I was looking on the Warcraft Wiki and saw that originally Warcraft 3 Reforged was going to have various story changes to make it better align with the lore as we know it today. Ultimately, they decided to go against this decision.
That being said, while I know a good amount of WoW lore and have been playing since Cata, I had never played WC3 until recently, and I am only two missions into the Prologue campaign of WC3 Reforged and I have already noticed that a good amount has been changed between then and now.
- Hillsbrad had VERY different geography, with small waterfalls and more bodies of water. The only body of water that made it to WoW was the river near Durnholde that ends at Southshore.
- Hillsbrad had Gnolls, whereas they mostly just appear in southern Eastern Kingdoms in WoW.
- Rock Elementals were called Golems for some reason, and look like they came right out of the Firelands.
- The Warsong banner was… purple? Ngl, that one confused me.
With this in mind, would a revised version of WC3 (as originally planned for Reforged) have been a useful tool for understanding the current landscape of the lore?
Not much really. I can’t think of anything besides things like the Broken Isles being raised from the seafloor and other inconsistencies like that. They would have just updated the map and fixed issues like the island was partially raised or not raised at all to explain the inconsistency
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One thing that happens in WC3 that really doesnt exist in WoW is both naga and blood elves using Night elf expressions in dialogue “ishnu alah” for example.
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There’s probably a bit more than that. While I haven’t gotten too far into the game, some things that come to mind based off of what I know about WoW lore would be:
- More consistent characterization for Illidan & Co to make them align better with their WoW depictions.
- The existence of the Draenei.
- As you mentioned, the raising of the Broken Isles.
- Muradin surviving when Arthas claimed Frostmourne.
- Tyrande and Malfurion being aware of Orcs due to Broxigar appearing in the War of the Ancients Trilogy.
- Any foreshadowing to the Jailer.
- More consistent characterization for Tyrande and the Night Elves. (I’ve heard that there is a large difference between WC3 NElves and WoW NElves.)
- Geographical inconsistencies.
That’s all I can think of at the moment. Until I get farther into the game, a lot of Horde’s arrival on Kalimdor and the Legion’s attack in the 3rd War is kind of a vague “I know where we ended up but not really how”, so I wouldn’t know if anything there would warrant an update or not.
Honestly, I suspect the “better aligned with current lore” was going to be more about characterization. It was around the time of BfA, the same time they were pushing Sylvanas as the super-duper-ultimate evil, so I think they would have gone back and made her less sympathetic. Possibly also canonized that godawful power slide.
There was also speculation that they would make Daelin Proudmoore more sympathetic (though still wrong).
Frankly, I think we probably dodged a bullet by not getting this.
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I wonder how they planned on doing that without it being completely tone deaf. Now I’m curious
Probably by playing up his relationship with his family and what a hero he was to the Kul Tirans. Remember all the “sad Jaina” cinematics in BfA? That kind of thing.
Given that the events of Warcraft III took place well before the current events of the lore (I believe we were in BFA when it launched), I don’t really know that it would have been useful for adding any NEW understanding to the lore. Part of WC3R’s initial appeal was because the current lore was going to be reflected in an older game - for example, the Sunwell is portrayed as a single fountain in the outdoors of Quel’thelas, when WoW obviously portrays it in a far different manner.
So I don’t think it would’ve been helpful for current lore, but it definitely would have been a net positive to portray the characters, locations, and events of the Third War with the added context World of Warcraft gives them. But obviously, we’re never gonna get that now.
Yeah most of those “update to current lore” changes were mainly towards map design. Stratholme, Dalaran’s maps and the assault on Silvermoon City are all different compared to their original designs. The Silvermoon mission even has Arthas make the frost bridge, which is kinda funny since the previous mission still had him using Goblin Zepps to fly over tiny rivers. Instead of making corpse bridges as seen in the Arthas novel.
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Honestly never knew that happened. While funny, I definitely get why that was retconned.
I’m not so sure. They were talking about completely re-recording all the dialogue.
WC3R not having the terrible post-wow story revisions was honestly the best thing about it. It was released at a low point for the Warcraft story and Shadowlands only made it worse.
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Somehow I’ve ended up going from hating Shadowlands to genuinely really enjoying its story.
I’ve even come to think that the Jailer is unironically a great villain.
Warcraft 3 was the earlier lore, those points you cited are retcons made by WoW.