Warcraft III Lore retconning to match WoW is a terrible idea

General Discussion
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WC3 fans will never know what happens post WC3 unless they pay a monthly fee to play through a grind of subpar story quests in dead abandoned zones.

Everything in WC3 was based on a need-to-know basis. It just tasted sweeter if you knew the references like location names or popular returning heroes.

WC3 didn’t hinge on you having previous knowledge that the Blizzard spell draws its magic from the icy mountains of Northeron.
I think you’ll be okay with a WC4 that simply treats all previous events as mere history, and unfolds its story as its own thing.

Kinda like watching the Joker movie. You could know nothing about Batman’s lore and mythos and still enjoy it for what it is. If you do know Batman though, then certain events in the movie will hold much deeper meaning for those who pay attention. That’s how WC3 and WoW both treat previous history (though WoW is a bit more fan-service pandery in that respect).

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This is the most well thought-out and articulated case I’ve seen presented for this. Well done, Triceron. :slight_smile:

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That’s all well and good but I want to experience what happens post WC3 not read some wiki article or rely on off hand comments made by characters in WC4. WC3’s story is more in-depth than 1 or 2s so that comparisons not entirely fair.
Still as long as It isn’t a direct WoW sequel hinging on characters and plot introduced In WoW I supposed that’s something.

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I think that’s a fair view.

I’ve got my own ideas for how it could pan out. Hear me out-

We focus on a Human kingdom, flying the familiar banners of the Alliance. Rolling hills pepper the landscape, lush with trees and lakes. This is a time of relative peace and growth.

We move to a band of human soldiers who are in combat with a rag-tag foe, a new creature we have not seen before. The knights are lead by a sparky young Hero, seeking to make a name for himself. The enemy speaks in gutteral cries, and signals a retreat. More of these attacks have persisted over the months, and there still is no knowledge of where these creatures come from.

The hero is tasked by the king to form an advanced scouting party to find the source of this new threat. From here, we’re introduced to other young new heroes, the ideal RPG adventurer party. In the name of the Alliance, they set out on their journey.

As the Scouting Party gets closer to the source of the Creatures, they find out that they are not wholly of this world. They are coming through a strange portal, and that they are aiming to summon a greater force into the realm; the Burning Legion.

As the Heroes witness the demons being summoned, mounted troops waving the Alliance banner storm in and attack the enemy and the Demons. But how? The Hero is the first to know of this location. Did the king know of this place? Were they being followed by the army? But as he looks closer, he realizes this is not the same banner of the Alliance that he has. It is a different one, emblazoned with golden light.

The Scouting party returns to the King and reports all that followed. The king thinks deeply on this news, and reveals to the heroes the history of their kingdom. They are the descendants of the Sons of Lother who travelled into Draenor to stop Ner’zhul. The survivors escaped into a portal to this world established a new kingdom, which has lasted a thousand years in peace.

From here, the Hero embarks on a journey to find this alternate Alliance who has entered their realm, and find out more about them. We learn of the history of the Alliance and the Horde through the eyes of a new Hero unknown to either, but familiar with it all through his own stories and legends, passed down generation by generation.

As he joins the ranks of this new Army of Light, we embark on a new adventure reaching across worlds: Warcraft 4.

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You know, as much as I appreciate WoW’s Wrath of the Lich King expansion, upon playing Warcraft 3 I can’t help but feel that Blizzard did Arthas dirty just to maintain “muh MMO balance” when it comes to capital cities.

In my mind, what Arthas should have done, which would be perfectly consistent with his character, would have been to resurrect Kel’Thuzad again, move Naxxramas over the Undercity, and march the Scourge right through the front gates. I’m talking full might here. Not some paltry force.

Take Lordaeron from Sylvanas, execute her, re-absorb the Forsaken into the Scourge. Now he’s got a permanent foothold in Lordaeron from which he can strike at Light’s Hope and Tyr’s Hand.

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ask yourself this question…do you really think wow lore isn’t going to affect the future of the warcraft franchise? Warcraft 3 is still considered to be part of the warcraft franchise, so their storylines co-exist and are not exclusive of one another…this is a fact. I can log into wow right now and go kill the lich king - that’s a continuation of warcraft 3 period - they share the same universe.

That being said…the wow lore is actually damaging in my opinion to what a future RTS could bring, and I’m under the impression a future RTS is not being taken into consideration as the writing continues.

Let’s look at some current examples:

  1. Night Elves are now horde…and alliance. The Highborne elves are a faction of NIGHT ELVES. There’s no “well they’re half elves” or whatever - they are night elves and they are currently allied with orcs/undead/trolls etc.

  2. Vulpera are an official race now…they are part of the horde. Now there’s not much lore to them now…so i mean they probably wouldn’t have a huge impact on an RTS game in the future (i seriously doubt they’d create a vulpera hero, because there aren’t any super significant names in development right now…but still).

  3. The entire Human race would have to be reworked. We have different factions of humans, including Worgen/Gil’neans now…it’s not just lordaeron armies…The archmage order is now shared across the board as well…and there are currently no elves directly allied with humans…with the exception of the night elves and void elves…and even then, they have their own interests period.

  4. Undead are in a weird spot. The “Scourge” is tamed and still loyal to bolvar who now sits on the frozen throne…but no more arthas…so who would the undead race even be? The Forsaken led by Sylvannus? Or would it be scourge? and if so, how would the heroes be worked out then? Cuz technically there are no more liches associated with the forsaken as far as I know…the dread lords are not affiliated with them anymore either…

these are just a few examples. For the naysayers - no i’ll just stop you right there - blizz isn’t going to make an entirely new game and make up an entire new story; it would still be a continuation of the writing they have now.

The only salvation we have for future expansions that are of the RTS genre rely on the writing. Metzen ain’t there anymore folks…this is not the same company that made the masterpiece we know as warcraft 3.

I think the elephant in the thread is that people are just avoiding that fact…and that’s why this thread isn’t going anywhere lol

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It all depends on what ‘End Game’ Blizzard has for WoW.

We are moving towards unified Alliance and Horde. Maybe by the end of WoW, it is one faction of good guys. Maybe the Night Elves will split off with Tyrande. Maybe the Vulpera will cause a civil war in the ranks by marrying Anduin. We don’t know the outcome, so we can’t see how things play into the bigger picture.

But TBH, nothing we knew of WC2 could have prepared us for WC3 either. Just because we knew Ner’zhul was defeated in outland couldn’t prepare us for the Lich King. Just because the Orcs lost their bloodlust doesn’t mean they’re out of the picture. Theres plenty that can be said and done to set a new stage for Warcraft.

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The only way to do a Warcraft 4 is to completely ignore WoW’s storylines.

Which, even as a (Classic) WoW fan, I’d be all for this.

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i get that. and while i would agree 100% with what you said, it’s not gonna happen. they aren’t going to make up an entire new warcraft story and ignore the events from warcraft 1, to warcraft 2, to warcraft 3, to wow…you know? i honestly do not see that happening. i don’t see how they’d even begin to write a story without explaining how arthas is gone and the death knight order isn’t an undead only thing anymore.

or why the undead are not a race anymore…stuff like that.

I personally believe better writing could also have the same effect as “ignoring the wow story”…it would just take a few expansions to clarify and such.

I guess they could technically make a warcraft 4 now, but it wouldn’t be 4 races…they could expand the orc to include undead in their ranks…that type of stuff but as far as wow goes right now there is literally not an undead race lol…there’s just 2 factions - one led by sylvannus with a much different type of army than the scourge (necromancy is still banned by both factions) - and then you have the scourge.

Technically, they could make the scourge their own race again if bolvar plays a bigger part - which new datamining is implying he will be…so i dunno.

I think warcraft 4 would just piss off human and orc players personally lol…luckily night elves are still kinda doing their own thing - even more so now…(i don’t wanna post spoilers in here, but if you look at the most recent wow events and how Tyrande has been acting…you’d see what i mean!)

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I’m not suggesting they ignore Wacrafts one through three.

Just WoW.

Just ignore WoW.

Start fresh from where Warcraft 3 left off.

If modern movie sequels can do it, Blizzard can too.

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I think the people who most likely want to ignore WoW are the undead lovers. :wink:

Like what sc2 did to the zerg, WoW is doing the same to the undead.

  1. The lich king was their overmind. Not a fan of arthas cleansing Ner’zhul out of the picture when Ner’zhul was the brains and arthas was the body.

  2. Sylvanas windrunner and Princess Calia Menethil are the kerrigans of the scourge. Windrunner most likely will receive the fate infested Kerrigan deserved while the princess saves the undead race. Warcraft 4 the holy undead mixed with light.

  3. Everything cool about the undead is gone after wow. No more elf vampires or banshee, no more crypt fiends, no more frost wyrms. The players will kill all the bad stuff that would threaten the future. =)

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Really? Because I’ve read plenty of fan-fic’s on post-Wc3 stuff that’s been better than, “Alright gang, lets split into two parties and see who kills the big-bad-guy first!”

Literally the Plaguelands in Vanilla was the only lore I actually liked in WoW, and that’s because they literally spent 1/3rd of the Undead campaign in TFT setting it up.

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Honestly, as I just re-did the Undead campaign in TFT again, I have to say that the Forsaken in WoW actually makes no sense. As quoted from the campaign, “As the Lich Kings power wanes, so too does his ability to command the Undead.”

This is all well and gone when he’s losing his power from Illidan’s attacks. But as soon as Arthas and the Lich King merge, he can easily begin amassing the same power as before. If WoW’s own lore is to be considered, his strength easily surpassed even the Dragon Aspects, which makes you question why can’t he simply re-dominate the more unruly undead as he is shown to do on occasion?

In fact, since he was technically the source of their necrotic life force, it stands that he should be able to reach back out and collect the wayward troops. There’s really no reason besides an excuse to keep Undead players as part of the Horde that Sylvanas wasn’t re-enslaved by the Lich King.

(Plus WoW made it so everyone who didn’t like murdering peasants could just break free whenever they felt like it).

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I’m all for a divergent timeline where the Alliance and Horde didn’t immediately start fighting again like idiots after Hyjal.
Where the Nightelves never lost their unique sex-split caste system and their savage edge and never joined the Alliance, which is to this day a choice that I found baffling.
Where rather than a red vs blue team we had more different nations with unique identities, alliances and ideologies.

BUT that will never happen so I think we’re better off harvesting the past of Warcraft for more campaigns or…

hear me out here, this is going to get wild:
Generate new lore for us to love and for WoW to bastardise.
Give us a glimpse at a different world where there is a sudden power vacuum when legion forces are recalled to protect Argus during the legion events and the formerly oppressed species experience a resurgence and culture boom that brings them into conflict with each other.
You could include orcs that fled Draenor during the events of Beyond the Dark Portal, when Ner’zuhl opened many rifts.
Drifting humans that also survived the destruction of Dreanor, maybe fill in some of the Turalyon/Alleria story with actual gameplay.
Include a few new species to throw into the mix that exist outside of the Horde Alliance dynamic and hopefully do not have to fit into that Alliance and Horde dynamic in a WoW future where your faction no longer matters. (seeing as in 8.3 they are maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe finally going to have lasting peace? 40 years late after Hyjal or whatever but fudge it, maybe it’ll stick this time.)

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OR they could just claim ‘Bronze Drake’ shenanigans and the whole timeline stuff. I mean honestly, WoW people could just become time travellers fixing epic battles and stuff, but I digress. Warcraft 4, to have a compelling story, would need to have the complex factionism that the RTS genre had, rather than the hyper-simplified system that’s currently being used.

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Agreed. Many factions > red vs blue.
I don’t care how they get there… could even keep the tangled WoW spaghetti if need be but then split the factions up proper. The Alliance seems to be more divided these days, so there’s hope. Calia, Derek and the Forsaken could grow more independent from the Horde.
The Zandalari, under rulership of Talanji specifically state they are equals to the horde and close allies but Talanji refused to declare Zandalar subservient to the Horde directly in Sylv’s dumb c*nt face.
drool Imagine a Zandalari faction full of trolls and dinosaurs… the ultimate monsters and cavalry faction.

I mean yes WoW’s story is a hot mess of just repeating the plot of RoC once or sometimes even 2-3 times in a single expansion for 7+ expansions… but they did add a lot of cool factions that would be amazing in an RTS.

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Some of the factions I can agree with, but some are just totally bonkers. Even some of the traditional races have facets that irk me heavily.

Like, Taurens were Shamanistic, not Druidic (hence why taurens carry massive TOTEMS). Blood Elves were never Paladins (nor did they need it), Draenei had their own culture, rather than being another generic human-type society, etc etc…

I’d really, if they ever make a Wc4, to take some of the general concepts (like the Spider Kingdoms/Titans in WotLK, or the Scarlet Crusade in Classic) and essentially re-write them to fit an RTS perspective.

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I’ll give one that I found a really nice addition:
Spirit Healers.
Think about it. Altars revive dead heroes how exactly?
They plop a spirit healer there.

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Druidism and Shamanism in the Warcraft lore are so closely linked they’re barely distinguishable. Both feature shapeshifting, both feature summoning beasts and/or nature spirits, both channel the power of the natural world and the creatures that live in them.
The only thing that meaningfully separates them is how this manifests with Shamans having much more subtle animal connections and leaning heavily on the elemental forces and spirits while druids have very overt animal connections and plant connections.
NPCs in WoW frequently mix and match the flavours of nature magic, especially in Troll culture where the line is exceptionally blurry.

As for paladins, what cultures do and don’t have paladins or even what is and isn’t even thought of as a paladin is completely arbitrary.
If you go back to WC2, and the roots of the paladin as a type of unit, it’s just a warrior who can wield the light. The fact that any culture that has priests doesn’t also have paladins is beyond weird.
Did high elves have priests? yes, then why not paladins?
Priestesses of the Moon are archers wearing at least partial plate in WC3 and wield powers that either are light or indistinguishable from it and may as well be a unique sub-class of bow-wielding paladin.

But I guess that’s the thing, WC3 didn’t try to push units into types and boxes like WoW had to do for player classes and then trying to retroactively come up with reasons why race X couldn’t be class Y.

Considering the timeline of WoW’s expansions, it’s by now weirder classes aren’t race agnostic. All these cultures have been fighting side by side or against one another for several decades. 2 or 3 generations of new warriors among at least races with human-like reproduction cycles would have had deviants in there that would have trained under tutelage of close racial allies.

If WC4 carries on past WoW’s current expansion, as opposed to creating an alternate timeline (which for the record is still my preferred option), the factions should reflect some of the modern cultural shifts and innovations in technology and cultural understanding. You don’t spend 3-4 decades in close cultural alignment with allies in a war without innovating.

Most importantly though, rendering the argument kind of pointless:
Who cares, just make the factions feel unique and give them enough cool stuff to call their own. Balance old nostalgic iconic units and introduce enough new cool stuff that can in time become iconic.
Case in point: Spell Breakers were all newfangled in TFT but now are considered a core icon of Blood Elf culture.

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Sorry but that’s flat out incorrect. In fact, Shamans are more similar to Paladins than they are Druids. Druid’s were specifically taught by Cenarius, and hold a key connection with the Emerald Dream. Not only that, but their spirits are of ‘nature’ itself, rather than an element from an elemental plane. Generally Druids deal with pure life-force, whereas Shamans manipulate energy that ultimately comes from an elemental plane (like Ragnaros for fire). If you played D&D you’d realize that a lot of this lore mimicks the class differences in Tabletop RPG’s.

WoW decided that this was all too much, and that having Shaman vs Paladin was enough of a faction difference, so wrote Taurens into being druids as well (despite the Earth Mother being an Earth Elemental rather than anything remotely Druidic).

Ultimately, I just hope that if they ever make a Wc4, they just timeline split everything. It’s just way too messy, too convoluted and self-contradictory to squeeze that much into an RTS setting where (generally) dialogue is fairly sparse outside of cutscenes.

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