#zangamarsh

[breadknight-likes-things]

Bread’s Game Journal 06/18/20: Through The Dark Portal, An Outland Retrospective, Part 2: Zangamarsh.

Zangamarsh is probably just about the last thing anybody adventuring into Outland expected to see, and it shows up a lot earlier than you’d think:a place of thriving life.  Sure it’s a swamp, but the very presence of organic life growing anywhere on this planet comes as a surprise after you’ve just spent hours leveling in a blood red fire wasteland.  Dominated by giant mushrooms and various large lakes, Zangamarsh is probably the single most alien feeling zone in Outland, due in large part to it’s array of strange creatures and glowing flora and fauna.  Not to mention all the killer snake people who will just not leave you alone!

I have a....complex history with Zangamarsh.  When I first came upon it, like all the times I start in a new zone, I was fascinated with it.  By the end of my adventures there, I wouldn’t say I didn’t like it, but I was sure ready to move on.  In subsequent visits on new characters, and most recently while leveling through all the old content.....I can’t stand the place.  It’s really through no fault of the zones design, and more on the issues, again, that a lot of the archaic quest design causes in an era where Vanilla WoW’s deliberate pacing simply doesn’t exist anymore.  It’s most apparent in a lot of the enemy spawn timers being dreadfully slow by modern standards, and causing a lot of the quests to take much longer than they should.  All players spend a pretty signifigant amount of time battling for the slowly spawning Naga mobs you spend most of this zone fighting, if you were doing this before they expanded tagging?  I admire your patience. 

Day or night, whenever you go, the zone has this kind of gloomy night time haze that works really well to set the mood.....also i’m not actually sure if Outland has a sun anymore.

The Naga?  Remember them?  Of course you do, we just spent most of Battle for Azeroth fighting them, up to and including their queen!  They had a big role in the story of this zone, both enslaving a lot of the local races to toil in their....something mines (i’m still not sure what the slave pen slaves are actually doing) and stealing what amounts to most of the remaining water of Outland to do...something, with.  It’s an underdeveloped plot for sure, but it’s a big hoot to get to fight iconic bad guys like Lady Vasj, who we all remember as the Naga leader that introduced us to the race existing at all in Frozen Throne!  Other, more friendly, races like the Sporegar round out the inhabitants of Zangamarsh and made sure that you were never bored when you were exploring this weird place.

I think something notable to bring up about Zanagamarsh too, is it’s relation to Dreanor in the later Warlords of Dreanor expansion.  For a long time it was hard to figure out exactly what Zangamarsh even could have been, to end up looking like it does, in a world that’s now literally shattered fragments floating through space, and when it was revealed what it actually used to be it all came into focus in a big way.  There is no “Zangamarsh” on Dreanor, but the “Zangar Sea” to the south of Frost Fire ridge sure does have some big mushrooms growing in it!  When you consider that the only reason all this water is left at all is that Zangamarsh is just some piece of the mostly drained ocean floor, left among the other landmasses, it makes it a bit more understandable how a place like this could exist in such a chaotic place to begin with!  

Zangamarsh has it’s issues, but it’s also incredibly unique among the rest of the Outland zones.  There are more places in Outland that show signs of life, one where life is even thriving as normal, but none felt more like stepping onto a vibrant alien planet still teeming with all sorts of bizarre alien life than Zangamarsh did.

Best Refuge In A Broken Land Award: Telredor

Telredor is a refuge city for the Alliance built on the roof of one of the giant mushrooms!  It’s one of the few surviving safe places for any of the Dreanei left in Outland and being so high up above all the dangers while you do your business actually makes it feel like one of the safest places for a player to be in the entire expansion pack!

Random Screenshot Of The Day:

It’s 2020 and it haunts me a lot that I still have absolutely no idea where the plot of this zones main conflict was even going.  What were the Naga doing with the water?  Were they sending it to someone?  Were the steam vaults just one giant vape?  Is that what happened?  Please, anyone, tell me!

Stray Notes:

- The Horde town in Zangamarsh deserves a shutout at least, as does the Cenarion Refuge you’re greeted with immediately upon entering the zone.  Both are fun settlements in an expansion where most Settlements being “fun” isn’t even the third thought in anybodies mind, let alone the first! - Unrelated to WoW, but hey, who’s amped for the big sad fest of Last of Us Part 2 on Friday?  I know I am!  I don’t know why I am, but I am!

[alittlepieceofwarcraft]

can we have a history of Aleeia?

Sure!

Aleeia is a draenei warrior. Born August 5th Year -24,982 in Mac’Aree, Argus, she is a whopping -24.925 years old! She is the oldest child of Krol’sha and Ra’mi.

Krol’sha was a Vindicator guard who met his wife Ra’mi, a mage, during his patrol on a market. She was smitten by him when he paid for the gems she was short on coins for whereas he did not show interest in her for a long time.

They had two children together: Aleeia and Imeyah. Krol’sha would teach the girls sword fighting whereas Ra’mi would teach them how to play the harp and how to paint.

When Aleeia was 18 and her sister was only 10, Sargeras corrupted the people of Argus and she fled alongside Velen and the other draenei. Her parents are currently assumed to be dead. She was already a skilled warrior and continued to hone her craft whereas Imeyah displayed an ability to commune with the Light.

When they settled on Draenor, Aleeia began a blacksmithing business. However, once the Horde attacked, she remained in the city and managed to save six children: four girls (including a newborn) and two boys. Once the Horde appeared to be satisfied with the destruction of the city, she snuck out with the children and made their way to Zangamarsh. To this day, Aleeia recieves six presents every Winter’s Veil from those children.

Upon crash landing on Azeroth and the draenei meeting the night elves, Aleeia befriended Mywin. She has become Mywin’s best friend and is extremely protective of her. She moved to Stormwind and made a point to demonstrate her desire to become one of the Kingsguard.

At the end of the last war between the Legion and Azeroth, Anduin appeared to relent to her persistent requests to be taken into the Kingsguard and is currently a member.

She joined the fight against the Horde in Darkshore and when Mywin was taken hostage, she spent much of her time searching for her and interrogating any Horde solider she found. When Mywin was recovering, she refused to leave from her self-imposed post outside her bedroom door.

That’s the key moments for Aleeia so far!

[iron-mum]

Thank you so much for the tag @potatoqueensays ! This looks like a lot of fun :)

What a question! Living in the World of Warcraft, specifically somewhere like Dalaran would be an absolute experience. There was also Astranaar, Zangamarsh, Stormwind. So many lush locations in Azeroth/Outland.

My question is: if you had three wishes, what would they be?

Tagging (if you wish to take part!): @superherotiger @kevyfanfics @zanderljones

Thanks for the tag @badbadbucky xx

I was tagged to answer a question, tag 4 people, and ask a new question...but tumblr is being annoying and won't let me answer on the original post :(( so I'm doing it here!

Q: if the world ended, what post apocalyptic fashion statement would you make?

This is such a cool question! (but also kinda difficult...) Honestly if the world ended I would probably steal some chainmail, and some bikers leathers. (I think the proper phrase is 'motorcycle clothes' but that sounds ridiculously boring)

because 1) it would work as awesome protection against whatever hoards of zombies/bandits/raiders/aliens were roaming the streets

2) I am gay. I want to wear leather.

3) It'd been warm, which is good because I spend a lot of my time quite cold at the moment and the world hasn't even ended yet.

4) This is gross, but in an emergency I think i read somewhere that you can boil leather and eat it? Which seems useful?

(on my hunt for chainmail I would love to grab some of those gauntlet things. a chest plate. a helmet or two. some capes!)

I've put far too much thought into this, haven't I.

I am tagging: @oh-hey-its-harry-the-carrot-boy @jxmieswxnter @just-about-nothing and @thatludicrousdisplay if you guys want to do this

The question: What would be your perfect day? (or just like. a good day. a moderately happy day. you choose.)

[rattle-me-bones]

44. For Avvilia and 30. for Kaey'len

44: How easy or difficult is it for your character to say “I love you?” Can they say it without meaning it?Avvilia really isn’t a stranger to getting close to people, but while she considers her late wife the only person she ‘truly’ loved - it hasn’t stopped her from saying “I love you” to a few people.

To her it’s still love but it would never be as deep and honest as the several thousands of years she spent with her wife. Like love is kind of in two-tiers for her, if that makes sense? (God i should have woken myself up before starting this :’D) So like the top tier would have been the relationship with her wife, and every other relationship is the tier below it?

Avvilia has several little relationships, many of which are fleeting but she hardly feels guilty about that. Avvilia has seen relationships/intimacy with others as something of a enjoyable distraction, there is no lie in her feelings or the things she says to them but she’s fully accepting that they are brief at best.

Occasionally she will find someone she’ll stick around with for a little while, but romanticism tends to come second to just a honest friendship, with love and such being a nice bonus. Like she may find someone she likes working with, enjoying their company and appreciating how they live and generally likes being around them. 

So, uh, to answer your question! It takes a good deal of respect from Avvilia to have her to say “I love you”, but she could never say it without meaning it to some degree.

30: What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?

Kaey’len usually finds certain personality traits to be repulsive or disgusting rather than anything physical (Except mushrooms). Kaey’len kind of grew really spiteful of the aristocratic types of Silvermoon after she returned from Outland, she was pretty angry at how pompous and dismissive they were in many regards, blaming them for neglecting issues that plagued those that were left with absolutely nothing after Arthas’ invasion; she had expected those issues to be resolved once she returned. 

She was absolutely fed up with their attitude once Alleria, their hero of old who had been missing for decades, finally reappeared only to be immediately shunned by her people.

Apart from that, she hates mushrooms with a burning passion. Despises them. Loathes them. 

And yes, she had been to Zangamarsh before...

[sebille]

[steph-irl-blog]

This... was fun.. Even if it was silly to do.

[on8legs]

Discovered that my fuzzy-wuzzy Izzy died during the night, while this Uber Sad Song was playing in Zangamarsh.

*cries*

[breadknight-likes-things]

Bread’s Game Journal 06/19/20: Through The Dark Portal, An Outland Retrospective, Part 3: Terokkar Forest.

I mentioned in yesterdays post that Zangamarsh being alive and vibrant with life was just about the last thing people expected to find in Outland, and Terokkar Forest shares some of that wonder, but in a way that just.....feels wrong.  To clarify, I don’t mean that in a way that indicates bad design, or like something went wrong in the creation of the zone as a whole, but that there’s something about Terokkar Forest looking as vibrant and alive as it does (and large parts of it are still not vibrant and alive) that never quite sits right with you as you explore and quest in this zone. Don’t quote me on this, but from what I understand about the lore of Terokkar, this zone went through a phase of looking just as nasty and messed up as most of it’s neighbors, but semi-recent intervention from the Cenarion Circle has turned it around.  In a way, to me, Terokkar feels almost artificial, like it’s full of plastic plants that only superficially resemble the living things that once dominated this place.  The fauna, though seemingly a lot more normal than most places in Outland, are constantly referred to as acting strange, and that also lends a big chunk of unease and strange tension to your time in Terokkar.  To the player the animals look like the same kind of things you always fight, but it adds a lot to the tone of the place when the quest dialogue is so adamant that something about them seems wrong.

Says a lot about my “things seem wrong theory” when you go back in time during Warlords of Dreanor and find that Terokkar’s trees used to be blood red.....never would think green trees could look so unnatural.

There are two extremely notable things about Terokkar, other than the stuff I just talked about, and they are as follows: Shattrah City, and Auchindoun.  Both are old Dreanei holy sites, and both are in the opposite shape as each other.  I’ll get to Shattrath tomorrow as I have a whole post planned out for it, so lets focus here on Auchindoun.  An old burial site for the Dreanei people, Auchindoun looks as if it blew up and took half of Terokkar forest with it.  The land surrounding the massive structure is dead, burnt to a crisp, and the only things living on it are explorers and vultures.  I remember wondering what, exactly, Auchindoun was supposed to be back in the BC days, was it a tomb?  A City?  Some kind of holy site?  None of these questions were really answered until far later in Warlords of Dreanor, but looking back on it now with the information I have, it makes it easily one of the most interesting locations on the whole of Outland.  Not to mention it’s the home to some pretty killer instances!

Last thing of note, for this zone, is Skettis.  I’m not really sure where Blizzard was going with Skettis, and the Arakoa in general, but they often seem like a bit part in an expansion that was packed full of a lot of disparate ideas.  Once again, it seems like we never really got much of an answer for what their deal was until Warlords of Dreanor gave us Spires of Arak (an area of Dreanor that’s been completely wiped out in the change to Outland), but they were at least an interesting part of the world building!

Best Refuge In A Broken Land Award: Stonebreaker Hold

I love some of the orc towns in Burning Crusade.  Many of them use the classic Warcraft: Orcs and Humans style that was lost to WoW’s art style since so many of the assets in the game were based directly on Warcraft 3′s structures.  It’s such a specific nostalgia blast that I can’t help but love Stonebreaker Hold!

Random Screenshot of The Day:

Seriously though, what happened to Auchindoun?  It looks like it could have leveled half of Outland with whatever blast happened here!

Stray Notes:

- Tune in tomorrow when I do a big post on the other, big part of Terokkar Forest, Shattrah city!  One of the most iconic places in the game if you ask me!

[girlsdontplaywow]

[breadknight-likes-things]

Bread’s Game Journal 06/16/20: Through The Dark Portal, An Outland Retrospective, Part 0: Introduction & The Dark Portal.

“Imprisoned for ten thousand years. Banished from my own homeland. And now, you dare enter my realm? You are not prepared.” Being 100% honest, I don’t really know what the general hype was leading into Burning Crusade from vanilla wow, as aside from a couple dalliances at a friends house, BC was actually when I started playing World of Warcraft in the first place.  I can tell you all about my own view of WoW’s first big expansion pack though, and it’s one warmly remembered.  Though recently I find those memories often grind up against the realities of the dated design of an expansion that’s still in the game with the same content as it had when it debuted in 2007.  Now, even with all that out there, whenever I go back and watch the old Burning Crusade cinematic intro, Illidans big speech, that I posted above, gives me goosebumps.  Every. Single. Time.

Outland is a truly alien place, matched only by Argus in WoW Legion  (though that place drew a lot of it’s cues from Outland to begin with!), it’s so unlike any other part of World of Warcraft, even to this day!  Outland is no recently re-discovered area of the world, or an island chain we all knew existed but just never had the ability to travel to.  No, Outland is a hyper bizarre amalgamation of everything left of an alien planet, years after it literally blew up and was sent hurtling through space.  Once Dreanor, the home planet of the Orcs, Outland has little left of the place it used to be.  Some areas still resemble their past counterparts we would later see in Warlords of Dreanor, but most have been twisted and warped by the planets explosion.  The implication of what Zangamarsh really is, being one of my favorite lore tidbits in WoW as a whole.

Step on through, a new adventure awaits.....

Though I’ll hold my writings about the first (and arguably most iconic) zone until tomorrow, I thought this intro would be a great place to bring up The Dark Portal.  Having been present in WoW since it’s beginning, The Dark Portal was an incredibly important lore location for the Warcraft fiction as a whole, and being able to finally step through it, on a personal level, was such a big deal at the time.  Sure, we’d been beyond it before, twice in fact in both the Warcraft 2 and 3 Expansion Packs, but being able to walk through it with my own character to see what was on the other side was an incredible feeling.  Not to mention the gates design is iconic as hell, and as cheesy as it may seem in the long run, I very much appreciate it that, in-game, the portal is as hilariously small ,as it was often shown in Warcraft media before then, on one side, and appropriately massive on the other.

So step on through The Dark Portal, into an chaotic land only barely held together only by it’s own energies, and get hyped up for reading my further ramblings about my all time favorite game, World of Warcraft.  I look forward to digging into my memories of this expansion, along with really coming together to appreciate all the best sights and sounds you could find in Outland!

Random Screenshot Of The Day:

“Okay, I know it’s super wide and everything, but you gotta walk through single file alright?  Just trust me, it’ll make sense when you come out the other side”- Gul’Dan, addressing the original Horde.

Stray Notes:

- I only just now realized that Outland is....straight up just Battleworld from Marvel Comics....or maybe Battleworld is Outland!  Both are a world cobbled together out of pieces of a place that has no reason to still exist, and both are concepts I find incredibly fascinating from a sci-fi perspective.....Illidan is even kind of just Doctor Doom.....

- From a sheer visual design perspective, while dated, Outland has held up incredibly well!  Gameplay perspective is....a rough bag, but I’ll cover all that!  Don’t you worry!  like I said, this expansion remains exactly as it was when it came out in Janurary 2007!