Questes : The Lady's Necklace

Look at that, twice in two days! I'm on a roll. Also, this is the second-to-last one of Questes, so let's make it count with the flat out coolest piece of audio work in the game.

Who can do this?

This is a horde-specific questline, but don't let it discourage you - it only requires level 15 to do, so you might as well level up some race/class combination you haven't done yet (easiest is BE or Undead, location-wise) and you can do both WC for The Glowing Shard and then this in one demonic, or even fel, swoop.

All Credit to http://www.wowhead.com/item=22597#screenshots:id=55354

Where do I begin?

It can be annoying, or it can be easy. I've never had an issue with getting the item that starts the quests - The Lady's Necklace, dropped off of Fallen Rangers and Deatholme Acolytes at Windrunner Spire in SW Ghostlands. However, a select few have just very poor luck and end up farming for a while before it drops. It's just the luck of the RNG, but it's always dropped within 3 or 4 kills for me.

How does mine necklace?

Seriously? This is like the simplest quest in the history of simple quests. Just read the bloiting quest text. I'm not even linking to wowhead here, it's just that easy.

And now, the loot.

You guessed it! Loot.

First off, you get 100,000 rep with Tranquillien, and 250 with Undercity. Toss on a sprinkling of gold and xp, and it's not a bad quest in and of itself. After the completion event, you also get a book, if you talk to the nearby question-markless Ambassador Sunsorrow. More on this later.

That's it, though - there's not much here. Of course, as we know, the journey is the worthier part.

All credit to WoW.com this time.

So... What's the point?

If you've done it by now, you know the point. At the end of the quest chain... *SPOILERS*... Deathwing appears and blows up the Undercity! Haha... see, now, the people who haven't done it are now going to go and complete it before actually having it spoiled. What really happens is that Sylvanas and a few of her banshees sing an epic and stunning song named 'Lament of the Highborne', all in Thalassian. I doubt that something of this quality will disappear in Cataclysm, but it very well could disappear, at least in its current incarnation - as Undercity and the entirety of Northern Lordaeron is getting hit by the renovate-bat, who knows.

For those allies in the crowd who can't be bothered to level up a measly level 15, I mean, seriously, you could just make a death knight for A'Dal's sake, you can type

/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Music\\GlueScreenMusic\\BCCredits_Lament_of_the_Highborne.mp3")

into the text window to hear the song, or watch a video on youtube. There is, however, nothing quite like walking up to the throne room and seeing it live. This is one of the truely amazing artistic feats in WoW - and something not to be missed.

It's simple.

Whew. Back again. It's been a busy couple of months, so it's nice to finally be able to type something up.

During that time, I had the delight of experiencing two unrelated yet simultaneously very very closely related endeavors - one, I watched the entire 3 seasons of Avatar, The Last Airbender (delightfully entertaining series) for the first time. Also, I listened to a large number of 3-minute protests - informing, convincing, and venting, all mixed together, in such a short period promotes very interesting topics and thoughts to be brought forth. One which struck me as particularly cool was protesting clapping directly after a performance - that brief, 2-second interlude between conclusion and applause is a sacred and necessary moment that must be always held dear. However, I am not here to talk about the importance of postconclusory peace - I am here to talk about racism.

One of these protest speeches was on the racism in the casting of 'The Last Airbender', the live-action movie based on the aforementioned television series. I had heard about the movie before, but had not watched the show nor had I heard about the controversy. It was only after watching the show and watching a few trailers that I really understood what was going on - and after all this, hearing the speech made the subject all the more interesting. (The same person that wrote the speech drew up the above poster.) I'll summarize the argument below.

Essentially, what it boils down to is this:

1: Every single character in Avatar is not white. The main characters are Asian and Inuit, and a select few are based off of other cultures. This was intended, as the creators of the show to create an entirely eastern-based fantasy world.

2: Every single actor that was cast was white. However, when enough people protested through letters and the internet, they responded by casting the villains as Asian, Middle-eastern, or Latino. Also, because Hollywood is traditionally anti-Asian American, there a huge numbers of Asian actors very willing to play the parts. It is not a matter of acting skill.

3: This sends a very wrong message for kids, at whom the T.V. series and Movie is aimed; the heroes are white, while the villains are of different races, leading to more intolerance and inacceptance.

4: The awful irony is that the show preaches acceptance, the writers for the show promoted acceptance, the T.V. series was voiced by Asian actors which led to more successful careers in a traditionally anti Asian-American Hollywood, while the movie - a trilogy that could quite possibly be very influential - is anything but.

So, the speech went on to say, what can you do about it? Boycott the movie. Do not show up, do not give them your money, show them that racism is not ok.

(Also, they cut Sokka's humor. WTF?)

Update: There's a site full of more information, if you're interested, at http://www.racebending.com/v3/.