r/warcraftlore

edit: DnD campaign. I couldn't figure out the weird capitalization stuff in the title.

tl;dr: I need advice on the feasibility of these two ideas, and whether or not they're (more or less) lore-compliant or not. I'm not sure if I'm overlooking or missing something or not.

As the title reads, my group is pretty excited about the upcoming Warcraft splatbook coming out later this year and wants me to run a Warcraft TTRPG campaign. I'm not too familiar with the setting but I've been doing some (not so light) reading the last few weeks to figure out a few campaigns to offer up to my group and I've narrowed it down to two. I'd really like some more experienced input on these. I went into it with a few ground rules.

• Very few to no major lore characters playing a pivotal role in the plot. At most, they're relegated to background noise or cameos.
• I'd like to keep it geographically condensed to a kingdom, at most.
• It needs to have a decent amount of variety and not lean too heavy in one direction.

Campaign 1 involves the tail end of the reconstruction of Stormwind after the Second War. I'm looking to dive a little deeper into Stormwind being on the verge of insolvency, as made obvious by the inability to pay the Stonemasons Guild for their efforts. As a result, the kingdom starts to slowly suffer as the crown is unable to defend the outer reaches of the kingdom, leading to a gradual loss of faith in the crown. The party would be a group of problem solvers for the crown, starting off with low level tasks like looking into missing tax collectors or trade caravans. This can go a bunch of different directions, but I see it leading to a political intrigue-centric campaign about Stormwind teetering on the brink of collapse, agitators and firebrands advocating for reform (and maybe republicanism), and so on. I feel like there's a lot I can do with this.

Campaign 2 involves the months following the Scourging of Lordaeron. I really love the idea of Session 1 being the party playing throwaway characters (with the party being aware) as the Capital City falls to the Scourge, leading to their deaths and eventual reanimation, leading to a pretty cool reveal later on. The actual campaign, I'm a little fuzzy on. The campaign probably starts in Southshore, but I'd need some sort of motive for the actual characters to venture into Lordaeron. I'm sure I can think of some MacGuffin for the party to look for, or even take the Fallout 1 approach and have them be gently shoved out from Southshore and told to look for something vital that was lost in the war.

Personally , I would love some Blood Elvish strawberry cake and a goblet filled with the best arcane-flavored sparkling wine :-)

Spoilers for the new campaign and cinematic, if you haven't seen it already, you've been warned.

I'm going to start this by making a comparison to the most infamous ending of a fantasy IP I can think of.

When Game of Thrones' Season 8 came out, there was a collective backlash to basically everything, because it took the most massive fantasy IP in the world and burned it to the ground (literally) with zero buildup, frankly insulting cliches, and the prevailing idea that anyone changing the system needs to be put down like Old Yeller (Daenerys). Status quo to a vast surveillance system under the guise of old traditional religion was literally king (Bran).

Whether you liked the fate of certain characters or not, the fact is that the show's ending and the revelation of these characters' fates coming to ultimately nothing, a long shaggy dog story that provided no satisfying tragedy, made a lot of people feel like idiots for caring about Game of Thrones. All those theories, all those ideas that there was rich storytelling done by writers who loved the work-- gone.

I loved the Amani storyline. I love Zul'jan and Zul'jarra, especially the supplemental material showing how much they cared for each other, how they had basically nothing, BUT each other. And I truly liked that Zul'jan was rebelling against old traditional religion, calling out the fickle nature of their gods (yes, I know the loa had their reasons, but the fact remains that these are godlike beings who can just easily decide not to help, and there's no guarantee of ANY safety).

Well, they put him down like Old Yeller. Stripped him of all his good qualities from the supplemental materials, consistently had the narrative punish him for questioning the status quo, shaved him and humiliated him in his final moments with 'you are so much cooler than me, sister', before joining the ranks of Rastakhan, Vol'jin, and so many other trolls.

This was the first time I ever got very invested in a character from WoW, I'm a relatively newish player. I haven't experienced all the other times Blizzard has taken a morally complex antihero and executed them, so this is my first moment of depression and I'm pretty sure it's the last, because what's the point?

Blizzard loves asking interesting questions about faith, the meaning of tradition, the worth of religion, the worth of faith in a fickle source-- and then essentially saying 'SIKE, YOU THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO HAVE THEMES? THEMES ARE FOR EIGHTH GRADE BOOK REPORTS!'

Because now I know that their whole 'The Light is multifaceted' storyline is going to result in 'Light bad zealots bad', we're already seeing 'but void good? Sometimes?' and no consequences for Void aligned characters doing dumbass things (Umbric being responsible for the death of potentially hundreds of people in Magister's Terrace, yet no one calls him out). There's no point in speculation on if the forces of Life are good or not, if the Titans are worth believing in or not, what Azeroth the being wants or not.

Because the minute they question the status quo, snarl in a less-than-pleasant way, not immediately kneel down and beg forgiveness for all their sins, they're marked for death. I was in denial the whole time, I genuinely thought that this was Blizzard's attempt at making the most compelling character and storyline in years--

And I felt like the world's biggest idiot for caring. So why bother caring about the story anymore? Why bother rooting for characters? Why bother engaging with any of this?

At the end of the day, they're all going to be put down like Old Yeller for not being Good ™️.

(If you've read this far, thank you, I'm a bit irritated with Blizzard lmao, hope you're having a great day)

Because goddamn, there are so many angry takes from people that don't participate in the sub, who's first post is here today, hundreds of comments on threads whereas normally you get 20-50 at best.

Just seems awfully convenient there was a pop up of identical sentiment (dare I say, pattern recognized?) threads saying the same things, complaining about woke, california influences, women writers, millennials and lack of testosterone in the zones.

I've noticed these things don't organically happen, and KIND of interesting there's an explosion of these threads today, you know?

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?

Every single time they do troll lore it just boils down to "so anyway, the trolls killed their Loa and apparently hate their gods and just want to use them for power".

It already started in Vanilla with the Hakkari (they captured the priests of other Loa and drained their power to fuel Hakkar), then needless to say Zul'Jin and the Amani trolls in TBC, then the Drakkari in WotLK.

BFA: Same thing again with the Blood Trolls and converted Zandalari following Gh'uun (and my girl Shadra dying AGAIN a second time??? Did they forget the player kills her in Vanilla where she's a random Elite lol?)

ShadowLands reversed the roles and Mueh'zala condemned troll souls to the Maw for the Jailer instead. Wow, peak plot twist!!!

Now in Midnight it's again trolls throwing Loa under the bus for power.

I'm a lifelong troll fan and it just grinds my gears a little bit, like there are no other stories to tell or to focus on the positive relationship with their gods for once.

Surely reusing the exact same plot line 1000 times has an end, right? RIGHT???

Within the first 2-3 quests involving him I already knew he was gonna be a problem and we probably were gonna have to kill him. He has never shown any indications of wanting to change his ways.

I like the character but he's very obviously a villain that we were gonna have to whack and you should have seen that coming a mile away

After Ula’Tek raid. Are there any important male characters left who aren't dead or old? I mean someone—anyone at all—who isn't just a one-off quest giver.
or we were left with only the female ones?

What exactly was Zul'jan's death suppose to accomplish? Was it suppose to teach Zul'jarra that going down a conqueror's path to "restore glory" by any means necessary was a bad thing? We have countless instances of that scenario not working, even amongst Troll history. You can't really say if this affected Zul'jarra in any way since we barely know a lot about her character to begin with. We even know Zul'jan supported her ascension to Chieftain so there was not animosity between the two prior to Midnight. I feel like if 12.1 had been about Zul'jarra and Zul'jan actually working together as siblings it would have added more character than just killing one off

Title basically, I think it would be interesting if the WoW troll atheist was brought back by a Loa. It could be interesting his relationship with his sister and the Loa of death. That way we can also have some intriguing if we ever have a undead expansion like going back to northrened.

What do yall think?

Well, blizz had caught lightning in a bottle and still decided to kill Zul'jan without ever actually addressing any flaws in Zul'jarra’s ‘Trust the loa implicitly’ angle or addressing that even if he went about it wrong that Jan had a point with the whole 'Maybe we should not put all our eggs in one basket with trusting the fallible animal gods’

But hey, even if they killed him, there’s still time for an EASY fix

1. Now that Ula'tek is dead (again) Talanji (who's in the area because of the Haranir stuff) can go visit the coiled isle and summon Bwonsamdi to help put the angry souls to rest.
2. Bwonsamdi can show up and perhaps recycle Ula'tek's soul and turn Jan into a psychopomp working for him to help sort out all the spirits that have been trapped on the Coiled Isle for years, plus the souls of the dead snakepeople.
3. This allows Jan to both repair some of the damage he did while also getting to see things from the 'loa’ side of the equation
4. This allows him to continue on as Vol'jin’s helper once Vol'jin finally respawns
5. This lets him interact with Zul'jin’s spirit.

But blizz won't do this because they were never serious about Zul'jarra and Jan's story continuing on into the future.

And they really only needed Jan to be the 'racist' troll who isn't happy with the elves, and Jarra to be the 'nice' native who listens to the elf lady and helps the elves and forgives them and doesn't even try to argue for her people to get some land back or access to their tombs or anything.

So did we ever get to know what or who that octopus, Old God looking thingie in the mural actually was?

I feel like over the years we defeated most big threats and what's left is a mere sidequest. For instance Azshara.

There may still be the light (depending on the end of the saga), Iridikron and titans coming back/Azeroth waking up but I don't know, they don't feel that threatening either after all we've done

I still can’t get over how casually Warcraft throws around world-ending events like they’re just another Tuesday in Azeroth.

One minute you’re farming boars, and the next some ancient cosmic entity is explaining that your entire planet was basically built on top of a sleeping problem.

Honestly, Azeroth needs therapy more than another expansion.

Thinking about starting a blood elf demon hunter, and slow rolling it up to cap. Was curious- What's the important story/lore to experience for that type of character? Planning to hit Legion after starting area. Maybe crush a couple of the BC raids for their story? I've done the BE starter area a couple times over the years, so probably skipping that. Will probably go back and check out the Purge of Dalaran, as that's an important BE event.

Any other major stuff I should check out?

Preferably, without major spoilers. I played WoW in the far past(vanilla/bc era), so there's alot of stuff it'll be the first time I see.

I'm definitely getting the books and going to prepare a campaign for my characters - but which time period would you run a campaign in?

With the Icecrown Map Pack coming with it, I was thinking of running one that aligns with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion - but I'm also interested in exploring that time period between WC3 and WoW.

With the threat of the Void you would think the Army of the “Light” would be ones spearheading the fight against Xal, instead of just being summoned by the Sunwell to fight for Quel’Thalas. Even if the Vindicaar can’t fire its orbital cannon anymore it should still serve well to transport troops as all you need is one of their ground teleports to move around. As far as we know Xal and her Void armies can’t even reach it

Were the night elves of Val’sharah immortal? After the Well of Eternity was destroyed, we knew that the Night Elves got their immortality from Nordrassil’s blessing. However, that blessing only extended to the Night Elves of Kalimdor, which is why the Highborne that ventured to what would be known as Quel’Thalas lost their immortality.

With Classic + on the Horizon, I really wonder how they'll handle lore. Will they release "Classic +" books / comics?

I've seriously enjoyed reading Warcraft books over the years (Mostly up until about WOTLK in the timeline) and I would love to get some new ones depending on the direction they take things.