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I know enough about Blizzard writing to know this is going to get tremendously stupid, also those premises earlier could probably be interesting if they were handled by people who could write. Also, how are you going to handle the stupid poo poo in WoW that happens after all this? We still need to see it after all.
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May 9, 2022 01:47
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SIGSEGV posted:Also, how are you going to handle the stupid poo poo in WoW that happens after all this? We still need to see it after all. I may be depressed and consumed with regret and self-loathing, but I'm not that depressed and consumed with regret and self-loathing. Was LPing Star Trek Online not punishment enough for my sins? Cythereal fucked around with this message at 02:03 on May 9, 2022 |
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May 9, 2022 01:53
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Oh, I don't mean actually LPing it, I mean just writing up the nonsense so we can nods thoughtfully at it and wonder at the fact that it somehow got infinitely stupider than before.
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May 9, 2022 02:58
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SIGSEGV posted:Oh, I don't mean actually LPing it, I mean just writing up the nonsense so we can nods thoughtfully at it and wonder at the fact that it somehow got infinitely stupider than before. Let Cyth introduce enough concepts and I'll help out along the way.
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May 9, 2022 02:59
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Excellent, I'll help by losing track of how many things are called fell[whatever] within five seconds.
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May 9, 2022 03:03
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Siegkrow posted:Let Cyth introduce enough concepts and I'll help out along the way. This. As I said, I'll probably post the next update and attendant lore update in another day or two, and I'll be explicitly discussing some WoW-era lore. There's a lot of games to get through and a lot of stuff to talk about, so please be patient y'all. 
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May 9, 2022 03:05
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SIGSEGV posted:Excellent, I'll help by losing track of how many things are called fell[whatever] within five seconds. A good rule of thumb: If it got touched by a demon, it probably has fel in the name.
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May 9, 2022 03:05
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Azzur posted:I'm here, giving Cythereal my full support and hoping to see some magic happen! From what I remember, you did have all the missions completed. What else was there to keep it from being considered finished? Anyway, that first lore update was already absolutely brain-melting. This should be entertaining. 
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May 9, 2022 03:09
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Cythereal posted:The orc not visibly carrying an axe is a peon, the Horde builder unit throughout the entire series. The main lot in life for peons throughout Warcraft is to be abused for comedy, and in 2020 the Horde's newest (at the time of writing) race proved their worth and joined the Horde in part by defeating an attempt by peons to unionize by throwing them a pizza party and giving them meaningless but impressive-sounding titles with no increase in pay or change in working conditions. I'm here and excited to learn things about Warcraft lore (played about six hours of free trial back in the day), something something ground floor of an epic thread. But. A literal pizza party? With pizza? Not even like, "p'i'za" or some other stupid sound-alike?
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May 9, 2022 04:30
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Let's play "What are people going to find the absolutely worst and most repulsive things about Warcraft Lore" I am putting it all on DRAGON LORE. I won't say anything else until you get there. Oh wait they just announced a DRAGON EXPANSION. I wonder how they are gonna hide all this dirty laundry? Cythereal, Thanks for doing this.
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May 9, 2022 05:22
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Dalris Othaine posted:I'm here and excited to learn things about Warcraft lore (played about six hours of free trial back in the day), something something ground floor of an epic thread. But. No, it is actually a feast, but that sounds less funny than a pizza party.
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May 9, 2022 05:58
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Feasting is very important to the tribal unit. I read that in a book.
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May 9, 2022 09:38
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Cythereal posted:Night Elves. That is some pretty cool artwork, I can't wait to hear how this standard fantasy-looking stuff is gonna actually have all kinds of Uchikoshi mindfuck poo poo involved
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May 9, 2022 09:57
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drat it, missed ground floor on this. Oh well. Good luck with that journey, you'll need it! But yes, thank for cheat codes - Don't think I'd ever have beaten 2 without them... And boy oh boy, those reactions were exactly what I thought was going to happen - You have barely even scratched the paint yet for them to see! Good seeing Azzur back too, loved your LPs - Good luck with the school and IRL in general!
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May 9, 2022 10:00
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SIGSEGV posted:Excellent, I'll help by losing track of how many things are called fell[whatever] within five seconds. (not sure how much corruption is going on in WoW lore, but given any other Blizzard franchise I'm more familiar with, I'd go with a lot).
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May 9, 2022 10:46
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Bifauxnen posted:That is some pretty cool artwork, I can't wait to hear how this standard fantasy-looking stuff is gonna actually have all kinds of Uchikoshi mindfuck poo poo involved Nothing in any Blizzard franchise is as inspired as an Uchikoshi plot.
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May 9, 2022 10:49
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That Italian Guy posted:(not sure how much corruption is going on in WoW lore, but given any other Blizzard franchise I'm more familiar with, I'd go with a lot). I actually think there's comparatively little corruption in StarCraft or Diablo, if you take WoW as the standard.
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May 9, 2022 10:59
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Torrannor posted:I actually think there's comparatively little corruption in StarCraft or Diablo, if you take WoW as the standard. Are you counting Starcraft 2 in that? But yeah Warcraft was definitely the poster child for Blizzard's big corruption thing. Even in Warcraft 3 while the story was still broadly popular, there was a lot of corruption all over the place.
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May 9, 2022 11:00
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Torrannor posted:I actually think there's comparatively little corruption in StarCraft or Diablo, if you take WoW as the standard.
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May 9, 2022 11:09
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I still remember the Warcraft 2 cheat codes even though I haven’t played in over 25 years. That’s how much I loved the game. Using them wasn’t always necessary for me, but it was fun. The main thing I will always remember Warcraft 2 for is the funny annoyed lines you get from clicking on units too many times. “Join the army, they said…” “Stop poking me!” “We’re not brainless anymore!” I can’t remember if Warcraft 1 had such lines, I didn’t play it nearly as much. If anyone does know and wants to post their favorites, they’d have my full support.
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May 9, 2022 11:21
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Per the first post. We already know that Humans are corrupted constructs. So one of the baseline races from Warcraft 1 starts out pre-corrupted. Starcraft 2 has nothing on this franchise.
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May 9, 2022 11:29
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Natural 20 posted:Per the first post. We already know that Humans are corrupted constructs. Blizzard literally only knows one story.
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May 9, 2022 11:31
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Hey now that's not fair; Blizzard Lost Vikings?
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May 9, 2022 11:44
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Overwatch? I have zero knowledge of Overwatch lore, but I haven't seen any hints of corruption in there through the snippets I picked up due to cultural osmosis.
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May 9, 2022 11:45
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Torrannor posted:Overwatch? I have zero knowledge of Overwatch lore, but I haven't seen any hints of corruption in there through the snippets I picked up due to cultural osmosis. quote:Widowmaker is the perfect assassin: a patient, ruthlessly efficient killer who shows neither emotion nor remorse. https://playoverwatch.com/en-gb/heroes/widowmaker/
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May 9, 2022 11:48
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I'm glad Blizzard finally came up with a character that's a slender female sniper that got corrupted to evil which turned her skin a weird colour Also the whole backstory of the Omnics is that they all got corrupted into waging a war against humanity (but they got better). I think some sort of space satan was implied to be involved but it's been a good few years since I paid any attention to its lore.
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May 9, 2022 12:01
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Okay, gently caress it, time to throw another torch in. I promise that future updates won't happen this quickly, but I was really bored this weekend.
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May 9, 2022 12:26
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Human 1: Non-Canon I need to explain a few things ahead of this post, so please bear with me. The human campaign of Warcraft 1 is mostly not canon, though a few specific events are. These events, which I'll call attention to when they happen, occurred despite the orcs winning the war. The human PC of Warcraft 1 is also non-canon, and for that matter has never been established as a discrete character at all. The role of human leadership in Warcraft 1 is split in the story between King Llane Wrynn, and a knight commander named Anduin Lothar. As we'll eventually see, however, the PC in the human campaign is very explicitly not either one of these characters. Faced with the fact that this campaign is non-canon in general, and that the player character has no name or identity, I've elected to indulge myself with a more narrative approach to playing out the human campaign of WC1. And since Stormwind as a fictional culture, history, and society is the literary equivalent of a dollop of miracle whip smeared across a slice of uncolored starch that cannot legally be advertised as bread in some countries, I've felt the need to further invent a few things for the viewpoint human character I've created. I'm even going to contradict one thing the game does establish about the player character. If you don't care for this approach, feel free to skip the human updates for the most part. After Warcraft 1, Blizzard will switch to a much more tightly interwoven narrative structure for the series with far less room for interpretation.   It's over. It's finally over. Would that I could let that be so. Who are you?! How did you get in here?! My name is Validormi, and I am a dragon of the Bronze Dragonflight. That doesn't mean anything to me. No, I don't suppose it does. Isidora Turan. Queen of Stormwind. Vanquisher of the Horde. None of this, unfortunately, should have come to pass. Explain. You were meant to die six years ago in Boralus after making several poorly chosen remarks to a pair of Kul Tiran marines while heavily inebriated. Your career should have met a premature end from a broken bottle of mead to the neck. Instead an out of control carriage struck you in the street and put you in the hospital for a month. Far more subtle than usual for Murozond's agents, credit where it's due. ...I think I understand less now than I did before you showed up. The Horde was meant to win this war. Your survival, and victory here six years later, has upset a great many affairs. If you're an ally of the orcs, then you have made a very poor choice of castle balconies to appear on. My allegiance lies with my Aspect and Azeroth herself, not with any mortal power. This is merely a courtesy to assure you that rectifying this timeline is nothing personal. Rectifying the timeline? Rectifying what? What possible things have I somehow broken by saving my people? Hmmm. Perhaps we should start by going over your entrance to this war. Your father was the last duke of Northern Redridge, the region better known as the Burning Steppes. King Baraden offered a duchy to any lord who could reestablish a foothold in the region, and your grandfather took up that challenge. Under his leadership, and your father's, the tentative colony began to prosper. Embershire, yes. Then the orcs appeared, erased that little dream from history, and left me the last of House Turan. Between your family's closeness with House Wrynn and your military experience on the Steppes, King Llane offered you a high command. Orcs were beginning to make incursions into the heartlands. I remember. Please don't throw me off the balcony, your majesty. At least not before I finish this account. Then get on with it. Estimated position.  Human 1 is actually almost identical to Orc 1. We have exactly the same objectives, resources, and hostiles on the map. All human units and structures so far are identical to their orc counterparts, differences between the factions won't appear for some time yet. We have a town hall, a farm, a peasant (worker), and three footmen (melee units).  Like orc peons, human peasants are the Alliance's worker unit throughout the series. Unlike peons, they are generally not subjected to abuse for laughs. At most they're involved in occasional Monty Python references.  Footmen are likewise the iconic Alliance infantry unit of the series, and in this game are completely identical to orc grunts.  This whole 'battle' was nothing. Without any gold mines in sight, I sent the squad out to survey the region. You didn't have maps of the area? Ask me about the Quartermaster Corps some time. Better yet, don't. The orc patrols are a lot more thinly scattered than the humans were in Orc 1, at least where I went exploring.  ...It took your soldiers that long to find a gold mine thirty feet from the town hall. I was not pleased with the quality of our scouts, no. Couldn't you have just... gotten up and looked out a window? I was looking at a map table and scouting reports, I only knew what was out there if the scouts called it in. Oh. Right. The broken leg. The healers kept me from dying in the street from that carriage you mentioned. But yes, now that you've so kindly mentioned it, I do in fact need this cane to walk anywhere without undue pain, when I'm not beating uninvited guests around the head with it. So yes, I stay in my center of operations and lead from behind a desk and set of charts. Alas, Robert. What did him dying here change? That isn't what we agreed to discuss. As in Orc 1, our starting mine doesn't have enough gold to complete the mission so I needed to find another. With that done, this mission is basically over.  Orc architecture changed dramatically from WC1 to WC2, but the design of the humans has stayed remarkably consistent.   I will never understand why gold mines do that. Any fancy dragon explanations? The world is just funny like that, I'm afraid. A bit of mining the new site later, and we're done.  So tell me, dragon, what's so wrong with this? You earned some genuine trust from King Llane and the rest of Stormwind's army. By the end of this little skirmish, you weren't just that strange noblewoman from the Steppes. You'd earned some legitimacy, however slight, with Stormwind's leadership. And what, was Llane meant to live through this war? Not at all. What was not intended was for him to have a successor.
Cythereal fucked around with this message at 14:45 on May 15, 2022 |
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May 9, 2022 12:28
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All Time Cops are Bastards In case you have no idea what was happening in the previous post, this... may not actually clear anything up for you, but I'll try. Shortly before his retirement, Chris Metzen - more or less the father of Blizzard Entertainment and still held in high regard for his visible passion for their games and for not currently being known as a sexual predator - declared that one of his greatest regrets with writing Warcraft was making dragons sentient beings instead of just big lizards. While he was probably referring to a gameplay mechanic in Warcraft 2 being (TW: sexual violence) that one side builds rape factories where sex slaves are continually forced to produce children who are mind-wiped, magically enslaved, and rapidly artificially aged to be hurled into battle, Metzen also later used dragons to introduce time travel to the Warcraft setting with World of Warcraft. If any of this sounds familiar to those only casually acquainted with Warcraft, it's because the next WoW expansion is centered on the dragons in one of many moves in the last few years that could be interpreted as a giant middle finger to Chris Metzen. Far better writers than Blizzard have struggled with writing time travel in their stories, and much like J. K. Rowling's approach to writing time travel, even their limited way of using it at first probably would have been fine if just left as a brief plot device or gag (in this case, letting players in future games experience events of past games). Inevitably, players crying out 'Well if time travel exists then why don't good time travelers prevent horrible tragedies?' Blizzard, not being up to tangling this kind of extremely thorny metaphysical question, elected instead to institute an organization of time cops whose sole job is to enforce the status quo whether it makes sense or not and put them front and center in some of the strangest storylines in Warcraft. Folks, meet the Bronze Dragonflight.  Five probably irrelevant characters named Alexstrasza, Ysera, Nozdormu, Malygos, and Neltharion face one of the lead candidates for the final boss of WoW’s upcoming expansion. Back when the cosmic space robots arrived on Azeroth and were ordering the planet, they noticed a bunch of big, smart, magically powerful winged lizards flying around. Quite a lot of them, in fact. Primordial Azeroth seems to have been something on the order of the ancient ecosystem of the modern American Godzilla movies, and so wizard van that I’m actually kind of surprised that Blizzard’s never set a game or WoW expansion here/then. Five of these dragons chose, or were chosen (it's been said both ways), to become lieutenants of the cosmic space robots. Each of these dragons were empowered by one particular space robot with a portion of their power, and collectively they were called the Aspects. The Aspects' charge was, aside from protecting Azeroth in general, to prevent a specific prophesied event called the Hour of Twilight. Let's acknowledge that the Hour of Twilight ended up being possible mostly because of the Aspects and move discreetly along. (this is all from vanilla World of Warcraft)  Nozdormu the Timeless, father and lord of the Bronze Dragonflight One of these five was Norzdormu, and he was given power over time itself. In the moment of his empowering, he foresaw that one day he would go insane, become a time terrorist trying to shatter linear time, and ultimately be killed by five player characters empowered by his own time cop self in a desolate wasteland at the end of time. (Murozond is from Cataclysm)  Murozond, Nozdormu's evil future self who his good past self would help some player characters kill as part of a storyline that was actually kind of cool in a FF14-style insane anime way but most people disregard because it was part of a bigger story that was really loving weird and generally despised. The other notable bronze dragon is Chronormu, better known to players as Chromie, but not for reasons that merit substantial discussion in this post. I’ll discuss her in detail later when I explore Warcraft’s relationship with LGBT issues. Aside from that, the bronze dragons' main purpose in Warcraft has been to allow player characters in WoW to revisit moments from the game's backstory, and to assert authorial fiat about events. We know that there's a bunch of stable alternate timelines that they let exist, but certain events prompt them to fix it (mostly caused by their own future selves under Murozond's command). In fact, one of these has already been directly relevant to Warcraft 1: the time terrorists tried to sabotage the opening of the Dark Portal, kill a fellow named Medivh who we'll talk about in due time, and prevent the Horde from reaching Azeroth. Alliance players were forced to go along with this, too, because the game's writers, using the Bronze Flight as their mouthpiece, asserted that had the Horde never come to Azeroth, the kingdoms of the Alliance would have turned on one another in civil war without an external enemy to unite against and thereby doom the world (The Burning Crusade). This detail, written into the setting back in 2007, was the first and one of the most explicit condemnations of peace as weakness that destroys the world by Warcraft writers. Eternal, genocidal hellwar, according to Blizzard's writing of the setting, actually makes both sides stronger and gives them the strength to save the world. If this sounds more than a little fascist, well. Yes, this is a classic element of fascist philosophy, that civilizations are defined by their wars and struggles, which make them stronger. Peace makes you weak and soft. Peace would destroy the world. Take that thought with you. Warcraft as a setting nakedly espouses fascist philosophy and dogma as a significant element of the setting and writing themes. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 17:55 on May 19, 2022 |
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May 9, 2022 12:28
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Cythereal posted:All Time Cops are Bastards Oh, I can't wait for that one. I'm sure it'll be super enlightened and not loving weird at all.  Cythereal posted:Take that thought with you. Warcraft as a setting nakedly espouses fascist philosophy and dogma as a significant element of the setting and writing themes. Whoof, is that a one-off or something that re-occurs several times?  Also wanted to say I'm enjoying the original writing for the Human campaign so far. 
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May 9, 2022 12:43
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I mean it draws from Warhammer as inspiration, doesn't it?
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May 9, 2022 12:45
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silvergoose posted:I mean it draws from Warhammer as inspiration, doesn't it? The story I always heard was that they made up like 90% of the game before they realized they weren't going to get that Warhammer license, and then rapidly changed the writing and details around the edges to make it their own original IP. But the thing is that even if it draws from Warhammer for inspiration, it'd be drawing on Warhammer Fantasy, which is notably less fashy than Warhammer 40k(even if 40k was originally intended as a satire of that, a lot of later writers seem to have missed that part. ), in general in Fantasy war is always shown as a sad necessity, and outside of the orcs most folks would rather avoid it.
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May 9, 2022 12:54
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Cythereal posted:In fact, one of these has already been directly relevant to Warcraft 1: the time terrorists tried to sabotage the opening of the Dark Portal, kill a fellow named Medivh who we'll talk about in due time, and prevent the Horde from reaching Azeroth. Alliance players were forced to go along with this, too, because the game's writers, using the Bronze Flight as their mouthpiece, asserted that had the Horde never come to Azeroth, the kingdoms of the Alliance would have turned on one another in civil war without an external enemy to unite against and thereby doom the world. Could they really not have just said that the orcs needed to be around so that everyone would discover Kalimdor and be there to fight off the demons in WC3? I always assumed that was the reason. Main thing I remember about the Bronze dragonflight raid series was that they did one around that climactic WC3 battle and got so into it they forgot to put in any time cop elements.
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May 9, 2022 13:02
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Oh hey I just watched this storyline on Loki. Turns out Nozdormu falls in love with his evil self and then they go to the end of time and find Metzen there
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May 9, 2022 13:11
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Rarity posted:Oh hey I just watched this storyline on Loki. Turns out Nozdormu falls in love with his evil self and then they go to the end of time and find Metzen there No you can only get to the End of Time if you travel through a Gate with a group of more than 3.
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May 9, 2022 13:32
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PurpleXVI posted:
Warcraft: Orcs And Humans Manual posted:Our order of ascension is a simple one - only the strongest survive. All matters of politics or dispute are settled in open debate. This can lead to hostilities in many cases, but it is the fastest and simplest way to come to a conclusion on most matters. Each Orc has the right to make heard his arguments, as long as he can back them up with fact - or steel. To gain the upper hand is a sign of strength, and strength is counted highly among the hordes. A decisive victory in battle raises the commander and his warriors to a place of honor and control. This hold is tenuous, however, for the higher one climbs, the farther - and more deadly - the fall. It is something found right from the beginning.
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May 9, 2022 13:38
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PurpleXVI posted:Oh, I can't wait for that one. I'm sure it'll be super enlightened and not loving weird at all. You'd be surprised, actually. It's not what I'd call good about representation, but it's actually better than most big-name franchises about LGBT representation.
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May 9, 2022 13:50
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Oh my, I did not know about this particular bit of Warcraft lore. I can already tell it’s going to be painful on many levels. At least your narrative is making it funny and entertaining to read about thus far.
achtungnight fucked around with this message at 14:15 on May 9, 2022 |
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May 9, 2022 13:53
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Oh cool, a new update already! This'll be fun to see what wacky discordant things come up after the human's first episode!Cythereal posted:While he was probably referring to a gameplay mechanic in Warcraft 2 being (TW: sexual violence) WHAT
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May 9, 2022 13:56
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Folks familiar with Warcraft 2 may recall that the Horde can build 'dragon roosts' which produce dragons for the Horde to use as units, and the 'dragon roost' is a red dragon visibly chained down. Yeah, that's (TW for the sensitive) a fully sentient woman chained to the ground and forced to continually have children whose incubation is magically sped up, then are enslaved and aged up into the usable unit the moment they hatch.
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May 9, 2022 14:02
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