The first of these is Richard Knaak, who had a habit of injecting irresponsibly powerful and incomprehensible powers into characters that don’t really translate into the game, but get brought up here because we’re more aware of the canon than the average bear. It doesn’t help when certain Night Elf posters wistfully bring these up rather than discussing more concrete factors like logistics and terrain. For a more contemporary example - consider the nothingburger Night Warrior stuff.
Second, it comes from a desire to justify and make sense of certain plot points, even when we probably should be hyper-critical of ANY episode where we endeavor to humiliate a playable race option within a medium that focuses as much on a customizable RPG identity as an MMO necessarily does.
Eh…I’m not going to say positive development isn’t going to have an effect because I know that’s stupid, but the biggest population boon trolls got was due to them getting the druid class in Cataclysm, and I’d chalk that up to widening up racial variety and due to trolls actually having a DPS cooldown racial. I think the last time the census was working, druid comprised a third of trolls altogether or something like that.
I’m not denying that access to druid class didn’t help.
But Berserking was always a DPS cooldown. I remember using it back in WotLK and the resons why I rerolled from belf to troll was that trolls were outperforming me (and because they looked much cooler and I was never fan of Legolas-look alike).
Nothing, I just don’t care enough to fight against it. I do not have enough investment in the Drakkari … especially with how remote the chances are of fixing the issues of the still canon Trolls. They are were I would rather focus my interest. I have more investment in them. Rather than retconning the death of a nation to what truly could be considered a natural disaster.
I’ve also just never been a fan of “returning to, or maintaining, the past” narratives. Especially for Trolls, who’s obsession with doing so has actually damned their people for 10k years. They are so fixated on reclaiming what was long lost, that so few of them seem capable of envisioning something new.
I can’t read this in a tone other than condescension, I’m afraid. It sounds to me like your answer is “well, I’m not invested, and I don’t like what other people like, so I don’t want to see it improved.”
Look, people are going to be invested in what they are going to be invested in, but as much of a tragedy of the Drakkari is … there was never anything to really get me invested in them as people. And you’re lying to yourselves if you bonded with anyone but Har’koa during that quest chain. They are the greatest victims of how Blizz haphazardly writes Trolls in this game, but if they are going to go so far as to take the unnecessary step of writing they are “essentially extict” … I don’t see a reason to counter them.
Blizz has never retconned population losses before. They always keep them miasmic and vague, but it never extends to outright retconning them. Which is why its extremely rare for them to pull the trigger on that “essentially extinct” tag. But since they have on the Drakkari, then my stance with retconning them is the same stance I take with bringing dead characters back to life. I’d rather focus on the still living, then worry about how to bring back the dead. There are plenty of living to worry about.
Because you keep turning it into a personal attack of some sort?
If people want to be invested in them, whatever … but my preference on this issue is no more selfish then theirs. I don’t like the idea of retconning something like this, because its so rare it would come off like bringing back dead characters. And since I am STRONGLY of the mind that bringing back dead characters (with Jin due a number of factors being the sole exception) is a bad idea … then “bringing back the dead Drakkari” is also not that appealing. Especially since what caused their extinction makes sense to me.
Well, I mean, what if I were to tell you that I don’t like goblins, and therefore you shouldn’t want more than for goblins to be portrayed as a joke race?
I’m not sure how that compares. This isn’t me bashing on Trolls, I love them. I would not be as invested in the fates of so many of the surviving Troll Tribes and Empires if I didn’t care. Its me just not worrying about the one Troll tribe that Blizz decided was pushed to extinction because of the Scourge. I also have not once requested anything related to Gobs being retconned. I always operate on what I want to see for my favorite PC race based off of the content and lore presented to me.
Changing this at this point would be a Retcon. Like it or not. And I don’t see a sufficient reason to do such a thing with just how much work all the other still alive Troll groups require in their current situations.
But we wouldn’t rezz literally dead people. We would use the people we knew that survived.
And the reason to return to Zul’drak would be :
Because we reutrn to Northren and it would be good to have a follow up on what is going on there.
It would give a positive story progression where trolls gain something at nobody’s expense.
It would be a big accomplishment on Talanji’s list.
We would re-use the beautiful assets that were created for WotLk (Alliance could have it’s equivalent in Gilneas)
And that is opposed to :
One NPC said they’re gone.
Ok, you’re not invested in them, but some people are, and they’re even more upset with the fact that 2 tribes were written off existence offscreen.
On paper there is more to gain, than there is to lose. So I don’t understand the persistence to just ditch the content and not re-use it for an uplifting story this time.
Especially when PC was also responsible for Drakkari’s downfall, and it would be a good story to make up for the wrongdoings.
If there is one ‘L’ the Trolls as a people should take to learn from, it’s the fall of the Drakkari. Their situation was garbage, but despite everything they managed to hold on for years. Keep in mind, these were the Trolls who herded the Aqir who would become the Nerubians into the North and defeated both them and the Obsidian Statues they deployed (Think Maut from Ny’alotha). These Trolls were not pushovers and Northrend is not a place where you grow soft over the years. When they finally started crumbling to the unstoppable army of the Scourge, they made the ultimate sacrifice and turned on their Loa for power. They knew what they were doing, and many priests were heartbroken to do so. And you know what? It seems to have bought them time. Even then, Trolls were fleeing Zul’drak into the Grizzly Hills where they were butchered by the loads of nonsense going on there. Then Drakuru betrayed them and Zul’drak cracked open like a nut and between the Argent Crusade and the Scourge it was curtains from there. Hell, even the Zandalari saw the writing on the wall and were present to document it and save as much history as possible. Next we see them is when Zul gathered the tribes in Cata, where Zul explicitly mentions that Zul’drak has fallen. In MoP, we see that the Drakkari are so screwed for troops that they’re actually using undead trolls to bolster their ranks. We kill their leader and decimate them further. Next, we’re told that they’re effectively gone by the Drakkari speaker, who seems pretty resigned to it. This isn’t just some Zandalari NPC, but one of the sole survivors of the tribe. He probably knows what he’s talking about.
Bringing back the Drakkari doesn’t do much for the Troll narrative. It gives the empire a foothold in the North… and then what? Bits and pieces of Northrend continue to be relevant to this day, such as Ulduar, but Zul’drak has only been nodded to in terms of the tragedy that befell it. Kinda like Theramore since its destruction. What purpose does Zul’drak serve besides allowing the Drakkari to escape their fate? Where does the story of the Drakkari lead?
The fall of Zul’drak is and should be a cautionary tale. They turned on their Loa, and though it brought them power it did not allow them to escape ruination. Those same perverted rituals that were used in desperation by the Drakkari were used by Zul and his goons to intentionally and maliciously kill members of the Zandalari pantheon. And they, like the Drakkari, were ruined, some by the power of the Loa themselves. That ultimate betrayal of the Loa leads to destruction. There’s no coming back from that.
The Amani and Gurubashi tribes have a much easier time with this, as they lost their land and have been beaten down multiple times for either defending what they still have or trying to take back what they once had. Even if they succeed, their main antagonist would still be the Alliance and would have their story intertwined with the Zandalari as a result. The Drakkari would be a footnote in the overall Troll narrative with that in mind. While it would be a feels good to have them still around, they don’t add much currently and their fall is currently one of the most impactful tragedies of Trollkind along with the shattering of the Amani/Gurubashi and the humiliation of the Zandalari by the Kal’dorei and the defeat following the Troll Wars. They should be remembered, but I think their time has passed.
And that’s coming from someone who L O V E S the Trolls.