Forum:Hearthstone lore

Warning, wall of text incoming...


 * Background

The topic of the canonicity of Hearthstone lore has already come up on Talk:Lore - for fuller background, see that discussion. The short version is that Hearthstone is regularly inventing new lore, some of which is intended to be non-canon, some of which is probably intended to be canon within that game, but without expectation of being considered canon in World of Warcraft or the main universe, and some of which is entirely intentionally non-canon, or as lead designer Ben Brode puts it, "a 'What If?' take on Warcraft lore."

For those who don't know, the designers are quite open about Hearthstone not trying too hard to be canon, or serious. They mix characters who are living, dead, and dead thousands of years ago (like Y'Shaarj), in the same present tense (like King Magni walking into the tavern itself). They also happily "mix and match" timelines and even invent alternate realities in order to play with hypothetical ideas, like the recent uproar-inspiring Ragnaros, Lightlord. This stuff basically makes no sense lore-wise and the designers are perfectly happy, and open, about this. Even at the best of times, Hearthstone takes lore way less seriously than WoW. In fact, "not serious" is pretty much its mission statement.

The new information from Hearthstone has been slowly creeping onto Wowpedia, but with the explosion in new lore over the last year (due to Hearthstone increasingly straying from established lore into original storylines and characters) the creep is turning into a steady current of new content.

As lead admin on the Gamepedia Hearthstone Wiki, and someone who spends far too much time writing about Hearthstone lore and its differences from that of the main universe, I'm happy to see Wowpedia documenting the new characters introduced by the game, and, even more interesting, the playful twists in the lore the game is innovating. However, I am concerned about how that information is handled and presented, specifically regarding canonicity, and its co-mingling with lore from canon sources.


 * The wiki

With entirely new characters, the current behaviour seems to be to tag the page as coming from Hearthstone, much as would be done with characters from novels; this seems fine to me. But when it comes to established characters which feature in Hearthstone, there doesn't seem to be any consistent approach to how we consider that information.

I guess I should provide some examples. [Update: since writing this, editors have made changes (apparently in response to this post) to the Old God infoboxes to highlight that the titles are from Hearthstone.] The titles for the new Old God cards are some: Y'Shaarj, Rage Unbound, N'Zoth, the Corruptor and C'Thun (fleetingly described as "the Old God of madness and chaos") [and Yogg-Saron, Hope's End]. These titles were invented for Hearthstone, but are now in the main infoboxes on their Wowpedia pages: Y'Shaarj, N'Zoth, C'Thun, Yogg-Saron. Personally, I suspect they made up these titles without having a long, serious consultation with the main lore universe people about which Old God represented Rage, which represented Corruption, which represented Madness and Chaos, etc., and without intention of canonicity. In fact, even within Hearthstone these Old Gods aren't meant to be the same ones known to Azeroth, but their counterparts from an alternate (possible imaginary) reality, where all four Old Gods are alive, well and dominating Azeroth. Should we be featuring these titles in the infoboxes for the canon Old Gods?

While I'm mostly talking about lore, this might go for art, too. The designers and artists for Hearthstone have been quite open in explaining that they are intentionally aiming for something different to the Warcraft art style, and are happy to depict characters in a way that fits the style of and serves the needs of Hearthstone, even if that doesn't suit the original source very well. I agree with them that this is fine for a card game which really is all about not taking things too seriously, but again, Wowpedia is steadily filling up with art created specifically for Hearthstone which depicts established characters in a new and often distinctly different light, including in many infoboxes. How do we want to handle this? Is there a line here? The same goes for art from Heroes of the Storm incidentally (which is pretty clearly non-canon), such as the "dumpy" Rexxar model, which is much more ogre-like than that seen in WoW or indeed Hearthstone. Interesting? Yes. Relevant? Sure. Canon? No. At least, not yet.

For the most part, it's usually pretty clear whether Hearthstone content is canon, new/maybe canon, or non-canon. My feeling is that we should be keeping these clearly separated. New lore can be added but with a notice that it may be non-canon; openly non-canon stuff is probably trivia. As for art, I feel its source should be marked as much as possible. Currently it's usually not, unless it's in the gallery. I'm not sure how best to handle art in the infoboxes, but I definitely don't think we should be featuring Hearthstone (or Heroes) art as implicitly canon simply because it's official art.

As I say, I hope I'm not coming across as anti-Hearthstone - I spend almost every day writing and wikiing Hearthstone content - I think it's great. But I think the way it is presented on this wiki should be carefully considered, and with the trickle of new content quickly turning to a flood, I think it's time we tackle the issue. -- Taohinton (talk) 06:24, 7 April 2016 (UTC)


 * RE: art: Ben Brode on Twitter

Q: so the illustration of n'zoth is not cannon (since we havent seen him on WoW) A: it should be
 * --Aquamonkeyeg (talk) 16:07, 7 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Yup, N'Zoth is canon. Perhaps I should have mentioned that the N'Zoth Hearthstone art is an exception to the norm, since it is not only confirmed as canon, but was actually made in collaboration with the main WoW lore and art people. The same seems to go for Y'Shaarj, which was drawn by Samwise; again, it's never been seen before, and so they obviously collaborated on what it should look like. That's not just about depiction - it's a question of what the Old God even is.


 * This doesn't go for Hearthstone card art as a rule, though. Hogger, Doom of Elwynn is an official depiction of Hogger... but is in no way to be considered canon. Likewise for a number of other cards. That said, I wasn't really discussing the canonicity of the art, so much as the goals and bias of its creation. Rexxar in Heroes is basically still the canon version, but he looks very different to how he looks in WoW. In fact, in Heroes Murky the baby murloc is half as big as Rexxar. So there are places where non-WoW art specifically doesn't fit with the canon info regarding characters' size and appearance; but more often it's a matter of them looking pretty different. As someone who plays all three games, I can tell you they are intentionally aiming for very different art styles. And since only one of those games is actually canon, it seems we should be primarily depicting the style featured in the one that is - or at the least trying to mention when we're featuring art from a game that isn't. WoW is also the only one of the games which cares about time in the least - both Heroes and Hearthstone feature a variety of deceased characters, with some massive timeline contradictions, and essentially take place outside of time itself.


 * It might also be worth pointing out that Hearthstone devs such as Brode are quite open about using art to depict a completely different character than the character it actually depicts. Check out Malygos, Mal'Ganis, or even Stampeding Kodo (hint: it's actually a clefthoof). The devs have been complained at plenty about this, and their attitude is that even though the art was created and intended to depict one character in the TCG, for example, in Hearthstone that art depicts a completely different character - or even a completely different species. Should we then consider this art to be valid depictions of those characters, despite the obvious contradictions? Should we feature the Kalecgos art in the infobox on Malygos? My feeling is no. Its current position way down in the gallery section, with a specific note that it does not depict the character except in Hearthstone, seems better to me.


 * To be clear, I'm not saying we shouldn't use art from Hearthstone, just that we should consider how best to handle it, and bear in mind the distinction for the future. We shouldn't automatically assume that art from Hearthstone or Heroes is canon art, or necessarily appropriate art to Wowpedia. I do think we should title HS art thumbs as "in Hearthstone", but we don't have captions in infoboxes so I'm not sure how best to handle that. For those who perhaps aren't aware, Hearthstone art is currently being used as the main Wowpedia image for a ton of key characters, including Thrall, Jaina, Anduin, Vol'jin, Malfurion, Gul'dan, Valeera Sanguinar and Uther.


 * Meanwhile, the changes made by User:DeludedTroll to add little Hearthstone icons into the infobox seems like a very good way to highlight the source for such information. -- Taohinton (talk) 04:18, 9 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I am of the opinion that for the most part Hearthstone and World of Warcraft should not mix. Including trivia & art (so long as it's in the gallery) on the relevant Wowpedia article pages is fine. Hearthstone "lore" (such as exists) belongs on its respective wiki and not on Wowpedia. -- Alayea (talk / contrib) 19:48, 13 April 2016 (UTC)