I only disagree because I find it impossible for Ner'zhul to find his way back to Azeroth. Medivh had the power of a guardian empowered by ancient forces and millennia of accumulated experience. Ner'zhul was working from a single book that probably contained only a fraction of Medivh's knowledge, and he obviously was nowhere near as experienced and powerful.

Another equally powerful guardian saving Ner'zhul's bacon because he was following them the whole time is a lot easier for me to swallow.

That doesn't invalidate the Scourge being (relatively) young, since the Lich King as I imagined only started operating shortly after Medivh woke him up. Otherwise I think your idea of the Scourge as being akin to Christianity is perfect.

Except it didn't rob their free agency; it restored it. The whole "deceived noble savage" narrative was blasted down when Thrall confronted the bloodlusted Grom in Kalimdor and Grom basically revealed that the idealized image Thrall had been fed of the orcs as peaceful victims who'd been duped was nonsense and they chose their own corruption willingly.

(Incidentally the consequences of that are arguably among the main things that have contributed to Thrall's mismanagement of the orcs and the orcs' own narrative inconsistencies throughout WoW. Even once Thrall learned the truth himself, after building up a new Horde on the lie that none of what happened before was really their fault there was no easy way to undo the damage he'd unwittingly already done by erroneously instilling that sense of stubborn blamelessness into so many of them.)

WoW really did most of that damage though. WC3's handling of the Legion was fairly spot-on; they were projected as a genuine threat, relying on their undead proxies as fodder while most individual demons tended to have higher-than-normal stats, unique abilities and auras that made them more than a match for any single non-hero unit.

It was WoW that changed everything from felguard to infernals to eredar from powerhouses that often individually took whole squads of soldiers to hack down into basically just quillboars with a different model.

I think the question of "How does the Scourge grow enough to become a serious threat in the time from Licj King Ner'zhul's first movements in the EK to the Third War's start?" can be addressed by:

1. Much of the Scourge's non-enthralled forces are deserters/traitors to the Alliance/Lordaeron.

2. Arthas advocates the Scourge without being implicated in Terenas' death.

3. The Scourge doesn't have the forces to overrun the world like WotLK said.

Aegwyn's story in the WC2 manual made it sound like Medivh was a nice enough boy before demons got to him. Even if Sargeras had no connection to him, there's still a hint that Medivh was corrupted by an outside party. I mean, it's not like demonic corruption isn't an iconic part of Christian influenced mythology and fantasy.

Since I'm not too fond of the Army of Light, I'm not sure if jumping onto other planets besides Draenor is a good idea.

The demons still were held as the ones who forged the Orcs into a war machine instead of them as a bunch of tribes hanging around.

I chalk that up to bad writing/planning.

I know. If it was up to me I'd have the Legion be both smaller in scope (they're just Sargeras' empire/subjects) forever broken at the Third War.

Well I think you can absolutely do a reskin of War3 using this new lore, just by omitting the campaign. Even Night Elves work aside from a Demon Hunter hero name swap to make it more relevant to this new universe. Mageslayer, done.

Tauren and Jungle Trolls can easily be swapped for Ogres and Amani. Instead of a Tauren Chieftain you have an Ogre Overlord, instead of a Farseer you could have a Bleeding Hollow inspired Dark Prophet. Wyverns are Red Drakes, Kodos could be Giant Turtles and you can pepper the rest with Goblin support.

For the Scourge, swap out the Dread Lord for a San'layn.

That's pretty much why I prefer to write the Horde as binding and enslaving demons, like some of the blood elves do, rather than being easily tricked by them. Aegwynn made the demons out to be a pretty big danger to any planet they appeared on, since her Order went to great lengths to increase their power and longevity, so it strains credibility that the orcs survived so long without recognizing the threat demons posed.

That's not the only beef I have with the Scourge. The other factions have centuries of implied history, whereas the Scourge is a new age religion being adopted by ancient cultures. Fair enough.

Where I disagree with Marthen's idea is that we keep the Scourge largely self-contained as a faction, rather than tying it into some of the other plot points introduced previously. The guardians as a plot point have massive ramifications for the history of Azeroth, but they've never received more than the tiniest attention in canon despite being integral to the arrival of the Horde and the wars. Bringing back legacy characters like Ner'zhul and his death knights strains credibility if they aren't receiving help from somebody with way more experience and power; ergo, I introduced another guardian to be the first Lich King and serve as the lynchpin of the Scourge even if everything else was made by his allies.

Being corrupted doesn't equate to Medivh being possessed by the Devil. Kil'jaeden was afraid of him, not happy to see his teacher return. (As a matter of fact, there's no implication in WC2 that Kil'jaeden was on good terms with Sargeras. For all we know they could have been mortal enemies by the time Gul'dan was tutored.)

That ship sailed in Warcraft 1 when the entire premise was that orcs were literally alien invaders, and again in Warcraft 2 when Ner'zhul opened portals to a bazillion other planets. The strange thing is that none of those portals attracted attention from the connected planets, even though an experienced mage like Khadgar had reason to believe that any connected worlds would suffer negative consequences when Draenor exploded.

I would really like to pick up that forgotten plot point to justify more alien invasions. Maybe, I don't know, introduce interplanetary empires. Canon is already extremely small, so anything which opens the universe more is something I can get behind.


What lore? I'm still brainstorming.

I mean, I just had the idea for Northrend to be stuck in another plane of existence similar to the Negaverse/Dark Kingdom in Sailor Moon.

Having demon hunters isn't that strange when demons have been known to exist and attack worlds since WC1/2. In fact, depicting the sentinels as alien invaders with practical knowledge of portal travel means that demon hunters would be mandatory.

The trolls don't need to be removed since they were introduced in WC2. The Kalimdor-specific races and creatures are difficult to work in w/o an invasion of/from Kalimdor but they don't absolutely need to be limited to Kalimdor. They could live somewhere else in proximity to Azeroth, or even be immigrants from another planet.

If the sentinels are part of an interplanetary empire or something, which makes no sense not to exist if interplanetary portals have existed as long as they supposedly have, then it makes sense for other planets to be accessible once the interplanetary wars start.

Why can't we have both?

The Scourge already recruits souls and infrastructure from the nether. It makes no sense they wouldn't have preparations in place to deal with the demons that infest the nether. Spells like Holy Light didn't distinguish undead, demons and cultists in WC3, suggesting some kind of metaphysical connection.

When you put it that way, I guess Ner'zhul being the spokesman of this new Lich King might work out. Maybe have him team-up with Arthas as the representatives of the Orcs and Humans.

Fitting that in with a Kil'jaeden as Sargeras' henchman, he could have been hoping he was gone for good so that he could upstage him.

BtDP's Alliance Campaign ended with Draenor's destruction though. This carried over into later lore so it looks like they were trying to keep focus on Azeroth.

The Dreadlords could just be enthralled like Beta Warcraft 3.

There's dozens of possible explanations, each more or less plausible given how the entire universe is structured. For example, one could easily write it so that unbeknownst to Ner'zhul or anyone else, the Book of Medivh was never about opening any portals, but specifically portals to Azeroth, leaving them stranded in Northrend. Or maybe the pull of the Great Portal and the link between the worlds was so strong that they were pulled to Azeroth, specifically Nortrend anyway. Or maybe time passes differently in the Lower Planes, and Ner'zhul had enough time to become a god-like figure and a motivation of his own to return to Azeroth. Or maybe there was another group of demons unrelated to Kil'jaeden or Sargeras involved in his return (cough cough Nathrezim).

The point is, nothing is truly impossible when it comes to writing, provides you have enough imagination and finesse to fit within the existing context, all that matters is the design. And for me, the Scourge being born out of orcish necromantic practices is far more interesting than an ancient imprisoned on Azeroth and disconnected from the orcs completely.

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Also, I am not sure where does this need to erase Kalimdor completely from the map come from. It simply can't exist as a "forgotten and mythic land in the west" or a continent the size of Lordaeron, Quel'thalas, Khaz Modan, Azeroth combined, but there is no reason it can't exist at all.

That is one of the timeline points on which I disagree with some of you. I still read the italics as intro and outro text. I'm not sold on Lothar ending his timeline with a mark five years ago, instead of in present day. (Though I may be made to believe Garona wrote her account five years after Lothar's, with Lothar writing at the start of the war and Garona writing toward the end.) But regardless....!

I find myself missing our grand timeline discourses! When I get time, I aim to give your RTS Timeline a good look and see the nain points it differs from my [u]3x5 Timeline>/u].

The wowpedia article BoxCrayon posted needs an overhaul, as the two timelines on it are far too speculative. I think it should just list Lothar's actual timeline, followed by a bulletpoint list of relevant quotes involving years and time passages.

I am not sure I follow there. Yes, it is the outro and intro to the chronicle, and this outro and intro is dated as happening some forty years after Aegwynn's first arrival to Azeroth, and Blackhand's rise is mentioned as part of this outro. And it is not only mere italics, there's also a larger paragraph break between them (this is maintained even in the version that lacks italics).

And that timeline is funny retrospectively, it comes from the time I was sort of trying to reconcille Warcraft I and II while assuming that the "six years since the war" meant since the end, when it probably meant since the beginning (and the shoddy wording led to this part getting removed for the PS/Battle.net versions).

Yeah, that's a fine idea.

I'm not sure how the Scourge is able to function by taking advantage of anti-orc sentiment if the Shadowmoon clan joined them and form a foundational pillar of their organization, but religious zealots doublethink all the time so we can be sure they will devise some excuse for their hypocrisy.



While brainstorming and making a list of the ideas I had so far, it occurred to me that maybe Kil'jaeden's people were enslaved by Sargeras and he was forcibly adopted a la Thanos and Gamora.

Another idea I had was that Sargeras was not an individual, but a family of demonic monarchy or something. The Sargeras who trained Kil'jaeden and the one killed by Aegwynn were not the same individual, but their family's dark magic (cloning scheme?) ensured they effectively shared the same knowledge and power.



You can't introduce the concept of an entire universe full of planets that can be visited and then do barely anything with it. Canon's focus on Azeroth is absurd. It has a bazillion intelligent races and empires and deadly monsters, among other things. That's a D&D staple, sure, but that doesn't make it a sensible plot choice. At least settings like Scarred Lands justified this by making the titans into amoral beings who created countless intelligent races and deadly monsters because they could.



Didn't I already agree with that idea before?


That's all true and nice ideas too. The problem I have is that the Guardian is a key plot point in Azeroth's world building.

WC2 firmly established that the universe beyond Azeroth was full of countless races of hostile demons (this was before they were retconned as all being part of the same organization) and Azeroth needed powerful guardians who were dedicated to the task of protecting it from these demons. The guardians are extremely resourceful, as shown when Medivh masterminded an alien invasion so he could conquer the planet himself.

Since Medivh is dead, that necessarily implies that Azeroth is now defenseless against the demon hordes. If it could defend itself, it wouldn't have needed the guardians. (WC3 ignores the potential ramifications of this by resurrecting Medivh without consequence, and then completely changing his role by having him directly interfere in mortal affairs rather than fight the demons himself.)

In order to address that, I would posit that there were multiple guardians at one time. Furthermore, they offer a convenient explanation for extremely unlikely scenarios. Ner'zhul was a legacy character who was brought back in WC3 simply because the writers couldn't bother to create an original character, but there's nothing about the Lich King that requires him to be a former orc.



If you are that attached to a Shadowmoon origin, I could invoke the time travel explanation too. In a parallel timeline Ner'zhul somehow managed to travel back to this timeline Azeroth's past. He hooked up with a human woman (probably a necromancress?), and had a kid who was called to be the guardian of the pillar of death because fate/destiny/doom. (This is pretty much identical to the "Medivh is Garona's dad" plot point from the Warcraft movie.) This kid grew up indoctrinated in Shadowmoon culture, but his human heritage led him to develop new ideas as well.

Ner'zhulson defied the guardian's prohibition against interfering in mortal affairs and so he was imprisoned in Icecrown Glacier after killing him failed to sever his connection to the pillar of death. When Medivh's recklessness freed him many centuries later, he remembered his father and that formed his motivation to rescue him (since an unrelated Lich King probably wouldn't be interested?). Because of alternate timelines this doesn't create a grandfather paradox.

Does that satisfy your desire for the Lich King to be a Shadowmoon clansman?

I wanted to preserve Kalimdor and all its storytelling potential, without simultaneously limiting the extent of Azeroth. I like having some mystery in which to justify new additions, rather than shoehorning retcons everywhere.


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I was doing more brainstorming and making a list of the things I wanted to do. Some of my ideas had to do with recycling retcons and other ideas from later games, as well as taking into account feedback in this thread. These are organized by the race/faction they relate to.

Scourge

With the Scourge, they become a religious organization with origins both ancient and new. As in the WC3 alpha/beta plot lines, the Alliance is experiencing civil strife that provides a perfect opportunity for the cult to spread the blight over a period of years that results in quarantines and paladins falling to them and such.

The culture of the Scourge is informed by converts from the San'layn, dread lords, nerubians, Shadowmoon clan, Lordaeron and others from the nether and lands of Azeroth.

Sentinels (and other elves)

The Darnassians/Sentinels are alien invaders. The Shadowmoon clan ended up on their world, but were rescued by the Lich King. The Sentinels followed them and intend to invade Azeroth to prevent the world from ever presenting a threat again.

Although I don't consider it strictly necessary for the elves to be closely related (or have a bazillion variants, more than any other race), I had an idea for recycling the War of the Ancients. Instead of occurring on Azeroth, it occurred on another world which exploded like Draenor (Sargeras wasn't involved, just generic demons). Some of the Kaldorei survived on giant meteors that landed on hospitable worlds, such as Azeroth. Those who arrived on Azeroth became the San'layn and the Thalassians. They founded the Order of Tirisfal to protect Azeroth from demons. Others landed on Kalimdor, becoming the Darnassians. Both the Thalassians and Darnassians took up a strict practice of druidism, but both explored this in very different ways.

One key difference I would add to the elves would be part of an overall unification of magic addiction, overdose, withdrawal, WC3 alpha/beta demon magic hunger and related concepts. To clarify: Magic itself isn't separate from nature as in a lot of fiction, but rather the applied knowledge of manipulating the universe. Even warriors and similar classes rely on their own kind of magic to perform their superhuman stunts. Whenever "magical energy" is referred to, this is actually the life force of the planet itself and such.

Anyway... In a disturbing parallel to demons (which is intentional), elves are dependent on sources of refined magic to survive. The Thalassians and Darnassians get this from their celestial wells. This essentially replaces all other sustenance and makes them physiologically distinct from every other race (a long-standing problem I have with the lore is that most of the races are just funny looking humans, with little in the way of unique physiology or psychology). Overdosing turns them into wretched, withdrawal turns them into emaciated/nightfallen/withered. Consuming fel energy turns them into felblood/felborne, and the potential mutations are even worse due to the chaos magic.

I haven't thought of a way to introduce the high/blood elves yet. I don't think they should be treated as entirely separate races the way canon does, as opposed to different political parties in the same society. The arcane and fel magic power sources are fine enough to distinguish them from the wood elves and sentinels. They could be survivors from the Kaldorei empire who decided the best way to defend themselves from demons was to use the demons' own magic against them and to predate on them rather than be victims ever again.

Draenei/Eredar

The Draenei/Eredar retcon I had an idea to recycle. As in WC3 alpha/beta plot, the Eredar destroyed their homeworld just like the Kaldorei and Ner'zhul did. They survived and fled into the nether searching for sustenance. Their degree of mutation is highly variable (as seen in canon with the many draenei and elf variants of mutation, overdose, withdrawal, etc), with some bands managing to resist fully transitioning into vicious magic-eating demons. (To reconcile the depiction of daemons and eredar, I recycled the ered'ruin/doomguards/etc as severely mutated eredar.) One such band, led by Kil'jaeden, were enslaved by a lord of the Sargeras nobility and tormented for ages before escaping. They ended up on Draenor, renamed themselves Draenei (or vice versa), and attempted to develop a peaceful relationship with the orcs by teaching them more advanced magic. This went wrong and many of the draenei were enslaved and exterminated, with only the most resourceful like Kil'jaeden and his ered'ruin managed to maintain a remotely equitable relationship.

Despite the mutations, they are still part of the same race. Although it isn't as bad as the destructive hordes, these eredar still suffered from magic addiction/hunger and as a result they were dependent on the magic of Draenor to survive. Misuse of dark magic caused the planet's wildlife to mutate, but they were able to maintain a stable equilibrium. When the horde invaded Azeroth, their magic caused the planet to likewise "sicken."

Now that Draenor exploded and any stable pieces are flying through the nether, the surviving eredar need a new source of magic. Azeroth is a potential new home for them. Of course, the guardians are still defending it and the Lich King might see them as potential converts. Although in the end, they are wild cards.

Naga and Underworld minions

An idea I had for the Naga and Underworld minions is to combine the plot points from "Exodus of the Horde" and "Terror of the Tides". The Naga and their allies and slaves are invading the islands west of the continent, and were occasionally encountered by ships during the Second War. They seem quite interested in investigating the various ruins on the islands, such as the Tomb of Sargeras and whatever else may be there.

The Naga don't necessary need to be related to the elves. They could just as easily be an ancient race from a forgotten historical epoch of the world (or aliens, since again I think Azeroth has too many native races as it stands), and were recently awakened from hibernation by the rifts and sickening caused by Medivh, Gul'dan, Ner'zhul and company.

They have a functional tech tree, even if isn't complete compared to the big four.

I need to work on their motives a lot.


Corrupted Ancients

The Corrupted Ancients include satyrs (severely mutated elves?), corrupted nature spirits, undead and possibly other mutated creatures and demons among their number. They are dependent on the corrupted moonwells for sustenance.

They could easily be immigrants from Draenor, or even affiliated with the Eredar. (Both the Corrupted Ancients and Draenei lack functional tech trees. They could even replace the planned Burning Legion tech tree from the WC3 alpha/beta.)

Like the naga, I need to work on their motives a lot.

I am not particularly fond of time travel or any sort of time travel shenanigans, so I don't think that'd click with me.

When it comes to more guardians, ultimately, I feel the whole point of the "Age of Chaos" was that there were no guardians to protect the world anymore (even Medivh's role in Warcraft III is more mystical than direct, and he ends his tenure with the words that the world no longer needs guardians).

Ultimately, all this is moot, as I am too focused on my own rewrite/reimagination of Warcraft and associated projects to do anything bar observing/ocassionaly commenting.

Alright, I guess we will have to agree to go in our own separate directions. I do like the Shadowmoon clan being a pillar of the Scourge, but I want to tie this new army into the existing backstory without falling into the same trap as canon did by shrinking the world and stretching credibility. Claiming the ancient Lich King is completely disconnected from the Shadowmoon does him a disservice, I think. Even if he wasn't born to their clan, that doesn't meant he couldn't have made contact with the dead and adopted their culture. For many centuries he was dedicated to defending Azeroth and probably didn't have much time to visit other worlds, so it is entirely plausible that the orcs knew arts he did not or otherwise contributed to the Scourge in a more integral way than providing meat shields.

My positing that the Draenei/Eredar, lost scions of an advanced civilization, tutored them in magic might explain why the Lich King found them so helpful, especially given that Azeroth lacked a pool of skilled necromancers at the time. He could just as easily be a figurehead who arbitrates between the converted nation-states. Seriously, I do sympathize with your concern about the apparent disconnection, but I want to be more holistic rather than rely on obvious contrivances like Ner'zhul spending a literal eternity in hell.

I think "the world no longer needs guardians, I will take my place among the legends of the past" thing is silly. The kaldorei, at least in my tweaking, exploded their home planet to fight off demons. A single guardian could destroy planets if they wanted to, and people that powerful are needed to defend planets from demonic incursions. It is completely absurd that the guardians would be anything less than integral to the continued existence of Azeroth and the key to its doom. Hence why I expanded that plot point, since I felt it was too big to sever.

The whole idea of successive ages dates back to romanticist notions that the world was better in the past and got progressively worse (which is demonstrably false). Tolkien cribbed this idea (being a Catholic and all) and fantasy fiction as a whole mindless copied this meme without understanding its origin, context or actual meaning due to the general decline of Christianity in the West.

In Azeroth, the idea of declining ages is demonstrably false. If anything, a Norse or Hindu cycle of worlds being created, destroyed and recreated in perpetuity is the case. The Kaldorei destroyed their world due to their arrogance, and the Order of Tirisfal seeks to avoid making the same mistakes.

The "Age of Chaos" doesn't have to be that specific, either. It could just as easily refer to the guardians breaking their vows and becoming involved in mortal affairs and choosing successors, which ends up causing chaos after centuries of maintaining order. Medivh tries to conquer the world out of pride and vanity. The Lich King tries to bring about worldly paradise. In the Age of Chaos, when the guardians of the world itself are now misusing their phenomenal cosmic power, anything is possible.

In any case, "Age of Chaos" is a really neat phrase. It is simple yet evocative.

The Anti-Orc campaign could just be a start. A lead into a wider Anti-Alliance/Terenas movement by those who aren't pleased with their current direction. Besides, we already saw Ner'zhul abandoning the other Orcs in BtDP's Horde Ending and WCIII's backstory (which suggests that he sees Orcs outside of his own clan as a bit expendable).

That's different.

You could just cut down on sapient life. LIke say, Furbolgs.

While I don't say I approve making the elves aliens from another planet, I do dig more detail into the effects of select magic on them.

The Blood Elves could be a movement that forms in parallel to the Scourge thanks to the mess Quel'thalas is in after the 2nd War (the Horde turns it into a burnt husk once they're done with it). The old ways of Druidism failed them so they seek new paths to power.

That makes me ask, how are you going to handle the "New Horde" story? Do they still reject demonic magic?

The general idea is to embrace a larger world, mystery and moral ambiguity. Making Sargeras into a race makes it easier for me to swallow the sheer unlikelihood of Kil'jaeden's tutor being entombed on the planet his student invades. Making the eredar somewhat sympathetic helps to illustrate the tragedy of the demon races and draws a parallel with what happened to the elves.

I'm surprised that Blizzard didn't already make the connection between elves and demons all being mutated magic addicts already.

The alien thing is mostly because I wanted to make the world bigger rather than smaller, and because I am trying to brainstorm various ways that the sentinels could be involved in the war from the start with their own independent campaign a la WC1/2 or Command & Conquer.

Which reminds me...

According to an old post here from 2007 discussing the retcons, some were arguing that orcs in WC1 were made from slime according to the manual.

I believe that was referring to the passage: "Conquest of the Orcish Homeworld [...] Our destiny concerning the domination over these lands has been foretold by the clan mystics for hundreds of years. Having risen from the mire of swamps and marshes, the Orcish hordes have swept across this domain in the fulfillment of that destiny."

While it would be interesting if orcs reproduced using mire (although that raises the question of who created the first orcs), I believe this statement is meant to refer to their creation myth (echoing how, say, the Bible states humans were made from clay) rather than modern reproduction. Garona's existence, as well as the orcs' observations that humans are not too dissimilar, would suggest that orcs reproduced in the same fashion as humans.

Alternately, orcs reproduced in sexual and asexual generations like plants do in reality. Although I doubt that the writers were thinking along those lines. If orcs did reproduce like plants, then Garona would have been able to asexually birth new orcs (half-orcs?) who themselves would reproduce sexually.

Sure, that makes plenty of sense. I'm surprised I didn't think of it before. Thank you.



Yes. Abuse of fel magic is precisely what caused Draenor to get so messed up. The New Horde rejects fel magic and forges a new path of spiritualism that incorporates both traditional orc religions and new ones discovered or invented on Azeroth. Unlike canon, this isn't a revival of a lost path so much as a revolution only partly based on the past. Whatever the orcs had before the eredar tutored them was nowhere near as advanced as canon, so they are basically creating a new religion from parts of the old.

In contrast to canon, this alternate shamanism incorporates speaking with the dead souls in the twisting nether as well as nature spirits or whatever the equivalent is in Azeroth. (Since in WC Adventures Thrall had to learn some necromancy.) Although some of the clans continue to practice isolated instances of necromancy and demonology, in the same way that WoW allowed the horde to have warlocks (and in alpha, necromancers) despite the shaman revolution in WC3.

Not sure where you are coming from with this whole talk about "successive ages". Nowhere have I asserted that the end of the guardians would classify the end of better times; on the contrary, it supposed to symbolize progress, a new era where the nations of the world do not have to rely on a secret order of mages to protect the world due to a number of revolutions and advances, be it the proliferation of magiks and mystical knowledge (including higher awareness of the horrors from the Lower Planes), quasi-industrial revolutions (which define Warcraft II as a setting), and societal changes resulting from all this progress and events happening in the world.

The order of the Guardians should be presented as a fault, a necessary evil to protect the world when it was not advanced enough to protect itself, and the Third (or rather Fourth, as Beyond the Dark Portal should be technically the Third War just like in Warcraft Adventures) War should be presented as the pivotal moment in the world's history where the mortals would manage to fend off yet another demonic invasion without the help of any guardian thanks to the progress made in the past decades. Making the Lich King a guardian or generally continuing to keep the guardians relevant to the story would run contrary to this whole theme, and ultimately, it would run contrary to the very soul of the original Warcrafts, which were all about the nations on the move, crushing the plans of even the most powerful magical beings beneath (plus the original Warcrafts were rather grounded, even Medivh was killed by a military band)

That's exactly why I said I don't like spoiling particular things.

Hmm.

You might have me, after all this time. The first year on that timeline is 559. Plus 40 years. So if Lothar had present day at 599, that's really close to Garona's 598.

And that's sad. Because I think it means that at least from the time of WCII, Blizzard always intended WC: O&H to be a single year and for WCII to be another single year. I blame Metzen.

More later in the timeline thread. I'll call it the "Snake Eyes Timeline".

I don't think that particular is in any way possible given all the figures provided in Warcraft II Manual (I'll get to this in the timeline thread).

Also, not sure why to blame Metzen, time has shown again and again he was not the force behind simplifications/alterations, and that it was him who breathed the necessary life to Warcraft. To provide some examples from the World of Warcraft Dev Diary (a book detailing the development of the original World of Warcraft game with some forays to the previous titles), Lothar, Garona, and their entries were specifically creations of Metzen (which lead to his position on Warcraft II), the changes to geography in World of Warcraft/Warcraft III were done by the whole team to "spread things out for better gameplay", with Metzen often having a back and forth with about the necessity of these changes (ultimately accepting them, as they were making games, not writing books), and so on.

It's a bit sad for me to see Metzen still scapegoated after all these years, especially since now when he is no longer part of the company, it starts to surface that many things he took blame for, he did so because it was "part of his job", even when they were completely outside his purview. It's even sadder for me, since thanks to Staat and his diary, I now know that Metzen had written a book worth of character stories for Warcraft from 1994 to 1998, but thanks to all these changes from 1999 onwards, they became obsolete and forgotten, as he never had energy/will to rewrite and update them.

(I meant the "I blame Metzen" comment as a half-joke, sorry. It sounded funnier in my head.)

Lemme see what you guys have been writing here...

Sorry, I suppose I didn't catch that. :/

I see things about keeping the same tech trees...
I see High/Blood Elves as political factions...
I see an orcish backstory about abandoning fel magic because it was damaging Draenor...

. . .

Know what I'd like? I'd like to see a FT-era Quel'thalas that has fully turned to fel magic after their kingdom was destroyed, while simultaneously rejoining the Alliance with Lordaeron, who also lost their kingdom. This reality existed in the FT Alliance tech tree but never in the campaigns or lore.

"rejoining the Alliance with Lordaeron's traitors"

King Arthas approves joins the Scourge. And his word is law. If he says Lordaeron leaves the Alliance for the Scourge then that's what happens.

Well yes, rejoining the Alliance with the Kingdom of Lordaeron's traitors, probably those in the eastern regions sandwiched between Quel'thalas and Stromgarde/Khaz Modan. Think of Garithos' forces but without Garithos as a Disney villain. The Alliance of Dwarves, Elves, and Men.

The tech tree is there already. Maybe not all of Quel'thalas is courting fel magic - not the Priests or Sorceresses, for example - but the Blood Mages are. And they're working together over the rubble of a decimated kingdom, recovering from a regicide.

And they'd be reentering an Alliance tied by that same theme: countrysides in the aftermath of invasion and regicide. Especially if you declare that Stromgarde was sacked and Thoras Trollbane killed in the Second War (which I very much think you should), which would have them as a kingdom still rebuilding by this point. You're talking about the Horde having retaken Azeroth-Stormwind, so they'd likewise be a broken refugee group.

The strongest kingdoms functioning would be Ironforge and Kul Tiras, presuming Gilneas still leans isolationist (along with Gnomeregan), but those two ruling seats would be geographically distant. For many of the survivors, the closest royalty would be Prince Kael'thas, or if you eliminate him then no king at all.

A group of survivors united by joint heritage and joint loss, a melting pot not only by race but by belief, with holy Paladins fighting side-by-side with hellfire-wielding Blood Mages. Desperate to cling to their old majesty and way of life, while simultaneously desperate to try anything, anything at all to survive.

Because they are the true peoples, right? They can do anything. That keeps them going.

EDIT: To be honest, the Blood Mages give me a slight vibe of fascism. Not nazism, but more like the non-holocausty military fascism... Italian, Austrian, or Spanish styles. The racial hatred all points outward to the Scourge and Sentinels (backstabbers, traitors) and Horde (mongrel barbarians). Picture all of the Garithos bigotry, but focused externally.

So what if the Horde couldn't handle fel magic? They're just a pack of stupid, beastish mouthbreathers. Likewise were the Night Elves too timid and weak to learn the true beauty of arcane magic. And of course all the other neanderthals hardly know what holy magic is at all. All elements of reality, all tools and weapons, are made to be woven together. Because when a people themselves are so strong, so good, so pure... then they can bend ANY force to their will.

To echo your previous statement: That is a view which I fundamentally disagree with. The reasons for this are simple historical observations: the demons are infinite in population and every civilization without guardians was inevitably destroyed because their vaunted free will inevitably made the wrong choice.

The Kaldorei were orders of magnitude more advanced than the modern nations and they still blew up their own planet to stop the demons and all the survivors were permanently cursed with an addition to magic wells even after swearing off the arcane forever. They still got off better than the Eredar, who got off even worse to the point that even the penitent Eredar who tried to live on harmony on Draenor still turned the planet into a hellscape and nearly caused the same to Azeroth (and still want to).

The Order was founded specifically to avoid these horrible outcomes, using the experience and knowledge of the same advanced civilizations. They are absolutely required to stop all possible demon invasions, as leaving societies to develop on their own inevitably results in the same outcome that destroyed the kaldorei and eredar among countless other civilizations that were turned into the infinite starving demon hordes. My vision of retrocraft is very bleak in that sense.

Stealing from Legacy of Kain again, the Order actually went so far as to bind the magical forces of Azeroth into physical form specifically to serve as a barrier against demonic invasions, among other applications. Much like the forging of the rings in Lord of the Rings, this was an irreversible process.

The alternate Lich King still respects the people's right to self-determination, which is what distinguishes the alternate Scourge from the canon and the Lich King himself from Medivh. This can be a downside, since we all know how religions can easily fracture into holy wars. Think the Forsaken was bad? There's nothing stopping the alternate Scourge from fracturing just like the Alliance and Horde did.

A story in which the Lich King tries to act as arbitrator between political factions, while trying to create a world free of demonic threat forever, is much more interesting than the canon conqueror.

These are already specific designs you use in your "reimagination". You can't use these to argue that "the world needs guardians, otherwise it does not make sense" based off of historical observation, as the demons, the Kaldorei, and so on do not have to be written the way you describe. And that was the gist of my objection, in a world following Warcraft II thematically as much as factually, they shouldn't be written this way, as a Warcraft II based setting should primarily be about clashes of nations, their socities, philosophies, not about powerful mystical figures dictating the course of the universe, that is Warcraft III and even more so, World of Warcraft.

There is an inherent lesson from WC1 and WC3, and it is this: nigh-almighty beings should NOT attempt to meddle in the affairs of mortals. Because mortals are dangerous. You will lose control of them, and they will kill you. It's like a dumb little kid throwing rocks at a wasp nest.

Medivh in WC1. If the humans hadn't stormed his tower, the orcs would have.

The Legion in WC3. They engineered two of the factions that helped kill them.

Don't. Play. With. Mortals!