Once again, a heartfelt welcome to my wonderful self-therapy! BlizzCon was a while ago, and I had enough time to let everything sink in. More and more information about Legion, the upcoming World of Warcraft addon, has been revealed. While much of it sounds good and interesting, other things are so far-fetched and illogical that my roleplayer heart starts to bleed.
Attention, it’s going to get a bit lore-nerdy; you have been warned.
Small Errors Are Nothing New
I fully understand that one can lose track of every single storyline or some historical events in a work as large as Warcraft. This is also nothing really new for Blizzard; in the past, they have altered or denied existing lore.
Just remember the original version where the dark titan Sargeras was corrupted by the Eredar. That was, after the doubtful questions from the lore freaks, quickly reversed so that the Eredar were corrupted by Sargeras instead.
At another point, the community had to help out, such as during Cataclysm, when the “Red Shirt Guy” corrected Chris Metzen, who assumed that Falstad Wildhammer had died in a book – which was not the case.
Legion Continues the Series
With World of Warcraft: Legion, the series of these lore mistakes seems to continue. A small example of this is the artifact weapon forged from Frostmourne. Its shards had been lying around – at least that’s the current version – for years after the death of the Lich King in Icecrown. Not only is it rather stupid to leave one of the most powerful weapons unattended, but it also contradicts the developer statement that the shards “were well kept and locked away where no one could find them.” I’m curious to see how they solve this puzzle.
However, the story surrounding the artifact weapon of the demonology warlock is even more amusing. I quote it here so that everyone knows what I’m talking about:
“Before the Eredar served the titan Sargeras, one of their greatest leaders, Thal’kiel, possessed unprecedented skill with summoning and binding magics. Driven by his ambition, he reached into the Void and acquired knowledge of dark creatures unlike anything the Eredar had seen before. His reckless pursuit of power enraged the Demon Lord Archimonde, who killed him and had his skull gilded and displayed as a warning.”
Thal’kiel reached into the Void before the Eredar served the dark titan Sargeras. This means that the Eredar were not demons at that time. However, this made the “Demon Lord” Archimonde angry – who, by the way, is also an Eredar and therefore could not have been a demon at that time.
Even if one assumes – which is not mentioned in the text – that many years passed between the “reaching into the Void” and “Archimonde’s wrath” and the demonization of the Eredar occurred in the meantime, the story still makes even less sense. Because then, Archimonde would have been angry at another demon striving for power – just as all Eredar did with their demonization.
To conclude the column, I will finish with the sarcastic remark of a good friend who drew my attention to the last story: “Five lore points for Gryffindor! Blizzard wins the nonsense trophy!”
