Writer Christie Golden, who has worked with Blizzard on multiple novels set in the Warcraft universe over the past two decades, is helping to bring “parity” to the stories of Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft, which will require retconning some of the strategy game’s story. Those changes will bring “renewed focus to a few central characters that we thought deserved a little bit more time in the limelight,” Stillwell said.
“There’s been 16 years of evolution of this franchise outside of this game,” Stillwell explained. “Some of that, especially central characters like Jaina and Sylvanas, these people who mean so much more to the world now who didn’t get as much focus [in the original Warcraft 3] because we just didn’t know where they were going to be.”
There will also be updates to Warcraft 3’s world layout and locations ... and even its Murlocs.
“The missions themselves, like what you see in ‘The Culling,’ we didn’t just replace the artwork, we relayed it out to be what people expect from World of Warcraft,” Souza, a lead artist on Reforged, said. “[Players have] gone through Stratholme while it’s burning. They’ve gone through Stratholme with Arthas as he’s doing the Culling, and that’s one of those things where we’re recreating the [Stratholme] that people know, rather than one that was in the original Warcraft 3, which if you looked at it really didn’t make much sense — it had Greek columns, and these whale statues and this river going through it. So where we can make those changes where it brings parity with World of Warcraft which has done so much with the characters, with the lore, and the locations...”
“And a lot of stuff in Warcraft 3 was just kind of put in as ‘Hey, isn’t this awesome? This is cool.’ Like the Murlocs for instance. One of the artists back in the day, he came in over the weekend because he felt that there needed to be more creeps on the maps ... so he just retextured what the ghoul was and he made a Murloc. That was how the Murloc was born. Just this guy [being] really passionate wanting more stuff. Then in World of Warcraft, Murlocs are everywhere — they’ve gotten a society, they’ve got heroes — so we want to make sure that [Reforged’s] Murlocs, are those Murlocs.”