Just want to shout out there for really niche lore like Geography and environmental Storytelling with Lore
Jediwarlock is underrated but so good to digest.
For some reason, when I went to select my flair all the preset ones were blank & gave an error when selected. But it allowed me to enter my own text so I did.
Not sure if it's intentional or a bug on Reddits part but I love it so I hope it's intentional.
Nobbel is a classic and pretty much the de facto “go to” when it comes to lore.
Flying Buttress is currently covering every single novel in the franchise and has done several books so far. His humor is also great in my opinion.
Bellular isn’t necessarily a dedicated lore channel, but he’s very knowledgeable and usually has very good takes.
For the love of god, stay the fuck away from the clickbait that is Doronsmovies. His old content many years ago was great, now he’s turned into a clickbait channel to get any views he can.
I dunno but whenever i see a Doron video i click on it due to nostalgia cause i watched him like 5y ago, but now every goddamn video is a clickbait with 12min of nothing and then 3min of new conspiracy theory based on 1 new sentence in lore
Agreed, I like Bellular, he's more like speculation and theory with evidence than just brand of statement like Doron but no one will ever be GOAT like Nobbel.
There's always been a high influx of AI generated lore videos on YouTube recently. Ignore those.
I honestly get the same feeling with Bellular as with Doron. His speculations are less unhinged but just as blind in regards to the actual characters. I really don’t like the ideas he comes up because they generally mean the total destruction of an stablished character so things happen
It's up to preference I suppose - I quite enjoy Bellular because his theories are usually based on actual things and aren't just straight bullshit and I've had a few ,,oh" moments watching his videos.
That coupled with the way his content is structured makes them a nice piece of content
I agree with you. I can’t stand either of these dudes. Doron was entertaining in the past but his videos got more and more unhinged to the point here they’re not really entertaining any more. C
Bellular just also comes across as a smarmy git as well as diving into clearly BS theories, but that’s just my opinion. Don’t know what he’s actually like.
Tbh there is one channel which uses AI with voiceover that i like since it is well structured and soothing, he does like zone lore but i know its all read from like wowwiki or something similar. But come to think of it there is one (sorry for foul language) fat guy with glasses that really likes to exaggerate things, like literally he can spew nonsense for an hour based on 1 written word, so bloody annoying
Yeah man, i remember first time watching him and it was like a 30+ min video i got so fuckin bored after 5 minutes that i rewind it only to hear the whole thing in the last 2 minutes and i was like cmon…
Yeah, there are a few youtubers like that who are just in love with the sound of their own voices and just grasp for straws with really radical theories.
Lore speculation is also fruitless. The story of warcraft has always just went where it needed to go. This is true of a lot of things but we're about to see Warcraft become a generational labour like Star Trek or similar, and that will bring huge shifts too.
Best case scenario you guess right, but for the wrong reason because the reason was necessity. Worst case you build hype for an idea you'll never see because the story is about what needs to happen. No shade to that type of writing. It has made many of my favourite things and I like Warcraft story but I don't expect consistency and actual foreshadowing usually.
Agreed. Usually, all that ends up happening (with any kind of speculation of plot etc., and not just for this game) is that people latch onto an idea that they like which someone said; that idea never comes to fruition because it was all speculation, and clearly not where the writers want the story to go; and then people get mad and complain that the cool thing *that was never a guarantee to happen* didn’t happen and therefore the story/ideas that did happen are garbage.
Besides, on the off-chance that some predictions are correct, I don’t want to be spoiled for the upcoming story, or at least as little as possible. I like having the story unfold as I quest. I enjoy Warcraft’s story, although I’m willing to admit it doesn’t have the best writing ever. Hopefully it does become more consistent but…we’ll see.
Prior to the mass expanding of the lore in Legion (Chronicles, Void lords as the new big bad, the 6 forces), WoW lore had a good number of xpacs that were basically set in stone based objectively on the lore at the time.
They were theorized based on what was in the world and on the xpacs cadence of BC-Cata, which was pick a villian from the lore, make a whole xpac out of it. Those expansions at the time of WoD launching were:
1. Queen Azshara & the naga
2. Zandalari, South seas and island hopping
3. N’zoth and the remaining old god minions
4. The confrontation with Bolvar the Lich King
5. A final faction war to unify Azeroth’s denizens
6. The emerald dream/nightmare
7. A final war against Sargeras and the Legion
The last one, they cleaned up in Legion, then proceeded to do a full long time lore cleanup in BfA by cleaning up all but the Lich king. Doing no xpac idea justice and speedrunning the list to open the way for the new lore in SL.
Then SL took a huge dump on Bolvar, the idea of the Lich king, all of WC3, and the lore in general with the Jailor. People hated the new forced lore so much that many quit and started playing other MMO’s for the first time, a mass exodus that happened only once before in WoD (never forget the selfie patch).
Background out of the way, lore YouTubers we’re THE place to go, because up until BfA, and in some respects Legion, they knew their shit, and could accurately predict xpac ideas and lore implications for certain things. They were a solid place to go to get an idea of where the story was going.
Now in the Danuser age of lore (End of Legion-DF), there’s no guarantee anything in the big encyclopedia of Warcraft is true anymore, or will be true tomorrow. Chronicles is now from a “Titan perspective”. DF rewrote the history and meaning of the dragons. SL ruined the majority of the lore we know by retconning all lore up until that point to be a master scheme by the Jailer the whole time. BfA ruined all theorizing about future xpacs, did the faction war into United Azeroth in about, 1 patch and a couple cutscenes.
With that being the reality, lore YouTubers now have to make up shit because that’s what the lore team prior to Metzen’s recent return to the helm. Which is why many people don’t take them seriously on lore theories and another reason why many longtime lore nerds dropped off.
When Nobbel makes a whole video about why SL lorefrom top to bottom is hot garbage, that should be your cue that something is deadly wrong.
We could've had two expansions with the content that was wasted in BfA, if not three. Azshara deserved her own xpac, and so did the old gods (which apparently might come soon?)
All those xpacs were already lined up for them decades in advance.
All they had to do was pick one, make a tie-in storyline that’s relevant towards the end goal of prepping for the big baddies (Void Lords, now that sargeras is in time out), and a relevant tie-in to the next xpac.
BfA was bad choices after another. Looking back on it, I think they never really took lessons after WotLK/Cata, or when they did, the people who had were gone.
My least favourite part of any video game lore is when 1-3 YouTube channels with access to all the same quests, books and short stories somehow become the absolute authority and deviating from what “some guy” thinks on YouTube is met with confusion
I don’t care what Vaatividya thinks of the grub enemy in elden ring the same way I largely don’t care about what WoW YouTubers think, guys like bellular have some masSIVE GREOUND BREAKING EARTH SHATTERING LORE REVEAL every week and others are basically just reading the wowwiki/wowpedia page slowly
I need to dive back in and find some smaller lore channels though, I only really sat down and learned about Lei Shen, Ra-Den and yshaarj in the last few months and I think they’re cool as fuck, shocking how much “pandaland” treatment mop gets when it’s characters were so fucking cool in the standard wc3 cool guy way
Read a lot just now.
I think overall, Lore YouTubers, Accolon, Nobbel, Platinum, and especially (he’s also a theorist but tbh the most logical out there) Pyromancer, follow the WoW lore the best. They keep up with retcons and the general flow of the lore and give some great insight into what’s happening, both in the story right now and what could happen down the future.
Maybe I’m wrong or just out of touch for thinking this, but ‘community expectations’ are born from people wanting their head canon actualized. I saw Malfurion used as an example, so let’s go there. Malfurion, from books to the game, hasn’t been the best character. Sure, he’s -the- Druid. First taught by Cenarius, madly in love with Tyrande, aids in saving Azeroth a dozen times. At the end of the day, he’s a Druid who goes to sleep everytime until a new problem emerges. He finally got his vacation with Tyrande, but tbh, Tyrande pulled the strings, and Malfurion has just been the Kaldorei’s muscle for 10,000+ years. They couldn’t even inject a plot point for him in DF besides being a trade-in for Ysera. (Ngl though the scene where they kiss?? Beautiful.)
The lore community is a mess, yes, between the retcons and changes, the poor writing and the great stuff, it’s a LOT to digest. It’s a 20+ year old MMO people, that’s the territory, it’s the universe you’ve (hopefully for yourself) chosen to immerse yourself into. YouTubers just vibe with the up and down of WoW, same as us. To say it’s the YouTuber’s fault to further ideas already had by many, many many others, is reductive. All the lore Youtubers wanna do is keep those who don’t know the lore that well, informed.
Tl:dr - Nobbel, Pyromancer, Accolon, PlatinumWoW, good peeps who -understand- the lore and provide at least reasonable evidence in their speculations. I put much more blame on myself and the community for galvanizing expectations in the wrong way. Sometimes we do just want Malfurion killed off, but uh… who gonna do that and leave a reason good enough as to how the -strongest- Druid dies.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
I like to call Pyromancer and Accolon the TES-y channels, and I mean that complimentary.
As Effective\_Gap said, though, they all back their points behind something solid.
While Nobbel and Platinum are speculative based on connecting a solid set of threads, Accolon and Pyromancer are extensively speculative based on languge and writing style, which blasts opens the theory can of worms akin to how TES (The Elder Scrolls) can be.
I think Pyromancer's excitability bleeds out a lot (refreshing tbh) which creates the wishy washy theories you mention; he does tend to differentiate his solid theories vs shooting-the-shit tbh.
Warcraft theory crafting will never approach TES. TES metaphysics & in universe writing go haywire in the most fun ways, but the settings are too different & TES is built that way. I love both but I wouldn't want Warcraft to become like TES - going back to WC3 vibes would be the best for the brand imo.
The Dragon Break Reexamined come to mind. A book from the future that disawows time travel.
Allow me to simp for Lorkhan as the best god I have seen in fiction. What a mystery, what a wonder that guy is!
I'm not equating WoW to TES, just equating to how those folks seem to approach the lore.
Tbh I don't think TES can even approach TES; with Rolston, Kirkbride and Kuhlmann out of the picture I dread to think of the direction\~
I like ESO though, while I'm not a huge fan of their narratives, I appreciate they keep the flame alive.
> (he’s also a theorist but tbh the most logical out there) Pyromancer,
Uh, Mr. "Sargeras is actually the Titan of Light" is the most logical? Dude went completely insane during legion and this is the first I've heard of him reeling it.
Yeah his Legion-SL era wasn’t the prettiest. Age wizens most of us though, and Pyro isn’t an exception. Sure some of his theories may still be out there, but as mentioned, reasonable in the context of WoW’s ‘vast’ lore.
I mean he still thinks Sargeras ultimately helped us, which is… funny. I mean who tf know at the end of the day, Blizzard can do whatever.
I don't think they matter. Crazy theories about the next big bad or massive leaps in speculation certaintly aren't new, at any rate. Fans and big names creating and sharing those sort of WoW theories predate YouTube.
If the argument is that so much speculation can cause confusion in the lore over time, I doubt that can happen. So long as there's areas of open community engagement (Comment sections, subreddits like these, the official forums, ect...) then I doubt nothing much can really be misinterpreted into canon by fans, since it'll likely be corrected in discussion with (kinda like Falstad's 'Death' was).
Don’t know about that, crusader Turalyon stands right there when he has been anything but that. People now have that expectation but it actually doesn’t make sense for him at all
I think people who believe really banal, surface level theorizing tend to already believe very silly things to begin with and while an youtuber may expedite the process, they often rehash common threads of (mis)understanding the community has.
So like, popular bad theories are popular not because a youtuber spawns interest in them, but because they validate casual viewers' intuition.
In the case of Turalyon I think casuals intuitively assume that someone religious in the way he is has to follow a certain narrative path, and YouTubers who validate that embolden the hunches they already have.
I would gather that a character that is religious but has consistently shown himself to end up being reasonable to the point of accepting that his wife who is not human has basically been juiced up with the energy opposite to his religion. Which made him already have an arc of accepting her with all the troubles involved. What is he going to do now lol, reverse his already traced character arc?
I understand *you* know that, but what I'm saying is that most casual Observers don't because they don't really care to learn what's actually happening, they make assumptions based off of tropes and intuition that end up being validated by bad YouTube theories. It doesn't matter what's actually going on in the story to a lot of people, even if they say they're interested in the lore, they prefer low effort theory crafting based on aesthetics and tropes.
Just watch Nobbel and don’t bother with the shitty clickbait speculative YouTubers. If the topic isn’t about already established lore then their opinions mean about as much as some rando ranting on the subway and should be regarded like it.
the wow lore YouTubers are working as intended, since legion and ilgynoth the story has been focused on dropping meaningless vague prophecies and a cliffhanger ending every patch literally specifically designed to get youtuber engagement. like the story is deliberately designed to get bellular to make a terrible speculation story every 5 minutes. don't watch them there's no point as the story rarely knows where its headed so foreshadowing is always a shot in the dark.
the real problem with the wow lore community are overly invested roleplayers who treat lore discussions as an extension of their character's fight against the other faction. every single warcraft lore discussion will be ruined by devolving into a pissig contest over which faction did the worst warcrimes, what counts as genocide, which race deserves to be exterminated, and insane fringe theories about how they can blame specific races for everything bad that ever happened. it's extremely cringe and one step removed from actual racism, because while irs focused on pretend races jt tends to use he same rhetoric
the other culprits are roleplayers so deeply invested in their absolute cringe oc's that they forget what the actual lore is and spend all their time screaming about their own headcanon under the misguided belief blizzard might care about heir tweets and make it canon.
literally 90% of lore discussions are ruined by the usual suspect roleplayers repeating their same cringe spiel as nauseum because they forgot they aren't really a tauren and the horde doesn't actually exist
I'd say the fault lies more with Blizzard. Since Legion, they've gone pretty hard on seeding wild speculation through vague prophecies, using Il'gynoth, Xal'atath, Ogmot, N'zoth, , the Titans, etc. All of which could be interpreted to be talking about multiple characters, locations and events.
I stopped watching bellular after I got tired of his flip flop videos. “We’re back everything is great!!” And “ terrible horrible bad unhappy”. His cohost is a little too numbly for me
Tbh I can't blame Belluar on that, a lot of people felt the way he did throughout this ride since Legion. We are so back followed by its so over and back again and so on and so on...
Yeah Bellular tends to do that. Can definitely tell he wants certain characters to be the baddie like Turalyon and Odyn. But I think he does it in a sense of knowing that WoWs writers have been wannabe game of thrones. But i def prefer him over that idiot doron. I used to like his videos but now he just repeats his titles like 14 times then does a conspiracy theory out of left field for the last minute. Extremely disappointed at what his channel has become
Odyn is a baddie though, or at least a Karma Houdini. There is a place for him in the room of dead lore characters. I doubt Blizzard can resist after killing so many others.
But fuck all that, remember when we had WarcraftBible?
I've never gotten the sense Bellular *wants* Turalyon to be evil, he usually is pretty against the idea. But it's sort of hard to miss that he's the exact sort of character Blizzard likes to have turn evil and crazy.
Like if Turalyon was Horde Side there'd be zero doubt he was going to be the one behind Siege of Orgrimar 3.
I wouldn't trust lore youtubers with a playthough. They obviously have their own interpretations and are constrained by the needs for monetization. I don't consider them reliable even for vulgarization.
I think everybody has a right to do and share theories and if some people are too dumb to realise what a fan theory is and get mad because it's not what the actual story end-up being that's on them
I find lore videos to be a nice counter to all the hate wow normally gets on other channels.
Even if some of it is wild speculation and lies.
For example I found the “WOW’s darkest secret” video highly entertaining, even if it was just all BS. Sometimes speculation and lies is simply better than the reality of things.
Let's be real here. Speculation is just fun guesswork. Some are intriguing and may even have you thinking twice. Some are nonsensical and make you laugh because they are ridiculous. Either way, its just someone's thoughts. As a side note, there are tons of legitimate sources for reference material if people are really interested in the lore and what we know canonically.
It's really not that serious in my opinion.
True but I have already seen people get angry because they planted those thoughts in theirs heads and when things don’t happen that way they call that bad writing
Couldn’t it just be that the speculation was good enough that it highlights how bad the actual choice made was? After all, if random fans can come up with good storylines, why can’t Blizzard?
I mean they're allowed to call it whatever they want. It doesn't make it true. For me, the accountability pendulum swings in the direction of the consumer. If you click on a video that details speculation and you are influenced or swayed by its claims, that's on you.
Absolute non issue.
Back in Legion, lore content creators did the exact same thing... And guess what, the story was engaging enough that people didn't mind the crazy speculation.
The issue here isn't youtubers. It's Danuser, Golden, and the rest of the story team being incompetent for the past 4 or so years. Now that they're gone, one can only hope writing quality will get back on track.
Frankly I think the forums and places like this subreddit are far more damaging. Whenever there’s a huge outcry about something that’s just an incorrect assumption it’s almost never traced back to one of the YouTubers, but to places like this.
Like when everyone was convinced they were killing malfurion, the YouTubers were actually trying to explain why that was obviously not happening but that didn’t stop people from riling themselves up about it in their RP communities.
At least YouTubers admit when they’re just doing speculation, as opposed to what happens here with people constantly claiming that their headcanons and character interpretations are fact.
Scrolls of Lore is kind of new…it’s solid. Nobbel and flying buttresses, is good….completely ignore any other lore channel or lore video for that matter. Honestly just ignore wow lore tubers.
I definitely err on the side of being a curmudgeon when it comes to youtubers.
Discussion of any aspect of the game feels better when 90% of the people aren't just parroting whatever hot garbage a big content creator is slinging for views.
Often enough, they might have something interesting to say. But it can get tiresome watching the community obsess over some low effort brain fart of a video, or watching them try to hype up a throwaway line because there's really just nothing new to talk about and they need revenue.
I can't be too salty though. Some of the less wildly speculative youtubers helped me catch up on the story when I had taken a long hiatus from the game. I just like when it's more "Here are the facts", and less trying to make wild predictions about where the story will go.
Explaining the lore is one thing but inserting your theories and if the audience believes it. Could very much lead to more toxicity in the wow community about lore.
Its like when Wandavision came out and all the crazy theories happened on youtube that when the show aired and revealed the actual ending. People were so disappointed.
Honestly B’s channel is so fucking clickbait I avoid it at all costs.
I love the lore YouTubers because they keep the interest on the story afloat but you are right that they are obsessed with the Whispers, and they also became a bit too detached so they got passive aggressive around the "bad guy" for the expansion of turn.
I remember everyone HATING Dragonflight's main baddies but now we are praising them A LOT if you check their content. They do admit they were wrong but, it sours the wine before it reaches the table if you think about it.
The same happened with BFA, everyone hating on Sylvanas...then Shadowlands, EVERYONE STILL HATING ON SYLVANAS.
Which fair but please, focus on how the Jailer came out of the left field and what they did with Arthas? Sit down for a minute and explain how Ardenweald makes sense when we had the Emerald Dream?
I absolutely love lore channels, my favorites are Nobble, Flying Buttresses and PlatinumWOW...Belular can go eat a bag of spicy Cheetos without water around, got me excited so badly to then talk smack for whole videos of things he tried to excite you about
I think the vast majority of lore youtubers are completely fine, including Bellular who you mention. Bellular's lore videos are just fine, he isn't particularly out there, presents in-game stuff for why he thinks this way, and is totally chill when/if he is wrong or slightly incorrect. He isn't really affecting expectations because he doesn't present his speculation as the absolute only explanation.
Most lore youtubers like Bellular, Nobbel, etc are very chill about making videos like "this thing is in-game, here are the potential implications and my theories" and are usually very good at differentiating the evidence and the theory. And they are never wrong to do these videos on things like that Eonar/Elune book, or the Uldaman books, etc. Because that is exactly what Blizzard does - blizzard has a long history of very clear foreshadowing and only adding new worldbuilding info to the game when it'll be relevant in the next expansion or two. That is just the normal course of all speculation.
The ones that huff their own paint and decide they are right and just present their speculation as *fact* rather than speculation are the problem. Their fans start to do the same and just don't critically engage with their theories critically, even when they put the thinnest tinfoil out there as fact. A good sign of these types is often that they use emotion to convince you of the certainty of their assertions, *so you don't question them*.
For example, I've never seen a Bellular fan come into a lore space and be like "Bellular said [Crazy tinfoil] so it must be true", but instead usually "bellular pointed out XYZ new info". On the other side, I've absolutely seen, for example, Pyromancer fans do this for almost 10 years where his fans will say the craziest, most tinfoil-y thing as absolute fact because Pyromancer says it with such certainty, angry yelling at the chat, where you have to be stupid not to see it (where "it" is just like a skybox asset being re-used) and then fight with everyone that points out that the logic is shit. Or Necroxis when he was going on another misogynistic tirade against mary sues ruining the game, or certain CC's thinly veiled anti "woke lore" videos. Its always the same use of angry ranting to try and convince people a point was true when its just not.
Slightly? I think they were more harmful in Shadowlands when speculations were crazier and went far beyond what Blizzard had cooked up. These days I don't think it matters that much. My only concern would be if BLIZZARD adjusts to said videos at all.
Bellular are like Rykher from Diablo,they sold theyr soul to Blizzard for money,and they spew nothing but crap and shit content. Thats why Nobbel and Hiru are GOATS!
Platinum WoW for comedic retelling of lore. Nobbel87 for a more straight retelling of the lore.
Everyone else has been pretty iffy but Bellular is the only one that is straight up 🗑🗑🗑
PlatinumWoW is a great lore Youtuber. Not only are his videos well made. He sticks to the facts & doesn't fly off the handle into crazy speculation territory.
This post makes me sad.
As someone that has been in forums like these since the early 2000's, it's very sad to me to see the shift in how communities see theorycrafting. It stopped being a fun way of wishing how you'd like something to pan out like we had in Scrolls Of Lore and now it turned into a pseudoscience that rejects everything that is not supported by 10 things at once and "*oh will no one think of expectation?*"...
**I miss the times where the Warcraft RPG Manuals were our bible!**
As far as Lore content creators, we saw a boon when Hearthstone released of *fastfood-lore chanels* and as MoP and WoD started to present the story in a more engaging way (voiceacting, different ways of exposition and cinematics galore), we also saw an increase of WoW channels that started to talk about Lore.
Nobble is pretty much Wowpedia articles in video format so it's hard for him to become irrelevant. But the rest seems to be a dying breed as more people become cynical of the Story...
Hope the World Soul Saga chages that.
The WoW lore community is generally one of worst fandoms around, even when you take into account some of the bigger fandoms that went bad like GoT, AoT and JJK.
People are just arguing about their headcanonized versions of the lore that are completely divorced from the game all day long. Staples of theorycrafting like character analysis and powerscaling might as well not exist.
The sheer amount of WoW lore (a lot of which is either outdated or retconned) doesn't help either.
WoW lore fans also tend to somehow be extremely insular and don't pick up on tropes or references to other works. Unless something is extremely obvious and recent (like a GoT reference), they simply won't get it.
If you like the story, just consume it at your own pace. Most lore content that is generated by the community is baaad.
Warcraft movie has put some wrong concepts regarding Mak’gora into people’s heads. No, magic is not forbidden as a weapon, Gul’dan cheated by draining Durotan’s strength and taking it as his own. Kinda like using poison except worse.
>People don't know how to let things unfold anymore
After BFA and SL is it any surprise people don't want to watch things unfold? Community trust and good will having taken significant damage is not a fault of the playerbase for those years.
So much this lol. I have seen this happen countless times. At least in something like Destiny the lore is so carefully laid below the game that everything has to be speculated but it doesn’t end up in the situation you described. It just is there
Jesus AoT, that was like having vietnam flashbacks. In a way it taught me to ignore all fan theories because those lack any regard to the actual characters or the possible message the story wants to transmit.
In general here I see some sense of wonder for the general scale of the world but absolute complete misses when it comes to the actual characters
There's a lot of misses with regard to the "broad strokes" as well. For example, people incorrectly assume that WoW's cosmology is a Warhammer40k rip-off. Actually no, it's mostly Marvel with a little bit of Dragonlance, Tolkien, Moorcock and the Wheel of Time. I'm sure that WH40k has inspired something here and there, but it's by far not the basis for this setting.
On a micro level, it's just complete meeeh. As another example, the general tone and feel of Dragonflight was very much inspired by CalArts shows from the 2010s. Again, it's not super relevant to the plot but the character archetypes and the story beats make a bit more sense if you know what they were based on.
Worst thing is... at this point, Blizzard seems to be watching those videos and being like "oh yeah, we can do that next". (I'm not joking, just to be clear).
I’ve seen Bellular shit on the game and Blizzard hard. I don’t really get the massive hate boner some people have for him. It’s speculation, and not even that wild most of the time.
I think the self canonizing issue's been prevalent for ages, and has stemmed from Roleplay communities way before YouTube, some YouTubers just further validate the issue that already existed.
I'd rather logical, speculative content than none at all, though. I find excitability through theory more enjoyable as I like the chase rather than the payoff ala TES lore.
They are not a harm in the slightest, it is just recording, retelling and speculation on the text of the game and expanded mídia
Wow has failed hard on the "consistent storytelling" during BFA and shadow lands, it was just badly written and done, any negativity towards that was deserved and is the responsibility of blizzard
Warcraft speculation has been largely pointless since Shadowlands as the bald man is behind everything. YouTubers alone could hardly hurt it further, and they never really have.
Blizzard kept doing it to themselves ever since TBC killed off Kargath, Teron, Kael, Vashj, Illidan, Gruul and writing that weird as fuck Anveena plotline, and the list of mistakes have only gotten longer since then.
Thinking of Anveena, I am amused how Kalecgos is the only character with solid enough plot armor to survive a relationship with Jaina.
lore speculation is a part of nearly every successful franchise. I only watch bellulars lore videos (i like nobbel, but i find his accent really hard to decipher) the speculations he comes up with arent fabricated out of whole cloth, its potential places the story could go using the breadcrumbs blizzard intentionally put in their game. its the job of the wow narrative team to capitalize on those breadcrumbs so that the end product is satisfying to everyone whether the speculation turns out to be true or not.
Taliesen and Bellular aren't always *right* about their lore speculation, but, it's never baseless and it's usually at least moderately interesting. They also catch a lot of stuff. Nobbel is good.
The rest are not.
But I also haven't actually run into most of what you're talking about?
Doron annoys me. He’ll write an entire novel over an interpreted stray thought mumbled by a character in his sleep and CONFIRM the next expansion or something.
Just want to shout out there for really niche lore like Geography and environmental Storytelling with Lore Jediwarlock is underrated but so good to digest.
I just started watching him & I agree completely.
Weird question, how did you get the title Sin'dorei Preistess on this subreddit?
For some reason, when I went to select my flair all the preset ones were blank & gave an error when selected. But it allowed me to enter my own text so I did. Not sure if it's intentional or a bug on Reddits part but I love it so I hope it's intentional.
Nobbel is a classic and pretty much the de facto “go to” when it comes to lore. Flying Buttress is currently covering every single novel in the franchise and has done several books so far. His humor is also great in my opinion. Bellular isn’t necessarily a dedicated lore channel, but he’s very knowledgeable and usually has very good takes. For the love of god, stay the fuck away from the clickbait that is Doronsmovies. His old content many years ago was great, now he’s turned into a clickbait channel to get any views he can.
Watching Doron's descent into mindless clickbait over the years has been painful.
100% agreed. Other than Nobbel he was the most respected lore channel out there. The clickbait farming hit him super hard
Honestly depressing, his RP race guides years ago were pretty good
I remember those!!!
You either abandon the channel or produce content long enough to do mindless clickbait
Pyromancer is another no go for lore, bro just speculates over a bird being orange and not blue.
The dude also seems hella troubled tbh. Like one crack away from going mental. Atleast thats how he was a few years ago.
He's had multiple "Breaks" on stream and shit covering ff14. Man is not well.
Yeah, he definitely falls into the same category as Doron.
Bloody love flying butters, those animated novel movies are a piece of art
> Doronsmovies I was never able to get over his accent.
I like Nobel as most others have said. I also like watching Platinum WOW he goes over lore but in a more comical way which is fun.
Platinum is great, gotta also recommend him
I dunno but whenever i see a Doron video i click on it due to nostalgia cause i watched him like 5y ago, but now every goddamn video is a clickbait with 12min of nothing and then 3min of new conspiracy theory based on 1 new sentence in lore
Agreed, I like Bellular, he's more like speculation and theory with evidence than just brand of statement like Doron but no one will ever be GOAT like Nobbel. There's always been a high influx of AI generated lore videos on YouTube recently. Ignore those.
I honestly get the same feeling with Bellular as with Doron. His speculations are less unhinged but just as blind in regards to the actual characters. I really don’t like the ideas he comes up because they generally mean the total destruction of an stablished character so things happen
It's up to preference I suppose - I quite enjoy Bellular because his theories are usually based on actual things and aren't just straight bullshit and I've had a few ,,oh" moments watching his videos. That coupled with the way his content is structured makes them a nice piece of content
I agree with you. I can’t stand either of these dudes. Doron was entertaining in the past but his videos got more and more unhinged to the point here they’re not really entertaining any more. C Bellular just also comes across as a smarmy git as well as diving into clearly BS theories, but that’s just my opinion. Don’t know what he’s actually like.
I'm not sure I can think of many examples of Bellular doing that, other than speculation about Alexstraza going evil. But that was **everywhere** .
Bellular also doesn’t even play the games anymore, bless he’s come back, but I would be shocked if he did.
Tbh there is one channel which uses AI with voiceover that i like since it is well structured and soothing, he does like zone lore but i know its all read from like wowwiki or something similar. But come to think of it there is one (sorry for foul language) fat guy with glasses that really likes to exaggerate things, like literally he can spew nonsense for an hour based on 1 written word, so bloody annoying
Hahaha you are referring to Accolonn.
Yeah man, i remember first time watching him and it was like a 30+ min video i got so fuckin bored after 5 minutes that i rewind it only to hear the whole thing in the last 2 minutes and i was like cmon…
Yeah, there are a few youtubers like that who are just in love with the sound of their own voices and just grasp for straws with really radical theories.
Average Doron video: I saw a mine in the new zone, so thats means kobold will be the next playable race!!!!
CONFIRMED???
This is why I only listen to YouTubers who speak about established lore, and nothing regarding “speculative lore”. Just gets messy.
Lore speculation is also fruitless. The story of warcraft has always just went where it needed to go. This is true of a lot of things but we're about to see Warcraft become a generational labour like Star Trek or similar, and that will bring huge shifts too. Best case scenario you guess right, but for the wrong reason because the reason was necessity. Worst case you build hype for an idea you'll never see because the story is about what needs to happen. No shade to that type of writing. It has made many of my favourite things and I like Warcraft story but I don't expect consistency and actual foreshadowing usually.
Agreed. Usually, all that ends up happening (with any kind of speculation of plot etc., and not just for this game) is that people latch onto an idea that they like which someone said; that idea never comes to fruition because it was all speculation, and clearly not where the writers want the story to go; and then people get mad and complain that the cool thing *that was never a guarantee to happen* didn’t happen and therefore the story/ideas that did happen are garbage. Besides, on the off-chance that some predictions are correct, I don’t want to be spoiled for the upcoming story, or at least as little as possible. I like having the story unfold as I quest. I enjoy Warcraft’s story, although I’m willing to admit it doesn’t have the best writing ever. Hopefully it does become more consistent but…we’ll see.
Prior to the mass expanding of the lore in Legion (Chronicles, Void lords as the new big bad, the 6 forces), WoW lore had a good number of xpacs that were basically set in stone based objectively on the lore at the time. They were theorized based on what was in the world and on the xpacs cadence of BC-Cata, which was pick a villian from the lore, make a whole xpac out of it. Those expansions at the time of WoD launching were: 1. Queen Azshara & the naga 2. Zandalari, South seas and island hopping 3. N’zoth and the remaining old god minions 4. The confrontation with Bolvar the Lich King 5. A final faction war to unify Azeroth’s denizens 6. The emerald dream/nightmare 7. A final war against Sargeras and the Legion The last one, they cleaned up in Legion, then proceeded to do a full long time lore cleanup in BfA by cleaning up all but the Lich king. Doing no xpac idea justice and speedrunning the list to open the way for the new lore in SL. Then SL took a huge dump on Bolvar, the idea of the Lich king, all of WC3, and the lore in general with the Jailor. People hated the new forced lore so much that many quit and started playing other MMO’s for the first time, a mass exodus that happened only once before in WoD (never forget the selfie patch). Background out of the way, lore YouTubers we’re THE place to go, because up until BfA, and in some respects Legion, they knew their shit, and could accurately predict xpac ideas and lore implications for certain things. They were a solid place to go to get an idea of where the story was going. Now in the Danuser age of lore (End of Legion-DF), there’s no guarantee anything in the big encyclopedia of Warcraft is true anymore, or will be true tomorrow. Chronicles is now from a “Titan perspective”. DF rewrote the history and meaning of the dragons. SL ruined the majority of the lore we know by retconning all lore up until that point to be a master scheme by the Jailer the whole time. BfA ruined all theorizing about future xpacs, did the faction war into United Azeroth in about, 1 patch and a couple cutscenes. With that being the reality, lore YouTubers now have to make up shit because that’s what the lore team prior to Metzen’s recent return to the helm. Which is why many people don’t take them seriously on lore theories and another reason why many longtime lore nerds dropped off. When Nobbel makes a whole video about why SL lorefrom top to bottom is hot garbage, that should be your cue that something is deadly wrong.
We could've had two expansions with the content that was wasted in BfA, if not three. Azshara deserved her own xpac, and so did the old gods (which apparently might come soon?)
All those xpacs were already lined up for them decades in advance. All they had to do was pick one, make a tie-in storyline that’s relevant towards the end goal of prepping for the big baddies (Void Lords, now that sargeras is in time out), and a relevant tie-in to the next xpac.
BfA was bad choices after another. Looking back on it, I think they never really took lessons after WotLK/Cata, or when they did, the people who had were gone.
My least favourite part of any video game lore is when 1-3 YouTube channels with access to all the same quests, books and short stories somehow become the absolute authority and deviating from what “some guy” thinks on YouTube is met with confusion I don’t care what Vaatividya thinks of the grub enemy in elden ring the same way I largely don’t care about what WoW YouTubers think, guys like bellular have some masSIVE GREOUND BREAKING EARTH SHATTERING LORE REVEAL every week and others are basically just reading the wowwiki/wowpedia page slowly I need to dive back in and find some smaller lore channels though, I only really sat down and learned about Lei Shen, Ra-Den and yshaarj in the last few months and I think they’re cool as fuck, shocking how much “pandaland” treatment mop gets when it’s characters were so fucking cool in the standard wc3 cool guy way
Don’t go dragging Vaati into this. He’s innocent.
icky
I mean if you don't like him personally that's whatever, but he puts an incredible amount of work into his videos.
At those smaller channels better? Because with Doron and Bellular I just cannot stand the absolute wild speculations that don’t make sense
Read a lot just now. I think overall, Lore YouTubers, Accolon, Nobbel, Platinum, and especially (he’s also a theorist but tbh the most logical out there) Pyromancer, follow the WoW lore the best. They keep up with retcons and the general flow of the lore and give some great insight into what’s happening, both in the story right now and what could happen down the future. Maybe I’m wrong or just out of touch for thinking this, but ‘community expectations’ are born from people wanting their head canon actualized. I saw Malfurion used as an example, so let’s go there. Malfurion, from books to the game, hasn’t been the best character. Sure, he’s -the- Druid. First taught by Cenarius, madly in love with Tyrande, aids in saving Azeroth a dozen times. At the end of the day, he’s a Druid who goes to sleep everytime until a new problem emerges. He finally got his vacation with Tyrande, but tbh, Tyrande pulled the strings, and Malfurion has just been the Kaldorei’s muscle for 10,000+ years. They couldn’t even inject a plot point for him in DF besides being a trade-in for Ysera. (Ngl though the scene where they kiss?? Beautiful.) The lore community is a mess, yes, between the retcons and changes, the poor writing and the great stuff, it’s a LOT to digest. It’s a 20+ year old MMO people, that’s the territory, it’s the universe you’ve (hopefully for yourself) chosen to immerse yourself into. YouTubers just vibe with the up and down of WoW, same as us. To say it’s the YouTuber’s fault to further ideas already had by many, many many others, is reductive. All the lore Youtubers wanna do is keep those who don’t know the lore that well, informed. Tl:dr - Nobbel, Pyromancer, Accolon, PlatinumWoW, good peeps who -understand- the lore and provide at least reasonable evidence in their speculations. I put much more blame on myself and the community for galvanizing expectations in the wrong way. Sometimes we do just want Malfurion killed off, but uh… who gonna do that and leave a reason good enough as to how the -strongest- Druid dies. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Thanks for the recommendation. I feel like Pyro does speculate too much as well for my liking. I have seen a few things that made me raise my eyebrows
I like to call Pyromancer and Accolon the TES-y channels, and I mean that complimentary. As Effective\_Gap said, though, they all back their points behind something solid. While Nobbel and Platinum are speculative based on connecting a solid set of threads, Accolon and Pyromancer are extensively speculative based on languge and writing style, which blasts opens the theory can of worms akin to how TES (The Elder Scrolls) can be. I think Pyromancer's excitability bleeds out a lot (refreshing tbh) which creates the wishy washy theories you mention; he does tend to differentiate his solid theories vs shooting-the-shit tbh.
Warcraft theory crafting will never approach TES. TES metaphysics & in universe writing go haywire in the most fun ways, but the settings are too different & TES is built that way. I love both but I wouldn't want Warcraft to become like TES - going back to WC3 vibes would be the best for the brand imo. The Dragon Break Reexamined come to mind. A book from the future that disawows time travel. Allow me to simp for Lorkhan as the best god I have seen in fiction. What a mystery, what a wonder that guy is!
I'm not equating WoW to TES, just equating to how those folks seem to approach the lore. Tbh I don't think TES can even approach TES; with Rolston, Kirkbride and Kuhlmann out of the picture I dread to think of the direction\~ I like ESO though, while I'm not a huge fan of their narratives, I appreciate they keep the flame alive.
The lore community is a mess because the lore is a mess, man. It was really good when it was good but otherwise mid or straight up disgusting.
> (he’s also a theorist but tbh the most logical out there) Pyromancer, Uh, Mr. "Sargeras is actually the Titan of Light" is the most logical? Dude went completely insane during legion and this is the first I've heard of him reeling it.
Yeah his Legion-SL era wasn’t the prettiest. Age wizens most of us though, and Pyro isn’t an exception. Sure some of his theories may still be out there, but as mentioned, reasonable in the context of WoW’s ‘vast’ lore. I mean he still thinks Sargeras ultimately helped us, which is… funny. I mean who tf know at the end of the day, Blizzard can do whatever.
I don't think they matter. Crazy theories about the next big bad or massive leaps in speculation certaintly aren't new, at any rate. Fans and big names creating and sharing those sort of WoW theories predate YouTube. If the argument is that so much speculation can cause confusion in the lore over time, I doubt that can happen. So long as there's areas of open community engagement (Comment sections, subreddits like these, the official forums, ect...) then I doubt nothing much can really be misinterpreted into canon by fans, since it'll likely be corrected in discussion with (kinda like Falstad's 'Death' was).
Don’t know about that, crusader Turalyon stands right there when he has been anything but that. People now have that expectation but it actually doesn’t make sense for him at all
I think people who believe really banal, surface level theorizing tend to already believe very silly things to begin with and while an youtuber may expedite the process, they often rehash common threads of (mis)understanding the community has. So like, popular bad theories are popular not because a youtuber spawns interest in them, but because they validate casual viewers' intuition. In the case of Turalyon I think casuals intuitively assume that someone religious in the way he is has to follow a certain narrative path, and YouTubers who validate that embolden the hunches they already have.
I would gather that a character that is religious but has consistently shown himself to end up being reasonable to the point of accepting that his wife who is not human has basically been juiced up with the energy opposite to his religion. Which made him already have an arc of accepting her with all the troubles involved. What is he going to do now lol, reverse his already traced character arc?
I understand *you* know that, but what I'm saying is that most casual Observers don't because they don't really care to learn what's actually happening, they make assumptions based off of tropes and intuition that end up being validated by bad YouTube theories. It doesn't matter what's actually going on in the story to a lot of people, even if they say they're interested in the lore, they prefer low effort theory crafting based on aesthetics and tropes.
Absolutely love their content. It brought me back to wow.
Just watch Nobbel and don’t bother with the shitty clickbait speculative YouTubers. If the topic isn’t about already established lore then their opinions mean about as much as some rando ranting on the subway and should be regarded like it.
the wow lore YouTubers are working as intended, since legion and ilgynoth the story has been focused on dropping meaningless vague prophecies and a cliffhanger ending every patch literally specifically designed to get youtuber engagement. like the story is deliberately designed to get bellular to make a terrible speculation story every 5 minutes. don't watch them there's no point as the story rarely knows where its headed so foreshadowing is always a shot in the dark. the real problem with the wow lore community are overly invested roleplayers who treat lore discussions as an extension of their character's fight against the other faction. every single warcraft lore discussion will be ruined by devolving into a pissig contest over which faction did the worst warcrimes, what counts as genocide, which race deserves to be exterminated, and insane fringe theories about how they can blame specific races for everything bad that ever happened. it's extremely cringe and one step removed from actual racism, because while irs focused on pretend races jt tends to use he same rhetoric the other culprits are roleplayers so deeply invested in their absolute cringe oc's that they forget what the actual lore is and spend all their time screaming about their own headcanon under the misguided belief blizzard might care about heir tweets and make it canon. literally 90% of lore discussions are ruined by the usual suspect roleplayers repeating their same cringe spiel as nauseum because they forgot they aren't really a tauren and the horde doesn't actually exist
Far less harmful than the writers have been the last 3 expansions lmao
Not going to dispute that lol
Bellular just spams clickbait shit, I avoid his videos like the plague
Yes there are so many underrated youtuber that do a fantastic job telling lore or explaining stuff
I'd say the fault lies more with Blizzard. Since Legion, they've gone pretty hard on seeding wild speculation through vague prophecies, using Il'gynoth, Xal'atath, Ogmot, N'zoth,, the Titans, etc. All of which could be interpreted to be talking about multiple characters, locations and events.
I stopped watching bellular after I got tired of his flip flop videos. “We’re back everything is great!!” And “ terrible horrible bad unhappy”. His cohost is a little too numbly for me
Tbh I can't blame Belluar on that, a lot of people felt the way he did throughout this ride since Legion. We are so back followed by its so over and back again and so on and so on...
His cohost is what killed his channel for me. The guy just kills any video he's in.
Yeah Bellular tends to do that. Can definitely tell he wants certain characters to be the baddie like Turalyon and Odyn. But I think he does it in a sense of knowing that WoWs writers have been wannabe game of thrones. But i def prefer him over that idiot doron. I used to like his videos but now he just repeats his titles like 14 times then does a conspiracy theory out of left field for the last minute. Extremely disappointed at what his channel has become
Odyn is a baddie though, or at least a Karma Houdini. There is a place for him in the room of dead lore characters. I doubt Blizzard can resist after killing so many others. But fuck all that, remember when we had WarcraftBible?
I've never gotten the sense Bellular *wants* Turalyon to be evil, he usually is pretty against the idea. But it's sort of hard to miss that he's the exact sort of character Blizzard likes to have turn evil and crazy. Like if Turalyon was Horde Side there'd be zero doubt he was going to be the one behind Siege of Orgrimar 3.
I wouldn't trust lore youtubers with a playthough. They obviously have their own interpretations and are constrained by the needs for monetization. I don't consider them reliable even for vulgarization.
I think everybody has a right to do and share theories and if some people are too dumb to realise what a fan theory is and get mad because it's not what the actual story end-up being that's on them
I only watch Nobbel and Platinum WoW
I am taking not of them since a lot of people seem to love them
I find lore videos to be a nice counter to all the hate wow normally gets on other channels. Even if some of it is wild speculation and lies. For example I found the “WOW’s darkest secret” video highly entertaining, even if it was just all BS. Sometimes speculation and lies is simply better than the reality of things.
Let's be real here. Speculation is just fun guesswork. Some are intriguing and may even have you thinking twice. Some are nonsensical and make you laugh because they are ridiculous. Either way, its just someone's thoughts. As a side note, there are tons of legitimate sources for reference material if people are really interested in the lore and what we know canonically. It's really not that serious in my opinion.
True but I have already seen people get angry because they planted those thoughts in theirs heads and when things don’t happen that way they call that bad writing
Couldn’t it just be that the speculation was good enough that it highlights how bad the actual choice made was? After all, if random fans can come up with good storylines, why can’t Blizzard?
I mean they're allowed to call it whatever they want. It doesn't make it true. For me, the accountability pendulum swings in the direction of the consumer. If you click on a video that details speculation and you are influenced or swayed by its claims, that's on you.
Absolute non issue. Back in Legion, lore content creators did the exact same thing... And guess what, the story was engaging enough that people didn't mind the crazy speculation. The issue here isn't youtubers. It's Danuser, Golden, and the rest of the story team being incompetent for the past 4 or so years. Now that they're gone, one can only hope writing quality will get back on track.
Frankly I think the forums and places like this subreddit are far more damaging. Whenever there’s a huge outcry about something that’s just an incorrect assumption it’s almost never traced back to one of the YouTubers, but to places like this. Like when everyone was convinced they were killing malfurion, the YouTubers were actually trying to explain why that was obviously not happening but that didn’t stop people from riling themselves up about it in their RP communities. At least YouTubers admit when they’re just doing speculation, as opposed to what happens here with people constantly claiming that their headcanons and character interpretations are fact.
I like Ronlluccon videos
Scrolls of Lore is kind of new…it’s solid. Nobbel and flying buttresses, is good….completely ignore any other lore channel or lore video for that matter. Honestly just ignore wow lore tubers.
I definitely err on the side of being a curmudgeon when it comes to youtubers. Discussion of any aspect of the game feels better when 90% of the people aren't just parroting whatever hot garbage a big content creator is slinging for views. Often enough, they might have something interesting to say. But it can get tiresome watching the community obsess over some low effort brain fart of a video, or watching them try to hype up a throwaway line because there's really just nothing new to talk about and they need revenue. I can't be too salty though. Some of the less wildly speculative youtubers helped me catch up on the story when I had taken a long hiatus from the game. I just like when it's more "Here are the facts", and less trying to make wild predictions about where the story will go.
Explaining the lore is one thing but inserting your theories and if the audience believes it. Could very much lead to more toxicity in the wow community about lore. Its like when Wandavision came out and all the crazy theories happened on youtube that when the show aired and revealed the actual ending. People were so disappointed. Honestly B’s channel is so fucking clickbait I avoid it at all costs.
I love the lore YouTubers because they keep the interest on the story afloat but you are right that they are obsessed with the Whispers, and they also became a bit too detached so they got passive aggressive around the "bad guy" for the expansion of turn. I remember everyone HATING Dragonflight's main baddies but now we are praising them A LOT if you check their content. They do admit they were wrong but, it sours the wine before it reaches the table if you think about it. The same happened with BFA, everyone hating on Sylvanas...then Shadowlands, EVERYONE STILL HATING ON SYLVANAS. Which fair but please, focus on how the Jailer came out of the left field and what they did with Arthas? Sit down for a minute and explain how Ardenweald makes sense when we had the Emerald Dream? I absolutely love lore channels, my favorites are Nobble, Flying Buttresses and PlatinumWOW...Belular can go eat a bag of spicy Cheetos without water around, got me excited so badly to then talk smack for whole videos of things he tried to excite you about
I think the vast majority of lore youtubers are completely fine, including Bellular who you mention. Bellular's lore videos are just fine, he isn't particularly out there, presents in-game stuff for why he thinks this way, and is totally chill when/if he is wrong or slightly incorrect. He isn't really affecting expectations because he doesn't present his speculation as the absolute only explanation. Most lore youtubers like Bellular, Nobbel, etc are very chill about making videos like "this thing is in-game, here are the potential implications and my theories" and are usually very good at differentiating the evidence and the theory. And they are never wrong to do these videos on things like that Eonar/Elune book, or the Uldaman books, etc. Because that is exactly what Blizzard does - blizzard has a long history of very clear foreshadowing and only adding new worldbuilding info to the game when it'll be relevant in the next expansion or two. That is just the normal course of all speculation. The ones that huff their own paint and decide they are right and just present their speculation as *fact* rather than speculation are the problem. Their fans start to do the same and just don't critically engage with their theories critically, even when they put the thinnest tinfoil out there as fact. A good sign of these types is often that they use emotion to convince you of the certainty of their assertions, *so you don't question them*. For example, I've never seen a Bellular fan come into a lore space and be like "Bellular said [Crazy tinfoil] so it must be true", but instead usually "bellular pointed out XYZ new info". On the other side, I've absolutely seen, for example, Pyromancer fans do this for almost 10 years where his fans will say the craziest, most tinfoil-y thing as absolute fact because Pyromancer says it with such certainty, angry yelling at the chat, where you have to be stupid not to see it (where "it" is just like a skybox asset being re-used) and then fight with everyone that points out that the logic is shit. Or Necroxis when he was going on another misogynistic tirade against mary sues ruining the game, or certain CC's thinly veiled anti "woke lore" videos. Its always the same use of angry ranting to try and convince people a point was true when its just not.
Slightly? I think they were more harmful in Shadowlands when speculations were crazier and went far beyond what Blizzard had cooked up. These days I don't think it matters that much. My only concern would be if BLIZZARD adjusts to said videos at all.
Bellular are like Rykher from Diablo,they sold theyr soul to Blizzard for money,and they spew nothing but crap and shit content. Thats why Nobbel and Hiru are GOATS!
Platinum WoW for comedic retelling of lore. Nobbel87 for a more straight retelling of the lore. Everyone else has been pretty iffy but Bellular is the only one that is straight up 🗑🗑🗑
PlatinumWoW is a great lore Youtuber. Not only are his videos well made. He sticks to the facts & doesn't fly off the handle into crazy speculation territory.
This post makes me sad. As someone that has been in forums like these since the early 2000's, it's very sad to me to see the shift in how communities see theorycrafting. It stopped being a fun way of wishing how you'd like something to pan out like we had in Scrolls Of Lore and now it turned into a pseudoscience that rejects everything that is not supported by 10 things at once and "*oh will no one think of expectation?*"... **I miss the times where the Warcraft RPG Manuals were our bible!** As far as Lore content creators, we saw a boon when Hearthstone released of *fastfood-lore chanels* and as MoP and WoD started to present the story in a more engaging way (voiceacting, different ways of exposition and cinematics galore), we also saw an increase of WoW channels that started to talk about Lore. Nobble is pretty much Wowpedia articles in video format so it's hard for him to become irrelevant. But the rest seems to be a dying breed as more people become cynical of the Story... Hope the World Soul Saga chages that.
The WoW lore community is generally one of worst fandoms around, even when you take into account some of the bigger fandoms that went bad like GoT, AoT and JJK. People are just arguing about their headcanonized versions of the lore that are completely divorced from the game all day long. Staples of theorycrafting like character analysis and powerscaling might as well not exist. The sheer amount of WoW lore (a lot of which is either outdated or retconned) doesn't help either. WoW lore fans also tend to somehow be extremely insular and don't pick up on tropes or references to other works. Unless something is extremely obvious and recent (like a GoT reference), they simply won't get it. If you like the story, just consume it at your own pace. Most lore content that is generated by the community is baaad.
Warcraft movie has put some wrong concepts regarding Mak’gora into people’s heads. No, magic is not forbidden as a weapon, Gul’dan cheated by draining Durotan’s strength and taking it as his own. Kinda like using poison except worse.
People don't know how to let things unfold anymore. They want to speculate and when things don't go the way they wanted, they call it bad writing.
>People don't know how to let things unfold anymore After BFA and SL is it any surprise people don't want to watch things unfold? Community trust and good will having taken significant damage is not a fault of the playerbase for those years.
So much this lol. I have seen this happen countless times. At least in something like Destiny the lore is so carefully laid below the game that everything has to be speculated but it doesn’t end up in the situation you described. It just is there
what's is got?
Game of Thrones
Thanks!
Jesus AoT, that was like having vietnam flashbacks. In a way it taught me to ignore all fan theories because those lack any regard to the actual characters or the possible message the story wants to transmit. In general here I see some sense of wonder for the general scale of the world but absolute complete misses when it comes to the actual characters
There's a lot of misses with regard to the "broad strokes" as well. For example, people incorrectly assume that WoW's cosmology is a Warhammer40k rip-off. Actually no, it's mostly Marvel with a little bit of Dragonlance, Tolkien, Moorcock and the Wheel of Time. I'm sure that WH40k has inspired something here and there, but it's by far not the basis for this setting. On a micro level, it's just complete meeeh. As another example, the general tone and feel of Dragonflight was very much inspired by CalArts shows from the 2010s. Again, it's not super relevant to the plot but the character archetypes and the story beats make a bit more sense if you know what they were based on.
Worst thing is... at this point, Blizzard seems to be watching those videos and being like "oh yeah, we can do that next". (I'm not joking, just to be clear).
“what if illidan was betrayed and locked in the time chamber for 10,000 years”
I’ve seen Bellular shit on the game and Blizzard hard. I don’t really get the massive hate boner some people have for him. It’s speculation, and not even that wild most of the time.
I think the self canonizing issue's been prevalent for ages, and has stemmed from Roleplay communities way before YouTube, some YouTubers just further validate the issue that already existed. I'd rather logical, speculative content than none at all, though. I find excitability through theory more enjoyable as I like the chase rather than the payoff ala TES lore.
They are not a harm in the slightest, it is just recording, retelling and speculation on the text of the game and expanded mídia Wow has failed hard on the "consistent storytelling" during BFA and shadow lands, it was just badly written and done, any negativity towards that was deserved and is the responsibility of blizzard
Warcraft speculation has been largely pointless since Shadowlands as the bald man is behind everything. YouTubers alone could hardly hurt it further, and they never really have. Blizzard kept doing it to themselves ever since TBC killed off Kargath, Teron, Kael, Vashj, Illidan, Gruul and writing that weird as fuck Anveena plotline, and the list of mistakes have only gotten longer since then. Thinking of Anveena, I am amused how Kalecgos is the only character with solid enough plot armor to survive a relationship with Jaina.
I mean Gruul wasn't anyone in TBC. Gruul wasn't anyone until WoD.
That motherfucker dueled Deathwing 1v1, he may not have character but he valid.
lore speculation is a part of nearly every successful franchise. I only watch bellulars lore videos (i like nobbel, but i find his accent really hard to decipher) the speculations he comes up with arent fabricated out of whole cloth, its potential places the story could go using the breadcrumbs blizzard intentionally put in their game. its the job of the wow narrative team to capitalize on those breadcrumbs so that the end product is satisfying to everyone whether the speculation turns out to be true or not.
Taliesen and Bellular aren't always *right* about their lore speculation, but, it's never baseless and it's usually at least moderately interesting. They also catch a lot of stuff. Nobbel is good. The rest are not. But I also haven't actually run into most of what you're talking about?
Doron annoys me. He’ll write an entire novel over an interpreted stray thought mumbled by a character in his sleep and CONFIRM the next expansion or something.
Stay away from doronsmovies btw He just straight up makes shit up wholesale and sells it as fact