That’s a weird way of spelling “Blood runs thicker” from Warcraft: Legends, volume 4.
Found some time to continue, so I’ll elaborate on the “superhero story” bit.
There’s some points in the history of the franchise where the story isn’t about different nations vying for supremacy or adventurers exploring strange places, learning about interesting cultures and slaying monsters.
During these points in the story, the focus revolves around the player-character and a cast of important, powerful NPCs as they battle against a clear and obvious villain. It’s not about a struggle between two nations and it’s not particularly adventurous either.
It’s primarily just about the good guys fighting against the bad guy(s). This may come with a new zone, but it’s ultimately just set dressing for the conflict. The “superhero story” revolves around this small group of heroes thwarting the villain before they get to carry out their evil plan, and that’s it.
The final content patch of almost every single expansion feels like a bit of a superhero story, since by that point in an expansion, all of the exploration and adventuring has been done and the focus has shifted to wrapping up the story, to a confrontation with the villain of the expansion.
I’d say that this starts as far back as 2.4 and the Sunwell Plateau raid, with a small cast of heroic NPCs who hog the spotlight and Kil’jaeden as the big bad guy, but it’s not the most egregious example.
If I had to name the most worst cases of this, I’d go with 4.3: Hour of Twilight, 8.3: Visions of N’Zoth, 9.1: Chains of Domination and 9.2: Eternity’s End. In all four of these patches, it feels as though the entire setting is warped, to try and force it to revolve around the latest band of heroes and the villain that they face.
10.2: Guardians of the Dream has its fair share of superhero moments, but there’s a strong enough sense of wonder and exploration surrounding the Emerald Dream that I won’t list this patch as one of the worst offenders.
7.3: Shadow of Argus is also undeniably one of the biggest “superhero story” patches in the entire game, perhaps the biggest one… Except somehow, it actually pulls it off. It genuinely feels epic and like the end of an era, with heroes and villains who all deserve the spotlight and thrive in it.
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I think much of this can be attributed to technology and shift in narrative approach when it comes to important figures that happened throughout Vanilla-WotLK era.
With WotLK, Blizzard introduced phasing, which allowed us to take part in events such as Wrathgate, or taking an enemy outpost for our own. Even in late TBC, Isle of Quel´Danas showed progressing war effort of Shattered Sun Offensive through gradual phasing of the area that was visible for everyone. And in Cataclysm, phasing now allowed for terrain changes, which resulted in insane amount of changes happening throughout the world as we quested through it.
While there were some larger battles in Vanilla too, such as Ahn´Qiraj, it was only in WotLK-Cata when Blizzard could show a town being destroyed by a bomb in ordinary levelling zone.
Second, with WotLK, Blizzard changed the way story worked in terms of major lore characters. Where TBC just threw Warcraft 3 characters as raid bosses against us, WotLK made us interact closely with major friendly characters for the first time. Sylvanas wasn´t just being an emo in her underground bunker, she got to do stuff. And, in turn, the armies of countries these major characters lead could appear in the story we experienced (instead of fighting the other faction somewhere out there while conveniently leaving home territories undefended so adventurers had to deal with everything).
This meant that we were finally able to see stories where the big bad enemy army lead by big bad from Warcraft 3 faced the good guys from Warcraft 3 (and others, since we could finally have new good characters that weren´t just NPCs standing in one location) and armies under their command instead of just some random adventurers.
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Lintian, it’s always such a pleasure to read your newest posts 
And everyone else continuing the conversation on this thread, I just want to say I enjoy reading it just as much - I’m getting so many insights and different points of view!
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I think this one works because, although it wasn’t a ‘proper’ story arc, in that it was mish-mashed throughout all the other stuff as we went, it managed to feel like a proper capstone to the whole Burning Legion story that has been intersperesed throughout since WC3.
Could it have been done better as an Overall? I think so, sure.
Was it still much better than the rushed/sudden ‘Super Hero’ segments you listed? I would say so, yes, because over time it had the benefit of feeling ‘earned’ as a story beat. It wasn’t just an ‘oh, this is a thing now’ like so many others.
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I think you might be on to something here, and it will become important when we get to the utter juvenile trainwreck thematic mess that was Cataclysm.
http://ramses-reviews.blogspot.com/2013/07/world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-deepholm.html
Ramses of the Ramses Reviews blog noted that Cataclysm was basically a Frankenstein’s monster sewn from three expansion ideas in one:
- The Alliance-Horde war.
- Survival in a world wrecked by the Cataclysm.
- The struggle to save the world from Deathwing and the Twilight’s Hammer.
The problem with these is that it turns the world of Cataclysm into a Schrodinger’s setting, whose very composition changes based on which story lens it is observed through. And no amount of handwaving and excuses in lore books can fix this, because these stories belong to different genres.
- The Alliance-Horde war is a warfare story. Red and Blue are powerhouses deploying their forces all across the globe. Resources are abundant, the factions have no problem with supply lines (the Alliance even co-opting previously pro-peace Theramore into a staging ground for their invasion of the Barrens), and this storyline cannot really end without removing either Varian or Garrosh from power, which doesn’t happen in this expansion at least. Good examples are Southern Barrens and Silverpine Forest.
- The survival plot in an adventure story. Wherever it surfaces, you see destruction wrought by the Cataclysm, whole towns burned down or sunk, and elemental storms raging across the planet. Civilization in those places has essentially collapsed, and the citizens rely on you, the adventurer, to gather food, rescue refugees, and keep out monsters threatening to destroy their shelters. Good examples are Darkshore and the goblin starting zones.
- Finally, the struggle against the Hour of Twilight is a superhero story. Deathwing is established to be a hopeless fight for mere mortals, seeing how he obliterates entire cities and leaves fissures that span continents. And so Thrall turns from just a decent warrior and young but promising shaman, and more importantly Warchief of the Horde, to this super-awesome World Shaman and stand-in Aspect of Earth who will deliver us from evil alongside the Dragon Aspects themselves. Oh, and 10–25 random schmucks are there, too.
And the problem is that none of these three storylines are compatible with each other.
- The war and survival storylines are incompatible, because the former requires the factions to have their power intact while the latter requires the world to be wrecked, everyone fighting for scraps.
- The war and struggle storylines are incompatible, because in the former, the survival of each faction is contingent on obliterating the other faction, while in the latter, both factions need to throw everything they have, including their greatest heroes, at the common enemy.
- The survival and struggle storylines are incompatible, because in the former, the most powerful people of both factions are preoccupied with stopping further damage and tending to the needs of helpless civilians, while in the latter, they have to leave their people behind to fight an evil mega-dragon and inexplicably numerous doomsday cult.
And we hear the clutch loudly every time the story shift gears — and genres. For example, the goblin starting zones are a survival story where you’re helping refugees who apparently all fit on Gallywix’s one ship. At the end, Thrall, as Warchief, reinstalls the sleazebag you just defeated as your leader for… some reason, then as soon as you arrive in Orgrimmar, it turns out Azshara is already taken over by goblins, reshaped into a giant Horde symbol (??!), and Garrosh puts you to work fueling the Horde war machine and preparing for an invasion of Ashenvale. You’re now in the war story.
The game basically gaslights you. “What? We never said Thrall was the Warchief. Garrosh is.” Thrall left his dear Horde he rebuilt from scratch because the world itself needs his help in… er… um… where exactly is he going, again?
In another example, Darkshore is a zone written and designed for the survival storyline, with Malfurion having to personally calm the storms (because druids and shamans are interchangeable now?) and address the naga and Twilight cultists. Fast forward to Mount Hyjal, which is part of the Hour of Twilight plot, and Malfurion is leading the cavalry against the Twilight’s Hammer, rubbing shoulders with Hamuul and Cenarius as the three take on Ragnaros in his own domain (oh, and you are there, too), and welcoming Horde champions to help defend Nordrassil, all while down the slopes of the selfsame Mount Hyjal, the Horde is deforesting Ashenvale and kidnapping wisps in Felwood.
I think when players rant about “Green Jesus” or “my faction heroes going neutral”, what they really mean is a dissatisfaction with the thematically incongruent story. It requires some thought to notice that Cataclysm is leaping between different genres with no rhyme or reason and changing the underlying assumptions about the world, but everyone can agree that they hate a Thrall who doesn’t wear his Warchief armor, doesn’t act like his WC3 self, has no real ties to the Horde he built, and doesn’t even want to be called Thrall.
And I haven’t even scratched the surface. I’ll need to devote many articles to Cataclysm when the time comes.
Part of the skill of the Mists of Pandaria writers was how they got to have their cake and eat it too. They looked at the three inconsistent world-states of Cataclysm and chose one so the next expansion could have a consistent setting. Mists of Pandaria continues the war story, but in 5.0, where you actually roam the new continent and discover its ancient wonders, both factions send only a token force, so you get to have your adventure story too until full-scale war breaks out in 5.1. There are other failings associated with that particular genre shift, but they’re more subtle and don’t lead to story collapse. I’ll get to them in due time, too.
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You hit the nail on the head here, and I´d say this is also the main reason behind people complaining about war being taken out of Warcraft (in myriad different ways). At its core, these complaints are a result of whiplash of completely opposite themes, however this time instead of taking place in single expansion, each expansion is focused on one theme that is incompatible with previous one.
Warcraft 3 to Vanilla was the time of peace that was the result of necessity to band together after Legion´s invasion. Vanilla - WotLK was time of increasing tensions, acts that soured both factions towards each other. Combined with hotheads such as Varian and Garry (proud member of “We Did Nothing Wrong Club” founded by Fëanor), this shift transformed intself into what should have been called Fourth War in Cata-MoP. With everyone exhausted by the war after that, we went into WoD-Legion era of cautious cooperation, but still with some hotheads such as Ashran guys, Genn and Sky-Admiral Rogers fueling smaller conflicts, but the factions at large working together through neutral orders that emerged in Legion, culminating with defeat of the Burning Legion.
And then the story breaks up because instead of developing either peace or budding tensions that would eventually lead to the next war, Blizzard threw us into what should have been called Fifth War with BfA. And then, once it ended, instead of peace with tensions, we just disappeared off to the afterlife, doing a Danuser cosmic plot. Then suddenly there is no war and everyone loves each other in Dragonflight, and we´re just left baffled because every expansion might as well be taking place in its own separate universe.
At least War Within seems to have some potential with building upon themes of Legion and (to an extent) BfA and DF. While not ideal, it might be the first expansion in 6 years that takes us to explore a story that makes sense as continuation of at least one of recent expansions.
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I think this breakdown of the narrative dissonance is the best one so far. And makes it make sense why there’s such a bad aftertaste to certain parts of WoW history/expacs.
So… thank you Lintian, and everyone who has put that into words! 
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Wars of desperation have been fought many times in the past by dying empires and losing sides with little resources. A desperate gamble to seize a key location or a resource to work as a buffer or a banquet from which to rise up again. Take a look at the Warring states period in ancient china, the Byzantine empire struggling vs warlords and hordes of all kinds between 600 AC till 1200, etc.
The whole reason why Garrosh even invades Ashenvale and Azshara is because resources are so scarce for the average orc, and so they turn to pillaging and plundering to secure those resources.
Survival storyline doesn’t also mean that it is present everywhere in the world. Just like the LK being mostly contained in the Frozen lands of Northrend (though with potential to advance much further, if not stopped there), just because he is not present everywhere around the world, did not mean that his presence wasn’t at the back of your mind, looming.
This only ever works if you assume that people only make rational and good decisions. The history is littered with people making poor and outright stupid decisions, much to their own detriment, instead of the obvious right one.
The factions do not have all the information, the goodwill and rationality to make good choices. In this reduced state of judgement, multiple truths can emerge and the setting can still function without cognitive dissonance- Which it does.
If anything, a conflict as large as this is a great pool to draw from as a storywriter: Your main characters and leaders of the factions have to decide which things do they spend their limited resources and attention on, and at whose expense. Some of them will have other upbringings and bias which swing them one way, others have it the other way. For example, Baine and Vol’jin both were preoccupied with making sure their people survived, while Garrosh ignored a more long-term solution to the problem in favour of a problem that could fix his problems right now, right here.
You do a good analysis of the story but I can’t help but to disagree with you on these points here.
A small correction here: Gallywix commands the -last- ship from Bilgewater, which is why he has so much levearage. Everybody else has either already fled before or is dead.
I agree there should have been a better build-up here. A novel, a story about the Bilgewater goblins joining the Horde earlier than the war-effort starting, something. But it could have been done well- There is also the fact that Garrosh has tasked Gazlove at this point to reshape Orgrimmar and kick the warmachine into full production mode.
I think in fairness Thrall later on does reflect about this (in Legion, no less), where he has to come down to terms with the fact that it was he who ultimately left Garrosh in charge, and even with all the good intentions he had with it (and Garrosh ultimately has only himself to blame for his decisions), the choice does still haunt him.
Again, had thrall been a 100% rational person that had all the knowledge in hand and also no bias toward the son of a warrior that literally saved his entire people, I’m sure he’d done the logical choice. But he’s not a logical person. As people rarely are.
More or less, yes.
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I think if everyone was 100% rational all the time, we’d have no wars anymore.
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I will say, in Battle for Azeroth it was also the first time I felt like Blizzard was no longer being coherent with the world they had built so far.
For a long time, in previous expansions they always strived to give internal consistency to the setting. It is likely a bit soon to discuss this, but it is impressive just how well-connected World of Warcraft is to Warcraft 3, and how much the story that unfolded onwards felt very much to come “alive” on its own: the weak nations after the Burning Legion’s invasion, the Lich King’s assault and to a lesser extent, Deathwing’s cataclysm.
In the same spirit, the Alliance vs. Horde conflict that happened in Cataclysm and then Mists was built through previous expansions, and gave a chance to all racial factions to play to their strenghts, strenghts we knew they had: the honorable tauren trying to second-guess the warmongering warchief, the darkspear feeling left out of the Horde, neutral factions being forced to take a stance as Garrosh’s threatened to harm them aswell, and the Sunreavers and the Silver Covenant eventually clashing.
It felt all part of one world (and, yeah I know, there were several flaws here and there, but everything felt grounded in the World of Warcraft we had come to know and appreciate). Compared to the previous conflict, I think Battle for Azeroth failed to deliver something so poignant, and I’ve said it multiple times but, it felt like decisions were coming down from above to dictate what would happen, and who’d side on what faction.
Ex. compare what made the Kirin Tor turn to the Alliance VS Voss just going “nah, the Alliance is stupid I’m with the Horde now”
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The botch was having a global conflict be spearheaded by character, rather than legitimate grievances of history, creed and resources.
MoP was bad for this, too, but the start with Garrosh in Cataclysm was rooted in the orcish schism of old regretfuls vs the born-in-the-internment camps.
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Cata also had the resources part. Thrall took basically one of the worst parts of Kalimdor (for varying reasons provided by various lore sources) and orcs effectively had to rely on trade to get needed resources. Garry was quite happy to go into war precisely because by taking Ashenvale, Horde would gain access to arguably the best land in Kalimdor and their resource issues would be a thing of the past.
Warcraft Retrospective 12: The Game That Never Was
https://lintian.eu/2024/01/28/warcraft-retrospective-12/
Excerpt:
In case this wasn’t obvious, the game isn’t subtle about the Native American parallels at all — and they’re not of the good, well-researched kind, but of the pulpy pop culture kind. The orcs have shamans and a council of elders. They once roamed the steppes. Now they’ve been put in reservations, as the game insists on calling their habitats, and have turned into impoverished drunkards. The only way this could be any more on the nose would be if they called humans “palefaces”.
This fits with what I understand about Chris Metzen’s creative process at that time. He drew inspiration from a variety of source material, but unfortunately, the source material was often itself full of third-rate cliche storms. Often he was inspired by popular movies and comic books. In this particular case, he described Thrall’s quest in Warcraft Adventures as “Braveheart meets Spartacus meets Dances With Wolves”, all movies known for their impeccable historical accuracy (not). Metzen was very much into pop culture, and this resulted in many elements of Warcraft being derivative of stories that were already derivative of better stories themselves.
Since this is the game that introduced the Blizzard orc archetype as we know it, which has since been adopted by other fantasy settings, I started this entry with an introduction examining the evolution of the orc concept from Tolkien onwards.
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Once again a really enjoyable read!
Blizzard and Warcraft have never been particularly subtle but Lord of the Clans has the subtlety of a brick.
Also a follow-up question I thought about. When the times eventually come, will you tackle WoW as a whole thing on its own or deep-dive into the expansions?
Will you also cover the side-games like Heartstone and Rumble?
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Thank you!
I’m planning to cover WoW expansion by expansion, and each expansion will take several posts to cover, since my original motivation for starting this series was finding the seeds of WoW’s fall from grace. This will be a long, long series.
Vanilla and Cataclysm will take many posts each because of their sheer scope (and in case of Cataclysm, the sheer scope of story brokenness).
As for other games… Hearthstone definitely, as it represents a very tonally different take on the Warcraft universe — more comedic, more cosmopolitan, but also more unashamedly “modernity in fantasy dressing”. Rumble, I don’t know. I haven’t played it and I’m not into mobile games. We’ll see.
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Another fantastic entry, this one being one of the few where I genuinely had no knowledge; I had scraps of WC1 and 2, although given the originals had slightly more depth than a puddle that still feels like a decent percetage heh. LotC? Nada.
Also, the pop-up *1 etc. inserts are really good!
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Insightful as always, Lintian! Did not know the story was made entirely by Chris Metzen. It’s very inspiring to see your dedication to the franchise.
And I appreciate reading those during dead times at work, I’m such a rebel.
Also fun fact. The Dragons begin to be red and black in LotC for the first time. However, their lore is very much that of dragons being generic fantasy creatures, rather than protectors of Azeroth.
Oh, and Alexstrasza “the Queen of Dragons” was Deathwing’s mom. Yup! All of this can be seen through the YouTube link you posted!
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I cannot overstate how enjoyable these are to read. There’s a cadence, flow and passion to your writing that’s up there with the scripts of some of my favourite video essays.
Can’t wait for the Warcraft 3 mammoth-posts.
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Warcraft Retrospective 13: Of Blood and Honor
https://lintian.eu/2024/02/04/warcraft-retrospective-13/
Excerpt:
It’s refreshing to see a story about paladins where they’re not saints. Tirion is imperfect, Uther is imperfect, Saidan is imperfect, and they’re all imperfect in different ways. They’re distinct characters and don’t feel like discount clones of each other spouting empty platitudes about the Light.
It’s also refreshing to see a Warcraft story that has no real antagonist, just a lonely dissenter in an uncaring system of people just doing what seems best to them. And it’s not easy being a lonely dissenter — for either an orc or a human. While we as readers want to see Eitrigg free and Tirion acquitted, for the characters themselves, given their limited knowledge, there are no easy answers. Of Blood and Honor almost feels like a novelization of an RP plot, and I mean it in the best possible way.
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