What defined these enemies was their desire for destruction for destruction’s sake - rather than the cheesy, Red vs. Even in vanilla (pre-expansion content) WoW the two factions - initially divided into the problematically savage and scary Horde, and the high-fantasy Alliance - have done endless battle, through player-versus-player combat and quests and overarching storylines that paint a picture of a conflict that only really halts if something threatens the worlds in which these two factions reside.Īs the expansions continued to release, the concept of this overarching threat - Legion’s titular, demonic Burning Legion, or Arthas, the Lich King, master of the enslaved undead - put stereotypes, suspicion and, frankly, lore-encouraged racism on the backburner in favor of dealing with Big Bads. That’s not to say there has never been an inkling of war. No title, however, has delved deeper into the lore of the Warcraft universe than the MMORPG World of Warcraft, and no expansion of the same has attempted to push back down into war harder than its latest, Battle for Azeroth. For many years, Blizzard has formed a sine-wave storyline that oscillates between the lows of factional, even nationalist warfare, and the highs of joining forces to face larger threats. The lore of the Warcraft universe is singularly focused on the divide between the Horde and the Alliance - or, if you’re older than a lot of its audience, orcs and humans.
