History Headscratchers / WorldOfWarcraft

** GameplayAndStorySegregation. The entire geography in the game is significantly scaled down in order to make the world easier to navigate and run on an online server.

---> "Wait a moment, did you just bring a race full of space-faring goat-people to a [[MedievalEuropeanFantasy Medieval Fantasy]]?"
---> "Yeah, so?"
---> "That's against the lore, isn't it?"
---> "Screw the lore-we have 6 million players."

** Two reasons: most people discovered the Warcraft universe with [=WoW=], so they wouldn't know about what happened 30 years before in universe; and the first Warcraft game, while not bad, was a stereotypical heroic fantasy story (good humans fighting evil orcs and an evil sorcerer), which could make people think that Warcraft is just a ripoff of [[Literature/LordOfTheRings another story adapted in movies a few years ago]].

*** Pre-Cataclysm, there actually ''was'' one NPC who would attack a Death Knight on sight... namely the level 12 Tauren Gamon. Of course, at this level, he posed practically no threat to the player, who'd be at least Level 57. This was the result of a low-level rogue quest, which required the player to pickpocket Gamon. As friendly [=NPCs=] couldn't be pickpocketed, he had to be coded as "neutral". This resulted in him being at "Hostile" with Death Knight players who had not yet turned in the quest.
However, in the lead-up to Cataclysm, he was patched to become a Level 85 Elite (technically harder than a raid boss at this point, as players were still capped at 80 and skull boss enemies are considered to be three levels above the player).

** Even before Cataclysm was announced, Gilneas was said to have been extremely isolationist and built the Greymane Wall to shut themselves off from the world, which is why we've never been there in WoW. We've just got the explanation now that the Gilneans pretty much quarantined themselves because the population fell victim to the [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent Worgen]] curse. As for Kul Tiras, WordOfGod says that the Cataclysm caused it to drift out a bit to sea, with some typically Blizzard cheekiness. The most popular current fan theory is that Kul Tiras will like be patched in some time during the Cataclysm expansion.

** Simple: he'll make a movie about something that happens during WoW, like a quest line, or something entirely new. BTW, I think I've read somewhere it would take place one year before [=WoW=] or something.

** The language issue is a huge gameplay/story problem. For WoW to make sense you have to assume Horde races only speak or understand Common when it's spoken by friends or when it's very important. This is in spite of the DK-related issues, as well as the fact that the Blood Elves and Forsaken should by any measure be able to communicate with humans.

** In the page for the system that helps parents restrict how much time their kids spend on WoW, all the "kids" seem to be dwarves and gnomes.

** Same reason that every single miner and blacksmith in Classic WoW didn't develop cancer.

* How is WoW an Expanded Universe? It is the core around which the franchise revolves. Even the RTS games that came before WoW are known as "Those games that came before WoW" to most players.

** The Orc and Tauren numbers are actually explained in WoW. Thrall has recruited more orc clans as established in various class quest lines. the Tauren in WC3 were only the Bloodhoof tauren and Cairne united all the Tauren tribes in WoW. Still in general, every races numbers just seem to be set at ENOUGH.

** Several Burning Blade orcs joined the modern Horde in both WC3 and WoW, typically serving as Blademasters. Much of the Blackrock clan actually joined the modern Horde, the Dark Horde being mostly composed of the Black Tooth Grin clan. There is also a least on Stormreaver ex member(Garona) with connections to the Horde. The Horde also recruited more clan members in expansions like BC and Cata, this isn't even touching the clans from TheExpandedUniverse. Ultimately though, population numbers don't matter much in WoW.

** Admittedly the first edition had a lot of issues. Also had quite a few good ideas, such as Jaina's half elf half sister that Blizzard decided to retcon out, and a lot of the magic items and technological devices were really cool. The second edition is generally an improvement on just about every front, though. But really, the rpg and WoW have two different focuses; the rpg is there to give players the tools to tell a story. WoW is there for people to collect loot. That's not a jab; a lot of people like raiding and pvp and couldn't care less about the story. That's there prerogative and they're the market blizzard is selling to.

** And on a similar vein, whatever happened to Lieutenant Alverold? It was said he was bringing ships to attack Durotar in Vanilla WoW.

** The elves don't actually have GlowingEyes in and on itself. It's a representation of their connection to magic, be it ember coloured eyes for druidic magic, blue for arcane magic or green for fel magic. The only elves who actually seem to have somewhat GlowingEyes are Night Elves, who only have them in a manner cats do - their iris is reflective, as evidenced by the Night Elf from vanilla WoW cinematic. Eyes, glowing thanks to magic, are not restricted to elves either - human mages of great power have them while casting powerful magic. The same thing goes for Dragon Aspects.

* So, according to WoWPedia, Sargeras came across a world being corrupted by the Old Gods and was about to make a Dark Titan from that World-Soul, so he killed the entire world before they could be allowed to be corrupted and form a Dark Titan. However, he was then berated by his fellow Titans for just murdering a planet. Therefore, Sargeras decided to take matters into his own hands by allying with demons in order to kill all of the Titans. He wants to save the Titans from corruption...by killing any Titan that refuses to be be corrupted by him...How does this make ANY sense?!? Shouldn't he be devoting the Burning Legion to fight the Old Gods, THE ONES CAUSING THAT TYPE OF CORRUPTION HE HATES IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?

** ...Since Mists of Pandaria? They've been pretty anti-horde and Pro-alliance since ''long'' before Mists of Pandaria. Ever notice that despite Alliance-aligned races having a lot of openly villainous characters, they're pretty much ''never'' actually working ''with'' the Alliance? Meanwhile the Horde is openly burning down trees and kicking puppies because the warchief says so. Meanwhile the Horde ends up losing characters left and right (Vol'jin, Cairne, Garrosh) and barely any mention is made ''after'' their deaths because they're just gone. Meanwhile, when they go kill alliance characters off... only Varian and Benedictus stuck. (Bolvar is the new Lich King. Magni? Came right back even more important than ever.) And Benedictus was so unimportant to the lore you'd be forgiven if you thought he was made up for Cataclysm. (Seriously I've met alliance players who didn't know who this guy was because he never set foot outside of the Cathedral of Light, and he didn't exist.) The alliance routinely gets PlotArmor whereas the horde ends up dying and are expected to ''stay'' dead, even if they treat some deaths (Vol'jin) as a tragedy the same way Varian's was.

* In Wrath, Saurfang threatened to kill Garrosh if he led the Horde down a similar path to the one Grom followed; a threat Saurfang attempted to follow through on in Mists of Pandaria. Yet in the lead-up to Battle for Azeroth, he never makes any such threat to Sylvanas, even after she'd committed a war crime right in front of him [[EvenEvilHasStandards that made '''Nathanos''', of all people, hesitate]]. Saurfang even [[spoiler: struck an underhanded blow against Malfurion while he was fighting one-on-one with Sylvanas]], even though [[spoiler:he later refused to kill Malfurion because it was "a dishonourable blow"]]. Why didn't Saurfang try to overthrow or kill Sylvanas [[spoiler: or let Malfurion kill her]]?

* In Wrath, Saurfang threatened to kill Garrosh if he led the Horde down a similar path to the one Grom followed; a threat Saurfang attempted to follow through on in Mists of Pandaria. Yet in the lead-up to Battle for Azeroth, he never makes any such threat to Sylvanas, even after she'd committed a war crime right in front of him [[EvenEvilHasStndards that made ''Nathanos'', of all people, hesitate]]. Saurfang even [[spoiler: struck an underhanded blow against Malfurion while he was fighting one-on-one with Sylvanas]], even though [[spoiler:he later refused to kill Malfurion because it was "a dishonourable blow"]]. Why didn't Saurfang try to overthrow or kill Sylvanas [[spoiler: or let Malfurion kill her]]?

* After the defeat of Argus the Unmaker [[spoiler: the imprisonment of Sargeras and the deaths of many members of the Burning Legion]], is the threat really over? Two of its highest-ranking demons (Tichondruis and Mannoroth) weren't killed in the Twisting Nether, so they could return. Not to mention the fact that the demons could do their dimension-hopping trick with a backup body (like Archimonde did at the end of Warlords). On that note, is it possible a remnant of the Burning Legion could return as a future threat? Maybe even still try to carry out Sargeras' plan?

** I haven't read the book(nor will I, I refuse to read anything by Knaak after war of the ancients), one could posit that Varian's super speed and agility are actually handicaps; he isn't used to moving that fast, isn't used to his body having those capabilities, so he's making mistakes. I'd throw out the analogy to [[ForgottenRealms Drizzt Do'Urden]] trying to use super speed braces and finding that they made his swings too fast to control and thus incredibly straight and predictable. Then again, I'm probably giving Knaak way too much credit with that one.

*** They didn't know how far off the deepend Azshara had gone until she confronted Farondis a second time. Remember that even when the Legion was pouring down, most Kaldorei still didn't think Azshara was responsible because she was so beloved. Farondis knew, but the rest didn't and they got dragged down with him still believing Azshara was their benevolent ruler.

** There's still fighting on Azeroth and invading Argus didn't stop their operations. The Alliance and Horde don't really have anybody left to send post-Broken Shore and we still Legion ships still deploying to Azeroth as we quest through Argus.

*** They didn't know how far off the deepend Azshara had gone until she confronted Farondis a second time. Remember that even when the Legion was pouring down, most Kaldorei still didn't think Azshara was responsible because she was so beloved. Farondis knew, but the rest didn't, but they got dragged down with him still believing Azshara was their benevolent ruler.

** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siW7PQtCq_8#t=93 This song about]] [[DefenseOfTheAncients another Faceless]] says it best: one part of a face does not constitute a face.