Warcraft Lore from Art

Lore Story
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So the art they make is entirely based on and informed by the lore. The story shown in the visualization is just as important, relevant and canon as the words in books, quests and statements.

Was listening g to the very recent live stream from the art team, and they really emphasised this point.

The art and lore are totally intertwined, all the art work for a race is based on their lore.

I mention this because story and lore forum people tend to simply ignore the story the visual art work shows, instead either waiting for verbal confirmation or flat out 8gnoring it with claims of placeholder.

It isn’t. They take so much time, meeting together re-iterating the lore in a level of detail you will never see said in text in game, because the visual aesthetic is supposed to carry a frick ton of racial info.

One typical example was in the early days of Legions release some felt the nightborne were not a night elven civilization

and not night elf related because they had a proper city and looked different, as well as arcane wielding.

Yet we had the opening cinematicandall the kaldorei motifs littered in Suramar, the attire of thenightborne,their mounts, the moon symbols all over the place, the Kakdorei ekven statues.

It was so evident these were showing you a pristine kaldorei civilization from the pre-sundering era, I was gob smacked that some were denying it. Until I realised later it was agenda fuelled. They wanted them linked to the blood elves, so were foolishly denying they were kaldorei, rather than the obvious, a night elf group that chooses friendship with the blood elves over their own fellow night elf.

I remember chronicles talking about them in the night elf section, saying they were a new race, and trying to explain to people, they are a new race of night elves, and blizzard are entitled to simply say a new race or new race of elves if they so wish, they don’t have to specify night elf everytime when the category is already established or implied elsewhere.

Now, how much more racial info does that give you about each race?

One thing for sure is you cannot ignore what the art tells you. It has so much info that is not outright stated in conversation or quest text. Every asset is there intentional andbuilds the story and identity of the race every bit as much as its history does

The art is so expressive and rich in wow, I reckon it carries as much info of the race that is canon as the descriptive lire andhistory does.

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This is true for the current content, but old things (TBC, WotLK) should be taken with a grain of salt - Sylvanas was a night elf for a long time after all.

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…that’s how the art team would like it to be. Then time constraints come in and the people who aren’t the artists start placing the art assets they thoughtfully designed around the world, while the artists rush the rest, and lore guys don’t look over anything anymore.

I wouldn’t take every quest source seriously, I most definitely wouldn’t take every art source seriously, either. Broad strokes like your NB example? Sure. Details? Depends on many factors.

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That is why the Night Elves willingly accept the gift of undeath!?

4000 IQ Blizzard play.

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:hocho: Forsaken Delaryn is as bad writing as Me’dan

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She have her reasons but not the time to explain them :wink:

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One of her lines of dialogue is this :

“We must defeat the Horde and their vile warchief, though it might cost us that which we hold most dear.”

Funny how things change…

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I know, of all the people I expected to reject Sylvanas’ “offer” it was Delaryn, the way she was written to respond to Sylvanas in that art piece cinematic… I would think she would be the poster child for night elves refusing to be raised as undead.

But maybe I haven’t delved into the psychology deeply yet.

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Frankly the only way I can see Delaryn working out is that she pulls a Lord Godfrey. The bravest Forsaken there ever was!

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Bless Lord Godfrey, we need more forsaken like him

A Good War does imply that she lost faith in Elune and fell into despair, which allowed for her to be able to be raised into undeath

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While that is true, there are few races out there who despise undead more than the Kaldorei. It goes against very Nature itself and they consider it an affront, an abomination.

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Then please walk me through it, because i combined that account with the ingame cinematic, and concluded it was not showing that.

HOwever I may have missed something, blizzard aren’t sloppy writers, they’ve shown taht time and time again. However they have also shown that some developments in the lore are not based on or from the lore, but done for what they perceive is the overall good of the game.

I can imagine that Delaryn is a more well known character because of how she is portrayed, therefore it is more emotional and effective to use her, a familiar face players can connect to, to boost the drama and connection to the content they want us involved with. Therefore, though Delayrn might not initially fit that parameter, she can be made too.

Another alternative is that like a lot of things, we have in stories, we can have differing outcomes, and sometimes, they just want to do the unexpected for dramatic effect.While most would have expected Delaryn to resist, it is possible that she does not, even if we find it disapointing and unlikely.

So then I try to figure out what the story tellers are trying to say with this move.I may reserve judgement to try and glean meaning from causing her to go this way. They trying to tell us more about Sylvanas, show how desperate the situation is and how cruel raising as undead is? I mean doing it with Delaryn was far more powerful than with Godrey or Voss - and this franchise plays with powerful themes their stories don’t often properly connect the players to their gravity or magnitude, and they should. When you actually think about a lot of the things that go on in the world of warcraft they really are terrifying, or incredible, and quite something. Raising to undeath? The cruetly of Arthas, a 10,000 year period - that is an incredibly long time, Immortal?

They seem like words banded about, lacking import without a story that can properly characterise them, therefore for those you need big drama…

I am not sure, I’m musing.

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Still doesn;t explain how Night Elves can be raised in the first place, Silverpine questing proves this.

And every person who gets asked to explain this either comes up with some deal with Heyla (despite the Lantern being destroy and it being done off-screen) or the fact she can raise Blood Elves somehow thus that can somehow relate to Night Elves.

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From Elegy

What have I done?

Teldrassil.

The Crown of the Earth.

The illumination of its branches, enormous and hitherto a sanctuary, bathed the water and the land with an orange glow and grotesqueries of shadow.

Now, you understand, the Banshee Queen had whispered into Delaryn’s ear—before she did the unthinkable. Before she . . .

But the Dark Lady had been wrong. I understand nothing.

Delaryn’s grief and guilt raged as fiercely as the fire. In a final touch of malice as unfathomable as her motives, Sylvanas Windrunner had turned Delaryn’s head so the dying kaldorei had a perfect view of the incineration of all she loved—all she had fought for, believed in, bled for. All she had lived for . . .and was about to die for.

The tree of life was now a deathtrap, and soon would be the site of the greatest mass incremation Azeroth had ever known.

“Close your eyes,” Ferryn said. He stretched out in front of her, trying to shield her from the inferno’s tortured brightness. But his ghostly form was translucent. He blurred, but did not block, the sight.

I cannot close my eyes. Though she couldn’t say it. She was long past speaking. Her breaths had numbers. I have to see this.

If there were any mercy, the excruciating sight would burn her eyes to blindness, but cruelly, that solace was denied her.

Her senses were at their peak, screaming. She shouldn’t be able to hear the crackling groans of the World Tree’s burning limbs, yet the sound mingled with the shrieks of those left on Darkshore.

With a strange perversity, Delaryn felt only coldness in the face of the scorching heat.

Death is cold, she thought. Even for those who burn.

Those whom I failed.

“Release your hatred and your fear,” Ferryn said, so softly, so gently. “You are past all of it now. Come with me.”

You are not real, Delaryn thought with both anger and anguish. You are only wistful shadows, promising peace.

There will be no peace. Not for me.

The ghostly form of the night elf druid disappeared—but of course, it had never been there.

Above the canopy, above the burning tree, above all the trials and torments of this world, hung two moons: the White Lady and the Blue Child. Mother and infant, Elune and her people. The night skies once offered such comfort and balm. Now they were cold, the stars as hard as the diamonds they resembled.

Where are you, Elune? How could you abandon your children to fire? We gave all we had. For what?

She was lucky. Arrows would claim her life. But the children whose cradle had been the boughs of the World Tree would die in agony and, worse, in utter innocence.

Turn your face from Azeroth in shame, Elune. Her thoughts were daggers. You have abandoned us. We tried so hard . . . We

believed in your love, in your protection . . .

Her mouth was too dry, her body too weak, to even spit in contempt.

Her pain grew, even as the coldness seeped into her heart.

Soon, it will not hurt at all, the ghostly shape of her beloved had assured her.

Would it still hurt when she passed into oblivion?

There was no Ferryn to ask.

This passage IMO was written from Delaryn’s perspective when Sylvanas turned Delaryn’s head towards Teldrassil, and describes her thought’s. The passage implies that due to her failure in defending Teldrassil and the fact that she did not expect to see her entire people being burned, she was consumed by fear and hatred.

Perhaps the image of Ferryn (her husband I believe) was a vision from Elune to go in peace, but she refused that.

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That’s true, a Silverpine quest does offer dialogue which imply that the val’kyr can only raise human corpses

Our enemies are becoming smarter - adapting to our tactics. Recently an attack was made upon Pyrewood Village, southwest of here. Our troops occupying the town were decimated, of course, but what made the attack especially interesting was the racial composition of the attacking force. No humans were used.

<Walden laughs.>

Rightfully, they fear being reanimated as Forsaken.

Let us teach the non-humans a lesson in fear. Together we will show them what happens to corpses that we cannot use.

However, dialogue between Lor’themar and Sylvanas does imply that Sylvanas can now raise elves as she offered to raise rangers to Lor’themar, which he flatly refused

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Yes, But Blood Elves and Night Elves are still different to each other even if they are distant kin.

Even the way the Night Elves spirits/wisps work would null this as well. The LK could only do it to his sheer power, there is nothing to suggest this with the Val’kyr under Sylvanas’s control.

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T̶r̶u̶e̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶a̶t̶h̶r̶e̶z̶i̶m̶ ̶w̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶n̶s̶h̶e̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶m̶u̶r̶d̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶n̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶e̶l̶f̶ ̶f̶e̶m̶a̶l̶e̶s̶.̶

Edit: The original post is misleading. I’ll post directly from wowpedia:
Banshees were once beautiful female night elves who were brutally murdered by demons during the fall of Kalimdor. Their restless spirits were left to wander the world for many ages in silent, tortured lamentation. Over the years they became jealous of the living and seeded a deep hatred for all life. Yet when the Lich King, Ner’zhul, became aware of them, he gathered them together and promised them vengeance upon the living. Ner’zhul gave them terrible voices so that the living would finally hear their timeless anguish. Thus, the banshees pledged themselves to the undead cause and began serving as valuable warriors in the Scourge

wow gamepedia com/Banshee

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I guess you’re right, it is implied, although it is only something we can see now in hindsight.

I never would have guessed they’d go down that route when they released the book and the cinematic.

I was under the impression raising elves was no easy feat even for th eLich king, let alone the valky’r

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But I still can’t understand why she joined the forsaken instantly. Just like Sira and all other Night Elves which you killed for your own personal army. Why?

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