Weekend Warcraft Lore General

Wakener, your deeds have earned you the trust of the Klaxxi. You are to be rewarded.

Walk with me.

We mantid are an elder race. The pandaren you associate with - they are but children. They have their role to play.

Each cycle, our young swarm their walls. The pandaren slay the weak. The strong return.
With each generation, we grow ever stronger.

Before your history began, our empire was vast. We shared this world with our sister kingdoms, Ahn'Qiraj and Azjol-Nerub.
Our Gods were many, and powerful. We mantid worshipped the seven heads of Y'shaarj.

Great was the Old One, and terrible was His wrath. He consumed hope and begat despair; He inhaled courage and breathed fear.

When the usurpers came - the ones you call "Titans" - Y'shaarj was destroyed. His last terrible breath has haunted this land ever since, but the shadows he left behind are mere whispers of his former glory.

I tell you now, because you have earned this warning.

Your gods are not our gods, outsider. If the Old Ones ever return, we mantid will once again stand by their side.

The wisest among you will do the same.

Where did the elves live before darnassus? Lmao no one cares look at sylvannas shes so sexy

The specifics are still nebulous, but to our knowledge, Elune is one of the rare instances of an honest-to-God deity on Azeroth. She's not some nebulous force like the Light, nor is she strictly a myth, nor is she to be confused with any of the loa or other lesser spirits. She is a distinct entity with a real religion surrounding her.

RIP Ysera

Ignoring the expansion's shitty writing, which orc clan did you like the most in WoD?

I'd have to go with Blackrock. They were metal as fuck in every sense of the word.

She might be Azeroth's world soul/Titan, she also might not be. Elune is still kind of a mystery.

>tfw no original Gorgrond with train around the whole zone

WoD was a terrible idea from the start but it could have been salvageable. At least the Arakkoa lore was great.

Can't wait to see how Blizzard inevitably fucks up Elune. :(

I was actually pretty pumped for WoD. I've got a massive orc boner which would put Metzen to shame, so seeing these alternate version of the clans got me excited.

Hot damn was it all so lackluster though.

>Hot damn was it all so lackluster though.
Apparently they actually edited out a huge portion of the planned story that actually had the most significance because they felt there was too much of a focus on orcs in the orc-themed expansion.

It's been mentioned here and there, but major chunks of the expansion were left on the cutting room floor.

Moonglade, you idiot

Really, I think WoD would've been a lot better if it was a more hellish portrayal of what could've happened. Like, have Garrosh basically win, and then have it be a desperate fight. And then do like a timeline threatens shit thing. And then have someone from the fucked timeline have a big heroic sacrifice moment and sacrifice their own timeline for the sake of the better future.

And then, again. Have this whole thing culminate in the ability to time travel or see through time or fuck with anything related to time totally undone.

one of the best races to come from MoP, along with the Mogu

Yeah that was the original focus of Gorgrond. Orgrim was gonna show up and have a major role to play, and IIRC it was gonna show how the Blackrocks and Warsong pressganged most of the other clans into the whole thing.

Instead it's about plant people and Orgrim--the character every proper Hordefag was practically shitting themselves to see again--was reduced to one fucking quest.

I'll be honest. I've basically totally ignored WoD. Because I hate AU wank shit. I hate it so much. Because it was clear from the beginning all the "familiar characters" are just deviant versions of the familiar lore characters.

It was a pointless expansion. It was totally fucking pointless. It did nothing. It stretched out the Garrosh shit when he should've been tossed in a pond filled with man-eating koi.

Well, that's kinda shitty. I'm an alliancefag but that sounds like a lot of fun.

I'm right there with you, user. I remember when the expansion first got announced, I was completely baffled that people were getting hyped, 'cause it really was just slapping old names on completely new characters. I know "comic book plot" is an overused complaint, but that really was the kind of nonsense that a Marvel or DC exec would come up with.

Reducing Grom's iconic jaw tattoo to some kind of soul patch was just salt in the wound.

this is also why draenei had such a big focus, in the original lore draenei had a small presence on draenor being mostly based out of one city/place like they are on azeroth. in wod they feel on par with orcs.

>Reducing Grom's iconic jaw tattoo to some kind of soul patch was just salt in the wound.

WoW seems incapable of actually keeping people's looks if they would be remotely effort to model. Like how pic related ended up 'Every other generic elf'.

Oh my god. The half blue face is where they got the idea for void elves.

Playing on an RP server, what bummed me out the most was all the people who immediately created their "AU" orc OCs. It's gotten to the point where there are probably more AU orcs represented by player characters than actual original timeline orcs. Which is a crying shame. Because there's so much going on with what's happening in the main timeline, and despite how much I love a lot of the Iron Horde's surface elements there's virtually no distinguishable difference between any of the orc clans.

Besides, there's no reason to ever not play a Frostwolf orc. Time and time again they prove they're the only clan capable of thinking for themselves.

Pity they reduced it to this because actually giving her a half face of facepaint would have been work. On the wrong side of her face.

I estimate to build the path of glory from Hellfire Citadel it would have taken over a billion draenai, possibly two billion, though I haven't taken measurements in game. How many draenai were these even supposed to be on draenor? Wouldn't the Orcs have had to capture and raise draenai just to use them as a construction material for a road? Aside from the absolute horror of such an action (in a children's game no less!) the logistics of feeding and raising two billion draenai to adulthood without giving them enough freedom to revolt seems suspect.

The orcs and demons must have REALLY hated the draenai for them to enact such a punishment

ohhh, i love that art. tyrande is a dream to draw

What's the population of the various warcraft races?

Could medieval Europe + the ottomans conquer the continent of lordaeron pre-scourge invasion?

Gul'dan could do it, so why not other orcs?

I go with Velen Naaru theory

>What's the population of the various warcraft races?

Fucking infinite, judging by how every race manages to lose an entire army every few months.

It kills me how much potential they wasted with the Mag'har and Garrosh. Fucking UNCORRUPTED ORCS! Living simply, practicing shamanism, untouched by war. The ones who never became the Horde. It was everything the orc narrative had been building to from Lord of the Clans through Warcraft 3. Just imagine how different the story would have been if Blizzard had actually let them have an influence on the Horde.

And then they wanted to bring back Warcraft 2, and used Garrosh to bring that about. Talk about forcing a square peg through a round hole. It's a crime of writing.

Threadly reminder that Sylvanas and the undead are abominations that have no place as a playable race but should be exterminated on sight.
Kill the undead, life war now

Does that make Cenarius Warcraft Jesus?

Why didn't the undead join the alliance btw? They're humans, they're literally humans who died fighting the horde who now have joined the horde in burning and pillaging their often children.

Blizzard lore is the most stupid one I've effect read.

because humans hate them and want to kill them because they are ugly.

The Forsaken disdain many horde members themselves, but work with what they have been given

Well, post more art then.

>they're literally humans who died fighting the horde
No, they're humans who died fighting the Scourge (or got plagued). Also, Sylvanas' story in TFT ended with her backstabbing Garithos, though admittedly he was about to turn on her as well. Relations were poor.

The Alliance saw no difference between them and the Scourge and they were KOS even before they joined the Horde.

The entire point of the Forsaken was they're tragic outcasts forced into underhanded behavior to survive. The world they knew turned its back on them, which is why they embraced darker tactics.

Thrall reached out to them because he understandably had a soft spot for exiles struggling to survive. Plus allies in the EK would be invaluable. The Forsaken saw the benefits of the Horde having their backs.

That said, I would like it if this thread didn't devolve into more Skubsaken bitching.

Bronze Dragonflight surreptitiously replaces populations with their alternate timeline selves.

Why does wowbfa get a pass but none of the other expansions before it? They're terrible, but aren't they included by including anything after?

Better to just ignore the MMO entirely, only gw does lore right

I think it gets bonus points for not being Legion.
Although I'll miss my talking Artifriends and Frostdes and Frostroy.

>That said, I would like it if this thread didn't devolve into more Skubsaken bitching.
Welcome to Warcraft lore threads.
>X did nothing wrong
>X is a dindu
>the factions make no sense, they should really be [insert even more tortured combination]
>Warcraft turned to shit in [insert game or expansion that followed the one I started with]
>le ebin DK world police memes
>I wish WoW lore was more like Hearthstone
>tfw no [race] gf
>how I would fix [retcon] with [even bigger retcon]
Did I miss anything?

>Elune strongly associated with Azeroth’s moon
>It’s real shit and has an effect

My bet is on Elune being a titan, contained in the moon. Able to project power onto Azeroth, even though she’s literally still dreaming and hasn’t awoken yet, like Azeroth.

How about an Avatar of Order?

Warcraft did turn to shit after classic, and I've only played the Frozen throne.

>Just imagine how different the story would have been if Blizzard had actually let them have an influence on the Horde.

Boring. Who the fuck actually wants orcs "Living simply" or "untouched by war"?
Warcraft should not be an orc farming simulator.

How did Sargeras defeat the entire Pantheon? How people even think we have a chance against him? The story makes no sense

Yes it should, although not farming of the agricultural variety.

Are Night Elves immortal? What about Draeneis?

#
Especially if it's after she makes a big deal about how aufilebthe void is, she'd just call her on her horrible assumptions and the selfishness of forcing her into that corner before finally just saying "it still sounds better then this bitch"

Would be the perfect logical pick apart of her entire damn motives

Who's redemption is less plausable? Kerrigan already contrived one or windrunners inevitably coming contrivance?

Sargeras' mere presence would conflagrate atleast half the planet. He literally cannot show up on any world ever, which is why he uses avatars. They're his only way to physically be anywhere outside his "titan realm". The raid boss in Legion is not Sargeras, it's one of his discarded avatars. You're literally fighting his animated skin sheddings

>muh WAR in WARcraft
You know what's boring? Unending fucking stalemate, which is all the faction war will ever be. How do you retards not understand that ActiBlizz is never going to let either side win or lose? It's like you WANT the setting to turn into Age of Sigmar.

>Sargeras' mere presence would conflagrate atleast half the planet.
Isn't he the "Destroyer of Worlds" though, his objective being to destroy all life?

Windrunners, Kerrigan was aufilebthe bit at least had the vague explenations og zerg/amon brain scrambling, leaving her not fully herself, windrunner acts more horribly then post WoL kerrigan ever did, and that is saying somtning.

He wants to destroy the universe and remake it to remove the void corruption. Killing potential allies would be counterproductive. Besides, he wants to plant his big flaming sword into Azeroth's nether regions

>remake it to remove the void corruption
Why is he considered the bad guy? He's doing the right thing

Green kool-aid made him batshit insane

I was under the impression that he just wants to destroy everything.
He can't have the Universe, so no-one can.

bet we will get an expansion on the moon next?

>the void will corrupt and create an unstoppable dark titan that will destroy the universe
>*gets corrupted and starts destroying the universe*

You are wrong.
Pre-Chronicles, Sargeras wanted to destroy the universe because he saw it as flawed because evil exists in it. In the new universe after the Burning Crusade, such a defect would be corrected, so that no evil is possible.
Post-Chronicles, he wants to destroy all world-souls in the universe before the Void Lords corrupt them into Dark Titans and plunge the universe into the void. Since Azeroth's world-soul is the strongest, the Legion is focused on it

Sargeras believes that life can take up root in the cosmos again after the Burning Crusade is at an end, since it did that before. If the cosmos falls to the void, this possibility vanishes

Did Eonar's spirit not hide on a world called Elunaria?

>You know what's boring? Unending fucking stalemate

It's more interesting than villain of the week who's unstoppable until we crush them across three raid tiers.

What? No, Pre-Chronicles Sargeras was just a nihilist who'd gone FUCK EVERYTHING-mode after all the shit he saw as a champion for the Titans. There was nothing suggesting he wanted to rebuild anything afterwards.

Also, while he was likely the most powerful individual in the universe, he was still not on the level of single-handedly cleaving planets. His loss to Aegwynn was legitimate, he just had a good Plan B.

>Why is he considered the bad guy?

Because he's going to kill everyone.

It's almost as if WoW is best when it's about discovery, investigation and small-scale problems, not all-out wars. Although the Thunder King was cool.

>Because he's going to kill everyone.
Not if you join the legion

I did like the fact that if thunder king and lich king went in a 1v1 fight the thunder king would win but if it included armies the lich king would win, probably due to sheer attrition.

>It's almost as if WoW is best when it's about discovery, investigation and small-scale problems, not all-out wars.

No, wars are good because they actually provide a sense of urgency to the plot and an over arching antagonist. The opposite faction is a better bad guy than any Lich King/Lava Dragon/Whatever else precisely because you don't just them in a raid.

...

>because you don't just them in a raid
But you don't just them ANYWHERE. There's no resolution, ever. Sure, you mow down a few hundred nameless NPCs during quests, but never anyone who truly matters. It's the opposite of urgency. I can never take faction war quests seriously because I know they all have less bearing on the plot than any hunt for bear asses.

>a sense of urgency to the plot
>muh plot
You are the same kind of faggot that ruined 40k.

>The constant fanwank faction wars that is just as stale as the villain of the expansion stories is just as good
How anyon can justify a faction war that won't mean anything longterm due to Blizzards hardon for their status quo is beyond me

>But you don't just them ANYWHERE. There's no resolution, ever.

Yes, you don't want to finish them off because then you're left scratching your ass with nothing to do.

>Sure, you mow down a few hundred nameless NPCs during quests, but never anyone who truly matters.

That's just the case of them not writing characters who matter. You easily could kill important characters, but characters are rarely developed Darkbad the Destroyer has come to kill us and we must learn the value of working together to defeat him.

Warcraft has always had an advancing plot.

Faction war is better because it provides a continual source of conflict.

>Warcraft has always had an advancing plot.
Is a matter of scope. In vanilla, we had Nefarian, not Deathwing. Kel'thuzad, not Arthas.
You had a sense of a wider world in which your character was an hero but not the focus.
Now is all about the big players, making the world smaller.
THIS is one of the main reasons people miss vanilla. Is not because "it was the first wow" or "they like to farm".
Is because you had a sense of a world in which you were immersed, not of a story driven single-player masqueraded as a MMORPG.

Pandaria was the best expansion

So does the Villian of the week stuff. Faction Conflict as a main plot point is dumb because in BfA we'll start it by fighting each other but end up working together to save Azeroth once again.

In early lore, the forsaken were simply allied to the horde, not actual members

They were forced to for survival, because in the eyes of the alliance, they are no better than the scourge (rightfully so)

Vanilla was the same shit, just more clunky.
You maybe didn't kill the Lich King on account of him being on another continent, but you killed Elemental Lords and Old Gods, so you weren't exactly wallowing with the small fry.
The world only seemed big because it was harder to get around and you weren't as good at the game.

No, and for the reasons I stated. Is true that where there was more exploration one could at least appreciate that.
But from like half TBC, things went to shit. Arguably from TBC because that made the decision that Illdan was the final boss. It all started with that.

>So does the Villian of the week stuff.

Not really, it provides conflict that's very start and stop and necessarily formulaic.

>we'll start it by fighting each other but end up working together to save Azeroth once again.

You don't actually need that last step though. You can skip the working together part easily enough.

> but you killed Elemental Lords and Old Gods
The old gods were not big characters of the original story like Illidan or Arthas (yes I know they were there, but more as plot devices, you did not see them in the same extent).
Also, in the following expansion the Horde went so retarded that became worse and more damaging than most of the villains.
Finally, I think that the fact that I had less mobility in the old game was a feature. The world felt bigger.

I liked how all the big enemies in vanilla (and to some extent, TBC) were all "lesser" bosses, or otherwise not at the top of their game.

- Ragnaros was summoned too soon.
- Onyxia and Nefarian, while powerful, were still just Deathwing's kids
- Hakkar was just one of many troll gods, also recently resurrected
- C'thun was still weakened since his imprisonment
- Kel'thuzad, while the top necromancer, was still "just" a lich, Arthas' lieutenant
- Kael, Vashj and Illidan were just really powerful mortals
- Gruul is only an extra-strong gronn, his kids aren't even raid bosses
- Zul'jin and the Amani are mostly the same as what we fought in Zul'Gurub, regular trolls with extra voodoo juice
- Kil'jaeden was literally stuck in a doorway, and even then required the aid of blue dragons and the sacrifice of Anveena to be stopped

It's only Wrath where things really got out of hand, starting off with us casually killing Malygos with zero drama. God that was stupid.

>The old gods were not big characters of the original story like Illidan or Arthas

Putting characters like Illidan and Arthas on a pedestal is part of the problem. Is there any logical reason an Old God shouldn't be more powerful or important than them? Not really.

New characters are hard to develop when everything is stuck in the suffocating shadow of WCIII.

>Finally, I think that the fact that I had less mobility in the old game was a feature. The world felt bigger.

Not really a feature considering you could still walk everywhere if you wanted.

>You don't actually need that last step though. You can skip the working together part easily enough.
Sure you can skip it but knowing Blizzard they won't
It's basically WoD 2.0 but less shit with its content draught
Eh, at least she has her own unique model and doesn't share one with Sylvanas. The idea behind Void Elves is still very dumb and a shitty way to give Alliance sort-of-but-not-really High Elves

Dapper lycanthropes.
Terrible, yet refined.

The time matters.
As the lack of automatic entry in the dungeon. Yes you spare time, but many fun stories belong to the times you approach the dungeon and you find an enemy (Horde/Alliance) party or raid.
They made it more automatic but it lost the unpredictability that makes playing a MMORPG game worth it.

>Putting characters like Illidan and Arthas on a pedestal is part of the problem. Is there any logical reason an Old God shouldn't be more powerful or important than them? Not really.
The point is that the world does not change as much if you kill C'thun in Vanilla (before these gods were inflated to main story points) while killing Illidan or Arthas is a big deal.

>Elune is Azeroth's midget twin
>but due to not having a severe Old God infestation, she can do things other than bleed out
I wonder what the deal is with the other moon.