The character interaction always is what interested me, although there is actually culture in there, albeit somewhat stereotyped for the races, it's still there.
As I said, the character interaction is what I love. Illidan and Furion, Medivh and Furion and Tyrande, Arthas and Sylvannis, Arthas and the Alliance as he got further corrupted, Thrall and Jaina, etc. I always liked how they interacted and how each story interweaves with the others.

Is the plot for my PnP campaign really that odd then? I am actually 'world building', and thinking up cultures to go with history, and geography. sorry for derailing (this derailed topic)---


but I have a whole world stewing in the back of my head, thinking about how civilizations rise and fall, and all that.

I was thinking more along the lines of 'Dungeon Siege with obligatory anglosaxon monarch and half-timber house backdrop.'

Dungeon Siege was not a game. It was an interactive screensaver.

I like the Warcraft world but mainly for it's look. It's bright and appealing, and while I normally prefer darker, grittier or trippier, it's got appeal for me. The lore is quite appealing too but only in a functional way. It's not bad, just formulaic. The saving grace is that I like the base fantasy tropes in the first place and haven't got to the stage where they're boring me into contempt. But I still prefer TES for lore, it takes the same tropes and twists them into new forms, it lets the lore run away with itself and uses unusual ideas. It's stuff you don't see often outside of good fantasy novels.

I'm saying that they had to join someone, and the Alliance was the only option. It was that or deal with the Horde alone. After the temporary alliance and truce to defend Mt. Hyjal, they still had to deal with the fact that the Horde had established a strong foothold on Kalimdor. Their options were to stand and hang alone, stand with the Alliance, or stand with the Horde.

They didn't stand with the Horde because a tribe of orcs killed Cenarius, and while Tyrande and Malfurion might have set that aside, I don't think the entire society would.

The Alliance/Horde thing does make sense in that both factions established themselves from the beginning. The Horde came through the Dark Portal, eventually recruited goblins and forest trolls, were broken, and Thrall built a new Horde. The Alliance formed to defend against the Horde. Of course, the Scourge and the Burning Legion made alliances a necessity, and continuing cold war-level tensions with frequent violent outbreaks made neutrality a difficult, possibly suicidal option.



The blood elves hate the Scourge, which devastated their homeland. The forsaken - who are undead who have freed themselves from the Scourge - also hate the Scourge, who also devastated their homeland. The Forsaken are led by Sylvanas, who, among other things, was a high elf who gave her life defending Quel'thalas against Arthas' advance. The Forsaken have offered extensive aid to the blood elves, share the same enemies and many (not all) of the same goals. Most especially, since the blood elves joined the Horde, the forsaken have worked hard to help the blood elves purge their homeland of the Scourge - hence the large number of undead NPCs in Tranquilien.

And I'm not sure if you're saying that Sylvanas was just a guard captain - she was sister to one of the heroes of who went beyond the dark portal (Alleria Windrunner) and was herself the Ranger General of Quel'Thalas. The Lament of the Highborne quest chain makes it clear that she has not abandoned her feelings for her heritage and life just because she was made undead.



Azshara is an exile, ruler of the Naga, formerly one of the Highborne. The night elves wouldn't follow her. There's no confusion anywhere as to whether she could rightfully rule the night elves. Effectively, there was a coup.

Tyrande is the highest ranking priestess of the moon. This is not an ambiguous statement. http://www.wowwiki.com/Tyrande



You can read about the night elven culture http://www.wowwiki.com/Night_elf

Greetings all

just felt i had something to offer the convo as an avid player of both the TES series and WOW

ill keep it short and sweet and relies please this is just my view not gona throw around around massive "lore rules" posts n drag out my tome of histories +20 :>

i personally think TES has allot more "serious" and in depth lore BUT WOW has Tons of lore too the only difference is its not forced on you like in TES .. you actually have to go look for it .. take any major starting city theres Tons of books there to read that give you the cliff notes of how your chosen race got to were its at .. nothing deep but that comes later .. abliet MUCH later .. most of WOWs deep lore isnt about the pawns (the players) its about the power struggles of the gods n demi gods n wana be gods .. most of witch you find out in the very late game .. but most folks dont bother with it since your friends are gona be a bit irked that you stopped to read that 20 page book in some high level instance while they all gota wait:>

but comparing wow lore to tes lore is kinda mute WoW is soo campy n tounge in cheek (purposely) while Tes is rather serious .. so i rate that to a design decision not ones better than the other ...

one thing that WoW is miles ahead of Tes thou is faction lore .. or rather simple the sides .. (horde n alliance isnt a cut n dry good vs evil thing.. only the major gods are that way) but depending what race you play if you bother to read the lore you can actually empathize with how each race came to its current position and why they believe the way they do .. thats one thing WOW lore got very right in the fact that the lesser races are just pawns in a big game and the lore reflects that from every side very well .. if you wernt to go read all the wikis you'd really have to play both sides to really understand what the big picture is .. not just your part in it at that time ..

were TES lore shines is its so very deep from the moment you step foot in the world witch is very cool theres a reason for everything almost and a grand story .. one of the best imho in RPGS.. (thou i still have a soft spot for a certain giant space hamster) and with every new game it gets deeper and a new chapter of the same story is told .. so it has this massive depth n scope thats just mind boggling ..

anywho short n sweet i think its comparing apples n oranges .. on pure volume and deep serious writing TES is the clear winner but WOW is no slouch its just not as accessible to the average player nor was it really meant to be imho (lowest common denominator = more paying customers) but it is there if you chose to spend the time looking for it

Mmal

Oh HO! My friends, it seems that our pondering upon the riddle-that-is-TES vs. WoW has gotten us some less than savory attention. My above-referenced best friend/cousin has discovered our clandiestine discussion! :bolt:

So, in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, "Mother of God, here it comes." Let us welcome any and all discussions from ...ummm...the masses that may migrate to TES allegiance through discourse and debate, a mechanism of expansion that is neither routinely used nor come in a "Pack".

Yours in the Scrolls,


___The Word Merchant of Julianos

PS: For those who are wondering, check out http://unguilded.game-host.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=2767#2767. Heh heh. I love that guy. :wub:

Go to his house and dump a cold bucket of water on him. That'll cool his hot head.

Good gracious. Your cousin is diplomatic, isn't he?

Alright then, get the Numidiums out. Lets have 'em.

Everyone should download the daedric font and type in that just to confuse them! Bwahahha!
That, or do all the AE ALTADOON and all that fun stuff.
Or hill-[censored]

Daedric fonts, subgradiency and .....of course, CHIM bay-bee!

No word from the guys, though. Perhaps they are still trying to get through "A Less Rude Song" or some such. :rofl:

We could drive them away with talk of Vivec's spear biting with Dagon. Or his...relationship with Azura.

I bet they're stuck on the Lusty Argonian Maid. :shakehead:

Just bear in mind that it all sounds sub-trekkie and lame from this vantage point.

Like a kindergardner in physics class. :wacko:

A discussion of the high irony of the "[censored] hitting the fan", when the ministry of truth falls, covering how the ministry of truth is a giant god-turd born from vivec's second aperture at the pomegranate banquet, would probably make them crazy. Just continue to give them a nice reading from the 5th era love letter, and pat them on the head like good little children.

And thus do we concur.....

Let them come.
They shall leave.
Driven insane
Back to dreamsleeve.

Click away
And get a level
Waste a day
And please the Devil.


____The Word Merchant of Julianos

ps: my fiance just called this tit-for-tat between TES and WoW a...*ahem*..."nerd war". :dance:

TES nerds are higher quality nerds, who end up researching interesting escoteric things, rather than just going "Bah! I PWNED JOO 4 EPIC LULZ!"

We are the absolute cream of the crop.....

Of course that crop being the harvested imagination of a generation lost in its own struggle to come to grips with the insanity outside by subtly sculpting, and thereby choosing, the insanity inside with external factors and influences that at least give us some common medium for comparison and extrapolation/explanatory discourse in lieu of silently and desperately slipping into a vortex of deliberate solipsistic self-focus that ends up in mere hubristic mental master**tion for the lonely and misguided [censored] that was deprived of a real-life fantasy in the first place.

Then, there are WoW players. I would, in all honesty and good faith, point them http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/abc_barbarian.shtml, should they truly wish to be enlightened into the magnificent world of "lore". Ya gotta start somewhere, right?


___The Word Merchant of Julianos

ABC isn't even finished yet?

Someone REALLY needs to do that. 5 years on and no-one at all? Bethesda could have at least finished it for TES 5, y'know, for the Oblivion players and the migratory ilk.

So is lore a universal cult word for 'nonessential background detail' or something? Because this forum was where I first encountered it and I never like to use it out of this context, or even in it, so much.

When you complain about "lore" you suggest that it's just another commodity like graphics and stability.

Well, all that is promised is the A and the B and the C... And that's whatcha got.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me :foodndrink:

Now now, WoW players (At least the intelligent ones) are like ourselves, but instead of lore, its the gameplay. They've got to search for every way to make that combo with their resto druid to work out for Arena, and get crit armor and combine it with their Aspect for huge crit chance, look for the best strategy to down Illidan with, or the best leveling build for a paladin.
My brother plays WoW as practically his sole came, and he's very much like that. He knows everything there is to know about WoW (and as a plus, he knows a huge chunk of Warcraft lore, as he is also a fan of the Warcraft strategy games, as am I).

But I still want to confuse the hell out of them.

Personally, I like how it touches so many esoteric and hermetic teachings and doctrines, and then twists them into pretzel shapes. WoW "lore" on the other hand, is: "The world exists for no other reason than to be a place for the game to happen." "Orcs come from some other dimension which has no real backstory." and the like.

It is one convenient plot device on top of another on top of another, ad nausium.


It is really just an excuse for the player to run around blowing stuff up.


At least in TES lore, they "hang a lantern" on it, with Arctus's little shpeel about how with no hero, there is no event.

oh everyone. a friendly warning. this topic started out just out of harmless fun, but if this gets out of hand merely than just freindly competition, i hope to god that you understand what testapo means.

because i'm not going to tolerate bringing any harm to this subforum.