding the vast majority of player resurrections as game mechanics and thus "lore light", it's still a realm where death isn't the more permanent force we here in the real world consider it to be. You could call it merely a setback. This is especially true when the person you want dead happens to be the most powerful Shaman on Azeroth and possibly all of existence, happens to be good buddies with four of the most powerful Dragons in the world, one of the (if not the) most powerful druids ever, is the head of an entire organization of powerful Shamans, and has the respect and loyalty of (most of) the Horde and at least the respect of a portion of the Alliance. And they're all standing right next to him. Underneath Nordrassil, one of the most powerful centers of life and healing magic stuff on all of Azeroth. Yeah, he'd be back up from death before you could type "ankh".

So they opt for a more thorough approach which sunders his soul and which will shortly annihilate his soul utterly. This is actually something that so thoroughly fucks Thrall that only Aggra actually thinks he can be saved; those other minor lore figures I talked about earlier have a less optimistic appraisal of Thrall's chances of survival. If they think he's fucked, then at least the Twilight's Hammer spent their "how to kill thrall REALLY bad" project budget well.

"Up next on our agenda, establishing an official cult-wide weight loss program." "The Master has googled medicine balls! The Master sees! The Master WANTS!"

So Thrall gets sundered, Aggra vows to save And this is where my analysis of this quest begins in earnest.

Up first is Air, and we're off to Uldum to find Thrall's spirit before it implodes. Fortunately, with the help of a compliant air elemental, the player and Aggra find him in time.

While my post about the elementals and what their whole deal is is best left for a later time, its worth noting that this quest does a lot to confirm my ideas about elementals, elemental planes, elemental lords and their relationship to the Elements; elementals are basically people, elemental lords basically kings or queens, and the planes themselves Titan-created elemental equivalents of jar-with-a-leaf-and-a-twig. In any case, after consulting with a sympathetic (although slightly mocking) air elemental with a pretty cool voiceover, we fly over to see Thrall's spirit. Apparently, Air is the element of smugness.

Just think, soon rule 34 will be invoked on both of them.

It's here that we are introduced to the progression bar that, while not originally introduced in this questline, is used here to great effect:

I want one for my UI. Someone export these things so I can tinker with them.

It goes up with every kill of an elemental nearby that a player makes; while the percent is player-dependent, the bar fills with every kill regardless of who kills the elemental, which is part of a larger trend in this patch to make group-oriented quests require only that you have a group of players involved and not an actual group. As mentioned above, normal mobs give a small portion of the bar, and elite ones gives a larger amount. The mobs are neutral to the player (good thing too, or they would swarm the players and kill them very, very quickly, requiring a group, which is of course something Blizzard is trying to trend away from toward what I would call "dynamic soloing" or "group soloing" The bar fills a little slowly in my opinion, but fortunately at every 25% of the bar that fills there's a little exchange of dialogue between Aggra and Thrall, keeping the story moving along.

Oh, did I mention the voice acting? Thrall is of course voiced by Chris Metzen as usual, who turns in a pretty laudable performance considering he's not a professional voice actor (or professional actor in general) at all, and generally busy with running World of Warcraft at every level, especially lore, most of the time. It's also worth noting that Metzen also voices Ragnaros (I think, anyway, but he does not voice Deathwing as many had speculated), so the above video is kind of funny in that about 80% of the voice acting is Metzen talking to Metzen. Malfurion gets a bit of voicework in right at the beginning of this quest, and the Aspects all have their own voices as well. Aggra is notable in that her performance is much improved from the introduction to Deepholme; her voice actor must have improved. Perhaps it's a new VA entirely, or her VA has simply gotten better, or the Warcraft voiceover directing team worked especially hard on this patch's VA work. Whatever the reason behind the change, it shows; Aggra, Thrall, every character with a voice in this patch turns in one of their best performances to date. They aren't quite the finest work I've ever heard, but they definitely worked hard to get the performances right. Or, depending on your criteria for a "good" performance, they made the voicework at least suck less. I prefer the former take on things.

The questline also starts doing something I wish a lot more quests in WoW should do; they have their own soundtrack. It's not John Williams meets Hans Zimmer, but it doesn't really have to be. Russell Brower delivers a soundtrack for this questline (and the patch in general) which is probably one of the boldest attempts since Icecrown Citadel to deliver a dynamic musical score accompaniment to WoW content.

There's more where this come from.

So there's that.

More in Part 2