Warcraft

There were two d20 OGL RPG's released in the Warcraft setting. Both set before or right around Vanilla Wow was released. They might be worth a try for big fans. Has anyone actually played them? I just remember skimming through PDF's.

Setting is fine. Blizzard just isn't very good at telling stories in WoW since the Cata expansion hit.

They let the power scale get away from them; things that used to be a big deal seem kind of stupid now. Like why haven't the Plaguelands been cleansed yet? The modern paladin should be able to fucking glass the place just by sneezing but it's still a hellhole. Also, the class legendaries/class halls are retarded.

Warcraft 1/2:
Interesting, rather unique setting, feels grounded.
Warcraft 3:
Kitchen sink fantasy setting. A lot of fun, but a shadow of warcraft 1/2 and awkwardly written.
WoW:
Irredeemable shitshow.

>Interesting, rather unique setting, feels grounded.

Isn't the setting for Warcraft 1/2 literally just
>orcs and demons have come from hell
>they're here to kill us

Sounds a bit generic, doesn't it?

Yes, it's a huge issue that Sargeras is barely felt. Personally, my preference actually would be to keep things small, but have big things somewhere out there with some influence. But I think Sargeras and Kil'Jaedan have different roles. Kil'Jaedan is a devil while Sargeras is a god. Kil'Jaedan is the Deceiver who tempts others off their path, while Sargeras represents a path and way of thinking of his own.

I suppose I'm getting off topic, but I think standing for something is part of what makes gods gods. In many ways they represent a certain outlook on reality. If Blizzard's going to be throwing a bunch of new "gods" at us, I'm hoping they won't be interchangeable. Some could be more passionate and dominating, others more distant and cold. Favoring different strategies, responding to things in vastly different ways, because they represent different attitudes and philosophies. Which would be carried down through their worshipers.

It's been a while, but details like the dark portal, and the fact that you get to play as the somewhat sympathetic extradimensional invaders really stood out to me. Fantasy wasn't as big in those days as it is now, and warcraft felt different.
It was war3, and especially WoW, where the legion of hell became just a regular ol' legion of hell. In Warcraft the orcs invade with all the complexities of a real society where the burning legion are evul demonz who want to kill a big tree because fuck elves. And then later, PLOT TWIST THEY'RE REALLY GOOD GUYS
subtlety begon

The Hunt for the Circle of MacGuffins in Legion was so goddamn stupid. And honestly, it didn't HAVE to be, but they forgot at any point to actually explain what the fuck these all were, and why the fuck they were important, so they might as well have been the green-rarity daggers you get as quest rewards for killing ten wolves.

>somewhat sympathetic
>Game 1 represents them as cruel raiders
>Game 2 represents them as either combat-hungry Klingons, or power-hungry, demon-worshipping assholes
>somewhat sympathetic
I mean, it's cool to meet somebody who started playing the franchise in 2008.

How is Warcraft 3 Kitchen Sink, but not Warcraft 2?

i think you are confusing the shitty movie with real warcraft 1 and 2

>It's been a while, but details like the dark portal, and the fact that you get to play as the somewhat sympathetic extradimensional invaders really stood out to me.
In Warcraft 1 the orcs are literally soldiers from Hell. The fuck are you talking about?

>he doesn't find this guy sympathetic youtu.be/BftPmS4NDZ0?t=36s and instantly support his cause

Well, that's Bill Roper's voice, if I remember; pretty sure nobody around here would be willing to support him anymore.

youtube.com/watch?v=eO6OaVnbqaY
Peon is my sprit orc, and I share his work enjoyment and ethics.

It is. Kil'jaden was impressive because like his master he needed one hell of a power source to come through. He -needed- the sunwell, nothing else was going to withstand him and we only won then because an admittedly anime plot twist came into play with Aveena. Still it went a long way to showing us how over our heads we where.

See also, Arthas. We lost that fight. We thought we where powerful but the power creep was turned on its head and subverted then he was ready to stop playing nice. Even Cata, one of the most hated expansions saw us acting as backup. Powerful and respected backup- no GW2 levels of plot neglect there, but still second fiddle while thrall and dragons did their anime shit.

Now we're on argus and the burning throne? it's fucking irrelevant. Sargaras isn't home and unless you've read the new retcon manuals you dont have a fucking clue WHAT argus the unmaker is or why dead titans are bosses in there- if you have, then you don't know what exactly is changed now. Because things stopped adding up again. So the final raid tier is meaningless because we've already killed everyone we know who matters. Nobody expected to fight sargaras and now that his two major underlings are gone the power creep has nowhere to go but into shonen territory

I....okay, yes, I'll admit, the attitudes of the units you move around are totally and completely endearing.
If it's one thing that's gone missing from the Horde over the years, it's that feeling of the complete joy of being an orc.
Heck, the greatest problem with Grom Hellscream's legacy may just be that we've completely forgotten his amazing singing voice.
(Was....was that what went wrong with Garrosh? He never learned how to sing?)

>Nobody expected to fight sargaras and now that his two major underlings are gone the power creep has nowhere to go but into shonen territory
And that's why cosmic threats have to be kept distant, while maybe occasionally poking their nose in here and there. The moment everyone starts wearing neon armor and having laser fights is the moment things have just gotten silly. Every single character who would be powerful in an ordinary setting starts looking weak and pitiful, because they don't eat and shit gods.
>(Was....was that what went wrong with Garrosh? He never learned how to sing?)
Actually, yes. They tried to recreate Grom, but didn't actually remember who Grom was.

Personally my favourite time period for Warcraft is Vanilla WoW

It's basically the only time we saw a world in operation without a world-ending threat on the horizon. We don't see all the world, and it's shrunk for our convenience, but the glimpse we get suggests a living, breathing society exists

I love how neither faction was monolithic, and how every society had internal struggles. I love how neither side was truly good or evil, even the forsaken had redeeming qualities. I love how the conflicts of the world fade in and out of view depending on which zone you're in. Everyone cares about the Alliance and Horde in Ashenvale, but no one gives a fuck in the Searing Gorge.

I feel like the World of Azeroth was why the World of Warcraft was a success, and the continued focus on world-ending threats, to the detriment of the world itself, has just meant it's gotten weaker with time. Regardless of how strong we as players are, the fact that every expansion from WotLK onwards is focused on a single monolithic threat is the worst part of WoW, and why it really, really needs a proper TTRPG, not some shitty OGL knockoff

>Of course in its current state it’s a complete mess so what is Veeky Forums‘s ideal version of Azeroth for roleaying?

Use the Warcraft 3 manual as the setting book, it's stuffed full of lore. Just take what you need from WoW and leave the rest.

>Actually, yes. They tried to recreate Grom, but didn't actually remember who Grom was.

They'ven't remembered who Grom was for a long time.
>describe him as a lean, pretty gaunt orc with a voice so shrill that it could shatter glass
>wc2 him is sorta like that
>wc3 happens
>grom is another typical musclebound orc with gravely voice

WC3 he was still lean and gaunt compared to all other orcs, it's just the voice that's unfitting

Remember, he was mechanically a blademaster, the agility-focused orc hero class

Were any of his 'silly' lines singing?
I feel like only the main Orc Grunt actually had a joke line involving songs.

I feel like it would better if after a God was killed, the various races and factions would go "Holy shit we can kill Gods! What's to stop us from becoming Gods?" And then initiate an all out Brawl for Dominance over all of Creation

>>grom is another typical musclebound orc with gravely voice
Compared to the other Orcs, he was. It was still mentioned in the novels, and they still said he had his high-pitched scream.

Then the "spitting-image" of his father made it look like Mrs. Hellscream got it on with an ogre, and WoD just carried on with that image. WoD was truly something of a shit show. A nostalgia-driven expansion by people who didn't even remember the past. How does that even happen?
>Were any of his 'silly' lines singing?
Yes.

Could be done well but Blizzard is finding new ways to fuck if up by the millisecond.

Well, if that's the kind of setting you want to run. However, that seems kind of apocalyptic. The moment before it all blows up in everyone's face and they're forced to scavenge in the desolate ruins left behind.

WoD, like most of modern WoW, is written by people who were edgy preteens when WC2 came out and never grew beyond that, so they still think the mindlessly destructive Horde of WC2 is "cool" and keep trying to turn the modern Horde into it

Holy Jesus. we're killing Kil'Jaeden, Dead Titan souls, and Enslaved Titan Souls.

What the christ is Blizzard thinking?

Everyone who was writing Warcraft stuff back when Warcraft lore was, well, not "good", but not painfully awful, is long gone.

Now it's run by idiots who think they need to keep upping the ante forever and constantly ruin fan-favourite characters by removing all semblance of nuance

WC2 Horde was cool, the problem is that they're trying to write Horde both as WC2 Horde, WC3 Horde, and dindu nuffing wrong Horde.

They run their story like a comicbook. It's pretty clear exactly what they're thinking. The Void/Light conflict ends with the destruction of the multiverse, but then it starts over again exactly as it had at the very beginning. Another explosion of Light and Void, and it's all back to square one. Then they pretend like WoW never happened.

I miss the WC3 /Vanilla WoW horde

keep the WC2 Horde in via dragonmaw clan or whatever, the WC3 Horde means that Horde/Alliance is a legitimate political conflict rather than boring old good vs evil

Reminder that Lord Illidan did nothing wrong.

Illidan is the patron saint of doing things wrong. You could tell him to walk in a straight line and he'd end up walking up his own ass.

>What the christ is Blizzard thinking?
They went full shounen anime up in Warcraft's ass, to their credit this was probably inevitable due to the constant power creep... A sad time it is we live in indeed... Sooner or later Blizzard will no choice but to reset the power level for everyone however people will riot if they do that.

But user Illdian is the chosen child of both the light and the darkness he literally can do no wrong...

Nonsense. Illidan knows he's a cunt, but he makes the excuse that the cause is more important than how much of a cunt he is.

That's why he was right to reject Xe'ra, who implied he should be rewarded since he "sacrificed so much for so little". Illidan was a cunt. He doesn't deserve any reward for that, and anyone who thinks he does is fucking insane.

Didn’t we kill an Old God (C’thun) and a WC3 villain (Kelthuzad) in vanilla? Power creep already existed by late game.

Kel'thuzad had a phylactery, and I believe there was already lore concerning how hard it was to keep "eternals" dead. Things like elementals, demons, and wild gods would have their spirits return to their home realm where they would revive. People assumed that C'thun was weakened or that what we killed was an avatar. People are pretty adverse to killing gods that way.

>Warcraft 1/2:
>Interesting, rather unique setting, feels grounded.
Holy shit, that's grand. WARCRAFT 1 and 2 being hailed as INTERESTING and UNIQUE. Goddamn, that's fucking hilarious. 10/10, got me to reply.

Best villain with best wit is here.

How long before Blizzard redeems him and it turns out he and Ner’zhul were nice guys who wanted to turn everyone undead so they could be better equipped to fight the old gods?

And KT wasn't considered quite as "Out there" as most of the BIG WC3 baddies.

He's dead. For real.

Didn't they have something about Arthas wanting to defeat the Burning Legion?

One of Blizzards problems is that they forget what genre they're writing for. Take Diablo, started as a dark fantasy gothic setting and diablo 3 it became high fantasy. I mean before 3 if you'd asked me what diablo heaven would have looked like I'd have pointed towards the summoner's realm in d2 or a church.

same thing with warcraft. in 2 Alleria is an elf in furs with woad paint, most heroes are just suped up units and what spellcasters there are are treated as a legitimate threat. Come warcraft three every hero has magic but major figures like arthas are running around in plate and chain and most generic characters are using still realistic looking sword. Come Wow everyone is running around in glowing armour and fuckhuge anime swords, what the shit?

Nothing like the realization that the storyline for Illidan was likely written by somebody who was 13 years old when WC3 came out and had a picture of Illidan they themselves drew hanging on the wall of their bedroom all the way up into their freshman year of college.

That would have been a pretty logical progression for the Scourge. Maybe not fully destroy, but the Scourge was started as a tool for the Burning Legion, using Ner'Zhul as a command node for the undead hordes.

If Arthas ever wanted to be more than a puppet, it makes sense for him to lash out against the Burning Legion to secure his place at the top.

The writer is a damn good one. He's the OG Gotrek and Felix guy, but you could tell he was following the script blizzard gave him.

Old Gods are the good guys, didn't you know? They're going to eat our souls to save us from ourselves.

You'll notice on roleplay servers on WoW the community is desperate to ignore most of the expansions handed to them and just want to go about fighting the factions or doing campaigns grounded in Azeroth (East Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Northrend, sometimes Outland etc). Everyone wants to play like the lore is WC3, people want the simple, humble aspect of paladins fighting the Scourge, humans fighting orcs, the titans being a mystery and the world full of mystery.

Instead we get 'the greater threat' every expansion.

>Damn good writer
>Gives golden fucking eyes to a character whose most notable trait is being fucking blind
Either you're lying, or Blizzard is lying.

Technically he blew up in his spaceship above Argus (which functionally does the same thing). So he is dead dead. On a side note Archi was marked as dead(?) due to the fact that -technically- he didn't die in the nether, but you should consider him dead. Basically in surprise asspull level where Illidan once was.
Also, (spoiler, but doubt you care) trap Sargeras in a prison with all the other titan souls. Illidan is the jailer because sole purpose for existence and all that (and time for Maiev to go either way off the rocker or become the actual hardass Night elves need). N'zoth / Azshara is basically set for next expansion, unless this is the biggest bait in history by blizz.
So GG, Burning Legion is dead. Biggest oh-shit in the Warcraft universe, dead. Technically there are the Void Lords, but that feels so much Starcraft it's not even funny.

One of my most memorable RP experience in WoW was squatting in Dire Maul for a week hunting satyr. I needed demonic runes for a blacksmith recipe and you can't buy them, so I had to go out and hunt high volume demons. Walking up to the 'clan' two days later with the demon/undead possessed sword that I had sourced the materials for and crafted myself felt great. Like, this sword is mine. I made it. It's dope as hell and I have a story with it.

Nothing past Wrath has ever had anything like that for me. I miss the class quests, I miss having to explore location to find your quest objectives, I miss hunting down rare and exotic materials and out of the way NPCs on quests that sent you on epic journies through the world. Yes the shaman water quest sucked because it was an integral part of your class instead of something cool, unlike the level 30 warrior weapon and armor quests or the paladin and warlock mount quests, but it was great having to actually go out and do things to grow as a character.

Now they don't even put elite enemies into the normal world map anymore because they might kill players. The world has lost so much of its teeth.

You know, I'd thought the ending to wc3 was to tie up the whole legion thing, sargeras was dead, Archimonde died, lorderon and the elf kingdom were gone, the mages were gone, and the osuthern kingdoms were still in ruins, the horde was still recuperating from being in the camps and of course the demon war.

Pretty much the only bbeg left was arthas and the lich king but the stage was set for a more political and down to earth setting.

Course frozen throne put a bit of a wrench in that. Even then the legion could only try for petty revenge through proxy armies, they'd lost the last of easy gateways in and even then it ended with a good set up with the lich king as a distant threat, sylvanas' ambitions, and the Horde and Alliance's diplomatic issues.

But he always had golden eyes.

Oooooh I thought you meant the BOOK just called "Illidan." not the WotA trilogy.

No, I was talking about the quest line in 'Legion' where the player is forced to follow along through Illidan's life.
....Christ, are you telling me the stupid 'golden eyes' thing is something that somebody had already come up with? Fuck, I was happy to blame it on someone 'bonding' with the character as an edgy teenager, but it sounds like this just goes back to someone being rank fucking incompetent.

I don't know if it was in the original WC3 manual or introduced in WotA, but he had a massive inferiority complex because he had golden Highborne-esque eyes he felt obligated him to be a badass.

So he then proceeded to tryhard the rest of his goddamn life because he thought he had to live up to some elf superstition that any commoner born with gold eyes was destined for greatness.

So, it was always their intention for one TWIN to be born with....
Oh, never fucking mind, it's not worth the trouble of contemplating.

If Alterac didn't betray the Alliance but Gul'dan didn't betray the Horde, who would have won?

Really fucked over the setting/lore badly in WoW.

WoW replaced with the Warhammer world would have been much more interesting and diverse.

>Tfw Turalyon from WC2 has been turned from humble pious folk hero to space marine chapter commander

Pretty sure Ner'Zhul was planning to turn against the Legion and do his own thing, and part of his plan for that involved getting Arthas though I'm not really sure they ever said how that was supposed to work. I'm almost positive there's scenes in 3 and Frozen Throne where Ner'Zhul is telling Arthas not to trust the Dreadlords.

>Lore character (besides Thrall) finally starts to get interesting

>Either goes evil, gets killed off, or both

Why does Blizzard keep doing this?

>[board] hates [popular thing] (just) because its popular

tourists like you belong on a cross.

They're not completely identical

Kossak.

...How bad is it?

Sargeras is sealed away (for a time)
Kil J abd archi are both deadly dead
Their planet is overrun by mortals
The pantheon is no more

The only "threat" remains Azeroth (the titan soul) itself; maybe a dormant old god and the mysterious elune

For me it seems like blizz is trying to wrap it all up and end it. The light/shadow conflict will end with valeria windrunner and tularyion (avatar of light and void) holding hands and tearing existence apart.

How likely is this?

Im ready to let the burning legion and the world pf warcraft go after so many years

The funny thing is, I'm not convinced Blizzard even needed world ending threats to drive engagement. BC had memorable boss characters that weren't world-ending apocalypse-tier. Illidan was just the lord of his domain. I think Blizzard got stuck after the Legion (Kil'jaden) and Arthas both needed to be hyped up as massive bad-asses, and never remebered that bosses like Illidan, Kel'thuzad, and Ragnaros were big, bad, epic, and yet never seriously threatened to destroy the whole world. It was never neccisary to play up-the-ante until we got to this point.

The problem with Warcraft as a setting is that everything just happens to be there. There is no real sense of why or how this world or its peoples developed, they just did. The events that happened to prop up the societies that currently exist are given a cursory glance and little to no narratively binding motive is given. For example, the human kingdoms are completely politically inscrutable - they rose and fell seemingly at random, with almost zero input from the subjects of the kingdoms. We never really hear of pretenders, or feudal contracts, or any actual governmental process.

The entire series is just a setup for interracial strife, without any care given to the daily lives of in-universe characters or the infrastructure that would support them.

>What is Veeky Forums‘s opinion on Warcraft as a setting?
I've never played it
I don't know the lore beyond the most basic stuff like races and classes
I think the art direction is okay to pretty good but can understand why others don't like it
From what I have seen of it it doesn't look like a bad setting just a Generic D&D type setting that has accumulated a decade worth of expansion on top of it

The movie was mediocre but entertaining and I wouldn't mind a sequel

Warcraft 3 was best, WoW suffers from having a small world populated by several dozen sentient races who every year have to face a new "ancient evil world ending threat"

When your world has almost been destroyed 5 times in the past 5 years by different gods or ancient evils etc... it loses its dramatic flair and feels kinda bland and shit

Look, the ending will be the player given the choice between Controlling the void, Destroying all void-like things, or making everyone part-void.
This will be represented by Azeroth exploding in either green light, red light, or blue light.

I liked the movie enough, up until Lothar called Khadgar a "spellchucker" and I fucking lost it. Then I loved the movie.

He was. I just used Arthas because he's become the main personality people think of when they picture the Lich King.

WoW is legit bad though, at least in what it did to Warcraft lore. The Horde and the Alliance are suddenly at war, for some reason the Blood Elves have joined the Horde, the whole Lich King subplot is put in the freezer (no pun intended) and if you want to figure out what the fuck happened you need to put in at least 80 hours of game time. Or skim through the wiki, whatever.

Even from a gameplay perspective, WoW has guaranteed that there will never be a Warcraft 4.

Reminder that the Horde should have been dismantled.

>For some reason the Blood Elves have joined the Horde

This reminds me of the time Billy Dee Williams was asked why he was wearing Han Solo's clothes for that one scene in Empire and he responded by asking if they wanted to hear the real answer or in-universe answer.

The in-universe answer is that Sylvannas is a dead Blood Elf and that she managed to convince their lord that the Horde was the better choice.

The real answer (and this was confirmed by Mark Kern, a dev from early WoW) is that they needed a more human race to restore faction balance in South Korea. They just won't play as something they can't fuck.

The in-universe answer is less about Sylvanas convincing the blood elves the horde was the better choice, and more the blood elves and humans still sort of hating each other over what happened during the Frozen Throne Campaign.

Of course, that's probably been glossed over in favor of more Sylvanas-wank since Cataclysm, bbecause, as everyone knows and has been stated many times in this thread, the current writers are terrible at their job

There are still things out here, I'm working on 2200 rating while building all kinds of armors, where vanilla had dark iron and the black furnace/anvil, legion has demonsteel and the firmament stone, its a matter of making this world still feel bigget than you, I'm not here defending the turbojewery this has becomes, but in its core we have to have bigger enemies, I mainly arena/bg, so for me the faction war has never ended, and my time in storyline things is not relevant, I'm a Knight of the Alliance and my role in this world is fighting the horde no matter who and where.

>The real answer (and this was confirmed by Mark Kern, a dev from early WoW) is that they needed a more human race to restore faction balance in South Korea. They just won't play as something they can't fuck.
The secret behind Kerrigan's stilettos is revealed.

>and more the blood elves and humans still sort of hating each other over what happened during the Frozen Throne Campaign.

Imagine how much different history would be if there wasn't a racist fuckup for some reason as the person that the prince of the elves needed to liaison with.

It makes sense

Most of the Lordaeronian nobility was dead, and the other living kingdoms were too far away from Quel Thalas. If more Lordaeronian nobility was alive, someone else probably would have been in charge, someone capable of actual diplomacy

Back in Vanilla Horde were the minority faction. Alliance more popular for newbies since they had ‘recognisable’ tolkienesque races. I’m pretty sure that’s why we never got High Elves in Vanilla, otherwise it would have been 90% Alliance. So that’s why for TBC Horde got elves and Alliance got space goats. Would have been better the other way round quite frankly, Thrall as an act of contrition extending the Horde’s protection to The Broken.

Kern, Ion Holocaustus and Cokehead have established that last one on separate occasions, that also was and is the reason for the lack of playable ogres, they cant fucking make a nonshit fem ogre, and much less adapt two headed ones yet, who gets the helm, who gets this, how would armors look on a fem ogre, same reason why they keep throwing that in lore Krokul or Broken eredar females die near instantly after becoming Broken because they cant make ugly females and that stops them a lot, where Arakkoas and Mantids have a lot of females just because you cant discern sex until you hear their voices, this is a fuckhuge mess.

You shut your whore mouth disrespecting Lord Othmar Garithos, King of Blackwood and High General of the Alliance of Lordaeron, those disgusting non humans were consorting with the daemonic nagas, nothing good comes out of inhumans.

Ah yes, the Naga. The group that legitimately had never fought the alliance until that point.

>nothing good comes out of inhumans.

I suppose that's why he later teamed up with the undead (The ones that didn't mind control him)

But they do look icky, and they use murlocks as peons.

Most undead used to be humans so allying with them, while detestable, is still better than allying with mindless elvish or dwarfish beasts.

Tbh Draenei for Alliance made sense, now if only they hadn't turned them from a race of ugly ninja aliens into a race of space futa goats.