Lore Watch Podcast

This week, Joe, Matt, and special guest Liz Harper read the newly released  Diablo  novel  The Lost Horadrim  by Matthew Kirby, and are here to share their thoughts. This is where I'd make a joke about that new book smell, but it's  Diablo  so I don't want to think about smelling anything. In terms of time, the book is set between the events of  Diablo 3  an...

Is  Midnight  the Elf-centric team-up expansion of our dreams, or what? That's the listener question which serves as our jumping off point this week. And our cohosts conclude: Yes, mostly! Indeed,  Midnight  is the elf-o-rama we've always wanted -- nay, deserved. Matt, Joe, and Eric point out some of their shared elf-y foibles (must we always have a singular, vulnerable font of...

This week's Lore Watch Podcast takes us back in the day, with a couple questions that ask about lore from the vanilla days. We start off talking arcs. The Alliance has a great arc involving the Defias in their initial starting zone, which evolves to involve Lady Prestor in the middle levels, all the way up to Onyxia at cap. The Lore Watch crew discuss the various threads of the Horde narrative tha...

Comic book artist Sam Kieth passed away earlier this month as a result of Lewy Body dementia, so our Lore Watch Podcast team wanted to take an episode to talk about his impact on the genre and pop culture as a whole. Both Sam Kieth's art style and plotlines shaped comics as we moved into a more grimdark take on the old heroes. Sam's comic  The Maxx  put him on the map, and his collaborat...

Joe, Matt, and Eric sat down this week to discuss the dragons of  World of Warcraft , starting with their origins as proto-dragons, and all the way up through more modern politics. With many thanks for the great questions, we start off with proto-dragons: why do they call themselves that? Seems like they might call themselves "dragons" and come up with something new for those long-armed fello...

This week Joe and Eric were joined by Liz, and it was a great opportunity to begin discussing the abundance of Loa we've had in  Midnight  so far. Our cohosts discussed some of the ins and outs of becoming a Loa, and talked about what they thought they might be the Loa of one day, since none of them were nepo babied into the situation. After that they moved into Harandar and its relation...

We love answering your questions, especially when it lets us don our tinfoil hat. Our first question this week was relatively straightforward: If you were to run a  WoW  TTRPG for a Horde campaign and an Alliance campaign, what would it be? With three hosts, there were six varied answers. We move from there to conflict among the Titans, and why some all-powerful beings might clash. Speak...

This week our usual crew of Joe, Matt, and Eric was joined by Liz to discuss William Gibson's novel  Neuromancer . This 1984 novel was foundational to the cyberpunk genre in many ways, from establishing the grittiness of the setting all the way down to shaping the way this genre looks and feels across different types of media. The crew discuss themes through  Neuromancer  which are...

We thank our listeners and patrons for giving us another round of great questions, which we summarily answered and used as a diving board directly into the deep end of tin foil hat theories and speculation. First, who was the elf Xal'atath is currently using for a body? While we do have a pithy answer to this identity courtesy of a particular quest line, there's also a broader lore implication in...

Our readers dutifully sent in questions, and our three hosts -- Joe, Matt, and Eric -- gave them all the answers they could want, and more. They start off with a discussion on the music of  WoW , spurred by the inclusion of Player Housing decor, and how Taurens all got drums. It evolves from there, to discuss how the themes present within in-game music mirror real life music characteristics....

Our listeners had a lot of questions for the Lore Watch crew this week, and they all center on  Midnight , specifically the role of the Void and Old Gods. Is there another forgotten Old God waiting in the wings? Will all the Old Gods come back to wreak havoc during The Last Titan? Perhaps most tantalizingly in light of the events to come, with all this Void power at her command, what exactly...

As we make our way into the  Midnight  prepatch and beyond, Matt, Joe, and Eric take the opportunity to recap the lore of  The War Within . In case you missed it -- or maybe missed some of the signs leading up to it, or through it -- we have the story. It starts with a literal bang, and the destruction of Dalaran. The implications of that, from how it affects the plot all the way to...

This week Joe is joined by our writer Eric O'Dea to discuss  Blood Ties , the newest  WoW  novel. The events of  Blood Ties happen between the end of The War Within but just before  Midnight  -- basically when we are right now. As such,  there will be spoilers for both  Blood Ties  and a little bit of what we know happens in  Midnight . Joe and Eri...

This week Joe and Matt are answering another listener question, this time concerning Paladins, and how they serve as an intersection between the divine Light, and the Titans who shaped Azeroth. As you might imagine, the answer will span the cosmos, and go completely off the rails in the process. Paladins in particular serve as a mash-up between some Light power and Titanic power -- does that mean...

This week by special listener request, Matt and Joe are delving into Icewind Dale -- perhaps literally, because it involves the iconic character Drizzt Do'Urden, the Drow Ranger. Icewind Dale began simply as a region in  Dungeons and Dragons , and then became the title of a series of three novels penned by R. A. Salvatore, with the first published in 1988 and the last in 1990, and then a vide...

Because it's Christmas, and on Christmas you get a little treat, Joe and Matt are discussing all the ways crossovers are used in comics. From KISS to that one time Doctor Doom was Santa, to more mundane crossovers, adding a different set of characters to an existing comic can add new life to a stale plot. This episode has it all, from  Archie  to  Transformers , perhaps both at the...

Since Paladins were announced as the next class to join the roster in  Diablo 4  in its next expansion  Lord of Hatred  -- and already playable with preorder -- Matt and Joe sat down this week to chat about both, but mostly Paladins and their history within the franchise. First, they dive into the place of Paladins within the franchise as contrasted by other classes. Blizzard s...

In this birthday episode of Lore Watch, Joe gave Matt a gift, and let Matt talk about whatever called to him -- and that was the lore of  The Outer Worlds . They discussed everyone's favorite Gilded Age throwback with minimal spoilers, talking about how the world itself is setup and constructed in this alternate version of earth. In this version of history, the robber baron tycoons who brough...

Our listeners wanted to know about the legacy of the Troll raid. We've been killing those poor saps a lot -- just about every expansion in either raid or dungeon form, in fact, to the extent that "the Troll raid" is almost a meme.  Midnight  may be bringing us another chance to murder a whole bunch more Trolls, with rumors swirling about islands off the coast near Zul'Aman -- which, inci...

This week we have four listener questions answered by our lore experts Joe and Matt. First, they discuss the Ethereals and what their timeline is in relation to the timeline on Azeroth. Has this race existed for years, decades, milennia -- or something different entirely. They pivoted to the dragons and their aspects, and how choice figures in. Chromie, for one, clearly got some element of choice...

As we make our way toward  Midnight , Joe and Matt are making sure we know what we need to before the expansion launches. Chief among those things is the lore of Blood Elves. It starts with the Highborne and the schism between Night Elves and High Elves, which eventually led to the Blood Elves and the creation of the Sunwell. But ancient history isn't all. Joe and Matt also discuss some of th...

Because we aren't all constantly filled with existential dread, Joe and Matt are answering some deep questions asked by some of our listeners. The first concerns the afterlife in  Diablo , namely where we all go when we die. Heaven and Hell aren't really in keeping with our religious afterlife paradigm, after all. Then, they're asked about what the moon or sun is, really, in  WoW . This...

As we head into  Midnight , we know this act begins with a direct assault on the Sunwell. But what is the Sunwell? Our Loremasters Joe and Matt discuss the history of Xal'atath's next target. The Sunwell isn't even the only well of power to be found on Azeroth -- they discuss the Well of Eternity, and the Nightwell, too. This isn't the first time the Sunwell has been directly assaulted -- and...

In the first of three questions we answered this week, a listener wanted to know some of the influences our hosts Joe and Matt see in  WoW  from literature, movies, and myth, and they talked about a slew of varied media, from 60s sci-fi (no, not that one, though yes, that one) through comics. There are a lot of cultural touchstones and homages to explore in  WoW . They also sort of...

Matt and Joe sit down this week to discuss  Vampire: The Masquerade : its lore, some of the source material that inspired it, and how it rippled vampires forward in pop culture. They break down what you need to know about the history of vampires in this setting, which goes back almost to the beginning of humans, so there's kind of a lot to discuss. Clans are the core concept to be aware of, a...