Warcraft Chronicle Vol 2 (Warning: Spoilers)

[Aucald]

Just finished reading it. I find it amusing how nowhere in this entire book they mentioned Med'an, even though Garona had quite a bit of highlighting.

Personally, I'm really hoping they just don't. The omission won't remove him from canon but it goes far toward relegating him to obsolescence.

[Paula Deen]

"Chronicle Vol. 2" definitely made the world of Draenor feel more real to me - gave it a similar sense of history and depth as Azeroth. It's waning days under the influence of Fel and the Horde are starkly brutal - the entire world resonates with the savage concept they aspired for in WoD (and failed to realize for multiple reasons).

I was very impressed by the stories of the Primal years specifically. It made Warlords of Draenor feel more real and made me really question why they cut Farahlon. Seems like it would have really been some neat as hell lore and stories there.

[Kralljin]

I was very impressed by the stories of the Primal years specifically. It made Warlords of Draenor feel more real and made me really question why they cut Farahlon. Seems like it would have really been some neat as hell lore and stories there.

Because Blizzard fucked up WoD on almost every single front in terms of lore.

It's not even mindless Blizzard bashing, WoD had a rather difficult setting to get started in, with the Alternate Universe stuff and such.

The issue here was simply that Blizzard started to flesh things out, then cancelled it, hence why there is so much leftover to be found from scrapped storylines in WoD.

Starting from Gorgrond and Orgrims role, the Shattrath raid, Farahlon, Ogre continent in the south, and so forth.

[Porimlys]

out of curiosity is there anywhere i can find the art in the book? not talking about the art from the previews, but stuff people might have uploaded after it's release

nvm! found the posts in this thread linking the pics, thanks guys!

[AbalDarkwind]

Because Blizzard fucked up WoD on almost every single front in terms of lore.

It's not even mindless Blizzard bashing, WoD had a rather difficult setting to get started in, with the Alternate Universe stuff and such.

The issue here was simply that Blizzard started to flesh things out, then cancelled it, hence why there is so much leftover to be found from scrapped storylines in WoD.

Starting from Gorgrond and Orgrims role, the Shattrath raid, Farahlon, Ogre continent in the south, and so forth.

To be fair, Blizzard can still do the Shattrath raid, Farahlon, and the southern continent if they decide to set another expansion on Draenor, perhaps as a way to introduce the Void Lords as the next significant threat. The reworked Gorgrond storyline and their handling of Orgrim Doomhammer, on the other hand, was garbage and deserves the derision it gets.

[steelballfc]

Good points steelballfc. *high five*

senpai has noticed me

[miketwistam]

Hmm, interesting. Many thanks for the recap. Looking forward to the part three. Also, those Whiteclaw orcs seem interesting.

[Jokubas]

I was very impressed by the stories of the Primal years specifically. It made Warlords of Draenor feel more real and made me really question why they cut Farahlon. Seems like it would have really been some neat as hell lore and stories there.

I think it's just because there's really nothing special about the place. Even in the Chronicle it was just more Primals (and the Horde went and trashed them before they went to Azeroth in our timeline) and Warlords of Draenor had plenty of Primals. There was the whole corpse thing, but then part of Nagrand/Throne of the Elements also being a corpse never mattered and we actually went there.

I really wanted to see pre-Netherstorm, but it seems they just never came up with something unique for it to be.

[DeicideUH]

I think it's just because there's really nothing special about the place. Even in the Chronicle it was just more Primals (and the Horde went and trashed them before they went to Azeroth in our timeline) and Warlords of Draenor had plenty of Primals. There was the whole corpse thing, but then part of Nagrand/Throne of the Elements also being a corpse never mattered and we actually went there.

I really wanted to see pre-Netherstorm, but it seems they just never came up with something unique for it to be.

I think the original plans for Farahlon's themes were merged into Gorgrond when they redone the zone. Gorgrond would be about the center of the Iron Horde war efforts; Farahlon would be Primal-focused. When they redone Gorgrond, removing the train tracks, the Doomhammer story and so on, they also merged the Primal theme into it.

[Jokubas]

Since I'm being so critical of this Chronicle, I just want to add here that I still thought it was a good read overall, and I was impressed that it continued the trend of wrapping up various inconsistencies as simply as possible. As a small thing, I liked how we got ogre and arakkoa names for Draenor, since it has been weird ever since we got the explanation of Draenor being a relatively recent draenei name for it.

I liked the explanation of how the Horde managed to sit right on top of some very different forces in Blackrock Mountain. Cho'gall was pretty cool throughout. I liked how he was simply power-hungry, and how that led him from one thing to another, initially using the Pale and ultimately realizing the truth in what they said. I liked how he managed to be one of Gul'dan's most trusted advisors while ultimately being on the opposite side (unbeknownst to many, since the true goal of the Legion doesn't seem common knowledge) and how he had every reason to continue that. I liked how they tied in the original ogre magi explanation with the new history. I liked the origin of the ogre empires overall and their affinity for arcane magic (even if it meant their success was due to another race).

Something that was really subtle, but managed to work really well for me, was the characterization of Orgrim. He takes over the Horde with all the best intentions, but the Shadow Council had left him in a desperate situation. The gradual justification of more and more horrible things in order to compensate for each previous bad decision was an amazingly realistic and tragic characterization in a book that is more encyclopedia than novel.

There are probably more things I'm forgetting, but I just want to make the point that I still liked the Chronicle, I just feel it wasn't as good as it could have been when it came to the new information.

i think that's because regarding Draenor history, we have had known enough of it for 2 expansion, that we kinda had a guide line, and chronicle 2.0 had explored the line for us, but in chronicle 1.0 we had no idea what the line, we know so little, it was vague already, so any information was needed and interesting, also the fact that what ever they do, draenor is sub-planet and they can just make it disappear and continue the story, unlike Azeroth the last of the universe and the planet that our story will continue on for generations, Azeroth is more relevant, because you will never go back to Draenor for any important thing " unless blizzard decide to add something ", but if all stay the same, Draenor has ended as planet but not as char's.

Certainly, and like I said, I think Chronicle 2's goal was more to give context to the orc's side of things as they led up to the First and Second Wars than to elaborate on Draenor's history in the universe, but it still feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to me.

The questions left unanswered or subtly contradicted from Warlords of Draenor feel odd. For another example, there is the ogre creation myth in the Code of Rule short story. Sure it's easy to say that the myth was just that, a myth, but then it begs the question as to how they knew there were more than one titan (or titans at all, considering how long before their birth that Aggramar left) or how they interacted with other worlds, which were heavily implied by that story. Meanwhile, the story of Gog isn't as elaborate in Code of Rule, but isn't directly contradictory.

Also, having absolutely no information on the other continent was a bit disappointing. Without double-checking the wording, the sea-based trade routes could simply be a reference to trading on the same continent between port towns (which the ogres had in at least Highmaul and Goria), and that was the closest implication to it existing. Otherwise, it did not appear on the maps, and it apparently had nothing to do with the Evergrowth which Aggramar was afraid would overrun the planet (or there would needed to have been a back-up plan if Grond died on one continent and his children couldn't stop the Evergrowth from becoming too powerful elsewhere).

I've been saying for awhile that it seems they had revised the story to pull the ogres over to the main continent, and the Chronicle proved that with the reveal of Goria being built where Shattrath is now (and mentioning no other empires), so I'm not just interested in the continent from an ogre-biased perspective. I would even reluctantly agree that they may not want to pin down too much of it until they're ready/if they use it, but the Chronicle was the perfect time to at least admit it existed. It almost makes me wonder if they're deciding against having it exist, which is disappointing.

I guess you could say, I feel like this Chronicle made the world smaller. Warlords of Draenor, for all its faults, made Draenor feel bigger. We were used to a certain section of Draenor and its history, and then Warlords of Draenor comes along and says that there used to be more continents, and the ogres used to have this history we never knew about, and the arakkoa had a legendary civilization prior to even the uncorrupted version. Draenor no longer just felt like "the orc homeworld that blew up" but its own full planet with its own history and legends.

The Chronicle just runs down pretty much exactly what we knew, elaborates on a few things (like what exactly the Apexis were), and otherwise implies that's all there is to know. For instance, Warlords of Draenor implied that the Gorian Empire based out of Highmaul wasn't the only empire in ogre history. Ashran, for instance, was implied to be the seat of one empire. The Chronicle, however, establishes that there only ever was just one empire, the Gorian empire, and its seat was only ever Goria, with the fall of Goria essentially being the fall of the ogres that they never recovered from. That's a massively wasted opportunity. I don't expect them to detail each and every one, but they easily could have talked about Gog founding the first empire, and then just saying that many more rose and fell over the centuries, until the Gorian empire.

As it was, Ashran wasn't even mentioned outside of appearing on the maps. I understand if they avoid talking about what the Horde and Alliance were doing there in Warlords of Draenor, since that was ambiguously canonical to begin with, but it's relevant beyond that. It wasn't mentioned as an ogre seat of power or Deathwing's lair, both of which should have been mentioned even if just in passing.

I think the original plans for Farahlon's themes were merged into Gorgrond when they redone the zone. Gorgrond would be about the center of the Iron Horde war efforts; Farahlon would be Primal-focused. When they redone Gorgrond, removing the train tracks, the Doomhammer story and so on, they also merged the Primal theme into it.

That's a good point. I think I remember reading somewhere that the Infested were originally called the Fara or something and would have been from Farahlon. Considering that, it means Farahlon had lost what was unique about it before the expansion even launched. It's funny, Blizzard compensating for orc fatigue by altering Gorgrond and bringing a larger ogre presence to the mainland might have come at the cost of the uniqueness of the non-orc elements.

[trm90]

I've only finished the first half, but I have to echo the sentiment that Draenor has been a surprisingly pleasurable part of Chronicle.

How similar was the AU Draenor timeline we entered? Did we enter a nearly identical timeline, one where the intervention of Garrosh instigated a divergence in the timelines?

I obviously couldn't help but try and connect Chronicle's lore to my in-game experiences of Outland/AU Draenor. But I couldn't shake off the nagging question: is what we saw in AU Draenor supposed to be what MU Draenor was a few hundred years before the Dark Portal? While it is obviously the intention of Chronicle v2 to flesh out the AU Draenor we just explored, it still feels a bit meaningless to me, philosophically speaking.

[Aucald]

I've only finished the first half, but I have to echo the sentiment that Draenor has been a surprisingly pleasurable part of Chronicle.

How similar was the AU Draenor timeline we entered? Did we enter a nearly identical timeline, one where the intervention of Garrosh instigated a divergence in the timelines?

I obviously couldn't help but try and connect Chronicle's lore to my in-game experiences of Outland/AU Draenor. But I couldn't shake off the nagging question: is what we saw in AU Draenor supposed to be what MU Draenor was a few hundred years before the Dark Portal? While it is obviously the intention of Chronicle v2 to flesh out the AU Draenor we just explored, it still feels a bit meaningless to me, philosophically speaking.

It seems like AU Draenor's history was pretty much exactly in line with MU Draenor/Outland with just a few specific differences for purposes of the story. In broad strokes the history unfolded the same in both continuities - the Primals and Breakers existed, the declination of the Titanforged races (Gronn, Ogron, Ogres, Orcs, etc.) went the same direction, and the same overall events happened the same way. WoD diverges rapidly at the point where Kairoz and Garrosh interceded in its history and changed the timeline - but up until that point I'd say it was about 90% the same and would've went on the same overall course without interruption.

[derpkitteh]

It seems like AU Draenor's history was pretty much exactly in line with MU Draenor/Outland with just a few specific differences for purposes of the story. In broad strokes the history unfolded the same in both continuities - the Primals and Breakers existed, the declination of the Titanforged races (Gronn, Ogron, Ogres, Orcs, etc.) went the same direction, and the same overall events happened the same way. WoD diverges rapidly at the point where Kairoz and Garrosh interceded in its history and changed the timeline - but up until that point I'd say it was about 90% the same and would've went on the same overall course without interruption.

well, one big difference is that highmaul still exists in AU draenor. it was ravaged into nothingness in the MU.

cho'gal's inclination towards the void is stronger as well. he immediately dives into worshiping it, it's not gradual at all.

garrosh wasn't born, of course.

oh, and what about ruhkmar? she's alive, and seems more paranoid and controlling than she was described in the MU.

[Aucald]

well, one big difference is that highmaul still exists in AU draenor. it was ravaged into nothingness in the MU.

cho'gal's inclination towards the void is stronger as well. he immediately dives into worshiping it, it's not gradual at all.

garrosh wasn't born, of course.

oh, and what about ruhkmar? she's alive, and seems more paranoid and controlling than she was described in the MU.

I can't recall when exactly Highmaul was decimated in "Chronicles Vol. 2," but I believe it was during the Old Horde's establishing rampages (coinciding with Gul'dan's ascension to leadership) - at the point we interceded in the AU's timeframe Highmaul would've still been around and kicking, same as the MU if they follow the same general timelines. Cho'gall is a bit different but his descent might've been prompted by Ner'zhul being driven into reawakening the Dark Star (something that didn't happen until much later in the unaltered MU timeline). Garrosh wasn't born, that's pretty much a static change. Not so sure on Rukhmar as "Chronicle Vol. 2" doesn't really go into her personality following her resurrection by the Ascendants - just that she was less powerful, and less stable.

[derpkitteh]

I can't recall when exactly Highmaul was decimated in "Chronicles Vol. 2," but I believe it was during the Old Horde's establishing rampages (coinciding with Gul'dan's ascension to leadership) - at the point we interceded in the AU's timeframe Highmaul would've still been around and kicking, same as the MU if they follow the same general timelines. Cho'gall is a bit different but his descent might've been prompted by Ner'zhul being driven into reawakening the Dark Star (something that didn't happen until much later in the unaltered MU timeline). Garrosh wasn't born, that's pretty much a static change. Not so sure on Rukhmar as "Chronicle Vol. 2" doesn't really go into her personality following her resurrection by the Ascendants - just that she was less powerful, and less stable.

highmaul was decimated by the elements, and i was under the impression that was LONG before the old horde was even an idea, or even any of the old horde chieftains were born.

[DaveL]

Just finished reading it. I find it amusing how nowhere in this entire book they mentioned Med'an, even though Garona had quite a bit of highlighting.

Wasn´t it just recently they called out Med´an is no longer canon? There was some bluepost or tweet about it

[Bubleheart]

highmaul was decimated by the elements, and i was under the impression that was LONG before the old horde was even an idea, or even any of the old horde chieftains were born.

Goria was decimated by the elements. Highmaul wasn't beaten until later as Chronicles 2.0 describes Cho'gall being there for Highmaul's fall.

[derpkitteh]

Goria was decimated by the elements. Highmaul wasn't beaten until later as Chronicles 2.0 describes Cho'gall being there for Highmaul's fall.

ohhhh. it was in nagrand, right? that's what got me mixed up.

[Bubleheart]

Correct. Highmaul is in Nagrand. Goria was basically where Shattrath City is now.

[Aucald]

ohhhh. it was in nagrand, right? that's what got me mixed up.

Goria was the original Ogre capital, situated in Talador/Terokkar where Shattrath would later be built. It was destroyed by the Orcish clans first working together with the Elements some time ago. The destruction of Highmaul came much later in the timeline and much closer to the opening of the Dark Portal in the original continuity of events.