My answer is to a new player who truly doesnt know anything this wont matter. If anything it just means they will associate said symbol with the Alliance. Heck it might even make them curious about what that symbol really means.
To a new player they dont need to know all the details and history of the Alliance and the symbol of Lordaeron. All they need to know is that is a symbol of the Alliance and important to the story of humanity.
It’s called The Icon of Courage and it’s the human symbol since Classic and, of course, WarCraft 3 before it. And the Lordaeron L was used by the Alliance as their main symbol in WarCraft 2 already, it’s as important to the human identity as the Stormwind lion.
Quite the opposite, they’ll know what the symbol next to the head of every Alliance pvp-enabled npc is or where that symbol used for the Alliance bases in every battleground map comes from.
I remember the bunk in those RPG books. Stuff like fel-crazed blood elf maniacs literally kidnapping high elves and infusing them with demon juice to bolster their ranks; the devs didn’t consider that nonsense canon even when it was written. The race’s official companion lore for WoW in 2006 was this: https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Warcraft_Encyclopedia/Blood_Elves
And to quote the relevant part:
Even so, the prince’s relatively quick acceptance of dire measures (e.g., draining magic from demons) is by no means characteristic of blood elves in general. The blood elves of Outland have by now discovered Kael’thas’ agreement with Illidan, and they have for the most part become convinced of its necessity. Most blood elves still live on Azeroth, though. Few of these elves know of Kael’thas’ pact with Illidan, and many would be horrified if they discovered it. Draining magic from small mana-bearing vermin is a far cry from draining magic from demons.
If it’s not a mistake, it’s a straight up and very casual retcon that throws out a lot of the race’s lore for no real reason. Lore referenced and reinforced as recently as Chronicles, even.
I get that “blood elves have green eyes so they must all be fel addicts” is an inference someone who’s not at all familiar with their lore might have, but if someone ought to get the fundamentals right it’s the dev in charge of advertising WoW’s races to us.
It’s weird they used that particular symbol for humans instead of the high def Stormwind Lion they have kicking around. While I don’t think it’s overly egregious compared to some of the others, I dislike the blending of human cultures, even if in this case it’s cursory.
I’m almost afraid to read the dwarven one or the night elf one.
Edit: Oh my god night elves list Darnassus as their capital but show Night Warrior Tyrande as the racial leader. WHAT THE HELL.
Also it looks like we get no new heritage armors any time soon.
That’s why it needs to be changed, though. Keeping the Warcraft III symbols wouldn’t have been as confusing when WoW first launched, as it had only been two-and-a-half years since Reign of Chaos came out, and only a year-and-a-half since The Frozen Throne released. It would have been reasonable at the time for Blizzard to assume that anyone playing WoW who was interested in the story would have already played through Warcraft III, and if they hadn’t, the RTS game would still have been easy to find and play. This is no longer a reasonable assumption, though. Reign of Chaos will be twenty years old this coming summer, there’s an entire generation of WoW players who weren’t even born when it was released. Sure, people could go play Reforged, but Reforged has an awful reputation that puts people off from playing it. If your webpage introducing brand new players to your playable races requires independent knowledge of a different game that came out twenty years ago in order to make sense, then it’s not good design. If incorporating that history is so important, then why not actually state it in the description? The Forsaken summary includes a very basic explanation of their Warcraft III origin, so it’s not like this isn’t being taken to account for other races.
What will they know of the Stormwind lion, then? This game has a serious issue with confusing new players about the lore. I know, because I was one of them. There’s been some good improvements over the last few years, but stuff like this really doesn’t help. It’d be one thing if it was just this one crest, but there’s so many other errors or confusing things in the other pages that the whole thing is a mess.
Warcraft II came out twenty-six years ago. It is not reasonable to expect brand new players, which is who these pages are ultimately for, to have any idea of what happened in Warcraft II.
Except that the website uses the Stormwind lion for the broader Alliance crest, just not the Stormwind racial human one. If it was for consistency with the battleground maps and PVP symbols, they should be flipped, with the Lordaeron “L” for the Alliance and the lion crest for humans. Instead, we have lions everywhere except the one place they should be. That Lordaeron symbol has never stood for just Stormwind and Stormwind alone, but that’s how the website is treating it.
Exactly.
Yeah, the entire thing is a mess. At least the reference to Darnassus mentions that it was destroyed, the Forsaken one lists Undercity as if it’s currently in use. There’s no consistent logic here.
The Forsaken: leaderless faction of unloved garbage, homeless, living in the sewers.
Just trying to get by on scraps.
I don’t get what is the problem, there’s lion on the icon of courage too. It’s a blend of the lion and the L, both main WarCraft human symbols players will encounter throughout the game while playing the Alliance.
Did the racist grey eminence write those pages?
That lion is barely visible on the webpage due to the size of the graphic, and it’s not as big or clear as the Stormwind lion graphic being used to represent the Alliance on the same page. It’s not great visual design; I can only tell that it’s a lion right away because I already know that’s what it’s supposed to be. As for the “L”, there’s no explanation for where it comes from, leaving the viewer to make assumptions based on what information is presented instead. If I were a brand new player, I would assume that the Icon of Courage is the crest of the nation of Stormwind, and that the Lion is something else that stands for the Alliance as a whole, because that is how they’re used on the website. There’s no mention of Lordaeron, or of any previous incarnation of the Alliance, or even that there have ever been any other human nations in the Alliance, so I wouldn’t feel any need to research further. The Forsaken page mentions what happened to Lordaeron in Warcraft III, but doesn’t feature the “L” or mention that Lordaeron was part of the Alliance prior to its fall, so there’s no hint there either that any human kingdom other than Stormwind has ever been in the Alliance. The Worgen page doesn’t even mention that the Gilneans were human, it’s only implied visually by the graphics for the racial mount and Greymane. The Kul Tiran page also gives no indication that the Kul Tirans are human and not half-giants or some other human-ish fantasy race like the dwarves and gnomes are, though it does finally give us a mention of the Alliance of Lordaeron as part of the racial backstory. Why couldn’t we have gotten a similar mention for the Human page? It wouldn’t even be necessary to add a full sentence, just an additional phrase. Take the existing first sentence, which is “The human kingdom of Stormwind forms the backbone of the Alliance” and add “…after the fall of Lordaeron to the undead Scourge in the Third War.” That’s it.
What exactly is there to know about the lion? That it is one of our symbols. Really, that is it. I don’t think people will be as confused as you say. Or more precisely no more confused then when they see Stormwind for the first time and see the statues of heroes that were not even from Stormwind.
I think the issue is they are trying to avoid information overload. The long and short of it is, if you wanted to truly know warcraft you would need several books of lore to truly understand it. These pages are just a quick overview of it, nothing more.
These pages are suppose to be as short and simple as possible. If anyone wanted to know more we have a “story of warcraft” page for people to read.
All anyone is suppose to get out it regarding the Icon of Courage is that it is important to the humans, if you wanted to know more people can learn it ingame.
The reason the L is not there is because it is not a symbol of the Forsaken(regardless of how some people might feel) and you are not suppose to associate the Icon of Courage to them but instead to the Alliance.
I’d also point out most of Warcraft’s story(up to Warcraft III) can be found ingame via books. Honestly, I think it would be more fun for people to stumble and accidentally read these books then just having it on the website.
I consider the the Night Elf page a vast improvement now that they’ve taken us gals out of the swimsuit competition.
And again… Teldrassil hasn’t been forgotten either.
I think that we just got a sneak peek of what the Night Elf Heritage armor is going to look like, as the Blood Elves are definitely dressed in it. and I’ve never seen that armor before.
Honestly, i want the night elf heritage armor to be the bikini style armor from the War of Thorns, both for male and females.
I think such transmogs exist in game.
For awhile my husgand’s night elf was rocking a male Wonder Woman plate set.
Void Elves have that bikini look for their set.
I’ll have to check but somehow u think it was different enough that you can’t actually have that same look ingame.
I am not sure if I should laugh or cry. They really set up those failures as leaders for the Horde races. With this staff leading them the Horde is doomed to be crap. I wish Blizzard would hit the rest button and kill off the entire Horde council to serperate us from that trash currently infesting it.
I love how so many people are now taking to rewriting the summaries and @'ing the WarcraftDevs Twitter
No discourse, just “Hey devs here is what you could’ve done hope it helps!!!”
So far seen 3 goblins, 2 night elves, 5 forsaken, 1 human, 2 trolls, and 1 Tauren
I am pretty baffled by the goblins. I get that it’s supposed to be a nod and a wink at their desire to dominate financially, but it really comes across as “Actually goblins want to rule the world and profits are a second best choice”.
Which is terrible, because as any good goblin knows, the only domination that matters is the biggest explosion and gaudiest vehicle.
Its just crazy the difference between how they describe horde race and alliance race, even prior to the update (allied race).
For the alliance, it mostly : This ( insert a quality) race have been a core alliance race for long. They now seek to use their ( insert a quality) for the good of the alliance.
For the horde, its nearly all: Those weird people got beat by those threat and are now seeking help, or want to dominate the horde…
Only some horde allied race actually seem to have a quality in their description and are doing it for the horde but this might change in a future update.
Incoming Mag’har description: “These savages were being converted to the glorious Light. They put their lot in with the mongrel Horde to escape.”
And as of the Grimoire, the biggest and gaudiest burial in the biggest and gaudiest casket to rub in the faces of one’s peers and enemies.