Weekend Warcraft Lore General

It's high time we had some stable in Veeky Forums to discuss the lore and tabletop, as established in the board games, WC3:TFT, vanilla WoW, and now WoW: BfA.

I've always felt there were multiple settings of Warcraft and have personally never enjoyed most of Blizzard's newer additions of lore. Much of it always felt like "fantasy for the sake of fantasy" and things poorly set up for the convenience of MMO mechanics (ie, zones, endlessly increasing power levels, raid bosses, etc.)
>vanilla: Forsaken joining Thrall's Horde, Night Elves joining the shattered Alliance, the killing of Kel'thuzad
>TBC: Blood elves joining Thrall's Horde, the killing of Illidan, the lush amount of life brought to the Outlands
>WOTLK: the ice barren wasteland turned into a multi-themed themepark for the sake of "interesting leveling zones", the Vrykul, the Titankeepers, the non-importance of the Nerubians
>Legion: whatever the heck went on in this expansion

If you could create a new setting, would you use any of the lore established in the MMO?

I think the best you could do would be dialing back to vanilla and then somehow making Night Elves and Forsaken their own factions. Though that has its own host of issues

everything after vanilla went to shit and yes, Forsaken suck.
At least the WW rpg books for 3.0 put A LOT of emphasis on the fact that a good part of the horde, based tauren first, did not like them at all.

To be fair, the night elves joining the Alliance isn't a total stretch. They did ally with Jaina and her expedition (plus the orcs) in Warcraft 3. Other than one mission there isn't any conflict between the night elves and those Alliance forces. Combine that with the night elf dislike of the orcs (who chopped down their forests and killed Cenarius) and the feelings of the Alliance toward the orcs, and it makes a bit of sense.

The Forsaken and blood elves joining the Horde on the other hand is totally out of place, however.

Alliance lore has progressively gotten better with every expansion.

Horde lore has progressively gotten worse. There is absolutely zero reason that anyone but the Forsaken, and maybe the Blood Elves, would support the burning of Teldrassil.

>If you could create a new setting, would you use any of the lore established in the MMO?

No, its all a mess and if you wanted to present Warcraft as a base to build something you need to start cutting the large ammounts of fat that WoW has piled over the setting either by omission or straight retcons. Post-00's Blizzard has forgotten what made their stories great or appealing, they've made everything far too large and epic for the sake of it while completely ignoring the fact that it was the characters that made their stories good and this endless upscaling of fantasy does nothing but destroy any appeal to anything beyond a big fireworks that are not as engaging as their previous stories.

In that sense I would just have the setting jump a couple years in the future, new characters, new everything and build it all from scratch.

>There is absolutely zero reason that anyone but the Forsaken, and maybe the Blood Elves, would support the burning of Teldrassil.
stop shitposting Fandral, you're already dead

It does make a good deal of sense. I can imagine Jaina and the other lords seeking to maintain ties with the night elves. I suppose my issues mostly stem from how the Alliance currently functions:
>The 4 kingdoms of continental Lordaeron and Dalaran are destroyed.
>Lordaeron survivors crash land upon the shores of Kalimdor after crossing the treacherous sea that has never been crossed before.
>Stormwind may have received refugees (though likely they made it only as far as the dwarves or Kul Tiras), but would otherwise assume the plague has ravaged all other humans in the north. Would they even have known there was a great plague at this point?
>skip 3 years
>Kalimdor humans now serve the Stormwind king despite never establishing ties after the 3rd War, and now the Alliance and Horde are both capable of projecting power across the world at a moment's notice as all difficulty of sea-travel is now rendered a non-issue
It's just too convenient.

To me, is amazing how Horde and Alliance "join force against greater evil" when at the end, Horde dealt way more permanent damage in recent times, than "greater evils.
I mean Deathwing damaged stormwing, the Horde ANNIHILATED Theramore.
For me that was the last straw. And another example of the "muh plot moving" pushed by retards and having an impact of other stuff like 40k.

Its just the fact that its an MMO and WoW players seem to dislike faction wars so the focus is on uniting agains a common evil, plus the fact that Horde players dislike the idea of their faction being evil or savage, they love Thrall's "green hippie alliance" and it was probably the reason why Garrosh had to be killed off since his entire first arc was making the Horde more warlike like it was in Doomhammer days.

I see your point but I was going beyond that. I see an utter failure form the writer's point in depicting the horde as misunderstood anti-heroes in search of redemptions, because they were successful in an heinous act that Deathwing failed to accomplish.
I cannot have sympathy for any of those fuckers. Not even the Tauren, that I used to love and respect, because at this point they are either hypocritical or retarded.

>Teldrassil
>a false world tree that only served to accelerate the growth of the Emerald Nightmare
that the Nelves did not burn the tree down themselves was out of character

Daily reminder that Garrosh did absolutely nothing wrong.

Also, this. Transform the Orcs from "dudes with redemption arc" to "dey gud boyz, dey dindu nuffin"

>tfw can't join Blackhand's Horde in Blackrock Mountain
why even live

>they love Thrall's "green hippie alliance"
This is a misunderstanding on your part. The Horde doesn't want to be evil anymore. It doesn't make sense if we're always going to be banding together to save the world from the greater threat, when the Horde itself may as well be the greater threat. There's a difference between a Horde that doesn't take shit from anyone, and a Horde that starts shit with everyone.

Most Horde players want to be the former, not the latter.

This. Also, this is why the way they handled the Forsaken is shit, albeit there was an island of hope in Wrath (then it went to super-shit and they ruined Lady Sylvanas).

how did they explain the gigantic Broken Isles in Legion?
i don't think it was mist-shrouded or whatever the fuck Pandaria was

Why are all the Goblin starting zones the only ones completely inaccessible ingame afterwards?

>>vanilla: Forsaken joining Thrall's Horde, Night Elves joining the shattered Alliance, the killing of Kel'thuzad

Back in the day I had an idea on how to integrate the Forsaken into Thrall's Horde.

Basic outline of the story is that the Lich King and the Scourge slowly starts exert more control over the Forsaken. They were able to escape when he was weakened and now he is stronger he is slowly whispering to them.

Before that, the relation between the Forsaken and the Alliance were slwly improving. But at certain key points, the Lich King took away the will of some Forsaken to assasinate Alliance diplomats, soldiers etc. That destroys the little trust Alliance had. The Scourge starts to directly attack the Forsaken. Forsaken ask from the Alliance. Most in alliance don't want to help them. Some are afraid of being backstabbed, some simply hate the Undead and think that it would be easier to kill them all in one fell swoop.

Meanwhile on the other side of Ocean, interesting things are going on. Thrall has kept Warsong clan at arms length and is very distrustful of them. Grom did redeem himself but his tribe not so much. Warsongs also share this view and decide to clean the universe of the mistakes the Orcs did. So they hunt demons on Kalimdor etc. But sometimes they break the peace as some are bit too puritanical. At one point, the news for Lordaeron reach Kalimdor. Thrall and many others ignore it as they have a nation to build. But when Warsongs look at the Lich King they don't see Arthas. They see Ner'zhul. They see the fragment of past orc mistake. Until now, they could only fix some mistakes, but now they can prevent one.

Warsongs steal a few ships and sail of to Lordaeron. However, they forget to mention this to Thrall. He simply sees a rebellious clan running away to potentially join enemies. He sends a small army to intercept and destroy them.

So you agree that horde players want it to be same as the alliance, good guys except big and green and that this is perfect for an MMO that relies on players uniting against a common foe.

Damn, fuck Blizzard for smiting him with awful writing.

Meanwhile, the Scrouge begins a final assault on the Forsaken. Sylvanas sits on the throne. Desperate. She starts hearing Arthas' voice. She tries to push it away but it grows stronger with each passing moment. Varimathras begs her to come to her senses and prepare a defense. He defenses are crumbling.

Moments before all hope was lost, a new sound appears. A sound so loud that the whisperings of the Lich King are unheard. So loud that even the Lich King is his Frozen Throne hears. A sound that everyone who hears it is well too familiar. A sound that brought blood and death. A sound that accompanied the burning Sylvanas' once beloved forest.


'WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

>So you agree that horde players want it to be same as the alliance
No, not at all. Are you retarded? Just because they want to be able to restrain their nonsensical rageboner doesn't mean they want to be exactly like the Alliance. Not being the villain doesn't mean "being just like the Alliance".

Ok user, to me good boy horde is the same as the alliance, basically a reskin in a game with good guys vs good guys that team up often, might as well remove all faction tension.

...

The turtle?

There is no good boy horde, at least there shouldn't be. Only morally grey horde struggling to survive, and inheriting the tooth-and-nail relationship with other races they had previous to getting brown Draenorian rapefugees and new Undead

>Ok user, to me good boy horde is the same as the alliance
"Good boy"? I'm pretty sure Horde players want something more pragmatic and closer to neutral overall. Being warlike and savage isn't their problem, so long as they feel they're doing it for the right reasons. Making the Horde the evil faction doesn't work, because they definitely are going to be working together with Neutral factions for the greater good, and have their every atrocity excused.

So the choice is between the "good boy Horde" that is savage, but picks its battles pragmatically rather than to get off on bloodshed and murder, and being the "dindu nuffin Horde" that only exists because the Alliance and Neutral factions are fucking retarded.

Alliance lost a lot to the undead so trying to convince them that these new undead are totally nice (and that would have been a lie anyway) was always a lost cause.

They had no real reason to hate the Gilnean worgen other than "ew gross furries." The fact that they were already fighting the Forsaken and consequently the Horde made them good recruiting material.

They just really fucked up with the Belves for no good reason.

Theramore is notably smaller than Stormwind, I'm pretty sure.

You are functionally illiterate, man. I am dead serious.

I think the BElves just wanted to be neutral and probably would've gone for the Alliance if they were pushed but instead had this army of undead asking them to join the horde lead by the acting leader's former boss.

This is stupid and petty counter-argument.
You know well what the point is.

IIRC they had trouble with the trolls and asked the Alliance for help and got snubbed so Sylvanas stepped in.

>I think the BElves just wanted to be neutral and probably would've gone for the Alliance if they were pushed

Well, they WERE alliance until the Grand High Marshal of the KKK tried to get them all executed because 'The leader of their nation made a diplomatic alliance with a race they had never had conflict with'

Don't know if you are blatantly trolling or just deadstop retarded, but also
>might as well remove all faction tension
Considering what was made of the lore, that would be the smart decision.

But Blizzard seems to agree with you, and that will be the way of next expac.

>They just really fucked up with the Belves for no good reason.
They were suspicious of what the Blood Elves had gotten up to, and so sent spies instead of diplomats. After Garithos had already pissed them off.

That the Horde assisted in stopping the non-aligned apocalypse (not related to anything they personally did) on at least four separate occasions?

orks?

He's assuming Warcraft orcs operate on the same principles as Warhammer orks, yes.

>Implying a WAAAGH is not exactly what happened at Wrathgate

Kinda. The idea was the suprise attack of few thousand really pissed off Orcs had enough psychic/magical/whatever effect to allow the Forsaken to thik clearly for a few seconds.

The Warsongs wreck shit up and eventually the other army shows up that was supposed kill them and decide that it would be better to help the Warsongs and the Forsaken.

The scourge is beaten back and eventully the shamans of Horde help teach the Forsaken how to keep the Lich King at bay whose reach in Lordaeron is weakened after the blow the Horde dealt. Some Forsaken however decide to emulate the Warsongs and find out that being really really pissed off is a good alternative to peaceful meditation.

We're never going back to Outland.
We will never fix Outland or at the very least TRY to fix Outland.
Blizzard most likely doesn't even remember or has ret-conned probably 2/3rds of Outland and it will only ever be used to their own plot convenience and not as the interesting, broken, but beautiful world that it is.
We went back in time to another dimension, before we went back to Outland.
We will never get closure on: What happened to the Fel Orcs? What happened to the Murlocs released in Zangarmarsh? What happened to the Broken and Lost One tribes? What happened to the BLACK DRAGON BROOD and their cultist-tribe forming? What happened to the Netherwing Brood forming? What happened to MURMUR???

I'll never not be mad about all this immense bullshit, I'll never not be mad that they thought it was better to release a minimum effort, shark-jumping, garrison idling, no-heart, no-commitment, time travel cliche expansion, than go back to OUTLAND.

What people don't seem to remember is that the forsaken actually betray the alliance when they kill garathos, and presumably his men, after teaming up to drive the dreadlords out of lorderan. They started the war with the alliance

Also the Gilneas were already part of the alliance in wc2 and 3, in the game lore some even follow jaina to kalamdor in RoC. They never do anything wrong.

Lastly, the Belves betray the alliance by siding with the naga enemys. After they escape prison and murder the kirintor jailers.

Outland was a mistake

the difference being that Theramore had it coming while Stormwind dindu nuffin to Deathwing

Only the orcs crash land and its because of the magic storm caused by the sea witch, you can find a mini campaign under "custom campaigns" in RoC, or maybe its in TFT, that explains the whole thing.

>Theramore had it coming
Bullshit. And a retaliation can not necessarily be total annihilation.

how would you continue Outland?

BEfags and Forsakenfags BTFO in one single, flawless post.
(barring the outland hate).

>make your city a military target
>it gets destroyed
>waaaaaah how could I have possibly avoided this, nothin I could do

>betray the Alliance by siding with naga enemies

This is how I know you didn't play WC3, Garithos wasn't upset because Kael'thas accepted the help of Naga, he was mad that Kael didn't die.

The entire Garithos plotline is giving Kael a reason to go to Outland because he realized Garithos just wanted to kill off the belves.

So Ogrimmar or Undercity should be levelled too.
Why is Theramore more of a target than those?

>Lastly, the Belves betray the alliance by siding with the naga enemys. After they escape prison and murder the kirintor jailers.

Except the naga weren't an enemy at that point. Garithos was pretty much "What the hell is that thing? It's ugly, we must kill it!". Not to mention that his title was self-appointment, and he was just looking for excuse to fuck up the elves.. see taking away every support they had just because his home was destroyed by fucking orcs while he was serving Alliance and helping helves to deal with orcs, trolls and dragons.

>What people don't seem to remember is that the forsaken actually betray the alliance when they kill garathos, and presumably his men, after teaming up to drive the dreadlords out of lorderan. They started the war with the alliance

Honestly, that likely made things better for the Alliance. Nothing Garathos did make stuff better and actively left the alliance with less members and power.

>Lastly, the Belves betray the alliance by siding with the naga enemys. After they escape prison and murder the kirintor jailers.

After he threw them in jail, to execute them, for making an alliance with the Naga...who were not the enemy of the Alliance. They'd never actually fought before and had turned up to offer help (Yes, they had motives of their own but from an alliance perspective, they were not the enemy).

Garathos is like the head of the british armed forces deciding to imprison and execute the king of Sweden because they made an alliance with Atlantis, a nation that had had no idea actually existed and had not fought with them.

You guys are applying your omnipotent knowledge of the lore and google instead of trying to see it from the PoV of someone in the world. I mean Varian dies never knowing why Garona killed his father, yet that information is pretty simple to access for us

yeah they should have been
blame Blizzard

Literally one of his in game quotes is "The lesser races must be purged from the kingdom."

>You guys are applying your omnipotent knowledge of the lore and google instead of trying to see it from the PoV of someone in the world.

No? An omnipotent knowledge would be 'The Naga are allies to the demonologist who is an enemy of the Night Elves'. This is what was actually known, in universe 'Fuck all beyond they turned up and want to help but you decided that teaming up with the people who come in peace to help us fight the undead is a capital offence'.

garathose is the leader of the alliance forces in wc3, he pretty much has the same rank as lothar. Obviously he is a man of power and influence and his death would have ramifications.

Clearly he knows who the naga are, he calls them by their preferred racial name "naga"

So is Kael'Thas but Garathos has no issue sentencing him to death for doing what he literally has the right to do. He's the sovereign of a nation, he's allowed to make diplomatic deals with people.

Then he'd also know that they've never actually fought the alliance. Ever. WoW hasn't even included any of it's 'Back in time' stories including the Alliance fighting the naga.

he isn't. Quel'thalas does not exist at that point, just a bunch of refugees

Apparently he does, because he does it and the kirin thor + dwarves let it happen. Kael'Thas was %100 justified for his actions but from the PoV of the alliance they only know what garathos tells them and that the naga are clearly an enemy faction.

You don't know that, they could be known "raiders" or something. They show up all over the coast line in many wow areas and are pretty hostile

>garathose is the leader of the alliance forces in wc3, he pretty much has the same rank as lothar. Obviously he is a man of power and influence and his death would have ramifications.

Considering we've seen the aftermath? Not really? The guy's only legacy is 'Managing to lose the alliance the elves' due to his racism. He's also hypocritical enough to want to execute his allies for making an alliance with a race they had no conflict with to fight the undead but personally wiling to team up with the undead and somehow expect them to keep their deal.

> Prince Kael'thas: "Hail, Lord Garithos. The observatories have been repaired as you requested. We were just about to--"
> Grand Marshal Garithos: "I received ill news from the front line. Is it true that you've consorted with the vile naga?"
>Prince Kael'thas: "Well, yes, milord. They helped us cross the lake. I assure you they pose no threat to us or to--"
>Grand Marshal Garithos: "They are inhuman and must be crushed like any other enemy! Be careful where you place your loyalties, blood elf. I will not tolerate treason in my ranks. Now I must return to the front. You will remain here and wait for further orders."
looks like you didn't play the game

Neither does Lorderan at that point so that would go just as much to Garithos as Kael'thas if that is the argument.

>You don't know that, they could be known "raiders" or something. They show up all over the coast line in many wow areas and are pretty hostile

WoW also occurs after WCIII and that's a pretty big jump when they'd shown literally zero hostile intent in the campaign until after the blood elves were lined up for execution. This is also after the humans had teamed up with 'Stone Giants, Chimeras, Tauren and Orcs' to avoid death and Orcs have a pretty concrete history of trying to kill humans, unlike the Naga.

the humans in Kalimdor. Not the humans in Lordaeron, who did not know about any of this

? He battles with the scourge and has enough success at it not to be replaced, just being in his position in the 1st place makes him a man of standing.

>Managing to lose the alliance the elves' due to his racism.
From the alliance PoV the blood elves were betraying the alliance

>they had no conflict with
Your assumption, he clearly knows who the naga are. And you're not going to tell me the naga are not hostile to everyone in WoW, there are plenty of places like lighthouses that are flooded with hostile naga. Pretty much every voice line in wc3 for naga includes "death to the surface dwellers.

Neither does Lordaeron. Didn't stop Garithos. Garithos was nobody who put himself in charge because there was no one higher ranked left, and he had no contact with anyone else. His "Alliance" was a joke, and Kael'thas would've outranked him if it had anything in common with Alliance of Lordaeron from 2nd war.

>He battles with the scourge and has enough success at it not to be replaced, just being in his position in the 1st place makes him a man of standing.

He was in charge because 'Everyone higher rank in Lorderan is dead'. Honestly, Kael'Thas outranked him and should have been in charge if they work with any sort of chain of alliance command, being the leader of one of the three founding races of the alliance in both a military and civil capacity.

>From the alliance PoV the blood elves were betraying the alliance

From the point of view of Garethos, which is the point. His racism fucked everything up and even in-context he should have known better than to try to execute an entire race for making an alliance with a race they are not at war with when the entire country is falling apart.

>He battles with the scourge and has enough success at it not to be replaced, just being in his position in the 1st place makes him a man of standing.

And his sole effect on history is 'Losing the alliance the elves and giving the forsaken a homeland'. Not exactly a glorious legacy.

Is there a map like this but from the warcraft 3 era? I can't seem to find one without all the new stuff like Pandaria and whatever on it.

...

Sylvanas came in and did fuckery to make the alliance look bad in the early parts of the storyline in Eversong Woods. Something about assassinating a dwarf or something like that.

what went wrong, lads?

WC3 era? Those maps would be weird if they tried to "stitch" them together.
Plenty of vanilla WoW era maps though.

WoW happened.

o, nvm

>He was in charge because 'Everyone higher rank in Lorderan is dead'
You dont even know that, lorderan is the front line in the battle with the scourge thats why he gets so many races supporting him, he was the best man for the job it doesn't matter what the circumstances were, he wasn't some butt fuck nobody. Im honestly getting pretty tired of of this argument, if you want to cherry pick why garathos was not competent be my guest, but that has nothing to do with anything. You have no argument at all.

The fact is he was the commander of the alliance forces, and kael betrayed his orders. Then didn't stick around for his judiciary process and murder the kirin tor jailers. Why you feel that garathoses competence that you guess at somehow undermines that is beyond me.

> an entire race
Only kael and his men, clearly not all the blood elves went off to outland. in fact the majority of them are still in azaroth in wow

Dont see why that matters,

I believe there is one in the manual, cant remember but its similar to this which Im not sure if its from WC3.

IMO, ideal WoW would still have Alliance and the Horde, with human (including all surviving nations, not just Stormwind), dwarves and gnomes against orcs, trolls and tauren, not in outright war (and though they would have strength to crush them, Ali wouldn't be able to project force to Kalimdor to deal with them) but the occassional skirmish from vanilla, with other races (nelves, h/belves, goblins, propably pandas, because why not, and fuck playable undead) would be neutral and players could choose one of the factions they want to suck up to... reputation system was there, so that would be no problem.

Goblins are mercenary, belves have reasons to hate both sides, pandas are friends with everyone, and while nelves have beef with orcs, they originally were more savage and primal, and could've joined tauren in trying to redeem the orcs. Ogres could propably work similar to goblins, they served as mercenaries for both sides in WC3.

With the reputation system, you would have greater flexibility in in-game politics. You can both add extra factions/races in a similar way, and you can have one side temporarily get closer to one of the main factions, while the players would have an option to stick with the opposite side no matter who the government favors.

When was Zandalar invented? I know they considered one of those islands the Undermine or something for the goblins during vanilla, but what about the others?

Kezan exploded and sunk thanks to Deathwing, and I think the other island also exploded after killing that huge lava turtle thing.

Zandalar was invented back before WoW, when they made the rpg

broken isles doesn't feel nearly so big as it is shown on that map

For the sake of it, the Warcraft 2 map of Azeroth.

>he was the best man for the job

He proceeds to get mind controlled by the undead the moment the camera isn't on him. That's how Sylvanas finds him.

Kael'thas was a crown prince of one of the member states of the alliance, and also a former ruling member of the kirin tor (who still probably had a shitload of clout there as well). Bullshit on Garithos having any kind of rank near Kael'thas assuming the world wasn't falling apart. He was a baron of Lordaeron at best.

Always felt like Stormwind was a lot further from the others, but they right there.

It was there all along. Everyone was just completely blind. Including Maiev, Tyrande, Malfurion & co. who actually landed there, led a battle with nagas and delved into the Tomb of Sargeras. They just never noticed there's a whole fucking continent all around them.

I'd want to talk about warcraft lore but I can't help but feel there are too many of the typical Veeky Forums whiners that I run into on other warcraft threads to have fun

>Why you feel that garathoses competence that you guess at somehow undermines that is beyond me.

It's not his competence (Though that is also lacking) that is the problem. It's the fact that his orders and arrest is racially motivated because he's in the middle of a war for survival and trying to further his own racist agenda.

>Only kael and his men, clearly not all the blood elves went off to outland. in fact the majority of them are still in azaroth in wow

And don't want to be part of an alliance that tried to execute their crown prince. Again, he arrested and tried to execute a crown prince for treason. He's literally the leader of his entire race at that point and a marshal is trying to do the equivalent of arresting the queen of England for her diplomatic deals.

How was the Vault of the Wardens on the Broken Isles if Maiev just discovered them?

Sometimes I miss when Warcraft lore was, if far from a masterpiece, at least cool and fun. It seems like the deeper into WoW Blizzard got the worse they got at everything that wasn't gameplay and cinematics, as further evidenced by the narrative messes of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3.

Nostalgia's no fun when the thing you're being nostalgic over is still around, just as something much less good.

what do you want to talk about?

They put too much emphasis on fighting the big names and now they have no key characters to push the storyline so they have to pull shit out of their ass.