Retcon Dracthyr "Lore"

Easily some of the least fleshed out and non-sensical lore for a playable race, aside from void elves.

They were made to be super-soldiers for big DW’s army, yet their VERY FIRST (and only) conflict together they get absolutely smoked. Somehow this leads to Deathwing worrying about losing control over them, and has to lock them away because they’re too much of a threat…? How? He just watched them receive the swiftest L a playable race has ever taken. That’s seriously why he locked them away for 20,000 years and forgot about them? Just say he was too embarrassed of his creation and didn’t want to look at them again.

Oh, and that’s the extent of their lore btw. That’s it. Bred for one purpose and they failed at it so hard their own creator literally forgot about them. Do SOMETHING with their lore, anything Blizz…

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Frankly, if DW was so worried about not having control over the Dracthyr, he should have destroyed them rather than put them to sleep.

Putting them to sleep is just asking for trouble. What if something power comes along and takes control of them? Now they have a powerful army under their control.

That’s the theme of Warcraft. Some big bad evil gets defeated, but they can’t destroy it: put it in some sort of prison. Just look at how often it has happened. It’s seriously a continuously reappearing theme.

paper thin justification for the artist’s coomer fetish race

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He locked them away because Dragon Flight framed Neltharion as something of a neutotic control- freak who was always sort of an iffy guy, even before The Old Gods got in his head.

The Titan Control device that he was using to ensure the Dracthyr’s servitude even beyond their slave-like devotion was damaged. The very idea of not having total and enforced control over them, as opposed to simply their loyalty, caused him to put them in the fridge.

The insight into Neltharion’s behavior before his madness and Deathwing persona emurged begs the question as to why the other aspects look fondly back on him at all. He was always kind of a treacherous, sweaty weirdo that I personally would not remember fondly.

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If Blizz was interested in retconning bad lore, Shadowlands would’ve been deleted already

The current team doesn’t care and can’t write good lore.

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That’s how the lore tends to go when the writers keep being replaced. Therazane lost her entire personality between Cata and Legion, and Malfurion goes full 180 on his attitude toward the Horde in BFA despite spending his screen time up to that point shilling for peace (while letting the Horde chop down Ashenvale).

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Nah, it was because his dominance got broken over them.

I assume you didn’t hear him in Abberus when he describes Dracthyr as failures. Kinda mirrors DKs where the player DK is meant to fail.

Honestly, Dracs, as a neutral race, are unlikely to get anything post-DF (see Pandaren, who barely exist anymore outside of Chen and Lili)

But yeah, as much as I like my dracthyr alt the lore is a supremely silly way to say syke after saying we were getting dragons (she’s a red drake IC, no buts, no ifs, with the name I’d given to a long abandoned dragon rp alt), and I do wish the visages were a bit more extensive.

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Neltharion made three Drakhyr prototypes:

  • The first one was a warrior and Neltharion was unable to control his aggression because of the warrior rage.
  • The second was an arcane mage where Neltharion löst control as well because mages might happen to become arcane power addicts, which means loss of control as well.
  • The last one was the closest to modern Drakthyr Evokers, but obviously Neltharion made them too smart to be able to keep continuous control over them even with that device.

This also explains the historic reason why Dracthyr warriors, mages and evokers exist today.

However the source of Drakthyr rogues, warlocks and priests is still unknown. Perhaps some Drakthyr came in contact with elves or trolls of these classes during ancient wars and learned these ways.

Rogues are just bound to happen in any military setting. As for priests and warlocks it wouldn’t shock me if they were trained to delve into such magics since nothing was off the table for Neltharion

Pretty sure it was rather heavily implied that they learned it from the Horde and Alliance during the course of DF. There’s even a couple quest lines showing the Dracthyr learning to become more than just what Neltharion made them to be

Dracthyr have some the best lore in the game. They’re basically WoW’s version of the Unsullied. If you’re interested in learning about them, it’s best to play an Evoker throughout Dragonflight. Also the book, “War of the Scaleborn” contains a lot of lore on them, too.

The battle at Forbidden Reach was a massive fight that lasted most of a day. The Dracthyr killed thousands Tarasek, hundreds of Primal Dragons, and they would have killed Raszageth too, if a traitor didn’t tell her about the Oathbinder. The Dracthyr far surpassed Neltharion’s expectation, and at the time he considered them his greatest creation. They also scared him… He was far from ‘Father of the Year’ material, and worried they might turn on him. So out of fear he sealed them away; but hoped to regain control over them again one day.

Metaphorically the Dracthyr represent the veteran community. Throughout the game, we see it touch on some sensitive veteran topics: Veterans struggling to integrate. Veteran PTSD. Veteran suicide. Permanent disabled veterans. I’m rather surprised such strong conservative messaging got past the Wokesheviks at Blizzard, and wonder who had the gall to pull that off. I guess when less than 1% of the population serves in the military, it was easy to fly over their heads.

Overall, Dracthyr lore is well developed, and better fleshed out than some of the original playable races that have been around for 20 years. And the races that do have developed lore, you wish you can unlearn it… Seriously, let me give you some example:

Elves! Everyone’s favorite race! In WoW lore, Elves are actually deformed Trolls who were mutated by the Well of Eternity, and are now addicted to mana. All elves need to feed this addiction; whether it be from arcane, moon juice, fel candy, or a dip in the void. Somehow someway they need mana. If an elf fails to feed its addiction (or overindulges), their illusion magic drops revealing their true form, and they go feral. The only thing that can be done for them at that point, is to give them mercy, and put them out of their misery.

Humans! Surely human lore has to be normal in WoW! Nope. In WoW, humans come from deformed babies who were discarded and aborted by the vrykul.

Dwarves and Gnomes, they come from alien robots who were turned to flesh by another group of aliens.

If you ever dig into WoW lore, you’ll discover it’s comically over complicated. A slave army of elite dragon hybrids kept in stases for 20,000 years, is one of the more normal and better pieces of WoW lore.

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Someone on the forums who read the War of the Scaleborn told me one Dracthyr 1v1’d a whole dragon in that book, so this makes even less sense.

It is honestly hilarious considering he easily could’ve just had his daddy N’zoth corrupt them too or something, and then he could’ve had them help him bring on the hour of twilight…

GEE, IT WOULD BE GREAT IF ANY OF THIS WAS IN THEM GAME INSTEAD OF BOOKS!

/10char

What was its iLvl? It probably outgeared the content! I mean, I bet my Dracthyr could solo Onyxia…

Please reread it, it says 1v1. short for one versus one.

And …? My dracthyr can 1v1 Onyxia.

Going to be stealing this for further use.

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