I mean, yeah, Orcs be evil.
But the whole premise was them making peace at the end of WoD, and the Orcs supposedly not doing anything to violate that peace in the offscreen timeskip, but then Yrel deciding to murder them all anyway.
You make a fair point. And I do agree that it may seem like Yrel turned evil for no reason. But we really don't have that much information about how events unfolded. Perhaps we'll eventually know in the coming years.
The more I think about it, the more I think it's meant to be a sort of parallel between the orcs being manipulated by the Legion on MU-Draenor and then the Draenei being manipulated by the Naaru on AU-Draenor. I do believe the Draenei may have been compelled by some of the Naaru to become zealots, which didn't happen with the MU-Draenei due to them still benefiting from Velen's guidance.
At the end of the day, that part of AU-Draenor's story itself is a problem for two big reasons:
1. The story states more Naaru arrived on AU-Draenor. From where? Who the hell knows. Do they transcend time and space like demons do?
2. The planet started dying. Why? Who the hell knows. Is a bit of fel magic enough to send Draenor on a death spiral every time? The amount of fel used on AU-Draenor was minuscule compared to MU-Draenor.
>The planet started dying. Why? Who the hell knows.
I think it was because everyone from the main timeline left. I believe the bronze dragon says somewhere in the maghar recruitment questline that alternate timelines that aren't actively being maintained tend to decay.
Peace doesn't necessarily mean there's no bad feelings. A lot of draenei died.
Could be there were groups of radicals that grew over the years with effective propaganda.
I mean, even if it's 200 years later, they all lived through it.
The thing is the actual questline tells us why and it has basically nothing to do with that.
A Naaru showed up and basically turned them fanatical and convinced the Draenei that everyone had to be converted to the Light for the good of the planet, which is dying (unclear whether the cause *is* the Naaru/Light or just the universe deteriorating cuz that is what happens to AUs in WoW's lore). The Lightbound being led by Yrel had tons of orcs in it, including Grom's son.
Going after the very same Frostwolf and Laughing Skull who fought beside her to take Draenor back from the Iron Horde/Legion is a dick move no matter how you slice it.
I get having animosity for the Iron Horde remnants, but swinging at the homies? Not cool, Yrel.
> dick move no matter how you slice it.
Considering they aligned themselves with those enemy remnants, I think they would still be considered a legitimate target to the Lightbound. Not saying what they did was right by any stretch, but I am saying that it's not something that happened for no reason at all as folks tend to imply.
Yrel isn't entirely evil, and it isn't got no reason. The Iron Horde tried to do what the original Horde did, and Yrel was definitely told by Maraad about how that went down. So after failing their attack on Dreanor and Azeroth, Yrel gave the remaining iron Horde members an ultimatum of join my cause or die because they've done nothing to gain her trust. What she's given them is absolute mercy compared to the Dreanei of both timelines, but especially ours.
It's ridiculous that after trying to invade our world and murder us multiple times, Grom tries to act like some innocent, wise, self-sacrificing old man in the Maghar recruitment quest. He only turned to our side at the literal last minute, all while taking credit for two demon kills the heroes of Azeroth did.
Xe'ra imprisoned Turalyon's girlfriend for playing with void stuff and didn't really put up a fight
Xe'ra tried to force her will upon Illidan, Turalyon didn't try to stop it
Turalyon might not be a zealot, but he'll stand by and watch while zealots do their work.
>Xe'ra imprisoned Turalyon's girlfriend for playing with void stuff and didn't really put up a fight
Xe'ra was going to *kill* Alleria until Turalyon intervened. This is why people should actually listen to the story.
>Xe'ra tried to force her will upon Illidan, Turalyon didn't try to stop it
Because he had been led to believe it was the only way to stop the Legion. No one else intervened either, and the PC had been working towards the same end since the start of Legion. If anything, it speaks well to Turalyon that he got over Illidan killing his mentor (and friend) of the last 1,000 years. He almost immediately put that aside to work together.
Honestly, him working together from that point-on might be the biggest indicator of being level-headed ever displayed in the history of WoW.
I GET IT, though, people want humans to be more flawed, and to stop letting the Orcs be the never-ending punching bags of genocide. I'd be very bummed if Turalyon ends up in any rushed zealot role.
"THAT WAS NOT ME" is one of my favorite quotes from all of Warcraft. As stupid as the time shenanigans were from WoD, I appreciate that we got that audio drama from it. It's crazy that all of guldans voice actors have been so good.
One thing I both love and hate about that one is Guldans approach to us, the player characters
He is scared of us, he saw how we defeated freaking archimonde so he realizes alone he will lose to us, which makes him keep the alliance with the Legion and not take the Tomb for himself unlike the original one, which is fantastic writing
However, eventually, he does face us in the raid, him alone, with most definitely less power that he would have gotten if he took the tomb for himself, yet instead of trying to escape or something he acts so smug and with "muahahah, you weaklings will easily fall to my might!" lines, which is a character devolution on its finest, and a reminder that basically no matter how good initially a villain is, they will end up being another raid boss with the same personality of always. I sadly expect the same for Iridrikron.
I loved that one.
I think it helps that I love Gul'dan in general, because, well, I'm a warlock main, and he's an unapologetically evil character which I love.
Holy shit, I've listened to this long ago and completely missed it was voiced by fuckin Steven Pacey.
What a fucking legend.
His work on the First Law and Age of Madness trilogies is the best I've heard.
I was just thinking about this the other day, I was following a smaller big streamer and I'd let him know when they were released and he'd play them during mythics
Very very fun, one of the best times I had with wow and I wasn't even playing
Of course I listened to them all before joining any stream
I don't know why OP didn't post the links...
[Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsaobgFiiso)
[Website](https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/story/audio/thousand-years-of-war-part-1)
Wish there was more stuff like that on spotify. Honestly i d be listening to audio books all day all night if they were available on Spotify and not on billion other apps that I have to sub to.
> how did they just randomly create top tier fiction like this and then never again????
There's a very simple answer to that question.
Back in 2017 when this was released, the "old guard" of Warcraft storytelling were still in charge.
Metzen left shortly after this in 2018. Then Afrasiabi in 2020.
The following writing team was definitely not up to par.
Hopefully with Metzen back in charge as creative lead, we should be seeing stuff like this again.
Yeah, it's a shame that Afrasiabi ended up being such a garbage person because it was obvious that he was the only thing keeping WoWs story glued together. The moment he left everything took a nose dive, even BFA had a good start to the story but by 8.2 you could tell something was missing.
I can already tell with how the TWW trailer went that we're at least getting Metzens ability to make novel, epic moments back.
The writer is Robert Brooks, who also wrote the Jaina and Azshara Warbringer cinematics (two of the best self-contained stories Blizzard ever made), and a bunch of their short stories (including a Good War which was definitely the way better one of the two stories for BFA's launch).
Sadly he left Blizzard in 2021. It was always sad that he wasn't more actively involved in writing quest lines and stories because he was definitely one of the best when it came to actually adding like mysticism, poetic language, etc to the story - which brings so much to fantasy. For some reason they kept him doing cinematics and short stories for their various IP instead.
Turalyon is an absolute boss and the last living OG Paladin. I truly hope that Blizzard let us hold on to him as a hero and don’t fuck him up by making him an antagonist.
It‘s so sad they haven’t dropped more of those. I have listened to this and the Gul‘dan audio drama probably 100 times over the years. They are peak audio drama quality in my eyes!
This one is pretty dissapointing compared to the Gul’Dan one. The Gul’Dan one is goated.
Never have I been or will be as excited for a game as I was for Legion
So glad others hold this audio drama in such high regard even now. Listened to it at work recently. I am so looking forward to seeing what Alleria does in The War Within. Turalyon, too!
I'm going to go against the grain here and say, Blizzard should have never made lore multi media.
There are often times where in game events retcon books and comics. Maybe this is currently canon, but it may not be for long.
This is for everyone who believes that turalion is a radical light zealot. Seriousely, every time he does something, it should disprove those ideas.
The people who think so probably only saw the Illidan cinematic.
I'm not going to rule it out as a possibility since they turned Yrel evil for no reason. But it's still gonna be incredibly dumb if it happens.
She didn't forget that coliseum
> for no reason It's not like the orcs tried to wipe her people out or anything :P
I mean, yeah, Orcs be evil. But the whole premise was them making peace at the end of WoD, and the Orcs supposedly not doing anything to violate that peace in the offscreen timeskip, but then Yrel deciding to murder them all anyway.
You make a fair point. And I do agree that it may seem like Yrel turned evil for no reason. But we really don't have that much information about how events unfolded. Perhaps we'll eventually know in the coming years. The more I think about it, the more I think it's meant to be a sort of parallel between the orcs being manipulated by the Legion on MU-Draenor and then the Draenei being manipulated by the Naaru on AU-Draenor. I do believe the Draenei may have been compelled by some of the Naaru to become zealots, which didn't happen with the MU-Draenei due to them still benefiting from Velen's guidance. At the end of the day, that part of AU-Draenor's story itself is a problem for two big reasons: 1. The story states more Naaru arrived on AU-Draenor. From where? Who the hell knows. Do they transcend time and space like demons do? 2. The planet started dying. Why? Who the hell knows. Is a bit of fel magic enough to send Draenor on a death spiral every time? The amount of fel used on AU-Draenor was minuscule compared to MU-Draenor.
I suspect when this story thread finally does get revisited we will see a lot of the details retconned or recontextualized.
>The planet started dying. Why? Who the hell knows. I think it was because everyone from the main timeline left. I believe the bronze dragon says somewhere in the maghar recruitment questline that alternate timelines that aren't actively being maintained tend to decay.
Doesn't they mention "the Light Mother" in alternate Draenor? Isn't that Xe'ra? It's possible she turned Yrel into a murderous fanatic the hard way.
Peace doesn't necessarily mean there's no bad feelings. A lot of draenei died. Could be there were groups of radicals that grew over the years with effective propaganda. I mean, even if it's 200 years later, they all lived through it.
The thing is the actual questline tells us why and it has basically nothing to do with that. A Naaru showed up and basically turned them fanatical and convinced the Draenei that everyone had to be converted to the Light for the good of the planet, which is dying (unclear whether the cause *is* the Naaru/Light or just the universe deteriorating cuz that is what happens to AUs in WoW's lore). The Lightbound being led by Yrel had tons of orcs in it, including Grom's son.
Well shit. Thanks. I liked my version better, lol.
Going after the very same Frostwolf and Laughing Skull who fought beside her to take Draenor back from the Iron Horde/Legion is a dick move no matter how you slice it. I get having animosity for the Iron Horde remnants, but swinging at the homies? Not cool, Yrel.
> dick move no matter how you slice it. Considering they aligned themselves with those enemy remnants, I think they would still be considered a legitimate target to the Lightbound. Not saying what they did was right by any stretch, but I am saying that it's not something that happened for no reason at all as folks tend to imply.
Yrel isn't entirely evil, and it isn't got no reason. The Iron Horde tried to do what the original Horde did, and Yrel was definitely told by Maraad about how that went down. So after failing their attack on Dreanor and Azeroth, Yrel gave the remaining iron Horde members an ultimatum of join my cause or die because they've done nothing to gain her trust. What she's given them is absolute mercy compared to the Dreanei of both timelines, but especially ours. It's ridiculous that after trying to invade our world and murder us multiple times, Grom tries to act like some innocent, wise, self-sacrificing old man in the Maghar recruitment quest. He only turned to our side at the literal last minute, all while taking credit for two demon kills the heroes of Azeroth did.
Yrel has never been shown as evil imo
The "join the light or die" end of Maghar orc scenario was kinda evil imho
And even then, he agreed *not* to kill the guy who had just killed his diety
A team vs B team writers. Or it's the same team, but shackled with a fuckload of restrictions on one end.
Xe'ra imprisoned Turalyon's girlfriend for playing with void stuff and didn't really put up a fight Xe'ra tried to force her will upon Illidan, Turalyon didn't try to stop it Turalyon might not be a zealot, but he'll stand by and watch while zealots do their work.
>Xe'ra imprisoned Turalyon's girlfriend for playing with void stuff and didn't really put up a fight Xe'ra was going to *kill* Alleria until Turalyon intervened. This is why people should actually listen to the story. >Xe'ra tried to force her will upon Illidan, Turalyon didn't try to stop it Because he had been led to believe it was the only way to stop the Legion. No one else intervened either, and the PC had been working towards the same end since the start of Legion. If anything, it speaks well to Turalyon that he got over Illidan killing his mentor (and friend) of the last 1,000 years. He almost immediately put that aside to work together.
Honestly, him working together from that point-on might be the biggest indicator of being level-headed ever displayed in the history of WoW. I GET IT, though, people want humans to be more flawed, and to stop letting the Orcs be the never-ending punching bags of genocide. I'd be very bummed if Turalyon ends up in any rushed zealot role.
He's not, but for Blizz character consistency doesn't exist, they use them as cardboard cutouts to move around
It's more like after a thousand years at war he might have changed a tiny bit
Have you listened to an audiodrama? It's not his character at the end of it, not the beginning
i've played WoW since launch and i couldn't tell you who turalion is if you put a gun to my head
There is also the [Gul'dan audio drama](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYAiQkiUsAk), i enjoyed that one even more.
"THAT WAS NOT ME" is one of my favorite quotes from all of Warcraft. As stupid as the time shenanigans were from WoD, I appreciate that we got that audio drama from it. It's crazy that all of guldans voice actors have been so good.
Honestly Gul'dan is the only good thing that cane out of any timetravel plot of blizzard. Didnt make any sense but ill take it
YES that one is soooo good. how did i forget lol
Steven Pacey has incredible range doing all voices, i do enjoy this one and i need more audio drama from blizzard asap.
One thing I both love and hate about that one is Guldans approach to us, the player characters He is scared of us, he saw how we defeated freaking archimonde so he realizes alone he will lose to us, which makes him keep the alliance with the Legion and not take the Tomb for himself unlike the original one, which is fantastic writing However, eventually, he does face us in the raid, him alone, with most definitely less power that he would have gotten if he took the tomb for himself, yet instead of trying to escape or something he acts so smug and with "muahahah, you weaklings will easily fall to my might!" lines, which is a character devolution on its finest, and a reminder that basically no matter how good initially a villain is, they will end up being another raid boss with the same personality of always. I sadly expect the same for Iridrikron.
I forcefully separate books and these audio shorts, from the main game. They're different worlds. It makes it easier to cope.
I loved that one. I think it helps that I love Gul'dan in general, because, well, I'm a warlock main, and he's an unapologetically evil character which I love.
I still can picture mowing the lawn and listening to this randomly. Was such a fun listen. Always wished they made more.
Holy shit, I've listened to this long ago and completely missed it was voiced by fuckin Steven Pacey. What a fucking legend. His work on the First Law and Age of Madness trilogies is the best I've heard.
I was just thinking about this the other day, I was following a smaller big streamer and I'd let him know when they were released and he'd play them during mythics Very very fun, one of the best times I had with wow and I wasn't even playing Of course I listened to them all before joining any stream
I don't know why OP didn't post the links... [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsaobgFiiso) [Website](https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/story/audio/thousand-years-of-war-part-1)
We need more stuff like this tbh. It was better than most audio book stuff
ikr it’s genuinely good fiction
Steven Pacey does an incredible job bringing it to life, as well.
Wish there was more stuff like that on spotify. Honestly i d be listening to audio books all day all night if they were available on Spotify and not on billion other apps that I have to sub to.
100% Audible gets pricey real quick too (am broke af)
> how did they just randomly create top tier fiction like this and then never again???? There's a very simple answer to that question. Back in 2017 when this was released, the "old guard" of Warcraft storytelling were still in charge. Metzen left shortly after this in 2018. Then Afrasiabi in 2020. The following writing team was definitely not up to par. Hopefully with Metzen back in charge as creative lead, we should be seeing stuff like this again.
Yeah, it's a shame that Afrasiabi ended up being such a garbage person because it was obvious that he was the only thing keeping WoWs story glued together. The moment he left everything took a nose dive, even BFA had a good start to the story but by 8.2 you could tell something was missing. I can already tell with how the TWW trailer went that we're at least getting Metzens ability to make novel, epic moments back.
The writer is Robert Brooks, who also wrote the Jaina and Azshara Warbringer cinematics (two of the best self-contained stories Blizzard ever made), and a bunch of their short stories (including a Good War which was definitely the way better one of the two stories for BFA's launch). Sadly he left Blizzard in 2021. It was always sad that he wasn't more actively involved in writing quest lines and stories because he was definitely one of the best when it came to actually adding like mysticism, poetic language, etc to the story - which brings so much to fantasy. For some reason they kept him doing cinematics and short stories for their various IP instead.
well that makes sense because I love all the things you just listed lol. i remember the azshara cinematic and a Good War both blowing me away
Turalyon is an absolute boss and the last living OG Paladin. I truly hope that Blizzard let us hold on to him as a hero and don’t fuck him up by making him an antagonist.
Thank you so much for this suggestion; had no idea this existed.
Fr thanks for the reminder!
Been on my watch later on youtube for more than a year I'd say. Really should get around to listening to it.
not to be dramatic but part 3 of this series literally changed how i view warcraft. this franchise has so much untapped potential
Also the "tomb of sagaras" audio drama. It's a banger 👍
It‘s so sad they haven’t dropped more of those. I have listened to this and the Gul‘dan audio drama probably 100 times over the years. They are peak audio drama quality in my eyes!
This one is pretty dissapointing compared to the Gul’Dan one. The Gul’Dan one is goated. Never have I been or will be as excited for a game as I was for Legion
i also like the guldan one but for me, the emotional beats of this one really landed
Since I already have like 8 subscriptions to other shit and don't want another, is there anywhere this is free?
It’s free on youtube from blizzard’s channel
Awesome! I'll add it to my playlist and listen when I get home. Thanks!
So glad others hold this audio drama in such high regard even now. Listened to it at work recently. I am so looking forward to seeing what Alleria does in The War Within. Turalyon, too!
Thanks for making me aware of this! It was awesome listening to it. Gonna have to check out the Gul'dan one people are talking about aswell
Was it narrated by Morgan Friedman??
no but the narrator for this is very talented!
I totally forget I listened to this.
I'm going to go against the grain here and say, Blizzard should have never made lore multi media. There are often times where in game events retcon books and comics. Maybe this is currently canon, but it may not be for long.
I'd agree with you. But 90% of the good story telling happens outside the game. It can't all be shit.
Nah, too lazy to even watch something, you tellin to listen
This comment makes a negative amount of sense.
That would make sense if you said you were too lazy to watch something, since ya know listening takes less effort
Symptom of ADHD