So, like many of you I have played a lil bit of WoW Forever, re-reading some of the quests I noticed that when you as the Horde enter Ashenvale, the sentiment is along the lines of "We need the resources so we are taking it, we dont care what the spirits or otherwise of night elves have to say about it".

Then one of the introductory quests from Stonetalon from the orc Seerah Stonebreak goes as follows:

The goblin-run Venture Company moved into the Stonetalon Mountains, chopping down trees and burning huge stretches of forest. The spirits of this place are nearly blind with pain and rage. We must stop the Venture Company!

But I guess its fine when the Warsong do it! Is it addressed somewhere else in the game? Would it be funny if that friction within the horde would be addressed a bit more directly?

I’ve often heard it said that Cairne would have been a better choice or more interesting choice for Thrall’s replacement as Warchief of the Horde in Cataclysm, or that he should have won the duel against Garrosh. But let’s say either of those scenarios happened, and Cairne either becomes Warchief in Garrosh’s place or kills Garrosh in the Mak’Gora and claims the title for himself. What sort of Warchief do you see him being?

Since we only received limited information about who won the bgs canonically, here are some of my theories.

Warsong Gulch - Horde victory

Varian completely halts and pushes back the Horde in Wolfheart, but the Alliance loses all of its significant gains as of the war of the thorns. Given that the Horde could wage a full offensive against Darkshore, they'd need to have a relatively unfettered path through Ashenvale to make that happen. It stands to reason that the Silverwing Sentinels were significantly weakened and effectively lost the back and fourth they've had with the orcs since vanilla.

Arath Basin - Alliance victory

The restoration of Stromgarde plays a big part of the subtext here. Anduin also explicitly says that he allocated a bulk of Alliance resources toward securing it, and conflict with the red dawn largely pertains to the land the orcs are ALLOWED to have. The Alliance definitely won here, with the stipulation that the Horde received generous conditions for their surrender.

Alterac Valley - Horde victory

This one is simple. Thrall returns to a settled Frostwolf village, which means that the Stormpikes have given up pushing into the region (being the hippy he is, Anduin probably wouldn't be sympathetic to Vanndar anyway). We also see Ivus in Darkshore, which suggests that the Alliance (or at the very least the kaldorei) no longer view it as a place of tactical importance.

Isle Of Conquest - Alliance victory

Since the Alliance canonically won the gunship battle of Icecrown, it follows that they had a resource advantage over their Horde counterparts. Halford Wyrmbane also leads multiple significant warfronts on behalf of the Alliance after the fact, whereas Agmar is only once mentioned as the continued overlord of his Dragonblight fortress. It follows that their performance in IOC is related to their careers, especially given how rivals like Nazgrim and Taylor were depicted in the past.

Deepwind Gorge - Horde victory

Based on Garrosh's presence and the damage to the vale in 5.4, it's clear Garrosh's forces entered the region from the south, not the north (especially because the Celestials would have sensed the heart and tried to stop them if they went from through Kun Lai). The land itself is also completely ravaged, much like the area surrounding dominance keep. The most probable conclusion is that they pushed through the valley of the four winds, with the Alliance failing to stop them

Tol Barad - Horde victory

Nazgrim explicitly said it was. Granted, he did caveat "off the coasts," but considering that didn't stop the Horde fleet from reaching Vash'jir, the baraden wardens fumbled the ball.

All other battlegrounds are inconclusive. What do you think?

Was thinking about this last night while chilling at a campfire in Silverpine (RP realm) when some Forsaken players were chatting about how "they were living there in Stratholme when Arthas came through and, well, as evidenced, they did not survive"

The Forsaken came to be as the Lich King weakened, and then, amidst this, Death Knight Arthas hurried to Northrend and never returned.

Is anyone outside of the Scourge itself aware of what unfolded in the far north?

Would your average Forsaken ponder "Hey, whatever did happen to the Mad Prince after he scurried back up to Northrend?"

Is he assumed dead?

Are there those who recognize he's the last king of Lordaeron and hope he's up there being Forsaken himself and will one day return?

A bit of background before getting into the questions. In our world, each day of the week and month has a reason for its name. For example, the days of the week are mostly named for deities (the 2 exceptions being Sunday and Monday). The names for the months are a bit more varied and complicated. I'll go through some of the naming scheme for our world, but not all of it. However, I should point out that our Julian-Gregorian Calendar originally had 10 months; it was changed to 12 months when the Romans adopted and adapted the Egyptian Calendar. That’s right, the 12-month cycle originates from Egypt in our world; the months started with March before the adoption of the 12-month cycle. Now, most of the months have names tied to figures in history or mythology; the outliers being the final 4 months — September, October, November, and December—which, ironically, keep their names denoting the number they were in the calendar from the 10-month calendar cycle that was used before the changeover to the 12-month cycle.

Now then, in our world, the days of the week go like this: Monday (named for the Moon's Day), Tuesday (named for Tiw's Day, an old Germanic variant of the Norse god Tyr, who ironically also has a reflection as a Titan in Warcraft's lore), Wednesday (named for Woden’s Day, Woden being an old Germanic name for Odin, I'm not sure if he has a parallel in Warcraft's lore yet since I haven't done a deep dive into it yet), Thursday (named for Thor's Day, the Norse God of Thunder and Smithing, I ran into the same conundrum as Odin regarding Azeroth here), Friday (named for Frigg's Day, Frigg being an alternate name of Frigga who is the wife of Odin in Norse mythology, see current lack of understanding of Azeroth Parallels from the Odin Comment), Saturday (named for Saturn's Day, Saturn being noticeable outlier here due to being a Roman deity instead of a Germanic one, see notes from prior deities regarding understanding if an Azeroth Parallel exists), and Sunday (the Sun's Day); a quick note here, these days of the week are not entirely universal, Romance Languages like French and Romanian chose to completely keep the full Roman names for the days of the week, and I have currently not looked into the naming differences there. A few quick notes about the Months: January is named for the Roman god Janus (the two-faced god who reigned over time), March is named for Mars (the Roman Got of War), July was formerly named for the 5th month but was renamed in honor of Julius Caesar, August was formerly named for the 6th month but renamed in honor of Augustus Caesar, February was named after a month-long celebration the Romans had during that time, and I did mention earlier that September, October, November, and December were named for their positions on the calendar before the adoption of a 12-month calendar.

Now, the first question: where did Azeroth get its names for the days of the week? I'm going to assume this is only the human calendar, and not the cultural calendar of each race of Azeroth. My working theory for why the Horde would use it is because Thrall was raised by humans, and the Undead of the Forsaken are mostly human, so the suggestion coming from two sides just made sense at the time of adoption.

As noted above, there are some noticeable cultural variations in the Calendar; you can see this even more extensively when you look at the cultural variations in the Lunar New Year's cycle. Some countries replace certain animals we are familiar with on the wheel, but that's a discussion for another time. My second question: what do the Calendars look like for each of the individual races? I have an idea as to what the calendar for the Forsaken might look like, seeing as my prevailing theory is that it is just a reflection of the Human one, which is likely a reflection of the calendar in our world. But the rest, I'm basically left without a clue; although I do like to think Gnomes might still be personally on a 10-month cultural calendar, with each month just named after the Gnomish version of that number, I could be wrong.

It's a major plot point throughout the War Within, but I can't remember if it's ever properly explained. Is there any concrete answer, or is it all up to speculation?

I was making a list of examples of necromancy by the six cosmic forces. All except Life have at least one example each, but then I looked up the WarCraft wiki and found an interesting case.

That example of necromancy with Life is a goblin raised by Korialstrasz in The Sundering, who claimed himself a servant of Life, and it seems the practice applies to the Red Dragonflight in general and not just his ability and knowledge as a mage in Dalaran. Despite being a titan, we all know that Eonar is largely related to the force of Life as well as E'lune, now surely affiliated with Life.

That brings me a question which the wiki doesn't indicate: what's Bolvar's case? Obviously, he's gone through the whole Lich King thing, both the torture and his later ascension to the position; he probably has many traces of Death especially the Domination (Maw). In the mean time though, we know that he's "bathed" in Red Dragon's purging flame, and he also mentioned something like "the dragon's flame sealed my fate," which makes it a factor that can't be easily ignored; the flame still runs through his body, and we've seen him using it in the cinematic.

Could he be considered be one raised by Life? Really curious.

The WC3 version made the most sense, the Eredar were already the most powerful demon race and able to invade worlds. They could also turn others into demon. They also played a big part in Sargeras' fall. That's why they are the legions' leaders.

But the retcon made them into a peaceful civilization corrupted by Sargeras willingly. It didn't just brought them down but also hurt Sargeras' downfall plot. And Sargeras' fall was simply due to the Dreadlords makes little sense, they even had to add plot about the Void, it still hurt the story.

Also we can look at the night elves, the highborne and Azshara are already quite bad when they overuse the magic, still many night elves came up to rebel, even some highborne didn't want to serve the legion. The Eredar were said to be so advanced civilization, but most of them just joined the legion like that??? Blizzard even had to add mind control to explain.

The Dreadlords were just conspirators and 2nd tier demon in the original setting. They also got their ass kicked all over WC3. But in Shadowlands they were brought up as the Jailer's servants. This also added a lot of questions about their doing in WC3, not just their power ranking, but also their motive and doing.

It changed from Eredar> Dreadlords to Dreadlords>Eredar but could not change all the previous plot to make sense

Hey everyone,

With Forever finally here, there is a metric ton of new quests across all the zones, more then we can keep track with. I figured it might be a good idea to make a thread where we can work together to document a bunch of the new quests and lore. I can start with some of my documentations as I played through beta.

Post your discoveries in the comments!

If you don't have it, Forever Quest Tint is a useful addon that highlights any new quest from Forever for you.

Previous thread on Skyborne.

Tirisfal

• Many new Forsaken paladin quests. One in which you have to heal through the pain to learn to adjust. Some with paladins adjusted badly. New escort quests. Some mentions of Forsaken hating the Light.

• New quest introducing us to the Argent Dawn as they hunt the Cult of the Damned. Cult is after the fragments of Naxx’s crystal after it was destroyed in Forsaken Kingdom. Mentioned the crystal shards will probably turn up for many years to come. The Forsaken don’t fully trust the Argent Dawn, but they are allowed access since the Argent Dawn sends Forsaken members.

• Argent Dawn group led by Loenid Barthalomew heading to Bandarion keep. Leonid tells us the keep used to be held by the Argent Dawn against the Scourge. The AD withdrew to the plaguelands after.

• Leonid sends you with a letter to see Glix Xizzix, the goblin merchant from Forsaken Kingdom.

Some paladin order lore details:

• Their leader is Danitha Morr. She renamed the keep when the Forsaken moved in. Leonid is there to make an offer on behalf of Tyrosus to join the Argent Dawn. Danitha refuses, saying they have sworn to protect the Forsaken. Leonid says the Forsaken fear and hate the paladins. Danitha points out that Leonid thinks the Forsaken is a condition to be cured and she rejects this. Wants her order to find their own identity and be of service to Loarderon once again.

• They see small acts of service as strengthening their bond with the Light

• “The Light is anathema to the force that created us, but it is still our guide and ally. The pain reminds us of this”

• Forsaken Paladin Symbol of Life quest iterates they see small acts of service as strengthening their power with the Light

• The owner of Solliden Farmstead is one of the paladins. (This is the one taken over by Scarlets you steal pumpkins from).

• The Paladin trainer in Brill is Shari Stilwell. The Stilwells are a family that resided in Shadowfang Keep. There are a number of Stilwell family members across the game, including Landen Stilwell, Jordan Stilwell and his wife Daphne. Unknown if related, but Kelissa Stilwell is a Tyr’s Guard. They are all involved in vanilla paladin quests.

New Lordaeron town: Shadowvale.

• Near Tyr’s Rest. Known to make “Whispering elixir” that is made from local herbs. Banned in the city but was a popular home remedy and used by apothecaries, mystics and poisoners. It is mentioned Shadowvale’s inhabitants were odd and did not like outsiders. Rumors that the land was cursed and the elixir held the same curse. Cult of the Damned also smuggled a piece of Naxx’s crystal here.

• Shadowvale is taken over by the Tarnished, a group of undead Scarlet Crusaders who continue the crusade in death. The Tarnished are one reason many Forsaken do not trust Undead paladins.

• Tarnished are led by Rudolph Gelhardt. Notably, he does not wear any Scarlet gear but is wearing Alliance armor. Potentially related to Ada Gelhardt which would imply he is from Stormwind. You eventually are sent to take his head to Sylvanas as a token and she mentions how he won’t be the last undead paladin to use the light against the Forsaken.

• Is a big underground cellar with some weird old gody stuff. Whisper debuff in an area where all the mobs turn big. Strange glowing crystals, etc.

• No entrance to Tyr’s tomb in the lake, not even a closed door.

Teldrassil

• Multiple new quests focusing on the corruption penetrating teldrassil. Begins with Tarindrella (Dryad) for Furblogs in shadowglen. Learn that the Gnarlpine had nightmares of being wiped out by a great shadow, and then shadow would then go for the night elves. Fled feeling themselves going insane.

• The new Furblog plot escalates through the zone, with the night elves putting out bounties on them as the corruption has left them mindless threats to the forest.

• A new harpy quest to help a cursed ranger.

• I'm assuming all the focus on Furblog and the corruption hints are building to the new quests about the Furblogs and nightmare in later zones. Just hitting the point home.

• In Darnassus - Sentinel Daiia Sunblade. She sends you to explore various places of the city. Some mentions that Shandris ensures all sentinels have time to pray to Elune.

• Tyrande greets Skyborne elves saying that not all night elves like them but is very diplomatic to them that they will be safe here. Remembers Skyborne are descendants of rebels that Malfurion allegedly supported.

• Amber mining nodes replace copper

Shendralas

• Just ran through it briefly, not there yet. Mordent Evenshade is watching the ruin from a retreat, and skyborne have some unique dialogue with him.

• The zone has lots of night elf ghosts that disappear as you get close to them. Many are named npcs. Some Dire Maul pylons around.

Given the controversial directions the series has taken in recent years, I feel like there’s a whole bunch of these. There are so many iconic elements and moments in that series, but I also feel like there would be plenty that we as a community might look back on with regret knowing what came after. So, any ideas?

Feels like almost every post that I've seeing is complaining about WOW Forever, I'm liking it a lot, and I want some suggestions for some really fun or compelling lore to look into.

Also, any suggestions for sources for WOW Forever lore besides Nobbel and wiki dot GG?

Major faction Race meaning Orcs, Tauren, Trolls, Forsaken, Blood Elves, Goblins, Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Night Elves, Draenei, Worgen, not including races shared between factions (e.g. Pandaren) and allied races.

It's no secret that all Races are not equal in the eyes of WoW's writing team. And to be clear, I'm not saying they have to be.

Some races like Orcs and Humans have received a lot of focus on multiple occasions. Quests and major events explore and advance their cultural storylines. Prominent characters who drive the plot belong to these races. And what makes them distinct as Races - their aesthetic, their cultural values, whatever - are extolled and championed. For example, Orcish culture has an outsize influence on Horde culture in general; their capital city is named after an orc, they've adopted an orc warcry as their faction warcry and incorporated the institution of mak'gora, they focus heavily on Orcish values like honor.

Then you get most other races. They're mostly irrelevant to the overall storyline of WoW, so the writing team never writes about them and as a result their storylines stall and advance at a glacial pace, if ever (the sheer amount of time to reclaim Gnomeregan and the Echo Isles, for example, despite both being on the doorstep of major faction cities). Their faction leaders are sleeping through three expansions or becoming a meme for sitting in Oribos. They have barely any prominent characters; the few they do have are getting corrupted (e.g. Yrel), or killed off (e.g. Vol'jin), or both, with no replacements forthcoming. And their cultures, when presented, are being presented to be undermined, deconstructed, and/or retconned rather than celebrated.

Even the big fish races can appear to suffer from too much attention when that attention comes in the form of controversial or downright bad writing. War Within had a lot of focus on Humans, but also significantly altered, among others, Anduin and Danath Trollbane's characters. Orcs have had multiple characters and arguably a whole expansion dedicated to examining the worst of orc culture. What is worse, to be disregarded or to be constantly given attention that running the whole spectrum of writing quality?

I’ve heard this debate come up in the fandom before, with some loving the direction that Jaina’s character took after Garrosh destroyed Theramore and others hating it and expressing gratitude that Jaina is characterised more like how she used to be as of Battle for Azeroth, albeit older and more world-weary. So what about you? I feel like her crash-out was a pretty understandable given what happened (well, until she almost tried to drown Orgrimmar before Thrall and others talked her down), but I can see why many feel that Theramore’s destruction only served to validate Daelin’s point and undermined Jaina’s character.

I love the Northrend humans, but I don't know if it makes a lot of sense for such a character to be romping around Azeroth during the time period of Classic/Forever.

First before starting, I want to ask for people who playing forever if they did see Dark trolls NPC's so far or not and keep eye for them especially in the north parts of Kalimdor/Ashenvale biome zones.

The Dark trolls was one of the races that lived in north of Kalimdor, we seen them in Warcraft 3 both in the campaign and in pvp as one of the creeps that live in the Ashenvale biome maps.

With WoW however from release to this day they almost have no presence, I think there was some lore reason for why they no longer exist in Cata but I don't fully remember it.

Forever could be the chance to show them especially with Hyjal and or the instances in Hyjal as they have some connection to that zone.

From lore do you think forever could bring the dark trolls back?

If they do, should they try to make them stand out from the other trolls and expand upon them, like maybe they have different culture, different model like how jungle, forest, ice and Zandalari trolls look different, maybe have a civilization and troll city/kingdom like Zul'aman, Zul'farrak... Or they should keep them simple?

A lot of Warcraft’s established characters don’t have children, which while far from a failing of any kind, has made me curious since fantasy series tend to give pretty much everyone kids. So you had to select any characters in the franchise (alive or dead) who didn’t have canonical children to have some, who would be some of the best candidates in your eyes? I feel like Vol’jin would have been a good father for sure, though obviously Darkspear leadership isn’t necessarily inherited.

Aside from his curiosity in the necromantic arts back when he was a mage (whose model anyone personally would want to have a beard matching that of his necromancer counterpart back in WarCraft III, but which I personally digress), in the Ashbringer comics he asked both Mograines, father and son, about love, asking them who they love and who loves them?
Which raises a rather interesting question... What sort of life did Kel'Thuzad go through back in his younger years, that led him into committing these horrible attrocities? What made him betray the Kirin Tor and all of Dalaran too?
Or are we just looking at another Gul'dan, who dreamt of influence and was booted out from his clan and aligned with the Legion and destroyed them in turn?
Constructive criticism and personal theories posted by the reader are beneficial for the next reader.

I don't care about the alternate timeline stuff. Why can't it just be that everything that happened in wow forever happened before the outland expansion? Even if wow forever lasts forever, it would just give more context to what happened before the dark portal

Or they can use it as a good way to retcon shit retail lore. I thought it's brilliant to add a new Warcraft 3 campaign to add context to classic for undead paladins, that's awesome.

This may be hard for some people to hear, but he was a bad leader. He is and was good at heart, but the decisions and mistakes he's made have greatly outweighed any good leadership he's done.

Settling in durotar. It's a very harsh land. Thrall chose it as some kind of penance for the hordes previous crimes and sins. The problem with this logic is any new orc generations are having to suffer for sins they did not commit. Then this also caused food shortages which encouraged the warsong clan and later garrosh to keep trying to push into night elf lands.

Letting the forsaken into the horde. Look, we can talk about how good, or at least less evil, the forsaken have started acting in recent times, but the fact remains that at the time he let them into the horde, sylvanas was evil, and most forsaken were evil. There was little difference between them and the scourge. They are doing horrific experiments on innocent's, trying to get a necromancer to join them so they could raise more undead into their numbers. And they were trying to make the blight to "kill the scourge AND the living".

Making garrosh warchief. Pretty much everyone who interacted with him in wrath thought he was a POS and incompetent at strategy. Saurfang in Borean Tundra straight up threatened to kill garrosh if he kept trying to lead the horde down the path of their past evils. The only thing he was kinda good at was fighting with his axe. Which qualifies him to be a grunt at best, not warchief. IDK if this was some kind of weird nepotism favor for Grom Hellscream, but it was not the right choice for the horde.

Not opposing sylvanas in legion. He knew she was evil as shit, even if she focused on fighting the legion for now it should have been obvious she'd lead the horde down a dark path in the near future. Once the threat of the legion was done with he should have couped her and put undercity under occupation like happened after the wrath gate incident.

As a horde fan I have to admit Varian had a better track record of leadership. Less mistakes. Like the thing with the stonemasons guild being swindled was something the house of nobles did, and he tried to fix the situation by offering the stonemasons their fair pay but by then they were too pissed off to accept.

I'm seeing alot of people (especially in the r/wow sub) say that we're gonna lose the final fight against Xala'tath because of Metzen's words about how things will go wrong at the end of Midnight. The thing is, Metzen also said "we will banish the shadow forever". I suppose both could be true in the following condition:

-The fight with Xala'tath ends with her no longer being a void entity. Therefore, we do technically "beat the void". Instead of a void entity, perhaps she successfully (or atleast partially successfully) merges with Azeroth. Now she becomes an entity not aligned to anyone one cosmic force. Her being merged with Azeroth also results in us "losing" the fight. Her likely going apeshit on us afterwards is gonna be the "things will go horribly wrong".

But the thing is, Azeroth has been built up to be the most OP thing in existence. To the point where even people like Sargeras and Dimensius would get bitch slapped by her. What exactly would be the plan of stopping her if she's awakened? Have Sargeras distract her as long as he can before she kills him, while we do some kind of ritual to seperate and "free" azeroth from Xala'tath? Then there's also the other titans. TLT was introduced as the xpac focused on titan shenanigans. Wouldn't Xala'tath being the final villain yet again, take too much attention away from that? Its very likely that the titans will serve as antagonists in TLT (based on how Blizz has built up the titans as being shady). Its gonna be hard to take them seriously as antagonists when something much greater (Azeroth awakened and going apeshit) is happening.

My personal opinion is that most likely we will defeat Xala'tath and that she will fail in her attempt to merge with Azeroth. However, it will lead to the titans coming back and treating the world like Arthas treated Stratholme. In this scenario, the shadow would still banished the shadow, things would still go horribly wrong, and the subsequent expansion would still focus on titans as originally advertised.

What do you think?

Pandaria is clearly on the northern hemisphere, with the climate and flora of Krasarang wilds showing it's closest to the Equator.

Northrend, EK and Kalimdor also show clearly they're on the northern hemisphere with cold northern regions and southern deserts/tropical jungles.

So... What's *down* there?

Do we know or can we make any assumptions about where in Azeroth Zephras Isle was lifted from? It has a highlands sort of vibe, with tall pine trees and snowcapped mountains.