Hello folks. On behalf of the writers here, I’d like to apologize for sketchy postings the last week or so. One of us had the audacity to go off and get married, and the other two may have been drinking beers to celebrate.

We’re back, though, I swear!

So game mechanics – they’re cool, right? But in an RP atmosphere, they don’t necessarily allow you to do everything you want to do. For example, let’s say your mage works for days on polymorphing someone into a squirrel. Squirrel’s a pretty low form of life, prolly less complicated than a sheep really, but . . . you cannot according to warcraft lore make someone into a squirrel. If someone emotes that they do it, is it lore breaking? Or is it taking creative license? I say it’s the latter, though I do know people who’d say otherwise. My thought on creative license is “Does this make the character ridiculously overpowered? Would this particular action break something cannon in game.” If the answer to both of those questions is ‘No’, I believe it’s fine.

Expound? Why yes, I think I will.

A common RP “universe breaker” I’d seen pre-Wrath were vampires. I should make it clear right now, I love vampire fiction, movies, tabletop and just about anything else you shove in front of me. However – I had a huge issue with them in an RP sense in WoW. I am not the type of person to walk up to you and tell you I think your roleplay is wrong, but I will pick and choose which situations I’ll respond to IC’ly. Someone vampired at me once in say outside of the Stormwind Cathedral, and I not so subtly just walked away. It wasn’t my cup of tea.

Now, however, things have changed! Much to the delight of vampire lovers everywhere, there are Darkfallen. Enter not only lorebreaking, but lore obliterating entities.

According to WoWWiki:

Darkfallen are a unique form of undead that can be encountered in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Though little lore has been established, they appear to be undead high elves and/or blood elves.

All characters explicitly identified as darkfallen are also currently tagged as members of the San’layn, though exactly how the groups relate to one another is uncertain. The only apparently darkfallen not tagged as San’layn are Prince Navarius in Zul’Drak, Prince Taldaram in Ahn’kahet, Dragonblight and Prince Sandoval in Icecrown.

The only non-named darkfallen seen regularly in-game so far appear in the Temple City of En’kilah in northeastern Borean Tundra.

At least two Darkfallen have demonstrated shape-shifting abilities. Neutral Crest [72+] Prince Valanar in the quest Last Rites and Tenris Mirkblood when using his Blood Mirror ability.

Elder Ko’nani of The Kalu’ak states that “The Dark One rides forth again with his San’layn…” showing that they are a major, or at least leading, part of the Scourge offensive. Depending on how the sentence is read, it may mean the San’layn were part of a previous attack of some kind.

It seems that they are vampiric in nature, especially in the case of the Princes, who are known to consume the flesh, blood, and souls of their victims.

Hokay, so . . . the only Darkfallen in game are blood elves or high elves. Why the heck are there a bunch of humans running around trying to convince me otherwise? By my earlier questions, “”Does this (being Darkfallen) make the character ridiculously overpowered?” No, not necessarily, though your hypnotizing gaze may set off my radar. Oh, your rampant shapeshifting which can’t be witnessed too, but . . . all right, creative license. I’ll bend*. Next question, though: “Would this particular action break something cannon in game?” Well? In this mock scenario, yes, yes it does, especially since there’s been zero indication darkfallen can be humans. Lorestompage, hooooo!

Trying to figure out the gray line between making the game your own and just obliterating “the rules” can be hard. From my own experience, I leave most of my “crazy rp ideas” to ficcing and keep them out of game. That way, if you want to cast Polymorph: Wombat on someone and they’ve given you the consent to do it, you don’t have random lore gestapo beating down your door. There’s nothing more killjoy than someone pulling nerd rank when you’re really into something. If you approach your stories responsibly, though, and take into account that everyone’s threshold for believability is different, you’ll likely be fine.

I think that’s all I have for today, folks. Ta!

(*I am sure someone out there is playing a Darkfallen IC’ly and it is bad ass, by the by. Sadly, I don’t play horde so I haven’t encountered it.)