My favorite thing about playing World of Warcraft is how intricately the developers have tied their MMO into the Warcraft games that came before. When they were building their virtual world, Blizzard didn’t just start from scratch; they dug into all of the games, novels and comic books that had come before and pulled out all sorts of people, places, weapons and dungeons to populate the World of Warcaft. Remember when you invaded Medivh’s dungeon way back in the very first game? Well now you can go quest there again and walk around its haunted halls. Or what about Khelgar, the sorcerer who helped you close the Dark Portal in Warcraft 2? Now you can go visit him for a chat and see how he’s doing.

Believe me, I could go on and on about all of the characters and places from the early games that are now sprinkled throughout the World of Warcraft. But instead, I want to draw your attention to three very specific characters who I think need to reunite and do something incredibly awesome.

I’m speaking, of course, about Rexxar, Rokhan and Chen Stormstout, champions of the Horde!

Or the Three Hordeketeers!

After the latest expansion, Mists of Pandaria, launched in September, all three characters are finally in World of Warcraft; but they have nothing to do with one another, and couldn’t be farther apart! One of them is, literally, on a different planet! But the important thing is that Rexxar, Rokhan and Chen are all finally in the game. So clearly it’s only a matter of time before they get the band back together, right? Surely I can’t be the only one who wants to see this badass team of heroes reunite?

Join me after the jump to find out who the hell I’m talking about and why this is one of the coolest Warcraft events nearly 10 years in the making!

I have been a Warcraft fan since the very beginning. My whole family has been, actually. Even my dad liked to play the original Warcraft games (mom, not so much). Warcraft started out as a real-time strategy game, in which you controlled entire armies on the battlefield. The story is about the heroic humans battling the villainous orcs for control of a fictional world called Azeroth. And the great thing about the Warcraft games was that you could play as both the human army or the orc army, they let you choose your side. That would continue through all the original games, from Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, through Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness, and into Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos.

See? Those little guys are fighting those other little guys

Then along came an expansion pack to Warcraft 3 called The Frozen Throne. Expansion packs introduced new units, new characters and new storylines, with each race getting a new campaign. And unique to The Frozen Throne, the orc campaign was actually a prototype of World of Warcraft. Instead of controlling an army on the battlefield, you’re given control of one individual hero who goes on quests. Seriously, if you’ve never gone back to play Frozen Throne after WoW, do so, it’s surreal. It’s like a baby version of WoW, right down to the yellow exclamation marks over the heads of the quest givers.

Freaky…

In this orc campaign, we’re introduced to our hero, Rexxar the Beastmaster. He’s an orc/ogre half-breed who comes from the same home planet as the orcs, and joined them in invading Azeroth way back in the day. But after several years living on his own in the wilderness, Rexxar has decided to come back and check out the new orc warchief, Thrall, and his new orc Horde. Rexxar was a new character for The Frozen Throne, he hadn’t appeared anywhere else. Also, he has a pet bear named Misha, because hells yes he does!

He is a beastmaster!

The orc campaign has you playing as Rexxar as he meets Thrall and helps the Horde set up their new home on the continent of Kalimdor. You get quests, explore early Orgrimmar and meet important Warcraft characters like Thrall, Cairne Bloodhoof and Vol’Jin, leader of the trolls. You meet the goblin Gazlowe and Jaina Proudmore, one of the most important human characters in the Warcraft series. And eventually you get embroiled in a larger story involving some evil human invaders who want to wipe out all of the orcs. So it’s up to Rexxar to rise to the challenge, unite the various races and defeat the evil humans! Rexxar is a hero!

A hero with giant axes!

But he’s not alone. During the course of the adventure, Rexxar gets two companions to join him on his journey: Rokhan, the troll shadowhunter, and Chen Stormstout, the pandaren brewmaster.

Is anyone else thinking Hangover parody?

Rokhan and Chen are two new characters who were introduced to fight alongside Rexxar, the three of them forming the heroic core of your team in the orc campaign. And by the end, all three are heroes who helped unite the Horde and turn back the forces of evil! It’s a fun game, a great story, and it was the last traditional Warcraft adventure before World of Warcraft launched a few years later.

So, of course, it’s only reasonable to assume that these three heroes would be a part of WoW, right?

Wrong!

For whatever reason, Rexxar, Rokhan and Chen are not a big part of World of Warcraft at all. In fact, two of them weren’t even around when the game first launched in 2004. Rexxar was the only one you could find in the game, if you knew where to look. Higher level players could find Rexxar wandering the roads of Desolace and Feralas, which, if you can’t tell by their names, were essentially the wilderness. He’d gone back to a life in the forest, strolling along without a care in the world, sometimes helping you out on a quest or two. I can still remember the day I randomly found Rexxar out in Desolace the first time I played World of Warcraft. I had no idea he was going to be out there. I was just walking along when I found him. It was a very cool moment.

Bear? Check. Axes? Check. Definitely Rexxar

Unfortunately, I was a human character, and I had to keep my distance. He probably would have killed me.

But that was it for Rexxar. All he did was walk to and fro, seemingly without a care in the world. There was a brief mention of Chen in one random quest, but otherwise there was nothing else in WoW from their memorable adventure. All of the other big characters you met in Frozen Throne were in WoW. There was Thrall, Cairne, Jaina, Vol’Jin, Gazlowe; heck, even Gar’Thok, the grunt NPC you met for five seconds in the orc campaign shows up in World of Warcarft.

Mayor of Razor Hill

But there’s so little from our heroes! What were Blizzard thinking?

I’ll tell you. I think Blizzard is planning something big. I think they’ve been building some kind of long game that has literally stretched across years as they slowly, perhaps intentionally, bring this trio back together.

It started  in 2007 with the first WoW expansion, The Burning Crusade, which took players through the Dark Portal back to the orc homeworld of Draenor. This also happened to be Rexxar’s homeworld, and sure enough, he was given a big role to play in the expansion. Rexxar was plucked out of Desolace and became a fort commander in the Blade’s Edge Mountains on Draenor, where he grew up. You can find him there with Misha, and he’s got a pretty big quest line that has you fighting off the local orgres while also reconnecting with his old tribe. You even get to meet Rexxar’s father! It’s a pretty neat storyline.

Giant deadly animals run in the family

The next expansion came in 2008, called Wrath of the Lich King, and it took players up to the frozen land of Northrend to combat the evil Prince Arthas. A lot of  story elements from The Frozen Throne paid off in Wrath of the Lich King, including the titular Lich King himself. And sure enough, hidden in a small encampment in the middle of Northrend, so secluded that there’s a very good chance you’ll miss him completely, you’ll find Rokhan. He has one single quest to hand out and doesn’t say anything about his past adventure. I’m not even sure what he was doing out there. Heck, I didn’t even know it was him when I took the quest. It wasn’t until weeks later when I looked him up online that I realized I’d visited his encampment and took his quest. It seems weird that Blizzard would do so little with the character, but there you have it. At least Rokhan was finally in the game.

The next expansion, Cataclysm, came and went in 2010, adding nothing to our story.

Then came the big one, Mists of Pandaria, released just this past September. And sure enough, Chen Stormstout is one of the main characters from the expansion, because people love panda bears. That’s a fact. The pandaren race had always been kind of a joke at Blizzard, but one clearly strong enough to earn its own expansion. When your character reaches the lost continent of Pandaria, you eventually meet Chen and go on a few adventures with him. Then even later in the game, he’ll briefly mention his old adventure with Rexxar and the gang. They also gave him a cute little panda cub niece named Li Li for some reason…

Never share the screen with kids or dogs

Anyway, the important thing is that Chen is finally in the game, alongside Rokhan and Rexxar. For the first time since World of Warcraft first started in 2004, all three characters from The Frozen Throne orc campaign are in the game. They may be entire continents and planets apart, but they’re in the game.

This has to mean something. But what? I don’t think Blizzard has said anything yet. But clearly they are putting something together, right? Why else would they randomly stick Rokhan in such an out of the way place? Why not just make that character a random troll nobody? Why use Rokhan specifically? Obviously Rexxar and Chen had important roles to play in their expansions, but Rexxar hasn’t done anything since. And when we move on to the next expansion, Chen and Pandaria are going to be a thing of the past. So all of these characters are free to do something.

Getting drunk is something

And do something they should!

It’s way past time that Warcraft brought the three of them together for some big, epic moment of pure awesomeness.