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Asehujiko posted:I'd imagine that with how much trouble just one undead royal is causing, the court probably expedited his cremation an interment into some sort of stasis vessel to prevent him from getting up. Actually an interesting point, you'd figure that any nation with a serious undead plague would immediately start preferring cremation to burial or other forms of corpse disposal.
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Aug 5, 2023 20:23
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I imagine someone was able to pull his body out during the chaos of the fall of Lordaeron's capital. Mages like Antonidas were known to go to his court so someone could have, for example, grabbed Terenas and spirited him away magically, hoping vainly that the king could have survived the blow. Also that exchange between Uther and Arthas at the end is just perfect. I can't judge the writing because I'm too busy hearing Arthas's dry, smug delivery in my mind and adoring it.
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Aug 5, 2023 20:27
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Arthas didn't storm the throne room at the head of an undead army, he arrived in the Capital as a hero and assassinated his dad as a shock to everyone. I think it's reasonable for Lordaeron's administrators to have managed to give him a funeral before things completely went to poo poo. "Crown prince commits regicide" is one of those things you don't expect to ever see but would have some protocols to handle. I figured it was the Cult of the Damned that buried Kel'thuzad in a crypt. They knew what was going to happen to him.
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Aug 5, 2023 20:32
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BlazetheInferno posted:That line does in fact go pretty hard. That, and also they re-use his "What the hell is that?!" line for the Sasquatch joke secret. Maybe they figured the latter better suited it.
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Aug 5, 2023 20:32
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I always thought it was funny that progressive decay would cause problems with the plan to revive Kel'thuzad, but the process of packing his remains into an urn and keeping them as a stable jam was fine.
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Aug 5, 2023 20:37
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disposablewords posted:I imagine someone was able to pull his body out during the chaos of the fall of Lordaeron's capital. Mages like Antonidas were known to go to his court so someone could have, for example, grabbed Terenas and spirited him away magically, hoping vainly that the king could have survived the blow. You can literally hear Arthas giggling in amusement when he points out that he didn't know what the Urn was currently holding. bladeworksmaster posted:That, and also they re-use his "What the hell is that?!" line for the Sasquatch joke secret. Maybe they figured the latter better suited it. This is in the original game too, for what it's worth.
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Aug 5, 2023 21:26
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Gruckles posted:I always thought it was funny that progressive decay would cause problems with the plan to revive Kel'thuzad, but the process of packing his remains into an urn and keeping them as a stable jam was fine. Saves the trouble of finding a phylactery, too!
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Aug 5, 2023 22:38
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Tenebrais posted:Arthas didn't storm the throne room at the head of an undead army, he arrived in the Capital as a hero and assassinated his dad as a shock to everyone. I think it's reasonable for Lordaeron's administrators to have managed to give him a funeral before things completely went to poo poo. "Crown prince commits regicide" is one of those things you don't expect to ever see but would have some protocols to handle. Yeah, people forget that Arthas didn't invade the capital, he walked in with a couple of (undead) Servants, Ganked his father... and then likely had to flee when he was not gloriously praised for doing so and probably was tried to be arrested.
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Aug 5, 2023 23:06
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Ultimately, we don't know how things played out in the capital. Whatever happened after the assassination has never been depicted or described in any material to my knowledge.
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Aug 5, 2023 23:17
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So about those Alliance and Horde Warlocks in WoW that turned around to help send the Burning Legion packing: was it just a case of the demon MIC being too unwieldy or...
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Aug 5, 2023 23:21
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Eh, that one's an easy handwave away. Factions within the Burning Legion. Bam. It's already been proven for non-Shadowlands writing in the case of Mal'Ganis getting ganked that the Burning Legion is hardly a completely unified whole.
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Aug 5, 2023 23:35
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Not all demons are apart of the Burning Legion. Some of them don't agree with the Legion's "destroy all worlds" plan, mostly because they enjoy messing with mortals too much, but still. A lot of them will also just follow whoever is the strongest around, which is how the warlock players get their army in the Legion expansion. We end up on the demon infested remains of a planet destroyed by the Legion, kill the biggest demon there, and the rest of them fall in line. Rhonne fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Aug 6, 2023 |
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Aug 6, 2023 00:15
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Sorry Cyth but you forgot Wilfred Fizzlebang. He was a Warlock who comically hosed up and got splatted by his own summoning. YOU FACE JARAXXUS! Edit: Also the Arthas-Uther exchange is still one of my favourite pre Good VS Evil battle exchanges ever. Just love the emphasis the OG actor put into "SO YOU CAN PISS ON THEM ONE FINAL TIME?!" Gridlocked fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Aug 6, 2023 |
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Aug 6, 2023 00:23
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Cythereal posted:Ultimately, we don't know how things played out in the capital. Whatever happened after the assassination has never been depicted or described in any material to my knowledge. The Bronze Dragonflight probably know in depressing detail. For the next century mages and warlocks trying to figure out time magic to go back in time and explode Arthas's head mid-stab is probably a frustratingly common activity they have to defend against. Rhonne posted:Not all demons are apart of the Burning Legion. Some of them don't agree with the Legion's "destroy all worlds" plan, mostly because they enjoy messing with mortals too much, but still. Also some just really, really like olives.
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Aug 6, 2023 02:48
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Alkydere posted:The Bronze Dragonflight probably know in depressing detail. For the next century mages and warlocks trying to figure out time magic to go back in time and explode Arthas's head mid-stab is probably a frustratingly common activity they have to defend against. Just off screen Chromie and a whole bunch of adventurers are brawling with Morchie and an entire other set of adventurers
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Aug 6, 2023 04:37
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Who the heck is Morchie?
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Aug 6, 2023 08:17
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Quackles posted:Who the heck is Morchie? Evil Chromie
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Aug 6, 2023 09:34
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Gridlocked posted:Evil Chromie Oh, I see, she's Google Chromie 
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Aug 6, 2023 09:57
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Quackles posted:Oh, I see, she's Google Chromie Pretty much, as mentioned in the bronze dragonflight post at the like... very beginning of the LP, pretty much any timecop dragon has an "evil" timecop version of themselves Note the "evil" Timecops will assert that they are in fact the good guys and what the "good" timecops want is really poo poo and things could be better Maybe they are right? who knows AtomikKrab fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Aug 6, 2023 |
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Aug 6, 2023 10:20
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ATAB
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Aug 6, 2023 14:04
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Feldegast42 posted:People who came not to praise him I guess I appreciated this.
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Aug 6, 2023 14:15
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Alkydere posted:The Bronze Dragonflight probably know in depressing detail. For the next century mages and warlocks trying to figure out time magic to go back in time and explode Arthas's head mid-stab is probably a frustratingly common activity they have to defend against. There's probably at least a few people who were there and saw what went down who are still around, in one form or another. Just, no one's asked on-camera. One of those things that could be a cool bit to see, but Blizzard's just never covered it. As it is, I received some interesting feedback this weekend on how I view and critique media, concerning authorial intent and viewer interpretation. I am personally of the view that all media and artwork are inherently subjective to at least some degree, each person brings their own biases, experiences, and beliefs that inform how we see and interpret things, and that viewer interpretation can sometimes vary wildly from the intent of those who created the art. Someone observed that I 'have trouble escaping my own head' to use their words, and that I believe my interpretations trump whatever the artist was trying to convey, even when my interpretations differ quite dramatically from the creator's intent. Personally, while I respect the idea that a creator's intentions should carry more weight than the viewer's interpretation, I do not agree with it. Here with Warcraft especially, we've seen time and again that Blizzard genuinely doesn't seem to think that war crimes and atrocities, mass slaughter in colonial invasions of conquest, are that big a deal. Blizzard constantly highlights women in particular as unreasonable and irrational when they lash out against those who have wronged them, and at times simultaneously elevating men pursuing what Blizzard portrays as righteous vengeance. While I acknowledge Blizzard's creative intent, I do believe that when it comes to weighing how I personally feel about and judge Blizzard's work, my own interpretation does indeed matter more than whatever I perceive as Blizzard's intent as the creators. And if people do disagree with me, that's perfectly fine! I don't believe I'm wrong for feeling as I do, and I don't believe you're wrong for disagreeing with me! If you can still enjoy Blizzard's works (or whatever else I dislike), I'm genuinely happy for you that there's so much you enjoy. I say this with regard to the Horde fans especially, I know I've rubbed many of them the wrong way with this LP. If you want to present that alternative view, I sincerely invite you to start your own LP! This forum can always do with more activity. Warcraft 1 and 2 are available on GOG if you want and ran smoothly on my machine. But, as someone who so often feels like an outsider looking in, I stand by what I've written. I don't claim to speak for anyone but me, dissonant from more popular views though I may be.
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Aug 6, 2023 16:22
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So how are the mover and shakers of various cultures we have met of the WOW era are doing right now and how are the eastern Kingdom doing right now?
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Aug 6, 2023 21:09
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ChaosDragon posted:So how are the mover and shakers of various cultures we have met of the WOW era are doing right now and how are the eastern Kingdom doing right now? Ask the WoW lore thread, this thread isn't for random WoW-specific questions.
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Aug 6, 2023 21:15
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I really scratch my head at everyone that feels the need to tell you how to write this LP, Cyth. Given that this is, what, the third time you've felt compelled to explain how you post and analyze videogames, I'm beginning to doubt that this 'feedback' is in good faith.
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Aug 6, 2023 21:38
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I mean it can still be in good faith, in some aspects of analyzing stuff I do the same thing as Cynth in other ways and it can be good to get feedback on it, at least you can see what you are doing when it's pointed out.
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Aug 6, 2023 22:11
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Yeah, if you're doing academic work or considering a "true" kind of canon, sure, authorial intent is king. To an extent, this is also true of how the work reflects on its creator. But disliking something because it's bigoted or otherwise sucks is a perfectly valid take, even if the creator never intended it in such a way. All the more so if it's a personal opinion and perspective and not a claim of superseding the creator as prime authority on the work.
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Aug 6, 2023 22:16
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Jen X posted:Yeah, if you're doing academic work or considering a "true" kind of canon, sure, authorial intent is king. To an extent, this is also true of how the work reflects on its creator. For academic work he author's intent very much isn't king, that's why we have "death of the author." It's admissible for sure and depending on what you're talking about it can be what's most important, but for most purposes what matters most is the text of the work, rather than the author's intent, because that can reveal a lot of things the author might not have been conscious of or done intentionally that can be interesting in various ways. That's doubly true when the author isn't an individual person, as is the case with something like Warcraft lore. Corporate teams don't have unified intent, but there's still one text that is equally accessible to everyone.
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Aug 6, 2023 22:37
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All of this is true, but I thought it was fair to mention the criticism I've gotten and why I don't agree with it, but I know it's a valid line of thinking to some people. It's like how I tend to be instinctively hostile to people, both in real life and video game characters, who I perceive as extremely gregarious and outgoing and friendly. I don't think I'll surprise anyone by stating that I'm a very private person in real life, or by stating that I have a very long history of being bullied and people abusing my trust going back to childhood. My life experiences, and general inclinations, have shaped me to believe that one of the greatest signs of friendship and respect is to respect another person's boundaries. Open enthusiastic wanting to be friends, to me, feels painfully insincere and often downright predatory. I get that some people are like that, and sincerely mean well and just want to be friends, but my tendency both in real life and in video gaming is to recoil from people like that and tell them to back off. One of the more reliable ways to alienate me from a story is to put people like that in a game and not give me the option to back off and calm down. I don't like being around people like that and I intensely dislike being asked to follow a protagonist who's either like that or won't tell them to keep their distance. For me, a big part of why I play video games, especially story-heavy RPGs, is escapism and the desire to imagine that someone like me, as I perceive myself, could be a hero. That's part of why I'm so attentive and sensitive to depictions of women and LGBT characters among other things in games. I want to feel like people like me are welcome in this world and won't be bullied or abused. But, well, having standards as high as I do is not without a certain cost.
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Aug 6, 2023 23:01
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It is worth noting, there is precisely one time when Author's Intent is absolute, and trumps all other opinions. When They're the one continuing to produce more material in the setting. Alternate interpretations of characters matter very little when subsequent works proceed to contradict those alternate interpretations in support of the Author's Intent.
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Aug 6, 2023 23:28
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In my experience, people going "but authorial intent!" never actually mean that intent 100% trumps actual expression. Taken to the logical endpoint, most people do have a communication-related equivalent of "cool motive, still murder". So it's always a question of what they are willing to take the author's word on, and when they personally go "that ain't it". Without that line disclaimed, "you interpret things wrong" is not a critique, it's a (hopefully) mild tantrum.
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Aug 6, 2023 23:34
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BlazetheInferno posted:It is worth noting, there is precisely one time when Author's Intent is absolute, and trumps all other opinions. And this is why I stopped giving a poo poo about 'Read what you want to into things! Write your own story! Use your imagination!' as a sop that some developers like to use, especially regarding LGBT representation. I'm not giving video game makers credit for my fanfic.
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Aug 6, 2023 23:37
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Undead 3: Tempting Fate Now for a brief interlude at the fortress of evil.  For whatever reason, Blizzard gave all of these dreadlords unique models. Anetheron has to date only been fought by heroes in WoW in the Caverns of Time, Shadowlands confirmed that he has remained at large and his whereabouts unknown.  Tichondrius is the Burning Legion's spymaster, recall, besides personally overseeing the Scourge project.  Mephistroth is our other new face. Illidan killed him with the players' help in Legion.  This line is the real purpose of this scene, name-dropping Archimonde as the mastermind of this game's conflicts and showing that Arthas and the Scourge are becoming unruly.  Post-Danuser, this scene becomes much harder to explain since the dreadlords are now agents of the Jailer who is also directly controlling the Lich King and Arthas. The only explanation I have for why the dreadlords would have this conversation is that it's theater meant for the benefit of anyone the rest of the Legion has spying on the dreadlords.  In a real remaster to bring WC3 fully into line with the current lore, this whole scene would need to be redesigned from the top. The narrative purpose of this scene, I believe, is to further the implications that Ner'zhul - now properly name-dropped as the Lich King - has his own agenda separate from the Legion, and to introduce Archimonde by name as the main villain of the game. Reconciling that purpose with Shadowlands is a tall order and very difficult to do. Personally, I recommend firing Steve Danuser and writing off the War of Thorns and the two subsequent expansions as a space travel induced nightmare everyone experienced on their way back from Argus near the end of Legion.  Now it's time to enter the region that WoW players know as the Ghostlands and get started on making that name.   Be wary. The elves likely wait in ambush. The frail elves do not concern me, necromancer. Our forces are strengthened with every foe we slay. Don't be too overconfident, death knight. The elves must not be taken lightly. Where is the entrance to your land, elf?For reference, this is already as far as the Horde ever got in the Second War. Caer Darrow lay on the border between Lordaeron and Quel'thalas, and orcs never penetrated the kingdom's actual fortified border.  Your precious gates won't stop me any more than these trees, little elf. Bring up the meat wagons! We'll make our own entrance. The energies of this place are strong. Kill the elves! Level their structures! This location is perfect for your base. It'll be a pleasure. 'Elfgates?' Really, mon? Have you -met- a high elf, loa? Quel'thalas operates as a sort of sub-faction of the Alliance, operating many but not all of the same structures and units.  The dome-like structures, for reference, are the elven farms.  If you are experiencing a sudden sense of impending doom, you have my deepest sympathies. DO NOT TALK ABOUT SYLVANAS WINDRUNNER OUTSIDE HER ROLE IN THIS ONE MISSION.   Do your worst. The elfgate to the inner kingdom is protected by our most powerful enchantments. You shall not pass.If you know why I issued that command, good. If you don't, abide by it regardless.  Sylvanas is a unique NPC hero, based on a scrapped hero from earlier versions of WC3 that called for each side to launch with four heroes. The Alliance's fourth would have been a half-elf ranger, and the completed model for that unit was used for Sylvanas. She can do quite a bit of damage at range and has an aura that boosts the damage of nearby elven archers. Yes, archers. While the high elves have footmen like the regular Alliance faction, they have no dwarven allies and so field archers and ballistas in the vein of WC2 rather than riflemen and mortar teams.  Skipping over the base-building, I get a new building and a new unit on this map - sadly, not the ones I would have wanted. The temple of the damned produces the undead caster units, starting with the necromancer. The necromancer can be a powerful support unit for the undead, but I feel that they need the support of a dreadlord hero (to alleviate the drawback of their second spell) or access to their third spell to be particularly useful. For now, they have the ability to raise corpses as skeletons. While they're free fodder, I never find that they do much without access to a lich hero who can put them to good use. At least, that's how I understand it. The undead are far and away my least-played race in skirmish.  This level's gimmick is using meat wagons to blast through trees, and the game helpfully tells you wherever progress is gated by trees.   The high elves, chronically underestimating the enemy and how much firepower they should be bringing for ten thousand years running. I have to say, it's really weird that we're attacking from the north when the map and the WoW geography say we should be coming in from the south. You can even see the ruined elfgates in WoW.  All the high elf architecture aside from the arcane sanctum and magic tower in this game is drawn from WoW. So you get their unique barracks and farms right alongside regular Alliance town halls and blacksmiths.  This is a high elf archer, for the record. She deals more damage than a dwarf rifleman but has less health. Also, bad Blizzard! She shouldn't have green eyes until TFT!  With this base cleared up, I build my first expansion of the WC3 part of this LP to bring the defense line up. I haven't realized it yet while playing, but this base is directly on the path of the elf attacks, which are created at the main base to the southeast, come up to this base, and then either keep going north or swing east. The green outline is what a necropolis looks like when I'm upgrading it to tier 2 for more health and damage in case of attack.  Hook back northwest and there's a gnoll camp awaiting slaughter.   A question for our resident former death knight. Shoot. You favor the bow for combat, do you not? Preferably on horseback, yes. A very old art for those of us who lived on the steppes. Every death knight I met has exclusively preferred melee combat. It's a personal choice. I'm no woodsman or tracker or beastmaster. Slotting someone's training into 'front-line fighter who maybe throws a weapon' or 'support fighter at range who runs away from melee' has always truck me as tragically narrow-minded. It was at this point that I realized I'd taken the most efficient route through the map possible, but I'm trying to show off the maps for y'all.  There's a troop of elves protecting a healing fountain in the center of the map. Healing fountains do heal undead units.  While I clean out another camp of gnolls, I receive notice that the gold mine in my original base collapsed. While I don't actually need any more gold, I route the acolytes down to the expansion base that I claimed.  My  Truth be told, horsemanship when you're undead takes a lot of specialized training. We use undead mounts because without powerful magic, living animals tend to go into paroxysm when we touch them. An undead horse, though, doesn't breathe, stop, or have any reflexes of its own. You have to consciously control both the mount with necromancy while also fighting. You'd be surprised how much that goes into horsemanship turns out to be predicated on riding a living horse and doesn't translate to riding an undead horse. That's funny, considering you- So help me if you make a joke involving any permutation of the term 'dragon riding' I'm launching you to Oribos. They really were in love, weren't they? I once told Neltharion that the only reason a woman would ever put up with him would be spite. I grab this expansion as well, just because I like terraforming the map in strategy games.   First Ones spare me from mortal ideas of 'romantic comedy.'  I don't know, my queen. Mortals are funny when they're hormone-addled idiots. You'd be surprised how many mortals wanted ta make deals with me out of love. Never any love for ol' Bwonsamdi, though... I miss dose adventurers. Dey were fun.  In the canon telling, Arthas and Kel'Thuzad were helped through all of this by a high elf necromancer named Dar'khan Drathir who betrayed Quel'thalas and sold Arthas the secrets of how to penetrate the kingdom's defenses. Drathir's rather funny for how every story he's in involves him getting brutally killed - by Arthas, by Aveena, by a guy WoW players know called Lor'themar Theron, and by the WoW player characters - but he always seems to come back even when his body has been completely disintegrated with magic.  After recording this mission, I discovered that WC3R makes multiple autosaves per mission, never deletes them, and there's no way to delete multiple saves at once. I had to go through and delete about thirty autosaves one by one. So that was fun. DO NOT TALK ABOUT SYLVANAS WINDRUNNER OUTSIDE HER ROLE IN THIS ONE MISSION. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Aug 7, 2023 |
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Aug 7, 2023 11:38
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Spiders-Men No, I'm not talking about Sylvanas yet. Today's subject, the Nerubians.  The story of the Nerubians begins with the Old Gods. The Aqir were a race of insectoid creatures spawned from the flesh of the Old Gods themselves, individually weaker than the N'Raqi (the Faceless as they're better known in Warcraft) but vastly greater in number. During the heyday of the Old Gods' empire on Azeroth, the Aqir served as a labor caste for the Old Gods, erecting most of the monuments and cities that sprawled across the world. Two wars shattered the Aqir, first the invasion of the Titans, then the war against the Zul Empire of the trolls. By the heroic efforts of the trolls, the armies of the Old Gods were broken again and scattered to the winds, with groups of N'Raqi and Aqir fleeing in all directions where they were claimed by individual Old Gods. Most of the Old Gods remade their servants to serve more individual roles, and in the case of the Aqir who fled northwards, Yogg-Saron remade the original insectoids into something distinctly more arachnid. The Nerubians had been created. At the command of Yogg-Saron, the Nerubians burrowed deep into the ice and rock of Northrend, perhaps in a bid by Yogg-Saron to excavate itself from its prison beneath Ulduar. We don't know, because in a display never seen among any other direct servants of the Old Gods, the Nerubians somehow broke free of their master's control. How and why this happened, we do not know, but Yogg-Saron would itself pass into legend and then myth among the newly freed Nerubian people. These people named their new subterranean home Azjol-Nerub and began to build a new life for themselves.  For thousands of years, Azjol-Nerub grew and thrived beneath the icy surface of Northrend. Nerubians have a lifespan in the centuries if not millennia, and they were a patient, cool-tempered people who treasured knowledge and condemned acting in haste. The Nerubians believed that this made them inherently superior to the short-lived mammalian races on the surface, which they deemed impulsive and emotional, and the Nerubians became figures of terrifying legend among the other races of Northrend even before the Sundering. Trolls, dwarves, and vrykul alike learned to fear caverns leading into the darkness and the skittering of legs, for the Nerubians occasionally emerged into the surface to raid their neighbors - not for gold or jewels, but books and magical artifacts. The Northrend population of tol'vir was effectively wiped out and enslaved by the Nerubians, creating what would come to be known as the obsidian destroyers. Of all the scholarly pursuits in Azjol-Nerub, perhaps the most revered among the Nerubians was the art of divination. The Nerubians had no wish to leave their comfortable subterranean realm, and delved deep into the magic of scrying and far-sight as a way of studying the world from the comfort and safety of Azjol-Nerub. From the distant darkness, the Nerubians watched the War of the Ancients, the Curse of Flesh, the rise and fall of the Arathi Empire, and even the First and Second Wars of the Horde's invasion of Azeroth. They never involved themselves in these affairs, seeing it all as none of their business, and were content to watch and record the march of history in peace. Post-Danuser, the Nerubian interest in scrying extended into planar research as well. Northrend, according to Danuser, is a place naturally close to the energies of death and the veil between Azeroth and the Shadowlands is thin in this land. This energy is what drew the Lich King's comet to Northrend, and allowed the Nerubians to peer deep into the Shadowlands, where they molded much of their architecture after the realms they saw in their visions.  Fittingly for their origins, Nerubian biology is known to be highly morphic. The most common Nerubian phenotype is the vaguely centauroid arachnid form we're familiar with, but there are many others such as the quadruped form pictured above. From what we know of Nerubian society, the different phenotypes of the Nerubians served as the basis of a rigid caste system in Azjol-Nerub, with the above form being the main leaders and scholars of the race while the centauroid arachnid form were the rank and file commoners of the race. The military leadership caste of Azjol-Nerub were distinctly beetle-like as you can see in the next image in this post. Other castes included arachnids with legs so heavily webbed (as in, membranes, not spider webs!) that they were capable of flight. Entirely non-sentient giant spiders were common pets and beasts of burden. Not all interactions between the Nerubians and their neighbors were hostile, though the Drakkari trolls remained mortal enemies of the former Aqir. The Northrend dwarves reached a relatively warm peace with Azjol-Nerub after the Sundering threatened both subterranean races, finding the Nerubians very prideful but surprisingly amenable to trade and exchange of ideas with those they deemed of similarly far-sighted, calm-minded dispositions. What the Nerubians seemed to condemn and loathe above all else was, in a word, chaos. Diplomacy with Azjol-Nerub was a matter of patience and forethought, and this has continued to the present day. Interestingly, there are quite a lot of mentions of the Nerubians being particularly friendly to the Alliance. The dwarves of Northrend coexisted in peace with the Nerubians for ages, and Wrath of the Lich King indicated that the night elves and draenei found similar common footing with the Nerubians. If Blizzard ever managed to make Nerubians playable (most likely through inventing a new humanoid phenotype for the purpose), the present lore for the Nerubians strongly suggests that they would favor the Alliance as allies, a supposition furthered by the mentions in the lore that the Alliance has remained active in Northrend following the Lich King's defeat. I doubt very much we'll ever get the Nerubians joining the Alliance in WoW, but I for one think it would be a very cool idea.  The recent history of Azjol-Nerub, however, has not been kind to this ancient race. When the Lich King landed in Northrend and began to expand his dominion, the first and most serious organized resistance Ner'zhul encountered was the Nerubians. The Nerubians understood immediately that the Lich King was an existential threat to their people and marshalled their forces for war with the Scourge in what would come to be known as the War of the Spider. For those wondering just what the Scourge was doing between Warcraft 2 and 3, the answer is that for ten years the newly arisen Scourge, aided directly by the Burning Legion to ensure the Scourge found a secure foothold on Azeroth, was locked in a to-the-death-and-beyond war with Azjol-Nerub. Unfortunately, the Nerubians had a great weakness: their reproduction and maturation is very slow. While enormous numbers of eggs could be laid by Nerubian queens, those eggs took a long time to hatch and the Nerubians a long time to grow to adulthood. Against an enemy that could raise their fallen endlessly and then also every Nerubian who fell, Azjol-Nerub fell inch by inch, slowly but surely against an enemy that could happily trade a thousand undead for a single Nerubian and come out ahead on the trade. A proud and reclusive people, the Nerubians had no allies to call upon and the rest of Northrend was largely ignorant of the war beneath their feet. Even Anub'Arak, the Spiderlord, the most celebrated general of Azjol-Nerub, eventually fell in battle against the Scourge and was soon raised as the first of what would come to be call the crypt lords. Nerubian laborers tried to find an escape route for their people by digging deeper and further into the earth, but only unleashed a new problem: the loyal forces of Yogg-Saron, faceless and forgotten, who were none too pleased with the treasonous former Aqir. Caught between the Scourge and the armies of the Old Gods, the Nerubian empire shattered and the survivors fled their ruined home.  Little now remains of the once great empire of Azjol-Nerub. The great caverns of their cities now teem with undead and N'Raqi vying for dominance, and many of the Lich King's greatest arcane servants have descended into the darkness to uncover the Nerubians' once celebrated troves of knowledge and spellcraft. A great deal of the magical rituals used by the Scourge during the Third War were pioneered by the Nerubians, as are much of the arcane workings necessary to turn Ner'zhul's visions of the Shadowlands into workable reality. What few living Nerubians remain have fled into the wilds of Northrend, where wildlife and other native races have harried and hunted them further. Many of these survivors strive to wage a guerrilla war against the Scourge and dream of one day reclaiming their home, even hiring adventurers in WoW to strike into Azjol-Nerub itself. A few Nerubians completely lost hope during the War of the Spider and surrendered to the will of their creator, Yogg-Saron, becoming soldiers of the Old Gods again. In general, the Nerubians of modern-day Warcraft feel to me at least like a major part of an expansion waiting to happen. There's a lot going on here, and plenty of hooks to hang a story on if Blizzard ever cares to. I just doubt that they will, probably in large part due to the sheer complexity of their models. If a simplified, or especially a humanoid, Nerubian model ever appears in WoW, though... DO NOT TALK ABOUT SYLVANAS WINDRUNNER OUTSIDE THIS ONE MISSION
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Aug 7, 2023 11:39
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It's a common criticism of Warcraft 3 that the first two campaigns are mostly just Alliance vs Scourge, in each direction, despite the sixteen possible matchups the game offers. This isn't entirely true though, since for this couple of missions we're fighting elves rather than strictly the human armies. I feel like it would have helped to have the elves' armies and bases borrow a bit more from the Night Elves, at least up to a point. It would help make the campaign feel more varied, although at the same time you probably don't want to aesthetically change them so much that they don't fit into the Alliance conceptually any more.
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Aug 7, 2023 12:05
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Probably the only way I'd come back to wow for a week or two is if they added the cool bug people. Unless, of course, they were bipedal and sexy. I will never come back to wow
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Aug 7, 2023 12:47
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How does a dreadlord get so fat? Is he over eating souls or something?
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Aug 7, 2023 13:02
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I've never liked this mission. The map is fun and all but lack of anything durable is painful. All you have are weak ghouls, clunky meatwagons and the fun necromancers. They could have at least given you some optional objective where you get a few abominations or something. Maybe for every x number of slaughtered elves or have the extra base to the east.Cythereal posted:
 Also it is my headcanon that they totally were, even if one of them wasn't aware of it or in denial.
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Aug 7, 2023 13:03
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As someone who only ever really played WC2, and has picked the rest up through RTS osmosis, (CnC was more my jive), the only characters I can name out of this game are Arthas, Janina and Sylvanis. So while I know more about the first two, I will patiently wait for Cyth to elaborate on number three.
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Aug 7, 2023 13:07
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Once upon a time, I was very active in the Blizzard modding community. I did a lot of stuff in Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2, and was invited to Blizzcon on Blizzard's dime multiple times because the stuff I worked on was popular enough. I've rubbed elbows with a ton of big-name WC3/SC2 modders and Blizzard developers, and the last time I did so, the topic of Warcraft 4 came up. The result of that conversation was that, given Unnamed Activision Executive's hate for RTSes, there were no resources available to allocate to a Warcraft 4 project for the foreseeable future (and at the time, it was mentioned that it was a miracle that SC2 continued to receive support). However, given the passion that the developers had for Warcraft 3, there were a substantial amount of "if we did" plans, and of the universally agreed-upon ideas would be to expand the available armies with sub-factions. For example, Alliance players would be able to pick an Elven army to empower their Elvish units and replace their non-Elven units with weaker variants, similarly to what we saw in this mission. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), Warcraft 4 is unlikely to happen as it would involve either the end of World of Warcraft or very messy storytelling that Blizzard is unwilling to attempt.
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Aug 7, 2023 13:14
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