I've always considered myself a lore sage for all things Warcraft, but I just thought of something I never questioned before.
How the frick did Stormwind become part of the Alliance? In WoW, they LEAD the Alliance.
During the second war when the horde was advancing North, the Alliance was formed. Human, Elven and Dwarven kingdoms all joined together to fight.
But Stormwind was destroyed in the first war, and king Lane was slain. The survivors were scattered and could do jack shit. The other kingdoms knew this. So when they formed the Alliance, what jackass decided to make Stormwind a part of it, knowing damn well they were already fricked over? Their king was dead and they were without leadership, so who did they send word to? Who approved it and decided to make Stormwind part of the Alliance?
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vancleef unfricked stormwind but they fricked him over
it was the biggest unfricked human city state left in eastern kingdom
Dude, Vancleef was such a good character, and the entirety of the Defias Brotherhood & Onyxia were some of the best writing that ever existed in WoW.
But Vancleef was just the head of the mason guild that rebuilt Stormwind during the second & third war. He was no leader until the dragon c**t infiltrated the reistablished nobility and fricked the masons over.
You can't even read a few wowpedia pages and you call yourself a lore sage?
>Wikis
I don't accept fan canon. While I am willing to accept novels(sometimes), none of them explain my question.
The only lore that matters is what's in the games.
Wikis aren't for fanfics, they usually link their sources
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/misc/Warcraft%202%20Battlenet%20edition.PDF
The Alliance was originally the seven human kingdoms. That's why the continent is called Eastern Kingdoms or Azeroth.
They did my boy Anub Arak dirty.
He really should have been a raid boss.
He also should have been massive in scale like in his art.
I really love how Arthas, Kel'Thuzad & Anubarak were written as becoming friends. Even in undeath when you're an evil bastard, you can still have a bro squad.
I loved this beetle so much as a kid.
We all did. He had some great abilities and a cool-ass voice. For quite a while, cryptlords were pretty damn OP in skirmish.
I'm still nostalgic enough to sometimes replay those missions where he and Arthas go through Azjol Nerub. I love the part when the still living nerubian m nation something about the traitor king, and Arthas asks "Who, me?"
"They are referring to me, Death Knight."
But he is a raid boss in totc,unless you mean because he was killed unceremoniously more or less
Anubarak was a dungeon boss that was killed by 5 nobodies.
At least he was resurrected once.
He was a dungeon boss in a 5 man, where you're sent in by living Nerubian survivor Kilik the Unraveler to kill him.
After being such a famous and beloved character this was seen as pathetic especially since the harder dungeon in the line up involved simply going in and killing some twilights and a servant of Yogg Saron to wank him off a bit more.
They brought him back for Trail of the Crusauder as an apology but it was too late anyway. Plus they gave him frost magic powers for some reason.
The point is he deserved better.
>Trial of the crusader
I forgot about that and I'm glad I did.
>I really love how Arthas, Kel'Thuzad & Anubarak were written as becoming friends.
It is honestly one of my favorite things about the undead campaigns. Arthas and Kel’Thuzad’s relationship became almost a mentor-student one, albeit where the mentor is clearly in the subservient role. I like that they had a cutscene of Kel giving Arthas a quick rundown on Lich King and Burning Legion lore.
Kel was great because he was slotting in to Uther's old role for Arthas except he was also much better at it.
What a bummer on Anub dying in TOTC since he barely got to do anything in Lich King.
Kel'Thuzad got a bit more (i'm not counting whatever the frick he did in Shadowlands) but it's a shame we never got to see the 3 of them be a bit more buddy buddy.
That's something I feel we lost being a faceless "hero" in WoW is there's less of a magnifying glass on shit like that.
The Alliance was formed after Stormwind got murder raped by the horde. They were never a part of it during the second war.
Why have the completely snubbed Vajh(?) and the giant bug, they were big characters in W3, even the skeleton mage.
Instead they prop up a secondary weakling like Sylvana.
>a lore sage for all things Warcraft,
Why is Hellscream called Hellscream when Hell doesn't exist in Warcraft? Shouldn't it be Shadowlandsscream?
Shadowlands is fanfic.
In Warcraft 1, the humans thought the orcs were demons from hell. It's even said in the intro that the orcs came from hell as told by(presumably) a human narrator.
So it's also safe to assume that he adopted the name to inspire fear in his foes.
Humans in WC1 refered to their deity as God because the Holy Light was not a thing then
Even their churches look explicitely Christian
Got a source for that? I don't recall ever hearing anyone in the game use the word "god". Come to think of it, I don't think any of the RTS games used the word, it was only until WoW when they started mentioning the Old Gods.
>Got a source for that?
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Warcraft:_Orcs_%26_Humans_manual
>God speed in your fight.
>This ability has developed from that need, and therefore allows the caster to see in an all encompassing fashion, as God does.
There were also references to Hades
Huh, I stand corrected. Neat.
I always thought the church sound was just made up language. Is the temple of the damned in Latin too? That was always my favorite.
Also when you click on a church in both Warcraft 1 and 2 it says "Deo gracias" meaning "Thanks be to God." in Latin.
>Got a source for that?
I love when people asks for source on vidya lore when the source is the video game, just play the game if you want to know the story kek
Sure, you can call me out, that's fair. But it's also fair to remember that Warcraft 2 came out in 95. It's been a while.
>Got a source for that?
I think he is talking about the warcraft 1 manual where it talks about the monks of northshire abbey being worshipers of God.
Eh, I also should have said that back then, the humans were ignorant of the setting, and that the church of the light preached of hell, having made it all up to explain where evil comes from.
In hindsight, it seems analogous to a critique of Christianity, but there's enough separation from the faith and the setting now.
How can it be about Christianity when Thrall is warcraft jesus and he only appeared later in WC3?
I never understood this meme, even back in the day. If anything, player character shamans were more like Jesus with the water walking and reincarnation. Thrall literally does none of those things. Hell, even his character has nearly nothing in common with Jesus. If anything, Grom should be Warcraft Jesus since he literally died to redeem the orcs of their sins.
What does that make Garrosh...
A man that strives to live up to his father's great deeds without commiting the same disastrous mistakes he did until the pozzed writers decided to turn him into a silly political analogy due to their trump derangement syndrome at the time.
If anything Thrall is obviously a Moses allegory, not a Jesus one.
Because most people are ignorant of Christian belief now (being atheistic) so Thrall being magic spiritual man in robe is being basically jesus to them.
He's actually Moses what with leading the orcs from captivity to the holy land across the sea.
Warcraft movie played into this with baby Thrall going down the river after his parents were killed by Orcs and him being found by a human lord.
The only difference is that he was treated like a slave instead of a son of the lord.
Different cultures have their own interpretations of the afterlife
While the jailor bullshit is dumb, the unknown enemy has long been established as the void lords. When I foolishly decided to play shadowlands, they even had the void infiltrating that place as well.
Stormwind are the ones that called for the Alliance to be formed, at that time I believe Lothar, acting as king regent flees with Varian to Lordaeron for exile and convokes all the kingdoms to get together under the same banner to stop the orcs and retake the southern lands to reclaim stormwind keep and destroy the portal
The people of stormwind from wc1 are the ones that create the alliance in the first place, why wouldn't they be a part of it
>mfw made conlangs for Warcraft up until WoW MoP
>didn't really stop, the new races simply weren't doing it
>don't know where to post them
Any help?
Here would be a good start.
I'm intrigued, I'm a huge fan of that shit.
Conlanging for WC got me into conlanging for ES a little while later.
It's a lot.
The retcons didn't change much in my reconstructions except some egregiously dumb names.
Ganker is simply too fast and I'm currently banned on /tg/.
How the frick do you get b& on /tg/? What did you do?
I'm a man of many talents.
I'll take a guess.
You were polposting about female custodes or shitposting about dnd
Nope. I'm not into WH40k since they dropped named Necrons. I was making a constructed script based on their glyphs.
This just confuses me more about how you were banned.
Well, sure, the first time. Is there some sort of contrived plot where he was brought back again after he was killed in Wrath of the Lich King?
>first underground region
What could've been.
Warcraft lore stopped after TFT.
I heard they were making an MMO but I guess that never panned out.
>Being a WoW Lore sage
I'm the same as you except I'm disgusted with myself because the lore is the epitome of a retcon mess and too many cooks syndrome.
You can literally see how certain parts of the lore relate to other ideas that are contrarian to other parts because of no communication and an apathetic lore authority.
The only reason I got into it was because I'm the type of gay that needs a story to drive my experience playing a game and I was playing WoW at the time.
There are some ideas I really like in WC and WoW and many many other ideas that are blatantly dog shit. It's a damn shame no one will ever step up and "clean up" the franchise.
My brother in suffering, I relate to you entirely.
What's even worse is being an Elder Scrolls lore sage as well.
>tfw autistic
>tfw out of all things I could've developed a hyperfixation for I got Warcraft lore
Even Warhammer and DnD autists are more respected
You are also my brother in suffering.
I am however bearing the burden of being a D&D and Warhammer(both fantasy and 40k) lore sage as well.
Come hang out with us on /tg/ sometime.
I stopped caring after cata when I quit the game. I only check in on expansions to see whats up so I'm "in the know" but otherwise I don't try to do shit like read the horrible books or anything.
So if you're subjecting yourself to that horror I feel bad. At least I've used my hyper fixation of lore to get really good at setting building.
Yeah I try focusing on the earlier parts of Warcraft as well and try doing my own interpretation of all the stuff that got added and changed
That new campaign was pretty cool
>The books
I'd actually like to recommend a WoW book my wife gave me for my birthday a couple months ago.
Folk & Fairy Tales of Azeroth.
Most of these stories are really fun, my favorites are the one about the goblin throwaway coins, the one about the fearless flyer, and the one about Uther.
The latter is particularly interesting.
Pirate the pdf sometime, it's all a fun read.
I'll give you an example of such moronic too many cooks syndrome.
Night Elves.
The original basis of Night Elves is that they are a deviated culture of elves from an Atlantean styled super culture that balanced nature and magical power, a common fantasy trope born of "industry versus nature" concepts.
The idea is the elves, driven by an increasing vain elite, drank too much from a divine thing meant to be regulated. That divine thing in of itself hailed from an unholy source. It led to their detachment from nature and thus their downfall.
Arcane was evil in the old lore, or at least morally grey. Cocaine that lead to magic crack in the form of Fel, stemming from a Not-Warp known as the twisting Nether. The same concept was used with orcs, using natural magic of the elements but then being corrupted by an objectively stronger power that required a Faustian bargain.
It was the defiant high elves and their human students that continued to tread the path of arcane like some sort of grey warden, knowing the risk of inviting evil it but taking extreme precaution. This was cemented in lore regarding the magical kingdom of Dalaran and centuries of high elven culture.
But then for some reason by BC, Blizzard began to write Arcane as no longer the stepping stone to demonic magic.
The entire point of the Night Elves is to take a people that witnessed the true evils of magic first hand.
It wasn't just simple ignorant orcs being straight up tricked, they knew the risks but still took the plunge into fel.
The followers of Malfurion were CORRECT. Druidism is just another form of Shamanism but from the divine knowledge of an actual natural force.
Dalaran was doomed, their destruction by Archimonde was their comeuppance. The Guardian Medivh, a virtual mage demigod, becoming a corrupt vessel cements this.
A mage of today is a warlock tomorrow.
That was the original idea of WC III and it's an idea so strong even dumb nu lore will frame things as if this idea is still true. But it's no longer true, because some other dumb writers decided that mages were no longer walking a dangerous line.
By BC Arcane was being described as separate from Fel. The addicting nature was psychological and Fel being a conclusion was ultimately a choice. Arcane became increasingly involved as a power used by the Titans and Richard Knaak devised a faction of blue dragons to manage arcane (despite this not making sense given the Highborn lore).
By WoW Chronicles, arcane was described as a force separate and opposite of Fel entirely, the relation being that fel devours arcane to propagate itself to explain why demons like it.
This excuses mages of their sin entirely and makes night elves seem like moronic nature hippies with puritanically views.
Yet the lore still treats them as "correct?" The theme has been utterly tarnished and destroyed and the writers cannot comprehend how much the universe has changed with their new ideas. It's disgusting.
Rule number 1 of any setting is never change your fundamental concepts late in the game, it obliterates the logic of motivation throughout your settings history.
I actually really like the lore for the elves. Sure, it's different from the RTS games, but I still like the concept.
When one of the Titans saw the old gods on Azeroth, corrupting the work of his siblings, he tried to pull it off the world. Failing in getting rid of it since it was too deeply ingrained in the planet, he wounded it, resulting in the Well of Eternity. A gaping wound in the world leaking a metric frick ton of magic.
So the trolls, which were the first intelligent mortals, discovered it and the magical energies mutated them into what we now know as elves. The Highborn.
They got so addicted to the magical crack that they started getting burnt out on it since it wasn't hitting as hard anymore, just like any drug. So Sargeras noticed all that magic and spoke to them promising HYPER TURBO CRACK if they let them come over to hang out.
The rest is history.
The vast majority of them died because SURPRISE! demons are evil, and those that sought to just chill with nature and shit ended up banishing the others that still wielded magic once the war was over. Now we have magical high elves while the others devoted themselves to nature. Then we have aillidan being a good guy and wanting to preserve his races immortality, recreating the well of eternity for both the naturegays and the magicgays.
This story takes too long to type, I need a drink and a smoke now.
Yeah the new lore DID fix the contradicting reasoning that Metzen came up in early drafts that the Well of Eternity was placed by the Titans intentionally, since if magic is the stuff of demons why would they do this? By making it an unintentional wound and Titans the natural pray of demons they did indeed fix this writing loophole.
The cost is that the entire theme of Nature versus sterile technology (In the form of cosmic magic) was fricked over with it.
They somehow managed to merge the natural with the cosmic by making Azeroth a titan, despite the two being opposite until legion. It simply doesn't bode well for the Night Elves or their religious beliefs.
Also even with all this there are a lot of weird contradictions in how magic was obtained pre-chronicles and other shit. Night Elves kept well of eternity water with "moonwells" which is contrary to their anti-arcane approach.
High Elf mages got arcane from the Sunwell, but they never explain where humans got such power. Some abilities in WC I and II imply mages got arcane straight from the nether making you question why elves need magic liquid in general.
Ley Lines are now the modern explanation for how it works but never resolved the issue of needing magic fonts. I even recall people speculating mages got magic from WoE particles in the atmosphere caused by the shattering in Vanilla.
TL;DR I feel like the explanation is multiple writers or magic systems ripped from other franchises without rationalizing them. Elves needing a magic well MUST be from something because of how insistent WC is with it, even though humans, dwarves and gnome mages don't really relate to that.
>Azeroth is a titan
Wut? I'm too out of touch with modern WoW lore, I thought every planet the Titans created just had souls. World Souls, and all that.
>magic
I agree with you there, it's always been so nebulous where magic actually comes from. Conflicting lore up the wazoo for years.
I like to just use a mix of my own headcanon and the WoW tabletop RPG to explain it.
Reminds me that I need to get back to working on my campaign for my wife. She's a high elven paladin, we left off with her and 3 other elven paladins trying to reach the other side of Silvermoon across the dead scar. She had to fight a bunch of murguls(undead murlocs) along the northern coast in a fishing village.
Warcraft is far more believable when you scale it all up to more realistic terms.
>Azeroth is a Titan
The idea is Titans are order being, they are born whenever a planet possessess a soul via the sheer order of its existence or some shit (it's not well explained).
The Titans order worlds not only because it's their nature, but because it causes worlds to potentially evolve into Titans.
Azeroth has a fetal titan in it and that's is why it has leylines and the well of eternity.
Sargeras wants it dead because the Old Gods exist to corrupt titans so they can let the Void Lords (Implied to be like the Outer Gods in Cthulhu Mythos) through.
>High Elf mages got arcane from the Sunwell, but they never explain where humans got such power.
iirc the elves brought runestones from their homeland that they used to infuse the humans with and give them magic abilities through a ritual. This is how the ogres get turned to use magic as well, during WC2 there's a mission where you steal one of the runestones and create the ogre magi, which got retconned as well and now ogres always had innate magic, meaning there's native arcane magic in Draenor and breaks a lot of other stuff in consequence
the whole thing is turtles all the way down in terms of retcons, it's just completely fricked and nothing makes sense anymore
Chronicles explained that since Ogres are closer to the Breakers, which originate from a titan made Giant, they naturally have a closer affinity to arcane than orcs which are even degraded descendent. The idea is that ogres sit at the intelligence needed to use arcane while having it innate to them, where as Gronns and shit are too dumb to realize they have that power.
I believe the Apexis Arrakoa also had a role in teaching ogres how to utilize arcane.
But yeah, retconning the Altar of Storms method of imbuing non-magic beings with magic power was completely fricked over.
Though even WITH THAT that the entire idea of Orcs just becoming warlocks by drinking demon blood still makes the Altar of Storms shit questionable anyway, because why wouldn't ogres just do the same? Ultimately the idea exists to make for a cool mission though.
To be fair though, Chronciles Vol II's history of Draenor was as developed and interesting as Orcs would ever get, you could tell Metzen actually gave a frick about it because he considers orcs HIS creation.
So while the Ogre history was retconned a lot, it still "makes sense". Orcs didn't like or understand arcane because they were a runt offshot race, Ogres had the power by sitting at the right IQ level and with aid by advanced Not Skekksis and their rivalry and need for more power against ogre mages contributed to Gul'dan enticing orcs with Fel.
I'm talking about the games' story, sure chronicles has all these explanations but it is what it is
Elves needing wells would be explained by them essentially drawing beyond their limits for centuries and thus they should be superior to other races in magic while they still have the well, but end up like insane coke fiends without it.
Humans/Dwarves could be justified by being former titan constructs tampered with the old gods via the curse of flesh. This would give the inherent magical power being titan, the swap to arcane being form the old gods + elves teachings. In short it shouldn't be the natural magic of humans/dwarves/gnomes but rather their channeling of the Light/Ancestral stone powers.
Well yeah humans and dwarves being titan made would explain it, but they obviously didn't think of that.
It could be explained as wells being a stronger energy source or a focus that taps at leylines, but mages can tap into leylines naturally at decreased power.
Because ultimately Stormwinds losses were retconned into being less severe in order to rebuild the lost "protagonist human kingdom" from the first game into the heart of the faction for the MMO.
Warcraft lore is wrought with population errors where an event will make a big deal about losses or a small population and then suddenly that faction is healthy enough to continue a war no more than a year later.
Orcs have a bigger problem with this than humans, with the original internment camp population being miniscule and yet somehow within like 10 years the Orcs are seemingly about the same population as the Alliance.
>Stormwinds losses were retconned into being less severe
I thought that a lot of the Stormwind human population were refugees from the northern kingdoms?
Real answer:
>we need Blue Humans to lead the Alliance … um actually Blue Human are the only Human Kingdom left, who care about being in the Alliance, until they aren’t
Meme answer:
>the stormwindian refugees after completely rebuilding all the damage the Horde caused in their Invasion of the North and supercharging the economy of the places that accepted them, because they are engineers, doctors and stonemasons, returned South to their Kingdom, shattering the economy of the Kingdoms they left into a million pieces and instantly rebuilt Stormwind almost over night, making it the strongest Kingdom of the Alliance
I hope this helped. Stormwindian refugees would have also helped to prevent the Undead plague hitting Lordaeron, because most Lordaeronians were relying on Stormwindian doctors. But the chud King Therenas told them all to go home and instead used his entire state budget to give welfare to German war criminals, who were supposed to be sent to outer space for their crimes, but Therenas hoped to use their rocket fel energy to compete with the Nightelves in the space race.
Im a terminal WoWgay of 18 years, but never been invested in the story. The past week I have been reading Chronicle volume 1. It's been fun reading so far
Cherish it because it was retconned before the end of legion.
I will never not be mad.
Chronicle is already a litany of retcons but it's kind of shocking how quickly they said "Yeah, that 'lore bible' we released and charged you money for? That's not canon anymore." It barely lasted a year.
It was the same reason WoD's plot got fricked up. Some moron in development wanted to up the stakes and purpose for the final raid regardless of the damage it caused to the lore.
Most of Chronciles shit aside wasn't directly retconned until Danuser wanted them to release a new Chronicles that blatantly retconns the original.
Danuser fricked the story up irreparably, how the frick was he allowed to just smear his liquid shit all over WoW.
Like WoW's story and lore was already a bit of a shit show, but holy frick having one moron impose his will on all of it shocks me.
I'm hesitant to blame Danuser for all of it. He was the guy in charge and 100% deserved to get fired but I feel like there had to be a LOT of morons in the room for Shadowlands to have been created.
Oh 100%, but it's hard not to point at the guy who has a name and face and a stiffy for Sylvannas.
But yeah it takes more than one dipshit for Shadowlands to come about.
>He was the guy in charge and 100% deserved to get fired
They actually fired him? For incompetency? Or was it that he got canceled?
Think he was also a dipshit around the office but I imagine being the dipshit as the face of the story wasn't doing him any favors.
Man Vol'jin was frickin cool, would have been neat having the alliance go full schizo to wipe the Horde out. Like Elves start pushing into Horde territory alongside Jaina, could easily have also played up the old god aspect sooner with some cultists instigating it.
But nah, got double down on Horde frickery but simultaneously have the Horde be playing both sides.
>Man Vol'jin was frickin cool,
It's a crime the disrespect he got.
I maintain that undead should have remained mobs and the Horde should have remained monster races.
I get that they wanted to balance the game pops but seriously frick that.
He had one of the best books too, while there was simultaneously one of the worst god damn bookd with Jaina ans her stupid gnome friend getting nuked.
I'm hoping whatever story stuff they have involving the trolls in the next patch at least gives Rokhan some shit to do.
Rokhan ain't Vol'jin but with a cool model and a few standout moments he could do some shit.
It's unconfirmed, but my theory is that the backlash from Shadowlands' story was so severe that even Blizzard noticed and decided heads needed to roll on the creative front. I imagine it's the same reason Christie Golden also got the axe (although imo she deserved it less than Steve).
Christie Golden wasn't too bad but you could tell she was only good at writing a few characters.
War Crimes was a fricking slog to read.
Feel like too many authors get hung up on the idea they're writing a "video game book" instead of a Fantasy/sci fi/Military novel that happens to have some games.
I know my friends consider the golden standard as the Halo books, I've got a massive spot in my heart for Gotrek and Felix.
Holy frick Gotrek and Felix have some fun books.
I'm afraid to reread the Fall of Reach and Ghosts of Onyx because I have such fond memories of the books.
She mixed game mechanics in which is moronic.
So War for Azeroth was bad, we can all agree on that.
But, the blood trolls? Fricking cool, dudes.
Absolute troll kino.
Battle for Azeroth with Vol'jin as Warchief instead of Sylvanas (and a more believable instigation of hostilities) would have been excellent. Also if they hadn't gentrified Nathanos.
Warlock chads rise up.
Do you remember your demons' names?
Mained a lock since vanilla.
My voidwalker was Kragron
My succubus was Nazva
The other two don't matter since I was a pvp affliction chad.
I can't remember. Oh god I can't remember any of them.
Am I the only one who really loved shadowlands, first time Sylvannas felt fleshed out and having the jailer as a super lich king was so cool.
>>>/tg/