Hello everyone, im preparing a video for youtube about WarCraft 3 units and their change/impact in WoW, but i came to face a brick wall i cant jump.
What are exactly GHOULS from the Scourge now with Shadowlands being a thing ?
Are they an evolution from a zombie ?
A different strain of the scourge ?
Why they’re so different to a zombie ?
What makes a Forsaken a Forsaken and a Ghoul a Ghoul ? Like, they’re two levels of necromancy ?
Or a Forsaken can be turned into a Ghoul ?
Do they have a soul or its just literally reanimated flesh ?
You get my point i think…
Also an extra too, what are Geist too ? An extra step in the evolution strain of the Plague ?
It’s pretty wildly inconsistent. I think ghouls are just mindless reanimated flesh seeing how DKs can pull them out’ve practically thin air. But I’m also pretty sure we’ve freed souls by destroying ghouls in a questline at one point or another. So like most things with undeath it seems to be whatever that writer wants it to be.
My personal head canon is the undead PC race were ghouls 2.0. Clawed creatures that could restore themselves by feeding on the flesh of the living but also more humanoid and independent so they could operate siege engines and wield both magic and weapons. Which sounded good but that higher capacity for thought is why they were able to break free from the Lich King’s command when Illidan tried to melt Northrend.
But again that’s head canon. The lore on undeath is vague and the difference between a ghoul, geist, zombie and PC race aren’t really touched on anywhere I’ve seen at least.
And it’s only gotten weirder since SL where now you can have Light necromancy. So one has to wonder if a Paladin could summon Holy Ghouls.
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It is incredible to me, how Shadowlands destroyed more things thant fixed.
Thank you for your answer too! This will come great for the vid.
I wonder this too since the resurrection of Calia 
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Yeah I was really hoping Maldraxxus would finally explain Necromancy in the setting. But instead it just managed to make things more confusing.
Like the Scourge’s architecture now clearly comes from Maldraxxus. When before it was stolen from the Nerubians. But now I guess the Nerubians just happen to have architecture almost identical to that of another plane of reality?
Oh and Maldraxxus had it’s own completely unrelated spidertaur dudes too come to think.
Yeah it’s a mess. As an undead RPer the only real solution I’ve found is to just not worry about it.
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ghouls : zombies :: kul tirans : regular humans
perhaps some differences in material, but not in form. probably the strongest claim i’d stake within what i think of as reasonability is something like “ghouls are more variable in composition and tend to be physically stronger than regular zombies,” but the best evidence i have for this claim is just that there are variants of ghoul, e.g. spiked ghouls, which don’t have correlates in zombies. but that’s investing probably much more thought into it than blizz has done so far
Ghouls are the citizens that have been turned by the plague. When the undead kills, their army gets bigger and it was ghouls that their enemies turn into. From the frozen tundra of Northrend to northern Eastern Kingdom battle has raged against the undead but with every one of our fallen soldiers has become a an abomination, a skeletal warrior, or in the case of a citizen a ghoul.
I was there when it all happened
But there are spiked zombies too 
So its maybe like a plague strain… ? Maybe ?
You guys never even touched warcraft 3
oh, are there spiked zombies? i remember that there are some weird ones in dalaran during wciii, but i don’t remember seeing any that’re really heavily modified in WoW. i might be mistaken, though
They are the “final step” after a living humanoid is turned into a zombie.
Basically, when the Cult of the Damned spread grain tainted with the Plague of Undeath, and innocent villagers ate tainted foodstuff, they turn into zombies (we see this at the beginning of the Hearthglen mission with the tainted villagers turning into zombies some time after eating tainted bread). Ghouls are zombies who have deteroriated further and further into undeath until they are no longer recognizable as humanoids and are just animals.
This is the fate that awaits the Forsaken. All Forsaken are wary of this fate. They feel the deeteroriation, they know that it is coming, and only by discipline and mental fortitude can they avoid it. They risk becoming mindless animals with each passing day, a cursed race.
Oh I can answer that, actually! Some of the old Warcraft 3 devs have shed light on this exact question.
Ghouls are what zombies degenerate into after long enough. Their bodies break down but in exchange they have advanced mobility and speed. Eventually ghouls break down into skeletons.
This doesn’t happen to all undead, however. Those revived with a significant level of power retain some form of control over their bodies. Forsaken don’t become ghouls or skeletons, and death knights don’t either.
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Is this info from the WC3 dev that has a YouTube channel and talks in how was the progress of making the game and makes AMA from time to time ? 
You missed the question completly lol
Dave? Yeah, it’s him. He’s talked it a bit when debunking pro-Culling arguments. If you’re not aware the discourse around “Culling of Stratholme” then lol.
You missed my answer completely it was above that.
A forsaken is an overarching of ghouls, abominations, and skeletal warriors. They are not parralel.
The forsaken is a fancy way of saying the Undead race.
Yup i know who it is! Didnt know he talked about this, gonna give a search on his videos! Any suggestion for the name of the video i should look up ? (Like when he mentions this things ?)