If there's one thing this thread has done for me, it's really increased my store of knowledge. The basilisk as it was first described is a sort of African cobra (a small snake, with a diadem-shaped white mark on its head, which travels with the forward part of its body held off the ground, lives in burrows and is vulnerable to mongoose attacks). This being antiquity, Pliny the Elder went on to say the thing was so venomous that it let off a miasma that killed plants and broke rocks just by being in the same general area, and if a man on horseback hit one with a spear, the venom would crawl up the spear and kill the man, then kill the horse. So not even a lizard. Just a snake. A three foot long snake.
Anyway, the actual closest thing to a traditional wyvern in WoW is definitely not a proto-drake. It's Hakkar the Soulflayer, and wind serpents in general for the legless variety.
No one said rage but you. That wouldn't be a reading comprehension fail would it?
You came into a thread and pointed out how something incredibly trivial "annoys the hell out of you". Someone called you out for your nit picking and how silly it was and you respond with the oh so clever "u mad bro" then rant for 3 paragraphs to justify why it "annoys the hell out of you". If the hypocrisy of that isn't obvious to you by now then it never will be. I'm starting to feel bad for you so I'm gonna stop.
"Terror, darkness, power? The Forsaken crave not these things; the Forsaken ARE these things."
Some, yes, depends on the creature. Dragons are common, as they are a staple of nearly every fantasy in existence. Elves are also common, as are many of the other staple races. Back before LOTR I would even say Hobbits were rather obscure, but now everyone knows what a Hobbit is, due to the popularity of the film series.
Manticore? Kobold? Gnoll? Wyvern? Dryads? Not so much.
Even though there is a lot of variation within descriptions of mythical creatures there are certain traits that make a certain creature that creature. Vampires suck blood, werewolves have some extent of permanent or temporary wolf features, gryphons are part lion part eagle etc. Even in a fantasy setting you'd look pretty ridiculous calling an alligator a pony or a dog a jellyfish. The point is wyverns are so far off of the traits considered to be "wyvern" (and in fact gone straight to traits common with another mythical creature, the manticore) that for those that do know what a wyvern is it looks ridiculous. Basilisks and crocolisks are fine because they are close enough to their reference that the connection can be seen (the basilisks are reptilian and can petrify. the connection has been made. Croclisks are clearly a cross between real world crocodilians and wow's basilisks)
Wyverns are really manticores while protodrakes are wyvernlike.
Quilin's are really fu-dogs while the new datamined mount is what a quilin actually looks like
Basilisks have also been described as a sort of serpent/dragon (wyvern, actually)/rooster fusion, like a cockatrice.
As far as I can figure, the only ACTUAL two legged, winged "dragons" in WoW are the chimeras, if the little tweedly proto drake hands are too "removed" from real wyverns for you. Hakkar and Wind serpents bear the closest resemblance to amphipteres.Anyway, the actual closest thing to a traditional wyvern in WoW is definitely not a proto-drake. It's Hakkar the Soulflayer, and wind serpents in general for the legless variety.
Last edited by Kaleredar; 2012-11-21 at 10:20 AM.
“Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
Words to live by.
I dunno I would say majority would described an elf as 'santas little helper'
Why is one fantasy setting more 'correct' than another?
Blizzard created a creature, called it a Wyvern. Other fantasy settings created other creatures, called them Wyverns. One is not more right than the other; they're just different.
Even though I do agree that they look like Manticores, I always referred to them as wind riders. Not going to let myself be bothered by it though.
If I had to stop and weep for every inconsistency in WoW lore compared to Earth lore, I probably wouldn't have made it past my first month of playtime
I don't remember a single video game or movie in the history of my 30 years on earth where A basilisk was not portrayed as a large snake or Alligator.
That said the wow Wyvern has more in common with the Mythical Chimera the only real difference being a Chimera generally has 2 or more heads.
Though Video games do tend to portray Wyvern differently from dragons but it is generally by making them much smaller and/or removing their legs.
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We should bathe them in toxic waste and radiation in the hopes of creating their mythical counterparts, or at least to create a swarm of flesh eating tree lizards.
This is a reasonable complaint. They aren't calling bears "lions," the nomenclature has been pretty consistent with reality, so the wyvern is probably a mistake on their part.
That might be because bears and lions are actual real things, as opposed to a heraldic dragon.
For that matter, how about everybody gives a written list of what they consider to be the most important features to make something a wyvern. No, "not like a WoW wyvern" is not a legit feature.
I always hate these kinds of threads. It doesn't make any sense. I could understand if wyvern/dragons/etc. were real creatures, but they aren't. There is not some set standard that everybody has to follow because they're fantasy creatures. I'm normally not one to defend Blizzard, but nitpicking over something like this is just dumb.