Have there ever been lore moments you enjoyed that have been either tweaked or retconned in such a way that has soured that experience for you?
For me, the recent Wrathgate business has been a real downer. While nostalgia might play a factor, the Wrathgate quest line was one of my very favorite quest lines I’ve ever gone through in this game. The very first cinematic in WoW’s lifetime was impressive enough, but for Horde characters, the battle to take back the Undercity from Varimathras and Putress was a very cool experience.
It was fantastic to see Thrall and Sylvanas work together throughout this quest and see them do something other than sit in their respective capital cities. There was a certain vindication in ousting Varimathras as he tried to summon Sargeras in the Undercity throne room.
The idea that the Wrathgate was a machination of Sylvanas and not an abject betrayal by Putress and Varimathras just sorta destroys the exultation. It feels a bit like getting the carrot at the end of the stick, but you find that it’s plastic. And then they beat you with the stick.
I’m sure I could think of other examples, but I’m really curious. Has Blizzard tinkered with story bits in such a way that ruined things for you?
Probably for me this whole deal with Derek, he was said to be burned to ashes and lying and the bottom of the sea…how does he even begin to have a body.
As this little but important change is only leading to all kinds of bad that is further dividing the Horde and it’s player base which i’m currently not happy about.
The overarching takeaway from that interview in particular is that Afrasiabi misspoke. He’s yet to verify in any other medium what he said was true and we’ve got numerous sources stating the contrary. It would turn a lot of lore on its head. This isn’t a small quip about harpy hygiene or anything, this is a very significant lore event, and if the details of that particular event were changed in this way, no other part of the lore properly reflects it.
As of yet, nothing on Wowpedia has been changed until we get verification. You can see the Wowpedia mod’s discussion on it here: https:// wow.gamepedia .com/Talk:Battle_of_Angrathar_the_Wrathgate#Sylvanas.27_Orders
When they shortened the first war from 20 plus years to like 1… which spawned a whole series of unnecessary ret-cons that didn’t need to happen. But I still stick with this story because there are interesting moments and heroes you still want to cheer for in spite of blizzard’s bungling.
The fact that Dranosh’s death, Sylvanas’s motivations, and the Wrathgate have been altered stings in a noticably different way.
Maybe its because I vividly remember waiting in line to buy WOTLK, flying my helicopter in aerial combat in Icecrown, advancing the phased content, Dragonblight and Wyrmrest temple, WOTLK in general…
It is a big change that alters a lot of what I actually played through. It changes motivations. It changes reactions.
The Eredar retcons in BC didnt really impact anyone currently playing. But this alters so much in a way that reverberates through a lot of the characters, players, and the entire story.
Being told that the Forsaken aren’t allowed to remember their past while swaths of Forsaken to include Sylvanas talks about their past quite often. courtesy of Before the Storm none the less.
Not really. With retcons from WoW specifically (that is, not WoW retcons of WC3 content, but WoW retcons of WoW content), it’s kinda just like whatever. It’ll usually just be “further” information as well - I don’t really consider the newfound info about the Wrathgate to be a retcon. It’s the same with what Dawnsong said - the fact that the alliance canonically clears the Sunwell raid is of the utmost stupidity, but doesn’t really retcon anything.
The whole finding Derek Proudmoore bit irks me too, especially since the fleet was hit by dragons and should have left very little behind. Not to mention the whole “Free Will” joke that the Forsaken seem to be handed now. Being conditioned to do something isn’t free will at all. Not to mention Derek never asked to be brought back. The writing has lowered in quality and suffered over the years.
I’m not sure if this would technically be a retcon. But the way they clarified Orgrimmar’s founding in Garrosh’s short story “Heart of War” ruined Thrall for me before he went full Go’el.
In the story, Garrosh visits Orgrimmar for the first time and speaks with an Orc who is clearly dissatisfied with their living conditions in Durotar.
So tell me, Hellscream, why would the good warchief, who loves his people so, condemn us to this wasteland when just up the river there is far more bounty He is either corrupt or incompetent, or both, and you seem to fit right in!”
A bit later, that Orc’s older sister clarified why she believes the Orcs must live in Durotar as a form of penance.
“But what they believed was wrong. What all the orcs believed was wrong. We must suffer for it. The warchief understands this, as do I. My sister does not.”
I know it doesn’t come directly from Thrall’s mouth, but if this is supposed to tell us that Thrall purposefully settled his people in a harsh environment so they can atone for what their people did, then I lost all respect for him.
The same guy who begged Jaina not to punish the children for the sins of the father punished his people for the sins of their fathers. That combined with how absolved he was from the Garrosh fiasco has dirtied him far too much.
It was always left open that Sylvanas may have had a hand in the Wrathgate scenario. We never knew for sure. We still don’t.
The game’s writers have shown time and time again that they don’t know the lore that well, especially when discussing it publicly, so it’s highly plausible that Alex slipped up.
But, yes, retcons ruined many story moments for me. The entirety of the Burning Crusade expansion was one giant retcon and it was the worst story that the game has ever had (thankfully Legion retconned some of the terrible BC retcons to be better).
(“Draenor is FREE!” is still the worst moment ever in WoW’s story for but WoD’s questing story was truly awesome up until that point.)
derek, is just annoying that blizzard is willing to bend the story so much to tell whatever the hell they have in mind.
and i really dislike that the entire horde war campaign depends on a retcon and luck to have a chance to keep surviving in the faction war i mean,really? it is because they cannot defeat the proudmoore’s in combat?
why not use actual assassins ?
are they truly planning using the proudmoores accepting back him again as a weapon even when contradicts the entire reason of the forsakens to hate the alliance?
what brings me to the all the wratgate incident, i don’t get it, it makes mad and salty that the entire horde and alliance are idiots who are all been fooled by a MiLiTaRy GeNiUs the whole time, and plus ret-conning a CINEMATIC where dranosh is killed by sylvanas.
and that the horde deserved to die since that moment, or at least, the forsakens should have been wiped out for the foolish actions of their leader.
i don’t see the reason of why we are even talking about this.
The fairly recent retcons of the magical schools and how they work have really soured the unique identity of priests, paladins, DK’s, and warlocks for me.
I liked it better when the light was a shining force of good, and shadow/fel were extremely dangerous and evil. There were exceptions, to this, but these exceptions being exceptions rather than the norm were what made them interesting in the first place. Part of the whole reason the scarlet crusade always had my curiosity was how they wielded the light despite being portrayed as evil; there could’ve been some more profound storytelling there other than “lol madness/dreadlord did it.”
The same goes for player/friendly warlocks, shadow priests, and DK’s. They wielded powers which would destroy and corrupt most others, but somehow managed to do so without letting it consume them.
Now it really seems like you just pick whatever magic school has your favorite color and go on doing whatever you want. If there is no good or evil, the choice between the two and consequences therein, then is there really any freedom of choice in the first place? If there is no choice, then is there no free will? If there is no free will, then can anyone truly hold agency for their own actions? Absence of consequence is absence of choice. In that, there are no heroes and villains and WoW at all, thus making any fight or struggle a moot point.
Well Pyrogar beat me to what I am going to say, but I’m going to rant on it anyway.
Burning Crusade, including that horrible Eredar retcon was a mess. BC had the best gameplay IMO, just the worst lore of all. It was nothing but an entire retcon expansion that started the whole the new writing team using their “creativity” instead of continuity. Even though it was Metzen that did that retcon sadly.
What that Eredar retcon did was turn a infinite, immortal, galactic demonic race hell bent on bringing well … hell to our universe, into roided out fel juiced aliens. Which in turned retconned all demons into just that, roided out angry aliens. They became from the big bad to the butt end joke of WoW from that change. Which was the sadly the purpose so that the Old Gods became the new big bads. But now the Old Gods got demoted also, and now this made up out of the purple Void Lords are the new big bads … for now.
Demons are not even Demons anymore, they’re just aliens. Just like humans are aliens but titled as humans, demons are now the same in this game. Demons are suppose to be mystical, immortal, malicious beings from the after life bent on making everything else suffer as they suffer for their own faults and sins, but blame it onto others. That is not what we have now. It the reason that the Burning Legion creating the Scourge made sense, they controlled hell so they brought back the dead to do their bidding, but only after the Horde failed. Demons don’t even control the hell part of WoW. That has been changed to some sort of Shadowlands stuff.
It also was a missed opportunity to give us Tieflings. Tieflings are humanoid races descended from demonic beings, and they are hated for it. Draenei are not Tieflings, they are Abberation space goats. That’s why people are asking for “Red” Draenei, to give us actual Tieflings!
A couple of recent retcons that stand out as particularly bad:
1. Derek Proudmoore
Derek was incinerated into a pile of ash after the dragons that destroyed the Third Fleet took his ship down.
Bringing him back is completely unnecessary.
With the Burning of Teldrassil, there was already more than enough there to define Sylvannas as the monster she is - retconning the manner of death of this long-dead Alliance hero adds nothing substantial to the story and is honestly just frustrating for the Horde who have to stand by and be complicit with yet another horrendous atrocity either through their inaction or by directly helping Sylvannas.
Blizzard took the ridiculousness of it a step further by having him be recovered from the bottom of the sea. With the effects of salt water and being at the bottom of the ocean getting eaten away at by all manner of sea life for twenty freakin’ years, there would be a maybe couple of bones left - if anything, even if he had died completely physically intact. Having been incinerated by dragon fire… and he even says that he remembers the flames consuming him… there should have been nothing left of him to raise.
2. The Light and Void
It was unnecessary to make the Light and the Void have their own slant on “MoRaLlY GrEy” ambiguity when you already have a whole slew of forces which are created from the interplay of Light & Void which can fill this role. This new dynamic strikes me as some anime-grade trash writing that is desperately trying hard to be “original” at the expense of being convincing.
And a not-recent retcon, but one that still bugs me:
3. Night Elves
The way the Night Elves as a culture were retconned into being a bunch of frolicking hippies took what should have been one of the most interesting races in the game and turned them into ineffectual weaklings.
It’s not so much retcons ruining individual moments for me so much as the possibility of retcons is messing with my ability to care about lore outside of what’s happening right in front of me right now.
The Sunwell being Alliance/Magister’s Terrace being Horde when in game it was the Shattered Sun inside both instances, Wrathgate (in regards to Dranosh), Derek’s death, the changes to the Old Gods and the Void, the Titans being dead/alive…
None of it is overly important in the grand scheme of things (except the void and titan stuff), but combined it makes me feel like I can’t trust that current lore will even be the same tomorrow, let alone in the next expansion. Maybe Rastakhan gets revealed as secretly evil the whole time, maybe Jaina has been void corrupted this entire time, maybe Xavius switched bodies with Malfurion in the Nightmare before we killed “Xavius” and the Malfurion doing things now is actually Xavius, who knows!
But when Purge Aethas was made to appear more complicit than Blizz intended by a bug in game, Blizz decided to leave it that way when they saw the community was freaking out over it. They seem to subscribe to Trump’s view of “All press is good press. If they are saying you are horrible, it’s better than them saying nothing at all”.
So Blizz may decide to never correct the comment, because look how much it’s improved “player engagement” on the forums with all these threads hating it!