Awesome Old-World Lore

Phasing in the old-world content is one of the newest sweethearts of the forum goonies. How awesome would it be if this was used in a future patch to show the death of one of the leaders of the horde or alliance. How crazy would it be if Cairne or some other leader were to be assassinated?

What sort of ramifications would this have? How would you like to see this done? WOULD you like to see something like this?

I think they should go wild with phasing in the old world. After four years and 80 levels, I think it would be a thrill for players to finally see some environmental changes in the world. I mean, seriously, we drove the Razormanes and Centaurs out of the Barrens, ravaged the trolls in ZF, defeated the silithid in...Silithus, shut down the cauldrons in Western Plaguelands, and demolished Scholomance and Blackrock Mountain. Shouldn't something change a little?

As far as assassinating a current leader, it would have to really drive a story point. I wouldn't want it to be a soap opera or comic book death just to shock the players. It would probably have to be Thrall or Jaina to really be effective, and I really wouldn't be thrilled with either unless there was some major plot being driven forward because of it.

I could see them killing off Jaina since she seems to be the only thing stopping Varian from waging an all out war on the Horde. If I were Arthas, I'd kill her and let the alliance and the horde turn on each other and make my job that much easier when they actually remembered why they were in Northrend in the first place.

I think that you could get away from the fake emotional tuggings if you did have a real reason to kill off a leader. My first novella that will be on my new blog (musthavediscipline.wordpress.com) will be tackling an issue similar to this. I hope to hear some feedback and see if this makes any cohesive sense to the rest of the lore and if it would make for fascinating gameplay!

Anyway, back to the issue of Jaina... her death should come at the hands of Arthas. I know that if she were to be assassinated or whatever it would ultimately be complete war against Alliance and Horde, but it would be incredibly poetic if Arthas were to take her life. At that point, he would have killed EVERYONE that he was once close to: Uther the Lightbringer, his father: Terenas Menithill II, Muradin Bronzebeard, and others. Her death would be right up Arthas' ally.

Also... Arthas' sister? She's gone. No one knows where she is. The last blood relative to Arthas HAS to have some sort of significance to the rest of this story.

From a lore standpoint, I love this idea to pieces - it would be awesome on a titanium skewer to have our actions have a marked effect on the Old World especially (reclamation of Gnomeregan/BRD, what happens to Silithus/BWL post boss-kills, political assassinations, the list goes on). From a pure gameplay/devil's advocate perspective, though, I think phasing has been used sparingly in WotLK for a very good reason - by definition, the technology will separate player characters into their own 'versions' of the zone depending on what quests they have or haven't done, and that creates problems when people want to group up but find they need to finish a quest line to even see each other.

Particularly with the given idea of a racial leader assassination (i.e. phasing in a capital city), what happens if the opposing faction attacks at any point during or after the event? Both the attackers and the defenders would essentially be warring over two (or more) versions of the same city, and probably wouldn't even realize it until they got there. One way to fix this is to make the quests chains short and the individual links easy to complete, but that defeats the purpose of the epic, lore-driven storyline of either the plan to assassinate the leader or the valiant, but futile attempt to save him/her. So with that in mind, we should first bug Blizzard to revise the phasing tech - something like when in a group or raid, all group members exist in the same phase (probably the earliest/latest phase any group member has gotten to). =P

Disciple: I had totally forgotten about Arthas's sister, but I'm sure Bliz hasn't. That could be a compelling piece of the story.

Kirotei: Yeah, the one issue with phasing is the grouping problem. I think they will really have to go back and change the mechanic so that grouping allows players in the latter part of the phasing to see the mobs in the former part. Icecrown's group quests have been a bitch for a lot of players for that exact reason.

I definitely understand the technical difficulties of creating in-world events... however what about an epic cut-scene? I think that (similar to the wrath gate vid) some great events can happen outside of game but make it almost similar to a movie. I'm talking 15-30 minute fully cgi video that shows some catastrophic event (opening of the greymane wall, leader assisination, etc.). When you log on, it shows the video, and then you can go in and things have changed. This means additional story content in the old world without phasing and a dynamic lore environment. I know how expensive those cut-scenes are... but if anyone has the bank for it, Blizzard does.

(My baby idea is still Magatha Grimtotem offing Cairne Bloodhoof... there's more to it... but I think an idea like this would be out of control)