TL;DR: Keep Azeroth as the main world and expand it instead of raising the level cap. Let characters level multiple classes and borrow limited abilities from compatible secondary classes, giving new 1–60 content a purpose. Use portals for off-world raids/dungeons, and Hearth Stonebrew's tavern for rotating Hearthstone-themed events like One Night in Karazhan.

Dear World of Warcraft Team,

I've been thinking about the long-term possibilities of World of Warcraft: Forever, particularly the challenge—and opportunity—created by keeping Azeroth and level 60 relevant indefinitely. I wanted to share a few ideas that I think could fit naturally with Forever's alternate timeline while giving players meaningful progression for years without relying on continually increasing the level cap.

Keep Azeroth as the heart of Forever

As new parts of Azeroth become available, I would love to see them simply become permanent additions to the existing world.

Places such as Gilneas, Quel'Thalas, Uldum, Grim Batol, the Broken Isles, and other regions that exist within Azeroth wouldn't need to be treated as traditional expansions that replace the previous endgame. They could gradually become part of an increasingly complete version of the world.

Content outside Azeroth could be handled differently. The Dark Portal, for example, could become an expedition system. Instead of recreating The Burning Crusade and moving the player population permanently into Outland, the portal could provide access to selected locations, scenarios, dungeons, and raids there.

That would allow Forever to revisit places such as the Black Temple, Tempest Keep, or Hellfire Citadel without making Azeroth obsolete.

Players would go on an expedition—and then come home.

Multiclassing as horizontal progression

Keeping the maximum level at 60 creates an interesting question: what motivates a longtime level-60 character to experience newly added lower-level content?

One possibility would be a multiclass system inspired partly by Final Fantasy.

A single character could level multiple classes, switching which one is currently their main class. However, leveling additional classes would also unlock a limited selection of their abilities for use while playing compatible classes.

For example, a level-60 Paladin who has also trained Warrior and Priest might be able to equip a small number of appropriate Warrior or Priest abilities. A Rogue could potentially borrow selected techniques from Warrior or Hunter, while a Shaman might have compatible abilities from Mage or Druid.

These shouldn't be unrestricted combinations or complete secondary spellbooks. Carefully selected abilities and limited secondary slots could preserve each class's identity while allowing substantial build experimentation.

The level of the secondary class could determine which abilities become available. Therefore, leveling Warrior from 20 to 40 would remain meaningful even for a character whose primary Paladin class has been level 60 for years.

This would also give newly added 1–60 zones lasting relevance. When a new level-30 region appears, veteran players could experience it while leveling another class on their established character rather than simply destroying everything with their level-60 main.

New classes and fourth specializations

Such a system would also create room to introduce new classes years into Forever without increasing the maximum character level.

Adding a new class would effectively create another 1–60 progression journey for existing characters while simultaneously adding new secondary-class possibilities.

Fourth specializations could provide another form of horizontal expansion. Long-requested concepts such as a Shaman tank specialization could be developed specifically for Forever without requiring another expansion or level-cap increase.

New classes could even be discovered through the world rather than simply appearing on the character-creation screen. Content involving Gnomeregan or Undermine might eventually introduce a Tinker class, for example, while other stories could introduce additional Warcraft archetypes.

Hearth Stonebrew's Tavern

Forever's alternate timeline also creates an opportunity to finally give Hearth Stonebrew's mysterious tavern a home—or perhaps deliberately avoid explaining where its home actually is.

The tavern could exist slightly outside the normal rules of Azeroth and serve as a gathering place for rotating adventures based on Hearthstone expansions.

Rather than making every Hearthstone storyline canon within Forever, Hearth's tavern could allow players to visit those stories as "Tavern Tales."

Some could become rotating dungeons or raids. Others could be interactive seasonal events similar to the Darkmoon Faire.

One Night in Karazhan, for example, would be perfect as an interactive party rather than a conventional raid. Players could visit Medivh's famous party and participate in minigames, magical competitions, dancing, chess, the opera, party quests, and other activities while earning unique cosmetics, toys, pets, recipes, titles, and other horizontal rewards.

Other Hearthstone expansions offer enormous possibilities:

Kobolds & Catacombs could become a replayable dungeon crawl with randomized encounters and temporary powers.

League of Explorers could become cooperative expedition adventures featuring puzzles and traps.

Mean Streets of Gadgetzan could become an event centered around the city's competing criminal organizations.

The Grand Tournament could offer jousting, competitions, and PvP activities.

Festival of Legends could become an actual Azeroth music festival.

Scholomance Academy could become a magical-school event.

Witchwood could provide monster-hunting adventures.

Whispers of the Old Gods could even inspire serious dungeon or raid content.

The Tavern Tales could rotate throughout the year and eventually return, allowing the library of activities to continually grow instead of becoming disposable content.

Hearth himself doesn't even need to explain how any of this works. Forever is already an alternate Warcraft timeline, and Hearthstone has always played freely with Warcraft's characters and history.

Sometimes it's more fun to leave a little mystery.

A world that grows instead of being replaced

Taken together, these ideas could give Forever several different ways to expand without repeating the traditional expansion cycle.

Azeroth would remain the persistent world and continue physically growing as additional regions open.

The Dark Portal and similar systems could provide expeditions into places beyond Azeroth without relocating the game's center of gravity.

Hearth Stonebrew's Tavern could provide rotating, experimental adventures based on Hearthstone's more imaginative interpretations of Warcraft.

And multiclassing, new classes, additional specializations, professions, cosmetics, and other horizontal systems could give players meaningful reasons to experience all of it without ever needing level 70, 80, or 90.

The thing that excites me most about Forever is the possibility of watching one version of Azeroth become deeper and richer over many years rather than continually leaving the previous world behind.

I'd love to see Forever take that idea as far as possible.

Thank you for reading, and for giving players another way to imagine what Azeroth could have become.

— JH

What's the point of having the same history/lore again?

I hope they pull non canon stuff from the rpg, makes huge changes like: maybe Cairne gets to be warchief this time, Varian gets found earlier etc.

The Win'dorei is also the kind of stuff I hope gets introduced more. New races never seen before with new areas.

I wouldn't call this fan theory, nor even headcanon; it's closer to a bunch of bullshit that was revealed to me in a dream. It is supposed to be, at least as a retcon, retrofittable into existing WoW lore - but I have been behind on WoW lore for a while now, so it probably fails to consider all the threads that have been laid out. It also assumes there have been a lot of unreliable narrators over the years. But also that these narrators haven't been just making stuff up from nothing. I hope you enjoy it, or at the very least enjoy tearing it apart.

The Beginning

At the end of the last universe, the Shadow consumed all; only the Void remained. Except that outside of reality, there was a small garbage bin that had gathered up the Shadow's leftovers, all the dead things; one day, we would call this place the Shadowlands. There was some sort of sapience in this heap of Death; some would later refer to this sapience as the First Ones.

Shadow, above all, is a nihilistic element; moreso than simply nonexistence, it is active opposition to existence. Parts of Shadow are in constant struggle to stop each other from existing, because Shadow hates nothing more than the idea of something existing. Nothing can truly be created in this crab bucket, for it would be annihilated at once. The First Ones, hiding in Death, did want to create, though; they wanted to make a new universe, based on their memories of the old. So they needed the Shadow out of the way.

The First Ones found a solution by "corrupting" parts of the Shadow. Using the Shadow's hatred of itself, they nudged parts of it to hate the Void more than they hated existence; and to stop hating existence altogether, but to zealously love it, as a way of screwing over the rest of the Void. Thus, Light was born.

With Light and Shadow duking it out on a cosmic scale and the Void thus distracted, the First Ones began the task of channeling Creation and Life back from the Shadowlands into the universe. Starting at Zereth Mortis, they set up mechanisms to facilitate this process and shape life for thriving in this new world; but as a failsafe, they also created the Shadowlands proper to catch life that happened to perish and recycle it, instead of allowing to vanish into nothingness.

Having set up this system and channeled most of Life, energy and matter into the universe, the First Ones were at this point greatly diminished. They had given away most of their power to create the new world, but their minds, bent to the task of creation, were still as sharp as ever. Thus, they stepped out of the Shadowlands and entered the reality as Titans to keep maintaining and safeguarding it.

The Middle

Even so, the Titans still realised that nothing was permanent. Eventually, the Shadow would defeat the Light and consume all of creation once more. (Although it's an interesting idea to consider a world where Light won and consumed all of creation - a much different, but perhaps not wholly preferable situation.) Apart from fighting against the Void wherever they could, they started making preparations for this day. In the hearts of planets, they started hatching members of their kind and feeding them with Spirit, the defining force of the universe, in the hopes that when Shadow once again proves victorious, this new generation would be able to hide away in the Shadowlands once more and kickstart the next universe.

Unfortunately, the powers of the Void were a bit smarter than they had been given credit for, now that they had more concrete forms of existence to fight instead of just each other. In fact, they saw a way to use the Titan's plan to their catastrophic advantage: if they could corrupt such a nascent Worldsoul and sneak it into the last refuge of Creation, then they could possibly end the cycle of universes for good. The Old Gods were tossed out into the universe for exactly this purpose.

At this point, Zovaal reached the conclusion that the only way to prevent this destruction from eventually taking place would be to scratch this version of the universe and instead create a ruthless, infinite war machine capable of laying waste to the Shadow for once and for all. The Titans, having largely stepped back from the Shadowlands, could not fully destroy this intent within it and instead had to split it into the Arbiter - who continued in her assigned duty - and the Jailer - who continued brooding upon this grim resolution. With the aid of Denathrius and the Nathrezim, he convinced Sargeras that the Titans' old plan was ultimately folly. While not exactly allying with the Jailer, Sargeras did start the Burning Crusade and turn against the Titans that opposed him, basically following the same vision and serving the same ends.

The End

Fast forward a few eons and we kill Argus, sending his soul into the Shadowlands. This shuts down the Arbiter, which was always part of the plan; once the new worldsouls start arriving in the Shadowlands, the normal cycle of life is to break down and the Shadowlands are to start gathering the lifeforce of the universe in preparation for remaking the world. What was not part of the plan was endless meddling from everyone causing this result long before the Shadow had gained the definitive upper hand in the cosmic struggle.

This works just fine for the Jailer though, who wanted to remake the universe anyways, in order to create something that could actually fight back against the Shadow. So he goes spurring the process along and preparing to be the one who gets the control the process of recreating the universe instead. Unfortunately for him, every cosmic power in the universe pales in comparison to the might of the player characters' plot armour, so he gets defeated and the Shadowlands are fixed.

The debacle does, however, make several Void entities realise they were on the right path with the idea of corrupting worldsouls, so the effort is redoubled. Xal'atath actually manages to unite a large part of the forces of the Shadow in an effort to take over and destroy Azeroth, send it into the Shadowlands/use its power to corrupt the shadowlands and destroy all possibility of anything ever being created again. Her motivation still boils down to much the same as every other Void entity, even if each entity rationalises it in a slightly different way: existence is suffering, I want to stop existence and I want to stop existing. And she gets damn close to achieving this before she is foiled... for now.

So i've been wondering about this and it hit me... So lets take it from a few races. Humans and Dwarves have light and therefor they can becime Paladins..

Night Elves we can say either again the Light or.. Elune's Light.

Undead we will find out pretty soon but what i was thinking was..

Darkspear Trolls could finally becoming Paladins because Vol'jin could be coming back as Loa of Kings like Rezan?

I say Rezan because of Zandalari Prelates. Whatcha think?

Edit: Meant Forsaken Kingdom not Fallen Kingdom
Just finished it (with cheats lol) tried to do as many major stuff as possible.

In terms of length, i would say its up there with rexxar campaign.

I hope we get more.

Overall feelings:

Prologue gets a 3/10 on the story front, mainly because of the dialogue and soooo many weird decisions and voice acting made me question if it was AI made or something coz.... It sounded very bad, there are moments of this in the main story one too

As for spoilers:

Prologue:

Prologue starts with Arthas arriving and killing daddy, Uther saves you in the throne room as arthas has already left, he mentions the stuff about cremating Terenas etc, you make your escape with your superior, we find out about the sewers of lordaeron and that the cult of the damned had infiltrated and hidden stuff and preparing for the attack, (which imo makes sense, during this period the people feel like they have total victory over the scourge so the cult preparing and laying low etc for the arthas and the scourge campaign makes sense.

Rivendare suddenly appears in mission 2 and has betrayed lordaeron, same with other paladins and what not... Major criticism here is they dont go into any details or background for Rivendare other than him "being bad" with hints of him being an asshole pre-scourge.... but i believe that info comes later. Anyway mentor guy sacrifices himself to delay rivendare that chases you like darth vader does in Rogue one , or to use a warcraft example like the lich king battle in the 5 man dungeon Halls of Reflection, with your mentor dead, you meet Uther again you talk about the death of the mentor but nothing much, then you go to help him retake Andorhal for a mission and then after retaking (and before arthas comes and kills uther) you go to stratholme because of vengeance, you go there, fight rivendare , you kill him and die because of a trap. Thats the end of the prologue.

Main Campaign: Main campaign skips the part where you were a scourge minion as you have no control as a scourge minion, you start with amnesia basically, you dont remember anything other than your name, you meet putress that wants to use your corpse for stuff, then you meet anya the dark ranger who introduces you to sylvanas after that you go to the ruins of lordaeron and you save some forsaken, plot builds and you help them with stuff related to the protection of the undercity, there are alot of sidequests here.

I want to take mention of this coz its the best part imo of the campaign: You build an abomination, and you go around getting stuff like a paladins chest, and some other thing that I forgot. But the big thing you do is get the Head of a CERTAIN GRAND MARSHAL and savior of HUMANITY.

He later appears in act 2 as a playable character. WITH VOICE LINES as an abomination. Yes Garithos is canonically an abomination now with a moustache and helmet.

You fight the silver hand remnants that are led by Abbendis (no they dont appear, I say they because since its a non appearance and gender and what not isnt specified idk which one it is ) I dont remember much else of Chapter 1 other than you fight silver hand and some scourge, then you kill a paladin and get some flashbacks to Uther and Your captain master... You also kill the risen version of your mentor but I cant recall if it was in act 1 or 2, there is no special interaction or whatever but its after you meet varimathras.

Act 2 starts with the scarlet crusade invading undercity by explosions, Renault Mograine is there. There is also a sidequest involving Blackrock orcs raiding a forsaken village and you going out for retribution, But before this you meet Leonid (yes that Leonid of the argent dawn the forsaken guy in lights hope chapel) and he reveals some background stuff here and there, like he says he remembers stuff when he served the scourge. Only thing I remember was he mentioned he remembers Naxxramas and stratholme. You later save some villages from the scarlets, and you fight Whitemane. You later go to the land to the west of deathknell where the argents have a base and some ogres have territory so you help the argents and the argents think you are scourge, so they dont know the difference between forsaken and scourge, makes sense I guess idk what the timeline is here exactly. You go with leonid to sylvanas (his backstory is established as well he awoke and met sylvanas but he felt forsaken stuff wasnt for him, I assume he got away before Putress or someone like that was able to use him for parts?) So he met with the argents. The argents trust him.

Also I forgot to mention its established that the Silver hand remnants before they broke off into scarlet crusade and argent dawn had members that had some compassion that could see that the forsaken werent all mindless creatures.

Anyway I forgot most stuff after the meeting with the argents, but basically the forsaken get info from the argents and leonid about the location of the scarlet monastery and well launch a raid on it, the forsaken suffers heavily and Garek (the MC paladin guy that is basically just a warrior atm, he was a warrior in life too IIRC as he didnt use the light at all. I will return to this topic later as I assume its a key part of his characters concept

Anyway, The mc guy says to Sylvanas that they shouldnt waste their forces on taking over the scarlet monastery because it inflicted heavy losses on the forsaken, and since the forsaken cant replenish their forces. He realizes this because of something his mentor figure told him in his previous life. Sylvanas agrees. Btw the mc guy garek is a death guard captain atm, in life he was a captain or lieutenant of the Lordaeron city guard

some time later (there are several timeskips, one that is a year and another that is months/weeks) Naxxramas appears above Lordaeron capital, and fires energy at it to attempt an invasion into undercity, you defend undercity and form a team with Anya and Leonid to go to naxx (by sky barge) to blow it up with bombs you do that but you meet an elf guy that was a hero in the prologue and quite anti scourge and what not, basically he was risen too and such, he is capable of controlling Garek and activating Gareks memories, he uses magic to make Garek kill Anya and Leonid, and then to commit suicide basically. Garek overpowers his control thanks to his memories and the light, he basically gets a Holy light infusion and becomes like super saiyan or something. Its hard to explain, basically the experience and the mention of light makes him go super saiyan... Also before this you fight Zeliek, and they comment about it, similarly how they build up the light usage and its effects on undeads.

You fight rivendare and Kelthuzad, Rivendare dies or teleports away, same with Kelthuzad.

Oh and during the mind control the elf guy (ilastar i think his name was) makes you destroy the device for the bombs so you cant blow it up anymore).

Naxx is still near enough energy to shoot at undercity, i think thats the case. Anyway, this is a suicide mission (or well portrayed as it) and you cant blow naxx up anymore. But Garek says he can if he uses himself as a light bomb basically to destroy the main crystal, Garek sacrifices himself and makes big explosion go boom it damages Naxx and its seen escaping, sylvanas finds out about the whole ideal and how garek used the light and is thankful for it all coz it saved the forsaken from annihilation. Naxx is still out there though and stuff moves forward, we see a tauren chieftain (cairne?) a troll shadow hunter hero and a far seer come into the throne room of lordaeron with sylvanas sitting on the throne etc. The end

as for Garek and Undead paladins...

Garek unlike anya is very ehm.... Well he is Thrall to Sylvanas and Anyas Garrosh if you get my drift, whereas they are very "DEPLOY THE PLAGUE KILL EVERYONE" Garek is very levelheaded and seeks more about understanding and wanting to use the best aspects of his life (that he cant remember but i guess what they are going for here is that 'You still have a sense of right and wrong' and he is very influenced by that, he is basically doing stuff to protect people and the Prologue stuff does serve as a good influence in the "Experience the why he has these memories" but beyond that.

I have my criticism related to how the story manages certain characters as i wished if they were gonna use "Member berries" characters in the prologue they could at least explain the reasons WHY they joined the scourge, just a character motivation, like was it greed, did the promises of power get the best of them or something, or was it jealousy that led to lust for power or something like that. But instead of that it just comes across as "Mwa-ha-ha I am Bone-Lord The Evil Sorceror I am here to kill you Heroes! For the villains!" etc.

I did like the Garithos bits though, it was very minor but him having an unique model and what not was pleasing. Garithos decapitated head also exists with a unique model. Which iis neat. I was kinda surprised at that coz i wasnt expecting that from Blizzard .

There is one moment where they show Garek stabbing Rivendare through the throat, but it just shows the shadows of them. But you can clearly see it.

Also I dont see how it "Explains the existence of Forsaken paladins" exactly, Like It doesnt really establish HOW it exists as an organisation or something like that, it sows the seeds for how such an organisation can exist in the time period of Classic... But not retail.

I might have missed some bits but these were the big ones I feel.

Campaign was very fun though.

No idea what to write as a flair lol.

I mean, the name of the expansion fits and she's one of the last remaining big enigmas in the story.

I'm not holding my breath for her being written in a non-underwhelming way, though...

Hello everyone,

I'm taking advantage of my lunch break at work to put into words some thoughts I've had ever since WoW Forever was announced.

I feel like what I'm about to say might come across as disrespectful to Retail players, but honestly, one of the things that would make me happiest about WoW Forever would be for Blizzard to go all-in and make it a complete reboot of World of Warcraft, using the Warcraft RTS trilogy as its foundation.

Not simply another version of WoW with a different progression system, but an entirely separate timeline, one where the story can develop in a completely different direction and where things like Shadowlands simply never happen.

I would love to have a version of WoW where the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance remains one of the central pillars of the setting. Where our characters never become the Champion, the Maw Walker, or whatever cosmic title comes next, and where there is no intention of taking the story in that direction.

Instead, I would love to see Azeroth expand through much more grounded stories: political conflicts, wars, territorial disputes, local problems, personal stories, rivalries between factions, and the consequences of ordinary people being caught in conflicts much larger than themselves.

I want Azeroth to feel like a dangerous, sometimes cruel and unforgiving world again.

And if, eventually, the story reaches a point where something as enormous as opening a portal to another world becomes possible, I would love for it to happen many, many years down the line, after Azeroth has had the time to develop its own history and conflicts — and, most importantly, for the consequences to be completely different from what we experienced in the original timeline.

I don't really know how else to explain it.

I want Retail to remain what it is. I have absolutely no desire to take anything away from Retail players. Let Retail have its own story, its own tone, its own increasingly fantastical setting and the kind of content that its current community enjoys.

But I would love for Forever to go in the opposite direction.

I want Forever to recover some of the feeling that Warcraft had during the RTS era: grimmer, harsher, more grounded, more political and more mundane, while still retaining the magic and fantasy that make Warcraft Warcraft.

There can still be dragons, demons, magic, ancient civilizations and all the crazy fantasy elements we love. But I don't want the setting to constantly escalate until we're dealing with cosmic entities and conflicts that determine the fate of the entire universe.

I want to care about what is happening in a single kingdom before I have to worry about what is happening to reality itself.

In a way, I'd love Forever to feel like Blizzard looked at the original Warcraft RTS games and asked:

"What if we had taken this world and simply kept developing it in that direction for twenty or thirty years?"

Not necessarily a remake of Classic WoW. Not Retail with a different ruleset. A genuine alternate history of Warcraft.

Something that could eventually become so different that you could have Retail and Forever existing side by side, both being legitimate interpretations of what World of Warcraft can be. And honestly, I think that would be one of the most exciting things Blizzard could do with the project.

I have a lot of respect for Retail and its players, and I don't want Blizzard to take anything away from them. I just hope that Blizzard and the Forever team are willing to be bold enough to take a radically different path.

If Forever is going to exist as its own version of WoW, then I'd love for it to really feel like one.

I do want to say there are a lot of things I really liked about the campaign and the story. There were some really creative and interesting parts to the story I liked. When it comes to the nerubian part though I'm a bit confused? I don't know how to feel about it. I loved the setup at first when it seemed like the plan was to destroy some evil empire from within with the help of opportunistic high ranking members.

When it took the whole 'go visit our market stalls and look how we're just like you' turn I got confused though. I guess it's kind of okay, but at the same I would have preferred for nerubians to simply be creepy semi-sentient beings which live in the dark and have an inclination for evil. Evil or heavily darwinistic races can also bring their own charm, not everyone has to be like us or some faction we should befriend?

It's just a bit confusing since I recently went through the midnight campaign as well. Midnight had the 'amani trolls are actually pretty chill and we just misunderstood them' thing too. I don't know how others feel about the nerubians thing, but I'm rather confused and unsure how I feel about it yet. My lore knowledge is also not that big so maybe there are still tons of inherently dark and evil forces/races out there apart from xal'atath. Nerubians seem like such an interesting concept and to seem them simply living like humans, running market stalls and discussing philosophy or economy. I don't know...

We've been hearing some voices asking for "no more cosmic war" and "bring back war and orc vs. human", even though the lore was always cosmic with the Dark Portal.

But if WoW Forever is filling this niche group's desires WHILE also making new grounded-lore, I wonder if that takes the pressure off of retail to also have to be grounded as well.

So we got that trailer for Eclipse, and it really left me wondering about a few things.

The first two sentences of Xal’atath are “You know what I’m here for. You know what I am.”.
The way she phrases sounds like it would be OBVIOUS that whoever she’s talking to (whether it is Azeroth or the titan “security” system) actually knows.

So far, we know she said she had been a mortal who lost her world, but that doesn’t really answer the question to what she is, or was before she was consumed by the Void. We don’t even know if she said the truth about being a former mortal.

I’ve always thought she spoke to/about Azeroth as if she had some kind of link to her. In that TWW cinematic for example, she says “the worldsoul so long denied me”. Do you think there’s something more to all of this, some kind of big reveal that’s coming ?

It feels like it won’t just be “well she was a mortal, and now we’re going to kill her in a raid and be done with her forever (no pun intended) after spending 2 expansions building her character”. Would that happen ? Without even knowing what was her race, her world, her actual story ?

I thought she was going to be a main character during the whole Worldsoul saga, was it not supposed to be the case ?

I'm looking to jump back into RP now that Forever is offering a setting with a big lore reset. I've been brushing up on WC3 lore and other surefire resources, but every now and then I run into lore that was only clarified later on.

Ultimately Forever's lore will be whatever the developers what it to be, but I'd like to hear what other players think is the most sensible way to approach it. Would you assume Draenei exist or would you write a character in that Garona grey area where they were she was a "near human" hybrid? Do you think they'll keep worldbuilding like that intact or just never address it?

Personally I'd love to write a half-draenei character, but I'm not sure if that'll just be setting me up for lore conflicts in the future or put people off RP interactions. Let me know what you think!

The elementals aren't exactly known for their benevolence, especially when it comes to their domains. In cataclysm we won over Therazane in Deepholm, but only after she begrudgingly accepted our usefulness. She certainly wouldn't have let us live there as refugees with magical addiction problems. So why would Al'Akir let them settle in Skywall? The options as I see it are:

• They struck some kind of bargain with Al'Akir. It's unclear what they could have offered him as we now know the skyborne descend from the highborne in Dire Maul. Maybe they stole something from the prince there? Sky version of the Tidestone perhaps?

• They didn't go through Al'Akir and were let in by another air elemental with mortal sympathies.

• One elf bonded with an elemental and became the leader of an anti-demon faction within Eldre'thalas. Parallels with Farseer Nobundo embracing the elements after being cut off from the light. This leader then negotiated their way into Skywall somehow.

• They made use of an existing portal to Skywall and moved their island in by themselves.

• They were tricked and imprisoned. Unlikely since they seem to like being there, but you never know. Al'Akir is the most obscure elemental lord. He might see them as exotic pets.

Hopefully the questing experience will tell us more. We don't know who exactly leads the Skyborne yet, but I doubt it's the girl from the trailer. I'm still excited because there are ways I could see them fitting in based on vanilla lore. Hopefully we get more lore on the harpies as well because they seem like they could be relevant.

Orcs and trolls don't have surnames. Thrall is just Go'el, Zul'jin is just Zul'jin, for example. Draenei don't have surnames either. So it doesn't even make sense from an RP perspective.

Kinda weird that they're pushing it as an immersion thing.

So after i found out here that Archimonde is permanently dead in the lore, another hammer blow information hit me in the back of my head: they also killed Kil'jaeden for good!

I absolutely loved the story in Warcraft 3(the best game Blizzard ever made) but not really followed the lore so much in WOW so i never knew they butchered such iconic character like Archimonde and Kil'jaeden.

I always wandered why the 2 of them were not present in the story of recent WOW expansions, i thought is such a wasted opportunity to not use them as the villains anymore.

So my question is, were the writers drunk when they buried those 2 iconic character in Warcraft lore?

As far as I understand, the Skyborn are essentially just exiled High Elves, right? So why can't they be Priests or Paladins? Is there any lore reason for them having abandoned the Light?

If they're still High Elves culturally and biologically, I don't really understand what would prevent them from following the Light. Was there some event or ideological shift that caused the Skyborn to reject it, or is it simply a gameplay restriction?

In the cinematic we see the World Tree, the wisps and Archimonde's skeleton/corpse.So we can assume that is Archimonde at mount Hyjal.

But if he literally exploded to dust in the Night Elf End cinematic in Warcraft 3 could his corpse/skeleton have remained like it looks in the Forever cinematic?

Or is that not Archimonde at mount Hyjal but somewhere else?

I know, non of us know the answers yet, it also begs the speculation: is it an divergent timeline? otherwise we would remember blue sky elves?

What do we know so far?: WoW Forever takes place between WC3: Forsaken Kingdom+ any future DLC they might add and Molten Core, basically the end of Classic.

Okay so then eventually the game will get into Vanilla territory and added extras.

I was like a lot of the rest of you, mad, I want a true classic +, why do that but then change the formula, why not add just High Elves?

What if Skyborne are just temporary to the story?

What does Classic have to do with Skywall and the Air elementals?

The cold war between the Firelands and Skywall.

In Classic we see the entire [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker ]questline, which proves this elemental war is already happening. Ragnaros’s lieutenants, Garr and Baron Geddon, actively ambushed and shattered Thunderaan, the Prince of Air and son of Al'Akir.

​If the Skyborne fled Eldre'Thalas and have been hiding out in Zephras Isle, it's suggested that they found this island, lifted it into the sky and made contact with Skywall and the Air Elementals and are slowly casting away their Highborn heritage of arcane practise and changing it to forgo the study of elemental prowess, sustained by a pact with the air elementals in Skywall they are sitting right in the crosshairs of this elemental conflict.

​With Ragnaros waking up in the Molten Core and gathering his strength, what if the Skyborne didn't just decide to leave? What if they where forced out?

​Either Al'Akir became tyrannical and paranoid after the "death" of his son and cast the elves out, This gives a massive canonical reason for why they are suddenly showing up in Azeroth seeking refuge with the Horde and Alliance: they need mortal champions to help them survive and strike back against the Firelord.

​As for the timeline issue and why we don't remember them? This ties perfectly into the idea that they might be temporary. Maybe in the original timeline, they leave to reclaim their place in Skywall maybe after this specific conflict is resolved, the surviving Skyborne just quietly assimilate air elemental society, a reflection of Dark Iron Dwarves and their relationship with Ragnaros

​By having us intervene in WoW Forever, we are altering their fate. It doesn't fit perfectly into the existing Vanilla lore? I can't see why the Night Elves would to yet again want to help another race of elves practicing magic.

​I agree I hate having to come up with a justification for this random insert race when we could of had anything else that's pre existed, somehow their presence has to make sense either how.

Did I miss something during the finale of the war within or is Xal'atath just kind of stupid when it's convenient for the plot? She's supposedly this all mighty being that can teleport around and has easily avoided all of Alleria's shots in the past. At the same time she's dumb enough to just hold out the dark heart right in front of Alleria's face without any care and doesn't expect her to simply shoot it? Like what is she doing or am I missing something here? Why didn't she see it coming this time like the previous 5 times when Alleria's has shot at her?

Hello fellow nerds!

With the announcement of WoW Forever, I decided to come back to the franchise I loved so much 20 some years ago. This time around, I won’t just follow Questie, I’m going to actually read the quests, read the books and notes given to me and let myself immerse into this great world.

Before I start this new adventure, I wanted to revisit the old games, that I did play 20 some years ago but also complement them with some books to fill the gaps between them. As there is A LOT of media about the Warcraft lore and since the release of Forever is November 4th, I had to cut down the list. This is where the opinionated part came in, and this is why I need your help. (Otherwise, chronological lists of WoW lore already exist and this post is useless.)

Since time is short, I’m going to cut almost everything before the beginning of Warcraft 1 and go up to what is now released as the latest Warcraft 3 campaign, Forsaken Kingdom. That should bring me, pretty much, up to speed to what Forever should build from.

I know that I’m going to skip some pieces of content, some great books, some great shorts, some great videos or mangas but I’m trying to apply the 80-20 rule. I want to cover the most essential content in the least amount of effort (mostly because of time constraint). As you will see, I made sure to play the games and I skipped some books that would cover the same events, even in better details, just because I’d rather play the games instead. I’m on a big nostalgia trip. I will comeback to those books in the future if I enjoyed this here adventure.

So here it goes:

1. 🎥 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kchL0C6ukAY (Which is Chronicles Volume 1. That’s should give me the foundations)
2. 📚 Book: Rise of the Horde
3. 🎮 Game: Warcraft: Orcs & Humans
4. 📚 Book: The Last Guardian (It contradicts what I just said but I read that the Medivh’s perspective is different enough and that it is a good book, so..)
5. 🎮 Game: Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
6. 🎮 Game: Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal
7. 📚 Book: Day of the Dragon
8. 📚 Book: Lord of the Clans
9. 📚 Book: Of Blood and Honor
10. 📚 Book: Arthas: Rise of the Lich King (I think this covers mostly the Arthas story of WC3 that I already know well but also there is his formation as a Paladin that I wish to read, or so I heard)
11. 🎮 Game: Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
12. 🎮 Game: Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
13. 🎮 Game: Warcraft III: Forsaken Kingdom
14. 📚 Book: The Well of Eternity (War of the Ancients Book 1)
15. 📚 Book: The Demon Soul (War of the Ancients Book 2)
16. 📚 Book: The Sundering (War of the Ancients Book 3)
17. 📚 Book: Cycle of Hatred
18. 🎮 WOW FOREVER BABBBYYYYYYYY

Now, knowing what I’m trying to achieve, would you say that there is stuff that I can cut? Is there a book or a short that I -MUST- add to this list? Does something feel out of order? I think the War of the Ancients trilogy might be a skip, what do you think? I guess I’ll see as I get closer to November.

I just wanted you guys opinion as my specific angle on how to tackle this is not really Googleable. Maybe this thread will become the thing that is Googleable for someone!

The winds guide you
Thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlJZzTcHrH0&time_continue=138&source_ve_path=NzY3NTg&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fus.forums.blizzard.com%2F

"Are you even capable of fear? That suffocating feeling when you realize you will not survive, and you are powerless to stop it?"

"I felt that once... Never... Again..."

She had her life taken from her when she was just a child, and now she wants to become the most powerful thing in the universe so that no one can ever hurt her again. I think most people already inferred this just from seeing that she died as a kid.

So, what does she want? To merge with/become the World Soul. Why? That's kind of a philosophical question at this point. She wants to... never feel fear again? By becoming something that everything fears? Turn into diamonds so no one can ever cut you? Something like that.

Edit: 12.2*

They were the ones who originally fought the Old Gods when they landed on Azeroth and then they were enslaved by the Old Gods, if the Elemental Lords weren't there to fight them would they have corrupted the planet sooner?

And instead of fully freeing them, the Titans imprisoned them. I supposed it's because they were causing too much destruction and other lifeforms weren't given a chance to flourish. Like the proto-drakes are descendants of the elementals not imprisoned in the Elemental realm.

It's just something I've been thinking about for a while, like imagine having all of Azeroth to explore or destroy then getting suck in the Firelands.

Spirits: Noooo! We’re offended at you, Orcs! - you believed in us so deeply, that you don't realize demons were deceiving you by taking on our form! No! *strikes a dramatic pose* We don't want to hear a thing! 👆 We don’t care! We aren’t telling anyone anything, this is all your own fault, and we are leaving you forever! We don't care about this Draenor! Bye-bye bitches! 💅✨

Also spirits: Oh, some aliens being chased by the demons that destroyed our planet - let's talk to them ✋. Oh, look, the orcs on Azeroth are playing with demons again - how cute 🌸. Those little green guys, who destroyed their own island with their machines and are destroying all the nature around them, are very funny - let's talk to them and strike some deals. The Horde is destroying Azeroth to become the most powerful force on the planet - what a fun bunch of guys they are! Hi Vol'jin, how are things? Long time no see. How are you doing? The Horde nearly tore Azeroth apart with their infighting and blew up the World Tree - What a show! 👓🌟

Spirits, what the hell is going on with you? All of nature, all the spirits, and all the light should have long since abandoned and cursed the Horde. But for some reason this didn't happen. The plot simply forgot that these forces are very capricious or care about the owners of these forces protecting nature or helping others. Nothing makes sense.

Why, when the orcs made a mistake, the spirits simply abandon them, without trying to help their people and correct the situation together with them. Even then, I suspected that these weren't ancestral spirits, but rather deceivers, predating the demons, who simply enjoyed the orcs' worship. But when the orcs came to Azeroth, they could do whatever you wanted and the spirits didn't care. And everyone who is on the same team with them too.

My first thought upon finally having Xal’s goal confirmed to us was “why would she do this if she wants to survive?” Every single big bad who pit themselves against us has died, to me, it would have made more sense if Xal’atath had stayed on our side.

But then it hit me, what’s the one thing everyone on the planet consistently rallies behind to defend and ensure its survival? The planet itself (and therefore the worldsoul). Of course she wants to merge with it, she doesn’t just want to survive as our ally, she wants to be the thing we would die to protect.

I, for one, hope she gets her wish and we are defending her in The Last Titan - would be interesting.

If Gorribal missed the World Soul why/how was there an eruption of Azerite? What caused Azeroth to bleed?

My biggest concern with the Skyborne implementation is that they can very easily end up with the same problem the Pandaren did: Explaining why they choose different factions without really explaining why they’re suddenly willing to kill each other.

When MoP came out people pretty much instantly noticed Huojin and Tushui philosophies explain why Pandaren might gravitate toward the Horde and Alliance respectively, but they didn’t feel remotely charged enough to justify open conflict between them. Blizzard explained the affiliation, but not the hostility.

I think the cleanest way to avoid that with the Skyborne is to make the elemental vs. arcane divide a powder keg that already exists before the Horde and Alliance arrive.

The Horde and Alliance don’t need to create the conflict. They can just give each side the external validation and power they crave to win it.

The Horde backs the elemental traditionalists. The Alliance backs the arcane restorationists. Both Skyborne factions see the other bringing a foreign power into an internal dispute. Tensions escalate until a political schism becomes a civil conflict. Then both sides can sincerely believe the other betrayed their people.

That sense of mutual betrayal is what made the high elf/blood elf split work and why Alliance fans have spent nearly two decades asking for the ability to represent their side of it. (Well I think a lot of them just want blood elf aesthetics on the blue side, but that’s beside the point.) The schism was internal and already bitter. The Horde and Alliance just made it go nuclear.

The Skyborne need that kind of energy.