There was a huge overlapped section at one point. Is the point I was trying to make. I could have been clearer, I will admit. It’s probably pretty fractured now.
I’ll agree that the lore is a pretty big part of the fissure, and I think you’ve hit the point of division on the head there.
I also think the the constant stream of retcons and Threat Escalation in not only WoW, but SC2 and Diablo 3 didn’t help matters either. It’s become clear that rather than trying to work within the lore they’ve established, they’ll just re-write it to suit whatever they need at the time.
I remember there being a lot of complaints about how the Draenai were retconned to hell and back. It could have been handled much better, like being descendants of Eredar purified by the Naru or the Titans, but still vulnerable to corruption.
As for the Heroes? Yeah, they always were the driving force, and I know me and a lot of my ‘old guard’ friends who grew up reading the manuals… We were always annoyed at the dev team starting to treat the PCs like some legendary figure when we know full well we’re just the footmen and the grunts clustered around the figures who actually matter.
The inspiration for Eredar/Draenei may be the Jewish Christians in the early days of Christianity. Consider Naruu the embodiment of the Holy Spirit and Draenei the original followers blessed and purified by their faith in the Holy Spirit. After Jerusalem was destroyed, they scattered around the world, mostly Europe. Gospel was preached and Christianity became mainstream there, just like humans and dwarves received the Holy Light. And the blood knights? Well I’m not familiar with that part of the lore … maybe they’re supposed to represent eastern orthodox section after it was separated from Catholics? They’d been at odds with Rome for centuries.
But one thing is for sure. BLZ gave BE to horde and Draenei to alliance based on a business decision. They were kind of pressured to give a bulky figure to alliance resembling the taurens and a pretty face to horde just for balance. A typical compromise to fans’ demand. For this decision they retconned a hell lot of things to make both races fit.
To me, the Eredar were always one of two races instrumental in the fall of Sargeras. Two things that predated him. Having the Eredar being fallen Draenai kind of cheapens that. I think it could have been a much more interesting sort of story if they were the descendants of some remnant Eredar that decided to embrace the light in the ages past after fighting against some of the titans. A sort of Mirror to Sargeras’ story.
As for the Blood Elves? I thought their reasoning felt a little more in line and wasn’t as big of a lore-shattering departure that the Draenai ended up being. I’m still kind of annoyed that the Night Elves ended up as part of the Alliance. I always thought they were more culturally and spiritually similar to the Horde. Ideally, they’d have been a mostly independent faction, and if they weren’t their own force, you’d have to choose to join the Alliance or the Horde like the Pandaren.
And don’t get me started on:
Fanbase: Can we have High elves?
Blizzard: High Elves? What are those? Did you mean these VOID ELVES?
Wait wtf they cancelled the campaign changes they premiered the whole fcking concept of reforged with?
That can’t be! All the datamined models and icons for characters relevant to the War3 campaign added by WoW lore, for what? Nothing?
I can’t believe this, I’m going to be so fcking gutted if this is the case, nothing but utter shame for Blizz and of course I only find out about this after pre-ordering after getting excited at seeing all the new models and units that made me believe they were going all in on the campaign changes like they showed at the initial announcement of reforged, f*cking hell.
Remnant Eredar? Aren’t those the lost ones and the broken? You know, deformed Eredar. They were everywhere in the Outland, and they were responsible for the Draenei shaman - they’d fallen from grace and embraced the local shamanic belief from the orcs. Some were enslaved by the nagas, some were followers of the demonic shadow council cabal, and the leader of the few good ones left were no other than Akama.
As for the night elves, well, there’s no way they’d join the horde. Orcs are chopping down their forest in Ashenvale for goodness’s sake. They didn’t have trouble with the alliance, though. Since they’re asthetically more fit for the alliance than the barbaric horde, they joined the pink skins and gave them a lot of footholds in Kalimdor. And they were kind of like a substitute for the high elves who were certainly out.
In the Warcraft 3 lore/Manual, the Eredar were one of two races instrumental in corrupting Sargeras along with the Nathrezim (Dreadlords). The Lost Ones were JUST Draenai in Warcraft 3. The other stages like the “Broken” didn’t exist. They were their own separate thing. There was no real need for such a drastic retcon of that scale. If they wanted to tie them and the Eredar together, there were better ways to do it by working with what they’d currently established.
Yeah, the orcs were cutting down the forest, but to be fair to them they didn’t really know it was ‘occupied’ either. Cenarius decided to start a fight instead of negotiate, and he lost. Likewise, the sentinels were fairly hostile to both the Alliance AND the Horde until Furion decide to put an ease to the tensions. They’d more or less worked out the tensions between them all by the end of Warcraft 3.
Aesthetically, the Night Elves are entirely separate from the Alliance AND the Horde. Their Druidism is inherently similar and compatible with the Shamanestic beliefs of the Tauren and the Orcs. Ideally, they’d have been best handled as a ‘third’ faction neutral between the two, and if a player started as one, they should be able to choose between the two - maybe with a slight bias towards the alliance.
Well, if the Lost Ones were the only Draenei survivors, BLZ had to make up a sect of uncorrupted Eredar for Alliance somehow. Since the Draenei was the native residents of Outland, they couldn’t be dismissed or marginalized. They had to be fit in for the alliance in one way or another, so we’ve got Valen and Exodar, and also the Tempest Keep. “Broken” is more or less a plot device to justify the decision of shaman as a class option for alliance. The Lost Ones looked like ugly retards, it was hard to link them to the Eredar race, so the Broken was added as some kind of a transitional stage. I have no love for Valen, Draenei and that part of retcon, but I do like the Brokens.
That is not a one-off skirmish. Till this day the warsong clan is still deforesting in Ashenvale for lumber. That’s the origin of the Warsong Gulch battlefield, an ongoing conflict over resources. Where else do you think the materials for building Orgrimmar come from? The hostility against both humans and orcs prior to the battle of mount hyjal, though, was actually a one-off misunderstanding. Besides, it was Tyrande’s sentinel faction that was hostile. Malfurion’s druids welcomed both to join the battle.
There should be four separate forces like it is in W3, but we all know that they had to be divided into two factions for the Alliance vs Horde setting in WoW. And geopolitically speaking, as I have pointed out, Alliance needs NE to expand their influence in Kalimdor, and Horde needs the Undead for the same reason in the Eastern Kingdom.
About druid, I agree that it should be an exclusive NE cultural thing. Making druid another exclusive class for alliance after paladin and death knight for horde after shaman would make more sense. But in WoW’s setting, druidism is obviously more than that. It’s like a huge environmental NGO on the mission to heal the nature that has been corrupted by demons, so it ended up with both NE and taurens as the guardians of nature, and the cenarion guys as major neutral factions all over the world. Death knight, though, was reserved for a later expansion.
Yup, all these cuts were just because they have ran out of time/budget, after the backlash in the forums lately we can see it was obviously not them listening to the community.
The broken are pretty cool, yeah. That said, the whole thing could have been done without breaking the lore by having the ‘current’ Draenai be the descendants of Eredar who turned from the legion if they wanted to make that connection? Maybe they were inspired by Sargeras’ valor and sought out the Titans. Maybe another reason for choosing the Orcs was so the Eredar could further spite their ‘traitorous’ bretheren? It’s something that requires far less mucking about in major events of the lore.
As for the whole thing about Ashenvale? To me that’s more something forced into being through WoW. The Barrens didn’t have a shortage of trees in Warcraft 3, and if I remember right part of the reason it was in that sorry state was because of the Centaurs.
As it stands though… WoW to me doesn’t really hold any credit to being ‘canon’ or holding any real ‘lore’ of substance when they’ll change anything at the drop of a hat and the plotlines for the expansions and raids are getting increasingly ridiculous, say nothing about what they’ve done to Diablo and Starcraft. Blizzard regaining my trust? Making a Warcraft 4 that ignores everything that happened since Warcraft 3 and not cocking it up would be a start, as would a WoW2 that picks up where Warcraft 3 left off and hopefully does a better job of things would be another good start.
They’ve been adding a lot features to the World Editor but i’m horribly afraid of what are they going to do with the classic Crowd and the existing Map Making community in terms of models. unit and hero models the community made all these years.
In the current Reforged beta client more then 50% of Standard Edition models don’t work. because they changed the games old model format instead of just supporting both it and Reforged.
They could have done this entire Reforged the right way around and now they just shot themselves in the foot and either have to spend a loooooooong time fixing how custom SD models work or they can just ignore.
There is a good chance to say half most of the people Imported community made custom models into their map are going to have to spend the next few MONTHS wrapping their head around how and why doesn’t their game transition PERFECTLY WITH NO ISSUES AS THEY PROMISED IN 2018. the only promise blizzard shied away from was if people were abusing bugs that the WE had. and community made models are in no way shape or form a part of that.
So yeah, as a map maker myself i’m pretty much 50/50 on the idea of WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE (referring to our maps ofc)
Actually if it were totally and faithful up to the lore of W3, both eredar and blood elves would’ve been already doomed beyond redemption. All eredars should’ve become demonic and all BEs off to Outland with Kael. I can’t imagine any way to make them two playable races without retconning their lores.
Well I’m afraid there was indeed a shortage of trees in the Barrens, hence the name. Grom went to Ashenvale for lumber in the first place.
The biggest issue I had with the lore is gnome. Totally made up out of nowhere. In W3 it was the dwarves in charge of engineering and machinery, they were the tech genius, but in WoW that job was given to these cartoonish halflings, and dwarves became miners, craftsmen and blacksmiths.
The gnomes were around in Warcraft 2 with the flying machines and everything. The dwarves were fairly competent at it as well, so there was some significant overlap between the two. Fair-er point about the Barrens, but I remember there being an asston of trees on the map in the TFT campaign. The Ashenvale conflict in WoW seems a little too out of character for Thrall at those points in Warcraft 3, however.
As for Lore accuracy, the Eredar would have never been doomed - they WERE doom itself. Some of the biggest bads that ever were in the Twisting Nether. As for the Blood Elves, it’s entirely plausible some of them might have split away from Kael after the battle of Icecrown - But i’d have much rather seen a third faction consisting of the Draenai, Blood Elves, Naga, and Bloodfiends.
I would rather see them put dev assets into Warcraft 4 then a “new” campaign of wc3. Give them a real chance to progress the Warcraft story in the way that only an RTS can.
Lore/story progression in wow has always seemed fragmented and messy unless you put in a large effort to investigate every medium (books, quests, raids, short stories, comics, etc…)
Give us our shiny and polished up WC3 to show us what a modern Warcraft RTS might look like, then start teasing a WC4 to lead to a major Warcraft story overhaul.
