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As with the Night Elves, the Dwarves are also heading down the path to civil war. The reason lies in one, soon to be born, dwarf.
If one has done the quest “The Princess Saved?” on the Horde side, or “The Princess’s Surprise” on the Alliance side, then one already has an idea of what we’re talking about.
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As part of an interview Warcry did with Jeff Kaplan, Jeff was asked…
WarCry: Much of the Horde experience in Outland revolved around the history of the orcs and the Mag’har tribe. What races can we expect to find tied to the lands of Northrend?
Jeffrey Kaplan: Northrend has some great story development in it. Humans, dwarves, tauren, and trolls will all have their storylines developed further. Of course, all of the other races will share the spotlight as well, but those four have an especially strong presence throughout the icy continent.
The rest of the article can be found here.
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It was a great shock to a lot of fans of WoW’s lore that Illidan actually dies when you defeat him at the end of Black Temple. This was doubly surprising when taking into account Chris Metzen at Blizzcon 2005 who said we’d only be “slowing him down”.
So there’s the question? Is Illidan really dead? Is his active participation in Warcraft’s lore over?
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As I discussed in a previous post, game lore and game mechanics are connected hand-in-hand, so to discuss one while entirely ignoring the other would be a fallacy.
With that in mind, when discussing game lore, one can reach a point where the lore has been pushed so far that the game mechanics can no longer be able to support it. This is what I call a “lore wall”.
Note that this “wall” is not a road block, but merely a boundary that should be acknowledged when it is crossed. One can go beyond the wall, but an entirely new game must be created at that point to support the lore.
A good example of this would be the factions of World of Warcraft.
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It was pointed out to me that in my future-lore post about the Night Elves I left out a significant piece of the puzzle: Tyrande Whisperwind, Malfurion Stormrage’s significant other.
With all eyes on Malfurion it’s easy to forget he’s only half of a greater whole. It is he and Tyrande together who form the true leader of the Night Elves. To say Malfurion will serve as the catalyst for Night Elf civil war is to say Tyrande will as well.
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The Night Elves are heading for civil war, simple as that. (The Dwarves are too, but more on that later.)
The Night Elves up until now have been a selfless race. The druids dedicated themselves to the Green Dragon Flight and the Emerald dream, while everyone else dedicated themselves to protecting the natural world around them while the druids are away. The last priority of the Night Elves was themselves.
But now they’ve lost their immortality, and in the wake of that loss we’ve got Fandral Staghelm splintering off with his Darnassian Night Elves and regrowing the world tree. They already knew this would be in vain; they didn’t care, so they grew it anyway. And now nature itself has been thrown off-balance by their actions. This is flat out heresy for a Night Elf. To throw nature off-balance literally goes against everything they are. The only thing worse would be for them to be delving into the arcane. And while the Darnassians are trying to fix the problem, they still are the ones who caused it in the first place through their own selflish greed.
But… not far away… you have the rest of the Night Elves. The ones who still follow Malfurion’s teachings and recognized “regrowing the world tree” as a selfish act. These are the Night Elves of Moonglade.
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When I originally made my “@ Chris Metzen & Alex Afrasiabi” on the World of Warcraft forums it received over 39,000 views and over 330 replies. Within the thread I made one reply, addressing some of the posters comments. Since I think it’s relevant to the first post, I’m posting it here….
As Kisirani, and other developers have mentioned in the past, within development there is a metaphorical “table”. It’s crowded and limited in size, and the goal of any thread like this one is to have Blizzard ask, “Should we make room for this issue?” Blizzard’s resources may be large, but, at the end of the day, they still have a limit. Therefore priority must be made.
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During the Lore panel for BlizzCon ‘07, the two of you discussed your desire for the world of Azeroth to be more immersive, and for the story to be brought to the forefront. You wanted characters who were more believable, relevant, and vibrant.
I am also in the storytelling business as a professional screenwriter. And as storytellers, it is a key goal of ours to ensure our audience lose themselves in the story… for them to forget they’re reading a script, or playing a game.
It sounds complex, but there are obviously many simple steps towards accomplishing this.
In screenwriting, one of them is not referring to the camera.
“A man steps into an old house. He hears a roar and turns to see a zombie charging towards him with an axe. The camera pulls back to show–” Reading this sentence, the reader sees a man, an old house, a zombie, then a camera!?? WTH where’d that come from!? Oh, that’s right… it’s just a movie. I’m reading a script.
This is exactly what you don’t want.
For World of Warcraft, it has its own simple solution:
Acknowledgment.
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“Alliance of Convenience”