me when danuser reveals some dumb new aspect of the universe’s cosmology that suddenly was the cause of every plot back to warcraft 1
24 Likes
I wouldn’t mind these strange additions so much if it didn’t have to be shoehorned into old lore. Let it stand on its own. It feels like lazy writing to me. If you have to mold old lore around it to prop it up, it probably isn’t a good idea to begin with.
6 Likes
My impression of the Mag’har recruitment scenario:
Take a portal
Take another portal
Take a portal backwards
Take a portal
Take a portal sideways
Take a portal
Portal
Portal
Portal
Portal
11 Likes
I refuse to believe Varsinax isn’t equivocally and completely and irreversibly dead.
11 Likes
The existence of the Shadowlands expansion.
I’m still in BFA, in my heart 
8 Likes
That the entirety of the Zandalari and Kul Tiran fleets were destroyed during the cinematics of 8.1 and 8.2
That’s just not how that works. A majority, probably, but not an entirety.
Also, I don’t accept the idea of Orcs reproducing like normal beings.
I’m sorry, but you cant populate a capital city just with the contents of a handful of ships you hijacked, even if you stack the orcs like lumber.
5 Likes
I don’t accept that Jaina survived taking on an entire horde raid at Dazar’alor. Any Jaina past that point is her twin sister Daina.
Also the mag’har recruitment scenario is good. No I did not play WoD.
3 Likes
That Suramar is a Horde city. At the least, that it would hostile to unarmed Alliance people. I’ll accept their leadership would more closely align with the Sin’dorei than the Kaldorei, but their going all-in on a genocidal, faction war, so much so they were actively hostile with the people that just liberated them? Yeah, that’s crap.
15 Likes
I started with WC3, is there actually a point to this retcon or did Blizz just feel like changing something for the sake of it?
Orcs have a narrative problem, that I think at least some of the developers have recognized, where a lot of their culture venerates the founders of the Old Horde despite those founders universally being deeply awful people. So they want the orcs to be Not Bad People, despite the fact that most of their idols are Definitely Bad People.
There’s basically two ways to solve this; either make the Horde ditch the love of their founding fathers - which we sort of saw a hint of, with Saurfang - or whitewash those founders into being Not Bad People, Actually, which is what they’ve mostly done up until now.
10 Likes
The Naga being the result of a pact between Azshara and Nzoth.
One of my favorite aspects of the Naga were their autonomy and the occasional variance in alignment and disposition they’d have. While the vast majority of the species were basically sycophants to their Queen there were some rare examples of outliers, however minor and overall inconsequential (with the possible exception of the Illidari Naga). What little division there has been in the Naga has been overshadowed in my opinion by the more common depictions of them. To me cementing them as creations of an Old God kind of ruined most of the potential for nuance that I once saw in them. It alongside Nazjatar’s depiction in BfA was more or less the last indication to me that the Naga aren’t a race. They have no real culture, they’re just another grunt for one of the major evils; mindless zealots devoted to Azeroth’s avatar of ego.
…But since I still kinda like the Naga I want to do what I can to maintain that fondness.
Another is the Night Warrior being some monkey’s paw divine ritual. I just don’t like it. It was originally described as an aspect of Elune herself and, while that is vague enough for multiple interpretations, I wouldn’t expect allegedly dangerous power boost that gradually kills the person who successfully assumes it to be one of those.
I would perhaps be more accepting if it actually had any significant use, beyond the scenario it was introduced in (itself somewhat ruined to me by the inclusion of Nathanos and Nelf Dark Rangers), but so far it hasn’t and there is little indication that anything particularly positive is planned for it; so in addition to arguably retconning a somewhat obscure piece of lore it also did so for something that was, at least to me, horribly underutilized and overall unnecessary.
I even kind of dislike the black eye visual. I think it would’ve looked much better with it’s own unique glow, perhaps more subdued than normal. The eyes themselves don’t look half bad up close.
12 Likes
All of it.
Blizzard’s “worldbuilding” has always omitted the finer details you’d expect from, you know, someone trying to build a world, and what detail we do have is broad, vague, and more prone to retcons than anything in, say, the Elder Scrolls, a setting which has retconning literally woven into the fabric of its reality.
An example: what is arcane magic? How does it work?
Well, a book kinda sorta implied it was super math and that mages were super mathematicians that could, uh, alter physical reality with equations? Only they, somehow, weren’t actually aware of arcane magic’s mathematical nature so they, uhm, weren’t really formulating said equations?? The equations just kinda… happened??? All these wizards were just doing math without realizing it was math, somehow???
Also, mana (something which seemingly has some degree of physical substance but which we know next to nothing about) is like water and mages heat it up with their, ah, mind, and the mana transforms in a way that’s likened to steam?? And mana in this transitional state is how arcane magic is made??? So mages are agitating mana (something we have no understanding of) with their mind but they’re also doing Super Cosmic Math and there’s also something about speaking “the Language of Order” and mages have to study a really long time to do any this, but only sometimes, and… that’s arcane magic!! You’re welcome.
(Also next to none of this will ever be referenced in-game.)
At this point all I really care about is nailing the feel of Warcraft.
So long as it feels like it fits with WoW’s overall aesthetic and doesn’t clash overmuch with any of the more firmly established (for WoW) broad strokes, I think it’s fine.
16 Likes
that there are only a few years between wrath of the lich king and legion.
edit: i also don’t accept that the sunwell works at all distances even across spacetime and i also don’t accept that blood elves don’t use their arcane torrent anymore.
5 Likes
I am in a similar camp as Kazimir’s regarding the acceptability of canon these days. The point about retcons is especially apt. However, I disagree with the “[s]o long as it feels like it fits with WoW’s overall aesthetic…” conclusion. Given the propensity of retcons, I am of the opinion that it is much worse than aesthetic grievances. Rather, WoW and its canon have become unsound because the retcons eroded away the very grounding upon which both depend. Hence, their ontology (or loss/lack thereof) reveals both to be entirely unreal in the most literal sense – and has instead been structured around the notion that “Human Potential” shall henceforth reign supreme. With WoW’s canon’s current state, there are no aesthetics as any thing for which one to have a taste lacks both grounding and relationality (whether to another thing or itself).
4 Likes
Yeah, troll regen is bananas OP in the lore. I tone mine down for RP purposes, otherwise what’s the point?
While I absolutely agree, the way I get around it is imagining that Azeroth takes longer than 365 days to travel around its sun, much how the other planets in our solar system take longer than Earth because they have farther to orbit. Obviously it’s not a perfect work around, but it does help me keep from pulling out my hair over the fact that my girl should really be in her mid 30’s by now.
OK, my two cents is this: Pandaria denizens should be able to be druids. Why? They have four wild gods guiding most of the population directly. Said wild gods are connected to the dream due to them being wild gods. Also, the fact that dreamleaf grows in the valley of the four winds only really grows in areas where the veil between the emerald dream and reality is thin. And with the eternal blossoms being a font of life-giving waters…
How blizzard says they can’t be druids is just…facepalm.
That and the year’s thing is such a headache, personally.
10 Likes
That Draenei were only on Draenor for ~300 years. Earlier lore suggested thousands of years (via BC Auchindoun flavor text), and was changed around WoD to only being a couple hundred.
There is no reason for something like Auchindoun to exist for a race that is essentially immortal if they were only on the planet for a few hundred years. A blink of an eye in Draenei terms.
The change threw a wrench in my OCs backstory and I will stay salty until the day I die.
19 Likes
i refuse to accept that the jailer and denathrius were behind everything all along.
23 Likes
Yes.
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