Do Gnomes have any place in Warcraft?

[GnomeSmash]

Comedic relief.

No one said that yet right?

Gnomes have a place in WoW as the butt of every joke, I can't think of a single gnome who's entire existence wasn't meant to simply be used for humor.

NOT TRUE! I love gnomes. I love seeing their little legs fly up in the air when I one shot them on my Blood Elf mage. Their little bodies bouncing in the air like so much popcorn. Yes, gnomes are fun to kill. I am delighted each time I enter a battleground and can pick out my favorite gnome, set a focus on them and - BOOM - cute little feet in the air and their little round bodies flopping up then down to earth with a plop!

More gnomes - I love em!.

[Deleted]

and then died in comedic fashion.

---------- Post added 2013-03-05 at 05:06 PM ----------



yeeeeeeeeee... that arn't ever going to happen. They are never going to remove races from assorted factions, since it would break up guilds and friendships and mess up questing, so... no.

Forced race change, prob solved.

[Skytotem]

At least they fit into the world perfectly, unlike Gnomes. Even the Grummles have more backstory.

Huh? How do Gnomes not fit?

---------- Post added 2013-03-05 at 11:09 AM ----------

I think people are confusing Blizz's writing with the actual potential of a race.

[Wilian]

Huh? How do Gnomes not fit?

Gnomes do not "fit in", in general because people A: Don't even realize they've been part of the lore far longer than most of the other races. B: Ignore the point regardless because of their "clear vision".

Also, gnomes had in game visible presence before Warcraft 3 beyond of just Warcraft 2. The playthrough of Warcraft Adventures beta takes you inside a gnomish invention lab where you have to do some tasks to get their things into your hands.

[Deleted]

I'm going to leave this here for you to read, if you still think Gnomes have no place in Warcraft Lore, you're simply racist. http://www.wowpedia.org/Gnome

[oplawlz]

They have the place of attracting middle aged women and bronies to the game

[Trassk]

Forced race change, prob solved.

and whats to stop players suing blizzard over that.

blizzard won't do that, it would be a breach of there own gaming rights.

[Deleted]

Gnomes do have a good place in Warcraft. As footballs for the bigger races.

[Deleted]

and whats to stop players suing blizzard over that.

They can't, it's blizz's property.

[Skytotem]

They'd unsub, it won't happen Lei.

[Lord Pebbleton]

As others have already pointed out, gnomes served as "tech support" through Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft.
I don't understand your "If none of them is named, they do not belong to lore"; following this logic, gnomes shouldn't exist, while the new alliance class should be Gigapenguins, since in Warcraft 3 there was the Penguin King, an important ruler.

[Deleted]

and then died in comedic fashion.

---------- Post added 2013-03-05 at 05:06 PM ----------



yeeeeeeeeee... that arn't ever going to happen. They are never going to remove races from assorted factions, since it would break up guilds and friendships and mess up questing, so... no.

Let the gnomes players be as a part of the race that remained with the Alliance and thus those players still remain as gnomes and in the Alliance.
But warn them they'd remain with those models forever and sometimes gear won't be fit properly on them and so on.

[Felarion]

They got very important place in warcraft. As a object of jokes

But seriously i think sure they are. They support alliance since second war (gnomish submarine and that flying scout machine), and alliance use their tehnology to bolster thier armies. In "Tides of War" Jaina even had gnome apprentice.

[Drilnos]

Gnomes are where the Alliance gets most of its technology. They've been this source for much longer than WoW has been around. With all their handiwork on display - the giant airships and such - it would frankly be very odd for them to not appear themselves, and going and saying the dwarves did all of it would be a colossal retcon.

However, the reason they're playable, I'm quite sure, is that if they weren't, and you people got high elves instead, in Vanilla that would have made an Alliance consisting of humans, night elves, high elves, and dwarves. There is not a whole lot of variety between those four. Night elves and high elves in particular would have had the exact same silhouette. A new player coming into the game would see all these options on the Horde side - different body shapes, sizes, postures, etc, then looked at the Alliance side and seen three extremely similar variations on the exact same archetype.

Even aside from that, gnomes are the single most Warcraft-centric of all of the original playable Alliance races. You can go to just about any standard fantasy setting and find graceful, keen-eyed elves, stocky subterranean dwarves with Scottish accents, and more humans than you can shake a stick at. How many other places are you going to find gnomes of the sort Warcraft has? Gnomes are quintessential Warcraft.

[Urti]

How many other places are you going to find gnomes of the sort Warcraft has? Gnomes are quintessential Warcraft.

DnD, specifically Dragonlance pre-3rd edition. Tinker Gnomes. After 3rd they were an option in core, although the edition-that-must-not-be-named dropped gnomes entirely in favor of half-dragon/half-demon warforged or some such madness. Also mythology with beings such as Santa's "elves" and the Cobbler's "elves". Pretty much any of those diminutive "house fey" are game for gnome origins, with varying degrees of technical ingenuity being demonstrated.

Warcraft gnomes, while not the trope, are also not entirely unique.

[Drithien]

Gnomes do have a place in WarCraft. What kind of question is that? They are a fictional humanoid race in a fictional medieval-fantasy-with-some-science-fiction-elemetns world. Anything that world's creators decide fits in it, well, fits.

Not realising why is like not realising why hobbits fit in Middle-Earth. There is a difference between not liking a race, and that race not having a function in a fictional world.

The only problem gnomes have in World of WarCraft is Blizzard's approach to story-telling: tackling mostly one racial faction at a time. This creates a problem when some no-as-popular-as-most racial factions come to take their turn. It's too much of a risk to base an entire major patch, much less an expansion on a racial faction that is not widely popular. There is also the matter of not getting too niche. Gnomes are all about reckless experimentation, and coming up with inventions to deal with daily life and war. Focusing on them, and their way of doing things, would drive the story to too a niche direction. Humans, dwarves and elves are more broad in their way of doing things.

If Blizzard went back to giving each racial faction its own campaign in the game, just like they tried to do in classic, the gnomes would have a nice opportunity to get some good development. And then it would be the time to examine how they fare in WarCraft's world.

[Deleted]

Gnomes are where the Alliance gets most of its technology. They've been this source for much longer than WoW has been around. With all their handiwork on display - the giant airships and such - it would frankly be very odd for them to not appear themselves, and going and saying the dwarves did all of it would be a colossal retcon.

However, the reason they're playable, I'm quite sure, is that if they weren't, and you people got high elves instead, in Vanilla that would have made an Alliance consisting of humans, night elves, high elves, and dwarves. There is not a whole lot of variety between those four. Night elves and high elves in particular would have had the exact same silhouette. A new player coming into the game would see all these options on the Horde side - different body shapes, sizes, postures, etc, then looked at the Alliance side and seen three extremely similar variations on the exact same archetype.

Even aside from that, gnomes are the single most Warcraft-centric of all of the original playable Alliance races. You can go to just about any standard fantasy setting and find graceful, keen-eyed elves, stocky subterranean dwarves with Scottish accents, and more humans than you can shake a stick at. How many other places are you going to find gnomes of the sort Warcraft has? Gnomes are quintessential Warcraft.

Actually, I can think of a few races that are truly different in WoW then in other stories. Night elves, being a melding between dark elves and wood elves but unique since they're like none other, draenei since they're good demons in a way... but gnomes? these are not the only technological gnomes, nor are the first ones. The gnomes of WoW are not very unique.

Here's just an example:
http://www.giantbomb.com/akanon/3035-3563/

[Wafffles]

Warcraft now has giant evil spiders, giant evil bunny rabbits, robots, titans, a variety of aliens, pandas, werewolves, ghosts, goblins, demons, talking animals, swamp monsters, pseudo-Vikings, pseudo-Chinese, living goo and gigantic divine turtles to just barely scratch the surface of races and species. And gnomes are the one you find out of place?

[Drilnos]

Actually, I can think of a few races that are truly different in WoW then in other stories. Night elves, being a melding between dark elves and wood elves but unique since they're like none other, draenei since they're good demons in a way... but gnomes? these are not the only technological gnomes, nor are the first ones. The gnomes of WoW are not very unique.

Here's just an example:
http://www.giantbomb.com/akanon/3035-3563/

They may not be entirely unique, but they sure as heck aren't as common as either wood elves, dark elves or any combination thereof. Draenei weren't present at launch in any case.

Anyway, gnomes have been around and making contraptions for the Alliance since before either night elves or draenei even existed as backstory. They have more of a claim to membership in the Alliance than the both of them put together.

[Kathranis]

As I recall when wow was first announced the originally proposed alliance races were Human, Dwarf and Gnome. Horde counterparts were Orc, Tauren and Troll.

Night Elves got added due to fan pressure, which led to the Forsaken being given to the Horde.

Actually, nope.

Humans, orcs, and tauren were first, in the original gameplay footage shown at ECTS in August, 2001. Dwarves came next, announced in May 20, 2002. Then the night elves on April 30, 2003. Undead, trolls, and gnomes were announced August 25, 2003, though actual information on the gnomes and trolls wasn't released until November 12, 2003, making them the "the last two player-character races announced for the game."


Anyway, I stand by my original point. I have no problem with the gnomes appearing in the game, but just like the draenei and worgen, the minimal backstory already established before the race was announced was constrictive, which choked Blizzard's creativity and made them difficult to integrate into the game as a whole.

Apart from forcefully injecting them directly into the plot, the relevance they have to the overall story is fairly limited. The gnomes' history and Titanic origins already been exhausted for the most part, while the draenei and worgen each still have a couple major story hooks left.

The problem here is that those storylines are going to be one-off things. The draenei and worgen will have some center stage moments in potential future content (Argus, Emerald Dream, etc.), but after those stories run their course will probably never be that prominent again, unless new storylines are specifically engineered to focus on them.