i miss the "medieval" fantasy of WoW

[Ryzek]

I never really felt Wow was a very grounded "medieval" fantasy to begin with.

[Nerovar]

We fought inter-dimensional demons in The Blasted Lands and had several quests where you had to die and go to the afterlife to commune with specific npc's.

How exactly are these thing incompatible with medieval fantasy?

[Queen of Hamsters]

WoW was never that...

My starting experience had Native-American tones. Then I got to an orange area and a huge city filled with huts. Then I got to Outland where things were Alien. Then I got to Northrend, with a mix of Norse, contemporary Scandinavian, Djungle, Tundra, Trolls...

WoW was never "medieval". The first time I saw something that reminded me of very VERY cartoonish medieval stuff, was when I rolled my first human character.

Then I got to a farm area, a dark forest more reminiscent of Sleepy Hollow, more Djungle etc etc.

I like grounded, small stories dealing with local threats. But we do have those every expansion. Drustvar being one of my favourite zones of all time thanks to the threats it deals with and the tone.

[ro9ue]

it was only a matter of time before the scale of WoW got bigger and we ended up fighting inter-dimensional demons from outer space, traveling to different planets, and now even going into the afterlife.
but i miss the grounded sense of medieval fantasy in WoW.
sword and shields, dragons, magic, and the feel you get from (let's say) classic WoW.

now.....before anybody says "go play Classic" .... that's not what i'm getting at.
what i'm getting at is that, as WoW's story continues do you think it will ever be grounded again?
i thought that BFA was an attempt to do that but looking back we see that wasn't the case.
the stories lined up to be dealt with in the future point to this scale becoming bigger and more out there.

I think the spacetraveling / titan tech is too front and center now I agree. But WC is that now I guess and theres no going back.

Could just wait it out for that Amazon studios LOTR mmo.

[Jetstream]

it was only a matter of time before the scale of WoW got bigger and we ended up fighting inter-dimensional demons from outer space, traveling to different planets, and now even going into the afterlife.
but i miss the grounded sense of medieval fantasy in WoW.
sword and shields, dragons, magic, and the feel you get from (let's say) classic WoW.

now.....before anybody says "go play Classic" .... that's not what i'm getting at.
what i'm getting at is that, as WoW's story continues do you think it will ever be grounded again?
i thought that BFA was an attempt to do that but looking back we see that wasn't the case.
the stories lined up to be dealt with in the future point to this scale becoming bigger and more out there.

Honestly when thinking about Warcraft's aesthetic, you should really start with Warhammer, rather than anything like your typical swords-and-horses fantasy.

I don't think there was ever a time when it was grounded the way you wanted.

[lvbuckeye]

You say that classic is not what you mean, but it was literally the only time wow story has been somewhat grounded. Everything after that has been off the scale end of the world kind of stuff. You miss something that never really existed.

I've mentioned this before and I will say it again, considering how many times the world (of warcraft) was about to cease to exist, all in the span of about 10 years, I'm truly confused why most, if not all, denizens of Azeroth are not either a complete neurotic mess or spent, jaded and apathetic.

Well we're all dead now, which is why we're in the Shadowlands.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk

[klogaroth]

What the hell are you talking about? Fantasy Orcs were literally invented for and popularized by medieval fantasy settings. If you think that the center of the Warcraft world (the human kingdoms) isn't rooted in medieval fantasy then you're simply wrong. This is such an inrcedibly absurd claim.

In medieval fantasy the orcs are the enemies. If you don't understand that, you don't understand the roots of the fantasy at all. You don't understand how the likes of warcraft and dungeon keeper are different. The playable races that we have are a deviation from classic medieval fantasy. Then to top all that off, some of them are from another planet.

[Venziir]

How exactly are these thing incompatible with medieval fantasy?

They aren't, but OP stated those examples as something he disliked so....

- - - Updated - - -

Well we're all dead now, which is why we're in the Shadowlands.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk

Nope, that's not true.

[Nnyco]

Then you didnt pay much attention.... ever? We literally have space traveling since early on.

[Verdugo]

Sci-fi elements are one thing, but there is something seriously wrong when Warhammer 40k feels more medieval than Warcraft.

[Ara Myrr]

Sci-fi elements are one thing, but there is something seriously wrong when Warhammer 40k feels more medieval than Warcraft.

..what?

By no stretch of the imagination does 40k feel more medieval than Warcraft.

[loras]

it was only a matter of time before the scale of WoW got bigger and we ended up fighting inter-dimensional demons from outer space, traveling to different planets, and now even going into the afterlife.
but i miss the grounded sense of medieval fantasy in WoW.
sword and shields, dragons, magic, and the feel you get from (let's say) classic WoW.

now.....before anybody says "go play Classic" .... that's not what i'm getting at.
what i'm getting at is that, as WoW's story continues do you think it will ever be grounded again?
i thought that BFA was an attempt to do that but looking back we see that wasn't the case.
the stories lined up to be dealt with in the future point to this scale becoming bigger and more out there.

Define "grounded", WoW's first raid consisted of going into the core of the planet, the first 20 man consisted of defeating a blood god from another plane of existence.

WC3 featured outland already, also a demon invasion and the emergence of a "god"like Lich King, also it heavily involved steampunk stuff at the very least.

You seem to have nostalgia for something that simply never has existed, or you word it very poorly.

[LemonDemonGirl]

WoW seems to be more Sci-fi/Fantasy like Warhammer 40k is, than Medieval/Fantasy like LotR and D&D imo

[huth]

Well we're all dead now, which is why we're in the Shadowlands.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk

Do go and learn the story of Shadowlands before trying to talk about it. You're just embarassing yourself here.

- - - Updated - - -

WoW seems to be more Sci-fi/Fantasy like Warhammer 40k is, than Medieval/Fantasy like LotR and D&D imo

At best it's on the level of Spelljammer. Most of the "high-tech" is magic based, not technology. The Legion "spaceships" are basically magic floating rocks. WH40k comes from the other side, a highly developed technological civilisation that keeps descending into myth and fantastical beliefs, with only some outliers involving anything approaching magic.

[Nerovar]

In medieval fantasy the orcs are the enemies. If you don't understand that, you don't understand the roots of the fantasy at all. You don't understand how the likes of warcraft and dungeon keeper are different. The playable races that we have are a deviation from classic medieval fantasy. Then to top all that off, some of them are from another planet.

Just because Orcs deviate from Tolkien Orcs doesn't mean it's not medieval fantasy. What kind of warped argument is that?

Sci-fi elements are one thing, but there is something seriously wrong when Warhammer 40k feels more medieval than Warcraft.

This man gets it.

[Sesethi]

What medieval phantasy of WoW? Several steampunk elements and advanced engineering were already present in the franchise warcraft 1. Hell the orc races by themselves were an Alien race to begin with.

To be fair, I love we threading outside the common rpg phantasy elements but when it is well done. I will never forget how awed I was during TBC and how they handled alien elements and cultures

[Jastall]

I never really felt Wow was a very grounded "medieval" fantasy to begin with.

It's never tried to be either. It's large-scale absurd heroic fantasy where anything the devs decide is cool goes like Warhammer which very heavily inspired it, where dinosaurs with clubs fight crazy ratmen with laser cannons, weaponized hamster wheels and nukes while half-naked demon-worshiping vikings invade 16th century Germany with tanks.

Much like Warhammer, some races and factions are more typical fantasy than others such as humans and elves, but as soon as you leave that even vanilla WoW had tons of high-tech nonsense.

[Garymorilix]

BfA was more grounded than any expansion since probably WotLK.
(or you could argue Pandaria maybe, if you consider that aesthetic " traditional medieval", but i don't)

Just goes to show that you probably don't even play the game.

Case closed.

[Shedaar]

What buggers me the most is that Orcs had problems to build Orgrimmar and they almost got wiped out by centaurs, but several years have passed and PC's killed titan on other planet or even fought a demon on a space ship, but they still use swords etc.,

How Stormwind/Orgrimmar aren't modernized to the current (spaceship, gnome/goblin/draenei/magic engineering) standards?
Why Darkspear still live in tents?

[omeomorfismo]

lol medieval?
gnome->magitech
tauren->you basically fight imperialist dwarf archeologists as one of the first thing, sort of US expansionism
orc and troll->you play basically a barbarian in a sort of mongolian desert
forsaken->they are in a sort of spooky tale and hard alchimist steampunk limbo

this game is "medieval" only playing humans, even the nelves arent something really tolkienian