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alt title(s): Wo W World of Warcraft is easily the most popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game in the world today. It's based on Blizzard Entertainment's popular Warcraft Real Time Strategy game series and is set seven years after Warcraft III.
Well-known for its depth of interaction, WoW has also spawned a collectible card game and many other merchandising peripherals. The game is currently the largest MMO in the world by a huge margin*, having 11 million players and nearly 60% of the total market share as of 2009, and a film is planned for 2011 (fortunately not directed by Uwe Boll). * For reference, the largest US MMORPG before this was Everquest at half a million during its height; the largest worldwide was Lineage at 2-3 million — although Asian MMORPG numbers such as Lineage can be considered inflated, as they have a different pricing structure in Asian markets that revolve around cybercafes. Note that World of Warcraft is played in the same cybercafes on the same terms. As of November 2009, China has shut down the game's Chinese provider, NetEase, in an apparent internal political dispute, which may affect these figures.
World Of Warcraft is based in the world of Azeroth, on three main continents: Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms, and Northrend; as well as Outland, whence the Orcs originate. There are two factions: the Alliance and the Horde (though neither is automatically good or evil — and in trope terms, both are The Alliance), ten races (five per faction), ten classes, ten primary professions, and three secondary professions. The game is very casual-friendly, being designed so that those who prefer to play solo can still achieve maximum level. It should be noted that, like most MMORPGs, about half of WoW's content can only be accessed after you reached maximum level, and cooperative play is required to earn the best gear and other rewards. Guilds are a major part of the game's community, with the majority of players belonging to one. Benefits of guild membership are both social and material — almost all endgame raid content is done by guilds and they can share a pool of resources much greater than that available to the solo player.
WoW's classes follow the standard RPG archetypes. The three core roles are tanking, healing, and DPS, which are further refined by the talents each character chooses to specialize in. There are "pure" classes that can only fill a DPS role, and "hybrid" classes which may fill multiple roles at the cost of utility.
- Death Knight (added in Wrath of the Lich King) — A tank or melee DPS class that utilizes the power of death and disease, and may summon undead minions to aid it. Formerly servants of the Lich King, they broke free of his control and now seek to Pay Evil Unto Evil.
- Druid — Servants of nature, Druids are the most versatile class, relying on talents and shapeshifting to specialize in melee DPS (cat), ranged DPS (Moonkin), tank (bear), or healer (tree). Additional forms allow them to breathe underwater, travel faster, and fly.
- Hunter — A ranged DPS class that tames beasts to use as pets in combat. The Hunter can specialize in improving his pet or his ranged combat skills, and is a master of traps and aggro management.
- Mage — A ranged DPS class that excels at dishing out magical damage. Talent choices focus on specific types of magic: Arcane, Fire, and Frost. Mages are also masters of crowd control.
- Paladin — A hybrid melee class, Paladins rely on their faith in the Light and can specialize as tank, melee DPS, or healer. Paladins also have some of the most powerful defensive abilities in the game.
- Priest — A hybrid caster, Priests channel their faith into spellcasting. The archetypal and most versatile of healers, Priests may also specialize as ranged DPS, destroying their enemies with Shadow magic.
- Rogue — A melee DPS class that attacks from stealth for incredible damage, then vanishes into the shadows to strike again. Rogues may specialize in the use of poisons, toe to toe combat, or trickery and deceit.
- Shaman — A caster/melee hybrid that draws on the power of the elements. Shamans may specialize in melee DPS, ranged DPS, or healing, and utilize mystical totems to buff allies and attack their foes.
- Warlock — A ranged DPS class that employs demons and attacks with Shadow and Fire magic. Warlocks may specialize in summoning their demonic minions, attacking their targets with curses, or shattering them with direct power, and utilize fragments of souls to heal, buff, and summon allies.
- Warrior — A melee hybrid, Warriors are the undisputed masters of weaponry. They may specialize as tanks or DPS, using their choice of single or dual wielding; their selection of abilities depends on their combat stance.
Players can play against the environment, completing quests and conquering dungeons; against each other, in dedicated Battlegrounds and Arenas; or a mixture of any of these, with talents and gear to support either choice. Servers are designated Player Versus Player, Player Versus Environment, and Role Playing. The main difference is that on PvP servers, you are automatically flagged for PvP in all zones above level 20, and in PvE servers, you must manually flag yourself for PvP. RP servers can also be PvP or PvE, but have more rules in regards to names and griefing.
The original, or "classic" game, featured a level cap of 60 and was played in the two continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. New content was added regularly up until the first expansion; the final released dungeon was Naxxramas.
The first expansion, The Burning Crusade, was released in January 2007, raised the level cap to 70, and allowed travel to Outland. It also allowed the creation of Blood Elf characters on the Horde and Draenei on the Alliance. This gave the Horde access to Paladins and the Alliance access to Shaman, a restriction which had previously caused irritation due to game-balance issues. The final released dungeon of The Burning Crusade was Sunwell Plateau.
The second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was released in November 2008, raised the level cap to 80, and allowed travel to Northrend. It added the Death Knight "hero" class, available only to players who already have a level 55 or higher character. Death Knights start at level 55 in an exclusive zone with a full set of equipment, but no tradeskills except First Aid. The final dungeon of Wrath of the Lich King is Icecrown Citadel.
The third expansion, Cataclysm, has been confirmed. Cataclysm will return players to a devastated Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, raise the level cap to 85, and revisit a great deal of old and unfinished content while continuing the story lines of Azshara, Deathwing, and the Guardians of Tirisfal. Worgen and Goblins will be new playable races (respectively in the Alliance and in the Horde), and there will be lots of new race/class associations possible.
See also the Warcraft Expanded Universe, which contains write-ups for works set in the Warcraft universe.
The character sheet is here.
This game provides examples of:
- Aborted Arc: Throughout World of Warcraft's history, there have been many apparently unfinished quest lines and plot elements. Some of these have since been revisited in later content, but some remain unresolved. When revisited, Blizzard at least tries to tie up the storyline in a dramatic fashion. See the trope page for specific examples.
- Acceptable Targets: Fandral Staghelm is the most hated faction leader of the Alliance (or he was until Varian Wrynn showed up). Garrosh Hellscream is the most hated (soon to be) faction leader of the Horde. Nobody likes them. On the lighter side, there's the widely practiced and highly enjoyable sport of gnome punting, popular in both factions, but most especially among the Tauren.
- Affectionate Parody: a very subtle instance; the game is parodying its own players. In the Borean Tundra zone, there are enemy NP Cs who work for the Great White Hunter, Hemet Nesingwary. Upon engaging combat with a player, these enemies will yell out things like "Just fifty more hooves and I'll have the new gun!" Replace all the nouns with more appropriate ones, and how often have you heard that said before? Or even said it yourself?
- Alcohol Hic: If you get drunk in game, in addition to random 'S'es becoming "Sh'es, a "...hic" will sometimes be added to your lines in chat.
- Patch 1.6 note: "You no longer spout profanity when talking about sitting while drunk."
- Alt-itis: Just about everybody who plays the game for long has multiple characters. Even if it isn't to experience life in the opposite faction, there are still five races and ten classes per faction, not to mention the advantages of having multiple professions available on one account. Some players never get a character to max level, instead rolling dozens of alts. And then Blizzard added the Recruit A Friend program, allowing players to level alts with their friends at triple the normal rate.
- In Wrath of the Lich King, the addition of "heirloom" class items makes this even more highly encouraged, as they can be traded among characters on the same account and scale to character level. Not only that, but in Cataclysm, the heirloom system will be expanded to guilds, allowing items to be crafted for every slot and traded among guild members. Further, Cataclysm is revamping the leveling experience in old Azeroth in order to attract players who are bored with the original content.
- The Alliance: Both the titular Alliance and the Horde.
- All Trolls Are Different: And in this case, the second most popular race in the yaoi fandom (as of BC, after the Blood Elves - used to be Night Elves in Classic).
- All There In The Manual: Doesn't seem strange that character X popped up out of nowhere and is suddenly a major lore figure? Why are we forming a raid so we can go kill this other guy? Why is this the first time we're hearing about such and such? You'd actually know what was going on if you caught up on the Warcraft Expanded Universe.
- Always Chaotic Evil: The Burning Legion and the Old Gods mostly. Surprisingly few other things. And note that this is specifically because the Legion is an organization. If you aren't evil, you don't belong to it by definition. The Draenei, a player race, are actually the uncorrupted remnants of the same species that makes up the backbone of the Legion.
- Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The Eye of Eternity, home of Malygos, and the Celestial Planetarium in Ulduar, home of Algalon the Observer.
- And Call Him George: XT-002 Deconstructor, in Ulduar. He's a Giant Robot with the mind and voice of a 6-year old, who fails to understand why he keeps breaking his "toys" when he plays with them.
- Actually, pretty much all standard abominations act like this too - Patchwerk, the giant flesh golem and a Lich's Avatar of War, yells "PLAY TIME!" when going into battle, and Rotface, rather disturbingly, yells out "I made an angry poopoo. IT GONNA BLOW!" It does.
- And I Must Scream: Bolvar Fordragon's ultimate fate.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Many quests reward players with strictly cosmetic rewards, such as clothes or off hand item with no other use other than appearance. Also, one of the rewards of reaching exalted reputation with most faction is the faction's tabard, which also qualifies as Bragging Rights Reward if you don't like wearing your guild tabard at least.
- Anti Hero: The Forsaken and their queen, Dark Action Girl Sylvanas Windrunner, are often sympathetic- almost pitiable, but can be extremely vicious and amoral in their quest for revenge, security from persecution, and their own goals. There's also the (pre-Sunwell) Blood Knights, who were casually sucking away an angelic being's life force to protect their own desperate homeland. And finally, there's the majority of the Knights of the Ebon Blade, whose very mantra is Pay Evil Unto Evil.
Darion Mograine: "Harness your hate. Make it useful."
- Animal Wrongs Group: D.E.H.T.A., a group of radical Druids in Borean Tundra who will attack players on sight if they kill any of the beast-type mobs in the zone, regardless of whether this death was in self-defense. In addition, their quests encourage players to kill some Anviliciously stereotyped game hunters... when the player him/herself is likely one of those hunters, either in Stranglethorn Vale or just north, in Sholazar Basin.
- Animate Dead: The modus operandi of the Undead faction, obviously. The Death Knight Hero class in particular has spells to produce ghouls from corpses, and can even animate a fallen PC, giving the player a few minutes to actually play the resulting ghoul.
- Anti Poop Socking: You get more experience for killing monsters after a break. Some rather profitable repeatable quests can only be done once per day, as opposed to repeatable quests that can be completed as often as you have the requisite Plot Coupons in hand. In addition, the Chinese version, per official request of the People's Republic of China, halves your experience gain after 3 hours of gameplay.
- Ascended Meme: The Night Elf Mohawk, made famous by Mr T's commercial, is now an in-game buff (it just changes your head to look like the Mr. T Night Elf Mohawk from said commercial).
- And, of course, the achievements from Onyxia's Lair.
MANY WHELPS! HANDLE IT! NOW!
- The Atoner: (most of) The Horde. Knights of the Ebon Blade in Wrath of the Lich King. The Blood Elves, or at least their Paladins, post-Burning Crusade.
- Attack Reflector: The Warrior ability Spell Reflect, plus a variety of similar abilities used by various creatures and bosses.
- Auction
- Badass Adorable: Gnomes, generally. Female gnomes, particularly. Female gnomes in pink pigtails, especially. And the queen of Badass Adorable: Darkrider Arly. Don't even think about punting her.
"I apologize profusely for any inconvenience my murderous rampage may have caused." (Female Gnome /silly)
- Badass Normal: Despite being the only classes in the game with no magical powers at all, rogues, hunters and warriors will kill you just as dead as anyone else.
- Bait And Switch Boss: The end boss of Arcatraz.
- Baleful Polymorph: Mages' "Polymorph" spells can turn opponents into sheep, turtles, cats, or penguins, while Shamans have a spell called "Hex" that turns opponents into toads. Quite a few mobs and bosses have access to these spells as well.
- Nefarian combines it with Mode Lock for Druids — he forces them into cat form during the fight.
- Banned In China: Literally. The Chinese government has historically taken a dim view of MMOs and WOW in particular, and has cut off all access to the game nationwide on two occasions. (Too bad this doesn't stop gold farmers.)
- Berserk Button: Mimiron, literally. To activate his Hard Mode you have to push a very large red button behind him (which is labeled with "DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON!"). Doing this will activate the self-destruct mechanism on his lab and make him VERY pissed. Other bosses that feature similar "hard mode" triggers include XT-002 Deconstructor and Sartharion.
- Big Bad: Each of the major patches and expansions has a different character that serves as that story arc's Big Bad. These include Ragnaros/Onyxia/Nefarion/C'Thun/Kel'thuzad in classic WoW, Illidan and Kil'Jaeden in The Burning Crusade, Yogg-Saron/The Lich King (obviously) in Wrath Of The Lich King, and Deathwing in Cataclysm. Sargeras, a rogue Titan, is the Big Bad for the entire Warcraft universe.
- Although Sargeras is technically dead in every way but spiritually. As of the current place in the timeline, his role as the leader of the Burning Legion is currently occupied by Kil'Jaeden, who didn't truly die at the end of the Burning Crusade. Doesn't mean Sargeras can come back at full power at a later time, however...
- Big Damn Gunship: When the Lich King corners you at the end of the Hall of Reflection dungeon, your faction's airship swoops in to save the day and buries him in rubble. Not that it's going to kill him, though.
- Big Damn Heroes: At the climax of a particularly memorable quest chain, The Knights of the Ebon Blade come to the aid of you and Fordring when you're surrounded by the Lich King and his elite servants.
- Happens during a Horde quest in Borean Tundra when Saurfang shows up to save the PC.
- Nastily subverted with the Battle of Angrathar the Wrathgate
 . Grand Apothecary Putress initially appears to be doing this, stopping the Lich King dead in his tracks right before he attacks Highlord Bolvar, but reveals his true intentions shortly afterward by nuking everyone on the battlefield, Horde, Alliance and Scourge alike. The killer line is DEATH TO THE LIVING!
- Tirion pulls off an epic one during the final battle with the Lich King.
- Let's not forget Terenas Menethil, now. Seeing a resurrection confirmation box pop up from an NPC has never been done before.
- Bilingual Bonus: With in-game languages.
- Bishonen: Blood Elves. Kael'thas Sunstrider. And how. Can also be extended to the High Elves, whom the Blood Elves diverged from.
- Kael'thas didn't look like one by the time he reappeared in Magister's Terrace. Tempest Keep might have been a setback, but clearly he underestimated the importance of basic skin care.
- Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Female trolls have upright postures, Cute Little Fangs, and the option of being rather attractive; male trolls slouch, and have beak-like noses and huge tusks. And compare the willowy, horned female draenei to their hulking, catfish-whiskered kinsmen...or, to depart from playable races, the four-armed Naga Sirens to their dragonish male counterparts.
- Averted by the female and male Blood Elves, which are much closer than other races. Male Blood Elves, although they act effeminate, are still hulking musclebound behemoths by the standards of anything other than World Of Warcraft (and were in fact changed to be that way after they were originally much more slender in the Burning Crusade beta).
- Note that the current female models for trolls and tauren were supposedly made in response to players' reactions to the original female models, which looked much more like their male counterparts.
- Black Magic: According to Canon, most types of magic in the Warcraft universe are this. Although Shadow and Fel magic (used by demons, undead, Warlocks, and Death Knights) are explicitly derived from The Dark Side, even Arcane magic (used by mages) has the twin drawbacks of being extremely addictive and acting as a beacon to attract demons to Azeroth — as the High Elves found out long ago. Also see White Magic, below.
- It's worth noting that not all Arcane and Shadow spells are bad; Druids' Arcane spells are actually powered by their natural connection with the stars, and Shadow Priests' damage is canonically psychic in origin, despite having the Shadow descriptor. This is probably due to game engine limitation, or they simply do not want to have too many damage types which complicates the game.
- Bling Of War: Many armor sets are like this. Casters have Impossibly Cool Clothes, while heavy armor dudes wear nicely designed armor complete with Shoulders Of Doom.
- Bond Creatures: Warlocks and Hunters both have pets that they tame (or coerce) and spend a great deal of time developing; this is one of the primary attractions of those classes.
- Booze Based Buff: Alcohol will blur your vision, make your character walk crooked, and make you misjudge enemies' levels if you drink enough of it, but some of it increases your stats temporarily. The chat box displays your intoxication level as feeling tipsy, drunk, etc. When you get to "completely smashed" you start to have hallucinations and your character starts vomiting. Of course, some booze buffs actually carry real buffs with them, from breathing fire to slowing your fall in the Storm Peaks (in a possible Shout Out to Family Guy's parody of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, "beer that never goes flat.")
- Boss Banter: Most dungeon bosses will talk to you in combat, starting from the earliest dungeons. Standard ones have an aggro speech and a Have A Nice Death speech. Later ones have Calling Your Attacks, some mid fight speech, and Last Words. Some later final dungeon bosses even does a Hannibal Lecture when you enter the room they are in. All comes in both Speech Bubbles/chat log and audio of course to crank it Up To Eleven.
- Bow And Sword In Accord: Night and Blood Elven Hunters. Dwarven, Orcs, Trolls and Tauren hunters carry a gun/axe combo.
- Bragging Rights Reward: Legendary weapons and ultra-fast flying mounts.
- Break The Haughty: Hello there, Greymane!
- Broken Base: The official announcement of Cataclysm has created two separate camps - the THIS IS FREAKIN AWESOME camp and the WHY THE HELL ARE YOU FLOODING/MOVING HALF OF THE ORIGINAL ZONES camp. To be fair (or not), each expansion and most of the major content patches has created the same camps, with approximately the same demographic split.
- Bullfight Boss: Icehowl, in the Crusaders' Coliseum.
- Bullet Hell: The Twin Val'kyr in Crusaders' Coliseum. The fight seems to be base off of Ikaruga, as the raid has to split up and avoid one color bullet while absorbing the other color for a damage buff.
- Butt Monkey: In Orgrimmar, there is a level 12 tauren that rogues must pickpocket for a quest. However, in order for a rogue to be able to pickpocket a target, the target must be attackable. The result is that many high-level Horde players get serious kicks out of assassinating him over and over again whenever he appears at the inn. Said level 12 tauren will also try to be a Big Damn Hero if a deathknight (who, at this point, is typically level 57 or 58) rides through Orgrimmar who hasn't yet delivered his letter to Thrall. Guess how that works out for him.
- Call A Rabbit A Smeerp: Zebras are called Zehvras, for instance (though they have a unicorn-like horn and cloven hooves).
- And dinosaurs too. Namely Diemetradon (Dimetrodon), Stegodon (Stegosaur), Pterrordax (Pterodactyl), Threshadon (Plesiosaur), and of course Devilsaur (Tyrannosaurus Rex).
- Call A Smeerp A Rabbit: Giraffes, orcas, and raptors, though, apparently all have horns.
- Calling Your Attacks: Many bosses do this, to the point where the game engine will display prominent warnings for the use of powerful abilities by bosses so you can't possibly miss them. Players also frequently set up macros that make them say things when they use certain abilities, either for roleplaying or to coordinate with their party members (the latter is especially helpful when using crowd control).
- Capital City: Shattrath, Dalaran, and the racial capitals for each faction.
- Cartography Sidequest: One for each zone, giving a lesser achievement for each, and then the overall achievement, title and tabard for getting ALL of them ('The Explorer').
- Chaos Architecture: Several locations from the Warcraft games have been radically altered or are just plain missing. The most glaring examples are Kul Tiras and Gilneas, although the latter is being added in Cataclysm. And let's not even get into the fact that one of Azeroth's moons is missing...
- There are rumors that Kul Tiras is also going to be added in Cataclysm as part of the goblin starting zone (possibly what prompted them to join the Horde, even), as in Warcraft III it was shown that they already had a presence in the area. As it is, Kul Tiras already has a presence in Durotar with an (albeit ravaged) base south of Orgrimmar.
- Kul Tiras has been confirmed as being in Cataclysm as a daily quest hub and Pv P zone - think Wintersgrasp meets Isle of Quel'danas.
- Character Derailment: Kael'thas Sunstrider and Illidan Stormrage for starters, as their devolution into raid bosses annoyed many people.
- Subverted with Varian Wyrnn-while he seems like a Jerk Ass towards the Horde when he reappears, he has a Pet The Dog moment where he allows an Orc to collect his Tragic Monster son.
- Chekhovs Gun: The hammer that Arthas casually threw away in favor of Frostmourne in a blink-and-you-might-miss-it animation at the end of the very first campaign of Warcraft III serves as the core of the ultimate weapon designed to defeat him and Wrath's penultimate melee weapon.
- Colossus Climb: Most of the fighting against the Flame Leviathan battle platform in the Ulduar raid of World Of Warcraft is done with a variety of vehicular weaponry, but the demolishers (catapaults) are capable of launching other players onto its back to destroy its turrets. This is necessary in order to send it grinding to a temporary halt that both resets its continuous acceleration and lets all the other vehicles pound on it for extra damage.
- Compensating For Something: The new seasonal mount, the Big Love Rocket. It's big. It's pink. It's full of love. It's between your legs. And, according to Blizzard, it changes according to your skill and location.
- Con Lang: So, so many. The playable race languages are as follows:
- Alliance
- Common (humans, also the lingua franca of the Alliance)
- Darnassian (night elves)
- Dwarven (dwarves)
- Gnomish (gnomes)
- Draenei (draenei)
- Horde
- Orcish (orcs, also the lingua franca of the Horde)
- Zandali (trolls)
- Thalassian (blood elves, very similar to Darnassian for obvious lore reasons, but they still can't understand each other)
- Gutterspeak (undead, who spoke Common in the beta and could talk to Alliance players. You can imagine how that went)
- Taurahe (tauren)
- There are multiple others as well, although it must be said that these are not actual constructed languages but rather chat filters. A word with a certain number of letters will be replaced with an "Orcish" or "Dwarven" word of the same length, but with no actual translateable meaning. As such they are not languages in the actual same sense that, for example, Sindarin or Klingon are.
- Conflict Ball: In Wrath of the Lich King, the smouldering feud between Horde and Alliance is reignited through a combination of treachery and epic idiocy on both sides, and taken to its ultimate extreme in the Icecrown Citadel raid where Horde and Alliance fight each other directly instead of Arthas. There's some justification in the story for this: the Old Gods have been subtly influencing Azeroth's inhabitants for eons.
- Connect The Deaths: Can and has been done with player corpses.
- Conservation Of Ninjutsu: Actually introduced as a game mechanic in Wintergrasp. Since this is an outdoor PVP zone where anyone can join the fray (unlike battlegrounds that limit each side to the same number of combatants) usually one side will be outnumbered. The underdog gets a buff called Tenacity which increases their damage, health and pretty much everything else in proportion to how outnumbered they are. Join a highly unbalanced WG fight and you become a mini-raid boss.
- Conspicuously Selective Perception: Your aggro radius (the distance at which you attract hostile NP Cs) is based on your character's level compared to theirs. At 20 or more levels higher, you can dance naked next to a hostile mob and it won't even notice.
- Not to mention that most monsters will blithely ignore nearby combat as long as nothing you do falls within that same aggro radius. Although some monsters will call or run for help, they won't raise a finger if you kill their friends first. It's as if they're victims of a kind of group sociopathy.
- Cool Airship: One for each faction; the Skybreaker for the Alliance, and Orgrim's Hammer for the Horde, each patrolling the skies above Icecrown. Helicarrier or monster zeppelin, take your pick!
- Copy And Paste Environments: Each race/faction uses a common set of building elements throughout their towns, forts, and cities. There are also many identically structured (thought not skinned) caves throughout the world. This is justified on two counts. First, it's easier to create and debug a limited set of interior models, and know that NP Cs aren't going to get stuck behind a rock, than to make dozens and have to test each and every mob and item placement to be certain it works. Second, since it's based on an RTS franchise, there's a thematic consistency to having each Town Hall, Keep, Castle, etc. look the same as every other.
- Cosmetic Award: Mounts (beyond the first you get at each tier), non-combat pets, character titles, tabards (except for the special faction ones in Wrath of the Lich King that let you earn reputation from dungeons), and most especially the Achievement system introduced with the latest expansion. There are, of course achievements for acquiring mounts, tabards, and pets, making them a recursive Cosmetic Award. Although it is technically impossible to achieve One Hundred Percent Completion in the game (Achievements that can be Lost Forever are actually called Feats of Strength and don't award any points), filling up the Achievements bar can occupy far more in-game time than simply conquering the dungeons and battlegrounds.
- Crowning Music Of Awesome: Sylvanas's lament qualifies. As does the music in each of the original game and expansion trailers, especially Wrath of the Lich King's. And check out the The Battle of Darrowshire
- While wildly different from most other World Of Warcraft music, this track from the Forge of Souls surely qualifies.
- The music that accompanies this video. Though it plays in several locations, the most notable one is the Ragnaros fight in the Molten Core. It meshes so well with the tone of the battle and Rag's own quotes that it may well be World Of Warcraft's first occurence of boss music.
- Shaping of the World, Call to Arms and the just released Invincible
- Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming: Muradin's return, and the subsequent reunion of all the Bronzebeards. Then he decides to leave to take out Arthas. Doubles as a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
- This piece of art◊ from Blizzcon '09 that Chris Metzen had to stop to deliberately point out as his favorite. "For all the epic weapons, that's who those guys are."
- From a development standpoint, the Shrine of the Fallen Warrior. Can also double as a Tear Jerker.
- If you do the Battle of Darrowshire make sure you stay for a bit after you complete the quest.
- Earlier on in the storyline, there's Thrall consoling Lord Saurfang after the Battle of Undercity. "I'm sorry about your boy."
- Icecrown Citadel has its share of these, particularly in the Saurfang encounter.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: The Ending of the Lich King Encounter at the Halls of Reflection Also counts as a Big Damn Gunship moment as your faction's airship swoops in to save your party from certain death.
- Kil'Jaedan's defeat in the Sunwell and Kael'thas' transition into the final phase of his encounter also qualify. Then there's the Gunship Battle in Icecrown.
- Culture Chop Suey: Most races are a hodgepodge of many different bits and pieces from real world cultures. For instance, Night Elf architecture is based in equal parts on Korean, Japanese, Nordic, and Greco-Roman styles. The Draenei speak with an Eastern-European accent and are inspired in equal parts by gypsies and some sort of South-Asian cultures, but use a lot of Greek sounds in their names. Goblins are infamous for both their gold smarts (a Jewish stereotype) and the pervasion of the Mafia in their culture (an Italian stereotype, with a matching accent to boot).
- Cute Monster Girl: Most female troll and orc faces are mean-looking and ugly by human standards; however, each race has the option of a deadpan and reasonably attractive face. Predictably, nearly all female orcs and trolls have those faces. Hence the snarky slang term "cutefase."
- Female Forsaken qualify for this, too. While there are a couple of faces that are frankly hideous (dessicated corpses never look pretty), even the faces where the jaw's had to be replaced are reasonably attractive.
- Thanks to the Barbershop, it is now possible to create attractive orcs and trolls without resorting to the cutefase.
- Fanart inevitably renders Tauren females somewhere between "adorably cute" and "instantly converts viewers to furries".
- Dark Is Not Evil: Most notably The Forsaken (although many of them, such as the Apothecaries, ARE evil); the Horde in general, to some degree; player-controlled Warlocks, Shadow Priests, and Death Knights.
- Nether Dragons too, despite being mutated decendants of evil Black Dragons, they are all but evil.
- Dark Action Girl: So far, almost all Dark Rangers ingame are Forsaken Elven females, who like Sylvanas fit this bill quite well. That said, these are probably in the game to lay the foundation for Forsaken Hunter class that is debuting in Cataclysm, which will presumably be available to both sexes.
- The Dark Side: Death Knights and Warlocks use this; see Black Magic. Depending on how strictly you follow the lore, Mages also partake of it, since arcane magic is both addictive and what attracted the Burning Legion to Azeroth in the first place. In fact, the overuse of arcane magic by mortals really pissed off a Dragon Aspect so much that he started a war (and eventually lost it).
- Darkest Hour: Arguably Cataclysm. Tensions between the Horde and Alliance have skyrocketed to an all time high, leadership in both factions is shifting rapidly, Deathwing and Queen Azshara have returned after years of lying low, both the Black Dragonflight and the Naga have become more powerful then ever, and half the world has been torn to shreds. There's very little heroism left, and whatever still remains shines extra bright. Of course, there's always room for more expansions.
- The Dead Have Eyes: And they glow!
- Demon Head: The Warlock spell Shadowflame, summons a literal demon head to blast enemies at close range. Mages have a similar spell, except with a dragon head
- Demoted To Extra: Ogres are still sadly ignored, and are the only Warcraft II race not playable in some form. Trolls' heroes have all been killed or sidelined, their city was taken over by a level 10 enemy, and the game designers even forgot that the Darkspear trolls come from the Echo isles and their Regeneration was turned into such a weak racial that they eventually had to give them an extra one. And draenei are the only race in Cataclysm not to get a new class.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu: There are two raid encounters where players attack and kill the Old Gods themselves.
- In both cases the Old Gods in question were extremely weak and trying to consolidate their power. It's like beating down Superman in a Kryptonite cage. Yes it counts as a win, but the game was rigged in your favor.
- Also in the case of Yogg Saron, assuming you aren't doing hard mode you are assisted by four godlike entities.
- A much more apt example would be Malygos. You enter his sanctum where he has absolute power and employ magic against him, which is kinda like using a fire hose against Aquaman, and still defeat him?
- Dramatic Irony: In particular, the voiceover to the cinematic intro for Wrath of the Lich King.
- Drought Level Of Doom: The endgame used to require massive resource stockpiling efforts before a raid could begin. It got (somewhat) better.
- Dude Wheres My Respect: Averted in the latest expansion — some NPC's acknowledge that you have done some pretty awesome stuff in the past. For example, right at the start of the Alliance entrance to Northrend, you are skipped past NP Cs wanting to join the fight thanks to your heroic deeds in Outland. One assumes this takes place even if you managed to level without going to Outland (via the new Pv P experience).
- Played straight with Conqueror Krenna, the Jerk Ass in charge of Conquest Hold in Grizzly Hills, who outright states that all your previous achievements mean crap to her and proceeds to treat you like a common grunt.
- In addition, if you reach "Exalted" reputation with some factions, some NP Cs will kiss your ass... figuratively, of course.
- If you have a legacy PVP rank (such as the "Knight-Lieutenant" title) there are a couple of NP Cs that will address you by it in quest text.
- There are several NP Cs who greet you differently depending on whether you have or haven't done certain quests before. When you meet Thassarian over Icecrown, he thanks you again for the time you helped his sister in the Borean Tundra - if you did that quest chain. Same for a gnome in those zones. And the first time you meet Highlord Fordragon in Northrend, if you did the Onyxia quest chain wayyy back in vanilla WoW (which had been obsolete since BC and is now removed) he reminds you of the time you helped him fight dragons in the Stormwind throne room.
- In yet another example, NP Cs in a town under siege by the undeath cheer themselves up by reminding each other that help is on the way: they have heard rumors of elite soldiers handpicked by A'dal himself, and even the Scarab Lord. "Hand of A'dal" and "the Scarab Lord" are, of course, titles that used to be attainable by players. The latter of which has one per server (Except for servers that didn't hold the event pertaining to it)
- Early Bird Cameo:There are a ton of Horde goblins in Northrend which hinted at their inclusion in Cataclysm and explains gobiln death knights.
- Given Arugal's involvement, the Wolfcult may be doing the same for worgen.
- There are also quite a few Dark Ranger npcs showing up recently, which are probably to foreshadow the introduction of Forsaken Hunters in Cataclysm.
- There is also a High Elf mage who has shown up in the Temple of the Moon in Darnassus and seeks an audience with Tyrrande. His dialog to the guard as he waits talks about the changes coming to the world and the need for the Night Elves to "rediscover the arcane path", a clear set up for the Night Elf Mage class combo forthcoming in Cataclysm.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The Blood Elves in Burning Crusade.
- Earth Shattering Kaboom: Both Malygos and Deathwing are trying to cause one.
- Malygos tried, but Deathwing succeeds.
- Malygos wasn't trying to cause on of these as he was doing something else, but if he had succeeded this would very likely have been a side effect.
- The Old Gods have been trying to make one of these happen for a few millennium, since it's pretty much the only way they can get free of there prisons deep inside the planet.
- Easter Egg: Many; here's the incomplete list.
- Easy Mode Mockery: Not in the game itself, but given how easy it is to play Hunters and Death Knights, the classes have gotten a reputation for attracting the worst of players and are therefore generally looked down on by other players.
- Due to the many, many changes to class balance and mechanics over the course of the game, every class has suffered from this at some point (even Shaman, way back in the pre-expansion days). Expect this to be tossed around anytime someone gets ganked by one of the above.
- Thus the terms Huntards and Death Knoob
- Dude, the ones that get mocked the most are still Paladins. Two buttons kill.
- Egomaniac Hunter: Hemet Nesingwary, although he is a friendly fellow and acknowledges your efforts when you finish his quests.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Old Gods, which are an obvious Shout Out to the Cthulhu mythos. Only two have been specifically identified so far: C'thun was introduced with the Ahn'Qiraj dungeon and is of course a giant tentacled eyeball; while the Wrath of the Lich King expansion brings us Yogg-Saron, final boss of the Ulduar raid instance, who appears to be a giant fleshy mass festooned with gaping toothy mouths.
- In a larger Shout Out to the Cthulhu mythos, Yogg-saron's fight includes a Sanity mechanic, where being hit by certain attacks drains your sanity, and when you lose all of it you become a gibbering slave to the Beast-With-Many-Maws. Unlike most status effects, this one lasts through death, so don't think your teammates will be planning to revive you any time soon...
- Elemental Crafting
- Elemental Powers: In this case Fire, Frost, Nature (comprising many effects that would normally have their own element; like earth and air, but also electricity and poison), Arcane (magic), Shadow, and Holy (unique in that it does not have a resistance stat associated with it).
- Elemental Rock Paper Scissors: Mostly averted but there are many enemies that are specifically resistant or immune to a given element and a rare few that take extra damage from them - particularly in the Blackwing Lair raid dungeon.
- End Of The World As We Know It: What happens to Azeroth in Cataclysm.
- Enemy Civil War: Hell,
pretty much every race has at least one faction hostile against the rest. The below examples, mind, are only one each of the many instances for most races.
- Alliance
- Humans vs. the Defias- the stonemasons of Stormwind who got pissed off at poor payment and became a borderline crime syndicate/resistance movement.
- Humans vs. the Syndicate - remnants of the traitorous kingdom of Alterac.
- Humans vs. the Scarlet Crusade - a fanatical Knight Templar organization.
- Gnomes vs. Mechagnomes- a Cybermen knockoff consisting of insane cyborgs who believe themselves children of the gods). And are.
- Gnomes vs. Leper Gnomes - the irradiated survivors of the Gnomeregan disaster.
- Dwarves vs. the Dark Iron clan- greedy, nasty slave traders
- Dwarves vs. the Iron Dwarves - confusingly named race of metal-skinned dwarves who are in league with the Mechagnomes. Or, rather, are enslaving them.
- Night Elves vs. the forces of Illidan the Betrayer- a demon-hunter who gazed too long into the abyss, and those who followed him off the slippery slope.
- Draenei vs. the Eredar- the majority of their species who joined the Burning Legion and became demons.
- And the Auchenai...and a significant presence in the Wyrmcult...
- Worgen (Gilneas) vs. Worgen (not Gilneas) - Savage beast-people that fell under the curse and couldn't control their beast nature.
- Horde:
- Tauren vs. the Grimtotem- a fanatically xenophobic tribe. Their leader, Magatha, is an NPC ally in Thunder Bluff who is vying for control of all Tauren tribes.
- Trolls vs... Trolls- The players are a tiny tribe (Darkspear refugees, implied to be only a few hundred total) out of an entire overwhelmingly villainous species.
- Orcs vs. Fel Orcs- Those Orcs still in the thrall of the demonic overlords who once controlled their entire race.
- Undead (Forsaken) vs. Undead (Scourge)- Moreso than even the trolls; the player characters are actually a tiny rump of Phlebotinum Rebels against the second most dangerous villainous faction in the entire universe.
- Undead (Forsaken) vs. Undead (Forsaken) - The Royal Apothecary Society and Varimathras, after years openly attempting to engineer the Plague of Undeath to kill anything that isn't Forsaken, unleash their new superweapon at the worst possible moment, and the result is a coup d'etat in the Undercity which the player must help curtail.
- Blood Elves (of Silvermoon) vs. Kael'thas and partisans- The only one of the above that is actually a civil war, instead of simply different factions of the same species; Kael leads the blood elves early in the storyline, but it comes out he's doing some truly dastardly things, and many of his original followers (inc. all the player characters, natch) rebel even while some continue to consider him their rightful king.
- Goblins vs. Goblins - Those enslaved by the black dragonflight following Cataclysm.
- Goblins (the neutral Steamwheedle Cartel and the Horde Bilgewater Cartel and Kezan Refugees) vs. Goblins (Venture Company) - A greedy and ecologically unfriendly Goblin Organization.
- Even the Burning Legion isn't immune to this: a number of demons left the Legion to work for Illidan in Burning Crusade.
- Enemy Mine: Happens so often that in Wrath of the Lich King, open war is finally reignited at the Battle for the Undercity, and even then, both sides are pressured to work together as there are slightly more pressing matters. Like that one guy, the Lich King...
- Unfortunately, Garrosh Hellscream (of the Orcish nation of Durotar, commanding its presence in Northrend) and King Varian Wrynn of Stormwind do not get this, even in the figurative face of the Old God of Death.
- Equal Opportunity Evil: The goblin race in general, and the Venture Co. in particular, although the Steamwheedle cartel is more moderate. Maybe they just figured that it's easier to make a profit if you don't attract random adventurers all the time — or better yet, get them working for you.
- Escort Mission: Many and varied. Fortunately, Blizzard has made an effort to reduce the reliance on these sorts of quests in later expansions, as by their very nature, only one player (or party) can do a particular quest at any given time and some of the original ones could take fifteen to twenty minutes, and on PvP realms can be undone by an opposing faction player camping the end spot of the quest.
- Inverted and mocked in a Northrend quest during which an Indiana Jones Expy pummels a snake god while you watch his back. Quest completion is achieved when he's escorted you to safety.
- Even Better Sequel: Burning Crusade was alright in the gameplay department, but a lot of people lamented the story it put forth, the scattershot villains, the feel of the setting and the fact that very little was improved on base game mechanics. Wrath of the Lich King, on the other hand, has so far been met with near-universal praise for how it allows the player to actually affect the status quo of the world (at least for themselves), the much more "Warcraft-ish" feel of Northrend, and the much tighter plotting and far more engaging villain groups (ranging from Arthas Menethil to a new villain who finally tips his hand in Storm Peaks and rockets to near the top of most fans' Magnificent Bastard list). Complaints that the new raid and dungeon content are too easy have been met with the addition of hard mode versions of most raid encounters, which equal or exceed the challenge of anything in previous content.
- Everyone Is Bi: During the Love Is In the Air (Valentine's Day) event. The city guards, around whom most of the event revolves, are all love-smitten, but they don't care what gender your character is, just which fragrance you put on last. And if you want to earn the full achievement for the event, you had best be prepared to swing both ways yourself. Sure, they try to explain it away as some kind of evil magical affliction, but still...
- Everything Fades: All corpses will eventually disappear, pretty quickly once they're looted, and almost instantly once they're skinned/mined/harvested. Except for player corpses, which stick around for up to a week if unclaimed.
- Everythings Better With Spinning: Warriors' Whirlwind and Bladestorm, Paladins' Divine Storm, and Rogues' Fan of Knives.
- Evil Chancellor: Lady Prestor, a noblewoman who is secretly the dragon Onyxia. And now Varimathras, a dreadlord secretly working with every other dreadlord ever met.
- There are many, many hints and clues that Magatha Grimtotem is this to Cairne, but she hasn't done anything to act against him or the Horde. Yet.
- Evil Is Deathly Cold: The Scourge's headquarters is located in the frigid continent of Northrend and its upper ranks (up to and including the Lich King himself) make heavy use of ice-based magic.
- Evil Is Not A Toy: Fel Magic. Just ask Illidan and Kael'thas.
- Evil Versus Evil: Several instances. Arugal's worgens versus Scourge and Scarlet Crusade versus Scourge in Vanilla. Illidan versus Burning Legion and Black dragons versus Gronns in Burning Crusade. Ice trolls versus Scourge, Black dragons versus Scourge, Yogg'saron versus Scourge and Scarlet Crusade versus Scourge again in Wrath of the Lich King.
- Evil Sorcerer: Necromancers and Warlocks are always this in lore. Though the latter may have player controlled exceptions.
- Expanded Universe: Specifically, the Warcraft Expanded Universe.
- Expansion Pack
- Expansion Pack World: In a quite literal sense with regard to Outland.
- And in Wrath of the Lich King, the whole continent of Northrend mysteriously appears on your game map, complete with Horde and Alliance outposts ready for you to visit.
- Fan Disservice: I don't care how sexy some of the female Forsaken look, they're corpses. Yes, even Sylvanas.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Ghosts, dragons, Darkfallen, Worgen, Gnomes, mummies, demons, aliens *
Draenei, and technically Orcs too , Old Gods, Sand Worms, purple magic, holy magic, icky green demon magic, etc, etc...
- Fake Difficulty: Most raiders see any boss with a random uncontrollable component as this. Usually cause for much whining.
- Fan Haters: WoW Widows, anyone?
- Fanservice: The inclusion of Death Knights as a playable class in Wrath of the Lich King has been accused of having no point but this.
- Also why female night elves occasionally jump up and down in place, why Sylvanas's new model wears a belly shirt, and many others.
- Alexstrasza, the leader of the Red Dragonflight, was given a model similar to Sylvanas. Consider the fact that Alexstrasza is kind, gentle, wise, and the protector of all living things (one of her sobriquets is "Life-Binder")...she's basically the mother figure for all Azeroth. And she's standing in front of you in leather underwear.
- Many otherwise poor armor pieces seem to be designed solely for this purpose, to the point where players will intentionally collect them even when they are totally useless from a gameplay perspective. Moreover, the exact same piece of armor that fully covers a male model may inexplicably turn into a Chainmail Bikini when worn by a female.
- And murloc-pets (or a mount with a murloc on it) being gifted to fans attending Blizzcon.
- Fantastic Racism: Tons in this game, of course, both from NP Cs and from players to some extent.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Applies to all of the playable races in different ways.
- The culture and architecture of the Tauren looks a great deal like those of the Plains Indians.
- Trolls are mostly Caribbean Islanders, or an over-the-top pastiche of them. They practice voodoo, worship animalistic gods called loa, and dance capoeira and to a Shakira tune. Seriously.
- Dwarves have Scottish accents and a big beer culture.
- Fan Yay.
- Fertile Feet: Lifeblood, a heal-over-time spell learned by herbalists, causes flowers to sprout around the caster's feet.
- Alexstraza, apparently at will
- As of May 2009, the Brew of The Month, Springtime Stout, goes all the way with it, causing flowers to sprout behind you as you walk.
- Fetch Quest: Tons, naturally.
- An extreme example involves buying a questgiver a flagon of mead to get him to give you the next quest in a chain, when said beverage can be purchased inside the building he's standing next to, and costs less than the reward you get from him for obtaining it. In fact, a good third or more of dwarf quests seem to involve fetching liquor of some sort - in one case it's from another planet.
- There's a Horde quest from Tarren Mill where the questgiver wants you to bring him some turtle meat and some soothing spices... so you go kill the turtles, then buy the soothing spices... from him.
- Fission Mailed: The climax of the Lich King encounter. The entire raid falls over dead, seemingly a wipe...just in time for Tirion Fordring and Terenas Menethil to resurrect the raid.
- Five Races: Per faction, although it's going to be six each in Cataclysm.
- Flanderization: Has been said to apply to many characters in the game's history, most particularly Sylvanas. Also, see Retcon below.
- Flawed Prototype
- Frankensteins Monster: The Abomination class of undead creatures. Also, Flesh Titans.
- Fungus Humongous: Zangamarsh, Outland, Black Citadel, Eastern Plaguelands, and Western Plaguelands.
- Fun With Acronyms
- M.E.G.A - Mechanical Engineering Guild, Associated
- G.E.E.K - Goblin Experimental Engineering Korporation
- B.O.O.M - Braintrust of Orbital Operations
- G.N.E.R.D.S - Gnomish Nutritional Effervescent Remarkably Delicious Sweets.
- R.O.I.D.S - Robust Operational Imbue Derived From Snickerfang
- Gameplay And Story Segregation: No matter how many times you defeat a villain, you can always go back and bash his head in again, at least until the official game storyline moves forward. See Perpetually Static for more info on the latter.
- It's also notable that, while Death Is Cheap for players, storyline NPC deaths are generally irrevocable, unless they are intended to come back later. This is given a Hand Wave by the original implementation of Spirit Healers, who told player ghosts that "it's not your time yet." Where Fridge Logic kicks in is in scripted events like the Crusader's Coliseum, when the NPC in charge laments the senseless waste of life without apparent regard to the fact that the opponents that players have just killed will come back to life in less than a week.
- Poison and disease (especially the Plague of Undeath) are treated very seriously in the story, with many quests centered around saving (or failing to save) NPCs who have succumbed, but for players, salvation is a cure spell or a short wait away.
- Mounts are another frequently cited example, as for gameplay reasons they are unable to assist players in combat.
- Gayborhood: Not in the game itself, but the "Proudmoore" server is known for its GLBT population.
- Get On The Boat: Literally, for the Alliance. The Horde is more fond of Zeppelins.
- Getting Crap Past The Radar: The aforementioned Love Rocket.
- Ghibli Hills: Mulgore, Nagrand and the Emerald Dream.
- Global Currency: Generic gold, although there are a few exceptions where a faction has its own special currency... often combined with money, and they still buy your things for normal money as well.
- Increasingly averted as each expansion (and many patches) have added new forms of currency, such as Badges of Justice, Emblems of Heroism/Valor, Honor, Arena Points, Stone Keeper's Shards, battleground Marks of Honor, Dalaran Cooking Awards, etc., all designed to reward specific styles of gameplay with specialized items. These currencies are rarely interchangeable, and it got so bad at one point that the developers created a special character sheet tab just for storing "currency" items so they wouldn't clutter up players' bags.
- Glowing Eyes Of Doom: It's not Warcraft unless you have glowing eyes!
- Goddamn Bats: Just about any enemy can be a Goddamn Bat in this game, but it's most famously Murlocs.
- God Mode: A handful of quests in Wrath of the Lich King give the players massive buffs (usually courtesy of a faction leader), making them nigh invulnerable and increasing their damage output several times over. That said, someone always finds a way to die.
- Gradual Grinder: The Warlock is an excellent example. "More DoTs!"
- Great White Hunter: Hemet Nesingwary
- Grey And Gray Morality: Neither the Alliance nor the Horde is particularly good or evil. Each faction, however, has one overwhelmingly "good" race—look for hooves. (As for evil...not going there.)
- Guide Dang It: Some quests (Mankrik's wife anyone?), although most are not if you actually read the quest.
- Infamous in the Death Knight starting zone. Despite the fact that the instructions are clearly spelled out in the quest text, so many players gloss over it and wind up asking for help in the general chat channel. Start a Death Knight and hang around a bit and you will eventually see at least two or three players asking for help on a quest that has the direct answer to their question in the quest text.
- One quest, which required budding Death Knights to steal and return their soon-to-be mount, required the explanation of "press one to turn in your horse" so often in beta that it spawned a guild, <Press One For Horse>.
- Haunted Castle: Karazhan, Shadowfang Keep, and the Undercity.
- Have A Nice Death: Pretty much any boss will say something nasty everytime they kill a player except if the boss can't speak, complete with audio to crank it up to Over Nine Thousand, ranging from some simple mocking, Bond One Liner / Grissom One Liner, You Suck comments, Badass Boast, something like "I am going to loot your corpses!", Nothing Can Stop Us Now , plain Evil Laugh, combination of above, and many other things. Made even more awesome (or scary) if the boss already speaking in Voice Of The Legion or Snake Talk or You No Take Candle, or some unknown language.
- Headless Horseman: A Headless Horseman appears in a seasonal event (during Halloween). He flies around setting starting towns on fire and can be fought as a boss. According to the background material, he used to be a paladin of the Scarlet Crusade went insane after his family was killed, died and got risen as an undead by the dreadlord Balnazzar.
- Herd Hitting Attack: Oh so many of them.
- Hey Its That Voice: A few instances.
- Cam Clarke as Medivh, the Blood Elf male, Nexus Prince Shaffar and Malygos.
- The Heavy voices Steelbreaker in the Iron Council encounter in Ulduar, and is credit to council.
- Tony Jay narrates the opening cinematics for each race and Death Knights.
- Michael Mc Connohie (AKA Warriv and The Necromancer in Diablo 2) as Uther, The Lich King, Aeonus, Commander Kolurg, and King Ymiron.
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Silithids, Reliquary of Souls, the abominations in Undercity.
- C'thun... dear god, C'thun just does it for this troper. Not only does it look insanely freakish, but those quotes also do the trick, especially 'your heart will explode'. *shudder*
- Yogg-Saron is a head with a giant razor-toothed mouth that has even more mouths where its eyes should be. Try imagining that and have it NOT be nightmarish.
- "You are too late...I must...OBEY!". Also, according to Lore Thaddius is made of the flesh of women and children.
- Made even more disturbing if you pay attention to the background music in Naxxramas. You occasionally hear women and children crying out for someone to help them or screaming in terror. The voices stop after Thaddius dies.
- The Upside-Down Sinners room in the Karazhan crypts...
- Hilarious In Hindsight: Swine Flu is an actual debuff in the game that's been there since Wrath of the Lich King first launched, which is before actual swine flu was ever heard of.
- While correct that it appeared before the current Swine Flu outbreak, Swine Flu also had outbreaks in 1918 and 1976
- Well, H 1 N 1 had outbreaks. They weren't called 'Swine Flu' however.
- Yes. Yes they were. The 1918 pandemic was alternatively called "Spanish flu" and "Swine flu". The 1976 one is generally just referred to as H 1 N 1, though.
- Hit And Run Tactics /Kiting: the hunter class has a quest at level 60 required to get an epic bow. The quest requires you to kill four elite demons with very nasty powers entirely solo, and for two of them Kiting is an absolute necessity, as they will instakill you if you get too close. This tactic is also perfectly viable in other circumstances.
- Homage: The Lich King and the Witch King, C'thun, Yogg Saron, and countless others
- Honor Before Reason: Pretty much every order of paladins ever conceived. The Knights of the Ebon Blade have no such qualms, though.
- Horsemen Of The Apocalypse: The Four Horsemen of Naxxramas.
- Horse Of A Different Colour: Every playable race has their own specific mount. With a bit of effort building reputation, players can ride the mounts of other races.
- Hybrid Monster
- Idle Animation: All the player races feature animations if you stop moving/doing anything for a few seconds, the example in the aforementioned trope lists a few of these.
- I'm A Humanitarian: Awilo in Dalaran really loves serving up gnome!
- Inevitable Tournament: Patch 3.2's Argent Tournament, of course.
- Internet Backdraft: Where do we even start?
- In The Hood: Many important armor sets, including tier sets, have hoods as part of the set. Said hoods are most common on caster and Rogue sets, but hoods on Druid and Hunter sets aren't unheard of.
- As far as npcs go, you'll be hard pressed to find many Priest npcs without a hood, and Hunter npcs seem especially fond of them (note the sudden proliferation of Dark Ranger Forsaken High/Blood Elves, who like Sylvanas all have hoods, in Undercity and Northrend after patch 3.3).
- Iron Woobie: Several, but Tirion Fordring, Darion Morgraine and Sylvanas stand out in particular.
- Item Crafting
- Jerkass: Technically, You in the quests "Mystery of the Infinite" and "Mystery of the Infinite, Redux". Both Future You and Past You insult your fighting skills while you fight alongside them to defend the Hourglass of Eternity in their respective quests. Future You can repeatedly insult the gear you're wearing (even though, funnily enough, [[spoiler:they have the very same gear as you're currently using, including some they shouldn't be able to equip).
- Not to mention a truckload of NP Cs, many of whom seem to carry the Villain Ball merely for the sake of giving the players something to kill.
- You, again, in some of the Children's Week quest achievements; you pick up an orphan from one of the orphanages and show him/her a good time all over the worlds... and get an achievement for buying a bunch of treats and candy and eating them in front of your orphan. Not to mention an achievement for teleporting to your home city while your orphan is with you, implicitly leaving it behind (although game mechanics simply allow you to "summon" it again).
- There was also a Children's Week achievement that was removed before the event began, which involved the player to kill other players that had their orphans out with them. The achievement in question? "Once an Orphan..." Even Blizzard thought this was too mean.
- Also, you can get an achievement for throwing a snowball at Cairne Bloodhoof. Cairne Bloodhoof, who is by far one of the few remaining reasonable and pacifist beings in existence on Azeroth!
- There are no shortage of NP Cs who behave this way. One particularly notable example is the Horde leader Conqueror Krenna, whose parochialism, stupidity, and aggression all make her a manifestly poor choice for Horde commander in the Grizzly Hills. The player ends up helping her sister, who's far more reasonable and has been covering for her sister's mistakes all this time, to kill her.
- Some accuse Varian Wrynn of this after his return to Stormwind. Partly changed at Icecrown Citadel.
- You probably won't find anyone who will argue for either Garrosh Hellscream or Archdruid Fandral Staghelm being anything but jerkasses. Any word of the Horde attacking Teldrassil is quickly followed by hopes that they'll whack the Archdruid.
- Jerk With a Heart of Gold : Moodle the Gorloc, who is the smartest and (one of) the rudest of the Gorlocs /and/ Wolvar you'll meet throughout Sholozar basin. He pets the dog several times through his lines during a quest to save the Mosswalker Gorlocs.
- Jet Pack: Everyone gets one to mess around with prior to the gunship battle in Icecrown Citadel. (Oh, and use them in the actual battle too.)
- Jumping Off The Slippery Slope: Malygos. Just Malygos.
- For the record, after having his life as the Dragon Aspect of Magic shot right to hell by the death of pretty much every one of his flight and his mate, went crazy and into hibernation. Upon waking up, he decided that the problem with the entire world was that everyone was using magic... and set about cracking the planet's crust, siphoning away the magic, and beaming it into the Twisted Nether. This will kill all life on the planet. It's a good thing he didn't succeed...
- Hell, many major villains count. Arthas, Illidan, Kael'thas, Sargeras, The Scarlet Crusade, and probably a lot more.
- Jungle Japes: Feralas, Un'Goro Crater, Stranglethorn Vale and Sholazar Basin.
- Kill Sat: The Titans left 4 in orbit around Azeroth as defenses after they left. Each is named for one of the 4 Keepers of Ulduar.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Trope Namer
- Large Ham: Pick a boss. Pretty much any boss. Notable examples are Kael, Malygos and Gothik the Harvester. Gothik's hamminess was actually toned down in the expansion and he's still in the running for best scenery chewer.
- Yogg-Saron may have just taken the cake... though, with all those mouths, it's understandable why he can't shut up. Woo hoo hah hah hah hah hah hah... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
- The Headless Horseman, part of the Hallow's End seasonal event, is so hammy that it's a wonder he doesn't drop ham in addition to candy & gear when he is defeated.
- So far, the award for Biggest Ham is either Jaraxxus or Kologarn.
- Thorim, I think, wins that award in Wrath. IN THE MOUNTAINS.
- Last Second Chance: The "Heart of Arthas" quest chain is basically Fordring trying to determine if there's anything redeemable left in the Lich King. To the surprise of little, there isn't. This gives Fordring and the Argent Crusade renewed determination to defeat the Scourge.
- The Legions Of Hell: The Burning Legion, pretty much literally.
- Lethal Joke Profession: Engineering. Every other profession is profitable and/or useful, and can manufacture superior slot equipment in comparison, not to mention that Engineering equipment is often subject to catastrophic malfunctioning. However, the ability to play Schrodinger Fu with your many gadgets in Pv P is invaluable, and stack enough Engineers in a Pv P group and certain battlegrounds can be won in record time.
- Lets You And Him Fight: Lantresor, a half-orc, half-draenai in Nagrand, arranges a heroic version of this, with your assistance.
- Level Grinding
- Ley Line: Ley nodes are shown in the elven territory, and Karazhan is highly spooky because every single ley line passes through it.
- Malygos' master plan was to reroute every one of these on the planet to run under his fortress, then channel all their power into space, removing magic from the world and thereby preventing mortals from abusing it. That this would most likely result in an Earth Shattering Kaboom didn't quite register to him.
- Limit Break: Rage acts like this, to an extent - built by dealing and taking damage.
- Loads And Loads Of Races: Type 2, following the example from the previous games.
- Lost Forever: Completing The Battle For Undercity will cause Varimathras to disappear from The Undercity. Therefore, if you didn't complete the quests that requires him, you can never complete them.
- Several one-time-only events offered goodies which are otherwise unobtainable. A particularly rare mount could only be obtained afer an event requiring countless man-hours from the entire server, for a period of less than a day. Any future new servers will have this event completed already, as well. Add in holiday rewards, anniversary pets, world events, and advertising promotion rewards...
- Love It Or Hate It: The creation of World of Warcraft is either mankind's greatest accomplishment, or its most horrible atrocity. There is no middle ground.
- Also, Varian Wrynn. Dear Lord, Varian Wrynn.
- Let's not forget about Jaina. This Troper has seen other complain about how she isn't actually a leader of the Alliance, and instead is too "nice" to the Horde.
- And Thrall, her horde counterpart. Damn it, why Thrall and Jaina kept quiet and let the Jerkasses Varian and Garrosh do all the "Diplomatic" talks.
- Light Is Not Good: The Scarlet Crusade and Blood Elves (before patch 2.4 gave them some redemption, anyway).
- Ludd Was Right: The Blood Elves.
- Mac Guffin Girl: Anveena.
- Made Of Explodium: Goblin Technology.
- Made Of Phlebotinum: World Of Warcraft seems more Made Of Phlebotinum than most fantasy worlds, what with all it's magically-powered civilizations and crystal planeships and such.
- Magic Knight: Shamans, Paladins, and Death Knights
- Magitek: Naaru constructs such as the Exodar and Tempest Keep; Ethereal technology
- Stuff left behind by the Titans appears to be as such, as well.
- Man On Fire: Bolvar Fordragon - though just how he survived both the Forsaken rebels' new plague and the red dragons' cleansing fires has yet to be explained.
- Marathon Level: Lots of the raid instances.
- Memetic Badass: High Overlord Saurfang is to World Of Warcraft what Chuck Norris is to the rest of the internet. He even has his own page of Saurfang Facts.
Area-effect target caps were implemented after Saurfang used Cleave on Stormwind and it shattered Draenor.
- Hogger, the boss capable of being brought down by level one gnomes, also applies. This eventually escalated to where the best guild was pitted against an elite, level cap, nigh unkillable version of Hogger.
- Memetic Mutation: LEEROOOOOOYY JEEEENKIIINSSS!!!
- The Messiah: Tirion Fordring, Highlord of the Argent Crusade, who started out a hermit exiled for showing mercy to an orc, got (with the player's help) the Call To Adventure and vowed to rebuild the Silver Hand, and has, by the present, become Azeroth's premier honorable paladin who actively urges both sides to join together and destroy the evils threatening them all.
- Thrall becomes this to the orcs, and both the Naaru and (though to a lesser extent) Velen to the draenei.
- Mind Control: Tons of examples among the various NP Cs and bosses, both in the lore and in the game itself. There is also a spell available to the Priest class that lets them take control of other players/monsters for a short while.
- Misaimed Fandom: You're not supposed to feel sorry for Malygos in Wrath of the Lich King, people.
- Missing Mom - Practically everyone, including, but not limited to: Jaina Proudmoore (mother unknown), both Varian Wrynn and his son Anduin (both of their mothers died during their youth), Moira Bronzebeard (mother unknown), Medivh (mother Aegwynn had little to do with him after he was born), Garrosh Hellscream (mother unknown), Blaine Bloodhoof (mother unknown), Kael'thas Sunstrider (mother unknown), and Saurfang the Younger (insert Saurfang fact here).
- Money Sink: the mounts mentioned above... while the price of regular mounts dropped to ease collecting (with the training cost being raised), there exists several mounts that cost a fortune and do little more than looking cool.
- Money Spider: somewhat averted, many monsters just drop Vendor Trash instead. Not that you can't find a twohanded sword inside a spider... Certain mobs in Karazhan were this, until the expansion made killing them trivial and they were nerfed in response. Likewise, Onyxia was used as this for a while.
- Moral Event Horizon: Potentially, you, if you play a Death Knight. While soulless in the service of Arthas, you're complicit in genocide, butchering civilians under the protection of the Scarlet Crusade, and torture. Depending on the individual Death Knight, this may or may not be More Than Mind Control.
- Arthas crossed the line long ago and continues to get more evil over time. This is even lampshaded in one of the more awesome Icecrown quest lines.
- Varimathras and his faction of the Forsaken arguably triggered this trope when they betrayed both the Horde and Alliance at the Wrathgate, resulting in the death of a major good NPC and reigniting the Horde vs. Alliance war.
- Mordor: There are several, but the most obvious is Icecrown, which takes its design directly from the film version of The Lord Of The Rings and contains an area called Mor'drethar.
- More Than Mind Control: Features regularly in Mind Control scenarios, and combined quite frequently with Evil Feels Good.
- Most Annoying Sound: Not enough energy, Not enough rage, Not enough mana, I can't carry anymore, I need to get closer. Also nasty things bosses say when they kick your ass.
- Motive Decay: Sorry, Illidan, Kael'thas. We need bosses for Burning Crusade.
- Mr Exposition: Uther serves this purpose in the last five-man dungeon of Wrath, due in patch 3.3.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Unless a fight is designed around the enemy's mana reserves, said enemy can cast spells at you even if you drain its mana down to zero.
- This is amusingly subverted during the Chess Event (which is, not surprisingly, a giant game of of magic chess) in the raid dungeon Karazhan, you play against the ghost of Medivh, who periodically uses his powers to alter the flow of the game...and announces it when he does it.
- And next door, Shade of Aran sort of subvert this. When he runs out of mana, he will polymorph everyone and have a drink before proceeding the fight.
- Names To Run Away From Really Fast: TONS! Most orc names tend to be this. Orbaz Bloodbane, Grom Hellscream, Kargath Bladefist, Orgrim Doomhammer, Tagar Spinebreaker, Teron Gorefiend...
- Nekrum Gutchewer
- Unholy Death Knight PC's get a minion who has one, of the Noun Verber variety. However, as the names are re-randomized every time you summon the minion, this has the potential for major, major narm. "Frostreaver"? Awesome! "Bonesnap"? Cool! "Batface"?... ... not so much...
- Some races have these. The Faceless Ones and the Dreadlords come to mind.
- Nemean Skinning
- New Game Plus: See Alt-itis, above. The heirloom items available for purchase with endgame emblems are usable at any level and grow along with the character they're on at any given moment, along with generally having Superior-quality stats when your character doesn't even see useful Uncommons on a regular basis until level 20 and beyond.
- Nice Job Breaking It Hero: You do this in an uncomfortably high number of quests.
- Noble Demon: Thassarian pre-Heel Face Turn.
- Nobody Poops: Well, sort of. There are a few outhouses around, but perhaps one for every hundredth NPC (And that's being generous). Still, there are more aversions than typical for a video game:
- Possible subversion/aversion when one takes into consideration the hygiene practices of ogres. Take a look at the ground of an ogre campground, especially the one in the Alterac Mountains. I dare you.
- One quest line involves an NPC (whom you never actually see) inside an outhouse asking if you can bring him some cloth because ... you know. You trade him the cloth for a quest item that he shoves under the door before he gets back to business.
- It is actually possible to see him. There's a quest line that starts with a random drop on the mobs in the area, the key to the outhouse. Once you've killed enough of the mobs he specifies he will emerge and run away.
- There's a complete subversion in an Outland quest. A shaman tells you to literally go sifting through giant piles of animal-crap to find some beans for him...that let you breathe underwater. Ew.
- There were enough quests of this nature that one of the rallying cries for Northrend was "no more poop quests!"
- Another quest line in Grizzly Hills involves the player eating something he shouldn't have. The result is, err, literal Toilet Humor. (Whether it's outrageously funny or just crude is a matter of opinion.)
- No Just No: The reaction of many, especially in the Horde, when the November issue of PC Gamer UK seemingly confirmed the rumors that Garrosh is the new leader of the Horde.
- Nothing Is The Same Anymore: Cataclysm brings this to a head with Deathwing devastating Azeroth simply by reemerging from his hideout. Yes, he is that powerful now. In addition, many races will be gaining access to previously unavailable classes due to their constant exposure to different cultures, and rumors have circulated that several major faction leaders will be stepping down as well.
- The entire lore of Warcraft can be considered this as nearly everything that fans consider timeless or part of the status quo will get dramatically changed in some way. Several notable examples are: Orcs being a proud warrior race instead of a Chaotic Evil Horde, elves joining the Horde, and Eredar history revealing that a small sect called the Draenei existed and became the driving force behind much of the story.
- On the upside, Mankrik finaly buries his wife.
- Not So Different: The Lich King includes this argument in his Hannibal Lecture to you as you advance through the Shadowmourne questline.
- Not Quite Dead: Pretty much everyone from Warcraft III whose death wasn't shown on screen returns, and even some whose were.
- Not So Safe Harbor: Booty Bay. Especially when it's New Year's and the guards are too drunk to intervene if another player attacks you within the city.
- Olympus Mons: Subdue the freaking Raven God and use him for a ride?
- Omnicidal Maniac: The goal of the Burning Legion is to unmake the universe.
- Also the issue with Algalon the
Observer Raid Destroyer, sent by the Titans to determine whether the world of Azeroth is corrupted enough to warrant "re-origination." Though in Algalon's defense, he's not exactly a maniac; it's just his job.
- Only Mostly Dead: Death just flings your spirit to the nearest spirit healer. Also lampshaded by a villanous NPC who writes about being constantly killed and resurrected in his diary.
- One could technically apply the same logic to the continually respawning NPCs; maybe they just run back from the graveyard...
- Only Sane Man: Jaina, Velen, Magni and arguably Tyrande on the Alliance side. Thrall, Cairne and Varok Saurfang on the Horde side.
- Orcus On His Throne: Officially, it was four years from the end of Warcraft 3 to the start of WoW, and each year since then really has counted. Arthas did absolutely nothing in eight years and, surprise!, is obviously not ready for the war he started. Apparently justified, as during those four years Arthas' spirit fought Ner'zhul to take control of their body. Also Illidan in The Burning Crusade, who does practically nothing but wait for players to come kill him. This may again be explained by the fact that he's under siege by the forces of Kil'jaeden.
- In any case Arthas' sitting around tendencies are exaggerated and made more prominent by the fact that he has been literally sitting on his throne - directing the forces of the Scourge. He did build several giant fortresses at a rather impressive speed, has launched several invasions against his enemies, and has been converting the Vrykul to his service. He's not been totally idle.
- Our Demons Are Different
- Our Dragons Are Different
- Our Dwarves Are All The Same: Played with the Ironforge dwarves, averted with the others.
- Our Elves Are Better: With both Night Elves and Blood Elves, there's delicious blueberry and strawberry flavors!
- Also included: High Elves, Felblood Elves, Wretched (or Crack Elves), and all cross-breeds and mutations thereof (Satyrs, Banshees, Harpies, etc.). This is to say nothing of the possible connection between the Elves and the infinite flavors of Trolls.
- Our Ghosts Are Different
- Our Ghouls Are Creepier
- Our Giants Are Bigger: The several snow, moutain and sea giants.
- Our Goblins Are Different: They like explosions, as well as money.
- Our Gnomes Are Weirder: They like engineering, and descend from clockwork creatures
- Our Mermaids Are Different: The Naga
- Our Orcs Are Different
- Our Vampires Are Different: The Darkfallen, which are undead Blood Elves that Arthas turned after Kael's failed excursion with Illidan against Arthas, have a lot of vampiric qualities.
- Also the Nathrezim, demons who follow some vampiric rules like having the ability to summon a swarm of bats or a "vampiric aura". Neither them nor the Darkfallen are really vampires, though.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: And with the Cataclysm expansion, they're also playable.
- Our Zombies Are Different: And playable since the beginning.
- Paper Thin Disguise: One Death Knight quest involves you ambushing a Scarlet Crusade courier by hiding behind a small tree literally made of cardboard.
"Hrm, what a strange tree. I must investigate."
- Passing The Torch: 3.3.3 PTR Data confirms Baine Bloodhoof has replaced Cairne as chief, whether this is a true Passing The Torch or actually a Take Up My Sword is yet to be seen
- Patchwork Map
- Pet The Dog: If you beat Tragic Monster Deathbringer Saurfang as an Alliance race, Varian gets one when he stands aside to let his (Orc) father collect his body. Character Derailment, my foot.
- Perpetually Static: Started out pretty straight at the game's release, but each expansion has delivered additional ways for players to impact the game world. The most noticeable one in the original game was when players had to cooperate to complete the War Effort and open the gates of Ahn'Qiraj. The game world also changes for the periodic holiday events, adding new (albeit temporary) objects and NPCs.
- Burning Crusade allows players to participate in key events related to their factions and conquer Player Versus Player objectives in several zones that provide temporary bonuses to fellow faction members.
- Wrath of the Lich King further averts this by delivering a new technique called phasing, which allows the story to advance for the player once he completes certain quests. This is particularly evident in Dragonblight, Storm Peaks, Icecrown, and the Death Knight starting area.
- Cataclysm turns Perpetually Static on its ear and kicks it in the balls — in addition to utterly changing the face of Azeroth as we know it, the latest expansion promises to take advantage of phasing like never before, altering the terrain of the world in addition to objects and NP Cs as players progress through the story.
- Plaguemaster: The Forsaken of the Royal Apothecary Society, who as of Wrath of the Lich King have brewed a plague capable of destroying both the living and undead.
- Power Up Food
- The Power Of Rock: As an April Fools gag, Blizzard stated that there was a bard hero class for the Expansion Pack that utilized Guitar Hero-style controls and abilities such as "Epic Jam", "Shoegazer" and "Nonconformity". Don't forget their epic axe, "The Facemelter", with the chance on hit to "blow your target's mind".
- Precursors: The Titans
- Prehistoria: The Un'Goro Crater and Sholazar Basin zones.
- Promoted Fanboy : Several fans have been immortalized by Blizzard by making references to them, sometimes in the TCG as Alamo and Leeroy Jenkins, whose antics are legendary amongst the fans; and sometimes in the game itself like Maghia and Volde, who were two of the best cosplayers at Blizzcon 09, with items named after them. Notable Fansite creators as well, the Pet Shot NPC in Dalaran Breanni, is based on the character of the go to site for Minipet info.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: As they say it themselves, "The gender of your character is purely a cosmetic feature and has no impact on that character's abilities or statistics. "
- Psychic Assisted Suicide: Priests + Mind Control + a tall cliff = Hilarity Ensues
- Randomly Drops: Ranging from quest items like eyes that should logically drop from every enemy but instead only drops from every fifth or so, to so called world drops which you bascially have no chance of ever getting... if you want it, you'll have to hope someone else was lucky and put it up on a auction house.
- Blizzard has changed the mechanics behind how often quest items drop, so you'll get those Raptor Heads eventually. If you want them badly enough. You do, don't you?
- Retcon: A few from the precedent games, with maybe the most important (and the most blown out of proportion) being the Eredar going from being evil demons who influenced Sargeras into forming the Burning Legion, to being a peaceful race who were corrupted by Sargeras during the Legion's formation.
- Real Money Trade: Despite intensive efforts by Blizzard to prevent it, a massive black market exists for gold-buying and powerleveling services. Odds are that the ad banner on the left of this very screen is for such a service. Beware, if you do this and get caught, you will lose your account — if not to Blizzard, then to the hackers you stupidly gave your password to.
- Religion Is Magic: Shamans, priests, paladins and druids. All of them get their powers from their respective spiritual authorities: elemental & ancestral spirits for shamans, the Holy Light for priests (unless it's from a god, like Night Elf priests who worship Elune, or troll priests who worship various spirits called loa; Forsaken priests worship something involving the light and shadow(They worship the "Forgotten Shadow in the rpg by Whitewolf) and paladins, and nature itself for druids.
- The Remnant: The Alliance navy and the Dark Horde.
The RPG sourcebook: "They are fighting a war which nobody told them was over. Nobody believes that they will win the war, not even themselves, and that makes them very dangerous."
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The only hostile druids are the druids of the fang(corrupted disciples of Naralex), who can turn into snakes. And also the naga, one of the only Always Chaotic Evil races.
- Ribcage Ridge: A very popular terrain feature, notably in Tanaris.
- Rouge Angles Of Satin: In-game chat is loaded with some of the most execrable grammar and spelling imaginable, as are the official forums. Even after you take into account the younger players, those for whom English is not a first language, and people typing in a hurry, there's still a lot of shame to go around. And may the gods help you if you're trying to read the trade channel when a Grammar Nazi gets wound up.
- The popular yet elusive "Rouge" class has become something of a Memetic Mutation.
- Sadly Mythtaken: There's a male boss named "Skadi" in Utgarde Pinnacle.
- Saharan Shipwreck
- Sapient Steed: Drakes, Hippogryphs and Wyverns are as intelligent as an humanoid, and Drakes can speak (in story, some can even turn into a humanoid). Not that you can see it in the game, though.
- Save The Princess: A quest charges you with rescuing the dwarven princess Moira Bronzebeard from the emperor of the dark dwarves. In a subversion, she's pregnant with said emperor's child and does not want to be saved...
- Scary Impractical Armor: The Lich King — this is even lampshaded in the hilarious Scourge Vent Recordings; Arthas complains about his armor. "No, it's not okay, I have skulls...on....my....kneecaps!"
- Can also apply to the shoulder armor for all classes starting from the first tier sets onwards. Or to most of the armor sets, for that matter.
- Schizo Tech: Troll, orc, and tauren civilization is mainly early Iron Age, and human civilization is stock medieval Europe, while gnomes have nuclear energy and cybernetics, and the Draenei capital city is a crashed interdimensional spaceship...sort of.
- The Scrappy: Fandral Staghelm is the game's original Jerk Ass, albeit with some justification — seeing your son ripped apart by the Qiraji can't have been good for his morale. Later, Garrosh Hellscream takes the title from him in unequivocal fashion, being introduced in Outland as a barely competent leader who nevertheless comes to stand by Thrall's right hand in Northrend while being unremittingly hostile to the Alliance and sabotaging his Warchief's attempts to make peace at every opportunity. And he may get to be the leader of the Horde in Cataclysm.
- Scrappy Level (Darnassus, Shattrath, Orgrimmar, Gnomeregan, the Exodar, Gnomeregan, Silverpine Forest, Durotar, the Badlands, Desolace, Gnomeregan, Hillsbrad, the Eastern Plaguelands, Hellfire Peninsula, Gnomeregan, Un'goro Crater, Blackrock Depths, Felwood, the Barrens (oh god, the Barrens), Mulgore, Oculus, and Gnomeregan. In other words, somewhere between 1/5th to 1/4th of the original game world may qualify. And Gnomeregan.)
- Lampshaded by Blizzard themselves as they acknowledge Oculus as a Scrappy Level that had to be nerfed just so people don't leave group with their new LFG system being implemented in 3.3.
- And when that didn't work, they had to resort to bribing players with extra loot at the end.
- Sealed Evil In A Can: Ragnaros, the Old Gods, and countless other examples.
- Sequel Displacement: What are these "classic trend setting strategy games" of which you speak?
- Shattered World: Outland, and later Azeroth itself in Cataclysm.
- Shock And Awe: The elemental Shaman's specialty!
- Shoot The Medic First: A basic tactic in both PvE and PvP combat. In PvP, healers are a primary target. In PvE, if a group of mobs has a healer, you'd better take it out first or your fight will be very long, if not impossible. This is hilariously lampshaded by one of the villains.
Lord Victor Nefarius: "Foolsss...Kill the one in the dress!"
- And ironically, he does not heed that advice when you actually fight him.
- Shoulders Of Doom: Much to the delight of some players, and the dismay of still more.
- To the extent that, when a bug reduced the size of shoulder armor on male orcs, the outcry was beyond immense. The bug was later fixed... and male orc shoulder size actually increased somewhat from its pre-bug levels.
- Shout Out: Vastly too many to list; a few exemplars include an NPC engineer called K. Lee Smallfry, a reference to Firefly—ironically, she's working for the Alliance.
- There's also Professor Putricide in Icecrown Citadel, who is a reference to Professor Farnsworth.
- Good news, everyone! The poison pipes are flowing again!
- Shauly Pore in the Ecodome (Pauly Shore in Bio-Dome); Siouxsie the Banshee (Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees); Haris Pilton <Socialite> (Paris Hilton); etc.
- Ship Tease: "Thrall and Jaina sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G".
- Sickly Green Glow: Fel magic, the demons and the Forsaken's plague.
- Slippy Slidey Ice World: Dun Morogh, Winterspring and Northrend (specifically, Wintergrasp, Dragonblight, Storm Peaks and especially Icecrown, the rest of the zones in Northrend avert it to some extent or another).
- Sorting Algorithm Of Evil: The leveling up process, combined with the need for enemies to challenge higher level players, often results in such ridiculous juxtapositions as a Northrend bear cub being fifty-plus levels higher than the leader of the Defias Brotherhood, or the minor bosses of Naxxramas being far stronger than the Lord of Elemental Fire. Lady Onyxia, a challenge for 40 level 60 players when she first appeared, can and has been soloed by level 70+ players.
- An interesting subversion is in the works for the Cataclysm expansion, as the infamous Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep instances are getting level 85 heroic versions, and both Onyxia and Ragnaros are coming back as level 80 and 85 raid bosses, respectively. The algorithm has also been specifically invoked by Blizzard's developers with respect to the relative strength of Arthas and Deathwing. Essentially: "Arthas is Bad Ass, sure. But Deathwing is more powerful than all the other dragonflights combined. He deliberately bided his time until he was sure nothing in Azeroth could withstand him."
- Spanner In The Works: Frequently the players, who after going along with villains' schemes Because Thou Must, promptly turn around and kill them.
- The Spartan Way: Many Death Knight Initiates are found wanting, and do not live long enough to become real Death Knights. Those who do reach Death Knight status are not only allowed, but actively encouraged to fight each other and see who is stronger.
- Standard Status Effects: Pretty much every single one of them.
- Star Spangled Spandex: Algalon the raid destroyer.
- Status Quo Is God: Played straight for the first few years while each expansion starts to subvert it little by little. Cataclysm, however, will take this trope and deliver it a swift kick in the crotch with a steel-toe boot.
- Staying Alive: Muradin, Baelgun, Magtheridon, Mal'Ganis and Balnazzar were given on-screen "deaths" and still came back — in Muradin's case, with a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming. Justified in the case of Dreadlords like Mal'Ganis, who are repeatedly hinted to be immortal, or at least able to come back from the dead.
- Steam Punk: The engineering profession is essentially this, and it inspires most of the Gnomish and Dwarven technology — especially Gnomish.
- Sticks To The Back: Every weapon, ever.
- Stop Poking Me: Well, naturally. You're right inside the trope namer's universe, after all.
- Summon Magic: Primarily Warlocks, who can summon a demon to aid them in battle. Several other classes can summon magical helpers but only for a short time.
- Talking Is A Free Action: Nothing will stop a boss from talking. Keristraza can rant at you while using her breath weapon. Half-averted for the players — you have to, y'know, type to talk, meaning you're not firing off your abilities — but you can make a simple macro beforehand...
- Talking To Himself: Michael Mc Connohie as Lich King and spirit of Uther in Halls of Reflection.
- Tear Jerker: There are a few moments that can be outright emotional. Several times during the Death Knight intro quests you find yourself suddenly face-to-face with an event so simply human in contrast with the raping and pillaging you have been doing. The Wrathgate event is another specific instance where the outcome of a battle is so sudden and unexpected.
- The king of tear jerkers in the game is the Pamela Redpath quest line. You meet the ghost of a little girl who wants you to find her dolly. Then she starts asking about her family and why they left here there. You find out that her father, Joseph Redpath, fell to the Scourge during the Battle for Darrowshire and murdered the remaining citizens and is considered a traitor and monster. You are given the opportunity to go back in time and change this one small event. While you can't save Joseph, you can defeat him after he is corrupted but before he can cause further damage, leaving him to be remembered as the fallen hero of Darrowshire. In the end, Joseph's ghost is reunited with the ghost of his daughter. And you bring her dolly back. This video will make you cry if you know the full back-story.
- Many quests also qualify, such as this one
- Or it's somewhat differently tear-jerking Horde equvilent. As apposed to freeing a lost loved one you take the wedding pendant of a dead man who had devoted his life to destroying the forsaken back to his grave on the request of his now forsaken wife, who wants nothing to do with him. Upon reaching his grave your greeted by a sad little bit of text detailing how lonely the grave looks and how the man will be forever forgotten.
- These two quests (one for each faction) are probably the most depressing in the game, mostly because the player just killed the letter writer.
- The NPC quotes from one of the final main quests for the Oracles (a mentally-simple race of frog-like creatures) in Sholazar Basin where you try to save the mortally injured Oracles from the invading Scourge are a good example of this. Particularly unsettling about this is that the Oracles worship the Titan structures in the area as entities due to their weather-preserving properties, and as such are still confused about what they did wrong to cause their swift deaths. The last words of many of them are gut-punchingly innocent, asking what they did to incur their progenitors' wrath, including 'not giving enough shinies'.
- Finally, the king of kings of Tear Jerker in the game is (A VERY MAJOR SPOILER, you have been warned) the Lich King's demise. First part shows Arthas' Death Equals Redemption as he died in his father's arms. and when you thought it was all... Bolvar Fordragon's Heroic Sacrifice as he took the responsibility of taking the Lich King's place, and sealing him forever while saying he must not be remembered.
I must be forgotten, Tirion! If the world is to live free from the tyranny of fear, they must never know what was done here today. Tell them only that the Lich King is dead. And that Bolvar Fordragon died with him.
- The Tetris Effect: It is amazing how much time can pass going through one dungeon.
- That One Boss: Lots, depending on the skill of the player(s) and the makeup of your group. See the trope entry for a (partial) list.
- Theme Naming: Most of the Dragons:
- Red dragons: names end with -strasz (males) or -strasza (females).
- Blue dragons: names end with -gos (males) or -gosa (female); also Colourful Theme Naming with blue (Azuregos, Cyanigosa, Colbatann...) or sometimes a reference to magic (Manaclaw, Arcanagos, Spellmaw).
- Green dragons: references to dreams (Somnus, Weaver, Morphaz, several begining with Dream- ), and some Colourful Theme Naming (Jade, Emeriss...).
- Bronze dragons: names end with -ormu (males) or -ormi (females); Temporal Theme Naming (Chronormu, Anachronos, Eternos, Chronalis...).
- Their evil counterpart, the Infinite Dragonflight, also have Temporal Theme Naming (Temporus, Aeonus, Epoch Hunter, Chrono Lord Deja)
- Black dragons: Colourful Theme Naming with black (Rivendark, Blackscale, Sabellion/Sablemane...) and/or Rock Theme Naming (Ebonroc, Obsidia, Onyxia...), or reference to something bad (Nefarian, Smolderwing, Insidion, Nihil, Sinestra...), or something related to fire/heat (Flamegor, Searinox, Emberstrife, Firemaw, Singe ...).
- Nether dragons: names usually (not always) ends with -aku or -us, otherwise it is because someone already give them their names.
- Theme Song: "Power of the Horde" for (Horde) shamans, "Rogues Do It From Behind" is obviously for rogues. "I am Murloc" for...Murlocs. Both of these were done by
Tenth Level 60 70 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain.
- The Starscream: Varimathras. Kael'thas Sunstrider is this for Illidan as well.
- They Changed It Now It Sucks: BALANCE! Also, many old-school players tend to complain that the game has gotten too easy, while others note that there are challenges available to those who seek them out, and Blizzard is trying to make more content for the majority of players instead of just the hardcore. In general though, people have been saying this pretty much since the first patch, but mysteriously still play.
- Time Keeps On Slipping (subverted)
- Title Drop: In Wrath of the Lich King you can quest for a faction of freed Death Knights, one of them does in dialog a title drop, as seen here◊.
- Too Much Of A Good Thing
- Took A Level In Badass: The already powerful Deathwing has become powerful enough to severely damage Azeroth's structure with his reappearence alone.
- Took A Level In Jerkass: Fandral Staghelm, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream.
- To Serve Man: As a Shout Out, the name of a Vendor Trash item drop from pickpocketing midlevel mobs is "To Serve Man - A Cookbook".
- Training Dummy
- Truce Zone: The goblin cities, Shattrath, Dalaran, Moonglade for Druids.
- Turns Red: A few non-boss enemies enrage at low health (or when an ally falls), and many bosses power up as the fight goes on. A number of bosses also go "berserk" after a set time limit, promptly causing a Party Wipe. It sometimes makes sense, such as Mimiron Hard Mode where you activate a self destruct mechanism.
- Twenty Bear Asses: Its fanbase coined the term.
- Uberwald: Gilneas in Cataclysm is a dreary, menacing-looking city with constant rain. Which makes thematic sense, as its inhabitants are civilized Worgen.
- Uncanny Valley: Quite a lot to choose from, but the Taunka are probably the worst. Bison-people doesn't sound like it'd cause this, but their flat, wide noses and lips and seemingly large eyes make them look more than a little... off.
- Undeath Always Ends: Subverted to Hell and back with the Forsaken, who make it very clear that they're here to stay and that the world just has to deal with it. Some of them (like Sylvanas herself) are still trying to find a way to undo their curse, while the more fanatical ones seek to kill everyone else instead.
- There is even a questline centered on trying to cure an exceptional Paladin who has been infected. Not even the Naaru can cure him, but they save his soul instead.
- Underwater Ruins
- The Unfought: Blizzard has confirmed that, despite the recent rise of the Naga, Queen Azshara will not be fought in Cataclysm.
- Unpleasable Fanbase: Read the WoW forums sometimes. Or better, don't.
- Vendor Trash: Lampshaded with Goldenscale Vendorfish.
- Some players make a game out of collecting the higher-value "junk" items, such as tower keys, New Age paintings, and Porcelain Bells (which is worth a whopping 100 gold). There's even a solid gold coin that's worth exactly 1 gold.
- Villain Ball: The Lich King in the second expansion, which may or may not be superior to Illidan in Burning Crusade just sitting in the Black Temple and doing... nothing.
- The Virus: The Plague of Undeath explicitly works this way. Demonic corruption has a way of transforming its victims as well, due to Evil Feels Good.
- Of particular interest was a brief in-game plague of sorts. One of the bosses in the Zul'Gurub instance hit raiders with a debuff called "Corrupted Blood" that dealt damage over time...but the status effect could land on things like vanity pets. Players would stow these infected pets, then bring them out in major cities where the contagion would jump to any nearby players or NPCs. As Zul'Gurub was a endgame dungeon at the time of its release, the plague quickly cut through weaker characters, turning cities such as Orgrimmar and Ironforge into charnel houses.
- This particular virus attracted serious academic attention, as researchers realized the World Of Warcraft game environment had grown in size and population enough to serve as a legitimate model for plague and pandemic spread.
- It's quite likely that the Corrupted Blood event inspired the undead plague from the Scourge Invasion just prior to the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, which turned both P Cs and NP Cs into members of an undead army. Many players considered this a fun departure from routine gameplay, but naturally, plenty of others complained because they were getting killed in normally safe areas, even on Pv E servers that are made specifically to avoid that.
- Voice Of The Legion: Death Knights and Arthas, appropriately. Also the Infinite Dragonflight bosses in Cavern of Time and the Corrupted Ashbringer if you are holding it.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Druids transform into a number of animal forms, and properly talented warlocks can turn into a demon form for a short amount of time. Shamans can turn into ghost wolves, used as a traveling form before obtaining a mount
- There are also many quests and items that temporarily transform or disguise the character, and some of the quest items can actually be kept by the player and used whenever they feel like it (Dartol's Rod of Transformation being one of the most common). These rarely have any direct impact on gameplay, except for the specific quest lines in which they appear.
- Warp Whistle: Hearthstones
- Waste Of Time Story: Most players ignore what NP Cs actually say and just look at the quest requirements. Story? Plotting? To the overwhelming majority of players, it may as well not exist. Interestingly, Blizzard is aware of this and Word Of God says that quest designers are explicitly limited in the amount of text they can put into a quest description to avoid "Too Long Didn't Read" syndrome.
- This can lead to interesting misconceptions; for example the Warlock specialty quests. The common view is that Warlocks are but Pawns of A Big Evil (The Burning Legion) but if you actually read the quest text the teachers congradulate the up and coming warlock for standing against such fel influences and encourages then to continue doing so.
- We Buy Anything: Except quest items, keys and items purchased with nonstandard currency such as Honor, Arena Points, Emblems of Valor, boss tokens, etc. The latter is somewhat unpopular but Blizzard justifies it as a way to prevent exploits. On the other hand, the inability to sell quest items and keys is possibly an Anti Frustration Feature to prevent players from accidentally selling things they need.
- Well Intentioned Extremist: Kael'Thas Sunstrider consorts with demonic powers in an attempt to rescue his people from their magic addiction. Of course, Evil Is Not A Toy, and he ends up playing The Renfield to Kil'jaeden.
- Malygos who RIGHTLY decides he needs to crack down on mortals' reckless use of magic, which already caused the Sundering and summoned the Legion to Azeroth on three different occasions (most recently in Sunwell at the end of TBC) but unfortunately he goes about it in the WORST way possible, starting a genocidal war that could rip the very planet apart. Even the dragons of the other Aspects agree mortal use of magic has gone out of control and should be reigned in, but they find Malygos' methods ahborrent and have to stand against him.
- Wham Episode: The "Wrathgate" in-game cutscene is one of these, killing off two canonical Bad Ass heroes and reigniting the war between Alliance and Horde. The Cataclysm expansion could also be seen as this, given the massive changes it will make to old Azeroth.
- White Magic: Consists of Holy magic (used by Paladins and Priests) and Nature magic (used by Druids and Shamans). In lore, these are the only pure sources of power; all other types are either corrupt to begin with or inevitably lead there. See Black Magic, above.
- Why Am I Ticking: Because you are the bomb. Run away, you idiot!
- Wide Open Sandbox
- Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds: Some believe Malygos to be this, but Your Mileage May Vary.
- The Worf Effect: Various NPC battles with the Lich King seem to be for the sole purpose of showing off how strong he is in comparison, with the fight in the Halls of Reflection being just the latest.
- Xanatos Sucker: You. Between Abercrombie (Alliance only) in Duskwood, Myzrael in Arathi Highlands, Kalaran the Deceiver in Searing Gorge, Teron Gorefiend in Shadowmoon Valley, Drakuru in Grizzly Hills, and Loken in the Storm Peaks, there are plenty of examples of villains using the player to accomplish their evil goals. Since these quests are a part of zone progression, the Violation Of Common Sense is enforced. It's worth noting that nearly all of these quest lines have you go back and defeat the guy afterwards, however.
- Xanatos Gambit: In the original game, Onyxia had an extremely complex scheme going on to manipulate herself into absolute control of the throne of Stormwind. This quest sequence was removed after King Varian Wrynn returned in Wrath of the Lich King and Onyxia's schemes were canonically thwarted.
- The Lich King actually let Tirion assault Icecrown Citadel because he knew that he would bring 10/25 of the most powerful adventurers in Azeroth with him for the final battle. The Lich King intended to kill them all and raise them as his most powerful generals. It backfires thanks to Tirion's Big Damn Heroes moment.
- You No Take Candle: Trope Namer
- Zombie Apocalypse: The Scourge Invasion
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