>Greyhawk >Forgotten Realms >Golarion >Azeroth You

>>54885969
Viable, but not good. The books have some good ideas in them, but they are mostly shit (can I say CR 50 Lich King?), and let me remind you that they are based on 3.5.

>>54885969

Viable? Yes. Good? No.

Warcraft is absolute garbage. Only idiots who sank hundreds of hours into the shitty MMO still feel anything for that wreck of a mindless setting.

>>54885969
>Arthas was good, became brainwashed and evil (just like Kerrigan)
>Orcs dindu nuffin and were corrupted (just like zerg)
>inside joke Pandas became serious race
>space aliens
Fuck off metzen.

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>>54886004
Also, space goat enthusiasts.

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WoW RPG books had this strange, bizarre bias against "ugly" races and love for beautiful ones. Like, take a look at this.

>>54886039
>elves are violent racists
And this seems unusual to you?

>>54886125
Yes, it does, since it also paints them as the good guys. Like, I understand hatred of trolls, since most of the tribes are pretty bad, but Darkspear are literally their allies.

>>54886032
Arthas was not even slightly close to the characterisation of Kerrigan. One got slowly broken down to a vengeful wreck that was focused on only one thing and subsequently sacrificed his soul and autonomy for it. The other was a slightly special woman that was put in a pod and turned evil.

Orcs haven't been evil since the most popular game in the franchise. I love Warcraft 1 and 2 but they were largely irrelevant compared to the third one and even in it, there are still plenty of orcs who are shown to be assholes. The whole point of the game was meant to be 'anyone can be a dickhead, no matter who they are'. Good job for missing that "extremely subtle" writing.

What tickles me is there are plenty of examples you could have compared one or the other two in fiction that might have supported your point but you chose to compare the two that had the least in common character-wise. Good job you twat.

>>54886153
Metzen go home, nobody likes you.

>>54886034
Yeah, take a peek into the Lion's Pride on any RP server to see that shit's out of control.

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What went wrong?

>>54886183
Plenty of people like him, the lore's not perfect but you chose literally the most stupid and hyperbolic shit to point out as its flaws.

Why not the stupidity of adding dragons as a guardian race into a setting where the guardian race can effectively do nothing due to the main characters being mortals?

What about the stupid character turns that make no sense like Garrosh or the plot armour of characters like Sylvanas? What about the sheer lack of sense most expansions have going into their plots?

There's a lot to complain about when it comes to Warcraft and its oft shoddy worldbuilding and writing, and you chose two things that aren't really wrong with it. You're a retard.

>>54886280
Because I played WoW for 10 minutes before uninstalling that boring piece of shit.
I don't know any of these new faggot characters, but from what I read in lore summaries its a huge train wreck

>>54886302
So what you're telling me is, you're 'criticising' something you know next to nothing about? Do you often talk shit about things you know nothing about?

Who am I kidding, that's probably your life.

>>54886302
check out this badass
did you dab when you did it

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>>54886188
So you wouldn't a space goat?

>>54887990
>space STDs
No thanks, I like my women like I like my beer - stout and bitter.

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>>54888050
I also like my women like I like my beer.
I don't like beer. It's expensive, tastes like piss, and you only drink it to get drunk anyway (which you often end up regretting).

>>54885969
I'm sure there'd be a way to make it viable, but considering the average WoW roleplayer is harder to work with than a rabid tumblerina-/pol/ hybrid (muh faction! muh race dindu! muh race better! u can't hurt me I have magic shield) I don't think there's a demographic for it. The setting is great if you remove all the artificial aspects that were tacked on to make it an MMO, but these people guard the canon that benefits them personally, while always bashing the canon that doesn't, regardless of quality.
Remove player input, rewrite the politics in the setting to make sense, return to old characterisation of characters from WC3, keep the worldgen but without this stupid "Sargeras not the worst, Void Lords are" last minute edit.

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>>54887990
I would a goat from beyond space

>>54888050
Dwarves leave

>>54886032
>Arthas was good, became brainwashed and evil (just like Kerrigan)
Except Arthas was always portrayed as a villain. The better parallel for Kerrigan would be Sylvanas, who was also shilled and allowed to get away with obscenely evil shit.

>>54888189
Where do you think we are?

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>>54885969
If you stick to Warcraft 3 timeline, or very early WoW (vanilla or earlier) then it's great for adventuring. I wouldn't do anything post-BC though. You'd also have to avoid making the players hero-unit tier in the game, or else they'll just roll over everything.

>>54885969
I wish I could find peopel to play this with. Desperately wan't to play a Tauren Plaguebender.

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>>54888229
Arthas was right at Andorhal but alienating Uther and Jaina robbed him of his anchor. With no one to smack him down when he was acting retarded he went from a zealot to an easily manipulated idiot.

>Chronicles 2 disproved the idea that the Apexis went into space to praise the sun more effectively
feels bad man

>>54888292
So? That doesn't make him a Kerrigan ripoff.

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>>54888306
You'll have to explain your reasoning to me.

Kerrigan was left for dead and captured before being rebuilt from the cellular level into a command node for the Zerg. Arthas was consumed by his ambition which lead him to seek out Frostmourne and willfully offer up his soul for power.

They're not very similar character arcs beyond both being fallen heroes.

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If you like Warcraft so much, why don't you come and contribute to wowpedia?

>>54888306
>>54888372
You're agreeing.

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>>54888394
Woops. You're right. I've been up too long. Ignore me.

>>54888412
The other guy fucked off because other people in the thread saw he was acting like a moron and shut him up.

Has there been any more work on the 5e conversion? Has anyone played it?

>>54888148
If you wanna get drunk you drink hard liquor anon

>>54888699
I haven't heard of it got a link?

>>54885969
As long as it is not WoW-levels of factionalism and simply go on adventures, then I'm OK.

>>54889069
Here ya go, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oaqqtXQG-fT-C5_yajhLbUabdpN5XPn7hmV-MXAGz78/edit

Looks like it's still being worked on, people had been talking about it months ago on here, but that was back when there was a general thread for talking about Warcraft lore/RPGs.

>>54885969
Greyhawk is a great setting, it's got just enough stuff in it to not be a clusterfuck or 400+ OFFICIALY PUBLISHED BOOKS HUGE.

You know Neverwinter Online? That is is sadly, an accurate depiction of just how bad Faerun and the forgotten realms are today.
>Oversaturated populace
>Bleeding heart alignment pushing Dragonborn
>Lore errors, oh god, so many of these
>Thoon Hulks being used by rgular illithid in a non-conforming conclave that has the Elder Brain out in the open defying all forms of known illithid architecture like the like you'd find in 2e3.5 Neverwinter Nights 1&2 and even Baldurs Gates
>Start of the game has a Warlock Stopping a Dracoliche's soul from returning to it's phylactery doing nondescriptive action
>Valindra Shadowmantle's phylactery not conforming to Phylactery size rules, being a massive "Please break me" purple diamond
>Valindra making VAMPIRE GHOSTS
>Anything spellplague
>Thay immediately decides that fianancial world domination is taking too long and immediately puts itself at risk assising the cult of the Dragon and Valindra's assualt on Neverwinter
>Make Orcus even more broken by letting him have SUMMONABLE NEGATIVE ENERGY ORIENTATED PATROLLING SPHERES OF ANNHILLATION THAT EXPLODE IN THE SAME WAY IF YOU THROW THE ROD OF WONDERS INTO IT BY BEING CHARGED BY ZOMBIES
>MULTIPLE
>FUCKING
>SPHERES OF ANHHILATION
Fuck Forgotten Realms, Fuck neverwinter Online, Fuck Elminster Fuck Nu-Minsc, the only canon thing about nevewinter Online is when Demogorgon shows up and smacks Drizzt and Friends right into the fucking Abyss like that story with him BEATING DEMOGRGON WITH THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP should have gone. The only other good thing was the random Lich Phylactery quest, which was Grade A comedy at it's finest.

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>>54889089
>>54889413

Shit wrong reply, my bad.

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>>54889600
Thanks anon, I something like this whipped up a couple months ago using Homebrewery. For some reason the tauren section always gets smushed.

>>54889493
Greyhawk's biggest problem was that despite sort of being the defacto default setting of 3.5 barely any actual Greyhawk setting books came out, and there hasn't really been anything since
As for FR I understand it Neverwinter Online was based on 4e's infamous Forgotten Realms lore which has been largely retconned or undone in some other way

>>54888148
You're so wrong it's not even funny.

>>54888148
Getting drunk off beer alone is a chore. Only anime characters, highschoolers, and alcoholics who can only afford Steel Reserve get drunk off beer

>>54885969
D20 3.0 and 3.5 match really poorly with WoW.

>>54891134
The biggest difference to get over is really just how WoW (and video games in general really) is an encounter based design with mechanics that are purely based on short cooldowns (4e comes closer, but oh boy watch the fireworks when you compare the two).
Anything more than giving a DnD a thin Azeroth colored coat of paint would beg the question of why you aren't just making your own system though (or god forbid just playing WoW).

>>54891253
>(or god forbid just playing WoW).
Well that's easy. You want a DM more trustworthy than Kossak.

>>54891253

>4e comes closer, but oh boy watch the fireworks when you compare the two

I've never really gotten that comparison. 4e doesn't have any per-round cooldowns. You need to actively stop fighting to recharge anything.

More in line with it would be something like 3.5's binder who had a shit tonne of 'recharges in 1d4 rounds' abilities.

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>>54891271
underrated post

>>54886199
I think what went wrong is that both characters decided five seconds into their brawl that they weren't gonna do a Mak'gora anymore and just wanted to murder eachother, and the fanbase didn't get the memo.

Seriously I don't recall the dialogue prior to the cinematic anymore but if they were honestly going into this claiming it's an honour duel for leadership then the whole setup was already misconceived. They had nothing to contest, anymore, they really just wanted eachother dead, and in such an environment the concept of "cheating" doesn't really have any merit, anymore.

Also Garrosh is yet another fine example of wasted potential as a character. Also, just going by the impossible timeline of Blizzard, Garrosh is pretty much the same age if not older than Thrall lol

>>54891720
...There's only been one reply since I posted that learn board etiquette jesus.

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>>54885969
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTyeE5oK7LQ
Anyone else think Hearthstone's Gadgetzan could be pretty cool as a setting?

>small trade outpost turned bustling port city metropolis
>cool aesthetic blending fantasy with 1920's
>fought over by three unique gangs with their own looks, goals, and fighting styles
>traditional mobsters but with a bunch of fantasy races and a ludicrous arsenal
>freaky alchemists with magic tattoos peddling dangerous bootleg potions, led by a troll who is possibly a dragon in disguise
>immigrants from Pandaria in a Chinatown sort of deal, secretly building up an army of jade golems to take over the city
>all while a crazy gnome blows shit up for "justice" and the mayor plots to secede the city from his cartel bosses

You could inspiration from the rest of WoW's Tanaris or nearby Un'goro and it's card exapnsion if you wanted to expand out from the city itself.

>>54886199
>>54891739
Also people don't get that there's different tiers of Mak'Gora from one-weapon loincloths only final destination to full armor, all weapons.

>>54891773
A little bit too much 20s, but it is kinda cool to see the city bigger.

>>54891773
Hearthstone's writers have this amazing ability to realise that Azeroth doesn't need a definite end towards which all possible plotlines must lead or all plotlines that don't lead to it are inferior and are only an afterthought, so they manage to make all these expansions "another day another adventure".

Problem is also the rule of cool is now tuned up to 11 and coherent lore will now be even more difficult.

>>54892148
I mean Hearthstone's never been intended as a solid story.

They're just jokey vignettes and what-ifs.

Sorta like a non-serious noncanon version of Warcraft Legends (Which was such a good series.)

>>54885969
The printed rules are just core 3.5with the numbers filed off and azeroth races.

It does a shit job of being a system for warcraft but the monster manuals are nice.

>>54886004
>wrong opinions.
I actually hated wow and quickly unsubbed, but like the warcraft setting, because warcraft 2 and warcraft 3 were great and have an entertaining setting.

>>54888245
>If you stick to Warcraft 3 timeline, or very early WoW (vanilla or earlier) then it's great for adventuring.

This. Vanilla-era WoW still felt like D&D character power levels, and the world was full of hidden mysteries instead of apocalypses from space or punching goddamn Deathwing.

>>54886039
In Warcraft lore, high elves and trols had been in war for many centuries before the later joined the Horde, and hating the newfound allies of their ancient enemies doesn't sound like biased to me.

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>All of the players in our tabletop group played WoW
>Most would probably be okay with WoW-themed D&D

Well. Except for that one guy in our group who refuses to play anything that's pre-written. No settings, no modules. Completely original settings ONLY.

>>54892484
Warcraft 3's lore, particularly (but not limited to) the Frozen Throne was also pretty shit

>>54892148
Hearthstone doesn't have enough writing for it to be bad. Obviously this is fine for minimalists but anyone who enjoys a good narrative should be concerned with how it and Overwatch are becoming the "new way to do things" as in the game doesn't deliver any storytelling of its own.

>>54894726
Stories in games are a meme anyways. Think about it, you're basically tacking on a concept that can only be experienced once in your entire lifetime, with something that is meant to be replayed over and over again until you get bored and move on to something else.

Old-School games didn't need a 150 hour narrative to justify sending plumbers to rescue princesses from giant turtles, the fact that you wanted to play was already justification enough with any story to be had coming from you going out of your way to find it later on, whether it's through manuals, flavor text, or details strewn throughout the levels.

>>54888050
They immortal holy space goats. Considering how old they get the STDs that enter their bodies are purged by arcane or holy magic.

>>54886183

metzen is retired you dumbfuck and even when he was with the company he wasnt actively involved in lore shit for years

brain-dead imbecile

>>54895186
He was involved with the shit the guy was responding to. You seem angry

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>>54885969
I wouldn't mind running or playing in Azeroth. Though I'd rather play only between Warcraft 3 upto WotLK because after that the lore kinda gets a bit crazy and stuff. Though I'd probably want to upgrade/convert the system to 5e or something not 3.5 (personal preference). I can see myself having lot of fun and really getting invested into a game like that. Being able to interact in a world I've played a bit in and be able to interact with those important lore figures would be awesome.

I looked at the wowwiki. The linguistic aspect of Warcraft is literally the dumbest shit I've ever read and I would've been happier not knowing how retarded and poorly thought-out it is.

Every single sapient being in the universe is fully fluent in Common for no apparent reason (presumably born with full inherent knowledge of it I guess?), but every race except humans also has a "racial" language (despite being apparently born fully fluent in "Common"). There's no explanation, and racial languages seem to exist solely so characters can "lapse into" them, despite Common being their first language.

Common is the Human language (for no adequately explained reason), despite humans not being even remotely widespread enough for that to make any sense. And certain entire races that have fairly regular contact with humans are arbitrarily bad at Common, and worse than other entire races that had literally never encountered a human and didn't know what they were.

>>54886199
Garrosh became a retard, Thrall became a messiah.

Thrall was supposed to be a mere spiritual leader, Garrosh a fanboy.

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>>54891773
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr_Ta6NS3-g

>>54885969
Viability does not equate to quality, you mongoloid

>>54886034
Much as I completely lack a fuck to give about Warcraft's setting at this point, space goats still make my dick hard, so that's alright

>>54896173
Explain the popularity of Warhammer than.

>>54896195
ebin britbong humo(U)r?

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>>54896181
I miss the heyday of Warcraft a lot.

>>54886199
Thrall became a mary sue because Warcraft writers are fucking retarded

>>54886199
>BC, Garrosh is a whiny shit no one likes
>Nice quest makes him feel better
>WotlK, Garrosh is suddenly an arrogant warmongering douchebag
>playerbase fucking hates him
>blizz make him the new warchief to the outrage of a lot of players
>make Thrall a Jesus sue who is the only hope to save the world from the evil dragon he has no real lore connection to, fanbase begins to turn on formerly beloved character
>Garrosh gets a few cool moments that makes him out to be somewhat honorable, even if he is still a warmonger. Some players warm up to him
>to satisfy the players who still hated him, blizz makes him go full cartoon villain
>annoys fans who warmed up to him, they point out how a lot of what he did pre-Pandaria full bad guy wasn't strictly his fault
>to acknowledge these complaints Garrosh voices them in his final battle with Green jesus.
>blizz attempts to point out that even if Thrall's bad choices put Garrosh where he was, he still did a lot of shit and shouldn't be absolved of responsibility
>do it clumsily so it looks like Thrall is absolving himself of ALL responsibility

That's the gist of it.

>>54896211
Shit hasn't been funny for decades.

>>54885969

yesand.jpg

Too bad they never fleshed out any of the individual human kingdoms. Or really any individual states within a larger political sphere.

Warcraft as a setting could use some more fleshing out of things like that. Stories and conflicts among members of the same race. Details about customs, religious beliefs, and relatively small-scale things. Things unrelated (or tangentially related) to big world-changing metaplots.

>>54885969
But can it be used to wargame?

>>54895000
Stories aren't a meme, and the interactive nature of games as a medium is an interesting and unique way to tell a story. However, many games don't need them, or don't do it well enough to justify them being there in the first place. Lots of those games are multiplayer.

>>54886134
The blood elves did not join the Horde until Burning Crusade and the Warcraft RPG came out before wow.

>>54889493
>Greyhawk is a great setting, it's got just enough stuff in it to not be a clusterfuck
I have run Greyhawk campaigns in 1e/2e for literally 30 years... I've never used much of the 3.whatever stuff either other than really a high level idea (crusades through the shield lands was about it)
Shit, I've even created all my own sourcebook so I don't need to use any of the official books anymore.
Even with my graphics skills at the 9000 hours in ms paint level I even created my own map of the city of greyhawk that isn't that fucking abortion of shit that the pit out officially and closely resembles gygaxs original layouts of the city

>>54898116
Alterac had a vague Russian-ness of some kind in the novels. Stromgard folk were boisterous and I got kind of a German vibe.

But yeah, as of Wow the only kingdom tropes were that Gilneas was Victorian England and Lordaeron was just an ultra-conservative version of Stormwind. Dalaran was never a human kingdom, in the novels it was a mix of elves and humans while by the WoW novels it was also equally gnome.

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>>54898210
Yeah. They just never have wanted to.

The closest we got was a mediocre miniatures game with great minis which had fucking terrible paintjobs, and the WoW boardgame. Which to be fair may as well have been a fucking wargame considering all the parts. Look at this, its the core game and one expansion out of three.

>>54886034
I hate how everything to do with Dranei involves futa.

>>54899230
Then again, a lot of the non-futa looks damn nice.

Like if you're going to do a spacejewgoat coochie, you have to be good at it.

>>54885969
It's too centered around the red versus blue conflict.

>>54890549
Forgotten Realms books always seem to reflect issues with the edition of DnD they're from.
The original book, way back in 1st edition, has terrible layout, no real index, and is incredibly scattershot - no real rhyme or reason to what gets treated as important.
The 2nd Edition sourcebook is better laid-out, but the whole thing is nearly collapsing under the weight of all the metaplot - between the comic book-tier 'Time of Troubles' crisis, and the Dumbest Mongol Invasion Ever, you can't get away from events nobody can even participate in.
3e is big. Ridiculously big. Like, they throw in waaaaay too much information, which overburdens anybody trying to learn about this world for the first time. Plus, it was the first time that the sourcebook treated the NPCs with the same level of untouchable Mary Sue reverence that the adventures and novels did, so you ended up hating any named character.
4? 4th edition smashes apart everything that existed, and adds in a whole lot of new stuff, for no rhyme or reason other then 'everything is different', even if everything ends up feeling bizarrely homogenized. (I know 4th fans don't like comparisons to 'WoW' or other MMOs, but *I'm* not the one who decided to stat up the goddamned Molten Core in the Forgotten Realms sourcebook...)
And the 5th edition book spends most of its time apologizing to everyone, and trying to get everybody to love them. This feels more awkward then anything else, and gets in the way of the parts that do work.

>>54891253
I just steal lore (WC3 and select few bits from WoW), change things to taste and ignore mechanics. I think one of the biggest problems with various attempts at converting the game to RPG lies with people trying to translate WoW class mechanics, when WoW classes themselves change every fucking expansion, often multiple times.

That said, being unfamiliar with 4e, I find 5e D&D pretty easy to work with for incorporating Warcraft feel.

>>54895722
Funny thing: This crap is actually imported from D&D, or rather "Warcraft RPG" which was a 3e OGL based.

>>54898964
Even with a human that tried to kill them it seems a stretch to me that they would join the faction with orcs, trolls, and undead. Particularly since the only one they were really on good terms with from what I remember of the Frozen Throne was Night Elves
Then again I never played Burning Crusade since I had long given up on WoW before then

>>54895722
That's how player character languages in DnD have always worked for obvious convenience reasons, though I never assumed that was universally true for all NPCs

>>54900302
belven motivation for joining horde was literally "horde needs pretty race to balance the number of alliance players". It worked.

>>54900339
Obviously, but I assumed they pulled something out of their ass like the Alliance not letting them be edgy enough or something

>>54888188
MILF

>>54900388
Alliance wouldn't take them because they were addicted to fel. Horde took them because Thrall (still Warchief at the time) was all, "Oh my people know the pain of fel addiction let us help these elves."

>>54900546
Funny how Varian later secretly tried to lure blood elves to the Alliance (successfully, apparently) before Jaina fucked it up with the Dalaran purge.

>>54900654
Jaina in general has just always been a fuck up. She either has the right idea and fails, or the wrong idea and succeeds

>>54886199
Aggra made Thrall into Go'el

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>>54900686
I miss blonde Jaina

>>54900654
>>54900686
Jaina was fine until Wrath, not coincidentally, when Varian was added to the game. Because King Chynn was supposed to be the GREATEST KING EVER, Jaina ended up acting out of character to be more or less some sort of abused housewife, chiding him for being an asshole and antagonizing his allies, but never actually doing anything about it. Not even at the point where Varian decided to attack Thrall after saying he wanted to kill every orc and kickstarted a war between the Alliance and the Horde(y'know, the one that everyone talked about Garrosh being a warmonger during). What does Jaina do? Briefly freeze Varian before weeping tears of joy at IceCrown tell him how proud she is of him because he suddenly went out of character to tell Magni to not be out of character so Saurfang could mourn his kid.

After that point, Varian was supposed to go from "hot-headed aggressive king" to "wiser and more temperate king, willing to be diplomatic" except...that was Jaina's part of the duo, being diplomatic and wanting peace over conflict. So what does Blizz do? Have her suddenly go crazy after being out of character during Cata(because the Jaina that put Theramore before her own father would totally allow Theramore to be a military base for strikes against villages in the Barrens) and voila! Suddenly Jaina is the aggressive and bloodthirsty leader to be talked down by the wise and glorious King Wrynn. :^)

Basically, fuck Varian and fuck Blizz for treating him like the greatest thing since sliced bread. No other character has done as much harm as he has to the story of Warcraft, not even Metzen's self-inserts, Thrall and Malfurion. Because while Green Jesus and Druid Jesus are annoying, they didn't consume as much of the plot as Varian did nor did they make every character around them suddenly go completely out of character just to make them look smarter.

>>54900817
It had become clear long before that the extent of their ability to use old characters is just to make them go crazy and give you something to fight.

>>54900878
Yeah, the stuff with Kael'thas was pretty stupid. But I honestly just wanted to take a moment to vent about Varian, because Jaina was a pretty fun character to me and he utterly fucked her story.

>>54900902
I liked Kael'thas in WC3, and I kinda *can* see him turn out how he did in BC... Illidan was a failure (and the dindu retcon from Legion is retarded), Quel'thalas was supposed to be shit (and it kinda was in the starter zone quests) and Kil'jaeden could've offered him a deal to save elven race Kael couldn't refuse, even if it should be obvious "the Deciever" isn't the most trustworthy entity, and the shit "Kael" did after Tempest Keep wasn't really himself anymore (the huge fel crystal protruding from his chest is a hint).

As for Jaina...

>out b4 "Jaina was corrupted/watched too much hentai all along"

>>54901053
The BC thing was just really...poorly done. Like, BC in general doesn't do the overaching story very well. You more or less wander from zone to zone doing random shit and then stopping by the Black Temple to loot a couple glaives. As much as it is a tiny bit overhyped, Wrath did do the best overarching story WoW has had so far.

And HONESTLY? I'm going to be more upset if Jaina isn't evil next expac. Because her character has been beat to shit and is about as inconsistent as Garrosh was up until he went full villain in MoP(which is sorta when some of his most meme-worthy lines are from). She's gone from peacemaker to bystander to war to bloodthirsty advocate for genocide to actively trying to genocide to deciding that it is better to try and make peace to trying to commit more genocide to being talked out of it and working past her anger to being rage and anger filled to working out of it to suddenly advocating total war in the middle of a demon invasion.

Jaina at this point has gone back and forth so often that it's just tiresome. She's there to be the voice of violence in the Alliance except has to be talked out of it at the last second because if she wasn't, she might get killed and the Alliance playerbase would throw a fit(consider that when Legion's beta first dropped, only Varian died at the Broken Shore and despite it being the most glorified death in all of WoW, the Alliance playerbase bitched so hard that they took out Vol'jin going to get help from the loa and other ancient troll shit and instead replaced it with Vol'jin dying to a random spear from some Felguard in a split second in a cutscene that only Horde players see while everyone was made to watch Varian having giant dramatic music) she's doing the same role Genn Greymane fills except it's a lot more all over the place. If she's going to be evil...just...go through with it. I'd rather see a solid villain in the end that another wishy washy "b-b-b-b-but she good all along!" Like Kerrigan.

>>54901129
Well, IF the next expac is the fabled "south seas and Queen Azshara" one, maybe they'll throw in Kul'Tiras as an EBUL human faction with Jaina as its leader. Then we can finally end the suffering of this inconsistent character.

>>54901218
They put out the artwork for the next Blizzcon a couple weeks ago and it has Jaina on it, so she's doing something. And the Demon Hunter spaceship's map has some islands in the South Seas now.

I mean...they don't have a whole lot else to do now, Blizz has kinda fucked themselves with Legion in that the Legion was always the big evil threat.

>>54901129
I wouldn't call Wrath a good story. They retconned Ner'zhul from the Lich King, they made Arthas show up every fucking where and devalued him as a credible threat, and made one of the most egregious examples of lazy raid design in the entire game. Which is saying something, after how good Ulduar was.

>>54900339
Well, that's why Worgen wound up on the Alliance; Alliance needed furfag bait, y'know as opposed to joining the side that they're geographically closest too and share a common bond of being cursed monsters who've regained their lives in some small part trying to make their way in the fucked up world of warcraft

>>54901511
The Forsaken have been hunting Worgen since Vanilla. Doubt there's a lot of common ground there.

>>54901511
Yeah fuck ideology. People should shape factions on the principle that they should have a balanced amount of appeal in terms of what people masturbate to on the internet

>>54901519
Aye, and the Alliance has never hurt a poor innocent puppy wuppy?
They're monsters, they should have been like-for-like with the rest of the monsters.

>>54901539
>They're gross, so they should be cool allying with the people who have systematically made their old home uninhabitable.

What?

>>54901590
No, not ugly, monsters. They are walking around like a bunch of living STDs but have simply been granted the sapience that they had before they became monsters. Y'know, exactly like their next-door neighbours, the Forsaken. Coupled with the fact that Gilneas and Lordaeron were historical allies, which worked out as a good enough reason for the prettyboys to join, why wouldn't they? Why would they go seek out the alliance instead of making overtures of peace to their neighbours?

>>54901780
Because those neighbors have been killing them for the last 20 years and have been going Full Scourge for 5.

>>54901780
It's a little bit different for the blood elves, whom Sylvanas probably felt okay with allying with being a high elf once herself (and this was BC before Sylvanas went full undead).

The Gilneans simply have no in with the Forsaken. The Forsaken have been occupying their country for years and besides that humans have been fighting undead for as long as there were undead. It's really hard to make peace with your conquerors like that, even if you share that sort of monstrous curse.

Think of the British in WW2. Do you really think they would have accepted German occupation? No, and once the war turned, they would accept nothing but unconditional surrender.

The Gilneans are pretty much based on Churchill's Britain.

>>54885969
>You may not like it
You are correct. D20 is trash and it being WoW or not doesn't even enter into it.

>>54901884
>humans have been fighting undead for as long as there were undead
In all fairness, everyone has been fighting Worgen for as long as worgen have been a thing as well.

>>54901129
THAT'S why Vol'Jin died? For fuck sake, that's such bullshit. Now the Horde is arguably worse with fucking Sylvanas doing war-crimes every 5 minutes.

>>54901129
BC had great gameplay with good dungeons and raids. But the story was shit. You just invade Draenor for no reason. It's even worse when you play as Horde, because your Blood Elves do still aknowledge Kael'thas as their King and want to join him (at least until he goes mad later). So why do they join the Horde and start a war with their own brethren who joined the Illidari?

>>54902173
the RPG is good though and was written before WoW raped the fluff. Apart from that rape, the setting itself is good and they really tried to use that setting in the RPG.
The stats for major NPCs are real bullshit, but apart from that, it's a good game imo. It's 3.5 ofc, so the rules are love it or hate it.

>>54896234
Forgot the part where the parts of Garrosh's character where he was honorable and reasonable, IE Stonetalon, were written by a separate quest designer who was later reprimanded for not making Garrosh 'evil' enough. Garrosh was a hit job the entire time.

>>54902210
You're sounding like you did not make this up...

>>54902210
Man, that quest was dope.

It's a shame Stonetalon in general is ass now, but watching Garrosh drop a motherfucker off a cliff almost makes up for it.

>>54902052
>THAT'S why Vol'Jin died?
You know, the thing that bugs me the most is that there are literally no good troll characters left. The only one with some degree of characterisation was Vol'Jin and he died in a fucking cinematic prologue to new expansion.
Blizzard repeatedly bashes our heads with 'Forsaken are not evil they are just very edgy and brooding!!1', Sylvanas got away with so many... 'questionable' things that this isn't even funny. Even worgen have beed depicted somewhat sympathetically.
But trolls? Nah, fuck those guys.
This is kinda sad, they are my favorite race in Warcraft universe. Oh well.

>>54901129
They really fucking butchered what Jaina was about. But I think that's a symptom of Warcraft's story being tied to an MMO where the power is in the player's hands and not the actual characters in the world, imo. The lore has to follow our whims and their stories second and as a result it's often disconnected and choppy.

TBC was fucking amazing at the time for what it did with its music, level design and quest design but it hasn't aged as gracefully as Wrath mainly due to its quest design still being in the early stages of transformation from what we had in vanilla to what we'd have in Wrath and then Cataclysm. That said, its story was garbage even if they hit every single high point with the lore shout-outs and interesting ideas or visuals they invoked with characters like Kargath, Gruul and especially the stunning visuals of Outland we'd never get again. It created an atmosphere of real wonder and glee regarding the world and those inhabiting I haven't really felt since.

>>54902919
Well, they tried to make both factions morally gray and this was a good choice.

On the Alliance side we had glorious heroes and Paladins, but also concentration camps and asshole nobles.

On the Horde side we had Thrall and his idea of an honourable and reformed Orcish society, but there were also shady dealings of the Apothecaries or the Grimtotems.

And these were just a few examples. The factions were likekable and their conflict was not one of good versus evil, but one of racial hatred and revanchism for past wars. Still, they were forced to work together to beat thehe real evils like the Burning Legion, the Old Gods and the Scourge.
The whole idea was to undo the cliche of evil Orcs and good Demihumans. I mean, even the Religion of Light could be corrupted by evil, as the Scarlet Crusade showed us.

But edgy Kiddies did not understand or want this (ofc they never read the Lore or played the older games) and WANTED to play as either cool eeeevil undead warlocks or as shiny Paladins of Good versus the evil monsters.
And Blizzard delivered.

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>>54901363
Arthas is pretty lame for most of Northrend, yeah. ICC is a bit of a half-baked justification for it("fooooooools! It was my plaaaaaan for you to come here and defeat most of my army!"). But I mean that Wrath has the best sense of telling a single story across the zones as well as making sure each one has their own thing. The Lich King feels like much more of a thing going on and affecting the land in Northrend than Illidan does in Outland or anything does in Pandaria.

>>54902173
This anon has the right idea, BC is fun to tool around in, but it really doesn't make a lot of sense.

>>54902052
I'd say the Horde is worse with Sylvanas if Sylvanas fucking DID anything past Stormheim. Legion has been almost utterly devoid of the Horde so far, Argus patch has a grand total of two Horde characters appearing in it, and neither of them do much of anything.

>>54902919
Trolls are fucking dank, my nigga. It's a shame that they're the go-to fodder enemy, the Zandalari look cool and it's fun that their lore is just "we wuz kangz" except all true.

>>54902988
My friends have soured on Outland more than I have due to the questing, I just like that feeling of wonder as you explore an alien world.

>>54903183
WoW story forum is cancerous, but the mental gymnastics people make there are hilarious.

>>54903183
>Well, they tried to make both factions morally gray and this was a good choice.
Making things less about 'good guys from Alliance vs bad guys from da Horde' and more about 'vicious cycle of revenge' and all that was a good choice.
But absolutely unabashed character shilling (Sylvanas 'can do no wrong' Windrunner comes to mind), character derailment (Jaina 'can't decide if I'm evil today' and Garrosh) just makes this whole plot look bad.
And I don't like that Horde kinda devolved into 'orcs, orcs everywhere' instead of being bunch of races that banded together with common goal of not dying. But maybe I'm just buttmad a bit.
Also I always found orcs to be boring and bland, even with their 'noble savages' shtick. Taurens do the 'noble' part much better, while trolls are more savage, while still being reasonably smart and interesting. Goblins are for crazy awesome, and blood elves with undead got the 'edgy' part of cliche spectrum covered.

>>54903814
Orcs and humans swallowed up their respective faction, though I think you have it worse playing Horde because of how much you got told going into MoP that you're super mean and bad and wrong...and then couldn't actually play to it.

Like...why the fuck am I treating Anduin like a guest if I'm apparently part of the faction who's morally awful?

>>54903812
I think Wrath's overarching story is the only one that actually works without any stupid massive leaps in logic bar Legion.

>>54892484
I think he means the Warcraft setting as it is today, as in including all the shit they introduced (and retconned) in World of Warcraft.

>>54902173
Fuck Blizzard for turning my boy Kael into a pinata.
He was a good character and theuy ruined him!

>>54904028
I'm a bit lost, do you mean that Legion doesn't have massive leaps of logic? 'Cause I can think of a few. But in any case, yeah, Wrath is the most tight of the expac stories. Cata is just too...bleh, MoP kept trying to figure out what it wanted to be and never quite got there, and Warlords just uh...died.

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>>54903812
>Trolls are fucking dank, my nigga. It's a shame that they're the go-to fodder enemy, the Zandalari look cool and it's fun that their lore is just "we wuz kangz" except all true.
Yeah, trolls are the shit. Also, they manage to pull off "we wuz kangz" without being completely unlikeable assholes. Darkspears are pretty chill even by Horde standarts. Zandalari look cooler than aztec\inca\maya rip-offs with tusks have any right to be. Culture aside, for me personally they always looked more intimidating than orcs. Dunno why.
I always found very funny that trolls, who got their empires destroyed, were kicked from their lands, and then everyone proceeded to look upon then as savages, are as whole more or less come to terms with this situation and just want to be left the fuck alone for once. Of course we had Zul'Jin and his dick-waving exercises, but this was more of an exception.
All this while orcs actually invaded Azeroth, and are still mad that Alliance doesn't like them much.
>>54903838
Well they tried to pull "Well Garrosh and his orc-nazis are bad, but the Horde is actually good"... Only to kill Vol'Jin and put Sylvanas as Warchief. What's the point? Like we don't know how it will end.

>>54902206
Not the anon you were talking to, but I agree. WarCraft lore hit a sweet spot somewhere in the neighborhood of WC3/TFT/vanilla WoW.

While I like me some space goat porn, I'd be willing to ditch every expansion to keep the lore in that sweet spot for a tabletop game. Even at the cost of the Quel'/Sin'dorei.

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>>54899045
>9000 hours in mspaint

>>54902919
Trolls were an afterthought in vanilla WoW. So were gnomes. Neither was originally meant to be a player race. That's why they don't have starter zones.

But then enough beta testers were all, "I WANNA PLAY A GNOME!" that Blizzard had to shove them into the dwarf zone, and then they had to balance out the Horde.

>>54904296
Well, Zul'jin had legit beef with the elves as did the Gurubashi with Stormwind. But overall, it's a bummer that the trolls are just used as "we need a raid but don't have an extra enemy". The Zandalari are fucking TIGHT and I would kill a man in order to get playable Zandalari because their shit looks rad.

The only complaint I have with trolls is that their voodoo/loa stuff doesn't get the treatment it deserves. It's cool, but it's usually treated as just this vague animism stuff.

>>54904409
WoW has soured me on gnomes, they coulda' been fine. But then every gnome who ever shows up is "le gnome meme xD!"

>>54904469
>WoW has soured me on gnomes, they coulda' been fine. But then every gnome who ever shows up is "le gnome meme xD!"
That's what comes of taking your comic relief race and jamming them into your MMO as an afterthought.

They should've waited and released them in the first expansion, if at all. "You've been wondering why you couldn't play as gnomes... Presenting Gnomeregan! (Oh and also here's trolls.)"

>>54904384
I think that's because at that time the world was just big enough to be cool. Nowadays game world is expanded so much that many things became inconsequential. Who cares about orcs and trolls when you have space goats? There are elder gods, galaxy-spanning demon empire, Void, naaru, time-travel, celestials and space ships. On this scale even dragons look dull and small.

>>54904504
Honestly, a lot of WoW's issues stem from it being made in a stream of consciousness fashion. Pandas were the same one, they took the shtick of one joke character in WC3 and made the entire race from it(and then told you that they were a morally superior race than you were). Draenei went from being weird alien ninjas to blue space goats with giant horsecocks(or so MRP tells me). And other stuff just sorta...happened.

>>54904296
Like, you my man. You saw this with the Zandalari. "Oh hey, remember those cool priestly trolls who have assisted us against ancient evils and been our friends? Well...we have a deep and complex story reason for them fighting us...They're not our friends, lol, they bad guys now, go loot them."

>>54904506
The player has also suddenly jacked up in importance without actually getting any say. You went from being an elite mercenary in Wrath to a sort of elite soldier/hero of the world in Cata, to suddenly being the chosen one in MoP to the grand commander of your faction's armies in WoD, and now you're the leader of all your class and wielding weapons of legend to beat a guy who destroys planets...and through it all? You still act like that mercenary. An Alliance PC can't use his/her authority as supreme commander to tell Genn not to fire on Sylvanas. And Jesus, playing as a paladin is nauseating with their lore. If I wanted a game to jack me off and tell me how great I am...I'd play like...I dunno, some kids game where they do that.

>>54895722
>Every single sapient being in the universe is fully fluent in Common for no apparent reason

That never happens in fictional settings. You're a visionary to see this.

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>>54899045
>Shit, I've even created all my own sourcebook so I don't need to use any of the official books anymore.
Can....can I has?

So basically what I'm gathering is that never playing WoW was the best decision I ever made and I was 100% right when I figured it would be garbage and shit all over the earlier games.

>>54886004
warcrafts lore is pretty good- at least untill the powercreep of WoW's later expansions removed the mystery and suspense of the setting

>>54909571
I had fun back in vanilla and quit some time before BC. I don't really regret playing it, and had fun with the game itself, but the writing was always terrible and has apparently gotten significantly worse from what I've seen

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Warcraft's problem as a setting rests in its progression of the plot from WC3 to Current WoW - the two are totally different places and as settings, they dimaterically differ in terms of potential BBGE's, player options, etc. not to mention the fact that current Wow is just a mess perpetuated for sake of an MMO, not to create a dramatic or coherent world or even an arc.

With death of characters like Arthas, Varian, or total flanderization of Jaina for example simply shows that material you had created for one thing gets creatively ripped apart once its strentched beyond its capacity to carry the plot, which is very character-dependent, as opposed to be in vein of the kingdom or the faction being the actual narrative protagonist, like the Imperium in 40k which as a faction is the focus of the setting.

Basically, if you want a viable Warcraft, set it in a Warcraft timeline, away from WoW, or concoct something of your own.

>>54895054
Well that's the thing about organisms or diseases of worlds outside of this one. If they entered our bodies they'd likely be so foreign they wouldn't know what the hell to do, so they either stagnate and die or get removed by our antibodies.

>>54906698
This, that sounds cool

>>54909571
Nah. You should've played vanilla and quit no later than Wrath.

>>54904732
I think most of WoW's issues actually stem from the platform the lore has been put forth on. It was fine at first, but having to shoehorn the hero characters into every story the team wanted to tell has visibly weakened a lot of the stories that would have been far more impactful if told from a player POV like an RTS or any other single player game would allow.