When did Warcraft lore start going down? (10 options researched)

[KrakHed]

You're only saying this because you have yet to witness the masterpiece that's going to be BfA's ending.

It's funny. Their stories, when they were good, never worked like this. They were simple and to the point.

The Horde story in Warcraft 3 is essentially about the struggle of breaking old habits, trying to start fresh, and stumbling on the way. It's simple, clear, and reasonably meaningful. It doesn't really fuck anything up.

The Alliance story was fine too. A decent corruption story that you could actually follow. You see Arthas become increasingly angry and desperate and see him justify more and more as his sense of purpose shifts from saving his people to vengeance for them. As was telegraphed in the earliest of missions. The core idea is there. If you sacrifice everything to beat your foe, are you still fighting for anything?

The Scourge campaign continues this. We see the end result of an Arthas who no longer cares about his men, who no longer cares about saving anyone, who has sacrificed everything to win. In short, we see a soulless monster. That's just the logical end result of "victory at any cost".

The Night Elf campaign is a simple story about essentially starting the true Age of Mortals before Cataclysm tried to redo it, but worse. The Ancient defenders of Azeroth are mighty and proud, but aren't strong enough to defend the world on their own. So they give up their pride and immortality to join the other races in defense of the world. And together, they can win.

It's fucking simple. WoW makes the mistake of trying to repeat themes without understanding them. We didn't need Garrosh, because that story was told well enough with Grom. We didn't need Cata, because the Nelves did the Age of Mortals thing better. We didn't need shitty "lol crazy!" corruption stories to manufacture bossfights, when the Alliance story showed one properly.

[Clone]

It took it's first step downhill in vanilla. It's not so much specific changes or incidents, but overall philosophy.

[Triceron]

Warcraft lore was never anything more than akin to a generic saturday morning cartoon idk why people want to act like Shakespeare was writing the lore until recently x expansion

This.

I think 'point of no return' implies that at any point there was something we should keep sacred, and with Warcraft this was simply never the case.

The whole thing is born out of a comic-book fantasy. It's literally a ripoff of Warhammer, which had far deeper lore, and Warcraft was simply a derivative work that did not have its own story or culture until much later in the series. Even WC2 lacked true culture; an entire tribes consisted little more than a paragraph in the manual. We didn't even get Amani/Forest Troll culture developed until World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, think about that. From WC2, they were depicted little more than uncultured, barbaric forest-dwelling monsters who were oppressed by the Humans and Elves.

[KrakHed]

This.

I think 'point of no return' implies that at any point there was something we should keep sacred, and with Warcraft this was simply never the case.

The whole thing is born out of a comic-book fantasy. It's literally a ripoff of Warhammer, which had far deeper lore, and Warcraft was simply a derivative work that did not have its own story or culture until much later in the series. Even WC2 lacked true culture; an entire tribes consisted little more than a paragraph in the manual. We didn't even get Amani/Forest Troll culture developed until World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, think about that. From WC2, they were depicted little more than uncultured, barbaric forest-dwelling monsters. I don't think that's significant lore to abide to whatsoever.

Even if it's just a comic book fantasy, people would lose respect for Superman if he engaged in regular murderous rampages in the main DC universe.

To me, the point of no return was the loss of simplicity and clarity, and the understanding of how different stories flow into one another.

The Orc story was supposed to be about moving into the future, after Grom proved they could overcome their demons rather than succumb. In WoW, the story has instead reinforced that their demons are inescapable and inseparable from them. It broke the simple themes of WC3, to the point where people are earnestly arguing in favor of Daelin Proudmoore. Blizzard fucked up a simple story because they thought they could be deep and tell a political message or something. I dunno.

Varian's story fucked up the Orc story too, by inventing an Orcish run slave ring in Orgrimmar, despite Thrall hating slavery. This is also the same series that gave us Med'an, so it was all a pretty shitty drug haze of an era. Green Jesus was also some weird attempt to tell a deeper, more personal, story. That's not the kind of story that works in games.

The story should be written with certain standards in mind. Do not break the simple story. Do not destroy the simple themes. Under no circumstance should Daelin be right, especially if they aren't willing to commit to that.

[RoKPaNda]

I've never found Blizzard writing to be particularly good, but the point where it got absolutely stupid for me was back in Wrath where Arthas randomly killed off ner'zhul and took credit for all of his work. Thanks Christie Golden. =]

[Triceron]

Even if it's just a comic book fantasy, people would lose respect for Superman if he engaged in regular murderous rampages in the main DC universe.

To me, the point of no return was the loss of simplicity and clarity, and the understanding of how different stories flow into one another.

The Orc story was supposed to be about moving into the future, after Grom proved they could overcome their demons rather than succumb. In WoW, the story has instead reinforced that their demons are inescapable and inseparable from them. It broke the simple themes of WC3, to the point where people are earnestly arguing in favor of Daelin Proudmoore. Blizzard fucked up a simple story because they thought they could be deep and tell a political message or something. I dunno.

Varian's story fucked up the Orc story too, by inventing an Orcish run slave ring in Orgrimmar, despite Thrall hating slavery. This is also the same series that gave us Med'an, so it was all a pretty shitty drug haze of an era. Green Jesus was also some weird attempt to tell a deeper, more personal, story. That's not the kind of story that works in games.

The story should be written with certain standards in mind. Do not break the simple story. Do not destroy the simple themes. Under no circumstance should Daelin be right, especially if they aren't willing to commit to that.

Well it depends on what you are considering 'sacred'.

"The Orc story was supposed to be about moving into the future, after Grom proved they could overcome their demons rather than succumb." is just one story. This isn't the one that Warcraft 1 or 2 told, this is Warcraft 3's attempt to revise the Horde into a misunderstood, honourable peoples who were corrupted by outside forces. This isn't the Orc story any more than the Forsaken is the 'Undead story'. We clearly recognize that the Scourge and Forsaken are two parts of a whole of Undead, but we would never see that for the Dark Horde and Thrall's Horde. Most people, like you, would simply recognize the Warcraft 3 story as the 'Orc's story', but the truth is it's just the one that was put on a pedestal and pushed as the current and most-important faction. We never really get to follow the remaining Blackrock Orcs who did not follow Thrall. This is something World of Warcraft did right, by continuing the Dark Horde story and explaining how Rend rallies them back to Blackrock Spire and found a new master to rally under - Nefarian and the Black Dragonflight. This is also the Orc story as continued from Warcraft 1 + 2.

Honestly, if you think Varian's story is F'd up, then so is Thrall's since Varian is literally a mirror story of Thrall. Why would the Humans allow gladiators and slave labour? Why were there internment camps instead of a kill-on-sight law that would be imposed to protect the lands, the same decree that would exist to keep Trolls out of their territory? These are also changes that Warcraft 3 implemented that make little sense, but exist to tell one Orc story. I think it's a shame because it derailed everything Lothar and Turalyon worked for in Warcraft 2, and their sacrifices are in vain if the Horde was allowed to rise again as an opposing faction because they allowed them mercy. This same move strained the Alliance politically and financially, causing nations like Gilneas to separate and the Elves to go back to Quel'thalas. Had they simply strengthed their military union and continued 'defending the nation', they may not have been as vulnerable to the Scourge as they were at the beginning of Warcraft 3. Much of the reasoning behind the fall of Lordaeron stemmed from overconfidence and relaxed positions in a time of peace.

If not World of Warcraft shattering the alliances (however arbitrary the reasoning), then it would be Warcraft 4 doing so. There is no Warcraft without conflict between factions. At the heart of the game, it is about Orcs vs Humans. The game and story wouldn't be the same if it shifted to Humans + Orcs vs Demons only. Even with WC3's story, people are most familiar with the melee component where 4 armies duke it out against each other, not 3 armies allied vs 1.

[Tojara]

At the start honestly.

Vanilla WoW is a hot mess story wise compared to WC3: RoC and WC3:TFT. Blizzard was awful at continuing and building upon lore in an MMO environment until Cataclysm honestly. The story telling devices, interwoven with cinematics and build up were way better once they reached like Cataclysm (realistically MoP).

This isn't me saying that the lore is better in Cataclysm and beyond either, I'm merely stating that Blizzard didn't know how to do story or expand upon lore very well in an MMO format until this point. Whether you like it or not is entirely up to you, merely stating that devices used to tell stories got better (again, IMO).

Vanilla had a lot of isolated little stories that weren't really connected to one another at all. Every tier was isolated from one another, and while some zones had transition points into other zones, everything was mostly self-contained. Did I like some of these stories? Yeah, but they had little or nothing to do with the overlying lore of the game except for exploring areas we heard of or visited in WC1 through WC3:TFT. When they finally started doing lore that continued from WC3:TFT in TBC they were so cryptic and mysterious about it that it was entirely left to your imagination as to what the fuck was going on.

Old versions of the game were more about world building and self-sustained stories, which of their own accord were cool. The Tirion Fordring questline in Vanilla and the EPL questlines are all good examples of shit built around the Warcraft universe, but were isolated stories woven into the fabric of the game. After Vanilla you have a story that's focused more or less on one individual story (with breaks in certain tiers), and they didn't really start doing a good job of forwarding that narrative until later. We didn't really find out what the story of TBC was until Legion basically because there was basically nothing to go on besides Kael'Thas betrayed Illidan and is trying to bring the Burning Legion back.

[KrakHed]

Well it depends on what you are considering 'sacred'.

"The Orc story was supposed to be about moving into the future, after Grom proved they could overcome their demons rather than succumb." is just one story. This isn't the one that Warcraft 1 or 2 told, this is Warcraft 3's attempt to revise the Horde into a misunderstood, honourable peoples who were corrupted by outside forces. This isn't the Orc story any more than the Forsaken is the 'Undead story'. We clearly recognize that the Scourge and Forsaken are two parts of a whole of Undead, but we would never see that for the Dark Horde and Thrall's Horde. Most people, like you, would simply recognize the Warcraft 3 story as the 'Orc's story', but the truth is it's just the one that was put on a pedestal and pushed as the current and most-important faction.

Honestly, if you think Varian's story is F'd up, then so is Thrall's since Varian is literally a mirror story of Thrall. Why would the Humans allow gladiators and slave labour? Why were there internment camps instead of a kill-on-sight law that would be imposed to protect the lands, the same decree that would exist to keep Trolls out of their territory? These are also changes that Warcraft 3 implemented that make little sense, but exist to tell one Orc story. I think it's a shame because it derailed everything Lothar and Turalyon worked for in Warcraft 2, and their sacrifices are in vain if the Horde was allowed to rise again as an opposing faction because they allowed them mercy. Even without WoW, the Horde is a rival faction to the Alliance who remains a threat even if Jaina is on good terms with Thrall - because in the end this is Warcraft, not Peacecraft, and the Orcs will forever be written as rivals to the Humans.

If not World of Warcraft shattering the alliances (however arbitrary the reasoning), then it would be Warcraft 4 doing so. There is no Warcraft without conflict between factions. The game and story wouldn't be the same if it shifted to Humans + Orcs vs Demons only.

Wasn't the idea for internment camps originally brought up in Warcraft 2?

And I'm not talking about alliances being broken as sacred. I'm talking about fucking up simple character traits. Sure, there could eventually be another war, but that doesn't mean that the characterization has to regress to enable it.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Time Travel always breaks everything.

And it did it to WoW too.

[Zandalariprelate]

I have no clue why people think those two characters specifically should be immune to villainy. Again, I just think people were furst introduced to Warcraft by WC3, when it got pretty huge, especially compared to WC1+2. I mean, the Nerubians were technically protagonists by proxy of people playable in the scourge, but they became villains as well. Hellscream was a clear villain in WC2, but he dies a martyr in WC3.. things change depending on perspective. Khadgar was in WC2 and ends up being a neutral protagonist. Thralls starts a "villain" and ends up being one of the most important characters. Could the BC story have been better? Sure, but that doesn't make it a travesty becase 2 popular characters became villains.

Kael'thas joining the Legion makes senses as the current night elves rangers or if randomly Tirion sided with the LK, the characters has lots of beef with the enemy and would rather die than join them. Also Grom is just a hero in eyes of the horde or among the orcs at worse case, he isn't celebrated by every race as the killer of Mannoroth.

[Soon-TM]

Time Travel always breaks everything.

And it did it to WoW too.

The problem is that things REALLY started to go south (lorewise, in principle) with Cata, i.e. before the complete mess that was WoD and its time-travelling Orcs. Not that there weren't any inconsistencies or silly things in Vanilla-WotLK, but never to the degree of Cata (although BC fiddled quite close tbh).

[Triceron]

Wasn't the idea for internment camps originally brought up in Warcraft 2?

And I'm not talking about alliances being broken as sacred. I'm talking about fucking up simple character traits. Sure, there could eventually be another war, but that doesn't mean that the characterization has to regress to enable it.

Internment camps were brought in the defunct Warcraft Adventures. Lord of the Clans is where it first existed, as a means to tell Thrall's story and his history as a slave and gladiator; nothing more. In the end, it was repurposed to continue Thrall's introduction in to Warcraft 3. It was never dealt with in-game either, considering by Warcraft 3 the Blackrock (chaos) Orcs were free and running rampant. If you didn't read the novel or manual, one could assume Internment camps never even existed. It was purely backstory for Thrall, and a way to show the Alliance fractured by politics.

If we take WC2 and extend it, then the Orcs would have never been given mercy. The whole journey into the Dark Portal was a suicide mission to prevent new Orcs from ever entering again. That tone should have set a united Alliance army that was stronger than any prior, the same way Warcraft 2 starts with a strong united Alliance of races. It wouldn't be some politically-strained regression of nations.

Even if we're just talking individual characters, I doubt a character like Thrall would have been allowed to exist in a post-Warcraft 2 world. His existence is owed to Metzen wanting to tell a cool comic-book origin story set within Warcraft; a story that turns the Alliance into the baddies and the Orcs into the good guys. By all means, this should have been a 'what if' story, not a sensible continuation of the series.

But I'm not mad that the story is how it is or anything, I'm just criticizing it where I see it. The story is great, albeit fallible to its own plot devices. I mean I also hate the idea of the Blood Elves leaving the Alliance due to racism. But I mean I love the character of Garithos, he was written so well as a guy you love-to-hate. It's because of these things that I don't take the story or lore as sacred. The story is fun when it's unpredictable.

-edit- It seems you are right, there is mention of prison camps for Beyond the Dark Portal.

The Blackrock, Dragonmaw, and Black Tooth Grin clans were captured by the Alliance and herded into guarded reserves and prison camps. While the leaders of the Alliance argued over what was to be done with them, Orgrim Doomhammer, the Warchief of the Horde, was placed under arrest and kept as an honored prisoner under the care of King Terenas of Lordaeron. Some members of the Alliance pleaded that the Orcs should be exterminated like animals, while others opted for a sentence of life imprisonment.

Having discussed the obvious benefits of a treaty with Doomhammer, King Terenas fervently hoped that the Orcs could be kept pacified long enough to eventually lose their lust for conquest.

I think with the way it's written, the Lethargy was really just a way for the story to build up Thrall as a hero and the Alliance as abusive oppressors. I think logically speaking, if Terenas and Wrynn trusted Doomhammer enough to not outright-slaughter them, they would have sought a way to deal with the Lethargy had they known about it too rather than the complete mishandling that lead to Thrall's journey as a gladiator and freedom fighter.

- - - Updated - - -

The problem is that things REALLY started to go south (lorewise, in principle) with Cata, i.e. before the complete mess that was WoD and its time-travelling Orcs. Not that there weren't any inconsistencies or silly things in Vanilla-WotLK, but never to the degree of Cata (although BC fiddled quite close tbh).

I would somewhat agree but Cata is still a bit of a wavy subject in terms of lore for me.

I would say that it felt like an incomplete expansion, but there weren't any real big lore inconsistencies the way Draenor messed things up. At least nothing that was beyond the inconsistencies that already existed up till Cata (no reason to fight Illidan, there must always be a Lich King, etc).

[Jastall]

"Going downhill" implies a downward spiral that never ended which is not a term I would use, but if there's one expansion where the universe's future writing woes really came to the fore it was TBC.

Huge amounts of retcons, with the Draenei. Retooling the lore to fit gameplay (Blood Elves in the Horde was purely gameplay driven). Reducing established characters to personalityless loot pinatas with Illidan and Kael'thas. Generally not even bothering with a cohesive plot, even. TBC just had too much wrong with it.

[prwraith]

I don't know how people are voting cata when TBC had so many retcons we don't even talk about it anymore.

[Super Dickmann]

It was indeed impossible to return to warcraft 3 Horde. But I think MoP explained (And maybe, failed since we didn't get to see what the Horde became under Vol'jin) how the Horde could work moving forward. I don't think everyone would hold hands and be buddy-buddy. Vol'jin even claims that the Horde tends to bicker and argue but the notion of working side by side to defend each other was it's core value.

Like having political discussions with your cousins during Christmas. You wouldn't like having them every day, but you'd still probably tolerate them and help them out if you can.

Working with one another by itself is not a value. That summarizes every Alliance possible and every permutation of the Horde. That's kind of the issue. The factions, already in Cataclysm, were such ridiculously large tents that a rebellion primed on the values of the organization as a whole instead of the component races was doomed to come across as kind of hollow. If you look at the blurbs of what the factions are supposed to be, they're effectively interchangable. If I told you that the Horde were defenders of hope and unity, not only would that be an outright lie, official site be damned, but it could just as easily describe the Alliance. Mists didn't push the Horde forward except by pure accident when Vol'jin ended up an incidental compromise candidate who didn't address any of the underlying issues except the existence of an orc cast. It was an entirely regressive exercise that failed. BFA is another one, but a more transparent one where they're determined to crowbar this square peg into a nonexistent hole, which is why we're on our third interminable Saurfang cutscene, this time with extra Green Jesus flavor.

The war shifted from a grey conflict in Cataclysm to pretty Black and White in MoP. I agree.
But that does come with Garrosh's explicit lust for war that was alluded as early as WotLK. Sure, he wasn't a villain, but his desire to conquer the Alliance was evident...

The relationship between Garrosh and Vol'jin was soured from the start. I think that in their very first interaction, Vol'jin was happy with the Horde's victory over the Lich King and Garrosh already claimed that he did nothing to help but merely recover the Echo Isles. So... yeah, not a very great first impression either.
Then he killed Cairne (Unintenionally, despite Baine's delusions in the future) and his plans for conquest moved forward...

This is kind of the problem. The shift in the ethos of the war was neither methodological nor was it addressed or followed through. Vol'jin threatened Garrosh with death and Cairne rebelled over a false flag before Garrosh did much of anything and the war itself was launched by Varian back in Wrath, with diplomacy failing. Yet every character in the setting treats it as though none of this, nor the Theramore incursion into the S. Barrens that threatened to invade Mulgore ever happened. Tides of War collapses if any character for even one moment had the events of Cataclysm acknowledged. Instead, it operates on the assumption that there is no war going on - despite factions clashing with huge armies all over the place and Garrosh being on a second invasion of Ashenvale, the Alliance having declared the war, trade embargoes being in and Jaina having built a highway specifically to speed up a war that she was running out of troops to invest in. The orcs' entire reason to go to war - that being Thrall's racial guilt, their resource deprivation that was already a big deal well before the Shattering according to the stories, is never brought up except in Garrosh's dialogue in 5.1. No named orc except Saurfang and Thrall even opposes Garrosh that we see.

The entire resource thing is unceremoniously dumped with no resolution after Mists and we're meant to assume that things are better now for whatever reason. Thrall's monologue, Garrosh's moment of pathos and the whole groundwork they had to go to that point pay lip service to those ideas, but it's a matter of telling and not showing. When we see the troll leader threaten the orc leader with death in their first conversation, have his race completely suppressed by a single unit of Kor'kron and then have to plead the Alliance for help in toppling said Warchief, who's grounds for war and who's opponents hostile actions are completely ignored, the story falls apart. It did not evolve into being black and white, it's just a switch being flipped and all characters being forced into roles they could not possibly fit.

[shade076]

I don't know how people are voting cata when TBC had so many retcons we don't even talk about it anymore.

This.

Not understanding the results. The poll is just about lore, just because you enjoyed TBC as expansion doesn't mean the lore didnt take a total nose dive.

[schwarzkopf]

It didn't start going down, however people started ignoring it probably from MoP on.
As things got added to make stuff easy (flying and quest maps etc) - people stopped bothering about the story.

[Al Gorefiend]

since christe golden joined in

Lol this forum loved Christie Golden like 3 years ago

[Jericho21]

Alright, -snip-

I thought Cataclysm was excellent in Lore. It brought an end to the Deathwing arc as well as the Unlimited POWAH the Dragonflights seemed to have. I didn't like the Aggra-Thrall thing at the end. I didn't like the lead up to MoP. And that's where I think the lore took a shit. MoP onward was/has been/is a shitshow. WoD, ugh, I cannot stand. Legion was TBC 2.0 done right, even with a time travel Gul'dan.

BfA I will honestly wait until the end to declare it the Windows Millennium Edition of WoW. Thus far, it's shaping up to be worse than WoD.

[Soon-TM]

I don't know how people are voting cata when TBC had so many retcons we don't even talk about it anymore.

The thing is that the numerous lore !@#&ups in BC were largely self-contained. Those weird portal machines and spaceships had no influence whatsoever in Azeroth, same as Illidank or Kael being turned into loot pinatas. It was fairly !@#&ty, sure (I loved the Human/BE campaign from WC3, Vashj and Kael were actually relatable, even likeable), especially when Blizzard decided that the big bad was going to be Illidan because... reasons.

But unlike BC's, the bad parts of the story from Cata, MoP (gonna leave WoD out of the picture because it was an irredeemable mess) have been stacking and bringing down the core elements of the story, aka the factions. To the point that today one of the factions will have to either disappear or be saved by a Deus ex Machina, which is lame as lame can get.