That just p!sses me off to such intense, immense extremes. 
However like you said, at least the art is still great …
This thread summed up:
Danuser:!character opinions are subjective.
Aussie: character opinions are inarguable objective fact because I like alliance high elves.
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I’ve actually been arguing against that.
… Should had gone to specsavers mate. 
Not to mention:
- The thread is about Blood Elves (not High Elves), and the damage the Void Elf lore applied to various class & cosmology lore.
- The pass few comments on this thread haven’t even been about High Elves – It’s been about how Blizzard retconned Chronicles after saying it would be the ‘Bible of lore’ and concrete canon foundations of their storytelling. Ultimately helping solidify their status-quo as massive corporate liars.
Dreadmoore summed up: "I like to project my own translation on others words by twisting them. 
"
… Alas, perhaps I’m wrong about you, and the fact could be that we both simply got off to a grand misunderstanding …
What I want, is various lore that’s been poked – To be addressed. (I mean, personally I’d also love Night Elven Worgen, since they were the ‘OG’ Worgen race - but don’t get me started on that rabbit hole of a conversation).
Tell me Dreadmoore, is there any lore subjects that have been pummelled into the story, then left to rot that YOU - Would like to be addressed? 
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It’s so interesting to see people react this way to Chronicle, and I sympathize.
Personally, it was Chronicles itself that gave me this reaction. I know a lot of people loved it, but it just overcomplicated and retconned a lot of basic stuff that defined the setting and how it worked. It made the universe feel much smaller and kinda…stop making sense for me. I actually stopped playing for years when Chronicles came out, because it completely transformed the setting into something less interesting in my eyes.
But whichever version of Warcraft lore you like, the amount of retcons on top of retcons has gotten completely unsustainable for the setting.
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I mean, I’ve played since late Vanilla / transitioning into early Burning Crusade, and the lore retcons upon retcons & changes kind of gave me that reaction on a lower scale. So Chronicles being introduced was like a much needed breath of relief “Finally the madness is over!” — Personally I found Chronicles made the universe feel much larger, however to me Shadowlands made the universe feel much smaller - Especially with ‘ThE fIrSt OnEs’ 
Key factors that transformed the setting into something much less interesting in my eyes to the WoW universe via Shadowlands was the fact they seemed to had retconned immortality, spirituality, eternity and the infinite mysticism of enlightenment & empowerment. They turned it all into something incredibly entropic, synthetic and nihilistic – Which is all rather ironic considering it was an expansion with ‘The Afterlife’ of WoW as its base of operations.
There was so much opportunity they could had built upon with Chronicles but let the potential waste away … Although they did build upon the Dragons origins & lore seen upon Chronicles in Dragonflight – So I’ll give them that.
Now that — I can agree with.
Honestly, I’d rather them retcon a lot of Shadowlands lore but they’re too shortsighted to do something like that; so I guess the shining love I once had for the WoW universe will flicker away and I’ll pour the light of that deep-fondness to another game or franchise with a rich intriguing storyline to fill that void.
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Lol same here. I actually learned the word retcon back in the day with the Draenei thing.
We agree on a lot here. Main reason Chronicles made me so mad was because I genuinely like the old soft-magic system in WoW, the dichotomy between divine and arcane, and I especially loved how arcane and fel were linked. I loved the idea that magic was a drug, how Arcane was a gateway to fel, how magic can twist and mutate you. So much of early Warcraft lore revolved around this. Character motivations revolved around this. Even Archimonde himself references this stuff when he destroys Dalaran. He saw the Kirin Tor as thieves and cheats who want to use the power of the Nether without consequences.
So much stuff was perfectly explainable within this system, because it was a foundational pillar of the universe and how it functioned. Why are demons attracted to arcane magic? Because they’re arcane mutants that feed on magic like vampires. Why did Malygos go crazy and try to destroy all mortal mages? Because the Arcane is chaotic, addictive, and too dangerous for mortals to wield. Why can the Scarlet Crusade use holy magic, despite being evil? Because holy and shadow magic are expressions of belief and emotions. They come from within and from one’s personal ideology.
Warcraft had a ton of retcons…dear god, a TON. But nothing that completely upended the way the universe functioned. In fact, this was one of the most consistent things about Warcraft lore from WC1 all the way up until around Legion.
I’m fine with Chronicles setting things in stone, but to carelessly throw that all out and replace it with the Cosmic Chart just made so much stuff make less sense.
Taking a soft(ish) magic system and making it fully hard just makes the world feel smaller and less infinite, with less possibilities. Turning the forms of magic into these semi-sentient Cosmic Forces was such a bad move. The differences between them don’t even make sense in the slightest.
How is necromancy “death magic” when it revolves around making things “undead” and creating diseases…which are living things.
If Arcane is Order, then why does the Light seem so orderly? They clearly aren’t equipped to even consider these philosophical nuances.
If Fel and Arcane are polar opposites, then why…(I could spend all day listing both minor and major plotholes this caused).
Warcraft needed something like Chronicles. On that we’ll agree. But many of the choices made in Chronicles have been irreparably damaging to the franchise.
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Stagnation can certainly appear to be a form of Order. But therein, various powers have always complimented one another fairly well. When the Sunwell became a font of Arcane and Light, it didn’t explode because the two forces were incompatible. Instead, they harmonized. Admittedly this used to be something of a property with the Arcane specifically, with only one exception: Fel. Arcane magic was able to harmonize or emulate any other kind of magic. It could even animate the inanimate, and if that happened to be a corpse or bones? Discount necromancy.
Life and Light were able to work in tandem, as we saw with the healing of the Plaguelands during Cataclysm.
Life and Death broke this idea of each power being able to work with the others except for their opposite. Ardenweald specifically broke that, by having Life and Death part of a cycle. But, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen something like this. The Naaru themselves are capable of a similar cycle between Light and Void, even if a Dark Naaru almost never returns to their Light state.
Again Solarion, you’re simply being smarter than the writers to plug in the holes they didn’t think about.
I’m not saying some of this stuff can’t be explained. I’m saying there were already explanations that worked fine, only to be retconned. In my opinion, their new lore makes the world feel smaller and more rigid, to the detriment of the setting.
But either way, can we agree that this is far too convoluted for what it’s worth? Blizzard should have thought this stuff through more, or they should have left it alone. The way they set up these Cosmic Forces is simply amateurish.
The idea of Necromancy being “death magic” sounds obvious and simple, until you remember that the entire basis of necromancy is blurring the lines between life and death. These writers don’t realize they’re inserting new lore into a pre-existing world. In Warcraft, Necromancy was a school of arcane magic involving life, death, and disease. Arcane magic is chaotic magic from the Nether. Divine magic comes from your inner beliefs, emotions, and convictions. Warcraft kept the magic system simple on purpose: to keep it flexible, open-ended, and mysterious.
Trying to replace this freeform, soft-magic system with a hard-set cosmic force system was a terrible move that damaged the franchise. It’s like trying to switch out the engine of a game when it’s already released.
Necromancy was already established in Warcraft. It had lore. The fact that so much magic in Warcraft came from the Twisting Nether was an intentional design choice. It harkens back to Warcraft’s Warhammer roots. Demons, the undead, and arcanists were all tied to the same form of magic being used in different ways. Power is addictive and corrupting. It’s why so many necromancers and warlocks were former mages for example. It’s why Archimonde makes that speech about Dalaran “stealing our fire” before he blows it up. It was the original basis for the war of the ancients, and the Night Elves hatred of unrestricted Arcane. It was why druids “balanced” the power of nature and the arcane, before they changed it to the sun and moon.
I would rather live in a timeline where WoW’s magic lore was simple again, than have to write thesis papers to explain why the different forms of magic work the way they do. I think we could be having much more interesting conversations about the people of Azeroth, say…blood elves, for example? I want to see their shadow priests tap into the primal darkness within to ensure the survival of their people. I want to see mages and warlocks arguing over the ethics of delving too deep into the Nether. I want to be having discussions about what kind of strange, alien civilizations could exist beyond the realm of Azeroth, with different religions completely unrelated to the Naaru, the Titans, or the Old Gods, but still drawing from the same magic. Sometimes simplicity gives you more potential for depth.
As it stands now…I feel like everywhere I go in the Warcraft universe, I’m just gonna run into the same 6 “super-factions” that are way too similar to each other.
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For arguably selfish reasons because of the effect the conflict was having on the Sha. Not because he cared a hill of beans about w ho was “right”.
I mean, the Sha kind of emphasises his point than mutes it. He warned them both of the threat, along with the cause and effect of their actions and they BOTH had 0 F’s given.
Taran Zhu had a mild turn around after he was saved by various adventurers from the Sha of Anger that chose him as a vessel (Ironically for the anger he felt towards them, for the danger they posed with the Sha). Although he went back to his original thoughts upon ‘The outsiders’ when Garrosh nuked the vale.
Something most players got putridly sick of, was how the Horde was always the instigator & villains of faction-wars & faction-war themed expansions. We called them out for it @ Blizzcon prior to BFA and they replied saying no, the Horde aren’t the villains in BFA and it would be morally grey (Big load of BS that was, eh?).
So if there is dissonance to be created between the two factions again, I seriously hope it’s the Alliance that fire the first shots — Because if the Horde become villains again, it’s just gonna be an atomic eyeroll cliché that cheeses everyone off. Heck I wouldn’t be surprised if heaps of pro-Horde players just legit uninstall & quit.
Even if the alliance starts the next one, they would simply be justified cause of the sheer crimes the horde has done.
Atleast short of something like them wanting extermination or to reclaim kingdoms or something
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I don’t. Because…
Pretty much this. After the War of Thorns? The Alliance has all the justification it needs to go after the Horde.
I just don’t want to see the faction conflict come back at all. I’m sick of it, that’s a sentiment I’ve seen other players share, and a faction conflict never ends well, because it can only end in a ceasefire or treaty. There is never any payoff on emotional investment. The Night Elves lost their world tree, most of their race, and their lands to the Horde. Where was their fistbumping moment? When did they get to hit the Horde back anywhere near that hard? The Night Warrior teased that might happen, but in the end that didn’t go anywhere either. Not to mention there was always that threat of, “Well, Tyrande is gonna die because of this,” meaning that even if she had nuked Orgrimmar and eviscerated Sylvanas and Nathanos and made a flag of their rotten innards, that moment still would have been tarnished by her death immediately afterwards.
Faction Conflict expansions and storylines are the worst. We’re better off without them.
I’d say that the story of MoP was pretty cool. But then decided to do it all again but on crack.
Faction war stories can be quite good but it has to be executed well. It seems like blizzard has an easier time writing smaller conflicts like in vanilla where it’s more local conflicts and not a full-scale war like in MoP or BFA.
And yes MoP had its issues but was overall quite a good story, there’s a reason why it’s remembered so fondly, and at least blizzard did not pretend that Garrosh was a good guy and that he did not do evil things, compare that to BFA where Sylvanas did far worse war crimes, and yet they call it morally grey? Horrid.
In my opinion for BFA to work, they should have had the Alliance be the aggressor but that’s a point that’s been debated to death for half a decade on here.
That said, shadowlands would not have worked unless they villain batted Sylvanas and had another rebellion. I’m sure they did it all so it would fit the emerging Jailer narrative. So good job blizzard, you morally bankrupted the Horde for the future, and destroyed any desire/goodwill the player base had for any faction war narrative, wrecked the night elves in several ways. All for the shadowlands story.
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This is called bad writing. If we’re going to shy away from the core fantasy of Warcraft because of Blizzard’s past failures, then what does that say about the state of the setting, and the people controlling its future? If we’re going to let past mistakes dictate the future of the story, then what will be left to write about?
Providing a solid, well-balanced faction rivalry is not impossible in fiction, even in multiplayer fiction. If these writers lack the talent or desire to deliver on such a basic premise then they should quit their jobs.
We also need to keep in mind that past faction-war stories were tainted by the toxic work environment. In BFA this became incredibly obvious. The devs were literally fighting behind the scenes for control of the franchise during a crucial moment in the story, and they all collectively dropped the ball.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
When every war has been a loss for the horde, leading to the culling of its cast, Why should anyone be excited for another war, why should i be excited for more dead leaders and another loss.
This is subjective, so I’ll respect your opinion, but from where I was standing… it was pretty bad.
You had 10,000+ year old Priestesses being lectured on how to wage a war by middle-aged human kings, Garrosh the simpleton who dismissed his air support while entering the Twilight Highlands playing 4D chess to prevent Lor’themar’s secret talks with Varian from coming to fruition to keep the Blood Elves in the Horde (not even touching the hot mess of retcons, cut content, and bugs that is the Purge of Dalaran), and lectures from an uppity Pandaren about stuff he had no clue about but still felt he was high and mighty enough to tell everyone else off for.
To top it all off, while the Horde had some excellent quests towards the end (liberating Razorhill, for example), the Alliance’s content in comparison was just awful (piloting a robot cat, being equated to, ‘trash from Theramore washing up on shore,’ or being talked down to by Vol’jin and only after there was enough of a point being made about how dumb that was, getting to remind him he wasn’t in a position to mouth off to begin with, although they should’ve just made his dialogue a little more respectful in the first place).
All in all, whatever highlights there were to the story, overall it felt poor. Not to mention Blizzard couldn’t even maintain some of it’s choices. The Alliance loses Theramore, and gained Dalaran, but then Dalaran functioned Neutral in Legion and sat out BFA so… what did we gain there at all?
To be fair.
The 10,000 year old priestesses barely lead a full on war on her own in that 10,000 year period. Everytime a major battle was to happen, the role of army leader and tactician was redelegated to another, usually a man (Malfurion, Fandral Staghelm, Fandral Staghelm’s son, Jarod Shadowsong).
We see Tyrande doing small skirmishes in the woods, where she also brazingly and without deeper thoughts just charges in.
And that was just in WC3. Tyrande’s experience when it comes to leadership and warfare is comically lacking, compared to any human in the Warcraft series. The Night Elves had a few skirmishes. The largest war Tyrande herself participated in, was War of the Ancients (Where no other race could get further credit for participating in the same war), where all she could do is act like a solo warrior, and get herself captured due to her own stupidity, of course.
Much of those 10,000 years for Tyrande, was spent in a temple.
Compared to Varian who had been involved in constant conflict since childhood - not to mention growing up to actually learning how to lead, because he was to be king. Tyrande was never undergoing further training in leadership, she was just suddenly propped up as the new High Priestess because the former died.
It is also still why the Warsong Clan alone managed to fight on equal footing with a larger Night Elven force. Sure, the Night Elves are bigger and stronger than High Elves, but those thousands years of peace, and those few battles with forces that simply tried to win by throwing higher numbers at the Night Elves, certainly did not prepare them for enemies that could and would actually think and strategise while also having just gotten out of near-constant fights and having learned a great deal.
… I don’t really like Tyrande or the Night elves for that matter.
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I wish I could find the pre-release dev interview in which Danuser and the team tackled this. I distinctly recall it being said that MoP was an inadequate exploration of the Horde’s structural shortcomings and that no real lessons had been learned from the Garrosh arc.
Bunk upon bunk. The Horde’s cast of characters already united with the Alliance to overthrow a Warchief gone too far; the question of whether the Horde was its Warchief was decidedly no. The only lesson they came away with the second time was “autocracy is bad, let’s rule by committee,” itself rather hollow, what with eleven out of twelve Horde leaders ruling their home factions autocratically. That even the most heroic of these characters abetted a tyrannical zombie genocider for two or three patches is so startling a condemnation of the modern Horde on an individual level that I just can’t believe these writers intended to tell that story. And if they did, what the hell were they thinking?
It will never not astonish me that their attempt to rectify MoP’s alleged failings ended up unutterably worse in every conceivable way. BfA’s faction war was a plot line so bad it genuinely makes me angry, and in that sense they got their intended audience reaction, as I did still care about the red faction enough to resent the mess it was mangled into.
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I don’t want it in general, but in terms of if it were to happen one way or another — I’d much rather not have the repeated stereotype faction conflict of:
- Horde does big bad.
- Alliance retaliates to big bad & war breaks out.
- ‘Plot-Twist’ Turns out Horde did big bad for bad reasons.
- Civil war within Horde.
- Alliance pound the pushover Horde AGAIN, and tell bonk them over the head telling them not to do it again - Be a good angry mob, say sorry and let there be a tenuous ‘peace’ between the two … Again.
People literally called all this out pre-BFA and Blizzard lied with a smile on their face saying no it’ll be different / morally grey / masterful storyline yadayadayada blahblahblah — Longstory short: Blizzard are full of $#!%. News to no one, sadly.
Percent.
I agree. Absolutely sick of it.
It could’ve been done better, and turned out to make the game better for it … However given the terrible writing and storyline incompetence of the sludge brained morons running the show – Yeah agreed.
How I feel about Shadowlands just butchering the entire storyline of the WoW universe and hamfisting all the lore it could grasp right up the Jailor’s @$$ to make him look more appealing.
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Lol what? If they aren’t canon, Warlocks can’t be either.