Just an Idea: Tales of Warcraft

"Tauren it up!" by Samwise Didier. Taken from BlizzGame.

There's been a lot of ideas for Warcraft floating around my head. As a fan of the series, you tend to look at certain parts of its narrative and things like me and ask yourself "how I would've done that". That's especially the case when you're not fond of the current direction the franchise has unfortunately taken under the leadership of those who have no passion or care for it. Although you might be delighted to see that more and more people are started to realize how bad things have actually become, it doesn't really matter at this point in time.

It's too late at point, and there's no way current Blizzard would be able to properly solve multitude of story/lore problems of Warcraft that became worse ever since Chris Metzen was gone and Steve Danuser took over the narrative. That leaves old fans of the series with only one option: fanfiction. Not the current official one, or typical cringe low quality material that's usually associated with the term nowadays. No, something that tries to be much better.

Back to Basics.

Enter the Tales of Warcraft — my vision of Warcraft continuity with its canon that ignores whatever Blizzard are trying to "create" nowadays. In this aspect, the idea is to combine all the best from various materials across multiple iterations of canon: from RTS games and RPG material to some WoW & Chronicle material. No Danuser stuff! In other words, cherry picking all the things I like in an attempt to combine them into something worthwhile.

One of my goals for creating something like this would've been to achieve proper continuity. That's something Blizzard always ultimately failed to reach, willingly or not. While it might be considered "cheating" to attempt such a thing from clear slate as they never really had such an option, which I think isn't really true. Developers had chances to properly kick off World of Warcraft by sticking to Warcraft 3's lore or not let "Nathanos" destroy original intent of Chronicles.

Besides, I wouldn't want to potentially mess up specific iteration of Warcraft's canon. More I thought about it, more I realized that I have very low chances to get it right by using The Frozen Throne or World of Warcraft: Classic as a starting point. It's not impossible and would definitely make things easier, but I just don't trust myself. Starting "fresh" seems more safe and better to me in the long run.

Boring Variety.

Although I don't really have anything specific in mind, I would try to provide an example of how I would've approached it via Human kingdoms of Azeroth. For longest time current canon tended to just simplify them into their Warcraft 3 portrayal and brought in more variety to Dalaran, Gilneas & Kul Tiras only when they started to play higher role in the expansions. Stromgarde and Alterac really suffered from that by becoming pretty much nonexistent in terms of scale and their position in universe.

My solution to this would be to not only tinker with the scale and forms of Eastern Kingdoms and other known continents, but make sure that each Human kingdom is unique and starts out on its own. Great way to address that would be focusing on their architecture and assign each existing take on Alliance's human structures to each kingdom: from Orcs & Humans to Wrath of the Lich King. I would've also followed their colors from Warcraft 2 (which means white/silver Lordaeron and original flag of Gilneas):

• Change the territory of each kingdom, notable reducing the sizes of Lordaeron.

• Stormwind keeps blue as their color with a mix of Orcs & Humans and Warcraft 2 styles.

• Stromgarde keeps red as their color with Warcraft 2 style.

• Lordaeron keeps while/silver as their color with Warcraft 3 style.

• Dalaran keeps purple as their color with Warcraft 1-3 and Wrath of the Lich King styles.

• Gilneas keeps black as their color with Warcraft 2 and Cataclysm styles.

• Kul Tiras keeps green as their color with Warcraft 2 and Battle for Azeroth styles.

• Alterac keeps orange as their color with Warcraft 2 and Wrath of the Lich King styles.

Valiance Keep Screenshot (Inspiration for Alterac). Taken from Wowpedia.

What does it mean? For example, forces of Stormwind's designs would've be based mostly on Human units from the first game while some buildings would be closer to Stromgarde due to kingdom's origins and its restoration after the Second War. Alterac's architecture would lean more into the style of Alliance structures from Wrath of the Lich King with armor being somewhere between that and Warcraft 2. Variety of appearances amongst the mages of Kirin Tor seems pretty self-explanatory to me.

I hope that's a great example of what kind of treatment I would've implied to the franchise. This is a task of enormous proportion, which is the most likely reason why this idea would live solely as a concept and idea instead of a something even closely resembling an actual creation of some kind... However, what that creation would've been? Some kind of wiki? Amateurish short stories? Probably, but there's another angle to all of this.

Playing the Tale.

Even though I'm not usually not as familiar with community projects of various games as I probably should be, it doesn't mean that the possibility of making a map or mod of my own didn't interest me. In fact, Tales of Warcraft started to take shape in my weird mind mostly because of that. Key element of that is, of course, Warcraft 3. As you can see at "Hidden Treasures of The Frozen Throne", its custom campaigns & total conversion somewhat interested me. Latter in particular, as an idea of getting a lite game client with specific campaign in it sounds like of neat.

However, that's likely requires too much work and I'm not even considering various patches of the game! So yeah, custom campaigns... of what kind? Well, the ambitious ones. Each "tale" would've focused on specific game genre, offering a unique gameplay experiece. Probably it would've been also something quite basic and simple in terms of systems and such. Even if that somehow would've became a team project. 

Tales of Warcraft's campaigns would've covered the time period between its versions of The Frozen Throne and World of Warcraft, focusing on short scale stories in various corners of the world. Less of a known and established heroes of the franchise and more about humble original characters. As I mentioned before, I have only rough concepts in my head for such stories:

• One of the last orcish Death Knight awakens after years of slumber in his hideout. His soul was drifting in the Shadowlands when he start to sense many great changes on Azeroth, before realize that its time to return to mortal world. After witnessing many of them firsthand, he goes into degrated kingdom of Alterac in search of answers for his future plans. He's looking for a Valley that serves as a sanctuary to only known orcish clan in this part of Azeroth.
  Gameplay & Genre Inspiration: Diablo, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Bastion.

• Many years have passed since Sons of Lothar destroyed the Dark Portal, and stayed in the Dying World. They've accepted their fate, but latest events brought many changes and hope. From the reports of new rising force in Outland and failed attempt to get in contact with a group of "high elves" to increasing silence from the leaders of Alliance Expedition after the return of its two briefly lost leaders and rumours of a new ancient ally. That's where begins a story of a human footman and elven ranger that would meet a few unlikely companions on their jourley.
  Gameplay & Genre Inspiration: Planescape Torment, Dungeon Siege.

• In an attempt to strike fear within the ranks of Night Elves, Tichondrius ordered Lord Banehollow to brainwash captured defenders of Kalimdor and "recruit" them as new Death Knights of the Scourge. Some of them remained with the last groups of dark forces hidden in Felwood before Lich King started to lose his power. When cursed night elves returned their freedom, many of them chosen a radical way out of such desecration. But one of them decides to take a path of vengeance against the master of Jaedenar for his crimes against kaldorei.
  Gameplay & Genre Inspiration: Rune, Gothic, Fable: The Lost Chapter.

• Residents of Wandering Isle were fascinated by the stories they've heard from returning brewmasters about orcs, demons and many conflicts between various factions of Azeroth. After learning about the events on Mount Hyjal, it becomes appeared that their relatives from the continent must learn about recently ended Third War. That's when they decide to send a young pandaren on his first big adventure that would lead him to discover a new threat to Pandaria.
  Gameplay & Genre Inspiration: The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango.

Just stories of a somewhat small scale for each known region within Warcraft universe. Even though I struggle to come up with something for Northrend, I had ideas for more campaigns that take inspiration from other games & genres within Warcraft 3's World Editor. I even had an idea for a multiplayer map taking place in the midst of Third War inspired by previously mentioned Rune and Heretic 2. That's the main thing for me in this segment of Tales of Warcraft, really: showcase what amazing things can be done while sticking to the original visual style of Warcraft 3 that would highlight the best this game has to offer in terms of community creations.

However, this is likely to remain as another unrealized idea of mine for multiple reasons. Scope and ambition surrounding Tales of Warcraft are too huge for one person to handle. I would need to gather team of enthusiats for it, especially considering my lack of experience with World Editor besides messing around the terrian a few years ago. That's also one of the reasons why I feel like I would've been more a... I don't know, director? Producer? Besides, who would even want to follow a vision of a dork like me? Especially when I would take it very serious and most likely stick to my vision exclusively, making me too stubborn and hard to discuss ideas with no matter how good or bad they are.