LAGWAR | GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

There will be no next castle for Arthas.

Many players don’t appreciate it, but WoW is on the verge of a major shift.  This past week the second wing of Icecrown Citadel was released to players, which means the next wing that gets released will pit us up against The Lich King, Arthas himself.   Before I delve into this I have to warn you, this might get lorey, but I think I have earned it.  I’ve written about game mechanics the last few weeks anyway.  Tell you what, next week I will write about expertise caps or some theorycraft thing, you know, to balance it out.  Anyway back to Arthas.  By all accounts from Blizzard, our matchup with him isn’t going to be like the end of a Mario Bros. level where Bowser grabs the Princess and high-tails it out of there or like the end of every Inspector Gadget episode either with Doctor Claw and that mangy cat somehow escaping.  It won’t be a repeat of the time we killed the left toenail of Kil’Jaeden either.  This time someone is going to die, Arthas or our raid group, only one gets to leave the room.  And if you think about this fight has been building for a long time.

Arthas and/or the Lich King (could say Ner’zhul even) has been the central force in the Warcraft universe since Warcraft 3.  Remember the Frozen throne where we got to run around as Arthas slaughtering infected villagers while defeating Mal’Ganis in Stratholme (fortunately you could bypass the flavor text in W3)?  Or the assault on Dalaran?  The events of Warcraft 3 are finally being brought to a close in patch 3.3 a full seven years later (for those counting that is still less time than we have waited for a starcraft sequel) with the Fall of the Lich King.

We chased Maeiv, I mean Illidan, ...we chased Illidan to Outlands.

It’s not just the RTS that is finally getting closure either.  If you look back at WoW everything our characters have done has been in preparation to take on Arthas, even back in Vanilla WoW.  Our characters were born into conflict by Arthas’s hand.  Take humans for example, the Defias were running rampant in Elwynn forest and Westfall, why?  It was because the mighty armies of Stormwind were busy elsewhere.  At the time we had no clue, now we know that they were in Northrend the whole time, getting ready for the assault on Icecrown Citadel.  Ahn’ Qiraj was a big deal in Vanilla WoW but what was the final encounter?  Naxxramas.  That was just Blizzard’s way of keeping our eye on the prize.  Onyxia, Ragnaros, even the old god C’thun were all secondary plotlines to Arthas, we just hadn’t built the harbor to get up to Northrend yet.  Naxxramas was really just a preview (of Naxxramas interestingly) of what was to come.

The Burning Crusade played out the same way.  We were facing off against Illidan here as well as some lackeys of the Burning Legion but in the end the attention was squarely on Arthas.  Illidan was becoming an afterthought in the Warcraft universe until he got conscribed by the Burning legion to destroy the Lich King.  And that is what began BC, our characters pursuing Illidan to Outland after his failed attempt to destroy the Lich King.  Even the last bit of content, Sunwell Plateau, directed us toward Arthas.  The final boss of Burning Crusade, Kil’Jaeden, (or at least some manifestation of him) was the Burning Legion demon that had created and lost control over the Lich King in the first place.  By the time our heroes arrived to thwart his entry into Outland he had already taken a back seat for what was to come next.

Fortunately for KJ here Blizzard wasn't quite ready to kill him off for good.

The Wrath of the Lich King.  From the title to the gameplay Blizzard let us know what the focus of this expansion was.  We ran into Arthas countless times questing our way to 80, then became embroiled in deep quest-lines with the Argent Crusade and Ebon Blade culminating in the assault on Icecrown citadel itself.  The most recent patch and content releases are the final pages of a saga that Blizzard has been crafting for the last 7 years.

More Old God goodness to come? We killed two already, three if you count Hakkar.

And that is why WoW is about to shift gears.  After the Lich King falls what comes next? What does Blizzard have in store for us after the conclusion of such an epic storyline?  We know that Cataclysm is supposed to follow closely on the footsteps of the Lich King’s demise, and it seems that the stage is already being set as small in-game hints of Cataclysm are becoming commonplace.  In Cataclysm the focus of the warcraft universe will shift for the first time in 7 years away from Arthas and seemingly squarely toward Deathwing, the Dragon Aspect of the Earth that was long ago corrupted by the whispers of the Old Gods and driven to madness.  Cataclysm could be the start of a new storyline, one focused on the Old Gods and Deathwing leaving Arthas (and through him the Burning Legion) to the past.  We also know that Blizzard’s next MMO which is to be set in a brand new game universe is already in development.  Does Cataclysm represent the first page of a new saga?  Or is it the epilogue of a fantastic story crafted around Arthas Menethil?