Realistic population numbers

Lore Story
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So I was thinking that someone should do a measure where we define how many people of what race are actually living on Azeroth right now. All of these counts are a subjective feeling so pls take it all with a grain of salt. Also I will not include allied races in these numbers since they are too new to have reliable sources on how much of them exists at large. So please forgive me for this.

  1. Humans. To no ones suprise this race is the race that probally still has enough to have a population we can see in pretty much every fantasy franchise. Despite the destructions of Lordaeron and Alterac they are able to breed fast and control the most land still to this very date. Stormwind and Kul Tiras had enough time to recover. So my guess is they are still in the millions.(To this I count Stormwind humans, Stromgarde humans, Kul Tirans and the Worgen)

  2. dwarfs. Ironforge was left untouched during the scourge invasion and was able to hold itself against the Horde in the second war. So it makes sense that still they have a large number of people living in their lands and cities. After the humans they control the most zones on the eastern continent. Ironforge is a metropolis and the wetlands are fertile for farming. Not to mention that Dun Morogh and the Blackrock are full of resources that feed the alliance war machine without limit so far.(In this I summarize Darkiron, Bronzebeards and Wildhammer)

  3. undead. mostly made up of the former people of Lordaeron Sylvanas has always pulled the strings to raise as many new Forsaken as possible. Since they are in control of Lordaeron now and with the Scarlet Crusade dead I doubt anyone has the manpower left to challenge their reign over the north. But now that the remaining Val’kyr are gone they might have trouble to recruit new soldiers to their ranks. Time will tell how well they feire post Bfa.

  4. Goblins. To no ones suprise the race that is the most widerspread by large comes next. They have a lot of cities and lots of influence on Global trade. As capitalists they need new workers which makes you assume one need really a high fertility rate. Many Goblins die while engineering so we need to pump out babies to become labor force later in life for the multiple princes of the trade coalition.(I just combined all their cities neutral and Horde and put it together, their population is similar to humans logically but they have larger casualties due to being on the losing side of most wars).

  5. Pandaren. Do I really need to say it? They have the biggest continent all for themselves and never waged war against each other since they gained their freedom from the Mogu. I say they are the people of Azeroth who had the best chances to populate without anyone stopping their advance. Toast to you my friends. you are good as you are and I hope Blizzard will write more stories about your rich culture.

  6. night elves. Despite the loss of Teldrassil the night elves should be able to field the largest army on Azeroth and are spread all over Kalimdor with dozens of settlements. What we know from Exploring Azeroth is that they are still fighting against the Horde in Ashenvale and the border regions so they are nowhere near as extinct as pessimistic night elf fans might try to tell you. The Kaldorei still have their place of the most populated races on the planet.

  7. blood elves. As elves they don’t recover fast from the genocide of the Scourge and it will take centuries until those losses can be compensated. Despite these problems there is still many thousands of them and they managed to get their land back and forma bond with the Horde. I wish I could say anything positive about them as they are my favorite race but currently they are being ignored and I don’t know if they can be relevant after TBC pretty much decided their story to be over without Kael’thas and the rest of the Sunfury which made up full 15% of their whole population.

  8. Gnomes. Suffering large due to inside betrayal they lost over 80% of their race to toxic radiation and have been living in the dwarf city ever since., There are effort to take back Gnomeregan but we didn’t get any updated on this for the last 12 years real time. BUT the bottom spot belongs to someone else.

  9. Tauren, Trolls and Orcs. There is no way around it. These are the races with the least impact in the story for the simple fact that they have the smallest populations of any race. Most Orcs died on Draenor and during the second war. The tauren got genocided by the centaurs and the Darkspear Tribe has always been the smallest troll tribe in whole of wow history. Sorry OG Horde fans but your favs literally don’t matter because they can not field armies on their own same manner the first three picks do. And Durotar and the Barrens don’t have the resources to support a growing poplation of anything and you can’t feed everyone on pork. A single human nation almost wiped them out back in the days and without support from Jaina they all would be dead by now.

Well I think that settles it. Let me tell if you agree or disagree. Hope you find my thoughts interesting and we can establish this further why these things are the way they are.

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I’d put Dwarves above humans, realistically humans should be spent. Dwarves barely had any real encounters that would decrease their numbers.

And I’d but belves at the bottom. Also realistically, there should be barely anyone left. First Scourge, then there was split between Outland belves and Silvermoon elves that Joined the Horde, so out of the 10% remaining it was already split in half, then we have second scourge, then we have Cataclysm and Mop, Where Garrosh was using belves as canon fodder and Purge of Dalaran on top of that, then in WoD one of their constructs went wrong and killed a small outpost of them, and lastly we had Legion where those are left split again and joined the Alliance and started to attack each other. So across the expansions belves were being divided and divided again, constantly.

But then again I wouldn’t stress too much over it, populations in WoW don’t matter.

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Blizzard has stated many times that Stormwind is the strongest nation of the alliance.

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Populations sadly have never really been a factor in driving the plot or the world building in WoW, and by now it feels too late to take them seriously, so I have a hard time seeing why it would matter.

That said, concerning gnomes, you forgot to add Mechagon, which has fully rejoined with the gnomeregan gnomes, and where the surviving population could frankly be as big or small as Blizzard likes at any given moment, after they had 500 years without notable threats from the outside.

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Not sure about Orc btw .

I remember them saying that orcs were very fertile and multiplied young and fast , so it was common for orcs to have 10 or more children . This allowed them to wage wars continually without going extinct .

On the other side In WoW I have never seen an orc with 10 children . The most I remember is Oronok Torn-heart who had like 3 or 4 if I remember correctly .
Look at Grommash and the others . 1 or 0 . You would expect a warchief to have way more than that . You would expect Ogrimmar to look like an overpopulated Indian city with with kids and Young people all over the place .

If that is the case they should be pretty well off after 5 years of piece .
If it is not and they have 1 or 0 children , than the bucket-loads of orcs killed in the span of the WoW story should mean they are basically extinct .

Also Most populous race is Murloc followed by naga (assuming they produce offspring) .
Both have the whole ocean to live in . The first seems to breed endlessly and the later seem immortal and had 10000 years to do what they please .

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What if anduin wrynn as some sort of “undead” goes to lordaeron and becomes their new king trying to unite them with the alliance. Anduin would then use lightforging to grow the undead army further. Then, the night elves get mad, join the horde, and start a new faction conflict.
I think that would be 10/10 story material

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This may be but their military power is by now factical non existant as in the 4th War Genn said that their soldiers are so decimated that if the war takes a bit longer they need to conscript all the farmers to even survive.

Many Goblins? In a quest with Lorewalker Cho it is revealed they have such a big love for explosions within them that there is no death of old age as everyone who did not die under different unfortunate events died in a fire.

Eh it whas said in the short story “Shadow of the Sun” that all surviving Sunfuries swear loyalty to Lor’themar after Kael’thas died a second time. On the other hand they lost another significant number by the exilants of Quel’Lithien and Magister Umbrics Voidresearchers.

Really? I only read this in Shadowrun. But it is canon that orcs turn teenage with 6 and fully mature with 12.
Also we know that Humans, Dwarfs and Elves have nearly the same mature time with humans only beeing 2 years early fully grown up.

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That’s an interesting comment. Why do you say that?

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Cause the stupid writing in Exploring Kalimdor where unless Exploring EK where the quest areas got evolved from story in the book in exploring Kalimdor they said why the cata status quo is still there.
Here he correctly describe the book content

Yeah sadly the Exploring Kalimdor authers flooped the book by writing that they control Astranaar, the Mor’shan Rampart and the Talrendis Point which are the three access points for Ashenvale except the see while the Warsong Clan still is able to put up a fight with them.

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Help me get this straight because it all just…like…were the EK authors straight up forgetting about BfA and the Burning of Teldrassil? Was that acknowledged as playing a role?

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Nah they remembered about Mor’shan giving as a reperation to Kaldorei at the end of BfA but forgetting end of MoP where it whas said that Azshara should be left for the horde but now the Orcs lost all their borders in the barrens being controlled by the alliance while the kaldorei still give pressure from Azshara while the warsongsclan still somehow stays in Ashenvale.
About the Darkshore they said that Bashal’Aran that could be rebuild during Warfront is a ruin again but somehow the Kaldorei forgave the Shatterspeartribe who decided to act against them for the second time during the war by BfA and so they live there again hoping to be ready to strike for a third time when the horde starts another war.

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Gnomes are a little bit tricky now, considering they literaly joined up with the mechagnomes to form one kingdom, what meens they did get a burst in numbers, and technicaly any gnome that is near death or dying, can be saved buy the mechagnomes, what kind of meens, they can get a burst in numbers now.

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The night elves will pay for what they did. Ashenvale will be liberated.

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it will yeah from the horde … the night elves have suffered enough from warmongers our cousins need time to recover from the traitor warchief

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When it comes to Orcs the answer is Stretch. Yes Stretch. Why? They were but a few warbands that broke free from the internment camps and reached Southshore.

Stole some ships from there and sailed west. In founding Durotar campaign the Horde had to be formed out of various races just to be able to survive the Expedition forces of Kul Tiras.

It wasn’t even a full might of the kingdom and still Orcs had no chance of defeating them on theitlr own.

Fast forward to WoW and suddenly we have a full blown race being on equal terms with Stormwind.

Tauren and Darkspear Trolls got similar outcome to Orcs.

Blood Elves are finally explained how things work from their perspective. Answers can be found in new Sylvanas book.

Thalassian Elves prior to Amani wars lived mostky within the vicinity of Silvermoon and Isle of Quel’Danas. Their numbers were similar to what they have now.

When Trolls attacked and death toll was great, the timely aid from Humans saved the day. Once Amani were defeated and Elven Kingdom stretched out all the way south to Thalassian pass, their numbers growed tenfold as well.

Scourge invasion pretty much reduced them to a starting point. Meaning they are not the might they once were but have geat open for potential full restoration.

Humans, Dwarves and Night Elves by far should be the most vast and powerful races.

In Classic WoW during new character introduction for both Dwarves and Humans we are told that time for Adventurers is now because armies of both kingdoms have marched to fjght the savage Horde.

By WarCraft 3 standards the joined forces of Ironforge and Stotmwind should have flattened the Orcs, Trolls, Tauren and Stonemaul Ogres like they were nothing.

Unlike Kul Turas those were two full fledged invasion forces and qay more than what this nascent Horde could have handled.

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It’s because all the Orcs can think of is the tale of Mankrik’s wife

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