Heroes of the Storm - HGC North America :: Spacestation Gaming vs Team Freedom :: Discussion thread |
- HGC North America :: Spacestation Gaming vs Team Freedom :: Discussion thread
- So, Hell in a Cell, huh?
- HEROES OF THE STORM PATCH NOTES — FEBRUARY 09, 2018
- HOTS Devs are among the best IMO
- There is currently a game breaking Junkrat bug on live servers right now that makes players respawn in lane. Replicated with near 100% accuracy on different maps and heroes.
- After 1200 levels and 6000 games played I'm getting a bit worried about the state of the game itself
- Can't wait to see all of these new teams tomorrow (EU)
- Level 20 Sgt Hammer with Orbital BFG is never considered afk.
- Can we please surrender games where there's 2+ bots?
- A new "New Player Event" is long overdue!
- New Patch Just Went Out (12:35 PM EST)
- Maiev Changed to Warrior? :thinking:
- Thank you Blizzard for quickly acting on the Maiev situation.
- Unranked draft is a very good game mode
- Matchmaking is the only thing keeping Hots back
- Visual update to Diablo's Apocalypse appears on all skins
- Does This Brawl Hint at the Next Hero?
- Pro Blaze Turn [HGC NA Spoilers]
- Line of sight Hanzo
- All Diablo and StarCraft releases have been "paired" for the last two years...
- Lunar Azmodan looks like a flaming hot Cheetos and now I want a bag.
- nice a e s t h e t i c
- How are you enjoying the Tyrael rework?
- Lore of Uther the Lightbringer — Character Lore
- HGC North America :: HeroesHearth Esports vs Simplicity :: Discussion thread
| HGC North America :: Spacestation Gaming vs Team Freedom :: Discussion thread Posted: 09 Feb 2018 05:00 PM PST Previous match thread: HGC North America :: HeroesHearth Esports vs Simplicity. Remember to upvote this thread to make it visible after another one is stickied. Thanks!TimeThe match should start at about 17:00 PST / 20:00 EST / 2:00 CET / the same time as this post. Please note that this time might not include potential delays. Match reports, VODsPrediction challengeStreams
HGC Europe - useful linksTeams
Game versionHGC Phase 1 Week 4 is played on patch 2.29.9, which is the last patch before Maiev was released. HGC match threads are created by /u/lerhond. Please mention or PM /u/lerhond if you have any feedback. [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 09 Feb 2018 03:33 PM PST I support u/OwenArrow's proposal of the Diablo+Maiev wombo combo. Also, shoutout to u/Animal-Crackers for the Diablo photoshop I mostly based this of For more Hots Comics and related material, here's a link to the deviantArt folder. [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HEROES OF THE STORM PATCH NOTES — FEBRUARY 09, 2018 Posted: 09 Feb 2018 09:52 AM PST
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| HOTS Devs are among the best IMO Posted: 09 Feb 2018 12:37 PM PST When you take into consideration the rate at which we receive new heroes, balance to existing heroes, re-working outclassed heroes, hotfixes when heroes are OP, the overall balance of the game, the way they approach balance with incremental moves, you start to get a picture of a team that has a strong handle on the game. Having played many games, including a few mobas, I just think the HOTS team for Blizz deserves all the recognition they get and more. [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 09 Feb 2018 03:29 PM PST
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| After 1200 levels and 6000 games played I'm getting a bit worried about the state of the game itself Posted: 09 Feb 2018 11:06 AM PST I've been playing Heroes of the Storm for a while now and i've never even tried to hide how much I love it. Blizzard basically made me love a game genre i didn't like at all and that is an accompishment in it's own and a testament to how good, fun and accessible this game is. However lately I believe we as a player base have been experiencing some worrying problems and issues that i believe are becoming really frustrating for experienced players and newcomers alike: New and returning bugs: It is no secret that some builds of this game are particularly buggy, especially when a hero brings in some new mechanic and some hero interactions are going to be "broken" or not working as intended and some of these don't get patched in a timely fashion. We got almost a month of some heroes being able to cast globally some spells before the start of the match not to mention heroes disappearing when entering Blaze's bunker or vanishing from existance after getting cocooned by Anub'Arak or some heroes not being able to cast spells when entering the mines in Haunted Mines. Some issues get solved just to be broken 30 days later following the next hero release. Not only that but some times Blizzard fails for many months to assess even the presence of a bug, such as the newcomers "frozen" daily quests, let alone fixing them outright. I do get that, in order to get monthly heroes releases developers have to work on different game builds and then implementing them to the live version may cause some troubles but honestly i'd rather wait 2-3 months with no new heroes/maps but with a stable and clean build rather than making one step forward and two backwards each new hero release. I'd like to mention the fact that on battle.net you can't open a support ticket for Hots and you have to circumvent that by opening a "general" one showing how little the developer itself cares about helping players who are having issues. "Visit the forum" they say, devs here read reddit and that is commendable but honestly if i were a new player with frozen daily quest and no way to make gold the last thing i'd do would be posting on HotS forum and hoping someone will hopefully one day solve the problem. The Engine: I really don't want to get that much in depth with this as i'm no programmer and i have no means to determine what the Starcraft 2 engine can and cannot do but as good as this engine looks it has higher than normal system requirements when compared to other games of this genre and it has one notable huge shortcoming which is the reconnection system which is just terrible, there are no other words for it. If you get disconnected for half a second chances are you'll have to wait 3-4 minutes to be able to reconnect to the game and by then the AI will have died loads of times, taken the wrong talents and hugely decreased the likeliness of winning the match. Balancing issues and heroes' kits: Lately the devs have shown little understanding of what needs to be done to balance the game. They try to balance the game to appease both ranked/high elo players and QM casuals alike with poor results. Let's just mention Valeera's nerfs or even the (hugely uncalled for) Sgt. Hammer nerfs which clearly were aimed at helping QM, disorganized players at dealing with them, while buffing Hanzo, which was admittedly slightly "meh" on release, to such an extreme and even letting those changes go into a live version for the HGC. Not only that but to pander to "general reddit" discontent the devs even changed Garrosh's kit (which, mind you, had various counterplays) to make it less "unfun" to play against and never gave enough in return to make him a viable hero again. Then a few months later they release Maiev, a hero with such a clearly packed kit: frequent mobility, invulnerability frames every 8 seconds, huge displacement for the whole team and combo potential topped off with huge damage and high armor and they feel it is okay to release it after the playerbase complained about high mobility character advertising her as an "antimobility hero" when in reality she's just an all rounder and a big annoyance with very little counterplay. Terrible Matchmaking: Blizzard has shown little to no interest in fixing the matchmaking or making it slightly better. QM compositions are supposed to be completely random but it is in no way fun getting to play against a "normal" composition with no assassins, 3 tanks and 2 specialists. Not only that but i've been having increasingly high chances of getting to play against 5 men combo-based comps no matter the size of my team be it solo, duo or trio and NEVER EVER is it fun because you queue up to play a hero you like or one you want to level up and go up against this composition with clear combos and no real means of counterplay which just clearly want to stomp QM players (probably because they're not good enough to do so in UD or TL) and hope that the randoms you get paired up with won't be organized enough to defeat them. It also doesn't help that the game doesn't take into consideration player ability, skill or level when matching you with others. I've had so many matches where my teammates wouldn't lane or soak, jump into useless fight when down several levels or without the full team and keep on staggering deaths. UD is slightly better sometimes when the other players don't instalock and/or refuse to write anything in chat or prepick to give you an idea of what you yourself should be playing but still that happens so rarely it's discomforting. Ranked is just the worse. I won't even talk about the whole PRA fiasco and how that affected the start of the current season (many players i know stopped playing altogether because of it) but it is what UD is, just slightly worse. People will instalock, pick stuff that doesn't make sense for the current map or enemy team composition. Many won't talk or prepick when asked to, others even troll pick and then throw. Many just go AFK during draft and get a random hero just to go AFK for the rest of the match and screw the entire team. You just have to hope that the afk guy is not also the guy who's supposed to pick the bans because if he is, tough luck the other team will basically draft whatever they want. Do we also want to talk about how lots of people calls GG after the first teamfight 2 minutes in and then starts feeding? I kinda do because this bring me to the next major point... Toxicity: When a game reaches a certain level of toxicity usually developers take notice. Look at Overwatch and how fast they implemented a complete report system that even tells you if a player you reported has been "dealt with" in just a few months. The developers must ALWAYS show the toxic players that their behaviour is not appreciated and that if they keep on pestering other players they'll be permanently removed from the game and this doesn't happen at all in Hots. Toxic players don't worry about the consequences of their actions and some are even convinced they'll never get punished because of them. The system clearly does not work and no new efforts have been put in the game to divide toxic players from good ones. There are some "ban waves" from time to time but they in no way stop the rampant toxicity in the game. I play every day and out of my 6-7 daily matches i always get at least 2-3 afk'ers or feeders and this is getting so frustrating it is really ruining my own enjoyment of the game. I always find it a good example to tell how when i was playing HL i got paired up with a guy who faked a healer prepick then did not pick it (leaving us with no healer) and then picked Tracer just to keep on running under towers repeatedly feeding intentionally and trolling us in chat all the while. at the end of the match everybody reported him and as soon as i requeued for another match i got paired up with the same guy again which pulled the same feeding cr*p for a second time in a row. The system just doesn't work. Also, as a side note, i posted here on reddit some reasons why Sombra should join Hots' roster and i got an unsettling amount of personal "KYS" personal messages because of that just because i politely listed some of the reasons why it would've been awesome to get her in the game so there's that...asking people to "kill themselves" over a game character that's....odd. The game feels like an "unimportant" side-project: This year Blizzard launched the Overwatch League and that was a huge event. Lots of viewers, great looking LAN arena with live crowd and in the game itself it got promoted by all the purchasable team skins and a big button that tells you when the OWL is live with the possibility to open up a browser window to watch it. Even the Battle.net launcher now has a button that takes you to the Twitch page and watch reruns. Lots of production value, loads of players stats in-between matches. Even Blizzgear has merchandise about it. We got HGC and it is a bit underwhelming to be honest. The game itself does never tell you when it is on, no button on the launcher, little to no merchandise about the game itself or the teams. First day the video/audio was stuttering so much i even thought i was having connection issues. Production is also a bit on the low side with no trailers during the downtimes, no statistics about the players, just the standings or the names of the teams who are up next. Casting is top notch (i love the usual Khaldor-Trik duo as much as pretty much everybody does) but to get more attention and to make the game grow further Blizz should put a little more effort into it instead of letting it get overshadowed by Overwatch. So let me know if you agree on some of my points or if you don't and why, I'd love to hear what you think about it! [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Can't wait to see all of these new teams tomorrow (EU) Posted: 09 Feb 2018 02:36 PM PST
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| Level 20 Sgt Hammer with Orbital BFG is never considered afk. Posted: 09 Feb 2018 04:01 AM PST Just had a really long game on infernal where after we reached 20, our tank flamed the hammer on our team for dying to KT's fissure spam. Hammer ragequit but had taken Orbital before they did. The BFG kept going across the map hitting minions so they weren't considered afk despite being afk for 10 minutes. We didn't get a bot and suffice to say we lost that. Can this be fixed? [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Can we please surrender games where there's 2+ bots? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 08:18 AM PST Playing with more than one or even any bots is demoralizing as hell. Its not fun at all and thinking about being stuck with bots for the next 30 minutes while the enemy farms the bots is even worse. Bots are not good, giving us a basic exp/min gain or something would be way better. [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A new "New Player Event" is long overdue! Posted: 09 Feb 2018 04:53 AM PST I think the last one was in April last year with the Megabundles, almost 10 months ago! Well, we've had a good "beginner bundle" introduced recently but that doesn't quite fill the gap... I want to introduce people to the game but most of them notice the steep hero acquisition curve and get discouraged :(! [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New Patch Just Went Out (12:35 PM EST) Posted: 09 Feb 2018 09:35 AM PST Original follows: Don't see any patch notes out yet, but it's out there... check it out. Update: Per Dvivoni, Upogsi and verified myself:
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| Maiev Changed to Warrior? :thinking: Posted: 09 Feb 2018 10:21 AM PST
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| Thank you Blizzard for quickly acting on the Maiev situation. Posted: 09 Feb 2018 12:11 PM PST I know that there probably isn't sufficient data yet for them to make the changes they want to make, but they recognized the situation at hand and took action on an irregular patch day (and the effort is appreciated). Now the matches will be better for several more days than if they had waited for next week's patch to roll around. [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Unranked draft is a very good game mode Posted: 09 Feb 2018 08:17 AM PST I was little angry after hear suggestion to make new hero unbannable in UD. It almost triggered me. And I want to ask for respect from all to that game mode. For me it is the best game mode (I haven't big parties for TL). Gap in skill of players is not so big like in HL(I have much better experience than in HL), also no visible annoying factors would help you to deal with loosestrick (like demolition matches and wonderful sound of it in HL waiting queue). But a lot of players go here just to pick "hero A" with supp and tank in their team. MM in QM is "bad" for them, and they can't carry their team there without supp and tank. I also dissapointed with fact, that people banned from HL still can play UD. It is not about all muted players, but a lot of them really tilted and they pick something like azmo and will stand 1 lane all game long. Other muted players just bad and will ping their teammates as soon as ping option is available. And god knows that they could wtite into chat, if they got such opportunity. Obviously they are very tillted. Unranked draft is not a TESTING MODE for heroes. It is just DRAFT without VISIBLE RANKING. Treat it properly. Want to test hero - play QM ot brawl, want to troll teammates - do it in QM or brawl. [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Matchmaking is the only thing keeping Hots back Posted: 09 Feb 2018 04:25 PM PST I feel like every other issue the game faces is minuscule compared to the awful matchmaking. That if fixed, could allow the Hots playerbase to grow to rival even LoL and Dota2. Yet we all complain about how the devs don't ''fix'' the matchmaking system like it is as simple as flipping a switch, frankly i am convinced that they can't. I think the Hots playerbase has just shrunk to such a small size, that the matchmaker simply can't find other players at your level, so it does it's best with what it has. To the matchmaker it's priority is to find you a match and get you in as fast as possible. Whether you have ''fun'' or not, is not a priority for the matchmaker. It is simply concerned with letting you play the game first and foremost. These devs are smart men and women who have poured an untold number of hours into this game. If they could fix the most heinous problem with their ''baby'', they surely would. That's why i feel sorry for them everytime people ask ''when are you going to fix the matchmaker?''. I like this game, ALOT. I have spent years playing this, and i would love to see that time rewarded with a game that meets all my expectations for it. Which is why it hurts that much more to realize that maybe this is an issue that just can't be fixed unless more people play the game. They see the bad matchmaking system, and it scares them away, and this subsequently leads to more bad matching, and the cycle continues. So what is the solution, should Blizzard just pour more money on to Hots?. Make a Hots 3.0 and blow up the promotion again in order to try and hook in more potential players?. From a business perspective, i can understand why they are dedicating more to OW and WoW. Those 2 games are their primary source of money, and Hots is more of a risky investment. Any ideas? [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Visual update to Diablo's Apocalypse appears on all skins Posted: 09 Feb 2018 04:33 PM PST According to the Maeiv patch notes, they updated the visuals on the Archangel skin:
However, this change appears to have been made baseline for all Diablo skins. [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Does This Brawl Hint at the Next Hero? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 02:13 PM PST Thinking about the rocket mayhem racing brawl, it looks VERY similar to Rock 'N Roll Racing. One of my favorite games growing up (Would play for hours and wake up early for it). Do you think this is on purpose? Is Blizzard hinting at the next classic hero, or am I stretching? [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Pro Blaze Turn [HGC NA Spoilers] Posted: 09 Feb 2018 07:41 PM PST | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 09 Feb 2018 05:10 AM PST
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| All Diablo and StarCraft releases have been "paired" for the last two years... Posted: 09 Feb 2018 04:36 PM PST Since February 2016, all Diablo and StarCraft Hero releases have happened together. Blaze breaks the pattern, being released after an Overwatch Hero (Hanzo) and before a Warcraft Hero (Maiev).
Chart of all releases can be found here. [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lunar Azmodan looks like a flaming hot Cheetos and now I want a bag. Posted: 09 Feb 2018 11:13 AM PST Shameless subtle cross promotion blizz has with Cheetos TM? Well it worked and I'm fucking dieing for a bag. yummy [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 09 Feb 2018 01:20 PM PST https://imgur.com/a/5Ff5J we both had felsabers too, albeit different colors edit: important to note this was random matchmaking, not a group que [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How are you enjoying the Tyrael rework? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 03:59 AM PST Do you have any favourite builds for him now? I think he's pretty fun and versatile now, though I haven't come down firmly on one build or another. I tend to prefer the Shields build, but I mostly just play QM. [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lore of Uther the Lightbringer — Character Lore Posted: 09 Feb 2018 10:00 AM PST Bit of a shorter lore thread this week, but today we'll be looking into the lore of Uther the Lightbringer, the First Paladin, co-founder and leader of the Knights of the Silver Hand, and hero of the Alliance. As is often the case with this series, I will save Uther's abilities, quotes, and skins for a separate thread on Sunday due to not having enough space to fit it into the lore thread. While this lore post will be a lot shorter than most of the previous split threads I've done, since Uther honestly doesn't really have too much lore himself (at least when compared to many other major Warcraft characters), Uther's quotes/abilities ended up taking up a lot more space than the lore coverage, so I felt more comfortable splitting that stuff off into its own thread, even if it leaves the lore thread feeling rather short in comparison. All previous "Lore of" episodes The First PaladinsDuring the First War between the human kingdom of Stormwind and the demon-corrupted orcish Horde, one of the great sources of hope for human soldiers that faced the mighty orcs in battle came in the form of the Holy Order of Northshire Clerics, a religious brotherhood that traced its roots back to the Church of the Holy Light in the kingdom of Lordaeron far to the north. You see, the predominant human religion was centered around the Holy Light, a primordial cosmic force that manifested in the physical universe as holy magic, which could be used to heal wounds and cure illnesses. The clerics of Northshire were a vital part of Stormwind, having accompanied the kingdom's soldiers in numerous conflicts, and the First War was no different. However, the healers were unprepared for the sheer brutality of the Horde's warfare. The orcs targeted every cleric they could find, and since the priests were equipped with neither armor nor weapons and lacked the martial training of Stormwind's knights, they could do little to defend themselves. Despite the significant losses they suffered, the clerics never hesitated from bravely risking their lives to aid and heal human soldiers on the battlefield. In the end, the Horde achieved victory, destroying Stormwind's namesake capital city, killing King Llane Wrynn and forcing the kingdom's survivors, led by the war hero Anduin Lothar and including the orphaned Prince Varian Wrynn, to flee north and seek aid in Lordaeron. At Lothar's request, Lordaeron's ruler — King Terenas Menethil II — gathered the leaders of the seven human nations at a great council, eventually — after much debate and reluctance, particularly from King Genn Greymane of Gilneas and King Aiden Perenolde of Alterac — managing to convince them to band together into the great Alliance of Lordaeron to combat the Horde threat. This Alliance would later also be joined by other races in the form of the Bronzebeard and Wildhammer dwarves, the gnomes, and the high elves. As the Alliance forces amassed, Lothar — who had been named supreme commander of the Alliance forces sought a way to bind the disparate and often rivalling human nations together. While the clerics were the most obvious choice, they had fared poorly in the First War. Archbishop Alonsus Faol, the leader of the Church of the Holy Light, met with Lothar and suggested the creation of a new order that would combine the healing and destructive power of holy magic with martial training by training priests in the arts of war and leadership and knights in the arts of wielding the Light. These holy warriors were dubbed paladins, and their order would be known as the Knights of the Silver Hand. The co-founder and first and greatest member of this new group was a man named Uther, a distinguished and highly pious knight who had served as Alonsus' own apprentice ever since the archbishop was merely a bishop. Uther was followed by four others: Gavinrad the Dire, Saidan Dathrohan, Tirion Fordring, and Turalyon. These first five were anointed in the Alonsus Chapel in the city of Stratholme, after which they continued training day and night for weeks. Lothar was pleased by the paladins' progress and eventually asked for Uther and Turalyon to serve as his lieutenants. During the Battle of Hillsbrad Foothills, the first true clash of the Second War, the paladins helped secure victory by healing their wounded brethren as well as destroying the reanimated human corpses and corruptive fog created by the Horde's death knights (necromantic horrors created by Gul'dan by placing the spirits of orc warlocks in the corpses of human knights). Uther, Turalyon, and the other paladins continued playing major roles throughout the rest of the Second War, with Uther at one point surviving an assassination attempt at the hands of the human kingdom of Alterac, which had betrayed the Alliance and thrown their lot in with the Horde, and was subsequently destroyed by the other humans for their treachery. The Horde, led by Warchief Orgrim Doomhammer, eventually laid siege to the capital of Lordaeron, Capital City, but when word came that the warlock Gul'dan had betrayed his fellow orcs by taking his forces and sailing west in search of the Tomb of Sargeras, Orgrim realized the remaining forces of the Horde couldn't hold Capital City and was forced to order his forces into a full retreat. The orcs fled south through the occupied dwarven and gnomish lands of Khaz Modan to regroup at their base of operations, Blackrock Spire. Lothar, Turalyon, and Uther rallied the Alliance's forces and pursued them all the way to the spire, where a massive battle ensued. Orgrim engaged Lothar in single combat and crushed his skull, but Turalyon picked up the commander's broken sword and used the Light to rally the humans to victory over the orcs, forcing the Horde's armies to scatter or surrender and capturing Warchief Orgrim. After the battle, Turalyon turned to his older brother-in-arms, Uther, and gave him the name "Lightbringer". Some of the remaining Horde, led by the death knights, fled back towards the Dark Portal, the magical gateway through which they had first entered the world of Azeroth from their home planet, Draenor. General Turalyon pursued them, and Alliance and Horde clashed in perhaps the fiercest battle of the Second War. Troops led by the newly-christened Uther the Lightbringer managed to rout and destroy the Burning Blade clan (Samuro's clan), and the Alliance eventually managed to force the Horde to flee back through the portal. Then, the human mage Khadgar and his sorcerers used their magic to seal and destroy the Azerothian side of the gateway, finally marking the end of the Second War. In the wake of the conflict, the captured orcs were placed in interment camps throughout Lordaeron, but in the following years several nations — specifically Gilneas, Quel'Thalas, and the human kingdom of Stromgarde — chose to secede from the Alliance. The Fall of LordaeronIn the aftermath of the Second War, the Knights of the Silver Hand helped reconstruct Stormwind City (with Turalyon helping secure the young Varian Wrynn's place as king) and worked in Lordaeron to help the citizens of the Alliance move forward by caring for their sick and injured. Uther remained as the supreme commander of the Silver Hand, mentoring new paladins and keeping the peace in Lordaeron by quelling various disputes and uprisings. 8 years after the end of the Second War, 15 years after the opening of the Dark Portal, King Terenas' 19-year old son, Prince Arthas Menethil, was inducted into the Knights of the Silver Hand. Uther, who had been like a brother to Terenas for years, took the young prince as his personal apprentice, and over the years the two of them became as close as family, with Uther considering Arthas more of a nephew than a student. A few years later, Tirion Fordring — ruler of the town of Hearthglen and one of Uther's fellow Knights of the Silver Hand — was forced to stand trial in Stratholme after having attacked Alliance soldiers to defend the orc hermit Eitrigg, who had saved Tirion's life sometime earlier. Uther led the court, while the jury consisted of Arthas, Alonsus Faol, Archmage Antonidas of the mage city of Dalaran, and Admiral Daelin Proudmoore of the island nation of Kul Tiras. The jurors were willing to give Tirion a full pardon if he reaffirmed his loyalty to the Alliance and forsook his vow to Eitrigg, but when Tirion refused the latter, Uther was forced to excommunicate and exile him. As a last token of friendship, however, Uther spared Tirion's wife and son from exile. Around this same time, a young orc named Thrall had begun liberating his people from the interment camps and rallied them into a New Horde. Thrall's forces attacked Stratholme to rescue Eitrigg, who managed to escape from captivity with Tirion's help. The New Horde managed to destroy a number of interment camps, including Durnholde Keep, the fortress that oversaw the camps. In the following months, King Terenas sent Uther and his paladins to quell this new warchief's uprising, but Thrall proved to be something of a tactical genius and evaded every effort from the paladins to corral his hit-and-run attacks. Thrall and the Horde eventually left Lordaeron for the land of Kalimdor on the western side of the Great Sea. The following year, 20 years after the Dark Portal, King Terenas sent Uther and Arthas to contain the threat posed by the Blackrock clan of orcs in southern Lordaeron, a wayward clan that had chosen not to leave for Kalimdor with Thrall. The two paladins met near the Blackrock village, close to the Alterac Mountains, and found that the orcs were preparing to attack the nearby defenseless human village of Strahnbrad. Uther and the Silver Hand troops left to move against the orc base, leaving Arthas and his soldiers to defend the human town. The prince's forces managed to repel the orcish attack on Strahnbrad and killed the Blackrock Slave Master, but were unable to prevent a number of prisoners from being hauled away to the Blackrock encampment. Arthas rejoined Uther at the Lightbringer's camp, where Uther had sent in two of his best knights to parley with the Blackrock leader, a vicious blademaster (the same type of warrior as Samuro). When the knights' horses returned to camp, riderless, Arthas wished to charge in and destroy the orcs. Uther reminded his pupil that, as paladins, they couldn't allow their passions to turn to bloodlust, but he allowed Arthas to lead the attack on the orcs while he himself remained behind to protect the camp. (I'll stop bolding the name Arthas now so it doesn't get repetitive.) After the Blackrock blademaster sacrificed a number of captured humans, Arthas' forces stormed into his camp and killed him. When he returned to Uther, Arthas worried that the orcs had been trying to summon demons with their sacrifices, but the Lightbringer assured his pupil that the orcs were simply trying to hold on to dying traditions. A few weeks later, Arthas set out with his former lover, the sorceress Jaina Proudmoore, to investigate the rumors of a mysterious plage spreading throughout northern Lordaeron. They eventually discovered a group known as the Cult of the Damned, accompanied by a number of undead creatures and led by the necromancer Kel'Thuzad, were responsible for spreading the plague by distributing infected grain throughout Lordaeron's northern villages. Kel'Thuzad himself also claimed that he and the Scourge — the undead army — were in service to the dreadlord Mal'Ganis in Stratholme. After confronting and killing the necromancer at the town of Andorhal, Arthas and Jaina continued to the nearby Hearthglen, where they were told that a vast unded army had emerged during the night and begun attacking villages, and was now heading towards Hearthglen. Arthas immediately sent Jaina to inform Uther of what had happened while he himself stayed behind to protect the village. Arthas soon discovered that grain infected with the plague had been distributed among Hearthglen's inhabitants, and that those who ate of the grain weren't merely killed, but rather transformed into the undead. Arthas and his forces desperately held the line against the advancing and seemingly limitless waves of undead, but just as all seemed darkest, Jaina, Uther, and the Knights of the Silver Hand arrived and repelled the attack. Humiliated and angered, Arthas decided to head to Stratholme to confront Mal'Ganis. When Uther attempted to calm down the prince, Arthas set out for Stratholme on his own, intent on killing Mal'Ganis with or without Uther's help. The next morning, Arthas, Uther, and Jaina met up on the outskirts of Stratholme. There, Arthas was horrified to discover that the city's inhabitants had already been infected by the plagued grain.
The Lightbringer and his paladins turned and left, leaving Arthas to his grim task, as did Lady Jaina. Arthas proceeded to cull Stratholme, massacring its citizens to prevent them from becoming undead slaves of the Scourge, and also encountered the dreadlord Mal'Ganis, who invited the young prince to pursue him to the arctic continent of Northrend. Arthas did so, taking the Lordaeron fleet with him. A few days later, Uther returned to the burning ruins of Stratholme, where he met Lady Jaina and demanded to know where Arthas had gone. After being told of the prince's destination, the Lightbringer told Jaina to not blame herself for the massacre that had taken place. Uther proceeded to meet with King Terenas and inform him of his son's actions, and they both agreed that Arthas' judgment was wavering. Uther convinced the king to recall Arthas' expedition, sending an emissary to Northrend to tell the prince's forces to return to Lordaeron immediately. In Northrend, Arthas picked up the cursed, soul-devouring runeblade Frostmourne, giving him enough power to kill Mal'Ganis but losing his soul and his sanity in the process. Arthas, now a death knight of the Scourge, eventually returned to Lordaeron, where he was celebrated as a hero. However, the people's joy was quickly replaced with horror when the young prince stormed into the royal throne room and murdered his father Terenas with Frostmourne. The Scourge then claimed Lordaeron, plunging the kingdom into ruin. Having lost both his king and his student, Uther vowed to personally guard the enchanted urn holding Terenas' ashes in Andorhal along with the remaining Knights of the Silver Hand — namely the paladins Gavinrad the Dire (who was charged with guarding Kel'Thuzad's buried remains at a nearby cemetery), Ballador the Bright, and Sage Truthbearer. Following the instructions of another dreadlord named Tichondrius, Arthas and the Scourge soon arrived at Andorhal and slew Gavinrad to retrieve Kel'Thuzad's decomposing remains. Tichondrius then tasked Arthas with retrieving the urn held by Uther in order to protect the necromancer's remains for the journey to the high elf kingdom of Quel'Thalas, where he could be resurrected using the elves' Sunwell. Arthas killed Ballador and Sage Truthbearer before coming face-to-face with his old mentor.
Despite the impossible odds, the Lightbringer refused to back down and defiantly battled his former pupil, whom he had once loved like a son, until he was eventually overpowered and slain by the wielder of Frostmourne. With his dying breath, Uther told Arthas that he hoped there was a special place in hell waiting for the death knight. Arthas merely replied that he intended to live forever. With the help of King Terenas' urn, Kel'Thuzad's remains were transported to Quel'Thalas, where Arthas resurrected him as an undead lich. (According to Heroes of the Storm, which is non-canon, the urn then became the lich's phylactery.) The Lightbringer's MemoryUther was buried at Sorrow Hill just south of Andorhal, in a great tomb that remained a beacon of Light and hope even as the surrounding region devolved into the desolate Plaguelands. The memory of the legendary paladin remained a source of inspiration and guidance to the Alliance and to all paladins long after his passing. A few years later, Uther's insignia — the Mark of the Lightbringer — was retrieved from a tower near Hearthglen by Alliance adventurers (World of Warcraft player characters) on the behest of Anchorite Truuen, a draenei (a Light-worshipping race that had recently arrived on Azeroth and joined the Alliance) that had begun studying many of Azeroth's heroes and had gained a reverence for Uther Lightbringer. The adventurer then helped escort Truuen to Uther's Tomb so that they could return the mark to him as a way of honoring the great paladin. At the tomb, the ghost of the Lightbringer himself appeared, thanked Truuen and the adventurer for their efforts, and asked them to go with his blessing before disappearing again. At the same time, however, adventurers of the Horde worked to retrieve the Mark of the Lightbringer for one of Uther's old pupils, the blood elf (formerly high elf) Mehlar Dawnblade. Mehlar blamed Uther's incompetent teaching for the atrocities Arthas had committed, mainly the defiling of the high elf homeland of Quel'Thalas. After being brought the Mark of the Lightbringer, Mehlar corrupted it with fel (demonic) magic and told the adventurer to use the insignia at Uther's Tomb to defile it. When the Horde adventurer attempted to do so, Uther's ghost appeared and reprimanded them. The Lightbringer was sad to learn how much hatred Mehlar harbored, but nonetheless forgave him for his actions and hoped he would turn his efforts to restoring Quel'Thalas, much to Mehlar's incredulity. (These encounters are in a weird spot in terms of canon, since it was later revealed during Wrath of the Lich King that Uther's spirit was at the time located inside Frostmourne, so it wouldn't make much sense for his ghost to be able to appear at his tomb, but yeah.) A few years later, the Alliance and Horde, along with the Argent Crusade, an organization led by a returned Tirion Fordring, charged into Northrend to confront Arthas, who had become one with the Lich King, the demigod ruler of the Scourge. Eventually, a small force led by Jaina Proudmoore or Sylvanas Windrunner (depending on if the player is Alliance or Horde) infiltrated a side entrance in the Lich King's stronghold, Icecrown Citadel, and reached the inner sanctum known as the Halls of Reflection. There, they found Arthas' dreaded runeblade, Frostmourne, floating unguarded over a pedestal. Jaina/Sylvanas began communing with the spirits trapped inside the blade, and were unexpectedly greeted by Uther's ghost. He revealed that they could not defeat the Lich King anywhere but at his seat, the Frozen Throne, the place where Arthas merged his consciousness with Ner'zhul, the original Lich King. The Lightbringer also revealed a chilling truth about the Lich King: there must always be a Lich King and someone would have to sacrifice themselves to take Arthas' place, for without the control of a master, the Scourge would run rampant across Azeroth and destroy all life (Uther suspected that whatever lingering part of Arthas' consciousness was left inside the Lich King was the only thing preventing the Scourge from doing so already). The conversation was cut short when the Lich King arrived and banished Uther back inside Frostmourne. Eventually, Arthas was confronted and slain by Tirion Fordring and heroes of Azeroth at the Frozen Throne — destroying Frostmourne and freeing the trapped souls within — with the fallen human hero Bolvar Fordragon subsequently taking Arthas' place as Lich King. One of the objects that adventurers retrieved from Arthas' body was the badge the prince had been given the day he was accepted into the Knights of the Silver Hand. When this medal was brought to Uther's soul, he sorrowfully stated that he had long been wracked with anxiety and an inability to forgive Arthas for his actions. He remembered how eager the prince had been to defend his people and defeat the enemies of the Light, and Uther stated that it was this memory of Arthas he chose to keep in his heart. Another few years later, Tirion was lost while battling against the demonic Burning Legion on the island known as the Broken Shore. Seeking to retrieve the legendary sword wielded by Fordring, the Ashbringer, the paladin Maxwell Tyrosus, accompanied by a paladin adventurer and Mehlar Dawnblade, journeyed to Sorrow Hill in the Plaguelands to seek the Lightbringer's help in locating the blade. Upon arriving, they found that those buried at Sorrow Hill had stirred from their graves as a result of the disturbance in the Light caused by Tirion's disappearance. After the adventurer helped Mehlar and High Priest Thel'danis (the night elf responsible for watching over Uther's grave) lay the undead to rest, they and Maxwell communed with Uther's ghost at the Lightbringer's tomb. Uther revealed that he could feel the Ashbringer calling out from somewhere near the Broken Shore and that Tirion was still alive, but in danger. Uther's spirit wished the two paladins luck before fading into the Light, despite Maxwell having more to ask of the old paladin. With the information provided by the Lightbringer, the paladin adventurer was eventually able to retrieve the Ashbringer, though they were unable to save Tirion's life. Uther Lightbringer has not been seen since, but his legacy continues to live on in all who follow in his footsteps of serving the Light and protecting Azeroth from all threats. And that is all for today. I expect that the post on Uther's quotes, abilities, and skins might end up being quite a bit longer than this lore thread, so look forward to that, I guess, and I'll see you all on Sunday. [link] [comments]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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