r/warcraftlore

so when Arthas killed her back in W3 he turned her into a banshee which is an ectoplasmic ghost and not a zombie. she’s available for the rest of that mission as a non hero unique unit. she’s not seen again until the frozen thrones undead campaign where she is a hero unite called a dark ranger where without explanation who has went from a floating ghost to having a corporal body.

she never stops being classified as a banshee but she still went from being a ghost to a zombie. (also when I say zombie I just mean any undead that has a physical body as opposed to an ectoplasmic ghost entity) she clearly has a physical body and isn’t a spectral entity anymore. in frozen throne she Talks to other Banshees that look like they always do (ghosts) and in wow we can encounter Banshees that are the same ghosts from W3 so it’s not like they retconned what Banshees are.

is their Any official in universe explanation of her change or is it the type of thing we are not supposed to think about?

I really think Kael was wasted not just because of his own character, but he got connection with many major figures, it could create a lot of interesting stories among the Horde/Alliance and Nightelves/blood elves.

As much as I hate how he was done in BC, I think the best way wasn't to totally toss away that plot. It could be used for good development with some changes. Like he was under some mind control in BC but he still tried to play double agent and caused some harm to the legion. When he was revived back, he still deeply regret for his doing and tried to make it up secretly. So he spent time and effort to help his people secretly(much like a Happy Prince plot). It could also give other blood elf characters good plot about realize the truth-feel sorry for their prince-change their view. At the same time characters like Sylvanas and Tyrande could also get things to do.

Mueh'zala elevated Bwonsamdi into his station as a Loa, but this begs the question: was Mueh'zala himself also originally a mortal troll who ascended?

Likewise, for Zanza the Restless.

They're the only 3 that are visually humanoid trolls, unlike the others.

And yeah, we could assume that Loa could potentially choose any form, so they appear as mortal-like visually, but I strongly suspect that Bwonsamdi still remaining clearly troll-like post-apotheosis is a hint at Loa origins, or at least their preferred forms.

The majority of the Loa are Wild Gods and appear as animalistic which makes sense for that group. Hakkar as well (From my research, he IS classified as a Wild God, despite his proclivity for blood and sacrifice, lol?).

And then you get kinda humanoid-looking Loa like Kevo ya Siti and Lukou, though they don't appear as trolls.

So one of the comments on Wrath remix Blizzard has made is that it's a chance to revisit Northrend for its Swansong. The teaser we have also appears to be a Titan Mech getting ready to blast Northrend.

If these hints are true, and the Northrend we get is not a Midnight Style 'update' but rather a Cata style 'We blew it up', how do you feel about that?

As far as I know currently, Alliance and Horde share the same exact campaign story throughout all the leveling zones in Midnight. At which expansion does this unification of storytelling occur? I decided that I want to do every quest each expansion has to offer, starting with TBC and realized that I would need to create both an Alliance and Horde character to experience both sides but didn't know which expansion the split story telling happens.

Edit: Shadowlands!

i want to start here and i can’t figure out how to order this.. should i start elsewhere? my main in WoW is a Night Elf so i suppose something else could work but someone told me start there

I've just replayed Warcraft 3, and this question popped into my head.

How do Thrall and Cairne manage to speak to each other when Thrall arrives in Kalimdor? They have never seen each other's races before and lived on different continents. Thrall speaks orcish, and Cairne speaks taur-ahe. How do they even communicate?

I know it's done for the sake of gameplay, but is there a lore explanation for this?

an acolyte says only places with powerful ley-energies. the Sunwell was one – were there others? if so, theoretically where or what were they?

In Vanilla humans got an overarching 'Enemy Within' arc starting from local troubles with Defias leading to uncovering of Missing Diplomat conspiracy and resolving in Onyxia raid.

I imagine the other races were supposed to have a similar treatment, but the developers simply didn't have enough time to complete them. We can see hints at them with nigh elves (corruption spreading from Teldrassil > conspiracy of Fandral > planned Emerald dream raid), orcs (Shadow Council), dwarves (Dark Iron infilatration > BRD), taurens (whatever Magatha is cooking with Arikara).

What do you think each story would be if they got the same treatment as humans?

We know Warcraft has Gnolls, some of the early Human and Forsaken quests/missions involve fighting Gnolls. I'm not really sure on the lore regarding Gnolls in Azeroth. What I do know is that in quite a few settings like Warcraft have Gnolls be a result of demonic corruption of Spotted Hyenas (also known as "Laughing Hyenas"). What's funny is that we can actually use Spotted Hyena as a foundation or template of Gnoll society. Before we go further I feel the need to mention the lack of noticeable female models for the Gnolls; yes, this is important for later.

Okay, first: Spotted Hyenas are aggressively matriarchal; how so? The lowest-ranked female is ranked higher than the highest-ranked male; take a moment to really think about that for a bit.

Second: female Spotted Hyenas have an anatomical feature that made early African peoples have lore about how these hyenas shift genders whenever they want (I would use the proper term here, but I'm worried about my choice of terminology getting me in trouble with the mods, so I won't use it here and just leave it to your own independent research).

Third: Research on teaching learned behavior that involved Spotted Hyenas actually showed they are able to teach learned behavior to other members of the group better than any other creature, including apes, they scored better on teaching learned behavior than several apes used those same studies.

Four: Spotted Hyenas have jaws able to literally crush bones, and they regularly make them part of their diet. Of the 4 living Hyena species, 3 are in the Bonecrusher group, and Spotted Hyenas are in that grouping, and they are the largest living hyenas.

There's more I could say, but I'll leave it here.

Yesterday, I mentioned stretching out the timeline for the expansions of WOW so that Azeroth could have a bit more breathing room between cataclysms and world-ending threats. With that in mind, here’s a rough timeline I thought of for when each expansion starts and how much time passes between them:

Classic - 25 ADP, like in canon

Burning Crusade - 27 ADP (one year between Classic and TBC)

Wrath of the Lich King - 30 ADP (two years between Burning Crusade and Wrath)

Cataclysm - 35 ADP (four years between Wrath and Cataclysm)

Mists of Pandaria - 37 ADP (several months between Cataclysm and Mists)

Warlords of Draenor - 40 ABY (one year between Mists and Warlords)

Legion - 41 ADP (Almost one year between Warlords and Legion)

Battle for Azeroth - 46 ADP (approximately four years between Legion and Battle for Azeroth)

Shadowlands - 49 ADP (Several months between the end of Battle for Azeroth and the start of Shadowlands)

Dragonflight - 54 ADP (Approximately three years between the end of Shadowlands and the beginning of Dragonflight, like in canon)

The War Within - 57 ADP (1-2 years after the end of Dragonflight)

Midnight - 58 ADP (direct continuation)

The Last Titan - 59 ADP (direct continuation)

Thoughts?

So essentially, we’d have the actual Alliance-Horde war be the focus of the first expansion called Battle for Azeroth, then we have Azshara and the Naga be the focus of their own expansion that’s a direct sequel to BFA (maybe called Rise of Azshara or something similar), and finally, N’Zoth and possibly the other two Old Gods (since I’m pretty sure C’Thun and Yogg-Saron weren’t confirmed to be dead until Midnight despite having been defeated due to the very fact they are Old Gods?) being the front and centre of a Black Empire/Old God themed expansion. Thoughts?

Does anyone have cool Shaman facts, obscure lore, or interesting headcanons? I'd like to hear them!

Could be about the different cultural variations of Shamanism, their practices and communing with the elements, little touches on their totems - Things like that!

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?

Hi guys,

Thinking of returning to WoW with the launch of Forever. I played an Undead Priest from Vanilla to WotLK before quitting, and I want to play DPS this time around. 99% sure I'm going to settle on Troll Mage.

Maybe I'm crazy, but one of the biggest things holding me back is that Troll Arcane users seem unusual for the Darkspear. I've been scouring the lore of a lot of the expansions since I quit, but I really can find very few instances of Troll Mages. The only one I've really been able to find is Zi'mo the Empowered... seemingly a relatively minor NPC.

Can you guys shed some light on the lore of Troll Mages? How do they fit in and are there any interesting characters throughout WoW?

Thanks!

What are your thoughts on this council made to rule Ironforge and the three main Dwarven clans in the Alliance, started in Cataclysm?

Do you think that it was and/or has led to interesting stories and writing for the Dwarves or not?

If you wanted, how and what you have changed about it, or replaced it?

While I do welcome the Dark Iron Dwarves becoming members of the Alliance, and the Wildhammers officially rejoining the Alliance, and some measure of reconciliation between the three clans, I have never been a fan of the council or how it was brought with Varian deciding for Dwarves instead of them choosing that solution or another one.

I strongly believe that the Wildhammer should have never accepted to return to and rejoin the kingdom of Ironforge, with their culture and lifestyle being too different by now from their subterrean-living cousins, and them having been independent for so long. And I see more the Wildhammer Dwarves as a coalition or federation of clans with a common culture, who aren't a kingdom and with their clans have more autonomy than in their cousins' political systems. And of course Dagran has zero claim of kingship over them.

The Dark Irons and them serving as the Alliance's token evil teammate, and them being distrusted and disliked by both their cousins and other Alliance races and members due to their history and culture and long hostility with others, and them joining the Alliance out of pragmatism and necessity without liking its ideals and the other members, and their different, darker methods, at least for a while, could have been explored much more and deeper.

I would have also written Moira and Muradin to have had a conflict or near-conflict after Magni's petrification and Moira's takeover and despotic rule over Ironforge with the Dark Irons being challenged by Muradin's return from Northrend and at least a large portion of Ironforge army and other Bronzebeards rallying behind him against Moira's authoritarian rule and association with the Dark Irons, many doing it because they are more loyal to Muradin after having served under him in the military before and during the Second War, and many using the claim that Moira is under the Dark Iron's thrall or spell; with the Gnomes and Stormwind and other members of the Alliance backing Muradin.

A compromise would eventually have been found, but decided either by the Dwarves themselves, or during an Alliance summit, with the Thorium Brotherhood also getting representation during the talks, and Moira and her supporters being forced to make major concessions to them given their hatred of and resistance to House Thaurissan, with them being given crucial roles and power within Dark Iron society, perhaps even with a charter similar to the English Magna Carta to limit the empress/emperor's powers over Shadowforge and create a senate like in Ironforge.

When we go back to Northrend by the time of the Last Titan, the Kirin Tor commandeers the abandoned Naxxramas, made massive clean ups, and began to use it as their base of operations to replace what Xal'atath blew up. The spirits might be a whole different issue though.

Because honestly, when you look at the current history of Azeroth, it’s incredibly depressing. As of Midnight, seventeen years have passed in-universe since the time of Classic (Midnight currently being set in 42 ADP when Classic takes place in 25 ADP), and because of the way expansions are spaced out, Azeroth has spent almost its entire time in those seventeen years being swallowed up by war. Hell, the only notable break they seem to have gotten was the three-year timeskip between the end of Shadowlands and the beginning of Dragonflight. So I definitely do wonder if they should have included more timeskips between expansions, but it does make me wonder how much time should have passed in each instance? Because Legion, for example, works great as a direct and almost immediate follow-up to Warlords of Draenor, but other expansions would probably show more mercy on Azeroth by spacing themselves out a bit. I definitely feel like there should have been a time skip between Legion and Battle for Azeroth, anyway.

A lot of them have been alive since the war of the ancients. Is there any indication they have started to age since the loss of the nightwell?

A thought I had for a long time was Tess Greymane (I figured they’d do a split inheritance where one child becomes the ruler of Stormwind and the other the ruler of Gilneas), but now that Tess is officially the Queen of Gilneas thanks to Genn abdicating the throne and the Gilneans reclaiming their kingdom, I don’t think such a match is likely anymore. Admittedly Anduin’s got a lot larger priorities on his mind right now, but if we ever see it happening (assuming they don’t just introduce a new character), who could it be?