On Warchief Vol'jin

[Darth-Piekus]

Gameplay trumps lore. That's their motto. It is obvious the story has to abide by the gameplay.

[Arrashi]

Gameplay trumps lore. That's their motto. It is obvious the story has to abide by the gameplay.

It doesn't matter when situation is fully explained in lore. And it was. Vol'jin was just that bad at dealing with single witch doctor.

[Darth-Piekus]

Sorry gameplay restrictions.

[Mehrunes]

Well nothing really prevents a bad monarch to do the same though the bad monarch is usually called a tyrant.

But that's not really relevant. What is relevant is the fact that the Horde didn't have Dictatorship during Thrall or Voljin. You can say it had with Garrosh or Guldan before. I don't know with Doomhammer. I have no Information of how Doomhammer treated his Horde.

And as I said twice already, you're conflating tyranny with dictatorship even though the two are not the same. No established succession laws indicating that it's a monarchy. The position originates from a solely military title. Political power located in the hands of a single individual (in Horde's case, literally absolute power, thanks to the Blood Oath).

Sorry gameplay restrictions.

And what gameplay restrictions would that be? You can't just dismiss the lore you don't like with a blanket statement of "but gameplay trumps lore/gameplay restrictions" without pointing out how it actually trumps said lore. As Arrashi has said, that piece of lore has been fully explained and is simply that Vol'jin is incompetent. The gameplay reason (not a restriction) for Vol'jin's incompetence most likely was, as Mormolyce has pointed out, that Blizzard didn't know what to do with the place, especially with the capital of the Horde next to it. Or didn't have the time for it. Something along these lines. But after that they came to the realization they can't really allocate more resources into creating a Troll capital there, they tailored the lore around that fact.

There's no restriction here. Only lore explanation for why the zone wasn't controlled by the Darkspears. There's absolutely nothing that restricted Blizzard from making it occupied by two Witch Doctors, or a billion Witch Doctors. Or 20 thousands Sargerases from various alternate universes. But Blizzard decided that direction they want to write Vol'jin is for him to be an incompetent twerp. And to accomplish that, they made the Echo Isles occupied by only one Witch Doctor.

And since this is a discussion about lore and not Blizzard's reasons for developing lore one way or another, Vol'jin can get all the flak for the state of things in-lore, which in this case is him failing to retake few islands from one Witch Doctor. For years.

[Darth-Piekus]

Then I suppose Garrosh should have known the existence of the Vrykul that trashed his First base in Northrend (the one at the beach) or he should have known that the mound under Warsong Hold was full of undead or I suppose he should have expected that he would be defenceless without Air support at the Highlands which happened when Twilight Dragons attacked. Seems that Garrosh is equally incompetent.

How would you call Thralls and Voljin's Horde political system?

[Arrashi]

Then I suppose Garrosh should have known the existence of the Vrykul that trashed his First base in Northrend (the one at the beach) or he should have known that the mound under Warsong Hold was full of undead or I suppose he should have expected that he would be defenceless without Air support at the Highlands which happened when Twilight Dragons attacked. Seems that Garrosh is equally incompetent.

How would you call Thralls and Voljin's Horde political system?

Because vrykul and val'kyr are native beings to draenor, and are heavily integrated into orc culture am i right ? And so are nerubians.

[Deleted]

Because vrykul and val'kyr are native beings to draenor, and are heavily integrated into orc culture am i right ? And so are nerubians.

Many Azerothian people were not aware what a Vrykul or a Nerubian was, hell, when the scourge plagued Lordaeron many humans didn't even know Kalimdor was real.

It is not a matter of getting there and finding new creatures not native to your planet but doing your homework and antecipating there is a possibility there will be strange new beings and play defensive as best as possible, I suppose.

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Well its not fair to say "Well he wasn't there killing the lich king" or whatever, cause blizzard has frequently left out major lore characters in major events in the game. They can only do so much, if all of WoW was written into a book, we would probably see a lot more activity from major players in azeroth. At the end of the night not all ideas make it into the final product, like the scrapped nerubian quest zone, other scrapped content.

Who would be a better warchief? Sylvanas? I love Sylvanas, but she is selfish in her motivations. Another orc? We saw how well that went.. Vol'jin was the obvious choice, weather you like it or not. x.x

Also as for Vol'jin using "recruits" to take back echo isle, well the dev's had to put in the game somewhere, and well the quest line wouldnt make sense anywhere else but at the beginning of the game.

Also you kill Dar'khan in a level 15 quest. ^^

Precisely. Sure, there were adventurers sent to Echo Isles to take Zalazane's head but obviously lore wise they did not keep on sending people day after day to do it when they realized Zalazane was messing with them the whole time.
It is simply inconceivable. Now if some confident recruit appeared saying they could do it, well sure, give it a try, good luck with that.

It is the same as assuming everyone that's gone there came out alive. I mean, it only makes sense game wise because PCs cannot die forever.

[Wildberry]

Who would be a better warchief? Sylvanas? I love Sylvanas, but she is selfish in her motivations. Another orc? We saw how well that went.. Vol'jin was the obvious choice, weather you like it or not. x.x

Because every Orc turns out like Garrosh, right? Thrall was such a terrible Warchief, he just declared war on everything

[Mehrunes]

Then I suppose Garrosh should have known the existence of the Vrykul that trashed his First base in Northrend (the one at the beach) or he should have known that the mound under Warsong Hold was full of undead or I suppose he should have expected that he would be defenceless without Air support at the Highlands which happened when Twilight Dragons attacked. Seems that Garrosh is equally incompetent.

You're comparing apples and rubber ducks as usual. No one knew about the Vrykul, let alone the Kvaldir. Or the location of the Nerubian pits, because none of the factions has the technology to discover underground caves and tunnels. Zalazane was a Witch Doctor. Something common across most, if not all Troll cultures. Vol'jin was a Troll. High ranking in the tribe considering he was the leader at the time of Zalazane conundrum. He should have been educated on all things Troll, or at least those common to his tribe. He was not. And again, "Garrosh is equally bad/worse than Vol'jin" is a piss-poor argument. Yes, him sending away the air support was idiotic. I'm not defending Garrosh.

And weirdly enough, none of that supports, or even is remotely related, to your argument that Vol'jin is incompetent because of "gameplay restrictions". It's almost as if you could not support it.

How would you call Thralls and Voljin's Horde political system?

Dictatorship. The personality of the leader is irrelevant. The power structure of the Horde is established by the Blood Oath. Given lack of hereditary rule, most monarchies are out and given lack of succession laws, even elective monarchy doesn't fit. Or, you know, the lack of a crown, any kind of crowning ceremony or other regalia. The history of the title of Warchief only supports dictatorship further.

Many Azerothian people were not aware what a Vrykul or a Nerubian was, hell, when the scourge plagued Lordaeron many humans didn't even know Kalimdor was real.

It is not a matter of getting there and finding new creatures not native to your planet but doing your homework and antecipating there is a possibility there will be strange new beings and play defensive as best as possible, I suppose.

Because not preparing for the possibility of a bunch of huge-ass humans summoning a dense mist that will fuck you over is a case of "not doing one's homework". Fog thinning devices are after all one of the basic military tools. Totally comparable to Vol'jin being uninformed about the scope of the powers of a Witch Doctor. It's only one of the cornerstones of Darkspear culture. And the Horde didn't go to Northrend to dick around by pondering whether or not is there a Nerubian tunnel beneath a particular spot. They were in Scourge territory, they had to build an outpost unless they wanted to get massacred by the Scourge.

[Darth-Piekus]

Looks like Voljin is here to stay as a Warchief.

[Wildberry]

Looks like Voljin is here to stay as a Warchief.

The Chinese leak was correct.

[Darth-Piekus]

And in the end Voljins and Thralls rule is definately not a Dictatorship because the Blood Oath is not even a valid reason. There are Oaths in every type of government. If would have been a Dictatorship if it fullfilled the criteria of a Dictatorship but it doesn't.

And finally No More Orcs. No More Hellscreams and a Worthy Enemy to Fight after a warm up that we had with those Orcs.

[Wildberry]

And in the end Voljins and Thralls rule is definately not a Dictatorship because the Blood Oath is not even a valid reason. There are Oaths in every type of government.

Great rebuttal.

[Deleted]

Did I heard it right? The world will be pretty much destroyed? Most of the characters will be killed?

[Zulkhan]

The Chinese leak was correct.

Much like occurred with WoD: correct about a lot, not about all however (which was physically impossible considered the absurd amount of stuff mentioned).

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Edit: now that I look at the official page I saw Sylvanas there. Incredibly, the leak really got a shit ton of stuff right.

[Arrashi]

To be fair, guys we are yet to know what will they do with him. So far chances are he will be as irrelevant as he was in WoD. It's not like they gonna tell us about smaller stories, we have to wait till beta to know what will happen to vol'jin (hopefully they will go with "he gets captured" option so we can h-h-h-h-h-heeeeelp him).

Also guys check this out: There are some characters listen as important on the site, but ones mentioned to....bite the dust like thrall and jaina are not there. Chances are sylvanas is here only to show her yet another new model.

And anduin looks like even bigger pansy. Get a haircut hippie.

[Zulkhan]

Chances are sylvanas is here only to show her yet another new model

However there's a decent description saying she's blatantly going to play a role of some sort, preoccupied that the uber-Legion invasion is going to kick her to the afterlife, realizing that her remaining Valkyrs can be barely counted on the fingers of one hand. Also, Genn Greymane is shown as well and with a similar amount of details, pretty obvious their stories will be intertwined.

Now, about how much these stories will be good or relevant, that's another matter. But something is there.

And anduin looks like even bigger pansy. Get a haircut hippie.

When Khadgar flew down there and I saw Anduin, I swear he looked like an Arthas clone: not only very similar hair but a similar attire, included the "holy" book on his left side.

They really tried hard to make Anduin look like Arthas, the only valuable difference is that the attire in question is a bunch of clothes instead of plate armor (for obvious reasons).

[Arrashi]

Weird thing about sylvanas. In hunter bow it says it was wielded by infamous ranger general. Is that her bow ? It looks really weird, and nothing like one she has in its basic form.

Then again, i don't care whos blood is flowing, as long as blood is flowing.

[Wildberry]

Edit: now that I look at the official page I saw Sylvanas there. Incredibly, the leak really got a shit ton of stuff right.

That was the first thing I checked. It's happening.

[Zulkhan]

That was the first thing I checked. It's happening.

I'm still shocked that Demon Hunters became a thing for real.