Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered

When World of Warcraft’s newest expansion went into Alpha (or Friends and Family) testing on May 1st Blizzard had to get the client to it’s testers in some way. It used the standard method of hosting it on it’s servers and allowing people to download the installer, however when the client went on-line they didn’t at first spot their major mistake.

They forgot to password protect the download.

For the average gamer such as you and I this doesn’t mean a whole lot, our accounts still need to be flagged to allow access to the Alpha so having the client installed would just mean hard disk space going to waste, however there are those out there that can do something with the client. It began with the less questionable practice of taking a peak at the files in the directories and then having a closer look at said files using a few choice tools to find names of new weapons, areas and maybe even images. Also even without access to the servers, players could still get access to the login and character creation screen so it took no time at all for Death Knights of all shapes and sizes to appear.

Fast forward all of a day and the far more questionable method of actually getting a private server set up running the client has come to light. We now know everything. Everything. We have screen shots of every new zone, videos of them even, we have photographs of all the new weapon graphics, we have some idea of game dynamics. The most surprising though entirely minor change I stumbled on? Stormwind Harbour. Yeah, it seems Stormwind which has remained unchanged since release apart from the odd seasonal activities is about to open a harbour, from the looks of it somewhere next to the Park and Cathedral. I’m not sure how legit this is as I haven’t seen any mention of boat routes from Northrend to Stormwind.

However on to the point of this post. Russell and I took Warcraft back in time last year to the Dungeons and Dragons styled ‘tabletop’ Role Playing Game. It’s a nerds heaven that allows you a few hours departure from reality where I get to become Rayda, my little Dorfy bringer of pain and then develop his character from an earlier age. Set a few years prior to World of Warcraft’s launch we have been able to explore a world where Tauren, Dwarf and Night Elf are able to travel together in relative peace, to places which have since vanished from Azeroth or been changed in major ways. We’ve been able to bring in nostalgic talks around the fire about the Second War (around twenty years previously) which led to Rayda’s unexpected and brief command of a squad and the loss of his father, as well as about how Kheldarath came to meet his loyal pet. The RPG allows other interesting things that the MMO simply doesn’t such as (dice rolls permitting) being allowed to pull off combat moves designed purely for showmanship. As stupid and nerdy as it sounds, it really helps to stretch the imagination and has led to some really good revelations and ideas about Rayda’s past. So we have the foundations now for his history prior to World of Warcraft but I’d never given much consideration to the future.

With there being a bit of tragedy in his past as is standard for any gritty storyline the only thing I’ve had to balance this out so far has been Rayda’s oddly cheerful personality. I hadn’t even considered any comedy elements in the story, aside from jokes I pull off during role-play. That was until I saw a screen shot of the Dwarf Death Knight.

The Death Knight so far only requires you to have a level 55+ character somewhere on your account, so I am perfectly eligible to make one when I get hold of the expansion. They are fallen warriors, almost always Paladins who have demonic spirits fed into them to create a Necromantic Knight designed to spread fear far and wide. When they fall, they are simply raised again, doomed to serve their master for all eternity.

This got the old grey matter going and I had a silly yet workable theory for Rayda’s future. Currently it’s a shell of a plot however with such a strong heroic character it suddenly felt right to have an equally strong yet entirely silly evil clone of him. I will attempt to explain him away with a more intelligent plot however, something revolving around Magic as that appears to be the sensible approach in a world of magical powers. It would give me a whole new stepping stone to future plots revolving around Rayda.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Gaming, Rayda Skaldensen, Dwarf Paladin, World of Warcraft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.