I cannot let the humans see me playing Super Maario 64 on my crystaltendo because they’ll all want one then
And yes we do have ignore pain, just gotta go yeah I never liked having that lung anyways, why do ya think we have 2
4 Likes
Humans be like, the Alliance said it’s my turn to play Nintendo!! and Juspion would be like, who told the Alliance we have video game!?!?!
4 Likes
I mean all of those explanations are fine; I am not knocking how anyone else has justified it.
I’m just saying for me personally, I like my fantasy grounded in realism a little more. I know that sounds stupid when talking about Orcs and magic and dragons, oh my, but you know what I mean.
6 Likes
I get this and agree, though.
Blizzard has always had various tiers of technology to best serve the whole slew of fantasies they’re attempting to include in their game. But prior to Draenei Crystal Technology, the technologies interacted.
Steam power and gunpowder were plentiful, but had limitations. Magic could even the score between bows and guns and an axe to the head did the same thing to a robot that it did to a person.
Then we have spaceships with lasers that specifically do not interact with the other technologies. There’s no explanation for the limitations or problems inherent of crystals or how they compare to gunpowder, so no one’s sure why people aren’t just using crystals now and no one’s answering it.
6 Likes
My headcanon is that the Draenei use the laser for hair removal (have you ever seen how SMOOTH their legs are??) and simply don’t have the time to use it for anything else.
3 Likes
And y’know, doing a little worldbuilding around these technologies isn’t exactly hard, even though it might come out a little handwavy at times.
e.g. “Our crystal technology is the greatest! But finding arkonite crystals to power it is virtually impossible now, so we can only repurpose what we already have and we’re not going to be installing a crystal power plant in Ironforge anytime soon.”
There! That’s why draenei consumer goods aren’t available in your local stormwind bodega! Just have some NPC say that!
7 Likes
If there was a WoW server with no cross-realm called “WrA Headcanons,” I’d probably come back for that. Hearing all the player ideas here gets me way more enthusiastic about this setting than anything official anymore.
4 Likes
I’d go even darker than that, personally.
"We are the ragged survivors of the Orcish Horde of Draenor who were then decimated by the Sunfury of Kael’thas who forcibly ejected us into the Twisted Nether which saw us crash onto a strange, alien world where our initial interactions were colored by a populace familiar with our demonic kinsmen.
Put simply, there are depressingly few left who can even maintain what we still have, let alone support new construction and our attrition rate on this world gives sobering prospects for our ability to hang on even to that much."
2 Likes
I mean, the easiest way to handwave swords and sorcery vs nukes and orbital laser platforms comes in three ways.
We have the Knowledge, not the Means:
We may very well have the knowledge to produce these artefacts of high technology, but we lack the ability to engage in mass production, and the resources to make them in production lines to field to every last grunt and foot-soldier.
Draenei tech may be worth literally dozens of times its weight in gold, simply because without Argunite, or synthesized versions of it like what we found in Draenor and the Draenei settlements there, it is little more than very beautiful works of art. Likewise, Sin’dorei magi-tech, Gnomish and Goblin tech all fall under similar limitations, in that you can either make cheap knock-offs that fail as often as they succeed, or they’re rare, difficult to operate and almost impossible to repair, let alone replace.
Where's the dang instruction manual again?:
Its been a theory of mine that common-place literacy and higher knowledge is extremely new to the Alliance, and incredibly rare amongst most races of the Horde. With the fall of Gnomeragon, Gnomes scattered to Ironforge for sanctuary, and eventually spread out across the Alliance in a futile attempt to gain aid to reclaim their beleaguered city. Failing this, they still needed to earn their daily bread, and the best way to do this is to draw upon their deep wellspring of knowledge. Engineering projects sprung up, improving the quality of life of the people of the Alliance, making it easier to gather lumber, mine and refine metal ores, improving farming and animal husbandry techniques … and teaching the children of the Humans and Dwarves.
No other race that values knowledge and the advancement of said knowledge exists on Azeroth than the Gnomes, and their love of learning and dedication to sharing it would have enlightened and uplifted a whole generation of Humans, who in turn would have a much greater respect and admiration for the Gnomes than their parents, and who in turn would have also educated their children in the same manner that the Gnomes provided for them.
But there’s a difference between knowing how to read and write, and being able to operate simple machinery, and to operate the kind of technology that can produce Warframes, and Titan weaponry, and all the other tools and vehicles we’ve used over the years.
The kind of training to understand and replicate this kind of technology would take years, decades of studying and training and experimentation, and few people would actually progress to that level of technological expertise, let alone have the resources and wealth to practice such heightened feats of technological marvels. Let alone the constant setbacks and losses of life caused by the endless wars, which leads us to the third and final point …
Artifical Scarcity and Branding:
The other two points bring forth scarcity of materials and a lack of adequately trained individuals to manufacture, repair and properly use such high technological marvels.
But … gathering, refining and moving all of this stuff from highly-dangerous and hotly-contested regions all takes a lot of troops, a lot of time, and a lot of gold. Even before the parts required to make a repeating gun or an arcane bomb make it to the specialist’s workship, they’ve had to be mined, refined, shipped and most importantly, taxed. The economy of the Alliance runs on a war-economy similar to the American model, and the Horde’s is a mish-mash of raiding, subsistence farming, scavenging and actual trading.
The technology that is readily available is already quite expensive and difficult to mass produce without a staggering investment of gold, resources and workers. Imagine how many magnitudes of order in difficulty, complexity and cost it would be to make something like the Vindicaar, or a fleet of warships with internal combustion engines and state-of-the-art weapons? The cost to armor those vessels to resist being sunk with a single barrage of those same state-of-the-art weapons?
It becomes a game of checks and balances, of how far you’re able to go. Do you build a fleet of highly expensive ships that might be absolutely useless once the battle goes inland and be unable to pay your soldiers’ wages, prompting them to riot? Do you skimp on weapons and risk the ships being taken and turned against you, or do you go for lighter armor and watch tens of thousands of gold’s worth of warships sink to the bottom of the ocean, with your army on it, due to a handful of mines rupturing their hulls?
4 Likes
I would like our characters to come back from Shadowlands and find out five years have passed while they were gone. Bring on the culture shock.
1 Like
The idea of video games existing in Azeroth is both strange and kind of awesome to me. I mean heck I know Ariiah would absolutely want to try and make her stories more interactive. She’d probably be the mastermind behind such epics as The Legend of Zeldoo, Star Beast: Alone, and Death Cosmos (Legend of Zelda, Alien: Isolation, and Dead Space, my 3 big fav games). I mainly kid but on the other hand, there was a time I was both fascinated and horrified by the idea of what Necromorphs in Azeroth would look like.
I remain scared of the concept of a Draenei Slasher that has an extra blade on the tail, or worse, a Brute made of Elves that can breathe FIRE. And other terrifying things of that nature.
Seriously, Necromorphs are such a neat and terrifying monster. John Carpenter’s The Thing has long been one of my fav movies.
Also I just have to say it because I’ve been playing lots of Dead Space 2 recently but man it’s always satisfying and hilarious to watch Isaac headbutt that one fella that gets necromorphed at the start of the game.
Also the space jump bit when you need to get back to the Sprawl fast is beyond awesome.
I love Dead Space 2 so much…
3 Likes
they should honestly just make all the cities as useful as the other
gilneas too, if they reclaim it, as well as stromgarde.
theyd really have to redo the leveling experience
i just want it to be easier to facilitate rp-pvp
8 Likes
Very excited for this time skip! 
Good way to come back after my big hiatus lol
Wait a sec, somebody else confirm this because I’m not sure I’m reading the social media posts/WoWhead stuff right.
We’ve been in the Shadowlands for two years. The Time-Skip will take place over three years.
So for two whole years, we were absent from Azeroth while there was a great gaping hole between our reality and the literal Underworld of the setting, Azshara is still out there and plotting revenge for what we did to her, all those little factions running around pursuing their own agendas, Pirates, Scarlet Crusaders, Defias holdouts, etc etc …
And nothing bad has happened while we’re gone? Really?
I’m smelling a rat here, and maybe a plot point that’s gonna sting when it hits.
1 Like
Would have been great if when Shadowlands was released and we were given a choice: go to the Shadowlands or stay home in Azeroth.
3 Likes
It was chase after Sylvanas and her New Special Best Friendo into Robot Hell or stay on Azeroth and hear ‘Woons’ every five minutes from Azeroth’s most persistent Dwarf.
2 Likes
I’ll take woons over the persistent slog that is Hellscape Funtime Land.
Assuming of course the devs care enough about remembering all these plot holes to close them.
5 Likes
The Alliance Regent has a literal Starship and a bunch of 10k year old war veterans.
The Horde Council is busy figuring out how it all works and shaking down their status quo.
We’ve been in a nonstop state of global conflict for over a decade.
Taking a few years to catch our collective breaths seems sensible.
5 Likes
It is too bad we didn’t wait until now to have the level squish, because it could have authentically reflected us sitting around for a few years getting all out of practice and flabby.
I didn’t go from 120 to 50 because of game mechanics, it immersively occurred because I didn’t cast mortal strike for a few years and haven’t been doing my push-ups!
9 Likes
Dude, I’ve been saying that about the Legion class halls! They should’ve kept the class trainers up until Legion so that in-story, you become the best of the best and don’t need any more training.
3 Likes