WoW as a TV Show

Lore Story Forum
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So there was an earlier post about a potential update about a WoW movie. And I really hope nothing comes of it.

Seriously WoW lore is best as the set dressing it is. There’s a reason Warcraft’s enduring legacy is as an MMORPG and not as a strategy series.

Which is why I think a WoW narrative would best be presented as an animated television show set in an indeterminate point in Vanilla. The artstyle of WoW has always been cartoony, so this feels like a natural fit.

For me at least the Warcraft movie became particularly ridiculous when you had normally proportioned human actors standing next to dwarves or Orcs.

So I saw we do an animated show, with a more anime style design as that’s cheaper and would lend itself to the bombastic action that makes the game so fun.

But what about the story?

Well for the first season we’re stealing heavily from A New Hope which is kosher as Lucas lifted a lot of that from Hidden Fortress and Flash Gordon.

We start with a Human farmboy in Westfall. While wandering about one day he finds an extremely wounded raven that turns out to be a Kaldorei druid. The druid gives him a message that must be delivered to a Dwarven hermit, but before he can complete the details he’s dropped by a Defias bowman and our human hero barely escapes with his life.

He finds the old dwarf hermit who of course is an aging Paladin. Turns out a Kaldorei Priestess was venturing here to seek out his aid with some growing darkness but her party was ambushed by the Dark Iron and she’s imprisoned in Shadowforge.

The human farmboy, as is tradition, rejects this call to adventure and tries to return home but alas one of the Defias recognized him and they killed his parents and burned his home while searching for him.

Ties to this place cut and a need for vengance in his heart he decides to go to Booty Bay with the Dwarf. Where yes we do the Cantina scene full of WoW easter eggs where you see virtually every race on Azeroth at the time. There they hire an Undead Warlock/Mage and Orc Shaman who can get them into Shadowforge.

We have a few episodes mostly full of character development. Surprise surprise we find out the warrior’s grandfather was actually one of the first great Paladins and wouldnt you know it Dwarf believes the kid has what it takes to be one himself. Also we have the human overcome some of his prejudices and learn the undead and orc are actually quite heroic in their own right. Also at least one episode entirely from the Priestess’s perspective.

We get to Blackrock Depths and we reach the Priestss but wouldn’t you know it she’s actually extremely capable and was working out a careful plan to free herself that’s been foiled by this rescue party and now they gotta fight their way out for the big finale.

The Dwarf Paladin mentor dies of course to an old friend who’s Thane Korth’azz, because we’re doing Naxxaramas season 2. The Human manages to pick up the dwarf’s holy hammer and wound the death knight and he decides to seek out another hermit the Dwarf mentioned, Tirion Fordring, for training.

So we’ve had a good adventure storyline full of OCs who are essentially PCs, which means the writers can do w/e they want with them. Plus at the end we now have two established characters from either factions who can stay together or do their own thing as the story continues through WoW’s plot.

So what do y’all think?

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a tv show like the mandalorian would be great! it could be a continuation of the movie

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If we’re taking the Star Wars route, why not dip our toes in all forms of media? Films, TV show, animated, claymation, etc.

Going to pretend you didn’t say this. :unamused:

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Star Wars doesn’t just have one TV Show though… It has multiple shows.

Pandaria should be it’s own show with each season focusing on a specific Zone(with some visits to the other Zones).

The Horror Zones of Duskwood, Felwood, Tirisfal Glades, Silverpine Forest, Eastern Plaguelands, Ghostlands, Icecrown, Drustvar, Maldraxxus and Revendreth should also all be one TV Show with Horror Movies for specific Horrors(such as the Cottontail Matron).

Vrykul should have their own show(involving Icecrown, Howling Fjord, Grizzly Hills, Storm Peaks and Stormheim).

Sholazar and Un’Goro Crater should also be their own show.

Night Elves(Teldrassil, Darkshore, Ashenvale, Azshara, Stonetalon Mountains, Desolace, Feralas, Winterspring, Moonglade, Silithus, Mount Hyjal and Val’sharah) should be a show too.

Trolls(De Other Side, Zandalar, Zul’Drak, Zul’Aman, Zul’Gurub and Zul’Farrak) should also be a show.

The Highborne(Dragonblight, Borean Tundra, Crystalsong Forest, Azsuna, Suramar and Nazjatar) need to be a show.

Tauren(Mulgore, the Barrens, Thousand Needles and Highmountain) would work as their own show.

Dwarves need their own show.

The Pirates should one show(featuring the Cape of Stranglethorn, Tanaris’s beach, Scallywag Point, the Blacksail Crew and Freehold).

The K’thir of Kul’Tiras needs a duo of Horror Movies(and if Vol’zith the Whisperer is infact a Dreadlord and the Drowned God of the Sunken City make it a trilogy).

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I said “tv show” as a generality, not literally only have one show.

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Does it really need be the most painfully generic race/sex combo in all of fantasy as the main character? You might as well call him Blanduin.

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Yes.

We’re trying to rope in a general audience - you go with the most human looking races on hand.

Then down the line we introduce trolls, tauren, Draenei etc once the audience is already invested enough to accept it.

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Honestly a TV show is the best route. One of the big complaints I had about the movie was that it was trying to do so much. It basically had to adapt the final stages of Rise of the Horde, along with the full The last Guardian novel into a movie. And even then, it didn’t actually finish the first war. If you were to adapt something like WC3: RoC into a movie, you would be better off making 4 different movies, one for each main campaign.

When moving into the other RTS games in the series, a TV show is the better route as well. Can have each mission be its own episode. Although I would like to have the final stages of the Night elf campaign, such as Illidan fighting Tichondrius and the battle for mount Hyjal be a “movie”. Something like Sozins Comet from Avatar the Last Airbender or the Siege of Mandalore from Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

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blonduin!!!

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(Satire): Clearly we need a Warcraft anime.

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For a Vanilla Era WoW setting i like it a lot. It has a very “grounded” feeling setting if that makes sense. It doesn’t sound ridiculously over the top and it’s feels very Warcraftish.

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in the past, i’d have been very excited for a wow tv show.

now days, with the way things like netflix and others behave(propaganda soapboxes disguised as entertainment), i’d rather not see any of the things i used to care about made a mess of like this.

if they were to make one though, please god don’t let it be live action. everything live action is so low quality these days. every “triple A” franchise movie these days is lower quality than the old cheesy scifi channel originals. just look at the dc movies.

an animated series could be alright, as long as it’s not done by netflix, and made to tell a warcraft story, rather than be an extension of the writer and director’s political views.

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I don’t think the movie was ever intended to finish the first war, but only cover the first interaction between orcs and humans that led to the first war.

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if wow is an anime draenor is an episode not in the original manga

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draenor was better than anything from bfa, story-wise and gameplay-wise.

you people get too hung up on these alternate universes, when they’re very easy to work around with the given description. AU’s just pop up and flicker out as probability dictates.

say a guy reaches out to pick up a mug of ale. the divergence from just this simple action could split hundreds of different ways. he reaches the ale and drinks it, or his arm is swatted away by a drunk and a tavern brawl breaks out, or he reaches and misses an stubs his finger, etc. etc.

these potentialities all play out all at once, but ultimately fizzle out and have no permanence. the problem is when these alternates are given permanence, like AU draenor.

it’s clear the main universe, the one in which we play most of the time, is the singular root from which all alternates branch off and wither away from. every character in the MU is the root character, every world. everything important is in this root.

this is a very simplistic concept, and i don’t understand why people rage over its existence. it doesn’t cheapen a character, because a character in the AU isn’t always going to be the same personality or moral code as the MU root character. it doesn’t cheapn death, it doesn’t give second chances or make things have no meaning, because these alternates have no meaning to begin with.

you cannot alter MU history with alternate timelines.

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Yeah I think Vanilla is probably the simplest, baseline fantasy setting. I wouldn’t go too deep into the lore at first. You’d nane drop some stuff but only explain what’s plot relevant to our somewhat ignorant farmboy character.

Keep it a fairly simple rescue the princess storyline with the character interactions and action being the main selling point. There’s a lot in WoW lore that’s cool but will lose a lot of people if you dive right in. The interplanetary / dimensional warfare, cosmic powers, demon spaceships, world souls - all thats cool. But even Warcraft didn’t start with any of that we gradually reached it.

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Also, it sounds more like you want an anthology series. So a single show where each season covers a different time period in Warcraft history.

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Anthology series are the best

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That’s something I’d personally love to see. WoW being as expansive as it is you could do entire different genres in universe.

But I do think a simpler character based adventure narrative would work great tir drawing in a general audience and then you go from there.

Worked for The Witcher at any rate, and that’s arguably a much weirder setting than Azeroth but it doesn’t bog itself down explaining the lore. Which I appreciate.

It always bugs me so much when exposition is used to explain concepts to characters who would have to be extraordinarily out of touch to not already be familar with.

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Maybe to a certain extent when it comes to the overall story.

But when it comes to BFA “story” i think the leveling story experience in Kul Tiras and Zandalar was pretty good. It’s been a while since i did Zandalar but i loved the Kul Tiran zones and their story/setting.

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