Weekend Warcraft Lore General

Gains (Against the Enemy) Edition

Discuss the lore and story of the Warcraft franchise and its application in and around traditional games.

>Document compendium: Contains official (ex-canon) DnD 3.x variants and a fan made DnD 5e version! Also contains the official Warcraft Chronicles volumes 1 and 2.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B52pEESRLwfBM3V0Sm5NTlBITlk

Previous thread

Energy, power

Oh, good grief, another gay elf. Why everyone likes blood elves? I can perfectly understand why everyone likes female elves, but race as a whole?

How is he gay if he's got a hot blood elf chick hanging off his arm?

Fag hag

lol

First four posts

Time to make a real discussion.

You've had time to find a real good WoW RPG shit.

How does you group go with it?

>a hot blood elf chick
A beard obviously.

I thought I'd preempt any RvB shitposting by expanding on an idea I had a couple threads ago...An AU Warcraft where instead of Alliance vs. Horde it's Thunder King vs. Kaldorei Empire

Thunder King Playable Races:

Pandaren: After he is resurrected by the Zandalari Lei Shen sees how the Pandaren defeated his heirs and decides to raise their status into warriors. Monks are now heavily militarized, but there is a secret rebellion in hiding.
Mogu: Uneasily aligned with their former slaves, the Mogu are still powerful and in the top brass, if no longer at the absolute head of all the other races. Often trying to suck up to Lei Shen after they lost favor for losing to the Pandaren Revolution.
Zandalari: In disarray due to losing their leadership in the war against the Pandaren, the Zandalari were forced to become vassals to the Thunder King, albeit respected ones. Keep a lot of their autonomy but must lend troops to his war effort to capture the Well of Eternity
Saurok: Exactly what they've always been: forcibly mutated living weapons, though Lei Shen treats them with more respect than later Mogu emperors and keeps them focused on his enemies. Hints of a real culture growing in their society.

Kaldorei Empire:

Night Elf: Obviously. There is a major split between the Highborne and the normal, more nature loving commoners but no real physical differences yet. The commoners fight the Thunder King for fear of his tyranny. The Highborne fight the Thunder King to keep the Well and their hedonistic, destructive lifestyles.

Furbolg: Brought in to fight for the Kaldorei Empire by the aforementioned commoners, the Furbolg are weary of Azshara's intentions but see no other choice but to keep Lei Shen from the greatest source of power in Azeroth.
Nerubians: Allied with Azshara due to her opposition to their ancient Troll foes. No one trusts them but no one can deny their

Tauren: Like the Furbolg, are allied more with the commoners than the Highborne, but also have memories of Mogu tyranny from their Yaungol ancestry.

Should I replace Nerubians with Mantid? That might fit better.

Isn't that the same AU with Demonhunter Malfurion and Archdruid Illidan?

Might be. I don't think they actually say the one with the Thunder King attacking the Kaldorei to claim the Well is the same roleswap one but it's certainly possible.

People who hate RvB tend to hate anything post WOTLK and that includes anything in Pandafag expansion.

>Nerubians
tfw Nerubians will be forever ignored

Eh? From what I've seen a lot of people hate the RvB aspects of MoP but like Pandaria itself.

Lei Shen is one of the best villains we've gotten in years.

>Tfw I forget to finish filling out their entry

"But no one can deny their effectiveness" fuck.

I feel your pain, spider bro. R.I.P. Azjol-Nerub zone.

But how is this concept ultimately any different from RvB?
You've changed the teams and the races, but it's still the same my faction vs. your faction that so many people seem to hate.

My main thought was because both Lei Shen and Azshara are shitters it would be less "I HAVE THE MORAL HIGHGROUND" shitposting.

But upon rereading what I wrote I'm realizing I gave the Kaldorei too much sympathy.

This. People want the nuance of vanilla. A cold war between ruined kingdoms just starting to rebuild and seek out allies. Sellswords fighting for more hawkish organizations. The ability to associate with powerful neutral organizations or even declare war on them if you feel like. That feeling of vastness of the world with a gorillion tribes, secret societies, brotherhoods, clans, kingdoms, trade cartels, city states, pirate fleets and more out there to befriend and join.

Eh, the idea's decent enough, but realistically any conflict with two sides will lead to zealots screaming about their side's supposed moral highground.

The problem is, blizzard cant write shades of grey at all. One side has a blindingly obvious high ground with every possible military advantage piled on the top of it. Hell they even won the war once just to snap back to the status quo where no one is allowed to win and every change to the factions, no matter how minor must be mirrored or fanboys start whining.

I am one of those people and I love most of Pandaria, I just hate the RvB stuff in Pandaria

They managed in vanilla

Lore question for the Warcraft game I may or may not.
When Illidan and Kael'thas go to destroy the Frozen Throne, does Kael'thas know they're doing that on the Kil'jaeden's orders? Or is it entirely because he wants to fuck up Arthas?

Kil'jaeden told Illidan to do it right in front of Kael, so yes I imagine he knows why they're doing it.

He'd probably happily do it anyway because fuck Arthas.

Eck, that doesn't sit well with me. Kael'thas's whole thing is supposed to be about how he's trying to save his people, but he seems to get really fucking sidetracked with pointless shit.

Kael was a fucking retard since WC3, no idea how he was lionized into being such a pure hero. He was a desperate crack addict all along craving power, not a bishie elf good boi.

Nah, the players want to play walking demigods in a world of streamlined factions led by cartoon characters.

t. Activision

The point of Illidan and crew in TFT was they were trying to take over Outland to live. When they conquered the Black Temple from Magtheridon they THOUGHT they'd done it.

Then Kil'jaeden showed up out of nowhere, having found them. He said "Sure, you can stay here in peace...IF you do this thing for me first." It was a greater good type of thing.

Can we take a moment to appreciate that the entire Defias Brotherhood rebellion was started by a bunch of pissed of construction workers and engineers.

Do you realise that this applies to every setting ever?

Here's another food-for-thought question: Is there any reason in TBC the blood elves couldn't have just joined the Alliance instead of the Horde?

>This shit again

This will be a good thread.

Logically the Belves shouldn't have joined either and would have been part of a third, Illidari faction.

But that would be too much work.

Blood elves were too special snowflake to stay in the illidari and betrayed them for the legion.

Truly a dispicable race.

Fair weather friends. Been like that since WC2.

The elves have always been fairweather allies. They were still sore about Garithos leaving them up the creek, and the fact they were still spying on them by the time TBC starts wasn't sitting with them. With the Dark Portal reopening and a chance to reunite with Kael'thas, the Azeroth blood elves needed allies to help with the trip, and it so happens that their former Ranger-General, now calling herself the Dark Lady, put in a good word for them with Thrall, who agreed to take them on.

That's OSTENSIBLY why the blood elves joined the Horde.

Goddamn why do you have to ruin every thread with this shit?

I know it's the same guy.

Right, but like...instead of the trolls and orcs that killed their families and friends, couldn't they have just been like "Sup Stormwind let's dark portal & chill?"
It just seems so much simpler.

Without the Sunwell, Kael'thas wanted power for his peoeple at any cost. He was just willing to cross the threshold to the dark side sooner than people expected, and his Sunfury loyalists were along for the ride with him because hey, he's fucking Kael'thas Sunstrider, god-prince of the sin'dorei.

That's not even the HE Thoughts. It's:

>Humans turned up, fleeing from the orcs and told us they were being followed by the orcs.
>We helped arm and equip them so we could fight together.
>The orks invaded and we bled with the humans to stop them.
>That's why we side with humans, we have a history of defending each other when they were at their lowest point.

a) Thrall's orcs and the Darkspear trolls were not the murderers of the high elves. Even the elves aren't that stupid.
b) Beggars can't be choosers.

>The elves have always been fairweather allies.

What? The Elves saved humanity after the first war when the humans fled to their lands. They left the alliance later, yeah but that was during a time of peace.

>Darkspear are the same thing as Amani
The main reason it was chosen was because the Horde needed a pretty race to balance factions. We all know this.

And don't bullshit it me and pretend you're some new person who's just shown up with questions, we have this debate EVERY, FUCKING, THREAD. I don't buy for a moment you're not a Helf fag.

Well, Thrall's orcs are. I mean, they lionise the shit out of Hellscream and 'Killing Elves' is one of his favourite killing activities.

"We've just been devastated to the Shadowlands and back by Arthas and his Scourge, we've just lost our font of power, and you send this FUCCBOI Garithos to bail us out? Are you for real, humans?"

>Even the elves aren't that stupid.

Aren't they though? It's not that big a stretch.
People attack sikhs just because they have turbans and >le islam boogeyman

>b) Beggars can't be choosers.

Right, but why wouldn't the Alliance take them? Seems like there's no good reason not to.

Obviously, it's game mechanics at work. But that's a lame ass explanation.

Not a helf fag, just trying to figure out Blizz's weird justifications for shit.

It's a shame as the one thing I very much liked about Vanilla was that it was less black and white than most fantasy I had encountered. While everybody is sick of orcs being "nobel savages who dindu nuffink wronk" these days, at the time having normally alwasy chaotic evil cannon fodder races actually have their own culture and society, and not all be baby-murdering assholes seemed novel.
In Vanilla both Horde and Alliance hade assholes and good people, and both factions were primarily concerned with rebuilding after a devastating war, and were in a state of cold war neighter side really wanted to get hot, but which would occasionally flare up into skirmishes in contested areas. You also got a feel of the PCs being mercenaries and explorers, travelling to far off areas and filling in for the armies which didn't have enough resources to deal with all the problems themselves.

However, later on the game has become more and more about all-out war between Horde and Alliance (usually justified by "putting war back in warcraft". despite the gold age of world pvp being in Vanilla when the two factions weren't even officially at war), while making the Horde more evil and Alliance into good guys who can do no wrong, but are never actually being allowed to destroy the Horde because that would mean no more faction war (the "Alliance if always right but Horde always wins" problem), and the PCs have gone from mercenaries and sellswords to legendary heroes who all are the leaders of their class order (no, don't ask howcome every paladin is the leader of the Silver Hand at the same time). I'm expecting a few expansions down the line they make every PC the Warchief/High King.

The Elves asked for help with the Amani during the Troll Wars. When they got it, they swore an oath to the human king's bloodline.

They fulfilled that oath later by sending a token force basically just to shut the humans up. It's not until the orcs attacked them (because the Amani told them to) that they put their full might into the Alliance.

They left the Alliance when they thought they'd been abandoned and then Terenas decided on the camps instead of execution.

They left the Alliance again because of Garithos. They almost left the Horde because of Garrosh. The elves of Quel'thelas have always been concerned mostly with themselves and their own people, and that is who they care about.

Allies are just means to achieve that.

I'm not really sure 'Stops being allies when a guy orders your leader killled' is fair weather. I mean, if some British major had wanted to execute Charles de Gaulle you could sorta see why the Free French wouldn't want to be allies there.

>the PCs have gone from mercenaries and sellswords to legendary heroes who all are the leaders of their class order
Admittedly, even during vanilla, you could be such a monstrous badass on the battlefield that you would become the High Warlord or Grand Marshall, essentially the Warchief/Alliance's ultimate and most decorated champion. That's nothing to sneeze at.
>What's an Old God? FUCK YOU, I'M HIGH WARLORD

>They fulfilled that oath later by sending a token force basically just to shut the humans up. It's not until the orcs attacked them (because the Amani told them to) that they put their full might into the Alliance.

...well, ok then. They've retconned the second war since I last played Tides of Darkness since the Elves were a major part of the alliance right from the start there (They were the guys who supplied a lot of the weapons that the human armies were using, to the point where it's mentioned in the opening cinematic.)

Yes. They retconned Tides of Darkness. There's been an assload of retcons to all the RTSes, though WC3 gets the least because it's the newest.

Take anything in WC2 with a grain of salt in the canoncity department.

>See this staring directly at you across the battlefield
What do you do?

Wonder what the fuck am I doing on a battlefield when I'm specialised in dealing with diplomacy towards neutral factions

PvE >>> PvP

But then, the two factions were forced to negotiate an uneasy truce when a malevolent force threatening to topple both of them invaded Azeroth. Through the Sun Portal opened in Feralas by the universally respected archmage Furion Stormrage poured in the sinister armies of the militant Apexis Empire from the distant planet of Rakshar.

Its regiments were spearheaded by the Ogres, a race of brutal, but cunning half-mineral, half-fungal creatures whipped into obedience by their feathered masters.

The ranks of spies and raiders were filled with the ferocious Saberon, feline children of one of Rakshar's wild gods enslaved by the Apexis.

The infantry was supplied by the Botani, plant creatures descended from a plant demigod called Talaa, burned to ashes by Apexis lasers back in ages immemorial.

The invasion was masterminded by the Arakkoa, a race of technologically advanced, but sinister birdmen who saw everybody as either potential slaves or pests to be eradicated.

The factions of Azeroth will have to work together with each other and with the mysterious Shadow Arakkoa to stop this terrible menace.

About the only thing Blizzard kept from Warcraft 1 was "the orcs won."

I like it.

Sap three times in a row, then steal the HK with ambush when she's engaged with two other people.

Rogue master race, all other PCs are fags, waah waah he just sneaks around and steals KBs, stop crying nerd should have saved your procs.

>their lands
>saved humanity
Can you at least skim the wowpedia entry on the Second War before you flat out invent lore out of the blue?

In his defence, he's more or less quoting what the opening cinematic of Tides of Darkness shows.

...

Haha le ebin meme Hordefriend!
You just wait until the Alliance wins and we force those Nelves to harvest ALL of the Ashenvale lumber for war reparations, maybe we'll cut you in on some of that lucrative lumber trade too if we let you live kek :>).

You and your kind all need to hang.

"alliance belf" faggot needs to hang. he's the carnac of warcraft lore general.

"My father once told me the world was gonna roll me, I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed" -Jaina Proudmoore

A lot of NPCs in WoW have flavor dialogue that's just that, for flavor. Is there some sort of list of NPCs who are confirmed to have took part in the battle at mount Hyjal? Either through books or flavor dialogue or fucking item descriptions.

I know it's a bit of an odd question, but I'm just curious.

Too late. You missed the last thread. Your streak is over.

Malfurion, Tyrande, Thrall and Jaina were there in warcraft 3. I guess characters like Cairne, Vol'jin and Shandris were there too.

I was more thinking of minor characters like if there was an NPC called Gruntius the Grunt in WoW who has a quest to kill demons and when you hand it in he says wow that reminds me of hyjal.

He's not real, but I was wondering if there were any like him. Perhaps in one of the books or whatever.

He means NPC's introduced in WoW, not lore characters from WC3.

Do you guys like all in one third generation death knights or the second generation death knights that had different powers based on race raised,
>Class death knight vs San'layn, undead, Banshee, Yamijar

>Lich queen jaina
This makes me want an ult wow expansion where the lich king won and we get to fight the new shadow council made of the death knights from hearthstone.

>while making the Horde more evil and Alliance into good guys
90% of the time I sort of felt like the bad guy as a Horde character it tied back to the Forsaken in some manner, with MoP Garrosh being the notable exception. However I doubt blizzard will do anything significant with that discontent brewing in undercity over Sylvanas' nonsense.

>Blizzard could have made Greymane be the one set fire to Teldrassil, because he's so desperate to kill Sylvanas and Anduin doesn't really want to fight after we banded together to defeat Sargeras that he just wants to spark a faction conflict so they have an excuse to wipe the Forsaken and the Horde off of azeroth
>no lol what if we just make it the horde cause they're the bad guys haha xd

Genn's an asshole but Teldrassil is where his people were housed after they escaped Gilneas because the night elves were the first race to come to his aid. The worgen and Gilneans probably care for Teldrassil about as much as most night elves, considering it's been around for the blink of an eye in a night elf lifespan. It's fucking retarded to suggest that Genn should burn the tree where his own people and the people that saved them from being wiped out by the worgen curse live, especially if your idea for his justification is that he just wants to spark another war.

There's making each faction morally ambiguous and then there's making a member of one of the factions pants-on-head fucktarded in the most ridiculous way imaginable just for the sake of making it grey. Besides, Teldrassil will be burned down by some third party and it will only appear like the Horde is to blame.

t. Hothead

almost as hot as Teldrassil in fact ;^)

>genn is going to destroy the place that is currently giving his place shelter to add witcher tier "moral greyness" to the plot.

And they were justified in their anger. Until they killed the queen.

No. Any rebellion against the crown is unjustified. For House Wrynn, those rebellious curs must be brought to heel and their leader forcibly wed to our Liege.

Pft. As if MANduin would need to stoop so low as to marry some criminal whore when he has Wrathion.

OP's pic makes me wonder, can Elves and Orcs breed? If so how long before Blood Elf/Orc hybrids start dominating the battlefield?

That's fucking retarded. How did you even type that out without having a stroke? You're the dumbest motherfucker of the weekend, congratufuckinglations.

Wrathion gonna get et by Ebonhorn off-screen. Forget about him.

I wouldn't have a problem with this. Wrathion's best showing in WoW is the questline where he's still just an egg.

does anyone hate how WoW is trying to turn established light is generally good in canon and flip it and say its been evil this game?

Orcs can breed with fucking Draenei of all people, so probably.

>one cutscene
>everybody chimps out
This is what really happened.

There is no "Thrall Orcs"

He just went into settlement camps and told the orcs why they are acting all peaceful and shit instead of being a horde.

then they made a comment about how Light is super evil because naaru go to Void planets and turn everything to crystal. Blizz can't write evil or good or grey...

There have been people saying 'dude there's something super fucking sketchy about the Naaru' since TBC. There is absolutely nothing new or mind-blowing about the Naaru potentially being assholes.

>Classical theme about what good is in all media actually evil
>fuck those naaru trying to help people they are evil

You really like this Nu Blizzard writing??

>Vanessa
>ever even LOOKING at Anduin

She gave up all Hope for a normal life just to restart a dead movement led by her criminal dupe of a father that was always a front for the Black Dragonflight.

She's got the crazy.

That's why he needs to fix her. With his love.

>Was Draenor n shit

looks like a Dota 2 character

I always thought it was more like...
>Humans beg us for help to defend their lands, we don't give a shit because the threat is far away and our city is protected by magic
>Lothar is a cool guy tho, fine...
>Sent ranger team to see how things develop in the lands of these plebs and to prepare just in case.
>Rangers take ages to come back, when they do they bring some plebs with them.
>They claim they were ambushed by Orcs, the threat is closer than they thought as the Orcs are going through the now traitor nation of Alterac.
>Orcs are now raping our forests and cutting down our women right at our doorstep, typical.
>Now our Ranger General wants to join the alliance thanks to the privitive concepts of "loyalty" and "honor", her time captive among these savages has clearly affected her.
>We join to get rid of the Orcs around or forest and to calm down our general's tits. they're pretty nice after all.
>We roll down all the way to the portal and win the day by being awesome.
>Humans were less than awesome at protecting our forest and letting orcs through their lands though,so we leave them to squabble amongs themselves again.
>Ranger General is still crazy and joins the Alliance full time. Whatever, we appoint her sister as the new Ranger General.
>Her tits are nicer anyway.

And that's, to my understanding, the story of how the elves won the second war. They tried to pull the same shit again with very little success.

Garithos did nothing wrong.

Oh please, the overzealous good guys being just as extreme as the bad guys is a trope that's just as common as classical themes of good and evil. The message of 'extremism is unhealthy, lead a balanced life' is a really fucking common one in all forms of media.

There's been cases of zealots exploiting the Light that go as far back as Vanilla. See the Scarlet Crusade. There is absolutely nothing new or shocking about the Light being used as a tool by extremists that are able to justify their actions to themselves as 'good.'

you can explain it anyway you want its still bad writing.

It's not nu-writing and I don't really see how it's offensive enough to be called bad. There was M'uru in Sunwell, as well as a naaru turning into a void god in Oshu'gun's basement, both in BC proper. Naaru have never been a perfect force of good, part of their life cycle is becoming void.

Blood Elves are into human males. See the Windrunners.

I bet tits-based promotion is how Liadrin got to lead the Blood Knights.