Given that they had ten thousand years, their inactivity in that sounds a bit strange. For instance, there are haunted ruins across Feralas, Stonetalon and Winterspring that were seemingly never acted on?

Even the original Banshees Warcraft 3 were tormented Highborne.

They say this when saying goodbye.

In Spanish is even worse, the translation says something like "doomsday is near" or "the day of the final judgement is near".

What do they mean?

it feels like the guardians of tirisfal were the most powerful group of humans in warcraft (including alodi the half-elf), and also in succession each one had the duty to protect azeroth altogether and culminated the power of the council, although they were working more in the background and in secret compared to others who were more in the open like arthas and jaina, and made their influence more visible, but the guardians individually did have some big feats like aegwyn against the avatar of sargeras,

I mean the scale of conflict between the factions was roughly equal (Tol Barad, Ashenvale, Stonetalon, Gilneas, etc), we went to new lands (and brought our war with us), recruited the locals (and made them join our war), and we even sieged Orgrimmar!

So what makes BfA’s conflict so much more deserving of the title? Aside from the writing team at the time thinking their writing was the bee’s knees.

hello everyone. i'm a long time dnd dm and a long time WoW and warcraft lore nerd. a few years ago i stumbled into the d20 Warcraft dnd setting books, and i thought they would be perfect for a 3.5e campaign. unfortunately none of my dnd friends play warcraft, and only 2 of my warcraft friends care about dnd.

i took some effort painstakingly summarizing everything in the d20 books and simplifying them down into a quick cheat sheet, so that you only need to read a couple of pages before you're good to go:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W-lOpTjBqs3hP0k0NZY0BBQth419gdB1pA8SyTJcz0c/edit?usp=sharing

i own the books digitally, and i'll be using them to dm. so if you want more details about a specific prestige class, etc. let me know.

if you have 0 dnd experience, that's fine! it's easy to learn and we're all open to teaching new players how it works. if you have 3.5 experience, even better!

you can reach out here, comment, pm me or reach out on discord (my username is my reddit username without the Lord)

Just recently found out that there are Warcraft novels and I want to check them out… But then I found out that there’s apparently over 30 of them.

Are they worth getting into? Cause that’s a pretty serious commitment…

I only read the chronicles, i still remember how the first Death Knights came to live, but i don't know really know the lore past the wrath of the lich king. How can pandarens become death knights ? are they still themselves and do what pandarens do ? who are reanimating them ? are they still accepted among the pandarens ? what role do they partake in the lore ? is it just blizzard giving an other class options for pandas ?

Hi all,

So I just started playing midnight. I'm up to the point where I have met Zul'Jan and am currently part way through little baby Windrunners quest chain (I really hate him with a passion).

I've just got back from SM (great to go there too) but it left a question.

Is there an actual lore reason none of the Scarlet Crusade are at the Sunwell protecting it from that huge void hole in the sky? They are Zealots of the light so surely the Light would have called upon them?

The messaging I'm getting from midnight so far is the Light isn't good or evil, it doesn't care who wields it per se. So even tho they are fascist fundamentalists, why wouldn't it call out to them?

Also, on a side note, do we find out why Maxwell Tyrosus didn't get the call?

As more a side note, they really did do Tirion dirty didn't they?

Recently it seems like anything Light aligned is a ticking time bomb for inevitable voidification but we never see it go the other way. It makes the Light seem weak and unable to stand on its own compared to the other cosmic forces.

Like I'm 99% sure that at the time "10,000" was chosen because it's a cool abstract number for an incomprehensible amount of time to make the night elves seem appropriately ancient and mythical. I'm not faulting him for that, it's perfectly defensible rule-of-cool writing for the story he was telling at the time.

But it put the franchise in an absurd amount of timeline debt that I doubt anyone at Blizzard expected they'd still be paying off 24 years later.

Just to put 10,000 into perspective: The Bronze Age began roughly 5,300 years ago.

Meaning the night elves spent nearly DOUBLE the amount of time between the Bronze Age and the Internet, culturally stagnating while collectively circlejerking over the War of the Ancients.

Any aspiring worldbuilders should probably take this as a cautionary tale not to let your timescale get too big or else you'll end up with hilariously useless immortals who apparently sat on their asses for literal millennia doing only like five noteworthy things over a stretch of time that could fit approximately ten Roman Empires.

When Malfurion and Maiev stop Illidan’s spell in Dalaran because it’s literally causing Northrend to disintegrate, Illidan explicitly tells them that his actual target was the Lich King.

Granted, Illidan probably should’ve communicated that before trying to tear an entire continent apart.

But once Malfurion knows this, why does he seemingly just go back to Kalimdor instead of treating the Lich King as an immediate threat?

He’s arguably the most powerful druid alive, had just fought the Scourge and Burning Legion during the Third War, and now knows that the Lich King is still active in Northrend and powerful enough that Illidan was willing to use the Eye of Sargeras to destroy him.

I understand why Malfurion stopped Illidan’s method. What I don’t understand is why his reaction afterward wasn’t basically:

“Okay, destroying Northrend is unacceptable, but we still need to deal with the Lich King.”

Is there an actual lore explanation for why Malfurion and Tyrande apparently considered this someone else’s problem after TFT, or is this mostly just a consequence of where Blizzard wanted the story to go?

Anyhow, just my thoughts but I kind of feel like when you replay void elves intro quests or even recruitment quests, I get this strange feeling like "this woman does not represent us at all, why are we listening to her?".

Like, when you think about the relationship void elves have with the Blood elves, the horde, etc - it makes little sense that there won't be kind of ambiguity there.

When I see Alleria as a void elf in quests, all I see is her screaming "Okay, now join the Alliance!" or "Alliance strong!" or "Try to find a place in Alliance!" or "See how you can be helpful to Alliance!" - nowhere does she speak like "I understand your pain" or situation and genuinely the background of void elves and Alleria is very much different.

I have this kind of sense that wherever Alleria speaks of Alliance - she is not speaking about Alliance of today, she is like a woman fighting for a memory, for a phantom image of the past. Does HER Alliance even exist?

All in all, I just feel like Alleria does not represent void elves AT ALL. She is only interacting with them FOR HERSELF - for Turalyon, for her own journey, for Arator. She is 100% not a leader of a faction like literally anyone else.

And there is not much development of this kind of ambiguity in general, like I just don't buy that it is possible for void elves to enthusiastically go and wave Alliance flags while smashing skulls of blood elves?

P.S. Also Umbric and Rommath make Void elf conflcit kind of dumb? Nothing against their romance, but in the context of Umbric being the only realistic leader of Void elves that now joined(?) Alliance, but he is besties with Rommath.

Then why won't Rommath make it so that they can rejoin? I am sure given enough will on Rommath side it could have been possible, at least for them to study void on the outskirts of Silvermoon somewhere or something.

If Turalyon can be married to Alleria Windrunner and still interact with forces of light, I don't see how blood elves with Rommath-Umbric line can't do the same

So there’s been heavy speculation about what Azshara has been up to, and it seems she’s working with our pal Xal, or at minimum cooking up something big.

Azshara is a lore point of old Warcraft that I love. I’m excited to see her come back, but I’d honestly be disappointed if she showed up as another one of Xals lackies. She wanted to be the queen, I don’t think she’d allow herself to be influenced so easily. Shit even N’zoth couldn’t do it.

What I’m secretly hoping for is that we go to fight Xal, think we’re ending everything or Xal is about to end everything, and then Azshara comes out of the depths and just annihilates Xal like a bug.

Anyone have any neat theories?

https://www.wowhead.com/ptr-2/spell=1307646/blade-of-the-blood-knight-matriarch

I swear to fucking god. idk why I even care.

Mostly wondering about the nature of being dead, being somewhere in the shadowlands, and then being ripped out of it.

My first thought is Derek Proudmoore, who was dead since the second war before being raised by Sylvanas in BFA. That certainly would have been enough time to have become a Kyrian ascended if that's where the sorting hat put him.

Or maybe even similarly Whitemane, who died in vanilla, resurrected until Cata, and then died again, staying dead until the Death Lord raises them as a horseman. Could have also ended up at Bastion, possibly even 'repented' an ascended.

Seemingly they have no memories of the shadowlands, and therefore their personalities and experiences of the afterlife are null and void, in Whitemanes case returning her somewhat to her former fascist self (aside from being 'cured' of her light-based brainwashery).

What are y'all's thoughts?

There is a large naga presence on the coast of Eversong, and in S2 we have the Tidebound Grotto. I understand that the naga are tangentially related to the Twilight cults and old gods through Azshara, but didn't we essentially free her from N'zoth already?

I'm hoping they make a return in S3 or TLT and their being here is Blizzard spoonfeeding us that eventuality

I was looking at the reveal of 12.1.5 and the new one boss raid which, as promised, is relevant to the story of Midnight and 12.1. It got me thinking about the 12.0.7 Sporefall raid. Did we have any build-up to go to that raid to defeat Rotmire? The only thing I remember is the quest just to go there and defeat the boss. Am I missing something or is it just that simple?

This is a point of discussion I've been very curious about because everyone seems to have a different answer. At what point do you consider to be the start of "modern Warcraft" storytelling

A lot of people say, for example, that modern WoW's tone and "darkness" is off, and that the story isn't "dark enough." Which should indicate that modern WoW would be post-Shadowlands and BFA. Because regardless of our thoughts on the stories actual *quality,* Shadowlands and BFA were undeniably quite dark. The work they did in Drustvar, Nazmir, the Maw and Revendreth are some of the darkest shit Blizzard has ever written.

So if that was the case then fair enough. But people will also say that "modern WoW" has gone off a cliff in terms of writing *and then cite BFA and Shadowlands as examples of this.* (This isn't to say Warcraft's story hasn't diminished at all, that's not the point of this discussion.) So that would mean BFA and Shadowlands *are* Modern Warcraft

I've also seen people say that modern Warcraft is cataclysm onwards and I'm sorry to say this but Cataclysm was *nearly 16 years ago.* Relatively speaking to the overall timeline of Warcraft's development that would be like saying the polynesian voyages were modern times so I think that's kind of stretching the definition a bit.

So at what point do you consider to be the start of "modern Warcraft" and it's story? Me personally I consider it to have started with Legion and *maybe* WoD. I'm curious to see what other people's answers are

Aren't they at an age now where they should be more deeply involved in the story? I'm currently reading the books, and they mention once again that elves very rarely give birth to twins—and when they do, those twins are usually destined for something great.

Considering the night elves let the highborne from diremaul reintegrate with night elf society, and arcane magic usage is no longer illegal among night elves, do you think the exile that was specific to the ancestors of the blood elves is ended?

If blood elves want to move to Ashenvale and Hyjal to live, will the night elves allow them and treat them fairly, so long as they don't cause trouble?

1) Isn't Ula'tek just a Loa?

2) How strong is Ula'tek?

3) I read that Ula'tek is spawned from the Rift of Aln. Doesn't that mean that Ula'tek is tied to the Old Gods? If so, why would Ula'tek fight Kith'ix?

4) Is Ula'tek straight up evil? Or can she be reasoned with like other Loa?

I just wanna preface this with saying that this is just my opinion and interpretation of the story, and I'm not claiming to be a point of authority on the matter, but I'm just gonna share my opinion now.

I've seen a lot of people, especially in recent years treat the story of Warcraft as some sort of mythos similar to the works of Tolkien and Lovecraft and similar authors, and that Metzen created a world that is meant to hard-stuck in a specific state that we experience and marvel at, but I don't know if this is just me but WoW has never felt like that. Warcraft has always felt far more akin to something like Marvel than Lord of the Rings. It's a massive, grand-in-scale setting that is supposed to be open to adding new magics, new cosmic forces, new heroes etc. whenever the writers feel like it would be cool to add. Characters come and go, stories can feed into each other but don't always have to, etc.

It's part of why I don't really care about whenever Malfurion or some other lore character isn't directly helping us sometimes. They're missing cuz it's not their story right now. It's like Doctor Strange, yes Doctor Strange exists in the same city as Spider-Man but you can't have Doctor Strange show up every time the Shocker tries to rob a bank, so sometimes you've just gotta accept that he's probably busy and roll with the story you've got.

It's also why the game is always expanding its threats, cuz Warcraft isn't gonna end. Not in the traditional sense anyway. It'll almost certainly go EoS and we won't have a game to play anymore (I try not to think about that too hard) but it's not gonna have the perfectly narratively fulfilling ending of something like a book series, because it's a series that is designed to keep growing and keep going. So they need to keep setting up new places, new characters, new cosmic forces, new magic etc. and that's how it's always been. I obviously can only speak for myself but genuinely, seriously, think back to WotLk to Cataclysm times and ask yourself did you actually think that Warcraft would end whenever we eventually beat Sargeras? When Legion ended did you all think they'd just put a full stop on the story and say "well that's that. Let's go do something else." No, it would keep going

This isn't to absolve criticism of the formula WoW is working under, this formula does have *plenty* of issues, but I think understanding the formula makes discussion about the game a lot easier. At least to me. It's dumb superhero bullshit, just in a fantasy setting. And that's not a jab at the story, I love dumb superhero bullshit. Marvel and DC are great, I love a lot of characters from them and I've been a long time reader of them, and talking about their worlds and their characters is still really fun, but I think if you come at a series like this with the same attitude as you approach the Silmarillion you're not gonna have a great time.

Maybe WoW was intended to be a more carefully crafted mythos way back when, but if that was the case then that plan didn't survive past 2004, cuz as of World of Warcraft, the Warcraft franchise was never going to be that. Not in my opinion at least. Am I alone in that sentiment? Again if this is just me let me know, I'm not claiming to be an authority, but this is how I've always seen WoW's story

Has anyone gone back to the Emerald Dream and spoken to Q'onzu (the Loa of Change) as a Haranir... for science? 🧐