Warcraft Retrospective: A Blog Post Series (latest issue: #39, 2024-10-19)

Argent Dawn
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Really looking forward to hear your thoughts on the night elf campaign!

I’ll be honest my mind had blanked all the lore about the oracle and how incredibly stupid it is.

Your post also reminded me of a small peeve but it bothers me alot for some reason, but I really dislike the renamed “Where Wind Riders Dare” over the original title, “Where Wyverns Dare”, primarily for two reasons.

One, it sounds alot more awkward to say. Two, the original title is meant to be a direct reference. The wiki says its the Misfits song “Where Eagles Dare”, but there is also a movie with the same title that predates it(The Misfit song has nothing to do with it I believe), and an Iron Maiden Song which is unrelated to the Misfit one(The Maiden one is based on the film). The film was released in 1968, the Misfit song in 1979 and the Iron Maiden song in 1983.

Some other fun but useless notes in regards to things from the orc campaign:

  • The effect of Grom changing to a Chaos orc is achieved in a different way one might expect. In the WC3 files, they got two separate hero units for Grom with completely different stats and models. So the game plays the animation of the change(which is tied to original Grom) then replaces him with a new unit.

  • If you spawn in the Soul Gem into a WC3 map it can be used on any hero. However doing so instantly kills that hero and effectively removes them from the map, because that is how the Gem is coded. Grom being released from it in the campaign is simply achieved by again, spawning in a new character entirely at the correct point in the cutscene.

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Yep.

The same thing happens with Arthas in the final human mission. Arthas wielding Frostmourne is a different hero unit from regular Arthas. He has an animation where he’s holding his hammer, Frostmourne falls nearby, and he throws the hammer away — and it’s this animation that plays in the cutscene.

I haven’t played the night elf campaign yet (going to start it right now, in fact), but apparently in patch 1.31, the same inventory bug happens to Tyrande in the second mission and to Illidan in his mission, after he consumes the Skull of Gul’dan. I’ve installed 1.30 side by side with 1.31, so I can play these missions there in case I hit the bug.

I didn’t know that! (Since I know very, very little about the stage music industry, so I don’t even know who the Misfits are, and Iron Maiden is just a name I heard.) I did wonder back in the day why the name of that mission was so weird. Where wyverns dare to… do what?

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I’m still so baffled by how this bug came to be.

For just a short-note version of the three potential references to give you some context!:

  • The movie is an action movie in ww2 about a special team sent to rescue a captured american officer from german troops. Most famous name involved is Clint Eastwood.

  • Misfits is a punk-rock band from the US and considered some of the early pioneers in “Horror Punk”(Using imagery of horror creatures, symbols and and props on stage & often in the lyrics and songs.)

  • Iron Maiden is a british heavy metal band and probably one of the most popular metal bands in the world. Their actual songs varies wildly from album to album(though each album usually has some kind of theme for some of the songs on it).

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Ah, the latter part of the orcish campaign!

Mission five against Cenarius was one for my inner turtle-player again. I often build towers with peons near them to patch them up if I can, as I like to take my time in these missions. Near the base I often put towers on that rise, while for the rest doing as you did, using headhunters and raiders ( with a kodo for attack buff) to bring down elven flyers.

Mission six, similar, build a row of towers to stop attacking humans and back up my defenders until I can finally assault the base on the cliff.

The dungeoncrawler mission on hard could be really tough, so again, make good use of Thrall’s spiritwolves to tank! Fortunately Cairne and his tauren are pretty hardy by themselves, but you’ve no healers with you so still need to be careful.

The final mission on hard was once again one for my inner Tortolla, as the orcs and infernals come at you from multiple angles, even the exit that is aimed towards Jaina’s base. So the peons were working overtime. I even went as far as to build towers in Jaina’s base because, left to her own devices, the Warsong Clan would eventually destroy her. Then slowly expand, try and conquer new goldmines, until we finally get to Grom.

Storywise, little old me really loved that the orcs were not evil just because, but because they’d been corrupted into being so. So first time I saw Grom drop the bombshell they did so willingly, I could very well understand Thrall’s reaction.
As for Jaina helping Thrall, despite having seemingly no reason for doing so… I presume next to the scolding, she has seen that although he was cryptic, the Oracle was right about Lordaeron falling, and she knows he has enormous power from her conversation with Antonidas during the human campaign. So I assume that at this point, she’s still inclined to believe him when he says that the Burning Legion arrived and that the only chance they got is working together. Even if she was not happy about Thrall and Grom killing a good portion of the people that followed her.

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I’m really enjoying these. It’s great to see how much you have already covered!

As always the criticism is spot-on. This is maybe the bit I disagree with:

Thrall will need Jaina’s help to save Grom, so now he has the motivation to work with her. Unfortunately — and the story glosses over this — she has no motivation to work with him […] She has no reason to help Thrall except for the Prophet pressuring her into it.

Personally, I think it made sense for Jaina to side with the orcs.

She does not need a motivation like Thrall’s, because unlike the orcs she has already seen the devastation brought by the Scourge firsthand. She knows how serious the threat is, she knows her people aren’t enough, and she knows she needs allies: it all fits her goal of granting a future to the survivors of Lordaeron.

I fear if they added a personal quick objective for Jaina, story-wise, it would just remove strength from the Thrall-Grom arc which they have established for the entire campaign.

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It wouldn’t necessarily had to have been Thrall, but it would have been nice to perhaps during the human campaign, have had her encounter one or a few orcs that weren’t bloodthirsty. Perhaps some frostwolf remnants.

Because prior to suddenly allying with Thrall in the Orc Campaign, as far as we know, her experience with orcs is the same as most humans. As demonic invaders. It could have also set up events in the orc campaign a bit nicer without interfering with it.

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I agree. Even if (I think) Jaina really hasn’t interacted with a lot of orcs herself so far.

Aside from the few bloodthirsty survivors of the Blackroll Clan, most orcs were in captivity during the years of her growth: she did not live the first two wars, and this will actually be touched upon during the TFT orc campaign, when she confronts her father, who instead remembers who and what the orcs were.

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Warcraft Retrospective 27: Beneath the Stars of Ever-Eve

https://lintian.eu/2024/05/24/warcraft-retrospective-27/

Excerpt:

Warcraft 3 likes to introduce gameplay abilities through cutscenes, which I appreciate, and this mission is no exception. By seeing Tyrande summon and use an Owl Scout in a cutscene, players will have a better understanding of how the ability works. (It’s an invulnerable owl, immune to spells, that you can control to fly around and scout the map.)

Story-wise, however, I already have some questions.

Everyone here acts like they’ve learned nothing from Grom’s disastrous foray into Ashenvale. Presumably, if not Grom himself, then at least some of his warriors would tell Thrall and Jaina that the woods are inhabited, and they’d attempt to parley with the night elves or at least find other sources of lumber to avoid their wrath. Here, it looks like the humans and orcs don’t even know about them.

Also, I have second thoughts about keeping the orbs and am wondering if it’s cheating. They don’t make that much of a difference and there are more powerful items to be found later on, but still, the mission designers didn’t intend the player to be able to take them.

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Another fun read-up on the “Journey to the West” part of Warcraft 3, as for the reason behind Grom not telling anyone about the Amazonian Murder Machines hiding in the trees I have to assume its because Warcraft 3 comes from a period of time where Humans themselves had no clue Kalimdor even existed up until Medivh started blathering about it because it was still shrouded in magic mist back in these days of yore, its also possible Grom’s clan isn’t present either as if I recall the Orcs in this mission all wear the indicative red of Thrall’s Horde, rather than Grom’s specific purple, so its possible they’re just taking into account a sense of scale, distance and time for this mission.

Grom’s little split off after having a spat with Thrall leads him into ‘x’ part of Ashenvale, Elven vietnam ensues, Grom backs off and perhaps there is a message being relayed to Thrall and Jaina aaaaalllll the way back in Theramore Isle(?) or Orgrimmar(?) but it wouldn’t be in time to reach this expeditionary force sent ahead to gather necessary resources, for all they know they’ve been sent into ‘y’ part of Ashenvale and found a very plentiful source of wood and gold.

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Wow, you’re a fast reader!

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I wouldn’t have said so :pensive:, maybe academia has broken my brain in more ways than I think it has. I think its in large part just due to already having the background knowledge and reading of Tolkien, D&D and the Old Warcraft concepts for the Elves so you’re able to read through it at a much faster rate.

I am curious though, you’re obviously very learned on Tolkien already and know a great deal about his Elves, but was it the mixture of Tolkienian themes + their own unique twist that drew you towards the Night Elves as a race? Or was it solely due to their closeness (given Quel’Thalas at this time had a good one sentence of lore) to Tolkien’s Elves that you were drawn to them by? Or was it something totally other than Tolkien/the Night Elves themselves.

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That third mission on hard was indeed a ( censored version of female dog) to play and it is as you said. From what I recall, even going as fast as I could I had no means to build an army large enough to entirely destroy the orc base -and- plow through the guardians before the undead got to Furion. So I did as you said, try and rush past the base and hope enough survived.

It’s indeed odd that none of the orcs bothered to tell Thrall and Jaina “By the way, maybe we should be careful about cutting lumber here, the last time we tried, the trees started speaking elvish. Oh, and, we kinda killed their demigod so they’re probably pissed off with us as is.”

I’m pretty sure neither of these two were built during Reign of Chaos. The bonus campaign “Founding of Durotar” in Frozen Throne specifically mentions the orcs moving back into the Barrens to found their homeland -after- the Battle of Mount Hyjal. Seeing as the humans did not really have time to build either ( Look for the oracle, rumble with the natives, rumble with the orcs, rumble with the demons) I assume they haven’t had time to go citybuild either.

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Its likely the camps were pitched even further away than the Orgrimmar-Ashenvale border then, possibly even where they all first shipwrecked and met Medivh which is a lot further south(?), although its never explicitly given to us beyond a few map points. I suppose we can assume Warcraft 3 did do a better job of that “the world is 10,000x bigger than the game allows” dilemma than WoW does by simply having the expeditionary forces already be too far ahead/already gone by the time any report of what happened to Grom’s expedition got back to Thrall and Jaina.

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It is the most reasonable thing to assume the camps were pitched further south, but, atleast for the humans we know very little about the circumstances surrounding their landing.

Thrall however, we know that the Horde was scattered, given how your first mission involves checking for survivors among the coast, and Hellscream’s clan being missing until mission three.

But, most expeditions, and especially when you are a displaced people on the run from something, which both orcs and humans were, -would- atleast establish a basecamp somewhere, a place you can rest, recover, and defend while you go look for the rest of your people, and stash your supplies. But WC3 never really explained this, and looking purely at the game, Thrall apparently went off with Cairne immedeatly to escort him and then look for the Oracle.

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Indeed. The impression I get is that the night elf campaign began shortly after the orc one ended, with the humans and orcs still camped at the Barrens-Ashenvale border. They hadn’t yet had time to build permanent settlements. TFT takes place several months later, by which point both Orgrimmar and Theramore had mostly been built.

Yes! That is one of the topics I’m going to touch two posts from now. To be more precise, the next two posts are going to be titled

  • Warcraft Retrospective 28: All In
  • Warcraft Retrospective 29: Interlude: The Value of Mystery

and then I’ll move on to TFT.

I think it was this, if subconsciously.

When I played WC3 at release, I was 15 years old and had no conception of thematic analysis (I don’t even think I saw into the Elune/Elbereth parallel until much, much later), and was not nearly as much into elves or as much of a namby-pamby nature lover as I am now. It was emotional and subconscious, that combination of awe and mystery, and a desire to know more.

As I recall, night elves were at just the sweet spot, just grounded enough and just novel enough, between “generic fantasy humans with pointy ears” and “so grotesquely fairy-otherworldly that it becomes ugly and offputting”. They rode felines! Their buildings were animated trees! But at the same time they were relatable and didn’t feel alien.

And just like when reading Tolkien books, I felt that the venture into Kalimdor lifted the veil from one tiny corner of a large, ancient, and mysterious unexplored world. And more than anything else, I was curious about the night elves. Are the Sentinels and druids their only population? Who makes them all these wonderful toys? What do they eat? Do they eat? (For all I knew, they could be drinking moonwell water for sustenance.) Were there night elf settlements elsewhere? How would they fare outside their home environment?

I eagerly awated TFT and WoW, and needless to say, I got answers to all these questions, and many many more.

Also it was the presentation as much as everything else. The Ashenvale tileset is gorgeous, properly selling the idea of an ancient forest. It’s humid and misty, with those mushrooms, and the ruins scattered around hint at a forgotten past. And the patches of moonlight. And to this day, simply building a night elf base from scratch is to me like those newfangled ASMR videos, with wisps chiming, and beams of light falling on buildings under construction, and the soft creaking sound of growing trees, and the soothing, aspirated voice of the advisor. “Your building is complete.”

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Fantastic read once again!

I’ve mentioned it many times before and as you brought up, WC3 while introducing quite alot of women characters to the setting and story, really did have a pretty weird fixation on showcasing these women as “hot” as possible with skimpy clothes and always very exaggerated chest poses.

It was nothing new to fantasy, it’s basically the standard trope for fantasy genre of the late 90’s and early 2000s. But boy it has not aged well in terms of that.

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Wait, was Kalimdor shrouded in magic mist? I don’t remember anything like that in the lore. Pandaria was, but I got the impression the main reason why Kalimdor was untouched was simply that nobody knew it was there, like real-life America by the time of its discovery.

(Medivh knew, but he liked to keep his secrets to himself.)

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Sort of, I’m not sure if it was still in place by the time of WoW but the RPG explicitly states that the Druids exiled the Highborne then wove the land in a shroud of mist to hide it.

“After the surviving Highborne were exiled by the night elves from Kalimdor, kaldorei druids wove a powerful spell to close their borders within an eternal mist. There they remained for thousands of years, hidden by the mist and by the swirling seas of the Maelstrom.”

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Well, the RPG was decanonized :slight_smile:

(I’ll still cover it when I get to it, though!)

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Ostensibly that was the case at one point, but it has been consistently eroded away and retconned out over the last 20 years with more and more lore detailing how people from Eastern Kingdoms knew of and actively visited Kalimdor decades if not centuries before Warcraft 3.

The high elves launched an expedition to Winterspring 140 years ago to recover an ancient artifact. Human sailors have frequented Gadgetzan for at minimum 40 years now (pre-First War), but likely more as it wasn’t considered a new discovery at the time.

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