Cut Worgen Content

Lore Story Forum
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I have heard that going back to Cata Blizzard has cut a lot of Worgen content for the sake of time constraints:

  1. A Gilnean District was planned to be added to Stormwind but was cut last minute because it “clashed” with the aesthetic of Stormwind.

  2. There was an Alliance side of the story in Silverpine Forest that continued the after the events of the Gilnean starter zone. As it stands now if you are a Worgen player you have to make a Horde character to see what happens after you leave the starting zone. Although I think this will eventually get addressed with the comments about seeing events like the reclaimation of Gilneas in-game by the devs.

  3. In WoD there was a storyline that was planned, but got cut, that involved worgen beginning to revert back to their feral nature as the effects of the ritual that they underwent is wearing off.

Honestly this sucks because all of these seem like really cool story bits that would have been awesome to see. I never liked that the ritual was a “instant perma cure” (we know in Wolfheart that worgen can still go feral after doing the ritual it’s just really hard), I liked how in the starting zone worgen were given a potion and were living on borrowed time effectively never knowing when they were gonna go feral again.

I think it would be really cool if Blizzard revisited the cut content storyline of worgen beginning to go feral, but this time rather than having the Night Elves save them have the Gilneans use their own alchemy like they originally did to help keep their humanity.

What do you guys think? Will we ever get to see this cut content make it into the game? Or at least similar stories to them?

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If the content wasn’t made when it was relevant, it’s certainly not going to be done now.

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Havenswood was really interesting, it’s a shame it was cut. I would really like to know more about the feral worgens and what they are currently up to. Especially alongside necromancers and Old God minions. Argual is defeated, what more story can be pulled from that storyline? I would love to know.

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I mean they went out of their way to have 9.2.5 mention Gilneas potentially being reclaimed because Calia is going to have the Forsaken pull out of Gilneas. Then Danuser mentioned wanting to have events like the reclaimation in game for players to experience makes me think they could add more story beats for worgen.

Wasn’t that one of the islands in Island Expeditions? I definitely remember going there so it wasn’t cut. Unless they cut it out later.

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They had planned a whole story there, they had a playable island expedition to play as part of the beta at Blizzcon and it was Havenswood. It was supposed to be this whole built up map around a Gilnean settlement and you could explore the keep on the island. But what we got in game was a scaled down map, you cannot visit the keep on the Island and it’s just a IE. I think they have the assets to actually do a story there, since there’s two different maps, but it’s all just game file assets at the moment.

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I’ve never heard of any of these pieces of content. I would like to see all of them, but it doesn’t seem likely.

It’s an island you can visit when you do Island expeditions. It contains a pack of Worgen. They have female Druids as their leaders, but the men seem to be all feral.

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Really?? I had no idea why there was a whole playable island with a story there! That makes it even more sad that Blizzard keeps making content based around Gilneans/Worgen and then cut it last minute. I don’t get it, they have such interesting culture and architecture why not use it?

I don’t think I have ever actually gotten that Island Expedition personally but I always wanted to. Even more so if they finally added the option to explore islands without a timer.

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This was the most obvious missing piece.

In Horde Silverpine there is very obviously supposed to be an Alliance questline running parallel to yours. So much so that I was actively confused when I got to Darnassus and was just directed to Darkshore.

I doubled back and looked around, convinced I missed a quest somewhere. Wasn’t until I alt tabbed out and did some googling that I realized there straight up wasn’t a Blue Silverpine quest.

I’m pretty sure Horde Silverpine is just outright non canonical now. Because you use Blight but just the lower strength, anti-personal stuff. Obviously. Because the stated goal is to seize Gilneas - not destroy it.

Plus the story ends with the Alliance retreating back into Gilneas. So that not happening also makes the presence of Blood Fang on Purgation Isle retroactively comedic. As I had presumed they’d taken a boat to there from Gilneas. But if Gilneas is destroyed / occupied by the Forsaken that would mean the Bloodfang managed to sneak through Southpoint Gate and I guess just swam there.

For me the real kicker here is in the ensuing decade rather then retroactively trying to tie this all together they just made it even more confusing.

Particularly as Belmont references his daring escape from Gilneas. So, still very confused on what went down. Baring any official explanation my headcanon is the Kirin Tor teleporting all of Dalaran caused a bunch of arcane temporal anomalies to ripple around the surrounding area.

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This is exactly how I thought. After I did the worgen starting zone I was like damn I can’t wait to see what happens to Gilneas afterwards! Got to Darnassus and was sent to Darkshore, which I thought okay that makes sense the worgen are helping their new allies the Kaldorei, we will likely see Gilneas later in the story…

Nope.

You never go back to Gilneas on Alliance side, as I said the only way you learn what happened after leaving is if you play Horde side. Which sucks because on Horde side you just start Silverpine with the Gilnean Liberation Front pushing up the Forsaken back towards Lordaeron… how did that happen??

When did the Gilneans get Gilneas back? When was the Gilnean Liberation Front formed? When did they recruit the Bloodfang pack to the cause? There are so many questions that it makes no sense that we don’t see any of this on Alliance side. But that’s where the obvious cut Alliance content comes in, it just seems like Blizzard ran out of time and said screw it.

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Not only that, but the entire silverpine quest line happens out of order. I think that was supposed to happen first, THAN the invasion kicks into high gear

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Red Shirt Guy had claimed that Metzen told him that at east the Kirin Tor portion was non-canon, since the Kirin Tor was supposed to be neutral.

That’s similar to my first experience playing a Worgen, during one of the few times I played this game as a kid.

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I’m not sure about that because the Forsaken invade as soon as Greymane Wall is destroyed by the cataclysm, as well as the coral reefs preventing the ships from getting close enough to invade. Plus we know the events of the Gilnean starting zone happen within a 6 week time frame.

I think the Horde questing in Silverpine happens after the Worgen starting zone, it’s just there is a huge disconnect between the two events. A lot happens with the Gilneans and their war effort that we just don’t see.

My guess is it was supposed to be Worgen starting zone → Alliance questing in Gilneas where we see the Gilnean Liberation formed, Bloodfang recruited, and push Forsaken out of Gilneas and into Silverpine → Then Horde questing in Silverpine that we currently have.

I just think the Alliance stuff was cut.

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Maybe. I just know silverpine left me really confused because some of the events don’t align with what takes place in the worgen starting zone

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To a point here I get it. Projects this big are notoriously difficult to make big changes to once the gears start turning. If a story beat doesn’t make sense or is just poorly written going back to change it could require adding months to development time. On top of stuff like having to call back in voice actors to rerecord lines who may now have commitments to other projects.

Having to scrap that Gilneas City EBG probably saw months of work and thousands of dollars go up in smoke. I can’t imagine that’s the sort of thing corporate is going to be happy about. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one person lost their job over it.

So having this one aspect to an expansion be janky because a whole EBG had to be abandoned and they didn’t immediately have any firm plans on what else to do isn’t great. But it is understandable.

What isn’t understandable is just refusing to address the problem for well over a decade. I’d wager the actual rationale here is statistically there aren’t that many Worgen players. The Horde’s demographics are a bit more evenly spread with the Belves making up 15-20%, which is why they have 2 heritage quests and a new skin, but the rest of the OG Horde races make up roughly equal shares.

But I think that’s because the Horde is actually pretty good at giving everyone stuff to do. Even the comparatively sparsely played Goblins can usually be relied upon to turn up and blow something up. So you never really feel neglected, and never feel out’ve place. Because the Horde is a pretty damn disparate band. When everyone’s out of place, no one is.

Granted thats a bit of chicken or egg question there. But I kinda get the feeling there’d be more Worgen toons if there was more Worgen content. Diddo for Dwarves, Draenei, etc.

We can only speculate but I imagine more than a few people saw a Worgen. Thought that looked cool. Rolled one and then discovered if you wanted to do werewolf stuff in a cool victorian setting - tough luck. There is some but you’ll have to guess where it was. I only knew there was some in the Blasted Lands because I noticed it on a Horde character doing stuff for the Belves there. Same for Duskwood.

Seriously I had to accidentally stumble upon Worgen content on my Worgen. I did Duskwood and the Blasted Lands but that well ran dry quick. But I was playing an Outlaw Rogue so I said screw it let’s go do the Booty Bay questline as I also got this Pirate thing going for me.

And wouldn’t you know it? Massive amount of Worgen stuff down there. Pirate Worgen stuff at that! I was so delighted to see they’d actually continued on a plot-thread from Vanilla! A bunch of pirates are from Gilneas in that. I never thought that would amount to anything. Just a throwaway detail to make Alliance players feel less weird for beheading humans on the request of Goblins.

But they actually kept that plothead going. And now werewolf pirates are a big problem for the Blackwater Raiders. They are so bad at giving Worgens things to do I had to walk in and trip over some of the coolest stuff about the fallout from the Worgen curse.

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I had the reverse of that happen.

The timeline just does not add up. You leave Gilneas with the Horde rushing in and presumably Blight bombing the place.

Then on the Forsaken the Worgen have pushed all the way to the Tirisfal border, and have agents poking around Brill. You attack them and they tell you the Forsaken deserve to die for what they did to Gilneas.

I still don’t know what that was.

Because they certainly didn’t Blight bomb it. I know that as you later push into Gilneas and are close to victory until the 7th Legion launches a surprise attack. The Forsaken didn’t even knock down the wall, Deathwing’s tantrum did that. So - guess they were really pissed about the field fortifications the Forsaken made?

Then it ends with a truce at Greymane’s Wall. Where Godfrey announces he’ll be this night’s BBEG, to the surprise of only Sylvanas, who he 360noscopes. Ya know come to think of it maybe her trusting the Jailor wasn’t that weird. She was already 0 for 2 with Varimathras and Godfrey.

And then outside a brief apperance from the Bloodfang in Hillsbrad that’s all you hear of it until Stormheim.

And because I came in during Legion I thought this Forsaken Gilneas thing was a frequent plot point. I didn’t see all of the EK afterall, much less Kalimdor, max level Cata, MoP, and WoD. So I was sure this had to come uo now and again.

But uh, no. The Worgen just don’t do anything until Stormheim. I happened to arrive at the perfect time to be tricked into thinking they were well implemented.

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The Worgen starting experience and Silverpine not keeping pace with each-other are more than likely the direct result of two parts of the writing Team not talking to each-other (which Cata was notorious for).

While I would also like to see cut Worgen content implemented, I’m not entirely sure I trust how it would be handled after the heritage quest.

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Pity that it got cut, it could have helped make the heritage questline feel less out of place.

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Seriously. You never really get a sense for any downside to lycanthropy in this setting. Once the Nelves give you a shot of moonjuice you can even be human whenever you want. Considering humans are fairly puny in this setting it kinda just seems like an upgrade.

And it’s odd because they do undeath pretty well. The Forsaken certainly vary in behavior pretty drastically but even the most mentally stable are a bit unhinged. As they should be they were made to attack, kill and eat the living. That’s what the claws are for. And the Worgen are even more explicitly predatory than them.

Personally I’d’ve tied it into the moon. Ya, that thing what’s usually pretty relevant to werewolves? Say they’re at their strongest but at highest risk of going feral at the full moon. With them generally skewing more human / bestial depending on lunar cycles.

Plus you could play with the theme of what the ‘true self’ of the Worgen are. You could have groups like the Bloodfang who embrace the predatory side and think their kin are nothing but well trained hounds deluding themselves. And others who skew to the human side and consider types like the Bloodfang psychos who are just using this as an excuse to quite literally act like animals.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff you can do with the Worgen. And particularly Gilneas as foggy gaslit cobblestone streets is certainly a vibe. Their architecture is certainly more interesting to look at than most of the human stuff we get.

I just don’t get why Blizz introduced Victorian werewolves then did next to nothing with them.

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I love the implication of this quest. It shows the ritual wasn’t perfect and that worgen can still lose themselves to the rage and go feral! Which SHOULD be something they worry about otherwise the curse isn’t really that much of a curse, despite having some downsides.

This is one of those things that sucks in WoW. Blizzard doesn’t show the downsides of being a worgen so it makes it seem like it is only a gift. Being a worgen fundamentally changes a person in body, mind, and spirt. Even in human form EVERY worgen has that desire to hunt and kill, they are animals that have human intelligence, they have to struggle with losing control to rage and transforming against their will.

And even in the Wolfheart novel, Night Elves in Teldrassil are warned to stay out of the worgen territory because they run the risk of being killed by worgen hunting… I loved that, it added a sense of fear and danger to worgen.

Anyways. I AGREE 100% with tying the worgen curse to the moon. IN FACT, there is lore to back that up. In the Curse of the Worgen comic it is revealed that Goldrinn’s rage is at it’s highest when the moon is full because he feels Elune is watching and judging him. And you know what worgen have? The essence of Goldrinn in them. I personally headcanon that on the full moon worgen are more aggressive, more prone to violence, and have a heightened urge to hunt and kill because it makes sense given they have Goldrinn’s essence of rage within them and it’s at it’s highest on the full moon.

I also agree with this. There is so much potential to have Gilneans fight with the idea of their “true self”. While we know their worgen form is their true self now, their racial ability Darkflight says this, the idea that some worgen hold onto their human form and think of that as their “true self” is natural and makes sense!

I would imagine most Gilnean worgen hold onto their former self and see the curse as a strength to use to their benefit despite it’s downsides, but they fight to hold their humanity as well, meanwhile worgen like the Bloodfang embrace their feral nature. Imagine how cool it would be having a storyline going into this? Gilneans balancing the curse and their humanity while shunning those who fully embrace it and act nothing more than wild beasts.

God so many missed opportunities by Blizzard.

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Yeah, Blizzard focused on the Horde stuff and Kalimdor first and saved Alliance stuff and EK for last. This is why there are a lot of visible major changes to Kalimdor zones and minor to moderate changes for EK. Along with meme zones.

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