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.

When looking at the new race and class combinations that are coming out with Cataclysm, some are far easier than others to digest, such as the addition of the hunter class to the human race. Of course the humans can be hunters, that's not a terribly far-fetched statement at all. But what about the other new race that, as of Cataclysm, gets to take up the bow and tame beasts as well? I'm speaking of the Forsaken, of course -- the thought of an undead creature holding a biscuit and coaxing a wolf to be his new best friend is just a little off-putting.

In Wrath, we've seen a sudden return of the dark rangers -- the forsaken remnants of what used to be Sylvanas' corps of elven rangers. As Ranger General of Silvermoon, Sylvanas led and commanded the Farstriders back before the Third War. After the events of the Third War, Sylvanas found herself turned into a banshee, and then after regaining her body, a dark ranger -- the first dark ranger of the Forsaken. But the Forsaken we play in game aren't really elven -- they're humans, the former residents of Lordaeron. How do they fit in? There's a few different and absolutely reasonable theories kicking around, but first we should take a look at the first and only human ranger lord -- Nathanos Marris.

WARNING: The following post may contain some spoilers for the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. If you wish to remain unspoiled, stopping here would be advised!

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Filed under: Lore, Know your Lore

I've said it before, but low level PvP is going to be insanely fun come Cataclysm. It will be so much fun, in fact, that it will almost be worth rolling alts for and maybe even turning off XP gains to stay in the lower brackets just a while longer. The big change is because of the bonus abilities players gain when choosing a tree to specialize in. Although every character gets one big, signature spell, they are bundled with complementary abilities or skills that define the spec.

When I first reviewed the initial talent overhaul, the developers hadn't settled on exactly what abilities to give to classes at level 10. Several builds into the beta, we have a better picture of how the various specs will look, and it's not very likely that these will change much when the game goes live, considering that each spec basically revolves around these core abilities. For the purposes of this post, we'll take a look at the first two battleground brackets -- 10-19 and 20-29 -- mostly because characters get talent points every other level now, so these two brackets should cover the first two tiers of each tree. We'll try to be general for now because everything is in such flux, so expect a few errors as abilities get moved around from one beta iteration to the next.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, The Art of War(craft) (PvP)

Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we discuss how holy power works and what we'll be using it for.

If we look at the resource systems of WoW over its lifetime, it's clear that Blizzard has been trying to diversify the mechanics. We've seen warriors' rage system constantly tweaked, rogue energy regeneration altered in every expansion, and hunters returning to their old focus resource from back in the original beta. The inception of death knights also introduced not one, but two resource systems to the game. Warlocks are even getting a new soul shard system in Cataclysm that will give them a brand new resource bar.

Paladins of all specs have been having problems with their ability usage. Retribution paladins could use a castrandom macro and do nearly full DPS, protection paladins have an incredibly static "969" rotation, and holy paladins have been stuck using nothing but Holy Light since Naxxramas. We needed something to help us break the cycle of repetitive ability usage. The dev team looked at ways to give our class a little more flavor, and came up with the concept of holy power.

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Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It

One of the most endearing emotes in World of Warcraft is the /silly. In this classic command, you order your character to tell a brief, audible joke. Everyone around you can hear it, of course. But the fine voice acting of /silly and /flirt are some of the most sought-after content of each expansion. Some are racy and risque, but all of the emotes speak to fundamental concepts about each race. The goblin voices, for example, talk a lot about crime and money. That's not by accident.

In any kind of roleplaying, sound bites and one liners both tend to be a big deal. They evoke memories and define characters. They help frame action into a resounding "heck yeah!" kind of moment. Comic book heroes are known for their quips. Stand up comedians make fine art of the one sentence joke. It is, in a word, some good stuff.

To help encourage folks to prepare their own worgen and goblin one liners, I thought I'd spend some time going through some examples. I'll drop the line or quote, share where I got it from, and why I think it reflects on the worgen and goblin. Don't worry; I promise to avoid Metallica and Linkin Park lyrics. Then, let's play in the comments and create a bunch more.

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The time has finally arrived - the Sunday Morning Funnies gallery guide to WoW-related comics has finally been posted. Whether you're looking to break into a new WoW-themed web comic, or you would just like to learn more about your favorites, this guide has you covered. In addition to displaying custom artwork and comic previews, you will learn about the authors and artists as well as the comics themselves, from art style to inspiration and more. It will even track when each comic updates so you don't have to!

Also, Complex Actions is back up and running! Check out Stress Therapy and The State of the PUG-Conomy, as well as Little Prejudices. In other comic news, WoW, eh? resumes on Monday, August 9th.

• Awkward Zombie: Ignorance.
• Out of World: At the ball part 9. (Slightly NSFW)
• Away From Reality: Very Common Ground.
• NPC: 8578. Also: Many Minis and Magnetic Fields.
• Travels with Tenthunders: I'm All Ears.
• K's Grab Bag: I Can Be Fair....
• Daily Quests: Stick Around.
• LFG #377 and #378 and #379 and #380.
• NoObz: Tomorrow is Another Day.
• Dark Legacy Comics: The Hike.
• Teh Gladiators: A Human Incognito.
• The Warcraft Hero in: A Happy Ending.
• Coffin Comics Mini: Unless.
• Coffin Comics: Leveling is Boarring.
• Torment of the Week: This Again.
• Beyond the Tree: Preposterous Propositions. Also: Stage Presence.
• Byron, the Tauren Rogue.
• Slash AFK: Hey Herb.
• Guilded Age.
• Penny-Arcade: Planting a Flag.

Update: From Fourth Wall, check out The Light and How to Swing it, as well as Old World, Old Grudges. Sorry for missing it!

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, Comics

Wow, Cataclysm really is hardcore. Even the architecture is throwing the goat. Neophyte goblin Mala noticed this particularly brutal graveyard in the beta, along with the also-metal bone fence and pile of skulls. She's no Eddie Riggs, but it'll do.

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Filed under: Around Azeroth

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

I'm living a dream that many guys out there have: My girlfriend is actively learning how to play World of Warcraft and is enjoying it. After a couple of false starts, she finally found a class that suited her.

First, she tried a warlock. Too many things to remember. Keeping DoTs up, keeping up with soul shards and collecting them, keeping tabs on her demon in battle. It was too much for her.

She tried a hunter. Taming her own pet was cool at first, but then she had to feed it and manage it in dungeons. Throw Feign Death, Deterrence and Disengage into the mix, and it was not her cup of tea. She's flying back 10 yards into other packs of mobs and feigning death every time the cooldown is up because she's afraid of the tank yelling at her for "doing the aggro thing." I was dismayed that a hunter didn't work out, because I always deemed it the default starter class for new players. At least it was for me.

Then came the paladin. Oh, blessed paladin, how she loves thee. At first, all she had to do was run up to the mob and hit it with Judgement of Light. The only "tricky" thing I had to teach her was when the Judgement of Light button was dark and wouldn't let her use it, it meant she needed to apply her Seal of Righteousness again. I even put the Seal right above the Judgement so she wouldn't forget. She was actually having pure joy with her new class. She didn't wonder if she was doing it right. She didn't worry about forgetting something. Just kill, kill, kill and love every second of it.

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Filed under: Paladin, Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts

In a forum thread that started about the current state of talent tree design and the infamous "this tree is too bloated" vs. "there's not enough choice" debate for each, our old crustacean pal Ghostcrawler comes in and waxes philosophical. While I think his entire answer is interesting, I'm going to focus on just one aspect of it here.

Ghostcrawler - Re: Bloat vs. Choice

I'm really not building towards any kind of conclusion with any of that. It has just been interesting to see the feedback. I guess I can offer that you might want to be careful about who you think you are speaking for when you say "we feel this" or "we don't want that." Players, even the microcosm of the forum community, want different things.

source

He lists a long series of different viewpoints some players hold which I think is worth reading in its entirety. It got me to thinking about my own general prefences as to how a talent tree should be designed. I basically like it when there's enough room in any talent tree for two fairly viable builds to emerge in that tree. Back in the day, (not so far back that actual dinosaurs roamed the earth) you had the dual wield and two handed slam builds for fury, and both were fairly viable. (Dual wield did usually come out ahead on damage.) However, I think it unlikely that such a diversity of option in each talent tree is really possible, and a good compromise is the idea that you can get most of the talents you're going to want and then customize based on preference. This is seen in the current warrior protection tree on the beta where one can spec for AoE or single target after picking up most of the core tanking talents.

It's an interesting read all told. Give it a read and see what you think about the idea: how would you define your preferences for talent design? Is there a valid distinction between bloat and choice in a tree? If so, what is it?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Cataclysm

It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, your one-stop shop for weekly mage columns. Seriously, any time you want a weekly mage column, you can come here and obtain one. We do one thing here at Arcane Brilliance, but we do it well. Or if we don't do it well, we at least do it hard. Or maybe just adequately. Pick an adverb. Any adverb, really. Insert it at the end of the phrase "we do it." Chances are -- at least some of the time -- that's probably how we do it.

Good news everyone!

I'm in the beta. It is awesome. I have been thoroughly impressed, and because I like you people, I would like to share some of those impressions with you. As you may have guessed from the title of the column, they will be fairly random. Most will be related in some fashion to mages.

I've come to understand that there exists a sizable contingent of folks who play this game but would prefer not to know about future iterations of it in advance of actually playing them. I respect that. I'm not sure, really, what beta information would be considered a "spoiler" and what beta information wouldn't (is talking about new talents a spoiler? UI changes? The new launcher? I don't know!), so I'll go ahead and bury all of my scattered thoughts behind the jump. That way, those of you who came here to this WoW news site in an attempt to avoid WoW news can turn back now, your virgin eyes still pure and unspoiled.

And yet, part of the purpose of placing text in front of the jump is to whet your appetites, leading you on to the meat of the article, so I feel obliged to mention two things before we adjourn and retire to the page beyond this one.

1. Earlier today, I set fire to a bomb-throwing monkey.
2. Prior to that, I ran over a pirate with my car.

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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance, Cataclysm

Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury, and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance, and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 9 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby.

With such a lame title, you'd never guess we have so much to talk about this week! Mastery bonus is all elemental damage, not just nature! Smarter Searing Totems! Four Ghostcrawler replies (11 paragraphs!) about Shamans, with four paragraphs solely about Enhancement! Longer Hex! New crit-increasing talents! Increased totem ranges! Well, okay, maybe that last one isn't as exciting as the first few. But there's so much news out there for us enhancers, I don't even know where to begin.

The logical place to start is with the biggest news: Enhancement Mastery bonus "increases all elemental damage done by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating." This is a change from the first Cataclysm build that included mastery; previously our bonus was only increasing our nature damage. The nature-only mastery was great for our core spell, Lightning Bolt (LB), but with Maelstrom Weapon (MW) now including Lava Burst (LvB) we would not benefit from our Mastery bonus with LvB. This was a problem for two reasons: first LvB does more damage than LB, and second, LvB could be used to keep Elemental Devastation up. Lava Burst will automatically crit when Flame Shock (FS) is on a target, making it a smart choice to used to keep Elemental Devastation active.

That choice changed. Mastery now affects all elemental damage, which includes Lava Burst. Hence, Lava Burst plus Flame Shock plus mastery equals happy enhancer. This is a great buff for us. Because LvB has an 8 second cooldown and LB has none, we'll still keep LB handy for when LvB is on cooldown.

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Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk