This is gonna be my cynical side showing, so be forewarned.
I’m very doubtful we’ll see dark trolls as allies in TWW, or any other expansion. If we ever see them, and it’s a big if, it’ll likely be as enemies because trolls are Horde and Horde-related races are historically enemies.
I’m more expecting we’ll find out in a future expansion that the dark trolls just died off-screen. Then few references to them ever again.
Like, we should have had dark trolls as far back as Cataclysm. When they revamped Darkshore, they turned the dancing troll village that should have been the dark trolls into some darkspear base in the least logical place for them to have been. When we visit Zuldazar and see troll tribes long thought extinct due to in-game events, the tribe we never saw was the dark trolls. Blizzard has some bugbear up their rears against ever showing this one troll tribe, a tribe that had been isolated from the Horde and Alliance since before either became a thing, and could have worked as a cool new Horde race, or even a neutral one if they needed to go that route.
Instead we get rock dwarves and illogically places jungle trolls.
EDIT: Yes, we got a single token dark troll in BfA, I know this.
So, yeah. This was still considered canon at least last we’ve heard. Obviously, at this point it’s long enough that that might not be the case. It’s been over a decade. But that question was asked at one point. But also, that’s still kind of my point.
Just because it used to be canon, doesn’t mean it is, and it also doesn’t mean it’s not written somewhere for the historians to pass on. Because I’m pretty positive Blizzard doesn’t record anything down properly. Like you just said with the quest designers.
That does not mention they are dumb, simply they are not interested in creating cities/large civilizations. Which is a very different thing. Nor does it imply people who are not interested in nation building are intellectually inferior.
The thing that I think is bugging me is this book does not read like Khadgar’s point of view. Where are all the witty little side bars and notes where he disagrees with legends he is recounting? He has first hand experience with all sorts of trolls, for example. It feels like he is being used as a sock puppet for them to put out lore they mean to be de facto without the responsibility of adhering to what they wrote as such.
They are using “POV” as justification to keep using racist tropes in the worldbuilding (Tauren are dumb and wrong, Trolls are dumb, everyone Horde aka Non-western based is dumb) with no need for narrative or personal accountability
I admit I didn’t see that part, but again that is a theory. You know what else where theories? That orcs were too dumb to learn arcane magic. Like this is not word of god lore and clearly feels more like someone’s research.
Not contesting that. But you did say the troll compendium didn’t state that Dark Trolls were dumb when it does.
Granted, we don’t know if they’re even using that lore now. We can only assume. We’ll likely find out in the next expansion whether they’re just the dumb brutes that the compendium says they are or, as as I expect they are, they’re fiercely intelligent and simply prefer to live in and around nature rather than build large settlements or cities like the other Troll tribes.
And I admitted that was a mistake(busy killing stuff in OW)
We don’t really have to. Chronicles does not paint them as some dumb savages. They are painted as somewhat peaceful/focused on living with nature not to mentioned they had their own mystics. Basically the hippies of the troll nations.
The issue is that this more or less confirms that the Troll Compendium, and likely other removed pieces of lore from early WoW, are still being used internally as valid sources
After twenty years when it’s laden with racist tropes
Which does not bode well for the Troll Heritage Armor, TWW, Midnight, or TLT
I mean… I think if you want to say that it was because of that fine. Blizzard hasn’t exactly earned any trust.
Just, I think that Troll intelligence overall in the older lore was a much more flexible thing. Trolls were weird in WC 2- WoW lore era.
You had Day of the Dragon have Trolls that ranged from barely sentient to every bit as intelligent as Dwarves and Humans. But like I said, different during this time. Lot closer in some ways to more traditionally fantasy trolls you see. I think even physically Day of the Dragon said some trolls were just kinda lumps of flesh, akin to the Lord of the Rings movies.
But it’s been well over a decade since I last read Day of the Dragon, so I could be getting minor details wrong.
Warcraft 3 came out after Day of the Dragon. By like more than a year. Warcraft 3 had around a 4 year development. It would have taken time to write the book, get it to publishing, etc. I mean, Day of the Dragon was very definitely a Warcraft 2 era book. Depending on what the editing practices were like back then, it’s possible the book could have been finished 2-3 years before Warcraft 3s release, only a year into development.
Trolls weren’t really given as overt of a South Native/African vibe until WC3/Vanilla WoW.
I really do understand where you are coming from on this, but I’m not sure that Trolls as we know them in WoW and WC3 were even developed that far back. They certainly weren’t in WC2.
WoW was being developed concurrent to Warcraft 3, and had Caribbean accents already
There’s an important difference between creating class based hierarchies and ethnic based hierarchies
“Poor country farmers with no public education struggle to read” and “this entire tribes of people in a giant sprawling magical empire are intrinsically more dumb” are not equivalent statements
