It does provide more worldbuilding, but I wouldn´t call it better. An example that comes to my mind is Stormwind, which has high elf population higher than entirety of Orgrimmar and I actually think the high elf population of Stormwind is equal to Orcish population of Durotar and number of half-elves in Stormwind is comparable to number of orcs in Orgrimmar.
Now let´s imagine what has more of an impact on RP scene: Backstory for a pirate lord or the fact that half-elves are now numbering in thousands (instead of being very rare examples) and live in Stormwind (a.k.a. the place that is most likely to become main Alliance RP hub), which has 5 times the population of Durotar?
RPG and old WoW lore in general is like Star Wars Legends. Sure, there were some really good things and it´s shame we lost them, but there was also a lot of crap. After all, when WoW was released (and in few years afterwards), tons of players complained how it´s horrible and how it ruined amazing story of Warcraft. Old WoW lore isn´t some jewel which was destroyed by trash new lore. It had its good and bad parts, just like modern lore does, and when it was new lore, people were complaining about it just as they are complaining about it now.
It´s simple, really: You don´t RP story of the expansion.
Last time I checked, you don´t have to RP soldier who fights for their faction, therefore the entire faction war becomes just a background information, not crucial to your roleplay (even for night elves, burning of Teldrassil can be traumatic experience that did not translate into them fighting in Darkshore). And Retail has nice bonuses like ease of travel, transmog (+easily obtainable gear of huge variety, also, plate gear is plate gear instead of slutmog), easy access to most zones, especially for alts (good luck doing RP event in Plaguelands or Burning Steppes when half of your guild is under 40), flying mounts (questionable for gameplay, amazing for RP), more races, access to the entire world instead of just certain areas and cross-faction communication.
And let´s not act as if Vanilla will be in any way different from BfA in terms of how people see faction war. If you go to classicwow subreddit, you are guaranteed to see people claiming how RP-PvP servers are the correct way to do RP because of the faction war in Vanilla. Classic RP will be another MoP rehash, except without Pandaria, because RPers will act as if Thrall and Bolvar are sending thousands of soldiers to fight in glorious battles, because lady in cinematic said “drums of war thunder once again” and then skimpy elf lady fought the orc in Mulgore or something.
Alterac Kingdom
The Syndicate, led by the heir to the throne, are waging war against the forsaken and all those who defy them. They are led by the last Perenholde, heir to the throne of Alterac. He seeks to recreate interment camps and has trained his own personal gladiator, Nagaz, much like Blackmore did with Thrall. He also holds a necklace that belonged to Taretha.
Cultists are active all over the place. From the Shadow Council to the Twilight’s Hammer, each cult is weaving ties with other factions (ie. Dark Iron clan). The only self-sustained cult of the Cult of the Damned.
The Scarlet Crusade. I’m surprised no one mentioned it yet, but the organization is thriving and fully operational. They are a real threat to the forsaken and enemies of the Scourge. Besides, they reclaimed cities such as hearthglen. Tirion Fordring has gone hermit mode and hides.
Magic.
• Magic in WoW is yet undefined, with elemental schools being more indicative of the domain, rather than the magic chart. “Demonic magic” seems more appropriate than fel magic, for example.
• Warlocks are learning how to summon more powerful demons, such as doomguards and are infiltrating the shadow council to steal their secrets.
• Mages have still to learn about chronomancy in full detail, which they will organize better from Cataclysm (with spells such as alter time).
Dragons.
• Dragons hide from mortal races unless on veery rare occasions, in which the balance of the world is at stake. If you meet them outside of these circumstances (ie. in their territory, they are hostile and territorial)
• Dragons are OP. In the game: if it is a drake, he’s an elite mini-boss. If it is a dragon, it’s goong to be a raid boss.
• Dragons are usually involved against the Old Gods: Ahn’Qiraj, the Nightmare etc.
Magic in WoW is yet undefined, with elemental schools being more indicative of the domain, rather than the magic chart.
Oh yeah, that’s one thing to also keep in mind. I don’t believe the shamans are aware of the elemental realms yet either; no Skywall, Deepholm, Firelands or Abyssal Maw.
For all everyone knows, the elements just kind of “pop” into existence here and there, and are bound to objects in the physical world like the ritual stones you use in the shaman totem questlines.
Jumping off from this, one of the original warlock class quests for the Alliance involved you poisoning someone from the House of Nobles that threatened to expose the coven beneath the slaughtered lamb. This is something I rarely touch on because when I point out how feared/loathed warlocks were portrayed in the old setting, I get ten people telling me I’m being literally Garithos or that one time Varian unironically nods at a fel guard in thanks, wew. The Forsaken didn’t seem to have any problems with warlocks, or the old ‘fel’ but every other race in the vanilla setting close to reviled it. Being open about being a warlock was asking for a lynching.
The Kirin Tor was as well much more hardline about this type of magic, as far back as the story Road to Damnation it’s made very clear that they are not tolerant of any kind of ‘dark magic’. If you made a human mage back in the day the letter you recieved from your class trainer warned you about how corrupting ‘normal’ arcane is. How it drew denizens of the Twisting Nether too you, outlining the Four Laws. Warlocks would typically be told to keep a low profile in their class letter and not draw attention to themselves, with vague promises of power. On top of that the schools had their branches, Abjuration, Conjuration etc. I’m not sure if that’s still the case? I’m really, REALLY, out of touch.
To touch on this as well, the Scarlet Crusade had a mixed reputation. One of the original questlines involves your character almost joining up with them. While I’m not about to say it’s a well kept secret it seems to be that the common man isn’t aware of the madness that’s taken ahold of the Scarlet Crusade. It seems more morally ambiguous. In the original lore, the comics also weren’t a thing. The old RPG book lore for the crusade is essentially cannon as it was back in the day until those comics came. There also seemed to be hints that Grand Inquisitor Isillien (I believe) was somewhat aware of Balnazzar/Dathoran’s behaviour.
It’s worth bearing in mind much of the RPG lore was considered cannon. Whether we’re talking about Prince Galen Trollbane, or the Caretakers. Just to start off.
My initial reply wasn’t all that helpful I’d like to try and set that right. Admiral Daelin Proudmoore wasn’t viewed as a monster by the Alliance and Stormwind certainly didn’t back the Horde during his failed invasion of Kalimdor. That’s something which has come about in the Chronicles. In the old lore he was considered something of a hero, a patriot and he has a statue in his honour in Stormwind Keep in the Royal Gallery.
Aegwynn was originally a more jaded character who was portrayed as very arrogant and self important. She didn’t have a love affair with a hunter from the Order trying to stop her, she actually used and binned the Court Conjurer Nilas Aran in a one night stand. The novel portrays a woman that in general came to be very independant and hard minded through her early experiences, the Order itself was portrayed in a more neutral manner which had very real concerns, they weren’t entirely innocent but no where near as corrupt or controlling as they are portrayed in the modern lore.
Turalyon has been given more importance than he originally had. Anduin Lothar’s role as far as I’m aware has been downplayed in comparison to a significant degree. It was Anduin Lothar and King Menethil that helped the council rally originally with Lothar taking most of the credit. Turalyon was actually a nervous, more innocent, side character at first that had trouble coming to terms with his ability, it was only when Lothar was struck down during the battle at blackrock mountain that he fully came out of his shell. It seems like they’ve given much of what Lothar did to Turalyon.
Paladins are not lawful stupid. They were originally founded to combat the dark powers of the Horde and in game they reflect this, while they definitely follow the three virtues there’s a very real difference between them and say what we now have which is the Argent Dawn/Crusade under the name of the Silver Hand. The likes of Gavinrad the Dire who was unremittingly tough and felt it was just to expel Tirion from the Order for helping an orc were more of a common theme.
The High King ‘stuff’ is also not present, each Kingdom in the Alliance is a seperate Kingdom. Now I shouldn’t have to point this out but as I’m aware Blizzard made it so the Alliance was like the blue Horde to make it easier for themselves? Either way, the Alliance is essentially a mutual defense pact as it originally was, each Kingdom has their own problems, politics and is an independant entity in itself. You won’t find Magni taking orders from Bolvar and so on. The Horde too is much less homogenized as well and while they ultimately answer to the Warchief, Orgrimmar is actually, mainly, for the orcs. Each race has a greater emphasis on their own culture and homeland. (in general) The forsaken are close to a faction within themselves and more akin to an ‘allied race’. They start off as neutral with all other factions within the Horde.
The Horde is (unsurprisingly) actually much more in tune with the RTS when it comes to the actual numbers of the faction. The tauren were near extinction before Thrall helped them. The darkspear tribe numbered 9000. The forsaken too are relatively small in numbers with the orcs making up the bulk, now in Cataclysm the Horde was able to field a fighting force on all fronts. There was lots of jokes about cloning machines on the story forums. In vanilla it makes it clear how small the faction is supposed to be. Portrayed as a group of outcasts banded together in an otherwise hostile world, they are able to operate with impunity only because the much larger Alliance is a shiny apple with a rotten core, bureaucratic corruption and evils within (like Onyxia) have crippled each nation.
The timeline too is another interesting one, the original time line as far as I’m aware was continually retconned to the point where I remember during about Wrath most of the people I knew had pretty much given up tailoring their characters around it. Originally, the wars lasted longer and the time period between them was greater in length.
That always felt weird to me. Even after the discovery of the Elemental Planes in Cataclysm, you still have notable shaman like Thrall going on about drawing from the land around them – a big reason why Garrosh had the Dark Shaman defile the elements around Barrens and Durotar.
If every shaman just tapped into the Elemental Planes on the regular, what’s even the point of going through all that effort to defile the elements to stop shaman like Thrall? And why did that plan work?
The shaman lore we get from The Shattering novel even reinforces the Vanilla take on shamanism, and it’s set during the very expansion that so prominently introduced the Elemental Planes.
I doubt I’ll roleplay in Classic myself due to time constraints, but some of the comments in the thread make me feel inspired to potentially level up a human character when it launches. I never was that interested in the lore of the humans when I played vanilla, and there’s some tidbits shared here I think pretty cool to get immersed in! It’s also been a very very long time since I last leveled a low level character in the Eastern Kingdoms.
Honestly there was something going on for every race in Vanilla, these days not so much. It’s not so much a "world"any more as a pulpy comic-book story. It gives me the big sad.
Yeah, i’ve been talking a lot about what they’re planning to do with forsaken post-BFA. It would be nice to see them develop into something more than a personality cult; see the Church of Forgotten Shadow being developed and expanded upon would be great.