Classic lore and what it misses

Lore Story
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Classic is coming.
And as a role-player I am increasingly intrigued by the possibility… of just forgetting about the last 13 years of lore. No spaceships. No High King. No “there must always be a Lich King”. No Garrosh. No World-shaman. No fanatic Naaru. No other dimensions. No genocidal uprisings from the Horde. No yearly catastrophies that wiped out most of the population. No demotion of the dragons. And No light-damed Void Elves.

It sounds attractive enough to me that I might even get over the lack of transmogg and the bad graphics. So… my question now would be… what am I missing? If we were all to go back to classic, what would you miss the most? The races that weren’t there and that you like to play is the most obvious and least interesting answer for me, but I’m interested anyway. Maybe you’ll convince me that there is something in the story I personally would actually miss!

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Huh… Now that I think about it there really isn’t that much in WoW lore that I would miss if it was wiped clean. Maybe Jaina’s character development (Pride of Kul Tiras is my favourite quest chain in whole game currently) thought especially MoP-WoD it was really incosistent at times.

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I’d miss Blood Elves obviously. Too much for me to really commit to Classic.

If I could just get the Blood Elves, Eversong Woods and Ghostlands in the game, but ignore Outland and all the messed up stuff there like Kael’thas going crazy then sure. But obviously that’ll never happen.

Of course, despite all that, there’s the issue of classic being static. The real appeal of WoW’s lore is that it’s constantly being added to, for better or worse. Classic will always be the year 25 ADP. Nothing new will ever arrive to shake the world up. It all ends with Kel’thuzzad’s defeat.

It seems to me that every expansion, in some way, screwed up the lore. It would be nice to get rid of those mistakes. But the cost is too high for me.

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I don’t know what I’d miss to be honest. I’m looking forward to the lore telling me that I’m a newly trained Night Elf Huntress and Orc Warlock, ready to embark on an adventure (not some daft heroic journey.) A Night Elf Hunter, born to northern Kalimdor, embarking on an exciting adventure, exploring the whole of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.

I keep thinking about what Gandalf says to Bilbo in the Hobbit: AUJ.
“You’ll have to manage without pocket handkerchiefs and good many other things, Night Elf Huntress, but we reach our journey’s end. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of Ashenvale Forest, but home is now behind you…the world is ahead.”

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Probably structured and overall good story lines.

The game might be to linear for many people currently, but it makes for pretty good individual story zones. Vanilla doesn’t really have this, they just have the good odd questchain here and there (such as Tirion and his son, the one in Duskwood I always forget about and class quests). Beyond these it is just the majority of quests in every zone are usual grind X collect Y and hand in Z.

People might like this over what we have now but I certainly don’t.

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Its not the full story. That is the problem I would have as a Roleplayer. I -Know- there are Blood Elves out there, I -Know- there are Gilneans behind that Wall, I -know- that what I am seeing is not the full story and not a story I would ever be able to finish.

Now you might think “Well what is different between that, and for example the introduction of new Continents with new Expansions?”

The Difference is, I don’t -know- those exist, until the Expansions come out. I can suspend my disbelief so far, but some things are just unrealistic. I could dig “Oh, the Elves live in their magical kingdom where no one comes out of and no one goes in” But then they clearly do. I mean we know they exist, I mean Alleria, Vereesa, Sylvanas, her Dark Rangers? We know it is possible, and we also have that ‘meta knowledge’ as players, if not our characters.
It would make for a very jarring experience which doesn’t add up.

As a purely MMO, yeah, it could work, as an MMORPG it just doesn’t work, you can’t suddenly wave a hand and go “None of that stuff happened” when you -know- that it did.

I don’t think it would be a very conducive arena for RP to happen in, when you know you are essentially playing a character who is living a lie. Also, from having seen the Classic Forums, it does not seem like the RP crowd is the one being catered to here. That’s not their focus, that’s not what their aim is, and that is not what their players seem to want.

I know the ‘N’ word gets thrown around far too often (Not the racist one!), but that -is- what they are gunning for here. It is a Nostalgia trip, that even the people who want the Nostalgia cannot agree on.

How am I to RP my human character when she comes from a Kingdom that no one can visit, and never will be able to? How can I RP as Brigante when my race isn’t even -in- the game except as NPC’s? Nabaal is still somewhere on Draenor, awaiting his ship to be hijacked by the Sunfury, and Keanagh has no reason to visit Eastern Kingdoms.

There is so much wrong with the setting, that it just kind of screams “No” as an RP option. “You can play in the past?” “Can I? Gee, thanks, I already had my backstory written, but sure, but what if I play X Race, or Y race, or Z race, or This Race? What if I come from A, B or C?” “Oh no, you can’t do that…”

Vanilla didn’t even accurately represent the World of Warcraft as it -was-, let alone as it -is-.

Its not an ideal RP setting, nor is that going to save it once the rose leaves those tinted glasses people have.

Its just not the World of Warcraft, put simply.

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…but it didn’t. There will never be a patch that says that it did- It’s in principle another dimension. We cannot enter blood elf lands and Blood elves can’t come to us. Why is that? One explanation is as good as another.

The Gilneans are behind a wall. But so what? It was said to be mostly unreachable before the Cataclysm. I don’t see why that would be a problem. While I know what happened there in the life server story… that story isn’t something that would have to have happened in that dimension.

  1. You don’t have to RP a character from that kingdom.
  2. They don’t let anyone in, since they put up the wall.

You cannot. Just like you can’t RP a Draenei or a Void Elf. I’m totally fine with that.

I don’t want to play in the past, and I wouldn’t. Because the future you think is real would never become real there.

Neither does the life game, with islands and continents popping up all the time. My suspension of disbelief has no problem with that.

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The thing i would miss are flying in bird from, Mounted druids, Northerend and pandaria(the lands, not the stories)

I said it before and i will say it again.
I would love to play retial in classic form.
I am going back purely for the gameplay.
Lorewise our charaters will be simply living in a time of cold war like peace.
What happends in the future will be long after our charaters old age death.

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But even in Vanilla’s setting they -can-, I mean we see them in WC3, we know they can.

I see what you are saying, and it is essentially RPing in the past, which is not something I have a problem with, but is not so much RPing in the past, as RPing in a world we instinctively -know- is untrue.

Agreed, that is however limiting RP Options, not increasing them, which rarely ends well.

Essentially that is the same as “You cannot play in Azeroth” because you would not be playing in that gameworld. If we accept the events of the WC games as canon, then Warcraft as Vanilla is just not viable.

So it would be a static timeline, ignoring both the past and the future?

As I say, it works as an MMO, I am not sure it would lend itself to an RP environment. I mean you did -ask- what people thought of this.

I covered that though. We can’t plan for things we don’t know, we can’t ‘Un-know-’ things we do. We can RP in a certain setting, in a certain timeframe, but if we -know- things are a certain way, then feigning ignorance of them only goes so far. Could I play a character from Vanilla Era in RP and enjoy it? Probably, would I enjoy it as much as playing a character from the true Era in RP and enjoy it? No, I would not.

I mean that -is- what you asked. Not “Tell me how cool RP in Vanilla will be” but “What would you miss?” Well, that is what I would miss.

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I did ask, and I’m listening. But you didn’t just state what you would miss, like I asked, you claimed that it wouldn’t be viable for role-play, that your character there would be “a lie”, that you would be playing in the past. And I vehemently disagree there. I wouldn’t have responded the way I did, if you didn’t make these claims.

I do indeed think that I might enjoy it more than the RP on live servers, and I was interested in the reasons I might not. I understand that the world would be static. I understand that certain open storylines would never be closed, I understand that there are loads of concepts on life servers, that you can’t play there. And it is a totally reasonable answer to my question point that out.

Judging the roleplay that is possible under those conditions wasn’t the question. I’m quite willing to have that discussion, but I won’t just take your claims there.

…and there were 5 years after WCIII in which Kael’thas’ troops were just gone from this world.

It might go wrong, I won’t dispute that. But I personally feel that too many options don’t really help the RP, either. When everyone is too different, no single difference matters.

You can’t play ogres or Alliance High Elves now, either, can you? But they are still part of the game world. I’m not sure I understand the point you’re trying to make here.

The future? Of course. The past? Only where it relates to elements that aren’t part of the game - and will never be. Static? Only as static as the roleplay you have there. Most of the plots and developments I took part in in character didn’t have much to do with the geopolitical situation.

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I hope they take their chance and re-open WOW again, this time just in better, more logical, more consistent and with fewer retcons, if you will, a WOW as it could have been.

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I would miss my Highborne Mage aligned to Darnassus.

I would remake this charbas a Shadow Priest and basicly a Shen’dralar Ambassador. It would be abit lorebending for him to travel the world, but whatever. My Warrior would be fine and the same charactwr, and same with my Druid.

I would definetively miss Malfurion, though as he is my favorite warcraft Character and I absolutely love his goofy, godlike appearance!

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I’m looking forward to it tbh. Surely I’ll miss Zandalar but at least real Horde will be back. The conflict would be minor skimrishes, there would be no belves in Horde so I could pretend that Amani could join instead. Normal Thrall is back, Cainr and Vol’Jin are alive.

I would only wish for bareber shop to be implemented. I can live without transmog and look like clownost of the time - it had it’s charm.

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Slight correction. Not normal Thrall, but human Thrall, who never steps up to protect Horde interests will be back. I Agree with the rest tho.

Extra: I will sit classic out since there are no Sin’dorei, and I’m an Rper at heart.

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We’re talking about Thrall not so long after WCIII, where he had no problem protecting Horde interests, by killing Daelin or whoever else was a threat, and even shorter after Cycle of Hatred, where he would like to stop a brewing war with Theramore, but still goes along with it, when it seems to be inevitable. What instances in the classic canon are you talking about, where he should protect Horde interests, but doesn’t?

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What? WC3 Thrall had no problem fighting humans - he is the reason Horde is what it is today.

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Not really, he instantly got into diplomatic mode, giving in to every request from the Alliance so far, making Durotar depend on external trading. Warcraft 3 Thrall died with Warcraft 3.

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Source, please. I have no idea what you are talking about.

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Please Wimbert don’t force me to return from my break. I beg you.

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Gilneas and Kul Tiras, that’s about it. And my DK. I’m almost decided that I’ll play human male mage this time.

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