Grakor Grumbles: Custom Server Lore

[Grakor456]

So the subject of custom server lore came up during the last Meet and Greet. I thought I'd do a little ramble on the subject as well as pose something of a dilemma that I'm faced with.

The mission statement for CotH is to, for better or for worse, adhere to relatively Blizz-like lore for the purposes of RP. This allows for a number of advantages, particularly in easing new players into RP here on CotH if they are familiar with canon WoW lore. There are other servers that make use of heavy custom lore, and we have neither the desire nor the resources to attempt to compete with these servers on that level.

Nonetheless, I've come to an impasse when it comes to Blizzard lore. Before I've never had any particular desire to change large segments of WoW lore. And then Cataclysm and Mists happened. For those of you who have not paid attention to the meta-plot of WoW for these two expansions or haven't heard me rant on it: I will be charitable and say that the meta-plot is...not very good.

Now, there's a lot of very...not good lore that we just can't do anything about without rewriting the expansions, particularly regarding the lore figure arcs. No matter what, Garrosh is going to go through his stage of slowly improving to be a leader, only to undergo an unprovoked heel turn for Mists. Jaina will shack up with a dragon, become inexplicably racist, and declare Dalaran Alliance. Thrall marries a woman with no personality solely so the plot gods can give him a kid. Varian becomes the flawless king who teaches the considerably older Tyrande the value of patience.

We can't do anything about that without rewriting things, which can make things confusing for new players coming in. What we potentially could do, though, is control the tones of our own events and make additions that make the lore more nuanced than it currently is. We already make -additions- to lore, in a sense, through new areas added to the game. The way that we control events and spin our stories can make improvements without necessarily altering what is already there. Examples:

- Running events to make orcs and undead morally lighter than the current expansions paint them as (seriously, Cata and Mists turned them into puppy-strangling maniacs.)

- On the subject of the Forsaken, provide clearer justification for the invasion of Gilneas. It's an event that has no logical justification, and it really needs some since it's the entire reason Gilneas joins the Alliance.

- Running events to make the Alliance more morally grey and flawed than the pure noblebright that they ended up being painted as.

- Taking races that have been ignored in canon lore (belves and draenei especially) and making them a bit more relevant.

- Taking lore figures that have been shelved by Blizzard and making them a bit more active (for example: Nazgrel, Trollbane, Rexxar, etc.)

I'm sure other ideas can be given as well.

The question I have then is how much would this fit within people's desires for more custom lore, and would they like to see things like this?

[Harmonic]

Yes please.

[Maulbane]

I think the threat of players finding it harder to acclimate may be a bit overestimated when it comes to custom lore. CotH already has had many stances that contradicted WoW's ingame lore, and all of them were for the better. We really don't have to be at the whims of the uh, the really great and super good writing team behind WoW, any more than we feel we have to. Peons are required to wait a month and have an approved profile before getting gruntship, which is essentially the average, normal rank of the server - so is it really going to hurt them to have to perform a minimum of research to find out that "x incredibly stupid thing that should never have happened even ironically" didn't actually happen, and was replaced by something not only more interesting, but more conducive to RP? It seems that, if we tidied up the server lore section on the wiki a bit, we'd have a great way to give new players the "cliffnotes' of stuff we changed.

The Sin'sholai, the Retaking of Stromgarde & Gnomeregan, were honestly the best times this server ever had, and I don't remember a single player being worried about lore incongruency then - I seriously doubt they'll be any different now. The benefits of having a simultaneously more interesting and easier to play in universe (I don't know how Cata (not sure about Mists, haven't looked up about it) managed to make so much lore both boring and fanfiction-grade at the same time) infinitely outweigh any issues players might have, considering the GM team have been incredibly proactive across this server's history - perhaps moreso now that there are so many more of them. We already tell players to look at the wiki, so shouldn't it be a bad thing if they didn't have the drive to at least view (what would be were we to do lore-altering events, anyway) the 1-2 sentence dot points about what we've done?

In regards to the lore character crap, I suppose it's inevitable. But I think that we could have far wider influences on the universe even without altering them. Ultimately, though, I think this kind of thing should be up to the players. Not that the players should all be going around rewriting things that happen in Cata, but that what the server does decide to change is relevant to people and will actually benefit the RP, be it with events or a less dumb storyline.

2cents, poorly worded but the sentiment counts.

[CappnRob]

I've always been fine with "fitting in" custom lore, that is, custom lore that rather than change the existing world, just expands on stuff behind the scenes. Stuff like Solidarity for example I really like. Just don't give us another Sin'Sholai :|||

- Running events to make orcs and undead morally lighter than the current expansions paint them as (seriously, Cata and Mists turned them into puppy-strangling maniacs.)

Though I'm pretty sure Black Harvest did this already for the Forsaken :||||

Honestly, most of this stuff is open to a lot of interpretation, so why not go ahead and interpret it?

[Harmonic]

The thing with Orcs WAS out of the blue for Pandaria though. I get it, that Garrosh is a bad dude.... but ALL the Kor'Kron are corrupted too? C'mon Blizz, this is pretty sudden.

[Rowgen]

I wholeheartedly support such a change, Grakor. While we don't need to deviate strongly from Blizzard Lore, it would be great to add details that would better explain these events, or add something good to the experience. I believe many fans of the Horde would be very glad to see characters such as Nazgrel and Rexxar given a greater role, for instance. We can alter the attitudes of certain Lore characters to present them in a better light - at least in terms of writing. To take Mathias' example: Trials of the High King shouldn't be about Varian going from place to place to teach the other leaders of the Alliance. The other faction leaders shouldn't be dumbed down to make Varian look good.

At the mention of faction leaders, I'd like to see Lor'themar Theron given a bigger role, along with the Blood Elves. While I am not the most passionate about Blood Elves, I do believe that more focus ought to be put on the things that makes it cool to be a Blood Elf. They have a majority of the Horde's most capable Magi! They are a fierce and proud people, and shouldn't be presented as the butt of the other Horde races' jokes - a notion Blizzard seems very content with, given how they always give the Blood Elves the shortest straw. Letting Lor'themar and his Blood Elves earn a few levels of awesome wouldn't hurt at all. The same goes for the Draenei. They could benefit greatly from a greater role than they are given.

What I mean to say, is that I agree that the things we have can be improved. Slight adjustments can be made to Lore events and characters. Where there is little, we can add a little more to improve the overall picture. We don't need an entire Lore revamp, when expanding on and adjusting what we already have can do nicely!

[Zenethen]

Does this mean we can finally bring Danath Trollbane and his men to bear on the forsaken for killing their kingdom's prince? :|

I kid.

I support this change, though I must ask. The boundaries of actual custom lore (like, say, for example, a second Retaking of Stromgarde event chain) are thin, or thick? My apologies if I'm simply not reading between the lines, as I'm sure the answer's probably already there and I just can't read at 4 AM. By whether it's thin or thick, I mean to ask that if we were to run an event at the caliber of Retaking of Stromgarde (just as an example), would we even be allowed to do it? Or would it be doomed to failure/never even occur? I understand that to keep new players from having to read craploads of text just to familiarize themselves -after- they've already read Blizzard -WONDERFUL- text walls, we may keep this restrained, but as Maulbane said, perhaps if we did do something of that caliber again, maybe we'd just freshen up our server lore section with some bullet points or world facts saying what major things there are that are not as they should be in standard WoW.

[Maulbane]

Although I think I should make one note I was going to add but then forgot.

We should focus far, far away from lore characters, IMO. That's a bit hard, it may seem, considering we're in a setting that's inarguably high fantasy (well, at this point it's closer to exosphere-fantasy), but it's possible. I maintain that lore characters don't matter, explicitly because they matter so much. Their actions and personalities are so out of touch (and asinine) with the other 99% of actions and personalities that there's little attempt to change the effect that they may have on events.

So, instead, let's take a page from historiography. Specifically the (pinko-red-commie, sickle-wielding) marxist historians who argue that history should be focused on the peoples of history rather than people of history. If these lore characters, like Varian, Thrall, Arthas, Sylvanas - the equivalent of celebrities in WoW - are all so disconnected with the normal plane filled with normal people, why not just let them exist in their own world? I bring this up because Warcraft, whether for gameplay reasons or for lore, has shown that the peeps in it are seriously autonomous. Rarely do orders come from lore figures, and if they do they're generally incredibly bumbling orders that can be interpreted any way we want. That's what I meant when I was talking about being able to significantly change lore without the influence of "the heroes" - why can't a committee of Warchiefs order an incursion into Ashenvale (this post does not condone incursions into Ashenvale)? Garrosh has been made to be an irredeemable idiot by Blizz, so why not roll -with- it rather than against it, especially if it benefits us? The Forsaken, specifically, seem incredibly autonomous, much more than any race but the Tauren - who seem to have almost no centralised structure where the man with the biggest pecs calls the shots. It's little openings here that we can carve WoW's lore into something that's not incongruent, but better in the little ways that improve peoples' RP - like knowing where the war starts and ends (very funny, multiple Horde bases in Ashenvale when there's still a front line in Stonetalon Mountains, I'm onto you) and being able to know what events can be made or not - and what impact they can have on lore.

TL;DR: Let them strut around with their Gorehowls and Shalamaynes. The other 99.99% of living (and dead) beings on the planet will actually organise and perform the things that have relevance to everyone (ICly and OOCly), save for the 00.01% of heroes and villains.

[Psychyn]

Jaina will shack up with a dragon

.. Wat.

Thrall marries a woman with no personality solely so the plot gods can give him a kid.

I knew that one, hated the quest chain and left Thrall imprisoned in.. whatever thing he ended up in. I never understood where this woman came from.

At any rate, lore-wise MoP is not my thing. Cata I enjoyed despite being very reluctant to it, although I'm sure I missed half of the lore really added with Cata. I do not have a solid stance on it, because I'm really not one of the lore king and queens we have around here. However, that said, I am not against such a change either if we can add a neat corner onto either wiki or forum to detail out such events.

Possibly have someone with elephant on during the event, then post the entire RP log (which may become huge) into that forum corner for future reference, so even those who weren't at the event, can read what exactly happened, and how.

Tl;Dr: If it can be done in a way that is understandable to lore-newbs like myself. Sure, why not.

[Grakor456]

The Sin'sholai, the Retaking of Stromgarde & Gnomeregan, were honestly the best times this server ever had, and I don't remember a single player being worried about lore incongruency then - I seriously doubt they'll be any different now.

Let me just offer a comment on this right fast, though be warned that I'm only half-awake.

A lot of people liked the Sin'sholai thing. But we're -never- going to do anything like that ever again. That story did awful, awful things to Horde RP, and I will fight you to the death over that fact. That said, you might not have seen it, but there WAS quite a number of people constantly confused over this lore, I had to see it explained near constantly on public channels. Not to mention, as an admin at the time, I got to watch these events actually scare off a number of players off of the server.

I'm not overestimating the difficulties of acclimating to a server that too heavily embraces custom lore. I saw it happen with our own server in the past, and it's exactly because of those experiences that I don't want to touch that kind of lore ever again.

To everyone/thing else, keep the comments coming.

[Maulbane]

The Sin'sholai, the Retaking of Stromgarde & Gnomeregan, were honestly the best times this server ever had, and I don't remember a single player being worried about lore incongruency then - I seriously doubt they'll be any different now.

Let me just offer a comment on this right fast, though be warned that I'm only half-awake.

A lot of people liked the Sin'sholai thing. But we're -never- going to do anything like that ever again. That story did awful, awful things to Horde RP, and I will fight you to the death over that fact. That said, you might not have seen it, but there WAS quite a number of people constantly confused over this lore, I had to see it explained near constantly on public channels. Not to mention, as an admin at the time, I got to watch these events actually scare off a number of players off of the server.

I'm not overestimating the difficulties of acclimating to a server that too heavily embraces custom lore. I saw it happen with our own server in the past, and it's exactly because of those experiences that I don't want to touch that kind of lore ever again.

To everyone/thing else, keep the comments coming.

I'm gonna go with you on this - I can easily see how that'd happen, and my memory's probably rose-tinted. No reason for me to remember all the stuff that wasn't positive, after all. But you're right, I didn't see any of that (or if I did I forgot).

When it comes to smaller stuff, though, I think what I said stands. Stuff that can be conveyed in less than a few sentences or (a) dot point(s), even Stromgarde and Gnomeregan count in my mind because they didn't have the level of convolutedness (and ubiquitous-ness) that the Sin'sholai did (don't think they could ever). I feel that there's a point where being a "hardcore" RP server can ask players to have some initiative when finding out what's happened in the world. Should clarify that in my posts, by 'what's happened' I generally mean smaller stuff anyway (in relation to Sin'sholai), no excessive upheavals of races/lands or anything.

[Vladdy]

I don't mind it one bit! Just don't go overboard and we -should- be fine. I wouldn't necessarily call it custom lore if we just had some things explained just a bit more, maybe a couple of events, yeah? However, if we go back to the time of custom lore, well...I've heard some stories about how that turned out. Wasn't good. Also! Make both factions morally grey. The Alliance did some pretty bad things as well in this expansion. A perfect example would be the damage done to the ship that carried what...How many Goblins? All under the justification that there should be "No witnesses." A justification is made, sure. But there's also a justification for why the Orcs invade Ashenvale; Durotar was running out of resources. What would you do if the resources necessary for life were slowly disappearing? You'd find a new source. Both of the factions have done some pretty bad things. We should make it very clear that they're both in the grey here.

If we read between the lines a bit, and come up with some good explanations for the invasion of Gilneas, I've no problem. But if we -do- create the absolute monstrosity that is custom lore? I will fight it with every fiber of my geeky being.

[Piken]

I would love if there was a chance to sort of.. deviate and throw in some 'custom lore' to our lovely server. Our past experiences may be a little.. extreme, but I think we should learn from that but not let that hinder us completely.. And since you're bringing it up for discussion, there's a glimmer of hope!

I think a problem we have here, though, is our(Staff? No offense ;-;..) habit to let the wiki and other information sort of become.. incredibly obsolete and outdated. I mean, if that's changed recently, great! But I remember the information being sometimes -years- outdated and never updated or removed. But as Maulbane said, a nice little bullet list outlining any changes from Blizz-lore™ and make sure that things are said plainly and simply.. with a convenient link leading to any major story threads in case someone wants to do some reading!

And to comment on the Sin'Sholai thing.. I think that entire concept was much better suited for story purposes, not RP purposes. Though, I fangirl-squee when I think of 1v1v1 Wars(Romance of the Three Kingdoms, what have you done to me?)

I'm sorry if this is poorly structured.. I tend to forget midway what I was trying to get at. ._.

[Xigo]

This lore can be worked with. It doesn't need to be changed. We don't need to greyify everything.

Instead of worrying about whether or not Garrosh is evil, worry about how your character will react to that. I think everything that happens in Mists/Cataclysm is fantastic material for me to provide my characters with moral conflicts. Each character on CotH will justify things on his or her own terms without us slamming the hammer down on the lore.

Don't touch the lore figures. Touch your characters. It doesn't matter if Garrosh or Sylvannas are OOCly justifiable, the lack of information our characters have will make them come to their own conclusions, and that provides for delicious interaction between people who disagree. The most recent Felfire proved that much. People were defending Garrosh. And everyone there was a member of the Horde.

Focus on your characters. Not Blizzard's characters.

[JVNemesis]

Focus on your characters. Not Blizzard's characters.

This, honestly, sums up my feelings on it very well.

I've said a whole bunch of times that we, as RPers, are not Blizzard's target audience when they're writing this game. They're making a fun and profitable game first, and writing a great narrative as a spot faaaar lower down the priority totem pole. Doesn't mean it can't happen, but I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that the section of the creative design team assigned to lore-writing is significantly smaller than the one making interesting game mechanics.

We have to make do with what we're given, not rewrite it because we think we know Blizzard's world better than they do. To be fair? Maybe we could do a better job, sure. We could change a few spots here and there. Who knows?

But I just don't like taking what we're given and changing it. Filling in the grey spots, or the empty lore spots, or running our own stuff that makes sense in the context of the existing lore? Sure! I'd definitely be game for that. Rewriting what we're given to fit what we want/think works better? No sir. Do not want.

Hell, ever since I learned the stories for Mists and Cata, I've been planning out how one of my military orcs will react to all that stuff. Is she gonna stick with the Horde and cause some hardcore drama with her troll mate, who's definitely not going to be staying? Is her guild gonna split, with half being led by that filthy liberal Kag'rin (<3), and half by Rekka? Is the schism gonna lead into open combat, Watcher against Watcher, during the Darkspear Uprising? Are we gonna have some awesome RP with this? Hell yeah we are.

That's how I see it. I don't look at it and think about how I can change the lore to make it "better." Part of this probably stems from my own experience writing, but there it is.