Is WOW leaving old lore yet?

Lore Story Forum
1

Is it leaving? So far the story is like enlarging of known lore, example are the monsters.

What do you think? Where should the story go next?

2

Not sure what you mean. TWW has been a pretty diverse bag: The Earthen storyline is a dramatic expansion of some pretty well-established Lore, the Arathi line is totally out-of-nowhere and is clearly being used to set up a new continent later down the line, and Azj-Kahet is a deep-dive into a culture that has theoretically existed in-game forever but has never actually been explored.

It’s a pretty broad spread of new and old.

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3

What do you mean? WoW has already left behind TONNES of old lore. There have been so many retcons since Vanilla, it’s crazy.

One example; there was a time when the was no hint of “Titans bad” lore.

While you may not have meant that, the post made me feel like posting a list of some of WoW’s retcons;

  • The Eredar/Draenei’s origins and nature.
  • Elune’s power, goals and sphere of influence as a goddess.
    • Originally she was a mystery with a lot of power, though once called “Azeroth’s only true deity” even compared to the Titans and the Light. Then she was revealed to have power over every cosmic force, possibly being confirmed as the Warcraft universe’s Creator God. Then she was reduced to being the Life equivalent of a Titan.
  • The Worgen’s nature and origins. From hellhounds fighting/fleeing demons on an alien planet to druid curse werewolves.
  • The origins of the Lich King, his sword and his helm. While a less sweeping change in the scope of the setting, this is one of the more hated retcons due to how much the Lich King character is beloved by the fanbase.
  • The Light’s morality and goals, or at least the Naaru’s.
    • This is one of the big retcons, as they went from a fundamental force of hope and creation to punching bags in yet another “order/fanaticism bad” story for Blizzard. Starting with the most powerful Naaru encountered being a jobber for Illidan. While better received initially partly because the Naaru are less popular than the Lich King or Illidan, the change has since become increasingly divisive with hindsight.
  • How powerful the Titans are.
  • The morality of the Titans.
    • Another big change, but less controversial because it was done in a more subtle way than the ham-fisted approach used on the Naaru.
  • The power level of the Old Gods, who flip-flopped from universe-ending parasites to lovecraftian monsters but getting literally crushed in the palm of a Titan’s hand.
  • Whether the Orcs were aggressive and bloodthirsty before or after the Burning Legion’s influence. Which got downplayed whenever the devs and marketing department wanted to shill the Orcs.
  • The nature of undeath (repeatedly), particularly whether it makes you evil or not and how that happens.
  • How the Shadowlands and afterlives work.
    • This is another of the big ones, and probably the most unpopular change. The Shadowlands went from a gray version of the mortal world and domain of the loa to what we see in the expansion of the same name, with various afterlives connected by a portal network centered in a floating city and the literal Hell of the Warcraft universe being a giant black hole. What’s more, various rulers of the afterlife were retconned into the backstory of major factions and characters in Warcraft, chief among them the Lich King (see above).
  • The origins of the Well of Eternity.
  • The Deflias Brotherhood conflict.
  • The origins, nature and goals of the Nathrezim.
  • Where the Scourge got their distinctive architecture from.
  • The sterilization of the dragons.
    • One of the most unpopular retcons. A side quest in Legion revealed the dragons could no longer reproduce as a side-effect of the Aspects using their power to defeat Deathwing in Cata. This was the biggest complaint about Legion regarding lore. It was alluded to in BfA, and removed via a retcon that would make Orwell himself cringe in Dragonflight.
  • Medivh’s backstory and goals.
  • Illidan’s personality, backstory and goals (twice).
  • Sylvanas’ personality, backstory and goals (repeatedly).
  • Garrosh Hellscream’s personality, motives and goals.
  • The circumstances of King Llane’s assassination by Garona.
  • Whether demons can be permanently killed and how to do it.
  • Sargeras’ backstory and motives.
  • How many Blood Elves followed Kael’thas into Outland.
  • The amount of blue and black dragons still alive (repeatedly).
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4

Isn’t that the outcome of old lore? Still about old lore. Something new example is, Azeroth show herself.

5

Given the theme of this and the next two confirmed expansions, I think the devs are ahead of you on this.

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6

nope and it never should
if we run out of stuff just reboot it or time travel

7

The question is, what is actually meant by ‘old lore’?

If we are referring to the RTS days, we have sort of left that behind long ago. At least in major ways.

Vanilla, TBC, Wrath and Cata had obvious connections to the RTS days.

Vanilla was a direct sequel to WC3. Although it mainly focused on building up the Old Gods that were mentioned in the WC3 manual. Even featuring one. That being C’thun.

TBC focused on Illidan, Vashj and Kael’thas following their defeat at Icecrown in WC3: TFT. While also shining light on Akama and Maiev.

Wrath focused on Arthas following his victory at Icecrown in WC3: TFT while also giving us the second Old God, Yogg-saron.

Cata focused on Deathwing following his defeats in both WC2: BtDP and the Day of the Dragon novel. While eluding to a third Old God, N’zoth.

The only connections MoP had to the RTS days was Chen Stormstout, in person and in how he said he was from Pandaria. Before it got retconned anyway. Along with Y’shaarj being one of the “Five” Old Gods that were mentioned but never named in the WC3 manual.

WoD was basically a what if scenario when it came to WC1

Legion was mainly following up plot threads from TBC and WoD

BFA had Jaina, her role in her fathers death and how that impacted her relationship with her homeland of Kul Tiras. While formally introducing N’zoth and giving the Naga a major role not seen since Cata and really TBC. But the N’zoth stuff really is a sequel from Cata, not WC3.

Shadowlands… forced itself into the RTS story by making Zovaal be the true mastermind behind everything.

Dragonflight was mainly following up Cata and the consequences of stopping the Hour of Twilight.

TWW is mainly continuing Xal’atath from Legion, BFA and her cameo in Dragonflight.

The problem is… even this far into Warcrafts life, if you go back through a lot of hoops you will always get back to the RTS days. Hell, even TWW had something that was linked to the RTS. That being Archmage Drenden. Who hasn’t been seen since Archimonde destroyed Dalaran back in WC3. Suddenly he showed up in the epilogue of Dragonflight and was revealed to be Xal’atath at the start of TWW proper.

From a meta perspective, we have left the old lore behind when it comes to the main storylines of an expansion since MoP’s launch. Excluding Shadowlands of course.

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8

What was the retcon from this one? It was the fact that the Stormwind nobles were exclusively being magically manipulated into not paying them right? And it was retconned that more or less they did it on their own because they’re greedy a-holes? I genuinely can’t recall.

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That’s what it was retconned to.

10

Which do you prefer? I’m not one to like any retcons but I feel like for as good as the vanilla questline with Onyxia was, having the Stormwind nobles basically have done nothing wrong because she was mind controlling them the whole time seems kinda lame.

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11

It wont leave it.

What you point out is not just in WoW, it is in bascially everything in the pop culture right now.

Everything is here and meant to remind the viewvers, users of the product of the paste, somehting they know, why? Because its easier to sell when people know what it is.

Star Wars 7 is exactly the proof of that, and South Park perfectly made fun of this with the “member berries”

MoP tried to do new stuff and people went mad at blizz when it did.

Myself, i hope that one day, people stop being “member Arthas? Membre “you are not prepared”? Member Vanilla?” so we can move forward and let Blizz try new things.

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12

When people ocassionally do this, I’m always like It’s cringey now, just like it was back then. But you know, some people have trouble letting go of the past and moving on

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13

To me, the TWW pre patch with the Azeroth echo was the overdose of this, i always was annoyed by this constant “ho you member this!!! do you have THE REFERENCE!!!” but with the echoes with it being exactly that, with Khadgar literally talking like a player who played back then was just soooo cringe and annoying…

And yeah, that culture of “i have the reference” is another part of this cursed world of pop culture we live on now…when you see that a lot of lazy writers dont even bother making new stories and literally copy paste stuff in a ill wish to “make like the things i like” like “ho dam i loved this movie, lets do exactly same in my movie!”

And then viewvers see the movie “omg i have the reference thats genius!” instead of blaming the lazyness and lack of creativity behind it, it just make me shake my head.

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14

I was reading recently about how even in scrolls from several thousand years ago we have people complaining about the young people doing things wrong and lamenting the lost glory days of the past…

Humans been doing this for probably as long as we have had cultural memory.

One of my, current, favorite book series, The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir, actually does this fairly well in my opinion, there’s little things here and there and even if you don’t get the reference it doesn’t detract from the story.

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15

Exactly, and funny enough South Park also mentioned it during the Member berries episodes!

But its not just with pop culture, its about pretty much anything, you can see our world today.

Its a deepest subject that one may think.

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16

Mate, WoW left the glory of old lore a few expansions ago.

Shadowlands took it out the back, shot it in the head, threw them into a bathtub — Melted the kill down in acid and flushed it away.

… Fortunately Dragonflight and War-Within, whilst lacking some qualities – has at least been building new intriguing storylines. :slight_smile:

1 Like