Past | Warcraft Ink

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider’s pages.

No matter what aspect of WoW you prefer, we all have bad nights. Your guild has an off night, wiping endlessly on farm content. You get in a drama-filled PUG and get saved to a raid that doesn’t really accomplish much. Your arena team loses most of its matches. You keep getting into BGs with half the other members AFK. We rage, QQ, maybe have an alcoholic beverage, and eventually log off frustrated and unfulfilled. However, with as many subscribers as WoW has, it is clear most of us manage to put that behind us and try again.

I’m not much of a PvPer anymore; mostly, I raid now. Lately, our guild has been struggling a bit. Lots of players are taking time off until Cataclysm. Some of the replacements just aren’t as good as the people they are replacing, or they are having trouble adjusting to the way our guild does fights. A couple of weeks ago, we had the worst raid night I have had since Wrath launched, wiping for about two hours on heroic Lady Deathwhisper — a fight we usually one-shot — and as the raid wound down, we actually set the encounter to normal just to get past it so we could clear at least through Saurfang before we called it a night. There was finger-pointing, complaining, grumbling, and general poor morale as the night wore on, and I am ashamed to admit I joined in on some of it. As the night ended and I logged off, I was just glad it was over.

So as I logged on for the next raid, I was already dreading what would become of the continuation of the previous night’s antics. However, as a guild, we decided to have fun the rest of the week, bust out some achievements for those who’d missed them, and not worry about slamming our heads against heroics — just clear the raid and make it a short week. It brought morale back up and turned things into a rewarding and relaxing raid week, and we got back on track. So how do you and your guild or friends recover from bad nights?

Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts

Breakfast Topic: How do you get past bad nights? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You’re playing the game, you’re fighting the bosses, you know the how — but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft is absolutely full of trolls — not the trade chat kind, the actual race. Whether you’re traveling the southern continents or icy heights of Northrend, the trolls are everywhere; vanilla WoW and both expansions have all included troll content of some kind or another. The original game had Zul’Farrak, Sunken Temple and then later Zul’Gurub. The Burning Crusade didn’t see much of the trolls in Outland (beyond a few settlements, of course), but trolls played a large part in high elf (now blood elf) history and currently plague the Ghostlands. Eventually we saw the release of Zul’Aman, and with Wrath‘s release, we were introduced to the ice trolls of Zul’Drak and their capital, Gun’Drak.

While there have been vague hints — stone tablets and other records — documenting the history of the race, there’s very little solid information regarding the trolls. Big events have been documented, but the day-to-day life and the origins of the trolls aren’t really addressed beyond “they have been on Azeroth since the beginning.” Of all the various troll tribes, only one is playable — the Darkspear tribe that now makes its home on Kalimdor. The trolls of the Darkspear have not only made a new home for themselves upon Cataclysm‘s release, but they’ve also found two new paths to follow; players will be able to choose troll druids and warlocks with the expansion’s launch. In order to understand the Darkspear, a closer look at its origins and the origins of one of the bloodiest wars in Azeroth’s history is necessary.

WARNING: The following post contains spoilers for the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. If you wish to remain spoiler-free, do not continue.

Continue reading Know Your Lore: The dark past of the Darkspear

Filed under: Lore, Know your Lore

Know Your Lore: The dark past of the Darkspear originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 05 Sep 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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