Is lore completely destroyed?

[Maljinwo]

I don't think the lore is destroyed.
It is unsalvageable though

[Starte]

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[Soon-TM]

Elves in the horde break the common fantasy tolkien stereotype

The whole point of WC3 was to move away from the common fantasy tropes though. WC3 humans aren't necessarily the goody goody guys, trolls aren't Tolkien's huge, dumb lumbering monsters, "dark elves" aka nelfs have a pretty unique spin to them - even your beloved orcs are no longer the subjugated, RAWR ME KILL, one-dimensional brutes of LotR (and early WC, while we're at it).

In such a world, is it really so much of a stretch to have edgy, wartorn, mana-addicted "light elves" join the underdog faction?

[Clawsout]

Yes, Warcraft must only ever have anything to do with either Arthas or the Burning Legion. Ever. Even the slightest hint of an original idea spells doom.

It does spell doom when the best they can come up with is a large man with nipples and decided to name him the jailer like what the fuck.

[cparle87]

Yes, Warcraft must only ever have anything to do with either Arthas or the Burning Legion. Ever. Even the slightest hint of an original idea spells doom.

I remember in the days before Pandaria. People were loudly complaining that Blizzard kept "recycling and reusing" all their old ideas and characters over and over. Then MoP was announced and the complaints changed to "This stuff isn't Warcraft and doesn't belong in Warcraft." Even had one guy make a big thread arguing that anything not related to the Scourge, Old Gods, or Burning Legion was "filler content used to cover up the fact they've run out of ideas."

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The whole point of WC3 was to move away from the common fantasy tropes though. WC3 humans aren't necessarily the goody goody guys, trolls aren't Tolkien's huge, dumb lumbering monsters, "dark elves" aka nelfs have a pretty unique spin to them - even your beloved orcs are no longer the subjugated, RAWR ME KILL, one-dimensional brutes of LotR (and early WC, while we're at it).

In such a world, is it really so much of a stretch to have edgy, wartorn, mana-addicted "light elves" join the underdog faction?

Agreed 100%. Part of what WC3 so popular imho is that it WAS the first time we majorly broke away from Tolkein-esque stereotypes. Having a good orc protagonist was a huge shakeup.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

Just look at DC and Marvel, there's your answer. They have done more retcons in a single reset then all of WOW's changes combined.

Basically. People really try to boil down the issue to a lore problem, when the framing it's more important. It's not even about retconing but what matters to the story being told, the problem isn't that the Eternals and the First Ones exist, but how their role is being framed during this expansion where we are so disconnected from the setting itself.

What we are attached to is our factions and our character's culture, the thing that have come to define our experience in this world, the lore is just window dressing at worst, context for that experience at best. As long as the world, the *universe* keeps expanding in ways that feel solid, that build on what we have and not just matter during an expansion things should be fine, as long as it's not forgotten that we are here because of our characters, and not for the cosmic struggle du jour.

The Jailer would have been a far more compelling villain if they had built him up and not just drop him on our laps the very same expansion. If they had forged that struggle earlier I think we would be overall more engaged.

WoW needs to get back to Azeroth and make use of its world, and the Dragon Isles would be a good way to go for it: despite Legion happening in a retconed Broken Isles, it felt like returning to Azeroth in the best way, because there was familiarity with many old characters, while taking us to face the legion, even ending on a different planet, but it all was tied up together to a compelling journey that smoothed out the parts that felt out of place.

I wanna believe there's a point in being so disconnected from Azeroth for a whole expansion, I think they really do wanna recapture that Legion feeling after WoD, but the failure was to make SL's plot so uncompelling was the failure to create a desire on the player to see where this story was going; by flip flopping Sylvanas motivations and framing so wildly, to creating a bland villain from thin air.

[Daronokk]

Is lore completely destroyed? Yes.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

I don't think WoW's lore is destroyed. It's an underwhelming mess, but a legitimately great writing team could turn it around. I think big-picture lore needs to take a backseat to story for a while. Give us thoughtful storytelling like Arcane, with a razor sharp focus on character and consequences. Makes us care again. Because personally speaking, I don't really give a toss about anything or anyone in SL.

That's the thing about lore, it's really just context for scenarios, by itself it's little more than background information. Every "the lore is ruined" fails to recognize the problems are narrative, that the lore is and has always been used and retconed to fit the story they wanted to tell. The problem with Shadowlands is that people don't care about whatever story they wanna tell, not because it's bad, but because they kinda killed our investment of it at large. They just fucked up Sylvanas way too much in BfA for people to be compelled by her alone to follow this journey, and we don't give a fuck about Zovaal.

[Kralljin]

In such a world, is it really so much of a stretch to have edgy, wartorn, mana-addicted "light elves" join the underdog faction?

I felt that the Blood elves lacked this "Wolf at the door" issue that drove them to the Horde and conversely, the Horde accepting the Blood elves.

With Trolls and Tauren, both are shown to struggle with certain conflicts and the Orcs helping them and in return, helping the Orcs.
With the Orcs being "on the run" from Human lands, it created the underdog aspect on both ends and a mutual benefit to help each other.

This has always lacked the Blood elves, the Blood elves in early TBC weren't under existantial threats, nor did the Horde somehow rely upon Blood elves to solve any existiantial issues.

Blood elves joining the Horde was basically Forsaken 2.0, they just joined because the script said so, with the missing aspect that the Forsaken actually had issues with the remaining (partially Alliance aligned) forces in Lordaeron and Horde struggling to maintain a presence in Lordaeron.

The Alliance being dicks towards the blood elves in the post Garithos era (which frankly could've been excused as Garithos derived his authority from a then defunct state) made no sense in TBC, they had a dwarven spy just because and Night elves also had sent some forces into their lands just because, despite the implication of TFT being that Blood elves and Night elves could_not_hate each other if necessary.

Blood elves joining the Horde as a reasonable call would have required the Alliance to go down a more imperialistic / racist path, which frankly was not an option because both factions were no longer allowed to be "evil" at large by our modern understanding since post Vanilla.

[uzira]

Absolutely NOT. The lore is just FINE.

[Super Dickmann]

In the spirit of Christmas cheer and since I shat on it last pages I will say some nice things about TBC and I think the defining part of it that both @Jovok and @MyWholeLifeIsThunder hit on, which you really summarize here:

i mean, its pretty simple, in tbc i fought with, and along side with, orcs, trolls, taurens, blood elves(same if i played as alliance), the outland factions, that consisted of factions we knew, against enemies we knew, doing something bad against our allies while killing the enemy faction in process.

and here:

- at least tbc didn't ruined the factions and most of the characters there, it actually introduced new ones and strenghtned faction fantasy, like adding Garrosh, Drannosh and the long lost maghar tribe, what shadowlands did to the horde? even by adding elves, everything else felt the horde became more horde, while in BFA, we actually became red alliance

TBC and even BFA were additive as well as destructive. TBC adding the blood elves to the Horde or the naaru or the draenei opened up new stories you could tell while it was chopping the RTS characters to fuel raids in bizarre locations. Many of those elements in the actual expansion were weak - the Mag'har only became interesting by implication in Cataclysm and Mists, Garrosh came into his own as the best MMO-introduced character and one of the best in the franchise in later expansions, the Draenor races like the arakkoa and ogres were thin as hell until Warlords and Chronicles made them great. But the seeds were planted and later writers could work with and expand them. Its worst sin with the blood elves' ending in SWP was only because the decision to actually add the Blood Elves to the Horde was daring, interesting and well reasoned, expanding the same vibe as the Forsaken and subverting the generic fantasy high elf trope while giving a race that could have forward momentum for years. When everything from their addiction, their unique spin on the paladin class, fel magic use and ties with the Forsaken were then unceremoniously massacred and filled with the most boiler plate high elf stereotypes so that the writers could make the final raid about a romantic relationship in a manga nobody'd read and so they could get their message in about love and acceptance it was as terrible as it was because what they had at the start was such a solid decision.

Shadowlands only does Kel'thuzad and Sylvanas dirty to the extent that TBC does every returning RTS character without exception. Its consequences will be completely ignorable. People will discuss how the Jailer being behind the dreadlords showing Sargeras the void-corrupted world ruins them as much as they'll discuss how Thrall going back in time to steal the Dragon Soul broke the setting's rules on time travel. Which is to say, not at all. But unlike TBC, which left tons of material for others to work with and how even BFA, the most destructive expansion they'd ever made also put new things to deal with, Shadowlands's most massive sin is that, barring a WoD-like importation of its world into Azeroth, it also added nothing that will be used later. None of its characters will recur, none of its concepts will be recurred, none of it informs prior material in a constructive way the way WoD massively expanded Draenor. And it's because of what @Jovok said about world vs. character-based writing. Shadowlands is written as a soap opera featuring characters that have zero reason to be involved in there and the world is there to get their journey along or, even when it is actually fairly interesting in both concept and execution as its own thing, which I think much of it is, it's inapplicable in any context except its own extremely narrow, self-contained story. No one will care about the Bald Man retcon because you can cut him out entirely and change nothing, but neither will anyone else care about any other aspect of it. Few care now except to be angry at the most galling parts of these retcons, and even then only because it's literally the only story out there, and when the story moves on, the last of its pertinence will fade and no one will care at all.

TBC was an utter failure of a narrative, wasting scores of characters as it goes and turning them into laughable caricatures to service a patchwork non-story who's ending is based on side materials nobody gives a fuck about. Its worldbuilding for its established elements, save for visuals, was wafer thin. I defy you to tell me one thing about the Mag'har's culture within TBC exclusively beyond "they're brown orcs instead of green". But it added as well as destroyed. Even BFA has that to its credit, even though its harm is so massive that it essentially killed the factions and every character, ruining the narrative to the point where an owl's work-life balance is more fleshed out than the entire Azeroth cast in its follow-up. Shadowlands' worst sin is that beyond the pomp it's a whole load of nothing. And where TBC wore all its terrible ideas on its sleeve and so other writers could then make something with them, like Mists basing a major plot point on how the Blood Elves no longer fit and everything that's been done wtih the draenei and naaru since, Shadowlands pulled its punches throughout. It broke every race's ideas of the afterlife but never had them actually learn about it so that it could affect the world. It played with high concept fantasy fare like determinism and god printers and then never interrogated any of them, playing it safe throughout. TBC had the balls to make Jesus a windchime and to have rednecks kill the Horde's original troll character to steal his valuables. When it steamrolled over everything it touched with abysmal plot points and half-assed retcons Metzen acknowledged it and kept on trucking. SL doesn't even have the balls to make its Devil figure look like anything but a big blue human with no shirt, let alone to actually commit to the scorched earth retcons it implies, pissing off everyone who will still hate them while backing off on delivering for any who'd be on board, either because of genuine interest in the ideas or just the joy of a trainwreck. Kael talking about his setback after his character assassination is a meme to this day, enough that they wrote him back in in Shadowlands to make up for it and actually gave his story a good shake in Chronicle. It was something that was cared about enough to want to be fixed. The Bald Man is so empty of any content that its that complete absence of any meat that is the only reason anyone ever talks about him, and when he's off the stage the only ones who go back to fix him will be the way you fix a dog. Shadowlands would have been better received in the long term if it were boldly worse compared to being insecure and disposable.

[ohwell]

With all these First Ones, some kind of hidden super-realities inside other realities and so on, this is no longer felt by Warcraft. And that's not to mention plot holes like the Jailer's 5-D chess game or Sylvanas' actions and so on. It seems to me that even if you say that it was all a dream or a retcon in some other way, it will only hurt the lore even more, because everyone is tired of retcons.

"Not to mention plot holes like" and then you neglect to name any actual plot holes just specific characters that probably you've just been led to believe are plot holes by either a streamer or forums.

There's nothing wrong with the lore. If the lore is bad now, it always has been as it has never changed. If you think there are plot holes now, you either weren't playing/watching or just completely willfully chose to ignore the story.

If you somehow think you can go from ANYTHING we killed in Vanilla back to being a simple adventurer, you're dead wrong. Escalation is needed as a part of player power in terms of lore as much as it is in terms of literal in game player power. "Hey look I got this all powerful sword, let me just go back to fighting bandits with it!" The stuff that they're adding has as much of a right to exist as anything. Even DnD has some ridiculous escalation of enemies at times.

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That's the thing about lore, it's really just context for scenarios, by itself it's little more than background information. Every "the lore is ruined" fails to recognize the problems are narrative, that the lore is and has always been used and retconed to fit the story they wanted to tell. The problem with Shadowlands is that people don't care about whatever story they wanna tell, not because it's bad, but because they kinda killed our investment of it at large. They just fucked up Sylvanas way too much in BfA for people to be compelled by her alone to follow this journey, and we don't give a fuck about Zovaal.

They don't care not because it's bad, but because someone else influenced them to think that because as usual they barely listened to anything told to them in game. When you have people still wondering why Zovaal was locked up and think it was because he did something evil it becomes proof enough that those players saying the lore is bad should be ignored.

[wargone]

THERE IS NO LORE. Just sylvanas!

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

They don't care not because it's bad, but because someone else influenced them to think that because as usual they barely listened to anything told to them in game. When you have people still wondering why Zovaal was locked up and think it was because he did something evil it becomes proof enough that those players saying the lore is bad should be ignored.

I don't think one can be dismissive of it either to be honest. My point is that whether the lore is good or bad is both subjective -you can like 3D printed gods- but is how that information is used, framed and delivered through a narrative what matters to us, experiencing a story.

"Good" lore means little if the narrative itself is not compelling, the lore itself could remain utterly unchanged, merely presented in a different framing and points of view, and be far better received. The problem isn't that Zovaal is the hand that has been behind everything, the problem is that narratively, he was introduced far too late, he's structurally jarring, a last act reveal with no build up. That is not a lore issue, that's a storytelling problem.

The lore can be perfectly serviceable and make sense within itself, but if the story fails to use it in any sort of compelling narrative the it's a moot point.

It's not the lore, the lore just has to be serviceable to the story, the lore just will feel bad and "ruined" if the story itself is not compelling.

[Syegfryed]

Blood elves joining the Horde as a reasonable call would have required the Alliance to go down a more imperialistic / racist path, which frankly was not an option because both factions were no longer allowed to be "evil" at large by our modern understanding since post Vanilla.

But they did joined the horde because of that, blood elves were fucked, even more so than taurens and trolls, they needed help and the alliance didn't send, they send spies and saboteurs because the whole deal with garithos.

Sylvanas reach then out so they could join the horde, since they had no love for the alliance, ever andThrall was a mother, he hep then, seems pretty reasonable.

I would say though, even undeads joining would make sense in a tactical standpoint so the horde have a position of power in the other continent, they just handled bad how thrall did, but things by its own make sense.

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TBC and even BFA were additive as well as destructive. TBC adding the blood elves to the Horde or the naaru or the draenei opened up new stories you could tell while it was chopping the RTS characters to fuel raids in bizarre locations. Many of those elements in the actual expansion were weak - the Mag'har only became interesting by implication in Cataclysm and Mists, Garrosh came into his own as the best MMO-introduced character and one of the best in the franchise in later expansions, the Draenor races like the arakkoa and ogres were thin as hell until Warlords and Chronicles made them great. But the seeds were planted and later writers could work with and expand them. Its worst sin with the blood elves' ending in SWP was only because the decision to actually add the Blood Elves to the Horde was daring, interesting and well reasoned, expanding the same vibe as the Forsaken and subverting the generic fantasy high elf trope while giving a race that could have forward momentum for years. When everything from their addiction, their unique spin on the paladin class, fel magic use and ties with the Forsaken were then unceremoniously massacred and filled with the most boiler plate high elf stereotypes so that the writers could make the final raid about a romantic relationship in a manga nobody'd read and so they could get their message in about love and acceptance it was as terrible as it was because what they had at the start was such a solid decision.

See, but thats the thing, what happened in TBC was not so BIG, compared to bfa-shadowlands era, yeah they burned the rts characters, but not many knew wc2. They were handled badly, but thigns did made sense.

the only thing Bf did was to add zandalari in the proccess and they fuck then up from what we knew, they even shoved the wakanda movie there, killed Rastkahan and used him as plot device to put his nobody daughter because woman power, just like they did with mayla.

I agree with how they bad handled the blood elves, changing their fantasy to the generic, but they are elves, people who play elves want tolkien shit, thats why people keep screaming and whining for high elves, people would not rly go for then as much fi they were "bad boys".

Like, literally every bfa racial leader is done dirty, that affects me more than if they done cahracters whoa re not from it and would, logically, be villains.

Shadowlands only does Kel'thuzad and Sylvanas dirty to the extent that TBC does every returning RTS character without exception. Its consequences will be completely ignorable.

i disagree entirelly, everything done with the characters will not be ignored as long the character live.

what they did with BfA-shadowlands, systematically destroying the horde and their characters like saurfang, Thral baine, is much worse than taking rts characters and making villains, one affect me directly and the ambiance where i play, i don't care if someone else house house is dirty if im going to pass just a few hours there, but my house? nah.

Like, yeah, kill Kargath, but fuck, why did you kill saufang, and before that, ruined his entire story?

[Kralljin]

But they did joined the horde because of that, blood elves were fucked, even more so than taurens and trolls, they needed help and the alliance didn't send, they send spies and saboteurs because the whole deal with garithos.

Blood elves weren't on the verge of extinction by the time of TBC, they had leftover scourge to deal with and some Amani trolls, but in comparison to the Tauren, who had to become nomads due to their inability to take Mulgore and Trolls, being stuck on an Island that's about to sink, the Blood elves position was better.

Being a dick towards Blood elves because of Garithos?
Why?
Garithos wasn't a popular commander in the Alliance to begin with and merely represented an effectively defunct kingdom, dwarves hated him and the Night elves have never interacted with him (and Garithos would've hated them anyway because he's a racist, especially towards elves).

Even the Alliance condemns Garithos, so the idea that the Alliance continued aggresion against the blood elves because of him towards the blood elves is just plain false.

[Syegfryed]

Blood elves weren't on the verge of extinction by the time of TBC, they had leftover scourge to deal with and some Amani trolls, but in comparison to the Tauren, who had to become nomads due to their inability to take Mulgore and Trolls, being stuck on an Island that's about to sink, the Blood elves position was better.

wut? the whole point is they had lots of problems with the remaining undead and the amani with few sources of mana, especially when the wretched start to appear, only with Sylvanas who save then more or less and the horde by sending troops they start coming back on foot again.

Being a dick towards Blood elves because of Garithos?
Why?
Garithos wasn't a popular commander in the Alliance to begin with and merely represented an effectively defunct kingdom, dwarves hated him and the Night elves have never interacted with him (and Garithos would've hated them anyway because he's a racist, especially towards elves).

Even the Alliance condemns Garithos, so the idea that the Alliance continued aggresion against the blood elves because of him towards the blood elves is just plain false.

alliance condemns garithos now, because the alliance had to be whitewashed, he was the defacto leader and the alliance answered to him like the dwarves and dalaran.

And no, isn't false, is hard canon:

Concurrent with failed negotiations with the Alliance, and night elven incursions into Quel'Thalas, Lor'themar began to forge an alliance with the faction his Forsaken allies now belonged to: the Horde

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Blo...urning_Crusade

Stormwind heard what happened before and obviously sided with Garithos version of the story, even by mistake or not knowing the full picture, was enough to treat the elves with doubt pushing then to the horde.

[Kralljin]

alliance condemns garithos now, because the alliance had to be whitewashed, he was the defacto leader and the alliance answered to him like the dwarves and dalaran.

Ah yes, all that bad stuff about Garithos came out after TBC, not during the interim years between TFT and Vanilla - of course!

Naturally, you have a source for that, right?

Stormwind heard what happened before and obviously sided with Garithos version of the story, even by mistake or not knowing the full picture, was enough to treat the elves with doubt pushing then to the horde.

It just says "negitiations failed" but not why they failed, not even mentioning that this implies the night elf incursions were going while they were negotionating.

[Syegfryed]

Ah yes, all that bad stuff about Garithos came out after TBC, not during the interim years between TFT and Vanilla - of course!

Naturally, you have a source for that, right?

humm, what? everyone knew he was racist before this and they still were fine with him.

It just says "negitiations failed" but not why they failed, not even mentioning that this implies the night elf incursions were going while they were negotionating.

It is said the alliance were in not good terms with the elves because the events of TFT, they did not trust then, therefore send spies

It was a time where the alliance was done correctly, it made perfect sense for then to not trust the elves, since they were not that close like dwarves, especially after learning they were sided with nagas, ilidan and later the undead with sylvanas.

[ohwell]

I don't think one can be dismissive of it either to be honest. My point is that whether the lore is good or bad is both subjective -you can like 3D printed gods- but is how that information is used, framed and delivered through a narrative what matters to us, experiencing a story.

"Good" lore means little if the narrative itself is not compelling, the lore itself could remain utterly unchanged, merely presented in a different framing and points of view, and be far better received. The problem isn't that Zovaal is the hand that has been behind everything, the problem is that narratively, he was introduced far too late, he's structurally jarring, a last act reveal with no build up. That is not a lore issue, that's a storytelling problem.

The lore can be perfectly serviceable and make sense within itself, but if the story fails to use it in any sort of compelling narrative the it's a moot point.

It's not the lore, the lore just has to be serviceable to the story, the lore just will feel bad and "ruined" if the story itself is not compelling.

There is nothing jarring about him. That's how the game has worked. Threats escalate. If it's jarring to you, you never played the game. There were definitely hints from Legion through BfA anyway.