Retcon Redundance

Argent Dawn
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Over the many years of WoW’s lifespan there have been numerous retcons to the lore of the Warcraft universe. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Jokes aside, I was wondering what retcon really made your :gear: grind.

Alternatively, were there any retcons that came to you as a pleasant surprise? What did you think when first you heard that some character that was killed off years ago popped on in, having either feigned their death or escaped in the last minute? Did you huff and puff upon enacting a favourite character for years only for Blizzard to spin around the very lore that you had based this character on?

And do you decide to simply not accept a retcon and if so, why? Will you deny it OOCly, or do you work it into your character’s IC views?

I’ll go first to give an example:

In the game Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, during the mission ‘Assault on the Blackrock Spire’, Anduin Lothar pursues Orgrim Doomhammer into the mountain and, together with his knights, befalls ambushed by ogres and trolls. An encounter that is scripted so that he cannot survive. His demise sparks Turalyon to rally the troops with renewed vigour and, driven by the desire to avenge their fallen leader, the Alliance forces push forth and defeat the (Old) Horde.

Now my gripe is this: Anduin Lothar was a pretty important hot-shot during the time, and although Orgrim Doomhammer was a much better canidate for warchief than Blackhand, organizing the Horde so that he pushed all the way into Lordaeron, I don’t believe it would have been out of place for such an ambush to take place during the messy, horrible war.

However, in later iterations in the lore they retconned the ambush and instead claimed Orgrim and Lothar duked it out in honourable combat, their battle legendary yet in the end Lothar bit off more hammer than he could chew. I believe this was done to give Orgrim a more dignified visage that plays a large part in influencing the remaining orcs that managed to avoid the interment camps in Lordaeron. It was this iteration of Orgrim that eventually inspired Thrall himself and led to the very ideals of the orcish people and their place in Azeroth. (for a time, anyhow)

Would it not have been better to have Lothar roflstomped by a terminal excess of ogre? We know that Orgrim valued powerful weapons for he allowed Gul’dan to construct the very first Death Knights. Surely there had been little honour in ravaging the countryside and sinking an axe or two in anything that remotely moves up to that point? In fact, Orgrim had already shown his favour for tactical prowess above the notion of honour by allying with the Amani to instead invade Quel’Thalas only to attain more troops. He also allied with the treasonous Perenolde so that his troops could tip-toe through the nation of Alterac. (RIP best cheese nation)

Personally, I would have preferred that they simply kept Anduin Lothar’s demise a mean-willed tragedy, for it to be yet another act in a terrible war that would have stained Orgrim’s honour. Stains which could’ve been used to define the character better; an orc who tried to balance honour and power to lead his people, yet spiralling into dark acts to ensure victory as the war raged on. Lessons he could have impeded on Thrall to teach the young orc of the price to pay for always striving to be the shining knight. (Still wouldn’t have given Taretha Foxton a nice heads-up) Hell, an old Orgrim suffering the ghosts of his darker actions could have given Thrall the insight to not declare Garrosh warchief.

But well, that’s my rant over. Here’s one retcon I did rather enjoy:

Back in the days of TBC, the raid of Zul’Aman was added in the Ghostlands. Here we found Harrison Jones, with whom we ring the gong to open the gates. Shortly thereafter he receives the Amani special (really taking a spear to heart).

However, during WotLK he pops up again in the Grizzly Hills, now a prisoner of the Drakkari to be sacrificed, were it not for our timely intervention. He has appeared during numerous expansions ever since.

Thank you for taking the time to read through all the above. And if you didn’t, thank you for taking the time to read this sentence. Now, what are your thoughts on the matter? Have you any retcon that impacted you on a personal level? Share it here and let us have a laugh!

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A series of ‘soft’ retcons that have annoyed me is the over-simplification of magic. To give an example of what is fresher on my mind rather than just lumping everything together; how they’ve slowly soft-retconned mages from being able to do a far more wide variety of magic than they do now, like Medivh’s lightning and many other types of elementalism and so on.

None of this has been officially retconned, but it is so unmentioned and missing altogether from the story, that it might as well be the case.

I cannot name a moment in specific in the story where this started, but for me, it’s felt like they’ve been especially focusing on what they can do in gameplay to write their stories rather than the other way around when Legion came out, and ever since they’ve just reduced magic classes to three different flavours, turning every mage from wizards & sorcerers that can do many things from different schools of magic for all kinds of things, to “do you throw fire, frost, or arcane”, turning priests into “is your magic yellow, purple, or both at random intervals”, etc.

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Shadowlands obviously created a few, but the ones that irk me most are Frostmourne and the Legion’s involvement in the story.

I don’t necessarily mind Frostmourne coming from the Primus/Runecarver, but the fact there is no detail provided about how it was passed on to Kil’jaeden and the Legion other than vague assumptions that Dreadlords did it as part of the Jailer’s plan goes on to further diminish the Legion’s designs in general and make them seem like easily manipulated pawns as opposed to the grand architects of the Third War.

It’s even worse when you consider Argus being made a Death Titan under their noses, and the Dreadlords potentially starting Sargeras on his crusade in the first place.

I’d have preferred it if they had shown that Zovaal and Kil’jaeden struck a deal with both seeking to play the other – or the Legion outright stole the sword from him, and Zovaal had to just roll with it and adapt. This way it would at least show the Legion still have some command of the situation, and it gives some depth to Zovaal rather than being the big-brain mastermind behind everything ever.

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Shadowlands destroyed everything like a shockwave through the past, present and future.

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the draenei retcon was a mistake

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My favorite retcon is the history of the orcs and the tolerability of the New Horde. I’m speaking in a strictly OOC manner, here. By giving the orcs nobler origins prior to interaction with demonology, a lot of doors were opened up for Warcraft to have both a more mature story (relatively speaking) and for the Horde to be slightly better than “deserving of total annihilation.”

I remember playing W1 and W2 back in the day; the game was basically Warhammer without the gritty edge to it. The orcs were monsters, and that was that. This retcon of orc history basically allowed the entire game as we know it to exist.

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I’ll also add that the nuance Chronicles 2 added to the events leading up to the Draenei Genocide was a good retcon too, where previously it was just “Kil’jaeden appeared to Ner’zhul in a dream and suddenly the orcs were gung ho about drinking demon blood and killing draenei, but before that they were a peaceful people”.

Chronicles 2 retconned things so that Ner’zhul had first rejected the visions Kil’jaeden was pestering him with of his dead wife, and it required Gul’dan’s manipulation of both the orcs and the draenei to create an escalation of conflict that eventually led to the outbreak of hostilities, and the casualties suffered during that lead to the demon blood, and eventual genocide.

For example, Gul’dan caused a draught that made the clans furthest away from Nagrand (which wasn’t hit as bad) suffer. With resources dwindling, the desperate border clans raided draenei caravans for supplies by Gul’dan’s prompting who whispered in their ear about how the draenei weren’t affected by the draught (they were, they just had advanced means of preserving and storing crop in case of draughts) because it was their doing.

At first there were minimal casualties - the orcs just wanted the supplies - but eventually the draenei started fighting back. Velen was working on a diplomatic solution to understand the root cause of the raids and try and alleviate the resource problem, but the escalation of the conflicts eventually led to Maraad wiping out an entire clan of orcs.

Gul’dan then swooped in to kill all survivors of Maraad’s counter attack to sell the lie that the draenei had struck the first major blow to rally the orcs on war path. All they saw was the destruction wrought by Maraad and his Vindicators, but not the reason why. Ner’zhul finally broke his silence about the visions he had been receiving from his wife (actually Kil’jaeden) warning that this would happen and so the Horde was finally formed.

Even so, the clans still rejected the demon blood and waged the first year of the war conventionally. When the Siege of Shattrath was becoming increasingly costly for the orcs because of the superior technology of the draenei, Gul’dan proposed the demon blood which finally turned the tide.

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This would have been nice to have. I always enjoyed the Legion as a sort of primary villain of the Warcraft universe. Simplisticly evil but still dangerous and competent as this otherworldy demonic force.

It feels a bit disappointment that SL felt the need to downplay them in order to try and make Zovaal seem more amazing.

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No, it should have been two polar opposite narratives espoused by the two factions - the Alliance would claim Anduin Lothar could only fall due to a treacherous ambush from ogres on the cusp of their victory, while the Horde would claim he fell honourably in single combat versus Orgrim.

The orcs in Warcraft 1 were literally demons from hell.

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One that stands out is the origin of the centaur. Originally established to have been the offspring of Zaetar and Theradras, now it appears that centaur existed long before then, with no knowledge of their conception.

Not only that, but with the new centaur having existed far longer than the old ones, isn’t it incredibly convenient that thousands of years later, the conception of our centaur via rock elemental and grovekeeper happened to produce centaur, out of all things? A race that apparently has existed for thousands of years, and had nothing to do with Zaetar or Theradras?

Dogwater, is what it is.

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Most W1 W2 retcons were for the better. The expansion, retcon and development of W1’s “Church” into being the church of the Holy Light instead of literally christianity was also a really good move alongside changing “Hell” into the twisting nether.

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My explanation is that the Centaur on the dragon isles are the Kalimdor centaur.

A bunch of them fell through a (Caverns of?) time portal and ended up on the dragon isles thousands of years in the past and were forced to create a new life for themselves there.

They’re the direct descendants of present-day centaur, just time-shifted.

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Yeah, it’s a shame – they could have just pushed back the date of the centaur’s creation to keep the Maruuk in line with the rest, that would have been the more easily explained way to do it.

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And the cooler parts of Warcraft 1&2 did directly translate to Warcraft 3 and WoW, or slowly drip into Warcraft lore as a whole anyways, like the Temple of the Damned that recruited Death Knights in Warcraft 2 being the rotting carcasses of ancient giants from Draenor; an idea which was then repurposed in Warlords of Draenor for the Thunderlords’ home settlement.

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A tribe of centaur migrate into Silithus shortly after the War of the Shifting Sands → they stumble upon the bones of Grakkarond, his sheer size having caused a minor time wound upon his death - a memory of his homeland → said tribe fashions weapons from some of the bones but end up in a conflict with the Anubisath who consider the site sacred → the time wound flares up due to the conflict → said tribe gets transported back in time to the Dragon Isles → profit.

Not to toot my own horn but I came up with that in the matter of five minutes and it still beats whatever we have going on with the current centaur timeline (not that it’s hard to beat a bar set below the ground).

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One retcon in Shadowlands that I enjoyed was Arthas’ death and how he was carried to the Maw by Uther and Devos. The soul lore was absolutely butchered there to fit the plot and specific moments, but I honestly didn’t mind it and it sort of made sense (at least for me).

That said, turning Arthas into 35 anima was quite a decision, Blizzard

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No but guys… You see…

Kalimdor Centaur and Dragon Isle Centaur are unrelated. So both are viable. We just do not know how the Dragon Isle Centaur came into existence, thats all.

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Please let that be sarcasm.

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A fantastic one thank goodness may he be gone forever amen

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Another dumb retcon: making Darkfallen the umbrella term for all undead elves.

The San’layn in the Crimson Hall and En’kilah would like a word.

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