There is some quotes from wowpedia that says the Hearthstones are a very rare object, some people even thinks they are only a legend.
But later on, some characters used it to do things. Like Anduin for example, at the Argus campaign, he used a Heartstone to port back to Stormwind “quietly”.
But there is not such information saying that is canon or some lore-explanation of where it came from or who created the Hearthstones.
Or even why we have one, since they are a super rare artifact.
So, Hearthstone exist only for gameplay mechanic, and the little “lore” ( if we can call it “lore”) is just to give a reason of it existance from nowhere?
Or there is some relevant lore behind it that Im missing?
I mean, thats a item that accompanies us at level one to max and it is with us since vanilla, but yet there’s not much of a history told to us about it
It’s likely one of the cases where one set of writers do one thing, but another set of writers don’t realise that so they write something contradictory.
That or it’s another case of the writers taking gameplay mechanics as canon in universe, such as thinking Zones are a lot smaller then they actually are with people being able to walk across them in a few hours at most.
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Hearthstones exist in canon, but they don’t really touch on why your character has one. Because largely, it is a gameplay mechanic for you, not for canon characters (like Anduin in Tides of War, or Gidwin in Eastern Plaguelands).
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Blurred area in lore, truth be told. The Hearthstone is a powerful teleportation tool in the world of Azeroth and allows a genuine escape out of any situation. We’ve seen it applied in lore, other times characters behave as if they’re stuck. So here’s my general idea for Hearthstones.
Hearthstones are provided to people of great importance (Not just leaders, but high ranks or important figures to organizations or collectives.) and used only once. They are a single-use escape from any moment of harm but require a fair bit of concentration for the magic to assess its wielder before teleporting it to its bound location. Its limits aren’t explicitly known, but one can presume that it functions with Arcane leylines.
Hearthstones are well known and primarily the first thing taken away from its wielder when someone is captured. Preventing an escape and the captive has to rely on other means.
A few quests and books canonically reference the Hearthstone but those same books seem to take into account the game mechanics/zone scale as being 1:1, so it’s very difficult.
It’s safe to presume that canonically we probably don’t have one, otherwise half the character lines of dialogue wouldn’t make sense as we’re often meant to be trapped in a location with no means of returning home or communicating with leadership/our armies.
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In terms of canon, Hearthstones exist, and we the players have at least two that are canon, as they come from quests.
So, in a broader view of the lore, the Commander of the Garrison during the campaigns on AU Draenor had a Hearthstone to take them back to their garrison. Also, the leaders of the neutral class orders in Legion had hearthstones which would take them to Dalaran, the epicenter of Azeroth’s defensive efforts against the Burning Legion’s invasion.
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The Lore Cannon is the first line of defense for the Story Forums. It’s deployed against new posters to determine if they have both the intellect to Know Their Lore and the endurance to put up with all of our obsessive personalities.
It’s a devastating weapon, and it’s rare for it to miss its mark.
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Quite. It was even so calamitous a weapon that the Blues which once frequented these forums fled, and never again would the Story Forums play host to such honored company.
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The obvious answer is that it’s both, but the two so far seen in stories and gameplay used by NPCs don’t operate the ones the players use which is purely a gaming convention that dates from Everquest and Ultima.
If the Inn keeper’s daughter is canon, then it is the ONLY example of the making of a Hearthstone we have…which has disturbing implications…as this suggests it’s just a glorified soul stone with some mage modifications for magical teleportation.
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Didn’t Anduin give Tyrande a hearthstone in one of the pre-bfa books? Anything from there that might be useful?
Jaina created one for Anduin way back in The Shattering: A Prelude to Cataclysm, so I would assume that not only do they exist in the lore, they’re just extremely difficult to make properly. As for why we have one? Not sure. We may technically have gotten one after our efforts as our armed forces’ leader in Draenor, or our time as the “Champion of the Alliance/Horde/Azeroth” in BfA.
It’s obviously though that it’s not an item that she takes into any tavern to bind it as a teleport destination. The one that the players use is nothing but a copy of the mechanic in Everquest. It has at most only coincidental resemblance to the ones in those stories.
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It’s more like a Alternate Timeline Mechanic of the Story.
Big City Tanaris, Lich Queen Jaina, and etc.
Magical Artifacts like a hearthstone isn’t anything unusual in WoW. I’m sure Mages is Dalaran create little bobbles like this quite regularly, though probably one of the more expensive ware mages may sell. “Teleport to location” spells are canon in game as well. We use them often in quests and we can buy them a number of locations. And there are a number of Items that have the same function; Band of the Kirin Tor (which the sell in Dalaran), Time-Lost Artifact, Argent Crusader’s Tabard, Tol Barad Tabard, Admiral’s Compass, etc. They’re a teleport spell in a convenient package that you don’t need to be a mage to use.
The main difference is Hearthstones are re-attunable to new locations where most items are set to a specific location at the time of their creation.
Our Heathstone probably likely functions differently from a standard one, for gameplay mechanics.
The Hearthstone is one of the last holdouts of WoW as an RPG, as well as how our characters were regarded in the story and the world itself up until maybe… Cataclysm. That being adventurers in a more classic D&D sense, as opposed to champions or heroes, though we did do some heroic things as a result.
Thus, stronger/more talented than the average, but generally set apart because we had a few unique items that others didn’t. These items were the Hearthstone, and our default bag, which essentially is a bag of holding in all but name. Two incredibly useful magical items, and likely more than most people had, but nothing that gives us (the adventurer) an edge in battle.
For gameplay purposes, everyone has one, but in the setting itself it would have been something only a small portion of people have, not easily whipped up, and maybe even an old artifact.
WoW has suffered from power creep for years now, so the Hearthstone doesn’t seem like much now, but back in Vanilla the setting was somewhat more grounded and encountering, say, a drake solo meant you were probably going to die. It was an item that differentiated the PC as someone special in the setting without making them the big hero, they were just another adventurer like all the other players, with a magic trinket few others had.
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