Never mind the fact that he managed to reanimate Invincible his pet horse, in Season of Discovery Sage Truthbearer/Sir Gregory Edmunson, or in TFT where he managed to use some of his remaining power to reanimate Sapphiron; the fact that he didn't raise Uther raises a few questions.

Was Uther simply too in tune with the Light. Did Arthas need to be the new Lich King to even hope to draw the most powerful of Azeroth's champions to Icecrown Citadel? Was Uther too high of a level for Arthas to reanimate? Could Arthas only have managed to do so much at such a low level during the events of RoC?

I ask based on this recent short I stumbled upon. ~ https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LoLs-cEefNY

Constructive criticism and personal theories posted by the reader are beneficial for the next reader.

I think Liadrin is going to pull a Gandalf where it looks as though she dies fighting Kithix and they fall together into the abyss. Everyone mourns, Arator is at the forefront of the mourning even though Salandria is literally her daughter. But then! Something is up with the Dawnwell. We all rush to investigate, and Liadrin rises up through it. She fell down through into the World Core, and confirms Orweyna’s vision that things are bad and we need to get down there, leading us to Patch 12.2.

Metzen said on stage in the blizzcon 2024 announcement of the worldsoul saga, about Midnight..... "You will be going to the old world, to the fabled lands of Quel'thalas. There, the forces of the Void have invaded Azeroth intent on snuffing out the Light of the Sunwell and plunging the world into darkness and fear. You will not only help reunify the scattered Elven tribes of Azeroth, but you will make your stand with the forces of the Light and banish the shadow forever. Of course, blizzcon, it is Azeroth; things may not go to plan. Things may just spiral wildly out of control, leading us to......." where upon he skips ahead to the third expansion. But for this topic I want to stop right there. Of the things that Metzen said would happen only in Midnight.....the last two things have not happened yet. Namely, we have never made our stand with the forces of Light to banish the shadow forever. So the patch 12.2 teased in the eclipse cinematic must involve somewhere in the raid us meeting forces of the Light who we get to stand with and banish the shadow forever? And then lastly, he lists "after" banishing the shadow forever...that things may not go as we planned and spiral out of control. So I am asking what twist, what unexpected event, what strange or unpredictable or shocking thing can occur which still includes us standing with forces of Light to banish the shadow forever 'and' also not going to plan and being shocking?

I'll go first, if that helps. I've already noticed and said that the image of the fireball thing does not match the image of the translucent golden yellow stellar constellation with yellow magic glow and extra yellow runed rings in the logo for the expansion after Midnight. And when the Xal'atath eclipse cinematic played.....it now seems strange to me that both the hologram doorbell "and" Xal'atath were seemingly written as if they were avoiding ever saying the name Azeroth. The doorbell hologram says "will never abandon what lies within" ....which does not mention Azeroth, and Xal'atath says "There you are....." which does not mention Azeroth. To be clear, I'm not saying that either the doorbell hologram nor Xal'atath knows the twist.....but rather that maybe the writers are trying to be cheeky and obscure with the words they chose? What if..........the fiery red thing we see inside that chamber is actually An'she and An'she was a child of Azeroth and Azeroth herself as a Worldsoul was maybe secretly switched out for An'she long ago (for now I'll say maybe they hid Azeroth as a Worldsoul inside the moon of the Azeroth planet or something) and so the automated doorbell hologram doesn't know that it was switched out it just does what it was programmed and guards the door. And Xal'atath doesn't know that what she refers to as "there you are" is An'she not Azeroth.....so maybe she spends the raid breaking open the rings around the fiery red being in the ring that we see. So perhaps she only realizes her error when the ring gets shut down and An'she reveals himself to us and grants us some Light powers to zap Xal'atath and permanently end her existence and banish all Void from ever threatening the planet ever again? That would fit the criteria of Metzen saying we would join with forces of the Light to banish the shadow forever. Then maybe Azeroth the Worldsoul comes back out of hiding and drops down into the Worldcore chamber to congratulate us on our seeming victory......but when she gets there, slam, the rings turn back on and trap her in Yellow magic and we discover either Iridikron or Odyn has trapped her there because both of them have been associated with yellow magic and neither one of them works with Titans anymore? Iridikron hates mortals and wants to eat them all; and Odyn doesn't believe that mortals deserve to become the pre-eminent lifeforms on the planet to replace all titanforged constructs. Either way, one of them has a base under Storm Peaks and the other supposedly returned to a base on the surface of Storm Peaks in BFA; meaning whatever the thundering judgement that zapped blue laser beams toward Storm Peaks was aiming at......it was one or the other; since they are threatening the Azeroth Worldsoul. Either one of those options would count as things not going to plan and spiraling out of control.

So I was going through the story today, and was musing about the name “Garek Bandarion”, and where I had heard it before.
Besides Garek being similar to Garen from League of Legends, it also hit me: “Beric Dondarrion”.

It’s almost an anagram of the same name. Both serve as warriors after death and both serve an undead Queen. - well, I’m unsure if Beric survives resurrecting Lady Stoneheart. I recall that he did not come back after that. Even so.
They’re too similar both in name and story that it can‘t be a coincidence.

What do y’all think?

Do all monk teachings come from Pandaria originally? Is it correct to assume that before Mists of Pandaria there were no monks outside of the pandaren on Pandaria? The pandaren taught other races upon the discovery of Pandaria and from there the teachings spread all across Azeroth to all the races?

Many blizzard interviews confirms that WoW Forever is a time bubble set in the year or years of vanilla time and it will stay there as the time doesn't progress but the world does so what that mean is the new content are from unexplored known or maybe some unknown location, so maybe things like Kul'Tiras and Zandalar could be future content in the Vanilla timeline or even Northrend or Outland from different portal but things like Panderia or the dragon isles will stay unexplored as we discoverd them only in that expansion time.

But the story of retail will be part of forever as we won't kill Zul'jin if we explored Zul'aman because he die in TBC and the same for Fandral or any other character that die later.

This could give them some limitations in the writing but it also allows them to discover other parts of Azeroth and focus on the smaller grounded stories.

In the other hand the idea of alternative timeline is intriguing, many expansion sacrifices the lore for gameplay and bombastic expansions that hype the players like the best example here is TBC where they turn almost every known named character to a raid boss and throw away many cool enemies factions like the Amani trolls or the felt orcs who could easily have their own cool story lines, so alternative universe could rebuild everything from the start and make very bad lore concepts like WoD or SL who both created bad mark on the lore especially SL.

But I also understand that creating two parallel stories of the same world can create it own problems as people will split and some think retail lore is the canon and others will think the forever one is the canon and it could create more problems over solution to the lore.

So in your opinion, should forever stick to the time bubble concept or it should take the risk and create alternative universe as these already exist in the lore anyway?

We all know how Gul'dan was one of the most evil characters in all Warcraft lore. Just for the sake of power he doomed Draenor, and turned the orcs into demon pawns.

And his betrayal costed the Horde the victory during the Second War. But ironically, Gul'dan's betrayal saved Azeroth's fate.

And I'm also referring to how Main Universe Gul'dan betrayed even the Legion (leading to his death in the Tomb of Sargeras). Imagine if he stayed loyal: we would have got the same invasion we got during Legion, but in the mid of the Second War. The divided and weakened Alliance and Horde wouldn't have stood a chance facing something like that.

And what do you think would have happened if Gul'dan stayed loyal? We could also discuss the "what if Gul'dan stayed loyal to Doomhammer and the Horde won the Second War".

I never played wow and all my knowledge comes from wc1-2-3 so I actually dont know if the lore divide with never opening the dark portal is just "hey see we are diverging the timeline a little" move or "the time traveller moves a chair" kind of big lore change?

Had a YouTube video recommend to read:

War of the ancients trilogy
Day of the dragon
Lord of the clans
The last guardian

Are these valid and is there anything else to read that covers the lore leading up to WoW Forever? I do plan on playing the warcraft games as well.

Mueh'zala elevated Bwonsamdi into his station as a Loa, but this begs the question: was Mueh'zala himself also originally a mortal troll who ascended?

Likewise, for Zanza the Restless.

They're the only 3 that are visually humanoid trolls, unlike the others.

And yeah, we could assume that Loa could potentially choose any form, so they appear as mortal-like visually, but I strongly suspect that Bwonsamdi still remaining clearly troll-like post-apotheosis is a hint at Loa origins, or at least their preferred forms.

The majority of the Loa are Wild Gods and appear as animalistic which makes sense for that group. Hakkar as well (From my research, he IS classified as a Wild God, despite his proclivity for blood and sacrifice, lol?).

And then you get kinda humanoid-looking Loa like Kevo ya Siti and Lukou, though they don't appear as trolls.

so when Arthas killed her back in W3 he turned her into a banshee which is an ectoplasmic ghost and not a zombie. she’s available for the rest of that mission as a non hero unique unit. she’s not seen again until the frozen thrones undead campaign where she is a hero unite called a dark ranger where without explanation who has went from a floating ghost to having a corporal body.

she never stops being classified as a banshee but she still went from being a ghost to a zombie. (also when I say zombie I just mean any undead that has a physical body as opposed to an ectoplasmic ghost entity) she clearly has a physical body and isn’t a spectral entity anymore. in frozen throne she Talks to other Banshees that look like they always do (ghosts) and in wow we can encounter Banshees that are the same ghosts from W3 so it’s not like they retconned what Banshees are.

is their Any official in universe explanation of her change or is it the type of thing we are not supposed to think about?

So in retail WOW, is Garek from the new Warcraft III campaign forgotten ?

Listen I am excited for new lore and I love the story beats of being an undead paladin. However I am wondering how they will account or add in the new story bits.

Does anyone have cool Shaman facts, obscure lore, or interesting headcanons? I'd like to hear them!

Could be about the different cultural variations of Shamanism, their practices and communing with the elements, little touches on their totems - Things like that!

We know Warcraft has Gnolls, some of the early Human and Forsaken quests/missions involve fighting Gnolls. I'm not really sure on the lore regarding Gnolls in Azeroth. What I do know is that in quite a few settings like Warcraft have Gnolls be a result of demonic corruption of Spotted Hyenas (also known as "Laughing Hyenas"). What's funny is that we can actually use Spotted Hyena as a foundation or template of Gnoll society. Before we go further I feel the need to mention the lack of noticeable female models for the Gnolls; yes, this is important for later.

Okay, first: Spotted Hyenas are aggressively matriarchal; how so? The lowest-ranked female is ranked higher than the highest-ranked male; take a moment to really think about that for a bit.

Second: female Spotted Hyenas have an anatomical feature that made early African peoples have lore about how these hyenas shift genders whenever they want (I would use the proper term here, but I'm worried about my choice of terminology getting me in trouble with the mods, so I won't use it here and just leave it to your own independent research).

Third: Research on teaching learned behavior that involved Spotted Hyenas actually showed they are able to teach learned behavior to other members of the group better than any other creature, including apes, they scored better on teaching learned behavior than several apes used those same studies.

Four: Spotted Hyenas have jaws able to literally crush bones, and they regularly make them part of their diet. Of the 4 living Hyena species, 3 are in the Bonecrusher group, and Spotted Hyenas are in that grouping, and they are the largest living hyenas.

There's more I could say, but I'll leave it here.

As far as I know currently, Alliance and Horde share the same exact campaign story throughout all the leveling zones in Midnight. At which expansion does this unification of storytelling occur? I decided that I want to do every quest each expansion has to offer, starting with TBC and realized that I would need to create both an Alliance and Horde character to experience both sides but didn't know which expansion the split story telling happens.

Edit: Shadowlands!

I really think Kael was wasted not just because of his own character, but he got connection with many major figures, it could create a lot of interesting stories among the Horde/Alliance and Nightelves/blood elves.

As much as I hate how he was done in BC, I think the best way wasn't to totally toss away that plot. It could be used for good development with some changes. Like he was under some mind control in BC but he still tried to play double agent and caused some harm to the legion. When he was revived back, he still deeply regret for his doing and tried to make it up secretly. So he spent time and effort to help his people secretly(much like a Happy Prince plot). It could also give other blood elf characters good plot about realize the truth-feel sorry for their prince-change their view. At the same time characters like Sylvanas and Tyrande could also get things to do.

So one of the comments on Wrath remix Blizzard has made is that it's a chance to revisit Northrend for its Swansong. The teaser we have also appears to be a Titan Mech getting ready to blast Northrend.

If these hints are true, and the Northrend we get is not a Midnight Style 'update' but rather a Cata style 'We blew it up', how do you feel about that?

What are your thoughts on this council made to rule Ironforge and the three main Dwarven clans in the Alliance, started in Cataclysm?

Do you think that it was and/or has led to interesting stories and writing for the Dwarves or not?

If you wanted, how and what you have changed about it, or replaced it?

While I do welcome the Dark Iron Dwarves becoming members of the Alliance, and the Wildhammers officially rejoining the Alliance, and some measure of reconciliation between the three clans, I have never been a fan of the council or how it was brought with Varian deciding for Dwarves instead of them choosing that solution or another one.

I strongly believe that the Wildhammer should have never accepted to return to and rejoin the kingdom of Ironforge, with their culture and lifestyle being too different by now from their subterrean-living cousins, and them having been independent for so long. And I see more the Wildhammer Dwarves as a coalition or federation of clans with a common culture, who aren't a kingdom and with their clans have more autonomy than in their cousins' political systems. And of course Dagran has zero claim of kingship over them.

The Dark Irons and them serving as the Alliance's token evil teammate, and them being distrusted and disliked by both their cousins and other Alliance races and members due to their history and culture and long hostility with others, and them joining the Alliance out of pragmatism and necessity without liking its ideals and the other members, and their different, darker methods, at least for a while, could have been explored much more and deeper.

I would have also written Moira and Muradin to have had a conflict or near-conflict after Magni's petrification and Moira's takeover and despotic rule over Ironforge with the Dark Irons being challenged by Muradin's return from Northrend and at least a large portion of Ironforge army and other Bronzebeards rallying behind him against Moira's authoritarian rule and association with the Dark Irons, many doing it because they are more loyal to Muradin after having served under him in the military before and during the Second War, and many using the claim that Moira is under the Dark Iron's thrall or spell; with the Gnomes and Stormwind and other members of the Alliance backing Muradin.

A compromise would eventually have been found, but decided either by the Dwarves themselves, or during an Alliance summit, with the Thorium Brotherhood also getting representation during the talks, and Moira and her supporters being forced to make major concessions to them given their hatred of and resistance to House Thaurissan, with them being given crucial roles and power within Dark Iron society, perhaps even with a charter similar to the English Magna Carta to limit the empress/emperor's powers over Shadowforge and create a senate like in Ironforge.

In Vanilla humans got an overarching 'Enemy Within' arc starting from local troubles with Defias leading to uncovering of Missing Diplomat conspiracy and resolving in Onyxia raid.

I imagine the other races were supposed to have a similar treatment, but the developers simply didn't have enough time to complete them. We can see hints at them with nigh elves (corruption spreading from Teldrassil > conspiracy of Fandral > planned Emerald dream raid), orcs (Shadow Council), dwarves (Dark Iron infilatration > BRD), taurens (whatever Magatha is cooking with Arikara).

What do you think each story would be if they got the same treatment as humans?

an acolyte says only places with powerful ley-energies. the Sunwell was one – were there others? if so, theoretically where or what were they?

i want to start here and i can’t figure out how to order this.. should i start elsewhere? my main in WoW is a Night Elf so i suppose something else could work but someone told me start there

So essentially, we’d have the actual Alliance-Horde war be the focus of the first expansion called Battle for Azeroth, then we have Azshara and the Naga be the focus of their own expansion that’s a direct sequel to BFA (maybe called Rise of Azshara or something similar), and finally, N’Zoth and possibly the other two Old Gods (since I’m pretty sure C’Thun and Yogg-Saron weren’t confirmed to be dead until Midnight despite having been defeated due to the very fact they are Old Gods?) being the front and centre of a Black Empire/Old God themed expansion. Thoughts?

I've just replayed Warcraft 3, and this question popped into my head.

How do Thrall and Cairne manage to speak to each other when Thrall arrives in Kalimdor? They have never seen each other's races before and lived on different continents. Thrall speaks orcish, and Cairne speaks taur-ahe. How do they even communicate?

I know it's done for the sake of gameplay, but is there a lore explanation for this?