Or more likely, just to know what a European Medieval city tended to look like. (I’ll give you a clue, Not like Stormwind)
Clearly you don’t, since you think Stormwind is not inspired by the middle ages.
My dear fellow, -when- do you think the ‘middle ages’ or ‘medieval’ times were? I’m genuinely curious now?
When History thinks they were, you mean, so between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the discovery of America.
He is still replying, get ready for the history lesson of your life.
EDIT
Have fun.
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History thinks nothing old boy, it is an academic science. So between the Fall of the Western (Though not Eastern) Roman Empire, and the Discovery of America, so Essentially between 476 CE and 1492 CE (Assuming we are going with Columbus being the ‘discoverer’
Well, I mean that is more than 1000 years there, that is a long time period indeed, consider the changes from now to the year 1003 Would you say we are living in the same time period as people in the year 1003?
Of course not. I don’t need to detail the vast changes in society, human rights, warfare, construction, trade, our knowledge of the world, communications, I mean everything, everything. I could not understand a word an English person in 1003 said to me, and they would not understand me either, even though we both spoke English.
Historians (Yeah, you guessed it, that’s my degree) often disdain the use of the phrase ‘The Dark Ages’, but it is coming back into use, primarily because it is actually relevant. There was a Dark Age, where everything went off the grid, no one was inventing anything, no one was writing anything, all the knowledge the Romans had pinched from the Greeks was more or less being used as bum fodder by the waves of Barbarians picking over the corpse of Mater Romanus, Some places kept the information, a candle lit against the darkness as it were, the hyperbolically named “How the Irish saved Civilisation” is not as fanciful a title as it sounds, a lot of the knowledge the world later needed, was squirrelled away in remote Irish Monastery’s, at that time the furthest away land from the Barbarians without going to Africa, where as everyone knew they were cannibals, had only one eye and one leg, and were led by a Christian Emperor called Prester John (I really wish I was making this up) or the Scythians, who were born of unnatural union between a man and a mare, (They were actually just very skilled cavalry archers, and the progenitor for our myths of ‘Centaurs’ but you know what old historians were like, Couldn’t possibly be good horse archers, clearly their menfolk are tumping female horses who give birth to these creatures). So Ireland it was. And protected the knowledge was.
Problem is, this was still the Dark Ages, and before those Irish Monks could get the information back into circulation, they got hacked. By the Vikings.
The Battle of Clontarf hit hard, and whilst Brian Boru, the fabled Warrior King did his best, the world was not yet ready for the information to be released. A lot of Barbarians still running around, with hairy bums, more likely to use the information to wipe bottoms with, than read and learn.
You actually need to fast forward a good few centuries to get to the classical Medieval period. We’re talking post Norman invasion, so 600 and more years ahead of your start period there. This is where we get to what Americans -think- Medieval Europe looked like.
Except it didn’t. It really didn’t. It was a nasty, horrible, smelly, vile place to live, and life expectancy was actually lower than it was for the Ancient Greeks and Romans, even than for the Barbarous Celts. Oh you had Castles alright, but they were squat, ugly things that brooded on hill tops like malignant toads, This was not yet the era of such jewels of England as Warwick Castle, or Caernaervon, of Kenilworth and Stirling.
Castles were Ugly, dirty, vile smelling, and charnel houses rife with disease. No Camelot they, Certainly no Stormwind.
A King may go to Stool, and his refuse drop a hundred feet to a midden, but he has nothing to wipe his behind with, nor feels the need to do so, and at the bottom of that drop, some poor peasant with a shovel has to remove the royal excrement. (Admittedly apparently peasant superstition was that royal poo made crops grow better than peasant poo, who knew…turns out you really can make money out of selling absolute Shi…anyway)
That’s not really Medieval either. That’s not your Stormwind level of Medieval. So lets scoot forwards to, ehh, the 1400’s. We’ve had loads of European Wars, William Wallace did his thing in Scotland (Mel Gibson needs a slap for that Film. My Dad was from Stirling, where William Wallace is especially remembered, in that film he has a fling with Princess Isabel of France. They never met. They definitely never had a fling, she was an infant child, and William Wallace was not a Nonce, ahem…anyway) By now, the Nobles have realised that having a small, navigable tunnel leading from your sh*tpit to your actual ‘throne for defecating’ is a foolish idea, no, put any thought of Red Hot pokers up the Jacksies out of your mind, there is no suggestion that King Edward II actually died that way, most historians believe he either was quietly throttled, or took his own life. I mean he was in Prison, Would you really climb up a faeces be-smeared tunnel, with a red hot poker in your hand (I mean how, this is a long- vertical- tunnel, how do the logistics work) just in the off chance that when you reach the top, the royal buttocks are at stool? Or just walk into his room and strangle him.
So, that’s the 1300’s through to 1400’s. We’re running out of time in your paradigm there to hit peak Stormwind Potential. Aaaaand its gone.
There never was such a time. There never was such a time, where Stormwind would seem like an accurate reflection of a European City, it is as fake as a nine bob note, a harlot’s smile, and Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney Accent.
There never was a period like that, historically.
How do you have a background in both law enforcement (if I recall correctly) and History? Career switch?
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Err, no, not Law Enforcement, History was a Degree I did as a mature student, but I did work in Fraud Investigation and AML (ANti Money Laundering) for a couple of Banks. So not Law Enforcement, but a certain legal aspect I suppose.
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Oh fair enough, thought you mentioned it somewhere, 
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Nah,the Fraud/AML stuff I just happened to drift into after getting a rep for picking up on fake ID’s we were getting sent in, the History thing was a conscious choice, I did the degree on the Open University (Man that’s hard…and expensive) But the Fraud Shiz is hilarious, I could tell you stories about the things people sent in as ID…
Best thing I saw, well, no, there’s two, one that’s funny, one that’s just tragic (If you were the fraudster) Imagine having put all your effort into producing the worlds most immaculate fake passport (This is before the new UK versions were released) I mean perfect, absolutely spotless. I get this thing passed to me to verify, as one of my monkeys has flagged it up as ‘looking a bit moody’ (I didn’t actually work with people from ‘The Sweeney’ we just had odd phrases) They were right though, even as I flicked through this passport, I too got the sensation it was a bit ‘moody’.
So I hung onto it, and it was only at the very end of the day, that I spotted the proof it was fake. I felt so stupid, though not as stupid as the crook must have felt when the Old Bill knocked on his door.
They’d put their date of birth as the 31st September…
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That’s cool, but Stormwind is still inspired by a medieval city.
Which one? I mean surely you must have an idea, right? Which one of the cities in that 1,000 period, do you think, Stormwind is based on. I could give you a really close guess, but…it really ain’t like that either, but go on, which city?
I’ll even help you out, it is nothing like Medieval London, and nothing like Medieval Paris, and I’m not even going going to suggest Berlin, as that wasn’t even a Capital until 1871.
These cities:
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/e70d4e/lincoln-uk-medieval-city-centre-with-the-cathedral-seen-from-castle-e70d4e.jpg
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/E779W6/lincoln-medieval-city-centre-lincolnshire-england-uk-E779W6.jpg
https://c7.alamy.com/comp/d09cxa/medieval-half-timbered-buildings-in-shrewsbury-city-centre-shropshire-d09cxa.jpg
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/07/54/cf/89/carcassonne-medieval.jpg
Do you want more images?
Should be interesting, I actually lived in Lincoln for a while, yeah, nothing like Stormwind, but sure, I’ll check the pictures…
Gotta say, if that is the strength of your argument, I ain’t holding out much hope for you here, but lets see.
Carcassonne came closest, I’d even have gone with “Yep, fair point” but the architecture is all wrong, The Lincolnshire pictures as I expected, showed those areas that are -decidedly- post Medieval, as I imagined. You’re looking at 16-1700’s there, even verging into 1800’s, The Shropshire one is even worse, that is a modern retouch of the -concept- of a design that wasn’t itself Medieval. You’re looking at a 1900’s retouch of a 1700’s original front of house.
The Carcassonne one is the best, by far, but it too falls flat, know why?
It doesn’t look like Stormwind. Because it actually -looks- like a Medieval keep, unlike Stormwind, why? Because Stormwind is too Frickin’ Clean! Bizzard can do this, Gilneas City and Boralus both have more realism than Stormwind. Whilst Stormwind is this lovely pretty white city, it in no way, shape or form conforms to any historical stereotype.
Stormwind, is -Not- Medieval.
That’s cool, Stormwind is still very clearly a medieval city with towers, stone and wooden houses, stone bridges, and knights in plate armor.
Remove the word ‘medieval’ and you’d be right. Otherwise, you are just as wrong as that jacka$$ who said nothing after 4.2 was canon.
Stormwind is very clearly a city with towers, stone and wooden houses, stone bridges, and knights in plate armour.
-That- is a factually correct statement, why so hung up on the bits that aren’t factually correct, I mean its -one- word? You really don’t like being wrong, do you?
I hope you see the irony in this one, Mr. Tongue-in-cheek.