Can someone explain

What, if anything, has “broken” canon?

It’s this pervasive idea that I don’t understand. I haven’t seen anything crop up that directly contradicts established history that isn’t a bronze dragon bit of work. I can see why folks would see using them as a cop out (because it is) but…most story beats are just adding on to additional lore. You are being shown that a house has more rooms. Closed doors are being opened, and there are doors behind them.
It’s not like we’re going through these doors and suddenly finding the rest of the house gone. It’s just a bigger house.

The only thing that I can see as breaking canon is the city of Suramar still being intact. Which, frankly, I don’t mind. I love that city to bits.

EDIT: There’s a lot of moments that are “rough on canon” (thank you Breakcog) which is fair! There are! I just haven’t seen a moment that necessarily breaks it.

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Gnome priests, Forsaken priests, and Lightforged death knights are rough on canon.

I think Vol’jin having children and Voss working with Sylvanas can be considered cracking the possiblitiy for canon.

Night elves risen as Dark Rangers rejecting the Night elves then considered they were rejected by the Night elves is an annoying blemish on canon.

So far thats all the moments I think the community brought up canon breaking. :thinking:

edit: Almost forgot! Uther in the Shadowlands and Western Plaguelands.

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“Anything I don’t like.”

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How?
Because he doesn’t have a wife?

I’d be surprised if half the ladies of his tribe weren’t trying to get in his loincloth. The dude was their chieftain and a shadow hunter.

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You’re forgetting the most important part: the beard.

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That was the result of the bargain he made with Bwonsamdi

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THESE are all great examples!!! I also appreciate you using “rough on canon” - because they are. They stretch canon, they certainly run it ragged - but they don’t break it.

Should Gnomish priests be canically rare/non-existent due to living in the secular technological meritocracy that Gnomeregan strove to be? Yes!
However, is there a possibility that some gnomes have learned to lean on faith in the Light to keep going? Absolutely.

I feel like a lot of these moments are like “What? Woah. Wouldn’t have thought of that as an option.” Moments.

Except the night elf dark rangers. I wanted more explanation there. They gave it eventually, but it needed to happen then instead of now.

And…spirits in Azeroth. Still…don’t get that.

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The problem is that what is and isn’t canon is decided by the devs.

They can go “Actually Uther was a Pink-Haired Gnome Woman with a pet kookaburra and everything we see in WC3 is the Jailer twisting our recollection of the past because reasons” and that’s technically canon now

It’d be incredibly stupid and another example of them trying to take a dump on old lore, but it’d technically be canon.

So when new canon conflicts with old canon, they just go “NUH-UH” like a kid getting called out in breaking the rules in the game he made.

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I mean in theory, yes. That would suck.
They haven’t done anything like that though as far as I know.

The closest thing I’ve seen is Sylvanas and her split soul but…I don’t know. It makes sense considering what we knew then.

There was some trouble with considering him too young to have had children before the tribe left the Darkspear Isles (when Sen’jin perished).

They used science to become priests. Fortunately, they later became acolytes.

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The way souls interact with the afterlife has been retconned pretty heavily with Shadowlands.

We have spoken to Uther’s soul in the Plaguelands yet his soul was only split into two pieces. One melancholy piece trapped in Bastion, and one still-righteous piece that was trapped in Frostmourne. Except… it was also not in Frostmourne, but in a shard given the Jailer by Frostmourne having stabbed him?

So there’s like 4 shards of Uther’s soul, 2 of which have debatable canon and 2 that are newly-established canon.

There’s also the way souls regularly reappear to speak with us in quests despite having been dead for some time in a lot of cases. And these aren’t souls trapped in the mortal-realm-adjacent death realm that the player sees when they’re dead as a ghost, but ones that have passed on and then came back later. In SL, this all simply isn’t possible without necromancy.

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[chuckles in Sir Zeliek]