Warcraft
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The Warcraft universe is a setting created by Blizzard Entertainment in 6 hours and 23 minutes way back in 1994, when (allegedly, as it has only been rumored and never proven) Games Workshop decided that Warhammer Fantasy didn't need a video game. Thus Blizzard took the main concept of Warhammer and created the game Warcraft. The plot of the game was simple, and the artistic style was mostly drawn from the sketchy scribblings of the viking enthusiast Chris Metzen. Azeroth is the kingdom of men and knights, demon-worshiping Orcs came from a swamp one day, both sides want to wipe each other out. Regardless of whether or not Warcraft was a stillborn Warhammer game, Warcraft still borrowed their green skinned Orcs from the Warhammer greenskins which had been the first. Notably, unlike Warhammer which had changed their Orcs to asexual fungus apes, Warcraft still retained females as mentioned in the first game. Overall it was an okay RTS game back in the day. Blizzard hadn't yet had a hit game, so it kept them afloat and enabled them to make a sequel.
In Warcraft 2, the canon turned out to be the Orcish end. Azeroth, now known as Stormwind (the continent is Azeroth), fell and most of the inhabitants were slaughtered like livestock. What few survived were lead by a man named Anduin Lothar, the champion of Stormwind, across the snows and seas to the other great human kingdom of Lordaeron, where the king named Terenas Menethil called a meeting of the world leaders. Lothar's ancestors were owed a debt by the Dwarves of the Ironforge mountain, and so the Dwarf king Magni Bronzebeard sent his brother Muradin. The wild Dwarves of the north, who rode giant gryphons, came after recognizing the threat the Horde presented. The magical kingdom of Dalaran came as well, as they also realized the danger the Orcs posed since one of their own, a powerful mage named Medivh who was the head of a secret society, had intentionally lead the Orcs to the world while under demonic control. The Elves refused to see reason, and instead hid themselves away behind their magical runes despite the General of their great armies coming to the aid of mankind. They quickly changed their tune when the Horde rampaged through their lands and slaughtered their people. The other human kingdoms were drawn in as well including Stromgarde (Lordaeron JR), Alterac (trade hub), Gilneas (experimenting with gunpowder), and Kul Tiras (naval).
Over the years, the setting was expanded to include elves, dorfs, trolls, ogres, and all kinds of generic fantasy creatures you can think of in the game Warcraft 2. It was a lot like the last game, but hey, it was still a pretty good game. It was a 90's game: The fluff was there if you went and read the manual, and if you didn't give a care about the story, you were also welcome to just play the game and send out your Footmen en masse for the fun of watching the fighting, or repeatedly click on them to listen to them say funny quotes.
When Blizzard employees were rich enough to afford weed instead of booze, they started to do weirder shit to the setting in Warcraft 3. Undead spiders and cow-people ripping off Native American culture started to roam the lands of Azeroth. Also it was the age when plot holes began to surface, but they were small and insignificant at that time. Units continued to have hilarious quotes.
All this shit culminated into World of Warcraft, which was initially planned as a spin-off, but got far more popular than the RTS games (so don't expect to ever see any more made), where time traveling immortal dragons are fighting with bugs created in the image of space bugs by an ancient deity while dimension-faring demon look-a-likes are furious that space-faring blood elves stole a creature of positive energy and are channeling its powers so that they can become paladins and so on and so on. Since the majority of the players are 14 year old blizzardfags, no one really cares that in every single content patch the previous fluff is brutally raped or that the fluff is simply stupid. Consistency, what's that?
In fact, WoW is an experiment financed by the government to find out how much shit people can take or willfully deny. Speculations are that gnomish death knights will make people wonder at least a bit, but I'm much more pessimistic. OLOLLOLOLOL, Wrath has come and gone and no one questioned the existence of Gnome Death Knights. Fuck you, Warcraft.
The newest example of Warcraft's horrific experimentation are, in order; Tauren Paladin "Holy Cows," (although this was explained by having them draw not from The Light, but from the Sun Goddess. Didn't change any of the abilities though, which would have been a start) Night Elf hippies using environmentally unsafe arcane magic, Forsaken Hunters that can't eat what they kill, and Blood Elf "I broke a nail!" Warriors, (because elves all fall into that stereotype. See Legolas and Drizzt for examples.) and a faggoty emo dragon who has a ridiculous looking jaw and acts like an obnoxious kitteh. Time will tell whether or not people will call out Metzen on his bullshit.
Warcraft does have a boardgame, a tabletop RPG, and a trading card game, so it is not all /v/.
By the way, has anyone else noticed that Metzen looks kinda similar to a CERTAIN SOMEONE? In multiple ways bearing in mind Metzen's latest lore?
(Oh yes, I went there It's not like we care. You're not special, stop flattering yourself.)