Why, Warcraft, Why?

[Straha]

I love warcraft, I really really do, and in fact one of my favorite games of all time is Warcraft II... I loved Warcraft for a number of reasons, but the main one happened to be it had a great, epic, fantasy story line which was still quite simple: Brutish Orcs overrun their world, while a Human sorcerer tinkers with things he shouldn't tinker with and opens a portal between the barbarian world and the Human world right in the middle of the Nation of Azeroth, Orcs kick human ass across the Ocean to the other Human Nation of Lordarean (sp?) where the Humans, Dwarves, and Elves ally, fight the Orcs back, close the blow-up the portal, and then close-it for good a second time after they chase the Orcs back through it.
Brutishly simple, and yet detailed. You feel for Lothar, you can fight for the Humans and try to drive back the Orcs from YOUR land, or you can give into your bloodthirsty side and play the Orcs in their drive across Human lands. It's nice, it's fun, and its got charecter.
Then Warcraft 3 comes out, I liked the game play, but... the story pissed me off:
The Orcs are now spiritual nomads who were driven into a bloodlust by a sort of "Demons at Large" group called the Burning Legion. Meanwhile there happens to be a group of elves, Night Elves!, in (the now nation) Azeroth who have vowed to fight the Burning Legion and their minions till the end of time, and they've come out of the wood-work to fight the Undead (who've bucked the control of the Orcs and are on their own now) conveniently ignoring the past not one, not two, but THREE wars against the Burning Legion controlled Orcs where their participation would have probably prevented the entire new shit-fest that's about to unfold. From there you get Warcraft III...
Now that's fine, I could grin and bear it, it's alright that they've trampled on the Warcraft I love, but it's not like it could get anyworse, right?
WRONG! I go by the bookstore today and I see a Warcraft Manga book, so I open it and start reading the introduction... They've collapsed the entire Orc-Human war down to about two sentences, they've made a huge deal out of these Night Elves who are charged with guarding the World against evil (Except, whooops, for the first ten years after Evil arrives) and then they start talking about Dragons... Now, in Warcraft II dragons were creatures which the Orcs had captured and were forcing into being their Air-Wing because they held the Dragon Queen captive, now it turns out that Dragons are mythical guardians of "Azeroth" too, and that Deathwing (A hero for the Orcs in the expansion, pitched as a Dragon who just liked killing people, and who the Humans later killed) is one of these super-mystical-defender-dragons (who now, straight out of D&D, have different colours indicating what realms they protect) who betrayed his other dragon brothers...
I put the book down there, I'm sorry, I loved Warcraft, and I still do, but what this has become... it just isn't Warcraft... It sickens me a little, and no matter how much I love Warcraft and RPGs I'm just not buying World of Warcraft mainly because of this...

Is there anyone else out there that agrees with me over this, or am I over-reacting and alone?

[/tired rant]

[The Grim Squeaker]

I took a look at the manga when I was in the store but it was too "mangaish" for me (focus on the faces, huge breasts, teardrops, annoying humour, didn't look like warcraft).
I actually liked the fact that the dragons were the "real" guardians of the world rather than those pretentious elves (the full story is detailed in the first warcraft book "Day of the dragon" and the new trilogy).

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I hate both WC3 and WoW's backstory quite a lot. Like yourself, I enjoyed WC2 immensely and had a lot of fun with a pretty cool, standard high-fantasy world.

Along comes #3 and then World, yuck. Wipes out the High Elves I liked so much and throws in the stupid wanky Night Elves, and as you said wussifies the Orcs. Adds in other BS too like Tauren, and just ugh.

Warcraft has become the Star Trek of high fantasy.

[brianeyci]

I don't know about the manga, but as someone who has played the entire Warcraft III and Warcraft Frozen Throne campaign, I like the new orcs. The whole idea of orcs being "evil" and the humans being good was far too simplistic for me. Orcs in Warcraft III turn out to be rational beings who were under the influence of demons. After the demon influence was purged in Warcraft II, the orcs reverted to their tribalism. Luckly for them, their chieftain was raised by humans and was actually moral, or the orcs could have been plunged into another dark age. Then, the Orcs head to find their new homeland and run into the Tauren, Ogres, Night Elves and so on -- on another continent (not on the mainland) after the exodus by Thrall and the Orcish tribes. Thrall leads the Orcs away from Lordaeron after the seer, who you find out is Medievh at the end of the game, warns Thrall that Lordaeron will be consumed by the Burning Legion. The High Elves are decimated for believing they could hide themselves forever isolated in their grove without paying attention to worldly matters, and Lordaeron falls to the Undead after their King ignores warning signs and treats the orcs with brutality in "internment camps".

The story is quite compelling, more so than the Warcraft I and Warcraft II stories of orcs being the bad guys and humans being the good. Sure, there's a few Blizzard cliches like betrayals, and it turns out not to be clear-cut fantasy with the orcs being mindless brutes and the humans being the good guys. I like the story though, and what is so far fetched about there being another race of feral elves, or Tauren, in a world where there are demons, magic and dragons? What is so wrong about fantasy having a little more depth to it than just good versus evil?

<edit>Oh btw, the idea that Dragons are some kind of "guardian" for mankind is absurd and conflicts with Warcraft I, II, Dark Portal, III and Frozen Throne. Medievh is the last of the guardians, and dragons were never guardians. Deathwing was just a dragon raised by orcs from childhood and had metal plating attached to him with magic to become invincible. Also, in the end of Warcraft III, Medievh comments that "mankind no longer needs guardians" and that it will be the age of men, or something along those lines. So the idea that Dragons are somehow Guardians not only doesn't mesh with Medievh and his backstory, but with the whole spirit of the ending of the Warcraft franchise in general.</edit>

Brian

[Spanky The Dolphin]

I put the book down there, I'm sorry, I loved Warcraft, and I still do, but what this has become... it just isn't Warcraft...

So, you didn't actually read it, did you?

[SAMAS]

Yeah, I have to say that I like the Orcs in Warcraft III a lot better than they were in part II. The fact that for once, they were more than just the Villain of the Year.

[Seggybop]

I agree with the OP absolutely.

The original concept was totally pushed aside when War3 came out, and this was exacerbated by WoW. It's obvious from the art style alone-- you can see that with Warcraft 1 and 2 the design was basically realistic, but with 3 and WoW they went all-out semi-cartoony high fantasy style. By itself this wouldn't be so bad, but they effectively wrecked what was one of my favorite series growing up.

[Captain tycho]

Yeah, I pretty much hated the whole story line after WC2, but nonetheless, I still enjoyed WC3 (mostly because of all the fun custom maps ).

[Akaramu Shinja]

So to those that "loved" 1 and 2 stories, does that mean you prefer moronicly simple good vs evil plots with the BAD ORCS and the GOOD HUMANS?

[Xon]

Moronically stupid heros who you want to kill as the main character doesnt really help.

I never like Arthas much at all. The whole tragically flawed hero bit is so over done you have to wonder how they leaned to put to stones together to build something without someone betraying someone else horribly.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

So to those that "loved" 1 and 2 stories, does that mean you prefer moronicly simple good vs evil plots with the BAD ORCS and the GOOD HUMANS?

A well-done simplistic plot is infinitely better than a poorly-done complex one.

[Akaramu Shinja]

So to those that "loved" 1 and 2 stories, does that mean you prefer moronicly simple good vs evil plots with the BAD ORCS and the GOOD HUMANS?

A well-done simplistic plot is infinitely better than a poorly-done complex one.

I didn't see anybody saying W3 and WoW stories were standalone poorly done. Just people bitching that it's not W1 and 2 plots.

[Quadlok]

Moronically stupid heros who you want to kill as the main character doesnt really help.

I never like Arthas much at all. The whole tragically flawed hero bit is so over done you have to wonder how they leaned to put to stones together to build something without someone betraying someone else horribly.

When a Heroes fatal flaw is his stupidity, it does tend to detract a bit from the story. It seemed like every human leader in WC3 and Frozen Throne had been struck retarded with the partial exception of Jaina Proudmoore.

[Straha]

So to those that "loved" 1 and 2 stories, does that mean you prefer moronicly simple good vs evil plots with the BAD ORCS and the GOOD HUMANS?

A well-done simplistic plot is infinitely better than a poorly-done complex one.

I didn't see anybody saying W3 and WoW stories were standalone poorly done. Just people bitching that it's not W1 and 2 plots.

The main problem with W3 and WoW is not only a needlessly complex story that's really just okay, but the fact that it SHITS on the continuity and kind of story that you expect from warcraft. Just the Night Elves alone pissed me off. You're guardians of the world, charged with protecting the world from those damn burning legions, and yet when the Burning Legion backed Orcs invade you do nothing through not one, not two, but THREE catafuckingclysmic wars, and ONLY then, after the Damage has been irevocably done and the world is inevitably screwed six ways from sunday do you get involved...

[The Grim Squeaker]

When a Heroes fatal flaw is his stupidity, it does tend to detract a bit from the story. It seemed like every human leader in WC3 and Frozen Throne had been struck retarded with the partial exception of Jaina Proudmoore.

Thrall was smart as was Corne Bloodhoof, before you bitch about killing Cenarius- that wasn't Thrall's orders, Just Hellscream being an idiot who was probably being influenced by the legion.
Also I really felt for Medivh who had to struggle against all the idiot humans.

[Quadlok]

When a Heroes fatal flaw is his stupidity, it does tend to detract a bit from the story. It seemed like every human leader in WC3 and Frozen Throne had been struck retarded with the partial exception of Jaina Proudmoore.

Thrall was smart as was Corne Bloodhoof, before you bitch about killing Cenarius- that wasn't Thrall's orders, Just Hellscream being an idiot who was probably being influenced by the legion.
Also I really felt for Medivh who had to struggle against all the idiot humans.

Note that I said Human, the Horde had descent leadership. And the leadup to Grom killing Cenarius was purely the fault of the Night Elves and their shoot first, ask questions never attitude. God I hate those purple bastards.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Oh... Illidan was cool (Damn, it was annoying when that punk Arthas beat him, good thing he's still alive), and he really did get the raw end of the deal, he never really betrayed the elves even in the Frozen throne he was'nt working against the elves despite being hunted by them and was trying to destroy a far greater threat.
Also Illidans brother was quite smart although annoyingly prejudiced against Illidain (Understandable considering the end of WC:the sundering).

All in all- Humiez Toopid, the Orcs are more in tuch with their inner.....

Earthquake

[Kuja]

Illidan Stormrage was a bastard who should've had his head torn from his shoulders at the end of the Sundering. I'm sorry, I absolutely hated Illidan.

And I'm with you Straha, I despise the Night Elves.

[Ghost Rider]

I blame Metzen..and thus most of Blizzard. Likely in the beginning(no matter how much they exclaim it was always there) had just an idea of Orcs vs humans, with some other possible brewings.

But nope...he has to go back the drawing board and produce......well Warcraft 3(and look uber wankitude protectors/guardians of the WOLRd....elves, but not just regular elves....special elves.)

And the less said of the convoluted BS that is WoW(if you've played both sides and enough of each race....you seriously wonder if they had a plan), and you get the mess where we're at now.

[Skelron]

The main problem with W3 and WoW is not only a needlessly complex story that's really just okay, but the fact that it SHITS on the continuity and kind of story that you expect from warcraft. Just the Night Elves alone pissed me off. You're guardians of the world, charged with protecting the world from those damn burning legions, and yet when the Burning Legion backed Orcs invade you do nothing through not one, not two, but THREE catafuckingclysmic wars, and ONLY then, after the Damage has been irevocably done and the world is inevitably screwed six ways from sunday do you get involved...

Well you know the Night Elves might have found it hard to fight the Burning Legions Orc inspiried attacks seeing as how they where on the other side of the world... When the Burning Legion came to the same continent they where actually on they fought them. In short when they knew the Burning Legion was attacking they went to war. They where not All-Knowing, and so made mistakes, but when push came to shove they sacrificied the most importent thing to them, their immortality to defeat the Burning Legion.

[Alan Bolte]

Please keep in mind that little of this is a story critique; I'm just trying to understand people's positions a bit better.

The Orcs are now spiritual nomads who were driven into a bloodlust by a sort of "Demons at Large" group called the Burning Legion.

The demons were well established in the previous games as the reason for the emergence of the Warlocks, formation of the Shadow Council, and corrupting Medivh into opening the portal. I'm sure you remember Kil'jaeden and Sargeras from WC2, at least. The only thing that wasn't entirely clear was the scope of the demon's plans to manipulate the Orcs, and to what extent an organization existed beyond Kil'jaeden, Sargeras, and their Doom Guard(wc3 name) minions. Well, I suppose it also wasn't real clear as to why they needed the orcs if they were already so powerful, but the only possible answer to that is, "apparently not powerful enough." As for the Orcs, I've really found no evidence that they were particularly peaceful prior to Kil'jaeden making contact with Ner'zul. They just weren't a near-mindless rampaging horde that would self-destruct as soon as it ran out of enemies. For example, let's take the story summary from the WoW main site: the Orcs are referred to as "shamanistic, clan-based", while the Draeni are differentiated as "peaceful." Admittedly the Orcs are also referred to as "noble," but that could certainly be interpreted in relative terms. The Ogres were necessarily out there, so the Orcs would already have a brutish, powerful enemy, and inter-clan conflict is inherent in a tribal culture. Shamanistic and spiritual just means that their religion was based around their ancestors and nature, rather than being some kind of death cult. Most damning, however, is that Mannoroth's blood only augmented the bloodlust, was primarily used to ensure loyalty, and was administered after the cultural shift. The change in their culture away from shamanism, toward the shadow, and into a state of constant inter-clan warfare was affected only through showing the Orcs an opportunity for power and encouraging them to seek glory through war. So while the bloodlust may not have been pre-existing, it was also not really out of character.

Meanwhile there happens to be a group of elves, Night Elves!, in (the now nation) Azeroth

I'm going to assume that that this here was supposed to be a complaitn that Azeroth now refers to the planet as well as the kingdom, which I agree is dumb.

who have vowed to fight the Burning Legion and their minions till the end of time,and they've come out of the wood-work to fight the Undead (who've bucked the control of the Orcs and are on their own now) conveniently ignoring the past not one, not two, but THREE wars against the Burning Legion controlled Orcs where their participation would have probably prevented the entire new shit-fest that's about to unfold. From there you get Warcraft III...

None of that made any sense to me at all. Did we play the same WC3? I swear neither continent knew the other one existed, the arrogant fool High Elves excepted. Maybe they'd seen a handful of orcs and humans and such thousands of years earlier due to some time travel bullshit the novels have introduced, but that's essentially moot. Communication tends not to happen when no one ever bothers crossing the ocean for any reason. The Night Elves have been sitting in their trees for thousands of years just keeping the Centaur from advancing north and the Satyrs from gaining any power, while maybe half to a third of them wander some other plane as part of the pact with the dragons that gave them immortality. Certainly they're worried about the Burning Legion, but only because they nearly got their asses handed to them the last time the Legion invaded. I'd be a little worried too if some horde of creatures from the Nether wanted to tear my civilization apart just for the fun of it. In summary, unless I'm forgetting some really important WC3 quote, the Night Elves didn't know anything was going on in the Eastern Kingdoms.As for the undead, I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'bucked the control'... Ner'zhul and the other most powerful warlocks continued to be the leaders of the undead armies, they were just undead too. I don't know if any of the original death nights were still in the control of either the Shadow Council or Ner'zhul, but, given that well over a decade passed, it really didn't matter. Ner'zhul had nothing better to do during that time than to bolster his forces. I'm sure he has all the liches and death knights he wants.

Now that's fine, I could grin and bear it, it's alright that they've trampled on the Warcraft I love, but it's not like it could get anyworse, right? WRONG! I go by the bookstore today and I see a Warcraft Manga book, so I open it and start reading the introduction... They've collapsed the entire Orc-Human war down to about two sentences, they've made a huge deal out of these Night Elves who are charged with guarding the World against evil (Except, whooops, for the first ten years after Evil arrives)

Hmm, I don't really know anything about these Manga books. Ah well, I've already discussed the NE.

and then they start talking about Dragons... Now, in Warcraft II dragons were creatures which the Orcs had captured and were forcing into being their Air-Wing because they held the Dragon Queen captive, now it turns out that Dragons are mythical guardians of "Azeroth" too, and that Deathwing (A hero for the Orcs in the expansion, pitched as a Dragon who just liked killing people, and who the Humans later killed) is one of these super-mystical-defender-dragons (who now, straight out of D&D, have different colours indicating what realms they protect) who betrayed his other dragon brothers...I put the book down there, I'm sorry, I loved Warcraft, and I still do, but what this has become... it just isn't Warcraft... It sickens me a little, and no matter how much I love Warcraft and RPGs I'm just not buying World of Warcraft mainly because of this...

Is there anyone else out there that agrees with me over this, or am I over-reacting and alone?

[/tired rant]

I'm not quite clear what your issue is with the Dragons, it isn't like half the game isn't borrowed from DnD/LotR. At least it isn't a direct copy: those dragonflights, being only five, are more easily distinguished from each other, and don't interfere in the stories too much, what with the dragonflights either being devastated or becoming reclusive. The colors haven't changed, either; the Dragonmaw clan had control of the red dragonflight, so all the WC2 dragons were red, except Deathwing, who was black. Red=don't want to fight for orcs, and black=just loves killing people, that suggests from the beginning that color might be an issue.

Oh btw, the idea that Dragons are some kind of "guardian" for mankind is absurd and conflicts with Warcraft I, II, Dark Portal, III and Frozen Throne. Medievh is the last of the guardians, and dragons were never guardians. Deathwing was just a dragon raised by orcs from childhood and had metal plating attached to him with magic to become invincible. Also, in the end of Warcraft III, Medievh comments that "mankind no longer needs guardians" and that it will be the age of men, or something along those lines. So the idea that Dragons are somehow Guardians not only doesn't mesh with Medievh and his backstory, but with the whole spirit of the ending of the Warcraft franchise in general.

Say what? Medivh and his mother were Guardians of Tirisfal, sure, but that just means they were trained by Dalaran to be an ultimate weapon should their dabbling in magic let more and more powerful demons onto their world. That order has only been around for, say several hundred years, maybe a couple thousand. The dragons were created by the Titans to keep corrupting forces from interfering with the natural order of things on their world, and were instructed to keep out of the affairs of mortals as much as possible. I can't find any specific reference to Deathwing's origin, so I mistrust your recollection of the matter.The other dragons aren't just gonna die out, so what if the mortals don't need 'em anymore? They're mostly all too focussed on their own affairs to go around protecting the mortals these days anyway.

As for the stupidity of the human leaders, how so? The opening to WC3, with the human leaders ignoring the rumors of an epidemic in favor of the enemy they've been figthing for more than a generation, sounds very typically human to me. It had me saying 'yup, politicians.' Arthas? Yup, he's kindof a dumbass, but what do you expect? A smart guy to get led into a trap and get his soul stolen? That's like complaining Anakin Skywalker should have been a real great guy prior to becoming Darth Vader. After that you've got a couple of bigots that I remember, that's certainly to be expected. The only thing that really irritated me was StratholmeL you'd think that a Paladin would understand the need to purge the city.

One last thing - where's this "NE are guardians of the world!!!!1elevenshift+1" coming from? I'm not famiar with that at all.

[HemlockGrey]

The storyline of the Frozen Throne sucked ass because it was ripped from Starcraft. Illidan is an evil, uncool version of Zeratul. The undead elven ranger is such an obvious carbon copy of Kerrigan it's painful. She even follows the same basic plot- resolute freedom fighter, transformed into the enemy, then when the overarching Evil Commander dies, plays the remaining evil commanders against each other and carves out own little kingdom. Pathetic.

And Arthas' fall was lame. Tragic stories are always better when heroes are forced to make decisions that they believe are for the best but turn out to be terribly flawed. Arthas just went insane for some reason that was never fully explained and became evil because he just happened to stumble across a magic sword.

[Alan Bolte]

I think you may have hit the worst point, in regards to Frozen Throne. I enjoyed the Naga, though.

Arthas I just don't think you were ever supposed to like all that much, unless you're the crazed nationalistic type. Why they chose such a character I don't know. At least they got it over with in the beginning instead of drawing it out; that would have much more required the sort of hero you're talking about.

Perhaps the best point made is the lack of obvious 'heroes' you can really identify with. Jaina seems fairly sane, but I'm a bit lost as to why she abandoned the Orcs in the end. Thrall seems like the overly-wise, can-do-no-wrong type. The other humans didn't act unreasonably, they just weren't who the story focussed on. Some, like the Crypt Lord, simply had no personality. I would've liked to see more Pit Lords.

[White Haven]

For the most part, Alan hit the nail pretty squarely....all you NEwhingers out there, at least get your shit straight. The Titans didn't create the dragons, just empowered five of them to act as guardians for the world they were leaving behind. Course that didn't go so well, bot that's entirely another story.

As for NE lack of reaction to the earlier Horde invasions, remember that the Legion wasn't nearly as blatant in their backing of the Orcs for the first two wars. Even if the Night Elves had been watching Azeroth for some reason, chances are it would look like just another mortal squabble.

[Siege]

I didn't have much problems with W3 in particular as that I'm getting a bit tired of Blizzards current style of story-telling. It's getting tiringly Ludlum-esque in that seemingly nothing can happen anymore without some greater scheme plan being set in motion at every turn of the way. Throughout W3 and The Frozen Throne it sometimes seemed that Arthas wouldn't be able to take a shit without Archimonde or some other demon cackling madly in the twisting nether, "bwahahaha, just as I had foreseeeeeen!"

Complicated stories with wheels within wheels are fine, but they're overdoing it. It was cool in SC where everyone and their dog was met at every turn with deception and betrayal, but WC3 and TFT I think went a bit over the top.

All things considered however, despite the rather tiresome "grand hidden scheme" stories, I love the way they evolved WarCraft into a detailed world with many factions.