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tithin
Nov 14, 2003


[Grandmaster Tactician]



Siegkrow posted:

I wouldn't be surprised to find naga in a landlocked lake.

"help me stepsquid, I'm stuck"

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Poil
Mar 17, 2007

How the twisting nether does the naga have the merpower to somehow conquer all of the oceans and invade everywhere? Usually you lose strength and forces by fighting (unless necromancy is involved) and constant war just leaves you weak and vulnerable.

Northrend looks to be way too far south honestly. How could it be the same as Quel'thalas? And the Sunwell is apparently further north than freaking Frostmourne cavern? :psyduck:

Poil fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Jul 1, 2023

Lord_Magmar
Feb 24, 2015

"Welcome to pound town, Slifer slacker!"


Poil posted:

How the twisting nether does the naga have the merpower to somehow conquer all of the oceans and invade everywhere? Usually you lose strength and forces by fighting (unless necromancy is involved).

Northrend looks to be way too far south honestly. How could it be the same as Quel'thalas? And the Sunwell is apparently further north than freaking Frostmourne cavern? :psyduck:

Flat Map vs Spherical Planet, supposedly Icecrown Citadel is at the Northern Pole of Azeroth.

Asehujiko
Apr 6, 2011

Siegkrow posted:

I wouldn't be surprised to find naga in a landlocked lake.
They'll show up at Lordamere Lake at some point.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Asehujiko posted:

They'll show up at Lordamere Lake at some point.

Someone's making a big pot of soup, a naga pops out of it and declares it to be the property of the mighty Naga Empire.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
Wait, Quel'thalas is on the same latitude as Northrend? How the gently caress does that work climate-wise?

I know the answer is "magic" but it's amazing how little effort they put into thinking their world through.

Lord_Magmar
Feb 24, 2015

"Welcome to pound town, Slifer slacker!"


anilEhilated posted:

Wait, Quel'thalas is on the same latitude as Northrend? How the gently caress does that work climate-wise?

I know the answer is "magic" but it's amazing how little effort they put into thinking their world through.

it isn't, the map isn't accounting for curvature of the planet, Northrend is canonically the Northern Pole of the planet. If I remember correctly.

Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Jul 1, 2023

Szarrukin
Sep 29, 2021

anilEhilated posted:

Wait, Quel'thalas is on the same latitude as Northrend? How the gently caress does that work climate-wise?

Very well, thank you.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
The high elves can make living anywhere fabulous.

sirtommygunn
Mar 7, 2013



Poil posted:

How the twisting nether does the naga have the merpower to somehow conquer all of the oceans and invade everywhere? Usually you lose strength and forces by fighting (unless necromancy is involved) and constant war just leaves you weak and vulnerable.

Northrend looks to be way too far south honestly. How could it be the same as Quel'thalas? And the Sunwell is apparently further north than freaking Frostmourne cavern? :psyduck:

Warcraft writers believe the opposite, so constantly being at war means you're only getting stronger all the time so long as you avoid the main characters/adventurers.

FoolyCharged
Oct 11, 2012

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Somebody call for an ant?

Siegkrow posted:

I wouldn't be surprised to find naga in a landlocked lake.

Well... that lander guy got lonely... and I felt that-

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

anilEhilated posted:

Wait, Quel'thalas is on the same latitude as Northrend? How the gently caress does that work climate-wise?

Rome is further north than New York City.

GhostStalker
Mar 26, 2010

Guys, find a woman who looks at you the way GhostStalker looks at every bald, obese, single 58 year old accountant from Tulsa who managed to win $4,000 by not wagering on a Final Jeopardy triple stumper.

Cythereal posted:

Rome is further north than New York City.

Also, either New York or Boston are on the same latitude as Lisbon. Map projections are weird, and ocean currents have a lot to do with the climate of a location.

Also, high elf magic.

Rhonne
Feb 13, 2012

Poil posted:

How the twisting nether does the naga have the merpower to somehow conquer all of the oceans and invade everywhere? Usually you lose strength and forces by fighting (unless necromancy is involved) and constant war just leaves you weak and vulnerable.

I think they conquered most or all of the ocean first before going after the land, which is why no one has actually seen any naga(outside of some drunk sailors no one believes probably) until WC3.

Watermelon Daiquiri
Jul 10, 2010
I TRIED TO BAIT THE TXPOL THREAD WITH THE WORLD'S WORST POSSIBLE TAKE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID AVATAR.

Poil posted:

How the twisting nether does the naga have the merpower to somehow conquer all of the oceans and invade everywhere? Usually you lose strength and forces by fighting (unless necromancy is involved) and constant war just leaves you weak and vulnerable.

Northrend looks to be way too far south honestly. How could it be the same as Quel'thalas? And the Sunwell is apparently further north than freaking Frostmourne cavern? :psyduck:

It's called the sunwell for a reason op :v:

mr_stibbons
Aug 18, 2019

sirtommygunn posted:

Warcraft writers believe the opposite, so constantly being at war means you're only getting stronger all the time so long as you avoid the main characters/adventurers.

While war itself isn't as virtuous as the nonsense the warcraft writers think it is, in the pre industrial world successfully conquering other lands was the best way to get more food, treasure and resources, and those spoils could be used to make a country bigger and more powerful when they started their next conquest. History has a lot of big empires that just kept getting bigger and more powerful through conquest. Since the Naga have had a super long fantasy timeframe to work with, conquering a massive undersea empire isn't unbelievable. Of course, in real history those empires would generally be torn apart by internal strife given enough time, but this is a fantasy empire with an immortal evil god queen.

This is not the same as having two superpower in an endless slugging match with no final victory like the history of the horde and the alliance. Those tend to burn more resources than they provide profits, and weaken both sides.

Rhonne
Feb 13, 2012

Every now and then, WoW will flirt with the idea of the negative effects of the constant forever wars. The homeless in Westfall in Cata, in BfA Anduin mentions that they're running low on soldiers and will have to start conscripting farmers, but they are only briefly touched on before moving on to the next set piece.

Edit: I guess since the end of BfA, there have been no major military battles for the Horde or Alliance armies. Shadowlands was completely self-contained with only a hand full of Horde and Alliance heroes involved and Dragonflight has been entirely about the dragons with little to no Horde or Alliance military involvement, so I guess they're in a period of rebuilding right now.

Rhonne fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Jul 1, 2023

SIGSEGV
Nov 4, 2010


mr_stibbons posted:

While war itself isn't as virtuous as the nonsense the warcraft writers think it is, in the pre industrial world successfully conquering other lands was the best way to get more food, treasure and resources, and those spoils could be used to make a country bigger and more powerful when they started their next conquest. History has a lot of big empires that just kept getting bigger and more powerful through conquest. Since the Naga have had a super long fantasy timeframe to work with, conquering a massive undersea empire isn't unbelievable. Of course, in real history those empires would generally be torn apart by internal strife given enough time, but this is a fantasy empire with an immortal evil god queen.

This is not the same as having two superpower in an endless slugging match with no final victory like the history of the horde and the alliance. Those tend to burn more resources than they provide profits, and weaken both sides.

The thing is that to exploit those lands and people and treasure you need to keep the people on the land and make them work and tax them, warcraft tends more towards the exterminate than the exploit.

Tenebrais
Sep 2, 2011

SIGSEGV posted:

The thing is that to exploit those lands and people and treasure you need to keep the people on the land and make them work and tax them, warcraft tends more towards the exterminate than the exploit.

This might actually be something the naga are doing differently.

Which we'll see in, like, six campaigns' time.

SIGSEGV
Nov 4, 2010


The one halfway competent empire around the place, mere mediocrity as a critical advantage.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Yeah probably worth remembering we won't even really see the Naga in the campaign until Frozen Throne.

Siegkrow
Oct 11, 2013

Arguing about Lore for 5 years and counting



anilEhilated posted:

Wait, Quel'thalas is on the same latitude as Northrend? How the gently caress does that work climate-wise?

I know the answer is "magic" but it's amazing how little effort they put into thinking their world through.

I think that in Warcraft Chronicles they said that the Helves use magic to keep Quel'Thalas in forever-spring.
(World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1, pg. 121)

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



mr_stibbons posted:

While war itself isn't as virtuous as the nonsense the warcraft writers think it is, in the pre industrial world successfully conquering other lands was the best way to get more food, treasure and resources, and those spoils could be used to make a country bigger and more powerful when they started their next conquest. History has a lot of big empires that just kept getting bigger and more powerful through conquest. Since the Naga have had a super long fantasy timeframe to work with, conquering a massive undersea empire isn't unbelievable. Of course, in real history those empires would generally be torn apart by internal strife given enough time, but this is a fantasy empire with an immortal evil god queen.

This is not the same as having two superpower in an endless slugging match with no final victory like the history of the horde and the alliance. Those tend to burn more resources than they provide profits, and weaken both sides.
This would only make sense if all the other people they conquered were also naga, or if the naga military and population was a multicultural organization that incorporated conquered peoples and added them to its core as they invaded ever more territory. Which there isn't evidence of either.

Rhonne
Feb 13, 2012

ApplesandOranges posted:

Yeah probably worth remembering we won't even really see the Naga in the campaign until Frozen Throne.

Well...we do see one in about 2 missions.

Tenebrais
Sep 2, 2011

Terrible Opinions posted:

This would only make sense if all the other people they conquered were also naga, or if the naga military and population was a multicultural organization that incorporated conquered peoples and added them to its core as they invaded ever more territory. Which there isn't evidence of either.

Let's put a pin in that one until we see their army in TFT.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
Patience on the naga, y'all.

I'll talk about them when we finally meet them.

FoolyCharged
Oct 11, 2012

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Somebody call for an ant?

All right I'm Naga-na talk about it.

Szarrukin
Sep 29, 2021

Rhonne posted:

Every now and then, WoW will flirt with the idea of the negative effects of the constant forever wars.
And then neckbeard chuds get angry and start ranting about "woke" and "bring back war to Warcraft".

Quackles
Aug 11, 2018

Pixels of Light.


Lord_Magmar posted:

Flat Map vs Spherical Planet, supposedly Icecrown Citadel is at the Northern Pole of Azeroth.

Maybe the big secret of Azeroth is that, instead of a rocky center like Earth, the planet is just a big ball o' water.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Quackles posted:

Maybe the big secret of Azeroth is that, instead of a rocky center like Earth, the planet is just a big ball o' water.

That would unironically be kind of a cool sci-fi concept, that the sea floor is just the first of several hollow, concentric shells each with their own weird lifeforms inside as consecutively greater crushing pressures mount. So if you can dodge all the awful life in there and survive the pressure, you can take a strategic shortcut through the depths.

AtomikKrab
Jul 17, 2010

Keep on GOP rolling rolling rolling rolling.

Quackles posted:

Maybe the big secret of Azeroth is that, instead of a rocky center like Earth, the planet is just a big ball o' water.

unfortunantly no, Azeroth is canonically an egg, the core is a big massive amount of something that is nascent titan

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Rhonne posted:

The homeless in Westfall in Cata

This was probably the most interesting and completely out of place story in WoW, in my opinion.

The premise: the Alliance committed to a massive mobilization for the Northrend campaign in the previous expansion that concluded in the defeat of the Scourge and the destruction of the Lich King. Huge numbers of civilian subjects of Stormwind were conscripted or enlisted, and the kingdom of Stormwind invested enormous amounts of money into the Northrend campaign, most significantly in the training and equipping of that military force. With the Lich King's death, enormous numbers of soldiers have been demobilized to return to civilian life, only to return home and find themselves unable to find employment or housing while government assistance and their promised military pay and government assistance was slow or nonexistent because the kingdom of Stormwind was almost entirely bankrupt from the expense of the Northrend campaign. Social and political movements drew upon these masses of agitated and impoverished veterans to threaten or commit violent social upheaval especially inclined to politically radical causes, triggering at times violent governmental crackdowns on these groups.

If this sounds familiar to my historically-inclined readers, it's because this is exactly what happened throughout the Western world in the wake of the First World War - see the Bonus Army in the United States and the Freikorps in Germany to name two examples.

It's a realistic, complex, morally ambiguous story with real life precedent that Blizzard was not and never could have been prepared to do justice, even if half the zone wasn't filled with already dated references to police procedural tv shows (CSI: Miami being a particular favorite of the people writing Westfall quests).

ungulateman
Apr 18, 2012

pretentious fuckwit who isn't half as literate or insightful or clever as he thinks he is

PurpleXVI posted:

That would unironically be kind of a cool sci-fi concept, that the sea floor is just the first of several hollow, concentric shells each with their own weird lifeforms inside as consecutively greater crushing pressures mount. So if you can dodge all the awful life in there and survive the pressure, you can take a strategic shortcut through the depths.

you and the naga form a symbiont circle, you must understand this

NewMars
Mar 10, 2013

PurpleXVI posted:

That would unironically be kind of a cool sci-fi concept, that the sea floor is just the first of several hollow, concentric shells each with their own weird lifeforms inside as consecutively greater crushing pressures mount. So if you can dodge all the awful life in there and survive the pressure, you can take a strategic shortcut through the depths.

This is literally naboo. They even do exactly that with the shortcut through the watery core in the phantom menace.

FoolyCharged
Oct 11, 2012

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Somebody call for an ant?

Neither of you went for "there's always a bigger fish." Shameful.

Qwertycoatl
Dec 31, 2008

PurpleXVI posted:

That would unironically be kind of a cool sci-fi concept, that the sea floor is just the first of several hollow, concentric shells each with their own weird lifeforms inside as consecutively greater crushing pressures mount. So if you can dodge all the awful life in there and survive the pressure, you can take a strategic shortcut through the depths.

A few hundred miles down, the pressure would be enough to compress the water into an exotic form of ice :science:

e: There really are planets like that https://www.wired.com/2007/05/blazing-hot-ice/

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

NewMars posted:

This is literally naboo. They even do exactly that with the shortcut through the watery core in the phantom menace.

I was thinking more "Extreme Subnautica" than "horrible Star Wars franchise movie," but sure, I guess. :v:

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
This is what I do on my birthday. :v:

Prologue 4: Thrall the Sound and Fury



In which our ?heroes? were defeated and captured by... checks notes... murlocs.



And find themselves locked up in an elaborate underground fortress. With their weapons and armor, of course.



Sacrifices? To what?
A long time ago, they started worshipin' some witch. They say she lives under the ocean, and if they don't make the sacrifices, she'll destroy this island.
Well, someone should have told them that orcs don't scare that easily! Now, let's get out of here!



Orcs don't scare that easily, says the man who got captured by murlocs. Who then let him keep all his gear.



So yeah, it's dungeon time.



I haven't been calling attention to it, but these crates and creep buildings we've been seeing throughout the game can be destroyed and I've been thorough about doing so. My taste for mayhem is finally rewarded with a tome of strength. As an intelligence hero, Thrall's only notable benefit from this is more HP, but he's still my only hero so it's not like I can give it to anyone else.



Per the bonus objective tracker, you can free more units from their cells.



Any Kul Tirans you free, however, will attack you on sight. And in this case, entering the cell where the Alliance prisoners were spawns another enemy to attack.



The reward is another ring of protection, which does stack with the previous ring I got in the first mission.



In a display of Warcraft neatly summed up in a single moment, a few orcs and humans were locked up together. Rather than work together against their mutual enemy, the orcs and humans would rather murder each other. I come along and save the orcs.



Ranged units can attack through the bars - including the dwarven riflemen.



These are the gribbliest murloc models I've ever seen.

I don't know why I'm surprised the Horde and Alliance were killing each other even here, but I am.
The murlocs intended to sacrifice them all to their witch. As far as the Kul Tirans knew, the orcs intended to sacrifice them to demons.
And no one thought to talk to one another.
Thrall's Horde wore the same colors and banners as Rend and Maim's, who wore the same colors and banners as the Burning Blade. All three claimed to be the rightful and true Horde. The Kul Tirans made the wrong decision, and it lead Thrall's Horde to make another poor choice.




After chopping through the big murlocs, I encounter the return of slimes. Slimes in WC3, and in WoW, are more tentacle-y than before, and debuff units they hit to slow their movement and attack speed.



The only way forward is to the south, where the Alliance has staged a breakout. You might think that this would be where Thrall makes an uneasy partnership with the Alliance prisoners.



Or, if you're familiar with the story of Wrath of the Lich King, you might instead expect what happens: the Horde charges the rear of the embattled Alliance and kills both sides.



I am rewarded for this slaughter with an area effect healing item.



Two, in fact, once I smash up some crates.



Skeletons return as random dungeon enemies.

I was talking with friends on discord about features we'd have liked to see in a full remake of Warcraft 3. One of my ideas was for Thrall to get a campaign-only ability to recruit neutral creeps instead of killing them. Obvious exceptions for mindless enemies like skeletons and slimes.



I remember Blackhand's dying words in my strand, that the green fire in his veins wouldn't release him even as he was dying. What are all these peoples' excuses for being so instinctively hateful and violent?




There are giant spiders down here, naturally. The reward is an item that passively boosts Thrall's damage.

Even by Necrolord standards, killing each other when a mutual enemy is holding you prisoner is a bit much.



Thrall's grudging acknowledgement of the humans' fighting spirit rings more than a little hollow considering that he massacred all the other Alliance prisoners that attempted to escape.




Warcraft 3 calls these thunder lizards 'salamanders,' but WoW will attach that name to something very different.



The reward is interesting: the orb of fire adds 5 damage to all of Thrall's attacks and gives him splash damage. If I had a melee hero, like the still absent Grom, equipping this would let the hero attack air units.



Progressing further brings me to a handful of golems and breakable rocks. There is a point to destroying the rocks.



I didn't realize this right away, but there's something very different about the shamans in this mission from previous missions.



I discover after moving north, brushing aside some murlocs and golems, that this shaman knows Bloodlust! Bloodlust in this game only affects one unit, but comes set to autocast, an extreme quality of life improvement for players as inept with micro as I am. While shamans aren't great in terms of combat stats, autocast Bloodlust means that they'll passively increase the speed and damage of other units.



In case you didn't figure it out (or aren't as habitually destructive of everything you can attack as I am), the game explicitly spells out here that you can attack the rock piles to break them.



Further up ahead are gnolls. What they're doing here or why, I don't know because they're immediately hostile and Thrall attacks on sight.



Judging by how this area looks like a mine, the gnolls were probably working as miners. Either willingly, or were slaves being put to work by the murlocs. Thrall cares not.

All these other loot drops I've been encountering have been mana potions, health scrolls, etc. If you're not playing on story difficulty, I imagine they might be very useful.



The presence of this giant skeleton warrior is easy enough to write off as just a random encounter...



But in combination with these statues and all the stonework, I'm wondering if there was an intent for this place to have been a vrykul ruin. The usual suspects for ancient ruins littering the world of Azeroth are Titans and ancient night elves, but there's not enough gold and magitek to be the former and not enough water and titty statues to be the latter.



This library looking area is a trap. Enter and a bunch of ghosts spawn.



My army is big enough to make quick work of them, and the reward is a series of tomes. Still feels a bit of a shame that Thrall is your only hero in this mission, this place feels like maybe it had been meant for less regular troops and at least one other hero.



This kind of nonsense is why I broke with the Alliance.




I'm sorry, any Blizzard developers reading this, but I just cannot take any of this seriously. It's murlocs. The ship sailed on them ever being a threatening foe.



And, personally, I feel like this whole prologue stuff in the island just hasn't been plotted all that well.



I think introducing Vol'jin in the last mission or this one might have helped a lot.



Sen'jin is I think the only notable character in all of Warcraft to have gone out to murlocs.



The whole idea of murlocs being clearly of human-level sapience and intellect, capable of speaking flawless and correct language, and being genuinely malevolent and threatening is one that Warcraft abandoned wholesale.



The juxtaposition sticks out in my mind as very odd. This is the hero and the army who will be facing down the Burning Legion, but they're starting off struggling with murlocs. As we'll see, the Alliance campaign has a more traditionally threatening adversary at the start.



The fight isn't as dangerous as it looks.



The mages hang back until aggroed, and the other murlocs are the same cannon fodder I was killing in the first mission. Concentrate fire on the mages when they advance and it's a snap.



The boss is much the same story.



With an army of this size, and Thrall as juiced up as he is, the boss falls quickly.



You don't have much time, young one. Go!
But you and your people are coming with us!
It be too late. I'm already gone.



Yeah, mon, pretty soon there be nothing left here anyway. We come with you.

*the screen shakes*



Where is that voice coming from?!
I don't know, but we have no time to waste! This cave is about to collapse!



I hope I've been demonstrating why I chose the Night Fae play as a narrative framing device for Warcraft 3. Not only is there far more plot and dialogue, there's also massively more going on in these missions. I chose the play as a framing device not just as an excuse to bring Isidora back, but also to let me pepper updates with some commentary and narrative as I see fit without overwhelming what's going on.

We'll discuss the sea witch another time.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
Warcraft Bestiary, Part Two



Kodos are enormous reptiles native to the plains of Kalimdor and Pandaria, where they mostly act as the local analogues to elephants, rhinos, and more importantly to the bison of the American West. Kodos are critically important to the culture and welfare of the semi-nomadic tauren of central Kalimdor, whose tribal movements tend to follow the kodo herds as vital sources of meat, hides, mounts, and beasts of burden. When the orcs arrive in Kalimdor, they further adopt the kodo as a weapon of war, primarily as a mobile command platform for drummers to direct the army (and in the fluff, some Horde officers like to stand on top of kodos to shout orders).

Juvenile kodos are used by the Horde, especially the tauren as mounts, while adults can carry entire squads or haul enormous carriages - probably the most memorable to Alliance players being the Wagon of Unending Agony commanded by Painmaster Thundrak, who Alliance players destroy to liberate the few surviving prisoners of this delightful mobile abattoir.



Unicorns are rare proof that creatures can be altered by Titan energies and not become sentient creatures as a result: the herds of wild horses that dwelled near the Well of Eternity in ancient Kalimdor became faster, stronger, powerfully attuned to magic, and very much not sentient. Few survived the night elves blowing up the world, and what unicorns remained on Azeroth became extremely secretive thanks in part to their innate magical powers. Unicorns became a myth to most peoples of Azeroth, and only typically emerged in the presence of vast amounts of the arcane energy that they need to survive.

Only in Quel'thalas and the forests surrounding Dalaran are unicorns a relatively common sight, and the creatures are so rare and willful that they have not been domesticated. A handful of individuals have been tamed by Alliance archmagi and elven knights, and to do so is considered a remarkable feat.

No sexism or magic healing powers here, note.



Cloud serpents are a distant branch of the dragon evolutionary line, one entirely uninvolved in the Ordering of Azeroth and creation of the Aspects by the Titans. Cloud serpents are mercurial and wild by nature, and their reaction to the invasion of the Titans and the rise of monsters like Galakrond was simply to flee. Only one of them, the ancient matriarch of the race named Yu'long, the Jade Serpent, worked alongside any of the Titans, and that was an equal partnership rather than becoming subordinate to the Titans.

The cloud serpents mostly dwelled in the steep mountains of Pandaria for the rest of history, where they occupied the role of the continent's apex predators with their graceful flight and shocking speed. Most who lived in Pandaria outright considered the cloud serpents to be monsters, wild and unpredictable forces of nature. But, when the Zandalari Empire invaded Pandaria after the fall of the Mogu Empire, a young pandaren woman forged an alliance with the cloud serpents: only the cloud serpents could fight the Zandalari's flying dinosaurs and make the contest for Pandaria an even one. It took a long time to gain the trust of the cloud serpents, but their intervention was decisive and saved Pandaria from conquest by the Zandalari.

Ever since, the Order of the Cloud Serpent has trained bold and patient heroes to forge similar bonds with cloud serpents while protecting their nesting grounds. Any pandaren hero character in WoW worth their salt has a cloud serpent mount, and they've cropped up in a number of remarkably touching quest lines.



Most hydras aren't as big as the one in this art, but if you've ever played a fantasy game you know what a hydra is. Hydras seem to have a connection to the Void: they have been found on multiple planets across the cosmos of Warcraft, and a few are stated to be favored pets of the Old Gods. In fact, they may very well have been directly created by the Old Gods like the rest of their servitors, and some have grown powerful enough to be worshiped by tribal races as terrible avatars of destruction and hunger.

Rather than growing new heads when one is chopped off, however, lore in Warcraft asserts that a mortally wounded hydra can instead split into two or three smaller hydras, dividing the surviving heads among them into new hydras that will grow replacement heads and return to the size of their parent. It's probably for the best that this behavior has never actually been seen in WoW.



Krakens are enormous sea monsters that seem to be partially elemental in nature, primarily answering to Neptulon the Tidehunter, the Elemental Lord of Water. Their origins are unclear, krakens were long supposed to have been minions of the Old Gods and native to the Abyssal Maw, Elemental Plane of Water, but troll legend asserts that the krakens were on Azeroth long before the Old Gods arrived. Krakens mostly seem to be neutral in affairs of Azeroth, and have only been encountered in affairs of the surface world under the command of powerful magic like that of the naga, the Tidesages of Kul Tiras, and Garrosh Hellscream following his empowerment by the Old Gods. Almost every time a kraken has been seen on the surface, a great many people have died.

Interestingly, the one peaceful kraken known to Azeroth is worshiped by the tuskarr of Northrend as a goddess of wisdom. Oacha'noa is briefly encountered by player characters in World of Warcraft, and featured in an official short story in Warcraft's compilation of in-setting fairy tales and folklore. Her known hostility to the Drakkari Empire of Northrend, and her appearance in the short story, suggests that Oacha'noa may be an aquatic Wild God, or some other great nature spirit that merely chooses to adopt the form of a kraken when interacting with mortals.

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Rhonne
Feb 13, 2012

Cythereal posted:

I'm sorry, any Blizzard developers reading this, but I just cannot take any of this seriously. It's murlocs. The ship sailed on them ever being a threatening foe.

To be fair, when these maps were first made, the murlocs were still brand new to the series and hadn't quite become the lovable jokes they are today. They also had the backing of a powerful sea witch empowering them.

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