Warcraft Lore and RPG Discussion

He has been non-canon for a while now afaik.

Where can I find more maps of the world that are of Kuusinen level of quality and detail?

(pic related)

Proposed fixes/headcanon (from a ttrpg perspective):

- Forsaken are neutral, no faction affiliation. They are rotting zombies, which should already be enough; they are an abomination to the light, that works on them like fire (so basically it's a no by the Alliance), and they are a conceptual abomination for nature itself, being something dead but also alive (which is another no by tauren's nature based culture and also orcish shamanistic religion). Also, among them there are the corpses of Lordaeronians that died in the 2nd war against the orcs, so I doubt that brought back to life they would love to be part of the Thrall Club of Friends.
- Nelves are also neutral. I doubt that they would be trusting races like the dwarves and gnomes given their love of fire and technology, or the humans with their liberal use of the arcane arts, and they can't be friendly with the orcs even, due to what happened in Ashenvale after the orcs landed and started logging there.
- Theramore is neutral, because if it's still Alliance related it would be a prime target for the Horde, being the biggest human port in Kalimdor, and allowing a hypotetical invasion fleet from EK to strike at Orgrimmar in 10-something days after resupplying there. Jaina being her, she made the city a hub for research, international relations, commerce and peace.
- In a world where firearms are widespread, and easily portable like rifles, plate armor and melee weapons survive because armor is made of a much harder and lighter metal than steel, that makes bullets a little less deadly and melee combat the most efficient way of finding gaps in the enemy's armor

Any more ideas?

-Warlocks are illegal and shunned by both the Alliance and the Horde.

-Draenei remain a shamanistic alien species with no relation to the Burning Legion. They also remain monstrous, unless a player really really really wants their space goat waifu

-The Alliance and the Horde are still peaceful and collaborating in fighting the Scourge, the Naga and any potential new threat.

-Varian is shunned by the Alliance due to his warmongering ways and ends up causing Jaina to step up and lead the Alliance.

>Illidan died in his duel with Arthas and now works for the Scourge. This is enough for Azshara to consider the Scourge a threat, so the two main "villainous" factions are also at war with each other

Traveler's out?

awesome

>Nelves are also neutral. I doubt that they would be trusting races like the dwarves and gnomes given their love of fire and technology, or the humans with their liberal use of the arcane arts, and they can't be friendly with the orcs even, due to what happened in Ashenvale after the orcs landed and started logging there.

Looks like someone didnt play Warcraft 3. Night elves were supposed to be a deconstruction of the whole hidden elf village shit, when they realized hiding away from their problems doesnt solve shit so they swallowed their pride and went out to change the world, a sleeping empire awakening.

> Theramore is neutral, because if it's still Alliance related it would be a prime target for the Horde, being the biggest human port in Kalimdor, and allowing a hypotetical invasion fleet from EK to strike at Orgrimmar in 10-something days after resupplying there. Jaina being her, she made the city a hub for research, international relations, commerce and peace.

Theramore was always neutral, just because you dont fire on horde ships on sight it doesnt mean you cant be alliance.

Even then, night elves joining the Alliance rather than remaining an independent empire of their own was kind of an asspull to have them be playable in WoW while still keeping the number of factions down to two (same with Forsaken joining the Horde). They don't really have any political ties to the Alliance, whose members mostly live on an entirely diffrent continent (Theramor being the only major humna settlement on Kalimdor) and with who they would have a lot of ideological differences (nigh elves are very reverent of nature, so dwarven industry would be an affront to them, and they despise arcane magic, which humans, gnomes, and high elves all use). They'd actually have more ties with the Horde (tauren and night elves have both been living on Kalimdor for thousands of years, even if they generally lived in different places and only overlap in a few areas, and druidic magic is quite close to shamanistic magic in many ways), but Grom having his chimpout and killing Cenarius is likely to put a dampen on them developing very close relationship.

>Even then, night elves joining the Alliance rather than remaining an independent empire of their own was kind of an asspull

No it wasnt, all the factions were allied at the and of WC3. If not the nigger moment of warsong and Thrall going easy on them because he idolized Grom the entire Horde could be literally part of the Alliance instead of red vs blue.

>same with Forsaken joining the Horde)

True, that was an asspull of epic proportions. Especially with the fucking dreadlord hanging out in undercity.

>They don't really have any political ties to the Alliance, whose members mostly live on an entirely diffrent continent

That was pretty much the point. So they could have ties to the other continent. Conflicts are global now, isolationism doesnt work when they summon the legion on the other half of the world anyway.

>nigh elves are very reverent of nature, so dwarven industry would be an affront to them, and they despise arcane magic, which humans, gnomes, and high elves all use)

And everyone keeps forgetting how they arent screaming, flanderized fanatics about it. Realpolitik came first, you want strong allies with steam tanks and war wizards more than upholding your obsolete beliefs. Especially when the scourge, the undead, the naga, the horde, the quiraji and all the other shit is threatening you.

Also, the whole tauren and druidic magic thing is a retcon of epic proportions that everyone just forgot about. In fact, pretty much everything about druids was completely retconned from WC3 to WoW to make them playable instead of a small cult of exclusively night elf males who have been sleeping for thousands of years.

Faction system should have revolved around individual city states y/n ?

Instead of lumping all playable races into a red vs. Blu cold war, all races should have been able to go a route where they could become exalted members of any other faction. Naturally, certain rces have it easier to become part of a faction, such as Darkspear joining the Horde or Dwarves joining the Alliance.

But just imagine the awesome clusterfuck when a bunch of Orcs decide they want to make amends to sentinels and farm rep by killing their own people until they get some purple pussy or humans seceding from the Alliance and joining Forsaken a.k.a. Undead ISIS in order to escape established monarchy.

>Looks like someone didnt play Warcraft 3
I played them all since wc1, thank you

>deconstruction of the whole hidden elf village shit
I might appreciate that, but this still is in conflict with the arcane magic used by humans - and gnomes - and the industrial powerhouse that is dwarves and gnomes combined VS the complete ban over arcane magic and a whole civilization living along with nature without exploiting natural resources.
Also, I am sure that the extreme conservativeness stemming from immortality and isolationism will outright clash with dynamism and progress that EK races are bringing to the table. At the very least, there would have been deep tensions, Nelves would have faced civil war between Staghelm and Tyrande. None of that happened.
Instead, a whole race of ex immortals converted to the good use of technology and progress, even without an external threat given that Archimonde had just been defeated.

>Theramore was always neutral, just because you dont fire on horde ships on sight it doesnt mean you cant be alliance
The Alliance is a military agreement first and foremost. You don't need to fire on horde ships, you just need to give logistical support to the army if the Alliance asks you to. Eg: an hypotetical invasion fleet coming from the east.
Needless to say, this obligation is a very heavy one on Jaina's plans of peaceful cohabitation. It just makes more sense for Theramore whole to not be inside the Alliance, not just "not belligerant".

>Alliance should have been this huge, loosely allied juggernaut, armies, fortresses, barracks errywhere, but constantly struggling with game of thrones tier internal dissent, uprisings, ambitious nobles plotting and cultural differences

>horde is a vastly outnumbered and outgunned shamanistic band of brothers stuggling to survive in a harsh world

>forsaken are nominal allies of the horde, but you have to do huge feats to actually get accepted and actually let into horde villages

>several orcish clans available to join as orcs are trying to revive their pre-horde culture. maybe you want to be a warsong warmonger yearning back for the good old days or a peaceful shaman actually trying to mend fences with the alliance and atone for your bloodlust and wars

>entire continuum of faction-related, faction-friendly and faction-accepted minor factions, befriending them could being actual gameplay benefits and stuff

I'd dig it, the roleplaying aspects of vanilla like unique priest spells based on race were the shit.

When the alternative is extinction its sensible to just swallow your elven pride and put up with the people willing to fight along you and bring all their toys. Its also easier to make decisions like that when your faction leader is a warlord who rules by literal divine mandate. What Tyrande says what Tyrande gets.

Also, the whole reason of the arcane magic ban was to prevent attracting demon attention and another Legion invasion which quite obviously failed. There was an entire city of wizards on the other contient, you can either ally them or try to genocide them to uphold the ban. There was also a great deal of butthurt about the loss of immortality too, but that was all Malfurions making.

Jaina killed her father and king to help the horde. I think that would be enough guarantee that the Alliance wont use Theramore as an invasion staging point.

If you go with that Canon then the Dark Portal wouldn't be open since Illidan never went to Outland, so why bother with a Draenei re-retcon?

This.... Druidism on Horde was too stupid.

We should had Paladin and Druid as Alliance exclusive and Shaman and Shadow Hunter as Horde exclusive instead of the nonsense Horde Priests and their light spells.

Ironically the Shaman vs Paladin thing was a epic fail at that time.

> its sensible to just swallow your elven pride and put up with the people willing to fight along you and bring all their toys

It's sensible indeed, I agree with you. I am not betting on all of the Nelves to be sensible though, and Staghelm must have at least some kind of following to outright state "Tyrande has no idea how to lead our people", I presume.

>arcane magic ban
Well, Medivh was a human and a mage, the elected best of them too, and he was the reason of all the shit that happened after that in Azeroth.
I guess if Nelves wanted to be the World Arcane Police they shouldn't have remained isolationists, so I gather that they were ok to just be free from arcane magic users themselves.
They did the same with the Helves: they didn't genocide them, just exiled.
So either I'm missing something or this is another of the thousand plot holes blizzard has in its lore.

> I think that would be enough guarantee that the Alliance wont use Theramore as an invasion staging point
That's another reason for Jaina and Theramore not to be in the Alliance in the first place. Even more so after killing the leader of a member nation, AND her father. That would be like, I don't know, Germany going at Belgium throat again in the 70s

why are human mages more powerful than elven ones?

Because Blizz creative department is like a first time DM, who already had some storytelling talent in the first place, but is better suited as a novelist than a worldbuilder or a DM.

Ie: the "good guy" protagonists are the humans here, elves are counterparts like the other races.

> Muh Alliance juggernaut

Nah.. Without a strong Horde or enemy it should be no reason for the Dwarves and Gnomes to mess directly on human affairs.

And humans were were still jobing on Westfall and every whatevershire.. people complain about Garrosh Horde infrastructure but Alliance had asspulls too.

It is just stupid to think that Bolvar would let the entire kingdom suck instead of just pulling all that massive force that we saw on wrath and cataclysm.

Elves are mutated trolls are evolved apes or some shit and therefore super sensitive to magic.

Humans are evolved Vrykul who are in turn fleshy titanforged who are metal people optimised by star faring gods to fight cthulhu starmonsters, so they're naturally conductive.

Elves are more in harmony with magic, but humans canchannel it harder.

Reminder that Onyxia's pussy game was so good it made Bolvar retarded.

Bolvar did anything on Vanilla or even on novels or another game? He had that quest to reveal Onyxia and what more?

Varian and the player base loved him but the only thing you may notice is that he was a shit leader and nothing else.... Then Varian started a world war because of him, he overcome the torture that no other could, become the lich King and wtf?

Well yeah, they simmered a lot and managed to force through the creation of Teldrassil but otherwise I dont think it was even possible for them to achieve anything. Again, warlord with divine mandate and her husbando as the archdruid. Even the second in command was her close personal friend for 10k years. There isnt anything dissenters could do, except complain about it on night elf /pol/.

When they finally got their shit together and tried to get off a plot in cata they all got killed off right away.

>That's another reason for Jaina and Theramore not to be in the Alliance in the first place. Even more so after killing the leader of a member nation, AND her father. That would be like, I don't know, Germany going at Belgium throat again in the 70s

I'm pretty mad how no one ever brought this up, or she never angsts over it. This would be a pretty fucking heinous crime. The time when she TPd Varian out of UC when he was about to kill Thrall also never gets brought up, But when she tries to retaliate to a WMD with a WMD its EEEEEVIL and she needs to get talked out about it by her sentient dragon dildo.

>vanilla
>defias uprising, we sadly put it out too quick and waste one of the best human plotlines, westfall is an abandoned shithole
>the alliance cant spare troops to help out its core production region with farms, mines and lumbermills but can afford to crusade to jungle and lava shitholes

>wotlk
>apparently westfall got its shit together so well they can afford to raise a milita and send it to northrend to campaign

>cata
>for some unearthly reason the war caused unemployment theres a fuckton of hobos milling around, instead of getting drafted and working mines and lumbermills or whatever
>defias boogaloo 2.0 with miss no pants
>CSI references out of the ass
>better go and fight in random shitholes and alternate dimensions again
>to add insult to injury the plotline never gets resolved and Sentinel Hill forever gets besieged by gnolls

>Again, warlord with divine mandate and her husbando as the archdruid.

This seems the most forced plot point ever to me. I mean, on one hand we missed a great opportunity for conflict, and on the other hand, if the Nelf aristocracy is literally that enlightened, why are they in a faction even, instead of acting like an impartial beacon of what really must be done for the safety of the planet?

They do have druids in the horde too, and it even made more sense for the Nelves to be buddies with Taurens that they already know, instead of steely soldiers of various heights from across the ocean. And arcane mages, that too.

Because Orcs are dickshits who kept trying to cut down Night Elf sacred forest.

Who is that?

I swear given the dialogue from the Ogre saying he wants to join the horde right before the first Legion quest I think we might get them and Nagas next expac.

Or you're just trying to shoehorn in needless conflict where none exists and none should exist, They are not retarded hippies ranting about industry and mages when those are blindingly obviously useful aganist the Legion, their mortal enemy.

They had nothing common with the tauren druids either, they barely communicated, had differing mythologies, worshipped different ancients and the like. The Cenarion Circle as an active organization was founded in vanilla times.

IS the tabletop RPG any good? If so anyone have links?

Its your regular D&D quite serviceable. I just love the part though when they statted some insane shit like the Lich King, the titans and Elune to fight and their relics as weapons. You could actually use the +5 sword Frostmourne and wear the Helm of Damnation amongst others.

Lei Shen, the most underrated and underused character Blizzard ever created

>I ONLY SOUGHT TO FINISH...THE WORK..OF THE GODS...

if the tol'vir hadn't stabbed him in the back then the War of the Ancients would have never happened as the Mogu Empire would stretch across Azeroth preventing the elves from gaining power

Lei Shen did literally nothing wrong

twitter.com/DaveKosak/status/759552173579591680

Horde can have Ogres and Alliance should get Arakkoa.

>Arthas
>smart
No, Ner'zhul would have won the with an army. Arthas would have charged into yet another a blatant trap like the retard he was.

pretty much this.
Metzen for better or worse loved the universe he helped create.

the last time I saw his twitter, he was responding to hordies who were sad that tyrande was yelling at them.

>sad

Try more like pissed off. Nobody minded helping the frigid cunt out, but it's bullshit that in beta got to talk shit to Horde players while they fucking help her and didn't even have an option to shut her shit down like Alliance players had with Vol'jin in 5.3.

So fuck off.

What are you so mad about, hordebaby?

To be fair, I can understand that.

>ywn impregnate Onyxia and restore the black dragonflight's numbers

Horde players should get the option to let Val'sharah fucking burn

Fuck Druids, they're all Alliance double agents anyway

It would be acceptable under condition that you can play corrupted Arakkoa and Two-Headed Ogres as specific classes.

And with Tanaris being updated to have Capital-sized Gadgetzan.

Troll Druid is my main, mon.

>vol'jin
the patch where all the alliance did was play robocat?

So which out of Onyxia, Neferian and Sabellion was the eldest?

I thought it was Neferian, but in WC2 you get the impression that Sabellion is Deathwing's go to guy, or dragon. So would that mean that he is in fact the eldest, and he has that position because he is the most experienced.

Or did Deathwing know that the other two were somewhat deficient in some way and Sabellion was number two because he was more capable than the other two and age had nothing to do with it? or was it simply a case of he had 3 children and he simply split the tasks up regardless of their personalities and talents?

It doesn't help that they consider half of the freaking continent as "sacred forest"

well no shit sherlock. it's their fucking continent.

Why do you have Metzen's face instead of Kosak on Garrosh?

I feel like putting Metzen's face on Thrall and Kosak's face on Garrosh would work better

Why would warlocks be illegal? They're the first line of defense against a demonic incursion, because no one recognizes the dangers of demonic power more so than those who use it.

The warlocks of the orcs, humans and gnomes should be those races equivalents to the night elf demon hunters. Potentially dangerous, but it's still far better to have them around than not

Why not? trade partners don't need a common enemy to mess with each others internal affairs

They really aren't, they're just suicidal

The plan to get 100 mages working together to cast one gigantic flamestrike was insanity, elves wouldn't do it because they're not crazy enough to try

Only the important ones like Jaina and Khadgar are. I'd say it goes something like
1. Genius Elven mages
2. Genius Human mages
3. Average Elven mages
4. Average Human mages
I'd also say that there are more Elven spellcasters due to their affinity for it, but it's a bit debatable seeing as humans have a larger population to pull from.

>>to add insult to injury the plotline never gets resolved and Sentinel Hill forever gets besieged by gnolls
you mean burning.

Elisande can stop time,Azshara is in a tier of her own and Kael'Thas could bend gravity.

The only human on their level is the Guardian(Medivh/Alodi/Aegwyn).

>Elisande can stop time
I must have missed something because I don't remember that at all.

Yeah. It's like they've lived there for over 10,000 years or something.

latest patch.
although that has probably more to do with the amount of experience that the elves have, since they live for so long.

The Night Elves were shoehorned into the Alliance. It doesn't help they keep forgettingthe Alliance is an alliance instead of a kingdom ruled by the Wrynns. Anyway :

> The High Elves are gone from the East by WoW. All the leftovers went Blood Elf. They're not in the Alliance or Horde and don't ever get another Sunwell.
> Arthas is just a piece of the Lich King.
>The Forsaken aren't a playable Scourge and instead are a country of rebels who aren't ridiculously hostile to the Alliance.
> Faction War never happens.
> Pandaria is found by exploring.
> The Old Gods are portrayed as less as yet another gang who's out to blow up Azeroth and instead a collection of creatures who have their places in Azeroth.

Just don't have races locked to factions.

Both the Alliance and Horde are ridiculously strong for all the carnage that's happened.

Kosak's tweet clashes with how Arthas is shown in Lore outside of WotLK. He's shown to be skilled at 1-on-one combat and leading his troops from the front. But not as a master planner of campaigns.

Don't forget Dindu.

Tbh if they had to include faction conflict they should had made Alliance&Horde into something like NATO (with Night Elves/Orcs being the USAs) instead of monolithic power block ruled over by a warchief/blue warchief.

I guess I just haven't gotten to it yet. The last thing I did was save Vanthir and give him the fruit.

>But not as a master planner of campaigns.
I'm 99% sure Kosak is hung up on Arthas' master plan to lead the players to icecrown then turn them into his pawns. He probably thinks Arthas is a fucking genius.

...

>the guy with a soul sucking sword will lose in a one on one fight
>the army of magical statues will lose to an army of undead
fucking Kosak

As if the overlord-minded Mogu would fight by their own strength alone.

These are the dudes who enslaved all of Pandaria, mind you, famous for their penchant for using slave races (those not Mogu) for everything they deemed beneath them, including as fodder, vanguard, flank, rear, and ass every time their masters wanted.

I say to restrict the Alliance to Stormwind, Kul'tiras, and Ironforge. Other Eastern lands are either dead or not in it. Theramore burned its bridges to the East after Proudmoore's death.

The Night Elves are allied with Theramore and trade with Eastern traders who reach them. But are not in the Alliance.

WotLK was out of character for Arthas. Among other things, he wouldn't go around trying some silly plan to recruit the players instead of riding around and messing them up.

In general it comes down elves would be way too fucking powerful if you accounted for age.

The above huge elven mages aside basically every fucking 1000 year old elf who has been studying magic for fucking centuries should blow every single human mage out of the water but that's not as fun so most elves are handicapped to be on equal footing as everyone else.

In an ideal world Onxyia would have fucked Anduin and we would have had a decade of hot /ss/ with Anduin's light powered wang purifying her of being a cunt and producing superior not shit dragon whelps.

>implying it's not rightful troll land

>evokved
De-evolved.
Curse of flesh worst day of my life

Or it turns out there is only so much you can learn or practice and raw talent, drive and ambition can count more. Humans have a far bigger pool for prodigies and they have a scant few decades to make something of themselves so they are going to try fucking hard.

That would still make it legit, case night elves are troll successors themselves.

>take a shit
>bunch of shit trolls appear and start to bitch how your freshly squeezed out turd is muh ancient troll lands

Fucking trolls.

>That would still make it legit, case night elves are troll successors themselves.

>the chinese have a legitimate claim on africa because their ancestors came from africa a long time ago

That's what you sound like. Newsflash: it doesn't work like that.

They were mutated from trolls but they are trolls no longer and they actively warred against the trolls. They aren't successors. They're usurpers.

Trolls lived in those forests before elves considered them sacred and the elves drove the trolls out of them.

All of Azeroth is rightful troll land. Elves have no claim.

>Just don't have races locked to factions.
Basically what I said, but more lame.

By that logic the trolls can fuck off from all the rightful Black Empire land.

Well Azeroth is rightful Old God clay and Titans and their creations should fuck off.

The trolls living in Night Elf lands developed into Night Elves, so Zandalari and the rest wanting clay are like africans trying to claim china because the ancestors of chinese came from africa.

I don't want my Titan to have an Old God infection

Because a gaping second anus that leaks arcane shit is much more preferable to little bit of tentacles and void lord loyalty.

Actually, Black Empire usurped the rightful lands of the Elemental Lords. Elementals ruled before the Old Gods or Titans arrived.

Not entirely accurate, because the night elves expanded beyond the lands originally inhabited by the dark trolls (which were few and small in size) and drove out trolls who lived in lands that the night elves conquered.

Honestly, I've got no problem with Right of Conquest. I only hate it when there's a double standard and hypocrites apply it to humans and elves but scream bloody murder if someone applies it to orcs, undead, or trolls.

Existence is rightful Elemental clay, gas the Void, primordial force war now.

Cause its always a shallow excuse that shows up in general hordefaggotry.

>b-b-but they need lumber so its okay to invade the elves!

RvB turned everything into shallow faction fanboyism tho, especially after vanilla.

If you could play a campaign in any Warcraft setting, what would it be?

Demon-serving bloodlusted human armies invading a world of peaceful shamanistic orcs

>mfw no good onyxia porn
>mfw no onyxia smut
People have no taste

a band of Scourge bros traveling the earth doing the Lich King's bidding

There would probably be an effective upper limit to arcane power. We see the same for fel (too much and you just melt) and they're opposites on the power chart. You might even be able to say the same for Light and Shadow, but nobody has really pushed it that hard other than Shadow Priests, and they conk out thanks to the madness before reaching any shadow limits

Black Empire crusades against the elements could be fun
Or a pre-Burning Legion orc tribal campaign on Draenor

And? The elves didn't NEED all the land they conquered, so why does that make it okay for them? If it isn't okay for the orcs to conquer, then it isn't okay for the elves or the humans.

Either you're on board with Right of Conquest or you aren't. Just don't be a hypocrite about it.