Unless you’re new here it should be evident that the story forums are saltier than your most inept cousin’s attempt at gravy.
But in the spirit of being thankful for stuff, what about the Warcraft universe captured your imagination?
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Good way to start a post :T
The schools of Magic, all of em have such vast lore.
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For me, it was the way the setting took most fantasy tropes and applied them with a twist - and not just for a single story, but for a whole world that I could wander around in at an individual level.
Fantasy monster races, but as actual societies and not all evil soldiers. Fantasy good guy races, but with flaws and different regional concerns. All of them being individual people you could run up to and talk to and learn about.
And since I started with WoW itself, I loved that the setting had this ridiculously huge and complicated history. I loved crawling through the wiki, jumping from topic to topic until I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there, seeing the giant breadth of ideas that went into the world that I got to walk through and try to piece together one quest or bit of flavor text at a time.
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My brother bought Warcraft 3 and he liked it. I eventually noticed the paperwork that came with the game and read some of the story. I thought it was pretty good for a video game. It got me interested, and I played the ever loving crud out of WC 3.
I did not play World of Warcraft on release though. I had no interest in paying a monthly sub for a vidya game. Then within a month, I had a new roommate and a new coworker who both played it. They wouldnt shut up about it. So I tried the game out, and it was fun.
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I have always loved the end of the Onyxia Attunement quest chain in Stormwind, When Onyxia revealed herself and left a bunch of her dragonspawn elites in the Keep. We then got to watch Bolvar take them all on.
There was once on Maylgos server in Vanilla wow that a hunter had kited one of the dragon world bosses to Stormwind to fight Bolvar and some one triggered the last part of the quest chain that had you escort the NPC to the keep. So Bolvar wasn’t there when the Elite Dragonspawn appeared.
This was when the players in the battlegrounds returned to the battlemasters in the keep when leaving the battleground. Everyone was distracted by the Dragon fighting Bolvar that no one noticed the chaos in the keep as the elite Dragonspawn ran amuck until players were logging in from the battlefields and were dead when the screen loaded.
It was an iconic moment for the Alliance and I am glad Classic bringing it back.
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i am a simple guy, i see medieval stuff, i play that game.
i don’t play often anything related to futuristic or even modern themes.i think that we need things to sometimes distance ourselves from the boring real world.
so medieval and fantasy is my stuff.
As for wow, well what can i say, basically everything that has to do with the alliance. i usually play thief or assasin on roleplay games.
because i do kinda like that they have their own depravated moral code.
but if we want to a little further in the imagination stuff, i create renders of my characters or anything i like with 3D.
a scene, a situation or some particular cool stuff that i would like to see represented. but that is kinda more a new thing, still learning about it as a hobby.
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This in a nutshell. My first exposure to WoW was the Sunwell Trilogy comic, it took everything I learned about fantasy and D&D and flipped it on its pink, pointy head. I have been a fan ever since.
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Tyrande Whisperwind and the Night Elves of WC3, hence all of my saltiness these forums.
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Id say the art style of the game. Its incredibly well done, leaves some up the the imagination, and the game has aged incredibly well due to the art being stylized. Also some of the intro cinematic gave a good run down of the lore too for a new player.
Also the warcraft comic with varian, valeera and broll was prolly my fav.
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I have been playing this same WoW character since original Classic, and honestly, nothing about it captured my imagination for a long time. What kept me going through Classic was mindless grinding and playing with my best friends. What kept be going through Burning Crusade was hardcore raiding (yes, as a Feral Druid) and playing with my best friend. What kept me going through Wrath was once again mindless grinding, now in the form of reputations.
It was actually the Cataclysm revamp of Kalimdor that enthralled me. Nothing’s been as great as the “world” tour of Kalimdor that came with the Cataclysm. Though it was depressing seeing the sad state the Cataclysm had left the Night Elves in once you get to Darkshore, actually questing through Teldrassil, Darkshore, Ashenvale, Stonetalon (with a detour in the middle to visit Naralex in the Overgrowth in the Southern Barrens), Feralas (skip Desolace, quest gameplay wise that zone is so terrible that it’s not worth doing despite the tidbits of Night Elf lore here and there in it), Silithus (skipping Thousand Needles since despite the Night Elf Sentinels helping the Tauren take back Freewind Post the zone is mostly zany antics of little Night Elf lore importance), Felwood, Winterspring, and then (ignoring Outland/Northrend) eventually, after a small trip to Vashj’ir, making it to Mount Hyjal and the Molten Front and Firelands story after was the best escalation of storylines ever.
It was just nonstop Night Elves taking Kalimdor back, recovering after such devastation and coming out stronger than ever, and definitely gave me more pride in the Night Elf people.
Following that up with Mists of Pandaria (with Admiral Taylor tying things together from Vashj’ir) we also had Jade Forest, Valley of the Four Winds, and Krasarang Wilds with the culmination wrapping up at Stoneplow village was great, too. (Draenor is largely skippable, despite Starfall Outpost and the cameos by the Druids of the Talon.) Then in Legion the zones of Azsuna and Val’sharah, and obviously the Emerald Nightmare raid (and killing Argus once to get Illidan’s message crystal) were awesome as well. Of course I also got the most out of Legion because my main here is a Druid.
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The Locales. The places and fun in the area excite my imagination and WoW seems to get more magical each Expansion even if the narrative is bad!
WoW has awakened the Magic of my childhood…
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World of Warcraft was just so different at the time I picked it up. It was a real shock to open up the character select and see something other than human, dwarf, and human-with-slightly-pointy-ears as a race option. My first characters were a night elf and a forsaken, and the lore of those races just sucked me right in.
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A poster with Valeera Sanguinar back in TBC.
can’t stop thinking about drustvar pigheads. Too much gore for 12+ game the more you think about it
The evident heart and soul that Metzen was pouring into the story and the effort he put behind both his own work and keeping the current hacks in check.
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When I came to WoW in 07 with this character after trying a few humans what captured my imagination was the elven fantasy trope. An ancient society hidden away in this vast enchanted forest. Not to mention I live a good female ruler so there was that too. Tube whine idea I’d then just enthralled me, especially after leaving Shadowglen and seeing Teldrassil. It was amazing.
The world also seemed huge too. Taking multiple boats and long runs getting from place to place. You could really lose yourself in it. I don’t think anything after classic held my attention the same way, lore wise Wrath and Legion were great but classic us what really shaped my love for the game.
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The night elves’ trees back in war 3.
I was a 9 year child and my best friend had a computee strong enough to play games( here in brazil this was rare by 2003)
And I asked him if he could let me play and he said " no! Go buy a computer for yourself"
So i’ve put in my mind i needed one to play warcraft and with the night elves. And 4 years after it I got it and soon I was in mid bc playing with my blood elf warlock.
After the fascination i had with night elves i meet kael’thas and his sexy voice so I started looking into blood elf lore and well…
Now I’m a sylvie cult member that works for the blood elves in secrecy to destroy bolvar’ career as the lich king
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The fall of Arthas to me at the time, was the first example of that trope that I had ever seen. So it… enticed me. A lot. So much in fact that it seemed like the road from the end of TFT to Wrath of the Lich King felt like 20 years instead of only 5.
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Two words: Intelligent Zombies
The Orcish society is extremely fascinating, but when they introduced the Forsaken that was a wrap. I liked the fact that they are mostly still themselves with a little touch of crazy always lingering because of their curse.
Don’t get me started on Sylvanas Windrunner omg her story and her character words really can’t describe the awesomeness.
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The Horde in general. Trolls specifically.
I’ve always been starved for pretty much any fantasy that wasn’t rooted in Europe/East Asia. So when the Horde showed up with its hodgepodge of Central Asian, Mesoamerica, North American, Caribbean, and West African elements, and I was totally game.
I could gush about WoW’s trolls for even more. But to keep this post short; it’s a nice change of pace compared to how the subject matter usually gets handled in fiction.
Edit: Also, as a player of non-European descent, the Horde was kind of the first time I went into an fantasy game character creator and “where’s the brownest/least pale skin tone?” wasn’t something I even had to consider. It’s hard to communicate how different and refreshing that was.
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