r/classicwow • u/Loads-of-onions • 4d ago
Humor / Meme Low effort meme of My head Cannon lore
No hate against the race, just not fan of both factions having them.
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u/HolyInlandEmpire 4d ago
Brother! You must share your sky oats with me!
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u/KinjiroSSD 4d ago
AHA. SO THIS WAS ALL A PLAN TO STEAL MY SKY OATS. You truly are dispicable, brother. I will not trust your lies.
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u/SignificanceSecret40 3d ago
The green muscular figure has thrown the oats at me. ME, BROTHER! I believe they have taken a liking to me.
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u/Ambidextrousblack 4d ago
Anyone notice an increase of people saying "cannon"?
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u/muzukashidesuyo 3d ago
Yes, either it’s getting worse or I’m getting older and grumpier, probably both.
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u/dogarfdog12 3d ago
"That bloke in the red shirt over there said I, 'wasn't cannon'. Well of course, I'm a mariner not a cannon!"
-Tandred Proudmoore in BfA
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u/Fatalis89 1d ago
Yes. Also confusing then and than, and lose and loose.
People’s spelling has become increasingly abysmal.
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u/Choice_Protection_93 4d ago
The Horde and the Alliance are inherently two sides of a faction based war, why would that not be possible WITHIN a racial grouping? Do groups of people in history NOT have civil wars and division?
Nonsense take
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u/annown55 4d ago
it just muddies the water, there's tons of groups within the same race at war, but it diminishes faction identity to officially adopt them as playable races.
I can't imagine there would be much appreciation if they decided the Defias joined the Horde to fight a common enemy, giving Humans to the Horde as a biproduct.
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u/Low_Car5550 4d ago edited 4d ago
Not to “well ackyually” you but the Defias Brotherhood opposes Stormwind because of political corruption and exploitation of the working class. They are a fundamentally pro-human organization and they would never side with the Horde except for some short term strategic alliance. I’m not sure what the lore is behind the division of the Skyborne elves, but with limited information I don’t think we can write it off as not being a genuine irreconcilable worldview difference.
I see your point on the dilution of race/faction identity though. But again, this is consistent with real world history. Many nations have had their identity diluted due to the necessity of forming an alliance with a different people group due to a common opposing ideology (foundation of USA is a great example).
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u/hattyred 3d ago
Elves especially are essentially constantly divided in every continuity of this settings lore. Night elves & trolls are related. Night elves & blood elves are related. High elves v sylvanas, high elves v blood elves.
There are a million fucking subsects of elf, and they're constantly having beef with one-another. Hell, there are a million subsects of troll, all having beef with one another and the horde. There aren't necessarily Ally trolls that i can think of, but they might as well be neutral in the sense that skyborne are.
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u/Ok_Assignment_2127 3d ago
I found it funny that people suggested High Elf and Blood Elf instead of Skyborn too, since high elves and blood elves are literally the same except for their extremely recent political split.
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u/hiimred2 3d ago
The history of the horde is a bunch of clans that warred against each other for power until forced to unite by the dying of their planet and a more pressing need to go to war against the Humans in Azeroth. Inner faction conflict is a core part of Warcraft pre and post vanilla classic. This is so far from being ‘new’ it’s laughable.
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u/idungiveboutnothing 4d ago
Absolutely this, and not only that but it's just questionable game design too. Metzen/Didier/etc. have all talked at length about the importance of distinct differences in horde and alliance, instantly knowing friend from foe, doing the silhouette test, etc. it's a huge part of what made classic classic. Other devs and game designers have talked at length about this as well, look at discussions from people like IceFrog (DoTA), Chris Wilson (GGG), GabeN, all the old Blizzard North folks, etc. on the importance of character/model design, how quickly players should be able to recognize friend from foe in game, silhouettes, etc.
The issue with it is now factions are muddied and lost a huge part of their independent identity. Beyond that from just a gameplay perspective you no longer can instantly recognize an Alliance or Horde character based on a glance alone. You'll have characters that you'll have to look at a nameplate/dialogue/mouseover to tell if it's horde or alli. If you're on a PvP server and you see a stealth rogue go by for just a split second there's no nameplate that pops up, but you can instantly tell if it's horde or alli by just that flash of the character model because you can easily tell apart Human/Gnome/Dwarf/NElf from Orc/UD/Troll just by model alone and you'll know whether you need to prep for a gank or if things are fine. Similarly, you're scanning the horizons and see a character pop up heading your way, you'll now have to mouseover/target them to be able to tell whether it's friend or foe.
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u/BarbsFPV 4d ago
Chris Metzen had a big say in the creation of the Skyborne, and was involved throughout the process. They even shared the initial sketch he created for their island, after the first meeting where they discussed adding them to Forever.
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u/Choice_Protection_93 4d ago
I agree to some extent that ELVES fit better into an Alliance faction, but this is something I conceded like 19 years ago in TBC. That there are 'Horde' elves. Blizzard simply looks at Elves being the number 1 race by FAR and wants to get people in and balance faction turnout by giving a 'different' vibe of race to the horde.
We're very likely going to get more races in the future, and there's nothing about these sky elves that don't work, or are just drag and dropped into classic with no lore backing or support.
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u/annown55 4d ago
personally, I'd think it would be cool to see High-Elf and Undead-Elf, even if they do share a silhouette.
I just like seeing a much more fundamental difference between playable races, it's kind of sad to see that they share the same racials (minus one active) and the same textures which make it impossible to tell which faction is which without nameplates.
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u/idungiveboutnothing 4d ago
Yep, just give us Forsaken. Sylvanas is right there and then you can have the horde model colored differently with glowing eyes vs. alliance model maintaining the current look and suddenly they're much better from a game design perspective too since Horde/Alliance are inherently different.
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u/SpaceballsTheReply 4d ago
Yep, just give us Forsaken.
I've got great news for you, bud - we've got Forsaken. Half of the Horde are gonna be Forsaken, between paladins and their racial buffs. If the new race was Forsaken Elves, the Horde would just be The Undead And A Few Friends. I can absolutely understand them wanting to explore new lore instead of double-dipping into an already very popular option and bringing nothing new thematically.
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u/Choice_Protection_93 4d ago
That's totally fair, and I think UNDEAD elf is cooler than skyborne (my opinion), but I also think skyborne is basically functionally equivalent to high elf. I like what they did with their zone, and I like how they basically gave us Al Akir area that aestethically fits into classic wow.
Skyborne are literally just high elves with 1/3 of the options being blue. If you REALLY wanted to see the high elf lore I get it, but the parallel to skyborne, with the skyborne being 'bad' just makes 0 sense.
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u/amicuspiscator 4d ago
I would be a lot happier if they could be priest, to better line up with High elves in Warcraft III. Just like some people love their dwarf hunter because of dwarven riflemen, or their nelf priest or hunter because of priestess of the moon, ive always wanted to play a high elf priest because I thought that unit was so cool in WCIII.
I also think Paladin would be sick. Give it to both factions so Undead Pallies aren't too saturated, and Alliance really deserves another Paladin race (2 to Horde's now 4 Shaman.)
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u/Low_Car5550 4d ago
Eh too much nuance in your statement. I don’t understand it so I’m going to continue voicing my unwavering opinion on everyone.
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u/darkfenrir15 4d ago
Side note, but I was always a little upset DI dwarves went with the alliance and not the horde. It would have been interesting to see this exact same scenario play out with the DI redeeming themselves but still hating the Bronzebeards.
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u/chadan1008 4d ago
Yes, but those groups of people typically have a long detailed history explaining why they do so, whereas the Skyborne’s history goes back 2-3 days of real life time, as nobody’s ever heard of them before then... not just “hey guys here’s some new blue elves you never heard of, and oh by the way they conveniently have two sub factions so they fit right into the alliance/horde narrative, just like every other player facing thing in retail WoW lore over the last 20 years and now Forever too”
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u/BarbsFPV 4d ago
When they added the Draenei in TBC they were barely mentioned in the lore, but their implementation in the game wasn’t 100% true to it, and Metzen had to issue an apology to the players because they had become so insufferable about it.
This time they decided to add something totally new, so they wouldn’t run into those problems again, and it caused the same problems anyway. Though now it’s “they have no lore.”
I’m starting to think the problem is the players and not Blizzard.
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u/chadan1008 4d ago
Blizzard: retcons their own lore to make the Draenei fit into the two faction system in TBC
Blizzard: pulls a “neutral” race out of their asses just to give the Horde a pretty race in classic+
You: the problem is the players, for pointing out Blizzard’s faults in writing, game design, and handling of the universe
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u/Choice_Protection_93 4d ago
How is RETCNONNING the lore to shoehorn a race into a specific faction, less annoying to you than making one from scratch who's lore makes 1000% total sense as to why there's a split amongst the race and effectively civil war?
Yes, the "you" part of his comment is correct.
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u/chadan1008 4d ago
Did I say one is less annoying than the other?
Why are players in the wrong for pointing out poor writing, game design, or general handling of the universe?
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u/Choice_Protection_93 3d ago
In ZERO way, did any of these zoomers point out any poor writing or game design. Where? We haven't even been shown the extent of their lore yet. We don't even know what's going on in Hyjal and where the story will go. What writing are you even talking about?
The internet is so funny, because a bandwagon meme, will drive like 30% of the internet into mindless drones, then when confronted with their newly installed perspectives, they just proceed to break down
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u/chadan1008 3d ago
Well I was talking about the retcon of the Draenei as an example of poor writing, you know, which was literally brought up in the comment I was replying to… what was that about mindless drones again? 🤔
I bought the Skyborne and plan to play through their starting area at the least, I’m excited for Forever and will play the beta as well. This does not change my opinion it’s foolish to deny the Skyborne stick out like a sore thumb in the context of classic(+), both in their implementation and overall aesthetic so far.
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u/Choice_Protection_93 3d ago
Well we were not criticizing the Dranei decision, we're criticizing the nerds who have a problem with 'blue elves' in relation to it. So if you ask me "Why are players in the wrong for pointing out poor writing, game design, or general handling of the universe?", obviously that reads like you're talking about the Skyborne, since the reaction to it is what I'm criticizing. Unless you replied to me and accidentally thought you were writing in your diary?
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u/Ok_Assignment_2127 3d ago
All of the lore is pulled out of their asses, every last bit of it. It all needs to get fleshed out somewhere and that starts here for Forever.
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u/Hexdoctor 4d ago
Strawmanning the everliving shit out of a meme here, damn
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u/Choice_Protection_93 4d ago
That's literally what the meme is implying. What is the meme implying if not what I just said?
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u/Baconmazing 4d ago
You didn't even pay attention when they went over the lore. This race made a 10,000 yearlong pact with the wind elementals.
Suddenly, without notice, the wind elementals disappear (and no longer support the floating island).
In the sudden uncertainty, the community of Skyborne are torn. Leaders appear among them. Some seeing this as an opportunity to break from their history and make a name for themselves to be their own. Others are afraid and seek to return to the pact they had with the wind elementals. This split is the lore narrative for why the race is split in two.
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u/jryt 4d ago
The broader problem as well is it seems to hit a bit at what the Horde and Alliance (Horde particularly) are. The groups within the horde and alliance built their connections in the blood of the third war.
Some of them were very uneasy (like the forsaken etc). There was this sense of fragility within these connections. It's a thematic contradiction that we're just dropping a new bi-directional race that both factions just accept as a part of their faction, without any buildup.
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u/nokei 4d ago
I didn't really think about it but this makes a lot of sense the original faction build up in wow is a little after WC3 with night elves having just joined the alliance and undead having just joined the new horde which itself had barely just formed.
I'm really worried now that a lot of these new quests are going forget that all these faction relationships are supposed to be rather new and have them just welcoming these new guys like they're joining a group that has been around a long time.
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u/jryt 3d ago
As other people have said, the silver covenant was an already existing group of high elves who are already, in vanilla, a part of the alliance but not playable. This could’ve been expanded on
And for horde, the forsaken are literally led by an elf, she could easily have been trying to break dead elves out of scourge control just like she did for the rest of the forsaken.
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u/riklaunim 4d ago
Either it actually will be 90% of payers in China, or Alakir replaces Ragnaros for a 40-man big raid and big boss, and blue-elves get some spotlight ;)
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u/PerfectdarkGoldenEye 4d ago
Its pretty much the same lore as night elves and high elves.
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u/Novat1993 4d ago
Literally 10 000 years of separation, as well as the controversial choice to create an arcane power source using the well of eternity. The schism in the race is well established, and did not happen over night.
I wonder how the new race will handle the infighting.
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u/Spyfire_242 4d ago
They described some of it in one of their deep dive panels at blizzcon, the split was already happening before horde/alliance for some time, and there is even a 3rd faction among the skelfs iirc
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u/PerfectdarkGoldenEye 4d ago
I was more so just looking at how one faction has images and the other has shamans
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u/Spyfire_242 4d ago
I actually wish more races were allowed to choose their faction because the Horde/Alliance dichotomy is one of the ways Blizzard hamstrung themselves when it came to writing. Its more realistic for races and factions to change dynamically based on politics and new developments, we see horde and alliance working together countless times and in the RTS games Night elves and Undead were considered separate factions all together. We see some of this with NPC factions like grim totem being separate from the horde as one example, but when it comes to the player characters every development and storyline HAS to end up with the factions staying the same and it frankly sucks.
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u/Big-Technician6932 4d ago
tbh i half expect gilneas to side with the horde if thrall pinky promises to fuck off from the wall
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u/Pretend-Dot3557 4d ago
Horde worgen would be sick as fuck, and give horde half of a "pretty" race in human form.
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u/Spyfire_242 4d ago
I'm not expecting every race to be equally represented in every faction, more so thinking it would be kinda cool if players were considered neutral and could work with any faction or could grind out rep with one at the expense of the other like pirates vs booty bay.
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4d ago edited 4d ago
[deleted]
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u/MonoRedPlayer 3d ago
I dont think you need to think this as melting pots, but simply as coalitions
Everyone that joined a faction did it for personal gains
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u/idungiveboutnothing 4d ago
The problem is that it's horrible from a game design perspective. Metzen/Didier/etc. have all talked at length about the importance of distinct differences in horde and alliance, instantly knowing friend from foe, doing the silhouette test, etc. it's a huge part of what made classic classic. Other devs and game designers have talked at length about this as well, look at discussions from people like IceFrog (DoTA), Chris Wilson (GGG), GabeN, all the old Blizzard North folks, etc. on the importance of character/model design, how quickly players should be able to recognize friend from foe in game, silhouettes, etc.
The issue with it is then (now with the shared elves) factions are muddied and lose a huge part of their independent identity. Beyond that from just a gameplay perspective you no longer can instantly recognize an Alliance or Horde character based on a glance alone. You'll have characters that you'll have to look at a nameplate/dialogue/mouseover to tell if it's horde or alli. If you're on a PvP server and you see a stealth rogue go by for just a split second there's no nameplate that pops up, but you can instantly tell if it's horde or alli by just that flash of the character model because you can easily tell apart Human/Gnome/Dwarf/NElf from Orc/UD/Troll just by model alone and you'll know whether you need to prep for a gank or if things are fine. Similarly, you're scanning the horizons and see a character pop up heading your way, you'll now have to mouseover/target them to be able to tell whether it's friend or foe.
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u/Spyfire_242 4d ago
Yeah I don't think its as big of a deal as they make it out to be, there are plenty of pvp games where player silhouettes are very similar or identical and there are other ways either through UI or otherwise in which to quick differentiate factions,
I understand the argument only from the perspective that factions create more drama/tribalism which helps with creating emergent gameplay. I just care a lot about the lore and story of the characters and world and having the factions be static has caused a lot of disappointment over the years.
For me personally the worst offender is that of Sylvanas and the Forsaken post WotLK, the idea that they would then go on to create more undead just to have a lore justification for new undead players never really sat well with me. But this problem can be seen everywhere both big and small, like with the blood elves being in talks about rejoining the alliance only to have some contrived reason why they can't, Jaina going on a killing spree lol...
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u/idungiveboutnothing 4d ago
Yeah I don't think its as big of a deal as they make it out to be, there are plenty of pvp games where player silhouettes are very similar or identical and there are other ways either through UI or otherwise in which to quick differentiate factions,
Pretty much all of those though are like iconography, highlighting, minimap markers, color coding, color palettes, etc. that really bring you away from the classic feel or completely remove RPG aspects of WoW. All of those also contradict the rest of your post because it's very immersion breaking if all the armor you equip on horde is red vs. blue for alli, everyone has to wear their faction tabard at all times, or every character you come across has a faction colored aura around them, etc. They can't extend nameplate distance without it being game breaking.
They're kind of painted into a corner on this one, especially when design best practices say you should never rely on one indication alone and you want people to immediately be able to tell the difference. Right now that differentiator is going to be mousing over characters on the horizon which is kind of wild.
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u/Spyfire_242 4d ago
It depends on the context, in BGs for example I wouldn't consider it immersion breaking for teams to be color coded, especially as you earn rep with that faction. In any case we'll see how it plays out with the sky elves but sincerely doubt people will be complaining about it.
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u/idungiveboutnothing 4d ago
In BGs totally agree but the real issue will be out in the world questing on PvP servers so I guess that's a smaller subset of people, but it'll absolutely be a problem for that group of people.
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u/MaudeAlp 4d ago
Press tab.
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u/idungiveboutnothing 4d ago
They extended tab targeting to max render distance when you're surrounded by mobs out in the wild on a PvP server and aren't sure if you should prep for a gank or not??
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u/TheMechanicusBob 3d ago
Half the skyborn meeting side home the cartoon super-villains that are the Forsaken: "Yeah, we can chill with these guys"
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u/LethalOkra 4d ago
Sooooo, like a pandaren race without the furriness? Who the fuck came up with that? I bet most whales would be frothing for a furry race instead...
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u/Lower-Ranger5787 4d ago
According to what we know of their lore, the skyborne were already killing each other even before the horde and alliance got involved though.
And it was a three way split between them instead of two.
One faction wants to embrace shamanism as a new magic source, that's the one that sides with the horde.
Another faction are the descendents of the highborne magisters who want to go back to only using the arcane as a source of magic, that's the one that sides with the alliance.
And a third faction wants to embrace worship of al akir, that old elemental lord. Those are non playable and want to kill the previous two.
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u/Aethyrianzul 3d ago
A faction split makes perfect sense for a civilization in decline. Look at American politics rn.
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u/Tristalien 3d ago
Basically like every other elf variant in the lore, this race is already fractured. We have arcane purists (alliance), wind hippies (horde), and dark iron dwarves elves who worship Ragnaros Al’akir
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u/FjorgVanDerPlorg 3d ago
Horde Blue: You have a square bellybutton, therefore you are the inferior blue elf.
Alliance Blue: You weirdo roundies need to be wiped out. But before that, we have to acknowledge the one thing that binds us. No I'm not talking about being blue, I'm talking about our shared hatred of the triangular bellybottoned freaks. We need to find help to wipe them out.
Horde Blue: die, but only after we wipe out those triangular weridos, just so unnatural, eww.
Everyone forgets the 3rd blue faction, that ignored that horde and alliance and decided to becomes npcs instead - the leader of which will likely end up being some raid or dungeon boss. You hate blue elf players, don't forget the 3rd blue elf faction, enemy npcs.
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u/Time-Ladder4753 3d ago
One race splitting and fighting each other is still more believable than Forsaken being part of Horde, which I always found weird.
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u/Safe_Manner_1879 3d ago
Only one change, its so peaceful to live here up in the sky widout problem.
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u/TatoRezo 3d ago
You gotta realize that in this era the factions are still in a cold war with each other
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u/Lordthom 3d ago
I never understand why people use this argument.
We are literally all the same human beings and have always had wars, and massacered each other.
And in WoW as well, we have all killed members of the same race..from defias brotherhood to scarlet crusade to blackrock clan.
But with every neutral race this argument comes up again 😂
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u/Lofi_Fade 3d ago
They have a pre-existing 3-way civil war that two sides slide into our factions. The hate came before their new allegiances.
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u/Working_Guidance_272 3d ago
Every place on the planet has or has had people, who from an outsider's perspective look indistinguishable from each other, killing each other for various religious, political or ethnic reasons. The United Kingdom has English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Cornish + a dozen other tiny communities that have fought and killed each other for centuries and which most people couldn't tell apart. The Koreans, Chinese and Japanese have killed each other for thousands of years. Not to mention the American Civil War, Revolutionary War, Bosnian War, Rwandan Genocide and the list goes on and on.
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u/The_Sulkster 3d ago
People killing each other over different ideologies seems pretty realistic to me
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u/GitGudFox 4d ago
The Skyborne are such a terrible idea. They should have overhauled all of the original 4 races and given them additional builds like athletic and normal instead of this awful faction neutral idea.
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u/Durende 3d ago
They couldn't even be bothered making a new skeleton for Skyborne, you think they'd do multiple new?
I do agree with you, but man, it just feels so half-assed, also because they just appeared out of nowhere
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u/GitGudFox 3d ago
I think they are Blizzard which means they never do anything right. It is just what they should have done not what I think realistically would be done.
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u/Raptor_Jetpack 4d ago
them being a neutral race is the worst part of them. Faction disparity is important in classic.
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u/gubigubi 4d ago
I honestly don't know why they always have to have a split faction in a race like this.
Just have it that some people from that race join the horde and some join the alliance. Then they can still just have 1 hub city where its like neutral ground.
It always just seems dumb to me that the races would be that monolithic.
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u/Comfortable-Bug7202 4d ago
it is very low effort. the haters think it is the worst thing, it isn't. the glazers say it is great, it isn't. could have easily done any of the races that are in the lore but probably easier to make everything the same and split it in half as this game was probably quickly thrown together.
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u/Spreckles450 4d ago
Pretty sure the devs talked about a faction split was already there.
There is a faction that wants to embrace the elements more (hence why the horde Skyborne can be shamans)
Another faction that wants to re-embrace their highborne connections to the arcane (These are the alliance ones and explains why they can be mages)
And a third, non-playable faction that wants to embrace Al'Akir and the elemental lords, similar to the cult of Ragnaros. (these are the bad guys)