Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

Right.

So just between Warcraft two and Warcraft three, when the second war ends to the beginning of the events of Warcraft three reign of chaos, uh, There's a 14 year gap and it starts in what year six.

You have the end of the second war where the Alliance forces destroy the dark portal and Ner'zhul's horde is defeated, leaving a bunch of orcs stranded here on Azeroth side.

and the rest of them fleeing back to Draenor.

So like there's this whole big political like divide happening inside of the human kingdom just in general.

And then it's year 19 when the plague and the plague cultists start showing up around Azeroth, uh, with Ner'zhul, uh, basically being shoved into the Lich King persona, uh, You know, and then shoved into the frozen throne for his failings in helping the Legion and then essentially creating this plague of undeath to create a mindless scourge that serves the Lich King and ultimately serves the Legion.

So like it's and then year 20, which is where Warcraft 3 officially begins the scourge attack Lordaeron Prince Arthas winds up falling to his corruption and And then the Burning Legion invades Azeroth, which again, this is over 14 years of just in between all that happened, which is not insignificant at all, right? And so everybody at this point is still reeling.

Every nation is still reeling.

You're trying to pass my guard? I can move my feet in a way to post again and catch your leg or post on your hip and reframe and move my hips and recenter while you were trying to pass my guard.

So when I was growing up, and I'm an old man, so I was old enough to have, like, Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3.

I really liked real-time strategy games.

Because, again, you have freedom.

Because if you look at the OG art book from the very first collector's edition, elemental elves existed back then as a concept that just never made it to live.

Like it was like we're talking like back in like Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3 era, they were already conceiving of them.

So it's really nice to see that see the light of day.

And to Phil's one point that he made about them having faction specific storylines.

But before WoW came out, I was a StarCraft player.

I had played WarCraft II, and it was like, yeah, it's cool.

But StarCraft, that was my jam, the original OG StarCraft.

So after WoW came out, I started playing WoW.

I dove deep into World of Warcraft when it first came out, like the initial release.

And I had grown up on the series playing the original Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Starcraft, all of them.

And so that world really stayed with me.

My friend and I, after high school, that's kind of how we stayed in touch.

Yeah.

Um, when Chris Metzen wrote the lore originally for Warcraft I, it was a little bit different to what they did in Warcraft II, and then that was a little bit different to what they did in Warcraft III, and he had to create it and come up with it and, and develop it.

And in the same vein, because this is essentially a new timeline, right? They can do what they like with the lore, and having another elf race is ju- is not so far afield that it's bizarre.

It's not like when the Draenei came along, this alien race, and we went, "Oh, this alien race suddenly came along.