In hindsight, just one change could've made WoW's story more coherent

[Wilfire]

TBC should have come after MoP and WoD should have been scrapped entirely. The Blood Elves and the Draenei can still be introduced in WoW's first expansion, WotLK. Here's how things would have made more sense:

1. Vanilla transitions organically into WotLK after Naxxramas' fall; the Lich King unleashes the second plague as retaliation and the Alliance and the Horde invade Northrend.

2. The Blood Elves don't get their redemption arc until much later and can remain the Horde's second token evil teammate for much longer instead of being High Elves with green eyes.

3. The characters of Illidan, Kael'thas and Vashj don't get thrown away because of WoW's earlier story weirdness.

4. The Horde - Alliance war would feel more meaningful with the Horde's hardliners coming to the forefront instead of all the pro-war top brass being Garrosh's outsider alien orcs from another world.

5. Garrosh is introduced much later and his story arc could be about living up to the Hellscream bloodline and fighting DEMONS instead of... just about everything else.

6. The Legion doesn't launch another half-assed invasion of Azeroth right after their defeat in WC3. Instead, they recoup for years before trying again with their full might.

7. New TBC leads directly into Legion, no need for WoD.

8. WoW's overarching story elements like the Naaru and the Void Lords can be introduced much later and fleshed out more in new TBC.

9. Foreshadowing is cool - M'uru turning dark would be fresh in people's memories as they interact with Xe'ra and L'ura.

10. But most importantly, Illidan doesn't need a half-assed redemption arc because by the time new TBC launched, Blizzard would know that they want him to be a hero instead of a villain.

[owbu]

I have questions
No Garrosh in mop. How would that work?
Do we still have two faction wars? Is the second one still terrible?

Two legion expansions in a row sounds a bit meh. How would you make tbc not just be boring legion?

[Powerogue]

Some things would definitely need heavily retconned. As you clearly acknowledge, BC would have to play out entirely differently, with Illidan and his forces at least somewhat helping us. Definitely more of an antihero plotline where we probably befriend rather than kill him at the end.

Definitely would have enjoyed the blood elves having a longer wait for their redemption arc (presumably still occurring the same way in BC roughly) for all your reasons.

Hindsight is 20/20 and all that, Blizzard have always wrote by the seat of their pants and worked to tweak things to make it look like it was their master plan all along. I feel like they'd agree with you on most of this.

[Varodoc]

I have questions
No Garrosh in mop. How would that work?
Do we still have two faction wars? Is the second one still terrible?

Two legion expansions in a row sounds a bit meh. How would you make tbc not just be boring legion?

No Garrosh in Cataclysm either. Garrosh was a major villain for the Alliance in that expansion, as he started the invasion of Ashenvale and Gilneas and launched the expedition to Vashj'ir.

[StationaryHawk]

4. The Horde - Alliance war would feel more meaningful with the Horde's hardliners coming to the forefront instead of all the pro-war top brass being Garrosh's outsider alien orcs from another world.

All orcs are aliens from another world.

But Garrosh's top brass, such as Malkorok and Zaela, were from the Blackrock and Dragonmaw clans, who arrived on Azeroth at the same time as the rest.

[ravenmoon]

BACK TO BACK LEGION THEMED EXPANSIONS MIGHT be too much fatigue, they would have to space them out.

woD could still come , but after say a Legion that saw the titans restore outland to a whole planet, and shadowlands that placed the dead back. Or right a new scenario of Orcs going beserk in a different version of the story.. exactly like how Suramar in Legion was a retelling of the first invasion of the Legion

[Wilfire]

All orcs are aliens from another world.

But Garrosh's top brass, such as Malkorok and Zaela, were from the Blackrock and Dragonmaw clans, who arrived on Azeroth at the same time as the rest.

Malkorok and Zaela became his top brass during the late stages of the war. Cata had Cromush and several Garrosh-style generals from Northrend leading the charge. The point is that Cromush and later Malkorok and Zaela always felt like outsiders rather than the core of the Horde, at least from a Horde player's PoV. I think the story would have worked out much better if core Horde members were the ones pushing a more aggressive stance and the racist angle wasn't brought in at all. It would have forced the Horde to reevaluate itself way way before BfA instead of pinning all the blame on Garrosh. There's no reason a similar Azerothian orc character couldn't have been built up to fulfill Garrosh's role. Hell, Agmar was a Garrosh-style general through and through and he was an Azerothian orc rather than a refugee from Outland.

[shoc]

There should never have been apocalypse-level crisis events. The story was doomed the moment they turned every conflict into an existential crisis for the entire world. It ties the story's feet to a chain of concrete blocks and throws it into the deepest part of the lake and dooms it to unmanageable power creep. Never do the armies that be in Warcraft fight for anything other than to save the world from an absolute threat, and the threats themselves are barely interesting in the first place. We've got our Milton inspired Judeo-Christian devils or the Lovecraft inspired horrors, wow, so original.

Real stories of war are nothing like that. They battle for supremacy or in defence of ideology, belief, values, tradition, religion, commerce, and so on. Functionally none of the factions have meaningful long-term ambitions that aren't vague referents to peace and or survival. But we rarely ever see any of that in Warcraft's story. The power struggle in Zandalar as well as in Kul Tiras between Rastakhan/Zul and Jaina/Everyone was actually pretty interesting, but it was so quickly overpowered by the routine existential crisis.

I guess what I'm saying, is that apocalyptic scenarios are really bad for the story. It trivializes so much of the interesting personal character story development that happens throughout the earlier parts of the expansion, and Blizzard unfortunately always seems to leave them in the dust when they move the story forward to the 'big bad'.

[Aresk]

TBC should have come after MoP and WoD should have been scrapped entirely. The Blood Elves and the Draenei can still be introduced in WoW's first expansion, WotLK. Here's how things would have made more sense:

1. Vanilla transitions organically into WotLK after Naxxramas' fall; the Lich King unleashes the second plague as retaliation and the Alliance and the Horde invade Northrend.

2. The Blood Elves don't get their redemption arc until much later and can remain the Horde's second token evil teammate for much longer instead of being High Elves with green eyes.

3. The characters of Illidan, Kael'thas and Vashj don't get thrown away because of WoW's earlier story weirdness.

4. The Horde - Alliance war would feel more meaningful with the Horde's hardliners coming to the forefront instead of all the pro-war top brass being Garrosh's outsider alien orcs from another world.

5. Garrosh is introduced much later and his story arc could be about living up to the Hellscream bloodline and fighting DEMONS instead of... just about everything else.

6. The Legion doesn't launch another half-assed invasion of Azeroth right after their defeat in WC3. Instead, they recoup for years before trying again with their full might.

7. New TBC leads directly into Legion, no need for WoD.

8. WoW's overarching story elements like the Naaru and the Void Lords can be introduced much later and fleshed out more in new TBC.

9. Foreshadowing is cool - M'uru turning dark would be fresh in people's memories as they interact with Xe'ra and L'ura.

10. But most importantly, Illidan doesn't need a half-assed redemption arc because by the time new TBC launched, Blizzard would know that they want him to be a hero instead of a villain.

So...Saurfang leads the WotLK campaign, gets promoted to Warchief during Cata, goes crazy in MoP, and then the new TBC Garrosh is the one who turns on Sylvanas in BfA? I mean, if Saurfang blamed the Alliance for not pulling their weight at the Wrathgate when Drannosh dies, it might be enough to push him to the same level of hostility as Garrosh's lust for wood. And Garrosh's daddy issues and focus on honor in TBC could naturally lead him to the same place Saurfang inhabits in BfA, except without tons of genocide under his belt. It's an interesting thought experiment, at least.

[FelPlague]

TBC should have come after MoP and WoD should have been scrapped entirely. The Blood Elves and the Draenei can still be introduced in WoW's first expansion, WotLK. Here's how things would have made more sense:

1. Vanilla transitions organically into WotLK after Naxxramas' fall; the Lich King unleashes the second plague as retaliation and the Alliance and the Horde invade Northrend.

2. The Blood Elves don't get their redemption arc until much later and can remain the Horde's second token evil teammate for much longer instead of being High Elves with green eyes.

3. The characters of Illidan, Kael'thas and Vashj don't get thrown away because of WoW's earlier story weirdness.

4. The Horde - Alliance war would feel more meaningful with the Horde's hardliners coming to the forefront instead of all the pro-war top brass being Garrosh's outsider alien orcs from another world.

5. Garrosh is introduced much later and his story arc could be about living up to the Hellscream bloodline and fighting DEMONS instead of... just about everything else.

6. The Legion doesn't launch another half-assed invasion of Azeroth right after their defeat in WC3. Instead, they recoup for years before trying again with their full might.

7. New TBC leads directly into Legion, no need for WoD.

8. WoW's overarching story elements like the Naaru and the Void Lords can be introduced much later and fleshed out more in new TBC.

9. Foreshadowing is cool - M'uru turning dark would be fresh in people's memories as they interact with Xe'ra and L'ura.

10. But most importantly, Illidan doesn't need a half-assed redemption arc because by the time new TBC launched, Blizzard would know that they want him to be a hero instead of a villain.

1. If TBC comes after mop, how does the whole thing with the blood elves helping garrosh get the bell work?
2. TBC is what brought garrosh to azeroth, cause he was trapped there until then. so how does wotlk, cata, and mop happen without garrosh?
3. You say blood elves and draenei could have bene introduced, but that woulda massivly changed the story, and not really made sense, so idk what your getting at....
4. With TBC after mop, kalec is gone, and things dont line up.





it sounds like as usual you are trying to fix things, but overall have made things like 100 times worse.

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No Garrosh in Cataclysm either. Garrosh was a major villain for the Alliance in that expansion, as he started the invasion of Ashenvale and Gilneas and launched the expedition to Vashj'ir.

No garrosh in wotlk too, which means the leader of a few places, and the whole thing with him ruining the possible peace treaty to stop yog sarron, is gone.

- - - Updated - - -

I have questions
No Garrosh in mop. How would that work?
Do we still have two faction wars? Is the second one still terrible?

Two legion expansions in a row sounds a bit meh. How would you make tbc not just be boring legion?

No garrosh in wotlk, no garrosh in cata, and no garrosh in mop, that is literally changing 2 out of 3 of the expansions in a major way, wotlk well he played a roll, but a minor one.

[Wilfire]

1. If TBC comes after mop, how does the whole thing with the blood elves helping garrosh get the bell work?
2. TBC is what brought garrosh to azeroth, cause he was trapped there until then. so how does wotlk, cata, and mop happen without garrosh?
3. You say blood elves and draenei could have bene introduced, but that woulda massivly changed the story, and not really made sense, so idk what your getting at....
4. With TBC after mop, kalec is gone, and things dont line up.





it sounds like as usual you are trying to fix things, but overall have made things like 100 times worse.

- - - Updated - - -



No garrosh in wotlk too, which means the leader of a few places, and the whole thing with him ruining the possible peace treaty to stop yog sarron, is gone.

- - - Updated - - -



No garrosh in wotlk, no garrosh in cata, and no garrosh in mop, that is literally changing 2 out of 3 of the expansions in a major way, wotlk well he played a roll, but a minor one.

Garrosh is extremely easy to write around by just introducing a new character who fulfills a similar role or, like Aresk suggested, having Saurfang be more hostile. The main point of moving TBC forward in time is that a) half of it doesn't have to be retconned later to make Illidan the hero, b) Warcraft's more esoteric cosmological elements are introduced at an appropriately advanced point in the story and explored in-game rather than being glossed over in TBC and later explained in-depth in Chronicles (an out of game source) and c) WoD and the AU can be skipped entirely by just having Kil'jaeden's invasion of the Sunwell succeed / partially succeed and lead to a full-blown invasion.

[guisadop]

There's a lot of lore-related stuff I really disliked in TBC, even though I love the expansion's theme (both aesthetically and lore-wise). And it seems the writers don't even bother trying to correct small errors and retcons, instead doubling down and doing even more retcons every time, which really removes the "magic" of the lore.

[Arikara]

Giving Garrosh a different stage to make a fool of himself would not change or redeem him, he'd still act stupid from start to finish

[DemonHunter18]

if I had to make WoW from a scratch, I would just start with where WC3 left off (Arthas becoming LK).

I would remove Arthas killed Nerzul and There must always be the Lich King because the Scourge is more dangerous than a fully powered Lich King controlling them to take over Azeoth BS.

[Mirishka]

TBC should have come after MoP and WoD should have been scrapped entirely. The Blood Elves and the Draenei can still be introduced in WoW's first expansion, WotLK. Here's how things would have made more sense:

1. Vanilla transitions organically into WotLK after Naxxramas' fall; the Lich King unleashes the second plague as retaliation and the Alliance and the Horde invade Northrend.

2. The Blood Elves don't get their redemption arc until much later and can remain the Horde's second token evil teammate for much longer instead of being High Elves with green eyes.

3. The characters of Illidan, Kael'thas and Vashj don't get thrown away because of WoW's earlier story weirdness.

4. The Horde - Alliance war would feel more meaningful with the Horde's hardliners coming to the forefront instead of all the pro-war top brass being Garrosh's outsider alien orcs from another world.

5. Garrosh is introduced much later and his story arc could be about living up to the Hellscream bloodline and fighting DEMONS instead of... just about everything else.

6. The Legion doesn't launch another half-assed invasion of Azeroth right after their defeat in WC3. Instead, they recoup for years before trying again with their full might.

7. New TBC leads directly into Legion, no need for WoD.

8. WoW's overarching story elements like the Naaru and the Void Lords can be introduced much later and fleshed out more in new TBC.

9. Foreshadowing is cool - M'uru turning dark would be fresh in people's memories as they interact with Xe'ra and L'ura.

10. But most importantly, Illidan doesn't need a half-assed redemption arc because by the time new TBC launched, Blizzard would know that they want him to be a hero instead of a villain.

Um... that's a hell of a lot more than one change. And it doesn't even take into account everything that would have to change on account of that degree of shuffling.

Hard pass.

[Beerbill Society]

Idk, this change for me raises more questions than answers.

I agree that TBC is kinda messy and Legion acts like it's spiritual successor, but Illidan redemption wasn't so bad, it was edgy at but it was enjoyable.

I while I disagree how they handled a lot of character development over the years, changing the time of the events wouldn't make a huge difference, tbh it would be a lot worst now, since they love wasting it all to make a quick profit (aka N'zoth, Azshara).

Make me glad TBC worked out how it did, at least the characters had some development

[Wilfire]

So...Saurfang leads the WotLK campaign, gets promoted to Warchief during Cata, goes crazy in MoP, and then the new TBC Garrosh is the one who turns on Sylvanas in BfA? I mean, if Saurfang blamed the Alliance for not pulling their weight at the Wrathgate when Drannosh dies, it might be enough to push him to the same level of hostility as Garrosh's lust for wood. And Garrosh's daddy issues and focus on honor in TBC could naturally lead him to the same place Saurfang inhabits in BfA, except without tons of genocide under his belt. It's an interesting thought experiment, at least.

It's crazy to think that BfA's paragon of moral superiority is one of the worst regular genociders in the entirety of Warcraft

[Aucald]

It's crazy to think that BfA's paragon of moral superiority is one of the worst regular genociders in the entirety of Warcraft

Almost all of the Old Horde falls under that banner, with Durotan and the Frostwolves being the few exceptions.

[Beerbill Society]

There should never have been apocalypse-level crisis events. The story was doomed the moment they turned every conflict into an existential crisis for the entire world. It ties the story's feet to a chain of concrete blocks and throws it into the deepest part of the lake and dooms it to unmanageable power creep. Never do the armies that be in Warcraft fight for anything other than to save the world from an absolute threat, and the threats themselves are barely interesting in the first place. We've got our Milton inspired Judeo-Christian devils or the Lovecraft inspired horrors, wow, so original.

Real stories of war are nothing like that. They battle for supremacy or in defence of ideology, belief, values, tradition, religion, commerce, and so on. Functionally none of the factions have meaningful long-term ambitions that aren't vague referents to peace and or survival. But we rarely ever see any of that in Warcraft's story. The power struggle in Zandalar as well as in Kul Tiras between Rastakhan/Zul and Jaina/Everyone was actually pretty interesting, but it was so quickly overpowered by the routine existential crisis.

I guess what I'm saying, is that apocalyptic scenarios are really bad for the story. It trivializes so much of the interesting personal character story development that happens throughout the earlier parts of the expansion, and Blizzard unfortunately always seems to leave them in the dust when they move the story forward to the 'big bad'.

That's true, the only thing is Warcraft always dealt with this world ending scenarios (like Orc invasions, in orcs and humans or demon invasions in reign of chaos, to the scourge plague in frozen throne), I feel like this formula was only not used (or abused seem more fitting) in classic where you deal with huge threats but not world ending ones (Ragnaros, Ony and Nef), those are minor conflicts that endangered the factions, and thus never handled by the players alone, but the factions with the help.

I agree with what you said, "apocalyptic scenarios are really bad for the story", they really are is just a cheap way to give a false sense of urgency for a threat and it only worked in the previous games because you controlled a whole faction not just single character, so I guess the proportions match.

[Varodoc]

Saurfang could never replace Garrosh. He would never become so hostile, because he has PTSD from the Genocide of the Draenei and can't even eat pork anymore. He's not Garrosh. He knows that war brings only death, destruction, pain to everyone. He would not start anything, much less for some "utopia" where only the orcs rule and the "lesser races" are exterminated.

He would not blame the Alliance for his son's death. He would've been told that his son died bravely fighting side by side with Fordragon, and that the only culprit for the Wrathgate is Putress (and, secretly, Sylvanas herself).

Furthermore, since Saurfang is calm, patient, and wise, he would never start all those shenanigans with the Sha and Y'Shaarj. So you are cutting ALL of MoP after Lei Shen.

You just can't write Garrosh out of the plot. There's no one else that can fit his role. Someone who is both very influential, as the son of a legendary war hero, and mentally unstable, willing to commit genocide and remake the world in his image.