Blizzard Entertainment posted a quickstart guide for WoW: Forever yesterday, less than a week after WoW: Forever launched with a new video for Legacy Talents. Ragnaros the Firelord, the elemental lord of fire, waited at the bottom of Molten Core in the original World of Warcraft and returned as the final boss of the Firelands raid in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Blizzard's World of Warcraft: Chronicle is the current canon source for his history, which runs from the war against the titans to his death in patch 4.2. Check out the official post down below:
The Firelord And The Black Empire
Chronicle Volume 1 introduces Ragnaros as the most violent of the 4 elemental lords who ruled primordial Azeroth. He despised the Windlord Al'Akir's habit of using spies and feints, and he preferred brute force. Volcanoes burst through the world's crust wherever he went, and Chronicle says he longed "to boil the seas, reduce the mountains to slag, and choke the skies with ember and ash." The other elemental lords hated him for his assaults.
When the Old Gods spread the Black Empire across the world, the elemental lords worked together against them. Al'Akir's tempests joined with Ragnaros's fire elementals to create cyclones of flame that burned the empire's citadels to ash. The Old Gods still won that war and enslaved the elementals, turning the 4 lords into their lieutenants.
When the titan-forged keepers began ordering the world, the Old Gods sent the elemental lords against them, and Tyr and Odyn volunteered to face Ragnaros, whom Chronicle calls the most destructive of the elemental lieutenants. Their battle lasted for weeks before the 2 keepers pushed him back to his volcanic lair in the east, where they defeated him in a land of boiling acid seas and ash-choked skies.
Elementals cannot be killed permanently, so the titan keeper Ra built a prison for them: 4 linked domains inside a pocket dimension called the Elemental Plane. Ragnaros and the fire elementals were exiled to its smoldering corner, the Firelands. Therazane went to Deepholm, Al'Akir to the Skywall and Neptulon to the Abyssal Maw.
Highlord Demitrian's dialogue in the original game adds a fight from that era. He says Ragnaros attacked Thunderaan, Prince of Air, defeated him and fed on his essence. He could not consume all of it, so he split what remained between his servants Baron Geddon and Garr, who both became Molten Core bosses. The Firelord's home in the Firelands is Sulfuron Keep.
The War Of The Three Hammers
Ragnaros returned to Azeroth because of a dwarf civil war. Chronicle dates the War of the Three Hammers to 230 years before the Dark Portal. After High King Modimus Anvilmar died of old age, Ironforge's 3 clans fought for control of the mountain, and the Bronzebeards under Thane Madoran Bronzebeard drove out the other 2. Khardros Wildhammer led his clan north to build Grim Batol, and Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissan took the Dark Irons south to the Redridge Mountains, where they founded a kingdom named after him.
Thaurissan later launched a 2-pronged attack. He led the assault on Ironforge himself with war golems and siege engines and reached the heart of the city before the Bronzebeards pushed him back to Redridge. His wife, the sorceress Modgud, besieged Grim Batol, where Khardros killed her in a counterattack. The Bronzebeard and Wildhammer armies then crushed the retreating Dark Irons from both sides and marched south together.
Chronicle says Thaurissan tried to draw fiery power from deep within the world as a weapon. In the middle of the spell, his thoughts turned to his wife's death and his defeats, and his rage breached the Elemental Plane. He unwittingly pulled Ragnaros to the surface of Azeroth, and the eruptions killed the sorcerer-thane instantly and shattered the surrounding mountains. Madoran and Khardros fled north.
The eruption created Blackrock Mountain, with the Burning Steppes to its south and the Searing Gorge to its north. Ragnaros withdrew to the Molten Core at the heart of the mountain and enslaved the surviving Dark Irons, who carved out Shadowforge City beneath it.
Canon note: Chronicle names only Thaurissan as the summoner. Blackrock Depths lore in the game says he called on the powers beneath the world with 7 of his most powerful Dark Iron allies, known as the Seven, and that all of them died in the summoning. The original game guide called him "Emperor Thaurissan," and Majordomo Executus's dialogue says the summoning happened "a mere three hundred years ago." Chronicle's 230 years before the Dark Portal is the current date.
Master Of Blackrock Mountain
Chronicle Volume 2 says the first Shadow Council warlocks who tried to dominate Blackrock Mountain's elementals during the orcish invasion burned from the inside out. Cho'gall negotiated a refuge for them high in the mountain, Blackrock Spire, and the Dark Irons later let Orgrim Doomhammer's Horde claim it as a headquarters at Ragnaros's secret command.
Chronicle Volume 3 picks up with Emperor Dagran Thaurissan, a descendant of the sorcerer-thane who ruled the Dark Irons on the Firelord's behalf. Ragnaros ordered him to prepare a new war, and Dagran kidnapped Princess Moira Bronzebeard, daughter of King Magni Bronzebeard of Ironforge. The 2 fell in love and married, and when an Alliance team sent by Magni killed Dagran in Shadowforge City, Moira refused rescue and announced she was pregnant with his child.
Molten Core And Majordomo Executus
Molten Core launched with World of Warcraft as a 40-player raid, alongside Onyxia's Lair. It sits beneath Blackrock Depths, and its bosses are Lucifron, Magmadar, Gehennas, Garr, Baron Geddon, Shazzrah, Sulfuron Harbinger, Golemagg the Incinerator, Majordomo Executus and Ragnaros. Every boss drops Tier 1 armor except Ragnaros, who drops Tier 2 leg pieces.
Chronicle credits Moira with starting the invasion. With the Dark Irons in chaos after Dagran's death, she spread word that Ragnaros was building an army and that riches were hidden in the mountain. The Hydraxian Waterlords, water elementals led by Duke Hydraxis, recruited champions to invade the Molten Core, and in the game Hydraxis gave players Aqual Quintessence to douse the 7 runes of warding beside the bosses, a step required to summon Executus.
After his defeat, Executus tells players that Ragnaros served the Old Gods, fought the titans and was banished to the Elemental Plane, and that he "has slept under this mountain ever since" the summoning. When Executus calls him up, Ragnaros rises in a rage: "TOO SOON! YOU HAVE AWAKENED ME TOO SOON, EXECUTUS! WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS INTRUSION???" He kills Executus for leading the raid to his lair, then turns on the players with yells like "BY FIRE BE PURGED!" and "DIE INSECT!"
Chronicle says the champions destroyed Ragnaros's protective runes with the Waterlords' gifts and banished him back to the Firelands. The Dark Irons were freed, and Moira became their ruler.
Players could craft the Firelord's weapon, Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros, a 2-handed mace, by combining the Sulfuron Hammer with the Eye of Sulfuras. The hammer needed a blacksmith with 300 skill and plans from Lokhtos Darkbargainer of the Thorium Brotherhood in Blackrock Depths, and the Eye had a low chance to drop from Ragnaros himself. Until Blackwing Lair arrived in patch 1.6, Sulfuras had the highest DPS of any melee weapon in World of Warcraft.
The Burning Of Hyjal
Chronicle Volume 3 says Ragnaros and Al'Akir kept their ties to the Old Gods, while Neptulon and Therazane had broken free of them. N'Zoth promised to release the Firelord and the Windlord from their prisons, with Deathwing as the key.
Shortly after the Cataclysm, Deathwing and Twilight's Hammer cultists performed a ritual near Mount Hyjal's summit that tore a rift into the Firelands. Ragnaros led thousands of fire elementals out of it and sent them up the mountain toward the World Tree, Nordrassil. The Cenarion Circle, the green dragonflight and the returning Wild Gods, including Goldrinn and Tortolla, drove him back into the rift. The earlier GB Lore Corner: How Warcraft's Neltharion The Earth-Warder Became Deathwing The Destroyer covers the Aspect who opened it.
Deathwing sent Ragnaros back when the Dragon Aspects gathered at Hyjal Summit to empower Nordrassil. He also turned to Fandral Staghelm, the disgraced former leader of the Cenarion Circle, who had been locked in a barrow den for trying to murder Malfurion Stormrage. Twilight's Hammer agents freed him, and Ragnaros remade him in flame. Fandral became the Firelord's foremost lieutenant and the first Druid of the Flame, and his druids ambushed Thrall near Hyjal Summit and shattered his spirit across the Elemental Plane.
Rage Of The Firelands
Blizzard's patch 4.2 trailer shows Thrall at the Maelstrom, unable to hear the elements. When he calls on them for guidance, Ragnaros bursts out of the rift, shouting "YOU CALLED, LITTLE SHAMAN... AND THE FIRELORD HAS ANSWERED!" He shows Thrall a vision of Nordrassil burning and a wave of fire reaching the gates of Orgrimmar, then calls it "THE FINAL HOUR OF TWILIGHT." Here is the official Rage of the Firelands trailer:
Chronicle says Malfurion rallied Hyjal's defenders for a counterattack and drove Ragnaros's army back into the Firelands. The Cenarion Circle carved out a stronghold inside called the Molten Front, Horde and Alliance reinforcements joined them, and they pushed deeper until they reached Sulfuron Keep.
The Firelands Raid
Patch 4.2, Rage of the Firelands, released on June 28, 2011. It added the Firelands raid, entered through the Sulfuron Spire in Mount Hyjal, along with the Molten Front daily quests, the staff Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest, and the Dungeon Journal. The raid's main bosses are Beth'tilac, Lord Rhyolith, Alysrazor, Shannox, Baleroc, Majordomo Staghelm and Ragnaros.
On Normal difficulty, Ragnaros sinks back into the lava at the end of the fight with the words "Too soon! ... You have come too soon..." On Heroic, Cenarius, Malfurion and Arch Druid Hamuul Runetotem arrive and solidify the lava around him, and Cenarius tells him, "No, fiend. Your time is NOW." His last words are "No, noooo- This was to be my hour of triumph..." Cenarius then says the primal powers Ragnaros represents can never be vanquished and that another will rise to power someday.
Chronicle ends the story in Sulfuron Keep. Ragnaros fell to Azeroth's defenders as Al'Akir had, and Fandral Staghelm and most of the Druids of the Flame died with him. The Firelands raid returned in Cataclysm Classic, and Blizzard released this trailer for it:
Which version of Ragnaros do you think made the better fight, the Firelord who rose out of the lava in Molten Core or the Firelord defending Sulfuron Keep in the Firelands?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.