The Golden Ticket: One Free Retcon

[Zagreus]

I'd retcon Abby Lewis to be the big bad of BfA instead of N'Zoth, she's way more terrifying.

[Akibaboy]

Tbh, though, a specific story moment? Id retcon Teldrassil and make it so Delaryn and the extremists in the Night Elves destroyed the tree to assure the Alliance would blame Sylvanas, it would have at least made the entire thing a little more of a twist because then Sylvanas wouldnt be the obvious big bad and that "morally grey" thing might actually make sense.

I had a similar idea: So the Azerite stuff is happening. Teldrassil's deep roots essentially means its beaming with Azerite deposits, oozing with it in every branch unlike anywhere else. The Horde and Alliance both recognize it's happening. The Alliance just got done spying on / being drawn into conflict with Horde excavation teams in Silithus, pushing relations to the brink of war. Sylvanas demands that in light of those attacks, to maintain peace the Alliance needs to surrender Teldrassil because it's essentially a massive source of Alliance power sitting in the Horde's backyard. Anduin disagrees and points to Sylvanas' own outlook that she sees Azerite only as a weapon and not a force with positive potential.

Unable to negotiate, Sylvanas aims to occupy Darkshore and Teldrassil swiftly and claim the resources for the Horde. Things play out mostly the same, except for the final discussion - Delaryn points out that the Night Elves will never surrender, they will not be occupied, that the Horde will effectively be stuck in ongoing warfare throughout the occupation, splitting her army across yet another front... because for the Night Elves this is a religious, righteous battle and not just a tactical one. Sylvanas agrees. In order to not let the Azerite fall into the hands of the Alliance, and to not be marred in an endless war, she orders her aerial troops to ignite the Azerite deposits attached to the tree, setting the entire thing ablaze.

[Reinhart11]

At this point i'd retcon the whole of World of Warcraft. Way too much wasted potential on a massive scale. The story turned out to be utter garbage. How people can think that small changes would solve this train wreck at this moment in time is beyond me.

[Reaper0329]

If it weren't for the fact that it'd essentially kill the game? I'd retcon Fordring's stupid deus ex machina during ICC. Yeah, I get the whole "Light answered his prayer" bit but it's just...hamfisted? The Lich King, by all rights, won.

Our victory was necessary for the game, yes, but that one moment still sits poorly with me.

[Doffen]

Kael'thas not going mad so he could be the proper leader for the Blood Elves. As a Sunstrider, as a hero of the elves and as a leader figure I can see the greatness they could have written for him in the game. But alas, TBC was the expansion where the big lore-figures was the bad guys, and they went all in on that one.

Unfortunately they ended a very good character. Great boss fight though.

[Tokk]

Blizzard has just given you a golden ticket, good for one free retcon to anything in the Warcraft universe.

What do you choose?

I think I would have had Garrosh at the Death Gate. It never really made sense given how he was written for him to not be there.

[Powerogue]

I'd retcon Abby Lewis to be the big bad of BfA instead of N'Zoth, she's way more terrifying.

Abby Lewis, that questline with Uuna. Maybe it has to do with them being some of the only enemies in the game you can't just stab to death. The Sha of Violence doesn't really impact much when you can just stab him repeatedly until he falls over. But when a horrible, black-dripping abberation appears out of the smoke, untouchable, and crawling straight at you, that's pants-wetting.

[HoodKazekage]

The night elves never joined the alliance and became their own faction allied with the worgen and the tauren

[Rendark]

Delete everything after Wrath and start over.

[DemonHunter18]

Illidan chose to stay behind for his own reasons - the Pantheon didn't request he do so, and it doesn't seem like it was ultimately necessary. Illidan stayed because he wished to revenge himself directly on Sargeras, which is both why he repeated the refrain "the hunter is nothing without the hunt" and why when Sargeras is finally teleported into his throne in the Seat that Illidan says "at last." He's glad to finally contend with Sargeras once and for all. Binding away Sargeras is likely the best we can hope for, given his sheer scope and power, and in that I think "victory" is an apt description. At least for the time being both he and his Legion are powerless.

both of them will most likely come back.

[Aucald]

both of them will most likely come back.

I doubt we've seen the last of them myself. As is typically the case with most defeated villains and/or dead heroes, they've simply been stuffed into the cooler until an appropriate time comes to free them. The same thing happened to Sargeras was Medivh was killed - his soul was sent swirling back into the Nether and he went out of play until his return to the scene in Legion (or perhaps WotLK if he was truly the man behind Varimathras).

[Lodreh]

Humans killed all of the Orcs that came through the Dark Portal instead of putting them in concentration camps.

[TheRevenantHero]

Not to sound like a jerk, but your understanding of the Lore is incredibly poor. Pretty much everything you've typed in regards to Sargeras, the Pantheon, and the Void Lords is wrong.

Let's start with the Void Lords, and why they seek a Void Titan. As the other poster said - if Sargeras did not destroy the nascent Titan that was consumed by the Old God parasties, it would have created a Void Titan, and that would have spelled our doom. That is because the Void Titans are little more than a gate way device to be used by the Void Lords to usher in their coming. Once in our dimension, the Void Lords would spread over all existence like a wave, consuming all matter until literally nothing is left in their wake. This leads us to our second point of contention in your understanding of the lore - Sargeras and his reasons for forming the Burning Crusade.

Sargeras never fell to insanity or corruption, he simply was devoted to his grim duty. He DID go to the other Pantheon members originally when he discovered the Void-consumed World Soul, and pleaded for their help. The Pantheon, however, shunned him aside saying that he was a fool for believing the Void to be stronger than they were, and even worst for killing a nascent Titan. The Titan's had no understanding of the Void (and still do not), they arrogantly thought they could have purified the Titan, and in doing so, could have risked the entirety of creation.

Sargeras formed the Burning Legion out of the necessity of sparing the Universe from utter annihilation by essentially burning it and letting it re-grow, believing that the Universe started from nothing, it could do so again. His ideology was that the Void Lords needed a Void Titan to usher in their coming, and if there were literally no Titans left in the Great Dark Beyond, then the Void Lords could never enter our realm, and the universe would be spared utter annihilation. His methodology might not have been the most morally righteous one, but in the face of a foe he knew could not be stopped in any other way, this was the only direction he saw possible.

Next - we did not defeat Sargeras, not in any sense of the word. Sargeras is in a league all of his own, and we would have never stood a chance against him without some serious deus ex machina plot device to get us there. Even the battle against Argus was barely a victory - and it was considerably weaker compared to Sargeras. Remember, what we fought of Argus was it's avatar, similar to what we fought of Aggramar right before hand. We did not fight Argus in his pure Titan form, and it's arguable that Argus was in a severely weakened state when Sargeras transferred his soul into his avatar. Let's also not forget that Argus killed us during the raid as well without breaking a sweat - and it took Eonar and the other Titans to bring us back and give us a fighting chance.

Then, when all was said and done, the Titans had to use the last of their power to bind Sargeras to his seat on the Pantheon, and even then they still needed Illidan to serve as his Jailor to ensure that the Titan wouldn't break free. That's barely a victory in any sense of the word.

Lastly, on the subject of there potentially being more than one Titan out there - there isn't. This doesn't just come from the fact that the Titans themselves seem to be aware of the fact that Azeroth is the last Titan, but it also comes from the Illidan book, where a scene depicts Magtheridon discussing the Legion's progress in cleansing the Great Dark Beyond, stating that there are only a handful of worlds that still remain, Azeroth being one of them. By the time Legion takes place, nearly every single planet in the Great Dark Beyond has been destroyed by the Legion. Azeroth is one of the absolute last hold outs of life in the universe, which is why Sargeras went through such great lengths to claim it. Azeroth was his end-game, and had he managed to destroy the World Soul, or turn it into his Dark Titan, or really do whatever he had wanted, he would have succeeded in protecting the Universe from Azeroth.

So in summary: If Sargeras never created his Burning Crusade or destroyed the Nascent Titan - WoW simply would not exit. The Void Lords would have arrived, consumed the universe, and the story would have ended there. It would have been the very definition of a Bad End.

Azeroth is NOT the last world left. There is absolutely no evidence supporting that every other world has been destroyed by the time Legion took place.

[Unholyground]

I would like to see Tirion not die for no good reason, considering he would be a huge boon against the forces of death come next expansion.

[TheRevenantHero]

I'd retcon Varian dying so we can avoid having the soy boy in charge.

[DemonHunter18]

[Dannihilate]

All the way back to the launch of WoW...

- NE join the Horde, giving the Horde a more primal/nature/elemental theme.
- High/Blood Elves join the Alliance, giving the Alliance an overall more developed/industrial theme.
- Forsaken are not part of any faction (but could eventually join the Alliance since Sylv is a former elf and most of the undead are former humans)
- The overarching theme of the factions, at least in Vanilla, is Nature vs Civilization.

This would open the story up to having the Alliance being the aggressors more often and not always portrayed as the saintly good guys. Maybe some of the faction disputes are caused by the Humans harvesting a forest or the Dwarves despoiling Tauren lands/upsetting the elements while digging up their past, etc.

[matrix123mko]

Can I delete golden with my ticket?

I want that too.

[Dannihilate]

My runner up ticket would be to ret-con all the ret-cons:
No Eredar ret-con where Sargeras corrupts them and no space-goats. No ret-conned motivation for Sargeras, the Lich King, Illidan, (and potentially Sylvanas) where they secretly had this master plan and had to commit evil acts but for the greater good of the planet/universe; sometimes bad guys can just be bad guys. No Void-Lords. Arthas doesn't "share" the Lich King persona with Ner'zul and doesn't have to fight him for control- they stick to what was said at the end of WC3- "now we are ONE" and their souls merged into a single being. The writing for Garrosh is consistent. These are just the ones that I can think of top-of-mind, but I know there are several more.