Do Gnomes have any place in Warcraft?

[Tauror]

Why there are any other races besides orcs, humans, ogres and undead? Heck, why there are any other human kingdoms besides the Kingdom of Azeroth and Stonewind Keep?

Silly, silly Salandrin...

[Chonar]

Don't mix genders with race significance. Trolls are one of the most important races in Warcraft, and considering their bias against women, it makes sense there were no significant female trolls.

Your point has been carefully deconstructed, and piece by piece countered. It has been explained to you, in painstaking detail, why you are wrong.

Let it go.

[leaks]

They should come to the Forsaken. They'll be put to much better use.

[Kathranis]

Like the draenei and worgen, the gnomes were sort of a footnote in Warcraft history that had to be expanded for the sake of giving the Alliance more races. I still remember there being a fair amount of controversy when they were finally announced as the fourth Alliance race.

What I'm about to say applies to all three of the Alliance races announced after the first three: We barely knew anything about them, but we knew just enough that it restricted Blizzard's creativity. That's one of the reasons Blizzard has a hard time organically integrating those races with current storylines, without developing catalysts to explain their introduction to the Alliance, or forcefully injecting them into current events, or creating holes and retcons in the backstory so they have niches to fill.

All of the other races in the game were more thoroughly integrated into the lore, at least having major story arcs in Warcraft III or an ongoing, visible presence in the franchise as a whole, before they were turned into playable races.

The major exception being the pandaren, which were essentially a blank slate. They had an existing presence in Warcraft, but so little was known about them and their homeland was so disconnected from the established world that Blizzard basically had full creative control over not just where they lived, but their history, society, and role in the ongoing story.


That said, what other options did they have? High elves would perhaps have been a better choice, sharing Stormwind with the humans in the same way trolls shared Orgrimmar. Even now, that's probably the most logical option for a new Alliance-exclusive race, narrowly beating out the furbolgs.

[Greektoast]

There are incredibly important dwarves. Muradin to name one. He trained Arthas in combat and in being a young man. He also was the sacrifice needed (in a sense) for Arthas to wield Frostmourne.

Next: Brann. Brann Bronzebeard. Oh lawdy. He singlehandedly (with his pet radio-cat) to Yogg Saron. If not for him discovering Ulduar's secrets, we may have had encountered innumerable problems shortly after killing Loken. Like, I don't know, planetary re-origination.


So... yes. Dwarves are important.

[Zaphiron]

It was said there gonna add more story telling and add more faction lore aswell I beleave. Also I agree that there some big hole in some faction lore and I hope blizzard will fill these eventually.

[Airwaves]

So... yes. Dwarves are important.

Where did Dwarves come from? This is about gnomes.

[TheyCallMeTarzan]

I would swap them for something else. Not a big fan of them in any way. They're fun and seemed to have more of a place in the world during Vanilla, but that's about it - for me at least. Now they're just there. "Oh but they make tech for the Alliance"... Not a good reason for me, and definitely not for them to be a playable race.

[taurenburger]

Ofcourse, they make good catapult-throwing things.

Tbh, I actually like that gnomes are in WoW. They're great characters, smart, inventive, etc. Would be odd without these creatures.

[Nish77]

I'd personally like to see the gnomes given more wizened personalities. I think the game has a lot of easy going fun aspect to it but the gnomes are made a little too silly.

They ought to be the intelligent group of casters and engineers that live 100's of years IMO (I know nothing of WoW lore, though).

Besides, who doesn't like seeing someone underestimate a gnome in a story and get knocked out by a magic spell?

P.S. I'm nothing special IRL but I find the gnome hate funny when I doubt most people playing this game (or most ppl irl for that matter) are 6 foot 4 inch Olympic athletes with perfect proportions.

[Wishblade]

The gnomes are the Alliance version of goblins, the ones doing the technology and industrial stuff.

I'm sure the gnomes would be awesome if they just did more stuff, currently the only big thing I recall them doing is "retaking" Gnomeregan. Give them some lore and awesome moments and I'm sure I'd care more about them.

[Arrashi]

Gnomes fit into many places in warcraft uniwerse.
- Fridge
- Pot
- Oven
- Cooking fire
- Microweave

[Verdugo]

Gnomes fit into many places in warcraft uniwerse.
- Fridge
- Pot
- Oven
- Cooking fire
- Microweave

-Blast Furnace

[Wilian]

From Warcraft 2 Manual

Gnomish Inventor (Alliance Building)

The Inventors are highly adept at creating outlandishly clever contraptions for military use. Among the many bizarre inventions created by the Gnomes are the Flying Machines that hover high above both land and sea, as well as the implausible Submarine that can move under the seas. The Gnomes are also responsible for perfecting the technique of extracting various chemical compounds out of oil to make gunpowder and explosives. Although the Gnomes are a bit odd and eccentric, none can deny their value to the Alliance.

Any disputes you ever had or the stupid excuses you tried to make up to deny their part can now go and rot in the place of ignorance.

[Briga]

Like the draenei and worgen, the gnomes were sort of a footnote in Warcraft history that had to be expanded for the sake of giving the Alliance more races. I still remember there being a fair amount of controversy when they were finally announced as the fourth Alliance race.

As I recall when wow was first announced the originally proposed alliance races were Human, Dwarf and Gnome. Horde counterparts were Orc, Tauren and Troll.

Night Elves got added due to fan pressure, which led to the Forsaken being given to the Horde.

Imo it took them far too long to get Goblins into the Horde, they should have been there from day 1.

[Mall Security]

I am suprised anybody could even ask this, Gnomes are essential, under used, perhaps in the story, but I would say they are just as vital as Nightelves, or Trolls or Tauren. Unlike some Gnomes fill with pure joy when i see them, and if for nothing else add a sense of fun to the game.

[Yig]

You people who judge the lore based on this weird procedural score keeping and list making are weird, why do you need to justify a race's place in the lore like this based on how important they are in their actions? Gnomes fit in Warcraft aesthetic wise, if you don't appreciate it, then you have a very personalized take on Warcraft or you never "got it" in the first place. Half the time these complaints seem to stem from a sense of guilt or stigma attached to you feeling like you're not being taken seriously, as if WOW wasn't created from the start heavily rooted in satire and parody. Some WOW players are absolutely embarrassed to take WOW or it's story seriously at all, and then you have those who are embarrassed by Warcraft being silly and over the top in a juxtaposition with it's dark and serious tones.

Threads like this make me feel like I'm listening to children argue about whose father could beat up the other's father.

[Snowraven]

To be honest I always felt gnomes are just a filler race. They're there just because Alliance needed another race.

If Gnomes weren't in WoW, they'd have to be invented. Someone needs to develop the Alliance's tech, and it's not Dwarves, being almost all of theirs is related to blowing things up.

Horde have had Goblins since WC2/3, so it stands that Gnomes are the Alliance's Goblins. Just as the devs of WoW figured out, they needed another Alliance race. So they used Gnomes, only slightly mentioned. They gave them no home city though, sharing it with Ironforge (to balance, they made Trolls homeless too, leading to the Pre-Cata events).

They may not have had a long history, but they've been used well.

Dwarves invented steam tanks. If you also look in Ironforge, there's planes there, and in WC3 the pilot of the flying machine seemed to have been a dwarf. I always thought that it meant the gnomes were retconned out of lore and their inventions attributed to the dwarves.

Pre-TBC, the draenei were at best a footnote. Just sayin'.

To be honest, current draenei were a retcon too. The draenei we knew about were Akama's guys.
And the amount of content draenei get nowadays (none) kind of shows how much they also fit in WoW. Very little.



I don't get people's love for gnomes. Just look at them and their lore. The OP is right, they're only here for comic relief. Even in their leader short story, it was filled with stupid jokes and stuff. They couldn't even retake their town, oh, but they retook their entrance, right? That's like if someone took your house and you retook the door mat... whenever gnomes appear they're there more for comic effects. Millhouse Manastorm with his jokes, Willfred with his grandeur dreams, Gelbin in the Siege of Gnomeregan etc.

[Aquamonkey]

Dwarves invented steam tanks. If you also look in Ironforge, there's planes there, and in WC3 the pilot of the flying machine seemed to have been a dwarf. I always thought that it meant the gnomes were retconned out of lore and their inventions attributed to the dwarves.

There was never a "dwarf engineering" profession.

[joppas]

Correct me if im wrong, but didnt the gnomes fly around in airplanes to scout in warcraft 2?