[Campaign] Primitives: Warcraft 3 through the eyes of "Lesser" races

[QuillQuickcard]

I had an interesting idea today while editing maps.

There are dozens are humanoid races in Azeroth, many of them more primitive and primal. How did the events of Warcraft 3 affect them?

Gnolls, murlocs, centaur, quillboar, kobold, ogre, tuskarr...

My idea was to create a series of levels exploring how some of these races were impacted, and their own struggles to survive and adapt to the new threats the third war brought.

It would be mostly infiltration, exploration, and defensive maps, with very little base construction or management.

I wanted to see what other people thought of the idea, and collect ideas for settings, stories, abilities, and other things.

 

[Veritas 117]

This could be a pretty unique idea. I think it depends on the story arcs you are going with. I could see some of the primal races seeing the main races as invaders. I feel like gnolls and murlocs would have certain "gods" or beliefs that they feel like are getting trampled on.

The success of this would definitely be dependent on how well you can make an interesting story for each lesser race and then have the main events affect them in subtle ways. (or maybe not so subtle) I think it could be very clever.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Could be very interesting, though I don't think a standard campaign (following the slaughter of a single species) would work very well.

 

[WhiteFang]

This sounds like a interesting idea

 

[QuillQuickcard]

It would basically be a collection of short 2-4 level campaigns, each focusing on a different race/tribe/whatever.

I want to really show a different side of the Legion's invasion, show unintended and unconsidered outcomes.

Take the Gnolls of Lordaeron, for instance. These creatures prefer fresh meat, sure, but they are perfectly fine eating carrion. With the coming of the scourge, entire swaths of human lands are abandoned, letting gnolls claim territory, resources, weapons and other artifacts. And on top of that, the scourge, unconcerned with such weak and sparse creatures, don't bother with a large offensive, ensuring a steady and consistent diet of the new undead horde to support a larger and larger population.

Their world has gotten no more dangerous, but instead far more lucrative.

Murlocs that live on the coast would have had to flee as populations turned to the oceans for refuge and the hope of fleeing the land. They would be driven inland, up rivers and into lakes and streams. Places that, once frequented by the living, are now unimportant and unstrategic to the dead. They must cope with new dangers, but they find a land ripe for the taking.

There is of course the tragedy of the ashenvale furbolgs, but what of the centaurs or the quillboars who, in all likelihood were on par with the tauren in terms of territory and power, suddenly find themselves utterly and hopelessly outmatched and outnumbered against the horde?

 

[cleavinghammer]

Seems to me that if the gnolls eat corpses they're a slightly bigger threat to the Undead by virtue of competing for a resource no one else wants/uses. Maybe have them raid undead slaughterhouses and necromancer staging areas for the corpses?

 

[QuillQuickcard]

Seems to me that if the gnolls eat corpses they're a slightly bigger threat to the Undead by virtue of competing for a resource no one else wants/uses. Maybe have them raid undead slaughterhouses and necromancer staging areas for the corpses?

An excellent point. And it would make a fun little level if I scaled up an undead base to about the size they would ACTUALLY be and just had some gnolls try to weasel their way through it.

 

[Veritas 117]

An excellent point. And it would make a fun little level if I scaled up an undead base to about the size they would ACTUALLY be and just had some gnolls try to weasel their way through it.

I really like that idea. I always liked the challenge of the "escape without getting seen" quests. As long as it doesn't get too repetitive. You can do the usual sneaking around from spot to spot. You can have a "hide" ability that can be used in long grass or something. You can have a spot where you actually have to do a little fighting of course. You can have an area where you can trigger a trap like dropping some rocks on some unsuspecting undead. You could have a distraction ability where you throw a rock or something.

All this is making me want to make a quest like this haha.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Have them hide in the corpse piles. Hides the gnoll's body, covers up his smell, and gives him something to snack on.

As for the murlocs, maybe something dealing with the mur'gul and naga?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

The stories of many of the creep "types" in the Warcraft universe are actually pretty sad when you think about it.

They pretty much only react to whatever changes the "important" races invoke on their surroundings.
Especially Gnolls, Murlocs, etc. imho are victims in the warcraft universe, mostly driven away of their initial habitats and hunting grounds by the aggressive expansion of the major races.

Every major race thinks it's okay killing them on-sight, despite them just wanting to survive until the next day. They are carnivores, of course they would go hunting or defend their hunting grounds. They are in no way more "evil" than a wild animal and yet have to endure a genocide on global scale by so called "heroes" that hunt them for their eyes or random loot.

Alliance and Horde are jerks.

 

[cleavinghammer]

I dunno, the first manual said that the main thing preventing gnolls from having their own expansionist empire was that they keep fighting each other for dominance.

 

[QuillQuickcard]

The warcraft 3 said the same.

These races are more primitive, but that doesn't make them stupid. It makes them different. I want to show them very humanized. Primitive, even savage, cruel, or brutal, but thinking, reasoning, feeling creatures all the same.

 

[cleavinghammer]

In the gnolls' case it's not so much stupidity as their lack of long-term vision.