Doesn’t seem that way. For example, again, Chronicle listing out which side cleared which dungeons and which raids, thus decanonizing the other side doing them despite them having been able to as well in-game.
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Maybe it should be “everything is canon until Blizzard makes the call”. There are conflicting stories, but this is one area I’d expect Blizzard to say a mix of both sides is the truth.
Chronicles is nothing more than wasted $$$ and frankly I’ll never buy another WoW novel again and just listen to the Synopsis on youtube. Calling an entire series that was sold as a lore bible suddenly unreliable narrator just so these hack writers don’t have to be held accountable by it is just a massive slap in the face to anyone that purchased them.
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I could get on board with that too. Ironically, it would actually make N’Zoth much cooler!
When you’re right, you’re right.
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I like you better than your cousin.
You miss the point. Blizzard does make the call. But it rarely makes only just ONE call. It makes multiple calls and they frequently conflict.
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Also, if they make one call today, they may very well turn around and make the opposite call an expansion or two down the road.
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It’s such a disappointment… Like, this statement alone:
Is such garbage. “Tie the hands of creators” - Well, get better creators if they are too lazy to work within established lore. When you have a franchise as beloved as Warcraft, you have a responsibility to uphold the integrity of the franchise.
It’s like, if The Witcher Series were to take away Geralt’s humanity because “Witchers don’t feel emotions or know right from wrong” and make him some Jackal and Hyde-esque monster, always struggling to keep his monster-DNA in check… It would be a slap in the face of the fans because it completely undermines the point of the character, and reveals that the least bit of thought and research was considered. At that point, it wouldn’t be Witcher, it would be some new fantasy with a the Witcher title wrongfully slapped onto it.
That’s Warcraft now… It’s not Warcraft, it’s something else now because Blizzard’s writing team refuses to do the most minute degree of research. I could work up a better BfA story in 20 mins, tops… And I mean that. Not an exaggeration.
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“When a developer working on World of Warcraft has a query related to an in-development storyline, they turn to Copeland and his team.”
I think it’s cute that Copeland has to lie and pretend that anyone on the WoW Story Team actually comes to him or his Co-workers with lore questions. As if they actually care enough.
“Alleria Windrunner made a return in patch 7.3,” Hazzikostas says. “The people who are the definitive authority track down every place we have mentioned her – references to her throughout older games, short stories, novels – to ensure that we don’t do anything inconsistent.”
Another lie from Hazzikostas. But that’s to be expected.
“Blizzard, on rare occasions, does decide that an inconvenient fact is simply more trouble than it’s worth.”
This is just the biggest yikes.
“We’re trying to build epic worlds, epic experiences,” Hazzikostas explains. “And yes, we do find ourselves fettered by something that was a small piece of a campaign in an RTS game when no one ever imagined for a moment this was going to be taken and built into a world of this scale – and it gets in the way of telling the story we need to tell.” When that happens, things are “flexible.”
“It’s something that we do very sparingly and only as a last resort,”
Another Hazzikostas lie. Chronicles retcons itself, and BfA retcons BtS and Shadowlands retcons basically anytime Sylvanas has ever had a thought in her own head.
Christ on a stick this entire article is just one big mega yikes.
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And I presume this is before Blizzard changes their mind on it later?
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Give me any decades old genre franchise aimed at teens with entries across multiple mediums and I’ll give you a constantly growing jumble of rule of cool moments tied together by alternately interpreted events/characters, retcons, and lore inconsistencies- and fans discussing all of it in depth on the internet in a way the creators never intended when they cooked it up.
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And I’ll come in with a nice helping of “That doesn’t give the current Devs an excuse to be lazy and disregard the work of those that came before them just because they find it ‘stifling’ to their creativity. If they can’t be creative while coloring inside the lines then they should find a new job.” to put on top.
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My point being that it’s not a matter of being lazy. It happens to EVERY franchise. It’s not some kind of failure unique to this particular to Warcraft writers or even this particular crop of writers in general. It’s the nature of the beast.
You HAVE to disregard varying amounts of the stuff that came before because a lot of the stuff that came before was written without any consideration for the lager ramifications, and people always want new stuff. And it’s not like the stuff that came before itself didn’t contradicts or rectons a lot of stuff that came before that. Combine that with a franchise that goes on for years and years and years with no end in sight and you are going to get this stuff.
Like how we’ve all been discussing Night Elves, even though Night Elves and all their associated lore didn’t exist in Warcraft’s history until the franchise was 8 years old, and already had 3 games, and 4 novels under its belt. They introduced Night Elves instead of giving existing Dwarf and High Elves their own playable campaign, which was the original plan. They changed what came before. Radically. They retconned the history of the world. They disregarded existing lore and swept existing races under the rug in order to hype up this race they made specifically for this game.
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Because its easy.
This isn’t an excuse. This is the Warcraft forums, so we are talking about Warcraft… I am sure there are several franchises worthy of the same criticism. If I cared enough, I would be there saying the same thing.
No you don’t… You can put forth a little bit of effort and care and work within what has already been established. It is a matter of putting forth the effort.
The difference is the Night Elves didn’t retcon or contradict pre-established lore. They were simply an addition.
That’s called working within the world.
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Sometimes the lines are crap and need to be crossed over. Some of the best bits of Star Trek had to wait until Gene Roddenberry keeled over.
I don’t do Star Trek or Wars so the reference is lost. But I disagree full stop none the less.
I’m not criticizing the discussing the lore. It’s fun stuff.
But acting like there was ever a time when said discussions were ever not subject to sudden changes by the addition of “new lore” that changed how stuff works every time there’s a game/novel/comic entry of the franchise and that such changes are the result of laziness is a whole other thing.
An addition born of just as much “laziness” because they wanted to introduce a new race instead of actually using the stuff that existed within the world as of Warcraft II.
Night Elves retconned sooooo much. Warcraft 3 itself retconned so much. It totally goes back and changes the origins of the High Elves, the history of Azeroth and the Legion on Azeroth, the cosmology, and treats it all like it was stuff people in the world just knew.
Just as Warcraft II itself decided that Orcs were suddenly the servants of the Burning Legion, this force that apparently has invaded Azeroth several times in its history, despite not coming up once in Warcraft I.
The Burning Legion, Night Elves, Draenei, Naa’ru, Old Gods other than the ones we know of, Curse of Flesh, Highmountain Tauren, Jailer, Bastion/Ardenweald/Maldraxxus/Revendreth, et al were “always there” and stuff is made up retroactively to try and justify it. Little of it is actually based in or even really constrained by pre-established lore.
We take this stuff in stride because over time, the new stuff becomes old stuff we’re used to, but at the time, when it’s new, it’s a retcon. It adds new stuff that’s supposed to have always been there, changing the context/continuity retroactively.
And the more stuff that gets added over the decades, the more stuff is going to change and eventually start bumping into one another. What does and doesn’t get accepted has less to do with its actual consistency so much as how popular the change is + how long it’s been around.
They’re pretty much making up as they go along and have been from day 1.
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I mean… It is though.
No… born of creativity… Not born of “Well, this is too hard to work with, so lets just change it.”
No they didn’t.
The origins of the High Elves was undefined. So nothing was changed.
Not sure how you figure any of this.
Not really… Orcs in WC1 had a strong demonic association already.
You are missing the point… New lore isn’t the issue. the Issue is new lore that contradicts pre-established lore. So, this is a non-argument.
The RTS’s had a lot more structure and the effort was made to keep it consistent. That is obvious and that is how it should be. Just because it gets harder as it develops is not an excuse to just stop caring altogether.
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Warcraft 1 was a one off game created for the Warhammer franchise until they lost the rights and changed it to be a generic setting. Following its success, they realized they got a sequel and had to start making up stuff for that.
In all the expansions and novels expanding on that sequel, Night Elves are not mentioned- despite eventually becoming very relevant to the world, it’s characters, its cultures, and the overarching conflicts of the franchise.
But Warcraft did have Dark Elves, said to populate Northern Kalimdor described in a novel as “lesser beings with minute lifespans and quick to rashness”. They’re even on the map of what used to be Kalimdor- before it was changed.
Then, 8 years later, Warcraft III happened. They were going to going into detail about Elves and Dwarves, since they were pre-established parts of the lore, but instead decided to make up a new race, retconning the existence of “Dark Elves” and through the development process, came up with what we now know as Night Elves, who aren’t like the Dark Elves previously described and with a history totally unlike anything ever referenced in the setting.
The writers have always cared. The stuff they come up with does change stuff. But it changes old stuff in order to make room for new stuff. New lore. They take stuff that’s obscure, little explored, or largely incidental and expand it into new stuff and new stories. Not all of it’s good. Not all of it’s constrained by what came before. But they obviously do try to not just throw everything before out.
If the franchise were constrained purely by what existed before, Orcs- which you call out as being Demonically inclined- would still be limited to calling Daemons from Hades. As in actual demons from Hell/Underworld- as established in Warcraft I. Not the Burning Legion of Sargeras, a corrupted Titan who roams the Twisting Nether as part of their ancient war on the Old Gods and their Voidlord masters as opposed by the other Titans and the Naaru and the army of uncorrupted Eredar in their giant crystal ship.
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