Four years have passed since the races banded together to protect the Well of Eternity from the power of the Burning Legion. The tenuous peace that once held all the hatred of the races at bay, has shattered. The lands of the world of Azeroth have once again become host to a World of Warcraft. With eight races, all vying for control of Azeroth.
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Somewhere in Dalaran you can find a flower seller called Aerith Primrose being quietly watched over by her bodyguard, Koraud. Spell it out loud and Koraud is basically Cloud with the letters shuffled, making this pair a sly little Final Fantasy VII reunion nobody asked for but everybody appreciated.
On the border between Mulgore and Stonetalon Mountains there's a small plateau populated entirely by oversized mice, rabbits and prairie dogs, all of them decked out with axes, knives and even shotguns, some carrying the skulls of whatever they've already beaten. Nobody's ever gotten a straight answer from Blizzard about why they're there.
Elite Tauren Chieftain isn't just a joke band that shows up in-game, it's a real group made up of actual Blizzard staff, including art director Samwise Didier on vocals and former company president Mike Morhaime on bass. Their song 'Power of the Horde' plays hourly at the Darkmoon Faire, and the band has genuinely performed it live at BlizzCon in full costume.
Back in 2010, a twelve-year-old Norwegian boy named Hans Jørgen Olsen ran into an angry moose while out walking with his sister. He taunted the moose to pull its attention away from her, then feigned death once it turned on him, both straight out of his hunter playbook in WoW, and it actually worked; the moose lost interest and wandered off.
Development quietly kicked off back in 1999, but the game wasn't revealed to the world until a European trade show on September 2, 2001, just days before the September 11 attacks reshaped the news cycle. Fans at the reveal were actually expecting an announcement about StarCraft II and were caught completely off guard when Blizzard said it was making an MMO instead.
Look closely at WoW's original launch cinematic and you'll notice something missing: no gnomes, no trolls. Both races were added so late into alpha development that they never made it into the trailer, long after the other six playable races had already been locked in.
A study out of North Carolina State University had a group of 60 to 77 year olds play WoW at home for two weeks after establishing a baseline cognitive score. Those who'd started off with lower scores showed a noticeable improvement in mental agility by the end of it, which is a pretty solid excuse to get your gran into raiding.
Once Arthas finally fell at the top of Icecrown Citadel, the Scourge needed a new leader fast or it would've run completely wild across Azeroth with nobody controlling it. That job fell to Bolvar Fordragon, a human paladin badly burned in an earlier battle, who willingly took up the Helm of Domination and became the new Lich King to keep the undead in check from the shadows.
The Lich King isn't one villain, it's a title that's been passed around. It started with Ner'zhul, an orc shaman whose soul was frozen into a block of ice by the Burning Legion, and it only became Arthas Menethil once the paladin claimed both the cursed runeblade Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination, fusing the two souls into the icon most players remember.
On the release day of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, city guards in Stormwind and Orgrimmar quietly swapped their usual weapons for glowing blades that looked suspiciously like lightsabers, blue for the Alliance and red for the Horde. It only lasted the one day, so if you weren't logged in you'd have completely missed it.
