The WC3 "Canon" - Misconceptions

General Discussion
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Hello there! This is going to be me ranting for a little bit about a myth that I see floating around the forums. The idea that WC3 lore and WoW lore were A). developed one before the other, B). that WoW lore retcons WC3 lore and C). that WC3 lore is better than WoW lore.

Disclaimer here first; I am going to be talking about a very specific era of WoW lore; that is, the era 1999 - 2009. This was a time where arcane magic was considered a corrupting magic that drew mages inexorably towards fel magic, where Blizzard forgot about things like the Eredar’s demonic ways causing doubt in Sargeras rather than Sargeras corrupting them first, etc.

FIRST MYTH - WC3 AND WOW ARE SEPARATE
I can already hear furious typing now. But here’s the thing, guys. Warcraft 3 was announced in 1999, a year after it’s development began. The same year in which World of Warcraft started it’s development. It would take until 2002 for Warcraft 3 to be released, by which time, World of Warcraft had already been announced 1 before and Warcraft 3 development would continue into 2003.

So, from 1999 to 2003, World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3 were developed and written simultaneously. For 4 years. They weren’t actually sequential.

xhttps://web.archive.org/web/20030618045059/xhttp://www.blizzard.com:80/wow/townhall/nightelves.shtml

This is an archived webpage from June 2003, a month before the Frozen Throne was released. It shows screenshots of zones that saw no alteration, like Shadow Glen. Keep in mind, this is when they were first archived, not when they were even first released.

For example, in the page above, there is a link to information about Teldrassil, which would only be archives in December 2003, further showing that much of the information was available before the Frozen Throne even released.

The World of Warcraft website would launch it’s timeline on July 16, 2004. After the release of Frozen Throne, granted, but clearly, much of the world had already been built based on what had happened in the Frozen Throne and vice versa. It’s inescapable that World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3 would have to be written with the same lore.

At least, that was the safe assumption at the time. World of Warcraft itself wouldn’t be launched until November 2004, so between July and November, all Warcraft nerds had only one game they could play without being part of the beta and that was Warcraft 3.

For many people, this was the entry level. And this is why there’s a lot of mistakes being made about what’s “WC3 Canon”. Because, for a short time, it was assumed and only natural that WoW and WC3 were the same lore. Because they were. Ostensibly. So they were used interchangably. So, what happened?

INRECONCILABLE
Let’s shift gears for a little. Because the games weren’t the only sources of lore for a while. In 2001, the first Warcraft book was published; Day of the Dragon. This followed up on the first short story, which was Of Blood and Honor, one month prior.

Day of the Dragon cemented the lore we know today about the dragon aspects, yet very little of this lore you would actually have been able to find in Warcraft 3. So, in July 2004, the dragon aspects became officially accounted for in a single timeline.

That is, if you discount another series of books. Namely; the RPG books. The first RPG book was launched in July 2003 simply called “Dungeons and Dragons: Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game”. Same month that the Frozen Throne was released. It would be followed up by books like the Alliance & Horde Compendium, which heavily featured art from Blizzard employees, who themselves contributed to the books and explained much of their current understanding of the lore at that time.

At that time, there was no understanding that the RPG would later be declared non-canon, just like the first Chronicle is now “canon, but only if seen from the perspective from the Titans”.

So, you would be forgiven for thinking that the lore in these books and on the website, right up until the release of World of Warcraft itself, was compatible and in fact accounted for in Warcraft 3. Yet, even then, there were many observed differences.

In November 2006, Blizzard would announce the Warcraft Encyclopedia, which was, back in the day, hailed as the first attempt to make sense of an increasingly confusing timeline. You might as well have called it the Elfcylopedia, though, since it mostly covered any confusion about night elves and blood elves. Again, things that would see ready adoption by the Warcraft 3 fans who would held beliefs validated that had not been confirmed up until then.

xhttps://web.archive.org/web/20061110080107/xhttp://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/encyclopedia/index.xml

WARCRAFT 3 LORE
Here’s something that many people don’t know about the Warcraft 3 lore; In Warcraft 3, the following were described as true;

  • Tyrande is a princess who is exactly 13,836 years old.
  • Moonglade is a hopelessly fel-infested forest.
  • Winterspring becomes a glade of beautiful spring weather every 4 years.
  • Felwood was infested by at least as much undead as demons, which would not be portrayed in the MMO.

These are things that would be hopelessly incompatible with the lore of World of Warcraft, yet this was published and edited in 2002, remember, when World of Warcraft had already been developed.

Yet, for some reason, nobody remembers these odd facts. Also, did you know that blood elves were never shown to use demon magic in the Frozen Throne? Instead, they were described as being feared for practicing pyromancy, a hitherto unexplored and dangerous school of magic; magic that was already planned to be routinely in use by mages for World of Warcraft.

Even within it’s own era, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne had lore in it that was not compatible with what we today consider “canon” for WC3.

CANON-ISH - PERIOD OF CONFUSION
What followed was a period of great confusion. The War of the Ancients trilogy would start detailing much about what we know of the night elves today, including Tyrande, Malfurion and Illidan. Nowhere was it said that Tyrande was a princess. Even then, nobody blinked an eye at that omission, because the Warcraft III manual wasn’t taken completely seriously, nor were Warcraft III’s maps. If you wanted to try and construct a canon, you were still kind of seen as cooky, if anything.

But the need for a canon arose when, in 2006, Chris Metzen admitted that the lore had become something of a “train-wreck”.

xhttps://wow.gamepedia.com/Metzen_on_lore

Chris would make another statement on what constitutes “canon” in 2007, where he clarified Blizzard’s stance that they “shoot for canon”, but that certain things would be less canon than others. This has been a through-line for Blizzard for a very long time.

SO WHERE DOES THAT PUT WARCRAFT 3’S "CANON"
It’s time to blow the lid off of this. After you have read that entire rant, you might think I might come to the conclusion that World of Warcraft is the canon and that’s the end of it.

I don’t, though. I haven’t liked what Blizzard did with the lore pretty much since the Burning Crusade; everything seemed to be a gradual slope downwards. That’s only an opinion and it’s my opinion.

I do think that we, the players, can define a canon for Warcraft 3, if we also accept that there were already conflicts of a canon perception of Warcraft 3 during Warcraft 3’s launch cycle.

Many of the things we think of as Warcraft 3 canon actually came from the vanilla timeline published in July 2004, the Knaak trilogy in 2004 and the RPGs in 2003. Where they didn’t conflict, we adopted them. Where they did conflict, we adopted what we liked best, such as Tyrande not being a princess, but a priestess from the beginning, more around 10,000 than 13,000 years old.

Warcraft III: Reforged represents an opportunity to keep things in line with what we imagined to be canon back in the day. To remove weird conflicts that didn’t make sense and to accept that the original lore did leave room for what would be introduced by later material.

So, if you ever discuss the concept of what’s canon to WC3, ask yourself, are you actually quoting WC3 from 2002? Or are you quoting the Warcraft Encyclopedia? Or the Warcraft RPG? Because I can almost guarantee you that most ideas you have about the WC3 canon weren’t a sure thing in 2002 or 2003.

What you are probably advocating for is the 2006 World of Warcraft canon.

TOO LONG; DIDN’T READ
TLDR: The popular conception of what is WC3 canon actually comes from sources between 2003-2006, after the Frozen Throne release, when all sources were still considered canon.

In 2007, the community became split on what was canon and became more judicious about the concept, whereas Blizzard cemented their stance that all things would be taken into consideration and they wouldn’t hold fast to the concept of “canon”.

Even back then, there was a lot of confusion about what the WC3 canon is, because nobody had bothered to draw a distinction back then. In reality, you probably advocate is the 2006 canon and that’s okay.

That’s not even touching on the subject of “Melee” being “not canon”.

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Blockquote where Blizzard forgot about things like the Eredar seducing Sargeras rather than the other way around, etc.

Sorry to correct you, but before Legion expansion it was stated in lore that the Nathrezim (Dreadlords) were the one responsible for the corruption.

And also you are quite right, the lore is messy but both the original Warcraft 3 role and WoW lore is still on the same point.
Examples : Arthas and the Scourge destroyed Silvermoon, in Warcraft 3 there was no mention Anasterian Sunstrider, but in WoW Lore Anasterian was the king of High elves who fought with Arthas on one occasion, Silvermoon still got destroyed. My Point is, regardless of Anasterian, the outcome was still the same.
Same with Sargeras, in Warcraft 3 lore, or before the Legion lore, as I mentioned Sargeras got corrupted by Nathrezim, but in Legion, he went mad on his own because he feared the Void Lords,(Still the same outcome).

To wrap it up, regardless if they added onto WC3 Reforged Lore, the outcome is still the same, even if characters that didn’t exist in original Warcraft 3, appear in Reforged, the outcome stays the same, meaning WoW cant retcon the Warcraft 3 lore, to the point that becomes too confusing.

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residentSleeper

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Oh my god, who cares?

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I wish more people thought like you, honestly.

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Great text. And it gets even more confusing when you take into consideration the little lore we had in Warcraft 1 and 2. The Warcraft 3 era retconned a whole bunch of stuff from the original story setup from the era of the first games. I just think it’s funny how biased people are to favoring Warcraft 3, even though that story already was basically a retcon. So it’s okay for WC3 to retcon, but God forbid if anything tries to retcon WC3? (And not much of current WoW lore even conflicts with WC3. Mostly changed stuff are the draenei, Burning Legion etc, but those areas of the lore weren’t even explored that much in WC3 in the first place.)

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Yeah, you’re right, I should have said “confusing Sargeras” or “causing his first doubts”. Quoting the Warcraft 3 manual.

“The Eredar, an insidious race of devilish sorcerers, used their warlock magics to enslave a number of worlds that they had invaded. The indigenous races of those worlds were mutated by the Eredar’s chaotic powers and turned into demons themselves. Though Sargeras’ nearly limitless powers were more than enough to defeat the vile Eredar, he was greatly troubled by the creatures’ corruption and all-consuming evil. Unable to fathom such depravity and spite, the great Titan slipped into a brooding depression. Despite his growing unease, Sargeras sought to rid the universe of the warlocks for all time, by trapping them within a vacuous corner of the Twisting Nether.”

My point remains, this was a point of contention when it was revealed that the Eredar were corrupted by Sargeras in the Burning Crusade. Thank you for your astute correction, though! I’ll be sure to correct it.
Quoting myself for posterity.

That’s true. Though I do want to add the note; I think it’s perfectly fine to prefer one timeline over the other and I also think it’s perfectly fine if people wanted to preserve a historical sample. But more often than not, I find people defending the preservation of the Warcraft history aren’t aware they are defending the Warcraft Encyclopedia of WC3 events. Or even later interpretations.

We can do all three; to preserve the original, to update the original to be internally consistent and to update the original again to be consistent with today’s lore. Just make three versions. All three are interesting points of view.

I will disagree with you somewhat there. I do think that there is considerable conflict between World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3, such as the general depiction of night elf culture. In Warcraft 3, they are highly mobile and dynamic, while in vanilla World of Warcraft, they are rooted in place and mostly passive.

I think that the depiction disagrees. I don’t think they are wholly incompatible, but they are definitely different and they feel inconsistent with each other in many places. And that’s alright! At least, in my opinion.

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Well yes, because like you mentioned, WC3 added SO MUCH “flesh around the bones” as far as WC1 and WC2 are concerned. Lot of the lore we WC3 fans also became to accept as canon also came from WC3 manual and the novels/books released at the time.

The reason why I have no problem with WC3 doing retcon in regards to WC1 and WC2 IS because those two games had very little in terms of story. Yes those two games set the base stones for Warcraft Universe, but Warcraft III truly was the foundation to World of Warcraft and I think there is good reason why most of us Warcraft RTS fans consider it the “holy bible” of Warcraft that should not be changed.

To be honest with you, I have no problems if they indeed add Anasterian Sunstrider as killable character defending Sunwell in Silvermoon map. Seems like they are doing that and Im ENTIRELY fine with it, cause its such a small detail that really doesnt change the outcome in any way or form. My only worry with any story retcons added in was trying to purpously please some WoW fans in regards to Jaina or Sylvanas by adding something there in their dialogue or lore that would make sense for WoW fans, but little to Warcraft III fans. I didnt want Blizzard to add ANYTHING in there that would have felt like uncessary service to WoW players, cause like Ive said time and time again. The story in WC3, the history of the events of RoC and TFT has remained largely entirely unchanged for past 16-17 years…the post WC3 era has ofc added in some characters to these events, but no one who would have played HUGE rule in the events or the outcome of it. I think possibly the Sunwell storyline and role of Dar’Khan Drathir as betrayer to his own people is possibly the most significant, but again this is something that in the larger picture of Warcraft III’s story actually changes very little.

My point about this whole “whether or not post WC3 lore should be added into Reforged” has always been that those lore fanatics who do know everything there is to know about the lore and story can connect the dots by themselves and thus I think adding this stuff in is not really crucial. I can understand that some people here really wanted to see entirely new content like that in Reforged, but in my honest opinion that is what entirely new campaigns could be for…

Anyhow I know it may sounds that we WC3 fanatics are freaking hypocrits for being so fearful and critical about retcons, but I think there is good reason for it and that is because most of us absolutely dispise WoW and what it has done to the lore and especially to many of the characters. I understand that much of that is thanks to what the MMO design has demanded from the storytellers/writers to do, but thats ALL the more reason why many people here refuse ENTIRELY to accept World of Warcraft’s events as part of the lore, in similar fashion that for example Terminator fans refuse to accept anything beyond events of Terminator 2 as canon…

Anyhow I personally think that Warcraft 1 and Warcraft 2 should be actually remade and once and for all fix any lore conflict that the original games currently have with later retcons that especially WC3 made. That for example should finally bring closure to the debate about the role and background of Garona…character that was completely tossed aside later in the lore. Her background and the role in the assassination of King Llane has been changed so many times back and forth that Ive lost count what is actually the official explanation about her character anymore.

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The people he wrote this post for.

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That is of course fair, but I want to make a point of this as well. I wish people didn’t care so much about this mess of a lore. There are moments that I love that I think weren’t honored in later expansions. But I never once thought this would ruin my experience forever.

I care about the original. I don’t care that something might overlap with the same stories that I loved. It will never take away the experience I had when I saw Arthas ascend the Frozen Throne and watch over a barren wasteland and realizing that, to Arthas, this was victory. That this was triumph. That being even just nominally the king, the figurehead of nothing; a wasteland; was preferable to being a failed prince.

Nothing can ever take that away from me. I don’t like that they turned it into him being in a power struggle with Ner’zhul, but they can’t take that better version out of my mind.

I wish people cared enough to grumble and gripe with me, without caring so much that they fabricate facts or harass people or wish others didn’t get what they wanted. I just want to gripe, then go back to having a laugh with friends. Who cares, really? It’s a video game with a great story and we all get to take away our diamonds in the rough. That’s all that matters, right?

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You are justifying that because warcraft did not have any fixed canon in those early years somehow gives us the reins to decide if we should at all consider anything as canon that they might have fixed over the course of the decade? i understood when metzen apologized for the inconsistencies in the lore during that time, but he also mentioned that they would be fixing those plotholes as they progress with the game, and they have fulfilled that promise. You can rest assured that they aren’t still looking to fix any inconsistencies in the campaigns and therefore also have faith that the events which happened during that time are pretty much set in stone at the present moment.
We can make all sorts of excuses about how blizzard did not have a well-defined lore during the year 2006 or 2007 but we currently do in 2019. The fact that there wasn’t a canon 10 years ago is no justification that there shouldn’t be a canon at the present moment.
Since the original idea of making reforged is to bridge the events between the RTS and the MMO and to give more clarity to the events of the campaigns, if they don’t input what they consider canon as per their lore in the year 2019, i don’t understand why they should go to such lengths to provide a reskin to an already established game.

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Great post mate! Let’s be friends. You’re clearly a Lore master of Warcraft like me!

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No, let me stop you right there. I’m not justifying anything, I’m just annoyed at people throwing “WC3 Canon; no changes” around and then quoting the Warcraft Encyclopedia from 2006.

I’m not even sure if I agree with that. I think that there is a fixed canon in those early years, but people confuse it a lot for what came directly after. A lot of the WoW lore from vanilla bled into the public consciousness of Warcraft III and I’m fine with that. I’m also fine with saying, “let’s take those bits out”. Both are fine. But pick one.

And I’m not sure what you mean by this or that this is a thing that needs justification.

Oh, I totally agree, personally. That wasn’t really what I was discussing at all, but I do agree that there’s no reason why they couldn’t fill in the gaps where it isn’t too leading for the Warcraft III narrative (in terms of beats, themes, etc). I want Blizzard to experiment with Reforged.

Within the purview of this discussion though, I’m just saying that a lot of people are discussing lore and what is and isn’t allowed to be reflected within Warcraft while misquoting their sources without knowing it.

For example, I was having a discussion with someone about whether there were male civillians in night elf society and they just refuse to acknowledge that was a possibility on the table, because “WC3 implies all men are druids and all druids are men and all women are sentinels and all sentinels are women”, even though within the same development year, night elf civillians were already being set up as NPCs and questgivers in World of Warcraft.

It’s stuff like that that I don’t like in these discussions, where people try to jam in their headcanon and then refuse to take anything from Vanilla, when Vanilla and Warcraft 3 were developed by the same people at the same time.

I haven’t been a lore master since Wrath of the Lich King. I could quote the page number of certain lore back in the day, but I stopped caring after Rise of the Lich King. xP

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I don’t remember any encyclopedias from 2006 or have any idea about the people who keep referring to them. I am talking about the lore which has been established over the course of 15 years and what is considered canon in the year 2019.

can we please already establish the definition of canon here? You are referring to events that happened 13 years ago where there are differently ‘perceived’ canons and even blizzard did not have full understadning of what they considered canon. Please come to 2019. It’s perfectly valid what you want to attribute as canon for yourself but that does not change the official canon of 2019 by any stretch.

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i am absolutely failing to understand the subject of the discussion here. All i see is Wc3 implies no ne civilians and world of warcraft implies yes ne civilians. If you are having discussions over if a race has no civilians in the society because some guy said that the rts game from the year 2003 which had 2000 units in total had established it as such, then i feel that you need to rethink about who you discuss these things with.

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What a bunch of nonsense.

Guess Suramar was also never e retcon right?

Or the fact that Blood evles were even shown in WC3 to use demonic mana for survival. It was never important what kind of magic they really used. Only that they found new mana sources.

Yes WoW did change things from the older games. The good ones. But it is really early and I don’t care to make a good argument or a list.
Only here to say: What a long way to ignore things.

Edit: Even if some things are contradictions from the start between the two games, there are things way later on which clearly are changes from WoW.

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To be fair, I don’t mind the Suramar “retcon” (it was also said that the shield made them hidden from view) as well as the structure change of the Tomb of Sargeras.

However, the Vault of the Wardens, the Val’sharah, and the Highmountain screws me over, when they could’ve put those locations somewhere else instead of a place that was raised by Gul’dan in WC2

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Yeah, didnt read all that.

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I haven’t been a lore master since Wrath of the Lich King. I could quote the page number of certain lore back in the day, but I stopped caring after Rise of the Lich King. xP

Blockquote

It’s knowledge that stays with you. At this point it also depends how into you’re in WoW. I stoped at Mists of Pandaria so I guess I’m lacking. But everything before that sure. I actually own all of the books you mentioned in your 1999-2009 period of Warcraft history, including the RPG books of course.

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