Very interesting (and also not exactly reassuring in some regards, but interesting nonetheless)
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/1ae12t2/former_warcraft_historian_here_to_explain_what_it/
The results of my notes would vary; every team and individual responds to feedback differently. Some people I’ve sat with and brainstormed how they could fix the conflict I called out. Other times I was told the potential issue was too minor for anyone to notice or care. And on occasion you have people ignore your comments entirely because it’s too late in the development process or because they think what they’re doing is cool enough to justify the conflict. Sometimes they were right and I was nitpicking, but at the end of the day even if they’re writing lore that states Dwarves have always been born from eggs laid by troggs, I have no power to stop them from doing so. The best I personally could do if I felt particularly strong about it, is point it out to Danuser and say, "yo dawg, you aware of this?"
Basically, it would seem “continuity shouldn’t tie the hands of creators” is still the default/dominant narrative design philosophy
Said former Lore Historian also answered a bunch of questions from various posters in this thread, here are some of the ones that strike me as important :
Q : So someone making a quest could effectively write fanfiction and just because its rule of cool it couldn’t be overturned? Sounds a little disheartening for someone who’s job it is to create and catalog a cohesive world.
A : I can’t speak to the whole quest design process but I do believe that base level Quest Designers need to get their ideas approved at some level, but I’m not sure who approves that and Lore is not a part of it.
From a strictly Lore team perspective though, sometimes yes, that’s what it can look like from afar. If it has some sort of major lore issue, we can trigger another discussion on it, but Blizzard often prefers to treat lore as somewhat malleable rather than strictly concrete and would rather try to massage it than toss it or start over.
Q : Mentioning the Dragonflight Codex, I’ve got to ask. Alexstrasza’s page reiterated that the dragons lost their ability to reproduce after Dragon Soul. Was there any explanation on where all these Dragon Isle’s whelps came from?
A : So I’m going to refrain from going into what the current canon is because I don’t believe it had been properly decided (publicized) by the time I left and I don’t know if anything has changed, especially since basically anything that wasn’t said publicly can change any time.
What I will say is that I believe this to be a failure on my part. I believe I read the first draft very early after DF launch and my initial thought was “Yeah, they can’t lay eggs. That’s what Cata said.” Did some checking online and internally that said mostly the same and the community sentiment at the time was that “maybe these DF eggs were left from the before times?” and I guess I just internalized that and rolled with it. Didn’t realize the issue until much later, by which point I’d forgotten I okayed it in the draft.
Q : Are the specific race data still canon from the RPG-books, like the ages and heights?
A : This is a good question. Generally we treat them as a separate canon from the games., similar to how we treat the film. However we have on occasion pulled from the RPGs when we felt they had something interesting we wanted to utilize. For RP purposes I would say “dubiously canon unless contradicted or reinforced by game lore”.
Q : How did the writers justified the existence of the Void Elves, lore-wise?
A : Couldn’t say sadly. I’d guess “Rule of Cool” was part of it.
Q : Late to the party but I always wanted to know this: Is there a reason there is absolutely no defined population scales etc. In WoW? These seem to be purposefully never included in anything and I’ve always wondered why.
A : I don’t have a definitive answer but my understanding is that keeping these things vague allows more freedom for Narrative and more freedom for whoever takes over the story next.
Q : Is there an opinion on the change to telling “biased perspective” books that’s gone on in recent stories over objective lore sources? Either on the historian team specifically or the overall team. I’ve always wondered how much of that is a top level narrative decision that the team has to go with, or if it’s an overall shift that everyone appreciates.
A : I’ve kind of mentioned it elsewhere, but it allows authors more freedom to write the stories they want to write and not feel like they can’t pursue a cool idea because of what someone wrote years prior.
