Silly Sauid Ya Be Dead Again Warcraft

World of Warcraft boasts an epic fantasy setting, where orcish grunts and human being knights head to the battlefield to settle a multi-generational conflict that reaches across space itself. In these battles with elves, dwarves, and demons, it's no surprise that people die a lot in the Warcraft setting. But surely, that's where the story ends for these heroes and villains, right? Death and taxes and all that?

No, friend, I'thou so sorry. The upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Shadowlands, proves that death isn't simple at all. In the existent world, there are and then many mysteries and theories about the afterlife. How can a fantasy setting cull which are true, and which are simulated? Blizzard answered that question with "They're all truthful, and an evil elf has torn a portal open and so we tin all cheque the diverse heavens out."

That'southward the simplest part about the overarching expiry story in Earth of Warcraft right now, only don't worry. I'm here to explain exactly how life and expiry work in Warcraft — and why it's completely out of command.

Death, explained

I'm certain some folks will discover this an oversimplification, simply permit'due south start with what the life and death cycle looks like in real life.

Illustration: Cass Marshall/Polygon

There are questions almost the stages in between, merely that's basically it. In World of Warcraft, things become a footling more varied. Anybody has a soul. This is a scientific, easily observable fact, considering you tin but see souls floating around. Someone lives, and when they laissez passer, their soul goes to the ultimate cosmic location for which it is destined. That is, unless you lot accept an immortal demon soul, which allows the beholder to come back to life through the gap in time and space known every bit the Twisting Under. Or if your soul is eaten. Or if it's used every bit a battery for some kind of portal.

When the body is dead, but the soul is shackled to the world, that becomes a third phase of existence: undeath.

In that location's no single type of undeath, only hither are some of the confirmed ways that Warcraft characters have fabricated the bound to this stage of semi-life:

• Chosen to the icy wastes of Northrend by a guy calling himself the Lich Male monarch
• Eating poisonous grain, which is lethal and causes immediate zombification
• Getting murdered without closure, leading to full general ghost activities
• If yous're really practiced at magic, you can just make yourself be undead and hence immortal
• Raised past Light Gods into being undead, but in a holy way
• Getting raised by a necromancer for some kind of nefarious purpose
• Being a really good paladin so you can essentially be a Forcefulness Ghost and give people counsel
• Getting murdered, then getting raised by the person who murdered you, and being kind of cool with information technology

An undead is chained to this aeroplane of existence; they tend to basically be a ghost haunting their own corpse. It's the creamy middle of life and expiry, and most people who are afflicted past it are really upset about information technology. Thanks to undeath, many characters who have died can even so be in the story.

But what well-nigh those who laissez passer on? Surely that's much simpler, correct?

Well, no. Here's what a full life and expiry chart might wait like for a denizen of the magical globe of Azeroth.

Illustration: Cass Marshall/Polygon

It'southward a whole lot.

No i tin can just die

Every bit we dig more than and more into expiry and what information technology ways in the Warcraft setting, the more than an unfortunate side upshot comes nearly. No one tin ever simply die anymore. The last person who had an uncomplicated, no takesy-backsies death in the primary storyline was the High King of the Alliance and long-time lore character Varian Wrynn. He got a long cinematic that showed just how badass he was before he finally went down in a blaze of glory. Everyone else who died during Legion came dorsum as a ghost.

That doesn't mean no i dies in World of Warcraft. Civilians die all the fourth dimension, commonly en masse. Correct at present, everyone who dies — and a lot of people are being intentionally murdered — are existence sent to mega Hell.

But if you're a chief part of the narrative, y'all better buckle upward, because y'all're locked in at that place. Even the player character has canonically died twice! (Or fifty-fifty more, if you play a Forsaken or a Death Knight.) Between undeath, resurrection, retcons, and instances where players thought someone was expressionless but we never saw the body, Globe of Warcraft has become a game of musical chairs where if someone is eliminated, they merely grab a throne made out of skulls and get right back in the game over everyone else's protests.

The final character who died an ignoble expiry off screen was the evil warlock and RTS villain Gul'dan, and Blizzard just shipped in another Gul'dan from another dimension to take his place!

...Merely everyone has to die

At that place'south one big exception to this rule: raids. Raids are endgame content where players take down powerful bosses, and those bosses mean a lot more if people know who they are. People honey the Icecrown Citadel raid because you come face-to-face with the Lich Male monarch, the protagonist of Warcraft 3.

Every Globe of Warcraft narrative resolves in a raid. That means Blizzard has to cook upward a whole agglomeration of characters for the states to murder. There are ways around this — the boss smokebombs out, or nosotros knock them out — merely information technology needs to be used sparingly, or the raid feels all for aught. So Blizzard has created a world wherein every big issue is resolved via players funneling into a series of Murder Rooms full of characters we know and love.

Maybe that's what has led to the wild ecosystem of decease that currently exists in World of Warcraft, where player characters are pretty chill with the thought of going to a bunch of afterlives in the heaven. Every character who has died could potentially come back; everything is off-white game. That'southward cool, just I miss the days where a guy could just get stabbed and die.

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Source: https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/27/21151521/world-of-warcraft-shadowlands-death-explainer-silly-flow-chart

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