Warlords of Draenor - Lore Discussion

[Groshnok]

Yesterday in redorc there were a few of us having a good discussion on the lore, and Warlords' impact on it. Obviously AU Draenor will never be revisited thankfully, but it still was the gateway for bringing Gul'dan back into the story. So, discussion, if you people want!

[Rhonya]

Too much timy wimy, too much silly things that don't add up, too much things not properly done (Orgrim anyone..? ) So. Eh. Don't have that much to discuss. Looked great. Lorewise, nooooop.

[Okram]

I find the lore of this entire Xpack just a giant shitfest.

A cheap excuse to bring back some old warcraft characters so that later when one goes to watch the movie they can go ''Hey it's that guy!''

They could have made it interesting if they actually provided some more content and lore around the Plant people, Ogres, Arrakoa but nah. Just a bunch of terribly written characters, terribly written story lines and just terrible lore all around.

[Gashuk]

Juicytroll? What is this, sounds, juicy.

In regards to the topic, Warlords looked amazing. I remember at the beginning/pre-release, OotRB was mostly hyped and considered the expansion to be perfect for our Tribe to grow and develop in. We could almost forgive the time travel and enjoy re-visiting old heroes and having a perfect location to, in hindsight, develop our own history in more depth than has ever been done before. Even so far as to have the Felblade Tribe counter us and Akesh re-appear. It had so much potential and I think we squeezed as much as we could out of it.

Unfortunately, in the long run, it got stale. Perhaps quicker than we expected it would. The Lore was written very poorly by Blizz/Devs and the expansion as a whole was very disappointing and was used more as a stepping stone to the future than it's own stand-alone concept.

The content drought has affected more than just us Rpers, but perhaps it has affected us the most. Raiders can raid the same tier of content for X amount of months until they have the best gear and simply move on to another game until new content has arisen but for us, so deeply invested in our own character's 'real' lives, we had to continue battling on with essentially nothing of note to do or speak about than your average tavern NPC.

Without going too much off-topic, I think we must appreciate the era Warlords allowed us to explore and enjoy the depth it has given our past, but as a whole? I hope overall disappointment was worth it and Legion will be indebted to it when it finally bears fruit.

[Groshnok]

Warlords didn't even really give us that much to encounter with our past. Akesh was only used in Krogon's death. I had quit around the time of Tanaan, so I assume you guys killed him there. It unfortunately only gave us the tools to be "raiders" and "pillagers" which, while survival was fun at first, got very stale after a few months.

I think the thing I'm just most pissed off about is how they let go the war crimes of Grom Hellscream, Blizzard coming out with the flimsy "the Draenei don't want anymore bloodshed". There is no more blood to shed other than Grom's. The Iron Horde are defeated, its remnants had turned to the Fel Iron Horde. Grom Hellscream is responsible for thousands of deaths. People can argue Garrosh tricked him, but Grom wanted war. He was depressed over his mate's death and the Warsong Clan failing during peace time, and jumped at the chance for conquest. And it seems our ooc chat name channel now corrects itself to a new name on the forums, I see 

[Okram]

The more I think about this whole expansion and the lore the more dissapointed I get.

Literally nothing makes sense. We pushed into the Portal with a small squad because we didn't have our full armies in the blasted lands? But Khadgar can open a portal to let your small army in for your garrison in DRAENOR, I think he would have been able to summon a portal to Stormwind and Orgrimmar and get the bulk of Horde and Alliance forces in but okay. Whatever. We still got a decent force in the Blasted Lands so why close the portal by freeing Gul'dan? Couldn't we just kill him? Or you know, wait till the rest of our forces came trough? We stopped the Iron Horde advancements and were holding our grounds decently.

Whatever we only free the most dangerous dude ever and get chased by the ''full might of the Iron Horde''. A bunch of weak orcs we roflstomp with ease. I mean we only had guys like Khadgar, Thrall and Maraad with us, some of the most powerful beings from our world. Hell I think Khadgar could solo the entirety of Draenor with his eyes closed.

Anyhow eventually we finally get our garrisons set up and shit. secure the zones. Meanwhile Ner'zhul is killed in his own graveyard by 5 random adventurers. We venture into the Ogre empire's capitol Highmaul!.... but why don't we force them to help us against the Iron Horde? It's well known they don't like them. Seems like a waste of resources. Sure the ogres would quit after beating the Iron Horde but who the fuck cares? Oh yeah Legendary warrior Kargath turns out to be the easiest raid boss ever.

Oh and Cho'gall does some void shit and then dies, void stuff he promised would happen never did. Probably got scrapped, screw content and storytelling!

Woops I forgot about Talador and Gorgrond. Then again who cared about those zones? The story didn't make any chance but hey we found Rexxar! But if Rexxar is here, where's the rest of his fucking clan?! Who cares Rexxar was born out of the very ground himself in this universe probably. All the Ogrim stuff got scrapped in gorgrond so we bump into him for the first time in Talador ''Hey it's Orgri- oh he's dead.'', incidentally it was also the last time.

This reminds me of Maraad who learned his lesson of being angry (that caused refugees to die in his lord of war vid), yet he's angry the entire expansion like a bloodcrazed fel orc. Great character development there. In the end he did nothing but being angry and saving Yrel. Atleast he did 1 good thing.

Blackhand was the only well written part of the Xpack along with the Arrakoa civil war, that was pretty enjoyable for a bit.


Time for Tanaan! Hey it's Kilrogg! Haven't seen him since like the intro quests. What's he been up to? We'll never know cause he probably didn't do shit. Ariokk is alive! Grom is captive! Why hasn't Gul'dan force fed them Demon Blood?! Like literally al he has to do is pinch their nose and put the cup to their mouths, they'll automatically drink. But fuck logic. let's keep them around uncorrupted cause why not. Could kill them? Nah. That's something competent and well written villains would do.

Speaking of Grommash Hellscream, garbage character btw, in the beginning he's committing mass genocide and all that jazz but at the end we're totally okay with him leading ''Let's go Draenor, you're the best!'' pep rally? The Draenei don't feel like they need to punish this guy? No? Okay.


Also don't get me started on the more boring decisions they made, like this one for example: Reanimated Mannorth, why not bring in Magtheridon? would have been way cooler.

I want to close on something positive though: Yrel is bae. She's now the only interesting Draenei since Maraad and to celebrate that we'll leave her behind on this now fel infested rock cause fuck you this expansion was all about giving a reason to get Gul'dan involved.

[Rakmal]

I'm mostly just salty about the awful, just awful, end to Garrosh. Well, that Orgrim. I'll vent a bit about the former first. The mak'gora in itself was falsely executed. Thrall had armour (well, a robe, but still torso armour), there were no judges nor audience, and Thrall used... Magic. He realised he couldn't beat Garrosh by playing fair so he crushed him and zapped him and looked badass doing so because Jesus can never do wrong. Garrosh actually played by the mak'gora rules, and look where that got him. I dunno about you, but the whole notion that Thrall is an honourable orc kiiiiinda fell apart for me and will likely never be restored. I just want him out of the picture for Legion - at least just keep him to the Shaman order hall. I've had enough of GJ for a lifetime.

On to the latter. I was so happy when I saw Orgrim. I was really hoping that there would be some kind of moment between him and Durotan, and then Orgrim would help us fight back Blackhand's invasion of Talador along with his own loyal Iron Horde turncoats. It's evident that even AU Orgrim is charistmatic asf. However, despite being one of the most significant orcs in all of MU Orcish history, he first rallies his troops up to slaughter innocents and then goes "I will not slaughter innocents, Blackhand," which, of course, results in his immediate execution by Papa Furnace Face. It could've been great, Blizzard. It could've been great. Instead, the great Orgrim Doomhammer became less significant than Rokhan in your garrison (what did he actually do other than hand out quests, by the way?) and will now, thanks to the Warcraft movie, be remembered as Durotan's subordinate in the MU by people unfamiliar with the lore. Y'know, because nobody remembered him in the AU.

Also, another minor detail that didn't really grind my gears, but made me wonder is why the fel orcs on Draenor are black. Green, sure; red, better. But black? Did Gul'dan switch to another dreadlord's blood? Or did the arts team at Blizzard Inc. mistake the words "red and spiky with red eyes" for "black and spikey with green eyes." I mean, it's their choice, being the creators and all, but is lore really that fickle to them?

Okay, I've secreted my salt for today. Back to studying.

[Revax]

Yeah agree with most of the above. I wish they had gone with their original idea of having Garrosh and Kairoz travel to Outland and use whatever bullshit magic they could conjure to re-animate the dead orcs/draenei there instead. That way we could have skipped all the AU mumbojumbo, had some real cool take on shadow-lore Outland-style and so on.

But hey, its almost over now!

[Rakmal]

The pain will end soon... But by the ancestors, what a pain it was.

[Rakmal]

... I'm actually a little scared that Blizzard with use AU Draenor as a template rather than MU Draenor when writing Chronicles 2.

[Azolg]

Jastor Gallywix.

Two expansions down and still this guy doesn't have his own fucking unique model, barely any storyline development and frankly has been sidelined. Lets review the entirety of his existence in chronological order, and remember this is the guy who's in charge of all the Goblins of the Horde.

1) His brief history is outline in this 4 page story here (Not in-game so not everyone will know) http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/lore/leader-story/gallywix/1

2) First appearance with generic Goblin model (He's utterly obese) in Kezan. Goblin starter zone.

3) Tides of War (Another book) Shows up a few times in the book (Talking to Baine, Garrosh and at a horde meeting)

4) The Blank Scroll, another short story where he doesn't actually appear; instead it's a vision that gives us the biggest insight into the characters depth than anything else so far. Something that leaves me thirsting for more.

5) He's present at the end of SoO and says one line and bows in the cinematic. Still placeholder model (Looks nothing like concept art)

"Vol'jin's one tough nut. Stabbed in the neck, still he comes back to collect what's due. I like this guy!
My people need security and profit. Under Hellscream, we got a whole lot of neither."

6) Finally he's in War Crimes and has a grand total of one sentance where he says the Alliance shouldn't be there.


Thats. Fucking. It. Gallywix is for me possibly one of the most interesting characters they've ever made. They pass him off as a greedy sucking asshole but then show a softer side to him (Blank Scroll, his praise for Vol'Jin) And then literally do nothing to progress the character. In all of the issues I have with WoD, nothing annoys me more than the lack of development they've done for Gallywix.

[Revax]

Maybe that's for the better Maka, lest we have to kill him in dungeon/raid someday for having gone sane.