Lore Watch Podcast

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...

Now that we've seen Lorewalking a bit, a listener asks the Lore Watch team what other events in Azeroth's history we should get to go visit through that system. While the listener suggests the War of the Three Hammers -- which Joe and Matt are on board with -- the response runs the gamut of Azeroth's history, from ancient events to a couple from  WoW  we just weren't there to see, all th...

The ultimate fight of  The War Within , Dimensius is a hulking purple Void Lord, and several developer interviews have led us to believe he may be the last one. Or, at least, that's what two of our listeners asked about -- is he the last Void Lord? And if he is, what does that even mean? So Matt and Joe start off explaining the Void and Void Lords a bit, before making a turn -- in the way onl...

This week we're having a throwback episode from the Archives. Over a hundred episodes ago, Matt and Joe discussed what they would like to see from an elf-centric expansion, which is more or less coming to fruition with  Midnight . They begin by talking about the lore behind elves in general, their historical origins as an offshoot of the Trolls, through the Night Elf schism with the High Elve...

The topic of Forsaken Paladins is the meat in a three listener question sandwich this week. We start off with the idea of corruption, and just how the Old Gods managed to bend the kobolds eating Milly Osgood's grapes in Elwynn Forest to their will, being that they're generally not all that geographically adjacent. Besides which -- kobolds? Really? Then, the Forsaken Paladin discussion, which dives...

This week's show is devoted to two listener questions. The first asks what the Void fears, in reference to a line from our old pal Ve'nari who asserts that she knows what it is -- but doesn't let us in on the secret. Can Matt and Joe unravel the mystery posed by our Broker friend? They go down some twisting paths to discuss their way to the answer, including a lot of discussion of all the elves on...

Most people think of the 80s as a simple time full of big hair and scrunchies, but those of us who were into  Dungeons and Dragons  will remember the Satanic Panic, a period of time when parents were terrified that every piece of media was making their children evil. Our hosts Matt and Joe take a walk through a history they remember quite well, drawing from their own experiences as kids...

Lore Watch this week explores three questions sent in by our listeners, all ending in answers we may see as we go forward into  Midnight . First, they talk about the different types of magic -- specifically that Warlock magic stems from the Titans -- and why that knowledge didn't knock the socks clean off the Kirin Tor. Or maybe Xal'atath literally knocking those socks off also knocked some s...

With the rigidity of the structure of the Kirin Tor and the Jedi Order, and their propensity for keeping secrets about power -- and sometimes that power for themselves -- there are a ton of parallels between these two organizations. Our hosts Matt and Joe dive deep into both the  World of Warcraft  universe and the  Star Wars  universe in order to compare and contrast the maste...

While we’re all excited about the new trailer for  Midnight  from gamescom, Matt and Joe took this opportunity to discuss what narrative threads we may see in  Midnight  as a whole. They recap some of our adventures on K’aresh, discuss the order of what might be coming, plus what the nature of the energy-based Ethereals have to do with Azeroth. It’s a multi-faceted lore deep di...

This week's Lore Watch Podcast is just as majestic as the last, with even more discussion of the lore of  Jurassic Park . This time, Joe, Matt, and special guest Eric O'Dea discuss the second set of Jurassic media, starting with  Jurassic World . They give a rundown of the plots of the newer movies, then move into analysis. While scientific hubris clearly has its role to play, perhaps th...

This week, Matt, Joe, and special guest Eric O'Dea dove into one of the most influential series for the 90s kids in the audience:  Jurassic Park . From Michael Crichton's groundbreaking novels to the movies, dinosaurs were inescapable -- pun intended. Our hosts discuss the first few works in the series, how the books and movies differed, and just how wrong the science was.  Jurassic Park...

This week's Lore Watch Podcast featured three different listener questions, answered by our intrepid hosts Matt and Joe. First, they delved into some pop culture references in  WoW , specifically focusing on  Final Fantasy  (or possibly  He-Man ). The second question talks Quilboar and the Scourge -- what did the Scourge get out of working with the Quilboar anyway? Finally, we...

This week's podcast features three different reader questions shoved into one podcast trenchcoat. First up, would it be possible to see a Void version of Demon Hunters, considering what we know now about Void as a magic source? Which of course, raises the question of, say, Light Demon Hunters or Arcane Demon Hunters. Then, we try to shove magic sources together, like Deathwing's Shadowflame (and w...

Our hosts Joe and Matt were joined by frequent guest and DM for our Tavern Watch podcast, Phil Ulrich. Together they explored the storytelling aspect of TTRPGs. While they do enjoy the aspect of "math rocks go brrrr" TTRPGs bring to the table, the ability to tell a story collaboratively makes it more appealing to them than a typical game like  Catan  or  Monopoly , though certainly...