Category Archives: villains

5 creepy Kalimdor lairs for roleplaying villains

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All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW.

One of the common themes in Warcraft is that if you're a villain, you've gotta have a hangout. Whether it's Illidan's retreat in The Black Temple, the Lich King's frozen Icecrown Citadel, or even places like The Deadmines where Vanessa VanCleef works on her diabolical schemes, every villain in Warcraft has some kind of lair to call home. Usually these lairs are either dungeons or instances that we as players must clear out in the name of good, but sometimes they can be as simple as the cave that the Gneech calls home.

If you're roleplaying a villain, no doubt you have plenty of evil schemes under your hat. But does your villain have a suitably villainous lair to call home? If you're roleplaying a villain who's trying to blend in to the scenery, perhaps you don't need a sanctuary to call your own. Maybe hiding in plain sight is working better for you. But if you're the leader of an evil organization or simply looking for someplace to roost while pondering how exactly you're going to conquer the rest of the world, perhaps one of these five Kalimdor locations will work for you.

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5 creepy Kalimdor lairs for roleplaying villains originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 31 Dec 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Breakfast Topic: Who will be the ultimate boss encounter of WoW?

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This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Illidan. Arthas. Deathwing. Gamon?

In WoW, we kill a lot of things. From x number of boars to 10,000-year-old, demon-juiced night elves, we gear up for and defeat just about everything that comes our way, assuming we can stay out of the fire. But at some point, even WoW, as with all good things, must come to an end.

Both for the game and for players in the game, a last boss will almost certainly arrive. For me, the last boss was simple: Arthas, the Lich King. As players, we've been following his rise, fall, and next rise for years. We watched him succumb to the dark side -- queue evil laugh -- and fall from his perch as a hero of Light into a twisted master of undeath. Then he taunted us throughout the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Finally, we vanquished him, fulfilling years of adventure.

Unfortunately for my ideal ending, I still enjoy and want to continue playing the game. Now we have Deathwing flying around, killing folks. Will he be the fated endgame boss? More Old Gods, maybe? Or perhaps even the Titans themselves will come back to purge the world of our meddling.

Who do you think should be the last boss of WoW? Do you think there will be a last boss?

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Breakfast Topic: Who will be the ultimate boss encounter of WoW? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Breakfast Topic: Who will be the ultimate boss encounter of WoW?

Posted on by
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Illidan. Arthas. Deathwing. Gamon?

In WoW, we kill a lot of things. From x number of boars to 10,000-year-old, demon-juiced night elves, we gear up for and defeat just about everything that comes our way, assuming we can stay out of the fire. But at some point, even WoW, as with all good things, must come to an end.

Both for the game and for players in the game, a last boss will almost certainly arrive. For me, the last boss was simple: Arthas, the Lich King. As players, we've been following his rise, fall, and next rise for years. We watched him succumb to the dark side -- queue evil laugh -- and fall from his perch as a hero of Light into a twisted master of undeath. Then he taunted us throughout the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Finally, we vanquished him, fulfilling years of adventure.

Unfortunately for my ideal ending, I still enjoy and want to continue playing the game. Now we have Deathwing flying around, killing folks. Will he be the fated endgame boss? More Old Gods, maybe? Or perhaps even the Titans themselves will come back to purge the world of our meddling.

Who do you think should be the last boss of WoW? Do you think there will be a last boss?

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Breakfast Topic: Who will be the ultimate boss encounter of WoW? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Breakfast Topic: What enemy would you turn traitor to join?

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This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

World of Warcraft puts players on a relatively fixed path in terms of loyalties. Sure, there are some very deliberate exceptions to this -- notably the Aldor/Scryer rivalry of The Burning Crusade and the Oracles/Frenzyheart feud in Wrath -- but in general, wherever a conflict arises in the game, the decision as to what side you're going to take is made for you. The rogue trainer in Northshire might tease you with the idea that joining the Defias is a potential option for you, but in reality, that can never happen.

WoW is certainly not lacking for "evil" factions one could potentially sympathize with. The aforementioned Defias, whose whole issue stems basically from getting screwed over by Onyxia's meddling, stand out as one such faction. Illidan Stormrage has long sparked controversy as to whether he was really on the side of evil, although that might be a result of his almost hopelessly confused lore. I have read suggestions that Malygos has a large (if misguided) sympathetic following. And even now, I see some already looking to figure out how to take the side of Big Bad Yet to Come, Deathwing himself.

Does this bother you? Do you wish sometimes that you could break the rules and side with a faction or villain you're not supposed to? What hostile faction or enemy character, if any, would you side with, given the opportunity to do so?

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Breakfast Topic: What enemy would you turn traitor to join? originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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All the World’s a Stage: So you want to raise up the shadows of doom

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Today, All the World's a Stage concludes a series on "how to be evil," bringing the bad guy back into your fantasy roleplaying, complete with ideas, methods, warnings, and practical examples. Be sure to check out steps 1-3, steps 4-6, and steps 7 and 8 on the path to evil!

Your friends keep telling you, "you can't play Arthas, man! Nobody's going to believe that your little human death knight is actually the Lich King in disguise. Get real!" But your idea just won't go away. You admit that creating a human death knight named "Ahrrthyss" might not be the best way to go about it, but you're in this guild which is devoted to fighting the Scourge, and you want Arthas to be a part of your story, not just an NPC who shows up in some quests and at the end of a raid.

We've already discussed a number of ways to be a villain in WoW - so you look at them to see if you can get one of them to work for you: The most obvious is to just start a new character and designate it to be one of your guild's antagonists, but the problem here is that making Arthas as an actual player character is way too Mary Sue. Such a tactic usually only works for very subtle villains (more like flawed heroes really), or for short-term possession, and your guild has done 3 "possessed by the Lich King's power" type stories already. You need something new! Another choice is to create a disposable villain, perhaps, some agent of the Lich King, which could be interesting, but still doesn't put you in touch with Arthas himself.

But there is another way, which many people have not thought of: to put the villain entirely in the shadows of the background, let him never actually be seen, but let his effects be felt based on what happens to the heroes. Arthas can indeed play a huge role in your story, without ever having to appear in person. It has been done to great effect before, even in novels. Sauron, anyone?

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All the World's a Stage: So you want to raise up the shadows of doom originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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All the World’s a Stage: So you want to be a disposable villain

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Today, All the World's a Stage continues with steps 7 and 8 of a series on "how to be evil: bringing the bad guy back into your fantasy roleplaying," complete with ideas, methods, warnings, and practical examples. Be sure not to miss steps 1-3 and steps 4-6 on the path to evil!

So, you want to be evil? It's not as easy as it seems. Perhaps you've watched a lot of movies or TV shows in which the bad guy has amazing powers, threatens human civilization, and nearly destroys the universe in his quest for domination. Perhaps you were playing Warcraft and saw characters like Arthas and Archimonde wrecking things up pretty bad and said to yourself, "I wanna be just like them when I grow up!" You open up your copy of World of Warcraft and find that you can't play a Lich King or Eredar Overlord, so you just click on the "forsaken" or "draenei" options as the next best things available. "Yup! I'm all ready to go!" you say to yourself. Everyone is just gonna love my idea about being an immortal demigod out to destroy the universe!

But it turns out no one believes you're actually the Lich Prince instead of just another forsaken dude. And people just roll their eyes whenever you reveal your draenei's secret eredar affiliation. A lot of people want to play a raid boss, but the fact remains, you're just not. You're a generic adventurer like everyone else. That doesn't mean you can't be bad... it just means can't be 20 feet tall and out whole cities with a flick of your hand. Once you start thinking practically, about doing something with what you've actually got, then you can start getting somewhere.

One of the most practical tools you can have for playing a bad guy is the disposable low-level character. Keeping your villain at a low level means you don't need to hesitate when he's been defeated, you can roleplay his glorious death and delete him. Your friends save the day -- you save a lot of leveling time. How is it done? Read on.

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All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a disposable villain originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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All the World’s a Stage: So you want to be possessed

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Today, All the World's a Stage continues a series on "how to be evil," bringing the bad guy back into your fantasy roleplaying, complete with ideas, methods, warnings, and practical examples. Be sure to check out steps 1-3 on the path to evil here.

It's been said that the secret to writing a good story is not having a really interesting hero, but rather an interesting villain. The hero himself is defined by the villain in many ways, just as a sports team becomes famous only once they've defeated the last year's champions, or a runner breaks the world record for speed, a hero needs someone to test himself against, a great obstacle for him to overcome or destroy. If the villain is interesting, then the hero will be interesting too.

It is natural, then, for a roleplayer to want to test his own heroes or those of his friends against some obstacles as well. Many of us sit down with the intention of creating a really interesting challenge for our guildmates to overcome - but in our creative endeavor we must remember that danger lurks behind every corner, and creating a villain in itself is a task with significant obstacles to overcome. In fact, one might say that the greatest enemy of such a roleplayer is none other than his own self, the ghost of cliché lurking just outside his field of creative vision.

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All the World's a Stage: So you want to be possessed originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 27 Sep 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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