< World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft/Tropes A-H


The first set of tropes present in World of Warcraft.

  • Aborted Arc: Throughout World of Warcraft's history, there have been many apparently unfinished quest lines and plot elements. Some of these have since been revisited in later content, but some remain unresolved. When revisited, Blizzard at least tries to tie up the storyline in a dramatic fashion. Cataclysm in particular went to great strides to bring closure to many unsettled storylines from the original release. See the trope page for specific examples.
    • Though Cataclysm was good at tying up loose ends from previous storylines, and setting up threads for future expansions, there was an aborted arc in Vashj'ir. Several places in the game have the Naga plotting to overthrow Water Lord Neptulon, which they do using the kraken Ozumat. The Throne of Tides dungeon has players rescuing Neptulon and fighting back against the Naga and Ozumat, but ends with Ozumat recapturing Neptulon and retreating. A second instance, Abyssal Maw was supposed to finish the arc, but was dropped.
  • Absolute Cleavage: Quite many robes and vests early in the game.
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer:
    • The sewers of Dalaran are so absurdly spacious that they're a town unto itself, complete with an inn and several merchants. The folks who live there are mostly the city's seedier residents, like locksmiths, rogues, and poison vendors. Black Market trading and Fight Clubbing both occur there. Naturally, it has quite a few Muck Monsters and Rodents of Unusual Size lurking about. In Legion, these sewers are used for the Rogue Class Hall.
    • Undercity is a unique case, being a subterranean city with the sewers above it, used as the entrance. They're spacious enough to flu a winged mount through.
  • Acceptable Breaks From Reality: Quite a few. Weapons never need sheathing, ranged weapons don't run out of ammunition any more, your mounts can fly or run indefinitely, eating or drinking heals all wounds, you can carry hundreds of items with you without so much as a bulging backpack showing, and you can swap pants without ever getting off your horse, as long as you're not in combat.
  • Achievements in Ignorance: Grandma Wahl in the Worgen starting zone is able to shift back and forth from Human to Worgen long before the Night Elves show up to give Worgen the means to go back and forth at will. She apparently does this by the power of senility, as when she transforms to protect her cat she doesn't seem to be aware she's a Worgen in the first place, let alone in a Shapeshifter Mode Lock.
  • Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: A large part of the game's slang. All the dungeons are usually referred to by their first letters, for one. "lfm 1 mdd (fdk) 2 rdd (amage, mm) t4w 10" [1] makes perfect sense.
    • This can cause confusion when two dungeons or areas share the same initials. "DM" can mean The Deadmines[2] or Dire Maul, TB can mean Tol Barad or Thunder Bluff, etc..
  • Activist Fundamentalist Antics: The Omnicidal Maniac cult Twilight's Hammer took on this role as they did their recruitment drive just before the release of Cataclysm. Oh, and [insert your own character's name here] got to run around shouting silly slogans as s/he infiltrated the cult.
  • Adam and Eve Plot: One of the fishing dailies in Thunder Bluff is to restock the pond with fish from a nearby lake, and you have to bring back two pairs of fish, which are "randy" and "amorous".
  • Adaptational Villainy: The Opera house Boss Battle in Karazhan is set up like a theatrical play based on a real one. The characters present do their best to kill the heroes no matter what their position on the moral axis was in the source material.
  • Air Jousting: One quest in Mt. Hyjal involves using a flying mount to slay giant buzzards using a lance over a pit of lava in 3D Homage to the Older Than the NES game Joust.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Robots are usually obedient... Usually:
    • When The Caretaker, the second boss of Karazan, first aggros, it starts to politely welcome the players, but then goes berserk in mid-sentence, yelling, "ERADICATE! ERADICATE! TERMINATE THE INTRUDERS!" Once you defeat it, you see a cutscene with Medivh explaining the need for regular maintenance in order to prevent its "erratic behavior".
    • Trilliax, the third boss of the Nighthold. Also malfunctioning due to lack of maintenance for centuries, he acts and talks like The Jeeves, but has three personalities that determine whether he acts like a normal Jeeves, a Faux Affably Evil Jeeves, or a sociopathic Axe Crazy Jeeves. He goes berserk and aggros on the players because they're making a mess and yells at them not to bleed over the floor while powering up his Disintegrator Ray.
  • Alien Sky: So many...
    • Azeroth, for starters, has them all over the place. Often, merely walking from one zone into the next is enough to turn the sky a completely different color. The place used to have two moons, but the smaller one disappeared in a patch that introduced weather effects. It was still mentioned by a few characters, but it reappeared in "Cataclysm". There is another weird thing going on, though. The sun always rises and sets in the same part of the sky, basically stopping its rise at noon and beginning to set again along the same trajectory. The same happens to the moons. The larger moon rises and sets in the night in the same position as the sun does during the day, the smaller moon rises and sets in another part of the sky, sometimes during the day, sometimes in the night. The planetary rotation seems incomprehensible. Also the moons are always full moons and it is always the same time of day in all parts of the world, regardless Azeroth is thought to be a round planet.
    • Azeroth gains more to make its sky alien in patch 7.2, where Illidan opens a massive portal between it and Argus, the home base of the Burning Legion. After clearing the Tomb of Sargeras raid, you can see Argus in the sky from almost every zone in the game. .
    • The skies of Outland are even more exotic, full of an effect akin to a particularly dramatic aurora. The aurora-like things you see in Outland are actually parts of the Twisting Nether that is bleeding physical world after Draenor was ripped apart by opening too many portals to the Nether. The Netherstorm zone is a result of an extreme version of this process.
    • Pandaria features an alien sky. Particularly when in presence of the Sha, the sky will turn into a weird, white tunnel with a grayish center, a substance looking like oil is running down the walls of the tunnel, giving the impression that the world is being swallowed by a bizarre creature.
    • The world has additional weird skies for the dead, existing in the twisting nether the sky looks like swirling vortes of energy when ones character is dead, the same applies for several toys that can locally change the skybox for a small amount of time.
    • The "Draenor" Expansion features an eternally night sky in the Shadowmoon Valley.
  • Alliteration: Most of the quest rewards from The Crucible of Carnage's final quest.
  • Almighty Janitor: Nat Pagle, the greatest fisherman in all of Azeroth, and the subject of much in-universe MemeticMutation. On the surface, he's a QuestGiver for anything involving the Fishing skill, but some conversations you can overhear suggest he's beaten sea serpents and sharks by reeling them in. In fact, the final readable page of his [to Extreme Anglin'] suggests he considers finding Ashbringer an "ordinary day of fishing".
  • Addictive Magic: The arcane. There are even entire races addicted to it, such as the high elves, blood elves, and naga. Handling this addiction is one of the main reasons (if not THE main reason) for the schism between high elves and blood elves.
  • Adventurer Archaeologist: The player characters thanks to the archaeology profession.
    • More traditionally, Harrison Jones, Brann Bronzebeard, and the Reliquary and Explorer's League factions.
  • Aesop Amnesia: Kul the Reckless at the Argent Tournament takes a band of aspirants to attack a nearby cultist camp, only to get them all captured, so players have to go in and save them. When Kul is saved, he might respond that he won't do anything that stupid again, but since the quest is a repeatable daily quest, he'll have done the exact same thing the very next morning.
  • Affably Evil: Nexus-Prince Shaffar, whose fondness of combat is evident throughout the encounter. Combined with his fine manners and sexy voice, Shaffar managed to earn himself quite a fanbase back in the day.
    • Also, Drakuru, who remained a friendly, chipper fellow as he manipulates you into destroying the last remnants of a troll dynasty so that he could become a powerful warlord in service of the Lich King .
  • Affectionate Parody: A very subtle instance; the game is parodying its own players. In the Borean Tundra zone, there are enemy NPCs who work for the Great White Hunter, Hemet Nesingwary. Upon engaging combat with a player, these enemies will yell out things like "Just fifty more hooves and I'll have the new gun!" Replace all the nouns with more appropriate ones, and how often have you heard that said before? Or even said it yourself? Not to mention there are multitudes of slight knocks on the tropes of fantasy, sci-fi, video games, and pop culture in general throughout the game, always affectionate, of course. Keep clicking on an NPC, hilarity will ensue. Also, post-Cataclysm Hillsbrad has you act as a quest giver interacting with NPCs who act in exaggerated stereotypes of the clueless new player, the arrogant high level player, and the obnoxious low level alt.
  • Alcohol Hic: If you get drunk in game, in addition to random 'S'es becoming "Sh'es, a "...hic" will sometimes be added to your lines in chat.

Patch 1.6 note: "You no longer spout profanity when talking about sitting while drunk."

  • All Deserts Have Cacti: Actually averted very well - The game has a lot of deserts, but only Tanaris and Durotar have actual cacti. Uldum, based off of Egypt, does not have cacti at all. Desolace and the Barrens are more like the savannah. Silithus meanwhile is pretty much just sand dunes.
  • All Just a Dream: While aiding the Earthen Ring in the Twilight Highlands, you are summoned by Thrall to help him fight Deathwing at the Maelstrom, only for you to be unable to do anything, and are berated for your failure. After Deathwing attacks, you are awoken by a shaman in the Highlands who rescued you from a swarm of enemies that overpowered you.
  • All There in the Manual: Does it seem strange that character X popped up out of nowhere and is suddenly a major lore figure? Why are we forming a raid so we can go kill this other guy? Why is this the first time we're hearing about such and such? You'd actually know what was going on if you caught up on the Warcraft Expanded Universe.
  • All Trolls Are Different: Hybrid Darkest Africa, theme park Jamaicans practicing Hollywood Voodoo, and Mayincatec. They are also one of the oldest sentient races native to Azeroth, and are the progenitors of the elves. And in this case, the second most popular race in the yaoi fandom as of Burning Crusade, after the blood elves.
    • ...but not so much according to the playerbase. At least before Burning Crusade, people used to see these mysterious trolls and think, "...the horde has trolls?" because before Blood Elves and rebalanced racials, the Horde was almost entirely undead, especially on a PvP server where undead were able to break crowd-control effects on them and become immune for a short while.
  • All Webbed Up: If you see giant spiders, you will have people cocooned in web, and usually there will be a quest to free them; unfortunately, the spiders trap almost anything, so sometimes when you break the web, the trapped NPC is a hostile mob.
    • Maexxna can do this to players in Naxxramas. In the Firelands, some Cinderweb spiders can drag players to their ledges once engaged.
  • Allegedly Free Game: In 2011, Blizzard made WoW free to play... until you reach level 20... and you have caps on trade skill levels and carried money, and you can't use the auction house or trade items, and you can't use public chats, and you can't join guilds...
    • The sign-up page makes it clear the free version is a "Starter Edition", and the FAQ page states it is meant as a trial version.
    • The game used to have a 10-day free trial, but was later changed to a level cap. Hardcore players could play through all the Vanilla content in 10 days, while those who didn't have much free time wouldn't get out of the starting zones.
  • The Alliance: Both the titular Alliance and the Horde.
  • Exclusively Evil: Rare. Demon Lords and Archdevils and Eldritch Abominations - The Burning Legion and the Old Gods - exist, as do cults that worship them, but other than that nearly every antagonist is a Well-Intentioned Extremist, is being Mind Controlled by the Legion or Old Gods, or is opposed to the playable factions for political reasons. Orcs are a Proud Warrior Race, The Undead (playable ones, at least) started out as Mind Controlled by a Big Bad but are now free and guided by a pragmatic political alliance, and even werewolves are just normal people with a curse. And note that the Burning Legion and the Twilight's Hammer cult serving Old Gods are both organizations. If you aren't evil, you don't belong to it by definition.
    • That said, many of the Legion's religious echolons and higher-ups genuinely believe in the nobility of wiping off the old, titan-tainted world and create a new order, putting it on a more Lawful Evil category.
    • Considering that the quests you take are voiced from the point of view of an allied race, nobody ever thinks they're doing something evil or over-the-top, even when they're slaughtering entire villages or committing a little vengeful genocide. It's called 'Warcraft' for a reason.
  • Always Lawful Good: Also rare. Hostile NPCs can be found of every race, playable or not.
  • Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The Eye of Eternity, home of Malygos, and the Celestial Planetarium in Ulduar, home of Algalon the Observer; when he's engaged, the dome of the room displays stars in space.
  • Amazon Brigade: There are absolutely no male night elf guards as a Continuity Nod to the fact that the Sentinels were an all-female organization in Warcraft III. The night elf priesthood is also mainly female. Inverted with night elf druids, who are mostly male, and by the blood elves who inexplicably have only male guards.
  • American Accents: The Goblin race has variations on a pretty awful New York accent to go with their fascination with violent explosions. As a result they often sound like they're about to hustle you.
  • Anachronic Order: Three forms of it in the game.
    • Patches and expansions generally add on new content relevant mainly to the endgame, but often enough they have added content to lower level areas as well. Before the Cataclysm expansion, the biggest of those was Patch 2.3, which made a lot of leveling content easier and added a lot of new quests to a zone in a level range that was particularly sparse on things to do. A character at the maximum level can go through that, breeze through the quests for One Hundred Percent Completion, and find that The Man Behind the Man was... a dragon they killed 10 levels ago.
    • Also, there are many more quests in the game than you need to do to reach the maximum. Some quest chains are connected storylines and it's impossible to see the end without completing the whole thing from start to finish, but most have some kind of Foreshadowing or Backstory much earlier that a player might skip through expedience or simple accident. Until Cataclysm if you leveled up to 70 without questing in the Eastern Plaguelands, it was possible to go to Northrend and serve under Highlord Tirion Fordring, Lord of the Silver Hand and greatest paladin in Azeroth... then go back to Eastern Plaguelands and meet Tirion Fordring, fallen paladin, traitor, and hermit, who hasn't yet been inspired to re-form the Silver Hand.
    • Because Outland and Northrend content haven't been chronologically updated, new characters start their quest in a world ravaged by Deathwing, rebuilding after the Cataclysm and the defeat of the Lich King. Eventually, you go back to the (comparatively) distant past to fight Illidan and the Legion in Outland. Then, returning to the present time, you then go back in time to fight the Lich King. After you're done there, you return to the post-Lich King world.
    • The above is MORE complicated for Draenei and Blood Elves. Their starting zones were not updated in Cataclysm, and so they remove the initial Post-cataclysm snarl and replace it with their own - They start in the time frame of the Dark portal having JUST opened in their starter zones, before leaving into the post cataclysm world, returning to the events of the Dark portal and The Burning Crusade, fighting The Lich King, and finally emerging back into the Post-cataclysm world. Again. A similar experience also harms the Death Knight storyline in the beginning (their timeline looks something like Lich King > Burning Crusade > Lich King > Cataclysm). While understandable for the latter, Blizzard refuses to budge on the former, merely stating that 'their storylines will be revisited in the future'.
  • A Nazi by Any Other Name:
    • The Nightborne in Surumar aren't openly racist, but the similarities are there, including obsession over physical perfection for a select few, vile experiments on prisoners, and Gestapo-like secret police patrolling the place. One resistance member goes so far as to use the term "the wrong side of history" when referring to how future generations will hopefully regard the current rulers.
    • The Mogu can also be considered this, given their LawfulEvil nature and "master race" philosophy.
  • AntagonistTitle: "Cataclysm" is actually a pseudonym for Deathwing, the BigBad of that expansion, although it also an accurate description of his goals. Also true for Wrath of the Lich King, Warlords of Draenor, and Legion.
  • And Call Him George: XT-002 Deconstructor, in Ulduar. He's a Giant Robot with the mind and voice of a 6-year old, who fails to understand why he keeps breaking his "toys" when he plays with them. In a similar vein, Rotface in Icecrown Citadel yells, "I broked-ed it!" when killing a player.
  • And I Must Scream: Bolvar Fordragon's ultimate fate. He is forced to sit on the throne, frozen for eternity, while alive, in complete solitude, leading an army who's entire purpose is to do nothing and rot away. Arguably the worst part is that nobody but Tirion knows he is there, and he was sworn, at Bolvar's wish, to not tell, meaning rescue will NEVER come. The entire rest of the world thinks he died (for good) at the Wrathgate.
    • Gameplay and Story Segregation. This can be read as he erected a statue commemorating the fall of the Lich King, but they implemented the watchable cutscene for only the player's benefit.
    • It's heavily implied that being part of the Undead Scourge is like this as well.
    • Illidan's ten thousand year imprisonment was probably a similar experience.
    • The night elf Asterion, imprisoned (and immortal) at Bashal'Aran, is a text book example. In his own words: "For a thousand years and more I have stared at [the pillars keeping the barrier up], wondering if at long last I outlived even the stone, would I be free?"
      • With the shattering of the world he's disappeared now though and his location is currently unknown...
  • And That's Terrible: The quest "Slavery Is Bad".
  • And Then the Scarlet Crusade was Zombies: The Scarlet Crusade was devoted to eradicating the undead, but was taken over by Dreadlord Balnazzar, who possessed Grand Crusader Saidan Dathrohan; he kills the Scarlet Crusaders in Stratholme, raising them as undead.
    • Players get in on the act too. New Forsaken players get a quest to collect the bodies of Scarlet Crusaders so they can be "recruited", and a daily quest in Northrend has players killing and raising members of the Scarlet Onslaught as ghouls for the Knights of the Ebon Blade.
    • Illidan, too, though he accepts his transformation as a necessary part of gaining enough power to fight demons.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Many quests reward players with strictly cosmetic rewards, such as clothes or off hand items with no other use other than appearance. Also, one of the rewards of reaching exalted reputation with most factions during the Burning Crusade expansions was the faction's tabard, which also qualifies as Cosmetic Award if you don't like wearing your guild tabard.
    • Inverted in Wrath of the Lich King, where the tabard is the first reward you can purchase from each new faction, and wearing it in level 80 dungeons is a primary way of gaining further reputation with the faction. This continues to be the case with Cataclysm endgame factions.
    • Played straight in Mysts of Pandaria, where the rewards of Challenge Mode dungeons are medals that will let you purchase gear with no stats, for the sole purpose of transmogrification.
    • Some of the rewards you can get by collecting and redeeming Darkmoon Faire tickets include "replica" weapons and armor. They have generally poor stats and are only there to look cool. (And for transmogrification.)
  • Animal Wrongs Group: D.E.H.T.A., a group of radical druids in Borean Tundra who will attack players on sight if they kill any of the beast-type mobs in the zone, regardless of whether this death was in self-defense. In addition, their quests require players to kill some Anviliciously stereotyped game hunters, cut off their ears, and bring them back for a reward... when the player him/herself is likely one of those hunters, either in Stranglethorn Vale, Nagrand, or just north, in Sholazar Basin.
    • In fact, the final quest in the Borean Tundra D.E.H.T.A. line is The Assassination of Harold Lane - who was a quest giver back in Nagrand, in Outland.
  • Animate Dead: The modus operandi of the Scourge, obviously. The death knight class in particular has spells to produce ghouls from corpses, lasting from a few seconds to "until killed by an enemy/by the DK to restore health", and can even animate a fallen PC, giving the player a few minutes to actually play the resulting ghoul. As of Cataclysm, the Forsaken are getting in on the act, as well.
  • Another Side, Another Story: Several contested zones have the same events played out from the perspective of the Horde and the Alliance, usually as they fight each other; averted in cases where players work for a third party as Horde and Alliance players get the same quests and story.
    • One notable case was the Camp Taurajo massacre in Southern Barrens. To the Horde, it looks like an overzealous Alliance General (nicknamed "The Butcher of Taurajo") sacked the town, killed the civilians, and are looting whatever is left. On the Alliance side, General Hawthorne did sack the town, but only chased the civilian population away, and were unfortunately killed by the quilboar, which he regretted deeply; and the looters where criminals drafted into to pay their sentence, and took the opportunity to line their own pockets, another decision that Hawthorne regrets.
  • Anticlimax: The goblin starter story. At the end when you and Thrall finally defeat Trade Prince Gallywix, who has so far screwed you out of your life savings, tried to enslave you, successfully enslaved your friends and committed various other atrocities, you stand there intending to lay down some righteous retribution, right? Nope, Thrall has other plans for him, like letting him remain the trade prince without any real repercussions for what he's done.
    • The new Westfall quest chain in Cataclysm is a bit like this as well. You've uncovered the conspiracy Vanessa VanCleef has been brewing, have warned King Varian, and returned to Sentinel Hill to see it under attack from the newly reformed Defias Brotherhood. So what does Gryan Stoutmantle have you do? He says it'll take time to plan a counter-attack against the Defias and sends you off to Redridge instead. Um, okay. Let's just ignore the fact that Sentinel Hill is under attack and burning down. Thankfully you get some retribution later by killing Vanessa in the Heroic version of the Deadmines, but the ultimate fate of Sentinel Hill is never revealed.
  • Anti-Hero: The Forsaken and their queen, Dark Action Girl Sylvanas Windrunner, are often sympathetic- almost pitiable, but can be extremely vicious and amoral in their quest for revenge, security from persecution, and their own goals. There's also the (pre-Sunwell) Blood Knights, who were casually sucking away an angelic being's life force to protect their own desperate homeland. And finally, there's the majority of the Knights of the Ebon Blade, whose very mantra is Pay Evil Unto Evil.

Darion Mograine: "Harness your hate. Make it useful."

  • Anti-Poopsocking: You get more experience for killing monsters after a break. Some rather profitable repeatable quests can only be done once per day, as opposed to repeatable quests that can be completed as often as you have the requisite Plot Coupons in hand. In addition, the Chinese version, per official request of the People's Republic of China, halves your experience gain after 3 hours of gameplay.
  • Anyone Can Die: Gameplay-wise, almost every major (or minor) character can be killed by players repeatedly, though they are not truly dead until the lore says they are.
  • Apocalyptic Log: LOTS of them. Some of the most memorable:
    • A journal found in Azsuna written by the tauren Paladin Aponi Brightmane details how she and her comrades have fought the Burning Legion for days, only to fail. The final entry claims they've been captured and are about to be dragged through a portal to the Legion's hellish domain.
    • In Suramar, a journal left by Arcanist Kel'danath, a Nightfallen mage, details his attempts to find a cure for the Nightfallen's condition. While he came very close to success, the Legion's initial invasion ruined his research, and the last entry suggests he is about to succumb to his addiction and become withered.
  • Apocalypse How: The End Time dungeon shows a Class 5 version of this should Deathwing win. Ironically, Deathwing succumbed to his own madness and winds up impaled on top of Wyrmrest Temple. Regardless, players must journey through this dungeon in order to reach the past and reclaim the Dragon Soul.
  • Appropriate Animal Attire: There are dozens of sentient races in the game, with different ideas of clothing, usually based on how anthropomorphic they are.
    • The most human-like races, including the playable tauren and worgen are fully clothed.
    • The least human-like races, such as the murlocs and gorlocs, don't wear clothes.
    • There are several types of dragon, and the more humanoid they are, the more clothes they wear; naturally they wear clothes when disguised as one of the playable races.
    • Naga are serpentine creatures derived from elves who wear nothing on their snake-like lower halves. On the top half, males don't wear anything except for armor; female naga have breasts, and wear tops, except for some who rely on their scale covered Barbie Doll Anatomy.
  • Arc Words: The phrase "They do not die; they do not live. They are outside the cycle." has been said at least in part by three bosses, all creations of the Old Gods.
    • Wrath of the Lich King had "No king rules forever" repeated several times by different major characters.
    • "The eyes of Hellscream are upon you."
    • "The Hour of Twilight" in Cataclysm.
  • Arch Enemy: Story-wise, the Horde is this to the Alliance, and vice-versa. Gameplay-wise, they're Friendly Enemies This really only counts when PVP is a factor, however.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In the Northern Barrens an Orc running a Caravan trading post complains that Plainstriders (an ostrich-esque bird) are stupid, they can't fight, and they break the axels of his caravans. But his greatest problem seems to be that they are 'gamey' (so you can't even enjoy a meal of them once you've knocked them down).
  • Art Evolution: Cataclysm changed the art for most of the Azeroth zones. According to a few developer comments, it had a lot to do with Blizzard's artists comparing the assets they made for WoW's launch with the assets they made for later expansions and going, "Yeah, I could do better." The newest player races, goblins and worgen, also have much more detailed models than the older races, and Blizzard has expressed a desire to update the older race models to similar levels of detail some time in the future.
  • The Artifact: Due to changes brought about by patches, sometimes characters who used to have some importance are no longer needed, but still stick around as background characters. Gamon in Orgrimmar used to be a pickpocket target for training rogues, but when that job was no longer needed, he just became a joke NPC that people liked to kill for laughs; then the Cataclysm came and he turned the joke back on players, but he's still just a background NPC.
    • For the pinnacle of a useless character who should've been removed is Willow in Desolace, a former quest giver who just stands in a house doing nothing, and belongs to the Twilight's Hammer. Before the Cataclysm, she gave a quest to test heroes to see how gullible they are, but now everyone knows the Twilight's Hammer is bad news, yet she's left alone.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • Exarch Maladaar, formerly a unidimensional boss of a dungeon in Burning crusade, is now an alliance supporting character and an integral part of the dark portal, shadowmoon and auchindoun's storylines, which leads him into direct conflict with...
    • Socrethar, formerly a one shot villain, final boss of a faction questline, it was mentioned on passing he used to be a draenei leader. Now we can see his fall from grace directly from the person he used to be,Exarch Othaar.His importance as a villain greatly increased as result.

Durotan and Draka go from posthumous characters into full fledged supporting characters for the horde storyline, and the character arc of their son Thrall. Terrok and the arakkoa in general. Went from being mooks in a dungeon and a few questing zones, to have an entire zone storyline devoted to their Civil War between the Anzu followers and The Adherents of Rukhmar, and if the Player Character becomes the champion of the Anzu followers, they name him their king, give him a title and some arakkoa garrison followers.

    • Kargath Bladefist, went from final boss of a dungeon in Burning Crusade to have his role radically expanded in Warlords of Draenor, getting to be a major villain in the Spires of Arak storyline, where he gets to curbstomp Terokk of all people, and a deeper exploration of his origins as a gladiator, which coincidentally also links into him being the first boss of the Highmaul raid, where he challenges the players to a fight in the Gorian arena.
    • Gul'dan went from posthumous inciter of all things evil befalling on every playable race in BC, to being relentlessly chased around by Khadgar and his plots getting derailed at every turn, until of course he manages to usurp the role of Big Bad from Grom.
    • Cho'gall went from Dragon Ascendant that takes over as main villain following Gul'dan's demise, to The Starscream that betrays Gul'dan and tries to take the power of the Naaru he was sent to capture for himself. Also, he plays a pivotal role on the fall of the Gorian Empire by letting the pale orcs loose on their capital city, and on Mythic difficulty he actually hijacks the final boss fight of the Highmaul raid, by killing the Imperator and forcing the players to fight him instead.
    • Blackhand went from the puppet leader of the Horde in Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, who gets to eventually be on the wrong end of a Klingon Promotion, to one of if not THE primary supporter of Grom as leader of the Iron Horde in Warlords of Draenor, his Blackrock clan forming the main bulk of the Iron Horde forces and being the most technologically advanced, and taking several levels in badass in the process, enough to easily kill Doomhammer, his Starscream in the main timeline once he rebels against him. His position as The Dragon to Grom was arguably so important that he swiftly loses the position of leader of the Iron Horde to Gul'dan, once Blackhand dies as the final boss of the Blackrock Foundry raid.
    • Nighthuntress Syrenne was originally a random elite NPC in Suramar who would one-shot anyone unfortunate enough to encounter her while questing. In 7.2 she becomes the Legionfall champion for Hunters after they help her rebel against the Felborne.
    • Maximilian of Northshire; originally a crazy knight used as comic relief in the Un'Goro Crater, he was just too cool to forget about, and can now be unlocked as a Class Hall follower for Paladins.
  • Ascended Fanboy: Sarah Pine, as well as other Writing Contest winners and finalists, now write short stories for the series.
  • Ascended Meme: The Night Elf Mohawk, made famous by Mr. T's commercial, was for a time an in-game buff, which changed your head to look like the Mr. T Night Elf Mohawk from said commercial. Now it is possible for Night Elf players to have that hairstyle by visiting a barber.
    • And, of course, the achievements from Onyxia's Lair, the first two of which are from an infamous (and not at all work-safe) recording of a raid leader berating his team as they attempted fight her (the last was an unrelated forum meme for a while).

Many Whelps! Handle It![3]
More Dots![4]
She Deep Breathes More[5]

    • Thorim's "In the mountains!" got a Shout-Out in the next patch, with the Pit of Saron's second boss Scourgelord Tyrannus yelling "Perhaps you should have stayed in the mountains!" when killing a player.
    • "(Zone) was merely a setback!" Originated by Kael'thas, the line has been reused by Blood Prince Valanar, Hogger, and Lady Sylvanas.
    • Leeroy Jenkins is immortalized in-game by a dungeon achievement[6] and player title,[7] as well as having his own trading card and miniature.
    • Alamo the druid (of CAT DURID IS 4 FITE fame) has his own card as well.
    • After a fan at Blizz Con caught the developers in a lore inconsistency and became known across the internet as "Red Shirt Guy", the error was corrected ingame, and the relevant NPC has been accompanied ever since by a "Fact Checker" wearing a red tunic, both in the game itself and in one of the leader short stories.
    • Players who die from standing in damaging effects on the ground (especially flames), are derided as "standing in the fire". In Cataclysm, there is an achievement for being killed by Deathwing (who randomly attacks zones, leaving behind large flames) that is called "Stood in the Fire", and Fandral Staghelm yells "You stood in the fire!" sometimes when killing players; one of his attacks creates a damaging circle of fire on the ground.
  • Atlantis Is Boring: Seemed to be the case before Cataclysm. Most of the underwater areas were quite plain, the few Underwater Ruins all looked similar and inhabited by Naga. Cataclysm introduced Vashj'ir which features a beautiful scenery and a continuous and very dark storyline that spans across all three of its zones.
  • The Atoner: (Most of) The Horde. The Knights of the Ebon Blade in Wrath of the Lich King. The Blood Elves, or at least their Paladins, post-Burning Crusade. The Blue Dragonflight in Cataclysm, as they chose Kalecgos, a dragon who believes they must take responsibility for their actions in the Nexus War, as their next Aspect.
  • Attack Reflector: The Warrior ability Spell Reflect, plus a variety of similar abilities used by various creatures and bosses. Priests and mages can optionally enhance their magic shields to reflect damage, though mages' shields are limited to reflecting magic damage. Ozruk also has an ability that reflects spells back at players, and players must take advantage of this to reflect a damage over time spell on themselves to break his paralyzing effect and be able to move to avoid his Shatter ability.
  • Authority in Name Only:
    • The ogres of Dire Maul live by a strict Might Makes Right policy, and anyone who kills their king becomes their king. Including your character, should you complete the quest by doing so. What does this mean? Well, you get a small tribute and none of them will bother you on your way out, but other than that, rather little.
    • Gunther Arcanus is an undead necromancer who is so admired - and feared - by the other Forsaken that they credit him as a Lich even though he isn't one. Of course, Gunther may well deserve such nomenclature, seeing as he was able to break free of the Lich King's control via nothing but his own willpower. Complete the quest where you convince him to join the other Forsaken and he may well become their actual leader, given how he says he plans to teach them necromancy.
  • Auction House: Forms a core part of the game's player-driven economy; one of the best ways in the game to earn gold is to play the market, following the basic rule of "buy low, sell high". Even if you don't become the WoW equivalent of a stock trader, you can still earn a lot of gold by selling off your unneeded stuff... or go broke in record time buying stuff.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: In full effect for just about every raid and dungeon boss in the game, as well as all of the city leaders being ridiculously powerful.
    • Though there is a subversion in a new quest chain with Salhet, who is shown to be pretty much the worst soldier in Ramkahen but proves himself as an accomplished tactician and becomes a high ranking commander in the war with the Neferset.
  • Automaton Horses: The mounts never need rest, feed, or in the case of mechanical ones, repair (not to mention fitting in your backpack for a good chunk of the game's history). The flying ones can hover indefinitely, in quiet defiance of logic (possibly because the controls for flying are the same as for swimming). Then again, it is an Acceptable Break From Reality.
    • Averted in the Brewfest event, as the faster your mount goes, the more quickly it becomes tired, but eating apples is enough to restore its stamina. It's easy to go the entire Kharanos delivery (and Horde equivalent) in a constant gallop by hitting every apple bin, but you will have to pace yourself when barking for the Thunderbrews or Barleybrews, since they don't put out apples that their competitors might be able to use.
  • Avenging the Villain: One of Vanessa Vancleef's primary goals is revenge for her father's death.
    • While he didn't need much of an excuse, the fact Stormwind had the head of Deathwing's daughter (Onyxia) as an ornament for a while did draw special attention from him when he returned to the world.
  • Awesome McCoolname: Several. Lesser notes are a few flightmasters. The one in Westfall being named Thor and the flightmaster for the Horde outpost in the Badlands being named Gorn. There's also another one in Westfall called Hoboair; Sadly, the flying mount isn't replaced with a crate being launched out of a makeshift catapult.
  • Badass Adorable: Gnomes, generally. Female gnomes, particularly. Female gnomes in pink pigtails, especially. And the queen of Badass Adorable: Darkrider Arly. Don't even think about punting her.
"I apologize profusely for any inconvenience my murderous rampage may have caused."
—Female Gnome /silly emote
  • Badass Bookworm: Jaina Proudmoore keeps her catchphrase from the RTS franchise: "All I ever wanted was to study."
  • Badass in Distress: A list of badass characters who are not held captive or put in danger at some point in the story would be shorter. It even happens to the player a few times, such as the Nagrad campaign in Warlords and Court of Farondis questline. Both times, Failure Is the Only Option but there's clearly advantages in alliances here.
  • Badass Family:
    • The Saurfangs.
    • The Crowleys
    • The Bronzebeards. Lampshades in one of Muradin's quotes from Warcraft 3, in which he says that with his older brother as King and his younger brother as a famous adventurer, he'd feel a tad awkward if he didn't kick so much ass.
  • Badass Normal: The hunter, rogue and warrior are known as "combat classes," meaning they have no magical, mystical, divine or demonic powers. They'll still kill you just as dead as anyone else.
  • Bad Future: The End Time dungeon involves going into the future of Azeroth and seeing the outcome if Deathwing prevails in destroying it.
  • Bad Guy Bar: Parties battling through Blackrock Depths will come across the Grim Guzzler, full of dark iron dwarfs reveling. This is one of the rare times you won't see them actively trying to kill you. Unless you piss one off.
  • Bad News in a Good Way: A subversion as Professor Putricide is a villain, so when he says "Good News", it is good news for him, but it's bad news for the players; and later it he inverts it when he is killed.

Professor Putricide: Good News Everyone! I think I perfected a plague that will destroy all life on Azeroth.

Professor Putricide: Bad news everyone... I don't think I'm going to make it... *dies*

    • Also on Heroic Mode Festergut, he says "Terrible news, everyone! Rotface is dead. But great news everyone! He left behind plenty of ooze for me to use!" which leads into the new Heroic mechanic for the fight, in which players have to dodge Malleable Goo.
  • Bait and Switch Boss: The end boss of Arcatraz, and again with the first boss of the Stonecore. Notably, both encounters have a character in common.
  • Baleful Polymorph: Mages' "Polymorph" spells can turn an opponent into one of the following: sheep, pig, rabbit, turtle, cat, or penguin. All look different but are functionally identical: they make the victim unable to use any abilities or control their movement. Meanwhile, Shaman have a spell called "Hex" that turns an opponent into a frog. Quite a few mobs and bosses have access to these spells as well.
  • Banned in China: The Chinese government has historically taken a dim view of MMOs and WoW in particular, and has cut off all access to the game nationwide on two occasions. (Too bad this doesn't stop gold farmers.)
  • Bar Brawl: The Goblins and Gnomes have a friendly rivalry going on at the Speedbarge, and they tend to mingle in the bar; a quest called "Bar Fight!" has you going to the bar, buying a bottle of grog, and smashing it over someone's head, causing the whole bar to erupt. The quest is a one time deal, but the description entices you to go back and do it whenever you want.
  • Bare Your Midriff: Jaina Proudmoore, Sylvanas Windrunner (incidentally, these are the go-to female leaders for events for Alliance and Horde, respectively), and Alextrasza the Life Binder, among others. Also a recurring theme with player female chest armor in Vanilla and Burning Crusade. The males get a few as well.
  • Barrier Warrior: Priests in general, but Discipline Priests take it Up to Eleven: they can cast a stronger barrier more frequently; their barriers can reflect some damage back at the attacker, and heal anyone the barrier is cast on. According to the preview of the Cataclysm game expansion, discipline priests will be able to effectively attack enemies and create a new, larger barrier that multiple people can hide in.
    • Paladins are also infamous for their protective auras.
  • Battle.net 2.0
  • Becoming the Boast: Kingslayer Orkus always imagined himself to be a great hero of the Horde, but fell well short of the mark. In "Heroes of the Horde", he takes on three Elite Alliance soldiers to buy players time to get Alliance war plans back to base, and dies as a proud, honourable hero.
  • Beleaguered Assistant: Grisy Spicecrackle, one of The Rokk's assistants. The Rokk is Shattrath's Cooking Master, and he keeps doting on Grisy to hurry up; this is one case where the master is not incompetent, he's just bossy.
    • In Vashj'ir is Felice to "The Great" Sambino. While he's a bit of a Kingslayer Orkus, Sam is competent, but he's so busy with his research that he leaves Felice to deal with the Giant Enemy Crabs.
  • Beneath the Earth: Deepholm, the Elemental Plane of Earth.
  • Berserk Button: Mimiron, literally. To activate his Hard Mode you have to push a very large red button behind him (which is labeled with "DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON!"). Doing this will activate the self-destruct mechanism on his lab and make him VERY pissed. Other bosses that feature similar "hard mode" triggers include XT-002 Deconstructor and Sartharion.
    • Warriors use Rage as their combat resource. They gain Rage by attacking, being hit, or pressing a button on their skill set that causes them to gain Rage. Basically, if you attack them, all you did was piss them off. They even have a literal Berserk Button ability that renders them temporarily immune to a number of mezzing effects.
    • The playable race of Trolls, as well as feral druids, have a racial/ability 'Berserk' the player can activate, another literal case.
    • Insult Coren Direbrew's brew and he will attack you.
    • Kill Runty and Beauty gains a significant boost to her attack power.
    • If you kill Shannox's dogs, he gains a boost to his attack that results in the tank needing considerably more healing to survive. When you kill Riplimb, he stops throwing his spear and starts driving it into the ground, making it a race against time to kill him before the damage-increasing debuff he puts on you enables him to one-shot you or drains your healer's mana.
  • Better to Die Than Be Killed: In the Heroic Deadmines, Vanessa Vancleef insists on living and dying on her own terms; when brought to 1HP, she pulls out a bomb, and blows herself up. This can also double as a Taking You with Me attack, since any player who stands too close will get killed, but there is plenty of time to escape.
  • Beware the Silly Ones:
  • BFS:
    • Most infamously Thunderfury, a one-hand sword bigger than most of the game's two-handers, but almost all weapons are rather oversized, in keeping with the "comic book" style of the game.
    • Armageddon is also notable.
    • Ashbringer. It isn't necessarily huge, but various people never seem to shut up about it.
    • Gorehowl, the weapon of Grom Hellscream (and now his son, Garrosh). An axe, but still enormous, and still famous.
    • Ashkandi, Greatsword of the Brotherhood is the second biggest BFS in the game. It even came back a second time in a different raid, though it was nowhere near as large the second go.
  • Big Bad: Each of the major patches and expansions has a different character that serves as that story arc's Big Bad. These include Ragnaros/Onyxia/Nefarion/C'Thun/Kel'thuzad in classic WoW, Lady Vashj, Illidan, Kael'thas, and Kil'jaeden in The Burning Crusade, Kel'thuzad again/Malygos/Yogg-Saron/The Lich King (obviously) in Wrath Of The Lich King, and Deathwing in Cataclysm. Sargeras, a rogue Titan, is the Big Bad for the entire Warcraft universe.
    • Although Sargeras is technically dead in every way but spiritually. As of the current place in the timeline, his role as the leader of the Burning Legion is currently occupied by Kil'jaeden, who didn't truly die at the end of the Burning Crusade. Doesn't mean Sargeras can't come back at full power at a later time, however....
    • Mists of Pandaria, according to Word of God, will not have a main antagonist at launch, instead focusing on the conflict between the Alliance and Horde. However, they also stated that a great threat would arise later in the expansion's life cycle.
      • The greater threat has been revealed to be none other than Garrosh Hellscream, current Warchief of the Horde, it certainly ties into the "horde/alliance conflict being the real villain" motif.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: In the Eastern Plaguelands, Ix'lar the Underlord will occasionally yell how he will become the next Lich King. You grind him into the dirt. He really didn't have a chance of becoming the next Lich King, either, seeing as he's a level 43 mob (not even an elite!) and the lowest Arthas could have been was 83.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Several quests have a battle in progress between friendly and enemy NPCs which is in a stalemate, or where your allies are supposedly losing; the player then comes in to win the battle, or just to prevent your allies from getting wiped out, depending on whether that quest uses phasing or not.
    • In some situations, the battle is between the Alliance and Horde, where players from each side act as Big Damn Heroes fighting against the players on the other side acting as Big Damn Heroes; the battle regularly shifts from one side to the other depending on how many Big Damn Heroes each side has.
    • The last quest in the caravan questline in the Eastern Plaguelands shows a member of the group about to be turned into a Death Knight and rescued by the arrival of yourself and everyone who joined the caravan.
    • Hamuul Runetotem, who had just recovered from being severely injured saves the player and Malfurion from Leyara.
  • Bigger Bad: Sargeras for the Burning Legion and the Old Gods for just about everyone else. The Old Gods themselves are subservient to beings called the Void Lords; to be blunt, if the Old Gods are Expies of the Great Old Ones, then the Void Lords are Expies of the Outer Gods.
  • Big Ol' Eyebrows: Dwarf babies.
  • Big Red Button: The newbie questchain for goblins make you push one of these in order to destroy an oil rig. Oh, and this button is VERY BIG! (Also very red. And the character comments on it.)
  • Big Red Devil: Illidan is the most famous example. Several other demons including the Succubi, the Eredar and especially the Doomguard also qualify.
    • A male Draenei player character can be made to look like the classic cartoony depiction of the devil, as long as you'll accept "a distinctly reddish purple" in lieu of actual red.
    • Kil'jaeden, too.
  • Bishonen: Blood Elves. Kael'thas Sunstrider. And how. Also applies to the High Elves, who are a separate political faction of the same race; what minor differences exist between the two are based on their different approaches to satisfying magical addiction.
    • Kael'thas wasn't quite so pretty the second time.
    • Lampshaded aboard one of the ships traversing the Great Sea. One of the female sailors complains that the (male) high elf first mate is prettier than her.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Vanessa Vancleef poses as the Saldeans' kindly adopted daughter, but is working to rebuild the Defias Brotherhood and avenge her father.
  • Bite the Wax Tadpole: As is customary with video games, neither the main title "World of Warcraft" nor the expansion subtitles are translated when the game is adapted into other languages. Unfortunately, this is causing the new "Mists of Pandaria" expansion to elicit quite a laugh in Germany, as Mist is German for "dung."
  • Bi the Way: Martek the Exiled.
  • Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Female trolls have upright postures, Cute Little Fangs, and the option of being rather attractive; male trolls slouch, and have beak-like noses and huge tusks. And compare the willowy, horned female draenei to their hulking, catfish-whiskered kinsmen...or, to depart from playable races, the four-armed Naga Sirens to their dragonish male counterparts.
    • Note that the current female models for trolls and tauren were supposedly made in response to players' reactions to the original female models, which looked much more like their male counterparts.
    • Especially strange with the Worgen, since it only exists when transformed and not in human form.
    • When Burning Crusade was first released, people were surprised at the lack of difference between male and female blood elves. A patch later, blood elf men became more manly in appearance... though they're still a little Elfeminate.
  • Black Mage: Mages, warlocks, and Shadow priests.
  • Black Magic: According to Canon, most types of magic in the Warcraft universe are this. Although shadow and fel magic (used by demons, undead, warlocks, priests, and death knights) are explicitly derived from The Dark Side, even arcane magic (used by mages) has the twin drawbacks of being extremely addictive and acting as a beacon to attract demons to Azeroth—as the Highborne found out long ago. Also see White Magic in Q-Z.
    • Arcane magic is a little less dangerous to use these days, mostly due to the fact that the demons are ALREADY coming, The addiction is problematic, but the average mage seems to have it more or less under control (the Kirin Tor, for example, are one of the more prominant organizations on Azeroth, and is entirely formed of mages). The only faction we see really suffering from addiction is the blood elves who ended up going through withdrawal when their giant mana battery, the Sunwell, got destroyed.
    • Note that druids and Shadow priests use arcane and shadow magic, respectively, without invoking this trope, as druids' magic is powered by their connection to the stars, and priests' is psychic in origin, despite using the shadow descriptor. And paladins use holy power to fuel their various magical abilities. The spells are merely classified into the damage schools they are for the sake of simplicity.
  • Black Speech: The Twilight's Hammer communicates in a written form of this.
  • Bleak Level: Gilneas, particularly pre-bite.
  • Blind Seer: Drek'thar
  • Bling of War: Many armor sets are like this. Casters have Impossibly Cool Clothes, while heavy armor dudes wear nicely designed armor complete with Shoulders of Doom.
  • Blood Knight: Death Knights - quite literally. According to Word of God, if a Death Knight does not inflict pain on other creatures regularly, they begin to suffer 'wracking pains that could drive them into a mindless, blood-seeking hysteria.' So not only are they solely designed to do battle, they are physically forced to do so.
    • Interestingly enough, not the titular Blood Knights of Silvermoon themselves. While there would certainly be a few Blood Elf paladins who revel in combat, the order is more multifaceted than that, especially after the revival of the Sunwell and what appears to be a shift towards more traditional paladin tenants.
    • Mankrik (of Mankrik's Wife fame) has become this in Cataclysm. Unable to let go of his grief and vengeful feelings, he's consumed with slaughtering quillboars. Near the end of the questline, an unusually gentle female orc manages to assuage his turmoil a bit, implying there may be a new Mankrik's Wife in the future.
    • Thisalee Crow of the Druids of the Talon enjoys fighting and killing Ragnaros' minions, and is fairly excited when the player recruits the Druids of the Talon.
  • Bloody Murder: Blood Death Knights have several tricks to do with their own or other people's blood. Oddly, the "blood plague" disease is mainly associated with the Unholy tree.
  • Blue and Orange Morality: A great number of forces simply see mortals as plants in the Titans' garden, to be pulled or fertilized as the situation warrants.
    • Algalon the Observer rightfully sees that the Old Gods haven't been properly contained and has decided to "re-originate" the planet.
    • A common interpretation of the war between the Blue and Red dragonflights is that neither is good or evil, the former is simply trying to do its job (guarding magic) by killing all mortal magicians, and the latter is just trying to do its job (guarding life) by saving them.
  • Blue Skinned Space Babe: The female draenei.
  • Bodyguarding a Badass: The guards of race leaders are much, much weaker than the actual leaders themselves.
  • Bond Creatures: Warlocks and Hunters (and Unholy-build Death Knights) both have pets that they tame/coerce/summon and spend a great deal of time developing; this is one of the primary attractions of those classes. Several other classes can also call upon temporary combat pets of varying use and potency.
    • Post-Patch 4.0.1, Frost Mages get their Water Elemental companion at level 10 as part of the Frost Tree speciality, and it's permanent when summoned.
    • Shamans can summon Fire and Earth Elementals, but only for 2 minutes at a time and with a 5 minute cooldown and they can't actually control them - Enhancement Shamans can call a pack of spirit wolves, as well. Priests do have a controllable Pet that's basically used for Mana restoration purposes, but it lasts only for 30 seconds and has a five minute cooldown. Moonkin Druids have a small army of controllable treants they can call every three minutes for about 45 seconds.
  • Bonus Boss: Several, unlocked under varying conditions
    • Several dungeons have bosses unique to Heroic Mode.
    • Algalon the Observer in Ulduar, unlocked by doing the "hard mode" for the Assembly of Iron, then doing the "hard modes" for Hodir, Thorim, Freya and Mimiron to get their sigils.
    • Sinestra by completing the rest of the Bastion of Twilight on Heroic.
  • Book Ends:
    • The opening cinematic of Wrath of the Lich King and the final cinematic of the Icecrown Citadel raid dungeon both feature King Terenas Menethil talking with Arthas.
      • The Icecrown raid itself opens and closes with "I see only darkness," once when you kill the gatekeeper and first boss Marrowgar and once when you finally kill the Lich King. Also counts as Arc Words
    • The opening cinematic of Cataclysm features Deathwing getting new armor plates. The second to last boss fight of the final raid instance is all about tearing off those armor plates. Word of God stated that this trope was what they were aiming for with that boss fight.
  • Booze-Based Buff: Alcohol will blur your vision, make your character walk crooked, and make you misjudge enemies' levels if you drink enough of it, but specific types of booze increase some stats temporarily. The chat box displays your intoxication level as feeling tipsy, drunk, etc. When you get to "completely smashed" you start to have hallucinations and your character starts vomiting. Additionally, some booze buffs have other effects, from breathing fire to slowing your fall in the Storm Peaks (in a possible Shout-Out to Family Guy's parody of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, "beer that never goes flat.")
  • Boring but Practical: The very first spell a Shaman learns is Lightning Bolt, which is simply a small ball of lightning shot at the target. It does decent Nature damage, and you will be using it for the rest of the game, especially if you decide to specialize in Elemental. Thankfully, there are several talents you can get that increase both its awesomeness and its practicality.
  • Boss Banter: Most dungeon bosses will talk to you in combat, starting from the earliest dungeons. Standard ones have an aggro speech and a Have a Nice Death speech. Later ones have Calling Your Attacks, some mid fight speech, and Last Words. Some later final dungeon bosses even do a Hannibal Lecture when you enter the room they are in. All comes in both Speech Bubbles/chat log and audio of course to crank it Up to Eleven.
    • One particular case of Boss Banter involves a dysfunctional demonic couple in The Arcatraz named Dalliah the Doomsayer and Wrath-Scryer Soccothrates bantering with each other in a rather amusing, and deliciously hammy manner.
  • Boss Dissonance: As part of the "Rise of the Zandalari" patch, level 85 Zul'Aman has Mario-type bosses: easier than the trash mobs guarding the paths to them.
    • In most other cases, the opposite is true. The trash is easy if the group is paying attention and doesn't pull too many, but the bosses in raids tend to require multiple attempts.
  • Bottomless Magazines: While ranged weapons used to require ammunition, they did not use it anymore as of patch 4.0.1. Sadly, this means that one of the major appeals of the Legendary bow, the fact that it generated its own ammunition, is now completely pointless.
  • Bow and Sword in Accord: Hunters and Warriors both carry a melee weapon and a ranged weapon that can be a bow, though to what extent they actually use their alternate is pretty much flipped. Alternatively they can use Sword and Gun.
    • Rogues can carry a bow/crossbow/gun as well, but most prefer a throwing weapon as they have certain skills that use thrown weapons.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: Any items that drop off of the current Big Bad on heroic mode (Lich King in Wrath of the Lich King or Kil'jaeden during Burning Crusade, or Kel'Thuzad during the original game), since those were the final bosses of their respective expansion. Partially subverted in that the gear you get from those bosses can make leveling easier once the next expansion is released, but if your gear is good enough to allow you to beat the Lich King on heroic mode, you'll probably hardly notice the difference between leveling with a weapon he drops and leveling without it.
    • A number of achievement rewards are cosmetic items; usually a mount, a tabard, a companion pet, or a title. Notable are the mounts such as the Rusted/Iron Protodrakes from Ulduar and the Frostbrood Wyrms from Icecrown Citadel, which you get as a reward for completing all the achievements in a single tier of raiding.
  • Brain Food: Parodied during the Hallow's End festival. Real undead do not go around eating brains, but NPCs wearing a Forsaken mask will occasionally say "Braaaaains".
  • Break the Haughty: Greymane's had it rough. After cutting his nation off from the rest of the world in spite towards the Alliance, he had to deal both with rebels who didn't agree with his decision, and more notably the outbreak of a werewolf curse that quickly spread amongst his closed-off nation. After most of the population and Greymane himself get infected with the curse, they come under attack from the Forsaken, and Greymane is forced to ask for help from the Alliance. Oh, and his son Liam dies in the fighting. Greymane's been eating a bit of humble pie since the Cataclysm hit.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: Entirely averted. When the game launched, there were no paid services at all. Now there are, but they don't offer any kind of advantage to the player and are mostly cosmetic.
  • Brick Joke: After you give the quest to Johnny Awesome, his Celestial Steed that he bragged about is found dead with its legs sticking out of the field in Hillsbrad with Johnny himself crying in a nearby house.
    • A better example is Kingslayer Orkus, after you dispense his quest, the NPC who gave you the quests to dispense offhandedly hopes "Maybe he'll drown?" Sure enough, the next time you see Orkus, he is drowning. In Shallow Water.
  • British Accents: The Gilnean accent for many peasants is so strong they sound like somebody crammed a Cockney down their throats. A popular phrase is, "get gabbin' or get goin'!". On the other hand, many Gilnean nobles sound like complete snobs, speaking with Recieved Pronunciation.
    • The accent even shows in a Worgen's wolf form as well as their human form, and it's the same for the Player Character too.
  • Brother-Sister Team: Cataclysm brought us two of these, both of them dragons. Blackwing Descent ends with the resurrected Nefarian and Onyxia, and Bastion of Twilight has the Twilight dragons Theralion and Valiona.
  • Brought Down to Normal: In terms of political power instead of super power, this happens to Goblin players. Players start out as the proteges of Trade Prince Gallywix, being groomed as the next trade prince(ss); but when Deathwing arrives to spoil the party, leaving you all on his ship fleeing Kezan, he decides you're more useful as slave labor.
    • The surviving Dragon Aspects at the end of Cataclysm.
  • Buddy Cop Show: Parodied with Asric and Jadaar; they don't catch the bad guy and they still hate each other.
  • Bug War: Several.
    • An unnamed conflict in which the Troll empires battled the Aqir for thousands of years; this eventually resulted in the latter splitting into the Qiraji and Nerubians.
    • The War of the Shifting Sands, in which the Night Elves allied with the Bronze, Blue, Red and Green Dragonflights to force back the expansionistic Qiraji. They succeeded in driving the Qiraji back to their capital; however, for various reasons, the Qiraji were merely contained. This proved to be a less-than-spectacular decision.
    • The War of the Spider, in which the Scourge all but destroyed the Nerubians... and raised them as undead monstrosities.
    • The Gates of Ahn'Qiraj event, in which the Alliance, Horde, and numerous third parties forced their way into Ahn-Qiraj in order to destroy the Qiraji and their master, an Old God called C'thun.
    • In Feralas, the Horde encampments come under attack from the gnolls. Once you help drive them back, you pick up gnoll maps indicating that they were attacking you because they were losing territory in their own war against local Silithid invaders, forcing them to try to expand the other way (that is, into Horde territory).
    • In the fourth expansion you have the Pandaren and Mantid. Guess which one's the bug.
  • Bullet Hell: The Twin Val'kyr in Crusaders' Coliseum. The fight seems to be based off of Ikaruga, as the raid has to split up and avoid one color bullet while absorbing the other color for a damage buff.
    • Several bosses have this kind of mechanic, including Walden's Ice Shards in SFK and Cookie's barrage of food in the Deadmines.
  • Bullfight Boss: Icehowl, in the Crusaders' Coliseum.
  • Butt Monkey: Gnomes in general are jokingly abused, especially with the now-memetic "gnome punting" enjoyed by both factions!
  • Cain and Abel: Several pairs of good and evil siblings exist.
    • Illidan and Malfurion Stormrage.
    • Stalvan and Tobias Mistmantle. Stalvan killed his student and her lover out of jealousy, much to Tobias' dismay.
    • Krenna and Gorgonna. The former is a General Ripper who wants to go to war with the alliance, while the latter is a more Reasonable Authority Figure who wants to prevent it. Krenna and her bodyguards ultimately fight Gorgonna and the players in a Duel to the Death, and are defeated.
    • Maiev and Jarod Shadowsong.
    • The Dragon Aspects are considered siblings in a sense, and regularly address each other as "sister" or "brother." Deathwing is the Cain, as is Malygos in Wrath of the Lich King, while Alexstraza, Ysera and Nozdormu are the Abels until Nozdormu becomes Murozond.
    • Subverted with Randolph and Mortimer Moloch in the Stockades dungeon; Mortimer is also evil, and fakes his death rather than take his brother's place.
  • Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: All over the place, sometimes with minor variations on colour as an excuse. Zhevras (Unicorns with Zebra hides); Swoops (basically vultures), Striders (Ostriches), Crocolisks (Six-legged crocodiles); and of course dinosaurs, including Diemetradon (Dimetrodon), Stegodon (Stegosaur), Pterrordax (Pterodactyl), Threshadon (Plesiosaur), Ravasaur (bigger Raptors), and Devilsaur (Tyrannosaurus Rex).
  • Call a Smeerp a Rabbit: Orcas and raptors, though apparently both have horns.
    • Orcas, to whit, look (accounting for WoW art style) exactly like their real world counterparts... Except they have four giant horns.
  • Call Back: In the "Return to Karazhan" dungeon, once you beat the Opera Event, the next room has NPCs who were the actors of the original Opera Event, from the Burning Crusade version of Karazhan. They don't attack you, and the Big Bad Wolf will - reluctantly - repeat his Catch Phrase if you talk to him.
  • Calling Your Attacks: Many bosses do this, to the point where the game engine will display prominent warnings for the use of powerful abilities by bosses so you can't possibly miss them. Players also frequently set up macros that make them say things when they use certain abilities, either for roleplaying or to coordinate with their party members (the latter can be helpful when using crowd control).
  • Came Back Wrong: Virtually anyone resurrected by the Scourge, as they are forced into ruthless evil by the Lich King; the Forsaken are viewed as this, regardless of their personal inclination - usually at first. The current, most recent batch of Forsaken brought back by the Val'kyr are given the choice of returning to "life", though this does not mean they are not Brainwashed into fawningly obeying the Banshee Queen afterwards. Death Knights' "Raise Ally" skill originally worked this way, but has since become a more standard combat resurrection ability.
  • Can't Catch Up: This has happened at various times in the game due to iterations of raid content. At the start of classic and each expansion, everyone's on more or less equal footing regarding gear, but this rapidly changes once new raid tiers are introduced and players need to play catch-up to be considered qualified to get into top-tier content. The trick, of course is that to get geared for that content, they have to run the content, creating a Catch-22.
    • Blizzard has mitigated this considerably with the Cataclysm gearing system. Running 5-man heroic dungeons now rewards Valor Points that players can spend to buy up-to-date raid gear, and each boss in said dungeons drops Justice Points which can be spent on the previous tier's raid gear.
    • Mists of Pandaria will make things even simpler to catch up, with more end-game Player Versus Environment options available besides dungeons and raids, such as the "scenarios" they're adding. Even some daily quests are planned to provide Valor Points.
    • This was especially bad in Classic and Burning Crusade. Where you had to do all sorts of different pre-requisite quests and attunements before reaching the content. The problem was, there was no dungeon finder until Wrath, so if you were on one of the wasteland servers, if you didn't get into the two guilds that ran the end-game content, you simply didn't raid. At all. This created a pretty big Can't Catch Up because players would pick these servers, find that they can't reach the guilds' initial gearing, and then transfer to a higher-population server where there are actually guilds that ran multiple raid groups.
  • The City: Many related Tropes, including:
    • Capital City: Shattrath, Dalaran, and the racial capitals for each faction.
    • Absurdly Cool City : Stormwind is the Shiny and Awesome type, Orgrimar is the Dark and Gritty type.
    • City of Adventure: Naturally. Both Orgrimmar are places where heroes are made.
    • City of Canals: Stormwind and Undercity, But the ones in the latter may not actually contain water.
    • City of Weirdos: Each city has representatives of all races of their faction, flying mounts are common within its walls, dragons patrol the perimeter, etc.
  • Captain Crash:
    • At the end of the Alliance Questline to Twilight Highlands, Fargo Flintlocke says he ditched the landing gear among other things to make the plane lighter - he doesn't "land" usually anyway. Fargo's remark at the end of the trip is a Crowning Moment of Funny.
  • Player awakens on a ship and looks up to see the plane burning on top of the mast*

Flintlocke: [his head popping into view, and looking down at the player] What? Like you could have done any better!

    • Hilariously done during the Fireland Invasion scenario with Ricket, a young goblin hired as an explosives expert. (The term is used loosely.) The first quest involving her has her barely miss the player by crashing a shoddily built vehicle right in front of you, then shaking off the shock by saying the prototype needs work.
    • There's also a running gag about the Draenei, that any time they're piloting a vehicle they'll crash it. This is likely because their capital, the Exodar, is a magic interstellar space-ship that they crashed into Azeroth.
      • The Oshu'gun, the ship that got them from Argus to Draenor, crashed as well. Neither was the fault of the draenei (the Oshu'gun was from their naaru pilots darkening and the Exodar was sabotaged by blood elves) but the meme stuck.
      • For the record, there has yet to be any serious accidents involving the Vindicaar, despite continuous attempts by the Legion to shoot it down.
      • This is lampshaded in Sholzar Basin where a female draenei remarks on how everyone looks at her like she crashed the boat.
  • Captain Obvious: Watcher Tolwe on the Orgrimmar/Thunder Bluff zeppelin will comment on random things he sees. The Wow Wiki even just says "he's very observant."

"Dere be a bug."

  • Car Fu: One of the bosses in the Crucible of Carnage is a Worgen that grabs the stagecoach he came in on, and smashes the players with it.
  • Cartography Sidequest: One for each zone, giving a lesser achievement for each, a tabard for exploring every zone in Northend, and the overall achievement and title ("The Explorer") for getting ALL of them.
  • Cassandra Truth: Drek'thar's visions are often correct, but tend to be dismissed as he is becoming senile.
    • In Patch 4.3, if you tell Bishop Farthing that Archbishop Benedictus, who left to Northrend to help the Aspects, is the Twilight Prophet, he will first laugh it off, then scold you for spreading nasty rumors, suggesting a rumor he heard about Bolvar that indicates that the truth about him is also viewed in a similar light.
  • Casual Kink: Your goblin female character sometimes say: "I'm a free spirit. I don't like to be tied down. Wait, you meant literally? Oh, I'm totally into that!". Characters of certain other race-gender combos also say things that can be interpreted in a similar direction, but they are less obvious about it.
  • Catapult to Glory: You can pilot and be fired out of Siege Engines in some locations. This is a key strategic element to the Hard Mode of the first boss in Ulduar.
  • Catch Phrase:
    • "Frostmourne hungers..."
    • "For the [Faction]!"
  • Catfolk: The Tol'vir: a race of centaur-like beings with lion bodies and feline faces, crafted by the Titans from stone.
  • The Cavalry: At the climax of a particularly memorable quest chain, The Knights of the Ebon Blade come to the aid of you and Fordring when you're surrounded by the Lich King and his elite servants.
    • Happens during a Horde quest in Borean Tundra when Saurfang shows up to save the PC.
    • Tirion Fordring pulls off an epic one during the final battle with the Lich King.
    • The last quest in the caravan questline in the Eastern Plaguelands shows a member of the group about to be turned into a Death Knight and rescued by the arrival of yourself and everyone who joined the caravan.
    • During the quest "Harrison Jones and the Temple of Uldum", The Hitler Wannabe Commander Schnottz was about to destroy the chest when he and his Black Dragon allies are obliterated. The man responsible for saving the butt of both the player and Harrison...Brann Bronzebeard himself.
  • Cavalry Betrayal: The Battle of Angrathar the Wrathgate. Grand Apothecary Putress initially appears to be The Cavalry, stopping the Lich King dead in his tracks right before he attacks Highlord Bolvar, but reveals his true intentions shortly afterward by nuking everyone on the battlefield, Horde, Alliance and Scourge alike. The killer line is "AND DEATH TO THE LIVING!"
  • Chainmail Bikini: Standard attire for the Val'kyr, female undead who were originally minions of the Lich King, later allies of Sylvanas Windrunner. Many female players using "slutmogs" have this too.
  • Chaos Architecture: In designing the maps of World of Warcraft, Blizzard took a very Broad Strokes approach to the lore and previous games. Several locations have been radically altered or are just plain missing. The most glaring example is Kul Tiras, which has a small presence along Kalimdor's coast. And let's not even get into the fact that one of Azeroth's moons is missing...
    • Maps of Warcraft III put Brill far south of Stratholme with Andorhal in the middle of the two. In WoW, Brill is on the West of Lordaeron, Andorhal is in the center and Stratholme is north-east, roughly where it was in Warcraft III maps.
    • There is a "Vandermar Village" in Warcraft III where the first undead mission takes place. It is supposed to be near the border of Tirisfal Glades and Western Plaguelands. It is nowhere to be found, though many speculate that Deathknell, located in the Western side of Tirisfal, used to be Vandermar.
    • Kul Tiras' colony on the coast of Kalimdor is not an example of this trope; the colony was explicitly founded by Admiral Proudmoore during the expansion to Warcraft III. However, the absence of Kul Tiras itself from this game fits. According to source materials and previous games, the island nation should be off the coast of the Eastern Kingdoms south of Gilneas, but just isn't there, except for a prison colony. (Maybe it was destroyed in the Cataclysm, but it never appeared on maps or was accessible to players to begin with.)
      • The return of Kul'Tiras has been hinted at many times. Including an attempt to explain its disappearance. An earthquake did it.
  • Character Development: Naturally. The most obvious recent example is Thrall, who steps down as Warchief to explore his role as a shaman, join the Earthen Ring and stop Deathwing, while cultivating a relationship with a Mag'har shaman named Aggra.
    • The arrogant Kingslayer Orkus, who appears to be a one-note gag character, ultimately overcomes his apparent cowardice and self-centered attitude to save the player's life, and dies honorably as a warrior of the Horde. In contrast, Johnny Awesome mopes for a few months and buys another Sparklepony.
  • Chef of Iron: Every character with the Cooking skill, seeing as gaining ingredients for recipes means hunting Beasts and Critters for the Organ Drops. (You can get some of them by Fishing too, but it's much slower.)
    • "Captain" Cookie, in Deadmines, although he's more of a Stone Wall than a fighter
  • Chekhov's Army: The pridelings you save in one quest chain, see the funny page.
    • A lot of factions were originally mild antagonists (Twilight's Hammer) or just one faction of many others depending on how you played Classic, (Earthen Ring, Cenarion Circle, Argent Dawn) later became the main driving forces behind other zones' storylines, or even other expansions.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The hammer that Arthas casually threw away in favor of Frostmourne in a blink-and-you-might-miss-it animation at the end of the very first campaign of Warcraft III serves as the core of the ultimate weapon designed to defeat him and Wrath's penultimate melee weapon.
    • A very early Forsaken quest has you gathering ingredients so that Apothecary Putress can continue his research on further weaponizing the Scourge plague. In Wrath of the Lich King, Putress unleashes his improved plague on Horde, Alliance and Scourge alike at Angrathar the Wrath Gate. That's right, that gun lay dormant through almost all of the original game and two expansions before being fired.
    • Chekhov's Boomerang: The Scarlet Key could be considered one. Found at the end of the second wing of Scarlet Monastery, its only role seems to be allowing access to the last two wings of the dungeon. Then thirty-odd levels later, it turns out to be necessary for accessing half of Stratholme too.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: A lot...
    • Tirion Fordring. Questgiver with a mild storyline in Classic. Come Wrath of the Lich King? one of the main driving forces for good.
    • Eranikus, originally a mild boss, becomes a bigger bad during the Silithus chain.
    • Chromie pops up at various places, tasking the player to help deal with time anomalies.
    • Fandral Staghelm, formerly a Jerkass NPC who orders players to help him with his research, including gathering Morrowgrain for him, turns out to have been responsible for corrupting Teldrassil while working with Xavius under the belief that his son could return from the dead.
  • The City: Both the cities of Stormwind and Orgrimar have several related Tropes, including:
    • AbsurdlyCoolCity: Stormwind is the Shiny and Awesome type, Orgrimar is the Dark and Gritty type.
    • City of Adventure: Naturally. Both Orgrimmar are places where heroes are made.
    • City of Canals: But the ones in Orgrimar may not actually GrimyWater contain water.
    • Citadel City: Fortified fortified and surrounded by walls, making it all-but impossibly impossible for an enemy - or even an army of them - to get in.
    • City of Weirdos: Each city has representatives of all races of their faction, flying mounts are common within its walls, dragons patrol the perimeter, etc. in.
  • Children Are Innocent: The Gnomes and Goblins on the Speedbarge are normally separated, and when they interact, it's usually to taunt or insult the other; even the bar where they mingle is just a bottle of grog away from a Bar Brawl. The exceptions are Raphael and Juliette, a Gnome boy and Goblin girl who are described as "rugrats", and are found playing on the deck of the barge.
  • Chocolate Baby: Dagran Thaurissan II, the son of a Dark Iron and Bronzebeard dwarf.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Every race and every faction has multiple traitors in it. Even the ones who are supposed to be neutral have a few members sneaking around cheating people - and by people, we mean you.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Calia Menethil, the older sister of Arthas and the last remaining heir to the kingdom of Lordaeron.
    • She is currently presumed dead by most, but there are hints she may be alive, with a few vague references in certain guides, such as a short story in which Trevor lets an Argent Dawn paladin release some captives, including one he calls "my princess".
  • Circus of Fear: The Darkmoon Faire. Doubly so after the introduction of Darkmoon Island.
  • City Guards: The game has guards in every city and town. These guards mainly exist to give directions to players, but will attack opposing faction players on sight, regardless of what they're doing. They'll also attack hostile NPCs, in the event they wander too close or get led there by an enterprising player. Some of the best unscripted moments in the game's history have involved people kiting outdoor world bosses to a major city and watching them wreak havoc.
  • Clothes Make the Superman: The two things that determine how powerful your character is—how much damage he can deal out, how much damage he can absorb, or how much damage she can heal—is his level, and his gear. The difference between a newly-minted max. level character wearing quest reward greens, and a max. level character in top tier epics, is like night and day.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Lots of them:
    • Azuregos is a dragon who falls in love with a Spirit Healer. Budd...just...anything with Budd present. "I'M A MANATAUR!!" anyone?
    • Harrison Jones...every single quest he gives, especially the one where he pointlessly destroys an ancient Egyptian-like temple; he's even more of a nut than the guy he's based on.
    • Tirion Fordring might not seem like one at first, but...the guy makes you fight and kill his own people, unrestrained monsters, and demons in his own personal Thunderdome for no apparent reason. He also makes you "beat each other with pointy sticks" aka joust, quite possibly the most hated quests in the game. In another example, the guy also puts two people who won't hesitate to try and murder each other (Garrosh and Varian) within a few feet of the other one while observing his special games. He claims this is to promote peace, but he has an encounter that does exactly the opposite with your faction fighting the other faction, for no reason at all! Perhaps his Trauma Conga Line messed with his head?
    • Drayds are often this by default, but Mylune seems to take the "spacy nature lover" bit UpToEleven, than the others, pleading with you to save the cutest animals in Mount Hyjai, threatening to "give you the eyes" if you don't. (Seeing as she's twelve feet tall and a higher level than the player likely is, she could likely use more "effective" means of persuasion if she wanted to, which only adds to the comedy of the situation.)
    • Cro Threadstrong, an orc who sells leatherworking supplies in Shattrath City, continually rants about how the Fruit Vendor is leading an army of ogres trying to eliminate the Horde. Among other things. (The Fruit Vendor in Shattrath is a sweet old lady named Granny Smith, so it's likely he's just a loon. Still, at least one Guild on one server has called itself Fruit Vendor Army out of inspiration.)
  • Colon Cancer: The title for the tie-in novel to the next expansion. World of Warcraft: The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm.
    • Also see World of Warcraft: Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects.
  • Color Wash: Different zones have different color washes. For instance, Durotar has a red color wash on top of its red terrain that can sear itself into players' vision after a while. Zones can look quite different without this wash: try looking at Ghostlands while standing in the Zul'Aman subzone.
  • Colossus Climb: Most of the fighting against the Flame Leviathan battle platform in the Ulduar raid of World Of Warcraft is done with a variety of vehicular weaponry, but the demolishers (catapaults) are capable of launching other players onto its back to destroy its turrets. This is necessary in order to send it grinding to a temporary halt that both resets its continuous acceleration and lets all the other vehicles pound on it for extra damage.
    • The first battle against Deathwing takes place on his back, as players work to break off his armor plates and enable Thrall to shoot him with the Dragon Soul.
  • Combat Medic: Obviously, every healing class has enough offensive spells, but the most obvious would be Discipline Priest who heals his allies while dealing damage, Restoration shaman's unconventional builds (via Focused Insight & Telluric Currents) letting him conserve and regen mana via shocks and lightning bolts, and the upcoming Monk who can heal people without ever targeting anything but enemies.
  • Complexity Addiction: Arthas. There are easier ways of conquering Azeroth. Possibly involving the gigantic army of incredibly powerful undead he already possesses. Turned out it was because his overweening arrogance and pride was deliberately injecting Idiot Ball into the plans to delay things for the good guys.
    • Explained in that he was setting up an entire expansion just to cause our heroes to take a Face Heel Turn. Doesn't make it any less complex, however.
  • Conflict Ball: In Wrath of the Lich King, the smouldering feud between Horde and Alliance is reignited through a combination of treachery and epic idiocy on both sides, and taken to its ultimate extreme in the Icecrown Citadel raid where Horde and Alliance fight each other directly instead of Arthas.
    • Cataclysm takes it Up to Eleven. Cho'Gall lampshades it ("Our enemies fight each other across the Highlands. Fools.")
  • Connect the Deaths: Can be and has been done with player corpses.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: Actually introduced as a game mechanic in Wintergrasp. Since this is an outdoor PVP zone where anyone can join the fray (unlike battlegrounds that limit each side to the same number of combatants) usually one side will be outnumbered. The underdog gets a buff called Tenacity which increases their damage, health and pretty much everything else in proportion to how outnumbered they are. Join a highly unbalanced WG fight and you become a mini-raid boss.
  • Conspicuously Selective Perception: Your aggro radius (the distance at which you attract hostile NPCs) is based on your character's level compared to theirs. At 20 or more levels higher, you can dance naked next to a hostile mob and it won't even notice.
    • Not to mention that most monsters will blithely ignore nearby combat as long as nothing you do falls within that same aggro radius. Although some monsters will call or run for help, they won't raise a finger if you kill their friends first. It's as if they're victims of a kind of group sociopathy.
  • Conspiracy Redemption: The Alliance hopes for one of these with the Scarlet Crusade, and two quests send players to the Scarlet Monestary to help Joseph the Awakened, a disillusioned Crusader launch a coup to restore the Crusade to its former glory. As you progress through the Monestary, it becomes clear the only reason Joseph is trying to overthrow the zealots leading the Scarlet Crusade, is because he's even crazier than they are.
  • Continuity Nod: Suprisingly considering the game's nature, some characters you've aided in the past will note you when they see you again. Darion Mograine actually has an entirely different speech for death knights when they first meet up with him again Icecrown.
  • Contractual Boss Immunity: Most dungeon, instance and raid Bosses are impervious to Stun, Sleep, and other move-hindering effects. Seeing as such bosses are rarely the type you'd fight alone, and a coordinated group or guild maintaining a chain-stun could turn a difficult battle into a curb-stomp, this makes a lot of sense.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Ironforge, Blackrock Mountain, and pretty much any other active volcano. The Molten Core and the Firelands crank it Up to Eleven.
  • Cool Airship: One for each faction; the Skybreaker for the Alliance, and Orgrim's Hammer for the Horde, each patrolling the skies above Icecrown. Helicarrier or monster zeppelin, take your pick! The Skyfire, similar to the Skybreaker, makes an appearance in the Dragon Soul raid.
  • Cool Versus Awesome: A few instances, but most notable when the Forsaken invade Gilneas in Cataclysm. In a nutshell, it's Zombies vs. Werewolves.
  • Cool Spaceship: The Exodar was originally one before it crashed; it was renovated into a still-cool town. The Vindicaar is a smaller version.
  • Copy and Paste Environments: Each race/faction uses a common set of building elements throughout their towns, forts, and cities. There are also many identically structured (thought not skinned) caves throughout the world. This is justified on two counts. First, it's easier to create and debug a limited set of interior models, and know that NPCs aren't going to get stuck behind a rock, than to make dozens and have to test each and every mob and item placement to be certain it works. Second, since it's based on an RTS franchise, there's a thematic consistency to having each Town Hall, Keep, Castle, etc. look the same as every other.
  • Corpse Land: Hellfire Peninsula. The land is shattered and almost devoid of plantlife, what few animals survive are violent, predatory, and often demon-possessed. Flames erupt from hellish chasms, ghosts of slain soldiers roam the ruins of their fortresses and the bones of the fallen litter the road (and in one case, ARE the road), and there doesn't seem to be any sources of clean water; the only water available is from swamps full of mutated, poisonous slime monsters and demons.
  • Corrupt Church: The Scarlet Crusade.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Trade Prince Gallywix, the Bilgewater Cartel faction leader. Even by goblin standards, Gallywix is considered scum by his own followers; a reputation that certainly wasn't when he extorted the survivors of a natural disaster, and then sold them into slavery when he got their money.
  • Cosmetic Award: Mounts (beyond the first you get at each tier), non-combat pets, character titles, tabards (except for the special faction ones in Wrath of the Lich King that let you earn reputation from dungeons), and most especially the Achievement system introduced with Wrath of the Lich King. There are, of course achievements for acquiring mounts, tabards, and pets, making them a recursive Cosmetic Award (they even give you one more mount/pet/tabard when you complete them). Although it is technically impossible to achieve One Hundred Percent Completion in the game - Achievements that can be Lost Forever are actually called Feats of Strength and don't award any points, filling up the Achievements bar can occupy far more in-game time than simply conquering the dungeons and battlegrounds and point-giving ones can be completed fully.
  • Covered in Mud: Rogues have the ability "blind" which pretty much consists of throwing dirt in one's face (previous versions had them carry special "blinding powder", which became Vendor Trash after the need for it was removed).
    • Lampshaded in blinding powder's new item description:

Once favored by rogues as a blinding agent, it was abandoned for more readily available resources... like dirt.

Azuregos: I know. I KNOW. We could never be, right? Dragon and Spirit Healer... two different worlds! Not to mention the physiological problems. But you're wrong. We have a deeper connection than that. Anara and I, we're involved.

  • Crap Saccharine World: Quel'Thalas, very obviously. Even the article on the game's old website which described how Silvermoon was designed stressed that this was the main concept behind the city.
    • Moonglade, though much subtler, was designed to have an unsettling and empty feeling even though there is not a single enemy in the region.
  • Crapsack World: Whooo BOY. Between the bitter, warring races and the legions of demons, titans, and old gods trying to ruin it, Azeroth is not a place you'd want to reside in. Cataclysm takes it up to Eleven, sundering a good portion of the world, limiting its valuable resources and driving the Horde and Alliance into open war with one another.
    • A few places in-world try to subvert this. Moonglade is an obvious example. The Cenarion faction of Druids enforce sanctuary for Horde and Alliance factions and the Moonglade is kept as much a pristine, sylvan woodlands as possible by their efforts.
  • Crazy Enough to Work:
    • Budd's plan to escape the Neferset in Uldum. Steal a bunch of Neferset armor, then have three people carry a third between them so they look like a Tol'vir.
    • In the Howling Fjord, there's a questline that ends in a quest called "Let's Go Surfing Now" that involves using a Vrykul Harpoon Gun to fire a burning spear from their village to your faction's base while standing on it. Even the Quest Giver who pays out your reward calls you crazy. (And you can use the mechanism any time you want after doing the quest.) As [video shows], there's been some slight Memetic Mutation of it.
    • The "horribly dangerous" plan to make an offensive against the Legion after Varian's death is to move the entire city of Dalaran using magic. This event, in effect, gives a player access to two versions of Dalaran, one of which is upgraded to coincide with higher-level players.
    • Also, any plan concocted by Fargo Flintlocke. When he explains that he will fire you out of a giant cannon and "Doc" Schweitzer points out a cannonball makes more sense, Flintlocke dismisses it as "too obvious."
    • In Legion, when activating every leyline feed in Suramar isn't enough to restore the Arcan'dor, Oculeth suggests amplifying them by creating a manastorm on purpose. (The magical equivalent of trying to power something with the explosion from a nuclear bomb.) Valtrois calls the idea insane, and Oculeth doesn't deny it, but feels its their only option. (Indeed, this is harder than it sounds. The player, Arluin, and Thalyssra have to storm the Arcway, seal off the conduits - Thalyssra emphasizing that leaving even one open would vaporize Suramar City and kill thousands - and sabotage the generators, all while fighting off foes, and then get the hell out of there before the storm actually starts. Unfortunately, that last two parts of that don't quite go according to plan, and you have to start the storm manually - leaving you unable to leave while it starts to rage - until Arluin sacrifices himself to shut the generator down and let you escape. Fortunately, it does indeed work.
  • Crazy Jealous Guy/Woman Scorned: Goblin players start out with a boy- or girlfriend (Chip Endale and Candy Cane) as a quest giver, but shortly afterward, they dump you and hook up with each other; two of the following quests will have the player killing both of them.
    • Stalvan Mistmantle, toward his student.
  • Crazy Prepared: Engineers can make a TON of weird stuff, some of which is only really useful in certain situations. Run into a Ogre swinging an axe? A blast from the Gnomish Shrink Ray will reduce him to pint size and take a chunk out of his strength stat. Jackass Mage spamming powerful spells? Turn him into a chicken, you cannot cast with a beak! Some asshole trying to get to a PVP objective? Lay a few Goblin Landmines and nail him while they are trying to figure out what the hell happened. In the middle of a dungeon and your best weapon breaks? Summon your Robot Buddy to fix it right up or another one to pull a new one from the bank. In addition to this though, they get bombs, transporters, and other weird stuff right out of Star Trek. The downside to this is that a lot of the stuff has a chance of backfiring, you might end up shrinking yourself, polymorphing yourself, exploding yourself, or getting teleported around 100 feet off the ground (If you try to port to a certain area and get stuck up in the air, you land on a pile of bones, they really need to work out the bugs in those teleporters...). Also, the better stuff, in addition to the backfire, is usually only worth one go before it breaks, or has a huge cooldown period. So use your toys wisely. and guess what species plays with engineering the most?
  • Crosshair Aware: Many boss attacks and some mobs' are telegraphed by blindingly obvious graphical displays on the ground where they are about to land/go off. Failing to notice these and move out of the way often marks the player as Too Dumb to Live. Fortunately the most obvious attacks are generally happy to smash anyone who sticks around, so it handles itself. Other attacks, however, must be absorbed by a player.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: One World Quest in Val'sharah requires you to save captive dryads from a dark spell that owlbeasts are using to liquefy them. (And it's clearly too late to save all of them, you even witness it happening to a few.)
  • Cruel Mercy: Sven Yorgen blames Jitters for bringing the Worgen and the Dark Riders to Duskwood, which leads to Sven's family's death, and him becoming a Worgen; Sven uses this to explain not killing Jitters when he gets his claws on him.
    • Gelbin Mekkatorque ultimately does this to Sicco Thermaplugg, after he gets cut in half and survives.
  • Cthulhumanoid: The Faceless ones, minions of the Cthulhu inspired Old Gods.
    • The Tier-13 Warlock helm is a hood with tentacles where the face should be.
  • Culture Chop Suey: Most races are a hodgepodge of many different bits and pieces from real world cultures. For instance, Night Elf architecture is based in equal parts on Korean, Japanese, Nordic, and Greco-Roman styles. The Draenei speak with an Eastern-European accent and are inspired in equal parts by gypsies, Jews, and some sort of South-Asian cultures, but use a lot of Greek sounds in their names. Goblins are infamous for both their gold smarts (a Jewish stereotype) and the pervasion of the Mafia in their culture (an Italian stereotype), and most recently in Cataclysm, conspicuous consumption and a thick accent.
  • Cursed with Awesome: Both the Forsaken and the Worgen. In Cataclysm, the Southshore refugees even happily take the Worgen curse as a more favorable alternative than becoming a Forsaken.
  • Cute Monster Girl: Most female troll and orc faces are mean-looking and ugly by human standards; however, each race has the option of a deadpan and reasonably attractive face. Predictably, nearly all female orcs and trolls have those faces. Hence the snarky slang term "cutefase."
    • Female Forsaken qualify for this, too. While there are a couple of faces that are frankly hideous (dessicated corpses never look pretty), even the faces where the jaw's had to be replaced are reasonably attractive.
    • Thanks to the Barbershop, it is now possible to create attractive orcs and trolls without resorting to the cutefase.
    • Fanart inevitably renders Tauren females somewhere between "adorably cute" and "instantly converts viewers to furries".
    • Draenei ladies, however, are firmly in this category.
    • Female worgen ended up with eyeshadow and what appears to be a Cat Smile from the front.
    • Female goblins, and genuinely sassy to boot.
  • Cutscene Incompetence: Every now and then you'll be unable to stop a villain from getting away with something even if you're strong enough to do it, either because your character is incapacitated in some way or because they aren't flagged as attackable.
    • The player gets this bad in Uldum during the Harrison Jones quest chain, from being captured by ten pygmies to standing around like an idiot while a weak-ish NPC is about to execute you. All it serves is to make Jones look like a badass.
  • Damage Over Time: The "Warlock" class is primarily built around skills that cause damage over time, especially if combined with the "Affliction" ability.
  • Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The Pack Form is considered this for druids. Thousands of years ago it was simply discouraged, despite making the user able to assume a bestial form able to curb stomp an entire army. But the savagery it causes can drive the user to madness, something Malfurion himself nearly succumbed to (the reason he "discouraged" it) and which even corrupted the godlike entity it originates from. Foolish druids who wouldn't listen to Malfurion eventually succumbed as well, becoming the first of the Worgen.
  • Dark Action Girl: So far, almost all Dark Rangers ingame are Forsaken Elven females, who like Sylvanas fit this bill quite well.
    • Also, Darkrider Arly. Complete with cute pink pigtails.
  • Darker and Edgier: Cataclysm. The constant threat of a Fourth War becomes a grim reality, those who had vouched for peace are either ignored entirely or branded traitor, several major political and military figures from both sides have defected to one of the evil third party factions (for one reason or another). From a non-Alliance/Horde war standpoint, much of Azeroth is in ruins due to Deathwing's return, the Naga Queen Azshara has finally begun to make her move, and now the Black Dragonflight, the Naga and the Twilight's Hammer cult are rampaging throughout the world, but the Alliance and Horde are far too busy fighting each other to oppose them. Oh, and recently, Ragnaros has returned, and is even stronger than ever.
    • Mists of Pandaria falls somewhere between here and Crap Saccharine World. On the surface it's all peace and pretty, but the whole reason you find Pandaria is your ships sunk in a naval battle. Plus you unleash these shadow beasts by continuing to make war on the island.
  • Darkest Hour: Arguably Cataclysm. Tensions between the Horde and Alliance have skyrocketed to an all time high, leadership in both factions is shifting rapidly, Deathwing and Queen Azshara have returned after years of lying low, both the Black Dragonflight and the Naga have become more powerful then ever, and half the world has been torn to shreds. There's very little heroism left, and whatever still remains shines extra bright. Of course, there's always room for more expansions.
  • Dark Is Evil:
    • There are five Dragonflights (Red, Blue, Green, Bronze, and Black), guess which one is evil.
    • Likewise, guss which one of the three dwarf clans (Bronzebeard, Wildhammer and Dark Iron) is hostile, at least until Cataclysm.
    • The Final Boss of the Vault of the Wardens uses darkness as a weapon, shrouding herself in darkness and summoning evil spirits from the shadows. In this case, however, her magic is Weakened by the Light.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Most notably The Forsaken (although many of them, such as the Apothecaries, ARE evil); the Horde in general, to some degree; player-controlled Warlocks, Shadow Priests, and Death Knights.
    • Nether Dragons, despite being mutated decendants of evil Black Dragons, are all but evil. In fact, the players can choose to aid them, as they're enslaved by Fel Orcs.
    • The Death Knights are all but Scourge that are having a dispute with upper management. They still fight exclusively through necrotic magic and vampirism, kept all the Scourge decorations, practice necromancy and one of their detachments in Icecrown is operating in a brutal chaotic evil fashion against living humans they have a grudge against. At one point, that commander arranges to destroy the SOUL of an enemy for no real reason other than hatred. Black and Grey Morality would be putting it lightly.
    • As Word of God has stated, there are no truly evil races available as major playable factions.
    • Although warlocks and mages technically use Black Magic, they're quite capable of doing good as well.
    • Latest example: Wrathion the Dragon Prince. He's stated by the Word of God as being in reserve for a cool villain later. Though, honestly, he's more of an Anti-Hero than anything.
  • Dangerous Forbidden Technique:The Pack Form is considered this for druids. Thousands of years ago it was simply discouraged, despite making the user able to assume a bestial form able to curb stomp an entire army. But the savagery it causes can drive the user to madness, something Malfurion himself nearly succumbed to (the reason he "discouraged" it) and which even corrupted the godlike entity it originates from. Foolish druids who wouldn't listen to Malfurion eventually succumbed as well, becoming the first of the Worgen.
  • The Dark Side: Death Knights and Warlocks use this; see Black Magic. Depending on how strictly you follow the lore, Mages also partake of it, since arcane magic is both addictive and what attracted the Burning Legion to Azeroth in the first place. In fact, the overuse of arcane magic by mortals really pissed off a Dragon Aspect so much that he started a war (and eventually lost it).
  • Dead Character Walking: You can explore as a ghost when dead, and before you respawn. Before this bug was fixed, you could actually "travel by suicide", as in, die and walk while dead to the Spirit Healer nearest where you wanted to be. Now, you can only respawn at the spirit healer nearest to where you died, or on the site of your corpse. Also... as one certain video demonstrates, there was a bug in which revived characters would keep using the dead model, leading to apparent corpses gliding on the ground.
  • Dead Guy, Junior: Anduin Llane Wrynn is named after both the Alliance badass Anduin Lothar, and his grandfather Llane Wrynn.
    • And his dad too, who is named after his grandmother Queen Varia Wrynn.
  • The Dead Have Eyes: And they glow!
  • Deadpan Snarker: The loading screen tips will occasionally tell you "don't stand in the fire." Not that this stops some players.
    • Achievement added for getting killed by Deathwing when he randomly attacks the zone you're in: "Stood in the Fire."
    • Achievement added for killing a certain boss without taking damage from a rotating fire wall: "Ready for Raiding." It's not accurate - this is one boss, less than a fourth of the way through one instance - but the achievement has that name simply because getting it requires not standing still when fire is coming at you, a very rare skill.
      • The achievement returns for the Molten Front. This time, you must defeat five randomly appearing bosses without getting hit, and their attacks are somewhat more difficult to avoid, from a trail of fire that chases you, to a channeled flame attack that the boss uses while rotating to a thrown spear that shoots out more fire upon impact.
    • Moodle the Gorloc in Sholazar Basin is also one, in addition to being the only one of his kind who has learned enough to avoid You No Take Candle.
  • Death Is a Slap on The Wrist/Death Is Cheap: For one, players can simply run back to their body as a ghost when they die, or talk to a Spirit Healer to be resurrected if their corpse is inaccessible, and all in-game NPCs respawn after a set amount of time (from minutes to weeks). For another, a number of bosses (especially in the Scourge army) tend to come back. For Kael'thas, dying was merely a setback.
    • And in a true example of Lampshade Hanging, in Cataclysm, when the minor quest boss Avalanchion dies his last words are "No ... not again."
  • Decapitation Presentation: In several quests where you kill an NPC, the quest giver wants you to bring them the head as proof.
    • When brought to Stormwind or Ogrimmar, the heads of Onyxia and Nefarian are strung up outside as trophies; Deathwing was none too pleased about that.
    • In Booty Bay, one of the Bloodsail Buckaneers wants you to kill Fleet Master Seahorn and bring him his head; Seahorn believes that the pirate wouldn't know one tauren from another, and has you bringing back the head of a regular cow with a pirate hat on it.
    • Subverted in an Alliance quest in the Twilight Highlands. An SI:7 agent wants you to kill two Ogre-Magi (two heads each), so you kill them and bring the four heads to him as proof; he finds your trophies a little gruesome, and says he would've taken your word for it.
    • The achievement for killing the Headless Horseman is called "Bring me the head of ... oh wait."
  • Defector From Decadence: Several of the playable races are small sects of races that are otherwise evil.
    • Trolls: While the playable Darkspear trolls are members of the Horde, most trolls are savage and grouped into tribes that attack other trolls as much as other races.
    • Forsaken: The playable undead are rebels from the scourge.
    • Draenei: The remnants of the Eredar who fled when Sargeras corrupted the rest of their race.
    • Blood Elves: The blood elves of Silvermoon rebelled against Kael'thas when they found out what his real intentions were.
    • Worgen: The people of Gilneas found a way to partially restore the humanity to some of the werewolves.
    • On a more individual level, you can see a defector from the Twilight Hammer cult in Silithus, who is hiding from the cultists trying to kill him for leaving.
  • Defictionalization: After the South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" aired, the Sword of a Thousand Truths was added to Wrath of the Lich King, under the new name "Slayer of the Lifeless". A sword actually named "Sword of a Thousand Truths" did appear in the beta version of The Burning Crusade, but in the final version it was replaced with the "Gladiator's Slicer".
    • A FoxTrot comic featured the character playing "World of Warquest", and acquiring an epic mace named Doomulus Prime. Later, the 1.9 release of WoW added a mace named "Doomulus Prime" as a quest reward for adventuring in Ahn'Qiraj.
  • Demon Head: The Warlock spell Shadowflame, summons a literal demon head to blast enemies at close range. Mages have a similar spell, except with a dragon head.
  • Demoted to Extra: Ogres are the only Warcraft II race not playable in some form come Cataclysm.
  • Den of Iniquity:
    • The Den of Mortal Delights in the Black Temple raid instance has parks, fluffy pillows, fountains, hookahs, silk curtains, nubile dancing blood elves, succubi and other female demons in stark contrast to the rest of the temple.
    • Sunwell Plateau has a zone called the Den of Iniquity, but it's empty and wrecked.
    • In Talador, part of Shattrath City has Legion demons called "Concubines of Lust" and "Nefarious Madams", along with many mortal Legion members. It's pretty obvious what the purpose of the place is.
  • Department of Redundancy Department
    • "Undead Death Knight." This is all sorts of dead. Add "Unholy" for extra Captain Obvious.
    • Worgen Druids, for all your recursive shapeshifting needs. For ultimate absurdity, try a Worgen hunter with a wolf pet, wearing Wolf's head shoulderpads and a Big Bad Wolf's Head. With a worg pup vanity pet. Shame that wolf mounts are exclusive to the Horde.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Both Fandral Staghelm and Archbishop Benedictus seem to have had their Face Heel Turn triggered by this, Fandral after both losing his beloved son and realizing he was nothing more than Xavious' pawn, and Benedictus apparently went mad with despair upon discovering The Hour of Twilight prophecy.
  • Determinator: The Black Knight. You fight and kill him at the end of an Argent Tournament questline, only for him to come back as a zombie in Trial of the Champion. You kill the zombie, but he gets up as a skeleton and attacks you again. When you kill the skeleton, he collapses again... Only to get back up as nothing but a spirit and continue attacking you. Poor guy just doesn't know when to give up.
  • Deus Ex Machina: The fight with the Lich King. He has done more than put you on the run. He has outright KILLED the entire raid, and is in the process of enslaving YOUR SOUL. Suddenly, Tirion Fordring (who has to this point been encased in a block of ice like a tool) PRAYS, the ice block shatters, and he destroys Frostmourne. Then Arthas' dead father comes out of the damn evil sword, rezzes the raid, and you beat on the final boss like a loot pinata. Keep in mind that Arthas explicitly stated that this very thing WOULD NOT HAPPEN A SECOND TIME. Third time's the charm, I... guess.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: There are two raid encounters where players attack and kill the Old Gods themselves, though both are in a weakened state, as they're partially imprisoned.
    • Other examples of players defeating beings of near Godlike power are Kil'jaeden in the Sunwell (assisted by Kalecgos and Anveena), Malygos in the Eye of Eternity (assisted by the Red Dragonflight) and Arthas himself in Icecrown Citadel (assisted by Tirion Fordring). Plus there's Deathwing in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion, who's more powerful than any/all of the above.
    • Don't forget Algalon the Observer, one of the Titans. The Old Gods locked up beneath Azeroth? The Titans locked them up. The Dragon Aspects? The Titans gave them their powers. Kil'Jaeden? Just one of the Co-Dragons of one of the Titans who went bad. In short, this dude's the Cthulhu of Cthulhu you can punch out in-game.
  • Disk One Nuke: Some items, like the Luffa, ended up having a level cap placed on them because they completely trivialized some encounters in later expansions. Gems and enchants have minimum item levels associated with them, to prevent players from making low level gear too powerful.
  • Disney Villain Death: Garrosh does this to Warlord Krom'gar after he murders High Chieftain Cliffwalker's wife and forcing him to watch as he bombed a Druid school full of innocents all because he dared to avenge his son's murder and thereby challenged his authority. Garrosh was not pleased. Not at all.

Garrosh: YOU. ARE. DISMISSED.

  • Damsel in Distress: Parodied by Maximillian of Northshire, a Don Quixote expy, as he believes all women are damsels in need of rescue. He helps a woman (male Blood Elf) retrieve her purse from a lake, rescues a woman trapped on a cliff (by throwing her off it), and slays a phoenix (the girl's pet bird).
  • Divided We Fall: A lot of people a lot of the time, but the crowning example has to come when the Horde and Alliance are both in the process of storming Icecrown Fortress, and start killing each other while doing so. The only reason either of them are in Northrend in the first place is to fight Arthas, an incredibly powerful necromancer, and they still can't stop making corpses even when he's right there. On the Broken Front, some Horde troops attacked the Alliance forces trying to take the Death Gate, resulting in both being annihilated when the Scourge attacked; even Garrosh found this outrageous.
  • Does Not Like Men: The Hyldnir are an Amazon Brigade of Frost Vrykul in the Storm Peaks. They have several Vrykul prisoners, and the men are used as slave labor in their mines, while the lone female is chained to a wall; players (disguised as a female Frost Vrykul) get quests to discipline the men and to kill one to set an example, but the woman is to be taken outside and killed as painlessly as possible.
    • The exception to this is Thorim, one of the Titan's creations whom they all look up to; they fight amongst themselves during Hyldsmeet, hoping to prove themselves worthy of "ruling by his side".
  • Does Not Like Shoes: Trolls do not wear shoes, prefering to go barefoot, while Tauren and Draenei have hooves, and Worgen have paws instead of feet; this is purely cosmetic as players can still equip shoes, their characters just won't be depicted wearing them.
    • Also, Night Elves tend to go barefoot, but unlike the above, they appear in shoes when equipped.
  • Doomed Hometown: Gilneas for Worgen, and Kezan for Goblins. Gilneas is being invaded by the Forsaken, and is now a battleground; while Kezan was attacked by Deathwing, who triggered Mt. Kajaro to erupt.
  • Doomy Dooms of Doom: Millhouse Manastorm knows a spell named "Impending Doooooom!". Its effects are however unknown.
  • Dominatrix: Succubi of the Burning Legion play up the part, wearing skimpy black leather and using whips, giggling playfully as they attack the player.
  • Double Entendre: There are daily quests for the Sons of Hodir called "Blowing Hodir's Horn", "Polishing the Helm" and "Thrusting Hodir's Spear".
    • In Vashj'ir is Adarrah who thanks you for giving her "crabs" and "juicy tail".
    • Goblin merchants have a few lines like "I've got what you need"; when spoken by the squeeky voiced Goblins, it sounds like an advertisment, but when spoken by the gruff voiced Goblins, it sounds like a cheap pickup line.
  • Double Play: Not officially supported, but many players engage in multiboxing, playing two (or more) characters at once using separate accounts for each one.
  • Downer Ending: The quest Till Death Do Us Part. It has you place an undead woman's pendant she received from her husband on his grave, saying she wants to forget him and have nothing to do with him, telling you he ignored her and his children to go out and fight the Scourge, as he considered devotion to the Light to be the way to stop the encroaching undead. Of course, the Scourge tore through Lordaeron, she became Forsaken, and he's dead. You find his grave to be littered, scratched, and uncared-for. You place the pendant on it. And that's it.
    • The end of the Battle for the Undercity, for both factions.
      • For the Horde: Sure, Thrall and Sylvanas manage to retake the Undercity from Varimathras, Putress and the demon hordes, but the rest of the Horde is now incredibly suspicious of the Forsaken, and as a result of their actions Varian Wrynn has seen all the evidence he needs to rekindle open war with the Horde. Thrall's dream of a peaceful world for his people to live in has been completely and utterly shattered.
      • For the Alliance: Varian Wrynn enters the Undercity himself and sees the horrors the Forsaken have been working on all these years, as well as what Lordaeron has become in that time. He then fails at retaking the city when Jaina stops him from trying to kill Thrall. And to top that all off, Bolvar is still dead or at least, appears to be.
    • The entirety of Vashj'ir, coming close to a Shaggy Dog Story: You start off on your way to an island off the coast of Stormwind that emerged after the Cataclysm. This goal is pretty much forgotten when the Naga attack your ship and sink it. You spend the rest of the chain trying to find out what the Naga are up to, eventually uncovering that they are planning to to take over the realm of Neptulon, culminating in a struggle to prevent this from happening. The final battle has your faction attacking the Naga with a heavily armed submarine to keep them from breaking into Neptulon's realm. And you fail. The Naga break through. Neptulon is incapacitated. The submarine is blown up. And Erunak, the shaman that has repeatedly saved your life, is captured.
      • However, you can set things right by completing the Throne of the Tides instance, helping Neptulon cleanse the place & expel the naga, and paying back Erunak by ridding him of a Puppeteer Parasite.
      • Throne of the Tides is an example in itself -You manage to save Erunak and kill Lady Naz'jar, but Ozumat kidnaps Neptulon and escapes into the Abyssal Maw. And since a recent Ask The Devs session stated that they were no longer planning to release the Abyssal Maw dungeon due to wanting to spend more time on Firelands, and because they felt that Throne of the Tides "does a pretty good job of finishing the Neptulon story" we may never see the story's actual ending.
  • Dragon Ascendant: Cho'gall was originally lieutenant to Gul'dan during the Second War. After Gul'dan's death, Cho'gall took control of the Twilight Hammer and rebuilt it into an insidious and powerful organization striving to unleash disaster on the world.
    • And in the next expansion, he succeeds. As a result he is soon demoted, but that's mainly because he just won in his attempts to wake up something bigger and badder than himself.
  • Dragon Their Feet: Kargath Bladefist and Rend Blackhand were both major players during the Second War but survived the Horde's defeat with relatively minor loss of personal power and followers. Now each has taken control of a rabidly-fanatic remnant of the Horde and are working towards their own ends.
  • Dragon Rider:
    • Vehicle-based quests are usually avoided by players who can, but not when the "vehicle" involved is a Rule of Cool freakin' dragon! More often than not, said dragon is also the Quest Giver.
    • Draconic flying mounts can be obtained too, but they aren't easy to get. The most basic ones are the Drakes, usually obtained via rare drops, and come in ten varieties (Azure, Black, Blue, Purple Nether, Twilight, Bronze, Blazing, Onyxian, and Red; collecting those awards the tenth, Emerald.) The Albino Drake is like the other Drakes, and is gained by acquiring 50 mounts. The Thundering Jade Cloud Serpent is another (oriental dragon here), and the much coveted Red Stormdrake is, well, it's a mount that's a Red Stormdrake. Does anything more need to be said?
    • One artifact you can uncover with the Archaeology skill lets you turn into a dragon that a party member can ride. You also need the Alchemy skill. (And yes, bad jokes about "mounting another player" are common among fans.)
  • Dragged Off to Hell: Happens to the player and their Valkyrie guide Ashildir during the Stormheim storyline, when Helya drags them to Hellheim. (Ashildir was the intended target; the player is Helya's sadistic idea of a bonus acquisition.) This leads to a short storyline that involves escaping; whether the player is dead, undead, or whatever during this storyline isn't exactly clear, but he/she does have a "lost soul" debuff that indicates his/her soul belongs to Helya. (Which is a Chekovs Gun| for this storyline; escaping requires getting it back.)
  • Dragon With an Agenda: Horde players play something between this, Noble Top Enforcer, and The Starscream to Garrosh in Mists of Pandaria. Depending on the quest, they might be working for Garrosh himself, the Blood Elves (who are weighing how much they want to stay with the Horde) or Vol'jin (who has always disliked Garrosh and almost gets killed by one of Garrosh' men in "Dagger in the Dark")
  • Dramatic Irony: In particular, the voiceover to the cinematic intro for Wrath of the Lich King.

Terenas: My child, I watched with pride as you grew into a weapon...
Arthas pulls out Frostmourne.

Terenas: ...of righteousness. And I know that you will show restraint when exercising your great power.

Arthas shatters a glacier and raises an enormous Frost Wyrm.

  • Driven to Suicide: In the end time, Deathwing, for all his corruption and madness, it still a dragon aspect, and the Old Gods won't be free unless all the aspects are dead. They give the command, and Deathwing jumps on it, that is,the top of wyrmrest temple.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Kael's nonsensical Face Heel Turn and subsequent death. Other examples vary wildly depending on one's sensibilities, but popular candidates include Uther the Lightbringer and Saurfang the Younger.
  • Dropped a Bridget On Him: Once believed to be the case with Chronormu/Chromie, a Bronze Dragon whose humanoid (and apparently favored) form is a female gnome, but whose proper name has a masculine suffix (female dragons of the same flight tend to have names ending in "-ormi"). However, the magazine has recently confirmed that Chronormu is female; she's just an oddity when it comes to naming.
    • Could explain why she prefers "Chromie," since it ends in the "mi" sound. It might also be (at least among dragons) an androgynous name such as "Bobby/Bobbi".
  • Drop the Hammer: You find out during a Quest Line in Storm Peak that Thorim, one of the Titanic Watchers, was tricked by Loken, his brother, into thinking that the Frost Giant King had murdered his wife. Enraged, Thorim hurled his hammer from his temple, and the impact resulted in Thunderfall. The throw was so mighty that it flash froze the Iron Forged Dwarves and Giants in combat, their ice statues a representation of what happens to those who cross Thorim.
    • Ragnaros uses his hammer to great effect in the battle with him in the Firelands. Sulfuras Smash sends lava waves across the platform in three directions from the point of impact, Splitting Blow causes adds to appear, and if you're standing under it when it hits, you die instantly.
  • Drought Level of Doom: The endgame used to require massive resource stockpiling efforts before a raid could begin. It got (somewhat) better.
  • Drunk on the Dark Side: Every mortal being who willingly works for the Legion, from the lowliest mook to Illidan himself. The Legion offers power, and some of them seem close to orgasm during Boss Battle.
  • Dual Boss: There are several dungeon encounters that are this, but for PvPers, there are the faction leaders.
    • Pre-Cataclysm, Alliance raids going for Warchief Thrall had to deal with the troll chief Vol'jin.
      • Post-Cataclysm, Horde players can turn the tables on Alliance raids against Garrosh Hellscream by Kiting Gamon into the fray.
    • Post-Cataclysm, Horde raids taking on King Varian Wrynn now have to deal with King Genn Greymane.
    • Also, Horde raids taking on Ironforge now have a trio boss of Muradin Bronzebeard, Moira Thaurissan and Falstad Wildhammer.
      • Though Alliance has had to deal with that since Burning Crusade. When attacking Silvermoon City, they have to deal with Regent Lord Lor'Themar Theron, Grand Magister Rommath, and Ranger General Halduron Brightwing.
  • Dual Wield: Warriors, Rogues, Shamans, Death Knights and Hunters can wield two weapons at once (invoking a larger chance to miss and half damage with the off-hand weapon, though all but Hunters have innate abilities to decrease the former and increase the latter if the correct talent tree is selected). Fury Warriors can even opt to dual-wield two-handed swords, axes and maces when they reach the top tier of their talent tree. Illidan Stormrage famously wields the dual Warglaives of Azzinoth, which players can obtain and use as well.
  • Dude Looks Like a Lady: Blizzard often pokes fun at male Blood Elves for this. A named one in Hillsbrad named Johnny Awesome is consistently referred to as being a girl by two of the undead NPC's in the area, one of them mentions how beautiful and how in love with "her" he is and the other is convinced he's a small girl.
    • Nevertheless, male Blood Elves are only "feminine" in comparison to the other race's males, most of which are quite musclebound and top-heavy. Compared to your typical Real Life human, they're pretty damn buff.
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: Averted in the latest expansion—some NPC's acknowledge that you have done some pretty awesome stuff in the past. For example, right at the start of the Alliance entrance to Northrend, you are skipped past NPCs wanting to join the fight thanks to your heroic deeds in Outland. One assumes this takes place even if you managed to level without going to Outland (via the new PvP experience).
    • Played straight with Conqueror Krenna, the Jerkass in charge of Conquest Hold in Grizzly Hills, who outright states that all your previous achievements mean crap to her and proceeds to treat you like a common grunt.
    • In addition, if you reach "Exalted" reputation with some factions, some NPCs will kiss your ass... figuratively, of course.
    • If you have a legacy PVP rank (such as the "Knight-Lieutenant" title) there are a couple of NPCs that will address you by it in quest text.
    • There are several NPCs who greet you differently depending on whether you have or haven't done certain quests before. When you meet Thassarian over Icecrown, he thanks you again for the time you helped his sister in the Borean Tundra - if you did that quest chain. Same for a gnome in those zones. And the first time you meet Highlord Fordragon in Northrend, if you did the Onyxia quest chain wayyy back in vanilla WoW (which had been obsolete since BC and is now removed) he reminds you of the time you helped him fight dragons in the Stormwind throne room.
    • In yet another example, NPCs in a town under siege by the undead cheer themselves up by reminding each other that help is on the way: they have heard rumors of elite soldiers handpicked by A'dal himself, and even the Scarab Lord. "Hand of A'dal" and "the Scarab Lord" are, of course, titles that used to be attainable by players. The latter of which has one per server (Except for servers that didn't hold the event pertaining to it)
    • Historical records seem to play the Trope straight, as the players rarely get much credit for major battles. It is stated that C'thun (the Final Boss of Vanilla) was slain by "a group of adventurers", but since then, the players never get first-billing. For example, in Cataclysm, Thrall and "his allies in the Wrymcrest Accord" (that group includes the players) slew Deathwing, while in Wrath, Tirion and "his champions" are given credit for the defeat of the LLich King, and so on. The players are always second-stringers for someone else in the annals of history.
  • Dug Too Deep: The Gnomes were just expanding their home city when suddenly troggs. The Nerubians, in their battle against a newly-created Scourge, tried to expand deeper underground when suddenly Yogg-Saron. Basically, in World of Warcraft, mining seems to be the one profession that can unintentionally doom the world, or at least the part of it you're standing on.
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: Lots and lots, but the medal has to go to the Orcish hero Broxigar. This guy tore through an army of Burning Legion demons by himself, until he was standing atop a mound of demon corpses. Sargeras himself stepped forward to fight Broxigar personally, and Broxigar actually managed to wound the demon in the leg before he was impaled. This HeroicSacrifice on Broxigar's part not only saved Azeroth, it proved that Sargeras was not invincible, and cemented Broxigar as one of the most badass fighters of all time.
  • Dying as Yourself: A large number of the bosses who've been animated or enslaved to fight you will thank you as they die. This turned out to include one of the prime sources of these bosses, Arthas himself.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: There are a ton of Horde goblins in Northrend which hinted at their inclusion in Cataclysm and explains goblin death knights. Even earlier, the Horde has had goblin-operated zeppelins since Vanilla.
    • Given Arugal's involvement, the Wolfcult may be doing the same for worgen.
    • There are also quite a few Dark Ranger NPCs showing up recently, which are probably to foreshadow the introduction of Forsaken Hunters in Cataclysm.
    • There is also a Highborne (old school Night Elf nobility) mage who has shown up in the Temple of the Moon in Darnassus and seeks an audience with High Priestess Tyrande Whisperwind. His dialog to the guard as he waits talks about the changes coming to the world and the need for the Night Elves to "rediscover the arcane path", a clear set up for the Night Elf Mage class combo forthcoming in Cataclysm.
    • In Thunder Bluff, a pair of Tauren discuss similarities between their Sun deity and the Holy Light that most of the Alliance reveres. Like the above examples, this is a possible a set up for them becoming Paladins and Priests (though the idea of a Tauren as a Squishy Wizard is just weird, even if the Grimtotems have them in their ranks).
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: The Blood Elves in Burning Crusade.
  • Earthshattering Kaboom:
    • Malygos' plan once he becomes sane again (for certain definitions of "sane", anyway) is to suck all the magic out of Azeroth so it can't be abused any more. When told that this would result in the complete destruction of the planet, he considers that an acceptable loss.
    • The Titans' plan for "reoriginating" Azeroth should it become irreparably corrupted by the Old Gods is implied to involve this.
    • The Cataclysm. A gigantic dragon bursts out of a shifted plane of existence, causing a massive global earthquake, then proceeds to fly around setting fire to anything within a 100 yard radius of itself. There's an entire expansion based on this.
  • Easter Egg: Many; here's the incomplete list.
  • Easy Mode Mockery: Not in the game itself, but extensive among the player base. Every class at one point or another has been generally regarded as overpowered and its players subsequently looked down upon, hunters and death knights in particular have reputations as being easy mode for leveling, and the forum community is quick to scorn anyone trying to comment on PvE without hardmode achievements on their Armory page.
    • The Random Raid Finder's bosses are significantly easier than their Normal 25-man equivalents, but any gear you get is less powerful than its normal or heroic equivalents and has "Raid Finder" on it, and several achievements, including the "Destroyer's End" title, can only be earned on normal difficulty.
  • Easy Logistics: Averted a number of times in quests to supply soldiers and encampments. The event for opening Ahn-Qiraj required players to stockpile millions of bandages, food and other items to supply the armies. Later on in Wrath Saurfang brings up the problems of keeping troops supplied in his objections to Garosh's reckless tactics.
  • Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: In their human disguises, the female Black Dragons Onyxia (Lady Katrana Prestor) and Nalice have pale skin and long black hair; Deathwing's original human form (Lord Daval Prestor) also had very light skin and black hair.
  • Egomaniac Hunter: Hemet Nesingwary, although he is a friendly fellow and acknowledges your efforts when you finish his quests.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The Old Gods, which are such an obvious Shout-Out to the Cthulhu mythos that it borders on plagiarism. Only two have been specifically identified so far in-game: C'thun was introduced with the Ahn'Qiraj dungeon and is of course a giant tentacled eyeball; while the Wrath of the Lich King expansion brings us Yogg-Saron, final boss of the Ulduar raid instance, who appears to be a giant fleshy mass festooned with gaping toothy mouths. Outside discussion during the end of 2010 from Blizzard has revealed the name of a third Old God, N'Zoth, who is linked to the Emerald Nightmare and 'sleeping beneath the oceans'...
    • In a larger Shout-Out to the Cthulhu mythos, Yogg-saron's fight includes a Sanity mechanic, where being hit by certain attacks drains your sanity, and when you lose all of it you become a gibbering slave to the Beast-With-Many-Maws. Unlike most status effects, this one lasts through death, so don't think your teammates will be planning to revive you any time soon...
    • The demons of the Burning Legion are also often seen as this. The draenei in particular call them "man'ari", which translates approximately as "something hideously and fundamentally wrong".
  • Elemental Crafting
  • Elemental Powers: In this case Fire, Frost, Nature (comprising many effects that would normally have their own element; like earth and air, but also electricity and poison), Arcane (magic), Shadow, and Holy (unique in that it does not have a resistance stat associated with it).
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Mostly averted but there are many enemies that are specifically resistant or immune to a given element and a rare few that take extra damage from them - particularly in the Blackwing Lair raid dungeon. Two interesting variations are the bosses Thaddius in Naxxramas and the Twin Val'kyr in Trial of the Crusader, where the "positive/negative" effect is applied to the players and must be managed properly to complete the encounter.
  • Emotion Eater: The Sha, demons that are - probably - native to Pandaria, who can feed on negative emotions like anger and hate via Demonic Possession. Naturally, the fighting between the Alliance and Horde is a buffet to them.
  • End of an Age: After the players defeat defeat Deathwing, the other Aspects reveal that they have lost their immortality now that their purpose has been fulfilled. Thus, Deathwing's defeat heralds a new "Age of Mortals".
  • The End of the World as We Know It: What happens to Azeroth in Cataclysm. It's not nearly as bad as most of other examples of this trope, but still a lot of damage was done.
    • The dungeon Endtime takes this, by WoW standards, Up to Eleven by showing us the actual end of the world if Deathwing wins.
  • Enemy Civil War: Hell, every race has at least one faction hostile against the rest.
    • Alliance
      • Humans vs. the Defias - the stonemasons of Stormwind who got pissed off at poor payment and became a borderline crime syndicate/resistance movement.
      • Humans vs. the Syndicate - remnants of the traitorous kingdom of Alterac.
      • Humans vs. the Scarlet Crusade - a fanatical Knight Templar organization.
      • Gnomes vs. Mechagnomes - Insane cyborgs who believe themselves children of the gods. And they are.
      • Gnomes vs. Leper Gnomes - the irradiated survivors of the Gnomeregan disaster.
      • Dwarves vs. the Dark Iron clan- greedy, nasty slave traders. Taken Up to Eleven in Cataclysm, where the Ironforge dwarves form a council with the Dark Irons to keep the peace (not that it helps quell unrest among the populace).
      • Dwarves vs. the Iron Dwarves - confusingly named race of metal-skinned dwarves who are in league with the Mechagnomes. Or, rather, are enslaving them.
      • Night Elves vs. the forces of Illidan the Betrayer - a demon-hunter who gazed too long into the abyss, and those who followed him off the slippery slope.
      • Night Elves vs. Highborne - the upper caste of early Night Elf society who practiced and became addicted to arcane magic, responsible for summoning the Burning Legion to Azeroth in the first place. The majority of the Highbornes' descendants eventually developed into either Naga or High Elves. Subverted in Cataclysm, where the last few remaining Night Elf Highbourne return to aid the Night Elves and teach a new generation arcane magic. They're accepted, but with much suspicion and disdain.
      • Draenei vs. the Eredar - the majority of their species who joined the Burning Legion and became demons.
      • Draenei vs. the Auchenai.
      • Draenei vs. the various Broken and Lost One tribes in Zangarmarsh.
      • Worgen (Gilneas) vs. Worgen (not Gilneas) - Savage beast-people that fell under the curse and couldn't control their beast nature.
    • Horde:
      • Tauren vs. the Grimtotem - a fanatically xenophobic tribe. Their leader, Magatha, was an NPC ally in Thunder Bluff before Cataclysm. Then she killed the tauren high chieftain, Cairne Bloodhoof, through her machinations, and briefly took control of Thunder Bluff, before being driven out by Cairne's son.
      • Trolls vs... Trolls - The players are a tiny tribe (Darkspear refugees, implied to be only a few hundred total) out of an entire overwhelmingly villainous species.
      • Orcs vs. Blackrock Orcs - Remnants of the Old Horde.
      • Orcs vs. Fel Orcs - Those Orcs still in the thrall of the demonic overlords who once controlled their entire race.
      • Undead (Forsaken) vs. Undead (Scourge) - Moreso than even the trolls; the player characters are actually a tiny rump of Phlebotinum Rebels against the second most dangerous villainous faction in the entire universe.
      • Undead (Forsaken) vs. The Royal Apothecary Society - The Society, led by Varimathras, after years openly attempting to engineer the Plague of Undeath to kill anything that isn't Forsaken, unleashes their new superweapon at the worst possible moment, and the result is a coup d'etat in the Undercity which the player must help curtail.
      • Blood Elves (of Silvermoon) vs. Kael'thas and partisans - The only one of the above that is actually a civil war, instead of simply different factions of the same species; Kael leads the blood elves early in the storyline, but it comes out he's doing some truly dastardly things, and many of his original followers (inc. all the player characters, natch) rebel even while some continue to consider him their rightful king.
      • Goblins vs. Goblins - Not really civil war so much as Goblin society is a corrupt capitalist venture where backstabbing, bribery and off-the-book deals are not only accepted, but encouraged as a means of success. Exemplified in Bilgewater faction leader Gallywix, who extorts the player's money and then sells him (and the rest of the Kezan survivors) into slavery (though even by goblin standards, that's a pretty extreme example).
        • Goblins (the neutral Steamwheedle Cartel and the Horde Bilgewater Cartel) vs. Goblins (Venture Company) - A greedy and ecologically unfriendly Goblin Organization. Well, they all are, but this one's Up to Eleven.
    • Even the Burning Legion isn't immune to this: a number of demons left the Legion to work for Illidan in Burning Crusade. Similarly, some of the Blood Elves stayed with Illidan even after Kael'Thas left him.
  • Enemy Mine: Happened a lot between the Horde and Alliance in Vanilla and Burning Crusade. Notable efforts include the War of the Shifting Sands and the re-opening of the Dark Portal. In fact, there was so many instances of the Alliance and Horde having to put their differences aside, the feeling of the two factions meant to be opposing forces began to stagnate. Hence in Wrath of the Lich King, the writers went out of their way to reignite conflict between the factions; and done gloriously so with the Wrath Gate and the subsequent Battle for the Undercity.
    • After the Cataclysm, the various neutral groups like the Cenarion Circle and Earthen Ring don't even try this, instead of getting the Horde and Alliance talking, they just go straight to the heroes and hire them individually. In the fight against Ragnaros, the Cenarion Circle and Earthen Ring themselves are put in an Enemy Mine situation, though they are not foes or even rivals, they merely avoided working together believing their divergent skills might not work well together.
    • Invasion is the same, seeing as some of them happen on bordering territories. Defeating the army of demons is easier if the two factions refrain from fighting each other.
    • As of Patch 7.2, Illidan's forces and the Wardens are part of the larger army that the heroes belong to; to say Illidan and Maiev find it hard to cooperate is an understatement, insulting each other constantly, even when there are Legion forces to deal with. Elsewhere in the expansion, groups usually hostile to both main factions (like murlocs and the vrykul) tend to side with them whenever the Legion is around.
  • Enemy Within: New Worgen players start by being infected with the Worgen curse, turning on their fellow Gilneans, getting captured, and then treated to give them back their humanity; however, the treatment is temporary, and just as the player heads out to retrieve ingredients to make more serum, the Forsaken attack. For the next hour or so, the player fights the Forsaken while being reminded that the serum could wear off, and they will turn feral again.
    • Eventually the player meets some night elves who teach them about the balance between their human and beast sides.
  • Equal Opportunity Evil: The goblin race in general, and the Venture Co. in particular, although the Steamwheedle cartel is more moderate. Maybe they just figured that it's easier to make a profit if you don't attack random adventurers all the time - or better yet, get them working for you.
    • There is also the Twilight's Hammer (which has Tauren, of all people, in its ranks), and the Wyrmcult (humans, orcs, and draenei). The Knights of the Ebon Blade were once this, but then became a force of racially-diverse anti-heroism.
  • Escort Mission: Many and varied. Fortunately, Blizzard has made an effort to reduce the reliance on these sorts of quests in later expansions, as by their very nature, only one player (or party) can do a particular quest at any given time and some of the original ones could take fifteen to twenty minutes, and on PvP realms can be undone by an opposing faction player camping the end spot of the quest.
    • Inverted and mocked in a Northrend quest during which an Indiana Jones Expy pummels a snake god while you watch his back. Quest completion is achieved when he's escorted you to safety.
    • Some of the escortees are actually strong enough to fight off the enemies with the player, others stop to allow players a moment to take a break, and they as a whole tend to be less suicidal about charging into danger than most of them.
    • Lampshaded with a vengeance with a quest in Uldum. When you finish the quest, Brann Bronzebeard asks you to accompany him to The Lost City of Tol'Vir, which is a considerable distance away from where you are. After travelling barely a hundred feet with several stops for Brann to "rest" he laughs uproariously and says, "Ah the old slow-walk trick. Gets 'em every time. I'll meet you there." and runs off.
    • Parodied in the infamous Tol Barad quest Walk A Mile In Their Shoes. You rescue a member of your faction from an enemy prison. Instead of heading straight out, however, he proceeds to make random guesses about where the exit might be, exploring every nook and cranny of the building even though the exit is right. frakking. in front of him. Unfortunately the quest is just as annoying as if it weren't a parody.
    • In the Dunwald ruins of Twilight Highlands, Caiden Dunwald wants you to accompany him through what he knows damn well is a twilight ambush. He is so powerful however that he is escorting you.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • From a certain point of view, Garrosh, despite being a warmonger against the Alliance, wants to wage war honorably, and anyone who steps out of line will receive punishments ranging from a reprimand to a summary execution. The Goblins, despite being typically amoral and focused on profit, despite Gallywix for his business practices.
    • Skadi the Ruthless is a mixed bag. His Dungeon Journal notes that among the Vrykul, who consider decapitating Taunka or wiping out a Drakkari bloodline worthy of being called "the Dutiful", to earn the title of "the Ruthless" requires you to commit something considered "a true act of depravity". In his case, that meant hunting down anyone who harboured their cursed Vrykul children and killing the entire family. The job description makes it sound like his actions were viewed with disgust (or at least distaste) by Vrykul society at large, but also imply a certain amount of respect for him -- if only that he had the nerve to follow through with it.
    • Sylvanas Windrunner is willing to use the Val'kyr to convert fallen enemies into Forsaken, but at least she waits until they're dead first. When she discovers the operation at the Sludge Pits which is torturing humans to death in foul experiments, she orders the deaths (as in, true death, the harshest punishment among the Forsaken) of the orchestrators. (A sentence that Forsaken players are tasked with carrying out
  • Even the Girls Want Her: If the comments at Wo W Head and quite a few other forums are anything to go by, Alexstrasza's Stripperiffic human form has more than a few women just as interested as the men.
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: On your arrival on the Alliance Gunship in Deepholm.
  • Everyone Was Bi: During the 2006-09 version of the Love Is In the Air (Valentine's Day) event. The city guards, around whom most of the event revolves, are all love-smitten, but they don't care what gender your character is, just which fragrance you put on last. And if you want to earn the full achievement for the event, you had best be prepared to swing both ways yourself. Sure, they try to explain it away as some kind of evil magical affliction, but still.... In 2010 the Love Is In The Air event underwent a revamp including a replacement storyline to which this trope no longer applies.
  • Everything Fades: All corpses will eventually disappear, pretty quickly once they're looted, and almost instantly once they're skinned/mined/harvested. Except for player corpses, which stick around for up to a week if unclaimed.
  • Everything's Better with Spinning: Warriors' Whirlwind and Bladestorm, Paladins' Divine Storm, and Rogues' Fan of Knives. Many character dances include spins, and the Blood Elf jump animation occasionally does it completely gratuitously.
    • The Belfs occasionally spinning is most likely a reference to the fact that Night Elves occasionally did an aerial front flip during their jump.
    • Taken up a notch again, now male Worgen in Cataclysm occasionally do an aerial backflip while jumping. Even while jumping forward.
  • Everything's Better with Princesses: Averted hard. Theradras, Myzrael and Huhuran are all princesses, and all are evil ugly monsters who you have to kill. Moira Bronzebeard is the only princess we've seen so far who isn't a monster, but she doesn't make anything better.
    • There's also Princess Stillpine, who arguably beats Moira hands-down in the not-making-anything-better stakes.
    • Post-Cataclysm Stranglethorn Vale has Princess Poobah, whose insistance on you getting her tiara and slippers before you can escort her out of trouble is pretty annoying. Pre-Cataclysm, all you had to do was find her message, kill the giant gorilla, and free her. Now they've made her a little more demanding.
  • Lava Adds Awesome: Many fire-based spells, such as the Shaman spell "Magma Totem", features spell effects giving the impression of lava. Their icons also depict lava/magma in different forms.
    • Lava Burst is also one of the most damaging spells in a Shaman's repetoire, particularly an Elemental Shaman, because if the target is under the effect of your Flame Shock it crits every time - with even more damage added given a specific Elemental talent.
    • Molten Core has Ragnaros the Firelord, who wields Sulfuras, a gargantuan lava warhammer.
    • Several bosses in the Firelands use lava-related attacks. Lord Rhyolith spawns volcanoes, will drink lava and wipe the raid if he reaches the edge of his platform, and after his armor is destroyed, reveals himself as a Magma Man.
  • Everything's Even Worse with Sharks: The Whale Shark, in Vashj'ir. It's a mini-raid boss whose attacks are powerful enough to instantly kill anyone it hits, so it can only be defeated by having whoever has aggro run away while everyone else damages it.
  • Everything's Worse with Bears: Some of the best parts of the game involve bears; see the trope page for more info.
  • Evil Chancellor: Lady Prestor, a noblewoman who is secretly the dragon Onyxia. And lately Varimathras, a dreadlord secretly working with every other dreadlord ever met.
    • Magatha Grimtotem was this to Cairne, as we find out in Cataclysm she fixed the duel between Cairne and Garrosh so that Cairne died. She then took control of Thunder Bluff in a bloody coup.
  • Evil Feels Good: Arthas! He went from being one of the stronger - if a bit headstrong and prone to acting before thinking - paladins in the Silver Hand to the Lich King's first and foremost Death Knight. And then became the Lich King himself. Saronite and the Old Gods also have this effect on those who remain in close proximity for too long.
  • Evil Is Deathly Cold: The Scourge's headquarters is located in the frigid continent of Northrend and its upper ranks (up to and including the Lich King himself) make heavy use of ice-based magic.
    • Heck, the Scourge top brass don't even live on solid land. Icecrown Glacier is just a hunk of ice that sits on/close to Northrend.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: Fel Magic. Just ask Illidan and Kael'thas.
  • Evil Laugh: A number of villains do this, but possibly the most well known is Yogg-Saron while he destroys your Sanity.
  • Evilly Affable: Professor Putricide.
    • Also doubles as a Mad Scientist.
    • Gallywix as well, not in the main game perhaps but but definitely in the short story about him.
  • Evil Makeover: Quite frequent.
    • Sargeras went from being a colossal, beautiful humanoid who apparently looked like sculpted bronze to a colossal, demon-horned entity whose beard and hair is made of fire.
    • The Eredar are an entire race who underwent an evil makeover. This can range from sickly-looking greenish-blue fifteen foot giants to hundred-foot tall, red, bat-winged, spine-adorned goliaths.
    • The naga were once Highbourne, the most beautiful of the high elves, who became... naga. Some of the more monstrous ones have shells and other sea creatures fused to their body, and their Queen Azshara looks like a Cosmic Horror.
    • Arthas went from a blond-haired paladin in blue and silver armor to a white haired, glowing blue-eyed monster who wears dark grey skull and spike-covered armor.
  • Evil Matriarch: As the whole black dragonflight is evil, it's top brood mother, Sintharia qualifies. In Shadowmoon Valley, Yarzill the Merc is collecting Netherwing eggs to keep them out of the "wrong hands"; at first this seems to be the Dragonmaw Orcs, but Sintharia (as Lady Sinestra) appears in a repeating event showing that she wants the eggs, and Overlord Mor'ghor is willing to trade. Being an offshoot of the black dragonflight, Sintharia is probably the mother to some, if not all of the Netherwing dragons, and they want nothing to do with her.
  • Evil Sorcerer: Necromancers and Warlocks are always this in lore. Though the latter may have player controlled exceptions.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: Many, many villains and bosses.
  • Evil Tower of Ominousness: Hello, Icecrown Citadel! Constructed entirely of Saronite, the hardened blood of an Old God, engraved with skulls and bones and lit by chilly blue fires. Seems downright welcoming, doesn't it?
    • In Cataclysm, a seared corner of the Twilight Highlands contains a massive, jagged spire leading to the Bastion of Twilight raid.
  • Evil Versus Evil: Several instances. Arugal's worgens versus Scourge, Dark Irons serving Ragnaros versus Blackrock Orcs serving the Black Dragonflight, and Scarlet Crusade versus Scourge in Vanilla. Illidan versus Burning Legion and Black dragons versus Gronn in Burning Crusade. Ice trolls versus Scourge, Black dragons versus Scourge, Yogg'Saron versus Scourge and Scarlet Crusade versus Scourge again in Wrath of the Lich King.
    • The updates leading to Cataclysm caused random portals to open in any area of the game, from which elementals pour out. No matter what kind of NPCs or enemies roam the area, they would immediately engage in a fight with the elementals.
    • Cataclysm itself mostly averts this, as almost all the major villains in the expansion (Deathwing, the Naga, Al'Akir, Ragnaros, and the Twilight's Hammer) are all controlled or influenced by the Old Gods, and are often seen working together; meanwhile the Zandalari Trolls have not faced any of the other villains. A minor exception are the Neferset, a villainous faction of Tol'Vir who turn against Siamat, a servant of Al'Akir.
    • During the Midsummer Fire Festival, Evil Versus Evil was Invoked Trope by the Old Gods. The Naga summon Frost Lord Ahune to fight Fire Lord Ragnaros, who was summoned by Deathwing, in hopes of sparking another Elemental War.
  • Expanded Universe: Specifically, the Warcraft Expanded Universe.
  • Expansion Pack
  • Expansion Pack World: In a quite literal sense with regard to Outland. In Wrath of the Lich King, the whole continent of Northrend becomes accessible to players, despite having existed for quite a long time. In Cataclysm, a number of additional previously inaccessible areas (notably Hyjal, which was an off-limits zone) have also been opened up.
  • Eyes Do Not Belong There: The leader of the Twilight's Hammer has been heavily mutated by exposure to C'thun - he now has an eyeball where each nipple should be, and two irregular bands around his upper arms. And yes, they do move and wink. Sweet dreams!
    • Inverted with the Old God, Yogg-Saron. His head is covered in what looks like many small, toothy mouths where eyes probably would be.
  • Face Design Shield
  • Face Heel Turn: The Old Gods, the Scourge, and Fel/chaos energy have a way of inducing this in people. The number of heroic characters who've turned is too large to conveniently list, but includes Millhouse Manastorm, Fandral Staghelm, and Archbishop Benedictus.
  • Failed a Spot Check: Averted in most cases; you don't fail the spot check, the game respawned the enemy you just killed. See Offscreen Teleportation.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: Unless they decide on another way to justify battlegrounds and PvP servers, peace negotiations between the Alliance and Horde are doomed to failure.
  • "Failure to Save" Murder: Two of these are what pushed Fandral Staghelm and Leyara's Face Heel Turns. Fandral blames the Dragonflights for not helping the Night Elves in the War of the Shifting Sands, where his son died; Leyara blames Malfurion Stormrage for not protecting Ashenvale from the Horde, where her daughter died.
  • Fake Difficulty: Most raiders see any boss with a random uncontrollable component as this. Usually cause for much whining. Fortunately these have gotten toned down quite a bit as the dungeon designers have improved at their craft.
  • Fallen Hero: Arthas, Illidan and Kael'thas are examples.
    • Death Knights. "A hero, that's what you once were."
    • The game uses the term "fallen hero" quite a bit, but in many cases that simply refers to the hero dying rather than being turned evil.
  • False Innocence Trick: There's a quest in the Arathi Highlands where you're contacted by an earth princess named Myzrael, who seeks your help to escape her confinement. To free her, you kill some of her guardians and release her from her crystal prison, where you find out that she's evil. Sort of subverted though, in that she was driven to madness by the Old Gods, and now resides in Deepholm, where she is once again sane and good.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Can happen In-Universe during the Well of Eternity dungeon, where players go back in time to just before the Great Sundering. The official lore has Night Elves killing the Highborne Varo'then before they drive Mannoroth out of Azeroth; but players, disguised as Night Elves, can ignore Varo'then and attack Mannoroth first, causing him to sacrifice Varo'then to restore his health. It is lampshaded with the achievement: "That's not Canon!"
  • Fan Nickname: Several, such as high-ranking Darnassus druid Fandouche Toolhelm.
    • Unusually easy fights are often given "loot-" nicknames, implying the designers might as well have placed the loot in a box for players to retrieve. Examples include Loot Reaver and Lootship.
    • One of the first bits of paid downloadable content is the Celestial Steed, aka Sparklepony.
  • Fan Service: There seems to be a model to appeal to just about every demographic of the game, including Stripperiffic female models, bare-chested guys, etc. There are also lots of bones thrown to the player base, such as the inclusion of Death Knights as a playable class, Murloc pets gifted to fans who attend Blizzcon, and the like.
    • Many otherwise poor armor pieces seem to be designed solely for this purpose, to the point where players will intentionally collect them even when they are totally useless from a gameplay perspective. Moreover, the exact same piece of armor that fully covers a male model may inexplicably turn into a Chainmail Bikini when worn by a female.
      • Amusingly enough, one of the new plate armour models in Cataclysm shows this in reverse, with the male model showing half of the player's chest, and the female model barely showing anything.
  • Fantastic Drug: According to a lore interview, a Blood death knight's healing blood is addictive to anyone that's healed by it, overusing said blood can cause addictions and eventually withdrawel, making them dependant on the death knight for a fix, sound familiar?
    • Arcane and especially Fel magic are this, too. One of the best examples is when the high elves' Sunwell was destroyed, cutting them off from Arcane energies and forcing the newly-christened blood elves to suck magic out of living beings to keep from becoming one of the "Wretched".
  • Fantastic Honorifics: "Magna" is the proper term for a Guardian of Tirisfal, though both of the ones we see (Aegwynn and Medihv) dislike it.
  • Fantastic Racism: Tons in this game, of course, both from NPCs and from players to some extent. Slightly disturbingly, this extends to the forums where posters will bash one another based on their avatar's race (among many, many other things) as if it were their real one.
    • The most extreme example is forsaken and living humans, in both directions.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Applies to all of the playable races in different ways, and most races including NPCs at least reflect a certain culture's architecture, regardless of their culture. For instance, Blood Elves have mostly Arabian Nights-style architecture, but their culture isn't similar at all—see the main trope page for specifics.
    • The culture and architecture of the Tauren looks a great deal like those of the Plains Indians.
    • Trolls are mostly Caribbean Islanders, or an over-the-top pastiche of them. They practice voodoo, worship animalistic gods called loa, and dance capoeira and to a Shakira tune.

... Mon.

    • Dwarves have Scottish accents and a big beer culture.
    • As for the Humans: Stormwind resembles Middle Ages Europe in government and architecture. Gilneas, for the most part, is based on 19th century England.
    • Orcs seem vaguely African, considering the Barrens' wildlife and the history of shamanism and being enslaved by humans.
    • Ethereals are based off of the old Arab Trader stereotype.
    • Goblins, particularly the Bilgewater ones, are a very, very biting parody of Americans. One that often hits much too close to home.
      • Many players tend to compare the Goblin state of affairs and aesthetic to stereotypical New Jersey (they have similar accents, tend to dress like pimps etc).
    • Uldum is Egypt. Very, very obviously.
    • Night Elven architecture is based on that of Japan and they were isolated from the rest of the world for centuries.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Ghosts, dragons, Darkfallen, Worgen, Gnomes, mummies, demons, aliens,[8] Old Gods, Sand Worms, purple magic, holy magic, icky green demon magic, etc, etc...
  • Fate Worse Than Death: While holed up in Fenris Keep, the Hillsbrad refugees would rather die than being turned into Worgen; but their corpses would become fodder for the Forsaken, a Fate Worse Than a Fate Worse Than Death, so they take the Worgen curse, as it grants immunity to the Forsaken plague.
  • Fauxshadow: During the early days of Burning Crusade, it was repeatedly established that Grand Magister Rommath is intensely loyal to Kael'thas, seemingly setting him up to side with the mad prince once his allegiance to the Legion was revealed. He doesn't. He was also set to betray the Horde for Twilights's Hammer, but this was also cut out.
    • Arator wanders around Honor Hold asking various NPCs about his missing father Turalyon, with the implication that we would eventually aid Arator in his quest to find him. We don't; the plot point was dropped (possibly a casualty of the cut "portal worlds" idea) and Turalyon remains MIA.
  • Fertile Feet: Lifeblood, an Herbalist spell that provides very light healing and haste, causes flowers to sprout around the caster's feet.
  • Fetch Quest: Tons, naturally.
    • An extreme example involves buying a questgiver a flagon of mead to get him to give you the next quest in a chain, when said beverage can be purchased inside the building he's standing next to, and costs less than the reward you get from him for obtaining it. You really don't get much lazier than that.
  • Find the Cure: In Silithus and Tanaris, players run into pairs of Goblins, one of whom is poisoned by the local bugs, and the other sends you out to collect samples so they can create an antidote. Silithus plays it straight, but Tanaris subverts it as the sick Goblin is suffering from food poisoning, due to her husband's lousy cooking.
    • Not a cure per se, but in Mt. Hyjal in the Rage of the Firelands patch, players get a daily quest to retrieve medical supplies to treat the near-fatally burned Hamuul Runetotem.
  • Finish Him!: Players get to do this to Arthas at the conclusion of the Icecrown Citadel raid, as well as Archimonde at the end of the Mount Hyjal raid.
  • Fish People: Murlocs
  • Fission Mailed: The climax of the Lich King encounter. The entire raid falls over dead, seemingly a wipe... just in time for Tirion Fordring and Terenas Menethil to resurrect the raid.
    • Interestingly enough, in-game statistics will count this as a death against the boss.
  • Five Races: Per faction as of Burning Crusade, although it bumped up to six each in Cataclysm.
  • Flanderization: Has been said to apply to many characters in the game's history, most particularly Sylvanas. Also, see Retcon in Q-Z.
  • Flawed Prototype
  • Flesh Golem: Abominations, Scourge, Forsaken and other necromancers' constructs, provide us the trope picture.
  • Flunky Boss: Several, but Queen Azshara in the Well of Etermity instance is almost a Wolfpack Boss as Azshara herself cannot be harmed, does very little during the fight, and will flee when her minions are defeated. She's considered the boss because what little she does can wipe the whole party, such as turning random players into People Puppets, or Mind Controlling the whole party, and killing them.
  • Follow the Chaos: From the Druid-in-Training quest chain in the Western Plaguelands:

Adrine Towhide: Among other things, Zen'Kiki needs to work on his spell accuracy. I could see his wrath spells spiraling out of control even from here! In fact, I used them as a marker to follow your progress through the woods.

  • Frankenstein's Monster: The Abomination class of undead creatures. Also, Flesh Titans.
  • Friendly Enemy: Although they're on opposing sides, the Night Elves and Tauren have a healthy respect for each other, mainly due to their similar backgrounds and traditions.
  • Friendly Fireproof: In full effect, but taken Up to Eleven with some Holy spells like the Priest's Penance or Holy Nova, or the Paladin's Holy Shock; they deal damage to enemies, but become healing spells when used on friendly characters.
    • A similar version applies with some bosses, who can create area of effect fields that provide benefits to them, but harm the players who enter them.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Kel'Thuzad's attempts at animating the dead bore little fruit until he traveled to Naxxramas in Northrend and saw the Lich King. Similarly, the Cult of the Damned is largely composed of people who were failures and social misfits, but who now are threats to the living of Azeroth.
  • Full Set Bonus: Some armor sets award bonuses once wearers have a certain number of pieces equipped, usually at 2 and 4 of a 5 piece tier set.
  • Fungus Humongous: Zangamarsh, Outland, Black Citadel, Eastern Plaguelands, Western Plaguelands, and some areas of Deepholm.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Usually done with Goblin and Gnome inventions. Such as -
    • M.E.G.A - Mechanical Engineering Guild, Associated
    • G.E.E.K - Goblin Experimental Engineering Korporation
    • B.O.O.M - Braintrust of Orbital Operations
    • G.N.E.R.D.S - Gnomish Nutritional Effervescent Remarkably Delicious Sweets.
    • R.O.I.D.S - Robust Operational Imbue Derived From Snickerfang
    • E.P.E.E.N. - Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number (from the April Fools' Day 2010 announcement, in case you didn't figure it out)
  • Furry Confusion: Becomes a plot point in Booty Bay where a rival pirate wants players to kill Tauren pirate Fleet Master Seahorn; Seahorn invokes this by having players return with the head of a certain farm animal (wearing a pirate hat).
  • Game Breaking Bugs:
    • Also affected by the same patch, Blackwing Lair's first boss required one person to constantly mind control a Large Dragonkin who then would have to proceed to destroy dragon eggs. At any given point, if the person loses their control over the dragonkin, the entire room will explode causing a party wipe.
    • With the release of Cataclysm and the Worgen's instanced areas, extremely savvy players who abuse several glitches can escape the instanced area without ever getting Worgen form. This renders you unable to use any of their racials or the Dungeon Finder system.
  • Game Face: Worgen most obviously, and also shadow priests, who shift into Shadowform for combat, which increase the damage from their shadow spells, and lowers the damage they take.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: No matter how many times you defeat a villain, you can always go back and bash his head in again, at least until the official game storyline moves forward. See Perpetually Static for more info on the latter.
    • It's also notable that, while Death Is Cheap for players, storyline NPC deaths are generally irrevocable, unless they are intended to come back later. This is given a Hand Wave by the original implementation of Spirit Healers, who told player ghosts that "it's not your time yet." The fact that many scripted events lament the death of NPCs who will merely respawn next week with fresh loot only makes this more obvious.
    • Poison and disease (especially the Plague of Undeath) are treated very seriously in the story, with many quests centered around saving (or failing to save) NPCs who have succumbed, but for players, salvation is a cure spell or a short wait away.
      • One daily quest chain involves treating Hamuul Runetotem, who has been burned very badly by Leyara of the Druids of the Flame, including reducing his swelling, replacing his bandages and easing his pain. Players can be cured up from near-fatal fire attacks easily, and Fire Mages can survive fatal attacks with Cauterize (although they will die without immediate healing).
    • Mounts are another frequently cited example, as for gameplay reasons they are unable to assist players in combat and some should, lorewise, be sapient and/or hostile to the players riding them.
    • Players will forever wonder why can't the faction leaders just go around everywhere and kill most of the problems to their kingdoms you have to deal with. Their effectiveness varies, however; while Jaina has millions of health in Theramore, she can be killed somewhat easily in the Battle for Mount Hyjal raid if the player doesn't do a good job of protecting her, although she's significantly more powerful than the other soldiers.
    • Magic spells and effects are all consolidated into one of six schools (Arcane, Fire, Frost, Holy, Nature, Shadow) regardless of actual lore-based source. Druids' star-based spells, for example, are classified as "Arcane," (and their damage in this element is increased while Balance Druids are in Lunar Eclipse) despite one of the major tenets of druidism being a rejection of Arcane magic sources. Mages and shaman both cast spells of the Fire and Frost schools, but the mages' spells are variations of Arcane magic, while the shamans' spells draw their power from elemental spirits. Nature damage includes both lightning and most poisons. Etcetera.
    • The Forsaken player race, while undead, are classified as Humanoids by the game engine due to the balance issues an Undead classification would cause with spell and abilities that have different effects on different target types. The paladin Exorcism spell, for example, which always crits against Undead targets, or mages' Polymorph, which doesn't work on Undead. They and Death Knights can also be healed with holy spells with no apparent ill effects, while healing is said to be painful to undead.
    • The Forsaken language of Gutterspeak exists entirely so that Horde and Alliance players cannot communicate with each other in-game. In lore, the Forsaken remember their human lives, and can speak Common just fine.
    • More language examples! Numerous scenes and events in-game depend on players and NPCs being able to communicate regardless of race, so NPCs such as raid bosses will speak a language all players can read. This could all be explained by everyone in Azeroth being able to understand Common, but gameplay prohibits this.
      • During the Alliance version of the Battle for the Undercity, Thrall will yell "The Undercity belongs to the Horde once more! Lok'tar!". Players will hear the sound file for this, but the in-game text dialogue will be rendered in Orcish.
  • Gayborhood: Not in the game itself, but the "Proudmoore" server is known for its GLBT population.
  • Gay Option: During the third part of the The Day That Deathwing Came quest series, you take control of Martek, who includes "hot babes" in his slightly exaggerated telling of the story of the day Deathwing came. As the story starts, there are four of Martek's admirers situated around his motorcycle: a orcish lady, a human lady, a night-elven lady, and a blood-elven gentleman. As the quest goes underway, Martek can only choose one his admirers to bring with him in the motorcycle, and which one he chooses is up to the player. Yes, you can choose the blood-elven gentleman, and whichever admirer you choose, the narration text will later inform you that Martek and his admirer share a "tender moment" in the motorcycle as the quest continues.
    • Admittedly this may have been intended another way. The point stands, though.
  • Generation Xerox: A justified example with Harpies. The female only Harpies will kidnap men from other races and use them for reproductive purposes. However, in times where their numbers dwindle, they can produce eggs, the offspring of which is an exact copy of its mother.
    • Fungalmancer Glop, meanwhile, takes this trope to the most absurd extreme imaginable. Every generation of the Glop family line is identical to the one before, having the same name, same appearance, same occupation, and exact same response when attacked. Taking out the latest Fungalmancer Glop is a daily quest, and the trope is taken so far beyond eleven that, gee, it's almost as if you're actually killing the same stone trogg every day, and the idea that it's the son of the previous is just a flimsy conceit to justify making it a daily quest.
  • General Ripper: Conqueror Krenna in Conquest Hold, forcing her sister to covertly oppose her, then fight alongside you against her and her bodyguards.
  • The Generic Guy / The Nondescript: Lor'themar Theron, until recently the only racial leader without a unique model/voice. Mention his name to anyone that plays WoW, and the most common reply will be "Who?" He finally got a unique voice actor and about 40 pounds more armor in Cataclysm.
    • The fandom at mmo-champion has taken to calling him Bob of Silvermoon in place of his actual name.
  • Get on the Boat: Literally, for the Alliance. The Horde is more fond of Zeppelins (which amusingly seem to be boats with a hot-air balloon tied to them).
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: The aforementioned Love Rocket.
    • And as of Cataclysm, a monkey named Spanks wandering around Nesingwary's expedition site in Stranglethorn Vale.
    • One quest in Vashj'ir involves taking a crate of crab meat to Adarrah after she is shipwrecked. She promises to vouch for your character, saying "I'll tell anyone who'll listen that in my moment of need you gave me a case of crabs..." The player later has to fetch her some lobster tails, and upon returning them to her she tells you "That's some of the biggest, juiciest tail I've ever seen!"
    • The Sons of Hodir quest Mounting Hodir's Helm as well as the daily quests Polishing The Helm, Blowing The Horn, and Thrusting The Spear.
    • During the Harrison Jones questline, you'll find the tip of a jeweled spear and have to find the spear it fits into. The quest for doing so is named Just The Tip.
    • A quest in Uldum is named "Camel Tow which involves the player...towing camels.
  • Ghibli Hills: Mulgore, Nagrand, Grizzly Hills, the Emerald Dream, Loch Modan, Azshara, and others.
  • The Ghost: The families of several leaders. The women in Arthas's family are never shown, although his mother and sister are named. The bext examples would be Queen Azshara (until Cataclysm), and the Dark Riders in Duskwood, who are apparently Worgen.
  • Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: Some of the earlier bosses had no explanation for how they were connected with the rest of the enemies in the dungeon. In the Dungeon Journal, however, most of the bosses have their backstory or relevance to the plot detailed.
  • GIFT: The game's chat is notorious for the racism, homophobia, and lewdness from childish players (who are not all children by the way). Particularly in the Barrens and City Trade channels. The latter connects between all of a faction's capital cities, Shattrath City and Dalaran, meaning that all players looking for raids, trying to recruit for them, or buying or selling goods have to put up with it.
    • Technically the City Trade channel connects ALL capital cities. If you're a Hordie on a raid in Stormwind, you will still see the Trade Chat of all the Horde cities.
  • Global Currency: Generic gold, although there are a few exceptions where a faction has its own special currency, often combined with money, and they still buy your things for normal money as well.
    • The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions went crazy adding alternate currency, such as Badges of Justice, Emblems of Heroism, Arena Points, Stone Keeper's Shards, Marks of Honor, and even Dalaran Cooking Awards, none of which were interchangeable and which required the developers to create a special character sheet tab just to manage.
    • Cataclysm, in its turn, tones down the explosion of emblems such that all PvE and PvP tokens are combined into two tiers of currency apiece, with the "higher" tiers being folded into the lower ones with each new content release, and with everyone's "higher" currency being converted into the "lower" currency to put everyone on equal footing in buying the new gear. The other forms of special currency remain, however.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: It's not Warcraft unless you have glowing eyes! Forsaken, Night, Blood, and High Elves, Draenei, and all Death Knights have them, and some helmets give your eyes this effect while worn. Mounts have them, too.
  • God Mode: A handful of quests in Wrath of the Lich King give the players massive buffs (usually courtesy of a faction leader), making them Nigh Invulnerable and increasing their damage output several times over. Repeated in Cataclysm and taken Up to Eleven in Throne of the Tides: in the final encounter, Neptulon buffs your party's damage at least twenty-fold with PURE WATER—and you need every bit of it to defeat Ozumat.
  • Going Mobile: WoW Companion App, it's an an organizer and a type of planner to help gamers keep track of world quests, missions, fuel the war campaign, and other things.
  • Gold Digger: Candy Cane in the Golbin starting area.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: This can happen to you during the Yogg Saron encounter.
    • Also, Archbishop Benedictus.

Archbishop Benedictus: I looked into the eyes of The Dragon, and despaired...

  • Goomba Stomp: The warrior's Heroic Leap ability.
  • Gradual Grinder: The Warlock (particularly when Affliction-specced) is an excellent example, as are Shadow Priests. And with Catacylsm feral Druids are even more focused on their bleeds. "More DoTs!"
  • G-Rated Drug: Bloodthistle, complete with withdrawal.
  • G-Rated Sex: The spring rabbit pet. When two of them get close to eachother, they'll get HeartSymbols over their heads, they'll hop close to eachother and a bunch of baby bunnies will pop up on the ground in sprays of petals.
  • Grand Theft Me: One quest has Teron Gorefiend pull this off on the player only to inexplicably release the player after slaying his jailor.
  • Grave Robbing: The Archaeology profession is all about this, as nothing you find will end up in a museum. Common items are nothing more than Vendor Trash, but with artifacts selling for up to 200 gold per item, it's the most valuable Vendor Trash in the game; while the Rare items are useable by the player and range from trinkets that do weird things, to Infinity Plus One Equipment.
  • Great White Hunter: Hemet Nesingwary (a Significant Anagram for Ernest Hemingway)
  • Grey and Gray Morality: Neither the Alliance nor the Horde is particularly good or evil. Each faction, however, has one race that is considered more peaceful or generally nicer than the others - look for hooves. Both sides have committed a fair share of war crimes though. By the time you hit level 60 you'll have heard of at least one against your race, and accidentally helped somebody from your side commit another.
  • Groundhog Day Loop: The Murozond fight in the End Time involves a giant hourglass that acts as a Reset Button, which allows players to keep the fight in a Groundhog Day Loop until the hourglass is used up. With each loop, the players are reset back to their state at the beginning of the fight, presumably at full health and most of their cooldowns reset, while Murozond is unaffected, so all damage he takes carries over.
  • Guide Dang It: Some quests (Mankrik's wife anyone?), although most are not if you actually read the quest. WOW was one of the first games to consciously try to avert this. Previous big-name MMORPGs such as EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI gave no hints at all to their quests.
    • The quest is retired as of the upcoming expansion, as Mankrik finally buried his wife. Good thing too since the area where her body is now will be flooded with lava.
    • Infamous in the Death Knight starting zone. One quest, which has budding Death Knights steal and return their soon-to-be mount, required the explanation of "press one to turn in your horse" so often in beta that it spawned a guild, <Press One For Horse>.
    • Tends to be somewhat averted over time as Blizzard makes improvements. In the past, only NPCs displayed exclamation/question marks signaling they could start/end a quest; now objects (wanted posters, statues, etc.) that start/end quests display such marks as well. The in-game map now highlights areas where current quest objectives may be located, e.g. where to find particular mobs, quest items, Mankrik's wife, etc. Items that must be gathered/used as part of a quest now sparkle, making them easier to find, and mobs relevant to current quests are marked as such when moused over.
    • Many of the quests for Blackrock-centered dungeons were this.
    • However, the epitome of this trope in WoW is probably the level 40+ Alliance quest hidden in the hills in the much lower level zone Westfall. The dwarf requires a sack each of barley, corn and rye. They're each hidden in seemingly random corners of Azeroth, but you wouldn't know this, as there are no hints whatsoever. Note that Westfall is known for its many farms and there are sacks of corn lying around everywhere, but no, only the one that's found in a desert on another continent will do. The rest of the chain this quest is part of isn't much better.
    • Then there was another quest in the classic game that required you to go to a blue dragon named Haleh in Winterspring. The only information the quest gave to you was that the person you needed to talk to you was of dragon blood and he or she may be disguised in a humanoid form. That's it. No hints are given to the character's location. The character herself was hiding on top of a mountain in Winterspring that could only be reached by finding a teleporter in a cave filled with hostile elite blue dragons (yes, you had to slaughter Haleh's own kin just to get to her).
    • Frequently comes up with raid bosses, whose abilities are not always intuitive (for example, you might have to stack in a certain spot to absorb the damage from a given attack, or kill monsters in a certain order), and groups often require members to watch videos or read guides for bosses. The Dungeon Journal, which shows all of the boss's abilities and how they work, mitigates this though.
  • Gunship Rescue: When the Lich King corners you at the end of the Hall of Reflection dungeon, your faction's airship swoops in to save the day and buries him in rubble. Not that it's going to kill him, though.
  • Guns Are Useless: Subverted. The Blunderbuss, Flintlock Pistol, and Long Rifle are very powerful ranged weapons that Hunters can channel their abilities through. However, only Hunters can use them.
  • Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Due to their Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism, rank and file Naga are this; males are Dumb Muscle while females are Squishy Wizards. In Vashj'ir, Wavespeakers Tulra and Valoren are surprised to hear about Nar'jira, a Naga Battlemaiden.
  • Had the Silly Thing In Reverse: A Gnome in Fort Triumph builds a new tank out of spare parts and asks a Dwarf to test drive it, only to have it run backwards and crash. The new design had the gear box backwards, so forwards is reverse and vice versa; a little feature she failed to notify the pilot of.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Invoked by pirate Tony Two-Tusk as a lame excuse to deny being a (at the time very literal) deadbeat dad. Tony, a Troll, says his ex-wife's sister's baby isn't his, but of Seadog Fajardo, a Human.
  • Happiness in Slavery: It's shockingly common for this to happen to Succubi enslaved by warlocks, to the point where even if the binding was broken, they would continue to serve. This also makes them homocidally jealous when someone of the opposite gender approaches their master.
  • Hard Mode Perks: Heroic versions of dungeons are harder but give much better loot. For Cataclysm raids, there's often only one achievement for completing the entire raid on normal, but achievements for defeating each boss on Heroic.
  • Hard Work Hardly Works: Why Gidwin and Tarenar, two childhood friends and paladins who want to join the Argent Crusade, have evolved into Vitriolic Best Buds. Gidwin, a dwarf was jealous that Tarenar, a blood elf was a natural as a paladin, while he had to work hard to keep up.
  • Haunted Castle: Karazhan, Shadowfang Keep, and the Undercity.
  • Have a Nice Death: Pretty much any boss will say something nasty everytime they kill a player (and sometimes the entire group) except if the boss can't speak, complete with audio to crank it up to Over Nine Thousand, ranging from some simple mocking, Bond One-Liner / Quip to Black, This Loser Is You comments, Badass Boast, something like "I am going to loot your corpses!", Nothing Can Stop Us Now , plain Evil Laugh, combination of above, and many other things. Made even more awesome (or scary) if the boss already speaking in Voice of the Legion or Snake Talk or You No Take Candle, or some unknown language.
    • Examples:

Ragnaros: DIE INSECT!
Blackheart the Inciter: You fail! MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Malygos: More artifacts to confiscate!

Loken: "What little time you had, you wasted."

Malown the Postman: You've been MALOWNED!

    • Except for Vaelastrasz in Blackwing Lair, who does apologize for every character he kills: "Forgive me friend, your death only adds to my failure."
  • Headless Horseman: A Headless Horseman appears in a seasonal event (during Halloween). He flies around setting starting towns on fire and can be fought as a boss. According to the background material, he used to be a paladin of the Scarlet Crusade went insane after his family was killed, died and was raised as an undead by the dreadlord Balnazzar.

"Prepare yourselves, the bells have tolled. Shelter your weak, your young and your old! Each of you shall pay the final sum! CRY FOR MERCY! THE RECKONING HAS COME!

  • Heel Face Revolving Door: Consider the Forsaken Death Knight. You started out as a regular inhabitant of Lordaeron, maybe even fighting the Scourge. You were killed and resurrected to fight for the Scourge. You then joined the Forsaken rebellion fighting against said Scourge. You were killed (again) and resurrected to fight for the Scourge (again). And then you rebelled and joined the Horde after Light's Hope.
  • Hellish Horse: Warlocks and Death Knights get class specific steeds that are horses with red eyes and flaming hooves, and the Forsaken's racial steed is a skeletal horse. There are also several mounts that are rare drops from bosses, including the Headless Horseman and the Lich King, both of which can fly.
  • Helping Would Be Killstealing: Averted due to the tagging system. Once a player attacks a monster, that monster is tagged and only they or their party gain experience points or loot from it. Newbies that don't know about this system will often accuse people of killstealing until they are told (often harshly) that the game doesn't allow this.
    • Some of the quests in Cataclysm will give credit to everyone involved in the kill, so it is beneficial to everyone to do this; the person who tagged gets some help, while the person helping still gets credit for certain quests.
  • Herd-Hitting Attack: Oh so many of them. Generally any group of more than five mobs at once will require AOE of some sort.
  • Heroic Resolve: Tirion Fordring, atop Icecrown Citadel. "Light give me strength to break these bonds," indeed.
  • Heterosexual Life Partners: Quite a few: Tirion and Eitrigg, Varian and Bolvar, Thassarian and Koltira, Asric and Jadaar...
  • He Who Fights Monsters: Sylvanas is headed down this path in Cataclysm. For starters, she hires the Val'kyr to reanimate corpses into new Forsaken, which Garrosh is utterly disgusted by. And during the Worgen starting experience, she uses the New Plague, despite Garrosh explicitly banning its use. She also uses it on Southshore. And she has a death knight kidnapped and brainwashed for the 'weakness' of not despising the Alliance. Doesn't seem too different from the late Lich King, eh? Garrosh even calls her out on this during the Silverpine Forest questline. Her reply indicates that she's largely accepted this.

Garrosh: Have you given any thought to what this means, Sylvanas? What difference is there between you and the Lich King now?
Sylvanas: Isn't it obvious, Warchief? I serve the Horde.

    • And then there's the end of the Western Plaguelands questline, where she kidnaps Koltira Deathweaver to punish him for not despising the Alliance and not wanting to harm his friend Thassarian (who is leading the Alliance forces in Andorhal). She heavily implies that torture and brainwashing will be involved.
    • The Royal Apothecary Society already went down this path in the backstory.
    • Also in the Worgen starting zone is Lord Godfrey; he had been fighting the feral Worgen for so long, that he wants to kill the player once they've succumbed to the curse, and then tries to sell out King Greymane to the Forsaken when it turns out Greymane is a Worgen.
      • And then during Silverpine Forest, he gets ressurected as a Forsaken, aids Sylvanas in pushing the Worgen from Silverpine...and then kills her, at point-blank range with his gun So by the time you kill him in Shadowfang Keep, he's not only - quite literally - become one of the enemies Gilneas was fighting, but he's become an enemy to THOSE enemies as well.
  • Heroic Sociopath: Many of the Knights of the Ebon Blade use quite ruthless tactics against the Lich King, many of which involve maximizing the body count against the Scourge and their allies.
  • Hijacked by Ganon: The Final Boss of Burning Crusade is Illidan, right? Nope, actually it's Kil'jaeden the Deceiver, a fact totally unhinted at by Blizzard prior to the Sunwell content patch (unless you were well-versed in the lore and managed to put quite a few subtle clues together).
  • Hit and Run Tactics /Kiting: Several bosses and quests involve mobs that are dangerous/suicidal to engage in melee combat and so must be kited. Some examples:
    • In Molten Core, a hunter may obtain a quest to construct an epic bow. Completion of the quest requires the hunter to defeat 4 individual demons. Two of the demons are deadly in melee range, but can be successfully defeated through kiting.
    • During the second phase of the Lady Vashj fight in Serpentshrine Caverns, Vashj summons various adds, including a large strider (a biological Tripod Terror) that cannot be tanked in melee range, but must instead be kited by a ranged DPS.
    • In addition, many ranged classes use kiting as part of their standard PvP tactic, and many melee classes have ways around it.
  • Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Used in several dungeons within the Caverns of Time, in which you travel back to prevent the Infinite Dragonflight from interfering with some apparently disastrous events in Azeroth's history—Arthas' Start of Darkness in "The Culling of Stratholme" and Medivh's "Opening of the Dark Portal" under Sargeras' dominion. The reason you need to do this is that if you don't stop them, the resulting futures would have been much, much worse, thanks in no small part to Nice Job Fixing It, Villain.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard - Arguably what ultimately got the Lich King killed.
    • Player examples, in the heroic version of throne of the tides, it's very possible for a shadow priest to kill themselves with their own shadow word: death's backlash while they're super buffed and burning down ozumat. Warlocks also used to have hellfire, which does a good amount of Area of Effect damage at the cost of damaging the warlock, if they were low enough, the damage would kill the warlock (This had strategic importance as dying to hellfire didn't cost repairs, allowing you suicide on a Total Party Kill and avoid gear damage), a patch changed it so that the spell didn't kill you if you hit 1 HP, to a predictable response.
  • Homage: The Lich King and the Witch King, C'thun, Yogg Saron, and countless others
  • Homing Projectile: Unless an attack is supposed to be avoided by moving out of the way (don't stand in the fire), then all ranged attacks will home in on their target. Normally this only manifests as an attack making a few curves to adjust for the target moving, but a slow moving attack on a mounted player will follow the player around until he stops and gets hit.
    • The Creeping Inferno used by the Devout Harbinger in the Molten Front is an explicit Homing Projectile that players are supposed to run away from until it extinguishes itself.
  • Honor Before Reason: Pretty much every order of paladins ever conceived. The Knights of the Ebon Blade have no such qualms, though; one quest is called "Honor is For the Weak".
  • Horned Humanoid: Ogres have rhino-horns, tauren and female draenei have horns of various styles, and almost all demons have them too.
  • Horny Devils: Played straight with the succubi (and potentially incubi, who may or may not exist). Averted with the other demons, most notably Talgath.
  • Horny Vikings: The Vrykul race from Northrend.
  • Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Four Horsemen of Naxxramas.
  • Horse of a Different Colour: Every playable race has their own specific mount. With a bit of effort building reputation, players can ride the mounts of other races. There are also quite a few mounts not specific to any one race, such as bears and mammoths.
    • BEAR CAVALRY!
  • Hot-Blooded: Any number of NPCs could certainly qualify for this, but Garrosh Hellscream is certainly the most prominant example of it. In no small part, his hot-bloodedness during the events of Wrath of the Lich King is reason for the re-ignition of hostilities between the Horde and the Alliance, or at least kept cooler heads from mitigating them.
  • Huge Rider, Tiny Mount: In a word, yes. For example, the Tauren, massive bovine-people, can ride a creature that is, to all intents and purposes, a chocobo with the serial numbers filed off. The game attempts to scale the poor creature's size upwards, but even so, it's quite clear the hawkstrider should be getting crushed.
    • Taken Up to Eleven with a specific subzone in the Storm Peaks. After a long quest chain, you get a perpetual disguise in the shape of the aforementioned Ice Vrykul. You can mount any of your normal mounts, but unlike with the tauren they don't scale up. Hence, you can have a giant ice woman crammed into a flying machine built for a gnome.
    • Similarly, there are very few things funnier to see than a Tauren Death Knight riding a pony (or even a foal) on the quest to get his (appropriately-sized) Deathcharger mount.
  • Human Ladder: In Uldum, Pygmies are trying to steal dates, but they are too short to reach, so they stand on each others' shoulders in a three-pygmy-tall tower to reach. Players can unleash cathartic revenge on the runts by grabbing a hammer and playing Whack-a-Pygmy.
  • Humongous Mecha: The Burning Legion's Fel Reavers, gargantuan level 70 elite mobs that stalk Hellfire Peninsula and make themselves the bane of the inattentive player. Well-equipped and intelligently-played 80s of virtually any class can solo these things (and it feels awesome).
  • 100% Heroism Rating: Reaching the highest reputation level with certain factions will occasionally result in some NPCs greeting/complimenting you as you walk past. The most commonly seen example is probably the two Kirin Tor mages standing by the doorway of the Dalaran flight point.
    • In addition to the reputation mechanic itself, there are several Easter Eggs where NPCs acknowledge particularly important feats if the player character has done them, but has more impersonal dialogue if not. For example, if a player did the quest chain to enter Onyxia's lair way back in original, classic WoW (obsolete since 2008 if not earlier and removed from the game entirely a little after that), a certain lord general greets the player like an old friend when encountered in Northrend. If the player hadn't done that quest, though, they're just greeted like some stranger.
  • Hybrid Monster
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  1. ↑ A 10-man raid into the Throne of the Four Winds is searching for three damage dealers, one of them melee (Frost spec Death Knight) and two ranged (Arcane Mage and Marksmanship Hunter)
  2. ↑ For this reason, Deadmines is usually abbreviated "VC" for (Edwin or Vanessa) VanCleef, the final boss.
  3. ↑ Cause 50 Onyxia Whelplings to hatch within 10 seconds of Onyxia's liftoff, and then defeat her.
  4. ↑ Defeat Onyxia in less than 5 minutes.
  5. ↑ Defeat Onyxia without anyone taking damage from a Deep Breath.
  6. ↑ "Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroy!" - Kill 50 rookery whelps within 15 seconds
  7. ↑ "Jenkins", awarded for completing the achievement
  8. ↑ Draenei and Orcs
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