If you could retcon WoW

[Triceron]

A magic faerie appears, granting you a wish. The condition is you can only change or completely rewrite WoW in your vision and have Blizzard executives carry through with it. You have one chance to rewrite the story in a way that will appeal to the masses and bring back all the fans.

What do you do?

Give me your best WoW Revision story pitch.

[Orby]

All of WoW was all a dream, by Thrall. :P

[Darththeo]

I would rewrite mainly involving Garrosh's story. His fall was handled terribly, especially given we KNOW Blizzard understands falls of characters. And they didn't do a good enough job building the character, imo, either.

[Spikeychris]

I mean usually without exception players of any games ideas for changing the lore are usually terrible (applies to a lot of fan fiction).

That said one thing I wished we had gotten was instead of WoD having a caverns of time themed expansion where going back to Draenor could have been a zone and the other zones would be spread throughout WoW history.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I'd start in cata.. a few less meme zone stories for example, more coherent, set up a better story for garrosh or kill him in a ditch in northrend, make deathwing a mentally present enemy, use his human form, etc.

[shoc]

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (1994) decides to adapt the Warhammer IP instead of coming up with an original story.

[Triceron]

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (1994) decides to adapt the Warhammer IP instead of coming up with an original story.

I hope it doesn't mean we have to suffer through Age of Sigmar after 2015 :P

[huth]

I hope it doesn't mean we have to suffer through Age of Sigmar after 2015 :P

Well, it's outside the constraints for the wish, so it wouldn't happen anyway.

I'd rather keep my hands off. I don't really trust my writing skills.

[Faldric]

All of WoW was all a dream, by Thrall. :P

Maybe not all, but a lot of it.

I would undo:
* Parallel universes and time travel and everything attached to it like the burning legion existing beyond time and space. It just made no sense at all. And change the end of Mists of Pandaria to Garrosh being executed and WoD never happening.
* The Void. It was just introduced because the game needed the next big bad guy.
* The "realms" concept. https://www.wowhead.com/news/the-cos...n-color-316394
* And all characters suffering from dissociative identity disorder. How else would one explain the rapid changes in personality of Garrosh, Sylvanas, etc.

[Romanthony]

ID retcon to much to really count, but mostly, would be Most of shadowlands and BFA from 9.2 onwards since 9.1 was great

[McNeil]

Night elves never joining the Alliance and Forsaken never joining the Horde. Still think this is one of the more damaging decisions to the lore, even when I first played WoW coming from WC3 it never made sense to me why they didn't remain their own faction.

[shoc]

Night elves never joining the Alliance and Forsaken never joining the Horde. Still think this is one of the more damaging decisions to the lore, even when I first played WoW coming from WC3 it never made sense to me why they didn't remain their own faction.

I really like the quadrangled conflict between Sentinels/Alliance/Horde/Scourge. I don't think it's too late for WoW to go this way.

[aceperson]

i'd probably erase everything after the launch of wod including 6.2 and the SBG dungeon. i think wod had a wonderful premise with an alternate timeline trying to invade azeroth. for 6.1, i'd have had a raid where the iron horde musters it's army together to make a second push on the dark portal and the raid area would be the blasted lands. probably have a fight where there is a giant tank trying to plow through the barricades and the heroes have to launch themselves from catapults onto the machine. then they would kill out the operating team and signal for dwarves to come pilot it and turn it back on the iron horde. the final fight would probably be kilrogg. this would fit with the vision shown in the warlord previews and make a warlord an end boss.

for 6.2. i would've had the assault on blackrock foundry. for 6.3, i would've had the siege of the citadel (the name of hellfire citadel before outland became a thing). it would've involved grom looking for more power now that his main forge has been destroyed and his forces were repelled twice. he would succumb to the rumored power of the dark star that ner'zhul used at the expansion launch. instead of the fel orcs being made, shadow orcs would be made. i think it would be a neat twist since it's an alternate timeline. grom would obviously be the final boss and i'd add a mythic only phase where guldan shows up as grom is losing. guldan offers power in turn for slavery. grom is so caught up in the fact that he might lose, that he might be a wolf with no teeth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRna...4RQMXa&index=2 for reference), that he hastily agrees to it. grom then intakes the power of fel which clashes with the already embraced shadow power. his power becomes literally explosive. his body is destroying itself from being imbued with conflicting powers. every attack is powerful and shakes the very foundation of the citadel but his body literally explodes apart as the fight finishes. with no thrall, this grom would not except being defeated without a restraint.

after my wod, i'd probably go with the bfa zones for each faction looking to replenish it's strength from a massive war and new economic growth. it'd be an expansion more about exploring azeroth instead of having a big bad. i'd have to give it more time of thought after that but it seems like having a burning legion invasion akin to legion (but none of the bs about fighting sargeras without fighting sargeras). bring in demon hunters as we weren't prepared (a ha!) for a demon invasion and need their help to repel them. you specifically would see sargeras for the first time but not fight him. this sets the story up for the final invasion in the future where the demon hunters have gained new knowledge and trained both factions in the ways of fighting demons.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I really like the quadrangled conflict between Sentinels/Alliance/Horde/Scourge. I don't think it's too late for WoW to go this way.

Splitting your playerbase 2-ways is already a stupid luxury in 2021, doing it 4-ways is just laughable. At best we get some intra-faction conflict that way like we currently have, but thinking it's realistic to do so as a full split is complete nonsense.

[ClassicPeon]

I mean usually without exception players of any games ideas for changing the lore are usually terrible (applies to a lot of fan fiction).

That said one thing I wished we had gotten was instead of WoD having a caverns of time themed expansion where going back to Draenor could have been a zone and the other zones would be spread throughout WoW history.

You know that by definition fan fiction is literally just lore written by fans right?

Thus ANY ideas for changing the lore by players is fan fiction....

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe not all, but a lot of it.

I would undo:
* Parallel universes and time travel and everything attached to it like the burning legion existing beyond time and space. It just made no sense at all. And change the end of Mists of Pandaria to Garrosh being executed and WoD never happening.
* The Void. It was just introduced because the game needed the next big bad guy.
* The "realms" concept. https://www.wowhead.com/news/the-cos...n-color-316394
* And all characters suffering from dissociative identity disorder. How else would one explain the rapid changes in personality of Garrosh, Sylvanas, etc.

Just like LITERALLY any other bad guy in the history of gaming.............. like....

[Hellobolis]

after war3, not form the horde and alliance and go with the frail peace between the many factions.

they could have the occasional smaller/regional conflict, but overall have to keep working together against the external threats that were there anyways.

the biggest effect in wow would either be 3 playable factions or 1 big faction with 5+ subfactions.

this should solve two problems: faction war feeling out of place/forced in current wow, and the faction imbalance.

- - - Updated - - -

Splitting your playerbase 2-ways is already a stupid luxury in 2021, doing it 4-ways is just laughable. At best we get some intra-faction conflict that way like we currently have, but thinking it's realistic to do so as a full split is complete nonsense.

2 factions is dumb. basically guaranteed every server became dominated by 1 faction. 3 factions is the way to go to prevent that.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Rewrite Warlords of Draenor to remove the Time Travel BS.

Instead it's set on an expanded Outland (hey remember that mystery southern continent from Draenor? Frostfire and Arak as well? Yeah those places are added to Outland) and features us hunting down Garrosh as he tries to rally a new Horde on Outland to invade Azeroth with.

And there's no Gul'dan, which means you gotta change the premise of the future expansions as well.

[Triceron]

Splitting your playerbase 2-ways is already a stupid luxury in 2021, doing it 4-ways is just laughable. At best we get some intra-faction conflict that way like we currently have, but thinking it's realistic to do so as a full split is complete nonsense.

To be honest the factions should have been treated as glorified Rep Factions more than anything.

No reason why your Orc couldn't swear fealty to the Alliance or Human work for the Horde. We've seen examples of this happening throughout the RTS games, like Alterac helping the Horde.

[breadisfunny]

undo what they did to alleria in legion.

[fazaim]

I'd make whoever rip the helm of Domination off of Arthas and let him fall off the Frozen Throne not to be seen for a while instead of killing him.