Yes I know, I’m not like some other guys that hate so much WoW that try to erase all signs of its lore, even trying to rehash warcraft universe into some interdimensional inter-planetary history, I don’t like many parts of WoW’s approach on lore, its main problem its the faction system, but I do recognize that there are some great things that would be absolutely awesome if told in a RTS perspective, so that’s my approach on a “what if” after TFT warcraft lore if they kept it on RTS.
Not on my vision of this “what if” history, on my take some High Elf survivors led by Vereesa, think of the Silver Covenant but on a major scale, enough to make them still recognisable as a race, traveled south and asked for refuge on Stormwind, hoping to keep their culture mostly intact and to return to their homeland someday. These refugees despise the Blood Elves, who on my approach, are more akin to the Dark Elves from warhammer universe, embracing fel magic and necromantic magic and eventually transforming into something similar to the San’layn as the history develops, to completely differentiate themselves from the High Elves on Stormwind, and to better blend in into the Forsaken faction led by Sylvanas.
Kind of sad. I feel it would be a bigger departure from the lore of TFT that even WoW. Real life Blood Elves are shiny and edgy. You’d like to splinter them into dark/edgy and shiny/boring. But in WC3, they enslaved demons and burned the undead.
Also, do you honestly agree with having Arthas asleep for a few years (15 in your case)? This is the result of WoW just as much as the faction system’s constraints.
It serves its purpose, the world’s factions needed some time to recover from the brutal Third War, if Arthas merged with the Lich King and kept awake as the single most powerful entity on Azeroth, with complete command over infinite legions of undead soldiers, ¿what would stop him from steamrolling on the severely crippled remaining factions on the world and transforming Azeroth into a necropolis? I prefer to make him sleep and gather power buying time for the world to gather strength to defend against his might over some “Arthas humanity kept him from taking over the world” dumber, on my opinion, approach.
Indeed, however, I do believe that TFT set the stone for the gradual transformation of the blood elves. I prefer them to embrace that conversion and turn them into chaotic elves, adopting the “combat fire with fire” phillosophy preached by Illidan and integrating with the Forsaken, who go along with that new approach on their culture perfectly, while also keeping the traditional high elves alive in their home faction, the Alliance.
But zombies are afraid of fire. I simply hate zombies and love demons, therefore to me lumping them all together in “chaos” seems contradictory and contrived.
I’m pretty sure the warlock in the original WoW trailer strongly suggests that Forsaken love fire, at least fel fire. On my imagination the Forsaken are like a “dark mockery” of the Alliance, outcasts, renegades, complete with loyal, disciplined and tireless undead soldiers, dark alchemy and science, with their own dark, vampiric approach of elves. Leave traditional mindless zombies for the Scourge, the Forsaken are pure chaos and rebellion.
Could be the case; still, for different reasons. They either crave revenge or the death of the living. Whereas the Blood Elves desire power and magic, like demons. Different things. In a way, the Blood Elves are an empire on steroids. As devoid of morality as the Forsaken, but as prideful as the Alliance.
And that’s why the blend in with the Forsaken perfectly, however, I do believe that this approach on the Blood Elves was killed after the whole Kael’thas and Sunwell episode, right now they are a boring race.
meh i’d have the lich king win, like win more then just what we saw in wow. i’m talking about taking over Kalimdors top side and whole of lordaeron by wiping out Sylvanases forces, since Kel thuzad stayed back when arthas went to icecrown.
i feel like Arthases Victory in wc3 was brushed aside, regardless of Wotlk in wow. they still killed him off too fast imo. he could have been a faaaaaaaaar greater threat and scarred the mortal realms for faaaar longer before he was destroyed. and only by the interruption of the Burning Legion since they learned of Nerzuls betrayal.
infact we can even say that it benefited the mortals when the legion returned they and The Scourge went in an all out war with the legion while everyone else was trying to stay the fvck alive.
only through cunning acts and setting aside past conflicts, learning from the leassons medivh taught them did they manage to seal off the legions access to Azeroth and defeat the scourge while it was weakened by the legion invasion.
since blizzard in current wow made “Light/good undead a thing” with Calia menethil, i’d say the Forsakens and that of sylvanases path would have led to them being purified of this blight.
Calia menethil herself would have retaken the Lordaerons throne but not without agreeing with the Forsaken that they will not be cast aside as mindless nobodies that didn’t deserve to live their lives in peace.
and Sylvanas would have remained the leader of her people instead of turning into a morally grey murder hoe.
as for what would have been the fate of Azeroth beyond the initial casting out of the legion and the end of The Scourge and the lich king. well i can just say an entirely new road for warcraft.
though i can easily see Bolvar or some other important paladin still taking a sacrifice to sit on the Frozen Throne.
In official lore Naga are inherently evil as they were corrupted by the power of an Old God. I would have them reimagined as beings that were just twisted and mutated by magic, trying to find a place in the world.
One has to write off a certain number of characters. Putting Sylvanas to rest with a good ending would have pleased many people. Especially seeing how it contrasts which the actual lore where she turned very evil.
The entire point is to pull a Warcraft III with Warcraft IV, where there is some big intermission between the two games allowing characters to die off screen deaths and new enemies to appear. It also resolves the issue WoW had of forcing flip flop diplomatics so alliance and horde can fight each other. Instead over time the alliances break down in a more natural way as new evils arrive and old evils reappear.
From a gameplay perspective it allows one to make major design changes to unit compositions which also suits the changes in graphic capabilities and overall modern RTS trends.
My idea is hate? A redeeming ending and heroic end which frees her from her eternal suffering is hate?
Was Varian even mentioned in Warcraft III? As far as I am aware he was made up for World of Warcraft lore.
I feel as if her clinging to existence at any cost, as expounded upon in Cataclysm, fits her more. That “evil” you speak of is her finding her place in the world as this monstrosity.
It’s the hatred of her body. In TFT, Sylv came to accept herself for what she was.
Eh, is it?
Gameplay - different strokes for different populations.
eSports - different eras.
Story - aside from HotS, decent.
Campaign gameplay - SC2 vastly superior.
This is not off-topic, this is an analysis of an RTS made by new Blizzard.
the game managed to lose 90% of it’s playerbase while having literally no competition for it’s niche market (rts), after 9 years of balancing the game is still in a laughable state, blizzcon finals has 5 zergs (all placed 1st in their groups) 2 protoss 1 terran.
the game is just bad and if it had any real competition it would be completely dead.
I have absolutely no faith in blizzard making good competitive games anymore, they specialized in their casual games and their competitive games went to shiet, the company should have been split into two, blizzard keeping their casual games (wow, hs, etc) and another group of people taking care of competitive games (sc, wc) a long time ago.
I mean, just look at what they have done to wc3 after their started working on reforged, in just 2 patches (iirc) they took a decently balanced game and made it into an abomination of KotG huntresses and mountain giants spams for about 1 and half years?
they’re just incompetent, I really hope they won’t make wc4, not until some big changes in the company happen, and that they don’t touch wc3 balance too much and ruin it
Well in my version Arthas is the main villain, so story should follow Illidan who comes back in Azeroth to gather more forces like naga with the help of Lady Vashj to destroy icecrown citadel (Kaelthas assists Illidan for his quest to get revenge on Arthas, Sylvanas teams up with them for same reasons, so forsaken follow Illidan), meanwhile there’s war between Thralls horde and the alliance (night elves aren’t in the alliance at this point), Varian Wrynn disappears (and becomes “Lo’Gosh” etc.) so Bolvar Fordragon’s in charge. Also Maiev Shadowsong accuses Illidan for bringing legion and takes command of a small night elf forces and prepares an ambush for him so she gets help from the horde by deceiving them about legions forces and Illidans campaign (at this point she assumes Illidan serves legion I guess), meanwhile Kaelthas goes to Jaina and recruits her for their mission to take down The Lich King which gets alliances attention so they lend some manpower as well. This will culminate in a fight between night elf/horde forces and Illidans/alliances army which is quite strong at this point (naga, forsaken, Kael’s blood elfs, Jaina and alliance), but ambush is set for them by Maiev that Illidans plan was to wipe out horde and alliance by betraying them with scourge, naga and forsaken, so in mid fight alliance goes aside and holds their ground to make sure Illidans forces can’t escape and unbeknownst to them scourge awakens and they’re all in an ambush of the undead army (which is basically countless at this point) led by Kel’Thuzad (who manipulated Maievs perception of Illidans campaign and made Sylvannas join Illidan and certain events so that whole horde/alliance army would be at scourge’s mercy). Their own dead troops come alive so horde/alliance team up in desperation and fight the way out of there. Out of rage Illidan kills Maiev and is captured by night elf/horde forces; Jaina, Sylvanas and Kaelthas get stranded together with little forsaken troops, Lady Vashj maybe dies along with naga, and rest of Illidans army; alliance retreats as well and announces awakening of the Lich King. (Muradin is not alive in this version, Tyrande and Malfurion think Illidan’s behind this onslaught, horde and alliance took huge loses and scourge begins it’s destruction of Azeroth which leads to another campaign I guess).
So that’s my short version of it feel free to criticize etc…
Warlords out the window, keep Sargeras as the ultimate evil looming in the background, not kill arthus, keep garrosh level headed, keep sylvanas as the traitor, make the nightelves not totally useless piles of trash, make the scourge a much greater and still ever looming threat, have deathwing as a more cunning character pulling strings instead of rushing around blowing up good old content.
feel free to criticize etc…