I'm going to have to side with Elenarie here. If Starcraft is supposed to be Warhammer 40K, what are its equivalent of chaos gods and why are the Terran space marines more like cowboys instead of medieval crusaders? ;)

You do realize that for a work to be plagiarized it doesn't require taking the whole thing, right. Plagiarizing one or two characters would be sufficient.

The rules are IMHO oppinion rather stupid and often times get in the way of producing new and improved works, but that's how that works. You don't get to take particular designs from another game without giving credit.

That being said, I have no opinion on this issue. I don't really know enough to say. But some of those designs from the other page look familiar.

Yeah, but not to the same scale.
They simplified a lot for the sake of balance, which is fine, I guess. I just wish they could have done what they did with SC2 and just make those units storyline only.

Those units are storyline only. Don't remember ever seeing ships in melee matches. Were there melee maps with ships even available?

I don't know, but ships are not race buildings, they are like mercenary camps and goblin shops - you use the hero to buy them from a neutral building. So probably they are present on some meele maps, just like aformentioned ones.

Well, the same could be said about Warhammer xenos that they are Aliens plagiarised. And aren't orcs, elves etc. plagiarised from Tolkien? And isn't Lord of the Rings plagiarised from Wagner's Ring of the nibelungs?

Some things are definately too similar and unoriginal in Starcraft world... though there are some cool things, like Xel-Naga (again, manual thing) and the whole purity-of-form vs purity-of-essence thing (i haven't played SC2 though).

At leas you can see the juggernauts still in the cinematics...

In Warcraft 3 you get the whole Warcraft 2 intro remade in W3 enginge during the ending credits. If you finish last mission on hard difficulty you get to see funny "behind the scenes" of many Warcraft 2 cinematics (like catapult shooting down goblin aircraft). Plus the map of Quel'Thalas in Warcraft 3 is almost the same like in Warcraft 2 in regard to terrain. Isn't that reference enough? I probably haven't mentioned everything. There's a lot of easter egg type of references.

Oh, for example here you have a list of references to Lost Vikings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Vikings#Cameo_appearances

Diablo 3, which from what I've heard may have been kind of bad, is made by different team than sc and wc. Me, I don't care about it. My love goes for WC and SC.

We are on the site devoted mostly to older games. I do remember them too, fondly.

You're beggining to sound aggresive. I answer to what i think is most important, or so that I don't repeat myself (or I may kind of agree with some points you made). I think that's natural. Instead of trying to insult my way of replying you should try to steer me in the right direction. I sincerely apologise if you think I may have ignored something you see as important. Let's try to stay friendly, shall we?

And how it is handled in War3 is a huge improvement for me. Actually though, Starcraft is the game that should get the credit for that improvement, like including dialogues and cripted events in the game, adding personality and stuff.

Gender-class division you assumed to be lore may have just been the fact that a single unit had a single model... so you want warriors to be men only (footmen, knights)? C'mon. Again, an RTS can show only a limited portion of a universe.

Things change, WOW takes place few years from WC3, Tauren learned to be Paladins, what's wrong with that? Most of the things you mentioned are minor compromises, or advances in a story I can live with. And i LOVE the spaceship thing. All those strange sci-fi things like radiation, mutations, it's actually what I love in WOW. I was a part of a Forsaken RP guild, nobody there complained about, we were arguing though if Forsaken are to be considered evil, opportunist, or good - it was really cool. There's a lot of mentioning of tension between the Horde and Forsaken.

Again, your vision of the future of Azeroth may have been different, but it's always an issue in sequels. WHy not open your mind to different visions. Some of the things you pointed do indeed seem illogical but this are minor details for me that don't spoil the charm in the whole. Some things are indeed retconned (like the high-elf thing), but the end result is satisfactory for me, so why not.

I remember playing a few in WC2, I don't remember Frozen Throne.

Warcraft 3 is a classic. I never fully finished the whole single-player campaign, i only completed 3/4. I need to someday finish the game.

I gave some thoughts to what have been said here and I came to a two-point conclusion:

First: I LIKE retcons. It's really fun to see how things change, and how they adapt the past to suit their current needs. Just like Nolan rewrites Batman mythos. I love replaying the old games searching for lore shifts. It's cool. Being 100% faithful is boring. And adapting is not ignoring, two different things. When they rewrite stuff, they pay attention to what was said already and change things accordingly. That's interesting. I'm definately not a legacy purist.

Second: I like the changed universe more than the original one (although I still think it's more of a progression than a radical shift, the groundwork was there).

BTW A nice cinematic trailer for Mists of Pandaria has been released...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wyybJf7yvo

...Uh, no, sorry, I'm not assuming anything. It's all written down in the Wc3 manual you seem to like so much, the NE campaign, and several other official sources. At first it was an intresting and somewhat original take on the classic "dark elves" race, it's a shame it lasted only one game.

As for what's bad about Tauren paladins, well... everything? The way it started, the way it was explained, the fact that sun worship has a lot more to do with druidism than holy magic? It's blatantly obvious that it was just an half-assed excuse to balance out the number of races that could be paladins. Horde players needed an alternative to Blood Elves (wich despite the way they used to (re)gain holy powers, they are still more close to the concept of paladins than sacred cows - no pun intended - could ever be).

My vision of Azeroth is that it's a rather weird and incoherent story but then again I never had high expectations about it. Although I admit Wc3 had many good ideas, but the narration was extremely boring and shallow.

I'm no Blizzard fanboy and I don't hate what they do either, but I think they are and have always been incredibly overrated. If you like their stories I'm glad you do, I'm not here to change your mind. What I don't get is how can you pass incoherency and poor narration as a sign of creativity and quality...

I really liked exploring the world in WoW and played it to the cap for that purpose. I never really liked WoW's lore though, and never played the old RTS games because I hate RTS, so can't say anything one way or the other there.

okay, I don't pretty much like all the stories themselves, the narration may be a little off, but I like the design, especially in the audio-visual department, and there are many interesting concepts there and unique atmosphere and small touches like design of particular quests. That's enough to make my heart race. Small incoherency is acceptable, and what you pointed out is in my categories - small. Lore of warcraft may not be the wonder of coherency, but has a lot other charms to more than make up for it in my opinion. I don't know, all those details just doesn't irritate me that much, and can be overlooked.

Maybe you should point out a world concept that doesn't have this issues (and does have the charms). But as of now I don't see anything that can replace WoW. I love for example Warhammer 40k universe, or Dune, but they are completely different thing.

About the DE: the release of W3 in Poland was probably half-assed, I bought it on premiere and there was just some poor excuse of a manual there and I don't remember any pdf, though I have to check that out. As for campaign, I played it through yesterday and have seen no signs of that, but I trust your manual and "other official" sources so I stand corrected.

One more thing:

"the fact that sun worship has a lot more to do with druidism than holy magic" - aren't you mixing up real world stuff with fictional here?

It's not that other franchises don't have continuity issues, it's that when the main writer has to step up and admit he doesn't even remember his own lore we may be a little beyond the realm of small details.


The campaign shows how women are left to protect the land while the men spend millenia in hybernation. It also shows their society has no supreme ruler, and even in desperate times the different factions aren't adverse to rivality and violence among each other. Anyway, (pages 24-30 and 47 are relevant). [url=http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/game/lore/story-so-far/chapter-1/11#readmode]Official sources.


Nope,* druids have always worshipped the moon, and in Tauren mythology moon & sun are the eyes of the Earthmother, aka Mother Nature, aka what druids are drawing their power from. While not every race worship the sun, since Cataclysm all druids have powers such as "Sunfire" "Solar Beam" "Eclipse".

The Holy Light is a whole another matter, it has always been more like a religion, but without a well defined god. It's hard to tell what it is at this point, and I think not even Blizzard could give you a clear answer anymore, but it surely has nothing to do with sun, moon, nature and spirits.



*Unless by that you mean the fact most warcraft mythology is a blatant ripoff of real life myths and legends, in wich case the answer would be YES! :)

I think you're being too harsh. He didn't say he doesn't remember the lore as such, but the lore about that particular problem. He screwed up, ok - but it's easy for me to forgive. I mean, it is still evident that they take it quite seriously, even though they fail in many aspects. (just BTW, Metzen's of blood and honor short story was really nice)

generally: I kind of understand you, but i don't take all this stuff that seriously and it is not detrimental that much. Usually i kind of make up for inconcistensies with my own mind. What's more i like when some things are kind of unexplained and unknown even to the "godlike" loremaster, which is the real world guy reading all the stuff. I actually hate that, in WoW too, they kind of explain in most cases who is evil, who is not, what's the physics, nature of magic etc. - i mean it's unknown to most of the inhabitants so why should we know? they are still inquiring, etc. That's why i hate the way that they explain almost ALL of the dwarves origin recently. All i'm interested is subjective view of all the particular agents in this world, their hypotheses, theories.

About the Tauren, ok that's sloppy area of WoW, but again, I'll cope with it, inventing something myself. You know these are things only roughly outlined in the lore - the cult of light may have different branches, may have spread through various means, reached Taurens in a much deformed form to be mixed in a way with their druidic teachings, so here we have it. They draw their power from the same source, but what is the source? Maybe they still can commune with spirits etc., it just isn't represented in game mechanics. Each cult has it's own believes being only a fraction of truth no one knows. (I just improvised right now, don't know how that general idea would fit.)

What's not clearly explained by the creators is left for us to interpret and shape, like in a good old tabletop RPG. Let's be flexible not rigid.

THank you for the links BTW, although I don't have a cataclysm account yet so archeology artifact description is kind of a spoiler to me.
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Maybe i'll name exactly the things that draw me into this lore the most (though as you already suspect i'm no absolute expert, i only experienced a small fraction of wow, and haven't been around during important changes):

spaceships, hi-tech, goblins and gnomes all alongside fantasy + black powder technology; this combination works extremely well for me and is like the essence of my experience in WoW. Without it, most of WoW would fall into "generic fantasy" category.

undead as not just an evil cannon fodder. plague, apothecary society, schisms within.

magic as a dangerous, drug-like force.

recently: the colonial aspect of Pandaren

and MOST of all: audiovisual style and design. The single most important aspect that draws me in. I treat it as lore - how things look, behave, the diversity of races and different zones. I mean, even if general concepts of most of these are ripped-off from somewhere, the audiovisual design of most of them is so unique to WoW. It's all kind of over-the-top, but that's exactly it's charm.