u/KingAnumaril

Y'know, somewhere you can park your fleet at and receive the shipments. Was there literally nothing left from the old kingdom? Did the scourge take all the ships with them to Northrend? From where?

I know Stratholme was meant to have a harbor if memory serves and is bigger than what we got to see in WoW, but was it really the only harbor in Lordaeron that wasn't in New Avalon?

Sure they use Zeppelins but that's more of a game thing, no?

If I phrased this question any other way, we'd probably have everyone say remove Shadowlands. I don't mind that, hell I'd say it too but thats not really what I am asking.

I'll start;

Get Tirion Fordring to become a Horseman. He's done his service in life, but he's too good at what he does to be allowed to die and rest in peace after. The world needs his like still. The light gave him one last chance at the top of the Icecrown Citadel and no more – let us amend that for him. If the light has an issue, let it resurrect its own champions instead.

I would've also been cool with Fordring dying in his sleep before the Shattering, in peace knowing that Arthas is six feet under and he did his job.

On that note, instead of Kyranastrasz, I would've liked for us to resurrect Korialstrasz as our dk class hall mount. We are pissing off literally everyone in DK class hall, let us go full hog while at it. Who cares about diplomacy and reputation when you can be cool?

Outcome one, The Best Ending Possible:

Arthas relents. Stratholme falls. The Trio immediately fills the ships with Lordaeronians and sails to Kalimdor on the Prophet's recommendation. Logistical nightmare still, but it probably works well enough and whatever headbutting Arthas & Uther and Horde might do are offset by the stabilizing catalyst that is Jaina, and Scourge is bereft of their ultimate champion. Quel'thalas and Dalaran likely doesn't fall the way they do, but Lordaeron is gone.

Outcome two, The Worst Ending Possible:

Arthas carries out the culling. Jaina follows him, though Uther probably doesn't. He still picks up the damn sword. Likely no refugees to Kalimdor, meaning there is no comeback for Grom, no freedom from Demons for those who drank the Blood, and no armies of Alliance to help out at Hyjal. Complete fucking disaster for the world & Ner'zhul as Legion snowballs their way into a w.

The reason why I believe Arthas picks up the sword even with Jaina's presence potentially helping him that acts such as Stratholme harden the heart of man, and make us into more callous people no matter our reasons. I don't think that he would hesitate.

What we found interesting was that Stratholme is the lynchpin of this game's story. It is by far the most important event in this game and everything depends on how it goes. Not that we didn't realize it beforehand, but our discussion really made it more clear.

Dude created an entire Necropolis out of it. It's so excessive, it makes me wonder if Yogg was messing with his mind.

Yet I always thought that the undead were strangely resistant to mind warping effects of Saronite, but I wonder if it didn't affect LK in a bad way in truth. We can't tell of course because Nerzhul or Arthas weren't really bastions of sanity on the first place. Then again, Yogg-Saron doesn't seem to care for LK even as a pawn and vice versa.

I wonder if Kil'jaeden realized Yogg was down there when he set Nerzhul up in the glacier?

As far as I know, demons always respawn in the Twisting Nether, unless they die within it. Meaning that Mannaroth could have come back because he died in the Demon Fall Canyon, not Twisting Nether, but the narrative treats Mannaroth dying as a permanent.

The funny thing is that this could make for an amazing layup and storyline for WoW. Well, not now, the Legion is fucking dissolved, but maybe for C+. Could've been perfect in Legion. I am not counting WoD.

So have Mannaroth come back, and with him, the Blood Curse. Make it so that Thrall and rest of the orcs initially thought the curse ended in their hubris and ignorance with the defeat of the demon, due to feeling the blood curse fade and recede to near nothingness, only for Drek'thar, an ex-Warlock who doubtlessly knows how demons function, warning them of a potential return, causing Thrall to be on guard. You can even make this into a legitimate reason why Thrall keeps warlocks around in his Horde – he needs people who can banish and bind a demon if need be and do it well, damn it.

And yet, eventually Mannaroth returns despite all precautions, either by resurrection or arriving & being summoned again, and with him the Blood Curse rears again, threatening all that Thrall has built. We now have to drag this demon back to twisting nether and kill his ass forever in there. Bam. You got yourself a raid boss!

Granted, this by itself would make fuck all for sense. It should probably be part of a wider legion invasion patch – if they even bother with another Legion invasion within the confines of C+ which I don't see happening unless C+ is succesful enough to have time for iterating on itself.

Its kinda stupid that Mannaroth & Archimonde had remains at all, they fuckin blew up!

I will also repeat that Grom killing two demigods, while amazing, is bullshit. Its like a child squaring up with his drunk father and winning. They should've had a few more people of import there, I would have recommended bringing Cairne, Vol'jin and Jaina along alongside a strike force as they are the bigs of their faction at the time. Then he could've hit him with execute on full cooldowns (deathwish included) and die in the process.

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.

I see this come up often, but I truly think that what people dislike about this retcon is that it breaks away with the narrative that we were fed in WC3. And true, it really sucks when you have something break with established continuity this egregiously.

I think many people back then had a knee-jerk reaction (and I honestly can't blame them) to it because "What the fuck space goats in space ships? How is this high fantasy? We sci-fi now?" But because the writing team was good, they fed that shit into the world in a good way, especially with the artstyle of the time (if the game itself isn't enough, check TCG for what I mean). This might have even made Warcraft one of the more unique fantasy worlds out there, what with everything we see in Outland, such as the world itself, Netherwing, Ethereals, Draenei tech, demons and so on.

The retcon also makes Kil'jaeden a more uniquely hateful and dangerous beast, who has pursued a group of exiles through space and time for millennia tirelessly, while being more or less able to scheme ten thousand plots even if a number of them occasionally suffer mortal setbacks (which is good, as even with his expertise, it shows that he or his designs are not infallible).

Not that they need this, but the same goes for Orcs as well, in that they basically fucked up a civilization that was light-years ahead of them with sheer power of demon blood.

We see this especially with Illidan and Grom, methinks. Even with AU!Grom fucking up Mannaroth, I fail to believe that he could take precedence over someone like Blackhand and Blackrock clan. He certainly didn't in the original timeline.

Or Illidan suddenly becoming a Messiah in Legion, which is Blizz basically taking what he thinks about himself at face value. Hello? This guy sold out to the Legion twice, even if he absolutely fucked up Tichondrius in the process! The Burning Crusade is more or less him shoring up his defences by his usual means while Burning Legion lures us to Outland by way of Kruul as KJ plots with Kael. I'd imagine that KJ was hoping we'd send Illidan his way in the Twisting Nether.

one of the greatest flaws of wc3 is that we don't get to see Illidan bond with Malfurion and Tyrande after his freedom from captivity over a few more missions. He just immediately picks up the skull and goes on his own way after his exile. However this could be excused as it can be surmised that by the end of WC3 the team was running on fumes.

Thrall becoming Green Jesus can probably also be considered as this phonemenon in action. And that really did impact his character big time.

Or Arthas destroying Nerzhul in his mind and completely taking over. This is probably one of WoW lore's original sins, and it's something that they ping pong on during wotlk, what with LK calling himself a Shaman during the quest where you find the vrykul & human connection iirc.

When you look beneath Arthas'... Aura, if you will, during wotlk, you find a mess of writing, to be honest. Its still a great expansion especially with all the Titan & Dragon stuff on top of it which I adore, but once you know it, you can't ignore it.

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.

Jaina rejected the idea completely, but neither she or Uther offered any real alternatives, not that Arthas was willing to listen. But what about Varian, for example? Or Magni? Hell, Terenas himself? Daelin? Kael'thas?

I think that someone like Orgrim would've done the purge, for all of Thrall's glorification of him – he always felt like a savvy politician, but his problem was that he could ultimately trust none of his fellow leaders in the Horde by the time he took over, all of them addled by demon blood (it's kind of a miracle that Gorefiend turned out to be as reliable as he ended up being, and somehow ended up bringing the best out of the chieftains that stuck with him despite all of them being bastards, real underrated character deserving of greater respect). He wouldn't like it, but he'd administer the cold medicine all the same.

In other words, how ruthless do you think these characters are deep down, or can be?

Okay so we've been having a few posts about Beckoning this past week or so and many of us are negative about the concept because it basically ends up ripping the generational warfare aspect of vtm by sending the elders and methuselahs to fucknowhere, Middle East, and nobody likes that. I am sure there are other reasons from other people. I know I don't like it as a whole.

The fact that this concept effectively got introduced by name in Gehenna Revised aside, and basically being the Summon power of Presence on steroids, there is one example of Beckoning that has been actually done right all along that I like, though I don't think it is called "Beckoning."

The goddamn Tzimisce Antediluvian and Kupala.

The Eldest keeps beckoning his descendants and using the assets in his hand to capture exotic specimens that someone like Lambach Ruthven, his chronicler and eventual first and last worshipper, has no clue about, like Lost Legacies and Wan Kuei and what not. But the Bogatyri, Zantosa and Ruthven get their work done.

But here, this plot device is not used as a means of getting the elders out of the way. Instead, any Tzimisce from the youngest fledgling to most august Methuselah can feel it, but not all of them do, at least yet. You can infer that the Eldest is being somewhat strategic with his feeding and is still playing the game. Then again he can also just consume from afar.

He is not the only one summoning his clan though – Kupala is also summoning them to Eastern Europe. You can see this in Clanbook Tzimisce Revised where sample characters Zajko (I am misremembering the name, forgive me) and Tyrone the Zulo Loco, feel the call emanating from Eastern Europe and New York respectively. This also likely ties into the Ancestral Soil Dependence flaw.

This is actually cool because here, the Eldest' beckoning isn't used as a contrived tool to get elders out of the way for some weird ass fucking reason, but because it's an organic plot point that can happen to anyone and still a phonemenon that in-universe not a whole lot of people, especially the Clan Tzimisce itself, realizes. They are also the only ones to feel the call in such a manner, discounting the third scenario of Gehenna Revised. Maybe other Antediluvians simply are not interested in this method, or are too far deep in sleep, or too far gone in their evolution, or the Tzimisce Antediluvian's unique state of existence requires him to work as a flytrap with mind control powers.

This usage of Beckoning is something you can drop as a plot hook in the middle of story and have the players investigate without waking them up immediately to something being wrong, meta-narrative knowledge aside, and get them on the Gehenna rails. It is far more handy.

tldr heavy handed plot contrivance bad, subtle plot hook good

According to the 2004 timeline, Quel'thalas fell to Arthas in the year 20 ADP. And according to the Narrator, by the time TBC starting zone quests begin, it's been 5 years since Reign of Chaos. But that's roughly around the same time as the Vanilla era itself, while TBC begins in year 26 according to 2007 timeline.

I find the idea of Blood Elves starting to quest around the same time as Vanilla era races somewhat cool, even if I doubt the plausibility - it could very well mean that they were out there adventuring from level one to sixty as everyone else were, and we see that in game with our eyes, them doing old vanilla content before reaching outland.

And I have no idea what this could mean for the Draenei.