New Mexico: State or foreign nation?

Well, this is depressing: New Mexico Magazine gets so many stories about people who think that New Mexico is part of Mexico, and not the United States, that they’ve had a humor column about it for decades now.

Blizzcon, Day 2: Lore & Quests

A large number of unfinished stories from the original World of Warcraft game will be advanced in the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

“We felt that Northrend and all that was the next break for an expansion,” Blizzard creative head Chris Metzen said at Saturday afternoon’s Blizzcon Lore & Quests panel.

The Wrath of the Lich King expansion will feature plenty of dwarves and steamtech, but otherwise, less of the non-standard fantasy elements found in the Burning Crusade expansion.

“With Outland, we kinda wanted to push the boundaries a little bit,” Metzen said.

Although the big boss of the expansion, Illidan Stormrage, is in the game, the threat of the Burning Legion continues. So more Legion content is coming in an upcoming patch, probably in the form of one of the other portals on Outland opening to a new world, where the remaining heroes of Warcraft II are fighting a major Legion threat.

“We definitely think the Legion story line isn’t done yet,” he said.

Before Northrend becomes available, “there will be some sort of inciting event,” Metzen said, “Where Arthas finally makes his move.”

But despite having a common foe, look for the Alliance and Horde to be at each others’ throats, thanks to the orc hero introduced in the Burning Crusade, Garrosh Hellscream.

“There will be a conflict,” quest designer Alex Afrasiabi said. “It will escalate.”

Other Warcraft heroes, including Sylvanas, Bolvar Fordragon, Brann Bronzebeard, Tirion Fordring and the new Order of the Silver Hand will also appear and play a major part in the story.

Garrosh Hellscream, who founds Warsong Hold in the western starting zone of Borean Tundra, is “problematic,” Metzen said, because they don’t want to deprive Horde players of the great quest content introducing the character in Nagrand in Outland.

“Garrosh is actually pretty aggressive, probably more a little more aggressive than Thrall would have wanted,” Metzen said.

As Sylvanas prepares to release her new plague on Arthas’ Scourge armies — a story line that will run throughout the expansion — the Forsaken for the first time will get their own new Warcraft-style buildings and units.

Tirion’s story, including the formation of a new order of knights to replace the one disbanded by Arthas in Warcraft III: The Reign of Chaos, will also further the Ashbringer story.

And finally, the new expansion “will be the first time we see Brann [Bronzebeard] in WoW,” Afrasiabi said. “He’ll have an interesting, tumultuous story line.”

“We decided we’ve got to get this guy into the campaign,” Metzen said. Brann will play a part in continuing the Titan/origin of the dwarves story. For the first time, the Explorers League will be a faction characters can gain reputation with.

New races will also appear, including the bison-like offshoot of the Tauren, the Taunka. Instead of living in harmony with nature, the Taunka, who live in a much more brutal environment than the Tauren homeland of Mulgore, subjugate nature and elementals. Metzen referred to them as “anti-rangers” and said they wouldn’t necessarily be hostile to Tauren, but they would definitely have a very different world view.

The Tuskarr will also reappear, fleshed out and given a culture and identity. The nomadic hunters, found initially in Borean Tundra, hunt orca whales and erect Easter Island-style giant walrus heads to mark their domain.

“They were kind of a joke when we were designing Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne,” Metzen said. With all of the darkness in Northrend, “the Tuskarr served as a nice pressure release.”

Inspired by a drawing in the Magic & Mayhem pen and paper Warcraft game book, the Iron Dwarves will be another product of the Titan influence on the world, and will carve magical runes into their metallic bodies.

“They’re ill-tempered,” Metzen said. “They’re very powerful, very ancient.”

The gigantic vampiric Viking berserkers found in Howling Fjord — the southeastern starting zone — will also be tied into the lore of the Titans.

“Your initial questing will introduce you to all these races and more,” Afrasiabi said.

“We’re always keen on bringing the story more to the forefront,” Metzen said.

As opposed to having the main villains of Outland be something only high-end raiders get to see, players will get to meet Arthas the Lich King early and often.

“Arthas thinks using you guys on your own cities is pretty funny,” Metzen said. It’s what the original Lich King did to Arthas, turning him into the weapon that brought down Lordaeron, but “it remains to be seen how it’s going to pan out.”

“Along the way, we’re definitely going to be battling Arthas,” Afrasiabi said. “He’s going to be out there, on the front lines.”

“It’s not just some end boss in a dungeon you’ll never get to,” said Metzen, whose WoW character is only level 68. “I’m pretty nervous that I’ll never get to see Illidan.”

The Titan, dragon and Old God story lines are all important in Northrend.

After completing the early 40s dungeon, Uldaman, players were sent to Uldum in the Tanaris Desert, which is just a door. The developers are talking about making Uldum a five-person dungeon, possibly coming out before Wrath of the Lich King is released.

“But we’re definitely doing Uldwar.”

Whereas Uldaman and Uldum are in ruins, Uldwar in the Storm Peaks of northern Northrend is something different.

“It’s a Titan city that was never broken,” Metzen said, comparing it to the Titan version of Olympus, nestled in the clouds, and filled with Titans and their servants, who send out Titan Harbingers into the world they shaped long ago.

“Imagine you spent all that time building a planet and seeing how whacked-out it’s become. I’d be pissed. ‘Crystal spaceships?'”

The nether dragons of Outland herald the return of the blue dragonflight. Malygos, the Aspect of Magic, was hurt during the long-ago War of the Ancients, as told in the novels of the same name, but now the mixture of draconic and arcane energies represented by the nether dragons have begun to heal the great blue dragon. And the last thing he remembers were Highborne elves almost destroying the world using mortal magic.

“He sees a lot of mages running around, right?” Metzen said. “Malygos has decided to declare war on mortal magic.”

The red dragonflight will also step to the fore in Northrend, attempting to defend the mortals, even as the Kirin-Tor move the wizard city of Dalaran to the skies above the continent, where it will serve as the capital city of the expansion.

“We’ve actually had that plan for a long time,” Metzen said.

A familiar face from the novels, Rhonin the mage, will rule Dalaran.

“There’s a lot of characters from the fiction coming to the fore,” Metzen said.

Many of the problems facing dragons stem back to what’s going on in the Emerald Dream, he said, but that won’t be addressed or explained any time soon.

Metzen also hopes to make a Warcraft II character, Garona, more significant soon, but has not settled on how.

“I think it’d be cool if we could find Thrall a mate one day,” he said.

Finally, an old god stirs beneath the ruins of Azjol-Nerub, much like the one beneath the southern city of Ahn’Qiraj.

Blizzcon, Day 2: PvP

“Let’s talk about kicking ass,” World of Warcraft lead Tom Chilton said, by way of welcoming Blizzcon attendees to Saturday’s PvP panel.

Major changes are coming to Alterac Valley, Jeff “Tigole” Kaplan said, accompanied by a Power Point slide labeling it “Alterac Valley 6.0.”

“We need to make people want to win Alterac Valley,” Kaplan said. “Believe it or not, but the Horde can win in AV. Now we have to make them want to.”

Among the coming changes:

• NPC issues, including solo-pulling Vandar Stormpike and general weirdness with the Horde warmasters will be addressed.
• Characters will not respawn in either tunnel unless all other graveyards are gone.
• AFK characters can be clicked on via the zone map. Once enough players have done this, a timer debuff will appear, while the character still gets honor for just being in the zone. Once it’s counted down to zero, it’s replaced with a debuff that halts all honor gain until they begin fighting again.
• The majority of the honor gains will be shifted from the beginning of the match to the end.
• Groups will again be able to queue up for the zone.
• The destructible buildings and siege weapons coming in Wrath of the Lich King PvP may also be added to Alterac Valley.

The Eye of the Storm battleground was originally going to be an Outland update of Arathi Basin, with a mobile flag that would orbit the playing field. But it was under development at the same time as Netherstorm, and the team liked those graphics so much, they decided to go with them, instead.

In future, to allow Blizzard to add more battlegrounds without fatally thinning out the available number of players, players will likely pick the size of a battleground match they want to play, but not which battleground. So a group may pick a 15-person match and be placed in a random battleground.

Learning from how world PvP worked in The Burning Crusade, Blizzard has set up the world PvP zone in Northrend, Lake Wintergrasp, to affect all of Northrend when it changes sides.

Third season arena competitors will need a better final rating to earn weapons. At the same time, the first season arena gear will be added to the regular honor system, to let newer PvP players catch up.

In an unrelated Q&A response, it was revealed the LFG system will be getting overhauled in the new expansion.

Blizzcon, Day 2: Warcraft Film Panel

Hall A at the Anaheim Convention Center was filled to capacity by fans wanting to hear more about the upcoming live action Warcraft film from Legendary Pictures — the company behind 300, Batman Begins and Superman Returns — surprising even the speakers.

“Everyone would tell us ‘fantasy movies don’t work,'” Blizzard COO Paul Sams said, of their Hollywood meetings prior to the release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And afterward, Hollywood executives all said “the bar has been set too high.

“We’re not looking to make a video game movie,” he said, “We want to make a big, epic movie.”

“I personally think sometimes, it’s dangerous to make a movie about a video game,” Legendary producer Thomas Tull said, citing the inevitable danger of not meeting fan expectations, especially when elements of the game are changed or expanded upon.

And despite the success of World of Warcraft, in movie terms, that’s not a figure that guarantees financial success.

“If every Warcraft player in the world bought a ticket, that’s still not enough,” Tull said. The film, which they hope to release in 2009, will need to bring in non-gamers, including those not being dragged there by a player, while still being true to the franchise. “There’s a reason over 9 million of you are so passionate about this, and we want to be true to that.”

They hope to have a trailer available “at the next Blizzcon.”

Blizzard’s senior creative guru, Chris Metzen, said the team had kicked around a number of different story possibilities, including one relating to the corruption of Medivh and the opening of the Dark Portal, but “in the end, most people know Warcraft from WoW.”

The script now taking shape takes place four years after Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne and a year before World of Warcraft, and incorporates a number of key events in the conflict specifically between orcs and humans and compresses them together a bit, to focus on that theme.

“You’re likely to see races you’ve played in lands that you know,” Metzen said. “It’s kind of a reimagining of recent events [similar to the reimagining in Batman Begins] … Why does it never end, this violence?”

The Alliance and Horde will notably not be teaming up at the end to fight a common enemy, as they did at the end of Warcraft III: The Reign of Chaos.

Notable Warcraft characters like Thrall and Jaina Proudmoore will appear. They have not yet decided whether or not the undead will have joined the Horde at that point.

“Any characters from before WoW that are in WoW that haven’t had their day in the sun” are also good bets to appear.

The protagonist of the picture, though, is new, “and he’s pretty badass,” Metzen said. The character, an Alliance answer to Thrall, is not the same new badass from the upcoming World of Warcraft comic from DC/Wildstorm.

The crew is still talking to directors, so no decisions have been made on actors yet, although they’ve received plenty of calls, including Superman actor Brandon Routh, who had begged Tull to set up a tour of Blizzard Entertainment headquarters in Irvine.

It’s far too soon to know what sort of rating the final film will receive, but “they’re not going to be hitting each other will pillows,” Tull said.

The film will be told from the perspective of the Alliance, an announcement that was met by boos.

“So,” Metzen said, nodding, “While my heart lies with the Horde, from a moviemaking perspective … it’s much easier to pick up the pace” without explaining who all these green people are, and why an audience should identify with them. “We want to focus on characters you can get immediately.”

The story will feature the fall of the human nation of Lordaeron as a prominent part of the story background.

The only piece from the film shown was a concept painting of the new world tree, Teldrassil, glowing with lights from buildings set along its outer trunk.

Blizzcon, Day 2: Items & Professions Panel

Those investing time in professions in World of Warcraft can look forward to better created items over the course of the next year, as Blizzard designers explained they hope to give every profession the ability to create some of the “best in slot” items, typically as a crafter-only item.

The aptly named John LeCraft said that before players could experience the approximately 650 new recipes in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion — including the new inscription profession — a number of changes and tweaks would be coming to the current game:

• Alchemists will soon be able to create potions only they can use.
• All crafters will be able to build gear better — and sometimes the best — for leveling up to the level cap.
• New recipes will be added to fill gaps in the current game’s itemization, both those left by accident and those created by Blizzard explicitly to be filled by crafters.

“Engineering is going to get some love,” LeCraft replied to calls from the audience: The portable mailbox schematic may be coming back to engineering, if Blizzard can keep it from being too badly exploited. More engineering schematics that benefit other people will also be added.

He acknowledged that Blizzard had made some mistakes in the past.

“We have some bad transmutes. I don’t know anyone transmuting primal fire to earth,” he said, and was greeted with roars of laughter. Transmutes will be switching from a precisely 24 hour refresh to being available every day when the server clock resets in the early morning.

The developers like the discovery process introduced for several tradeskills, but are going to switch the discoveries to cover non-core recipes. Rather, these rare recipes will be the rare, fun ones.

Vendor camping will soon be coming to an end, when all vendors of a certain type will share the same table of rare goods, meaning more chances to find a rare recipe, but a more random schedule.

“It’s not a lot of fun to camp a vendor,” LeCraft said.

He briefly touched on what the new inscription profession in Wrath of the Lich King might include, although he warned attendees not to hold their breaths for the knockback addition to spells that another developer had hypothesized at a panel on Friday.

Instead, spells and abilities could get additional damage, more critical hits and the like. He compared inscription modifications to abilities to each ability having its own talent point.

Inscribers will also be able to create a new sort of item, but he did not say what.

Before that happens, though, there are a number of changes coming in patches 2.2 and 2.3:

• Daily quests will soon include profession quests, beginning with a cooking one.
• Crafter-only gear (intended to be “best in slot” items) will be added to jewelcrafting and alchemy next.
• Once the crafting endgame, skill-ups from 275 to 300 will be made smoother and easier.
• Zul’Aman will include a new enchantment, Execution, which will require 375 skill and add 840 points of armor penetration to a weapon, which what LeCraft says will be a “visual effect at least as cool as Mongoose.”
• Three epic jewelcrafter-only gem recipes will be added through the reputation system.
• The new Steady Talasite jewelcrafting recipe (350 skill, +4 resilience, +6 stamina) will be available for four Halaa research tokens.
• Random cooking recipes — presumably available through the discovery system — will be available soon, including Storm Chops, a lightning-based upgrade to Dragonsbreath Chili that will have special effects in the rain.

On the itemization front, resilience will soon ameliorate damage over time effects.

All items that add to healing will soon add a great deal of additional spell damage, so that high-end healing gear is more versatile.

There will be a legendary ranged weapon in the raid zone after Zul’Aman. (Probably a 25-man Sunwell zone, based on comments on Friday.)

Enchantments may finally be switched over to a system that can work with the auction house: Scrolls or something else created by enchanters will be the method of improving gear, so that enchanters aren’t stuck in a city, spamming the Trade channel to sell their wares. (Inscription will work off of items, right from the beginning.)

More and better ore nodes will be showing up in dungeons.

The much-maligned Spirit stat will be made interesting in the Wrath of the Lich King, they promise.

And, in response to a completely random question at an items and professions panel, it was revealed that death knights would likely get a special mount, the deathcharger.