WoW Moviewatch: Attack on Horde

Just uploaded earlier today, Attack on Horde is a different kind of WoW machinima -- it's a parody of the opening for the show Attack on Titan, using WoW models in place of the actual characters. It's kind of like the really cool intros guild Fifth Element does for their kill videos, only there's no kill involved -- just sweet, sweet butt-kicking of Horde. The video stands alone by itself as a pretty good machinima, I really like the use of the music and the combination of both models and brief flashes of panels from the WoW comic series.

But the cool part is checking out how well it lines up to the original. Youtube user Bain Williams not only put the video above up for viewing, he also posted a side-by-side comparison to the original intro for the anime, so you can see for yourself how well it matched up! I don't know about the rest of you, but I like this trend of intros-turned-machinima. Nice work, Bain!

Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com. Tags: featured, guide-to-machinima, machinima, movies, ow-machinima, world-of-warcraft-movies, world-of-warcraft-videos, wow-created-movies, wow-fan-movies, wow-guide, wow-machinima-guide, wow-movie-guide, wow-movies, wow-video-guide, wow-videos

Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

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Around Azeroth: When the Horde gets bored

What do you do when you're all ready for PvP but your opponents never show up? Just hang around, make campfires in the rain and construct spotlights, I suppose. "Here are five of us anxiously awaiting our mortal foes from the Alliance in Tol Barad," writes submitter Healfdene of alea iacta est salus on Earthen Ring (US-H). "We feel like a bride left at the altar on the day of her wedding. We came to fight, but instead we wait. Perhaps someday, the Alliance shall return to fight."
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm. Tags: around azeroth, around-azeroth, AroundAzeroth, featured, screen-shots, screenshots, world-of-warcraft-pictures, world-of-warcraft-screenshots, wow-screen-shots, wow-screenshot, wow-screenshots, wow-ss

Filed under: Around Azeroth

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Know Your Lore: The Alliance and Horde

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.

To ask why we fight, is to ask why the leaves fall -- it is in their nature.

The Alliance and Horde have been notoriously at each other's throats since the two factions began in the days of the First and Second Wars. And although I have come up with some crazy theories regarding the innate reasons behind that latent aggression between the two factions, they're simply theories. They may make sense, in a bizarre and meta fashion, but they are in no way true. So here we are, left with a simple question: What makes the Alliance and Horde so prone to aggression? Why do they continue to battle, and turn their noses at the thought of making peace?

While I do enjoy coming up with fanciful reasons for all of this, there is one blatant, simple reason that stands on its own: Misunderstanding. Sheer, unadulterated ignorance and a stubborn unwillingness to try and understand. Both sides possess a single-minded obsession with violence and retribution that has never faded, nearly thirty years after the events of the First War. And when you step back and take a look at the conflict between the two factions with a neutral eye, the whole of the aggression turns into a delightful, tragic, almost laughable comedy of errors and escalation.

Let's take a look at where some of the common misconceptions surrounding both Horde and Alliance have gotten us.

The internment camps

Following the Second War, the remaining orc forces of the Horde were rounded up and ushered off into internment camps. As prisoners of war, they treated with cruelty -- and they succumbed to a strange lethargy, listless and unwilling to fight. Thrall famously liberated the orcs from their cruel prisons and led them to freedom, far away from any Alliance settlement, intent on restoring them to their noble heritage -- heritage he'd heard tales of. Thrall was, after all, raised by humans, not orcs. What he'd learned of orcish heritage was tales told by Grom Hellscream and later, Drek'thar.

But let's back up a second. Yes, the orcs weren't exactly treated kindly in the internment camps -- they were prisoners of war, after all. But the very existence of the internment camps was a moment of mercy from the Alliance. Both Thoras Trollbane and Genn Greymane wanted the orcish race slaughtered down to the last after the Second War. It was King Terenas who insisted that the orcs be imprisoned. He was convinced that the orcs would see the errors of their crimes. His actions put a rift in the Alliance of Lordaeron that eventually tore the whole thing apart. Genn left the Alliance of Lordaeron over it.

In fact, that strange lethargy was a cause of concern for the Alliance. Archmage Antonidas was researching it because people thought that it was some sort of disease, and didn't want it to spread. He theorized correctly -- that the orcs had been under demonic influence, and that influence was simply wearing off. If Terenas hadn't shown a moment of mercy, there would be no new Horde today.

Conflict after the Third War

Orc, human, and night elf forces came together successfully to defeat Archimonde at Mount Hyjal in the Third War. So what happened? Territorial disputes. The night elves were unwilling to offer the orcs any kind of useable land or resources, and the humans were equally unwilling to do so. In order to survive, the Horde had to take what it could -- and take what allies it could. Likely the biggest mistake Thrall made in his career as Warchief was allowing the Forsaken to join the Horde. It wasn't something he took lightly -- he had to be talked into it by Hamuul Runetotem, who thought the Forsaken had a chance at redemption.

But that act pretty much closed the door on any hope the Horde had on successfully coming to any kind of negotiations with the Alliance. The Forsaken weren't just misunderstood dead guys -- they were former Scourge. They committed horrific atrocities while they were under the Lich King's sway. What's worse, after they broke free of the Lich King's hold, they went ahead and began slaughtering the rest of the living in Lordaeron. As far as the Alliance was concerned, the Forsaken were monsters -- and in a way, they were right.

Between that, and leftover feelings of animosity from the First War, there was no way any kind of negotiation stood a chance. Thrall's Horde was not the Horde of old -- but the allies it chose to consort with implied that it was the same as ever.

Alliances during the Burning Crusade

Round two, fight! As both Horde and Alliance forces entered the Dark Portal and traveled to Outland, tensions continued to build on both sides. But once again, both sides united to put a stop to the Burning Legion -- this time, Kil'jaeden. In fact, the interaction between the blood elves and draenei was the perfect illustration of what an alliance between the two factions could accomplish. Even though the blood elves had sabotaged the Exodar, causing it to plummet to Azeroth, Velen was able to distinguish between the elves that served Prince Kael'thas, and subsequently the Burning Legion, and the blood elves who were simply blind followers.

Not only that, but Velen was willing to actually help the beleaguered blood elves and restore the Sunwell. The source of all their power -- the thing that caused all those crazy addictions that eventually led their leader straight to the Legion's doorstep. And Velen didn't ask for a single thing in return. In contrast, the blood elves had the help of the Forsaken, yes -- and were forced to send what little aid they could to Northrend, under threat of that alliance being broken.

Is it any wonder that the blood elves considered, even briefly, defecting from the Horde? The relationship between the draenei and the blood elves was barely mentioned by either side. The draenei didn't receive any kind of punishment for what they'd done, and the blood elves received no acknowledgement of their short alliance with the draenei, either. In fact, both sin'dorei and draenei were by and large ignored when the war in Northrend began, their curious alliance completely forgotten in favor of fighting the Lich King -- and fighting between the Alliance and Horde.
The Battle for the Undercity

Although the battle at the Wrathgate proved pivotal in erasing all tentative peace between Alliance and Horde, for a moment it appeared as though that peace would actually come to pass. Bolvar and Saurfang appeared to be almost comrades on the battlefield, fighting side-by-side with apparent respect for each other. It wasn't until Putress launched his attack on both forces that it all came crashing down -- and what the Alliance seemed all too willing to forget was that the attack was not just on Alliance forces, but on Horde forces as well.

When Varian pushed into the Undercity, it wasn't to reclaim it for Sylvanas. It was to reclaim it for the Alliance. He had absolutely no interest in hearing about what had really occurred at the Wrathgate. He had no interest in looking at Sylvanas or the Forsaken with anything but disgust. And who can blame him? The halls of Lordaeron were once Varian's home -- they were shelter and a place of comfort after Stormwind was destroyed in the First War. For that matter, Varian held absolutely no love for the orcs, and why would he -- he was just a child when he watched his father die at the hands of Garona.

If Jaina hadn't intervened, it's entirely likely either Varian or Thrall would be dead right now. And the Alliance and Horde would have wasted their time murdering each other over it instead of focusing on the real issue -- the Lich King. But there's really one moment in history that stands above all as the moment this all began ... and the ramifications of that moment continue to this day.

The Horde invasion

The Alliance held and has continued to hold an impression of the Horde as a bunch of vicious, unruly savages. While there is truth behind that impression -- the Old Horde was in fact incredibly cruel, ruthless, and bloodthirsty -- the orcs behind the Horde were not acting of their own volition. They were pawns and puppets of the Burning Legion, tricked into servitude by the manipulations of Kil'jaeden and a very few orcs who were incredibly willing to serve in exchange for power, manipulating the rest of their race into following suit. But that was only one side of the Dark Portal. The other side of the portal was engineered by the human sorcerer Medivh, who had been possessed by Sargeras in the womb. Sargeras' influence led Medivh to contact Gul'dan and begin the creation of the Dark Portal.

In other words, the invasion of Azeroth was pretty much orchestrated by the Burning Legion from beginning to end, on both sides of the equation. In this, it was a massive success -- because the chaos wrought from that initial battle still continues to plague Azeroth to this day. Never mind how many demons have been killed since then, never mind how many victories both sides have won against the Burning Legion -- in this one simple act, Sargeras and Kil'jaeden guaranteed that Azeroth would be awash in war even without the presence of the Legion.

You know how the Alliance is quietly helping the Darkspear Rebellion in an effort to encourage more Horde casualties on both sides, to ultimately weaken the Horde as a whole? This is the Burning Legion's equivalent of that -- as long as Alliance and Horde are occupied with fighting each other, the Legion can continue to slip in and attack. Every moment the Legion has been defeated to date has been a moment where Alliance and Horde come together. The only exception to this is the War of the Ancients -- which took place thousands of years before the Alliance and Horde even existed.

Sargeras wasn't playing a short game with his possession of Aegwynn. He was waiting for Medivh. He was waiting for Kil'jaeden to complete his complete corruption of the orcs of Draenor. Kil'jaeden wasn't sent to conquer Draenor by any stretch of the imagination -- he was sent to find an army that could take Azeroth. And he did, with resounding success. If the First War had never happened, the Alliance would never have existed -- they'd have no reason to. The Horde never would have existed -- they'd have simply continued their existence on Draenor. And with a Guardian to watch over Azeroth, the world would continue to thrive.

In just a few calculated moves, Sargeras set up a domino effect that changed the face of Azeroth forever. It put into place a power struggle that continues to distract both Alliance and Horde to this day. And while both sides have been willing to put aside their differences until now, the Horde has a new leader -- a true son of Draenor who is willing to do whatever it takes to obtain victory. Garrosh Hellscream isn't just a threat to the Alliance. He's the one creature that currently has the power to push the conflict between Alliance and Horde into all-out chaos -- leaving the world open and vulnerable to another Legion attack. This is what Wrathion sees -- this is why he's trying to determine which side will be the victor in this war. Because as long as two sides exist, Azeroth will remain in constant danger, an ever-weakening target for the Legion to strike.

While you don't need to have played the previous Warcraft games to enjoy World of Warcraft, a little history goes a long way toward making the game a lot more fun. Dig into even more of the lore and history behind the World of Warcraft in WoW Insider's Guide to Warcraft Lore. Tags: alliance, archimonde, bolvar-fordragon, burning-legion, featured, first-war, garrosh-hellscream, guide, guide-to-lore, horde, kiljaeden, lore, lore-guide, role-play, role-playing-guide, rp-guide, sargeras, saurfang-the-younger, second-war, third-war, varian-wrynn, world-of-warcraft-lore, wow-guide, wow-lore, wow-role-playing, wow-role-playing-guide, wow-rp, wow-rp-guide, wow-rping, wrathgate, wrathion

Filed under: Lore, Know your Lore

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Know Your Lore: Gul'dan, Doomhammer, and the nature of the Horde

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.

Garrosh Hellscream is many things. He's brash, headstrong, arrogant, concerned for his people, determined to deliver the whole of Azeroth into their dominion no matter what anyone thinks about it, but one thing is clear. He's not Gul'dan. For all the grief I like to give Horde players (mainly because it's easy to rile Horde players up, I know, I raided as Horde for all of Cataclysm and a good chunk of Mists) It's true that on the surface, the Horde of today has changed greatly from the Horde Gul'dan created.

The Horde as it exists today is the spiritual successor of the Horde that Orgrim Doomhammer created when he seized power. Was Doomhammer a kindly, soft spoken orc who loved kittens and rainbows? No. No he was not. He was an orc who had come to power as the right hand of Blackhand the Destroyer, a hunter and a warrior who had spent his entire life in combat. He was strong, devoted to his people, and absolutely committed to an orc victory no matter the odds. In a way, minus Garrosh's bluster and bravado, the orc he most resembles from the history of the old Horde is Orgrim Doomhammer. Doomhammer understood the harsh algebra of victory, how it often demands actions that would sicken or shock another orc. It was Doomhammer who allowed Gul'dan to create the first Death Knights, countenancing Gul'dan's atrocious misuse of human corpses and the spirits of his own acolytes, acolytes Gul'dan himself murdered and then implanted into those human bodies. It was Doomhammer who supported the plan to use the Demon Soul to capture the Red Dragonqueen, Alexstrasza, and it was by Doomhammer's command as Warchief of the Horde that Alexstrasza was forced to breed incessantly so that her offspring could be used as fodder for the Horde. For all that Doomhammer cared deeply for his people's welfare, his vision never moved past them, nor did he ever see that he'd become part and parcel of a system created by Gul'dan in the first place to mislead and subjugate his own people. Even in victory, Doomhammer was trapped in Gul'dan's web. And his ultimate defeat came from Gul'dan, who proved himself to be the ultimate opportunist.

The problem was and still is fairly simple. The Horde as it exists now dates back to Gul'dan's need for a structure to shape and direct the nomadic clans in a singular purpose. He did not invent the Horde, precisely. There were traditions dating back to the distant past when the orcs were fighting for their lives against the gronn and their ogre descendants of a unified force, commanded by a single orc, that could come together and deal with the ancient enemy. When Ner'zhul convinced the various orc clans to make war on the draenei (misled as he was by Kil'Jaeden) he didn't try and organize them any further than simply giving them directives under the auspices of his position as the most renowned shaman of the orcish people, but Gul'dan saw the need for organization both to placate Kil'Jaeden and as a means to more surely ensure the end of the draenei people. It didn't hurt that with the decision to sell his people into demonic slavery for greater personal power Gul'dan realized that the orcs would become impossible for him to directly control. They were already a proud and aggressive race of nomads who disliked the idea of a centralized government and who engaged in conflict both with the ogres and among each other. Even before they drank the blood of Mannoroth, they were unlikely to follow someone like Gul'dan.
Gul'dan's masterstroke was the creation of two organizations. To those former shaman who lost their power to command the elements he offered the Shadow Council, a means to the demonic powers of the warlock. To the vast majority of the orcish people, whose souls now burned with the unholy frenzy of the blood curse, he offered the Horde. Led by Blackhand the Destroyer, a physically powerful orc with ambition that far exceeded his intellect, the Horde would serve Gul'dan's plans without the danger of actually being seen to be in charge. Meanwhile, the Shadow Council of warlocks would give Gul'dan a means to direct the occult might of the Horde as he saw fit, and served to allow him to manipulate the Horde from behind many guises. And for the entirety of the war against the draenei as well as the invasion of Azeroth, Gul'dan was satisfied with the arrangement.

It wasn't until he got greedy that things fell apart. The Shadow Council created in Garona an agent who would execute their will, infiltrate the humans (as a half-draenei, she was conditioned to believe she was in fact half-human) and ultimately strike down the human king, Llane Wrynn. It was all going according to plan until Gul'dan's silent partner Medivh was struck down by his former friends and allies Khadgar and Anduin Lothar, and Gul'dan attempted to telepathically steal the secrets of Sargeras from the dying Guardian's mind. Instead, he nearly died with him. In so doing, Gul'dan exposed the true weakness of both the Shadow Council and the Horde.

The Shadow Council could not direct itself absent from Gul'dan. He had ensured that his was the driving will. There was no consensus, no loyalty between council members - each served at Gul'dan's pleasure and intrigued against each other, which kept them from uniting and attempting to overthrow Gul'dan himself. Similarly, with the Shadow Council at each other's throats, Warchief Blackhand was incapable of directing the Horde minus their input. He wasn't a strategist, he was a jumped up thug better at crushing heads than using his own, more cunning than smart. It was this moment of chaos, when Blackhand couldn't find his footing, that Doomhammer exploited. He challenged his Warchief and tribal leader to combat, killed him, and assumed control both over the Blackrock clan and the Horde entire. While a united Shadow Council under Gul'dan could and would have taken steps to remove Doomhammer or bring him in line (the very reason he hadn't moved against Blackhand before) in their fragmented state, with Gul'dan lying comatose, Doomhammer easily removed their subtle control of the Horde by killing most of them.

Ironically, in the very moment of their destruction, the Shadow Council's agent did indeed murder King Llane Wrynn, paving the way for the orcish Horde to destroy Stormwind. Still, Doomhammer was now Warchief of a Horde committed to conquest on an alien planet, one that had under Gul'dan and the Shadow Council left their own world tainted and dying. Doomhammer never even considered negotiation with the humans. It's possible that his world view was simply too shaped by Draenor, a hostile world where the only path to peace with the ogres had been their subjugation, or that the war against the draenei had shaped him without his realizing it. Despite never having drunk demon blood, despite his personal misgivings (whatever they may have been) Doomhammer committed himself and his people to the destruction of the humans who had never offered him or his people any insult, just as he participated in the annihilation of the draenei. And he did so using the same methods as the Horde had under Gul'dan. Indeed, he did so using Gul'dan himself.

This is why I said before that on the surface the Horde today has changed greatly from Gul'dan's Horde, because at the very moment that Doomhammer killed Blackhand and assumed total power, he brought Gul'dan into the ranks of the Horde and made use of his own slain Shadow Council as the first of his new death knights. The position of Warchief, a figurehead when Blackhand held it, now held real power but Doomhammer never used that power to reform the Horde in any substantive way. He didn't seem a return to shamanism, but instead put warlocks like Gul'dan in positions of power. Gul'dan was even allowed to lead an entire clan, the Stormreavers, in addition to his loyal servants among the Twilight's Hammer. (It's telling that, with Gul'dan dead, only the Old Gods could command the loyalty of the Twilight's.) And yes, in the end Gul'dan betrayed Doomhammer and the Horde, as everyone always knew he would.

It was this failure on Doomhammer's part to purge the Horde that resonates to the present day. Thrall's attempt to preserve Doomhammer's legacy has allowed Gul'dan's original Horde to exist like a cancer eating away at the Horde entire - even Garrosh, who emulates Doomhammer in his ways, preserves this 'Victory at any cost' mentality that allows Gul'dan's legacy to continue. As long as the Horde will do anything for victory, Gul'dan will remain as a presence within the modern Horde. While you don't need to have played the previous Warcraft games to enjoy World of Warcraft, a little history goes a long way toward making the game a lot more fun. Dig into even more of the lore and history behind the World of Warcraft in WoW Insider's Guide to Warcraft Lore. Tags: Doomhammer, featured, Garona, Garona-Halforcen, guide, guide-to-lore, Guldan, Horde, Kiljaeden, lore, lore-guide, Nerzhul, Orgrim-Doomhammer, role-play, role-playing-guide, rp-guide, world-of-warcraft-lore, wow-guide, wow-lore, wow-role-playing, wow-role-playing-guide, wow-rp, wow-rp-guide, wow-rping

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Lore, Know your Lore

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Upgrade or Horde

Daowen, on 18 February 2013 - 12:40 PM, said:

what else is available immediately when  5.2 hits?

a way to determine what to do with my vp

A list of all the new items purchasable with VP coming in patch 5.2.0

Besides the necks they all require a certain amount of reputation with the new faction coming in patch 5.2 as follows:

Neutral: necks

Friendly: rings, trinkets, wrists

Honored: capes, hands, legs

Revered: chests, waists

Healer for Life!

Monk healer MadMonk - Warcry - EU Auchindoun

My opinion does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the owners or writers of the icy-veins website/guides.

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Upgrade or Horde

Keeping Valor for the 5.2 release is actually going to be a major waste.  When the patch is applied ALL valor will be converted to justice.  Justice over the 4k cap will be converted to money.

So the answer there is simple, spend every valor point you can. Edited by NightShade, Yesterday, 09:39 PM.

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Horde and Alliance Xbox Avatar T-Shirts

We’ve partnered with Raptr to give away a limited number of Horde and Alliance t-shirts for your Xbox avatar! All you need to do is sign up for a free Raptr account and meet the requirements.

Raptr is a gaming community site that tracks and rewards you for playing games, and allows you to share your accomplishments. By linking various platforms to your Raptr account you can track your play time across multiple games and even be offered rewards based on your achievements.

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