Heres a thread for discussing the warcraft rpg and associated warcraft lore.
How would you fix warcraft lore? Hard mode no retcons.
Lets make the focus of this thread minor races and what to do and where to go with them.
Warcraft RPG
Heres a thread for discussing the warcraft rpg and associated warcraft lore.
How would you fix warcraft lore? Hard mode no retcons.
Lets make the focus of this thread minor races and what to do and where to go with them.
If you were running a Warcraft campaign, what races would you allow? Would you let them pick any playable race from WOW? And what non-playable races would you approve?
Unrelated to your question but the evolution of the jinyu from murloc makes makes me wonder what might happen to other "degenerate" races if exposed to the wells waters. Like what would troggs turn into for example?
Troggs are corrupted earthen, so arguably they might turn into another variant of dwarf.
Troggs aren't corrupted earthen. Rather earthen are perfected troggs.
I hate that retcon so much.
It's sad when Futurama actually does the degenerated brute and intellectually advanced race idea better
I care about that retcon so little.
Depends on the game i run, what its about and where its set. If its a Northrend game set during Wotlk, i´ll allow Taunka and Frost Dwarves. Because why not, in the end.
I wanna play a wolvar.
I liked the Wolvar from Zul'drak not so much the ones in Sholazar.
It depends on the era, since race relations is such a big deal in the Warcraft universe.
Oh heavens, I'd have to have a simpler approach to fantasy races than usual. There's too many, with too much variation, and too little reason to care most of the time.
I'm either doing a Kalimdor campaign at which point is Alliance (Humans, High Elves, Dwarfs), Night Elves, and Horde (Orcs, Trolls, Tauren, Goblins) or an Alliance Eastern Kingdom campaign (Humans, High Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes). I don't think I'd allow much else, although there's a few things I'd be open too (Worgen in an Alliance EK campaign).
Only the ones that were in WC3. Inluding neutral creeps, provided they appear in the region the campaign takes place in and have a sensible reason to cooperate with the rest of the party.
I'd be doing a campaign on Kalimdor immediately after TFT, so races would be as follows:
Night elves, Humans, Dwarves, High elves, Orcs, Trolls (jungle, sand, or dark), Tauren, Ogres (stonemaul), or Goblins.
Humans, dwarves, and high elves are the Theramorean refugees from Lordaeron/Dalaran. Jaina's abandonment of her father and withdrawl of her forces thoroughly alienated the people of her homeland though and the Kul Tirans sailed back east almost to a man. (This has, incidentally, crippled Theramore's naval capabilities, as most of their shipwrights and sailors were Kul Tiran; at this point they couldn't attempt to cross the sea again even if they wanted to.)
Orcs, jungle trolls, tauren, and ogres are all members of the Horde. The goblin can either be part of the Horde or mercenaries; goblins have historic Horde membership in both WC2, and WC3 gave the impression of them being more generally mercenary, but even in WC3 they were directly involved in the taming of Durotar and founding of Orgrimmar.
Night elves are their own organization, with a brusque but functional relationship with Theramore and the Horde. A new addition to the night elves' faction are the dark trolls; having never been a great troll empire they have little quarrel with their distant descendants, and as they suffered heavy losses together defending the World Tree, rebuilding together seemed more sensible than fading away in isolation.
The Farraki, on the other hand, are a kingdom unto themselves in the south, and if you travel down that way you'll discover a nation quite unlike those of the eastern continents; unbroken citadels, raptor cataphracts, lush fig tree orchards and barley fields irrigated along a great and winding river. You'll also find a vast and bloody conflict, for the War of Shifting Sands has been waging in the south for centuries. Neither dragons, night elves, nor Scarab Wall have ever barred the swarms from the north; just unwavering trollish strength and will.
>Jaina's abandonment of her father and withdrawl of her forces thoroughly alienated the people of her homeland though and the Kul Tirans sailed back east almost to a man.
Wouldn't it just be secondhand accounts of the fall of Daelin Proudmoore and how Jaina "supposedly" let it happen? I remember one of the promos for BfA was the creation of a Kul Tiran sea shanty that basically calls Jaina a traitor for letting Daelin die.
For people who weren't there, sure. But in WC3 Jaina directly asked that her people be spared when the Horde came to kill her Father and his men, which would have required that she directly take action to ensure they were separated. She would have had to give her people orders to themselves abandon the Kul Tiran fleet in order to facilitate that request.
So for anyone that was part of Theramore, they wouldn't have found out through rumors, they'd have directly received marching orders to that effect.
>The War of the Shifting Sands never ended
>The Farraki sand trolls are the only thing protecting everything north of Tanaris from the silithids
Trolls are the ones that broke the aqir in the first place, so it seemed like a neat way to keep the qiraj around, build up the sand trolls, and simultaneously explain why neither was prominently seen in WC3. Northern Kalimdor was the stomping grounds for the night elves, the center's a scramble between centaurs, quilboar, tauren, and harpies, and the south is troll byzantium with some egyptian flavoring vs the very egyptian-themed qiraj.
A tradition of pseudo-varangians in the form of ogres and tauren can help contextualize non-trolls in southern Kalimdor, and the goblin cartels would love the mercantile opportunities of a troll empire, so it's a great setting for players to play around in without retreading WoW shit or feeling like Ashenvale and the Barrens are the only places where anything interesting happens.
>simultaneously explain why neither was prominently seen in WC3
Because the events of WC3 took place in the northern half of Kalimdor, half a continent away from Ahn'Qiraj?
So you expect me to believe the night elves fought a stalemate in the War of the Shifting Sands AND repelled the second Burning Legion invasion up to and including the Battle of Mt. Hyjal simultaneously?
Are you illiterate or just trolling? The night elves aren't involved in the war of shifting sands at all, that's the whole point. The qiraj don't start it till much later in the timeline, and the sand trolls are the ones fighting them.
I think that's bullshit. Night elves at their peak were massacred by the qiraji, the dragons could only seal them instead of exterminating them, and then a bunch of camel frickers whose actual representation in the setting is one ruined city are so cool and sue that they've been holding them at bay for thousands of years. Yeah right.
>holding them at bay for thousands of years
I said centuries, not millenia. I moved up the timetable for when that war started, greatly expanded the scope of the sand trolls (they had no elf/human war like the Amani, no civil war like the Gurubashi, and have a lot of land to capitalize on, why wouldn't they do so?).
Besides, the night elves shouldn't be the only ones that can accomplish anything interesting.
?t=84
This is why.
So you're just being a homosexual, got it.
So what other troll empires would this theoretical "Zul'Farrak never fell" Farraki troll empire be comparable to that we know of?
To make it as open as possible, I'd probably start the players in Ratchet or Booty Bay. Any of the original vanilla WoW races could be picked, as could high/blood elves, broken draenai, iron dwarves, ogres, and goblins. The players play as mercenaries on a job for the boss of Ratchet to obtain an artifact, get caught between horde/alliance forces trying to complete the same objective, find out their mission has dire ramifications for Azeroth that no one but they understand. Along the way, they get contacts in the Cenarion Circle, Argent Dawn, Fel Pact, and a few other minor groups.
Halfway through the game they're going to have to decide how to handle their job, if they should complete it and give it to Ratchet to make the cartel filthy rich, hand it over to the horde/alliance to tip the balance of their war, or get with one of the minor factions to seal/destroy/unleash it. Regardless of what they do, everyone is going to be pissed at them except for who they work with.
>How would you fix warcraft lore? Hard mode no retcons.
The best I can do post-BfA is "it was just N'zoth's mental trick to trap heroes in a dream while he took over the world"
I can't accept the very existence of the new Shadowlands as canon and I don't know anything past that.
Depends on the campaign, probably either an alliance oriented one with humans, worgens, dwarves, high elves and maybe gnomes if my players want them, or a horde oriented one with orcs, ogres, taurens, goblins, and trolls.
I could also consider a night elf or forsaken campaign.
In any case: no memeshit like pandas, tuskarr or vulperas. I wouldn't even make them appear in the campaign.
>The best I can do post-BfA is "it was just N'zoth's mental trick to trap heroes in a dream while he took over the world"
It's the only viable solution.
Anduin I think would be a very caring older brother
What would Varian name his daughter though? Obviously the wife might take great offence to naming her Tiffin so it would need to be something else
If you want a name with historic connections and not just something random, make it Mereldar. The sister of the guy after whom Lordaeron was named and founder of the church of light.
The little sister should be psycho attached to Anduin
Sylvanas
Digging up old thread lore
r8
>Dalaran - founded by HElf-trained mages, speak a sort of Low Thalassian among themselves, look weird to other humans due to effects of long-term mana exposure (slower aging, premature white hair, glowing blue eyeballs, etc.)
>Stromgarde - closest to original human culture, still speak a kind of Vulgar Arathi and remember more Azotha legends and culture than the rest
>Alterac - similar to Stromgarde, but less so; weaker, with more adaptations to mountain living
>Kul Tiras - obsessed with the sea as per normal, are oddly close to Vrykul or Azotha culture in this respect; their refinement of the harvest-craft and elemental magics their ancestors practiced is owed in part to the harsh Kul Tiran landscape making it necessary and in part to acquiring some direct Vrykul and/or Drust mentors at some point in the past
>Gilneas - relative isolation on the peninsula leaves them close to original human culture, though not as close as Stromgarde or Alterac
>Lordaeron - all about that Tyr (and thus preserve many Vrykul legends), all about that Light, the only ones to officially abandon the entry-level druidism and shamanism of their ancestors; outlying rural regions may still practice it, but everything is wrapped up in the Light and maybe the Titans
>Stormwind - the odd ones out, so isolated from humanity that they exist in three rough cultural 'bands.' In Elwynn and the capitol, it roughly evens out, but the further north you go, the more Bronzebeard influence and Khaz worship, and the further south you go, the more Gurubashi influence and Shirvallah/Bethekk worship
>still speak a kind of Vulgar Arathi
Wouldn't Vulgar Arathi just be Common?
>Shirvallah/Bethekk worship
I really doubt they'd just straight up worship loa
The way I picture Stormwind, or the kingdom of Azeroth as it was called in the olden days, would be a distinct culture, appearing more savage than the rest, but still medieval. Like the midway point between germanic tribalism and frankish feudalism.
There is a spirit of wild independence. Their soldiers have no official attire, whatever armour and accessories are chosen and picked up by themselves. Their mages, or conjurers as they were known, study in isolation in their own towers, not having an all encompasing organization like Dalaran does. Same with the clerics, who though they view themselves as devoted servants of the Light, also called the God, aren't afraid to dabble in areas that would be considered heretical by the main church, such as shadow magic.
They use their own King's Calendar.
Although, as they were forced to immigrate the after losing the First War, they have adopted many elements from their northern brethren. Like their military traditions, making them more organized(and made horned helmets more uncommon) or them being inspired to organize the mages more, building the Mage Quarter in Stormwind City.
Speaking of, once they've returned to their homeland they've decided to rebrand themselves as the kingdom of Stormwind, named after the capital.
This cultural exchange got strengthened even more as refugees from Lordareon came to Stormwind because of the Scourge. Even the seat of the Archbishop was moved to Stormwind city.
The Azerothiens have evolved from what the others would consider backwater savages to the heart of humanity.
>Wouldn't Vulgar Arathi just be Common?
Naw, I would figure either the lordaeron or azeroth dialect would be common. The difference between arathi and common would be like the difference between english and scots.
You're just describing Stromgarde
Well now that you point that out I can see that but it's not 100% the same
I have a theory that ogre lords from outlands are actually half-ogres half-gronn. It would explain why there are none on draenor since in outland theres only male gronn left.
You're not wrong, but not for the reason you think. Even before the whole Breakers bullshit came about, Blizzard wanted to show that the Ogres were descended from the Gronn, and put in ogre lords as an atavistic "missing link" to help bridge that transition.
Yeah I know, I'm trying to explain they are in outland and not in draenor. On draenor the ogron serve that role.
So are Mirror Images solid or not?
Depends. In the old 3.5 wow books you had multiple schools of illusion, so you could cast it both solid and not. (including the capability of doing actual dmg)
I've been playing in, and rotating DMing, for a WoW RPG Group for over half a decade now. We've gone so far from actual canon (because we started in Legion, and basically ignored everything past BFA because its been exceptionally dog shit) that it's all practically fan fiction at this point, but its also the most fun I've ever had in TTRPG or roleplaying in general.
>How would you fix warcraft lore?
No retcons I'd hard line separate the species of Azeroth from the universes cosmic bullshit in one last way too big story moment. Some story where the worldsoul emerges but it means the death of azeroth. The titans give the last of their power to create a new unexplore universe and Azeroth the last titan forges the species who protected her a new world to live on, she then goes to explore the galaxy. The species of the world now live on this new planet they call Titan in honor of the beings who gave their lives to create it and free them from the dangers of the light and void. The story from there is about exploring the frontiers of this new world and the redefined power struggles from being placed on it, even though it's a new world there is always war(craft). With Retcons we'd fricking restart from WC2 I hate that cosmic bullshit.
Speaking of deserts, what's your interpretation of the Wastewander?
Are they like arabs? Do they have an Islam like religion? If so would they have a Mecca and where would it be?
I noticed that they are awfully close to both the Caverns of Time and Uldum.
Maybe either of those could be a holy site?
Depends on their beliefs
I don't see a value in their existing in the first place, frankly. A random group of fantasy arabic humans on a continent that was supposed to be a semi-mythical lost world that humans had never touched directly pre-Theramore doesn't improve the story potential for my Kalimdor, so they aren't present on it.
Technically they are pirates who settled there around TFT
They're descended from marooned mariners and pirates, aren't they?
yeah
Considering their origins as pirates, they'd probably lean towards some kind of bastardized Light and/or Tidemother worship, right? Though I suppose worshiping a sea god wouldn't be of much use in a desert.
There's that ghostly 'Matthias Lehner' thing from Wrath that was heavily implied to be a piece of Arthas, and in Legion DKs beat the shit out of fragments of Arthas and Ner'Zhul as part of one of their artifact quests. So there are at least 2 Arthas fragments.
I had this idea of their holy book being a merge of the Quran and the Odyssey, in that their prophet made the scripture along the adventures he and his crew had throughout their journey to Kalimdor.
Once they arrived they declared Uldum to be their holy site, since it's obelisks represent the sun, moon and stars, the 3 main manifestations of the Light as they interpret it.
TIL the dreadlords have cousins
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Tothrezim
>Making my own fantasy race
>Think I'm being unique with horns, four arms, and dragon wings
>See tothrezim
Frick me
Nothing is original anon, except in how well you present it.
Abandon originality, embrace quality.
Thanks my drive to write a fanfic self insert into WoW has been reinforced
Nightelves and Dark Trolls are best friends. Prove me wrong.
They genocided them
What would Dalaran think of magic fueled by hatred, anger, and rage?
Would they consider it dangerous and try to stifle it's use?
Fel magic?
That's a pretty good description of the kind of magic that necromancers and warlocks use. You know, the kinds of magic users proscribed by Dalaran.
Lmao dogshit ripoff game of a dogshit ripoff game
Is that someone's self insert character being embraced by Varian? Huge cringe.
There is one OC named Valerica Glenmore who has a shitload of art online of her and Varian. It's all commissioned by one dude, very fascinating.
Sounds like some white woman is trying to do the same thing that one Saudi oil baron did with horsewiener futa draenei.
How often do you guys think Onyxia took advantage of Anduin?
>Onyxia forbids he jerk off and instead come to her whenever the need arises
Oh yeah is there an age taboo in WoW?
Is a 13 year old boy and a 20 year old woman seen as improper and they would need to be discreet in their love?
Such a thing has never been brought up, but given Blizzard is based in California, I imagine they would avoid talking about the love prospects of an underage boy for as long as possible.
>Is a 13 year old boy and a 20 year old woman seen as improper
No, it's seens as NICE
Why does VARIAN of all people have so many OCs shipped with him
I Google Varian x OC and get quite a few results. Jaina x OC gets mostly her and Arthas and sometimes Thrall. Yet VARIAN gets all the fricking OC love?
Another victory for the High King of the Alliance.
He's a fantasy human king and a widower to boot. The Wrynns, both father and son, were/are the most eligible bachelors on Azeroth.
He ticks all the boxes
Tragic past, agressive but has a soft side to him, powerful both physically and politically, flawed but sympathetic personality
You jelly of my anime hair and DD, brah?
how have people who claim to have played the rpg never heard of tothrezim?
Is nursing a baby seen as unbecoming for upper or middle class humans in WoW?
I know Thrall had a wetnurse but that obviously was because his parents died, and his wet nurse's shame was likely because she nursed an orc.
I'm guessing Anduin had a wet nurse feed him when Tiffin died, but I'm curious if he was ever nursed by his mother or always handed off to a wet nurse.
I know the last Chinese emperor had a very close relationship with his wet nurse, I wonder if Anduin would too.
I wonder if orcs, elves, or dwarves have different customs.
Wet nurses were only a huge thing among Western Nobility during a very limited time. It was when our warrior class lost their reason to exist, because of technology and their martial spirit was left idle and turned to art, fashion, music and also degeneracy. Before that noble women were definitely expected to be wholistic women, who would not just birth babies, but also properly take care of them.
Hmm good response.
Was fostering children of a noble family under your house actually done much? I find it strange that Jaina, Arthas, and Varian had no other small noble children grow up alongside them but they might just not have been mentioned
Paedos come up with the craziest questions.
Hot take:
Not only do undead fit into the Horde, but they are a core race, even moreso than trolls and tauren.
They've been part of the Horde right from the very first game.
Undead is not a race, it's a state of being. Their race is human or blood elf. Of course they don't fit the Horde, most of them fought the Horde.
It makes me wonder, what if the undead the necrolytes and death knights of the Horde raised were like the Forsaken, in regards that if their master is weakened, they gain free will?
Will the human ones be traumatized and immediately turn on them?
I suppose those that used to be Alteraci or bandits who sided with the Horde would still remain, as they have nowhere else to turn to.
What would Blackhand's and Doomhammer's policies on sentient undead be?
Blackhand would corral them into Alliance settlements to get rid of them and weaken the Alliance in one fell swoop. If that proved too difficult, he'd exterminate them all, drive them into a volcano or something.
Doomhammer would let them be, but wouldn't let them mingle with the orcs all the same. Instead he'd promise them some land to call their own if they swear fealty to the Horde and help take those lands from the Alliance. He'd keep the promise as well, but would probably put Kor'kron overseers into the Undead capital just to ensure himself against betrayal. In other words, he wouldn't be too different from Thrall in his approach, only less trustful and more ruthless.
>this is the symbol for the ogre female mask
How did they get away with it?
I think for the dwarven Bodacious Door Knockers too.
THey made that specifically because she got directly ganked by Frostmourne
And then lost another chunk an heroing on a saronite spike.
And maybe another when the Valky'r raised her after Godfrey got her with the Gat.
God I hate that jailer shit so much, that said her gettign progressively more evil each time she died had promise. Or even having been replaced by/fused with one of the Val'kyr
The Good SOul Bad Soul thing was a relatively late retcon but apparently getting whacked by a "Mourneblade" like Frostmourne or Andiun's Kingsmourne (SHallymourne) cleaves your soul which is why there's multiple ghosts of Uther and the one in Shadowlands is such a dick.
So even after Arthas released her Banshee form from Frostmourne part of it remained and she MAY have been losing more pieces of it every death since.
>getting whacked by a "Mourneblade" like Frostmourne or Andiun's Kingsmourne (SHallymourne) cleaves your soul which is why there's multiple ghosts of Uther and the one in Shadowlands is such a dick.
Wait a sec, does it mean there's a good Arthas ghost floating out there somewhere?
Can you rate my theory on corruption in Warcraft Lore? I think it‘s actually way more deep than people realize:
>there are many different ways a person can be corrupted and they are all related to the different metaphysical forces
>these being fel, shadow, necromantic, but theoretically even holy, arcane or nature energy maybe
>when a person is turned undead, forcefully corrupted by fel energy or turned insane by the Old Gods (void), their personality is seemingly replaced by a saturday cartoon villain
>but there interesting thing is that it‘s not exactly mind control in the classical sense of the corrupted person just being a puppet or mindless zombie
>many corrupted characters don’t exactly have a clear master pulling their strings, but just join the evil faction as a regular member and adopt their basic beliefs, attitude and friend/enemy distinction
Example:
The San'layn. They are the Bloodelves, who died when Kael together with Illidan stormed Ice Crown and got resurrected. They seem to have a great amount of freedom and have personality. They act like Vampire Royalty.
>a simple metaphor on what happens is an evil twin personality taking over.
>they seem to have a convert‘s zeal and enthusiastically support the basic goals of the faction they joined.
>this also seems true for people, who were forcefully fel-converted.
Of course in the case of Undead there is the Lich King. He is an addition on top of what I described. His constant whispers seem to act as a way to reinforce the corruption, but he is also capable of directly mind-controlling his minions.
1/?
It‘s also important what your psychological state and personality is like, when you get corrupted.
Case study: Arthas
I think we can all clearly agree that Arthas is a good guy. A hero of the Light. Even his decision to purge Stratholme was motivated by a love for his people and to do good, even if you yourself consider it extreme. I personally do not. I would support the same policy, if a Necromancer poisoned our grain.
But let‘s skip straight to our meta knowledge of the LK‘s plan. Kel‘thuzad admitted the entire point of the Cult of the Damned and the First Scourge Invasion was to turn Arthas into a champion of the Lich King. As part of a greater step-by-step plan to summon the Burning Legion. Which was part of a greater Plan to free himself from the control of the Dreadlords.
So the question is why the LK did all this. It seems like it‘s beneficial for corruption purposes to not simply kill Arthas and resurrect him, but to first psychologically break him, make him desperate enough so that his last act of free will is taking Frostmourne, which sealed his fate, stole his soul and corrupted him.
Another case study is Illidan. Illidan has the right mindset and mental state to embrace the fel corruption and ignore Gul‘dans whispers. He is the anti-hero, not a fallen Hero like Arthas, who embraces the corruptive influence for his own goals. He doesn’t get corrupted, because he already does support typically evil methods and goals, so it‘s nothing new for him.
Kel‘Thuzad gets willingly corrupted. It doesn’t matter how weak the Lich King‘s whispers are. Kel‘Thuzad would stay loyal even without the mind control and I like that it‘s completely ambiguous whether or not he is actually controlled by the LK, because for him it wouldn’t make a difference. He is a true believer.
2/2
>I think we can all clearly agree that Arthas is a good guy. A hero of the Light.
Arthas was infamously weak of character, which is what allowed him to fall in the first place. All those "Arthas was an autist" jokes are not for nothing. He was snippy and defensive and demanded recognition for his actions.
>demanded recognition for his actions
Oh my, so like a normal person then. Such a weak character.
Yes. Your average person is weak in character to some degree. His story isn't that it could happen to anybody, the story is that it could happen to anybody who is like him.
You know your post reminds me of this fanfic
https://archiveofourown.org/works/38659083/chapters/127997590
It makes Arthas extremely whiny, petulant, and incompetent, and Jaina chooses Kael over him cause of it.
You're overthinking it, the actual answer is just that Blizzard can't write. They all but said in Cataclysm that the reason risen Alliance soldiers just ally with the Forsaken is that they didn't have time to write actual character arcs, so they just handwave them as being really aggressive upon resurrection. Why aren't they aggressive towards the Forsaken? Why don't we see their reactions after they come to their senses? Because Blizzard didn't care and wanted you to move on to the next theme park ride where you can blow up a building or meet Rambo or whatever the frick. Corruption is just one of their go-to cop-outs for changing character motivations to justify where they want the story to go. "Writers" like this just look at characters as action figures they can bash together, you should think of them like children.
I think Blizzard never really gave much thought about the mechanics, but in Shadowland they basically embraced what they were doing all along. They finally confirmed that the original Sylvanas was basically dead all along and an evil twin of her, her undead version, controlled her all this time. Being risen as an undead makes you almost always evil or rather lets an evil version take charge of your body. That‘s the world they created.
How could you misunderstand it so badly? And the story was so primitive, too. Sylvanas became evil because Mr. Clean sealed the good half of her soul after she committed sudoku for no reason.
>she committed sudoku for no reason
In the epilogue of Wrath, she pitched herself from the top of Icecrown Citadel because the ultimate goal of the Forsaken - vengeance against the Lich King - was finally achieved and she had nothing left to live for. In death, she saw the Maw awaited her, and the Jailer made her a deal to spare her fate if he were to serve as his living agent. From Cataclysm through Shadowlands, Sylvanas was an agent of the Jailer, but it only manifested early in the plot as a justified fear of mortality.
Even ignoring all that, it was still apparent that Sylvanas was fricked up from the day she was Scourge'd by Arthas. It was only after Wrath that she made her deal with the devil.
I stand by what I said. Sylvanas was an unquestioned leader of the Forsaken and her suicide was a horribly OOC act of betrayal. Maybe some of the Forsaken only lived for vengeance, like her, and would've committed suicide like her. But most came to terms with their new existence, they rebuilt their old homes, decorated them, they clearly weren't going to shut down the day Arthas died. They would all be horribly hurt if their saviour figure just killed herself with no warning, leaving behind a power vacuum huge enough to swallow the northern half of the Eastern Kingdoms. She had to know that her sudden disappearance from the political scene would lead to a massive conflict, a conflict where not only undead would die. A conflict where a lot of blood elves would die, actually. She was not supposed to be so comically selfish and irresponsible. She would've stayed because a lot of people came to depend on her.
I guess Sylvanas was a very goal oriented person.
>"We will not rest until we have vengeance."
>Lich King is destroyed
>"Welp, guess we're done here. See ya on the other side, boys and girls."
Undead Sylvanas was always a massive b***h and the Forsaken were always bunch of buttholes. Some of them might just have been trying to play with the shit hand they were dealt, but a lot of them did so by being huge c**ts. I was baffled by the amount of Horde players who were shocked and appalled at the burning of Teldrassil. They clearly never did a single Forsaken quest. They view their own as entirely expendable. Throwing waves of meat into the grinder, killing their own for being captured, casual friendly fire, wholesale slaughtering people for the crime of being alive near them, forcing people to kill their own mutated pets for the crime of being too good at defending themselves, being completely unphased when they accidentally kill their own assistants, death camps, etc.
Wasn’t playing retail at the time and only just read both A Good War and Elegy, my thoughts with regards to the burning of Teldrassil and ultimately what led to it is that I don’t understand how the other members of the Horde, or at least Orcs, could be so gung-ho about it.
Forsaken I get, Vanilla quests make it clear that the thought process is the belief that everyone hates you and you have to get everyone else. I suppose Trolls and Blood Elves have enough of an axe to grind against Night Elves, but Orcs to me seemed like they were learning there is room for cohabitation.
The other problem I had is that it seemed really dumb strategically. The whole point of the offensive was to drive a wedge in the Alliance whereas the burning seemingly had the opposite effect. The only excuse for Sylvanas starting the war in the first place seems to be Jailer shit or a desperate attempt to force Red vs Blue.
>I don’t understand how the other members of the Horde, or at least Orcs, could be so gung-ho about it.
Same reason there were so many loyalists defending Garrosh during the Siege of Orgrimmar: "My Warchief, right or wrong." For some members of the Horde (orcs, most typically), their loyalty is to the Warchief above all else. Even if they may personally disagree with orders or ideals, you never question the Warchief.
Yeah, I don't know why anybody gives the Forsaken any sort of sympathy. They've been complete psychos since Vanilla, and the entire point is that they're comically evil motherfrickers. Just look at all the heinous shit in the Undercity, as well as some of the horrors you do in their quests (brainwashed human mindslaves, actively experimenting on injured tauren, feeding POWs chemical weapons, slaughtering civilians, brazenly lying to the tauren to earn their sympathy, etc.)
I agree with the sentiment that it would be much cooler and more compelling if they had some amount of nobility, sentiment, and dignity, but they don't. The lore, even in Warcraft 3, is that they're backstabbing, unloving, cold-hearted monsters that actively despise their past lives and hate the living. They've always been like that, and they're supposed to be stupidly edgy monsters.
It's been absolutely ludicrous that the Horde at large tolerates the Forsaken since Cataclysm. They only do so because gameplay contrivance. The idea that the Darkspear trolls (admittedly the only trolls that would give a shit), tauren, and shamanistic orcs would just shrug and be okay with Sylvanas raising the dead and blighting the land en masse is ludicrous. Especially right after they finally beat Arthas AND THEY JUST DEALT WITH THE FORSAKEN COUP. It's just as moronic as any of them being okay with what the goblins did to Azshara. It's nonsensical that they'd have any loyalty or fondness for each other.
Especially because the Tauren and Darkspear only swore fealty to Thrall, and Garrosh actively told them to frick off the edge of his dick.
Before WotLK there was a bit more ambiguity within the Forsaken. They definitely leaned towards evil but individual Forsaken could get heroic or tragic moments - that was part of what made them compelling. In Wrath even you could maybe excuse the non-Apothecaries since they were after Arthas, but from Cataclysm on the faction just becomes a joke and gets some of the worst writing in the game and they drag down the rest of the Horde just by association. It's pathetic.
I remember when the Forsaken holy priest was considered the height of Forsaken selflessness and nobility. The Light reinvigorates their body and actively reminds them that they are a living corpse - you can feel the bugs crawling around, you can feel the skin hanging off and the bones grinding, EVERYTHING HURTS. To subject yourself to that pain as an undead when there are so many other options may speak to the connection to the Light they had in life, or the devotion they still hold for the Light even beyond death. By Forsaken standards, you'd be pretty whacked out to return to the Light like that.
In Wrath it's specifically Putress and the apothecaries that start plague-bombing everybody, Scourge or living, out of nowhere, and they were led by Varimathras who was implied to have been serving the Legion the whole time (which would be why they wanted to kill both Arthas and the people fighting him, as the Legion would want both dead to make their invasion easier). At that point you could still make an argument for Sylvanas and Forsaken player characters being unaware of the plan. Not that the Forsaken haven't been buttholes before, especially the Royal Apothecary Society, but prior to Cataclysm most of their buttholery can be categorized as "we'll use any means necessary to destroy the Lich King and defend our territory, no matter how immoral", while from Cata onwards it's more "frick the living for no reason in particular, let's kill everyone for shits and giggles". With Arthas dead they really should have mellowed out due to having accomplished their goal of getting revenge and eliminating their biggest enemy, but instead they just crank up the buttholery further and start all acting like Putress but without the excuse of being backed by the Legion.
>RAS and Varimathras launch a coup to oust Sylvanas as Forsaken leader
>Two Horde civil wars that end in a Warchief forcibly removed from power
Where's the Alliance power struggles? Does that include Moira Bronzebeard showing up with the Dark Irons in Ironforge and shouting "this is my son, the new heir to both Ironforge and Shadowforge, so suck my breasts and deal with it"?
>suck my breasts and deal with it
Would
I'm curious, have Dwarves ever married non-Dwarves?
I have an idea for a half dwarven claimant to a non-Dwarven throne, not sure if dwarves would back him or not
Warcraft hasn't seriously discussed hybrids since the first game. Since garona there hasn't been an important hybrid character.
Nah, even before WotLK the Forsaken were pretty much universally pieces of shit, it just got outrageous in Cata. Again, they had tortured human mindslaves and they experimented on their own allies after lying to them about wanting to find a cure for undeath. There are some individuals that could be cool, but I really can't recall any off the top of my head. The closest I can think of is Sylvanas showing some attachment to the pendant you find in the Ghostlands, when she conjures the Lament of the Highborne.
I mean, the devs weren't even being coy about it. The Forsaken greeting dialogue when you speak to them is like one step away from them saying they're going to kill all the living. And it's always been part of the lore that being undead suppresses all positive emotions and compels them to hate.
This isn't really a complaint because I think the Forsaken are really cool. I would have personally preferred if they made them more noble or did something to have it be less farfetched that everybody else just puts up with their shit.
This is a good question because Vanilla had quests establishing quite directly that Forsaken start to basically suffer Dementia and deteriorate back into mindless undead. Maybe not aggressive but definitely weathering away. The seamstress in Brill, Gretchen Dedmar, talks about it in her quest, which is about how she's feeling it so she wants to try to get some more work done before she succumbs to the Mindless State.
So I think the issue would be less repairing the physical body and more that I think the mental and spiritual aspect would just wear away, and that it might be a constant struggle of will. And it also might be lore they just forgot or retconned, and instead just ignore if undead have any "timer" or requirement to be maintained.
>Forsaken start to basically suffer Dementia and deteriorate back into mindless undead
I read somewhere that this was a result of the lich king trying to take control over them back. If that's true then maybe it's not a problem anymore with Bolvar at the helm.
more likely, blizzard simply forgot it was a plot point they'd made in the first place. Forgetting things was unfortunately a really common occurrance with Warcraft lore as WoW grew over time and the people who worked on it left the company and were replaced by new people. They never had a setting bible either, Metzen's Chronicles were him trying to finally create one and reconcile all the shit that'd been created without one into a coherent and consistent setting.
Forsaken chicks are fricking great.
That's a rotting corpse
Since the degredation of body and mind never really became a plotpoint again, we might assume it either went away of the apothecaries found off-screen methods against it
Oh no, the scarletgay is back. Abandon ship!
>the Forsaken were always bunch of buttholes. Some of them might just have been trying to play with the shit hand they were dealt, but a lot of them did so by being huge c**ts.
"They brought me back from the dead, and now I'm about to make that everyone's problem."
Huh? I admit I honestly only followed half current wow lore. But how does that make any sense then? Was the good part of her soul active, when she regained her free will from the LK up to her suicide? I thought it was dormant. In the dream world she was thinking of her homeland and called the Undead Sylvanas a monster. But if she was part of Undead Sylvanas all this time up to her suicide, then that doesn’t make sense. Okay, I really don‘t get it now. Are you really sure her good part was taken from her, when she committed suicided and wasn‘t dormant/in limbo?
It's easier to just say we don't talk about Shadowlands. Roleplayers - the most ardent and detail-oriented of loreheads - refuse to acknowledge its existence outside of a couple unignorable details (the Helm of Domination was destroyed, Sylvanas was redeemed and is in super-exile).
This is extra moronic when you remember the original lore was that sylvannas's soul was eaten by frostmourne and thats why she's like arthas.
>the reason risen Alliance soldiers just ally with the Forsaken
Hopelessness
Stockholm syndrome
Brainwashing
I thought that sword was a second floozy from the thumbnail.
Speaking of fanfics, although I don't read many, I did like this series:
https://lparchive.org/Warcraft/
https://lparchive.org/Warcraft-II/
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3853698
I love how it integrated the story with RTS gameplay
man that art does remind me of the old WC1 and WC2 manual art
Found out the wiki has evolution guides for all the games. Might be useful for picking out good lore that got retconned. https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Warcraft_III_evolution_guide
Which elves have the most sensitive ears and are weakest to ear rubs?
Female night elves. Of course, their ears are ridiculously long, so they easily rub against leaves and such while they frolic about. After a long, sweaty run through the woods, a female night elf is willing to pounce onto the first man she runs into, regardless of race. It's a big problem for them, really.
At least their ears droop down, nightborne ears curve up and are far more likely to rub against door frames and stuff.
I miss when Sylvanas was just the designated Horde fanservice character. What happened, /tg/? Where did we stray?
Blame Danuser. Someone post the pic. You know the one.
Cata came out before Danuser was even hired.
What does that have to do with anything? She only became irredeemable shit around BfA
The moment they made her Warchief and everyone just went along, it all went downhill. She should have remained in the shadows, never be the front and center
Making Sylvanas Warchief is like electing a literal prostitute off the streets as president.
A prostitute would have at least had people skills.
I agree. I love the Forsaken and I love how comically evil they are but they should remain the team bad guy doing fricked up shit in the background rather than being the face of the team itself.
Removing Sylvanas' bikini armor is so fricking stupid. She was created to be fanservice, don't try to make her some grrrlboss feminist character. No wonder nobody draws or cosplays the boring covered-up versions with shrunken breasts and ass.
>I didn't want Sylvanas to be a bad example for my teenage daughter hur dur
- Metzen.
Remind to abort any female children my wife might have.
What a fricking lie. They did it to distract from the female employee rape.
>Sylvanas being anything other than a bad example
Being an objectively evil turboc**t is fine, little Suzy, but heaven forefend you show your midriff.
Mezten was talking about old Alexstraza, implying it's a demeaning look for the most powerful dragon in the world to be wearing a bikini in her humanoid guise.
I'm surprised dragons wear ANY clothes in their humanoid forms.
The humanoid forms, in-universe, are specifically to make it easier to converse with mortals.
The pants came before it
I am 90% sure the pants were added later. Just like with Alextrasa and Ysera.
His soul got put back together, thrown into super-hell by the butthole half of Uther, then used to turn Anduin into a deathknight and then disenchanted into 35 Anima currency(no not the same anima that the Mogu use this is soul juice a bunch of vampires farm out of evil people and donate to other realms of death including the pretty ones to power them) wherupon Anduin and Sylvanus and I forget who else maybe thrall or something talked about him being less than nothing now.
The models in that picture are credited as vanilla, Wrath beta, and Wrath, respectively.
Sylvanas has never gone full battle bikini, though. The closest she ever came was her Wrath model where she wore a battle bikini over pants.
She originally had just the bikini in WC3's expansion and in art based on it.
???
I really like the Vanilla Sylvanas outfit as something she may wear as a head of state.
I wanna write a web of interactions for my OC and his children with a canon WoW character
how detailed should I get
Best race to represent the average ttrpg player coming through
I don't understand why fantasy characters wearing fantasy clothes is such a huge controversy tbh.
Because when you're one of the most venerated IPs in your space and reach mainstream appeal, you're expected to try and avoid offending people, and "only horny nerds would defend a battle bikini" or something.
My session zero for my next WoW campaign is this Friday, and needless to say I'm excited. It's nice to be back in the DM seat once again.
Which one was yours?
4e dnd, open world themed, set just before dragonflight, starting in Desolace. My outline for "shit to do in the world" is over 100 pages at this point, so it's been a fun thing to write dow
Oh, that's after a few of my personal breakpoints but I wish you luck.
Entirely out of curiosity, what are your breakpoints, and why?
It's weird I love tons of specific things from Cata, most of MoP, and lots of the BFA side content but I have various issues wiuth post-MoP stuff. But I love a lot of individual bits and bobs from it.
I guess the cosmology change in chronicle hurt my engagement with a lot of the world. And changes to the whole lost isles. Even if individually I liked sthe zones they were just too close to the temple and too different from WC3's appearance for the area. And then well, SL.
BFA going truly full hot war and burning out zones bums me out.
Wash your fricking dress
We will never have Tyrande with a blood-spattered robe. Sad
She's still an elf and the nelf pope, she has someone to wash her damn clothes
Actually much worse than Sylvie's redesign.
Elfbarian was the best era of nelfs and this b***h in 50 kg plate boots is not my Tyrande.
who is your tyrande then
So the even less barbarian one, got it.
Nobody asked your opinion, seethe in silence.
>is a "Night Warrior"
>Wears white as if its her wedding day
Wish they'd move on from her current outfit. The dull, dirty white and shitty silver was never a good combo
White and silver are the moon's colors, so that's her thing.
I hate that it looks like she's wearing a GW2 outfit. I absolutely despise the butt-cape look.
night elf society doesn't feel fundamentalist enough for a people ruled by their church for 10,000 years.
At least the druid part is pretty drastic and pretty much 100% devoted to that cult/aspect of magic
It shouldn’t be fundamentalist. It‘s not a Christian or gnostic-themed Church. It‘s an amazon society where warrior-priestesses rule. And that‘s just one faction of the Nightelves. The watchers operate very autonomously. Tyrande didn‘t even recognize Illidan‘s prison at first and had forgotten about it. It‘s even worse in wow, because Tyrande‘s husband leads a neutral faction, taking away half of the core territory of the Nightelves and leaves her alone to face the Horde.
Kayhlanestra
Kayhla for short
So someone thought of an interesting idea last thread
>Malfurion and tyrande have several children over the years of their love
>These children have many children of their own and those children have children, etc.
>One of these descendants who resembles Tyrande falls for Illidan, they're far enough removed it's no longer considered incestuous
What should this descendant's name be?
I am going to put cowboy witches into my campaign based off the new hearthstone expansion, and none of you can stop me! I've gone mad with power. MAD I say.
Okay then, that was always allowed.
MAD I SAY!
I agree.
Not having cowboys in the barrens is one of the major faults of the MMO if you ask me.
Bro there are Taruen all over the place?
Cowboys not cowgirls.
He has the sigils
I remember in Wrath going through Ysera's little green section of the Dragonblight, and one of the quest texts from the green dragons mentions how this corner of paradise is untouched because the nature magics that festoon the area vaporize the undead instantly, with the noted exception of the Forsaken. It seemed interesting how they could specify between Forsaken and Scourge.
What is the Norf like in your Azeroth?
Isn't the fall of Lordaeron something of a canon event for the EK? There's no real getting around that one.
Yes, but at the same time at no moment in time was there ever not an alliance presence in the norf.
Playing in the northern parts of the EK for alliance always has a heavy theme of either "holding on to the remnants that still remain" or "trying to reclaim what was lost." Thats kinda the whole regions selling point which you dont really get with Stormwind or Kul Tiras.
Peak night elf energy
>Female nelf druid
WoW waa fricked right from the start
She‘s a priestess.
She transforms into a panther in the cinematic
The armor was originally designed for the night elf archers and sentinels in WC3: Reign of Chaos so just replace that staff with a bow and you have the most OG night elf possible.
>How would you fix warcraft lore? Hard mode no retcons.
Actually make use of the 3 year time skip after Sneedolands to bring the nations and peoples of the world in a state i can make fun stories with going forward.
Without retcons, there is no fixing Warcraft lore. At the very least Warlords of Draenor and Shadowlands need to go into the trash, as much as I enjoy the Highmaul/Iron Horde/Revendreth aesthetics.
Look at what the femoids took from us.
Look at those fricking breasts man
Maybe female forest trolls will look something like this
how much in game time past from the beginning of Wow to legioin?
is there a timeline?
How are undead warriors even a thing? Apparently they are extremely fragile and even a child squeezing them too hard can break them, according to one of the books.
Anyone can learn to be a man-at-arms. It's why the warrior was the first universal class in the game that every race had access to. I did like the suggested idea on how Forsaken warrior rage is different from stereotypical warrior rage - it's a cold rage, more steely and silent. You can go for the more manic "feral undead" rage if you want.
Yeah I get that but I mean on more a practical level. I've seen arguments for both sides, saying they would be excellent warriors because they have infinite stamina and nothing limiting how much physical strength they can use and the opposite saying they would be horrible because they are fragile and can't take a hit. I suppose both can be true though.
>they are fragile and can't take a hit
Thats what armor is for.
Better question, how are vanilla era Forsaken still around? I have seen explanations ranging from they rot slower than regular corpses to their state of decay is frozen at the state they were in when they were resurrected.
They augment themselves with ironjaws and other metal parts to reinforce their bodies. Embracing the light allows to remove the problem of decay completely.
>they would be horrible because they are fragile and can't take a hit.
IIRC back in vanilla forsaken usually had the highest starding stamina scores of their classes. They're tough as shit.Worst agility scores though. Then again, the highest starting intellect of any race-class combo was orc shaman with 28. After that it was gnome mage with 27.
I know RPG stuff is dubiously canon now but I liked the bit about how they can regenerate by eating people, which went a long way in explaining how they could still look relatively well preserved even after years.
I do believe they're also stated both in the video game and in the RPG that the necromantic energy that animates them also preserves their somewhat and slows their decay. Not entirely though, since the deathknight handbook mentions practical solutions to stave off decay.
>How would you fix warcraft lore?
Make the campaign take place between the end of TFT and start of Wc1.
>get warcraft rpg pdf
>ctrl+f
>doesn't work
>it's just images
frick me
Where did you get them from?
What do you guys think of the khaz algar stuff that was revealed for war within?
>South west of kalimdor
>fricking nerubians live there for some reason
>FRICKING ARATHI HUMANS TOO
>main villians are the nreubians and knaifu
>oh and playable earthen for both factions
The new trend of just plopping old races in nonsensical places is really getting on my nerves. How did nerubians and get to khaz algar without finding kalimdor? Who cares! Why not make new races instead of using old ones in ways that ruins the established lore of those races? Would cost too much.
Legit reads like bad fanfiction.
Earthen Civilization seems pretty kino, the militaristic fire-light crusader humans with airships too. Wasnt expecting Nerubians, but i always wanted to explore their shit back in Northrend, so im down for it.
>The new trend of just plopping old races in nonsensical places is really getting on my nerves
I dont know, earthen in a new titan facility makes sense. Nerubians having underground empire down south can work too, i guess. Its the underground. The arathi are a wild card, but im willing to wait and see how they ended down there. Inject this hollow earth shit right into my veins.
>Nerubians having underground empire down south can work too, i guess. Its the underground
What does it being underground have to do with anything? Nerubians still come from northrend.
Yes, but we dont really know much about them. How long are they up there? Thousands of years? How far did they stretch? Did they establish far off colonies elswhere? Have there been exile nerubians who left Northrend hundreds or years ago? Did some of they frick off during the war of the spider? All manner of reasons might exist as to why there is another nerbubian empire far away. Its not really a far streach, which what little we know
>we dont really know much about them
Yes we do, nerubians are one of the old god spawn we know the most about.
>How long are they up there? Thousands of years?
Since the troll wars
>How far did they stretch?
Trolls made sure not far.
>Did they establish far off colonies elswhere?
The problem with this is that we know for as fact they didn't anywhere else besides khas algar. In order to get there any nerubian colonists which have to ignore places far closer and more accessible and beeline start for khaz algar. It's a bit silly to think about.
>Have there been exile nerubians who left Northrend hundreds or years ago? Did some of they frick off during the war of the spider?
We know that they're not recent because the website says they've been fighting the arathi humans for thousands of years.
>All manner of reasons might exist as to why there is another nerbubian empire far away. Its not really a far streach
The problem is that we know from other times blizz has done this that they aren't even going to try to explain. Why are there quillboar in kul tiras and centaur in the dragon isles? Lol who knows? Blizz legit never bothered explaining why they're there. The quillboar wouldn't have even been that hard to explain but they still never bothered.
I have zero faith the writers will put in the work to justify nerubians and arathi's.
>I have zero faith the writers will put in the work to justify nerubians and arathi's.
Whats the point discussing it then, if you dont expect anything anyways?
>Since the troll wars
Well thats makes some roughly 3000 years. Thats a LOT of time. Like, ancient greek till the modern day. Much and more can have happend in that time span we dont know about
>Trolls made sure not far.
All the time? For 3000 years straight? Non stop?
> In order to get there any nerubian colonists which have to ignore places far closer and more accessible and beeline start for khaz algar.
There might be reasons for that. We simple do not know.
>Why are there quillboar in kul tiras and centaur in the dragon isles?
Then again, why shouldnt there be Quilboar in Kul Tiras? Do they need to explain that?
>Whats the point discussing it then, if you dont expect anything anyways?
I'm complaining.
>Well thats makes some roughly 3000 years.
The troll wars were more than 10000 years ago, are you thinking of the one against the high elves?
>All the time? For 3000 years straight? Non stop?
10000 years and yes, the persistence of the troll empires was pretty much the entire reason they one against the aqir.
>There might be reasons for that.
lol
>Then again, why shouldnt there be Quilboar in Kul Tiras? Do they need to explain that?
Not even gonna try to defend the centaurs are you? And yes, they do need to. My point is that the way to get quillboar in kul tiras is obvious and simple, the fact they didn't even bother coming up with the obvious reason shows where their priorities lie. Blizz used to go into excessive detail into the history of important races. Now they don't.
Web parachuting spiders would've ended up in kalimdor long before khaz algar.
Another thing that pisses me off is that they made these nerubians old god worshippers again, when the entire point of the nerubians was that they were the only old god spawn that rejected the divinity of the old gods. Now they're just generic bug swarms like the mantid and qiraj.
They did that thing where spiders fly by using webs to catch the wind
The Earthen stuff is fine, we already know they were deployed at multiple facilities across Azeroth already, so it's not a stretch to say that another group of them exists.
My only gripe with the Nerubians is that they're expressly Nerubians instead of being a fourth remnant of the Aqir. But that's a minor thing.
I'm more confused about the Arathi, but the presentation at Blizzcon alluded to 'mysterious circumstances', so I guess we'll just have to wait and see if the explanation is shit or not. I lean towards it probably being underwhelming, sadly.
>Blackhand
Ordered to get his own daughter killed
>Gul'dan
Massacred his home village, doomed his entire race to slavery
Had a woman raped and forcibly aged the baby to serve as his slave
>Cho'gall
Even though he was raised on a silver platter, he fought against his own people out of a pure lust for power
>Nekros
Captured dragons and forced them to mate and then enslaved their offspring
>Kilrogg
Literally murdered his entire family
>Kargath
Established a masochistic culture where everyone has to smash their arm
And that's not even all of them
You just gotta appreciate how uniquely evil each member of the Old Horde is
>Ordered to get his own daughter killed
Never played CK? Humans did this all the time.
>Had a woman raped and forcibly aged the baby to serve as his slave
lmao retcons
>Nekros
This is just domestication.
>Established a masochistic culture where everyone has to smash their arm
Real human cultures make men cut off their dick skin, this in no worse.
Orcs are just barbaric and primitive. Not uniquely evil.
Daelen Prooudmore did nothing wrong. Death to the black bloods.
He did one thing wrong: raising a bleeding heart traitor of a daughter
Also losing, that one is kinda important
Forsaken being comically evil is fine as long as the alliance isnt being written as spineless gays that is just taking it raw because muh honor
How are the Lightforged able to tolerate being on the same faction as Void Elves and now Man'ari? If I were them I'd be questioning Turalyon's judgement by now and be wondering if he really is fit to lead us.
The Lightforged have a redeemed Dread Lord don't they?
Although he doesn't seem to use any fel magics so yeah strange the Man'ari who are still fel infused are on their side
Wasn't he just a double agent too, as of Shadowlands lore?
Why not? They are still fighting against the cosmic forces of the void and the legion and these guys in your factions have proven to be worthy and capable allies in that cause. Also to show enough self control to not go off the deep end.
Looking at world maps from early development is interesting. Like Ulduar being a continent, or Kalimdor being tiny.
Maps plans are a very fascinating topic for discussion. Like for that one, I really have to wonder what the hell they were planning to do with ulduar there? Makes me think they went back to this map for inspiration for Khaz algar.
Speaking of old maps I've always been fascinated by the big continent to the south of draenor here. The only info we got on it was that it was the continent the ogres came from. Although that didn't make much sense to me, wouldn't it make more sense that ogres originated on the continent the breakers actually lived on rather than that one? Would be more reasonable that the ogres colonized it rather than came from there.
But it also got me thinking, since draenor is made up of the bodies of the sporemounds and grond, wouldn't that mean that this continent is where the mountain that Aggramar animated to create grond came from? Not to mention where the sporemounds were growing before grond wrestled them out to sea? Not to mention the potential old gods influence discussed a few threads ago.
Going to engage in some cringe ass fanfiction now, you are warned. What if draenor once had an old god land on it? But since there was no world soul and old gods are parasites there was nothing for it to do but play solo civilization with it's spawn as it slowly starved. However it wouldn't be that easy as the native life of draenor began to fight back. While the old god had the advantage at first, it was always a fight it was destined to lose. As the native life learned and evolved the old god only wasted away. This evolutionary impetus is what would eventually create the sporemounds. Also I like to think that when the old god died Zang grew on it's corpse.
Now this is the state where Aggramar finds draenor in when he gets there. History proceeds as written. But whats left unwritten is whats going on the other continent. What if the old god spawn survived as tribes keeping their heads down under the sporemounds? What would they have seen? Cont.
Well they would've seen a giant in the sky that animated a mountain to destroy their insurmountable oppressors. Thats quite literally the stuff religions are made out of. Yes I am suggesting that on draenor there once existed titan worshipping old god spawn. After the fall of the sporemounds they'd make an empire on that continent to honor their savior aggramar. A funny thought I had would be if they imagined aggramar as the old gods husband in their myths and his reason for creating grond was in revenge for her murder by the sporemounds.
Anyways, maybe along with the spawn theres other empires of native life such as saberons or even arakkoa if they flew over there too. It'd probably be a good idea to come up with ideas for new races for the other continent. Regardless over the many millennia of dominance the spawns empire would grow decadent and weak. Thats when the gorian empire waltzes in and completely obliterates them, colonizing the entire continent quickly and easily. Now back on draenor the gorian empire would be having a hard time but their control in the other continent wouldn't falter until the rise of the horde. That'd allow rebellions to pop up and bring the gorians to near collapse. And then ner-zhul destroys draenor and they all die. The end.
How'd you like my fanfiction /tg/?
By the time Warcraft 3 came out, this had changed, but Kalimdor still has that triple seperation between Elve, Tauren/plains and Lost World/later Titian stuff.
The more I want to play a Warcraft game the more I want the lore to be just that early Classic WoW/TFT and slowly introduce WoW lore as th game progresses, but modifered for what was already established.
So Dranei are what later games call Broken Dranei,always have been. They do join the Allience but were always little dudes.
Pandaren live to the west of Kalimdor where they were surposed to be and where they stuck the Dranei in TBC.
The lands are filled with broad sweeping expanses of wild tribes and mosnters where adventurers can travel across whole zones and right the wrongs to restore them back to normal.
I also liked the bits where Thrall was making honest good faith efforts at trying to establish good relations with the Alliance.
Honestly Varian getting pissy at Thrall because Garona tried to assassinate him in the comic felt somewhat forced in order to make Alliance and Horde not like each other. Varian especially feels a bit spergy.
I wonder if there's a better way to write a wedge diving them in the Theramore Summit.
>forced in order to make Alliance and Horde not like each other.
Every other WoW event ever. I fricking hate it so much.
They should've just made it a Cold War between them. Guards just stop opposite faction NPCs from entering their areas and don't attack unless you run through.
The dark portal area has a quest where the commander of each faction's portal guards cannot read plans from the other, but hires the PC to do it.
Stuff like that honestly should be the entire conflict between Alliance and Horde.
The original plan was to use an EQ style system and I'll never forgive DAoC for ruining that. Should have went with that. Literally the only fricking thing the faction system as it is ever did for me was lock me out of playing with about half of my friends at any given time and also give some of them tribalist brain rot.
What's the EQ vs DAOc system?
NTA but Everquest versus Dark Age of Camelot.
EQ had floating faction rep that could be changed by actions, DAoC didn't. WoW has the code for the former and uses it but not on anything important.
Another interesting what if is that originally WoW didn't have instances. Just like in EQ one you just wandered into the dungeon from an entrance on the world map, it didn't load you into a different zone or anything. So for example in Alpha the Blackfathom depths was a literal physical dungeon in Darkshore that you delved into, located in the north of the zone. And yes this did mean that a rival dungeon team could go in after you and ninja kill the final boss after you did most of the work, like in EQ. Whoever came up with the decision to make instanced content probably saved the game right there.
The situation in vanilla was lore-wise a mostly cold war situation, with some minor skirmishes at contested zones. There's some individual quests where an NPC tasks you with screwing over the rival faction in some way, but it's all very small scale. On the large scale neither faction wants to start a full-blown war between each other, and there's some quests where you're tasked with preventing things from escalating to that. The entire reason for Horde players to get involved in the Onyxia questline for example is that Onyxia was trying to manipulate the factions into going to war with each other to weaken both.
Or the reason for Horde going into Blackrock Depths to rescue Moira was so Thrall could build bridges with the Alliance. A "hey, Horde members risked life and limb assaulting the capital city of your ancestral enemy to rescue the king's daughter".
Man, Blackrock Depths was a legitimately epic dungeon in terms of scope.
>Man, Blackrock Depths was a legitimately epic dungeon in terms of scope.
Shadowforge city is a better city than every faction capital other than Ironforge in vanilla.
Varian was always a sperg and an OC Donut Steel character. If he'd just been dead and we had Anduin "child-king" Wrynn trying to speedrun learning to rule a kingdom while also cludging together his realm's contributions to an international axis of powers, we'd have been vastly better off.
Varian was a Warrior, while Anduin is a Priest. Their class reflects their temperance.
Do you think all those mountain that are in WoW as zone seperators are there in lore and would yould keep or remove some in a campaign?
No I don't think so.
They're mostly for gameplay.
I'd get rid of most of them. Like if I ran a game, it would theoretically be possible to walk from directly from Stranglethorn Vale to the Blasted Lands by going east, but you'd have to navigate some pretty awful swamplands.
I might still keep some mountains there, but travelling through them wouldn't too much of a barrier.
Like using the Kuusinen/ScrollsOfLore map.
Light Blue and Purple lines would be super easy.
Dark blue not much of an issue either.
Green path might take some mountain passes that could be a lil' sketchy.
But no harder barrier, not like you have to run up to Karazhan to get there.
I was wondering, should the scale of Azeroth be increased. I'd even recommend increasing the span of time back to originally how long the First War happened, and increasing the length of time for the Second and Third Wars. The events of Warcraft 3 should at least be 3 to 4 years in my opinion.
Timespan is definitely the biggest problem with modern wow. It's what caused the problem with garona.
>hardmode no retcons
Basically impossible. Most of Shadowlands and plenty of BfA needs to just be tossed. Arguably every expansion from WoD onwards needs to be heavily pruned or cut (I have a special hatred for time travel/alternate universe plots in general). Even the earlier expansions and base game need a lot of retcons to make their lore cohesive and not moronic
The timeline should definitely be stretched as compared to how Blizzard presents it. Major bloody conflicts are happening in WoW every 2-3 years, which itself starts just 3 years after the Scourge destroyed the majority of human civilisation. Teldrassil burned barely a decade after it was planted. It's all just absurdly compressed, makes no sense at all when you look at it as a whole
I think it is in character reasonably large, but the game messes with that. If say we started with only Thrall's Horde and Jaina's alliance on Kalimdor, with all the effort for the EK focused on making Kalimdor frick huge, then I think we could get a more reasonable scale. Each expansion adds more world (going to Azeroth to get control of the Dark Portal, going to Lordaeron to deal with the Scourge's current front, then eventually Outlands and Northrend) would prolong the focus on the WC3 stuff while laying ground for future problems (Onyxia gets her own expansion, the Forsaken/Gilneas/Blood Elves theirs).
Azeroth in WoW was massively, colossally compressed down in size and in the timeline of events happening. Not only would it be staggeringly stupid to not expand the scope of distances and timelines of events, if would also make the world continue to be nonsensical.
It felt weird to me that the War of the Thorns lasted a couple days at most.
I assume both warfronts also lasted one "round" rather than it being a back and forth that lasted a year like it did for gameplay purposes.
Yeah mostly it's just thinking about how to fill in an expanded map, mostly in terms of climate or who controls what. For example take Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes. How large should what is effectively the setting's equivalent to Mordor in terms of tone be? Especially if it's supposed to be land that was carved out by Ragnaros' erupting into the physical plane.
Yeah with Garona, she was written under the assumption that initial Horde expansion out of the Black Morass and Swamp of Sorrows and into human territory took at least 15 or so years. As for the Second War, I think it ought to take 6 years of fighting, at least. With the failed siege on Lordaeron City and raising of the Broken Isles be about the halfway point.
>mostly in terms of climate or who controls what.
from scrolls of lore, their attempt at making sense of it
also:
I'm not sure about the scale they have in the index though, what it is based on exactly.
I like the basic geography and look of it though, as it pays more respect to wc2+wc3 instead of nonsense mmo gameplay concessions.
I like that map a lot actually. Even if I don't use the geography, it'd be pretty useful to get a handle on climate zones. It must be pretty north of the equator if it only hits the tropics too.
I feel like the Arathi Highlands are relatively dry and possibly mildly cold.
I feel like a longer back and forth also works a bit.
>stormwind is mostly subtropical with a little bit temperate
It probably has a climate similar to the American South or southwestern China. Not sure how I feel about that one
This map probably has the continent a little bit too big, since if Azeroth is a globe roughly the size of the earth, than this would make the eastern kingdoms ~2900 miles from tip to tip
I did always love the maps in the games. Has anyone ever tried to use like the interactive maps World of Warcraft had to zoom in and find the RTS maps(or as close as WoW is to the original trilogy)?
I'd seriously love being able to generate TTRPG maps out of ingame content. Like party sized battle maps. Not sure if' it's actually possible though.The ingame stuff doesn't seem to work too well when explored from top down and there's a lot of... weird choices made that have built up on top of one another making some really stupid looking parts of the map.
On topic... It's been established that alternate timelines can be created and can create interactions between. Warlords of Draenor opened up potential that has been apparently discarded. I would have liked to see an 'evil Alliance' come through the Dark Portal next from an Azeroth that went even further wrong(or, arguably, right, since the idea was to not destroy the planet and Draenor in the Iron Horde timeline is much less broken than in their original timeline).
We are CLEARLY not in the 'best timeline'. So a solution would be to jump back in time in Azeroth and start fixing things. Treat it as it's own timeline, the original still exists so this isn't a retcon.
Major changes I've made for my RP is that the individual races are more independent. This has led to them making allies more important, and causes more small scale strife, it also means that for example, the Night Elves and the Tauren remain in good standing with one another, and Tauren can act as intermediaries for Night Elf conflicts against the Orcs. This basically dissolves the monolithic Alliance and Horde, and your faction is your 'race'(not 'human' but Stormwind Human) with quests locked not to faction but to reputation with other factions.
Additionally there are some points in the timeline that have gaps in them, where a small action by one faction might have let them network.
I'm a bit confused when Draenor blew up and why. I feel like it was never properly explained in the games, but then it's been decades since I played WC2 and it had already happened in WC3
Dark Alliance could be cool, have them go full industrial revolution and using actual tanks, machine guns bound with naa'ru, etc. They've flirted with the light in an extreme being a crusade just as abominable as the burning legion, so embrace that what if.
The way I'd fix Warcraft without any retcons (it needs retcons badly and Blizzard should just start pretending certain expansions never happened) is to make a new cast of main characters for the fanbase to latch onto that aren't the political leaders of racial monolithic factions.
The story gets fricked up because one singular fan favorite decides to do something insane because Blizzard can't write for shit, which drags an entire race and their related geographies down. Then to undo the damage of that, they have another insanely important leader character do something more fricked up or kill that character, then rinse and repeat in an endless cycle.
They should start making a cast of new unrelated main characters (the next generation potentially) that all have beef with eachother, do micro-interfaction conflicts (and in some cases, civil wars within subgroups in those factions that could represent different narrative povs that ppl like in the fanbase; eg. sylvanas loyalists taking over gilneas and non-loyalists wrecking them) and all of them should only have a tertiary relationship to a faction's actual leader. Maybe sometimes they get spicy and incite an expansion's faction war by fricking up and targetting someone way bigger than them, but the scale is fricked up right now in general as it is. They need to dial it back and stop butchering old staples and killing them for shock value, as it's removing the serie's entire identity over time.
Funny how the fricking joke game Hearthstone figured this out and built their PvE content around rando adventurers, mercenaries and other low-tier people fricking around on their personal quests rather than Thrall, Jaina and Illidan for the 1000th time fricking the entire world up.
THE JOKE GAME FIGURED THIS OUT
>THE JOKE GAME FIGURED THIS OUT
My idealized version of warcraft lore and even wow as a game would pilfer stuff from hearthstone.
A lot of it doesn't make sense, but there's no pretence of it making sense and at least they don't rely on a few specific staples as crutches.
I'd fix wow by taking Danuser out behind a shed like old yeller. Then hire a team of writers that are forced to actually work together and collaborate, instead of seemingly all doing their own thing with a single lead and violating each other in the office.
I wanna force Knaak and Danuser to fight a Mak'gora.
Winner gets to face Golden.
Apparently there are rumors that Danuser left the company. He wasnt at Blizzcon at all and some wow youtubers heard something. Nothing confirmed, ofc but who knows.
I have a suggestion on how to save wow lore. We just consider the entire WoW canon an alternative timeline. What is the real timeline? What did actually happen? We don’t know, but it certainly won’t contain any time travel. Because logically the Bronze Dragons would have protected the timeline and reset it by traveling back in time and preventing the time travelers from having any impact in the first place. So the real Warcraft story can‘t feature time travel as a plot device,
What other things are different? We don’t know either, but basically this gives us the legitimacy to use the MMORPG as inspiration (in-universe it would be the other way around). Sylvanas taking over the Horde as new Warchief? Let‘s consider this a vision from Thrall, if he shies away from his responsibility as Warchief and doesn’t kick them ou of the Horde. Sargeras stabbing Azeroth with a planet-size sword? That‘s a bad ending. Game over.
wrote a basic outline for my speshul OC self insert characters in WoW
Do you think Jaina suffers enough in the marriage?
>cold husband who only tolerates her for sex
>psycho stepdaughter who father will always side with over her
Not sure what else to do to make the family dynamics more messed up
Nobody gives a shit about your garbage OC
Then why are you replying?
Way too edgy
Yeah that was the goal. I like edgy. One of my favourite characters is Aemond Targaryen.
>doesn’t even try to conform to warcraft universe standards
It's not like modern WoW does either
There's a fine line between "edgy" and "unlikeable". A character should be hated for the right reasons, and "existing solely to make an existing (beloved) character's life miserable" isn't how to do it.
Hmm maybe the shit marriage life with the crazy stepdaughter is a bit harshly excessive.
These would-be characters exist solely to bring down Jaina, and that's terrible.
Yeah you got a point. I have some changes in mind...
Seems way too complicated.
I read like two sentences and had to stop. Peak early 2000s Sonic OC parody
>nu-lore
>doesn’t even try to conform to warcraft universe standards
I hate it
Just as bad as the OC posted by a guy from five years ago: a silly pacifist trickster mage who was actually an age-immortal ex-Guardian of Tirisfal.
, for those who want to see it.
Does anyone have all the Warcraft manga they can share?
every time I think of the Me'dan comics my gun starts to look like a lollipop
How did Garona even birth him safely?