Blizzard seems to have a fear of numbers. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that they don’t have a good grip on the world they created. There were contradictions between lore in the games and lore in the RPG books…maybe they figured they should keep things vague to avoid screwing it up (instead of tasking a specific person with keeping lore consistent as Bethesda does with Elder Scrolls, or keeping one official document available for relevant employees on an intranet as is done with the Star Wars franchise).
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The thing is, people keep talking about how extensive and large WoW lore is.
But so many essential details from every day life is missing, that wether we like it or not, unless you’re RPing a human, most of the things we know is just straight up headcanon and speculation.
We don’t know anything about religious practices, barely anything about cultural customs and there’s actually pretty much nothing about government and politics.
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I can’t leave it be, gods help me.
WoW humans are as alien a race to real humans as a gnome. Their culture is of Azeroth and contemporary Stormwind in particular, not Earth and medieval England. A lot of people make this mistake.
With draenei, we actually do. They have philosophical angles, full length prayers, ritual and more.
In fact a whole lot about orcs. Especially orcs! Many other races have fleshed out cultural customs for life, death and a myriad of things inbetween.
Not true either. Which race are you operating from that has no political lore?
Ackshually true for cultural adulthood for D&D longears and the Warcraft RPG books straight up copypasted a lot of lore for reasons that I can only assume to be sloppiness. That’s probably how it entered the headcanon genepool of WoW players along with paladins being immune to a bunch of things by divine blessing and wizards and sorcerers being different things.
Alright, so how do priests (that aren’t a Golden boy Anduin) become priests? In any race? At what age do they start training, how do they apply, can they marry, and what kind of daily duties do they have?
Afaik we’ve no idea. And those are pretty essential to RPing one.
That’s one flashed out race - although I could probably ask questions about those that are essential to Roleplay and are left without a canon answer too - but do please try writing a single page worth of text about how, say gnomes or tauren treat their young for example. You can’t, because there’s next to nothing confirmed. We can only guess by how a couple of important NPCs are acting like in the books or in game.
What do we know about any race at all, except the name of its leader, politics-wise?
The game just assumes we’ll assume they’re like a king or a prime minister and let it go. It’s specifics I’m talking about, not vague answers that makes enough sense so that it isn’t question further by people who just play the game and/or read the books.
But I could be wrong, please do give me source to a site that has blood elf aristocracy, clergy and education detailed, it could be just me who hasn’t found any of that.
The RPG books are no longer canon, thus it truly is only headcanon at this point.
Dude, I wish you’d post here more often. I know it was a brief post, but that was seriously raw and a good example of short writing.
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Draenei initiate priests are Proselytes trained at the exodar. A full fledged “priest” is an Anchorite with additional ranking titles tacked on by seniority.
That aside, communal worship is demonstrated on Draenor and there’s the whole subclass holy order dedicated to the safekeeping of the souls of the dead in the Auchenai. It’s a fair bit more lore than many races get.
They do leave large gaps in lore of what’s not immediately relevant to clobbering baddies. We do know about cultural biases and discrimination as humans, dwarves, orcs and draenei had a bit more sexism going on in the olden days and reformed by necessity.
We’re not getting the names of local representatives beyond things like the elected mayor of Redridge or the forsaken having magistrates. Gnomes used to operate under a meritocratic democracy but Gelbin’s not held any elections for a while. It’s regressing to a unitary executive state by distressingly unanimous consent.
It doesn’t exist as the aristocracy seem to have died off en masse and political power rests with the regent lord and council. It doesn’t stop players from assuming influence and extrapolating a magocracy, though. Blood elf priestesses are called Matrons.
Definitely. I’m just pointing out where a bunch of headcanon stems from.
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One race having a somewhat flashed out system doesn’t mean the lore overall is as flashed out as that. The same information is missing from a lot of other races and we can’t really assume anything is similar to the draenei, seeing as they’re literally space aliens.
That still leaves a lot to be desired though, doesn’t it?
Oh definitely. It’s a culture and tradition wholly divorced from Azeroth’s native population and the church founded upon Tyr’s sacrifice and the Naaru visions of Mereldar. Then we have the matter of this human institution with its bishops spreading to other races with wholly different religious structures in new denominations but maintaining enough of an ecumenical consensus to avoid religious strife but for one outlier cult.
The Sisterhood of Elune as a governmental body is a different matter and the nature of her divinity being a mystery gutted by myth as first assembled from remnants of the titans.
The cult of forgotten shadows getting some meat on its bones did expand its non canon chunks into a proper dogma of balance but ultimately did nothing to define its structure and justify its focus on Shadow over the Balance spec’s thematic mastery of both forces of creation.
There’s certainly lore avaliable but we’ll never see a full list of Elunarian initiation rites, the proper way to anoint a new Prophet of the draenei or the complete human hymnal to Tyr’s selflessness.
Omg Christina Ricci is an elf! I’ve seen her in films for years but didn’t recognize it till you put it that way.
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Dream diary episode 72: Wheels on the bus.
I dreamt that I kept missing a long distance bus to somewhere not quite knowing where but only that I was supposed to be there, repeatedly getting on the wrong one just as the proper ones were departing into the cold autumn night. The bus radios played this one Beatles song.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bI8P6ZSHSvE
Stranded at the stationafter the last departure I found a strangely docile red viper in the fallen leaves, its odd club tail hiding a large third poison fang like a stinger. I spent the night waiting for another bus, handling the viper for company with its fangs and stinger lazily bared.
Symbolism of a sort that I can’t disentangle.
Moo. 
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I enjoyed reading your humorous comment.
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I’m mostly spending my gaming time on playing classic and leveling an arrogant young Night Elf warrior. That being said I’ll probably come back to retail for Shadowlands. The revelation of the afterlife would shake things up for just about every single one of my characters.
Hi, by the way. How y’all doing?
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Lyth won’t be bothered too much, he’s going to the Nether when he dies anyway.
But it looks like it’ll mostly be a good expansion to RP in.
We can most likely ignore most of the main story shiz and do stuff back home.
Bought Shadowlands epic edition because I was like “Hey, I should play WoW again!” Then immediately remembered why I left in the first place.
This combat sucks.
Oh well, atleast the RP’s good!
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Another new character! Used my level 120 boost on this guy here. Behold Rokkesh: Horde Conscript.
He is NOT a prelate/paladin ICly. I picked this class for two OOC reasons.
One: Fashion, the true endgame. The set I wanted for this guy is paladin only. (Grievous Gladiator)
Two: I already have a warrior.
Anyway, Rokkesh is a Zandalari criminal who was conscripted into the Horde as opposed to exile to Vol’dun or simply straight up executed. Basically the thought process was instead of getting rid of him altogether, how about just let him take his rage and frustration out on anything that threatens the Horde or the Zandalari?
Not loyal to anything other than the promise of freedom one day.
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Nice concept.
Might be nice to see a zandalari that isn’t the usual “I be bettah den ya, mon.” high and mighty stereotype.
I’m thinking of trying my hand in something a bit controversial. I’ve seen a lot of demon RPers around Stormwind and Booty Bay especially and I’ve never really seen them done right.
I want to make a character that’s a demon, but isn’t aligned to the Legion and while she’s still doing chaotic evil stuff, she’s not hostile to azerothians and has rational thinking, although also a complete lack of empathy.
I am also not going to try BSing my way out of fighting five demon hunters, just because I don’t allow character death. Might be a nice change of pace. 
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I think its a cool idea Lytherael!
And not that farfatched…
There is an archeology find , chaos orb I think that describe how the Legion HAVE to use those things to indoctrinate Demons in the Ways of the Legion, because lots of them are just not “evil” enough or care about the grand vision about destroying everything
And I doubt Matron Mother Malevolence and her little team is the only rebelious Demons who are actually quite “nice” and reasonable
Heck, a Nathrezim would do anything if its in his/her interest… includin, lets saaaay, team up with a Banshee
Even Man’ari Eredar arent all that fanatic, there is that guy hiding in Dalaran, Val’zuun who helped the Shadowblade
And the whole Dreadscar and every Demon who loyal to the Black Harves and most of them are loyal, because you showed them you are worthy, not dominating their mind
Dare to dream big! 
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Update: Korrak’s revenge is awesome and I feel like a badass doing it on Nendrovus, gonna get 120 tonight when I get home!
I won a 1v3 as him and I felt special afterwards and I hope Coldshade notices me for being a good pyromaniac. ;u;
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