Warcraft III Lore retconning to match WoW is a terrible idea

General Discussion
21

It’s not even just to match WoW’s - they are literally going through every line of dialogue, ‘smoothing’ it out.

2 Likes
22

Why would you make a book then make a movie on the book but completely change the story and then make a book on the movie.
Thats like saying “the fist book is not true read the other book”
Why did they make Ogrim Doomhammer be a member of the Frostwolf Clan in the movie when he was a member of the Blackrock Clan originaly.
Same BS might happen with warcraft story.

13 Likes
23

As I see it, there is no Warcraft 3 or WoW lore, it’s both part of the same Warcraft universe, they’re just different iterations of the story. Calling everything written about Warcraft after 2004 for “WoW lore” is not correct as the Universe was independently developed from WoW in many ways. For example, look at all the book literature written about Warcraft after 2004, you could fill an entire bookshelf with it.

What you have to keep in mind is that when creating an entire fictional Universe, it is an iterative process. This means that in order to continue to tell stories in the future you must at times rewrite previous iterations of the story. Retcons are inevitable when expanding a universe from being in just one game to being in board games, comics, literature, MMO, strategy games and merchandise. Blizzard is no longer interested in just making good stories for a single game, it has to also fit in with the rest.

I also want to say that this is not a useful discussion to have as Classic Games have already decided what to do on the macro level with the campaign chapters. They’ve already decided to make all campaign maps have similar geography as in WoW. They’ve already decided to include things into the story which was not previously there, like more time with minor characters like Vol’jin, Darkan’Drathir and Captain Falric. I also think they might even give them unique models and names too.

The macro is decided already, they’re going to reforge the campaign to tell the story they wanted to tell and make it fit into the lore developed after 2004. If you want to be useful, create discussions about specific story moments or chapters and how you think they should best be done.

5 Likes
24

As far as I understand, they just want to add some lines and very minor tweaks. This wouldn’t be a big issue and just feel like east eggs to WoW players. With that i am totally fine. In an interview they on gameinformer dot com pretty clearly say, they will not do major changes :slight_smile:

6 Likes
25

Besides maybe adding small easter eggs, i agree. WoW screwed up a lot of lore very heavily: one of them being night elves. It came at a time when lore was honestly better, before it was deemed much easier to write a story without needing to follow the universe’s continuity for it.

6 Likes
26

I can here to say just this! I’d love to see the story from Warcraft III continued separately from WoW. There’s no reason to drag down a good story for the sake of tying in the decisions made by the multiple dev teams that worked on the mmo for so many years.

10 Likes
27

It’s same lore and franchise do you smoke something? They will make little changes like a map in Stratholme story is same they made WoW from W3. “I propose that WoW’s continuity is kept separate to WC3s. This will be a much better starting point going forward towards a potential WC4 (which should be a direct squeal to WC3, ignoring WoW).” ahahahahahha let’s just ignore 15 years of Wow lore and go on our path… You and people like you are my favorite :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: type of W3 players. We beg together for this remaster and now you don’t wanna changes :scream:

28

Blizzard has already stated that they have no plans to make War4, so a continuation of the story if at all will happen through another medium, such as war3 dlc content or a mobile game (or something that will make the most money).

Also, I think they didn’t say they were making war3 true to the wow story. They were just tweeking the maps to make them look more like how they are positioned in WoW. I didn’t hear anything about them changing the storyline to match WoW – just the map layout. I could be wrong though…

29

The problem that you still dont seem to get is that not ALL of us Warcraft RTS fans have played WoW and every one if its damn expansions over the years…if you say that its not Blizzard’s problem that we dont want/dont have time to keep up with WoW and all the changes it has made to the storyline and that all of us original WC3 fans can just go f*** ourselves and play the original if we dont like it, well thats the path to see this remaster failing.

In the end what Blizzard should do is to give players as much choice as possible…have original map design + voice acting combined with new visuals for those who want it and the reforged WoW retcon maps and dialogue for those who want that. That is the best and only way to respect both and it would also give both sides able to see the changes in best way possible.

Anyhow you must have been living in barrel if you havent noticed how most of us Warcraft RTS fans have said this for quite a while now, that we dont care/like about the stuff thats whats been going on in WoW and/or many of us simply dont have time for any MMO, and thats the reason why most of us dont want Warcraft III’s lore to be fitting together with WoW (again cause we dont care about such thing) and ultimately if they ever do decide to make Warcraft IV, who do you think its main audience would be? WoW players many of whom dont even give a damn about this WC3 remaster, or the Warcraft RTS fans who have been actually demanding for WC IV to happen all these longs years…if Blizzard has any sense left, they would know exactly whom to make that game story/lore wise. And yes, I know there are those Warcraft fans who played and liked both, but there are so many of us who either mainly sticked to the RTS games and those who have only ever played WoW and will keep on sticking playing it to the very end and have no interest in RTS genre whatsoever.

8 Likes
30

Wow is canon. Wow players are critical to the games success, especially considering I am a wow player who played Warcraft 3 up until the day of Wows release.

Changing the design of Stratholme or Tirisfal Glades to better match the geography created by World of Warcraft is an amazing feat, not to just normalize the series for myself and other Wow players, but it just makes more sense.

Some of the maps on the loading screen just do not match wow, and the geography, land masses, city sizes, and scenery just makes more sense. I am excited to see how they will handle the Plaguelands before they were plaguelands and the march on Quel Thalas.

It will be interesting how they will handle simple North south East and West in some of these instances. Dragonblight I believe was more of a top of the map to the south of the map mission?

3 Likes
31

Actually what they have said is that they dont have plans for Warcraft IV AT THE MOMENT, yet they have always added that “its not impossible and might happen one day”…

So as long as they keep saying that, ofc Warcraft RTS fans are going to keep demanding the story and lore respected from our point of view and keep it sensible to those of us who dont have freaking clue whats been going on in WoW, (nor do we care)

6 Likes
32

I play all warcraft games, but certainly don’t think of warcraft and WoW stories as being from the same branch. WoW stories generally suck and are just designed to make people happy to keep subs up. I would prefer them to just leave the missions as they are with the new graphics, but I also wouldn’t mind if they improved on them where after 15 years they’ve realized (WoW aside) there were places for improvement. I also do like the idea of having maps look as you’d expect them in a world rather than random doodads thrown everywhere to give the impression that you’re at this location.

And they always say ‘at the moment’ because they’d never intentionally shut a door. I just wouldn’t expect it to ever happen - at least not for another 15+ years maybe.

6 Likes
33

Yes I know what you mean, I play W3 when I was kid till now. I play both games W3 and Wow I know where is a story at W3 and know where is lore after 15years of Wow development. You stay behind your words that you don’t wanna changes me too bro but you don’t know what are that changes, there are no bat changes, W3 start everything Wow are built on that lore just more expended. They don’t have big things to change only small ones. Everything is the same, same game same developers, same writers. If you love that much W3 lore like everyone else why do you don’t wanna new thing? You don’t wanna know where is Rexxar now? Where is Thrall? Sylvanas? Where Arthas the Lich King end journey and who replaces him? You don’t wanna know more of your favorite heroes and villains? What happened to them? Even if W3 Reforge succeed we will not get W4 in next 8-10years because a game needs a lot of time to develop + they wanna continue supporting W3. Yes, I know many of you didn’t come to Wow because it’s too expensive and its MMORPG no RTS game. But tell me that you don’t wanna story continue in W3 RTS way in form of new expansions or something… What W3 fan are you if don’t, stop sabotage game them. They can make only good changes in the story because I know the story

34

Ofc I want to see continuation of Warcrafts story in RTS format, BUT in form that doesnt require you to know much anything of what has happened in World of Warcraft…as I said already in other thread I would be fine if Blizzard would take the main events of WoW, bring them to WC3: Reforged as additional campaings (or finally do WC IV), and just expand on those story elements and adjust them in ways that were never possible in MMO form. Im somewhat aware what has been happening in WoW ofc due to the expansion trailers and thus I know something about some characters and their fates, so I roughly know the main events, but most of the details from past 10-11 years are completely unknown to me. That is why I dont want Blizzard at any point to assume that if Warcraft should continue in RTS form that you must know what happened in World of Warcraft in any shape or form. Thats why I have kept saying, I wouldnt mind at all if everything about WoW’s lore would be thrown into trash and everything would be started anew from 2003 and WC III:TFT onwards. But likely I wouldnt mind if they take WoW’s storyline as basis and build better story around it. Both are fine by me, I just want this Reforged not to change Warcraft III in way that would one day make that impossible. Anyhow I couldnt give a damn about what WoW players think or want, they can have their MMO, let us Warcraft RTS fans have what we want in RTS form.

7 Likes
35

Exactly, my opinion as well.

2 Likes
36

The issue is that the changes they are proposing is not just changing the loading-screen maps, or the topography of Stratholme. It is giving more prominence to less-important characters like Sylvanas and Jaina just to please the WoW-crowd, and having fan-fiction-level writers going through every line of dialogue trying to improve upon it.

Firstly, not every line needs to be epic - if everything is special, nothing is. Secondly, Warcraft 3’s campaign has such a loyal following for a reason. Why on earth you would think it’s a good idea to try to improve upon something with so many fans is beyond me, and can only be chalked down to hubris or stupidity.

10 Likes
37

The lore should stay as it was. I dont know why it should cater towards WoW lore, which most of the fans of W3 lore find irrelevant, nonsensical, simply as a weird fanfiction.

11 Likes
38

Hopefully if enough of us say it often enough, Blizzard will reconsider combing through everything. Blizzard, you can change stuff like where you enter Stratholme from, or add story-encounters like the militia-men in Stratholme, but please don’t change the story.

5 Likes
39

In this Back2WarCraft interview, at 5:20 to 7:10, Pete Stilwell talks about the lore and all that. He states that the original version of the history will still be there within the game.

:slight_smile:

3 Likes
40

WoW Lore continues to evolve to fit the playstyle of MMO.
Glorious Warcraft 3 is entirely a different beast! I love Warcraft 3 lore, but no no for WoW. With Warcraft 3’s way of telling its lore, it is less constraint and more flexible. You don’t have to introduce characters as villain or boss unlike WoW. In Warcraft 3, characters can develop on their own whether they take the path of good,evil, or their own ideals.

Actually, instead of reforging Warcraft 3 to WoW lore, why not “forge” more stories for warcraft 3 if it is possible.

"Reforge the game, but not the story/lore. "

9 Likes