Hello everyone!
Last week we began are tour down memory lane with the 15 year aniversary of World of Warcraft.
Some old hits, some old bosses make a return as we party with chromie.
Next up we enter the wrath of the lich king era.
As we discussed last week, the lich king was send over to azeroth by the burning legion
to help kick off another invasion of the world.
It was not a loyal minion however.
The orc ner’zhul that they used to create this powerful necromantic being had no love
for kil’jaeden or the legion.
Quite the opposite so under the watchful eye of the dreadlords, he worked on his own schemes
while pretending to be an ally to the legion.
The Lich king’s power was rapidly growing, in the cold land of Northrend a truly terrifying
army was being build.
Most of northrends inhabitants were easily corrupted by the plague of undeath and his
forces swelled in number.
But it wasnt long before the lich king faced his first real test.
An ancient race of insectoids called nerubians lived in northrend and they were monstrously
fierce in battle.
With ties to the old god Yogg-saron they were no easy pray.
Their grand kingdom, Azjol- Nerub, stretched far beneath the frozen tundra.
They were here far before the lich king arived and had no intention of allowing him to conquer
them.
Any attempts to spread the plague of undeath in their home were ruthlessly snuffed out
by the nerubians leader, a powerful warlor named Anub’arak.
The lich king saw no way to subvert their defenses.
So he settled on smashing the nerubians into rubble instead.
For years, the lich kings undead army fought a war of attrition against the insectoids.
Each one who fell was added to te lich kings ranks, and when the end came, he was delighted
to raise Anub’arrak himself as a powerful undead minion.
The former ruler was now a slave, unable to set himself free from the leash that binds
him to the lich king.
In turn, the lich king was so impressed by the nerubians resistance that he decided to
adopt their architectural style as his own.
If you’ve played Warcraft 3 then you remember Anub’arak guiding Arthas to where he was
supposed to be.
Guide him to Icecrown citadel where he could merge with the Lich King.
Anub’arak was also the one who showed kel’thuzad around Naxxramas.
Showing him the might and dperativity teaming up with the lich king holds.
It was too much...even for the nextromancer.
When he saw what the lich king was truly about, he tried to run, but by that time it was already
far too late.
There would be no plots or schemes to fight back against LK.
When dealing with such a mighty being, not even death is a certainty so kel’thuzad
bowed down and pledged his allegiance.
Fast forward a few years and heroes of Azeroth would find their lands invaded by the ravenous
scourge.
Arthas the Lich King was taunting them.
Taunting them to come to his domain with the idea of slaying the most powerful heroes the
world had to offer.
With them raised in undeath, under his command, nothing in this world of the living would
be able to stand against him.
But his dreams weren’t accomplished quite yet.
Heroes rose up under the guidance of Tirion Fordring, wielding the mighty holy blade known
as Ashbringer.
First target of assault was the floating citadel of naxxramas.
This fortress had been quite a problem before.
You might recall going in there during classic or perhaps you’re looking forward to explore
the place in its original glory for the first time.
Either way, Kel’thuzad and his loyal minions are inside working for their master the lich
king.
They had to be taken out amongst them was Heigan the Unclean.
“Clever and devious, hegan the unclean set up the halls of naxxramas to poison unprepared
adventurers.
But dirty tricks like that wouldnt work on you would they?
You always did know how to watch your step.”
The second boss of the plague quarter and responsible for those cauldrons you see scattered
across the plaguelands, Heigan the Unclean loves to throw a party as during his fight
you need to do the safety dance.
“We can dance if we want too.”
Atleast that’s the way I learned the fight back then, became quite good at it as well
hopefully those old dancing ksills are still there.
The idea behind it is that pain raises up from the floor and the room is divided in
different sections.
Make sure to stand on the section that’s safe and you’ll be fine throughout the fight.
Learn the dancing steps to the right rythm.
I remember so many people failing this mechanic.
It was glorious and a fight i’m really looking forward to doing once more.
“I just love a good dance, don’t you?”
Champions were then later invited to the Argent Tournament to figure out who was able and
ready to join them in the assault upon icecrown.
We couldn’t exactly just send in all that we had.
Every fallen would just add to the lich king’s numbers.
Countless heroes participated in the tournament’s trials while the alliance and horde weren’t
exactly on friendly terms with one another.
Something about the wrathgate.
Either way, what they didnt know was that...
“The argent crusade once held a grand tournament to find azeroths greatest heroes, but anubarak
arrived uninivted.
Turned out the crusaders build the coloseum on top of a barried nerubian kingdom.
That can only lead to eternal agony.”
Not only did the Lich King yoink their architecture like naxxramas for example.
The nerubians have lived in northrend for many many years and have a lot of tunnels
underneath the land.
Arthas used one of them to reach Icecrown in time and now he has a lich king sends us
down to rumble with none other then Anub’arak, traitor king to the Nerubian.
When dealing with the lich king, death is not a certainty.
Anub’arak has been brougth back quite a few times now.
Who knows if he’s finally found his eternal rest after his defeat right here.
Ahhh doesn’t matter, atleast we got some shiny loot.
“I don’t usually speak ill of the dead, but that guy really bugged me.”
With the mightiest heroes selected, the main event was upon us.
High atop Icecrown Citadel sits the Lich King, waiting for those poor souls to fight their
way through his halls and confront him.
“Amidst northrends frozen wastes, the champions of the argent tournament laid siege to icecrown
citadel.
After vanquishing countless minions of the dead, our heroes stood ready to face the wrath
of the lich king.”
By the time they reached him they were exhausted, battered and enraged...just as the Lich King
had planned.
His true prize now stood before him; the most powerful heroes of Azeroth.
The fate of the world rested upon this single moment.
The Lich King unleashed his full fury.
Tirion fordring and his champions fought back in a valiant battle that shook icecrown citadel
to its foundations...especially if they brought some engineering bombs.
The Lich King ripped several heroes’ souls from their bodies with Frostmourne, but even
that did not stop them.
The champions trapped in the cursed blade fought on, stirring the other spirits imprisoned
in the sword to action.
But despite their valor and heroism, the champions could not prevail.
The Lich King’s strength overwhelmed them all.
Tirion was subdued in a block of cie and his followers were slaughtered.
“Light give me one final blessing.”
The Lich King had won.
He began to raise his foes into undeath,.
Tirion refused to give up.
The light answered his prayers and he broke free from his icy prison.
With a desperate blow, Ashbringer shatters frostmourne.
In an instant, the souls trapped in the blade were released.
The spirits of the lich king’s victims swarmed around their tormentor, repaying his cruelty
with righteous vengeance.
The spirit of king terenas, the father slain by the son, brings the spirits of our fallen
heroes back to life and together they beat up arthas like a freaking pinata.
In his dying moments, Arthas felt the corruption of the frozen throne fading away from him
and he was faced with the enormity of his crimes.
He slipped into death, into a cold and unforgiving afterlife of darkness...
I loved learning how to solo this fight when it became available.
The many different phases the lich king would throw at you.
When people ask ‘Should they bring arthas back’, my answer is probably not considering
this was one of the times where they really got it right.
Start to finish, the story of the Lich King is a favorite amongst many, i’m sure that
reliving this fight is going to be awesome as well... not too mention the next expansion
coming up as we all know, there must always be a lich king.
Bolvar took up the job of jailer of the damned, keep the restless scourge in check while our
adventure flowed into the next trip down memory lame...the memories of the cataclysm...
“Bolvar said not to tell anyone what happened up there, but i think we can make this exception
just once.”
As with the Cataclysm things moved from chilly and cold to fire and death everywhere.
You all remember that pre-event where the entire zone would just lit up on fire and
your charred corpse would be rewarded with an achievement?
Pretty great to have people seek out deathwing in the hopes of being part of his barbeque.
This was a time in which black dragon deathwing, mad and corrupted, listening to the whispers
of n’zoth, broke out and caused a cataclysm across the world of azeroth.
Their ultimate goal was to bring about the hour of twilight, the moment in which the
old gods would break out of their prisons and rule the world once more.
The landscape changed, as well as our leveling experience, all across the world death and
destruction as it burned beneath his wings.
The old gods are one of those primordial threats the world has had.
They once ruled the planet with their black empire, causing chaos, pitching the enslaved
elemental lords against one another.
Corrupting the slumbering titan spirit inside the planet.
Having a fantastic old time until the titans showed up.
They brought order to the world to give that titan spirit a fighting chance at life.
They send the elemental lords to their elemental planes and imprisoned the old gods.
That was the end of their party which the old gods were not down with.
They wanted to be set free so whispers and corruption echoes out of their prisons, manipulating
the minds of all those they could get their tentacles one.
Including Deathwing, who was not always the corrupted mad aspect as we see him now.
Once he was a guardian of the world, an earth-warder, but that connection to the world made him
volnerable to those whispers until nothing but madness was left.
A corruption that spread throughout his entire dragonflight.
Two of his children, Onyxia and Nefarian, would cause quite a bit of trouble to the
world while their dad was absent.
Onyxia for example infiltrated the house of nobles in Stormwind and manipulated in such
a way that king Varian ended up being kidnapped and split into two.
One weakwilled side of him that she could control and manipulate.
The strongwilled side was planned to be killed, but it escaped before she had the chance and
went on a wild adventure until the two reunited and realised something was up.
Lady Katrana Prestor was exposed for who she really was.
Young Anduin was kidnapped to her lair.
Heroes ventured to battle a dragon and brought her head back as proof of demise.
Meanwhile her brother took up residance in the upper half of blackrock spire working
on his experiments to create a chromatic dragonflight.
Horrible vile things were performed to make that dream a reality, to combine the powers
of the different dragonflights into single beings.
He too was confronted and defeated.
His head shown to all to display the might of the faction.
And some wonder why deathwing was so angry during the cinematic...
“Nefarian, son of deathwing, was raised from death by twilight cultist in the heart
of blackrock mountain.
Intrapit heroes such as you braved the black dragons sacntum to put an end to his schemes
once and for all.”
The experiment he had done in the past pale in comparisen to what the reanimated Nefarian
is up too.
He even has some help now, Maloriak, who was once the human Malory.
A bright young alchemist, kidnapped and fused with the corpse of a dragonspawn.
The result is a bumbling minion who possesses only a dull glimmer of his former intelligence.
Still they can boast about achievements like the bosses Atramedes and Chimaeron.
Even his beloved sister Onyxia has been brought back from the dead to stand and fall with
her brother once again.
“Oh no, we left before we could loot his head.
Ehh sorry about that.”
In the lower section of the mountain you might recall fighting against the elemental lord
Ragnaros.
He was accidently summoned there in ages past the dark iron dwarves and already quite a
threat so we pushed him back to his elemental plane of fire, the firelands.
With the cataclysm ragnaros is back, allied to deathwing and the old gods to burn the
world assunder.
“Though thwarted by mortals once before, Ragnaros returned to azeroth and sought to
consume it in flame.
It was up to heroes like you to venture into the firelands and permanently snuff him out.”
The world tree Nordrassil, healing after the events with Archimonde during warcraft 3,
that’s what they set their eyes on first.
N’zoth believed that burning the world tree would deal a blow to the world from which
it would never recover.
The initial attack was pushed back.
Efforts were made to heal Nordrassil at a faster rate.
Eventually the cenarion circle stormed into the firelands and carved out a stronhold known
as the molten front.
YOu remember doing these dailies here where you could choose the path of quests you wanted
to each day?
Was kinda fun.
Reinforcements from the horde and the alliance soon joined the cenarion circle.
Slowly, they pushed deeper into the firelands until they reached sulfuron keep, ragnaros’blazing
citadel.
Secure in his own domain, ragnaros thought himself beyond the reach of simple mortals.
He did not count on being litteraly dragged out of his hottub and forced to stand and
face us.
Quite litteraly as they gave the firelord some legs.
By taking him out in his own domain we actually removed him as the ruling lord of fire.
By now, after the events of legion and the shaman order hall, a new firelord sits on
the throne.
“I guess Ragnaros came back to our world a little...too sooon...”
And as the final memory, the final boss of the cataclysm time period, there is the ogre
Cho’gall.
He’s not native to Azeroth, he actually joined gul’dan during that first invasion
of the Horde but the ogre mage had already quite a connection to the old gods.
As far back as living on draenor, through the pale and the naaru he learned about the
void, the hour of twilight, shadow magic.
Stepping unto azeroth, a world infused with these void powers was amazing to them, it
was like destiny finding the place where they belonged – the place where they would bring
about the prophesised hour of tiwilight.
No wonder that cho’gall and his twilight hammer cult gladly sided with deathwing and
n’zoth.
He took many of the cultists to the highlands where they carved out a fortress in the heart
of the region.
Cho’gall named this stronghold the Bastion of Twilight and he fashioned it into the cult’s
base of operations and a place for its members to worship their unseen gods.
Void energies gradually bled from the spire, creeping across the terrain and mutating all
life that passedb eneath its shadow.
The land itself warped and darkened, and the region soomn became known as the twilight
highlands.
“From within the sinister bastion of twilight, cho’gall commanded his servant to usher
the old gods into our world.
Thankfully heroes like you took up arms and fought the maniacal cultleader face to face
to face.
“
Recruitment to their caus with the promises from dark whispers backing them up made cho’gall’s
cult quite huge.
All layers of society were infiltrated by them so his death did not mean the end of
the cult or their schemes.
There was the twilight father, archbishop benedictus ready to take over after the ogre’s
fall while on higher difficulties a nice secret was revealed.
The secret as to what goes down in the bowls of the citadel.
However, this is where the last boss of our trip through time ends....this is where cho’gall
falls.
“2 heads aren’t always better then one.”
And that’s where the aniversary ends as far as it comes to the greatest hits in world
of warcraft, facing off against bosses of the past.
The event itself carries on for quite a while longer so you can leveling up some alts quicker,
grind out those reputations, get some sweet timewalking rewards.
15 years man, how time flies.
It was kinda fun poking at these bosses in their different phases.
Personally don’t recall many of them as my hardcore raiding days died after classic
with the occasional raid night best left forgotten in between.
HAving them as proper timewalking bosses would have been amazing, but all the same, it was
a fun night out with the guildies and the mount is awesome.
15 years... according to youtube i created this channel back in 2007 but back then it
was mainly to upload some videos about our guild events.
Screenshots contests, duels in the gurubashi arena which then flowed into solo guides and
eventually the lore videos.
I’ve been doing this crazy youtube thing fulltime now since Warlords of draenor which
is 2014 I think....5 years of sharing my passion, telling stories...living the dream.
And that’s all thanks to you.
Thank you so much for sticking with me and after all this time still sharing the enthousiasm
for the story of Warcraft.
Shadowlands can be glimpsed on the horizon.
Still so many stories to tell....
What a strange long trip it’s been, who knows where the future might take us but for
now...as always...thank you so very much for joining me everybody.
Subscribe if you like my videos, leave a like if you enjoyed this one aaaand until next
time...see ya!
So yeah.
Thank thank you very much for joining me on this trip everybody.
Again i’ll link some videos in the description if you want a much more detailed story behind
some of these characters.
Subscribe if you like my videos, leave a lik eif you enjoyed this one aaand until next
time...see ya!