Finding the History

When I first made this character I really wanted her to be as close to lore as possible. I'm not saying that she is the daughter of some NPC whom you might know, but rather that her story and background needed to be based off of lore. I have noticed in my recent encounters that there are many role-players on Shadow Council who have not even looked into the lore of the world of Azeroth. It frustrates me some because it just makes their character seem even less attuned to the world in which they live. I don't assume this of most of the people on rp-haven, but there is always something new to learn from looking into the lore.

But of course, Blizzard has not been consistent with their storyline, which makes it difficult to really find which course is the "correct" one to take. Some things that have been altered and twisted don't really make sense, but I think having the knowledge of both (or more) stories that Blizz has contradicted itself is a bonus. Some people may choose to follow one story while you follow another, but both of them are in lore and so both of them are logical (though maybe that is just me ^^).

Anyway, in my searching for the Lore of WoW I have found many quite interesting pages. Of course not all of them are trustworthy, but there are a few that most of us use as a sort of bible when it comes to role-playing in Warcraft.

www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/encyclopedia/index.xml - This is one of my favorites, but maybe that is because I have two main characters I play and they are both elves. I have to admit, there isn't a huge amount of information here, but the facts that are here are powerful and in-depth. I used the Farstriders page for most of the information on Moriurya and also read into the history of both the Sin'dorei(blood elves) and Quel'dorei(high elves). On my druid I really looked into the Cenarion Circle page, the Emerald Dream, Druids, and then went through the Kaldorei (Night elves). There is so much information that can be taken in from this one site.

www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/story/ - I found this more to be a good read than anything else, and it isn't up to current events. If your character is one who is studying the history of Azeroth (or has lived through much of it like many of the Nightelves) this would be a great place to get the basics down. As I was reading through I took out a journal and wrote notes down as if I was reading the stories as my druid. It helped me develop some characteristics for my character because she had the knowledge of many things that are not quite understood by others (and I did the Well Read and Higher Learning achievements).

www.wowwiki.com/Portal:Main - Most people I know go to this site, though I sometimes don't trust it since it is mainly kept up-to-date by players rather than Blizzard staff, but maybe the Blues actually look here and confirm some of the information. This site has the biggest collection of information, and not just on storyline and races. You can look up the background of everything in WoW here (if someone has taken the time to put the information in, that is). The only reason I did not list WoWwiki first is because it is missing some of the information from the two above links. I reference this the most though because it has many people inserting information from the RPG books, which I have found to be the most resourceful. I used this to reference the weight, height, age, and eye/hair color of all of my characters so to have something to base the averages on.

Well, I hope this helps. I know most of you are like "yeah yeah, I have seen all of these, thanks for wasting my time", but then this post was not really meant for you. I want to have the information out there for those people who might not have considered these before, or maybe are new to role-playing in WoW. Before I had looked into any of these I feared role-playing in WoW because people would always say "you can't do that" or "you're wrong", which only turned me away from really getting into the role-play until almost a year into playing. Please, if this is helpful, then I am glad.