Three Kinds of History

A person in Year 29 holds the past at three different distances, and knows it very differently at each one.

Part One · Myth

The World Was Made

The stories say titans — enormous beings of metal and light — came to an unfinished world, put it in order, and left. They built vaults and cities underground and then went away and never came back.

You can go and look at the vaults. Uldaman in the Badlands is one, and dwarven expeditions are digging it out right now. This part is not really in dispute. What the titans actually wanted, and whether they are coming back, absolutely is.

The Well and the War

Ten thousand years ago there was one continent and a lake of raw magic at the centre of it called the Well of Eternity. The night elf empire grew up around it and grew powerful and, most people agree, unbearable.

Their queen and her court dug too deep into that power and opened a door. Through it came the Burning Legion — a demonic army whose entire purpose is unmaking worlds.

The war that followed is called The War of the Ancients. The night elves won, barely, at a cost that reset the map.

The Sundering

The Well exploded. The single continent broke apart into the ones that exist now — the Eastern Kingdoms in the east, Kalimdor in the west, and a great deal of ocean in between where the middle used to be.

That event is called The Sundering, and it is the dividing line. Everything before it is myth. Everything after it is history.

The surviving night elves withdrew into the forests, swore off the magic that had caused it, and did not speak to anyone else for ten thousand years.

Part Two · The Grandparents' Wars

Trolls Were Here First

Before anyone else, the continents belonged to troll empires — enormous, old, and now mostly ruins. Almost every city standing today is built on top of something a troll built first.

Roughly two and a half thousand years ago, humans and the exiled high elves fought the trolls back together in The Troll Wars. That alliance produced the human kingdom of Arathor, and the high elves taught humans arcane magic as payment.

Every troll alive knows this history and is, without exception, still furious about it.

Seven Human Kingdoms

Arathor eventually split into seven states — Stormwind, Lordaeron, Gilneas, Alterac, Stromgarde, Kul Tiras, and Dalaran. They spent centuries squabbling with each other in the ordinary way of neighbours.

The Portal Opens — Year 0

On the world of Draenor, the orcs were shamanic clan-people. Then the Burning Legion got to them, fed them demon blood, and turned them into an army.

A portal opened between the worlds. The orcs came through it into the swamps south of Stormwind.

The First and Second Wars

The First War (Years 0–5) — the orcs destroyed Stormwind. Refugees fled north by sea.

The Second War (Years 6–8) — the northern kingdoms formed the first Alliance and, with the high elves and dwarves, drove the orcs back. Lordaeron's forces broke the Horde. The Knights of the Silver Hand were founded in this war and it is the thing they are proudest of.

The Invasion of Draenor (Years 17–18) — an Alliance expedition went through the Portal to finish the job. Draenor came apart while they were on it. Most of them never came home.

The Camps

The orcs who surrendered were put in internment camps and kept there for the better part of twenty years.

Part Three · What You Lived Through

Thrall

A young orc named Thrall was raised in captivity as a human noble's gladiator, escaped, found the last free clan, and learned the shamanism his people had lost. He emptied the camps.

Then — and this is the part the Alliance did not expect — he took his people west, across the sea, away from the war entirely.

The Plague — Years 23–25

Something started killing people in northern Lordaeron. The dead got back up.

Prince Arthas of Lordaeron, the crown prince and the Silver Hand's finest paladin, went north to stop it. What happened to him up there is argued about. What is not argued about is what he did when he came back: he killed his own father on the throne and handed the kingdom to the dead.

The northern kingdom is gone. Not conquered — emptied. Its survivors are refugees and its capital is a tomb.

Hyjal — Year 25

The Burning Legion came back, properly, with the plague as its opening move.

Three peoples who had every reason to hate each other — orcs, humans, and night elves — met on the slopes of Mount Hyjal and fought together. Thrall's Horde, Jaina Proudmoore's human survivors, and Tyrande Whisperwind's kaldorei.

They won. The night elves spent ten thousand years of immortality to do it, burning their World Tree to destroy the Legion's commander.

Part Four · Right Now

The Four Years After

Everyone went home and nobody agreed what came next. That is where the campaign starts.

• The night elves joined the Alliance — recently, narrowly, and they are not sure about it.
• The orcs have a homeland for the first time: Durotar, a red desert nobody else wanted, with Orgrimmar built out of raw timber four years ago.
• The Tauren and the Darkspear trolls joined the Horde, having been saved from extinction by it.
• The Forsaken joined too — undead who broke free of the Scourge and got their own minds back. Nobody is comfortable about this, including the Horde.
• Stormwind stands, ruled by a ten-year-old king and a regent, and it is broke.
• Ironforge is fine, is rich, and is quietly paying for most of the Alliance.
• Dalaran is a crater and its surviving mages teach in back rooms.
• Gnomeregan fell and the gnomes are refugees in Ironforge.

The Thing About Right Now

There is no war and there is no peace.

Thrall and Jaina Proudmoore are both genuinely trying to keep it that way. Almost nobody on either side believes the other side is trying. Meanwhile the Ashenvale logging, the Stonetalon mines, and the Hillsbrad Foothills border go on being fought over by people who are officially not at war.

And every one of the disasters above left something behind that is still out there — a plague that never fully burned out, a clan that never accepted the peace, an order that lost its way.

If You Remember Five Things

1. The Dark Portal opened 29 years ago and started everything. Orcs are not from here.
2. The orcs were demon-controlled and are not any more. One of them died to break it.
3. Lordaeron was destroyed by its own prince, four years ago, and the survivors are everywhere.
4. Everyone fought together at Hyjal and won, and then immediately stopped speaking.
5. The night elves gave up immortality to make that work, and are still working out what that means.

Going Deeper

The detail behind all of this, if you want it:

• Timeline of Azeroth — the full chronology, dated
• The State of the World — where every region stands right now
• Peoples MOC — each people's own version of this history, in much more depth
• The Alliance · The Horde — how the two sides actually work
• Player Primer — Azeroth in Year 29 — the short version, if this was too much