Blizzards newest lore retcon [Heavy Spoilers]

[FelPlague]

What official lore has been changed? I see a lot of times where there are things added to lore and people shout "RETCON!!" even though nothing previous was changed, just explained.


On a side note, I heard George Lucas attempted to explain Sargeras' fall, but Blizz turned it down due to cheese.

"From my point of view the Titans are evil!"

first of all L O FUCKING L

and the only lore that has been changed is sargeras dident turn insane because why would there be so much chaos in the universe, if it was ment to have order, and yeah...

also that the old gods dident just... show up on the planet, that it was made by these void gods as i will call them and sent into our planet

all the rest (to do with the titans) was stuff added, not changed

[Disreali]

so thats the aim every time then, build up a big baddy every time, but when we get close to possibly beating them, just then say 'oh no theres someone else even more powerful'.
thats fan faction levels of bad...

No, that's Dragonball Z.

[Ragedaug]

...also that the old gods didn't just... show up on the planet, that it was made by these void gods as i will call them and sent into our planet

This next question is mostly because of my ignorance, not that I'm arguing with what you are saying, but just to clarify, could it be possible that the "void gods" did that all along? Seems to me that all we were lacking was an explanation, like we didn't know how they showed up on the planet before as it was never explained, but now we do know.

[FelPlague]

This next question is mostly because of my ignorance, not that I'm arguing with what you are saying, but just to clarify, could it be possible that the "void gods" did that all along? Seems to me that all we were lacking was an explanation, like we didn't know how they showed up on the planet before as it was never explained, but now we do know.

^^^^^ exactly, thats why its confusing why people call it "reconning" when its really more of "clarifying"

like we also dident know what the well of eternity was, how it got there, how come the titans couldent kill the old gods, why we shouldent, also there was the removal of 1 titan having died during the battle against the old god who died... that kinda made no sense... how could somethign bigger then a planet... die to something as big as their fist

[Ragedaug]

My only real issue with lore changes/retcons is so much of it happens outside of the games.

I bought chronicle for the one reason it is intended to be, a place where all the assorted lores from all the games and novels can officially be called canon. But it's yet another book outside of the game.

I would say this is like complaining about the problem with The Silmarillion and The Histories of Middle-earth is that they are outside The Lord of the Rings books/movies.

The game serves it purposes and contains enough lore to tell a compelling story for the masses. If you want background and histories and granular detail, (which most folks don't want or care for) you need to consume additional media.

[Krazzorx]

They basically have 2 possibilities (and this is especially true in fantasy where the evil power is generally extremely powerful): either fight the same enemy endlessly or make another one. Generally more powerful than the last.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

They basically have 2 possibilities (and this is especially true in fantasy where the evil power is generally extremely powerful): either fight the same enemy endlessly or make another one. Generally more powerful than the last.

I'd prefer having Old Gods being separate from the Void Lords but that was before Chronicles came out and such. That's just me though

[Krazzorx]

While it did make them feel less powerful, it does now let them reload on Old Gods if we kill N'zoth. (Which has to be remembered that both C'thun and Yogg were killed mid xpac)

[Viradiance]

I think there's an implied distinction. A 'Voidwalker' is a species of demon composed of a sort of 'negative energy', but isn't... Strictly speaking, the same thing as a 'void lord'. A 'Voidlord' in the sense of a demon is just a caste of 'Voidwalker' (see: Felguard -> Fel Lord).

I think it's just a coincidence case of two things having the same name, like Blackrock Mountain and Blackrock Clan. The Blackrock Mountain on Azeroth was known as Blackrock for thousands of years before Orcs reared their ugly head and already had the name 'Blackrock'.

[Rathbourne]

Before this, we use to assume from what the lore gave us that the old gods were these supremely powerful beings that matched power for power against sargeras and outside of him nobody elves compared to this. Now however we learn that the old gods are infact servents of the void lords, the rulers of the void, creatures that make sargeras look like jimmy olson fighting megatech lexx luthor. Void lords are meant to be so powerful that they are the reason sargeras went nuts and is trying to convert the universe by killing worlds corrupted by the old gods (again servents) meaning there are many many more old gods out there, because said planets are capable of becoming titans, but if the old gods corrupt the planet they will become dark titans and kick sargeras' ass.

The Old Gods being supremely powerful was shit spewed by old god followers in the lore and people who actually believed them.Sargeras and the Legion were always the bigger threat.You just need to look at the lore logically and carefully you'll find out that Old Gods being an equal to Sargeras doesnt even make sense.

The Void Lords are the same story.They are more powerful than Old Gods,but the Titans are stronger than the Void Lords.The only thing in the known universe stronger than a Titan is a Void Titan,which the Void Lords are trying to bring forth.Sargeras never feared the Void Lords,he feared the Void Titan they could eventually produce.Read the Chronicles carefully word by word instead of generalising and you'll see.

[Florena]

Just one thing I want to say. Having Void Lords and Voidlords as two separate things is pretty dumb and can easily and understandably lead to confusion. It's just a space, not even a different spelling just one has the words together and one has them as two different words. I can't blame anyone for getting confused over this. It'd be like if Archmage and Arch Mage were two similar but distinct titles int he lore.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

They basically have 2 possibilities (and this is especially true in fantasy where the evil power is generally extremely powerful): either fight the same enemy endlessly or make another one. Generally more powerful than the last.

This is a fantastic point. People like to complain about this sort of thing, but you sort of have to either go bigger, fail to kill it, or the story ends. We have to keep fighting things for there to be more game, having us fail to defeat them feels like a cop out, so all they can do is give us something new to fight. If it's weaker, there's no challenge, so it has to be a bigger deal.

[PursueTheChase]

Highlighting the relevant bit for you. One cannot retcon an assumption. We just assumed incorrectly.

Semantics and pedantry aside, I don't think it's a retcon. Players have always assumed that when we were fighting Old Gods, we were fighting what is essentially their big toe or whatever. It's always been thought that they are much bigger and much more powerful and terrifying than what we face on the surface. Void Lords are basically that. Old Gods are manifestations of the Void Lords because the Void Lords cannot exist in the WoW universe without exploding or something. So instead of fighting the Old Gods' big toe, we've been fighting Void Lords' big toes. Blizz probably just gave them a name to categorize them as being on a whole other level than the servants we fight. And Void Lords WOULD absolutely wreck Sargeras. So the lore hasn't really changed at all, we just got a name for that unknown 'full power' version we've always supposed had to exist outside of Azeroth's dimension.


Okay, you're Blizzard. You're Kosak or Metzen or whoever is in charge of lore these days. When would you have told players the pantheon is dead? How? It's been foreshadowed ever since MoP at the very least when Wrathion ate Lei Shen's heart and had his titan freak out, so clearly not at that point since they only wanted to tease it a little. The end of the expansion, we were fighting orcs, hardly the time for Titan lore. Then we jumped straight to WoD, where the entire expansion took place in an alternate universe where there was zero room for Titan lore whatsoever. Where would you drop that lore bomb in WoD without it being shoehorned in? Or would you, and follow me with this one, the logic is complicated, bring it up in an expansion devoted to the Legion where we learn more about them and Sargeras and have entire zones and dungeons dealing with the Titan constructs they left behind? You're also churning out this Chronicles book that details the ordering of the Warcraft universe and goes more indepth into the history of Azeroth, the Titan Watchers, and its native races than any other source before it. You could just omit the part where the Pantheon are murdered and the last of their powers are sent out to the Watchers, but in a book that's meant to fill in holes in the story, why make more? The lore nerds will have something to discuss, and the people who only play the game will learn about it when its relevant to the current day story.

tl;dr I'm sure it'll come up whenever we deal with Sargeras if it's not already in Legion somewhere already.

Well, you pretty much said everything I came here to say. Kudos to you.

[olddog]

The Old Gods are not manifestations of the Void Lords. they are just physical creations of the void. manifestations of the Void Lords are voidlords like Dimensius, Pandemonius, Zuramat, etc.

[Gallahadd]

Void lords are meant to be so powerful that they are the reason sargeras went nuts and is trying to convert the universe by killing worlds corrupted by the old gods (again servents) meaning there are many many more old gods out there, because said planets are capable of becoming titans, but if the old gods corrupt the planet they will become dark titans and kick sargeras' ass.

Haha Blizz have been reading too much marvel... This "Plot" sounds suspiciously similar to the plot of the 1999 run "Earth X/Universe X/Paradise X" where it's revealed that the reason Galactus goes around eating planets, and the reason he wants to eat earth, is because the planet is actually an embryo for a Celestial. If the celestial is allowed to hatch it could potentially destroy the universe, so Galactus goes around draining all the life energy out of planets infected with a celestial embryo to stop that happening.

[Feel The Power]

It sickens me that a fantasy game/story would try to keep things moving along, instead of "welp, next expansion is the last ever guys! The story outline we made years ago cannot be changed or added to." I would be appalled if a movie franchise had the big bad guy killed, and then another bigger bad guy came along next movie...it's just not how things work! What is Blizz thinking! How unoriginal and lazy of them to change or add things to an unfinished story, to keep things going. Obviously Blizz...a billion dollar global business...is just trying to make money.

[Trassk]

Haha Blizz have been reading too much marvel... This "Plot" sounds suspiciously similar to the plot of the 1999 run "Earth X/Universe X/Paradise X" where it's revealed that the reason Galactus goes around eating planets, and the reason he wants to eat earth, is because the planet is actually an embryo for a Celestial. If the celestial is allowed to hatch it could potentially destroy the universe, so Galactus goes around draining all the life energy out of planets infected with a celestial embryo to stop that happening.

*face.. desk..*

I've known the fact blizzard just copies plotlines from comic books and tv shows all the time, I mean the old gods are direct rips from lovecraft, but even this is a comic book rip from a ridiculous plot from marvel. Blizzard can't even copy from decent ideas anymore.

[Florena]

My only real issue with the void lords is it seems a bit too similar to SC 2's story turn. I don't mind the fact that they fleshed out Sargeras' motivations beyond 'the universe sucks let's remake it.' But going with the Void as the big bad thing in another of their big three franchises makes me facepalm a bit.

[Deleted]

LMAO. The names Succubus and Incubus have been around MUCH longer than DnD.

But nobody used it as widely as now, and that's due to fantasy games. Yeah I know, religion. But the common people weren't really inclined to talk about demons.

- - - Updated - - -

actually, no.
both words are far longer on earth than DnD.
both words are derived from late latin, incubo (incubus) and succuba (succubus)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succubus

Yeah and it's a type of demon, one that doesn't really fit with the game demon anymore because they're so fleshed out now as to be something else. And to my knowledge, there are no male Sayaad.

[Wildmoon]

BTW, the Voild Lords are not confirmed to be individually stronger than Sargeras.