Warcraft Lore and RPG Discussion

if Blizzard made MoP but included a different race as the good guys instead of Pandaren, everyone would think it was great lorewise, but the kung fu panda memes ruined it

the pandaren wouldn't be a problem if blizzard didn't make it into a meme caricature of china and push heavy handed peacenik bullshit in a game that is designed around faction conflict

>notChina is a glorious land of peace ruled by angels and wise leader
>foreigners ruin everything
>notChinese teach them philosophy and why holding hands and singing kumbayah is nice in a setting which has literal demons from hell trying to destroy the world.

Pretty much, yes. It's actually genuinely good storywise for the most part. The standard problem of flimsy justification for Team Red vs Blue fighting still persists, though, and Siege of Orgrimmar has a really weak ending because any actual ending would upset the status quo (which makes me question why they though making SoO was a good idea, as they must've known they couldn't give it a satisfactory ending), but most of the storyline is good and the new lore is nice. It helps that most of it is focused on stuff that hasn't been seen before, so there's less chanse of making pointless retcons or butchering existing characters.

Draenei retcon was probably an improvement overall, even if I wish they'd have handled it differently. The new draenei are pretty cool, and have lots more story potential than them being just another primitive race on Draenor that got their asses kicked by the orc. Plus, they have the best waifus.

But I wish they'd have kept the old draenei as their own thing and introduced the new draenei as a different race. There's also the part where Blizz forgot the original fluff for Sargeras had the eredar and dreadlords corrupting him instead of him corrupting the eredar, but that ultimately doesn't have a huge effect on the setting, and I actually preferred the newer version (where it wasn't a specifc group of demons who turned him evil with lolcorruption, but him fighting demons and other abomination for so long that he had a breakdown and decided that the universe must be flawed for so much evil to exist, and the only solution was the wipe the table clean and start from scratch).

Is there some kind of 4e warcraft supplement out there?

>notChinese teach them philosophy and why holding hands and singing kumbayah is nice in a setting which has literal demons from hell trying to destroy the world.
Tbh that's exactly why they SHOULD hold hands and sing kumbayah. When there's a literal legion of demons from hell seeking to burn the entire world, wasting time and lives on petty squabbles between Red and Blue instead of joining forces to fight the guys who want to kill you both, along with everything else in the universe, is just stupid.

Just tired memes about WoW Edition.

that could still happen. I want really want jaina & kt to team up. Shes been scorned by dalaran and hes got a free schedual. Its what arthas would have wanted

Seriously. Alliance should get Jinyu and Horde should get Hozen.
And with WoW, they could have added something like Arakkoa to the Alliance and Ogres to the Horde.
I like the idea that someone proposed in an old thread that the Arakkoa, for their physical classes, be the tall, pre-curse Arakkoa and the casters would be the hunched, cursed Arakkoa.
And physical class Ogres would have one head, casters would get two.
It's not perfectly aligned with the lore, but I do like the idea of classes having some physical distinction for some races.

>There's also the part where Blizz forgot the original fluff for Sargeras had the eredar and dreadlords corrupting him instead of him corrupting the eredar,
honestly, I always thought it made more sense if the annihilan and nathrezim were the ones that drove Sargeras insane instead of the eredar. It's just seems more their style, Archimonde wouldn't corrupt Sargeras, he'd just fucking kill him, he ain't got time for sneaking and planning and fag shit like that

Jaina's dragon boyfriend has access to the Nexus. All the magical power of Azeroth flows through there. And when you fight Malygos, he claims that there's enough power there to destroy the entire planet ten times over.
Imagine Jaina getting her hands on that sort of power.

The Eredar were mentioned as just so sadistically cruel that they, along with the Nathrezim, were what drove Sargeras over the edge of sanity to the point that he decided that all of creation was salvageable and it needed to be burned to the ground and started over.
Not necessarily "corrupting" him, just were the final straw that broke his camel's back of sanity/

>ringlet hair

Patrician as fuck, I do declare.

That has more to do with Archimonde being a mongoloid. Corruption is the premier modus operandi of KJ on the other hand.

Yeah that was the joke

I don't think it was a small remnant.
It was the veterans of probably the most powerful human nation.

>so sadistically cruel
which is why changing the eredar for the pit lords makes sense post retcon. The pit lords are brutally cunning and the dreadlords are cunningly brutal, Sargeras eventually got tired of fixing their shit and decided that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em

Ya got it mixed up, doc. Pit lords are cunningly brutal, and nathrezim are brutally cunning.

And Sargeras did fix their shit by locking them away in Mardun, but decided he hated the Void Lords even more and became Mega-Arthas.

>Hozen
Hozen are lame as fuck, though. They're barely a race, and more like just talking monkeys. At least the Pandaren have some distinction from just being pandas, like being bipedal and having a distinct culture and architecture.

And although I am totally up for Arakkoa for Alliance, not every expansion needs to introduce new races. Besides, one of the few good things from WoD was the development of Draenei culture and society. Introducing the Arakkoa as playable would likely reduced that.

Arakkoa were pretty damned awesome in WoD, though, and I could see a reasonable excuse for then appearing in the future is the discovery that the Spires of Arakk survived Draenor's destruction and exists as a shard like Outland.

Think you got pitlords and dreadlords mixed up. Dreadlords are clearly the brutally cunning ones (their whole MO is manipulating everybody from the shadows), while pitlords are cunningly brural (they smash you in the face, really hard).

>more like just talking monkeys
So... typical Horde players.

Natherzim are cunning.
Pit lords are brutal.
To the Eredar they were second rate.

>Arakkoa were pretty damned awesome in WoD, though, and I could see a reasonable excuse for then appearing in the future is the discovery that the Spires of Arakk survived Draenor's destruction and exists as a shard like Outland.
That, and the fact that it's hinted that the reason the Apexis (the super-advanced Arakkoa civilization that originally built all the robots and sun-lasers thousands of years ago; the High Arakkoa just unearthed and copied their designs) disappearred was because they built a spaceship and fuck off to space. They might still be out there, cruising around on spaceborn "sky-palaces" armed with batteries of grossly incandescent turbolasers.

Why are you talking about what should be in future world of warcraft expansions?

>Hozen are lame as fuck, though. They're barely a race, and more like just talking monkeys.
getting to genocide those shitters was the best part of playing an Alliance character in Pandaria. The jinyu were cool though

Why are they so perfect?

the naaru secretly selected the hottest eredar women for the Genedar so repopulating their race would be easier.

Wait. You get to genocide a entire race when playing alliance in Mop? Danm.

Well. I wouldn't go so far as perfect. But i do like their accent.

>implying Jaina would ever go crazy

>Implying Jaina isn't already kind of crazy.

Did you see those QTs in the warcraft movie?

I didn't hate the movie, I thought it was okay.

>implying she's not already

>implying I would give money

there was draenei in the movie?

every time there's a Hozen village you get a quest to slaughter them. It's not total genocide, but it's close enough for someone who had to suffer through them leveling a Horde character

that scene did a great job of setting up Gul'dan to be the best part of the movie

I'd like to see Duncan Jones' director's cut. He had to trim over 40 minutes out to get the studio to approve it for theaters.
Briefly. Before they all die. The movie does kinda gloss over that those were the last draenei on the planet after the Orcs just got done genociding the fuck out of them.
One nice touch was that Gul'dan's spike skulls were changed to draenei skulls.
Despite a few changes from the old lore, Gul'dan was probably the best part of the movie.

At the start, when the Horde is on Draenor. In cages.

Ah. Well fair enough. I was personally mostly fine with them. Not my first choice for a new playable race.

WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY OGRE'S!

Yes. And i kind of expect Gul Dan to be even better in the inevitable Warcraft 2 movie.

I thought it was watchable, and I enjoyed it. I certainly think it could have done with more backstory on some of the characters, and have Grom Hellscream be a background character with no lines was a weird choice.

It wasn't an earth shatteringly good movie, but it also wasn't the worst movie ever made. It was fairly average.

>Tall
>Posture that emphacises the ass
>Sexy accent
>Exotic look and skin color
>Built-in handlebars
>/waggle
>Kind and compassionate
>Loyal, dutyful and devoted
>Highly intelligent and adept in both arcane and holy magic

Draenei women are without doubt the best waifus. They've got pretty much all traits I'd value in a girl, and are also blue semen-demons.

I went into it expecting to absolutely loathe it.
I left feeling rather "meh."
There were a lot of nice touches for fans to notice. Like Medivh's manservant, Moroes being present.
Grom and Kargath are both present, but just in the background with no lines or dialogue acknowledging them.
And how the final fight was like an actual boss fight with the warrior taunting and the mage kiting the add to a specific point while the main boss undergoes multiple phases.
The Orcs were the ones I was really afraid of how they were going to be handled. I fully expected them to be turned into complete "dindu nuffin" good boys. They weren't. They really had the feel of the noble savage character that Warcraft 3 had given them and didn't skimp on the savage part.

>The Orcs were the ones I was really afraid of how they were going to be handled
I think this was how most people felt. but they ended up being the best part of the movie

There might still be some hiding out somewhere, like in the MU. Orcs thought they killed them all, but some survived by hiding in Zangarmarsh and other places.

Gul'dan was definitely the best part of the movie. He was as much of a colossal asshole as he should. I kind of wish they'd have him do the speech he does in WoD when he has Kilrogg drink demonblood ("You...Will be a scourge of a hundred worlds...The might...of a Legion!) Could've easily fit that to when he's supposed to be showing the other orcs the power of fel magic. And would've served as a little nod to the Legion being around (despite not really mentioned in the movie; Mediev is still possessed but in the movie you don't learn it was by Sargeras, or that the Legion is a thing).

Yeah, it's difficult to introduce people to a fantasy setting with a villainous race, but that they're not all bad and make us care about them as individuals.
Fantasy generally has to keep it simple for the stupids, even for established settings.

That's called "retaliation". When people under your command betray you and help those who have destroyed your city, you tend to get a little bit upset.

Yeah, the only mention of the Legion at all is Garona telling Lothar or Khadgar that Gul'dan was communicating with someone he called a demon.
They did kinda skimp over the whole demon blood thing and just have Guldy waggle his fingers to give the "gift of the fel" to orcs like Blackhand.
That was a little disappointing.

>("You...Will be a scourge of a hundred worlds...The might...of a Legion!)
too bad Kilrogg isn't demony enough to come back in Legion

>The Orcs were the ones I was really afraid of how they were going to be handled. I fully expected them to be turned into complete "dindu nuffin" good boys. They weren't. They really had the feel of the noble savage character that Warcraft 3 had given them and didn't skimp on the savage part.

I think Duncan and blizzard were wrong with trying to go with "it's not good vs evil, it's 50/50".
Invading people who haven't done anything wrong is not 50/50.
It didn't appear 50/50 though like they wanted, at least not to me, so it was a little better than I expected imo.
The orcs seemed like evil assholes you should defeat and if all of them die while you're defending your lands it isn't so bad.
There were some decent softer characteristics they managed to portray though.
Even super evil Gul Dan had a moment with how he appears like an elder medicine man for Drakka while saving Thrall. Sure he does things for so he stays in power, but it was still a good deed.
Durotan seemed conflicted, wanted to end things, but he's from a society where war solves everything. He seemed kinda hopeless while saying that, frustrated probably with how he sees no easy answer.
The orcs trying to move away from Gul Dan after he cheats, Orgrim calling him out on his bs, the orcs ignoring him after Lothar defeated blackhand.
Were all nice.

Shame they fucked up the size so I can't take a fight between even a fully armored human and an orc seriously.
It's a World of Warcraft movie with modern blizzard sensibilities set during the time of the first war rather than an Orcs vs Human movie sadly.

The character relationships and the events in this one makes it harder to make a second war movie work.

>Shame they fucked up the size so I can't take a fight between even a fully armored human and an orc seriously
It gave them an excuse to give the humans guns and have the /pol/tards of /tv/ calling it "redpilled" because it shows glorious white man saving his womenfolk from evil, brown-skinned savages using the glorious firearm to even the playing field despite the physical strength disparity.

>It gave them an excuse to give the humans guns
Yup, and guns in the first war is one of my issues with the movie.

At least they gave credit to the dwarves, who provided the cannons in the Second War.
And showed that, while Stormwind was in good standing to call a meeting of different races, they weren't the full Alliance yet, and so everyone walked out and left Stormwind to its fate.
Though they're going to have to come up with new lore showing Stormwind being sacked and Lothar leading the refugees to Lordaeron.
Maybe the second movie will be Warcraft's Empire Strike Back.
But then, we'd still need a third movie to begin the Second War. And THAT's a lot of ground to cover.

>Though they're going to have to come up with new lore showing Stormwind being sacked and Lothar leading the refugees to Lordaeron.
I hope they go with the real lore and have Cho'gall and Kilrogg lead the attack

Yeah, I forgot to mention Gul'dan being in a coma because he was trying to rip the location of Sargeras' tomb from Medivh's mind when Lothar and Khadgar killed him.

The excessive size difference between the humans and orcs was pretty ridiculous. I was a little disappointed in the movie with how it was well-established that the humans shouldn't take them with brute force, something Lothar even points out, and then one of the scenes following that being their stealth mission where they ditched the armor. When I saw that I thought, "Oh, neat, they're changing tactics and focusing on dexterity over strength." And then all of the fight scenes after that had them back in full plate and fighting the orcs head-on.

That's why I was pretty okay with the guns in the last battle; it finally showed the humans changing tactics against the orcs.

Did you pay any attention to the Pandaria lore? The entire reason Pandaren preach peace so strongly is that feeling negative emotions too strongly in Pandaria causes Sha to bust out of your asshole and kill everything.

The Warcraft and World of Warcraft RPG books use 3.x, funnily enough.

I always felt that the "aesthetic" of healing through shielding allies from damage would fit paladins better than their holy spec

>in a game that is designed around faction conflict
A game that has been designed around faction conflict only since the Kossaklysm.

Unless you were on a PvP server faction conflict was a sideshow and should have remained a sideshow.

Honestly, if that adventure game starring Thrall that never got off the ground had been made the suddenly shift in WarCraft 3 would have been much less dramatic.
That entire game is basically about bridging the gap between 2 and 3 and slowly building up to the reveal that while the orcs are dangerous and tough they aren't pure evil blood-addled lunatics.

Instead it just gets dropped on you as backround lore in WC3 and it's sort of jarring.

Not really that funny or even that surprising.
OGL meant everyone could churn out a crappy game with the lore they desperately wanted the publish but couldn't make a system for using the d20 System completely legally and for no effort.

>"aesthetic"
Blizzard's buzzword of choice is "class fantasy"

That's why I liked Grom more than Thrall in WC3 (also, blademaster being better hero than farseer certainly helped)...showing he's a bloodthirsty asshole fitting with WC2 orcs.

I despise blizzard trying to understand and refine class fantasy.

So much unnecessary pruning. Though at least legion makes earthquake instant cast even if the CD is still way too long and the targeting is manual.

I quit my shaman when they nerfed chain lightning and buffed earthquake, I would rather spam one button than actually cast earthquake.

If Grom wasn't there I wouldn't have bought the transition.
An orc character like him on the new hordes side(most of the time) was really necessary to make it work.

>(also, blademaster being better hero than farseer certainly helped)
Yeah Thrall isn't a very satisfying hero to control. Even buffed up with loads of items on the final map he feels week.

Unlike Arthas in the two first campaigns.

Frostmourne Arthas, chaos grom and Illidan
So good

Humor is derived from 4e being constantly labeled as "WoW tabletop" when the actual WoW tabletop rpg is 3.x

Same here. Outside of editing, slightly wooden acting (understandable) and a few really bad effects I thought it was servicable. My biggest problem remains with the orc design. Whyyy they had to be hulk sized confounds me. When iirc their ingame midle is shorter than the humans?

Slightly taller and much, much broader.
Yeah, the movie kinda made them a bit too big. I would have been fine if they made the green orcs huge and the regular orcs the "canon" size, to show the allure of accepting the Fel.

Worst thing Blizzard did in WoD was removing warlock's Glyph of Demon Hunting in preparation of their newest cashgrab scheme... I mean, new class in Legion.

I miss my tanky warlock

The issue is that hollywood just does not have cartoonishly massive men.

In fact they're like 80% manlet and even their largest actors are not warcraft-human sized.

Yes. It was always shock after OP Frostmourne paladin Arthas (seriously, he could easily solo the whole map... I did it a week ago) to shitty deathknight Arthas at the start of undead campaign.

I wish there was playable dreadlord in RoC Scourge campaign...really, they were the only faction without all their skirmish/MP heroes playable.

And I loved playing Sylvanas in TFT. No offence to Anub'arak, but I'd prefered Dark Ranger as a new undead hero instead of giant bug.

That's the thing, Warcraft (and WoW) RPGs were Warcraft inspired by 3.x D&D. 4e D&D was RPG inspired by WoW

I'd ask for a citation, but I already know your main source is the inside of your ass.

>Humans having guns in the first war

Well, I SUPPOSE to be honest it makes sense that given Warcraft's technology they'd be using rifled muskets instead of the crossbow spam like they did in the actual WCI (cause you know; muskets are a lot cheaper than crossbows) but it still feels like they just weren't paying attention to the sheer difference in technology between WCI and WoW, which is pretty huge. The armor style of the footmen isn't even accurate, instead being Third War era plate.

Eh, you could buy her as a mercenary which is nice because it gave every faction a mind control hero that could say, steal a building unit and multi-tech-tree.

And even if it's completely inefficient in an ACTUAL game, multiteching is hilariously good fun if you can get everyone to agree to wait before actually fighting each other.

>(seriously, he could easily solo the whole map... I did it a week ago)
Yeah it is so satisfying.
Everything else on defense and he just goes and mows everything down.
Sure I fall back a bit, but still.
45 seconds of invulnerability, 15 seconds of vulnerability and that chaos damage that turns buildings into butter.

I think Sylvanas had much better missions than Anub'arak did.
I have a soft spot for that geographical area.
Mechanically I'm not sure I prefeer the dark ranger over the crypt lord.

In a casual FFA you can probably pull it off.

Might go for an AI game where I aim to get Dark Ranger+Priestess of the Moon and a Blood Mage.
All flavors of elf unite.

In broodwar I sometimes used zerg pops just for drones in some ffa games when I was playing protoss.
Didn't care to tech the zerg up, but I can free up some psi by using drones instead.

I remember a friend told me he was watching a video where a group of friends banned their best Terran player from going Terran since he always nuke-rushed and blew them all up.

...So he went Protoss and stole a human builder and then nuked them all anyway.

But yeah Multiteching lets you do sill things like experiment with a basic infantry or even worker guy under the effects of ALL the auras fighting against something normally stronger.

Although speaking of the actual units, holy SHIT did the standard Ogre mercenary suck balls.

It was like a worse footman, and in TFT's Rexxar campaign you can I believe only build magi and the basic unit in the final level of the second campaign.

The Ogres in the "Sylvanus gathers a coalition" level were at least buffed so they weren't total shit.

(I also loved that level and want to one-day run a PnP campaign vaguely based on making a multispecies coalition against the scourge without the aid of excessive mind control so players have to diplomance various factions together.)

You talking about the Ogre Warrior? It is sort of odd that they have 300 less health than the Orc Grunt even though they're the same level.

And Sylvanus had the benefit of being able to call on Ogre Maulers, which are closer in strength to unupgraded knights and actually useful.

>(I also loved that level and want to one-day run a PnP campaign vaguely based on making a multispecies coalition against the scourge without the aid of excessive mind control so players have to diplomance various factions together.)
I've been thinking something similar.

but less about fighting the scourge, and more about surviving and helping people in that terrible situation and forming unconventional alliances.
Like forest trolls suck in the eyes of the classic alliance party, but at least they aren't undead.

Yeah the ogres in wc3 were weird, considering what absolute monsters they were in wc2.

I played through the human campaigns in wc2 quite recently, not any of the orc campaigns.
There's one mission you get help from the laughing skull clan in beyond the dark portal though and jesus christ it was a stomp once I hade a bunch of bloodlusted ogre mages.

Yeah she had I think the Ogre T2 as her T1 and the Woundmasters as well, plus War-mages instead of just mages (I forget what the other spell war mages got was, I think it was Slow as a nice counterpoint to Bloodlust but I may be mistaken)

Also things like the Horde and Jaina's alliance slowly trickling back from Kalimdor, the Thorium Brotherhood War-Profiteering but in a way that actually does benefit the living (Because I like Dark Irons and golems make great anti-undead units! Plus they may want to learn about Gargoyles or something)

bloodlust was a monster spell in WC2. Leave it to Blizzard to somehow unbalance a game even when the factions are statistically identical

>Plus they may want to learn about Gargoyles or something)

Nerubian architecture and tech may be valueable to them. A necropolis by itself could be interesting to them.

Ruins of Quel'Thalas and Dalaran also have stuff they could trade with dark irons.

When I was a kid I thought the humans were better.
I mean polymorph is an instant kill for even dragons (though dragons suck) , and healing seemed really good to me at the time. With perfect micro sure it could be amazing, but warcraft 2 is a very fast game where units are made of cardboard.

It was funny to watch a 1vs1 game where a player picked human on youtube though and he won.
Most of those games are just orc vs orc.
His solution to bloodlusted ogres seemed to be to run away with his knights(he ignored the paladin upgrade).
Then when bloodlust was gone he'd engage them.

Then he used mages invisiblity to some effect.

Rexxar have access to stonemaul ogre units, not regular ogres.
Which are WAY more powerful than regular ones.
In fact The ogre line holds the longest without player's help in the final battle.

What signifigant moments in history would you like to personally visit via the Caverns of Time so as to preserve the flow of time?
>Fall of Gnomeregan
>Kael'thas vs. Garithos
>Broxigar wrecks Sargeras
>Kel'thuzad restored in the Sunwell

I guess I'd go back to the time where Knaak is hired for writing blizzard books and stop him.

I seem to recall the regular Ogre Soldier being shit compared to the Tauren or even an Orc Grunt.

something in Pandaria, maybe the rise or death of the Lei Shen