< World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft/YMMV


  • Acceptable Targets: Fandral Staghelm was the most hated faction leader of the Alliance. Garrosh Hellscream (though he has gotten better), Trade Prince Gallywix, and Sylvanas are the most controversial Horde leaders. On the lighter side, there's the widely practiced and highly enjoyable sport of gnome punting, popular in both factions, but most especially among the Tauren. Blood elves are also frequently mocked as being too Alliance-y (or feminine) for the Horde.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Arthas. Despite being what he is, surprisingly, this one is played DEAD STRAIGHT by giving him a Tear Jerker farewell.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation. Many for the faction leaders. One debate is whether General Hawthorne, who destroyed Camp Taurajo, was a war criminal responsible for civilian deaths or someone who tried to win while showing more mercy than his comrades.
  • Alt-Itis: Just about everybody who plays the game for long has multiple characters. Even if it isn't to experience life in the opposite faction, there are still six races per faction and ten classes, not to mention the advantages of having multiple professions available on one account. Some players never get a character to max level, instead rolling dozens of alts. And then Blizzard added the Recruit A Friend program, allowing players to level alts with their friends at triple the normal rate.
    • In Wrath of the Lich King, the addition of "heirloom" class items makes this even more highly encouraged, as they can be traded among characters on the same account, scale to character level and increase the rate at which experience is gained, making leveling up additional characters easier.
    • In Cataclysm, the heirloom system was expanded to guilds, with heirloom capes and helms only being available once your guild reaches a certain level. Further, Cataclysm revamped the leveling experience in old Azeroth in order to attract players who are bored with the original content.
  • Base Breaker: Arthas (as a Paladin), Varian, Garrosh, Sylvanas, and Gallywix.
    • Thrall as of Cataclysm. A common fan sentiment is that they "like Thrall, but hate "Go'el"".
    • Sky Admiral Rogers is viewed either as a badass Alliance leader who actually values the safety of her own soldiers over the enemy's, or a war criminal for killing surrendering Horde soldiers swimming to shore (especially since they may have been drafted by Garrosh).
    • Sunwalker Dezco is seen either as a cool and tragic character, or a poorly written character that ruined the dynamic of Sunwalkers and acts like a human paladin despite having no ties with humanity.
    • Rhonin's tendency for New Powers as the Plot Demands and to receive Character Shilling in his story have led to him being considered either a Scrappy or Crazy Awesome.
    • Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream are the two most prominent cases. The former is an angry post-Literal Split Personality who was a slave to Orcs for quite some time, had his home destroyed by the orcs and his father betrayed to death by one even earlier and shilled to a ridiculous degree for awhile by Blizzard. The latter is is a racist warmonger with lacking leadership skills taking over from the level-headed, peace-seeking Thrall despite being a self-hating Emo Teen barely a few years ago. The developers even admitted they put them in charge just to provide in-universe justification for continuing the Alliance-Horde conflict.
    • Jaina Proudmoore. After Mists of Pandaria, some thought her Character Development made sense as she saw all the work she did to bring peace destroyed in moments, and because of the side she trusted as well. Others believe that it's Character Derailment was delivered in breakneck speed and shoved down the players' throats, in addition of really going against her characterization in WC3 (the woman who allowed her father to die in order to ensure peace, now she's considered to be an insult to that).
    • Sylvanas was already a contentious character being seen as either a Jerkass Woobie Anti-Hero or a Karma Houdini Creator's Pet. This reached it's peak in Legion when she was delcared Warchief of the Horde. Some think she was the next best candidate, others think she is too evil/similar to past tyrannical Warchiefs to deserve it and think it should have been Baine or even Lor'themar. People from either side, and others, are mad that Warchief Vol'jin just seemed to warm the chair Sylvanas would sit on due to being Out of Focus in Warlords.
    • The Prime Naaru Xe'ra is more notable because she reached this status faster than even Garrosh or Varian did at the meta level. Some view her as a well-intentioned extremist ally with a deep past who was killed by the selfish magic addict she was trying to save - Illidan (some fans have compared Xe'ra forcefully infusing Illidan with the Light to remove his fel magic to intervention and rehabilitation for a drug addict) and thought she and her story arc story wasted. Others see her as a manipulative Knight Templar who got what she deserved and brought it on herself.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Every time a class bitches enough to get class buffs or reworks, you can bet your bottom they'll be complaining they're oversaturated with noobs who don't know how to play them.
    • The fanbase complained about long convoluted attunement quest chains and being unable to complete them because nobody would lift a finger to help. Now that that's no longer required and you don't have to run a dozen dungeons (That nobody wants to do anymore) and hope your token actually drops so guilds will look in your general direction. Then they complained about how annoyingly hard the game was only now are complaining about "Casuals" taking over the game. (Don't try pointing out that there are in fact heroic raids meant specifically for these "Core" players, or that they offer stronger gear and require much more coordination than raid finder - they're not listening.)
    • Throughout wrath, the fanbase bitched non-stop about how "easy" the heroics were. (ignoring, of course, that they were "hard" before people started running them in Naxx gear or with heirlooms.) Then when the last three Wrath heroics were added, they bitched about how "hard" they were and would constantly Rage Quit the halls of reflection. When Cataclysm was released, what was everyone's response to the heroics? That they're too hard. Of course nowadays, nobody complains about how "hard" they were because just like Wrath, they all outgeared the heroics enough to just rush through.
    • For that matter, they complained about the needless amounts of Fake Difficulty in the game, alleviating the Catch22 situations. Now they complain about "Wrath babies" or "noobs" running their heroics.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: Various quests in Cataclysm involving random creatures nobody likes (eels, hyenas, vultures) show up with no warning when you kill one of them, and have absolutely no mention after you finish them.
  • Bittersweet Ending
    • Badlands: Rheastrasza is destroyed, along with the egg she and the player worked so hard to keep hidden from Deathwing. The "sweet" part comes in when it is revealed that, though she and the egg were destroyed, it was all part of the plan: She knew Deathwing would find her, so she trusted the cleansed black dragon egg with another ally and replaced it with one of her own.
    • Wrath of the Lich King: The Lich King is defeated, but Bolvar Fordragon forgoes his salvation in order to become the new Lich King and prevent the rise of the Scourge once again.
  • Broken Base: Almost any Horde vs Alliance debate; most notably, currently its the ownership of Lordaeron.
    • Mists of Pandaria seems to be causing this too.
    • Also, PVE vs. PVP. Players will pull up unoriginal insults akin to Fantastic Racism without the "race".
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • The Seige of Orgrimmar raid is this for the Alliance. Well, many Horde players likely had no love for Garrosh either, but this raid actually lets you storm and invade the Horde capital itself and lay waste to the citizenry. Any beginning Alliance player who has been shot down after flying too near the place sees it as revenge.
    • When you finally kill the Whale Shark in Vashj'ir. It doesn't drop anything or give XP, but this monster likely kills you several times while you try to explore the undersea zone, and finally killing the thing is satisfying. In fact, the Achievement you get has a fitting name, "From Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee".
    • Players who felt bad after seeing this cutscene and/or this one will experience a lot of Catharsis once they complete the Raid that ends with this one.
  • ClichĂ© Storm: the Large Ham bosses' favorite way of Calling Your Attacks. Originally done so you'd know how to prepare for an incoming attack but nowadays it's just tradition.
  • Complete Monster: Quite a few villains qualify, although overall most of them tend to be Anti-Villains.
    • Loken from Wrath of the Lich King murders his sister in law and frames his brother's friends for it, causing a needless war, warps his brothers dragon into a monstrosity, and tries to brainwash Thorim.
    • Apparently, the curse that comes with wielding the blade Frostmourne ultimately turns a person into this. As shown by the below quote:
      • "An individual who wields Frostmourne will not part with it willingly. Over time the person will go from good to neutral and finally to evil. A non-undead evil wielder will then become undead. Finally the sword is able to suck the being's soul into the sword."
    • Chargla Razorflank sells her own people to the Scourge.
    • Gul'dan(despite being Faux Affably Evil) who voluntarily corrupted his people into a bloodthirsty horde which he secretly controls, planned the genocide of the Draenei and brought the Orcs into Azeroth so they could trigger two wars. He also created Garona as a "breeding experiment" between an Orc soldier and a female Draenei prisoner, after that she was magically aged, tortured and mind controlled into becoming his personal assassin. Finally, he betrays the Horde to follow his own ends of achieving power.
    • Kael'thas gets changed into this in The Burning Crusade, although your Mileage May Vary. He becomes a power hungry lunatic who seeks to sacrifice an innocent girl in order to bring his master Kil'Jaeden into the world, who incidentally is the one who gave the order for the destruction of Kael'thas's home (well not him directly, but he and Archimonde would have certainly authorized it and he DID create the Scourge for use against Azeroth).
    • Deathwing is an unrepentant mass murderer, who coldly murdered most of his and the blue flight and who covertly helped the Orcs gain control over his rival, Alexstrasza, who he kept as his unwilling consort for a time. His act of entering the world (though admittedly rather awesome) kills countless innocents and causes almost incalculable environmental damage, and he has a genocidal hatred of anyone who isn't a black dragon (and considering the twilight flight even they may be expendable eventually).
    • Worst of all are the Old Gods. They have caused quite a few atrocities in Azeroth's history (they corrupted Deathwing and in turn are indirectly responsible for all of his crimes, and in turn the nexus war), and seem to be intent on destroying the world solely to create chaos.
    • Sargeras and Archimonde are both heartless lunatics who love killing things and who have destroyed countless worlds.
    • Depending on how you view him Gallywix may qualify. And for good reason, he is a callous Jerkass whose crimes include: selling the player and others into slavery after he made them give up their life savings, leaving the goblins behind to take over Azshara, enslaving the goblins in a mine called the Gallywix Reeducation Cavern, and employing abusive Hobgoblin slavemasters. He was even attempted at a last-ditch attempt to kill Thrall (right before he was re-appointed leader). Constantly taunting you in the second half of the starting experience doesn't help matters either. There's even a Goblin NPC who calls him a monster.
    • Magatha Grimtotem, who leads the Grimtotems, who wants eradicate the "lesser races" from Kalimdor and retake the long lost tauren ancestral holdings. And in Cataclysm, she rigs the duel between Garrosh and Cairne by poisoning Garrosh's Axe which caused Garrosh to easily cripple, and kill Cairne
  • Crack is Cheaper: A widely spread opinion, given how much time players spend into the game.
  • Crazy Awesome: Most of the Goblin starting experience, to wit: One of the focuses right at the beginning is to set everything up for a party, naturally, you succeed and start to have a pretty rad (by Goblin standards) party... only to have it be crashed by Party Crasher Pirates. After the Volcano starts to blow, you're trying to get enough money to get off the Island. So you break into the bank, steal your life savings back, but it's still not enough. So what do you do? Why, burn down your corporate headquarters to get the insurance money, of course! You do this by Overloading your Generator, turn on your "Leaky Stove" And then drop a cigar on your flammable bed. It only goes upwards from there, there are many examples later, but one truly stands out. Once you're on the Lost Isles, a Goblin asks you to take care of a Giant Shark. How do you do this? Well, after getting a bunch of shark bits, he makes a Shark Submarine With Freakin' Laser Beams, then you fight the Shark in it.
    • After his bout with debilitating insanity in Wrath of the Lich King, Budd Nedreck has stabilized into this.

I'M A MANATAUR!

    • Blizzard itself is kind getting in on it too! A forum post complained how the Maelstrom wasn't "epic" enough, a representative ensured that in the next patch the "epicness" would increase tenfold. The next patch came and we got...this.
    • The whole defending the shard thing became really annoying after awhile, so Azuregos entrusted it to a construct of his called Maws, which is a very special minnow. The player has the option of calling him insane for this, while a pleased Azuregos claims to be a genius instead.
      • He gets worse in cataclysm, it's implied being farmed so much may have caused permanent damage to his brain, eventually he decided just to stay dead for a while and wound up falling in love with a spirit healer.
  • Creator's Pet: Many in the playerbase grew to dislike Garrosh as he rose in prominence during the events of Wrath Of The Lich King, and when it was announced that he would replace well-loved Thrall as the Warchief of The Horde in Catacylsm fan response was pretty predictable. Now there are many questgiving NPCs who will praise Garrosh for his bellicose manner and warmongering foreign policies. That there are a few NPCs who will express concern about this gives fans a few straws to cling to.
    • Thrall basically tells Vol'jin "look, our people really hate the Alliance and want to kill them right now (and I'm busy), so we need a leader who feels the same." Most of the people who disagree with Garrosh and his policies are off with Thrall, fixing the Cataclysm.
      • Not that players who feel more loyal to Thrall than "The Horde" are given any option...
      • Thrall himself is falling victim to this to some extent, as Cataclysm marches on. Even some of his diehard fans are starting to get tired of his being the anointed chosen one in every situation, whether it makes sense to the plot or not. Being the lead writer's admitted favorite character isn't helping.
    • The Official site claims Gallywix was worried about Goblin trampling deaths and invented the Trikes to prevent this. Yet in the starting zone Trikes are seen on Kezan way before the goblin joined the Horde and Gallywix never showed any concern over any Bilgewater goblin deaths (not surprising considering he caused more deaths among his cartel then any other character).
      • He was concerned about the deaths because he got to keep their death benefits, which they only got if they actually got to and fought in the battle. When the trikes were invented is a continuity error.
    • Subverted with Garrosh Hellscream (thank the Earthmother). While he was appointed to the position of Warchief despite not having any tact, it also came with a long string of Break the Haughty and it's clear that most of the Horde dislikes if not hates him (hell, it's implied in Elemental Bonds that Thrall regrets appointing him). Slowly but surely he's begun to mature as well.
      • They might have tried to give him Character Development, but fan dislike of him has caused him to become a straight villain in Mists of Pandaria.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Nightsong from Cataclysm.
  • Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Cataclysm. A nice chunk of the player base thinks that it turned all the major lore characters into a bunch of brooding sociopaths, and anyone untouched is generally pushed into the background. One would believe in the war revolving around this invisible scarcity of resources had it been shown in any zone outside one (Westfall) and if almost all factional settlements hadn't gotten a makeover, contradicting this.
  • Demonic Spiders: The Level 90 starting zone guards for Ammen Vale (which is the Level 1-5 zone for Draenei). They make the "Explore Azuremyst Isle" achievement for the Horde nigh impossible because of bad game design. They can (and will if you're not careful or geared enough) one-shot any maximum level player with ranged or melee damage. Corpse running past them is essential to get the achievement. It gets worse from here. Horde Rogues or Mages can't stealth past them. The guards themselves can see through stealth/invisibility and have a really large aggro radius to boot. Have fun!
  • Dork Age: A fair few people will say either the first or second expansions were this. The Burning Crusade gets it for the storyline problems already mentioned, a perceived disrespect for the lore and a setting too detached from the rest of the Warcraft world (which has become something of a scrappy world now that vanilla content has been rejigged in Cataclysm, making Outland paradoxically the oldest and grindiest level bracket). Wrath of the Lich King gets it for making heroic dungeons too easy (raid content too at first, but they implemented a lot of optional harder modes with better loot to fix that, not that anyone actually listened), a painful lack of new content for PVPers and some really ugly looking gear.
    • It's also worth mentioning that in Wrath, the "too easy" heroics were because more people got geared or would run with geared players and wind up walking through the dungeon so easily and only having trouble with say, Oculus. From 2008-early 2009, most people weren't complaining about heroics being "too easy" unless they were Naxxramas or Ulduar geared. They weren't as hard as the Cataclysm heroics were at launch, however. The Cataclysm heroics also got easier as people with Tier 12 or 13 gear joined the queues, more people learned how to fight the bosses, and as the bosses got a few nerfs.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • Sylvanas. She and the rest of the Forsaken have suffered a great deal. On the other hand, they are also quite ruthless, often beyond the scope of what their circumstances would justify, and fans tend to forget this part.
    • A milder example lies in Illidan, since the potential for great good certainly existed in him, but it's there.
    • Kael'thas.
    • Arthas.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Several.
    • Mankrik, a minor Orc NPC searching for his wife. Pre-Cataclysm, she was a notoriously hard to find quest target, as she was labelled as "a battered corpse," rather than being referred to as his wife. As of the Cataclysm, Mankrik's wife has been properly laid to rest and Mankrik has gone on a quilboar hunting rampage to avenge her death.
      • And since then, shows up in Mount Hyjal as a possible squadmate for one of the daily quests where you need to kill some impressively tough elite elementals, and is one of six NPCs you must do a /wave emote to in order to get an achievement. He more than accounts for himself.
    • Despite (or perhaps because of) being killed off during the worgen starting experience, Liam Greymane has a following among the playerbase. Liam's further characterization during flashbacks in the short story about his father Genn only added to his popularity.
    • Sassy Hardwrench, the goblin player character's secretary, is often named in hypothetical plans to overthrow Gallywix.
    • Boss Mida, a fan made character also involved in Gallywix removal plans.
    • John J. Keeshan and Bravo Company, although Keeshan himself borders on Memetic Badass status.
    • Rheastraza, just for the Tear Jerker quest line she is involved in. Also, the unhatched black dragon egg she purified, although it's not even born, is one of two player favorite candidates regarding the future leader of the Black Dragonflight
    • Tichondrius. Well, he was quite charismatic.
    • Asric and Jadaar, a male blood elf and a male draenei respectively. The two would trade insults while investigating Griftah's activities in Shattrath during The Burning Crusade expansion. Fan reaction to the two prompted Blizzard to bring them back in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
    • Cro Threadstrong, an Orc NPC in Shattrath who yells about waging war with a nearby apple vendor.
    • Sabellian, Deathwing's younger son who is a questgiver in Outland. As of late, there have been several calls for Sabellian, who is much less evil and more sane than his father, to take control of the Black Dragonflight after Deathwing's inevitable demise at the hands of players.
  • Evil Is Cool: The Lich King. Honestly, given his backstory, appearance, and powers, this guy rates higher on the Coolness Factor than any of the good guys.
  • Evil Is Sexy:
    • It's unlikely Onyxia would have been gotten away with a thousandth of what she got away with if not for people's assumption that she was the returned King's mistress and previously Bolvar's. In all likelihood, she really was the returned Varian's mistress for the short time she had him spellbound.
    • High Inquisitor Whitemane, Mother Shahraz, Blood Queen Lana'thel, and many others. Even a few mobs get this, including Succubi and Shivarra.
  • Fake Difficulty: Back in Vanilla and TBC, it was exceptionally difficult to try get gear for entry level dungeons after new tiers were released, due to the playerbase having a tendency to flat out declare themelves "done" with the old dungeons and from that point on. This lead to the Can't Catch Up phenomenon, where players who still needed gear from these dungeons and quests were stuck waiting for a group to form since the players focusing on all of the new stuff wouldn't lift a finger to help unless it was for the new things. It's quite frustrating on both ends, to have to run a dungeon for the umpteeth time because people still haven't learned how to play, but also frustrating when you want to raid but can't because nobody seems interested in what you need to do. Thankfully, this has been fixed as of Wrath and Cataclysm, with each new tier usually coming alongside new 5-men dungeons and badge/justice point gear that give easy access to gear equivalent to that of the previous tier, enabling easy access to the new raids.
    • Due to guild advancement/achievements now giving guild perks, it will be considerably easier to do this. The more achievements and guild XP for things like old world raids, the better perks you get, like instantly teleporting the entire raid to your position.
      • The Halls of Reflection was this for some people. (note: for some) It required perfect cooperation with the group to survive the waves. Wiping on a wave before the two bosses (before 5th and 10th) required you to start over from the first and sixth waves, respectively. It was also common for random players to drop group as soon as Halls of Reflection showed up as the random heroic.
  • Fandom Nod: Besides the countless Ascended Memes, the massive fan game/forum post "You awaken in razor hill became so well-known that blizzard actually added the main character Tednuget (Changed to Tednug for copyright reasons) got his own NPC.
  • Fan Dumb: The official forums aka the "Bitch Board" is pretty much full of nostalgia-blinded people and highbrow elitists who trash about how there are people who didn't have to do what they did back in the original game. No matter how bad of a financial decision it was to not let gamers see higher-level content. (Granted; it wasn't all Blizzard and Vivendi's fault there, some people were left out because of player created catch-22 situations and they didn't expect people to abandon low-pop servers and get people stuck waiting for a group that almost never forms.)
    • And that's only the general forums. Each sub-forum seems to have its own Fan Dumb that does nothing but whine and complain about whatever the subject of the board is. For example, the class forums are often less filled with constructive advice on how to improve the class so much as they become slagging matches between users about how the class developers favor some classes over others. The story forums are more or less the same, just replace 'classes' with 'factions' and 'class developers' with 'creative developers'.
  • Fan Hater: One of the most plagued games by this. Many fanhaters also refuse to acknowledge that the game actually isn't addictive and it's not causing the players to give up their lives.
    • Players of EVE Online seem to have a major superiority complex about WoW. Mention WoW in any forum or in the in-game chat in Eve and you'll be buried in people shouting "Eve is a much more complex and difficult game and WoW is the training wheels of the internet and..." It's rather sad considering Eve itself has enough Fan Haters that its playerbase could be expected to be a little wiser.
    • Mentioning WoW is practically taboo in the Guild Wars community. Anyone suggesting implementation of a feature from or making a comparison to WoW on a Guild Wars fan forum is quickly shot down by legions of other members insisting "Guild Wars is nothing like that piece of crap" and all but calling the initial poster an idiot for liking WoW. Invariably at least one person will bring up the Skinner box argument that "you only enjoy it because they're manipulating your psychology." This really is the case with GW fans and any P2P MMO (Aion, Rift, etc... SWTOR is the current punching bag), but WoW is generally the most loathed.
  • Foe Yay: In Wrath of the Lich King, the Lich King and Tirion Fordring have it in spades.
    • Varian/Garrosh is practically the fandom's memetic OTP.
    • Kil'jaeden's obsession with Velen crosses over into this on more than one occasion.
    • Asric and Jadaar.
    • Thassarian and Koltira.
  • Fountain of Memes: Arguably the game itself, but for more a more specific example, Garrosh Hellscream has a few in the Cataclysm expansion: "YOU. ARE. DISMISSED!", "GET OFF MY SHIIIP!!" and "Watch your clever mouth, bitch!"
  • Fridge Horror: One of Cataclysm's new professions is Archaeology, which lets you dig up artifacts from dig sites around the world. While most sites are ruins, one such site is the Ancestral Burial Grounds in Nagrand. You know, one of the most revered sites to the Orc race, where High Overlord Saurfang promised to place his son's body after his death in Icecrown, a likely resting place of Thrall's ancestors and even your own if you play an Orc. As an Orc, you're digging up your own ancestors' graves for Vendor Trash and skillups.
  • Genius Bonus: A fan noticed that some of the blue- and purple-quality items in the first tier of Cataclysm are named after lines from Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale". The more she looked, the more references she found to 19th and 20th century poetry, from Wordsworth to T.S. Eliot.
  • Goddamned Bats: Famously, Murlocs, which hang out in close packs that love to aggro en masse on unwary players. Burning Crusade for its part introduced true flying enemies, the most annoying of which are the Kaliri, which attack out of nowhere and can knock you off your flying mount if they hit you from behind.
    • The minor elementals (fire, earth, water and air) deserve a mention. They're extremely irritating and have erratic pathing. Which results in you being forced to fight them (usually thanks to the dazed mechanic). It doesn't help they're immune to their respective element, but they're usually easy to kill.
  • Good Bad Bugs: In an early release of Frozen Throne, Anub'arak's carapace skill stacked over time, giving him enough armor points to make him virtually invincible.
    • In Lost city of the Tol'vir, a few ranged players discovered a glitch that allowed them to jump onto a statue during a boss fight and plink away. The adds summoned by the boss never touch them, and for hte most part it's impossible for them to pull aggro. This was removed.
  • Growing the Beard: The game was infamous for its questing: while trying to avert completely depending on Level Grinding, it pretty much invented Twenty Bear Asses, leveling was filled with boring, irrelevant sidequests no one cares about. Now with Cataclysm update many locations were reshaped in such a way so each zone tells a story and most sidequests are directly tied into it. The game is becoming more and more convenient over the years too, with things such as Dungeon Finder that lets you forget about crying "LFG" for hours being drowned out by people selling things.
    • You'd actually be very surprised how little people pay attention to it.
  • Hate Dumb: Many people trash the game because "It's a Warhammer Fantasy Battle ripoff" or without having ever touched it. Naturally this leads to some sometimes funny comments like how much of a ripoff of Lord of the Rings it is. (If this game is a ripoff of Lord of the Rings, then it's safe to say every form of fantasy is a ripoff!) There are many people who in fact act all New Media Are Evil and that the game will addict you if you touch it. This is of course ignoring that IT'S A GAME and not something that chemically addicts you, and how many people act like playing any other game for 14 hours a day or doing stuff like reading or watching TV is somehow more productive than playing this one.
    • There have even been instances of Hate Dumb for this game on this very wiki in the Headscratchers section.
    • The Foe Yay-type haters deserve a special mention here. If you believe what you read in the trade channels and at the forums, the vast majority of WoW's players loathe the game with a passion... and yet they pay money to play it. Thus, Blizzard's probably INTENTIONALLY doing stuff like "Dumbing the game down" or "inventing races out of nowhere" to piss these guys off because they know they'll be constantly coming back and paying them the monthly fee
  • Heartwarming Moments:
    • Muradin's reunion.
    • Darion when he receive his father's soulstone from the player.
    • A minor one, but one nonetheless especially for new players questing in Durotar, some Orc NPCs upon bidden farewell will say "Be safe", and set the player on their way. Some female Orc NPCs say it as well, but not with as much caring and compassion.
    • More than the Orcs is the way Goblin NPCs say "Hurry back". Male Goblins (especially the ones with high-pitched squeeky voices) sound like they're saying "Hurry back (with your gold)"; female Goblins sound like they are really worried for your safety... or the safety of your gold, either way, they sound genuinly concerned.
  • Hell Is That Noise: The horrifying Darkshore ambiance sound at nighttime, post-Shattering.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight / Funny Aneurysm Moment: Said by a quest giver in Stormwind on a level 30 quest chain: "The Defias Brotherhood, you say? Well, you're certainly the bearer of wonderful news, aren't you? Next you're going to tell me that Deathwing is still alive and attacking the city." Yeah, about that...
    • One of the loading screen tips says: "Bring your friends to Azeroth, but remember to go out of Azeroth with them as well". When Burning Crusade, which mainly takes place in Outland, came out there was a rather glaring loophole in that statement...
  • Holy Shit Quotient: The opening cinematic for Cataclysm ranks pretty high.
    • Stepping through the Dark Portal into the broken world of Outland for the first time (and right into the middle of a battle between the Alliance & Horde and an army of demons) in Burning Crusade was up there as well.
  • Hypocritical Hatedom: Whenever an article about how New Media Are Evil shows up, if the New media that's being demonized is World of Warcraft, the comments will often be (stupidly) agreeing with it or saying "This is proof that WOW is evil". Whereas if an article had said the same thing about any other game would have gamers are up in arms about it and saying "See? Typical scapegoating BS".
  • Internet Backdraft: Where do we even start? Forum MVP Palehoof gives a good rundown here of all of the various changes Blizzard has made to the game that caused the community to revolt. You can see/add more examples on the Internet Backdraft page itself. It's notable that three of these have actually been successful in getting Blizzard to change its policies: the outcry against the ban of a GLBT guild for forum advertising, the firestorm that came from Blizzard's announcement in July 2010 that the forums would begin requiring users to post with their real names, and the outcry against charging customers a fee to use the Real ID cross realm dungeon finder.
    • Currently, Blizzard is facing the community's backlash against the new "Worgen racial mounts", which are actually a copy and paste job on some Human horse mount models minus the saddles, that were announced to be included in the 4.3 patch. This post explains perfectly why the community is so up in arms over the decision.
    • Next expansion is Mists of Pandaria. Fans backlash and this trope kicks in.
    • The backdraft has reached critical status after, at blizzcon 2011, Samwise Didler and Greg "Corpsegrinder" made a song towards the alliance that was little more than a string of homophobic insults and telling alliance to commit suicide, this song stirred people into a frenzy that led to people being attacked for showing their alliance pride, Community manager Bashiok tried to pass it off as being "Just a joke, not to be taken seriously", which made matters worse, blizzard has since owed up to this and publicly apologized for it.
    • Developer statements that, in Mists of Pandaria, Garrosh will be overthrown as Warchief, with Thrall taking his place, have been met with considerable scorn from players. Among others, complaints often came from fans who are sick of Thrall being, by their view, a Spotlight Stealing Creator's Pet, and Alliance players who are angry that they were forced to work with Thrall on numerous occasions throughout Cataclysm because Blizzard was trying so hard(to varying degrees of success, depending on who you ask) to make him a neutral character, only for it to be implied that Thrall will immediately be returning to the Warchief seat with absolutely no repercussions for leaving the Horde in Cataclysm. The specific reactions varied between straight-up hatred for Thrall, to numerous discussions over who would be a better option for Warchief, with Vol'jin and Saurfang being popular options. However, some later posts indicate that Blizzard may have changed their minds about that decision.
    • At the start of the Beta for Mists of Pandaria, Ji Firepaw's first interaction with the player was complimenting their skills and being buddy buddy with them (if male) or flirting with them in a very blunt way (if female). Despite being such a small, one-off comment, this line wound up setting off a long backlash about sexism in video gaming. Eventually blizzard caved and changed it, which shifted the problem towards people who liked Ji's characterization as a Chivalrous lech (the lech being a common character in a lot of asian literature.) and how blizzard was caving in to people being overly sensitive. Eventually blizzard settled for having a line of dialogue where Ji lampshades this while observing Aysa meditating, worrying if she would find him creepy if he was too forward, or had no personality if he tried to compliment her skill and just that.
  • Iron Woobie:
    • Farseer Nobundo. His short story is inspiring, especially the end.
    • Tirion. The fact that he manages to remain determined and focused after everything he's lost including his son is quite remarkable.
    • Darion Mograine and Sylvanas stand out in particular.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Sylvanas is quite sympathetic, but she also holds the living in contempt and can often be fairly icy and brusque to those with whom she deals.
    • Fandral Staghelm. Sure, he's arrogant bastard, but seeing what he's been through, it's really hard to blame him. Seeing how patriotic he is when it comes to night elves, it probably pained him a lot to see what happened to his race, and not to mention how the silithid butchered his beloved son just as a way to break him. His coin in the Dalaran fountain just adds the woobiedom:

Fandral Staghelm's Silver Coin: The War of the Shifting Sands... I wish I could forget it ever happened.

    • Genn Greymane, due to the events unfolding in Gilneas, including the Worgen curse and the Forsaken invasion which cost him his kingdom and the life of his son Liam.
    • Oh, sure, Illidan's not exactly a nice guy, but the poor bastard's been suffering for over ten thousand years. His entire life is a litany of failed attempts at heroism and greatness.
    • Leyara, in her first appearance, she's a Druid of the Flame and burns Hamuul Runetotem to death (almost), after he points out that she killed several of his students, and is seriously pissed of at Malfurion Stormrage for some reason. Later when Malfurion finally confronts her, she strikes him down, and while gloating over how she killed Hamuul, said Tauren appears and kills her. Shortly after, players are mailed a locket found in the Molten Front that reveals that she was the wife of Fandral Staghelm's son, and they had a daughter before he was killed in Silithus; later her daughter was killed during a Horde attack, and she blamed Malfurion for not doing anything to save them. Not surprising she'd follow her father-in-law to joining Ragnaros for revenge.
    • Varian Wrynn has a great deal of responsibility for the escalating Horde-Alliance tensions, and is hot-tempered and impulsive, often with many negative consequences.. As a child, he lost his father to Garona and saw Stormwind overrun, lost his wife to the Defias riots, and now has a strained relationship with his son Anduin, which motivates him to try to work on his temper.
  • It's Easy, So It Sucks: Some people are saying this about Wrath of the Lich King and, to a lesser extent, Cataclysm, claiming that getting gear for raids has become too easy and this enables less competent players who would never have been able to raid before to participate. Others, however, believe that this is an improvement over the grinding required to raid in vanilla and Burning Crusade.
  • Jumping the Shark: There has been largely two immediate reactions for the Mists of Pandaria expansion announcement regarding the setting and gameplay changes.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Kil'Jaeden, they don't call him The Deceiver for nothing.
  • Memetic Badass:

Area-effect target caps were implemented after Saurfang used Cleave on Stormwind and it shattered Draenor.

    • Hogger, the boss capable of being brought down by level one gnomes, also applies. This eventually escalated to where the best guild was pitted against an elite, level cap, nigh unkillable version of Hogger. The Armory website also tracks each character's stats for "deaths by Hogger."
    • Darius Crowley, an NPC from the Worgen starting zone, is also shaping up to be this. He, too, has his own page of Crowley Facts.
    • Basic Campfire.
    • Theldurin the Lost in Cataclysm. His quest has you chase after, and then procede to land a haymaker on, Deathwing, In the face.
    • JOHN J. KEESHAN. Yes, he is so awesome his name has to be spelt in all caps at all times.
  • Memetic Mutation: So many that they had to be listed on the Memes page.
  • Misaimed Fandom: You're not supposed to agree with Malygos in Wrath of the Lich King, people. No matter how profoundly wrong Blizzard make their characters, there will always be someone on the official forums to claim they're right.
  • Misblamed: The mob respawn rates at the start of Cataclysm actually weren't entirely Blizzard's fault; they were a programming oversight. The insane respawn rates were due to so many players clogging the zones at once that they respawned almost instantly. This was after Burning crusade's launch the mob respawn rate was too low so people would camp required mobs.
  • Moe: Mylune, a Dryad with Puppy Dog Eyes that gives you quests to save the critters that roam around a burning forest. She even squees.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Potentially, you, if you play a Death Knight. While soulless in the service of Arthas, you're complicit in genocide, butchering civilians under the protection of the Scarlet Crusade, and torture. Depending on the individual Death Knight, this may or may not be More Than Mind Control.
    • Arthas crossed the line long ago and continues to get more evil over time. Most players point to the Culling of Stratholm as his "point of no return", but in truth, it's hard to pinpoint just one action. This is even lampshaded in one of the more awesome Icecrown quest lines.
    • Varimathras and his faction of the Forsaken arguably triggered this trope when they betrayed both the Horde and Alliance at the Wrathgate, resulting in the death of a major Alliance NPC and reigniting the Horde vs. Alliance war.
    • One particular group of Naga damn well crossed it in The Blasted Lands during Cataclysm. They betrayed and enslaved the entire Murloc population in the zone, even the babies. Hate Murlocs or not, that is just God damn depressing.
    • At one point you are asked by a group of mostly peaceful hunter gatherers to literally bag up the children of their enemies so that they can raise them themselves. This is either this trope for yourself (for agreeing to do it), the people who sent you on the task in the first place, Moral Dissonance, or any combination of the aforementioned.
      • There is also the issue that many players don't believe that the Tuskarr really intend to raise the Wolvar pups in the first place. The fact that the Tuskarr village is right by the sea lends itself to some serious Fridge Horror.
      • Also, there are no pups to be seen in the village, and the questgiver has a knife.
    • In Uldum, a friend of Harrison Jones is working to build a traveling circus and asks you to capture a few pygmies (gnome-like humanoids who, while not intelligent, are quite sentient). So, yeah. A "good guy" just asked you to be his personal slave driver. If you were not the player, you would be the villain.
    • Malygos crossed the Moral Event Horizon in a few ways (kidnapping, torturing and brainwashing Keristraza, and forcing mages to work for him under threat of their families being killed), but the realization that he's redirecting leylines to power his dragonflight (which places all of Azeroth in danger) is what causes Alextrasza to reluctantly call for his death.
    • Deathwing crossed the Moral Event Horizon by betraying the other dragonflights and using the Demon Soul's power to kill off most of the Blue Dragonflight, and now planning Azeroth's destruction. The Red Dragonflight considers the Black Dragonflight beyond redemption in Cataclysm.
    • Sylvanas and the forsaken appear to be Jumping Off the Slippery Slope nowadays. They're now deliberately creating more undead to swell their ranks, and in the Gilneas starter quests for the Worgen, the invading forsaken (under direct command of Sylvanas) attempt to use Arthas' plague (you know, that one that even Garrosh thinks is going too far.) Oh, and according to a terrified mother they're freely murdering any children they find.
    • Dar'Khan letting Arthas in to have his people getting slaughtered.
    • The entire story arc surrounding Keristrasza was designed to make the players hate Malygos enough to kill him. Or at least was supposed to.
    • In the Horde's eyes, for the Alliance there's the sacking of Camp Taurajo, a peaceful Tauren village. In the eyes of the Alliance, while the camp was definitely a soft target with civilians that was unnecessarily killed, it was arming and training Horde warriors, was strategically important, and General Hawthorne even took pains to make sure civilians could slip through Alliance lines. The Horde does not gain this information and are right to be pissed about it however.
    • In Battle for Azeroth, Lady Waycrest crossed this line long before she turned to witchcraft and became a truly dangerous adversary to the players. She hired assassins to kill her daughter Lucille's beloved on their wedding day, simply because she didn't like the idea of having a mere merchant for a son-in-law.
  • More Popular Spinoff: Compared to the original strategy games.
  • Most Annoying Sound: Not enough energy, Not enough rage, Not enough mana, I can't carry anymore, That would be stealing, I need to get closer, That ability isn't ready yet. Also nasty things bosses say when they kick your ass (particularly ones who can kill in rapid succession, such as after the tank dies). Certain pet noises, the Piccolo, the train set, Lil' XT... the list goes on. Fortunately, at least the error messages can be turned off in the options menu, and there's a tiny robot you can buy whose only purpose is to smash train sets.
  • Motive Decay: Sorry, Illidan, Kael'thas. We need bosses for Burning Crusade.
    • Getting "corrupted" by the Old Gods tends to to this in general. Deathwing was once much more subtle.
  • Nightmare Fuel: See here.
  • Nostalgia Filter: Consider how much of the game changed since its release in 2004. Several classes, especially the hybrids, actually are playable and actually work the way you would expect them to. Content is actually not being wasted by locking the majority of the playerbase out by attunement chains. (Most of the Can't Catch Up was caused by other players, though, so it's not Bizzard and Vivendi's fault since they didn't intend for selfish players to refuse to help their friends in need.)
    • And the Elemental Invasion. Wait around the cities and someone's going to say how the Zombie Invasion was better and that the fandom rejoiced. This is ignoring how, during the zombie invasion, there was just as much complaining about how many people were interrupted by zombies or how much they event sucked and should have been optional.
    • Attunement in general. This supposedly weeded out the "Bad players" back in the day, when all it took to get attuned was to be lucky enough to find a group that formed for it, especially on some servers like most Wasteland EST PvP Servers. This lead to a Can't Catch Up in which perfectly good players were stuck waiting for an attunement group to form while everyone else was busy trying to get the bosses down.
      • And evidently people used to "need a brain" to get to end-game. Evidently, "Needing a brain" meant "being able to be lucky to have a group that would do convoluted attunement chains" and "having the free time to run dungeons enough to get gear so the guilds would even look at you."
  • Old Shame: There are quite a few things Blizzard would like players to forget. In no particular order:
    • The BlizzCon lesbian. Back during BlzzCon 2011, a fan who called herself "Brei" asked why there were no openly LGBT characters in the game. As often happens with controversial issues where opinions are required, the community completely blew up and a Flame War started. Eventually, Blizzard simply said it was because too many kids play the game, and swept it under the rug.
    • Cyric, the mod often called the Troller of Trolls. Now, Trolls are a fact of life on game forums, but the Vanilla and Crusade eras were out of control. Cyric was a moderator who just couldn't take it anymore, and started insulting the trolls with horrible profanity, replying to each and every troll who replied to him as such. He actually got rid of a few, but was eventually fired for encouraging such behavior.
    • Dear lord, the Pet Pit. Another problem they had in 2011 was gold sellers, and were cracking down on it. Then they released Guardian Cubs, collectible Battle Pets which you could buy with actual money and then sell in-game for inflated prices. This was seen as hypocrisy. Which it was. They even admitted that this is what it was for, admitting, "we're okay with it, if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services. However, please keep in mind that there's never any guarantee that someone will purchase what you put up for sale at the auction house." (That's a direct quote, by the way.) This was removed from the game quickly, due to the controversy, but the pets are still available (as Soulbound, meaning unsellable in-game).
    • The Real ID forum was a case of Didn't Think This Through. During 2011 (seeing a trend here?) they had a policy that said you could only post if you used your real name, address, and email, making that info public. Yeah, uh-huh. They assumed trolls would be hesitant to insult someone they knew was a 12-year-old. Well, they underestimated how vile some of them were, and to say it didn't work was a very big understatement.
    • As controversial as the BlizzCon lesbian was, Corpse Grinder George, a guest of Blizzard at again, 2011. The original interview (edited when released, thank goodness) was seven solid minutes of homophobic hate speech and endorsement of violence with ample use of the F-word directed at Alliance players. Why they promoted George in the first place (rather than kicked him out on his rear) caused outcry unlike Blizzard had ever seen before or since, causing them to make a public apology.
  • Older Than They Think:
    • Lor'themar actually wasn't invented for WoW and first showed up in a Korean-drawn comic.
    • Goblins have been called "Gnome wannabes", ignoring that goblins and gnomes both showed up at the same time in Warcraft II and the former had a much larger role. In the next game gnomes were Put on a Bus and goblins had a major role as a neutral force and were almost their own faction according to concept on Sons of the Storm. Even in World Of Warcraft, goblins were considered to be the fourth Alliance race until they decided to bring gnomes back.
    • With the Mists Of Panderia leak, some of the playerbase has accused the Pandaren concept of (among other things) ripping off Kung Fu Panda. The Pandaren started out as an April Fool's joke by artist Samwise Didier that proved so popular that it led to their debut in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, years before Kung Fu Panda even came out.
    • When Cataclysm was announced, there was outcry from the fanbase declaring that Deathwing is a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere, while in reality he has been a fixture in Warcraft lore since Warcraft II
  • Play the Game, Skip the Story: Most players ignore what NPCs actually say and just look at the quest requirements. Story? Plotting? To the majority of players, it may as well not exist. Interestingly, Blizzard is aware of this and Word of God says that quest designers are explicitly limited in the amount of text they can put into a quest description to avoid "Too Long Didn't Read" syndrome.
  • Replacement Scrappy:
    • Garrosh Hellscream replaced Thrall as leader of the Horde. Considering that Thrall is well-loved both by the player base and in-universe, some of this is bound to happen. Even if Garrosh's character was becoming more likable and competent, he would still get some scrappism for the act of displacing Thrall alone.
      • Though, since Thrall has become more and more of a blatant Creator's Pet throughout Cataclysm, more and more players are changing their minds about this, and now there is a new outcry starting now that the creators have stated their intent to reinstate Thrall as Warchief at the end of Mo P.
    • Some fans see Lor'tbemar as this to Kael'thas as leader of the Blood Elves. It didn't help when Kael got Killed Off for Real.
    • Anduin seems to have the undeserved reputation as a wimp, mostly because his dad was so goddam awesome. His reluctance to lead and more pragmatic approach to doing so (as in, he resolves most conflicts without fighting) is seen as a weakness. While some characters claim he is Wise Beyond His Years, players often regard him as a weak leader who has done nothing for the Alliance. Of course, most fans forget about how close the Alliance came to a bloody civil war that Varian would likely have caused (during Cataclysm, no less) had his son not stopped him from killing Magni... His upcoming role in Battle for Azeroth does seem to have helped his reputation a little.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Arguably happens to Garrosh in Cataclysm. Then he is a villain in the next expansion.
  • Ruined FOREVER: Former forum user Palehoof gives a good rundown of all of the various changes Blizzard has made to the game that supposedly ruined World of Warcraft forever (up to and including paid-for vanity pets). He was a Forum MVP for good reason.
  • The Scrappy: Fandral Staghelm is the game's original Jerkass, albeit with some justification—seeing your son ripped apart by the Qiraji can't have been good for his morale. The players hatred of him likely played part in him turning evil in the latest novel, and eventually, becoming a boss in the Firelands. Later, Garrosh Hellscream takes the title from him in unequivocal fashion, being introduced in Outland as a barely competent leader who nevertheless comes to stand by Thrall's right hand in Northrend while being unremittingly hostile to the Alliance and sabotaging his Warchief's attempts to make peace at every opportunity. And he may get to be is the leader of the Horde in Cataclysm.
    • Put it this way: Cairne "Nice-grandfatherly-type-who-wants-to-teach-and-nurture-all-of-you" Bloodhoof tries to kill him!
    • And Cataclysm gives us an even bigger Scrappy in the form of Trade Prince Gallywix, leader of the playable Bilgewater Goblins. Even Garrosh has some defenders in the fanbase, and Fandral at least has some people who sort of feel sorry for him, but Gallywix is pretty much universally loathed, and for good reason. When Kezan's volcano explodes, he extorts your goblin character's life savings in an apparent deal to save you and your friends from certain death, only to reveal that the rescue boat is a slave ship and you're the new cargo. Thrall reappointing him for no real reason only makes thing much worse. The only players that like him freely admit that it's because he's an Faux Affably Evil Jerkass or rather accuse his haters of of Values Dissonance. See below.
      • To be fair it's not that he is hated, a lot of fans actually like him. It is more of how he is forced as the leader of the goblins despite what he has done that gives him his Hatedom.
      • He was a good goblin (by goblin values), and a good villain... but why did Thrall give him leadership of the goblins? This plot point has not yet been explained.
      • Actually, no. It has been officially stated that Gallywix is a Complete Monster even by goblin standards.
      • He was called a "monster" at least twice by goblin characters, and is certainly evil, but the goal of the goblins is primarily to make money by any means necessary. The player was just on the losing end, until he is defeated... and appointed leader of his Cartel again.
    • Almost every character created by Richard Knaak gets this treatment from the playerbase, especially Rhonin (in Knaak's later works). It goes so far that he even gets blamed for characters he had nothing to do with (like Med'an).
    • Among the Horde Koltira is very unpopular, to start with he's has a very inconsistent backstory (he died as a High Elf yet is treated like a Blood elf for no reason), he almost joined the Alliance in his backstory, and treats the player poorly throughout his quests. Though he's better thought of among players of the Alliance.
    • Aggra seems to be getting this lately, fans are flaunting that her introduction in supplimental materials and her relationship with Thrall which ends in the two becoming married seemed far too rushed and poorly fleshed out.
      • Well...that, and "Tsundere" is pretty much her only personality trait. At all.
    • For the people who read the Expanded Universe, Med'an is this, as he is amongst the most triumphant examples of the Canon Sue. He is a son of two popular characters (Garona and Medivh), making him a unique hybridization of races. He has been chosen as the new guardian of Tirisfal. But he is not just any guardian of Tirisfal, but a more powerful version, getting not just mage powers, but also paladin, shaman and druid powers. Despite the fact that in the comics, he was empowered to become one of the most powerful beings on the planet, he hasn't appeared in World of Warcraft itself yet, possibly due to the Fan Backlash.
    • Some players dislike Thrall simply he seems so infallible, almost to the point of being a Mary Sue. The Fan Nickname "Green Jesus" is often used sarcastically.
    • Yrel, from Warlords is an NPC that starts out as a slave rescued from the Iron Horde who quickly becomes one of the players' most valued allies. Heroes who go From Nobody to Nightmare are common, but Yrel seems to do so a little too quickly for Willing Suspension of Disbelief to handle, and players find her annoying.
  • Scrappy Level:
    • Vashj'ir, for its mob density causing mobs to have a completely three dimensional attack range as well as how many bugs it had and respawn rates up the wazoo. Players rarely come here anymore unless they need to mine Obsidian, which is kind of a shame, as the place is rather beautiful.
    • Gnomeregan. First off, you need a parachute to get from one area to the next, and the NPC you get it from is not all-that obvious unless you're there for the first time and doing the Dungeon Quest. Second, if you're a class that depends on pets - like Warlocks and Rangers - using them is a good way to aggro every mob in the place and overwhelm the entire party.
    • The Oculus; vehicle combat is something of a Scrappy Mechanic in this game, and the Oculus is a whole dungeon that depends on it. Not all too fun or enjoyable.
    • Uldaman. It's actually something of a My Greatest Failure amongst the developers, since they wanted it to be a winged dungeon yet wound up with a rather tedious dungeon with a pretty unique boss mechanic. The main downfall of Uldaman was that the level range was too high. Normally you're good if you're within a couple levels of their dungeon mobs, but in Uldaman, you'd start off at the mid 30s, but later on would get to 40+ meaning low level players would get ambushed by mobs in their 40s. For awhile the recommended level range ended at 51. It has been nerfed a boatload of times and became a much better dungeon since. Oh, and Enchanters had to run this because there was a trainer in there.
    • Tol Barad is the most disliked battleground, because the attacker must capture all three bases to win and gain control of Baradin Hold and the Tol Barad dailies, whereas if the defender has one base under their control or not completely taken by end of the time limit, they keep Tol Barad for another two hours.
    • Sithicus is this because for some reason, it was unfinished. It was this little corner in Kalimdor that, for some reason, wasn't covered in the guide, but there were actually a few quest chains in there. When you entered, you found this wall that you couldn't get past; literally half the map of Silithus was unfinished. It also became an Obvious Beta (along with Eastern Plaguelands) for an attempt at creating world PvP. It was later finished in patch 1.8, but was still plagued with mob-density problems. Eventually, Blizzard decided to nuke the entire zone - literally - as part of the storyline leading up to Battle For Azeroth, giving it some purpose in-story, but very little for gameplay.
  • Scrappy Mechanic : Daze, a debuff that's present on everything in the game within minimal level range that dismounts and slows you if you're attacked from behind, it can make "Short jaunt through this area" into "Will you stop knocking me off my horse?!"
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Prior to Cataclysm, the old world and well, a lot of this game in general has had elements copied by others. Would you believe that this game had given enough content to justify an expansion pack, yet they chose to wait off until they had much more content for a single one?
  • Sequel Displacement: What are these "classic trend setting strategy games" of which you speak?
  • Shallow Love Interest: Dear god, Aggra. The only reason she seems to exist is to be with and get knocked up by Thrall. Magnified by the fact that she sunk the Thrall x Jaina Ship.
  • Stoic Woobie: Baine Bloodhoof.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Burning Crusade was alright in the gameplay department, but a lot of people lamented the story it put forth, the scattershot villains, the feel of the setting and the fact that very little was improved on base game mechanics. Wrath of the Lich King, on the other hand, was praised for how it allowed the player to actually affect the status quo of the world (at least for themselves), the much more "Warcraft-ish" feel of Northrend, the much tighter plotting and far more engaging villain groups (ranging from Arthas Menethil to a new villain who finally tips his hand in Storm Peaks and rockets to near the top of most fans' Magnificent Bastard list). It did have its own problems (see Dork Age above) but Blizzard has shown an admirable ability to learn from their mistakes with expansions and Cataclysm seems to be a successful attempt to combine the best of Burning Crusade, Wrath and vanilla WoW.
  • Tear Jerker: The Death Knight starting area includes a quest where the player, a former hero taken by the Scourge, is ordered to murder a prisoner. The prisoner is a member of your race, who recognizes you from before you were turned and begs you to remember your homeland and fight the Lich King's control. You cannot continue until you've executed them.
    • Some versions of the quest are sadder than others; trolls are reminded of how they used to be a "mojo masta", but night elf players have to kill their caretaker from when they were a child.
    • Tirion's son Taelan's death, and finding a picture of Tirion's lost family in the quest "Of Love and Family" in Stratholme.
  • That One Achievement: Some of the meta-achievements, such as Glory of the Hero have at least one achievement that is significantly harder than the others (Less-Rabi and Zombiefest are two examples). What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been requires the completion of all holiday meta-achievements and most holiday achievements, which includes several luck-based achievements, and generally requires that players be 80 or above for at least a year.
  • That One Boss: Lots, depending on the skill of the player(s) and the makeup of your group. See the trope entry for a (partial) list.
    • When players gain levels and better gear from newer expansions, many become less difficult, but others remain difficult because of certain mechanics. One example is Razorgore, who will instantly wipe raids that kill him without destroying all the eggs in his room.
  • That One Level: Darnassus, Shattrath, Orgrimmar, Gnomeregan, the Exodar, Silverpine Forest, Durotar, the Badlands, Desolace, Sunken Temple, Hillsbrad, the Eastern Plaguelands, Silithus, Hellfire Peninsula, Shadowmoon Valley, Un'goro Crater, Blackrock Depths, Felwood, the Barrens, Mulgore, Oculus and the Halls of Reflection. In other words, somewhere between 1/5th to 1/4th of the original game world may qualify. The makeover in Cataclysm hopes to remedy much of this.
    • Lampshaded by Blizzard themselves as they acknowledge Oculus as that one level that had to be nerfed and get extra loot added just so people don't leave groups when it's selected as a random dungeon.
    • Among the PVP areas, Tol Barad gets quite a bit of hate, since the attacking faction must hold three separate bases at once to take it. This tends to result in the attacker having difficulty taking the third base (for example, while the attackers take Warden's Vigil, the defenders will retake the Slagworks,and once the attackers set out to take the Slagworks, the defenders will head to the Ironclad Garrison). This tends to be disliked by PVPers for being poorly designed and by PVErs who don't like to have access to quests and the Baradin Hold raid be determined by their faction's skill at PVP.
      • Although after some further balancing and buffs on the part of the attacking side, a lot of the hatedom for TB seems to have died down.
      • In fact, the attacking team has been overbuffed, meaning they almost always win - which is still imbalanced, but better because TB constantly exchanges hands, rather than stays in Horde / Alliance hands till the reset.
      • Which is the reverse of what happened in Wintergrasp, the "TB" of Wrath. Wintergrasp started out as being severely in favor of the attacking team, and while this meant you had little chance of holding the keep, you knew you would get it back right away in 2 hours. This was later re-balanced. If you want access to dailies, the "overbalance" approach works a little better, especially on servers where one side is much better at PVP.
  • That One Sidequest: Every single escort mission. Not pretty much every escort mission. Every single one of them. Not because you're weak, not because the person you're guarding is weak, but because the person you'll be working with will all be disgustingly stupid and charge after enemies that probably wouldn't have seen them otherwise. One of the worst is escorting this guy out of the Lost Ones territory in Swamp of Sorrows. You end up fighting three warlocks and their imp minions. Even several levels above the quest either you, or your human companion, will not make it. The only exception would be a Zangarmarsh escort quest where your target just tags along instead of slowly following a predefined pattern, is hard to kill, doesn't aggro mob packs for no reason, spams Wrath instead of meleeing people with a wimpy staff, and constantly casts Regrowth on you to ensure you aren't going to die as well.
    • By that corollary, many of the parts of the dungeons that involve mandatory escorting, especially The Escape from Durnholde and Halls of Stone, become Scrappy Levels.
    • Mankrik's goddamn wife. Takes forever to find her, even if you use a guide, not least because you think you're looking for a person instead of a poorly-marked corpse. This has led to quite a bit of Memetic Mutation. In Cataclysm, Mankrik is still alive and has a quest chain a good bit of Lampshading.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: One part of the Suramar storyline involves persuading the city nobility to approve of Ly'leth for the role of adviser, done mostly by informing the other nobility of her opponent's atrocities and spreading rumors of fake ones, along with killing the worst of the loyalists among them. (This, in effect, plants a mole for the resistance much closer to Elisande than she believes.) Now, this had the potential to be an enjoyable Stealth Based Mission, but unfortunately, the areas you have to go through to spread the rumors have the most mobs in the city able to uncover your disguise. This makes it turn into a slaughter (or worse, a "corpse run" where you have to die multiple times) rather quickly, and ruins the overall mood of the intent.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks:
    • BALANCE! Also, many old-school players tend to complain that the game has gotten too easy, while others note that there are challenges available to those who seek them out, and Blizzard is trying to make more content for the majority of players instead of just the hardcore. In general though, people have been saying this pretty much since the first patch, but mysteriously still play.
      • Shamans v Paladins, unique to the Horde and Alliance, respectively, until Burning Crusade. The devs admitted there's no way to balance them while still making their mechanics and abilities unique.
    • Sylvanas' voice since patch 3.2.
    • Theralion's voice, going from a Camp Gay voice to a generic deep and evil voice.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Worgen, originally extra-dimensional hellhounds with their own hierarchy and cunning brutality, have been retconned into being just a bunch of druids who went crazy.
    • In the Goblin starting area, the player takes part in a game of footbomb, a sport involving heavy machinery and high explosives. The coach wants to win the game with style, so he tells you to kick the bomb through two smoke stacks off in the distance. In the beta, the bomb falls into the nearby volcano, which causes it to erupt, which would've highlighted the Goblin's seftdestructive behaviour of decadence, lack of fore-thought and addiction to high explosives. In the final version, the quest does nothing more than have the player look up into the sky just as Deathwing appears.
    • There was a lot of Foreshadowing throughout Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King in regards to the Infinite Dragonflight and who their leader is. One quest in Dragonblight heavily implies Nozdormu, leader of the Bronze Dragonflight, has/will perform a Face Heel Turn, but Chromie hand waves this saying he must be fighting the Infinites. As of Patch 4.2 he's back with no explanation given (his return was shown in a novel released after he appeared).
      • Although it turns out he did go crazy in the distant future. - making this a bit of an aversion.
    • There's a questline (leading to the Twilight Highlands) that in Cata beta eventually reveals Archbishop Benedictus as a servant of the Old Gods. Upon release however the traitor has been discovered to be Major Samuelson, a royal guardian and essentially some noname. Leading to a surprising subversion in 4.3 where Archbishop Benedictus is in fact a traitor and a dungeon boss.
      • Though this is, in itself a bit of an example. Rather than Benedictus being confronted by someone canonically close to him, or even anyone from the Alliance, he's confronted by Thrall, a Horde character who had never even met Benedictus prior to that point.
    • Also in Cataclysm, Magni Bronzebeard was turned to diamond performing a ritual intended to protect Ironforge during Deathwing's initial attack. In the wake of the ensuing power struggle, the Council of Three Hammers is formed, where representatives from the Bronzebeard family, Wildhammer Clan, and Dark Iron Dwarves jointly rule Ironforge. These are three characters with very clear and very different allegiances, worldviews, and aspirations, making for a treasure trove of potential storylines that have gone completely ignored. Apparently, a recently-recovered amnesiac who just lost his brother, a guy with a near-need to be out and about up in the sky being pulled into a desk job in an underground city, and a Token Evil Teammate who is quite obvious about her intent to take over the whole city so her son can someday be its sole ruler can work just fine together.
  • Ugly Cute: Broken draenei.
  • Uncanny Valley: Quite a lot to choose from, but the Taunka are probably the worst. Bison-people doesn't sound like it'd cause this, but their flat, wide noses and lips and seemingly large eyes make them look more than a little... off.
  • Unfortunate Implications: The "sand pygmies" in Uldum. While almost certainly an attempt to provide generic comic relief mooks, it does carry some, well, unfortunate implications.
  • Villain Decay: After Burning Crusade, Blizzard felt that it was necessary to give the Big Bads more on-screen time and involvement during the leveling phase as a means of making them more familiar and recognized to the player. However, because it would be annoying to have multiple scripted events in which the villain kicks your ass, most of these encounters involve you either thwarting the villain or being spared by them. This leads to having the player constantly witness the villain failing to do anything right, and being belittled or fooled every time they show up. The Lich King had this the worst, from retreating the battlefield while coughing as a result of gas exposure to having his heart destroyed and collapsing to the ground.
    • Except actually not... the Lich King implies he can kill you at any time. In fact, if you go too close to him in one part of the world, he does kill you. But he keeps you alive, specifically so you can get stronger and lets you kill all his lieutenants and undead armies so he can raise you as his new lieutenants, a lot stronger than the previous ones. In fact, if you fight him, he does just that.
    • However, if he could kill you at any time, and had an army that could overrun the planet without him keeping then in check, why did he need the players as new champions? Him getting duped into becoming the Lich King by Ner'zhul and the dreadlords was still nagging at him. He wanted to prove to himself that he was not weak, and that heroes getting corrupted was just the way of things... that can seem a little weak, especially with all the theatrics. His pride and self-doubt were holding this evil overlord back.
  • Vocal Minority / Silent Majority: Did you know there are people who actually don't play this game for 14 hours a day? Did you know that there are plenty of people who actually play other games too? Or that there are people in the military playing it, college students, or people with 40-hour-a-week jobs and a family? The way the Hate Dumb carries on about it, you probably wouldn't believe so.
    • Likewise there are often just as many if not more people who are glad for patch changes than those screaming on the bitch board.
  • What an Idiot!: Garrosh is universally hated by faction leaders(and also by many players, through he has gotten better), due to his utter lack of diplomatic tact and reactions to events that border on the psychotic. After ceding the post of Warchief to him, Thrall counsels Garrosh to trust his advisors (the other racial leaders, Vol'Jin, Cairne, and Sylvanas) and rely on their counsel. Garrosh then turns around and makes personal enemies of two of them; the normally placid Vol'jin threatens to kill Garrosh to his face, while Sylvanas openly flouts Garrosh's authority and insults him behind his back. Garrosh then kills Cairne, an almost universally beloved figure among the tauren (and players too), leaving the chieftanship to Cairne's now extremely pissed son Baine. And this is within a couple of months of taking over. Time will tell what other feats of leadership Garrosh will achieve.
  • The Woobie: All races have their moments be it in-game or in the lore, but Forsaken possibly take the cake. They were killed by either Kel'Thuzad's Plague of Undeath, the Scourge, or Arthas himself after he became a Death Knight, and then reanimated as mindless slaves to the Lich King. After they regained their consciousness and free will, they were driven away from their old homes, lost everything they knew and loved, and left with no place to call home until Sylvanas claimed the Undercity as their home.
    • A quote from Forsaken writings sums this up.

"When I clawed my way out of the grave, I thought my family would welcome me with open arms. Instead, they drove me out of the village, screaming in a language I could no longer understand."

    • The draenei have been running for their lives for 25,000 years, have seen the destruction of countless planets, were almost killed off entirely, and when it seems they finally catch a break in retaking the Exodar, the blood elves crash it. And most of them were alive for all of it.
    • Also, voidwalkers, if you listen to their quotes. For instance, upon being summoned: "I don't like this place...", or being dismissed: "Release... at last..."
    • Garona. Literally her entire life sucks from beginning to present.
    • Jaina. Just look at how much she lost: Homeland, lovers ( two of whom spectacularly went insane, turned evil, and died), mentor, father, any hope of peace... And now new homeland too, if the new expansion is to be believed. Goddammit Garrosh. Not to mention that it potentially gets worse, as seen in the Bad Future that is End Time - her immortal soul is trapped forever in the incinerated ruins of the world, and is only freed when killed by the protagonist's party. Mercifully averted if you complete the final boss of Cataclysm (which, canonicly speaking, happens), so thank goodness for small favours.
    • Kael'thas. He and his people were pretty much Azeroth's Chew Toy in Frozen Throne... And then Burning Crusade took away pretty much everything that made him sympathetic.
    • How often do you pity a dragon? Kalecgos loses the girl he loves, and he watches his ruler go batshit.
    • Anveena. She's abducted by almost every villain with a lust for power, she finds out that her parents were never real, and she has to sacrifice herself (and give up her love for Kalecgos) to help the party defeat Kil'jaeden. The poor girl never seems to catch a break.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Malygos is clearly intended to be this.
  • Woolseyism: In the Chinese version, Lord Marrowgar gets a different look because bones aren't allowed to be shown in video games there.
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