Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth

Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth is a popular Web Comic by Dave "Fargo" Kosak, made using screenshots from World of Warcraft. Originally conceived as part of a column about virtual life in WoW, focus soon shifted to Flintlocke and his quest to discover the ultimate weapon.

Flintlocke is a dwarven warrior who prefers to fight with his bizarrely engineered weapons, to his own detriment and that of those around him. Scatterbrained and none-too-bright, he nonetheless slaps together a party to aid him in his quest for more boom. This team includes:

• Kathrena, a night elf huntress who is by far the most level-headed member of the group
• Schweitzer, a cowardly human priest who avoids enemy attention by never casting his healing spells
• Bloodrose, a gnome mage and extreme powergamer who boasts that she "blows through levels like Kleenex!"
• and Lowping, a gnome rogue running entirely on macros and scripts written by a Chinese gold farmer, making him an effective looter but unreliable fighter.

The original comic ran for two years before reaching its explosive conclusion, after which a "drawn" comic was planned to follow it up. That didn't pan out, so after spending some time in limbo, the comic was revived with a new story, Flintlocke Versus the Horde, focusing on a group of Horde players opposing Flintlocke's band. The new story concluded in early 2009, and with the creator's decision to move on getting hired by Blizzard to work as a designer for World of Warcraft, this would seem to be the end of Flintlocke's adventures.

The Horde counterparts include:

• Rok'tar: A Roleplaying Orc Hunter who gets a bit too much into his character.
• Gravy: A Troll Shaman who prefers to just get high all the time.
• Bubbles: A Forsaken Priest who serves as the group foil to Bloodrose.
• Cheri: An incredibly ditzy Blood Elf Warlock.

A "director's cut" of the original comic can be found here, while Flintlocke Versus the Horde can be found here. Since it's hosted by Gamespy, there's gonna be an ad every couple of pages, so apologies in advance.

Tropes used in Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth include:

• Abnormal Ammo: A lot of what Flintlocke ends up shooting from his musket is both alive and reluctant to take part in the fighting.
• Ascended Fanboy: Dave Kosak gave up doing the series...because he got hired by Blizzard to work as a designer for World of Warcraft. Huzzah! (and yes, that's the real reason Flintlocke, Schweitzer, Rok'tar, and Gravy appear in Cataclysm).
• Ascended Meme: The Twilight Highlands, one of the new zones in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, features NPCs named Fargo Flintlocke and Doc Schweitzer. Flintlocke's even got custom lines!
  • Players can now use the Chuck Shot!
• Big No: In the July 9, 2009 strip.
• Bill, Bill, Junk, Bill: "Auction... auction... vendor... auction..."
• Brick Joke: Very nearly involving actual bricks in fact. Early on, Flintlocke finds a way to make gold. Seven months later, this happens. Of course, the author made sure to point it out.
• Chekhov's Gun: The Wuuf training Schweitzer and reallocating his talent points.
• Cherry Tapping: In the final battle between Rok'tar and Flintlocke, Bun'kar finishes off Lowping, who had previously been reduced to 1 hp.
• Death Is Cheap: It is based on World of Warcraft, after all. Slightly subverted in the battle between Rok'tar's party and Flintlocke's party; death is still cheap, but the closest Graveyard to the area is too far away for anyone killed in the battle to return in time to be effective again.
• Deus Exit Machina: In the battle between Rok'tar and Flintlocke's parties, Bloodrose, The Munchkin of Flintlocke's party, is the first to be killed, having been caught while out of mana.
• Distant Reaction Shot: Common when Flintlocke gets his hands on anything explosive.
• Do Wrong Right: Flintlocke refuses to use the Ultimate Goblin Engineered Weapon on the Everblooming the group is being attacked by... because the forest they are surrounded by is too green for the weapon to achieve maximum collateral damage.
• Dual Wield: Exclamation points.
• Edible Ammunition: According to Flintlocke, a Dwarven Thanksgiving tradition is to stuff the turkey with blasting powder, so it can be fired as-is from a cannon in the event of an attack. The party ends up actually doing so, albeit offscreen.
• Fail O'Suckyname: Apparently the reason the Horde overran Westfall. And the next stronghold after that was Fort Pwned.
• Fan Nickname: The Horde priest's real name was never revealed in the strip; somebody just called him "Bubbles" in the comments one day and it caught on.
• False Reassurance: When Bloodrose expresses concern that the "Remote Backstab" is just another ridiculous made-up tactic of Flintlocke's:

Flintlocke: Nonsense. Tha' Remote Backstab is a time-honored move wit' tha utmost a' respectability.
Beat
Flintlocke: Now reach into me backpack an' get out me toilet plunger.

• • In Gadgetzan, when Schweitzer is buying drugs from a goblin merchant.

Goblin: Here, try a hit of this!
Schweitzer: Ooh... is it legal?
Goblin: It's approved for industrial use.

• Fastball Special: The "Remote Backstab," which involves six charges of blasting powder, a musket, a plunger, and Lowping the gnome.
• Gratuitous Spanish: Flintlocke's "Human Accent".
• Gray and Gray Morality: How Schweitzer's father sees the world, apparently.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Besides Flintlocke's animal-based weapons, Bloodrose reflects that "it's amazing what you can learn while beating someone over the head with their own spine."
• Guy in Real Life: Cheri is initially suspected to be this. She's not.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Lowping; when he's actually playing, anyway.
• Improbable Weapon User: Flintlocke once wields a question mark in battle against a goblin using dual exclamation points.
• I'm Going to Hell For This: Schweitzer notes this after he uses his revive on Flintlocke's ram and instead zombified it. He notes however that he'll have a drink first before hell.
• Insult Backfire: Kathrena calls Schweitzer "the worst living priest on the server". Schweitzer points out that, putting emphasis on the "living" part, it's actually not that bad a title.
• It's a Wonderful Plot: One strip has a variation when the characters imagine what Azeroth would be like without rogues. Apparently, in such a world, the Alliance and Horde have settled their differences and the classes are all in perfect balance.
• Just One More Level: The Five Stages of Warcraft.
• Killer Rabbit: Bun'kar
  • Kind of an Informed Ability, as the most impressive thing it's actually shown doing is Cherry Tapping Lowping.
• Line-of-Sight Name: The terrifyingly-named Horde guild, Desk Chair Lamp.
• Mad Scientist: Those who created The Ultimate Goblin-Engineered Weapon.
  • Flintlocke to an extent. He's certainly got the "Mad" part down.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: "We're going to save and/or destroy the world!"
• No Kill Like Overkill: Flintlocke's philosophy in a nutshell.
  • The Remote Backstab:

Bloodrose: He bored a hole clear through him!

• • And the Pween Scene Investigators mentioned that bits of his ribcage were found three zones away.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The final showdown between Flintlocke/Schweitzer and Rok'tar takes place off-panel.
  • According to this strip, exciting pirate battles, among other things, occur during loading screens.
• Porky Pig Pronunciation: Zeppelin would have been easier to say.
• The Rashomon: A few of the last strips are separately shown from the perspectives of Schweitzer and Cheri.
• Red Baron: Flintlocke's great-great-uncle "Triggerfinger" Ironstone.

Schweitzer: So named for his legendary marksmanship?
Flintlocke: No! So named 'cuz tha's tha only finger 'e 'ad left... after 'e mastered tha Chuck Shot!

• Relax-O-Vision: Used for a particularly messy fight involving Flintlocke and the Beaverstick.
• Running Gag: "Tell me you like my hat!"
  • Early comics had comments on Flintlocke's purple boots. That went away after his first armor upgrade, though.
  • Rok'tar's pets and animals he's decided to tame as pets getting killed, usually by his teammates.
• Shoot the Medic First: Schweitzer is convinced that all enemies subscribe to this philosophy.
• Small Name, Big Ego: The PSI guys see each other as competent and brilliant, though they come to conclusions that no detective ever would, ever.
  • Flintlocke himself, though he does manage to be pretty effective in combat from time to time.
• The Stoner: Gravy the Troll Shaman.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Generally the result of Flintlocke's actions.
• Tempting Fate: In the final strip of Flintlocke vs. The Horde.

"We can't possibly lose!"

• Took a Level in Badass: Schweitzer, after the reveal that the Wuuf had custom designed a "Murder" macro for him and his party managed to convince him to actually use it.
• Tuxedo and Martini: Bubbles' plan for Rok'tar to get through Teldrassil is pictured as him becoming this.
• Ultimate Gamer 386: The Wuuf, a night elf priest who spends his time calculating the most powerful talent combinations, a gamer so hardcore that even WoW's developers are scared of him. His Horde counterpart is Bubbles the Forsaken Priest.
• Unusual Euphemism: Flintlocke appears to use the term 'jimmy/jimmies' instead of testicles.
  • Justified, since it's a part of the Scottish accent Flintlocke favors.
  • Tinkmaster Overspark calls Flintlocke a "lugnut" when he doesn't seem to grasp the concept of a mount.
• We Need a Distraction: Flintlocke finds his true calling.
• You Killed My Father: Rok'tar declares vengeance on Flintlocke due to him killing off his father. It's not really that big of a deal since his father's an NPC who just respawns in a few minutes. Admittedly, Flintlocke did kill his father twenty more times as well as Malakkaboom, as he thought that they were Kel'Thuzad and Illidan, respectively.
• Your Mom: Barrens chat gives several of these(many of them unheard) to Rok'tar.