Warcraft/wow rpg

All of the events of the Warcraft 3 campaigns (both the base game and the expansion) happen before WoW.

If we go by the timeline in the WoW RPG book, the Scourge first appear 25 years (year 25) after the orcs come through the portal (year 0). The events of Warcraft 3 (the base game) take place at this time. In year 28, Arthas becomes the Lich King. The present year (assuming the beginning of vanilla WoW is when the book assumes is the present) is year 30. The events of the Burning Crusade take place some time after that.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by Chromatus. The Scourge First invasion somewhat coincides with the formation of the Blood Elves. They're former High Elves who hid in the kingdom of Quel'Thalas and had a swell time fending off trolls, until some radical Lich named KT said that he needed the Sunwell, the source of the High Elves power, to be resurrected. Arthas pretty much burnt Quel'Thalas to the ground and resurrected KT. The High Elves that were left after this followed Kael'Thas (different to KT) and named themselves the Blood Elves, to remember the past. This all happened before the events of the Burning Crusade, by somewhere between 3 and 6 years. The Burning Crusade wasn't actually anything of a sort, there was no Crusade that happened that wasn't already going on. The Burning Legion burn worlds and tried to burn Azeroth but failed again.

During the events of the Burning Crusade expansion, Arthas was sat upon the Frozen Throne and didn't really do anything.

This entire thread is just making me sad about how much WoW fucked the lore of a setting I used to like.

I know right. WC3 had such an amazing story and then WoW ruined it because of gameplay > story to Blizzard.

Fuck I wish I could play the Forsaken in WoW and actually be against everyone cooking up a new plague to unleash on the world.

It's always the fucking same, some world shaking event/threat arrives and then Horde and Alliance work together to kill the super bad guys who were really actually worse than the previously super bad guys.

Everyone wants to play the hero, so Blizzard panders to everyone and the end result is a watered down boring story where nothing ever changes.

What part of the world are you considering starting your players in OP? We can probably help you springboard from there.

Also do you care which faction your players are coming from?

>Played Warcraft since Orcs and Humans RTS.

>1st war happens.
>2nd war is technically a continuation of it now in continuity, taking place shortly after King Lane's death and the Fall of Stormwind.

>2nd war ends, and about 10 years pass or so.
>Warcraft 3 starts. Heirs who grew up during that time have reached adulthood. Arthas is a Paladin in Training. Jaina is a star pupil in Dalaran. Thrall is breaking out of Durnhold and learning what his people lost.

>WC3 happens.
Well that optimism didn't last long.
>After Archimonde is pushed back, Thrall leads his people into the somewhat harsh land central-eastern Kalimdor and calls it Durotar, and establishes the Horde's capital of Orgrimmar. Cairne and co are doing fine two zones over in Mulgore. The Night Elves are trying to recover some of the woodland lost to demonic corruption; they do not succeed as much as they'd like, but Hyjal is less fucked than it was or could have been. On the Eastern Continent, Stormwind is back on its feet after the whole ORCSFUCKINGEVERYWHERE period, which is good because the other major human bastions are either fallen or falling. Lordaeron is an undead bastion, Stromgarde is falling to decay and banditry, Alterac has been fucked since WC2, and Dalaran got curbstomped.

So,
>Arthas, former golden child of Lordaeron got driven crazy by anger, vengeance, and a talking sword that turned out to be the mouthpiece of the Lich King. Good ole Ner'Zhul is in trouble though; pushing the sword out to get it to Arthas fractured the Frozen Throne, so Arty goes on a big adventure to try to save the boss.

Illidan, who it turns out was trying to play the demons for power, acts as a bit of a double-agent and takes a kill-order on Ner'Zhul for going rogue (again). Long story short, he gets the Blood Elves and the Naga (Former night-elves turned sea-snakes) to help try to kill the Lich King.
And fails.

So he runs away to Outland (Formerly Draenor) to build up a fortress and forces to fight off the eventual arrival of the Burning Legion in about a game-and-a-half.

Arthas gets to the Lich King with a little help from his friends, smashes the Frozen Throne, puts on the Lich King's fancy hat and becomes the Lich King, then sits on his ass for another 10 to 15 years as Ner'Zhul, Arthas, and Arthas' inner child fight for supremacy.

In Lordaeron, Sylvanas Windrunner rips a chunk of the undead from under the Lich King's control, purges some demons, kills off more of the native human population and declares that the undead people shes freed from LK are the "Forsaken" rather than scourge.

The High Elves in Silvermoon convert to fel (demon) magic when they can't get their kicks from the corrupted sun-well after KelThuzad fucked it up to summon a demon in WC3, so in honor of the losses they took in failing to protect their home and people from the Scourge, they change their name to the Blood Elves and start being more emo in general.

Stromgarde falls apart entirely and its people are refugees in their own lands, their old castle/town is now owned by whatever gang of thieves have it this week.

Alterac is still a shithole.

Dalaran bubbles itself up for 10 years or so and reduces its interactions with the world by a fuckton.

Gilneas, y'know, that human kingdom that was there in WC2 but suspiciously absent from 3? After the Plague hit Lordaeron hard they walled up and closed the country. Some dumbfuck was doing werewolf things just over the wall though, and it leaked in. Lycanthropic plague of furries came through instead of undeath. They gradually get it under control, develop some alchemical means of keeping people as peopleish even in fuzzy form, but it takes a long while and roving worgen packs are kind of a worry for most of that time until....like, 15 to 20 years later when Cataclysm hits.

Kul'Tiras, the Alliance's former naval powerhouse, is mostly settled into Theramore under Jaina Proudmore. WC3TFT's final campaign includes her and Thrall teaming up to keep Admiral Daddy Proudmore from ruining the peace between the Horde and the human refugees already there. It doesn't last for long, but it's a nice lull in the race war.

The Night-elves, in light of Illidan being a shit and demons fucking their forests, begin a major expansion effort under Archdruid Staghelm while Malfurion was busy elsewhere doing I forgot what. The goal presented was to "Ensure Resources and Territory for the Night Elf people's posterity and future." This motivation may be familiar to you and I was kinda dissapointed that we didn't get night-elf death camps working orcs to the bone before feeding them to furbolgs, but I guess Thrall and company were capable enough of keeping the hostilities in Ashenvale somewhat static. Still, there are nightelf roadways stretching from Teldrasil up top (which I'll get to in a sec) to Feathermoon Stronghold in Feralas, so they pretty much owned the north-western quarter of the continent for a while, kept away from Mulgore by a mountain range and the Barrens/Durotar by angry orcs and trolls.

Teldrasil is a giant Tree-Island that Staghelm tried to make to replace Nordrasil after some fucking hobo threw their people's immortality away. Since it didn't have the dragons' blessings though, it didn't work out right so now they've got this bitchin treefort off the north end of Kalimdor that's kinda rotting and cancerous in bits and is really high upkeep for the night-elf side of the Cenarian Circle.

Also as of some later lore there were like 7 attempts to make new World Trees and almost all of them turned to shit because the roots delved too deep, like some tolkein-level-dwarf-dup-too-deep. Anyhow.

The Twilight's Hammer Clan, of the orcs? Obsessed with the end of the world? Turns out they're a very culturally accepting bunch and branch out into accepting doom-saying nutcases of all races now and just become the Twilight's Hammer Cult. They fuck some stuff up along the way but are mostly small-time in Vanilla era. The Dragonmaw pretty much joins them. The Blackrock still have Blackrock Spire....or at least part of it but likewise they diminish in relevance, reduced to a holdout of a past era aside from serving the Black Dragonflight later.

Stormwind, in Vanilla, has fully recovered as a kingdom...sorta. To the west is Westfall, which would be a breadbasket sorta place, farms and all that, but there's a lot of hurt feelings over the workers from there not getting paid for literally fixing the fuck out of their broken kingdom and castle. Turns sour fast in terms of criminal uprisings, potential terrorism, and so forth. To the East is Lakeshire in the Redridge Mountains, which is a nice place when the old holdouts of orcs and shit aren't raiding south. Immediately south of Stormwind City is Elwynn forest, which is a pretty cool place with some nice realestate, good farms, lovely place to start a family and raise some future lvl1 PC's.

South of Elwynn is Duskwood, which is dark and spooky most of the time, has problems with the dead not staying dead due to weird-shit-radiation leaking from Kharazhan, Medihv's old Wizardy Tower about two zones south and east of there, past Duskwood and Deadwind Pass.

South of Duskwood proper is Stranglethorn Vale. Jungly type place, troll tribes/cults of various levels of barbarism, wild dire animals abound, and a major non-government-agency presence via Bloodsail Pirate base, Booty-Bay(Freemarket Goblin Prince territory) and the like. The Horde actually set up a small place there for a goblin-zepplin tower for transit into the Eastern Kingdoms and use it as a gateway to head north to their old holdouts in the Swamp of Sorrows east of Deadwind Pass.

South of the Swamp of Sorrows (the Black Morass ) is the Blasted Lands. They got blasted because First there was a fel-magic fucking portal that the orcs used to come into Azeroth, then because the Alliance tried to get Dalaran to magic-bomb it the fuck off the planet, then that didn't work so they invaded the portal, and THAT then caused some wierd shit and then the portal closed and that's all the Alliance knows about it for the most part until Burning Crusade's era opened it up again.

Btw am I typing to the wind here? I can stop bumping if there's no one to care.

We haven't even gotten to the goddamn space goats yet.

I'm lurking. I appreciate the refresher, as I got on WarCraft's wild ride with 2 and got off during Wrath of the Lich King.

Cool. Could do with some direction as to what you're looking for so I can go more in-depth in specific regions rather than guessing like throwing darts at a map of the world (of warcraft).

So, after the Plague and the rise of the Forsaken, Sylvanas and the undead with enough sense of self to put together a semblence of a kingdom did so. Had some trouble with human survivors and still do to this day, though less now than they used to and a lot of it has been revealed to be a more sinister plot than just people trying to "retake" their land...from their undead neighbors. Literally in some cases; survivors might be fighting with torches and pitchforks against risen former members of their own communities. Makes shit weird, but apparently either Sylvanas never had a conscience or turned a blind eye to the apothecaries that served her through the years after she took power. The Royal Apothocary Society did some dark shit, mad-science levels off the charts. Took what they learned from the Scourge and hit the ground running, though they weren't able to help bolster the Forsaken's numbers as much as they'd like. Still, badass chemical weapons warfare is on the horizon for the Forsaken at the Vanilla era. They control all of Tirisfal (Land around Lordaeron) Silverpine (South of Lordaeron until the Greymane Wall) and fight with Hillsbrad for Southshore area and fight with Scourge Holdouts in the Western and Eastern Plaguelands (Andorhol, Stratholme, etc). Oddly enough though, Alterac, despite being Still a banditry shithole, had enough solidarity among their own kind or just had nothing of value, so the undead left 'em alone.

On the Eastern side of the Northern end of the Eastern Kingdoms in the Hinterlands, the Wildhammer Dwarves of Aeiry Peak....kinda hung out and did their own thing. Beating up trolls. Raising gryphons, etc. Their bond with the Dwarfs of Ironforge kinda fell apart after the 2nd war and only got worse after the 3rd. Theyre still Technically Alliance members but they're mostly chilling out up on the mountains until Cataclysm happens.

Ironforge dwarfs are mostly trying to recover after the 3rd war as well; they didn't take as big a hit as Lordaeron or the northern human kingdoms, but their economy was kinda hurt to say the least and more so they have a big issue with their neighbors the Gnomes living on their couch in a political sense and in their capital city in a literal sense.

Turns out the reason the Gnomes weren't very active in WC3's era was a civil war among their own which ended with their whole capital an irradiated mess. High Tinker Mekatorque sought out their old friends in Ironforge, and King Magni was like Sure dude bring the whole senpai so now there's a Tinkertown section in Ironforge. Dwarfs know steel, forging, cannons and such but the Gnomes are pretty cutting-edge when it comes to real technology and such, having had Aircraft when the rest of the world scarcely had Oil Engines and were mostly sailing the seas and thought it was cool. Goblins managed with dirigible hot-air ships, but it's just not the same.

Oh, I'm not the OP so I'm not really looking for anything. I just love loredumps and the histories of fictional worlds, and WarCraft used to be one of my favorite settings.

Tell whichever parts you like and stop whenever you feel the need, user.

Also, how deep down the rabit-hole of eldritch terror bullshit and space alien intervention do you want to deal with right now OP?

There's a lot of it and timeline-wise it stretches back to before the shaping of the world.

Think that about covers most of the world as it was in Vanilla without going into specific raids and events, of which come to mind
>Naxxramas, Scourge's attempt to reestablish a solid hold on the Plaguelands and put down the human survivors.
>Molten Core: Twilight's Hammer working with the Dark Iron Dwarfs to awaken elemental powers beneath Blackrock Spire for some (then) unknown reason.
>Upper Blackrock Spire, Deathwing's Kids are fuckin shit up and someobody's stolen the heir to SW's throne.
>Oh wait those savage trolls are actualy doing shit? What the fuck is a blood god and OH GOD WHY IS EVERYTHING DYING?!
>Hey we got the king back let's go kill the dragon that nabbed him.
>Oh right um...Hey Alliance? Horde? Night elves and Tauren here. We kinda have a bug problem. Forgot to tell you that was going to be coming up soon and has something to do with world-killing parasites.

Main thing in Vanilla is that you didn't have major lore characters walking in and stealing the spotlight all the time like you do now. With the exception of a few high level raids the PCs were basically glorified Grunts who spent most of their time fortifying outposts for their factions and keeping them supplied.

If anyone's still here, there's usually a Warcraft general for this, but it seems to have 404ed. In 3 hours I'll make a new one if anyone's interested

I'm crashing soon, but I might pop in once I wake up.

thread up for anyone still interested

>Oh wait those savage trolls are actualy doing shit? What the fuck is a blood god and OH GOD WHY IS EVERYTHING DYING?!

2005 was a good year.

>Dwarves control a huge amount of territory from the Redridge Mountains to the Thandol Span
>Except maybe in the eastern burning steppes
>They're also present in the hinterlands
God damn, the dwarves are seriously underrated part of the alliance. They're only rivaled in the Eastern Kingdoms by Stormwind and the Forsaken