Ideas and solutions to develop the races' nations and kingdoms ?

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

This thread is dedicated to ideas, speculation, headcanons and solutions on how to develop the races and factions of Warcraft develop their kingdom and/or nation to make it more suitable or prosperous and peaceful for them, to develop their economy, culture and power, and to solve the many more or less grave problems and constant internal threats that these races and factions must often face whenever it's lack of food and other ressources, disunity and political tensions, criminality, pests and recurring foes such as centaurs, gnolls, quilboars, troggs, undeads, et...

What are the possible solutions you would use to solve these and on how to better showcase and use the territories ?

[Shadowferal]

"Peaceful?" That's a joke, right? Just wait...the writing will become silly enough.

Seriously, what you're asking for should have been long part of the game.

[Combatbutler]

I wouldn't solve these problems, they are not the real issue, the real problem is the races and nations in wow lack basic identity.

Show the education system of each kingdom
Give definite numbers on reaching adutlhood
Show apprenticeships
Kingdom specific celebrations
Kingdom specific traditions
Distinct social structures, meaning if you a caste system in your society, god damn show it.
What rare resources exist within the nations
what crops are grown, how long is the crop cycle ?
how important is religion?
How tolerant are the religions?
Who are the main trading partners?
What is being traded?
How long does it take to transport things?
How do the kingdoms influence their neighbours?
Why are the nations in their respective factions?
Show cultural clashes between allies.
What races do the specific kingdoms hate
What is the agency of single nations
Explain the power structures in details
etc.

Meaning the bare minimum to actually flesh out the world.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Famine shouldn't be a problem given that druids and mages can rapidly accelerate the growth of vegetation from seeds to maturity within seconds.

Gnomes should be able to cleanse blighted lands such as Gnomergan, Gilneas, Lordaeron, etc.

[Skytotem]

Famine shouldn't be a problem given that druids and mages can rapidly accelerate the growth of vegetation from seeds to maturity within seconds.

Gnomes should be able to cleanse blighted lands such as Gnomergan, Gilneas, Lordaeron, etc.

More interesting questions: Why is famine still a thing despite druids and shaman?

What keeps areas from easily being cleansed?

[LilSaihah]

I would like it if stormwind was stormy and windy

[Gamevizier]

I firmly believe that Warcraft needs a calendar system. many game universes that have much less that Warcraft in terms of lore content, have managed to establish a sense of calendar system to categorize the events in their own chronological order.

Things such as months, years, ages, etc can all be given a theme. for instance, different months can be named after different mythological beings in the Warcraft universe and each civilization or nation can have it's own system.

Humans for instance can have their months be named after important human figures/dieties such as Thoradin (the first human high king) or Tyr or have a theme revolving around the church of light, since historically churches were in charge of managing the calendar system and register important historical events. We can even have zodiac symbols for different years similar to the chinese zodiac system e.g year of the dragon etc.

It also helps the fans categorize events better, instead of saying "26 years after the dark portal opened" we can use the calendar system to specifically say e.g event X happened in year 476.

[Skytotem]

We're way overdue for a dive into what the Church of Holy Light believes, even if it's just an ingame rehash of RPG lore.

[Syegfryed]

Getting new writers that understand the races politics and fantasy, worldbuilding and the geopolitics in azeroth.

But with factions gone homogenized and we living in eternal peace, those things hardly matter anymore

[Gamevizier]

Getting new writers that understand the races politics and fantasy, worldbuilding and the geopolitics in azeroth.

But with factions gone homogenized and we living in eternal peace, those things hardly matter anymore

I don't think that horde/alliance disappearing is neccesarily a bad thing. The whole idea of dividing Azeroth into a blue/red faction was getting a bit stale. I support a more complex faction system instead of just pinning a horde/alliance tag on the player character during character creation.

I think that its better to start every character neutral, this way PCs can explore different regions and visit different kingdoms without being attacked because their race is tied to their faction. this can provide a good opportunity for PVE and PVP content to develop separately (also maybe some players want to be a blood elf but serve alliance?) Should a player character wish to participate in PVP, they can go to different faction capitals and get signed up to represent that faction in conflicts. this would be the "warmode" in which you can attack members of different factions while doing quests or battlegrounds.

If we splinter horde/alliance into 4-5 factions this can make faction politics a bit more complicated but i think the factions in WoW need to be more complicated. the night elves of hyjal and the humans of stormwind may not necessarily see eye-to-eye on a lot of subjects, the forsaken and the tauren have their separate struggles and self interests. I don't see why they would want to be dragged into eachother's conflicts when their own societies are struggling. This idea will also allow players to join factions that are aligned with current factions but are not joinable e.g the argent crusade.

PVP can be more about faction politics in regards to other factions e.g humans going into conflict with Orcs in wetlands. and PVE can be more focused about stories that deal with evil villains such as old gods, naga etc.

[munkeyinorbit]

More interesting questions: Why is famine still a thing despite druids and shaman?

What keeps areas from easily being cleansed?

Greed and corruption. Look at the real-world. It's not about having the most. It's about making sure your neighbour has it worst.

[Skytotem]

Greed and corruption. Look at the real-world. It's not about having the most. It's about making sure your neighbour has it worst.

Yeah but those are boring and depressing answers, I think we can be more creative than irl.

Let's say Druidism can only grow certain kinds of plants (ones native to the area?) or is still limited by the seasons and climate, or local spirits. Or overuse risks damaging the dream so they can only tap into it for big harvests periodically.

Drek'thar explicitly calls out that using the shaman to make Frostwolf valley into a paradise would be abuse of the elements during the Lord of the Clans book, so perhaps regulating climate risks crazed elementals tearing up the land.

Perhaps all that regrowth we've seen in WPL is surface-level and things start getting gnarly again as the plants roots grow deeper, or the plants LOOK healthy but are still not making healthy harvests and it's taking too much time and energy for the shaman and druids to live there longterm?

[Shadowferal]

Yeah but those are boring and depressing answers, I think we can be more creative than irl.

And yet Blizz gave the best response in Desolace with Cenarion Wildlands;


So it can be done. The reasoning why it isn't done, is probably the usual boring answer of Blizz not allocating the resources to show it ingame.

[Nymrohd]

I really don't get why we are asking for the Blight to be removed from certain areas. The Forsaken seem to like it and those are their places. I could see Southshore?
But if you start cleansing the Eastweald and Stratholme, you are not going to be moving Forsaken there. You will be moving the Argent Crusade there. The living never left Lordaeron after all and control significant parts of it.

The Forsaken still need a starting experience with their neighbouring areas being thematically linked to them

[Shadowferal]

I really don't get why we are asking for the Blight to be removed from certain areas. The Forsaken seem to like it and those are their places. I could see Southshore? But if you start cleansing the Eastweald and Stratholme, you are not going to be moving Forsaken there. You will be moving the Argent Crusade there. The living never left Lordaeron after all and control significant parts of it.

Sounds good to me.

The Forsaken still need a starting experience with their neighbouring areas being thematically linked to them

Lets drop the pretense and the word "forsaken" and call them what they are; the "Scourge." They can begin where they belong, in Icecrown.

[Varodoc]

The game is called Warcraft and the game expansions are exclusively set during war times. Kingdoms don't develop during war times, they develop during periods of peace. Periods of peace in Warcraft are very few and they are always hand-waved away in unseen timeskips. As proven by the recent 3 years timeskip between SL and DF that didn't really amount to anything at all. The development of kingdoms is beyond the focus frame of this series that revolves exclusively around wars.

Beyond that, there's little room for the mortal kingdoms to develop when every year there's a new Bob the Evil One threatening the Cosmos with his ultra mega "bigger than the Legion" asspulled army.

[Nymrohd]

Sounds good to me. Lets drop the pretense and the word "forsaken" and call them what they are; the "Scourge." They can begin where they belong, in Icecrown.

I will say, instead of the Val'kyr plot which violated parts of the Forsaken identity (undeath is a curse we have to learn to live with, freedom of choice is paramount) the solution to the Forsaken population for the medium term could have simply been finding Scourge who were freed from Arthas' control when he got killed while Bolvar was wavering and learning how to use the helm. I would not move them to Icecrown though.

[Syegfryed]

I don't think that horde/alliance disappearing is neccesarily a bad thing. The whole idea of dividing Azeroth into a blue/red faction was getting a bit stale. I support a more complex faction system instead of just pinning a horde/alliance tag on the player character during character creation.

It is a bad thing, because it robs the game from one of their core aspects, and the main drive force of why the game was so popular, dividing azeroth is what gives people the immersion and "faction pride" that lead to better RP and to a bigger attachement to the game. Even normies who didn't play wow know what horde and alliance is, because how much of a force in the nerd culture this was.

Effectively ending the factions, making then not matter, was one of their biggest mistakes

Yes, it was becoming stale...but because they were not competent enough to write the lore, no wonder why the lore is being dogshit since MOP ended

I think that its better to start every character neutral, this way PCs can explore different regions and visit different kingdoms without being attacked because their race is tied to their faction.

But that was the whole point of it, that truly shows you are part of a living world, it shows your race and faction matter in this world, you can't go there without being attacked, so you attack then instead.

If X area is dominated by Y faction, you grab your party and go there by force, like when people made parties to kill the enemy faction leaders, all of this is meaningless now.

Realistically it makes no sense to ever be peace, the races would hold a grudge forever and they could toy with those interactions like we had until mop.


One of the reasons, if not the main reason why they "united" the factions and allowed crossfaction is because this game is dead and the corpse is bleeding so much players it can't afford two factions

also maybe some players want to be a blood elf but serve alliance?)

Those are the kind of people who ruined the lore, some people should just accept consequences of their choices instead, and acknowledge a blood elf would never serve the faction that fuck then over.

[Skytotem]

And yet Blizz gave the best response in Desolace with Cenarion Wildlands;
So it can be done. The reasoning why it isn't done, is probably the usual boring answer of Blizz not allocating the resources to show it ingame.

That was a product of the Cataclysm and Alexstraza, not a concentrated effort by the druids who just moved in afterwards.

[Gamevizier]

Those are the kind of people who ruined the lore, some people should just accept consequences of their choices instead, and acknowledge a blood elf would never serve the faction that fuck then over.

No, not really. It is a natural way of progression and evolution for civilizations that come im close contact with one another. you want both factions to be locked in a constant state of xenophobia, (aka warhammer factions) always attacking races of the other faction "just because" and still have an interesting story in the game. the story gets stale when theres no progression within it, thats why the horde vs. alliance story in MoP was okay, but in BfA it was stale because it was literally the same thing as MoP again.

some blood elves are already part the alliance via void elves. and about your point of blood elves never be willing to serve a faction that fucked them over is moot. heck, blood elves are literally aligned with orcs, trolls and undead ...well i dont really need to tell you about the history of blood elves do i?

the game used to be popular and now its not, its not because of faction conflict, if that was the case BfA and MoP should've been the most popular expansions.

dont want to go off-topic but imo the reason that classic is popular is not because of horde vs. alliance (thought its great to have faction identity) it was because the game was HARD and players were forced ro be grouped into communities (groups/guilds etc) to progress and to have a better game experience. and that created a sense of adventure, being part of a group made u want to login everyday and group up with the online friends u had made.

this same sense of group adventure can be had if your group consists of orcs, humans, gnomes or elves etc. player experience is separate from game lore.

theres also the problem with retail and new player retention, but that topic is a beast of its own.