Honestly, we should all be pirates. Would make things so much easier 
2 Likes
That falls flat when the named insignia for the Forsaken is the scourge banner.
Bael Modan’s biggest crime was bringing ugly dwarf architrcture to Kalimdor and ruining the peaceful hills scenery of the Barrens.
1 Like
What are you talking about? The forsaken symbol is the broken mask. Look at the symbols Blizzard uses to represent the Forsaken and the Humans. Humans have the Lordaeron symbol while the Undead/Forsaken do not have it.
Death offered no escape for the scores of humans killed during the Lich King’s campaign to scour the living from Lordaeron. Instead, the kingdom’s fallen were risen into undeath as Scourge minions and forced to wage an unholy war against everything… and everyone… that they once held dear.
The kingdom of Stormwind has become the strongest bastion of humanity and the most powerful force in the now multi-racial Alliance. Now, the people of Stormwind hold fast to the principles of honor and justice as they defend their settlements and their allies.
This is simply a case of people who stayed behind in the lands moved on, for the most part, from identifying as Lordaeron, which is something Blizzard is currently walking back some with Calia Menethil bearing the symbol of Lordaeron on her outfit.
Stormwind claims Lordaeron in the political heritage sense because of the logic of the Alliance of Lordaeron much like Western Europe claimed the heritage of the Roman Empire when the Holy Roman Empire was barely Holy, not Roman except in the vaguest of linguistic senses, and only periodically an Empire.
The player character is framed as of the kingdom of Stormwind, rather strictly. Not “any human kingdom diaspora”.
Does the lore allow for otherwise sure, but that requires a decent amount of knowledge of the lore itself and is not the fantasy a new player will learn about when first setting foot in the game as per the Official Website, the in-game description, and the introductory narration.
Which is the general problem.
The in-game standing lore is contrary to the fantasy many of us are being sold officially via the official mediums.
6 Likes
Google “Forsaken tabard scourge tabard.”
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/429476017653153802/882291825254203422/image0.jpg
1 Like
This isn’t even true anymore, btw.
https://i.imgur.com/vqPrEiK.jpg
Or people should beware the plot device indicators:
A prince who walked with the Light, but was unsure of his destiny, and brought that up to Uther.
A princess who walked with the Light, but is in Oribos wondering if the Attendants can help her understand her destiny.
Both named Menethil.
Maybe they intend to break the cycle…maybe.
1 Like
If you go back to Cataclysm era undercity you’ll see Lordaeron banners outside capital city. Banners that weren’t there in classic.
There is a Horde pvp shield that represents all nations of the Horde during the classic wow era. It uses the symbol of lordaeron to represent the Forsaken https://classic.wowhead.com/item=18826/high-warlords-shield-wall 2
The Forsaken no longer use the L of Lordaeron as their main symbol, but it is not entirely out of use
https://classic.wowhead.com/item=18826/high-warlords-shield-wall 2
4 Likes
That’s not true, they were definitely there in classic. There is all sorts of Alliance heraldry all over the Ruins of Lordaeron that are clearly the result of it being an Alliance city prior to WoW, unless you’re going to claim all those Lions are Forsaken symbols too.
It is absolutely indisputable that the Seal of Lordaeron is far, far, FAR more prominent in the Alliance that it is among the Forsaken.
Horde players keep on repeating this but that doesn’t make it any truer. I keep on telling you that there’s no way for anyone who isn’t literally a child to be “strictly from Stormwind” but it keeps falling on deaf ears.
For the player character to be “strictly from Stormwind” they would need to be Anduin’s age. Spoiler: Most of them aren’t, especially any humans that were rolled prior to BfA.
This is like, really really fundamental to human lore and it’s why Humans in WoW were, in terms of classes, Lordaeronian in nature. Again, Humans were Paladins and Mages. Those are Lordaeron things. Stormwind things were Conjurors and Clerics, which are extinct.
If you’re going to try to transparently balkanize humanity in order to defend Horde land claims then you could at least try to get a basic sense of what “Stormwind” even historically is, instead of “that reserve on the other side of the continent where the Horde forces all the humans to go.”
Come to think of it, was there a time skip between WC3 and WoW? I always assumed there had to be, in order for stuff like Orgrimmar to get properly built up.
4 years, as per the original WoW cinematic.
My point was never that it was more or less prominent anywhere in particular - only that it is continued to be used by the Forsaken to some extent, as they identify as the rightful heirs to Lordaeron, even if they do spit on its legacy from a cultural perspective.
Mate, I don’t think that Blizzard thinks this stuff through.
Look at the orcs. They’re everywhere. And yet they too mostly made their way to Kalimdor on a handful of ships.
In theory it doesn’t make a great deal of sense for Stormwind Humans to be the majority population of the Kingdom of Stormwind… and yet, it remains no less true that the playable human character of WoW is presented as being from Stormwind. It remains no less true that Stormwind is presented as having a large population.
WoW populations are as large as they need to be for the story to progress, and the devs don’t put a whit of thought into it beyond that.
2 Likes
It hasn’t, though. The only real thing that you can claim would be the Forsaken using it is the High Warlord’s Shield Wall, which is itself a bit weird because it was obviously designed by an Orc, and that it’s a relic from Vanilla where the Forsaken were characterized as being a neo-Scourge.
Being a resident of Stormwind does not preclude you from originating elsewhere before you came to live there. That’s what Horde players seem to keep on missing. Most humans are residents of Stormwind now, but almost none of them would actually be able to trace their immediate heritage there.
Since the human player character is not a literal child when they’re rolled, the human player character is actually 100% guaranteed to be from anywhere BUT Stormwind, because Stormwind did not meaningfully exist for the bulk of an average adult’s lifespan by the time WoW started.
It’s like if humans started in Theramore, and the cinematic said “you’re a human of Theramore” and everyone took that to mean that no humans had any history outside Theramore even though that would be chronologically impossible.
Correct.
That is simply the material in-game fantasy the player is sold upon reading the website, the character creation description, and the introductory narration.
Anywho today I’m toying with the idea of “Europeanizing”/Tolkien-izing the Human Noble Family Trees:
- Anduin’s mom as a cadet branch of Menethil, ergo why Anduin and Arthas look alike
- Lilian as Calia’s and Benedictus Voss’s daughter cuz yolo
- Arathor line has some elven cuz I like that trope of Tolkien
- Jaina’s mom a distant descendant of Meryl Felstorm, so when Jaina started Mage School in Dalaran at age 11 she went to live with the Winterstorm family cuz they’re her distant cousins
- Greymanes as a cadet branch of Menethil, Proudmoore as a cadet branch of Greymanes
- Mia Greymane is nee Crowley (So Darius and Genn are brothers in law)
- Trollbane a cadet branch of Perenolde
1 Like
I would definitely like to know more about human royal houses. It’s weird how much influence that the Wrynns hold when Stormwind was originally founded by Thoradin’s line, but Lothar had no royal claims or titles by the time of WC1.
I’m also curious as to where the close relationship between the Wrynns and the Menethils originates. The closeness of those two dynasties was widely known even at the time of the First War but we’re not sure what it was based on.
1 Like
I don’t think it’s quite that, but rather in this example, “the player character specifically is only relevant to Theramore.” Because that’s where the game would have said you originated. Anything you want to imagine about your character is superseded by what the game says about you.
It’s kinda like how in MoP, when you have to do those tests to prove they’re allowed into the Eternal Vale, the final challenge is fighting against your most hated enemy and for me, Varian Wrynn pops up. And I went “bwuh?” both because I didn’t expect the game to make me kill an image of Anduin’s father right in front of him, and also because I never got the impression through gameplay that Varian was meant to be what my character hated most. But regardless of how I felt about it, that’s what the game said, and that was that.
8 Likes
There’s no contradiction though. The game says that the player character resides in Stormwind when they roll a human. Okay.
But people are trying to use that as evidence that human player characters therefore have no historical lineage or identity outside of Stormwind when that’s chronologically impossible.
So the fact is, we don’t actually know what the human player characters historical lineage is, and the only reason anyone would claim that we do is because they want to dictate human players identity to them.
As if that would even matter when the topic of land claims comes up. Playable Dwarves are from Ironforge or Shadowforge but nobody would dispute that the Alliance has more claim to Grim Batol than the Orcs do just because playable Dwarves aren’t explicitly Wildhammers.
This would only matter if WoW were actually a meaningful roleplaying game in terms of its gameplay, but it isn’t. Players have identity but our characters are not characters and they never were. They’re avatars and nothing more.