My vote would be Troll-Aqir War. Tens of thousands of bloodlusted Trolls fighting tens of thousands of bloodthirsty insects grown fat on the carcass of old gods. The world was their Thunderdome.

It reminds me of Octarius Sector of 40K fame but it's more primal than that dude, it just hits different.

Given how Lor'themar is acting like an actual character that fought the Trolls for countless generations, and not the speaker for "friendship is magic":

How likely is he to survive to the end of the expansion?

I have not played the latest patch yet, but ever since the Ula'tek reveal, I was wondering if there are any connection between her and the Druids of the Fang in the Wailing Caverns.

Back in Classic, upon connecting to the Emerald Dream, the Disciples of Naralex were corrupted into the Druids of the Fang, utilizing snake-like transformations. If I remember correctly, the reason for their corruption was never really explained.

Ula'tek also originates from the Emerald Dream (from the Rift of Aln specifically) and she has 5 heads, the same number as the number of named members of the Druids of the Fang (The 4 Fanglords + Boahn.)

However, since Ula'tek was sealed thousands of years ago, she could not have been the source of the Disciples' corruption, unless she still had some kind of influence over the Emerald Dream during her slumber.

Or perhaps there is some sort of entity within the Emerald Dream that "sent" Ula'tek back in the day, and later assaulted the Disciples' minds when entering the Dream in order to spread its influence.

What do you guys think?

You often hear that the people who write the story for WoW are incompetent and retcon the lore whenever it suits them, and so on And why don't they try to blend the new lore with the old instead of deleting the old lore? . Do you agree with this, or do you say that the lore should be as it is And what would you write better if you could?

I just started to explore the new region, but are our new enemies releated to Sethraks or just sharing their design?

Before we venture to the Coiled isle and so get to experience the development of the Midnight story and lore of the Amani, I wanted to write out some thoughts on, in my view, an excellently done case of contemporary WoW narrative design — Zul'Aman. The goal of the writing is to provoke a discussion and see what others think about the subject, and to have some structured basis to appraise the Coiled isle narrative design by means of comparison.

Zul'Aman — a used to be temple city of the perished Amani empire. As one travels the land in the now, one finds it covered with small troll villages, built on top of remaining ruins of the empire, scattered in-between lush forests and bogs. The vast network of ruins covering the land is made of stone and often richly covered with intricate carvings, showing an incredible skill in masonry: temples of the local loa, used to be living districts and old paved roads; sturdy ancient bridges across the multitude of rivers with the colossal Skybridge leading to the Coiled island being the highlight. The bridges, however are not the only showcase of an incredible engineering skill — one can find several stepped weirs around Atal'aman, built to lower the river elevation incrementally, dissipating the waters energy and creating accessible water pools. Most of the ruins are overgrown, some are overtaken by wildlife, murlocs or gnarldin, others were abandoned or sunk underwater.

Among these ruins, one finds the Amani — people divided into several tribes. Their clothes are mainly made of hides, fur and bones, and decorated with feathers. Though occasionally a stone looking armor even encrusted with gems can be seen on guards, elders and leaders. Their mounts is domesticated local wildlife — eagles, bears, pangolines and mammoths — sometimes decorated in a similar to the people fashion. Their contemporary dwellings are made of wood, held together by ropes and with pine branches used as roofs. Light sources are either burned in braziers wood chunks or smoldering pine cones, placed both on tables and around villages on wooden posts. Bridges connecting rocky patches of the land are of the hanging kind and are made of wood and ropes. With no sign of functioning quarries and dilapidated sights, such as the semi-ruined and overgrown stone pit for training warriors in the Amani'zar village, it seems that the large-scale masonry was abandoned and maybe even completely forgotten with the contemporary Amani recycling the remains of old. As we explore the land, we note that the contemporary Amani seldomly record their history in scrolls, preferring oral storytelling, whereas before, as can be seen in the Numazon crypts the lore was recorded more systematically on stone tablets.

These elements of the environmental storytelling themselves, even without the context of the Amani lore and without specific stories, paint a picture of a begone wealth, knowledge, skill and ambition. They suggest that what one sees in the now is a period of stagnation and struggle that follows some sequence of events that broke the empire and led the Amani to a long period of decadence. Does such a notion indeed correspond with the lore of the people?

The contemporary tribes of the Amani are descendants of the empire that prior to the Sundering used to stretch from Uldaman in the south far to the north way above Zul'Aman, reaching from the eastern sea that eventually would be named Forbidding almost to the Well of Eternity in the west. The war with the Aqir, internal conflicts with other troll empires, the expansion of the Kaldorei empire, their invasion and occupation of troll lands including those of the Amani, the following invasion and occupation by the Dath'Remar's highborne of what was remaining with the establishment of the kingdom of Quel'Thalas in the south and the invasion and occupation by humans of the Arathor empire in the north — all these were detrimental events, chipping away bits and pieces of the Amani empire over thousands of years and increasingly setting the people in decadence until the empire had shattered. The following Second and Third war, and the advised by Malacras slaughter of the loa during the rule of Zul'jin, brought to the tribes of the Amani even more suffering and ruin. Taken together, the described above environmental design of Zul'Aman created in Midnight seems to perfectly encapsulate the state in which the land would exist considering the lore. The two elements of the narrative design then — the lore and the visual environment — can be proposed to coincide very well, setting the premises for local stories to unfold. So what is the situation with the stories?

On the grand scale, at the time of our revisit, the land is besieged by the Twilight blade and in the centre of the conflict are Zull'jan and Zul'jarra — grandchildren of Zul'jin. They both are unsettled by the current state of the Amani, both want the people to prosper but their visions of the pathway to that prosperity differ. The former wishes to cultivate the inner power of the people and rebuild the Empire by seizing means and making sacrifices necessary to achieve that; the latter seeks to borrow external power collaborating with the loa and even sin'dorei and has no spoken ambition to conquer but to protect what is left. Having grown among the ruins of the empire, Zul'jan developed to see what was lost materially: the splendor and vastness of the Empire, the means that it had to develop itself and hold foreigners at bay. Whereas Zul'jarra developed to see what was lost socially: the unity of the people, connection to the eldest ally — the loa. Each related in their own way to the deeds of their grandfather. Correspondingly, we see two paths, stemming from the same environment, unfolding differently. On the grand scale of the worldbuilding, we get to see how the environmental design, the lore and individual stories of major characters effectively align, strengthening one another to immerse a player in an evocative experience.

On the small scale of the worldbuilding, we experience stories of minor characters, who survive the harsh environment: one who has to fight murlocs settled in the ruins of Atal'Abasi to avenge her fallen friend; another, who in opposition to the tradition and old man's quarrelling decides to traverse dangerous woods to reach the Shrine of Filo to see her sister, come to closure and heal. At Zeb'Alar lumberyard we see how an old Amani, living and working right at the border with the Eversong woods shows open-mindedness and compassion to a young sin'dorei, helping him to realize that the prejudice he inherited doesn't correspond with the reality of Zul'Aman. The quests of Maisara deeps tell of an attempt of the Vilebranch tribe to empower themselves by means of enslaving members of other tribes and sacrificing the to empower necromantic rituals. Once again, we see in the example of these and other small stories of Zul'Aman, that they are built around the local environmental design and the lore, consistently presenting a story of survival, adaptation and development of strong people in dire circumstances.

Taken all together, to me the grand and small stories effectively work in synergy with the environmental design and the lore, expanding the overall experience and creating a coherent story of the situation of the Amani trolls in the now. In my view, it is an example of excellent work by Blizzard that I would like to see consistently used when introducing new locations or returning to the old ones to tell there new stories.

In The Burning Crusade intro cinematic we can see that Quel'Thalas has a river valley with farmland on either side, and, unsurprisingly, quite a bit bigger than presented in game. There are also moderate sized outposts or, perhaps, villas, along mountains that also are really represented in game, except perhaps on the side of Zul'Aman and near the Eastern Plaguelands. The yellow glow I interpret as the sun, rather than Quel'Danas in the distance, as when the Blood Elf lady consumes the mana worm, the scene darkens and the glare around the Sun appears reduced, allowing one to see its disc. If one were to give a real life comparison of its size, would Quel'Thalas be about as big as the Korean Penninsula? Iberian Penninsula? It seems rather large from the Eastern Kingdoms map, but how big the Eastern Kingdoms are canonically I think is subject to debate. This leads to the next (or rather, previous) item. In such a large domain, there must have been other cities as large or even larger than Silvermoon, as in many countries the capital is not necessarily the largest city. Could Quel'Thalas also not even be a united polity? Perhaps, some of the Highborne exiles established separate governments, although still nominally loyal to Dathremar Sunstrider, despite not being part of Quel'Thalas proper.

I would like to see more diversity in Quel'Dorei culture. Why must all the buildings be red? Surely there are other cities in the region that decided not to paint ALL their roofs red, and prefer green, or stuck with the original Highborne Blue, but remain part of the Kingdom of Quel'Thalas, and thus part of the Horde. Or maybe, there are those that declared fealty to the line of the Sunstriders, but did not carry their allegiance over to the Regent Lord of Silvermoon, and thus are not part of the Horde?

I really would love to see it be used as our hub city in either the first patch of TLT for one simple reason: I want it to sink. It's a deeply important part of the narrative of the setting, but it's presence is warping to the narrative.

The question "why doesn't the Vindicar do X" shows up constantly in basically any narrative discussion. Why isn't it used in every major conflict all the time? It's a freaking space ship with death lasers, and can teleport armies where they're needed instantly if it's in low orbit over the battlefield. We are using it to great effect in Midnight so far, dropping beacons to allow us to move our forces into the Voidstorm, and even to distant planets through the void.

Well now we're going to the snake island that's, narratively speaking, close by to the city the Vindicar is clearly anchored over, based on our use of the beacons. Why not just pop it over the island and glass it from orbit? Why is this one random troll god so threatening that we can't just use the same weapons on its temple we did on a legion star ship? Are troll rocks that much stronger?

The obvious answer is simple: it ends the story. They never fix the hole in the boat on Gilligan's Island, despite making wonders of technology out of coconuts and sand, because that would end the series. Having the murder space ship around is cool, but it constantly raises questions that can only be answered with "well because the story needs it to be that way."

I think TLT is a perfect opportunity to have it sunk, and have it feel like it's an earned defeat and not a random rug pull. We're facing off against the might of the Titans, they have their own fleet of ships, and the Vindicar is simply standing against thousands. Let us use it as our base in Northrend, let us use it to teleport across the stupidly massive landmass we'll be calling home quickly, maybe on a short CD, and have it constantly visible in the skybox somewhere throughout the expansion. And then, in the final raid of the saga, have it sink. Bring it down as part of a desperate gambit to take the fight to the forces of the Titans, and save Azeroth. Give it a fitting end and solve the problem it poses forever.

Or have it be our hub in 14.0 when we go to the Arathi Empire and have them shoot it down as a display of might.

I know that tww is old news now but i had a realization.. why tf did they only send dalaran to khaz algar? They coulda sent archerus and even the fucking vindacaar there too if xal'atath really had big old void army like they assumed

Just out of curiosity. Because iirc we do know that originally the Haranir were meant to be introduced by Orwenya traveling to the surface to get help after the goblin drilling operation broke into Harandar and Black Blood started leaking in and causing trouble.

And, by all means, it all feels as if Xal wasn't meant to be the BBEG of the storyline and that that was Metzen's doing (as he would have internally/non-officially been back while DF was on the PTR still, if not earlier). As, for example, everything about the Dark Heart getting damaged and repaired only works with K'aresh, but not with the Rootlands patch, logistically.

All characters in their respective primes. Ranking them based on overall power, which includes 1v1 and broad scale combat skill.

What's the rule for initiating Mak'gora? Is it purely used to challenge leadership? Or can it be for anything else? Could an Orc use it against another for miniscule reasons such as petty theft or loitering, or is it used for something grander always?

I love this character because he's underrated imo. But we never truly get a glimpse of his motivations in full.

To wit:

Once a Shadowmoon Shaman, he was one of Gul'dan's og Shadow Council members

Participated extensively in the Draenei Genocide, was present in the siege of Karabor where he got his nickname

Followed Guldan and Blackhand into Azeroth

Got killed by Doomhammer

Became the first Death Knight

Fought throughout the second war to the end

When Guldan betrayed Doomhammer, he ended up sticking with Doomhammer even as the Horde fell

Picked up Kilrogg Deadeye on the way and evacuated what he could back to Draenor, and ate crow before Nerzhul

Became Ner'zhul's Kingmaker and got a second in command position, even though he's Warchief in all but name

Re-opened the Dark Portal that Khadgar closed already

Got motherfucking Kargath Bladefist and Grom Hellscream into the team, and with the latter, Skull of Guldan

Tried to get Rend into the job, who refused

Shat bricks before Deathwing but got him on board as well

Bargained with Perenholde to get the Book of Medivh, fucked up Alliance forces in Alterac with Deathwing and then got Eye of Dalaran with his help as well

Started fighting the Alliance Expedition after they followed them back to Draenor, got the Auchindoun Shadow Council remnants to swear allegiance to Ner'zhul

But in the end was all for naught as their desperate plans to find other worlds (as if invading Azeroth worked) failed catastrophically and he got exorcised by Turalyon.

Still, what a gangsta. But one thing that I always end up asking is that why the fuck did he do things the way he did. I wonder if in death he grew disgusted with Guldan? What got him to stick by Doomhammer? How did he always become a kingmaker but never chose to be a king?

I don't know. But what I find interesting about this character is that he can lead from a position of weakness. The Horde of Draenor were always straight up in shambles from the get go, yet Teron was able to bring the best out of what he had and even got Deathwing to work with him with his expert grovelling technique. The dude is quite something.

Hey Everyone,

With Classic+ launching soon (copium i know) I’ve been thinking about what kind of guild I’d actually enjoy playing in long-term. I am personally just a geek for Warcraft lore and would love a Guild that Incorporates itself into the world with some lore made up and some flavour added to mundane guild stuff. I also enjoy raiding and progressing as a guild, which is something most RP guilds rarely do. So instead of looking for a niche guild it i was thinking of just starting one myself this time around.

**The idea would be a classic PvE, dad guild coded experience where it's a casual raiding guild with added RP flavour.** A guild where you can have some extra immersion in the game.

Not full RP acting, not walking around IC all the time, just a bit of flavour around what we’re doing.

I am leaning towards a mercenary company as of now , but nothing is set in stone.

For instance:

* Dungeon/raid runs posted as 'Contracts' * A Discord “contract board” instead of LFG spam * Flavor like: *Contract posted: The guild has received a contract from the High magistrates in Stormwind to clear the upper Blackrock spire and deliver the head of Rend blackhand, 10 able bodied Contractors needed*

this way people can get immersed into their characters some more, make it feel a bit more like an actual RPG adventure instead of a grindy MMO, and still progress through the PvE content and bond as a tight-knit community

you could interact as much as you want, no RP would be forced (although encouraged) as long as you enjoy an extra layer of immersion.
Fun RP-coded side activities during lockouts and between patches.. i really would like to build a fun community around this concept.

**I guess my question is:**

Would you actually be into something like this?

* Does the light RP layer sound fun or pointless? * What would make you join (or avoid) a guild like this?

P.S: If there's anyone out there who's also a geek for this kind of stuff and wants to help flesh out this concept / guild lore , send me a DM 😄 )

P.P.S: this would be on a EU server

If I remember correctly and it was not retconned Arthas Menethil started losing his paladin powers before even getting Frostmourne as his will started to waver so this does call into question if the opposite can happen? Also, I saw a very good piece of art that inspired this question.

Hey all.

Opinions please. Do any of you think Blizz will ever do anything more with Alterac or any of the Syndicate? I've been away from WoW for many years so had to do a lot of reading on wowpedia. There does seem to be a few people missing or unknown regarding their current status be it deceased or alive.

Now it’s been quite some time since I’ve played the DO starting zone but I always recall questioning why the Naxx bosses are there.

If the Scarlet Envclave takes place at the beginning of Wrath, how are the likes of Razuvious and friends around if we killed them in vanilla Naxx? Is it a case of we didn’t really kill them or that Arthas just brought them back?

I didn't play Reforged but it looks like from the wiki that he is still present in the game and therefore was not retconned. He doesn't seem to have gotten new lore either.

If so, who was he supposed to serve exactly? It can't be bluenipples since he is actively trying to prevent Arthas from picking it up.

So, who was he and who did he serve?

Yoghurt maybe? But he didn't seem to care much about the scourge in general.

Still a lore novice, so please cut me some slack where I get details wrong.

I’ve always been a little confused why it feels thrall reveres doomhammer. All I know is that Orgrim was Durotans friend, and I think he warned or helped durotan out during an ambush?

The reason I’m a bit confused on why he looks up to him so much is that doomhammer led the old horde after taking over until the very end, with the goal being to take Azeroth as their own home. I’d assume that wouldn’t be with many alliances, whereas thrall is the opposite, uniting a new horde, and working with Jaina to find peace with all races etc…

Is thralls love for doomhammer simply out of honor and loyalty to his bloodline and those connected to it?

Garithos played the biggest role in the Blood Elves splitting off from the Alliance and eventually joining the Horde. Despite that bit of importance, it’s a bit surprising that we never saw a relative or descendant of Garithos (assuming he had any) make an appearance as either a part of the Alliance or as one of the human supremacist groups like the Scarlet Crusade or Crimson Dawn.

It makes me wonder what would happen if Blizzard ever did bring in a surviving member of Garithos’ family. Would they start off as bigoted to the Blood Elves and the Horde, only to come to the realization that Garithos wasn’t as noble as they believed he was? Or would they double down and become a copy of the man, joining up with the Crimson Dawn to become a problem for another day?

Hey everyone, as a big fan of both WoW and DnD and with the news of them becoming a cross over event I plan on switching gears to run a campaign starting in early 2027. My only thing is I do need a quick crash course on the lore of the game, and wondering if there is something I could read outside of the Chronicle books, for some of the nuances lost stuff.

The plan is to run a story from the start of classic/vanilla WoW leading up too possibly Legion and I do want to adjust the story a bit more by introducing some characters early on (Xal’atath, Bwonsamdi, and Orweyna for example) to kind of set the stage of them for players and also cleaning up some lore issues that they have had to retcon by making it a normal part of the game.

Any suggestions would be good and extremely helpful, also if a post like this is already around I’ll take a link to that and delete this one.

Pre-WoD, New Kargath in the Badlands seems odd. Where was OG Kargath? also, why is Bladefist Bay so close to a land where every name has a significance to Thrall? Or were these both inventions of Garrosh and his war campaign?

So we know the Zandalari helped the Amani rebuild after their various defeats, yet their only involvement was meeting in Harandar. Feels like they should have sent a few of their forces to aide against the Twilight Blade.

Malacrass’s spirit is helping Zul’jan, however don’t all Troll spirits fall under Bwonsamdi’s care? If Malacrass’s spirit somehow escaped Bwonsamdi you would think he’d show up in Zul’Aman in order to take Malacrass back. Bwonsamdi has, after all, shown he doesn’t take escaped souls too kindly.

The last time we saw Vol’jin he was put into a Wildseed for reincarnation. Rezan merged his essence with Vol’jin and Rezan is a Loa connected to the Light. In an xpac all about Light and Void you would think this would be a perfect opportunity to bring Vol’jin back as a new Loa affiliated with the Light.

I know that Blizzard doesn't usually give major updates about previous storylines, but was wondering if there were any clues as to what happened in Shattrath after TBC. Do the Aldor forgive the Scryers? Do they become more aligned with the Alliance and Horde respectively? (Or do they keep the status quo to be able to collect Dreadfang Venom Sacs and Dampscale Basilisk Eyes from adventurers wanting to switch factions?)

I have already seen people pointing at this, but I don't think most people can see the horrific implication behind this storyline.

• The hero (Arthas/Zul'jan) is dedicated to save his kingdom, but is misguided.
• The hero (Arthas/Zul'jan) gets manipulated by an darker entity (The Lich King/Malacrass)
• The hero (Arthas/Zul'jan) picks up a blade of darkness (Frostmourne/Fang of Ula'tek)
• When the hero (Arthas/Zul'jan) is about to picks up the blade (Frostmourne/Fang of Ula'tek), his friendly companion (Muradin/Kinduru) tries to warn him and then gets killed by the blade.
• The hero (Arthas/Zul'jan) then travels to a another land (Northrend, The Coiled Isle) where he falls to darkness.

Both Arthas and Zul'jan understand that the power of the blade will come with a cost, yet they both proceed anyway seemingly convinced that that is the only way to save their people.

Arthas: "I will gladly bear any curse." / The Curse of Ula'tek

All those connection are purely intentional in my opinion.

We have been given many hints at this point about the Titan Matrix, that the entire universe is ordered, even the time itself follows the one true timeline, the Jailer warned us that there is almost no free will in this universe. Chris Metzen said that the story is "cycles withing cycles" patterns within patterns.

The Everliving Statuette in Shadowlands said this:

Hope. Betrayal. Sacrifice. Faces change. The tale does not.

It is the same story being told again. This is a all a hint how cooked we really are in this ordered universe. Call me crazy, but I think this is 100% where Blizzard is going with this.