I never understood why Arthas killed everyone in Stratholme. Can’t Mal’ganis just raise them anyway?
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Good point. However, Arthas didn’t know much about the Scourge back then, so maybe he thought that only infected grain could turn people into undead?
Another part of the story that’s always bothered me: in TFT, Illidan can create portals at will? I’ve always been uncomfortable with the idea of teleportation in Warcraft, because it’s too easy; hey, if you can teleport yourself so easily, why not teleporting behind the Lich King and stab him once and for all? Teleportation is always lazy storytelling imho.
But there’s worse: at the end of the last NE mission in TFT, Illidan bids farewell to Furion and Tyrande, then he creates a portal and leaves. A few seconds later, Maiev and her troups follow him. In the next campaign, we see Illidan, captured by Maiev in Outland. It would mean that Illidan created a portal to Outland, which he and Maiev used to go there.
Since when Illidan is powerful enough to create portals to Outland, without even using the book of Medivh? He consumed the skull of Gul’dan, but as far as I know, it’s not enough to open a rift between worlds (Gul’dan never created any portal; also, in WC2: Beyond the Dark Portal, the skull of Gul’dan is needed to open/close portals, but it doesn’t suffice, Medivh’s book is also needed).
Unless Illidan teleported somewhere near Dalaran and then took Archimonde’s portal?
Edit: according to Wowpedia and World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 3, it seems Illidan created a portal to Outland by using a small rift left behind from the portal Kel’Thuzad had used to summon Archimonde (Illidan Stormrage - Wowpedia - Your wiki guide to the World of Warcraft). Well, I’m not convinced. I still think it’s lazy storytelling.
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Yeah, that’s how I always thought of it. It was merely an error made by the character himself, and Mal’Ganis just played along so he could lure Arthas to Northrend. Also, in the book it was explained that Arthas indeed thought that only the grain caused the undeath.
And I couldn’t agree more on the portals thing. For example, in the human campaign, why the heck is Arthas staying behind to fight the undead when Jaina teleports away to get Uther? And apparently Uther as well just teleports in (or how else could he end up there so soon?) Why didn’t they just teleport all people from the town to safety in the first place?
Again, I’ve been thinking that maybe making an actual portal is hard and Jaina could easily teleport herself, but making a portal for a whole town wouldn’t be so easy. But that still doesn’t explain all teleportation cases in the game (like you mentioned).
Anyway, teleportation has always been quite a mess in the Warcraft lore. Brings to my mind a moment from BfA, when they are fighting in Undercity. At the end where Sylvanas gasses the whole place and is planning to crush the Alliance guys inside the castle, they just at the last moment suddenly simply teleport out - I was like, yeah right… If it was that easy, why didn’t Jaina just teleport them in at the very beginning and skip this whole mess?
Still, I would like to see some minor tweaks or at least explanations for these things on Warcraft 3 in the Reforged campaign. It is lazy writing, and also I think the makers back then just didn’t think about things like that so much, so now is a good time to correct some of the nuances like those.
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Yes, I suppose you need more power to teleport more than one person. A whole town or a whole army would be hard if not impossible, especially for someone as young as Jaina.
About Uther, my guess is that he didn’t teleport in, but he needed a 2-3 day ride to get to Hearthglen with his knights. That’s the 30 minutes cooldown of the mission. The duration of 30 minutes is for gameplay reasons, but the actual time in the “real” world would be a few days.
But still, it’s not a very good story. In all WC3 campaigns, characters teleport themselves all the time, but it looks like a cosmetic thing, it’s almost never used for good reasons. For example, why Jaina didn’t come back to help Arthas once she had warned Uther?
There are plenty of examples like that one. In WotlK, in the Wrathgate chainquest, you get teleported to the outskirts of Undercity, along with Varian, Jaina and more soldiers. If it’s so easy to teleport so many people, why not teleporting straight to the throne room and kill Varimathras by surprise? That kind of event shows how poor the story is when it involves too much magic, and more specifically, teleportation.
Same goes for many, many minor quests in the game, in which you get easily teleported to many parts of the world, not to mention the many ways players have to get teleported (such as hearthstones, but that’s for practical gameplay reasons).
I’m very reluctant when it comes to changing the campaigns, but I agree that some parts could be improved a little.
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Yeah, I remember thinking it was a pretty messed up decision since it doesn’t actually stop people turning undead by killing them pre-emptively…
I mean there’s only one reason to show that part, and it’s to illustrate the desperation and cold demeanor that Arthas has in the face of a hard decision. The city was lost, and Uther’s suggestion would have been just as bad, but there’s no reason to kill everyone before they actually turned either.
But hey, War3 was full of that kind of stuff. It was built on character-driven narrative with actions that make no sense. Tyrande just ups and frees Illidan and she isn’t even reprimanded for doing so. Cenarius dies and everyone forgets about it their differences and bands together without any unease. It’s why I don’t put War3 story on a pedestal, I just enjoy it for what it is and try not too hard to think about how these characters really aren’t too realistic or logical in their actions and reactions.
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I believe that Arthas killing the infected was the “better” choice because like Walross said “Couldnt Malganis raise them anyways?”
Because he secured city the undead left and malganis fled.
If listened to Uther they undead army would increase by a city worth of people.
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No, it’s not a retcon. It’s a legitimate story continuation and lore expansion.
What if he dismembered the corpses? And killed a lot of them using the Holy Light? Those could do the trick.
Purely regarding the geographical position of the armies, that’s true as well
Ah, Sieben , you think like me! I did ponder at the question myself. My answer years ago was that Outland is not a proper world, more like an asteroid in the Nether, so opening portals there shouldn’t take much energy. The opposite way, Outland-to-Azeroth, however, should be harder…
The answer given in the Chronicles (I believe?) is that Illidan was next to Dalaran, and there was a huge tear in reality there.
Still, the question remains how the Illidari launched an attack on the Frozen Throne. Maybe, they just had a lot of fel power in the Black Citadel? And it’s not like their forces counted an Eredar Lord among them (that would require an immense portal).
In lore, the biggest constraint on portal-making is the knowledge of the coordinates. That at least explains why teleport out, but not in. The same in WC3 melee with TP scrolls.
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Howso?
In Warcraft 3, we’re clearly shown that there is a change from High Elf to Blood Elf with their clothing changed to red. Eye colors were not just green, and clearly shown as white, blue or green.
If the green eyes thing happened after TFT, then it would make sense. But we can see with Reforged that the characters already have green eyes, which means it’s not just a continuation, but a retcon. It wouldn’t be a continuation if they didn’t get the green eyes in Warcraft 3/TFT.
It did.
Then it would be a retcon. But green eyes in TBC are not. I was talking about the latter.
Even then, It’s not necessarily a retcon. The transition to the green eyes might have been gradual, and started right at the end of TFT. Thus choosing a colour would only mean the period you try to represent - an earlier or a later stage.
It would be a retcon though since they have had flashback scenes in WoW showing Blood Elves during TFT, and they all use the green eyes model. BFA’s BE heritage armor involves a flashback and even gave Lorthemar a new model. They even used Kael’thas old model, datamining showed that they updated it with almost no changes, green eyes intact. His ‘verdant spheres’ were changed to red flames though.
It doesn’t seem like the gradual change is intentional, and if it is it’s ill-represented in all fronts.
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Then it would be awkward indeed to understand where they got the tint/taint. I doubt Blizzard won’t make it a gradual change in Reforged.
Are those flashbacks from before or after the acceptance of the pact with Illidan? Or even before, with Vashj?
I haven’t played that section since I don’t have BFA, I’ve only read about datamined stuff.
All I know is Arthas, Kael’thas and Silvermoon are involved so…
And here is the link of Kael’thas model
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Honestly, they could go the route where they turn green after exploding the Sunwell. The same time point when Kael gets the Verdant Spheres. I have always had to remind myself that the two are separate in time instances in known WoW lore.
/offtopic Would be cool to have Silvermoon ravaged by a Warfront. Any Sin’dorei lore is better than nothing… and it can’t be any worse than it is.
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I’m all for any reason for them to revamp all of Quel’thalas, and finally enable flight!
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That would require a new lvl 1-20 questing experience, and I don’t see Blizzard creating a compelling reason for existing for a new Blood Elven character. The oldschool quests are the closest to TFT we have, and the FT Sin’dorei image is the closest to epicness there is.
About the retcons - an unsuspecting reader would cry murder and ActiBlizz at the sight of such ideas, but Tolkien was used to recombining and reshuffling events, names and places all the time, and he was a god.
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Well Tolkien gets the credit of not having ppeople create avatars in his world and have all his changes affect everyone who feels they have a personal stake in the lore.
That and social media didn’t exist back then.
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Retcons are fine its not like we are getting WC4 anytime soon…
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Golems were golems… Nothing like robots they making in wow
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i think at this point we understand “WoW” is a cheap moneygrab.
But then you say WC3 lore (War of Ancients) and prior is cannon.
Then there are inconsistencies in the game to tht.
Like above with the “Red Dragons” being in Orc possession in WC3 which takes place after Day of Dragon events…
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I mean I doubt 14 years of keeping up and maintaining servers alone wasn’t cheap, let alone all the development time for the base game and then every expansion, as well as all the marketing for every time an expansion release happens.
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