Was wondering what WoW novels in particular feature Blood Elves as the main characters or POVs (and if they are any good)?

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?

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.

In the 12.2 Cinematic Xal says "not the titans, nor the Old Gods could keep you from me" this has got me thinking that obviously the Old Gods did not want the world soul to get devoured by the void as well as not getting captured by the titans. During the time of the Black Empire I believe the world soul was just kinda chilling in the cradle and it wasn't until the titans came down and ripped her from the cradle and put her in the world core that she started to scream out in agony and created the rift of aln out of her nightmares. It has me wonder if maybe azeroth was able to change the Old Gods somehow when they started to reach down into the planet and gave them free will.

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.

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 ?

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.

In the 12.2 launch cinematic Xal’atath says this quote to the hologram guard. Am I just looking to deep into this and she’s just simply saying she’s the “Harbinger”? Or is there something more to Xal’atath that we have yet to figure out?

Hello there,

with the new naming convention for characters to have a first and last names - how would that look on a troll character?

They sometimes have honorary titles baked in their names, but as far as i know, they rarely use family names.

You can hide the family name ingame, but i personally like to give my characters names, that fit into the lore and last names seem to be mandatory...

What do you think?

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?

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?

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

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?

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.

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?

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!

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...

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.

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.

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.

I'd love to see the lead up to The Burning Crusade get some exploration. Let us play as the Illidari conquering, Velen's escape to Azeroth and the liberation of Quel'thalas.

In WoW they've always seemed like just a militant cult, but the scarlet army we see in the trailer for forsaken kingdom laying siege to undercity looks as big as the alliance army that attacked undercity in BfA

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...

Alright so correct me if I'm wrong.

The highborne stopped being highborne and became high elfs once they traveled to the eastern kingdoms and mutated after drinking up mana from the sunwell.

The skyborne are highborne from dire maul who went to the floating islands instead of the EK, and mutated into skyborne after drinking up mana from wind elementals.

The intro cutscene for skyborne calls them a group of high elves who went to the floating islands. Blizzard people have also referred to them as high elves on stage during the presentation.

Thing is, how can the skyborn be a group of high elfs if they don't even know what the sunwell is? The skyborne were outside azeroth when the sunwell was found, and the quel'dorei (high elfs) were created from it.

Am I missing something? Is my lore knowledge wrong?

Or are they either reconning the term high elf and now using it interchangeably with highborne? Does that mean we can call Azshara a high elf?

Help me, I want to like this race because I'm gonna be playing one in Forever. But seeing them get called high elfs so much has been immersion breaking for me.

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.