Too much Technology in the World...of Warcraft.

[Baladash]

When I played Dungeons and Dragons regularly I had a gnome paladin who was an engineer/alchemist who made himself a "Holy Avenger" revolver that he made magically imbued holy bullets that he could change out during battle. Inspired by Gene Starwind from outlaw star and the castor bullets. His name was sock.
*"Did you ever know that you're my heeeerrrrooooo..." plays during a montage of Sock's adventures*

...Anywho, the reason I bring this up is that even know he had sweet bullets they were balanced around not being armor penetrating, or if they were magical shields could block the armor pen ones. Just a thought about why guns may not be as powerful as we would think. I think they're more of a Blunderbuss or the primitive weapons of the American Civil War rather than the hightech machine guns we have now.

[brirrspliff]

One thing about WoW that has never made sense to me is all the technology in this game

wrong! goblins.

I was always under the impression that the world we play in was some kind of medieval fantasy type setting like LoTR but I was way wrong.

yes, you were way wrong. it is the "warcraft" setting. (c) blizzard. no frodos and gandalfs.

[dklol]

Can you imagine playing a person playing WoW..in WoW.. playing another person playing their toon in WoW?

We have to go deeper!

[Rivelle]

You cannot apply logic and reasoning to a fantasy game. It just doesn't work that way. :P

[Zuben]

Steamtanks can be countered with magic, but weapons of mass destruction ála Stonetalon bomb go too far. The manabomb used on Theramore was the result of a complicated plan that required a very rare magical material(the focusing iris), so that one had a decent excuse. But the Stonetalon bomb was there just because lolgoblins. I'm guessing Blizz realized it was too much and are now kinda ignoring it and hoping everyone else do too.

[Protar]

You cannot apply logic and reasoning to a fantasy game. It just doesn't work that way. :P

Yes it does work that way. Ignoring logic and consistency just because magic exists in the setting is plain bad writing. It's not just "anything goes."

[Rivelle]

Yes it does work that way. Ignoring logic and consistency just because magic exists in the setting is plain bad writing. It's not just "anything goes."

It's also not real life.

Otherwise I'd be outside right now riding my flying mount around and throwing lightning bolts at people instead of sitting at my computer doing it in game.

[Sydänyö]

I wish people would stop using the term "steampunk" for WoW. Steampunk is a completely different animal, and while a steampunk setting may have some fantasy flavor, the genre is steampunk, not fantasy. Mainly steampunk is sci-fi or alternate reality/history.

WoW on the other hand is quite firmly in the fantasy genre, even though it has some scientific elements. It's not steampunk, and even the scientific/techno elements of WoW aren't steampunk. Steam, yes. Punk? Not so much. Just because something is powered by steam, it doesn't mean it's steampunk. Steam-powered trains and ships weren't steampunk. They were just old, and used steam as their power source.

Even technofantasy doesn't work for WoW, since most technofantasy settings are science fiction with magic.

Just because you've heard the term "steampunk" somewhere and seen someone use it to describe WoW, or the "techno" elements in WoW, it doesn't mean it has been used correctly. WoW isn't steampunk. WoW's technology isn't steampunk. WoW is just fantasy with some science added in.

I could summarize it like this: WoW is steampunk just as much as every science fiction is cyberpunk. In other words, not quite.

[Trigg]

I don't know guys, all this Technology seems to be a giant flaw on Blizzards part when they were making this game. The game developers were smart enough to notice that you can't have Pandaren be a druid because it wouldn't make sense for a bear to turn into a bear. However they were not smart enough to notice that gun wielders vs sword wielders would simply not be a fair fight.

I'm pretty sure a warrior in wow can dodge a bullet fired from a hunter. I'ts a fantasy setting. Paladins using swords can put up shields that deflect bullets.

This isn't an FPS.

IMO the main reason why it has all this is, it adds colour and variation to the lore and to the world, and it also allows people to choose how they want to play.
The tech is powered by magic. it's nothing like our modern world tech. It has crystal robots, floating shards of light and laser beams coming out of people's hands.

Personally i can't see how this inclusion of tech that fits well in the lore and the game can in any way break the imersion, since this is all part of a world that you are imerssed in.

If you want to play a game where it's all medi-eval warfare, don't play wow.

One other game that comes to mind with all this is Final Fantasy. Do you complain in the same way about that? They're fantasy games, just like wow is a fantasy game. They don't need to abide by real world rules and they're more fun by not doing so.

[Netherspark]

I agree the magic has a lot to do with it, but when you have guns why use swords? that's what I'm asking.

Guns and their amunition are much harder to produce, especially in large numbers.

[Grocalis]

Yes it does work that way. Ignoring logic and consistency just because magic exists in the setting is plain bad writing. It's not just "anything goes."

It's a fantasy world, it makes it's own logic. That's kind of the point of it being it's own world, and not just Earth with green skinned men.

Think about it. What can be done in this game? I can turn a fifteen foot man into a sheep. I can stand in the middle of a open field, in daylight, and be completely invisible. I can summon a big breasted demon from another otherworldly dimension. I killed a dragon whose BLOOD was beating the junk out of me. I am now running a farm in a region that grows twenty foot tall turnips.

How does any of that have "logic"? What is "real" about any of that? It's not, it's larger then life. That's the point.

In this world, a gun is just as useful as a bow, and a guy using a rifle can have his bullets shrugged off by a warrior who can chase after you while spinning around on one leg with such g-forces that his axe should fly right out of his hand comically into the distance.

[SamR]

I find the Warcraft world far less jarring than the SWTOR world which makes even less sense on multiple levels.

[Verdugo]

Orks already managed to get to the top of engineering evolution.

[Protar]

It's also not real life.

Otherwise I'd be outside right now riding my flying mount around and throwing lightning bolts at people instead of sitting at my computer doing it in game.

No it isn't real life. It's got magic and dragons and steampunk robots. So how on earth are swords still as relevant as they were in the middle ages in the real world?

[StationaryHawk]

Gyrocopters have been part of the Warcraft universe since Warcraft II. Robots and computers have been a thing since Vanilla World of Warcraft. Technology is simply part of the world, and your ideas of how it should be doesn't change any of that.

I suspect the reason we're still using swords and shields in the presence of guns and rockets is because it's a Fantasy World.

[Protar]

It's a fantasy world, it makes it's own logic. That's kind of the point of it being it's own world, and not just Earth with green skinned men.

Think about it. What can be done in this game? I can turn a fifteen foot man into a sheep. I can stand in the middle of a open field, in daylight, and be completely invisible. I can summon a big breasted demon from another otherworldly dimension. I killed a dragon whose BLOOD was beating the junk out of me. I am now running a farm in a region that grows twenty foot tall turnips.

How does any of that have "logic"? What is "real" about any of that? It's not, it's larger then life. That's the point.



In this world, a gun is just as useful as a bow, and a guy using a rifle can have his bullets shrugged off by a warrior who can chase after you while spinning around on one leg with such g-forces that his axe should fly right out of his hand comically into the distance.

Yes you can do all of those things, but there's explanations for them that make sense within the established rules of the universe. Killing a dragon who's blood is attacking you sounds pretty whacky sure, but there's a massively detailed backstory for this dragon all of which culminates in it's blood attacking you. There is no lore or internal logic telling us why swords are still a valid means to counter a laser gun. In Vanilla there was an explanation. Goblin tech exploded too much for anyone other than goblins to consider using it, gnomes were probably too cautious to unleash their full technological potential after what happened in Gnomeregan with nuclear power, Titan tech was unavailable to mortals and dwarven siege weaponry hadn't really been around for too long. Now though goblin tech seems to have stabilised enough to provide the baseline for the Horde military power, gnomes have gnomeregan back at least partially, we've taken over several titan facilities and dwarven machinery has been around for a lot longer now.

[StationaryHawk]

Yes you can do all of those things, but there's explanations for them that make sense within the established rules of the universe. Killing a dragon who's blood is attacking you sounds pretty whacky sure, but there's a massively detailed backstory for this dragon all of which culminates in it's blood attacking you. There is no lore or internal logic telling us why swords are still a valid means to counter a laser gun. In Vanilla there was an explanation. Goblin tech exploded too much for anyone other than goblins to consider using it, gnomes were probably too cautious to unleash their full technological potential after what happened in Gnomeregan with nuclear power, Titan tech was unavailable to mortals and dwarven siege weaponry hadn't really been around for too long. Now though goblin tech seems to have stabilised enough to provide the baseline for the Horde military power, gnomes have gnomeregan back at least partially, we've taken over several titan facilities and dwarven machinery has been around for a lot longer now.

You may as well be arguing how plate-wearing characters are capable of moving around in their unrealistically enormous armor, wielding swords as big as themselves.

In the case where one fails to wrap their mind around the fact that World of Warcraft is a fantasy world which does not follow the same restrictions as real life, a wizard did it.

[Verdugo]

In the case where one fails to wrap their mind around the fact that World of Warcraft is a fantasy world which does not follow the same restrictions as real life, a wizard did it.

It still needs some anchors into reality, otherwise it would be just pure randomness.

[GnomercyBeastmaster]

I like a balance of technology in my fantasy MMORPG that included the scifi of outlands and spacegaots. This game has a little of everything. Trying to sort it all out will just ruin the experience of the game for you. Love it for what it is

[taurenburger]

Gosh, I guess humanoids in games can't progress like we do irl...