Fantasy News and Views 3

Warcraft:             Blizzcon is this weekend. Announcement is expected on what the next the next expansion will. Speculations are running amok as earlier this week is was discovered that “The Warlords of Draenor” was trademarked in US, UK, New Zealand and the EU. Draenor is the homeworld of the Orcs and the first world the Draenai settled after they ran from The Burning Legion, according to lore.  When the Legion caught up with them, the orcs were bent to the legions will and the Draenai finally tried to leave. The Blood Elves sabotaged their ship and the Draenai crashed on Azeroth. The Blood Legion also caused the planet Draenor to break up and become what we know as the Outlands. Basically, The Outlands is what‘s left of Draenor, the Orc homeworld.

                From this knowledge, and the fact that the Horde is run by Warlords and Warchiefs, the new trademark seems to imply that the next expansion will be about the Outlands and the Orcs. Possibly even Garrosh Hellscream escaping from his Pandaren punishment and finds and organizes the last of the Fel Orc tribes to retake the Horde.  Speculation aside, it is clear that this next expansion will be Horde-centric story line again based on the title alone, at least to me at this time.

                To this I feel sadden. The Horde receives so much attention from the expansions that I feel that Blizzard only has the Alliance in it so that the Horde has a reason to unify.  The Alliance keeps loosing battles and land to the Horde and even when they have a chance to regain that stolen property, the leadership chooses not to. In fact, more Alliance locations have suffered devastation by the Horde than the reverse.  If this is supposed to be two groups that can’t wipe the other out, then the Alliance needs to start taking back lost territory and win a few battles. They also need to have their story take the forefront just as often as the Hordes. If they could alternate the expansions between Horde, Alliance and outside threat, I bet that they could get more of a feel of a living world and make more people happy.

Hearthstone:     Blizzard has said that no new invites to Closed Beta will occur till after Blizzcon. Hopefully, the panels at Blizzcon will give us some Idea of a release date for this game. I enjoy it immensely and my two girls like watching me play. I want to set them up with their own account to play the game, but I won’t do that till it’s at least in open Beta.

                That is all of the fantasy based news I have for now. Hopefully this has been informative and helpful in some way. Until tomorrow, have fun!