A special look at - the alliance

So, now that we've got the introduction out of the way, it's finally time to discuss the alliance as a whole. We're gonna cover everything up to and including TBC, first for the alliance in general, then for each individual faction. Those of you who are more horde-inclined, don't worry, we're going to cover them at some point in the future as well (probably in relation to cataclysm).

First, a quick refresher for which factions are in the alliance or are associated with them.

Members

• The human kingdom of Dalaran
• The human kingdom of Kul Tiras
• The human kingdom of Stormwind
• The humans of Hillsbrad
• The state of Theramore
• The gnomish republic of Gnomeregan
• The dwarves of the Bronzebeard Clan
• The night elves
• The Aldor of the Exodar
• The broken who follow Nobundo
• The high elves of Allerian Stronghold
• The dwarves of wildhammer stronghold
• Various draenei settlements
• The humans of Honor Hold
• The furbolg of the stillpine tribe

Associates

• The human kingdom of Stromgarde
• The dwarves of the Wildhammer Clan
• The high elves of Quel'danil Lodge
• The Kurenai broken

Former members or associates, now neutral

• The survivors of Wizard's Row
• The Cenarion Circle
• The Timbermaw furbolg

What is the Alliance?

Thematically, the alliance are the stereotypical fantasy good guys. For most of their history, they've fulfilled this role in the world of Azeroth as well, with most other races being evil, murderous primitives or both. It says a lot that the goblins of Kezan were the most noble major power on the planet not associated with the alliance. However, now the alliance have come into a world where they aren't the only good guys any more, and it takes some adjusting.

In-universe, the history of the alliance is problematic to say the least. For some reason, blizzard seems to retcon details every game, leaving a bit of a cluttered mess.

When it first appeared in warcraft II, the alliance consisted of the seven human kingdoms, the elves of Quel'thalas, the gnomes of... someplace, the dwarves of Ironforge and the dwarves of Northeron. In the expansion to Warcraft II, it was stated that Stromgarde and Gilneas had left the alliance and that the other nations had withdrawn support until only Lordaeron and Stormwind were really supporting it anymore.

In warcraft III, the elves had left the alliance after the battle of Grim Batol (which all official timelines nonsensically place after Beyond the Dark Portal), and Stromgarde and Gilneas had left in their wake, rather than leaving between Warcraft II and the expansion, and the other nations (bar the gnomes, which aren't mentioned at all) were suddenly still fully loyal to the alliance. As far as retcons go, those were pretty annoying considering they didn't affect the story at all. And then in the Frozen Throne manual, the elves were described as still being members of the alliance, indicating they never left. My Ramses senses are indicating lack of proper editing.

And then comes World of Warcraft. Something about the alliance in WoW just seems off. Sure, the problems with the night elves joining and Stormwind suddenly being restored are obvious, but it's more than that. The alliance is ridiculously ineffective, to the point where it would almost make a good parody. The only location where we actually see members of the alliance coming together to assist each other is Alterac Valley, where it would make the least amount of sense. Couple this with the fact that all major alliance factions bar Stormwind and Ironforge have their presence toned down and you end up with a real mess.

Before we discuss the individual factions, lets take a moment to discuss the icon of the alliance. Icons can have a lot of power, as they represent the faction in a single, simple symbol and can serve as a rallying point for the fans. However, the icon of the alliance is terrible, simply being the lion of Stormwind. Using the symbol of any nation in an alliance as the symbol for that alliance is already a questionable call. However, as stated before, Stormwind isn't even taking an active role to help the other nations. Why not just keep using the symbol of Lordaeron?

The human kingdom of Dalaran and the survivors of Wizard's row

Why do these guys still exist? No, seriously, why? Dalaran was, within a year, invaded by the scourge, crushed by Archimonde, taken over by the scourge, taken over by the naga, taken over by the night and blood elves, taken over by the scourge again and then taken over by the new alliance. Every single inhabitant of the city (bar that one paladin who was imprisoned by the scourge) should be dead. While there were probably a few dalaran mages active in other regions (though most of those would have been in regions affected by the scourge) and a few probably joined Jaina Proudmoore's expedition, the faction as a whole should be deader than baroque music. Maybe if every single remaining person who owes some loyalty to Dalaran traveled to the city, they could have set up a minor community, except we know for a fact that didn't happen, since both Nethergarde and Theramore (which would have the most survivors) kept their mages.

The Burning Crusade could have helped a bit in this regard, as a lot of Dalaran wizards went with the alliance expedition. However, Wizard's Row, the city built by the dalaran survivors, has also been completely destroyed. If that wasn't enough, many of the survivors, most notably Khadgar, have instead joined the sha'tar or other neutral factions.

The whole dalaran surviving is going to get especially ridiculous in WotLK, but we're not here to talk about that. Instead, let's point out more things that are silly about Dalaran. Take for example the city shield, a large purple bubble that cuts off Dalaran from the rest of the world, including their allies. Why would they do that? What possible reason could Dalaran have to cut itself off from its allies?

There is also another question; if so many Dalarani survived the destruction of their city, where were they during Garithos' attempt to purge the blood elves? The elves and the people of Dalaran were long-standing allies, and there were several elves in high-ranking government positions (in day of the dragon, at least one of the councilors was an elf), so I can't imagine them ever supporting that sort of thing. It also calls to question what happened to the elves of Dalaran during that purge, but we'll get to that when we cover WotLK.

The human kingdom of Kul Tiras

There is a reason why I spelled out the full list of factions rather than just the playable races, like most listings do. That reason is this: WHERE THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE? While some of the other factions of playable races do actually appear in the game, their role is almost completely repressed whenever it comes to events of any global importance.

This is especially notable with Kul Tiras, which, lorewise, should be one of the strongest nations on the planet, as its homeland was the only human nation in the alliance not to fall during any of three wars. However, they're almost completely unrepresented in-game. We occasionally see someone wearing the Kul Tiras tabard, but we have no idea what is going on with the nation itself. Who is it's leader? I guess it's one of Jaina's siblings (she was described as being Daelin's youngest daughter, so she at least has an older sister), but we have no idea who that person might be. Was it attacked by the scourge during the third war? Are they supporting the actions of Northwatch? Did the scourge invade it at the start of WotLK? How did the Cataclysm affect it? Has the horde attacked it since Garrosh became warchief? These are just some very basic questions, and there has never even been a hint regarding any of them.

I'm going to break my own rules here and talk about some expansions we haven't covered yet, because it should have been so easy to introduce Kul Tiras as a faction in any of them:

• TBC: The starting questline of the draenei: Why not replace Admiral Odesyus with Lieutenant Alverold? It makes absolutely no sense for a stormwind admiral to be sailing anywhere near azuremyst isle, but we already had Alverold established as sailing around Kalimdor back in Vanilla. If you don't want to use Alverold himself due to the morally questionable nature of Daelin's soldiers, that's fine too; you can just use another Kul Tiras officer who was in the area to look for Alverold's fleet.
  Hell, have Alverold/the officer land his fleet and have them serve as a reputation faction (as a counterpart to tranquillen) during the bloodmyst isle questline. You clearly didn't have enough ideas for that zone anyway, so you can kill two flies with one stone.
  
  Alternatively, you could simply have a small Kul Tiras outpost in Draenor. While we know that they weren't amongst the leading forces in the expedition, it makes perfect sense for there to have been a contingent of Kul Tiras soldiers in Nethergarde Keep who could have joined in the assault.
• WotLK: The alliance assault on Northrend happens mostly by boat, so why not make one of the invasion points a stronghold of Kul Tiras? Valiance Keep seems like the best choice, as you could make Farshire a colony of Kul Tiras, rather than leaving it up in the air to what nation it belonged, and it makes a lot of sense for a nation of traders to maintain colonies.
• Cata: There is this huge battle over Gilneas and Silverpine forest with several waves of alliance reinforcements. Why not have one of those waves be Kul Tiras soldiers? Kul Tiras is very close to the continent of Lordaeron (though we don't know exactly where it is due to map changes between games), so it seems silly for them to have been left out of the battle.
  
  Or what about Uldum? It would make perfect sense to replace the gnomish fleet (what the hell were they doing there anyway?) with the remains of Alverold's scouting fleet.
• MoP: An epic battle between a horde fleet and an alliance fleet is what sets off the events of the expansion to begin with. Later, a second invasion fleet arrives to repel the horde from Pandaria. Either of these fleets could be Tirasian or have a couple of ships flying the Tirasian flag.

The human kingdom of Stormwind

World of Warcraft had a really bad habit of dodging a lot of the more complicated moral situations that the earlier games created. Two examples have already been mentioned above, with Dalaran's involvement in the purge of the blood elves and Kul Tiras' reaction to Jaina aiding in the death of Daelin Proudmoore. Another one pops up here: the remaining orcish internment camps.

Back in Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, it was pretty explicit that there were a large number of internment camps in Stormwind. It was part of the backstory of both Danath Trollbane (who was a warden of these camps) and Grom Hellscream (who was said to be unsuccessfully fighting to free those camps in the warcraft III manual). We also know that Thrall was mostly active in Lordaeron, so he can't have freed the orcs in these camps either.

However, then World of Warcraft comes around, and all the orcish internment camps are suddenly gone. We can kind of forgive this with the remaining camps in Lordaeron (which were probably just exterminated during the third war or set free in the interim period), but the disappearance of all the southern camps is just silly. They can't have been set free, as Varian vanished before signing the peace agreement with the horde, and I can't imagine Onyxia agreeing with just setting them free.

There is another issue that's far more important than any mere continuity: Stormwind is easily and by a long shot the worst faction design in the game. In most fantasy settings, humanity tends to be the default, and therefore least interesting race. Warcraft II tried to improve on this somewhat, by giving each of the human nations some unique traits. Lordaeron was the religious nation, Stromgarde was a nation of gruff warriors, Kul Tiras possessed a powerful navy, Gilneas refused to aid its allies, Dalaran was a city of great mages and Alterac had shady nobles who betrayed the alliance. However, Stormwind wasn't really given an identity. I'm going to quote the manual to illustrate my point here (note: Stormwind was called Azeroth in the earlier games):

Before the coming of the Age of Chaos when the Portal was first opened, the kingdom of Azeroth was the mightiest of all Human nations. Ruled by the wise and just King Llane, Azeroth stood as a beacon of light and truth throughout the known world. After the First War, Azeroth and all of its lands were devastated by the Horde. With King Llane dead, Sir Lothar took charge of the shattered armies of Azeroth and led the survivors across the Great Sea to the shores of Lordaeron. King Terenas, ruler of Lordaeron, agreed to support the landless Azerothiens. The people of Azeroth settled near the Southshore region of Lordaeron, pledging their loyalty to the Alliance. Battle-hardened and brave, the last of the once great armies of Azeroth now seek retribution for the loss of their homeland.

So yeah, the unique trait given to Stormwind was “Generic human fantasy kingdom that lost its homeland”. With the end of the second war and the founding of New Stormwind, Stormwind lost that trait. It was just “Generic human fantasy kingdom” now.

Without any interesting traits to set it apart, the designers of WoW apparently decided to just give it the traits of all the human nations. After all, it was “the mightiest of all Human nations”. It was given the religious strength of Lordaeron, with the Archbishop and the knights of the silver hand moving to Stormwind City. It was given the martial culture of Stromgarde, with the outlying provinces forming their own powerful militias. It was given the fleets of Kul Tiras, with its fleets dominating any alliance naval battle in the game. It was given the mages of Dalaran, with an entire district in the city dedicated to magic. Gilneas and Alterac were represented too, with there being many shady nobles that were preventing the armies of Stormwind from aiding its' allies and were looking to betray the alliance. Hell, they've even got Theramore's main villain of Onyxia. If that wasn't bad enough, entire districts of Stormwind were dedicated to its non-human allies, with the park given to the night elves (why would so many night elves want to move to Stormwind anyway?) and the dwarven district given to the dwarves. Since the RPG was still canon back in Vanilla, Stormwind also had most of the world's high and half-elves. The result was a nation that not only didn't manage to be interesting on its own, but took away from the uniqueness of the other nations while also plastering their national flag all over the planet.

I simply don't get why Stormwind wasn't further defined. There was certainly plenty of opportunity. You could extend the idea of the house of nobles and SI:7 and make Stormwind a land of political intrigue. Instead of the “generic human town”©s, make the quest hubs strongholds of various lords who seek to extend their power, with SI:7 being the only thing keeping them in check. You could extend the idea of the Defias riots (who are pure evil in the game because enemies of the “generic human fantasy kingdom” always are) and make Stormwind a land on the brink of civil war, with the outlying provinces ready to break away from the main kingdom. You could even extend the idea of the Brotherhood of the Horse and make Stormwind the homeland of knighthood (the knights in warcraft III were members of the silver hand, which was founded by survivors from Stormwind), with castles, chivalry, various knightly orders and tournaments. Just give it some traits, any traits, of its own.

While the writers based their design of Stormwind on the “the mightiest of all Human nations” quote, they kind of seemed to have forgotten another quote: “Before the coming of the Age of Chaos”. Stormwind was absolutely devastated during the first war and second wars, with the only survivors of the first war having to flee by boat to Southshore, which became one of the first targets for the horde during the second war. While there have been about two decades to rebuild since the second war, that simply can't have made up for the sheer population loss the nation of Stormwind should have suffered. Unlike Dalaran, Stormwind makes sense as still being a full nation. However, making it the most powerful nation in the alliance is just silly. Related to this: When did New Stormwind become Stormwind City again? And how does Stormwind City have an old district if the town is only twenty years old? And, while we're at it, why are Nethergarde and Southshore under the command of Stormwind rather than their founding nations?

The Humans of Hillsbrad

The old hillsbrad foothills had some quests that made fans of lore go “Huh?”. For example, the citizens have to pay taxes to Stormwind. That's just... random. Shouldn't Hillsbrad be its own nation? What happened to Calia Menethil? If the people of Hillsbrad were going to join another nation, why would they join Stormwind, which doesn't do anything to help them? If they are citizens of Stormwind, how can they openly be attacked by the forsaken without it starting a war? If the forsaken are openly attacking the people of Hillsbrad, why hasn't Thrall kicked them out of the horde yet? Also, this:

Second War

Varian Wrynn: “I beseech thee for help, lord of Lordaeron. A swarm of demon-empowered monstrosities has overrun my kingdom, killing most of my people, including my father.”

Terenas Menethil: “Do not worry, young wrynn. In my lands, your people will be save. Together, we can retake your kingdom, for which I shall secure the funds necessary to rebuild it.”

Third War

Calia Menethil: “I beseech thee for help, lord of Stormwind. A swarm of demon-empowered monstrosities has overrun my kingdom, killing most of my people, including my father.”

Varian Wrynn: “Guess that means you're paying taxes to me now, suckers!”

The State of Theramore

Theramore is in an odd situation. With every new warcraft product that comes out, it seems to decrease in importance. In warcraft III, it was founded by the last survivors of Lordaeron, as that continent was turned to ashes by the burning legion. In TFT, it was the only large city still controlled by the people from Lordaeron. In the RPG, it was one of many great alliance cities, but it was still of great political importance, effectively leading the alliance. In Vanilla and TBC, it was the only major human alliance settlement on the continent and its leader was one of the faction leaders of the alliance.

However, unlike many other changes, I'm not that critical of this one (well, at least until we get to WotLK). This is because the reason that Theramore lost importance was to add diversity to the game. Not diversity in factions mind you, but diversity in its zones. Theramore's main importance was as a haven for the refugees from Lordaeron. However, World of Warcraft seriously toned down the implied advance of the scourge and the burning legion (they cover about as much area as they did when Archimonde was summoned, despite the burning legion joining in assaults against humanity afterwards). This was done because a Lordaeron where every zone was blighted and filled with undead would frankly be pretty monotonous. Vanilla simply lacked the resources to make the logical amount of undead-filled zones seem interesting. As such, many human settlements that we assumed were destroyed during warcraft III survived, and the people of Theramore were no longer the only survivors.

That said, I'm still a bit disappointed, though it's admittedly because Jaina Proudmoore was my favorite character in Warcraft III. Theramore definitely feels too small compared to how it was portrayed in Warcraft III. Since an extra capital city would have imbalanced the game, it might have been a good idea to have Theramore use the city shield rather than Dalaran. Considering Jaina was a prodigy amongst the Kirin Tor, it would be logical for her to have been able to recruit a large amount of mages for her expedition, in addition to surviving high elves and hydromancers from Kul Tiras. It actually kind of makes sense for Theramore to not want random alliance ships visiting, as Jaina would fear that these could be used to stage an attack against the horde. You could even tie it into the Onyxia storyline by saying that she would only drop the shield when the alliance leaders signed the official peace agreement with the horde, which became impossible with the disappearance of Varian Wrynn. Ah well, I'm just throwing ideas around with hindsight. As it is, I'm plenty happy with how theramore turned out.

The Gnomish Republic of Gnomeregan

I've covered my problems with the handling of Gnomeregan before, so I'm just going to summarize: As a technologically advanced nation, Gnomeregan has something that makes it easily recognizable and unique. However, the writers went way too far with some of its technological aspects, to the point where gnomes really should be the most dominant force on the planet. While this technology is usually used as a basis for comedy, it's still rather disconcerting as part of the greater warcraft setting.

The Dwarves of the Bronzebeard Clan

I like the warcraft dwarves and their implementation in World of Warcraft is actually handled rather well, probably the best out of any of the playable races. Their main writing flaw is a weird inconsistency regarding their obsession with archeology, as they invade three different horde territories to get to minor titan digsites, despite there being at least two titan cities within their own or allied territory that they haven't fully uncovered yet. However, that's a relatively minor writing inconsistency.

The Night Elves and the Cenarion Circle

To understand one of the main issues with the night elves, we need to discuss class design. While I like the overall design of most classes a lot, world of warcraft made a number of questionable or outright bad calls when it came to the lore of the classes.

Most famously, there are a number of weird race/class combinations. Has there been any sign before or since World of Warcraft that trolls practice arcane magic? So what's up with them being able to become mages? Or how about gnomish warriors? Why can't forsaken or humans become hunters? Or blood elves become warriors? And why are there orcish, human and gnomish warlocks? I get that there is a need to balance out the two factions, but there has to be a better way.

However, there is also a number of internal class design choices that are just confusing. Take hunters for example. While the various design aspects do make sense individually, the choice to make the ranged weapon specialist also draw on the power of the animal kingdom comes straight out of nowhere. Or how about priests. I get holy priests and shadow priests, but what in the world is a discipline priest supposed to be? It's not like there is a shortage of divine power sources for other priest specs in the warcraft universe.

However, we're supposed to be talking about the night elves here, so let's get back to them. In warcraft III, the night elves had been given two unique magical arts that defined much of their culture: The power of Elune and the arts of druidism. However, then World of Warcraft came along. For some ungodly reason, the designers decided to give all the moon-based powers to the druid class. First of all, it was very specifically mentioned several times that druids do not in any way shape or form draw their power from Elune, so merging these two classes is about as bizarre as merging shamans and death knights. Second, if all the moon priestess powers have been merged into the druid class, why do night elves still have access to the priest class?

And then there was the second mistake; making this class, which now represents most of the night elves' cultural identity, available to other races. Not only that, but they made the members of this class a completely neutral faction. Since many of the other notable features of the night elves (their natural allies, their warrior culture and their gender policies) were dropped from the game, it makes the race far less distinct. For an alternate class solution, see appendix one.

Even aside from the “we made the most distinct aspects of a playable race into a neutral faction”, the cenarion circle is still a terrible idea. Druidism and the night elves are two concepts that are were designed to be ingrained with one another. Just look at Warcraft III. So separating these two is like having all shamans leave the horde, or all mages leave the blood elves.

That said, a druid reputation faction could still somewhat work. Having a number of neutral druids act outside night elf territory to get some cross-faction help in druidic problems makes perfect sense. These guys could deal with Naralex, the corruption of felwood or the various instances of corrupted green dragons. However, that's not what they went with. Instead, all druids were members of the cenarion circle.

Which starts raising some questions. It's obvious that druids are still part of general night elf society as well. You see quite a number of them throughout Teldrassil, and they have their own section within the capital (which for some reason also has the rogue and hunter trainers, classes you'd think to be related to the sentinels). Both Malfurion and Fandral were still considered leaders of the night elves. So how exactly can the cenarion circle maintain faction-independent holdings if one of its leaders is also a faction leader? It would be like the US vice-president declaring himself independent of any nation, but keeping his job. Having neutral agents in other countries makes sense. Having an independent neutral nation does not. Especially not in the way they chose to handle it, with the cenarion circle taking over the old capital. To keep with our analogy, it's like the US vice-president declaring the north-eastern states an independent nation led by him, but still keeping his old job.

Which brings us to Teldrassil. I doubt I can fully explain how ludicrous the entire concept is and in how many ways it doesn't make sense. But let's try anyway, beginning with an obvious one. The original world tree was grown from an acorn of G'hanir, gifted by Alexstrasza. G'hanir has been dead and gone for about ten thousand years now. So where did they get the seed for the new world tree?

Two; why do they even need a new world tree? The loss of the night elves' immortality was because Malfurion sacrificed the blessings of the aspects to destroy Archimonde, not because of physical damage to the world tree. Why can't they simply ask the aspects to renew their blessing on the old world tree?

Three; the location of the world tree. As the new source of immortality for the night elves, this tree would be a huge strategic weakness. As such, you're going to want it in a defensible position. Moonglade would probably have been the best choice, being surrounded by mountains on all side. You could even put it a bit lower on the slopes to mount hyjal. However, they instead chose to put it on an island, which it soon outgrew, leaving only one viable harbor. This means that any attack that doesn't come from the south can only be fought off by boat or by flight. Couple this with the fact that even a small attack could potentially set the world tree on fire and the night elves have an enormous tactical disadvantage.

Four; Teldrassil as a zone. The decision to turn Teldrassil into a zone is what baffles me the most. As a tree, it has no large horizontal surface area. If we ignore a few sources we could speculate that it's a tree stump rather than a full tree, but that makes even less sense, as the night elves still expect the tree to be growing, so it would be stupid to build anything on top of it. The only explanation that makes sense would be for Teldrassil to be a metaphorical scaled representation of the actual Teldrassil walkable areas, which were cut into the trunk. Except that wouldn't make sense either. Why did the night elves cut holes into their sacred tree to plant more trees? Why did they cut holes to create mountains? Why did they cut holes for satyr and harpies to live in? Why would you introduce a zone that you can't represent in your game engine and doesn't make sense from any standpoint?

Five; Teldrassil's internal design. Okay, let's ignore all the greater design oddities of Teldrassil and look at the smaller picture. There are so many little things that don't make any sense. For example, why doesn't your character, an adult night elf that presumably heard at least a bit about night elf history, instantly recognize a satyr? If the night elves know about this satyr (and several other ones in class quests), why haven't they killed it yet? If the pact with Ysera was not renewed, why are there druids sleeping in the barrow dens? How can Darnassus contain highborne architecture when it was only constructed recently? How can Denalan have been in the swamp of sorrows decades ago? Hell, that one is impossible in two entirely different ways, as the night elves were insular until about four years before WoW and the swamp only became a separate area nineteen years ago. How can so many elements of night elf culture be named after Darnassus if the city is only four years old?

So yeah, Teldrassil (while admittedly very pretty) makes no sense on just about every level you can think of. However, that's not the only problem with the night elves. While never really savage, the night elves of warcraft III had a certain amount of... roughness to their behavior. There was no doubt that they'd kill anyone who just looked at their forests the wrong way. But the night elves of World of Warcraft are more like your typical fantasy forest elves, always seeking the peaceful solution first. It's really disconcerting to do the night elf zones right after playing Warcraft III, with the night elves only fighting unquestionably evil enemies and letting dwarves poke around the ruins of their ancestors for magical treasure. It's a bad change.

Finally, there's the absence or under-representation of most night elf natural allies, which I mentioned before. This and all the earlier mentioned criticisms should make it clear that the night elf zones really should have gotten some more refinement and/or a complete redesign before their final release, but alas.

Also, what the hell is up with the cenarion expedition? Why would druids be interested in going to outland? Sure, druids might be interested in restoring the power of nature, but there's still a lot of other corrupted areas, both at home and in the eastern kingdoms. And then there are some quests that say one of the main purposes of the druids in outland is taxonomy. Words fail me at how silly that is.

The Aldor of the Exodar, the broken who follow Nobundo, various draenei settlements, the Kurenai and the Stillpine furbolg

Those of you who followed World of Warcraft back when The Burning Crusade was first announced may remember something odd about the racial announcements. While the blood elves were announced as the new horde race almost immediately after the expansion itself, it took several more months for the alliance race to be announced.

While I don't think it has ever been officially confirmed, the common assumption amongst fans is that the draenei were announced so late is because they simply weren't decided on until late in development. I've seen the theory many times, usually with either furbolgs or pandaren as the original playable race. Pandaren seem pretty unlikely, but furbolg actually make quite a bit of sense.

First of all, they're a perfect mirror for the blood elves, having a strong connection to the night elves while having a culture more similar to that of the horde. The environment of the draenei starting area also makes a lot of sense for a furbolg starting zone, with the blood elves having crashed the Exodar rather than the draenei. The furbolg would already have been allies of the night elves, with the events of the zone supplying them with a reason to go to outland: “REVENGE!” (insert dramatic musical cue). Also, preventing that kind of stuff from happening again. But mostly revenge.

The draenei starting areas have a lot of weird plot holes which could easily be filled if you assumed the quests were originally designed for the furbolg. Why were the crash survivors able to survive, despite being thrown several miles from the crash site and being injured in a hostile environment for weeks? Because the original intent was for the survivors to be from the player's village and the quest to take place just after the crash. The stasis pod was only added to explain why the player character wasn't injured. Why doesn't draenei architecture make any sense? Because the questing hubs were intended to be furbolg villages rather than fragments from a ship and didn't make the transition well. Why does that one questline about the draenei being infiltrated by an eredar and one of their military leaders being corrupted not fit with the flow of the quests and never reaching its conclusion? Because it was only added later and never fully finished.

Of course, it's just pure speculation, but it fits really well and would explain why the draenei presence in the alliance is so weirdly handled. Most notably, the draenei never actually join the alliance. The closest thing they get is “I have prepared a letter of introduction to the people of Auberdine, the closest Alliance settlement, proposing cooperation in the fight against our foes”, which isn't much in the way of joining an organization, and there is nothing that would spur a closer alliance after that. The relation between the exodar draenei, the aldor and the alliance draenei of outland is equally weird. Velen is the head of the exodar draenei, as well as being the head of the aldor. So why are the two separate groups? The only excuse I can think of is that Velen sees a conflict of interest between the groups (which, to be frank, I don't see), but then why would he still recruit the draenei of Telredor and the temple of Telhamat for the alliance?

The Kurenai have the same problem. Why do they ally with the alliance (which doesn't assist them at all), rather than with the sha'tar? The Kurenai, Nobundo's broken, the ashtongue and the tribes illidan enslaved also have a bit of a different problem, in that they are interesting, well-developed and likable characters. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, but a good thing. Except that it makes the idea that the other broken are insane and aggressive by their very nature impossible, making the players brutally slaughtering some of the tribes seem not just against the standards of the two factions, but also stupid, since they could try recruiting 'em. Plus there's the whole timeline issue that I mentioned in my review of TBC.

A much smaller complaint is playable draenei mages. They just seem out of place in such a light-centered society (not to mention that draenei look rather silly in colorful robes). Most draenei technology seems to work by channeling the holy light anyway, so its not like the mages take up a vital place in society.

I do actually like the addition of the draenei. They have an interesting visual aesthetic, their backstory is pretty interesting, they fit in well with the alliance and there are a lot of cultural elements that are easily portrayed in-game. However, their execution leave a lot to be desired.

The high elves of Allerian Stronghold, the dwarves of wildhammer stronghold and the humans of Honor Hold

I've got no complaints about these guys, since they were handled pretty decently. Hope to see Vereesa and Turalyon some day soon.

The human kingdom of Stromgarde

Stromgarde is a really good example of how incompetent storytelling in WoW can be. This is a nation with an interesting backstory, a culture that can easily be integrated into the game, a series of mysteries (the assassination of Lord Trollbane, the syndicate using bloodstone and the stuff related to myzrael) that could spark a long an interesting questchain and a weapon of legend that has a backstory that doesn't require it to be overpowered.

However, instead of that, the quests are mostly just bugging the horde, killing random enemies without much of a specific reason and grabbing some random magical stuff that an archmage was too much of an idiot to take with him when he fled. Hell, I don't think you actually visited the human-controlled part of Stromgarde once during the questchain.

It would have been so easy to combine these elements into a strong narrative. But no, these things barely relate to the nation at all. I don't even think its ever been revealed who killed the king. Guess we're supposed to not care.

The dwarves of the Wildhammer Clan

Again, these guys were handled fairly competently, though there was a bit of a shortage of quests that were actually about the clan.

The high elves of Quel'danil Lodge

While some people didn't like these guys, I'll admit I think they're actually a pretty clever idea. Since the split with the other elves happened before Kael'thas gathered his soldiers, there is a plausible explanation for them keeping their old culture (unlike some of the elves we get to see later). Going cold turkey to deal with the magic addiction is actually a pretty interesting idea, and I can imagine why the other elves didn't even think to try it, and it still leaves them with ranger magic to make them a unique part of the alliance.

The timbermaw furbolg

Pretty decently handled, though not without some flaws. First of all, the the idea that they are the only uncorrupted tribe was always a bit silly. Even when there were no others in the game, the RPG (still canon at the time) had already established there were furbolgs in Northrend.

Second, and more importantly; How are the timbermaw uncorrupted? It's been pretty implicit that certain species are more naturally vulnerable to corruption, most notably creatures that were created by the ancient guardians (furbolg, quilboar, harpy, dryad) and, somewhat less severely, creatures that are connected to the emerald dream (ancients, faerie drakes and even druids). The gnarlpine tribe got corrupted just by standing on a tree with some trace elements of corruption. So how is a tribe able to live right next to felwood and remain unaffected?

Closing thoughts

So, that pretty much covers everything for the alliance (though I'm sure I've forgotten about a dozen things, WoW is kinda big). As I remarked in the foreword and will say again when I cover the horde, many of the problems stem from a lack of the writers just sitting down to discuss what they're going to do with a certain faction. Even in the factions that were handled decently, there is a distinct lack of focus in their quests and a lot of understated cultural elements.

Though I speak with obvious hindsight, I think the RPG for once had an actual idea here: Only put one of the continents in the game. This not only gives you less factions to develop, but gives you more room to develop them in.

Well, that's all I had to say (barring the appendix), so I'll see you guys next time. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to cover next, since I haven't read Cycle of Hatred yet, so I don't know if it has enough stuff to comment on. If it doesn't, we're going to return to the warcraft comic instead. Or I might even take a short break from warcraft review and look at a few random episodes of stargate instead.

Appendix One – Alternative Class System

Now I've got it easy. I don't actually have to come up with working designs for a game that's going be played and scrutinized by millions. Plus, I have access to hindsight (The most powerful of the magical arts). But still, I'm going to offer up an alternative, integrating all the points I mentioned above.

Okay, basic class changes:

• Hunters have been renamed primals, focusing on animal-based powers and ranged weaponry. Marksmanship abilities are redesigned to work with both bows and thrown weapons. Arcane shot and concussive shot are renamed searing sting and storm bolt, having been reanimated accordingly.
• Priests have lost their discipline specialization, instead gaining an animism specialization. Discipline spells are left mostly intact, but simply have their names and animation changed.
• Druids have lost their balance specialization, instead having their feral specialization split in two, one for DPS and one for tanking.

Now for the class Distribution in vanilla:

• Warriors, rogues and Priests are the base classes, available to most races. Gnomes are unable to become warriors, tauren are unable to become rogues and orcs and night elves are unable to become priests.
• Paladin, Druid, Shaman and Warlock are faction-exclusive classes. Only the western horde can become shamans, only the forsaken can become warlocks, only the eastern alliance can become paladins and only the night elves can become druids.
• Mages and primals are faction-restricted classes. Only the western horde and the night elves can become primals and only the eastern alliance and the forsaken can become mages.

	Human	Gnome	Dwarf	Night Elf	Orc	Troll	Tauren	Forsaken
Warrior	X		X	X	X	X	X	X
Rogue	X	X	X	X	X	X		X
Priest	X	X	X			X	X	X
Paladin	X	X	X
Druid				X
Shaman					X	X	X
Warlock								X
Mage	X	X	X					X
Primal				X	X	X	X

As you can see, the factions are perfectly balanced between factions. Admitted drawback is that there are slightly less race/class combinations (36 here vs 40 in vanilla).

Now for TBC. Both the draenei and the blood elves get:

• Access to all three base classes
• Access to one faction-exclusive class of their own faction (paladins for draenei, warlocks for blood elves)
• Access to one faction-exclusive class of the opposite faction (shamans for draenei, druids for blood elves).
• Access to one faction-restricted class available mainly to the opposing faction (primals for draenei, mages for blood elves)

	Human	Gnome	Dwarf	Night Elf	Draenei	Orc	Troll	Tauren	Forsaken	Blood elf
Warrior	X		X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Rogue	X	X	X	X	X	X	X		X	X
Priest	X	X	X		X		X	X	X	X
Paladin	X	X	X		X
Druid				X						X
Shaman					X	X	X	X
Warlock									X	X
Mage	X	X	X						X	X
Primal				X	X	X	X	X

Explanation of some (lack of) class combinations:

• Human, gnome and orc warlocks still exist lorewise. However, their specialization is considered illegal and they are not able to perform it openly as adventurers.
• Night elf priests still exist lorewise. However, the temple of Elune keeps direct control of all priests, with none of them acting as adventurers. Out-of-universe, keeping them non-playable allows them to remain a female-only organization.
• The night elf sentinels still only allow females to join their numbers. However, individual male warriors and primals still act as adventurers, or as agents of the alliance.
• Night elf druids don't have gender restrictions, as that would just be silly.
• Draenei mages do not exist in notable numbers. Their ships and technologies work entirely by channeling holy power.
• Draenei primals and draenei rogues have the same origin as draenei shamans, with these ways having emerged thanks to integration of broken ones in draenei society.
• Orc priests do not exist, as orcs do not practice animism in the same manner as tauren or trolls. While orcs believe in many spirits, these are only bound to living creatures and thus part of shamanism.
• Blood elf holy priests and paladins don't exist in WoW for the same reason given in TBC. However, they have not captured a naaru to draw power from. Instead, many blood elf priests have joined their forsaken brethren in rejecting the light and embracing the cult of the forgotten shadow.
• Blood elf druids have their powers originating from the arcane. Lorewise, they are only able to cast restoration spells, but they have access to the other specializations for gameplay reasons (like tauren, human and gnome shadow priests)

Alternatively, if furbolgs had become a playable race rather than the draenei:

	Human	Gnome	Dwarf	Night Elf	Furbolg	Orc	Troll	Tauren	Forsaken	Blood elf
Warrior	X		X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Rogue	X	X	X	X	X	X	X		X	X
Priest	X	X	X		X		X	X	X	X
Paladin	X	X	X							X
Druid				X	X
Shaman					X	X	X	X
Warlock									X	X
Mage	X	X	X						X	X
Primal				X	X	X	X	X

Explanation of some (lack of) class combinations:

• Here, the blood elves never lost their holy powers (or the stupid bit with the captured naaru is kept), so they retain paladins and most priests are still holy.
• Blood elf druids on the other hand have all but vanished, due to nature becoming corrupted and uncontrollable after the attack by the scourge.
• Furbolg priests practice animism.

WoW – A special look at – foreword

Happy Christmas everybody. However, since I don't celebrate the holiday, you're getting nothing special, just another article.

I've mentioned a few times now that I want to take a closer look at the alliance. However, as I was writing that article, I realized I had written down a lot of stuff that had more to do with my views on general warcraft lore rather than the alliance. Since that stuff was still necessary to understand where I was coming from with several of my arguments, I decided to give it an article of its own. So, let's begin.

What do I like about Warcraft?

Let's start with a simple, but important question: Why do I care about warcraft? There's hundreds of fantasy universes, so why did I choose to focus on this one? To my surprise, I was actually able to boil down the reasons pretty well.

Reason 1: Diversity: As a setting, the warcraft universe is INCREDIBLY diverse. This started as early as warcraft 2, where there were no less than 28 different factions involved (11 nations in the alliance, 7 orcish clans on Azeroth, 6 orcish clans on Draenor, the dragons of Alexstrasza, the dragons of Deathwing, the death knights of Draenor, the trolls and the goblins). Admittedly, these factions were not very developed, but it wasn't really necessary. They had enough characterization to be unique, and for players to relate and favor certain factions.

As more warcraft products came out, the number of factions only grew, each with unique characteristics. The characterization for some of the new factions was also much more extensive than that of the original 28, which meant that people could identify much more strongly with them. You certainly see a lot more fans of the night elves than you see fans of Stromgarde. However, while the books offered some development for them, warcraft 3 mostly left the original 28 factions alone, so it could focus on people who had split off to form their own groups (Thrall, Jaina, the Lich King, Sylvanas) or completely new factions (night elves, darkspear trolls, tauren). The old factions were pretty much cannon fodder throughout the campaign or were only seen as team names during victory screens. Really, only three returning factions served as anything more than cannon fodder: The Warsong Clan, Quel'thalas and Kul Tiras. Even Lordaeron, which served as the stage for a large number of missions, was really just a backdrop.

World of Warcraft tried to do something similar to Warcraft 3, giving much more development to the new factions than to the old. The dark iron dwarves, the many new troll tribes and the silithid were all given extensive backstories and connections to the previous games. However, this didn't work out as well as it did before. Warcraft 3 had been an RTS, with each map being only a tiny portion of the planet. If it wanted to ignore a faction, it simply didn't put any missions within that faction's borders. However, world of warcraft is an RPG, with a gameworld covering most of the known landmasses of Azeroth. It can't just skip over a faction the writers didn't properly develop.

That's not to say the writers didn't try though. Dalaran locked itself off for no real reason, the remnants of Alterac got wiped out off-screen, Gilneas blocked itself off with a wall, Kul Tiras and Crestfall weren't included on the map, Stromgarde fell to the syndicate, the hillsbrad foothills suddenly belonged to Stormwind with no mention of what happened to Calia, the Shattered Hand, Twilight's Hammer and Burning Blade clans stopped being clans and the Frostwolf Clan retreated to a single battleground. Not to mention the factions that simply vanished, like the Bleeding Hollow Clan, the Stormreaver Clan, four of the five goblin cartels and the Shadowtooth Tribe. There were also the groups that blizzard didn't develop, but didn't minimize, like the gnolls, the makrura, the ogres, the harpies, the ancients, the dryads, the troggs and the kobolds.

However, that's not to say the diversity is gone. On the contrary, the warcraft world has become more diverse than ever, thanks to the expansions. These were generally a lot better at adding new cultural elements to the world, mostly because they took place in lands that were largely unexplored, leaving room for the writers to add new stuff. Even Cataclysm, which had severe problems in pretty much every regard, gave us interesting new factions. The expansions did have a few problems of their own in this regard though, but we'll address those at a later point.

Reason 2: Clear backstory. In one aspect, the warcraft universe is pretty much unique amongst the popular fantasy franchises: It has an extensive, but easily understood backstory, especially when it comes to ancient history. To show what I mean, its best to compare it to some other franchises. In lord of the rings, the ancient history is given in The Silmarillion, which makes use of such complicated language and extensive metaphors (and things that seem like metaphors but are are actually meant literally) that it becomes incomprehensible to many readers. In Star Wars, the backstory has to be puzzled together from at least a hundred different expanded universe books, much of which contradicts each other or the new movies and television series. For The Elder Scrolls I can't even properly describe the backstory, what with the probably metaphorical home continent of the elves, humans somehow originating from three different continents, the warp in the west, most sources being unreliable due to being written in-universe and the contradictory nature of the daedric gods.

The backstory of the warcraft universe on the other hand makes use of relatively simple language, has the same physical laws for its entire history and can be (and more importantly, has been) explained in only a few pages. While I certainly don't dislike any of the other settings I mentioned, this does set warcraft apart. While it does have some hiccups, they are relatively minor and mostly regard lore that takes place more recently (unless that one theory about elune being a naaru and the holy light being created by the tauren sun god is confirmed, but that's a rant for another day. Maybe even more than one rant.).

What will I let warcraft get away with?

A big part of being a fantasy or science-fiction fan is being able to suspend your disbelief. You need to be able to accept all sorts of ridiculous concepts, like the laws of gravity and flying cities co-existing or societies being stagnant for thousands of years. More than that, you need to be able to accept some internal inconsistencies. If there is a dozen different writers and the works in the franchise are spread out over more than a decade, there is bound to be some things that fall by the wayside.

That doesn't mean you have to accept everything though. I do expect the writers to be paying some attention to what they are doing and try to be as consistent and internally logical as possible. Mistakes can happen, but that doesn't mean I'm happy with them. Still, there is a few things that I'm completely willing to ignore, most of which have to do with maintaining the diversity and the clear backstory I mentioned above.

For example, the history of most of the warcraft factions is extremely lackluster. It seems that most of the human kingdoms didn't have any important events happening between their founding and the first war, despite thousands of years having passed. I'm completely fine with this. That's not to say that the franchise couldn't benefit from some extensions in the backstory, but even then, its fine to just have a couple of hundred years without major events.

Another example is cultural contamination. In real life, all sorts of tiny cultural bits bleed from one nation into the nations that it has contact with. However, to maintain both diversity and a clear backstory, it's much better to ignore this most of the time. The gnomes and the ironforge dwarves get to be two distinct cultures, even in towns with a mixed population. It's actually a bad thing when cultural contamination is handled too realistically, as it takes away from the diversity. If human armies started to build spider-tanks and flying machines, the gnomes would become less distinct. If the orcs started worshiping the earthmother, the tauren would become less distinct. This can even apply internally to cultures, like blood elf magisters learning ranger tricks, or night elf druids learning to channel the power of the moon (more on that later).

On the other hand, having one race have something similar to another race can also be interesting, as long as the two are distinct. The difference between orcish and tauren shamanism is an obvious example of this. You have to be careful with this though. If you have two cultures with different views of the same spiritual being, they can't both be right. And if one them turns out to be wrong, it would make maintaining their culture, which has probably built up a fanbase by now, seem stupid. If you're planning to make one race wrong, it is best to give them only a minor cultural connection, like is the case with the tauren and the ancient guardians.

So, now that we have covered a few basic points, it's time to take a closer look at the alliance. See you all next time.

WoW - horde players' guide - part 2

And, after a long wait, the second part of the horde player's guide has finally arrived. I have a tad more free time coming up, so you can expect at least the next few reviews to be more frequent.

Chapter Five: History and Culture

And we rejoin Brann once more to look at cultures.

Orc: I really like Brann in this section. He is not entirely over his old prejudices, but is still willing to argue for peace. Otherwise, the section is actually pretty good. Brann actually points out a problem I have with the whole “first war is warcraft I, second war is warcraft II” thing, as there really wasn't anything to divide it into two wars in-universe. The history does skip over a few points, so this section can't stand on it's own for people who don't know the backstory yet, but otherwise it's really great.

The culture section is pretty good as well, but does have a few flaws. First of all, I dislike the idea that the clans have disbanded, as it takes away a bit of uniqueness. Plus, it contradicts WoW, where the shattered hand and the warsong outriders still exist. Another flaw is that it states that it was Thrall's policies that brought gender equality, despite the fact that women acting as full warriors within the horde dates back all the way to Warcraft I, where the orcish heroes were both female.

Jungle Troll: Another great section, augmented by the fact that troll history isn't really all that well-known. Most of Brann's information came from a single troll, Vok'fon, so he isn't too sure about the reliability. One interesting bit is that Vok'fon claims that the darkspear tribe merely reclaimed land when they sailed to the darkspear isles, implying that they lived in that area before either the sundering or the war with the night elves.

The culture section is also pretty good, contrasting the modern darkspear way of life with those of the other jungle trolls. The section focuses a bit too much on the other jungle troll tribes though, giving an incredibly detailed listing of hierarchy, which doesn't really apply to the darkspear at all.

At this point, I have to make a special side-note. Most of the books in the 2^nd edition of the RPG have featured little side-stories along the text, usually about half a page in length each. I didn't really mention them before because... well, they really didn't have much to do with the content they were placed next to and were too short to be interesting. Even ignoring that limitation, most of the stories were mediocre at best. However, the side stories in this book are exceptionally high quality, tying into the text and sometimes even each other.

Tauren: The tauren history section is... minimalistic. It basically starts at the exact moment that the tauren met the orcs, not giving any history on what they were like before. It does go into detail a bit about how the tauren are changing their ways and Brann speculating that their insight into the world isn't as good as they think it is, but it's too short.

Forsaken: The history section is good, covering all that there is to cover. There is a minor mistake with Brann saying that Garithos' forces were the only remaining humans in Lordaeron, which is false, as, even if he was only referring to the nation rather than the continent, there is still the scarlet crusade, the solliden farmstead and the population of the Hillsbrad Foothills (though that group seems to have joined stormwind since then for some reason, which is something I'll address either when I do WotLK or just a general look at the alliance).

However, I do want to discuss the forsaken joining the horde again. The reason stated in this book is that, after the alliance (which the forsaken didn't want to join due to bad experiences with humans after they broke free of the scourge), the horde is the mightiest faction on the planet, hence why they joined. However, that just seems silly. The horde at this point consists of:

• The freed remnants of the blackrock, shattered hand, bleeding hollow and warsong clans of orcs, who were so few in number that they could wholly fit on a small stolen human fleet, and that was before two shipwrecks, a massive war, the near-destruction of the warsong clan, the annihilation of Samuro's village, a smaller war, and the frostwolf clan retreating back to their homelands.
• A single tribe of jungle trolls, which was so few in number that there was still room for it on that very same fleet.
• An unspecified number of tauren tribes, the most powerful of which was nearing extinction when it joined the horde. A little wiggle room here for the horde to get numbers, but not much.
• One village of ogres.
• One nest of Wyverns.

Sure, there's a lot of variety in there and the individuals of all the races are pretty strong, but the horde is severely lacking in manpower. Daelin Proudmoore's fleet was a danger that could have wiped out at least the trolls and the orcs, and that probably wasn't even the full might of the Kul Tiras fleet. The illidari, the trade coalition, the naga and possibly the dark horde should all be at least as powerful, if not more powerful than the current horde, not to mention being in a much better position to help.

Another issue that gets brought up here is one I also raised: Why are nearly all the forsaken human zombies? The zombie part doesn't get addressed here, but the human part does. The forsaken themselves are not entirely sure, but they suspect it has something to do with the power of the human spirit, the fearlessness of humans and more nonsense like that. Seriously, RPG writers (and mr. Knaak), humans are not that exceptional in the warcraft series, so stop saying stuff like that. If you want an excuse, it's easy: Sylvanas' rebellion started in Lordaeron, and most of the undead there were probably locals. Undead that broke free from the lich king elsewhere were still surrounded by loyal undead and were slaughtered. Since then, the forsaken have only been raising the dead in the Tirisfal Glades, where the population was also human. Hence, most of the forsaken are human.

Otherwise though, the culture section is great, giving a lot of nice details, an interesting look at a society and some fun commentary by Brann.

As an amusing little sidenote, the book hints that Varimathras is secretly working for the scourge, sending information to Naxxramas. This would be different in WotLK, where he was secretly working for the burning legion instead.

Ogre: First of all, it's a good call to discuss ogre culture and history here, rather than just focusing on the main playable races. Second of all, this section makes no sense. It says that the orcs waged a massive war against the ogres when the horde first rose, exterminating or enslaving most of them to use in experiments. Because of this, ogres hate orcs to this very day. However, that doesn't fit with with what we see in warcraft at all. Back in warcraft II, there were ogres that were members, or even leaders, of the orc clans. In more recent times, the stonemaul are allied with the horde, at least 4 ogre tribes are part of the dark horde and one tribe was working alongside the demon-worshipping remnants of the blackrock clan.

Also, Brann claims to have fought ogres during the horde attack on Theramore, which makes all kinds of no sense. Brann has mentioned that attack about a dozen times throughout the books and he never claimed to have been involved before. Lands of Mystery, when Brann first traveled to Kalimdor, definitely took place after the battle, so there is no way to fit this into the timeline.

Forest Trolls: Very strong history section that, despite covering a large portion of history (all of recorded history in fact), manages to be fairly complete. It also addresses a few points in lore that had never been addressed, like the forest trolls fighting demons during the war of the ancients, as well as adding some new points, like the forest trolls leaving the horde after the defeat of Gul'dan, rather than waiting for the orcs to be defeated at blackrock mountain.

One thing that is odd though are the knowledge checks for the various horde races, which seem to be written for alliance players rather than horde. It's a bit weird that a member of the horde needs a DC 30 knowledge check to know that they are allied with a tribe of forest trolls.

The culture section is also pretty good, though, like the jungle troll section, it spends more time talking about the forest trolls outside the horde than the ones in the horde.

Cult of Forgotten Shadow: Ugh, organization alignments. You know, it really takes a whole lot of fun out of the setting if you announce up front which organizations are evil and which are good. Otherwise, the section is rather good though.

The Grimtotem Tribe: Calling this a horde organization is a bit of a stretch, as the sole goal of the tribe is not to be part of the horde. Considering the nature of the horde, it might have actually been a good idea to have a whole separate section with enemies that split off from the horde or were members of the previous hordes (in fact, they have a section on enemies to the horde that covers many of these things). Otherwise, the section is pretty strong though.

Chapters Six & Seven: State of the Horde and Threats to the horde

Like chapter seven of the alliance player's guide, this chapter should really have been merged with the one before it, as it repeats many things that were already said there and only adds a rather small amount of information. However, I'm pretty forgiving of it, because it is so well-written. The history section gives a clear oversight of the various races that are or were in the horde and their status before they joined, rather than only focusing on the orcs like most tellings of this story do. The section also has sections for the individual orcish clans and their place in history, which gives nice oversight. There's a couple of weird retcons here though, like the frostwolf clan having fought in the first and second war despite still not being corrupted by demons, or Gul'dan only heading for the tomb of Sargeras after the fall of Blackrock mountain. However, the section is still good despite those tidbits.

There is also a very interesting series of short stories in the sides, which follow the tale of a human paladin named Andarin, who was working to free a mysterious prisoner from the Undercity. In the end, it is revealed that this prisoner was none other than Calia Menethil.

Aside from the short stories, there is a lot of good stuff in this chapter, like the discussion of the various leaders of the horde and their positions, a number of mysterious expeditions centering around major characters (Rokhan seems to have gone off the maps completely and Sylvanas moves to and from Northrend all the time), the reaction within the horde when the forsaken were allowed to join and an oversight of the horde's various holdings. This chapter, along with the alliance equivalent, are probably the strongest chapters in the entire RPG. My favorite parts have to be where Brann points out how easily the warsong battleground situation could be solved:

“This is one of many situations where an agreement could probably be reached, but no one bothers. The Horde needs lumber, the Alliance wants to keep the trees alive — so the Alliance could just give the Horde some wood extracted by their wisps. Seems simple enough to me.”

“Hey Warsongs: Why cut down the trees in elf-dominated territory and antagonize the Alliance further, when other locations (such as Feralas) are nowhere near as contested? Just food for thought.”

I mentioned earlier that the holdings of the horde were discussed. The list that we are given is fairly complete, but there is one really notable omission: Shadowprey village. This is probably to leave room for a fan theory that the trolls of shadowprey village are not from the darkspear tribe, but are actually a tribe of dark trolls (there is a similar theory for the shatterspear tribe). As far as fan theories go, that one's actually a really good idea. The darkspear tribe has no reason to be in desolace at all, it would finally give the dark trolls some representation and some dark trolls joining the horde is a pretty logical follow-up after the two groups worked together during the battle of mount hyjal.

One more notable development here is that Brann seems to have turned far more neutral than in the previous books, speaking about the alliance as if he is no longer a part of it. This neutral perspective adds a lot to the sections written from his perspective. Despite this being a horde sourcebook, that doesn't mean he'll choose their side, but his dwarven heritage doesn't mean he'll flat-out oppose them on everything either. The alliance is listed right alongside the other threats to the horde, and is not treated differently. Speaking of the threat list, it is very well-written, but seems to have left out the dark horde for some reason.

Chapters Eight & Nine: Horde Military and Bestiary

Like the alliance chapters, this simply lists the various forces inside the horde. It is a bit stronger than the alliance counterpart due to going more into details about the military identities of the various races. However, like the alliance's dire cobras, there is an odd listing on the horde bestiary list in the form of the centaur.

Overall

In many ways, this book is similar to the alliance player's guide, starting out as just being fairly okay, and only growing better over time. I'd say that this book is a bit stronger than the alliance book though, as it takes a more detailed look at the culture.

Upcoming reviews: Second arc of the warcraft comic, war of the ancients trilogy, cycle of hatred, a special look at the alliance and something completely different.

WoW - horde players' guide - part 1

Since I'm taking so long to write this review (busy with college), I'm going to release it in two parts. This is part one, covering about half the book.

I'll admit I'm excited for this book. I don't think I've mentioned it on the blog yet, but I'm mostly a horde player (though that has as much to do with me liking the horde as it does with the horde questlines experiencing much more of the alliance than the alliance questlines do). Our subject matter today is the Horde Player's Guide, the counterpart to the book we reviewed last time.

One good thing about this book is the statement that the alliance player's guide and the horde player's guide have replaced the old alliance&horde compendium and that book no longer counts. Those of you who read my review of that book may recall that the AHC only had a very small portion of the book dedicated to the title factions, so having these new books (which actually give what the title promises) replace it would be weird. However, those who read my review may also recall that the AHC was terrible, so I'm glad it and its nomadic blood elf terrorists are no longer canon.

Chapter One: New races

Like the APG, we're given three new races: half-ogres, half-orcs and forest trolls. As a racial selection, this is kinda weak, due to the fact that none of these races are actually members of the horde. Forest trolls are okay, as there is a sufficiently large group of them associated with the horde, but half-orcs are also found amongst the alliance in large numbers and half-ogres are incredibly rare, with only one of them ever being seen as a part of the horde. Ogres and skeletons/banshees/shades/skeletal mages would probably have been better choices.

Half-ogres: Despite being a half-breed race, half-ogres are actually somewhat united due to most of them being created at a single time, when they were bred to combine the strength of ogres and the intelligence of orcs. Both races, while biologically compatible, aren't naturally attracted to each other, so there's few to none half-ogres that are not descended from this group. As a backstory, this is actually really clever, as it allows the half-ogres to have a somewhat united culture. In this case, they're pretty much Rexxars clones, which is perfectly fine with me. The race is pretty cool and I'm surprised at how well they make it work.

The racial class on the other hand is meh. They get no special tricks, just some stat bonuses and a size increase. Yes, learning about their culture makes them bigger.

Half-orc: The half-orcs have all the narrative problems of half-elves, as well as having the problem of not having any racial history (due to only coming into existence less than three decades ago). It also raises a question. If orcs and humans can interbreed, and humans and elves can interbreed, where are the half-orc, half-elves? The section also makes the mistake of saying that most orcs and humans lost friends to the other side during the third war, despite the fact that the third war battles with the horde only involved a tiny smidgen of humanity.

Forest trolls: Why are these guys in the horde? In WoW, they were never really developed as a culture, so the players always assumed that they had mellowed out compared to the other forest trolls tribes. However, the RPG describes them as evil, savage cannibals who look down on all other races and would like nothing more than destroying them. Sounds like the perfect match for Thrall's horde, right?

Chapter Two: Class Options

First, the orcs get a racial class. They didn't get one before to make them more similar to humans, as humans and orcs “are the most important in the warcraft world” (literal quote from the book), a statement which is partially justified (they have had a lot of influence on recent history), partially false (the orcs in particular currently have very little power) and partially stupid (why does both races being important mean they have to be similar?). It's an okay racial class though.

Variant Classes

Melee Hunter: Exchanges some ranged abilities for melee abilities. Pretty basic and makes sense in lore.

Wandering Hunter: A hunter that draws power from the land, rather than from the animals, changing his normal aspects for different, environment-related ones. While okay, it seem weird that they still get an animal companion.

Uncorrupted Necromancer of Warlock: Basically, the playable orc and troll warlocks from WoW. Doesn't automatically become evil, but gets less bonus feats. Very basic, but necessary lorewise. Even with this, I'm still not particularly fond of the idea of orcish warlocks in the horde.

Battle shaman: A shaman that sacrifices a significant portion of his spellcasting abilities to become an adept melee fighter. Fits pretty well with lore.

Far seer: A shaman that sacrifices a few elemental abilities to gain extra divination spells. The divination spells are a bit weird though. How in the world can Eye of Kilrogg ever be cast as a shaman spell? It's a literal demonic eye!

Hidden Warlock: A warlock with some more mage abilities in order to blend into society. Not entirely sure why it is included in this book, considering hidden warlocks are still working for the burning legion, not the horde.

Racial Iconic Classes

Forsaken Witch Doctor: Apothecary: It's a bit of a weird racial class, as it has absolutely nothing to do with the witch doctor lorewise, but the class abilities match up surprisingly well. The apothecary has severely reduced spell power (gaining none of the witch doctor spells, and only one necromancer spell per level), but makes up for it through even more extended potion-brewing capabilities (being able to use all necromancer spells to create potions, being able to brew more powerful spells into potions, being able to make syringes).

Jungle Troll Witch Doctor: Gives up a few standard healer spells in order to become much more adapt with totems. Fits pretty well with the witch doctor unit from warcraft 3.

Half-ogre Hunter: Exchanges a powerful attack for the ability to call on the aid of animals. They really should have just called this class beastmaster, but otherwise it's okay.

Orc Warrior: Exchanges most of its bonus feats for greater axe skills, the ability to burst into rages and knowledge of where to best strike humans. So, basically, it's a warrior with all of its bonus feats pre-assigned. It makes sense lorewise, but I can't really imagine it adding much to gameplay.

Tauren Shaman: Loses some battle capabilities to create an aura of peace or call upon the ancestors. Another pretty good racial class.

Troll Barbarian: A ranged barbarian to emulate the headhunters from warcraft III. Pretty good class.

Creature class

Again, skipping these due to not really having much of a connection with lore. Not entirely sure why the Centaur are included though, considering they are the ancient enemies of the tauren and have been at war with the horde ever since first contact. The other creature classes are the abomination, the ogre and the ogre magi.

Feats

Some feats related to shamanism, the cult of the forgotten shadow and general warrior-ness. They're all actually pretty good.

Chapter Three: Prestige Classes

Bone Crusher: One problem that this book shares with its alliance counterpart (and many other RPG books, even outside the warcraft ones) is the fact that prestige classes are made as if they were core classes. However, Prestige classes are supposed to represent an extra specialization on top of your normal abilities. For example, a dragonslayer builds upon the capabilities of knights, fighters, monks and barbarians (or any other melee class), so would make a great prestige class. In addition, its' often handy to explain a prestige class as being a specific order or being agents of a specific deity, as it explains lorewise why the prestige class is a completely separate training, rather than just being a choice for a core class.

The bone crusher lies at the other part of that spectrum. The bone crusher is a massive brute who fights with his bare hands. As a prestige class, that doesn't work for several reasons. First, why the hell would someone first have to train in another class (which does use weapons) before he can become a weapon-less warrior? Second of all, why do all the worldwide examples of bone crushers (found amongst orcs, ogres, furbolgs, dwarves and mok'nathal) have the same specialized combat rules, despite not having any sort of similar training or source for their magical powers? This class reads like it should have just been a list of warrior bonus feats.

Dark Ranger: Now this is a better example of a prestige class. A small elite group of ranged fighters that gains special magic and training that are available to no one else. The bit that confuses me a bit though is the nature of the dark ranger magical powers. The text explicitly says that they're divine spells, but that some are arcane in origin. What does that even mean? Plus, if they're divine spells, from what deity or power are they drawn? The text makes it pretty clear that dark rangers are older than the cult of the forgotten shadow and that Sylvanas (who doesn't follow the shadow) was the first dark ranger, so it can't be that.

Hexer: A shaman that specializes in the calling of spirits. The class sounds and reads more like a new healer specialization than a prestige class.

Lightslayer: Sneaky agents of the forgotten shadow that fight to purge all traces of the holy light. An absolutely awesome prestige class that fits lore rather well. I really want to see these guys integrated into WoW.

Plagueshifter: With the spread of the plague, the horde has founded a new order of druids specifically to combat it. Another fun class that works well with lore, though I do have to wonder about a horde-exclusive druid order (since all druids are already part of the neutral/alliance-favoring cenarion circle).

Potion Doc: Why does this class exist? No, seriously. We already have a witch doctor class, plus a separate forsaken alchemist racial iconic class. What other major alchemists remain in the horde? Certainly not any that would call themselves potion docs, that's for sure. Maybe as a goblin alchemist variant, but not as part of a horde sourcebook.

Primal: People who unleash the beast within! Not too fond about this class either. While the abilities are pretty good, it again doesn't fit the prestige class mold. It's not a specialisation. It's a completely different combat style.

Pyremaster: Another example of a good prestige class. Pyremasters are a cult of orcish shamans who conduct the funeral rites for great orcish warriors. As orcs burn their dead, the pyremaster has built a kinship with flame, giving him special abilities.

Shadow Ascendant: Another good one, representing the ultimate followers of the cult of the forgotten shadow, who have become one with the darkness. They're powerful priests of darkness, acting as spies. Amongst the jungle trolls, some have even started revering them as dark loa spirits.

Shadow Hunter: Okay, while a decent prestige class, this section contradicts WoW completely by saying that the shadow hunters are the only followers of the loa, despite the fact that we see pretty much everyone in WoW who is associated with voodoo deal with the loa. It's a shame too, because I really wanted to know what the deal was with these guys. What differentiates them from normal loa priests? The Frozen Throne manual was unenlightening as always. My favored theory is that the shadow hunters are followers of the dark troll loa, rather than the jungle troll loa, which would explain their different powers and the fact that they only became playable after the battle of mount hyjal.

Spirit Champion: A warrior who channels the spirits to enhance his combat abilities. It's a pretty cool class, though the lack of a unifying backstory (again), makes me ask why the abilities aren't just shaman feats and/or spells.

Spirit Walker: A being who is neither alive nor dead, but always shifting between worlds. Fevered dreams make them question the very nature of reality, as they slowly ascend into a state where they are no longer one being. The spirit walker is an awesome prestige class, doing a very good job of extending the lore given to them in Warcraft III.

Spymaster: Another sneaky forsaken class. It's getting kinda redundant. In addition, the backstory of this class is confusing, with things like “the horde are the only people who know how to become spymasters, as they tortured alliance prisoners to get the information back during the first war” and “spymasters originate from the orcs, and most spymasters are half-orcs and forsaken, as orcs aren't disciplined enough to become spymasters”.

Techslayer: A warrior who specializes in stopping destructive technology. I'm a bit confused why techslayers are in this book though. Wouldn't the night elves and the furbolg have just as much, if not more need for these guys? Between the forsaken in the east and the goblin mercenaries in the west, I would say that the horde uses far more destructive technology than the alliance, so its weird to see these guys in this book. Giving an actual backstory that would make the techslayers some sort of organization would avert this, but alas.

Wilderness Stalkers: Why can only half-ogres, tauren and jungle trolls teach this art? If those three groups have it, it means it emerged independently on three different continents spread over two worlds. Considering that the class basically amounts to “person sneaks around wilderness and becomes one with it”, it's a serious stretch to say the night elves or the furbolg don't have them. Again, this is why its useful to make prestige classes members of a specific organization.

Chapter Four: Magic and Faith

In this chapter, we take a look at beliefs, magic and faith in the horde. I actually really like this chapter, as it doesn't just boil the beliefs of the western horde down to a vague unified “Shamanism”, but has multiple paths within shamanism, with each race being distinct, as well as having distinctions within itself. It's actually really clever.

Orcs: While the orcs have returned to their shamanistic ways from before Gul'dan's rise to power, there is one tiny problem: No one actually remembers the ways of the shaman. Because of this, there have emerged three distinct movements.

The first are Thrall's loyalists. Since orcs respect power, and Thrall is the most powerful shaman on the planet, they idolize him. These people are shamanistic not because they believe it's right, but because Thrall believes it's right. This group also greatly respects the Tauren, who have similarly powerful shamans, and are inspired by their ways.

The second group are the Walkers of the Old Path. This group seeks to reclaim the shamanistic traditions of ancient Draenor, rather than simply borrowing new shamanistic traditions from the tauren.

Last are the Faithful of the horde. For some reason, the book describes two completely unrelated groups in this section, but we're gonna talk about the first group first. This group has seen the horde's triumph at the battle of mount hyjal, where they helped save the world, as a sign that the horde must be on the right path. These are the guys that strongly support the peace with the alliance.

On the flipside, there are a groups that disagree with the new shamanistic horde. The other Faithful of the Horde see the pact with the alliance as a betrayal of all that the horde should stand for. This group considers the modern horde corrupted and weak, and seek to restore the horde of the second war. Finally, there are the Fallen Orcs, who have once more given in to the lure of demons and seek to restore the horde of the first war.

Tauren: Most Tauren have embraced their new place in the horde, seeing it as their duty to guide their new allies in the ways of shamanism. However, for a few it is different. Traditionalists have heard of the dark past of the horde, and want nothing to do with them, fearing that they may one day drag the tauren into darkness. There is also a few younger tauren who see the freedom and variety within the horde, and have broken with the traditions of their tribes.

Jungle Trolls: The trolls are basically in the same situation as the orcs, with many inspired by the example of Thrall, but a few who try to maintain their old traditions, many of which have now been outlawed. There are also a few jungle trolls who practice a weird mixture of traditional troll shamanism and modern horde shamanism.

Forsaken: The forsaken are split over how they are supposed to regard their current state. For those that follow the forgotten shadow, undeath is something to be embraced. Those who follow the echo of life are becoming addicted to arcane magic as, just for a second, it makes them feel more alive. Those who follow the value of knowledge seek to actually return to life, with many joining the Royal Apothecary Society to study alchemy in the hopes of finding a cure.

Faiths

The cult of the Forgotten Shadow: The counterpart to the church of the holy light, the members of the cult embrace the values that oppose those of the church. It is a really good read, and, while canon, is sadly underused in World of Warcraft.

Shamanism – Ancestor Worship: As I said, it's really good to see shamanism split into several beliefs. Ancestor worship is pretty much what you'd expect; speaking to and channeling the power of your ancestors. There's a lot of specific little things here that really enhance the section though.

Shamanism – Animism: Every plant, every animal, yes, every rock has a spirit. Respect these spirits, for they may teach you great things. For the tauren, these spirits form a greater whole, a being that encompasses the entire world; the earthmother. The animism section is a bit short, and there does seem to be a jungle troll or ogre section missing.

Shamanism – Voodoo: While normal animists assume that the spirits of the world are mostly benevolent, this is not true to the practitioners of voodoo. Every spirit is trying to harm you. The only thing that can protect you from these spirits is knowing how to deal with them. The beliefs of voodoo for the darkspear tribe have changed much over the recent years, as they have been adapting to the ways of the horde. Again, a good section.

Spells

Really good spell list, doing a nice job of staying mostly horde-exclusive, and introducing a few spells that only work on people who are related to you or people who are members of your tribe/clan. Overall, good work.

Magic Items

My main complaint for this section: Most of these items aren't magical. Of, if they are magical, that magic doesn't come from the crafter but from the materials used. So why do they all require spells to craft? There's also a few items that should be completely unique, but can be crafted like normal magical items.

On a more positive note, the “anti-human” magic seen here makes a lot more sense, as it doesn't really only affect humans, just things that are essential to human warfare, like formations and heavy armour.

Chapter Four: Technology

Here is where this book makes a big mistake. To mirror the alliance's player's guide, the horde gets a large technology chapter despite the fact that, generally speaking, the horde isn't all that technological. Sure, they have the occasional inventor, but generally speaking, horde technology is provided by goblin mercenaries and the forsaken (and even that didn't really reach fruition until WotLK).

However, because they need to fill out this chapter, all of the races suddenly have technological advancements of their own. For example, the tauren now have collapse portable metal walls and automated drums. There are still a few technologies in here that could actually fit in with the horde, but its weird to see an atlatl and a freeze gun both requiring the same “use technological devices” check. If you're gonna say the atlatl needs a check like that, wouldn't simple weapons, like bows, crossbows and morningstars, also require one?