This may be a bit off topic, but, you know, you bring up a good point.
Most fantasy games have such cheesy sounding names. You read the name and you instantly think, "wow, that sounds completely ridiculous", though somehow TES seems to have avoided having such cheesy and unbelievable names. It may just be me, but I generally don't get that "That's such a dumb, made up, typical fantasy sounding name" feeling from TES. Anyone else think the same?

While I certainly appreciate TES lore as much as is natural and perhaps more then that in some measure I must say I see much bias on the part of our esteemed lore masters. I have not played any Warcraft games so I can't reasonably disagree on merit of experience- however it is not inconceivable for other collectives of individuals like onto the bethesda devs, who may I remind you constantly botch lore with each new iteration of the TES games while simultaneously adding new lore which may or may not prove useful in unraveling the mysteries of the Elder Scrolls, to create something that is rich and meaningful with a good measure of depth: in particular I am appaled that anyone would dare demean the forgotten realms setting- itself part of a larger universe of lore that stems from Dungeons and Dragons- thus by extension all the other settings of D&D and their lore- having had an active interest in both TES lore and Forgotten realms lore for some time I can say with some certainty that while the more esoteric TES Lore holds more interest for me, each holds an equally astonishing amount of Depth- though Moreso in quantity in the forgotten realms and D&D setting thanks to the many many novels written by excellent authors such as R.A Salvatore (who BTW has done writing for forgotten realms games). It is important to remember that different people have different tastes and while my tastes certainly are more inclined towards TES that does not automatically mean that Warcraft is of less quality: instead merely that it does not have the elements that grab my interest.

I actually don't mind about the names. Just that the horrible misuse of the apostrophe in fantasy has to end.

I agree that TES has pretty decent names, but that is also after a considerable amount of revision. Look at the city names in Arena versus the names in Morrowind. During the intervening years, somehow many of the really corny names were translated into Dunmeri so that they sounded much more exotic. Also, several of the really bad names are still around (the provinces), and those have only been redeemed by a considerable amount of background explanation for why they could respectably be known by names like "Skyrim," "Hammerfell," "High Rock," "Black Marsh," and "Elswyre."

WoW has more Lore? :huh:

Tell your friend to stop sniffing the Goblin poo.

I'm with you here.




the Dwarves of Khaz Modan
It's also interesting how fantasy, as a genre has relied on such a limited set of lexemes for all those years.

:lmao:

You sure he is talking about WoW and not the actual Warcraft? WoW doesn't have lore. It has kids going for epics and pwning. Played it over a year and probably the most emptiest piece of zort I've ever played. The only thing that kept me in the game for so long was the online aspect of it.

I don't think so. There's just more of it. Forgotten Realms is filled with filler. Pages upon pages of fluff involving a monsters from a bloated bestiary and familiar nations and characters involved in various cataclysms, tragedies and epic disasters suitable for RPG campaigns. The role of the Forgotten Realms is to provide a setting for storytelling, and over the years, it's tried to do that as comprehensively as possible. The Forgotten Realms timeline is http://www.o-love.net/realms/fr_time_notable.html, but filled with utterly bland trivia. It's composed of a mixture of campaigns to kill the evil wizard becoming historical events (random example "Nessmara, a lamia noble skilled in the Art who dwells amidst the ruined city of Illimar in the Gulthmere Woods, recovers the broken fragments of the Maguscepter. Once reassembled, the sentient scepter twists its mistress's desires towards its own ends: ruling the city of Westgate." and boggling minutiae like "Establishment of the first elvish settlements of Shantel Othreier" - really just historical scribble intended to give people that would normally be called "an encounter" some sort of reason for being in the general area or acting in a totally chaotically neutral way or whatever.

Similarly, reading the in-game books from http://www.sorcerers.net/Worlds/FR/index.php is almost impossible, because they're intolerably bland. Even moreso than real historical books. Really, have a look at that link and compare them to some of TIL's books. I dare you. I dare anyone to read those books without falling asleep.

But the main emphasis of the Forgotten Realms is, like D&D itself as a set of rules, a mechanism to facilitate storytelling. I've never met someone interested in the lore of the Forgotten Realms, but certainly many people taken in by the storytelling. Encounters, characters, conflicts and resolutions. What RPs are about. Hence, R. A. Salvatore. Though I'd dispute the claim that he's an "excellent author", but that's for another time.


Summerset has always been the one I hated the most. It sounds so...charmingly idyllic, like a postcard picture of the English countryside. I think fantasy names in general were avoided after some careful thinking about culture and appropriateness. Thankfully, I don't think there were ever some really terrible names. Warcraft seems to be intentionally campy, both in this and the fact the whole aesthetic it cultivates is very cartoony, even if some people might take it too seriously. "Arthas Menethil"? "Jaina Proudmoore"? "Muradin Bronzebeard"? Illidan Stormrage"? The ""Skull of Gul'dan"?

If that isn't bad enough, Blizzard has altered the backstory several times. The last change was a full-blown retcon of some previous lore.

WoW just made it all go down the drain...The new update of WoW, giving the new island...with the new raiding dungeon. So blood elves are now raiding their own leader to get epics

Retcons are fine if they do what they're supposed to do. But like I said, I really don't think anyone is supposed to take it seriously because the game doesnt' take itself seriously, both in its visual style and in its campy fiction.


I don't even know what that means and something tells me I'm fortunate for it.

Trust me, you are VERY fortunate.

Oh, Warcraft used to be great and quite well thought out. Not as deep as TES, but it was quite good. Then Blizzard made WoW. It [censored] lore, flushed it down the drain, and waited in the sewers so it could [censored] it again. WoW is 95% 'OMG?! People pay for this! MONEY!!!', 4% addiction, 0.5 actual fun and 0.5% Lore. I'm pretty disappointed in Blizzard. They are just using whatever is cool with no regard for their own lore and they are slowly killing all their main characters. The best characters actually. In the BC it was Illidan, soon it will be the Lich King, what's next? Doing a raid with 750 Level 160 characters on Heaven? WoW is just powergaming incarnate. Well, the PvP and PvE servers are. Dunno about the Roleplaying Server, but i don't think it will be different.

Actually, the Roleplaying servers are quite tame, from what I hear. Not that I play WoW, or ever will. But I have a friends who does, and he says that the Roleplaying Servers are the only tolerable ones.

Anyway, TES gives WoW a major case of butt-hurt in regards to which has better lore. It does that to Warcraft in general, but Reign of Chaos was at least sort of...OK. Well, come to think of it, it does that to every fantasy universe with the exception of LOTR.

RP servers are where they say 'Orcish Paladin, Level Five near Stormwind' instead of 'horde pally 5 at SW'

Blizzard's world is deliberately campy and cartoony. It doesn't take itself seriously. Certainly, TES lore tends sometime to take itself a bit too seriously. Doesn't matter, though. Blizzard's strength is in gameplay. They make well-balanced games, and are willing to put out patches even if just to revise the damage factor of the glaive-glaive-glaive-guisarme-glaive when it's used in one hand by a minotaur who's holding a beer in the other hand. You don't have to care too much about the story, no more than you had to care about the story in, say, Xenon2: Megablast. The games are just fun to play, and all the elements are faithful to the predigested fantasy tropes everybody is familiar about: a mish-mash of D&D and Warhammer. There's no attempt at http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SubvertedTrope or http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlayingWithATrope, tropes in Warcraft are exploited, sometimes justified or sometimes parodied, but they don't run against the flow.

In TES, there's a much greater creative effort behind the world. Bethesda's problem, on the other hand, is gameplay. It is always terrible, for various reasons.

The Elder Scrolls without anything even resembling something closely to an object that looks a bit like doubt.

Could someone define "more lore"?

Both series have a lot of backstory/history. TES is more enigmatic. Warcraft is both more straightforward and less defined. TES has a more developed theology. Warcraft's is well, there's the Light...and Dragons and Undead and Demons.

Both series are about power and how to get some. Yes, you can opt out and "roleplay" (in WoW only) although in TES you'll be alone either way and in WoW people will look at you funny then run away.

Argue about something more productive, like whether the Red Sox will beat the Yankees out this year.

Mara

Leave it to Albides to come up with a direct and well-spoken response to a question like this. In other words, I concur!!!!

Yeah. And Warcraft's dragons are like every dragon out there. Warcraft's undead are like every undead out there. Warcraft's demons are like every demons out there. Warcraft's dwarves are like every other dwarves out there. Warcraft's elves are like every other elves out there. Warcraft's trolls are like every other dwarves out there. TES http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurDragonsAreDifferent http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurOrcsAreDifferent from this. It's not like, "okay, this World of Warcraft has gnomes, I see. I remember that in Dragonlance gnomes are silly little guys who make crazy inventions that blow up all the time. Oh, they're the same here too." In TES, it's more like "okay, there are wood elves, I bet they live in harmony with nature and are friends with birds and all that tree-hugging hippy stuff... Oops, wait, apparently they're crazy cannibalistic shapechangers and they only eat meat, even their booze is made from meat. Ugh."

In the end, the minutia and trivia such as "what is the name of the orcs' homeland?" or "how old is the empire?" is not interesting lore, it's fluff. It's still important to know that fluff when you're making the game or attempting to create a lore-correct mod, but it's not something that leaves a real impression. Warcraft orcs come from Draenor, they could have come from Z'baraklar it wouldn't have changed anything. The Septim Empire is 433-year-old in Oblivion, it could be 276-year-old without changing anything.

What matters more is the concepts and the visuals involved. Which is partly why people in this part of the forums were disappointed by Oblivion, which looked too generic fantasy, saying that this was the death of lore. Morrowind was shock-full of strange concepts and exotic visuals. Oblivion has standard fantasy fare. And Warcraft is 100% standard fantasy fare.

Pointy ears? This differs from TES how? WoW does not have wood elves, just blood elves (descended from a kind of high elf) and night elves (neither wood nor dark, though they are tree huggers). WoW has Tauren (cows with guns!) and Draenei (demonic inspired but good demons). Warcraft made orcs playable (and not evil although brutal and enemies of humankind) long before TES dreamed of doing so. TES' trolls are far more generic fantasy strong healthy monsters than WoW's playable race with its West Indian mojo flavor. (Yes, WoW is cartoonish and does not take itself seriously, something I find refreshing).

Mara

1.Night Elves = Tolkien Wood-Elves
2.Draenei have had more retcons then anyone can possibly imagine.
3.Morrowind came out in the same year as Warcraft 3.
4.Before Warcraft 3 Orcs were always teh generic "always chaotic evil" Orcs we see in everything.

Yup. There were no revelation in WCII about the Orcs' demonic possession. They were just that...invaders from another dimension. Then you have that Thrall story about being raised by his human captors and being a liberator to the Orcs.

EDIT: accidently replied to myself when trying to slightly edit the post.

Warcraft has a lot of in depth lore actually. It's just, you can't simply find it by running around in WoW raiding dungeons. Even the campaigns in the RTS series do not cover everything. Much like the TES Lore forum, there is a Lore forum on the blizzard websites. People discuss about the 6 (?) or something wars, the trolls fought. Which tribe exactly the playables belong to, which tribe they descendet from and wether or not the nightelves are troll's ancestors or the other way around. It's endless stuff you can discuss on. As I was only truly interested in the nightelve's lore (I liked Tyrande way too much and screamed IRL when I met the high priestess in Mount Hyjal), it is the only lore part I can comment on with actually giving advice. The NE's lore is tight pretty strong to the distruction of the Well of Eternity and thus to the story of the Aspects and their betrayer deathwing (Onyxia is one of his daugther's, boy is that dragon mad. Sheogorath could learn something from him). Our heroes: Illidan, Tyrande, Furion, Broxigar and Kadgar (? think it's not spelled correctly) all show up in that epic first battle against the burning legion (btw those warcraft demons use a lot of "machines", not very usual-demon-like, if you ask me). You can learn, why the Blue Dragon swarm almost vanished, who freed Alexstraza and stuff like that. Or, where did all the demi-gods go ? Not to forget, NE didn't have druids before that, it was only then, Malfurion learned to walk the emerald dream (another sphere which is ruled by one of the 5 aspects).

Did you know Lady Vashj was actually one of Azshara's handmaidens ? She betrayed her queen like 4 times now in several ways and I wouldn't rely too much on her, if I was Illidan, but oh well, we killed them all. Pretty sad that is. (Azshara is still alive as far as I know, though.)

As for the bloodelve drama:
The High elves were actually nightelves that fled from Kalimdor after the first war against the burning legion. They had to go, because pretty much all of them were "Highborne" who pacted with their "new god": Sargeras.
As we learn in Reign of Chaos, The Scourge corrupts the Highelves fountain, Kel'Thalas gets destroyed. The one's who survived suffer from an ill madness caused by a lack of magic, because the source of power ain't there anymore. (The NE who stayed in Kalimdor were mostly commoners and learned to use magic w/o the power of the well of eternity as a gift from Elune (with help from one of the oldest red dragons who wasn't old at that time). Except for Illidan (who did all that he did, only because he wanted to be a noble, but got not accepted in their ranks) the nightelves could only use magic at night during that time. Illidan however managed to evolve some skills, so he could use magic everytime he wanted to. He's easily the most powerful mage among the nightelves until he meets Sargeras.

It is announced their change is not complete yet. We do NOT manage to kill Kael'thas Sunstrider (one of his ancestors was actually the captain of queen Azsharas guards) and he will return much more changed. The blood elves you can play on Horde side are "run-aways". They are trying to overcome the hunger for magic.

Since my boyfriend was a Horde-lore freak it had to learn quite a lot about the orc's lore aswell. And not everybody is happy about Thrall (even keeping his name) and his "peace" with the humans. He's grown up as a human and only learned much later that he was not only an orc but also the abandoned last child of the frostwolf tribes leader's. You happen to learn even things like, orcs babies get milk with their mother's blood and stuff like that.

If one is a bit into all that lore, you can discover a lot of lore related quests and items in WoW. If you however, never read a book about it or are not interested at all, it will appear like your flat god-vs-evil-average MMO, tho.

[...] could go on like that forever. While the lore is every different and not "high fantasy" it's still rich lore, in my humble opinion.

Excuse my bad English, it's not my native language, but I hope, it's understandable. =P