Warcraft 3 revisit

As part of my quest to finish all the games in my backlog (there are many),  I decided on a whim two weeks ago to pick up Warcraft 3 again and finish its expansion The Frozen Throne for good. I had never truly finished the expansion because I had cheated on the last mission (the shame) and didn’t complete the bonus campaign that was unavailable at the time so it was on my to-do list to get back to this game. So I redid the entirety of the two game and expansion and I’m now finished. I could have done only the expansion but I was curious to see the entire story again and see how it would fit with WoW and if there was any plot points that was still unresolved after all these years.

Instead of doing a long and detailed post about it, I’ll just lay down my notes in bullet point form. WoW lore nerds out there can feel free to answer a few of my questions. I know it’s old stuff but I’ll still call spoiler alert just in case.

Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos

• Uther is still the man. I wish there was more of him in WoW and that his back story was explored more.
• Arthas reminds us all why nobility needs to disappear forever.
• Muradin Bronzebeard death at the end of the first act should have been final. The story about how he was just wounded in Wotlk seems so contrived now. Muradin should have stayed dead.
• Ner’zhul and Kel’thuzad had obviously been working for a long time on creating the Scourge and cult of the Damned but the back story has little exposition both in Wc3 and WoW. I’m thinking there’s potential here especially given the Scourge origins with the Burning Legion.
• For a city that has been razed by Archimonde, Dalaran shows very little damage in Wotlk.
• Mannoroth and Grom Hellscream part needs more than just a statue in Orgrimmar and a little spot in Ashenvale.
• In fact the whole new horde vs old horde needs to be revisited especially given Garrosh recent doings. We saw some of it around Blackrock mountain but what happened to the old clans like the Blacktooth or Stormreaver? They brought back the Dragonmaw in Cataclysm, bring back the old horde!
• So I still cannot care about the Night elves campaign. Archimonde bites it, pretty much all there is to it.
• General comment: the maps. It’s funny to see the maps not line up with what we know in WoW right now.

Warcraft 3: The frozen throne

• Ok, so Blizzard was obviously further ahead in WoW development when they released this game. The maps are now pretty accurate and there’s some missions that are obviously about setting up the world for WoW. In retrospect, Reign of chaos was mostly about closing the older game events and Frozen throne was about WoW.
• I love how the first two campaigns are pretty much setting up the entire story of Burning crusade. The Blood elves campaign is all about preparing WoW first expansion which tells me that Blizzard had a pretty good idea of what Burning Crusade was going to be about. To a certain extent, you can see the rough draft of Wotlk in the undead campaign too.
• Tomb of Sargeras! When are we going to go there? There’s so much lore associated with it and Sargeras I can’t believe there’s not a raid there yet. The place screams “Make me a raid!”.
• Guldan! WoW needs more Guldan, also, bring back Orgrim Doomhammer while you’re at it.
• Maiev is insane. Like mass murderer insane.
• Replaying this after Burning crusade makes Kael looks much better now and a lot less of a douche. The guy was literally handed the worst hand ever and had to do deal with an impossible situation.
• So Illidan was mostly a victim of his own poor choices. You can see he wants to do right but his addiction to magic gets the better of him every single time. It doesn’t excuse his choices but it explains how he got the point where he is in BC.
• Speaking of BC, the story was horribly handled in that expansion. Blizzard admitted to it after the fact but there was a great story to be exploited there and they botched it. Not proud of ya Blizz.
• I love how the entire point of the Sylvanas storyline is setting up the Forsakens for WoW.
• Marshall Garithos. I know he died but I don’t think he’s even mentioned in WoW. For someone who had such an influence on why things happened, he should be mentioned again. How does the Alliance view him for example?
• The first glimpse of the old gods. Foreshadowing for the win!
• Arthas needs to learn to stop picking up magic items encased in ice. Never leads to good.

If I was to sum up the experience I’d say I wish we could see more of the old games in WoW and get back to certain critical events. Caverns of Time was nice but there’s still a lot to be said there. Also, the Burning legion and Outland needs to come back. There’s still much unresolved and I don’t believe Kil’jaeden just gave up.

Make it happen Blizz!

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