World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade intro cinematic
Just for the handful of people who haven’t seen it yet …
The Cinematics department at Blizzard takes more than a year to work on a cinematic, answering the persistent question of “why don’t these guys make a movie?” They’d love to, of course, but it would mean hiring a lot more folks very quickly, with a possible (perhaps even probable) loss in overall quality. And, of course, someone would need to make a cinematic for whatever Blizzard’s next release in that period as well.
In any case, for those who don’t know what the heck that cinematic is about, Illidan, the narrator, is a night elf whose story is told in Warcraft III: The Reign of Chaos and its expansion, The Frozen Throne. Thousands of years ago, he was part of the night elf forces seeking to keep the Burning Legion (an army of demons that travel from world to world, sucking the magic out of it and laying waste to it) from Azeroth.
Unlike his (goody-goody) brother and his brother’s girlfriend, he was more interested in defending the world’s magical resources than in fighting the Burning Legion. In thanks, the night elves through his immortal butt into the equivalent of night elf Sing-Sing, until he’s freed during the course of the Warcraft III storyline, when the night elves decide that, it might be nice to have Illidan back, now that the Burning Crusade is invading again. Naturally, this is something of a mixed deal, and after the Burning Crusade are routed at the end of Warcraft III, he decides he’s not going back into stir and takes off to the former orc world of Draenor, now known as Outland after it was blown into chunks in the expansion to Warcraft II and put the smack down on the night elf marshal (essentially) sent to drag him back to pointy-ears prison.
In the expansion to World of Warcraft, the Burning Crusade opens the door between Outland and Azeroth. This is bad news for Illidan because, not only will it mean yet more damn night elves coming after him (and really, I pretty much feel the same way about the night elves that he does), he’s worried that the Alliance and Horde will reactivate all the other portals on Outland that he’s worked to shut down. And that, in turn, will alert the main army of the Burning Crusade that Outland is still a strategic asset and, oh yes, your old nemesis Illidan is still around.
Anyone who’s said that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” never met Illidan.
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade hits stores in mid-January.
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