[Lore]Blizzards big mistakes - When did it all start going wrong? And what caused it?

[Halyon]

People are impossible to please. Not defending Blizz, nor the community, but it is def. a deciding factor.

[Wilfire]

MoP. Prior to MoP Warcraft was all about buff but dumb guys & gals beating the shit out of each other. It wasn't particularly deep or sophisticated, but it was engaging and fun. MoP is when mr. non-toxic masculinity Anduin and his boyfriend Baine started to take the spotlight and it's all been a heavyhanded moral lesson ever since.

Funnily enough, Metzen tried to give us some of that meathead type of toxic masculinity back in WoD but it all went downhill from there because of poorly planned content pacing and scrapped features. I wonder how different things would've turned out had WoD been received positively.

[Super Dickmann]

MoP. Prior to MoP Warcraft was all about buff but dumb guys & gals beating the shit out of each other. It wasn't particularly deep or sophisticated, but it was engaging and fun. MoP is when mr. non-toxic masculinity Anduin and his boyfriend Baine started to take the spotlight and it's all been a heavyhanded moral lesson ever since.

Correct. Mists is when the slide towards moralizing piffle at war with its own purpose took center stage and never looked back.

Pretty good gameplay though.

[ksehsatoo]

yes it was Cata easily
While in TBC they made us with spaceships and completely retcon Draenei lore, back then at least they apologized for that
In cata we got holy cows, no amount of puns is enough for that, also they insisted that 'lore-wise' they are just druid of sun, yet we see them with paladins everywhere, and even playing some minor roles in both priest and paladin campaign

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u do know that alliance tried to kill every single living high elf in wc3 tft right? that doesn't make sense
in fact there shouldn't been any high elf with alliance in wow in first place, or they have the worst (fictional) stockholm syndrome i ever saw

Alliance killed the High Elves? I've never heard that. Do you have a source?

The only thing I find it;

"Years later an Alliance of Lordaeron Prince (Arthas Menethil) came and killed %90 of the High Elven population, children, women and their King Anasterian Sunstrider have died. They named themselves Blood Elves in memory of their fallen people against the Scourge and they painted all their blue themed things to red."

It's widely know Arthas was corrupted and acted as the Scourge and not as the Alliance. He already was the Lich King when he marched on Lordaeron.
As it's stated in the last sentence of my quote: "fallen people against the Scourge"

[sam86]

Alliance killed the High Elves? I've never heard that. Do you have a source?

mission 3/4 in wc3 tft -.- ? they literally run for their lives from alliance

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MoP and WoD hardly defines a trend. In BfA the threat is an old god, so constantly trying to one up the threat level.

old gods are nowhere close to threat lvl of a corrupted titan who wanted to rape (the exact word they used was 'penetrate') our planet titan soul, we know that all old gods combined on azeroth are nowhere as strong as Aman'thul, and the entire titan pantheon order is weaker than Sargeras

[Zandalariprelate]

Warcraft never really had the best story ever told but it was good. Being made into a mmo hurt it a lot but i think the lore really started to die with WoD.

This, the mmorpg made new brand characters to come cheesy and bland in most of the cases with very few being the exception. Also it doesn't help that being a mmorpg opens the problem of "too many hands in the kitchen" which results in characters doing 180 grades every while and retconning things to push the storyline x faction in the writing team wants to push(BTS being retconed to fit Sylvanas' 1900D Chest game)

[omeomorfismo]

imo, when they pussified the belfs at the end of tbc.
im not even a belf fan in the slightest, but damn, demonlishing their pally characterization was a very low.

[ro9ue]

BC. Draenei, spaceships, etc.

The Wrath titan technology was really bad too. But it was the Time Travel and Alternate Dimensions of WoD that were pretty much the nail in the coffin.

CoT dungeons were fine as they seemed to be snippets or pockets of time sections. But WoD... an entire expansion dedicated to an alternate universe in the past made me not care about the lore at all.

I loved Legion as an expansion, and the spaceships were cool on their own, but I absolutely dislike them in the Warcraft universe.

Crude goblin machines are about as far as I'm willing to go on that stuff. No titan machines, no legion spaceships, no draenei technology. Fuck all that.

If I want that I'll play Sci-fi stuff.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

WoW doesn't have a "lore" issue. The story and themes are... fine, no worse or better than a regular comic title.

The problem with WoW is that they can't seem to find the best way to deliver the lore, the narrative, through the gameplay, thusly what should be thematic arcs that encompass whole expansions -such as Sylvanas plans and Saurfang's redemption- are just blips that happen amongst a main narrative that focus little on the on the most relevant narratives, either plot wise or theme wise.

[Dark Succ]

TBC fucked everything up imo. The small stories were good, ofc, but the main narrative? Not good at all, if you ask me. (RIP Kael'thas)

WotLK, aside from Arthas & the Scourge taking up the idiot ball, was fucking legendary in regards to lore.

Anything after that, minus MoP & Legion (Well, all zones in legion minus Argus, Broken Shore and Val'sharah at least, those sucked but others were amazing imo) was dogshit.

[Daronokk]

The Burning Crusade with the Draenei retcon, spaceships and other bullshit.

[ravenmoon]

there was some mistakes, big msitakes that could be bypassed, the first one was in vanilla when they shove the forsakens in the horde and the night elves in the alliance

it could and it was bypassed by the reasons of "alliance of convenience" for several reasons, thats ok

in TBC things went wrong again, by retconing the Draenei and shoving the blood elves in the horde, with all the mostly random main history there, yet, its bearable, because some logical reasons like, "hey illidan is slaving people lets kill him", not good reasons but yeah.


To me, when things went to shit without the reckoning was when they went full yolo in MOP with all that peace bullshit, change Varian to be more peaceful and Made Garrosh into a villain, you simple can have a "peace" history with the main story of the game, is insane and it was the lore was thrown into the dumpster

The results was the horde losing without identity, the alliance forgetting everything, just to not matter a single shit later cause war again, and doing the same plot of wanting peace

Agreed on that one. Neither night elves nor forsaken needed to wholly join the alliance or horde to have some of their kin playable on each. that could have bypassed a lot of needless retcon.

1. A group of young night elves wanted to play a larger role in affairs, travel and bring their knowledge and culture to the world. Found friendship and more commonality with the humans first.

Most night elves however are neutral and don't interfere with the troubles of younger races. they do keep an eye out in secret for the youngesters as there aren't many young night elves around.

2. Though I haven't thought much about it, they could have had an excuse for the undead too,such that lone undead adventurers being hunted by alliance raes, often find work and toleration amongst horde races and eventually work fot hem some even gaining loyalty to them, but it's not a "faction" - even though you start in undercity doing stuff for your race, it leads you to the horde as an individual, not the whole race.

But the banshee queen, doesn't let anyone ever fully go, she fully intends to make use of your loyalties to the horde to further her machinations and schemes … when the time is right.

[matrix123mko]

The Burning Crusade with the Draenei retcon, spaceships and other bullshit.

I like this. I wish they did Draenei like that in Warcraft 3.

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Agreed on that one. Neither night elves nor forsaken needed to wholly join the alliance or horde to have some of their kin playable on each. that could have bypassed a lot of needless retcon.

1. A group of young night elves wanted to play a larger role in affairs, travel and bring their knowledge and culture to the world. Found friendship and more commonality with the humans first.

Most night elves however are neutral and don't interfere with the troubles of younger races. they do keep an eye out in secret for the youngesters as there aren't many young night elves around.

This would look much better. The only downside is that night elf players wouldn't get to see their zones playable.

2. Though I haven't thought much about it, they could have had an excuse for the undead too,such that lone undead adventurers being hunted by alliance raes, often find work and toleration amongst horde races and eventually work fot hem some even gaining loyalty to them, but it's not a "faction" - even though you start in undercity doing stuff for your race, it leads you to the horde as an individual, not the whole race.
But the banshee queen, doesn't let anyone ever fully go, she fully intends to make use of your loyalties to the horde to further her machinations and schemes … when the time is right.

I think player could be sent as a spy by Sylvanas. He would go alongside some ambassadors and other spies. Sylvanas' planwould be to make Horde attack Eastern Kingdoms.

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imo, when they pussified the belfs at the end of tbc.
im not even a belf fan in the slightest, but damn, demonlishing their pally characterization was a very low.

I wish they went for way: "We are thankful to you but we will not worship you again." Their source of power would be Sunwell.

[Thelyron]

BC ruined it, wrath redeemed it, good lore in cata and mop, and then wod ruined it again, and it's been downhill since.

[ravenmoon]

Storytelling of Warcraft only has 2 main flaws.

1. The audience can't handle a story that moves forwards. We're used to the stories of games and movies being solid and unchanging. There may be expansion packs, but they tell an additional story.

Wow gives us a world that lives. Things continue on. This means change occurs, in the characters, places and knowledge we have. That's how the real world works, and no one likes it. We would prefer to be able to head into the old neighbourhood of our childhood, and find everything the same as it was before. Every time a character evolves or grows, or changes or picks a bad path, people freak our about how the character isn't the same anymore. Captain America in Avengers: Endgame, will always remain the same when we watch that movie. Jaina in WoW won't be the same. Human brains are neither wired nor trained to like that too much, normally.


2. Blizzard is telling the story like a book. They know the conclusions, and are feeding it to us chapter by chapter. The problem is, a lot of chapters in adventure books suck or at least do not appeal to us, to be in for long. You watch a movie and the dwarves hunting a dragon are stuck in an enchanted forest. Maybe you hate that part of the movie. It's not the part you came for, and it takes frikking 30 minutes. In WoW though, that chapter you do not like, takes 8 months or more.

Blizzard needs to cool it on chapters that have no pay-off to their plotlines for 2 years. Each major patch should be satisfying stand-alone. They may have a satisfying conclusion in mind. But if the story isn't satisfying without that conclusion, don't keep us in that unsatisfied state for a year or more. That's not satisfying storytelling.

I admit those are legitimate issues you've pointed out, but i think we could still have had a much better story /lore despite the problem those two present - take tv series , you get the story in installments, yet that isn't a problem, even for multi season sagas. And as for point 1, yes, while people don't like change, change also excites people, if you do the story well they'd love the evolution. Take SWTOR, i hated the fact that expansion to expansion very little changed, however the story continued to be very interesting even after they stopped doing 8 different class story lines and just told 2, then 1, the stories were all engaging and things definitely moved forward a lot, and that was one of the best aspects of the game.

Blizzard on the other hand do a fantastic job giving new things in the expansion, and while it does appear people hate story changes, i think that is more because the changes aren't done well even when it's an okay or even brilliant change.. if you don't do it well, people aren't going to like it. They choose not to make the effort to present and explain, or map the changes well in game or in their books. They could have written many more books and comics explaining things further especialyl from a major character perspective, and had those books in game available. The game could have more focused on the world and zones and it's people's/culture continuing to expand on the richness many of the people groups are introduced with (look at how rich and mysterious the night elves with their mysterious star culture, their fabled arcane past and the enigma of their current simple living state with male druids and female moon priests with very diverse and distinct roles - there is so much in that to bring out, not limited to the return of the highborne or new spin offs like the nightborne - this is what I mean by providing depth of culture and location in the actual game and doing far more to explain many of the evolutions everywhere in game) - what was to stop the lore team giving details to NPCs so that when you click on them you got information about the zone, it's bestiary, its history, the culture of that NPCs people or town/base etc - yet none of that appears, not to mention how interesting it would have libraries you could read far more than is available with each race having different (sometimes multiple ways of recording stuff - example draenei store information in crystals and books too, as well as word of mouth - elves having Ancients with information they can read, perfect memory, arcane librams and other things even reading from the stars)

The stuff they could have done. As much as I didn't like the decision for the blood elves to join the horde at the time (it seemed a brilliant move - but the execution was so lacking, and not enough to seem plausible even though it could have actually been plausible - how you tell such drastic changes as high elves choosing the horde needs depth, and if you can't show that depth in-game you need a book or several to explore it.

Wasted opportunies, they could have done much better and I feel people would have liked the changes, and appreciated the multi media availability. I for instace feel it is a strength that warcraft continues its story and evolves it, even when they do a poor job (and it's not always they do, they mostly do a good job, but it's the volume of bad things that really hurts it, the lore to be believed and respected needs to have been a lot more flawless than it's turned out with far fewer mistakes and bad bits than we had - and they needed to make the effort to make it so. I use to find one thing about RPGs annoying, when the story the game or book tells is over, that's it, you never get to see how it affects the peoples, whether they change, what changes, and how they come "after disaster or great fortune" - MMOs give us that opportunity.. WArcraft has so many races that its current events affect greatly, the night elves for example start off with a back story of 15,000 years, 5k of an arcane wonder empire with catastrophe that determins 10,000 years of magic prohbition and simple living that is shattered when we first meet in wc3, the very nature of their backstory and the events of their introduction demand that this group would change after WC3. An MMO, allows you to see the changes happening, which is good, because in their introduction you have many questions.. "how are they children of the stars? What does that mean and look like especially it was their main identity adopted in a their original era".. "what did this amazing civilization that was described as so wonderful look like?" "how did these so called described as highly intelilgent and immortal elves live like before, and how have they managed to live so different and why?" "what does Elune exactly do? What are the priests belief system, why were they all female... " etc etc, there are so many questions, such an explosive introduction asks, that you really want to see more, and how this group changes.. cos face it, only damaged forests and ruins isn't actually that attractive.

Same goes for the high elves, who although you meet a game earlier, have a lot of lore backstory that is connected to the night elves, and their biggest exposure is their destruction and pollution of their sunwell, and you are dying to know if this group survives or if they will recover. WC3 doesn't do enough, especially the cliff hanger of Kael'thas going with Illidan, who at this point is clearly an Anti-hero, not a villain, especially if you add the events of the WotA to it and actualyl read it carefully for his role), you have so many questions here, what would these new blood elves do? What about those who refused to join them and stayed high elves or travelled with Jaina to the new continent.

What is the fate of humanity and the orcs having left the EAstern Kingdoms in ruins and now in this new foreign ancient land where immortals live, and ancient wild beasts, civilizations and mysteries. You actually want more after this, not less. so I don't think continuing the story is the problem as much as how they came about many of their "changes" and how they were executed.

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Well, most of you guys have some pretty good points. Some of which i do really agree with. I'll go over some of my main arguments with why the story went down in quality.

Warcraft 3 felt very much like a novel. The story followed a predetermined storyline that was character driven. Three entire campaigns were based on Arthas's character, and it is one of the main reasons why that particular story is remembered so fondly. And when considering all the other campaigns, each was focused around particular leaders of their respective factions, which grew with the story being told. They followed Thrall, Grom, Jaina, Medivh, Malfurion, Tyrande, Maiev, Kael'thas, Illidan. They were what drove the story forward. The world was only a medium through which that could be done. You can clearly see that through how simple and undetailed the loading screen maps were.

World of Warcraft took the different approach of making the world the main focus. While that brought one of the greatest games that has ever been made, in the form of World of Warcraft Classic, it did also represent a completely different format for storytelling, completely incompatible with the way it was done in the RTS games. By the time Classic was done, the team was entirely void of any creativity in my opinion. Which is why they were forced to go with an entire 180 in TBC, and go from the antiheroes the Illidari were in the Curse of the Blood Elves, to completely turning them into villains, with no respect given to their previous interpretations. That started the focus on gameplay over story, which meant that the only way to have sufficient enemies for our heroes to be excited to defeat was to turn former lore characters into villains. And they did that all the way until Mists of Pandaria, when they were completely out of material and started with something fresh, but completely opposite to what Warcraft stood there until then.

The MMO is a medium through which the work is put on one character, gameplay and storywise. Your character. And because the player was given complete freedom, it was impossible to tell a linear story. There could be millions of potential stories, each unique and different. Classic went in this direction all the way. The previous story could also be retconned for the sake of a more beautiful and interesting world. The clearest example of that is the fact that during the alpha development, there were actual considerations of moving the Dark Portal underwater to Azshara, if that could be considered better, completely changing nearly everything that was set up in the RTS games.

And this gets into another issue. Chris Metzen. While i believe he did some very good work by putting the foundation of all Blizzard franchises in terms of lore, i think the man had a huge shift in the way he wrote anything. The golden age was when it came to Warcraft 2 and 3, Diablo 1 and 2 and Starcraft. But after World of Warcraft Classic, he took a huge dive into an endless push of the rule of cool over everything, including the integrity of the world he built. That is made the best clear around the 2010, where World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, were nearly identical in their plethora of flaws. Villains that had no intrinsic motivations, and could only be killed in their original dimension. Characters completely forgot who they were in the past, and turned from vulnerable people with tragedy into their past to unmovable superheroes that always were right and always had their plots win. Just look at how many crazy things happened in Cataclysm that completely broke the suspension of disbelief, like the entire Indiana Jones thing in Uldum.

For the last 6 months or so, me and one of my friends have been working to rework the entirety of the Warcraft storyline starting with that huge change in direction that was World of Warcraft. We mainly wished to conserve the factions and characters while changing the story sufficiently enough for it to be of great quality. However our continous efforts have changed the story so much, because of the butterfly effect, that it is more of an completely alternate story from WoW. And we also intend to work this into a long series of RPG/RTS hybrid campaigns, sort of a perfected form of the Founding of Durotar. The main change we have is separating the peoples of Azeroth into 4 factions instead of 2, with the kaldorei and the forsaken remaining on their own. Each faction would receive new allies with the progress of the campaigns, with the illidari becoming allied with the forsaken. Each faction has its own identity and motives.

We are openly looking for other people that would like to learn about our work, and who would like to provide feedback and help us build up a good lore for Warcraft, that was not affected by the many flaws brought by its MMO adaptation. If you are interested, or just want to ask me further questions, please PM or contact me on Discord, where i can also invite you to our Discord server. My username is Zenmaster#0068.

Some very good points here.

Let me start with the first chunk:

Well, most of you guys have some pretty good points. Some of which i do really agree with. I'll go over some of my main arguments with why the story went down in quality.

Warcraft 3 felt very much like a novel. The story followed a predetermined storyline that was character driven. Three entire campaigns were based on Arthas's character, and it is one of the main reasons why that particular story is remembered so fondly. And when considering all the other campaigns, each was focused around particular leaders of their respective factions, which grew with the story being told. They followed Thrall, Grom, Jaina, Medivh, Malfurion, Tyrande, Maiev, Kael'thas, Illidan. They were what drove the story forward. The world was only a medium through which that could be done. You can clearly see that through how simple and undetailed the loading screen maps were.

World of Warcraft took the different approach of making the world the main focus. While that brought one of the greatest games that has ever been made, in the form of World of Warcraft Classic, it did also represent a completely different format for storytelling, completely incompatible with the way it was done in the RTS games. By the time Classic was done, the team was entirely void of any creativity in my opinion. Which is why they were forced to go with an entire 180 in TBC, and go from the antiheroes the Illidari were in the Curse of the Blood Elves, to completely turning them into villains, with no respect given to their previous interpretations. That started the focus on gameplay over story, which meant that the only way to have sufficient enemies for our heroes to be excited to defeat was to turn former lore characters into villains. And they did that all the way until Mists of Pandaria, when they were completely out of material and started with something fresh, but completely opposite to what Warcraft stood there until then.

The MMO is a medium through which the work is put on one character, gameplay and storywise. Your character. And because the player was given complete freedom, it was impossible to tell a linear story. There could be millions of potential stories, each unique and different. Classic went in this direction all the way. The previous story could also be retconned for the sake of a more beautiful and interesting world. The clearest example of that is the fact that during the alpha development, there were actual considerations of moving the Dark Portal underwater to Azshara, if that could be considered better, completely changing nearly everything that was set up in the RTS games.

It is becoming quite clear, that they could have done a better job. SWTOr showed you can tell a story in an MMO, you just have to make the effort to do so... However blizzard owning the whole franchise had the liberty of doing other approaches that would have worked quite well. I felt this when TBC came out. I really loved the expansion, but many of the story directions I felt were either wrong (like Illidan and Kael'thas becoming villains) or they could have done a far better job making interesting, convincing and complex (like the blood elves joining the horde). The draenei re-interpretation was actually one of the things I thought was really good, but not without errors either. Firstly, rather than directly retcon the original lore, why not reveal it was not all there was to it, and made the new story fit a bit more. Secondly, they should have called the playable race Eredar, and the Broken called Draenei instead, keeping that naming system would have made that part of TBC not seem such a big retcon at all, but rather merely revealing a lot more about the Draenei (Broken) and their origin (Eredar)

Linear stories are better for books, TV shows, RPG single adventure games or RTS, it seems the reason for calling it World of Warcraft was to explore the world of the Warcraft of the RTS, which is how you become an adveutrer in about the peoples and cultures from the RTS and more to be revealed. That is what they should have stuck with.. but the great success of wow, would make them decide to make it their main focus, and while they did so much good and hard work with art, world set, racial identities and distinction, they put a fraction of that man hours into actually ensuring the story was told properly and in good ways that didn't even have to make Illidan or Kael'thas the evil villains they turned into, but rather tragic unfortunate casualities that were necessary to take out because of their approach (like how it was re-written for Illidan (the novel) and Legion).


If this was ever to be done again. Keep everyting relatively the same up to the end of classic (with minor changes) - TBC main story line would either be a single player game or an RTS sequel), then you would also have the expansion continent launch a little later exploring the zones, people and culture rather than trying to tell a linear story, with suitable raid bosses introduced in the single player game you could then tackle and expore some of the aftermath of the story line of the sniglle player game.

WotLk would be an RTS for the storyline, and again Warcraft would get an expansion continent exploring.

Cataclysm would be TV series or movie. A powerful evil dragon, a cataclysmic event, Dragons, world tree, cultists, a world in turmoil - that is great material for any.. it could also be a single player game or RTS.. with Warcraft again having an expansion where you get to explore the aftermath in the many updated zones and previously closed but now open zones like Hyjal/Vashj'ir/Uldum/Deepholm/Twilight Highlands.


And that's how i'd do it - SWTOR couldn't do that because Bioware don't own the Star wars franchise, Warcraft received unprecedented popularity and global fame that could have been utilised a hell of lot more to make the franchise become a globally recognised world like Star wars/Harry Potter and others. Wrath could have been a film too or started the Warcraft series as it was at it's sustained heights.

And this gets into another issue. Chris Metzen. While i believe he did some very good work by putting the foundation of all Blizzard franchises in terms of lore, i think the man had a huge shift in the way he wrote anything. The golden age was when it came to Warcraft 2 and 3, Diablo 1 and 2 and Starcraft. But after World of Warcraft Classic, he took a huge dive into an endless push of the rule of cool over everything, including the integrity of the world he built. That is made the best clear around the 2010, where World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, were nearly identical in their plethora of flaws. Villains that had no intrinsic motivations, and could only be killed in their original dimension. Characters completely forgot who they were in the past, and turned from vulnerable people with tragedy into their past to unmovable superheroes that always were right and always had their plots win. Just look at how many crazy things happened in Cataclysm that completely broke the suspension of disbelief, like the entire Indiana Jones thing in Uldum.

Poor Metzen, I'm not sure what happened there, could he not grow? or did the switch to an MMO not utilise his talents best. I suspect more was involved.

I suspect MEtzen started working on movie themes as way back as TBC, I think while he did the main story lines for the expansions, many of the details and quests were handled by the tohers, I don't think he wrote most of what we played, and I think he was focused on other projects.

I also don't think the company was willing to make the effort for the lore that would have been required to tell a linear story through an MMO, and I think they started undermining his efforts in classic when they went with decisions like "the whole game must be canon, and we'll force you to make Tauren druids, alliance warlocks, night elf male priests and female druids etc" which ruined a lot of the key individual touches and aspects introduced in the RTs, by wow, becaue they couldn't show the effects well, undead no longer desecrated the ground where they walked, and that was just changed over night.)

These changes hurt a lore incredible, because I t is unique details such as the above that give a franchise it's charm and makes it stand out more from the generic. I also think Metzen got a bit carried away, i'm convinced night elves were originally the oldest race in wow, but he changed that because he loved giving twists and ended up doing some for the sake of twists, I aslo feel his ego was bruised by people calling his work a rip-off LotR, and so instead of giving natural twists like we saw in WC3, he started forcing some, like night elves suddenly coming from trolls, who's history was after the sundering and now suddenly before, giving us a reverse LoTR twists, (whose orcs come from elves).. which imo is just silly, because Warcraft was already a rip off fantasy pop culture no matter how you sliced it, elves, dwarves, zombies, dark elves, worgen are all from other fantasies, and Warcraft itself was a converted Warhammer project. Secondly he had enough unique stuff and cool stuff to keep us going, some things were un-necessary. Some changes were brilliant put poorly executed, some were just un-necessary, others were both good and well executed.

But they got carried away with "cool" and "twists" - some I feel were just for the sake of it, and were un-necessary retcons that weren't good or at least not any different hurting more than helping, and it showed.

For the last 6 months or so, me and one of my friends have been working to rework the entirety of the Warcraft storyline starting with that huge change in direction that was World of Warcraft. We mainly wished to conserve the factions and characters while changing the story sufficiently enough for it to be of great quality. However our continous efforts have changed the story so much, because of the butterfly effect, that it is more of an completely alternate story from WoW. And we also intend to work this into a long series of RPG/RTS hybrid campaigns, sort of a perfected form of the Founding of Durotar. The main change we have is separating the peoples of Azeroth into 4 factions instead of 2, with the kaldorei and the forsaken remaining on their own. Each faction would receive new allies with the progress of the campaigns, with the illidari becoming allied with the forsaken. Each faction has its own identity and motives.

We are openly looking for other people that would like to learn about our work, and who would like to provide feedback and help us build up a good lore for Warcraft, that was not affected by the many flaws brought by its MMO adaptation. If you are interested, or just want to ask me further questions, please PM or contact me on Discord, where i can also invite you to our Discord server. My username is Zenmaster#0068.

That sounds quite interesting, and I can already tell by some of your decisions, that you are doing a goo djob, I wouldn't have immediately thought of it, but the ilildari joining the forsaken or rather the Frosaken joining the Illidari seems a good move. Ofc it would work as well with the forsaken expanding to undead versions of other racs and being their own action, but I never liked that, I think the story means more when only humans could be made undead, although making an exception like a dragon could be gcool to give Arthas his flying dragon, though it would have been something rather special to make happn and related to galakrond to be possible and even a one off or at least very difficult to pull off such that he could only manage one. (maybe the Dragons make it impossible for him to gather more of their dead).

I wonder who you would give to the night elves as friends? Tauren definitely don't fit, they were only made druids because wow wanted all classes playable on both sides, and despite fighting Paladin/shaman were the only ones allowed to in the end, which was reversed in TBc (entirely for gameplay reasons and teams moaning) - if only they had done what SWTor did, and just given the same class dressed differently per faction... (from a lore perspective) from a gameplay persopective, the more unique playstyles the b etter, but such a limited in these games, which is why I feel "class identities" or "class skins" that simply redress an exsiting class as another in the lroe (but having identical gameplay) is a smart move that doesn't break the lore and makes the game more diverse and attractive. if I could play the shaman playstyle on elf classes disguised as an Entropist (o humans/forsaken) and an Star Augur/arcane elementalist ( on Elves - both night and thalassians) that would be cool, I get to experience the shaman on races that didn't have it, without breaking the lore or forcing shamanism into their racial identity, rather I give them something that is already in their racial culture, and I disguise or dress the shaman class playstyle up like it. - take the Arcane Elementalist/Star Augur - these are guys that use the arcane to produce elemnts like fire/frost (water)/Air/Earth instead of using elemental spirits, because it is based off the Elven arcane arts in the wonder age before the sundering - nightborne and moonguard bring this back to Elven groups as they used the arcane to produce elements, including a form of healing with star arcane magic they picked up from the priesthood of elune - STar Augur is an alternative representation, while a shaman visually drops down toeksn, Arcane Elementalists (you can call them arcanists) or STar Augurs instead use magical items of power created to store and release additional amounts of maic to the elementalists (or Stars in the case of the Star Augur) that have the same effect as totems gameplay wise.. it basically is simply shaman abilities with differnet names, visuals, icons and effects with a different story that makes it work.

Oops, I went off on one, - Tauren, definitely work on the horde, with their Shamanistic and Earthmother approach, with strong traditional survival hunter and warrior cultural influences, druidsm doesn't happen with them, although when we eventually meet the highmountain, we can have an exception, we don't have to erase the pre-sundering Tauren experience with Cenarius, although it fails to be necessary without Tauren druidsm, however I would keep it because it leaves the door open for Tauren to have the Zandalari version down the line which is very different from the Cenarius stellar/lunar based one of the night elves, but can happen.

However for night elf friends would be interesting. Draenei/Eredar would be with the Illidari, this makes sense, and will make them a powerful and diverse group to match both the human alliance and the horde, especially when you add the Demon hunters, the shamanistic Broken, with the gifted and talented Blood elves and Eredar - blood elves being more pure magic, while Eredar being more technomagic (which is a distinction that I would greatly expand on) . The night elves would need something equally impressive and diverse, and I think I know how. The night elves were nerfed a lot for wow and joining the alliance, so we will un-nerf them, and also restore a bit of their legendary empire in addition becuas this is decribed to be head and shoulders above any native race of Azeroth (so it's not counting the draenei) and the original history makes it remarkable enough to be described as a titanic race that inflicts the legions first defeat - the night elves that developed in wow are a shadow of what was originally described in the WC3 manual and wotA - by adding a bit of the past back, we can make the jump from the near on par WC3 state, to something that matches other factions like the Illidair having Eredar and blood elves, or the humans and orcs.

Night elf priests, night elf druids, Highborne, Cenarians, Ancients, Void Elves - and we see the priestly and druidic aspect of the night elves witnessed in WC3, add the power of their ancient wonder civilization added in the Highborne and Nightborne.

• Order of Elune - Priestesses and Sentinels, Priestesses are the magical star maidens and healers and are all female, eyes are either Silver or black with stars).
  
• You have a range from elegant priestess in shimmering silver gowns to tomboy sentinels with dishevelled eyebrows and 4 pack stomachs reflecting Themyscira maidens on the one hand, and something new in the moon priests
• Druids - these are males that also have features like Antlers and other partial animal features - eyes are either silver or emerald dream green (like Malfurion in Legion), druids look young though they are not, they are extremely healthy and fit as belies nature magically imbued people/
• Highborne & Nightborne - These will be ornately dressed and robed with fine features, star options on their purple skin, arcane rune options, silver hair with tints, neat beard options, and elaborate female hair styles, and some good male ones too - all faces are beautiful and young looking reflecting the vanity.
• Cenarians - these are 4-legged counterpart Dryads and Keepers of the Forest, very powerful physically and magically in both nature and arcane star magic
• Night Elf Worgen - worgen don't have to be on 1 faction only, especially when the lore accounts for both Gilnean and night elf worgen, one is on the alliance with humans as befits their geography and perfect for a worgen v zombie/vampire conflict, the other is the more Goldrinn nature based night elf worgen. I would not give them the option to have a night elf form personally, Although the Gilneans will be able to shift, the night elf ones would not, and would have a more intimidating primal appearance and will retain their intelligence
• Void elves - I think the night elves should have a Thalassian group that prefers to return to their purer original kaldorei roots with the highborne, nightborne and the black moon wing of the Order of elune being major incentives and areas of friendships with this faction. While the Illidari have the Blood elves, and the Alliance have the high elves, the void elves can work with the night elves through the dark side of the moon aspect of Elune and the pain mistresses, Tyrande can still invoke the Night Warrior ritual (change the name and the circumstance - it makes sense this happens for the cataclysm), the void elves that can become a thing around TBC which can be altered to discover the fate of Alleria and Turalyon and have her journey with the void have been complete in time to help those high/blood elves investigating its power after the fall of Quel'thalas, leads the void process to happen at this time, and the elven connection to the void is what alerts some of the Moon Preistesses to seek them out and they are drawn and intrigued by the extensive void history of the night elves who have success with it without going mad, the knowledge of the Locus Walker and Alleria is also quite useful to the Order of Elune, who's majority of void lore was part of the pre-sundering empire, more is re-discovered when they reclaim the Cathedral of Elune.

I would also dial down a bit on the elf hatreds. It always seemed un-necessarily blown out of proportion, and while there is a lot of hate in Warcraft, the elven relationships can be different.

Firstly Thalassian hate - the high elf/blood elf hate is no where near as intense as blizzard makes it out in WotLK or in Vereesa blindly hating the blood elves, nor are the blood elves in support of the destruction of Theramore because of the high elf population, Garrosh uses rogue blood elves, as the blood elves are part of the illidari (although you might retell that story differently), the high elves are horrified but it's more disgusted with the blood elves, not to the point of murderous hate, but more disappointment and not wanting anything to do with them. The blood elves in turn are disdainful of the high elves who they ant to believes are cowards for not shedding pointless high ideals (as they view it) in order to survive. Also the void elf hate contrived in BFA doesn't exist, distrust of the void elves is a combinaton of their decision to work with the Kaldorei which is viewed as a soft betrayal, but not one of intense hatred, there is still void fear of the sunwell being put in greater danger because of them, but it's not the paranoid levels of the current timeline.

Night elf - Thalassian hate - again is grossly exaggerated, elves conflict up to the end of classic was unheard off, they may disliek or even hate each other, but they contested in other ways, the night elves refused to kill the highborne who broke the magic ban, even though that was the penalty, they expelled them instead and every other, it shows taht even with the world at stake, an elf killing an elf is not taken lightly unless under the most dire of circumstances like Azshara's palace elves who sided with the legion and as such were forced to. While there is Thalassian hate for the kaldorei, it isn't murderous, and because the blood elves don't join the horde, they don't go killing night elves for snooping, and while i think night elves would still snoop to check on the blood elves worried that they've gone all demon hungry (the truth of Illidan isn't yet revealed to not be a villain yet) without needing to be in the alliance. That event doesn't need to end in bloodshed.

Elves don't kill elves, which is stupid given how low their numbers are and how intelligent they are, yes they can sharply disagree, but they love life, unlsee they've gone evil, and still elves would rather imprison other elves than kill.

TBC happens but differently, it results in the discovery of the true legion plot and Illidan as an anti-hero not villain who is after the events accepted as actually betraying the Legion and not his people who won't accept him because of the Fe, even though they see he and his hunters can master it, the other elves are not that arrogant. Illidari are as they are not, both blood elven and night elven one, the corporation also breaks down some of the elf hatred between the night and day groups.

Faction Races

• Alliance: Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, High elves, Gilenean Worgen (5 races in total)
• Horde: Orcs, Tauren, Trolls, Goblins, Pandaren (5 races in total)
• Illidari: Blood & Fel Elves, Forsaken Undead, Eredar, Broken, Naga ( 5 races in total)
• Kaldorei: Elunites & Druids, Cenarians, Highborne & Nightborne, Worgen, Void elves (5 races in total)

Sub-races join their respective factions wherever they appear exceptons are the ones above, as the Thalassians are in 3 of the 4 factions, and nightborne are part of the highborne group amongs the night elves.

New races coming in:

• Kaldorei: Ancients and Constellars - you get to choose your own tree and not all constellars are the powerful entities like Algalon, you get to meet more and find out why the Kaldorei truly are children of the stars
• Illidari: Vampires & Botanni
• Horde: Ogres and Mogu
• Alliance: Vrykul And Ethereals

Ethereals and Constellars that become playable would also have updated appearnces, i.e. you're not going to get variations of mummified wrappings as the only way to distinguish Ethereals, nor are you going to have playable constellars just be blue/silver stars people with beams of light for bones, they will be re-imagined to have an actual appearance with full customisation ranges but still be identifiable as belonging to a race of their original seen versions in -game.

Btw.. did you notice that the night elves have half their races from the long vigil tradition steeped in nature, and half from the pre-sundering tradition steeped in the arcane? (that wasn't intentional, it just fell in that way when I considered all the possibilities).

Also if you go by current player population statistics, These factions are far more likely to be even numbered than the classic factions
Finally if you look at the new races coming in, I think each faction has races you are gonna wanna play. There are no clear winners

[ZenmasterStar]

ravenmoon

I thank you very much for your answer, ravenmoon. Thank you for letting me know your opinion on my answer to your question and on my project.

I will start with expanding on why i think WoW fel behind other MMOs like SWTOR, despite the fact that both suffer from the type of game they are in terms of story. SWTOR was made from the start as a game designed around the story, and the clearest example of that is the voice acting for nearly every quest. World of Warcraft was made in a previous era, and it was made more as an experiment, with Blizzard never expecting it to become so popular. Unfortunately, the other flaws brought by them with time did not help.

About the draenei and the dimensional ship with them, i personally never had an issue with it. I've always been good with including such themes in fantasy. However, Legion took it too far. Metzen made it clear that the dimensional ships phased through the Twisting Nether in TBC. In Legion, we have the Vindicaar just skip through space like any conventional spaceship. I think this particular retcon that made the eredar corrupted by Sargeras instead of the other way around was probably the best retcon we got. Not only did we get the draenei, who's corruption mirrors the highborne of Azeroth, but we also for the first time started to have the modern Burning Legion, which i see as far superior. The original was a swarm of locusts seeking magic. The new one is an army of pure chaos, forced into order by Sargeras, with a great purpose of destroying existence for the sake of saving it. This is also an example of the fact that while the story went worse in general, it did have plenty of good additions, which i heavily respect and which i try to incorporate in a better format.

The fact that they released expansions and patches at break neck speed was also something that limited them. Take me or many others. We now know the stories through and through and we can come up with something better after analyzing them for years since they came out. Wrath of the Lich King came out 10 years ago. Blizzard only had a few years in advance to come up with these stories, while trying to make everything as consistent as they could in the time constraints. However, as time passed, it is pretty clear that Blizzard itself lost is ways, and put less and less effort in what they did, and we can see that in BfA.

You mentioned the unfortunate gameplay sacrifices WoW required, such as the addition of tauren druids. For that specifically, we intend to have tauren runemasters be the interpretation of druidism amongs tauren, with Hamuul Runetotem as their leader.

An on the topic of the night elves, we want their faction name to be the Emerald Concord. You suggested several potential allies, so i'll tell you our rendition of their allies so far. Keep in mind those are the allies we have in mind so far, considering they would join the night elves one by one during a very long period, starting from the equivalent of WoW Classic, all the way to the equivalent of WoW Legion.

The Cenarians - Dryads, Keepers of the Groves and other children of Cenarius that have been with the night elves for as long as Cenarius was their ally; later on, the Crystal Cenarians of Northrend

The Furbolgs - Friends of the night elves, and descendents of the twin bear brethren Ursoc and Ursol, wild gods who fought during the War of the Ancients; later on, the Polar Furbolgs of Northrend

The Dark Trolls - progenitors of the night elves and worshipers of the night elven wild gods as their own loa pantheon, willing allies during the Battle for Mount Hyjal

The Ancient Treants - the forests of the night elves are alive in the true sense, with their Ancients going through a very long and very selective development, starting from the smallest sapling, to tree mimics, to treants, and eventually, after millenia, into the Ancients themselves

The Primals - the plant like intelligent being of Draenor, who have barely survived the shattering of Outland, and kept on living despite all odds; the include the botani, the primal treants and ancients, the sporelings and spore giants

The Worgen - night elves affected by the Curse caused by the lack of control over the form of the Wolf, as well as the kingdom of Gilneas, who gave their loyalty to the kaldorei after being cured and saved from the Forsaken

The Dragonflights - the great dragons and their minions, who have fought together with the kaldorei during the War of the Ancients, the War of the Shifting Sands, and other such conflicts; the dragonkin have integrated within the night elf society, formerly being night elves that were transformed after their millenia long service to the Dragon Aspects

The Pandaren Empire - ancient followers of peace and tranquility, and worshipers of the August Celestials, ancient wild gods that stood united in defending and maintaining the balance of Pandaria

The Harpies - brought back to their former sanity by the ressurection of their ancient godess Aviana, the feathery maidens are willing to aid the night elves against their common threats

The Centaur - initially nearly brought to extinction by the Horde in a pursuit to stop their marauding clans from slaughtering and looting their holds, as well as in an effort to stop Princess Therazane, the few remaining tribes united in the hopes of being forgiven for the death of their father Remulos, and wishing to reunite with their half brethren

I have just as many allies thought out for the Alliance, Horde, and the Ashen Covenant (the unity between the Forsaken and the Illidari). And i have many more ideas, most of them written down on my Discord server. I would personally love to talk more with you about all the things i have done so far. You seem like a very creative person that i would have a lot to talk with. I also do not want to give up much about my very expansive alternate universe unless it is in private, because i believe there might be the slight chance this might take off after we adapt it to Warcraft 3 Reforged.

I am new to MMOchampion, and i believe i cannot send DMs yet, unless i receive a DM from that person first, i believe. I'd really appreciate if we could discuss more on Discord, just add me (Zenmaster#0068). I feel it saves up a lot of time and that it would be easier for the both of us.

[Rialius]

I think that the problems started when Blizzard listened to the customers hemming and hawing about the Horde not being #savage enough and brutal enough.

They gave us Garrosh. Then people hated him so they overreacted and gave him the villain bat and they've been overcorrecting ever since. They made him a villain into WOD which was a turd. They gave us Sylvanas as warchief to bring back the fans then hit her with the villain bat.

I'm kinda fed up.

[allawyn]

Well, one point was when they thought they could just reuse the plot for an old expansion (MoP) in a new expansion.

- - - Updated - - -

I think that the problems started when Blizzard listened to the customers hemming and hawing about the Horde not being #savage enough and brutal enough.

They gave us Garrosh. Then people hated him so they overreacted and gave him the villain bat and they've been overcorrecting ever since. They made him a villain into WOD which was a turd. They gave us Sylvanas as warchief to bring back the fans then hit her with the villain bat.

I'm kinda fed up.

Another point they went wrong was to keep hitting the same faction with villian bat while hitting the other faction with the hero bat.

[Soon-TM]

WoD was another major loss of story potential. Mostly because the story for WoD never made sense to begin with. This is where 'rule of cool' started to take over, most notably by Blizzard's own comment at the Blizzcon where WoD was annouced - "Who cares about the details of how to get there? You're going to Draenor!!! Get hype!!!" - It no longer mattered how. The explanation for 'how' was secondary to the idea that it sounded cool. Blizzard's own design changed in favor of "rule of cool" rather than "this makes sense." Thus, we are where we are today.

Yes, I especially remember the comment about "not counting every single blade of grass" or something like that. Everyone (including me) should have realised by then what a mess was that going to be.

[A Blue Smurf]

Personally I believe there was no singular point or even collection of events of "going wrong". It was caused by a fundamental shift of storytelling and world concepts that snowballed from expansion to expansion.

The continued focus of "the big bad" of each expansion would, in my opinion, be the biggest conceptual mistake that drove the dissatisfaction with the story/lore of Warcraft. Instead of world building that revolved around localised stories that were, in some abstract way or another, linked to the events of a larger conflict the story become singularly focused on the actions of one "big bad" enemy or faction.

We had stories like the Defias Brotherhood and how, behind the scenes, Onyxia manipulated the Stormwind Nobles to inadvertently give rise to their existence and then exploited their actions to engineer the kidnapping of Varian Wrynn. Each action and event had a snowball effect on the surrounding environment, the creation of the Defias led groups of bandits becoming organised and well-equipped which put increased pressure of the Stormwind garrison. This meant that they didn't have the necessary resources to manage the districts around Stormwind, allowing the Blackrock Orcs to invade Redridge from the Burning Steppes and capture Stonewatch Garrison. It also meant that the murloc villages of Elwynn and Redridge propagated unchecked while Gnolls were able to capture entire farmsteads and kobolds overran key mines.

None of those were factions were allied nor did they serve any singular entity or faction but they actions of each allowed the continued actions of the others. It was intrinsically linked world.

Now everything is centrally focused around the actions of one "big bad" faction and everything you do is only in relation to that singular faction. And frankly, for the "World" of Warcraft... there isn't much world left anymore.

And don't even get me started on unnecessary and careless ret-cons let alone the "rule of cool".