Humans, similarly to night elves, lost a lot of personality in the transition from W3 to WoW. A huge collection of diverse kingdoms, now forced to rebuild civilization in the foreign land of Kalimdor! But then Stormwind was magically rebuilt overnight and they became "USA but with castles". Sad.
The Human Kingdoms were supposed to struggle in their decline, a Tolkienian tragedy where hope is futile but paradoxically the most beautiful thing that inspires us in spite of certain doom. W3 had that melancholy, the best audio track is called "The Last Days of the Alliance". Human paladins in torn fabrics over battleworn armor wielding battered and cracked hammers on splintering handles is famously one of the artworks that inspire the spirit of the Alliance. It's almost a retelling of the Byzantine Empire's collapse. WoW sttempted to maintain the political intrigue and the "skeletons in the closet" but they fell off once they forced Varian as the Blue Warchief.
The USA with castles is a top notch description not gonna lie. The only European thing about them is the pseudo-Latin they speak and the writing system that vaguely resembles Nordic runes. And the fact that these two are smack dabbed together just shows that humans represent white americans, not specific blocks of European cultures. It would so cool for lorderon to be based on Byzantine/Slavic orthodox Christian aesthetics for example. Or even use cultures outside Europe.
The Uldaman Tome specifically shows Odyn telling his Keepers to keep the ‘advances of the Black Empire’ out of common knowledge. Now the Old Gods are responsible for the Curse of Flesh which afflicted the Titanborn, but it stands to reason that the Curse likewise could’ve afflicted the Elementals. We know that Protodrakes are evolved from the Firehawks, and now the hints are Tauren evolved from Earth Elementals or some other kind of Elemental. Void/Old Gods have been the source of literally ‘fleshy’ evolution for nearly all the Alliance core races. It might be tempering the Curse of Flesh with Order magic = regular people
I'm interested in the overlooked Drogbar from Legion and how they kind of seem related to primordial trolls. And just trolls in general as their genesis into the many subspecies we see today is fascinating. They're one of the few truly home-grown species Azeroth bore, seemingly not having been created or shaped by higher powers from jump, and yet are as highly malleable as the dragons.
@@ShadowWolfRising Several tribes, actually. Horde trolls are of the Darkspear and Shatterspear jungle troll tribes, and the Revantusk forest troll tribe.
I’ve been playing a human warrior since vanilla, and it’s awesome to have a series like this coming out. All of the human leveling zones are just stories of the towns or people of stormwind/ lordaeron/ scholomance / etc. The lore of wow is so rich !
Out of all the lore videos that mention galakrond, it seems like none of them mention one of the biggest hints found in gathering professions related to the story. As an herbalist you can get elemental reagents for crafting: air, frost, order…and decay. Decay is only found in one area, and to me it clearly points to Tyr’s failed experiment with galakrond. Decay is the offset of Order. It’s small but it fits.
Love these type of videos mate, I vaguely knew about Tyr and human stuff... but when you put it like that, that was surprisingly detailed even though somewhat summarized. all n' all that was awesome!
So I've had this theory bouncing around in my head since Kul'Tirans entered WoW in BfA that they are more closely related to their Vykrul ancestors than other humans. Not only are they of larger build in both girth and height than most humans, but their affinity for seafaring and shamanistic beliefs through the Tidesages is more akin to Vykrul ways than Human. That is today that instead of evolving from those original Human clans, that Kul'Tirans are their own settlement of those cursed Dragonflayers that settled entirely separately from the core group in what is now Arathi and Tirsfal. Granted this is all based on real world migration theory which has little to no bearings on a fantasy setting, but it makes you wonder...
Kul Tiras was founded by Gilnean settlers. Upon discovering the new land, they ended up at war with the native Drust, another Vrykul off- shoot that combined druidism with death magic. The Kul Tirans were ultimately victorious, but some of the Drust joined Kul Tiran society. A popular theory is the big and bulky Kul Tirans have Drust blood in their veins.
This is the most interested I've been in WOW lore in years, I have been a human paladin as far back as I can remember so this is really fascinating to me. Thank you for making this video.
Please make an awareness video for Turkey. Two earthquakes (7.7 and 7.6) hit the southern region of Turkey and 13 million people are effected. Please Michael.
Man this video is just beautiful, thanks a lot for the good work and I can't wait to see the rest. LOR in WoW is so deep, vast and exploded everywhere that it's nearly impossible for someone like me who was not there 10 years ago to get it. Nevertheless it's fascinating and everytime I check a Lor video I learn a bit more and I love that. Today your video is participating to my WoW culture, big thanks for that ! :D Rascarkapac
as they are in all games where you can be another race instead, in The Elder Scrolls i was either Khajiit, Argonian or Dark Elf (or whatever they called them)
@@ShadowWolfRising ahh right, right, been a while since playing Skyrim, legit forgot. funny how i can remember being called a "Filthy S'wit" in Morrowind, but couldnt remember Dunmer. lol
15:35 you may have just triggered 50% Americans who don't believe York is a place... the other 50% knew I was real and that the Scotts invaded it, just like on Braveheart 🤣🤣
Blizzard is an organization name. Is or are can change depending on the extended meaning of the name. In this case, the extended meaning is not Blizzard as one entity, but rather the team working on World of Warcraft, which means "are" is more grammatical than "is" in this particular case. :)
@@gabrielballiet9282 Not really different rules. It's just that grammar rules are actually quite flexible and change by usage all around the world. Grammar as you're taught in school is just a limited picture of what grammar actually is. Greetings from an English teacher. :)
@@Krascara English is the easiest and simultaniously most confusing language ever. It's so practical and quick to pick up, but god damn the rules look like a conspiracy board.
Is the human origin story really that underdeveloped? I mean, it's identical to dwarves and gnomes, and they haven't gotten much more in their distant history either. I mean, we've had so much vrykul stuff, but very little earthen and trogg stuff, and gnomes have even less going for them, because they only got minor (true) mecha-gnome stuff. And leper gnomes are recent history.
The humans possible connection and lineage from Vrykul and Djaridin could be a great story angle for them lore wise to justify giving humans shaman class.
I've never really been interested in Humans in any game that gives me race options. They always feel like the generic cookie cutter race that never feels any different then it did in the last game.
Your channel is so big and you like so much to hear your own voice, but you cant make proper english subtitles, leaving it to the messy youtube automatic generator
Thought this was going to be about how they would fix the human models to not look so janky and PS1. Disappointed. Also if humans in Azeroth are descended from the Viking-themed Vrykul with Nordic features, it makes even less sense for there to be ethnic diversity among them. It's basically saying they all descended from white people, in which case there's no reason for them to have Asiatic or Afro phenotypes.
Well it seems the vast majority of the community cares about humans, being the most played race and all? You got what, 24 races to choose from? And you play a human? Isn't it enough to be one irl?
@@galten7361 You seem offended by my joke and I am just baffled as to why. Not sure what reading books has to do with a factional version of the human race in a game, And I have no idea what comic books have to do with anything. I have lived a large portion of my life pre-Internet. I am not in my twenties or even thirties so I had to look up the term capeshit to confirm it meant what I thought it probably meant. My statement really just referred to my own preference in playing non-humans in RPG games, tabletop or CRPG, because I am already human. It's like me playing a game where I am a character doing the exact same activities I do for work. Are you simply replying out of boredom? Normally I would not reply to such an inane statement but I am just so baffled why there is so much vitriol toward my silly, pointless comment.
@Somejustin Pretty much no credible fantasy or even sci-fi settings have non-humans there for non-metaphysical (like Tolkien's maiar being more or less angels) or allegorical (like in Arcanum) purposes. WC does neither, not well anyway (they really should have stopped at RoC at most).
@@galten7361 "Pretty much no credible fantasy or even sci-fi " - Sounds a bit too close to "No true Scotsman". You did not address anything I wrote and instead went into left field as a defensive mechanism so I am done conversing with you.
Reminder that Cataclysm brought rumors of an 8th human kingdom, in the region that is now called the Burning Steppes. When the Dark Iron dwarves summoned Ragnaros, the area was utterly destroyed. The humans of Stormwind had to migrate from the Badlands through the Redridge mountains. This is where they encountered lions, which are represented in Stormwind's heraldry.
That was an interesting story that sadly never had any follow up on. Theramore had a lot of potential as a "new" human kingdom on Kalimdor. I really hate how they destroyed it before it got any meaningful development.
6:35 if tauren are specifically earth elemental descendants that would explain Xalathat's line about them, that they are rather resilient to corruption despite their origins. Would also explain why there were so many tauren in the Twilight Hammer's cult, and also would explain why so many powerful shamans are tauren specifically (like Kurog or Magatha)
I think the dragonflayer became dragonflayer after the meet-up with the djaradin. They met up the fire giants, King Ymiron survived, got home alone but with dragon eggs and new teachings, and started the whole dragonflayer thing.
For thoese who have read the day of the dragon novel and played war2 we know that the story of the 7 kingdom is awesome, they could sooooo much do a Games of Thron story about them... Please bring back my Kingdom of Alterac dam it!
It really is. Sadly Stormwind is the most boring of the 7 Kingdoms and was like the only one (minus Alterac perhaps) that was irrelevant to WC3. Blizz really squandered every chance they had to make Stormwind interesting.
@@Trollbane96 And Alterac with all the political plots around its downfall and after its fall was so much better than Stormwind will ever be...especially since writters are not able to treat humans with more serious than them being US soldiers...
I definitely want different theming to signify the different kinds of humans, I was ecstatic when Kultirans became playable for that reason, and from an RP aspect that would be amazing. I'd also like to see some more Vrykul themed human customisations / equipment.
@@Bunstonious Except that what you play when you play a "regular human" is a Stormwind human, it is whats written in the race description, hence why the heritage armor will be about stormwind
@@Bunstonious I think, we are coming to a "weird" point with the humans now, actually its "sad" but it feels like IF the Kingdom of humanity are NOT separate "races" like Kul tirans it wont get any cultural developpement in the lore I explained myself here, to me unless they do an actual allied race for the Alteraci humans we wont get any major cultural difference/developpement compared to the playable stormwind humans, this can be seen with the orcs, if you look at the orcs the whole idea and culture differences of each clans is innexistant regarding to the base orcs who came to only be well...orcs
with the amount of vrykul armor being added to the players it wouldn't surprise me Vrykuls would be playable race in the future. If they do become playable hopefully a rework of their player model.
clicked on this video as soon as i saw it. i’m someone who plays only worgen and forsaken because they’re just more interesting humans in my mind. i’d love for a reason to actually play a human!
That’s something WoW has always done pretty well. Racial Origin stories. Out of all of the playable races, the only origin story that we are missing (to my knowledge) is that of the Eredar. Draenei is just a name that means uncorrupted and Exodar obviously means Exodus, or exiled. But all of the other races have some sort of origin story. Subjects of evolution from elemental entities, curse of flesh titanforged, literally created by the titan keepers to populate and cultivate the world, etc. But Draenei are as much just Russian space goats as they are anything else. We know very little about how the Eredar came to be. My personal theory is that they are similar to the orcs or trolls, since there was no old gods on their planet and their home world was also a titan.
@@NubsWithGuns He means their origin as a species, which we know close to nothing about. We know zilch about what Argus was like before it was destroyed, much less their original society.
The Draenei are a shoddy race who's backstory is ridiculous (technology better than the Gnomes and magic easily rivaling Dalaran but manage to lose a war against boar men with spears).
I would love to know more about the Humans other than the bits and pieces and obvious things. My OG character, Human Priest, she's 19 years old now! And I barely know who she is.
One of the main things making humans less interesting is how they became bland good guys over time, along with the rest of the Alliance. Early on in Warcraft and through to the early years of WoW, there was lots of background of scheming nobles, peasant revolts, and different factions scraping against each other. As time went on, though, anyone morally dubious in the Alliance got scraped out and never got replaced. Not for lack of opportunity! The Alliance still has a secret police and is run largely by hereditary nobles, a wonderful combination. Nobody ever challenged the Kul Tirans about where they'd been while the Scourge or the Legion were invading. The social, political and economic consequences of the setting's constant wars and disasters are as glossed over as anyone - the only way the setting makes sense is if most people who die get resurrected, and then barely. I'm not asking for the Alliance to suddenly be full of cackling edgy villains, but it really has seemed like Blizzard has repeatedly, deliberately backed away from any opportunity for the Alliance to have any flaws and the potential interesting stories that would come with it, except occasionally when an entire city gets destroyed and then maybe one Alliance character gets to be a bit angry for an expansion or two. Yeah that's really some verisimilitude there, guys. Humans being the main characters of the Alliance most of the time, they get it the worst. I have hope they improve things, but not a lot of it.
I got plenty of human characters, and one of them is my Alliance main. It will be interesting to see Blizzard expand on the human lore, fill in the blanks between the cursed Vrykul and the rise of Arathor. I'm also curious if there's another connection with the Djaradin, beyond that Vrykul king who joined them.
Human Female is right now probably the worst model in the game. I mean, the face was updated, but the skeleton and animations are just.. bad. From running animation to more seruous issues like 2hander position being practically imbeded in their bac, which means every single 2hander clips AT LEAST with capes.. more than 90% of them clip with a lot more (back, both shoulderpads, left hand). Bleh The less being said about the male model the better. So one of the most OG races of Warcraft franchise is reduced to blow-up doll and a representation of a 5year old's drawing of their steroid-ridden father.
Always wanted vrykul to be playable. I choose human (when I play alliance) only because of how much I dislike the other races. Gnomes, nelves, velves, draenai, are all at the top of the shitlist, followed by pandas. The new dragon race things look really dumb to me too. On Horde, I only hate vulpera and belves.
I personally just don't care about humans. They're the race you play when you want a self-insert into the universe and not actually feel like you're playing a different character.
There was Alterac but Blizzard pretends they were never a thing since they show that Alliance v. Horde wasn't invented as the fantasy racism filled war they desperate insist on it being.
Wonder if they gonna tie this in to the old Azotha lore? Primordial/barbarian like humans who settled in Arathi fighting jungle trolls especially as hinted that primordial trolls was gonna be a part of dragonflight eventually also?
Thank you Bellular and crew for the amazing content, you can tell how much you care about this just by the effort of creating your own story and putting things using real world and warcraft world together in comparison. Amazing work :)
I don't really want to dumb it all down to skin colour but do you guys remember the small storm with darker skin colours for Blood Elves? When combined with the excitement for different clan customizations for orcs and dwarves it really showed how insulated Blizzard and some western parts of the community really are and how shallow their understanding of cultures and ethnicities is. Fun is cool and everything but all those differences don't need to be seen through this singular paradigm sucked out of US. Humans were hit by this avatarization the most. Other races can play with these differences and make them fun with lots of cultural curiosities, both positive and negative. Humans on the other hand (and to some degree also blood elves) are so close to this melting pot they know, that everything melts together into this one mass of grey goo. There is a beauty in interactions with more insulated cultures, ethnicities, groups, styles. When everyone is and can be everything then everything cannot be anything but uninteresting.
actually after hearing your theory/video about avalon and there possibly being a whole new Human badass kingdom on the other side of azeroth, and there being far more to it than just Humans being fleshy titanoids, when I saw the yaradeen I just kept thinking about that, and how these Yaradeen look so Human even though they are lava people xD and the whole "titans are bad" from the primalists, + your description of Odyn and his expedition to a rebel faction + that pirate guy who went and came back xD It makes you think, and it makes you fantasize about the potential true badass lineage of the Humans
Why is this guy intentionally pronouncing common lore names wrong like Loken, Alterac and Amani? So that real fans can correct him in comments for engagement? What a sod.
Still wondering why the Tauren mythology so specifically mentions "the sun and the moon", especially since the new Tuskarr stories mention the same. But, there are two moons in Azeroth, aren't there? There definitely is canonically two moons, yet for many years we only had one in game. Is all of that just a series of mistakes? or could it be hinting at something?
Is it that accurate to say that the last Vrykul died then? Like the Drust and stuff were around well after this, weren't they? Re: New Avalon - could easily be that Avalon was one of the cities destroyed in the troll wars. New Avalon is in an Amani controlled area.
Its because the alliance is lacking meaningful lore. The alliance king is always a spoiled white boy(always a human running the alliance) going through emotional problems, it's getting old and repetitive. That also reflects on the direction of WoW. The game as a tool is tending to the spoiled minded instead of using it to manifest a vision, a purpose that was surely felt from WC3.
I like that Blizzard is trying to fix the humans, but goodness me besides Night Elves and the Humans themselves, no Alliance race gets any attention these days and are pushed off so far to the side they're not too noticeable.
I play humans because of their reputation bonus and secondary stat bonus, but they are very bland. There is no doubt that other races have much better flavor, and way more fun racials.
