Warcraft Lore and RPG Discussion

Ethereals are neat Imo and have unused potential but I feel they are best used as supplement rather than having everything based on them.

I had envisioned (and worked in WC3) a campaign located on backwater planet conquered and left barren by The Burning Legion with minimal defense force. The heroes would be orcs and draenei who left the exploding Draenor before it turned to Oitlands by utilizing portals opened by the orcs. Not all orcs drank the blood of Mannoroth and some would have had helped the draenei eacape the onslaught using opened portals to other planes. The draenei and orc survivors would not include any well known major characters but would revere them as mythical heroes and aspire to be as great as them. This way they would have solid connection to them without having to have them present. The orcs and draenei would enter an alliance of some sort and by having to stay close in order to survive they would eventually form a solid civilization. Interbreeding is possible or not, makes little difference to me but somebody always wants to play half-breed to be torn between races. I'll elaborate when on PC.

>Interbreeding is possible or not
There are at least two canon examples: Garona and Lantresor

>hey, remember LEEROY JENKINS
>that was funny, right?

>heh

How could we? He makes appearance in WoD as well.

it was a joke about how the bad guys use light magic and the good guys shadow

Looks like they're abandoning the idea that Light = good & redemption that the Naaru seemed to represent in reigniting the Sunwell.

I'd like to believe it's to add more nuance to the Light, that it can be abused without being extinguished, but I fear they're going to take the path of grayness and balance between light and darkness.

Then again, the naaru light-darkness cycle is not exactly new, and it's not without reason to not want either side to get too big advantage over the other, even the good one, since once they cycle out the lump of light becomes a lump of darkness.

the Adherents don't really use the Light, it's sun magic that's superficially similar to the Light, but unlike the Sunwalkers, isn't actually holy in any way. In the Spires of Arak questline it's constantly pointed out that shadow isn't necessarily evil due to it's sheltering and obscuring nature helping the Outcasts, and the Light isn't necessarily good because it allows the Adherents to root out and destroy the Outcasts from the safety of Skyreach

I suppose that makes sense, but the difference is subtle enough for the sunwalker from garrison daily to not recognize it.

I still don't believe Vol'Jin is dead. It's fucking retarded even for Blizzard.

Darkspear genocide best day of my life

Dude

EMOTIONAL impact

LMAO

Killing off a character who is already mocked for being inconsequential is not how you do emotional impact

I think he's more popularly liked as a cool guy, more than he's mocked.

Will we ever see her again? The way her story ended I wouldn't be surprised if she returned as demon hunter, although she's probably just forgotten.

Didn't they try to add ethereals to the blue dragon war arc in Wrath before it was immediately aborted?

I think it was more like the blues were buying something the ethereals had, so more like a business deal.

Apparently there will be some ethereals involved in world events around the blue dragon presence in northrend in Legion.

I saw that. They were involved in the Blue Dragonshrine and the artifact quests.

So, the nightborne are looking pretty neat overall. Suramar looks pretty fucking cool

So, would anyone be interested in working on conjuring up racial stats for the various Warcraft races in D&D 5e mechanics? I've got all of the 5e, Warcraft D20 and WoW D20 books, but I'm completely lost about how the lore developed in WoW, so we'd need to work together if we wanted to add, for example, Dranei.

give them affinity to arcane/holy magic and make them lawful good.

Well, Draenei are basicly tieflings, so you could just use that?

>Warcraft
> lore

I had an idea for a Warcraft campaign using 5e, where the Alliance and the Horde manage to beat back the Burning Legion once and for all, but Azeroth is completely wrecked afterward similar to how Draenor was, and everyone instead decides to flee to another world.

Does it have potential or is it retarded?

No, they're aasimar that look like tieflings, entirely because WotC changed what tieflings look like to make them more like draenei.

Doesn't sound too bad to me. Certainly better than what I've heard the lore has become for the games so far...

Hmm, I really do need to read up on their actual WoW lore, but I'm not a huge fan of the crunch for the current aasimar, really. Still, probably wouldn't be a bad basis, I guess.

Will the Warcraft movie act as a good introduction to the lore/story of the series?

Maybe. Probably.

I'd bet money the majority of WoW's playerbase doesn't know anything pre-WC3, in fact.

Which makes Kosak's pandering to the Warcraft 2 fanbase all the stranger

Hmm... looking at this page for them - wow.gamepedia.com/Draenei_(playable) - my kneejerk 5e writeup for Dranei would probably look like this:

Draenei 5e, 1st Draft:
Ability Score Modifier: +1 Strength, +1 Intelligence, +1 Wisdom
Size: Medium
Speed: 30 feet
Gift of the Naaru: You know the Cure Wounds spell and can cast it with this trait once per short rest or long rest.
Shadow Resistance: You have Resistance to Necrotic damage and are Immune to effects that would lower your maximum hit point value.

add in "most draenei are lawful good, those that aren't tend to fall to lawful evil over time" as a fluff piece

you could say that.
but it is it's own universe.

the story of the original Warcraft has been retconned so much that the movie will probably be the *only* accurate source of lore about it

I'd say they can be Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral and maybe Chaotic Good as well, and Broken/Lost Ones can be all over the place.

Eh, I don't really consider alignment to be worthwhile for mentioning, especially since A: the Warcraftverse is supposed to run on Black & Gray Morality, so the "clear cut" Axis of Alignment doesn't fit, and B: WoW D20 abandoned the use of alignment for just that reason.

So, no mechanical tweaks that people would suggest making? Maybe the Powerful Build trait from the Goliath (Elemental Evil Player's Guide), since the Draenei are a pretty damn big race at 8ft-9ft tall?

If no other tweaks to the Draenei present themselves, any recommendations/suggestions/requests for the next race to try tackling? Orcs, Elves, Tauren, Trolls, Forsaken, whatever?

The movie as well as the prequal books/graphic novel are part of their own seperate universe but as a jumping off part for newcomers to warcraft I'd say so.

Well, it looks like blizz is toying with the idea of Night elf paladins so she may become that instead.

She did give that holy warrior vibe back then, but I guess what she'd be know depends on how she dealt with Lightforge's fate.

>know
now*

I just cannot wrap my head around Night Elves and Draenei as playable races.
A race that gets a few hundred years old is already strange, since you either have to play someone very young, very incompetent or very amnesiac.

But somebody from a race that can break seven, eight or twelve thousand years no sweat? Or, god forbid, twenty, twentyfive thousand years? I mean, the thought of a random Draenei baker looking down on a several thousand years old Night Elf Priestess because he's thrice her age is funny, but still.

Blood Elves can live for millennia as well, and the Forsaken and Death Knights are also potentially immortal.

Yeah, potentially they are, but they shouldn't have lived that long yet.
Being ten thousand years old isn't strange for Night Elves. Hell, Malfurion was already more than 2000 years old when the Well of Eternity exploded.

There's two ways around this:
>your character is a fresh adult learning skills for the first time, just like many other adventurers
>the "thousands of years" lifespan is based on an outlier in statistics(like Velen) and is not the average for your usual person of that race

I prefer the second one myself. If everyone got to live to 25,000+ years then there'd be almost no children around, but in what's left of the lore there's no hint about few children or no children at all until recently like there is in night elf lore. At least as far as I'm aware.

I thought high/blood elves only lived a few centuries?

>I thought high/blood elves only lived a few centuries

Anasterian Sunstrider was king of Quel'thalas for almost 3,000 years before Arthas killed him. Who knows how long he'd have lived if he hadn't been murdered.

Warcraft lore is a mess.

I've been doing some reading, and I found this from WoD (in reference to the Draenei that pledged allegiance to the Burning Legion and became evil):
>Defeat the draenei and we prove our loyalty to the Legion. Crush Shattrath, and the demons promise us the glory of immortality!

If Draenei really can live 25K+ years normally, then why would they be goaded into working for obviously treacherous demons for the mere promise of living forever? This is the kind of shit humans and orcs fall for. Maybe they really don't live thousands of years on average or someone on the writing team fucked up, which is more likely.

>>your character is a fresh adult learning skills for the first time, just like many other adventurers
>>the "thousands of years" lifespan is based on an outlier in statistics(like Velen) and is not the average for your usual person of that race
although there are many thousand year old Draenei, there were also a great deal of Draenei who were born on Draenor, and therefore would only be 600 years old or less

most of the Sargerei were draenei that were disillusioned with Velen's leadership and realized that their options were to keep running forever until you get torn apart by a felhound or join the Legion and have eternal life and great power

also the voice direction in Socrethar's fight is fun as fuck

Yeah, but the Night Elves are undeniably fucked up in that regard. They were 100% immune to dying from old age or sickness and there were next to no substantial threats on Kalimdor, so there's no reason most elves wouldn't live to this day.

Also, wasn't there a Draenei child in a book that didn't age a day after several decades? So even a young adult should clock in at one or two thousand years for them.

Y'know, the alternate universe Ner'Zhul is either on someone's shit list, or their biggest hero after managing to get Velen to sacrifice himself, now that I think about it. Kil'Jaeden and Archimonde spent millenia chasing after him, only for someone not on their side to do the deed.

OP reminds me of my Hearthstone deck.

I just started a couple of days ago because they lured me in with free cards and I liked the look of them. Jaina being the start deck, I've just stuck with it, and being new all my fancy cards are from the Old Gods deck. So it's basically just become cultist leader Jaina deck.

>AU Ner'zhul still managed to end up as the Lich King because Kil'jaeden is butthurt about him killing AU Velen
I hope this happened

Maybe they need an external power source for their longevity like the night elves, or even for their general health like the blood elves. The originals lived in a magocratic paradise, the eredar have fel, draenei have the Naaru, and draenei death knights have the lich king.

>why would they be goaded into working for obviously treacherous demons for the mere promise of living forever?
Because Demons don't die even when they're killed, unless they're in the Twisting Nether.

Becoming a demon doesn't just mean not dying of old age. It means having almost no fear of death whatsoever, being able to die thousands of times without any fear of never coming back.

>tfw Jaina will become a cult leader raid boss in this expansion or the next
sic transit gloria mundi

pls no.

Although laura bailey is now getting on my nerves.

I'm just waiting for Elune as a raid boss to happen.

Naga and Satyrs can also be old. Vashj was around during the War of the Ancients

>mfw Blizzard's plan all along was to show Warcraft fans that all things succumb to decay eventually
>mfw WoW's final battle is a one-man dungeon with the final boss being a corrupted version of the player's character

we do that in wotlk

So I heard you guys had gnomes.

How many problems in WoW's current lore are a result of trying to portray the orcs simultaneously as the badass murdermachines from Warcraft 2 and the misunderstood noble underdogs from Warcraft 3?

They have orcs winning every single conflict, yet they are always the weak side. They are needlessly brutal and cruel, yet everyone treats them like a normal sentient species.

It's not even the Horde as a whole, it's literally just the Orcs. How would you do orcs in your game?

>not leading the players on more and more brutal quests telling them they're killing for some nebulous "greater good"
>players follow along because they're too stupid to read the quests and just see red NPCs to loot
>confronted with Pure version of themselves.

Be better if orcs were like Spartans. Super beefy dudes who fight for their lives, but only do war when they need to.

...

I imagine they'd fill their fighting quota with tournaments, wrestling, and other such stuff when they weren't at war. You can have a good fight without killing anyone.

Hell, they can have a free-for-all day at the arena, where anyone who wants to can just jump into a massive brawl.

>only do war when they need to
>Spartans
You do know that 300 wasn't a documentary, right? Spartans were assholes.

I believe that Azeroth has a few pro sports leagues, so they may get into those.

Where were the dwarves that fought with Lordaeron in WC3 from? Were they Ironforge dwarves or some other group?

Wildhammer I think, they're still hanging out in the Hinterlands.

the rifleman and artillery were regiments from Ironforge partnered with the Lordaeron military, the gryphon riders are Wildhammers

They're super assholes who hated Athens, but knew they couldn't outsmart them in a tactics fight. So an uneasy alliance was better.
Course, all Greeks were assholes if you read the stories. Ulysses and the gang raped the court of Troy.

So aside from Blizz removing all fun things, is there any reason why a draenei PC could not meet themself in WoD? I'm not getting my timeline mixed up right? Given the life span of Draenei and the timeline of the events and where the AU splits from the MU, it should be totally possible for PC to meet a younger version of themselves right?

aren't Malfurion and Tyrande over 10000 years old?

That's mostly due to the world tree, though elves seemed to have a long life span with their close relationship with the well. With mortality, not sure how long they can live now.

As long as they were born before the Attack of the Orcs they should be able to meet themselves. It might be harder to track their earlier self down though because before the Orc rape train hit them, there were hundreds of thousands or even maybe millions more. Depends on the current population, lore says 80% got genocided, but it doesn't say their total population.

>draenei PC meets themself
>as one of the Sargerei cultists in HFC
whoops

Kill yourself.
Literally.

>One of the cultist recognizes the PC
"Faleer, what are you doing out of uniform? The master said for everyone to be ready in case those adventures attack!"
>Cultist leads PC away and said PC tries to awkwardly explain that they are not who they think they are

I smell sitcom. Or a shitty quest line.

never reply to me again unless you're contributing to the thread

Seems to be on topic. You gotta kill your evil self for the good of the future.
This is suicide on a whole new level

I'm stupid and misunderstood his post

So I got back to the game for 7 day with the free pass thing
And got a eye of sulfuras
But I can't get the sulfuron hammer, blah.

I actually liked WoD's background, but the actual story is just.... ahh...

if you ignore the main storyline and do the side stuff, WoD is pretty cool.
the new Arakkoa are cool as shit

seconding this opinion. One of the only good parts of WoD is that they force you to do all the storyline missions to get flying in Draenor, and the Arakkoa quests are part of that.

I didn't like having to side with the shitty grounders. Since they breed true apparently that means that eventually they're all going to lose their wings and flying is literally the coolest fucking shit.

Since Iskar (the cross-dressing, cross-species guy from Talador) gets his wings back through fel there's presumably also other magic that can do it. It is a curse after all.

Yeah but fel is the absolute worst news. That's not to say it might not be possible through other means, just that it's not a sure bet and the only thing we know works isn't worth messing with.

Sure. I'm just saying it might be doable through ways that don't involve drinking the kool-aid. Blood elf addiction could be cured, for example, and they also almost got tricked into fel slavery.

Which threat against Azeroth do you feel make the world the most desperate? What threat was it that collectively pushed the people's back against the wall with dread and despair? What was Azeroth's darkest and most dire threat to the world?