Warlocks after the Third War

[Chortles]

I know the first and most important answer to this question is: being a Warlock is awesome, and WoW should fulfill that fantasy. But this occurred to me while reading posts about whether additional class+race combos would be appropriate for Turtle WoW.

It is my understanding (though I am not a lore expert, so please correct me if I'm wrong), that after the Third War, anyone who consorts with demons would be enemy number one in both the Horde and Alliance.

The the events of Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne were perpetrated by demons, and effected all of Azeroth. Orcs only relatively recently won their freedom from demonic control. The demon-controlled Scourge and Lich King are the sworn enemy of the Forsaken (and, like, everybody else, too). I feel like Sylvanas and Jaina and Thrall would have strong feelings about this.

I notice that High Elves cannot be Warlocks, unlike Blood Elves in The Burning Crusade. Was that a lore consideration, or something else?

[Redmagejoe]

Keep in mind that Warlocks within the Horde and Alliance operate in, essentially, secrecy and tucked away in corners of cities. Cleft of Shadow in Orgrimmar has Neeru Fireblade, with whom Thrall is playing a game of 5-dimensional chess. Neeru pretends he's using his Warlock connections to help the Horde while "secretly" being a member of the Burning Blade who seeks to bring the Legion back, while Thrall knows Neeru's a backstabbing Burning Blader, and pretends he's fooled to keep his finger on the pulse of the Legion's allies. Keep your enemies closer and all that.

The Slaughtered Lamb in Stormwind is a tavern that supposedly hides under the nobility's noses a basement full of Warlocks, and the nobility probably doesn't notice or turns a blind eye to it because of all the rampant corruption (even without Onyxia) in Stormwind's court of nobles. There's a Turtle quest where one of the Warlocks has you poison a drunkard noble who is actually looking to snoop around the Slaughtered Lamb. Likewise the Forlorn Cavern in Ironforge is something of a ghetto where the lone member of the Twilight Cult is cordoned and, presumably, kept a close eye on.

To answer your question, lorewise, all the Alliance and Horde affiliated Warlocks sects are either operating in secrecy or kept under close vigil by the powers that be, ready to eliminate them with extreme prejudice if there's even an inkling of a suspicion that they'll somehow bring the Legion knocking on their doors again.

[Shamma]

One correction to a wonderful post - the quest to poison the noble is not a turtle quest. It also exists in classic.

[Calevarn]

I believe that the inclusion of warlocks in Vanilla is something particularly motivated by expanding game mechanics, a wish from Blizzard to include that fantasy in their game even if it might not always and neatly fit within the context of their story.

This is especially true for the Horde, who had the orcs corrupted by the warlocks on several occasions, Thrall from a personal level had his friend Grom turned into a slave, and his parents assassinated by warlocks. They know that the use of warlock magic is so dangerous that it destroyed Draenor, and so indisidious that many of their great warriors were turned into hollow puppets.

While it is also true they occasionally operate in secrecy, that sort of immersion is shattered often whenever you see one in broad daylight. The quest giver in the Valley of Trials even tells you where to find them, fully aware they are warlocks, and doesn't seem too bothered by their existence.

Ultimately I don't believe there is strong reasoning given as to why the warlocks are tolerated to operate to the extent that they are, sharing their teachings as they do.

As for the Stormwind ones, yeah, I think their existence is much more credible. It's plainly shown by the quests that the authorities of the city are so corrupt and inept they are unable to deal with a warlock coven, and the fact they go to extremes to remain hidden demonstrates whatever they're doing is neither endorsed, nor actually allowed by Stormwind. Which makes sense.

[Schwa]

for turtle to fix class race faction problems, they would need to bring class choice into the world itself. they would need to allow for anyone to become a shaman by interacting with some patterned combination of npcs. it could be one per faction with multiple copies of the npc name in different areas of zones, making for a master-pupil tutelage relationship. there could be a unified faction of locks who have different branchs and which have end game content going back and forth between the major cities with all of the class mentors being in settlements, by class flavor. or they could have a bunch of npcs in each zone doing classy things like picking herbs, and just give mentorship as a social obligation they dont particulary want to do.

the tldr is that the kinds of problems you noticed were because most of the original staff were doing a paint by numbers thing, they didnt think it all out.

so what is the lore position you should take?
that warlocks are a detested portion of the alliance and horde. the best rationalization is they are tollerated as bearers of mass destruction, who could help in the war with the other faction since the other faction already has them. both factions should be thought of as having an uneasy truce due to being aware of the other side's similar truce. the horde thinks the alliance 'corruption' and allowing for the existence of the warlocks, is a scheme to retaliate for past horde glories. and the alliance thinks the corruption wasn't rooted out, and is biding time for them to re-emerge as the savages who destroyed stormwind in the seccond war.

'why can't elves be warlocks?'
it is probably more an aesthetic decision rather than a lore one.
why can't dwarves be warlocks? both dwarves and gnomes have the curse of the flesh.
why can't any alliance race be shamen or horde be pally?
the problem to me is philosophical.
the way the game is designed, you have a class as part of your character. so narratively speaking, you aren't at teh begining of your heroic journey.
to change this would be pretty huge. you would need to introduce a null-class, a classless archtype.
personally i'm in favor of this. i think that an mmo with much better emphasis on role play and character and similar would be a better game.

edited for brevity

[Sinrek]

The best explanation on this matter is given by the guards when you ask for directions… Try it.

[Nightowl]

It's an interesting question. I view it from the same lens as I view real life criminal elements that despite all odds manage to dredge out existance far longer than what you would expect out of them knowing all the tools of power at the state's beckon call - they're in on it.

By that I mean that criminals are fully in the pocket of elite/state/nobility and are used for things that powerful actors require but are prohibited by the law. Drugs is big business for instance, and everyone is on it be it a politician, top ranking CIA, a crime druglord or some junkie who seeks to escape the dredgery of life. It's tons of money and it's addictive, meaning that the cash flow will be steady. If people demand justice or persecution against their drug-puppets, the elites can just wave off their hands and state "we can't capture them all" or "we're working as hard as we can". Hegelian dialectic and all that. Goes without saying that this applies to other stratas outside of drugs - slavery didn't go away people it's still here just outside the surface level of perception.

To apply this to WoW, I view Alliance Warlocks as a sort of "controlled criminal element" that is to be used by powerful nobles when the rulebook that is stacked in their favor anyway, doesn't just cut it still. People think that Alliance is corrupted because of Onyxia while in reality it was already a cesspool of corruption long before she hit the stage, and those corrupted nobles probably saw opportunity to gain power by supporting Warlocks.

Similarly Dwarves and by that extension their cousins Gnomes are also knee deep in "civilized society", which does come with perks talked about in the paragraph above. Some disgruntled noble with too much resources but too tied hands in the lawful strata will sponsor some criminal elements behind the scenes, it's not exactly rocket science either. I mean shit, it's a SENATE. We all know how Roman Senate ended up after a few centuries of Republican so called Golden Age.

With Horde it's also a bit interesting. Thrall isn't really fully in control of Orcs, he's a leader of course, but there are powerful Orcs behind the scenes who carry lots of weight that even he had to pay attention to. From what I remember, Warsong Clan was a loose cannon that invaded Ashenvale despite the fact that Thrall was against it, and since Thrall didn't pull them out, it means that several influential Orcs backed Warsong and that stage Thrall is forced to make concessions or risk fragmenting Horde even more so, and that would suck because there is competition for his leadership with Dark Horde across the sea and Shadow Council groups on homefront, and all of those would welcome the disident influential Orcs into their fold. It's such a shame that WoW never expanded on these Orcs. The way you read it you'd think that every orc goes "GO THRALL WOOOOO!!!", but in reality there are a lot of high rankers who are more like 2nd War era Orcs - these later accepted Garrosh with open arms because he too wanted to expand and conquer.

On that note, having some influential Warhawkish Orc General making life miserable for Thrall and not taking shit from anyone, not even Saurfang, would be interesting. I always felt that Warsong was incomplete in that regard. They had all the backstory for it, they just lacked a big name character that was visible in game.

In any case, before I go on a longer tangent, where is the gurantee that there isn't some influential Orc who doesn't view Warlocks as total waste of space? Felpower is strong you know. Warlocks lorewise are total powerhouses perhaps stronger than every other class in the game? Also Orgrimm's Horde viewed Warlocks as useful tools and slaves to their cause, and there are plenty of Orcs of that Era in Thralls Horde. Would they trust them with their life? Probably not. But when you're a single warlock and the guy in question has a clan of 2000 plus orcs ready to slit your throat you there's not much of an opportunity to get to the headhoncho, while reversed there's a big opportunity to solve some issues of yours that standard "honorable means" aren't just up to the task.

So yeah, long story short, criminals are useful to powers that be for several reasons if we are to apply it to "Civilized Faction", and the "Less Civilized Faction" is essentially a giant pissing contest of powerful individuals to proud to take a knee for the team because they're all "TEAM ME" or "TEAM MY CLAN, REST OF U CAN FK OFF!".

[Nightowl]

Shit now that I think about it. It's such a shame that Blizzard chickened out from making Thrall's horde an intriguing place where several clans are struggling for dominance over Horde's society.

- Warsong Clan head is a warmonger who wants to expand and make his clan the most influential
- Bleeding Hollow branch is a struggling clan that wishes to ensure survival of ther society
- Remnants of Blackrock clan that were pro-Doomhammer seeking to convince their wayward breatheren to join Thrall's horde
- A couple of Burning Blade blademasters who didn't accept fel that seek to establish own clan etc
- Frostwolves seeking to keep Warsong in check since Thrall's their kin.

In essence you can have Thrall trying to slowly destroy the clan system, to mirror real life where Leadership across all societies did away with clan system because clans are harder to govern than single familiar units. I mean try to pull big boy pants on a clan that has 10k individuals who are all ready to wage war against you if you start going full tyrant, I don't care who you are you'd be reconsidering that action with 0.5 seconds of thought. And then you can have the rest of the clans going "no sir, we like our clan system, thank you very much." at Thralls idea.

Oh how I wished that they would instead release expansions full of intrigue. But that would have been too complex for Metzen T_T

[Bigspliffa22]

If warlocks are supposed to be operating under the shadows in RP, then explain the blatantly obvious T2+ armor

[Rukopashka]

I know the first and most important answer to this question is: being a Warlock is awesome, and WoW should fulfill that fantasy. But this occurred to me while reading posts about whether additional class+race combos would be appropriate for Turtle WoW.

It is my understanding (though I am not a lore expert, so please correct me if I'm wrong), that after the Third War, anyone who consorts with demons would be enemy number one in both the Horde and Alliance.

The the events of Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne were perpetrated by demons, and effected all of Azeroth. Orcs only relatively recently won their freedom from demonic control. The demon-controlled Scourge and Lich King are the sworn enemy of the Forsaken (and, like, everybody else, too). I feel like Sylvanas and Jaina and Thrall would have strong feelings about this.

I notice that High Elves cannot be Warlocks, unlike Blood Elves in The Burning Crusade. Was that a lore consideration, or something else?

You are correct that consorting with demons is generally considered taboo in both the Horde and the Alliance after the events of the Third War. However, it's worth noting that not all Warlocks necessarily deal with demons, and not all demons are necessarily evil.

Warlocks in World of Warcraft are typically associated with dark magic, curses, and summoning demons to do their bidding. However, some Warlocks may focus more on the manipulation of life and death, or the harnessing of fel magic for purposes that don't necessarily involve demons. Additionally, some Warlocks may form pacts with demons that don't involve selling their souls or becoming corrupted by fel energy.

As for why certain races may or may not be Warlocks, it's largely a matter of lore and cultural background. The High Elves, for example, have a long history of practicing arcane magic and have been wary of dabbling in darker forces since the days of the Highborne. The Blood Elves, on the other hand, were forced to turn to fel magic to sate their addiction to the Sunwell, and this eventually led to some of their number becoming Warlocks.

Ultimately, the decision to allow Warlocks in the Horde and Alliance is a matter of political and strategic considerations. While some leaders may be wary of their use of dark magic, they may also recognize the value of having powerful spellcasters in their ranks. Additionally, individual Warlocks may prove their worth through acts of service or by demonstrating their loyalty to their faction.

[Allknighty]

I've always played my warlocks (vanilla, retail, maybe here one day) as being "undercover" by making them look as a mage (transmog or simply equipping them with mage items) and playing with the Succubus who can be invisible. Since I've always played destrolock, I think it makes more sense since many spells use fire in that spec.

If that can help some RPers here who want to try that "criminal undercover" style.

You can also dress as a priest or try to wear a cloth jacket/pants combo to make your char look more like a leather wearing class.

[Kefke]

"Imp? No, that's just Scooby. He's a mixed breed."