One of the odder bits of Cata content was finding out the Forsaken had a reproduction problem. They were obviously sterile but being zombie vampire Frankenstein’s I figured they’d reproduce how those types always do.
I bring that up because the Worgen curse actually behaves more like an undead virus than the Plague does. It does seem to turn people a lot faster if the Gilneas quests prove anything.
(Though they are taking oceanic lieters of piss saying your character only got bit 20 minutes in, after already fighting approximatelyallthe Worgen in close quarters combat before then)
So the shorter incubation time prevents a Stratholme scenario where half the populace turns into a ticking time bomb. But while it can’t spread quietly feral worgen are a lot more dangerous than feral undead (are on their own). They retain enough memory to use at least rudimentary magic and instinctually understand pack tactics.
Also we know the Worgen curse should presumably infect everything. We only see human and Nelf worgen but those two races have absolutely zero in common physiologically speaking. If it can jump from mutant troll to robot with Cthulu skin cancer then I don’t see why it wouldn’t jump to most other playable races. Other elves, trolls, dwarves and gnomes for sure. But I don’t see why it wouldn’t infect Orcs and Draenei. I’d imagine only the undead, augmented or otherwise already beastial would be immune.
It just seems like a virulent werewolf virus should be a bigger in universe problem. I get they have the chill pill moon juice but restraining a feral wolfman to force feed them it is a whole project. Can’t imagine you could easily manage that while a whole outbreak of them are swarming over their defenses. We see in Gilneas just how quickly and how badly it can get out of hand.
Just weird it never comes up ever again outside of Gilneas and a few quests in Duskwood.
IIRC Arugal did some tinkering with the Curse and made it so it would only affect humans but I might be misremembering that specific part from Chronicles.
Its been a long time since I’ve done that quest in Silverpine with Berard, but when killed did he change back to a Forsaken from a Worgen?
We know the Forsaken included non-undead into their ranks as far back as vanilla. There were leper gnomes among them, and in the Undercity there was even a living human woman whom had suffered a lobotomy and worked as an assistant to the RAS. It might not be outside the realm of possibility that Berard was a living human, perhaps with a terminal illness who was working for the Forsaken in exchange for assurances he would join them once he died. Kind of like Thomas Zelling.
That’s all speculation, of course.
Another way to look at it is that the Forsaken’s Valkyr weren’t powerful enough to raise Worgen into undeath. The Lich King apparently was powerful enough, since Worgen Death Knights exist.
I’d consider it non canon. There’s a lot of content in Vanilla that does not line up with newer lore that got removed in Cata.
I’m not opposed to undead werewolves persay. But that is a hat on a hat if I’ve ever seen one. Plus then there’s the question of could someone be a human who turns into a zombie werewolf? Or are they a zombie that turns into a werewolf?
While hardly canon, I’ve long speculated that the elf-to-human transmission might have resulted from Arugal’s Vanilla-era experiments on the humans of Silverpine with those enchanted bracers that caused controlled worgen transformations in tandem with the day/night cycle. Even the Sons of Arugal patrolling the area created a sense that the mage had special worgen that he was deliberately creating rather than just sitting around being crazy in the midst of the outbreak. Since the master he invokes upon death was apparently Alpha Prime, him trying to increase the curse’s range of vectors would make sense, as Ralaar would have wanted the curse to work on humans in particular for his plans to create an army of Gilnean worgen under his control.
So Ralaar might have had Arugal deliberately alter the curse with arcane magic to specifically target humans as well, since they were the most numerous living subjects (see:potential warriors) on hand at the time.
If an Undead can become a Worgen, why not a regular dead human? Why not a tree or a rock? Perhaps the bacteria and microbes in Gilneas all have tiny teeth and claws sprouting from their outermost membranes.