Back in January, Lisa Poisso posted a touching story about two players, Hexu, an enhancement shaman played by British Army soldier Ben Shaw, who, while serving in Iraq, was involved in an incident with a roadside bomb in Basra. He suffered multiple shrapnel wounds and had to have both eyes surgically removed. Despite this, Hexu has accepted many challenges, including WoW raiding.

But how does a sightless player raid? Well, that's where Davidian comes in. Davidian is a Death Knight, played by a Scotsman named Owen, and is Hexu's in-game guide. He uses a series of macros, both on Hexu's machine and his own, to help Hexu perform in-game actions from repairs to killing Deathwing, the two even ranking side by side in DPS.

Why are we repeating this story? Well, Blizzard has honored Hexu and Davidian with two in-game items: Hexu's Amplifying Helm, and Davidian's All-Seeing Eyes. The item descriptions on the tooltips are particularly touching: "A man with a friend is never without vision" and "Sharp enough to see for two men" respectively. I was really touched by this, and so are Hexu and Davidian's guild, Die Safe, who have posted a thread on the EU forums thanking Blizzard for this recognition.

Why do players choose to play what they do? I'm not referring to class here, or even role, but purely why they choose the race they choose. An undead warrior named Tearsnomore on the EU forums asked why anyone would play a male pandaren. To me, this is interesting because choosing to play a forsaken male is equally as baffling. Forsaken female? Sure, they have some awesome animations at least. Forsaken male? Why not just wear a bag on your head the entire time you're playing?

This led to some feedback from CM Takralus that got me thinking. I haven't race changed to pandaren, although I expect I'll roll one before long. Gotta catch 'em all and all that (I even have a forsaken warrior, and yes, it's female) but what really interested me about his post was the idea of visiting a major city to see the player diversity at work. I feel like, so far in Jade Forest at least, I don't even have to go back to see it. Heck, I see more of it because I see the Horde and the Alliance running around. Goblins, forsaken, draenei, trolls - I've seen a lot more trolls than I expected.

This got me to wonder -- is it all just about racials? Racials don't care what gender you play - do you just pick whatever gender you're more comfortable with? Do you even look at racials when you pick your race? I tend to play night elf and draenei tanks because they have solid racials for tanking (the draenei racial has gotten better for tanks under the active mitigation system) but I also play worgen and tauren purely for looks. I honestly don't think I could have stood to play Horde as long as I did as any other race than tauren.

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.

The earliest days of Azeroth's recorded history of wars and conflicts detail the events of the War of the Ancients, which culminated in the destruction of the Well of Eternity and the Sundering of the great continent of Kalimdor. While we have vague remnants of history before that time -- wars between troll empires and aqir, the Titanic creation of our world; it is becoming increasingly clear that our scope of knowledge of these early days of Azeroth is quite small.

Pandaria was once part of the main Kalimdor continent before it vanished into the mists, forgotten. But even before the Sundering, Pandaria had a vast, rich history that was far more complex than the snippets of tales and legends from troll or tauren. And while we don't know if the pandaren are native to Azeroth, or Titan creation like the dwarves and gnomes, one thing is imminently clear -- the pandaren are a far more advanced civilization than any other native Azerothian race.