So… everyone complains about retcons. And yes… sometimes they’re quite annoying and break the immersion.
What’s the most annoying one according to you?
I think that the one that bugs me most is the Avatar of Sargeras thing. Old books - like the Cycle of Hatred by Keith DeCandido depicted Aegwynn as fighting Sargeras. That’s it. Not a stupid avatar. I am certain that when Blizzard first wrote these stories, the idea about it being an avatar and not the true Sargeras never entered their heads… Now the whole story about Sargeras entering the mind of Medivh is unbelieavable. It was all retconned to depict Sargeras as a cosmic being bigger than a planet.
What about you?
vah Jaina having extraordinary powers out of the blue, flying ghost ships and bombarding ice meteors at UC.
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Not exactly a retcon but more of a “yeah let’s forget about that and move on” type scenario. Although it was pretty cool wielding all those amazing artifact weapons in Legion, they all in my opinion got wasted in the end. That and all class titles we got in that era. Doomhammer, Ashbringer, Felomalorn… All just pieces of scrap now. I guess the shadow priests got something a little extra during BfA but that was about it. Us death knights get to be called “Deathlord” that one time on the SL starting quest but we’re basically retconed as “just another death knight” from “Deathlord”.
That’s probably because of the format the story has to take because of the game etc…
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Not a retcon. You weren’t paying attention to the story.
If a small group of wizards could levitate an entire metropolis, there’s no reason why Jaina, one of the most powerful mages in the setting, can’t levitate a ruined ship.
“Bombarding ice meteors” is basic stuff that even the Mage player character can do.
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Especially considering Jaina has been repeatedly described as the “most powerful mortal mage” since MoP; the same expansion where she took on the powers of a demigod, The Thunder King.
I have a long list about Night Elf Retcons post WC3 till this day…
Hint: None of those retcons benefitted the Kaldorei in any way 
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Retconning A’dal and the Sha’tar into Army of Light.
It does not make much sense; the Naaru depicted in BC are nowhere close to Xe’ra or the portrayal in Legion; A’dal is a manifestation of benevolence accepting to pretty much any refugee in Outland.
There’s no words on Lightforged in Outland, neither is there any information on how the Tempest Keep came to be, now that it is not a Naaru stronghold; but a vessel of the Army of the Light. Even worse, TK is a larger vessel than their main stronghold, the Xenedar.
It’ a prime example of chronicles offerimg a random thumbs up / take without any deeper considerations.
Beyond that, the idea that apparently A’dal and the Sha’tar knew of Illidan’s prophecy and did not oppose him (Illidan novel).
If you do a retcon like that at least remove the Sha’tari Naaru leading the assault on Black Temple from the game…
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I guess I find that Night Elves are a bit dull now?
In WC3 they were savage warriors who’d stop at nothing to protect their forests, even preemptively attacking the orcs just for the crime of cutting lumber. Cut to WoW and we have Tyrande running around Val’sharah in a sheer silk dress and high heels.
I get that she is a priest of Elune but there’s still a weird disonance in the ‘mood’ around the Kaldorei.
It is debatable how much of a retcon this is and I apologize, but it is what sprung to mind first! 
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The entire back and forth with what species Garona is.
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Following from your point, I never quite understood (besides the whole faction symmetry) why the Night Elves joined the Alliance? The Humans in Kalimdor cut plenty of trees too. Sure they didn’t kill Senarius, but they trusted the orcs/“true horde” enough to enlist them in the battle of Hyjal. Also, Taurens were always amicable to Night Elves yet that didn’t seem to matter when the faction split happened?
And remember that the in vanilla wow, The Forsaken started as neutral for the rest of the Horde where as the Night Elves were friendly?
Its worse.
In chronicles Blizzard explaines why the Forsaken joined the Horde instead of their living family.
They still didnt know how to explain the night elves joining the Alliance (or bieng its own faction).
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For me it’s the Drained/Eredar retcon, because for me it was the first big sign of Blizzard not really caring for their own story and all the things to come.
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Right?! I remember reading the Chronicle and getting to the part where they’re basically breaching the gap between WIII and Wow and I remember thinking I’ve skipped a page! No info on it whatsoever.
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What’s the most annoying retcon?
1). An orc and human that have changed everything with their time travel in past(War of the Ancient). But in our real time nothing have changed…
2). Info that Night Elves actually were not created by the Elune.
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old gods being perma dead instead of us just pushing back their physical form.
Also to a lesser extent yrels character development and groms " redemption " though i put this more down to the plot of WOD being cut.
BFA where normal Valkyr can raise Night elves.
The only reason Valkyr could raise humans is because they are derivatives of the Vrykul (Which Odyn created the Valkyr to raise).
Every other non-human was raised by a necromancer/lich, so there was little to no need to add this lorebreaker to the already lore breaking Darkshore warfront.
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I’m not sure that I would call it “the most annoying” retcon, but I preferred eredar being a supremely evil race responsible for corrupting Sargeras. TBC flipped the script and gave us draenei as well, whereas I would have preferred Broken.
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In chronicles Blizzard explaines why the Forsaken joined the Horde instead of their living family.
To be honest, we didn’t need Chronicles to explain that one, it was quite evident. The Forsaken should never be part of the alive humans again based on history alone.
As for the Elves joining Alliance, the only way I’d see it explainable is that while Elves hated everyone equally, only the Horde carved its home in Kalimdor, which means that they alone were a threat to the old forests. Humans, Dwarves and Gnomes were all based and remained around Eastern Kingdoms, while now we had an entire group of races in Kalimdor pushing through Ashenvale.
