Warcraft lore

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Dtox
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Warcraft lore

Post by Dtox »

so i decided to ignite the inner nerd within me (covered VERY nicely in napalm) and went onto wowwiki to do some research on WoW lore, stuff such as where stuff began, why stuff happened, and how things got to where they are today.

it was quite enlightening to read up on all the stuff, and it all started with a quest in felwood when some quest giver said "this is the very claw of the demon (insert name here) who lead the burning legion through these forests", and so it perked my interest about who this demon was exactly.

well i found out who that demon was, being the jailer of ner'zhul when he was the lich king, but more and more questions popped up as i read.

not like i didnt know who alot of people were in WoW, just there were holes all over the place.

well i refreshed myself on quite a bit on the lore, all the way from sargeras to the end of the third war.

but then i thought to myself, "why are there so many people who dislike the current lore?"

i hear alot from people who criticize the game about what blizz is doing with the lore, mostly about burning crusade and WotLK. like i hear ALOT of people say bad things about what goes on in the expansion packs, but frankly i really dont see what their saying, i like the lore and where its going.

so i was wondering, what do you guys think of the way blizz is treating the current lore? do you like it or not? if not, what is it you dont like and why do you not like it?
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Re: Warcraft lore

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I never personally saw an issue with the lore as an "average" player, but I was actually upset that I could kill Illidan and Arthas, and now possibly Deathwing? And how some major role players in WarCraft 3 were basically a throw away character in WoW, such as Kael'thas, or even from earlier lore (I think it's WarCraft 2) with Khadgar.
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Re: Warcraft lore

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Danath Trollbane, the would be Lord of Stromgarde, and Khadgar have been planning their return to Azeroth for quite a while now. Considering the damage Lord Prestor, a.k.a. Neltharion, a.k.a. Deathwing, had on Stromgarde we might in fact see the reemergence of the old Alliance stronghold in Arathi! For his part, Khadgar has been working on his comeback plan ever since Deathwing endangered his statue in Stormwind.

The issue hasn't been their desire to comeback; however, the bureaucratic red tape and the impact from the DPSA (i.e. Dark Portal Security Agency), has hindered their efforts to return and defeat Deathwing. You see, all portal travel requires documentation now as a result of the Twilight Cultist paranoia widespread through the Alliance. Since neither Khadgar nor Danath have such identification, their identities have been put in to question and there's a long waiting list for verification.

Oh, and we didn't defeat Arthas, Tirion did, and Maiev as well as Akama assisted us in defeating Illidan. :)

[Edit]
Oh, and it's Danath's statue that Deathwing knocks over in Stormwind. If that desecration of one of the Sons of Lothar's monument isn't a fullout declaration of war then I don't know what else could be. It's foreshadowing conflict!
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Re: Warcraft lore

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And so, the Orcs are now faced to deal with the Draenei to travel through space in illegal immigration to Azeroth.
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Re: Warcraft lore

Post by UntamedLoli »

My main issue with the Warcraft lore in general is that way back when in Vanilla WoW all of those bosses you were killing actually had some kind of tie in to everything else that was happening. That all went out the window afterwards like where the hell did Putricide come from after supposedly being the source of the Scourges Abominations spread all over Northrend etc? Better yet was hey lets go in the Obsidian Sanctum to kill some random dragon doing nefarious things in there that nobody really cares about. They've also completely cut off the Infinite Dragonflight, next thing you know you will be killing Nozdormu.

Malygos was a big dissapointment in general for being an ASPECT "Hey Nexus War, oh bye Nexus War". They have also had major issues KEEPING PEOPLE DEAD being Mal'ganis still running around plotting after his soul was stolen, oh yeah derp Frostmourne doesn't work on demon's. Sinestra still being alive after being burned away by Dargonax destablizing but I guess they forgot to get the dust pan out and sweep up what would've been her head, then again Onyxia has come back from the dead TWICE missing her head both times for years. They also want to redeem Illidan after all this time.

Every bit of lore they've thrown in has been a freaking disgrace to everything that came before it, they are absolutely terrible at hammering out details and keeping them that way.
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Re: Warcraft lore

Post by RazorclawX »

Lavarinth wrote:I never personally saw an issue with the lore as an "average" player, but I was actually upset that I could kill Illidan and Arthas, and now possibly Deathwing? And how some major role players in WarCraft 3 were basically a throw away character in WoW, such as Kael'thas, or even from earlier lore (I think it's WarCraft 2) with Khadgar.
Kael'thas had more to do with Burning Crusade's main plot than Illidan did.
Hunter_Killers wrote: They've also completely cut off the Infinite Dragonflight, next thing you know you will be killing Nozdormu.
People have been expecting to kill Nozdormu for a while now. Infinite Dragonflight is coming back in a later patch supposedly.

Of course they really dropped the ball with Hyjal. They played up the Infinite Dragonflight messing with it, and they weren't in there at all.


--------------------------------------

In general there used to be a number of running plot threads in the game, but they're starting to dwindle down. Scourge is done, Twilight's Hammer is going to be done, Black Dragonflight is going to be done, Blue Dragonflight is done, Outland is done. Only things left are:

1. Naga
2. Burning Legion
3. Emerald Nightmare
4. Infinite Dragonflight
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Re: Warcraft lore

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Do not forget the MURLOCS! They mysterious appearance on land is perhaps all part of much greater plan.
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Re: Warcraft lore

Post by Dtox »

thanks for the replies everyone! its good to know what other peoples motivations/issues are and lets me get a more 3 dimensional look at the evolving (or in some cases devolving) storyline.

@Hunter_killers: i know exactly what you mean, some of these events felt force fed and just left a big ? hanging over my head after doing them, didnt quite think about them till you mentioned it.
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Re: Warcraft lore

Post by RazorclawX »

Lavarinth wrote:Do not forget the MURLOCS! They mysterious appearance on land is perhaps all part of much greater plan.
Actually the Murlocs were fleeing from the Naga. This was covered in TFT when the Naga showed up with Murloc slaves.
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Re: Warcraft lore

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We're heading off to the Void to kill Titans! Rather, we're going to head off to the Void in our reconstructed Exodar. We'll assist Aggramar, former lieutenant to Sargeras, in reforging Gorshalach. You see, Gorshalach was a sentient weapon capable of understanding that it could not be wielded by the corrupted Sargeras, so splitting itself in to two fragments, Gorribal and Taeshalach, managing to stop Sargeras being able to destroy the universe with this incredibly powerful weapon. So of course Aggramar possesses Taeshalach, with the understanding that Gorshalach will only allow itself to be reformed by a non-evil being. Through our efforts to collect hundreds upon thousands of Void-bandages, we'll assist Aggramar in acquiring Gorribal from Sargeras, reforging the most powerful weapon in the universe, and striking Sargeras down once and for all!

Then of course Gorshalach will be a legendary, we'll all be lv. 100. We'll have taken up Gorshalach to defeat Sargeras because Aggramar will have failed somehow, and the World of Warcraft will span an entire universe, literally. With Draenei star ships!
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Re: Warcraft lore

Post by UntamedLoli »

I'm pretty sure the emerald nightmare line has also been obliterated.
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Re: Warcraft lore

Post by Thalraxal »

Missed opportunities and sidelining characters who had been major characters in earlier works would be my biggest complaint. The Nerubians barely had any presence at all in Wrath, despite being a big part of Northrend's lore, the Scourge backstory and TFT. Anub'arak was just a random dungeon/raid boss. Illidan barely had any part in BC despite being Burning Crusade's "poster boy". Even then, the only reason we're fighting Illidan, Kael'thas and the Illidari is because they "went crazy". At least Kael'thas got some plot involved with his decent into madness, but even then they still mostly derailed his character. To be fair though, I might just be bitter because Illidan, Kael'thas and Anub'arak were my favourite characters in WC3. I think BC would have been far more interesting if we'd been fighting the Burning Legion alongside the Illidari, rather than the confused free for all we get thrown into between the Illidari, the Sha'tar and the Burning Legion.

Other than that, there's a lot of plot points that have been dealt with in other media, rather than in the game itself. The entire Sunwell plot, the return of King Varian, and the return of Malfurion and the resolution of the Emerald Nightmare plot, were all dealt with in manga/comics/novels and have had a huge impact on WoW, yet almost none of these events are actually related to us in game, despite the fact that they could have been some really interesting encounters for the players. From the sounds of it, that sort of thing is just going to get worse in the future.

That said, I'm not currently playing WoW, but from what I've heard Cataclysm's done a lot to tighten up stuff plotwise/quest progression-wise. Seeing how Wrath was quite solid up until post-Ulduar, I'd hope Cataclysm would be at least on par with that.
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Re: Warcraft lore

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@thalraxel

well i can vouch for the improvements made upon cataclysms release, quest progression has become allot more fluid like as well as having cinematic experiences. im also seeing ALOT of things from vanilla getting attention, one region off the top of my mind is southern barrens, such as wailing caverns (you get a whole quest line along side naralex, highlighting what his involvement was with the place as well as his encounter with the "adventurers" that freed him, with the end being him resolving what his sins had created) and npc's from taurajo.

you get a chain of quests revolving around fighting gorilla warfare in southern barrens, fighting back the alliance invasion. theres this one part where you have to go out to the burning ruins of taurajo after its been raided, and give the dead npc's of taurajo their last rights, where their ghost's speak to you and all that, and not just some random bunch of npc's either, the actual npc's that handed out the quests and trained you in professions, the body of one npc had the lable of "leather worker" still under its name. you even get to infiltrate/blow up bael modan, where you sabotage an explosive shell that fits into the fortress's main cannon, the camera zooms out and shows your character running out of the entrance, as it zooms out further to show the whole place explode and blaze aflame.

through the use of phase time events and these new manipulations of camera movements, id have to say blizz is paying a closer eye to immersion/plot development for the players (NPC's are getting alot more dialog as well).

though outlands remains vastly neglected of any such changes, the quest givers who hand out dungeon quests arnt even located in their own dungeons.
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Re: Warcraft lore

Post by Thalraxal »

Nice, nice! I think one of the things WoW (and most MMOs really) have gotten a lot of flak for has been the "unchanging" nature of the MMO worlds. Nice to here that WoW's making a wholehearted effort to break free of that.

I like to think that Outland will get updated in the next expansion. They're basically redoing an expansion's worth of content, so I can't say I blame them for not doing it all at once.
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Re: Warcraft lore

Post by RazorclawX »

I can't say that the Cataclysm questing scheme was a huge improvement. One of the things I enjoyed about the BC/Wrath method is you could skip a chain if you really wanted to.

In Cataclysm, you're practically forced upon a set progression even if you didn't want to do some of it. While it makes sense from a storyline progression the freedom the previous expansions offered is nonexistent. You are practically forced to do Deepholm, for instance.
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