Blizzard fails at naming people.

[Kellorion]

Hmm i think i should explain myself, when you write book, you have to fix every mistake before publishing it. I expected the same thing from the biggest company - Blizzard. It hurt me because i care about story and i hate when they dont even try. But yeah, call me kid, thats the most difficult thing you can do.

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Or, or you can make completely different nordic name so its more believable than Odyn. Thats fucking dumb.

Hmm i think i should explain myself,

when you write book,

you have to fix every mistake

It hurt me because i

Hmmmmm.
/10char

[Zeek Daniels]

There is a Tor in the Halls of Valor instance

Look at the guy next to him. His name is Bjorn aka Tor Bjorn.

[Deleted]

Odyn is not a "badly put easter egg" - the whole Vrykul/Valajar/Halls of Valor deal is heavily inspired by Scandinavian mythology, at least educate yourself before you complain about something.

You might be shocked to find out that there are a ton of references to both pop culture and older cultural landmarks all throughout the game, just like in every other art form, the artists take inspiration and pay homage to things they like, who'da thunk it !

[Torched]

You know that these chars that you listed are from north mythology right? many of the vrykul carry Icelandic names

[Deleted]

The first bad thing about naming is how unoriginal it is.

You're actually trying to imply that Warcraft is somehow original?
WAAAGH! Some greenskins might disagree. Even the very origins of it are copied from other IPs.

[ghostblade]

I agree, it's a mythological mishmash of everything and nothing. Thor is supposed to be Odin's son, but the in-game version of Thor, Thorim, is not Odyn's son. It's like for one expansion they draw influence from norse mythology, and then four expansions later they do it again and contradict everything they did in the previous one.

not sure which warrior order hall you are using but odyn keeps calling Thorim his son.

[RedNight at MMOC]

I think you mean "Blizzard failed at keeping names consistent and the same across multiple instances of the name being used" instead of "Blizzard failed at naming people." This can happen a lot, and I would love to see you write millions of lines of code and not make a single error to where the same character has two or more different spellings to his/hers/its name.

Instead of making a bitching post about the issue on a third party website, why not tell the Blizzard developers directly (in-game ticket, official forums, Twitter, etc.) about it so they know the issue at hand and can fix it when they have the time to get to it?

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I like the tweaked names. Tells me Odyn is based on our Odin, so gives me an idea of what to expect, but also tells me he is not going to be exactly the same so I shouldn't quibble when they deviate. I suspect that's what they were going for.

[WowIsDead64]

I have always been telling this. When game has easter eggs - nothing bad. But when whole game consists of easter eggs only - then it's just silly.

[TheFirstOnes]

Mods, get in here.

[Radeghost]

This is my issue as well. Good fantasy settings might get inspired by some other work, but please, now it's copycating and it may ust destroy whole immersion. I get it, Yogg-Saron was Yogg-Sothoth, Azeroth - Azathoth, Thorim - Thor, but even then it was a little bit too much. But now Odyn, lel. In Polish we spell Odin as Odyn, so.

[Eurhetemec]

This is my issue as well. Good fantasy settings might get inspired by some other work, but please, now it's copycating and it may ust destroy whole immersion. I get it, Yogg-Saron was Yogg-Sothoth, Azeroth - Azathoth, Thorim - Thor, but even then it was a little bit too much. But now Odyn, lel. In Polish we spell Odin as Odyn, so.

Azeroth isn't Azathoth in any way, shape or form.

Azathoth is the blind, gibbering, insane being (Old God in WoW terms) who sits at the center of the universe driving people mad.

Azeroth is the name of the planet WoW takes place on (largely). If anything, it's taken from either the Bible (there's a place called Hazeroth) or the 1979 sci-fi book "The Fires of Azeroth".

Anyway, the reason they do it was well explained in a post before yours:

I like the tweaked names. Tells me Odyn is based on our Odin, so gives me an idea of what to expect, but also tells me he is not going to be exactly the same so I shouldn't quibble when they deviate. I suspect that's what they were going for.

This is precisely it - it's a form of cultural shorthand. It's arguably a little lazy, but it's effective so...

[Radeghost]

@up
Name me one, good fantasy setting which has names & characters ripped off of other fantasy settings, with subtle changes.

[Vargur]

Remember the Tarina / Tarlna chaos?

That always cracked me up.

[Deleted]

Amm, you are about 10 years late to complain about Titan names ...

[Eurhetemec]

@up
Name me one, good fantasy setting which has names & characters ripped off of other fantasy settings, with subtle changes.

Well, starting with Dungeons and Dragons:

The Forgotten Realms
Planescape
Ravenloft

All have characters, gods, places, beigns who either steal names entirely from real-world or fictional stuff, or slightly alter them.

Then if you're looking at fantasy novels, there are almost infinite examples - vast numbers of good fantasy authors, including Polish ones (Sapkowski, for example) use fairly simple name alterations, or steal names entirely and put them on beings or people or places which aren't QUITE the same as mythical source.

Tolkien certainly did it - and that's why, I think, it's so common in fantasy. Almost every epic-fantasy writer does it. I can't think of any who definitely don't. A very obvious example from a very good writer is Guy Gavriel Kay, who does it constantly - for example in his "Sailing to Sarantium" series, Sarantium is obviously Byzantium.

EDIT - And if you are complaining about "ripping off" HP Lovecraft, well, that's extremely common throughout fantasy.

Also, not sure why you'd be mad about Odyn and not about y'know Orcs...

[Zorial]

donnu i have a weird issue with odyn at y, it should be odin, odyn always reminds me of swan lake swan odile, and it cringes me... And the way they pronounce it in eng client is really weird.. Odin and Wotan are spoken the Same, its only 2 different writings for the same sound. And i dont know who youd spell Wotan into ODÜN, but it works well enough with only one vokal shift into odin. Perhaps they have a turkish odin, i dont know...

so please dont say odins name like it was a freaking swan in a kids fairy tail, or a turk-language handicapped version of a germanic myth.

Odin is also wrong, the original is "Woðanaz", which later on turned into Woden, then Oden and then as it turned English it became Odin, so you are just as wrong as the people who you mock.

[JCD000]

Something I've always found odd is the apostrophe to separate some names of characters and places from different unrelated cultures: Ner'Zhul, Kel'Thuzad, Vol'Jin, Sin'Dorei. I'm sure there's plenty more, those are the ones that come to mind though. Maybe they were all influenced by some titan language conventions or something like that.

[Silver Forte]

Did you just start playing WoW yesterday? Or did you completely miss the entirety of the Northrend Titan constructs, or an entire zone themed around Ancient Egypt, where the names and appearances of the Titan Constructs were about as subtle a reference to the Egyptian pantheon of gods as a brick to the face? Not to mention the fact that "real world" stuff has been copy/pasted in one form or another into WoW since day 1 of vanilla.

Blizzard has been doing this for a very long time, and they have never been subtle about it.

I've been playing it for 11 years. I'm still entitled to think it's weird and I never said I wasn't aware it's been done in-game before.

[Beckers]

If that's your gripe I guess they did their job well!

Yes, typos can be an eye sore, and yes, some of the names are clearly borrowed. But why not?

The things I love the most about this game is the relation or hints to a historical culture or ethnic group, it bridges the gap between what you were told about a certain faction or race to what you expect them to act like.

For example the naturalistic Tauren which are a clear hint to native Americans, you expect them to love their surroundings without even saying a word about it. And so does the nordic theme of the vrykul, you get what you expect which is viking bad-assery. Name a wolf Fenryr and I know what to expect of it in that context.