Following that thought: We have canonically lost against every single Incarnate. Raszageth got her goal of rescuing her family
Fyrakk obliterated the Loamm Niffen and we couldn't save them all.
Iridikron put us in a Catch-22 and forced us to choose preventing a New World Order situation.
Vyranoth managed to attain Plot Armor.
In addition, we've also 'lost' against several other bosses this expansion. Decaytriarch Wratheye managed to escape instead of dying. Sarkareth opened up a direct portal to the void (And we had an achieve where we chucked a mass of void-flesh into it). Primal Council ended with Dathea escaping, and demanding a second attempt to kill us.
Other past failures include not saving the Blue Dragon against Brutallus in Sunwell. Every time a boss escapes to fight another day.
The biggest failure of course has to be that by killing Argus, we cause the Shadowlands to go out of whack.
Garrosh going to draenot did way more. He started the whole draenor wich made guldan come to our timeline wich started the whole legion expansion. It killed varian and voljin so sylvanas became warchief wich directly caused battle for azeroth and shadowlands.... three full expansions direct result of garrosh escaping
Three full expansions result from Wraithion being a little shit who gets off scott free from the various war crimes he is directly linked to and responsible for. FTFY
P.s Fuck Wraithion, new dreanor , legion invasion and shadowlands are all directly his fault
I was low key kinda hoping he would get corrupted when we went to the caverns/Aberrus, falling prey to the same madness that plagued his father so we could take his ass out and protect the future of Azeroth from his tactical genius.
To be fair, Sabellion did a lot in not only stabilizing his flight but finding a way home, where as Wraithion murder hobos everyone in his flight still on Azeroth.
The only concern towards Sabellion was the fact that his number one priority was his flight, and then the other problems of the mortals afterwards.
I actually really enjoyed the black dragon flight story this expansion. But I fully agree that Wrathion and Sabelllion were both way to selfish / single-minded.
BFA was a directly consequence too, sword in the planet/azerite was from legion.
When this asshole was going on about having saved Azeroth from N'zoth, I was thinking the whole time "bitch, you're the reason he escaped in the first place"
I did not support Wrathion one bit until Sabellian rep was maxed.
I mean there was a bronze dragon who allowed him to go to old draenor, don’t recall his name. He would be to blame as well, without him wrathion and garrosh would just be running around on normal Azeroth.
Except... That's not the players losing. That's Kairozdormu, an Infinite dragon, tricking several named NPCs into powering up a time travel object so that he can break Garrosh out. The players have 0 interaction with Kairoz during the events of War Crimes...Because it's a book.
we killed Ursoc in legion, we also kinda killed cenarius but not totally, we killed ysera as well and that's all because Xavius
Then when anima draught happened they had to leave Ursoc behind in the pod in Ardenweald and he withered away but his sacrifice helped Ysera's pod to stay intact
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p\_IHQJy8feU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_IHQJy8feU) - Ursoc short
For Horde specifically you fail to protect Rastakhan during Battle of Dazar'alor.
If you go by quests related to dungeons there's Blackrock Depths, you get sent in by Magni back in Classic to free Moira who he *thought* was mind controlled by Dagran Thaurissan, but nah, turns out she actually loved him and you just killed him in front of his wife.
OG Sunken Temple - all we succeeded in doing is slowing down Hakkar from coming back.
Halls of Reflection, you're sent in to hopefully get Frostmourne without the Lich King noticing, which obviously fails, and the last encounter is literally you running from your lives from him.
***Previously***, we lost in Throne of the Tides where Ozumat abducted Neptulon, it's been retconned when the dungeon got updated in Dragonflight though so he doesn't get kidnapped at the end.
Then there's the quests where "player gets tricked because they're a moron so bad thing happens" which is us losing, at least at the time. For example the whole reason Kel'thuzad came back in Wrath is because, canonically, someone out there is a dumbass who instead of destroying his phylactery to make sure he never came back decided it turning it over to someone who happened to be working for the scourge. Dude was playing 4D chess with us too, he just gave us some shiny purples from turning it over to him as reward so he could claim his reward of becoming a lich.
Sarkareth is the one that stings the most IMO. He's a step ahead of you for that entire questline. Almost every time you catch up to him, he gets what he wants, and someone on your side dies.
I felt the same fury Emberthal did during that story.
Wait when did Iridikron do anything? I must have either missed something or be having a brain fart but I thought he pretty much fucked off after he told Frank to unlock Abberus.
EDIT: Fyrakk, not Frank. Thanks autocorrect.
Dawn of the infinites. We fight him to stop him getting the void soul thing but as a result Deios succeeds in corrupting Nozdormu early so we go back again to stop Deios and as a result Iridikron gets the void soul thing to xalatath.
The weird "I want to be a nobody adventurer again" people probably logged out of their characters at that quest so they could pretend their story ends by being caterers.
Because we have amnesia.
Seriously, our canonical character is "i will follow the most recent orders given to me, no matter who it's from". If the bad guys stopped trying to play coy, and literally said "go kill chromie", we would just kill her. The bonesmith proved this to me, by suggesting the single \*dumbest\* idea of bringing the final sigil directly into torghast, and we just.. did it. Not a single question asked. Even the guy we saved scolded us for the incredibly stupid plan!
the weekly quest in naxxramas to hand kel'thuzad's phylactery over to a completely trustworthy stranger remains the funniest bit of fourth wall breaking ever. why did you *think* he keeps coming back every weekly reset?
Reminds me of in Shadowlands where both the Jailer and us were looking for the Primus Sigil and instead of leaving it lost to time we restore his memory, hunt for it and find it, only to essentially lose it immediately.
Speaking of people getting dusted, I felt we lost hard too when they quickly did away with Arthas by turning him into 30 anima right at the end. Such a legendary character deserved much better.
That was kinda the point, I believe. Arthas the prince, to death knight, to the Lich King... and ultimately, to nothing. I thought it was a rather poignant moment. A man with so much potential to good who ends up causing immense, almost unquantifiable, suffering. Ultimately, he is slain and defeated and his "essence" is diminished to nonexistence. I wasn't sure if it was out of punishment or simply a consequence of all the horrors he had wrought upon Azeroth, but I actually felt sad for the character... whom I am only familiar with through my own readings of the wikis and WoW. Can only imagine someone who has played all the WC games leading up to that.
That's a romantic way of looking at it, I guess. Honestly, it didn't even feel like a lore thing like that, to me. More like they wanted to end the expansion, the community was kind of wondering if they were ever going to do anything about him and as a sort of closure, they did that. Glad they gave it an end regardless but it came off more as a rushed job than a proper end, imo.
To me it just felt insulting tbh. Nothing epic, no melancholy, no fight etc. he just became a disenchanted green item. There was no epic final scene to give one of the most iconic characters his end, he had a really good ending back in WotLK but then they brought him back in SL and made it a wet fart, I mean just compare the ICC cutscene to the SL cutscene. Varian died in a "stupid" way as well but at least he was a badass until the end trying to save Azeroth. Even Garrosh's final moment in SL was way more impactful than Arthas'.
The Shadowlands story wasn't about Arthas though, not really, it was about Sylvanas. Arthas got his ending in Wrath, he was just there because of how heavily tied to him Sylvanas is.
Don't even bother, everyone ignores Vol'jin in favor of Varian, ypu even see it in the comments "Vol'jin got stabbed by a quest mob, Varian tanked half the raid"
Vol'jin's story at least had an interesting turn in Shadowlands, provided you played through the Ardenweld campaign.
Still just added to thr list of Horde leaders who got the shaft though.
Shafted so the Special Cool Girl Sylvanas could be promoted to Warchief despite not being someone literally anyone outside of the Forsaken would willingly follow.
Extremely justified! He was Warchief for the expansion where you're not on the fucking planet, and he shows up at the end to check out your base and see your cool boats
Blizzard literally can't undo how bad they handled Vol'jin, because even a retcon won't fix that I had to experience that bullshit live at the peak of my time playing Warcraft.
Dude the best, having you carve your way through just to have that dramatic wow changing death right at the start of the expac, I’ll always say what a great lead up
What happened in ICC was literally Arthas’ entire plan. He actually DID kill us and was in the process of making us scourge when Tirion took out the sword. Without a literal deus ex machina arthas wins lol
The fun part is he asked the light for one final blessing. And then a few expansions later he gets fucking rocked because the light said "damn bro, you said back in Northrend that would be the last time!"
RIP Tirion
I still think he should have died at the end of ICC. His death would have been far more deserving if he died resurrecting the raid team and killing arthas than to some random demon 4 expansions later just so he can hand off Ashbringer to every paladin in the game.
Ha, jokes on him. My dk \*really\* did not want to be back under his control and survived the one shot mechanic back in the day. I still remember people yelling at me in vent to stop hitting Arthas because apparently if you killed him, you wouldn't get credit for the kill, but he'd be dead in the lockout.
“Local Death Knight Literally Too Angry to Die.”
*The Red Rage has consumed him in his moment of triumph, he is literally unstoppable, Tirion reportedly holding him back in a full nelson while also monologuing.*
There's a Horde quest in Azshara where we die as well. We go to help some blue dragon that's in love with a spirit healer and have to go to the spirit realm.
Does it actually kill us or just separates the spirit from the body? Found [a quick video of the quest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfKHc4PpYnI) and while you enter the portal and drop down from considerable height and split from your body, the character window doesn't show the player as dead
Well, except the part right after that where Tirion whips out a deus ex machina and Arthus loses...
Like that part is still cannon - the good guys beat Arthas.
I think the argument is WE lose though. We were supposed to be the chosen champions of the Argent crusade and oops, it literally was the Lich King's plan all along and now we are dead and about to be brainwashed into lackeys. TIRION wins...only to not be saved by the light in Legion because he's called in his huge final favor to save us and stop Arthas. That results in things getting messy enough that Varian and Vol'jin both die, spiralling everything which... They later tried to say was the Jailer's plan all along but unlike Arthas, where we could see how things led to what he wanted, the Jailer clearly hadn't existed in their minds for that to actually work.
Arthas, in 5-man dungeon, and in ICC. Without Jaina or Lights intervention, we would've been subjected into being scourge puppets.
Legion intro, we assaulted Temple of Sargeras and lost both Varian and Vol'jin.
When you think about it, the legií assault is such a tragic loss, it's refreshing for the story
Yea it was a huge meta blunder to lose Varian and Voljin bcs blizzard failed to give us characters that we loved even half like them but still
We lose in dawn of the infinites. Even going back in the second half to try and undo our loss, we just end up losing in a different way and iridikron wins.
I mean, Iridikron practically says "You won't see me again until the final installment of the World Soul Trilogy" after that, so I would guess he's coming back.
Then again, Wrathion wasn't in Legion, so who knows what Blizzard will do in 6+ years.
We lose alot in Zandalar.
1. The ritual in Vol'dun is completed
2. We lose alot of loa including Rezan
3. We slow down the blood trolls and make new alliances in Nazmir but I wouldn't say we win until we come back later to kill G'huun
All this culminates in a big battle in Zuldazar where king Rastakan has to make a sacrificial deal just to keep the kingdom alive.
Know all of this isn't technically a loss but it's a Pyrrhic victory.
I have to say, it was a refreshing change of pace to see the Horde and Alliance immediately agree to a truce and throw absolutely everything they had at the Serious Problem from the start. It was so nice that the writing was just straightforward and reasonable. No petty disagreements from the outset, no angry leader shrugging off attempted diplomacy to do it their own way, no sending in a ragtag group of mercenaries or special forces. They just did the most logical thing in the world: attempt to utterly crush the invasion before the enemy could really dig in.
It just so happened that their best wasn't enough. That hyped me up so much.
The Alliance and Horde immediately broke that truce when Genn decided it was time to wage war on the Horde in the Broken Isles and Sylvanas was more than happy to return the favor the entire time. Yes, I get it Greymane's forces hold this warden tower. I will break their ranks and show no mercy.
Legion is won not by the Horde or Alliance but by the order halls and the army of light. Jaina is a piss baby and quits the Kirin Tor because they let the Horde back in (reminder, she indiscriminately killed every blood elf she could find in the purging only years earlier which is the only reason they weren't there anymore)
BFA begins because those tensions never relax (because Sylvanas doesn't want them to). We then fight that extremely costly war which in canon leaves the Horde and Alliance both completely depleted and unable to really continue the war which leads into shadowlands which we deal with by the skin of our teeth and necessitate blizzard doing the time jump to dragonflight just to give the world 'breathing room' for the first time since the time gap between Warcraft 3 and 1.0 WoW.
in one of the ice crown dungeons, the final boss is the lich King, and all you do is run from him, clearing mobs and such. in the end he chokes jaina/sylvanas (not sexual), and you barely escape (sexual).
you do suffer minor set backs in quest zones. freshest in my memory is that the bald night elf lady technically beats you early on, though you do come back to win in round 2 later on at the end.
also we fail in uldum when the time dragons destroy the artifact you came for.
we certainly don't lose when it's important though lol
Literally every expansion. Normally multiple times. People seem to focus on the fact that our world has never been annihilated as a proof we always win. We've never lost against a world-ending threat, sure, but we've certainly lost plenty.
BfA, Eternal Palace - we're tricked into letting out N'zoth. Huge L.
Shadowlands, zone questlines - Denathrius is uncovered too late and beats us. Tears open a massive funnel of anima to the Maw so big it changes the Oribos skybox. Next patch, we don't stop Sylvanas fast enough and the Jailer expands the Maw to Oribos, walks through a portal with Anduin, and has his prize. The Jailer gets non-stop dubs the entire expac, he just loses in the final hour.
We can go back earlier, too. Icecrown, we lose - Arthas lured us there and he one-shots us all. It takes a literal miracle to save the day. Previously in the expansion, at Halls of Reflection, the final boss fight is to run the fuck away because we can't beat Arthas.
There's also the WoD opening. We rattle the cage a bit too much and the entire Iron Horde comes for us. We bail as fast as we can and even get a debuff that makes us run faster but takes away mounting while we run for our lives. I'd also consider the final raid an L - we kill the big bad, but he launches Gul'dan into our timeline and starts the most intense Legion invasion to date.
I could go on. In WoW, we take L after L after L. We just happen to usually win the final fights.
The whole Warcraft setting exists because various factions keep getting duped by agents of the Burning Legion. And when you think about it, the Burning Legion did so much damage to Light-aligned forces throughout its history that Sargeras kind of got baited by the voidlords, in a way.
>We bail as fast as we can and even get a debuff that makes us run faster but takes away mounting while we run for our lives.
TBF, the first mission portrays you as, essentially, a suicide squad only meant to close the Dark Portal from the other side. You're not really *supposed* to survive.
Then they make the same mistake that MoP makes where they go "also, you're trapped!" but in a world where mages and portals exist, so you pretty much immediately open up a portal to Stormwind/Orgrimmar to build your garrison.
During the pre-patch for BFA on Alliance side, Ally players are tasked with trying to save as many civilians as humanely possible within a time limit while inside a burning Teldrassil-- no matter how much you do or how fast you do it, you can literally always see a fire that needs to be put out or an NPC to be saved as your screen turns black (PC passes out from smoke). It was rigged from the start that you just -couldn't- save everyone/everything during that quest.
Seriously, I cried about this quest 😭 I played so many alliance alts thinking maybe I need to be faster/save people in a certain order to get everyone, but it's the entire Darnassus that's alit in flames, I was doomed from the start :( I thought the quest was REALLY well written to emphasize that the Alliance/PC is losing here. It felt very severe. It felt awful yet super good to know the PC isn't always the savior
Arthas could kill us at any point during Wrath, he was just toying with us the whole time.
Garrosh escaping to Draenor, then Gul'dan coming to our Azeroth leading directly to the Legion invading again. That in itself is kind of a loss, but then the Broken Shore where so many are killed and everyone retreats allowing the Legion to gain a greater foothold.
The Sanctum of Domination raid in Shadowlands was intended as an alpha strike against Sylvanas/The Jailer, but The Jailer escapes during the final boss fight and not much was accomplished other than stopping Sylvanas and Kel'thuzad from being annoying.
Taking away demons' immortality, effectively disbanding the Burning Legion, and capturing Sargeras are *absolutely* victories. Azeroth could have been destroyed by Sargeras, but our intervention made it only a wound.
This is definitely the biggest disaster the heroes have faced in lore (in WoW at least, some events of WC1 and 2 could be argued to be worse for their individual factions)
Broken Shore was a fucking blood bath. So many men lost. I happened to be there. I don't think I'll ever be the same mentally coming off thay beach head.. and many of my brothers feel the exact same way.
To be frank, the last time I ever felt like we truly lost was the beginning of Legion. Assaulted the broken shore with everything we had, lost two major leaders, a good number of our troops, and were pushed on the back foot while the legion invaded our territory.
Which placed the comeback to the broken isles and pushing them all the way to even Argus felt so good
Dawn of the Infinite: we literally beat Iridikron in a fair and square fight, but the infinites successfully change the timeline, therefore Murozond rises as a result so Chromie literally rollback the fight to prevent everything from happening.
Iridikron escapes, becomes stronger than ever and he's now a major threat in TWW and we have yet to face him again. And something tells me the next encounter is not gonna be so easy.
> or a quest giver thoroughly outplays us and tricks us into doing stupid/evil shit that we don't get to make up for.
This happens a lot, depending on what you mean by "make up for".
In Teldrassil there's a satyr that night elves give a bunch of reagents by slaughtering forest critters. They turn him into a frog temporarily afterwards and that was the end of it in vanilla, but in Cataclysm he moved to Darkshore and spread a fel taint throughout the wildlife as revenge for the humiliation, killing/corrupting a shitton of animals.
In BC we were tricked to help Teron Gorefiend free himself from his prison by 'killing' ghosts of his victims and then were possessed by him to kill his warden before he went and joined Illidan (for some reason that i dont think they've ever explained).
In Wrath, Drakuru tricked us into cleansing Drak'tharon Keep of any remaining resistance and securing it as a Scourge stronghold, which it still is to this day lorewise, even post-Shadowlands.
Speaking of Shadowlands, there's a quest-chain in Korthia where we help a dreadlord in disguise hunt down Fate-scribe Roh-Kalo, who *was* successfully hiding from the Jailer because he knew very important things. As a result, Fatescribe got captured, dominated, and turned into a raid boss - and probly told the Jailer exactly where to find the Sepulcher.
There's definitely more, but thats just off the top of my head.
The Horde have lost every war they have fought against the Alliance after the first - so if you play Horde the answer is yes.
Do we as the players really face that consequence? Nah, not really. We take part in all the war crimes under Garrosh and Sylvanas until they are mean to our next faction leader (Vol'Jin or Baine respectively) then we decide we're heroes again and siege orgrimmar and depose the warchief only for them to be dealt with in the next expansion. But we still lose, the horde lost those wars.
The Alliance has also lost - but in smaller less meaningful ways. The Alliance has lost Theramore, the Alliance has lost Southshore, the Alliance has lost its foothold in Andorhal, the Alliance has lost Teldrassil, the Alliance has lost all of Darkshore.
But the kicker? They have all that back - off screen of course.
During Legion and BFA the mission tables explain how the Alliance take all these places they have lost through cataclysm til BFA back. This isn't reflected in the world which is largely time locked to Cataclysm with exception of the few areas that have moved forward due to BFA phases or the events like retaking Undercity and Gilneas - but they have reclaimed these things.
Similarly the Horde has taken back some of the stuff it has lost. It has Undercity (well, the ruins above it) back after Sylvanas plagued the whole place to spite the Alliance. It has also secured its land routes between Thunder Bluff and Orgrimmar back after the Alliance were besieging it in the war - but it has also never pushed the Alliance back out of its territory since the war.
The Alliance still has a staging point within Durotar and the Barrens to harass the Horde if they ever go to war again. The Horde has all but pulled out of Ashenvale in-lore, with only Zoramgar Strand remaining. There is probably still a logging operation, but it is likely not sanctioned and under constant attack by night elves while the Horde looks the other way.
Freeing Guldan in the WoD intro was the biggest L we took
It killed Varian, Voljin, Ysera, Cenarius, Ursoc, Tyrion and maybe some more I forgot in legion
Put the events of shadowlands in motion via the Argus kill and Silvanas became warchief.
Then we got the whole 4th War and probably more events because of sargeras sword sticking in azeroth
Argus straight up murders us repeatedly and it's only through eonars magic life tree that we win.
Arthas killed us all in ICC. Like canonically everyone dies. Terenas (it's yogg saron actually and I'm dying on this hill) rezzes us.
Yogg saron is the main villain in northrend, he is just overshadowed by arthas.
Yogg sarons actual body is massive, with influence in multiple zones of northrend. It's like cthun in ahn qiraj and ilgynoth and nzoth in nyalotha. Their bodies are so massive that entire rooms and corridors can exist inside them. Yoggs brain was chained in ulduar, but his body was still there underneath northrend, actively functioning. In howling fjord, grizzly hills and icecrown there are places where you see his presence.
Yogg sarons blood is saronite ore. We see this in icecrown in the caves with the insane miners. His blood and then saronite ore corrupts things and is a conduit for his power.
When arthas was a death knight he went thru azjol nerub to reach icecrown. Anubarak showed him the way and they were separated and arthas had to fight a huge old god looking monster with tentacles and a stationary central point and all. Anubarak was surprised arthas survived and called it a forgotten one. This can be presumed to be one of yoggs presences. Like he corrupted the tree in grizzly hills, he also had influence deep under azjol nerub.
After arthas became the lich king he built all his fortresses and walls and the citadel out of saronite. He made additions to his armor with saronite. He built his entire capital with the blood of an old god. The blood that is shown to have corrupting capabilities in small amounts. He built a castle out of it and covered himself in it.
Yogg shows us arthas torturing bolvar during his brain phase. "He will learn, no king rules forever" is what yogg says as we trying to escape.
"I am the lucid dream, the monster in your nightmares, the fiend of a thousand faces, cower before my true form. Bow down before the god of death". Yogg says this as he emerges after phase 1 and Sara becomes a valkyr and rises above yoggs body. He is the lucid dream and the monster of nightmares as he was the first old god to breach the emerald dream with his corrupted tree in northrend, creating the emerald nightmare. He is the fiend of a thousand faces as he has influenced and manipulated key events in azeroths history. He created the curse of flesh. He is the god of death because outside of his brain in ulduar, the largest concentration of his power is icecrown glacier. Arthas built everything with saronite. All that death, all or the scourge machinery and weapons, is saronite.
When arthas is beaten and frostmourne shatters, all the souls "escape?" Sure it looks that way but why is Terenas so much more powerful than the rest? Uther makes sense, he is the lightbringer. Terenas was just the king, he had no actual power like uther. The ghost we see in icecrown as terenas is yogg saron. "At long last, my son, no king rules forever" He's just that powerful. All the things yogg did mentioned above, he did after his brain was shackled in ulduar. So we raided ulduar and hit him around a bit and threw Valanyr at him and he went back to sleep. Yoggs still active, he's just not going to be at full power. When we revisit ulduar in legion, his essence is still lingering. Yogg saron is the ghost terenas menethil. Yogg was manipulating arthas. When frostmourne breaks, yogg is free to rise in northrend unchallenged as his influence is insidious and he's presumed defeated. He rezzes us because we are needed for the old gods plans. Arthas was testing us so we could become his strongest scourgelords, yogg was testing us at the same time. Telling us there must always be a lich king is because a wild feral scourge would be an obstacle for yogg saron. He's manipulated one lich king, he can do it again.
Now after the jailer used ICC as an azerite conduit, we aren't too sure as to the damage it did. So yoggs presence there now is hard to guess. However he's got all of northrend, and if his presence is still there, he now has a DIRECT path to the heart of azeroth that the jailer ripped open using the forge of souls under icecrown.
The world within won't just be about xalatath. Yogg is coming back.
there are 3 raidfights where the Champion and his companions die/failed and only survive because of an outer source saving them (Lich King kills the Raid and we get saved by Tyrons last blessing, Argus/Sargeras kills us during the Argus fight and we get revived by Eonar, N'zoth gains full controll over you at the end of the fight and Azeroth breaks you out of it)
there are multiple quest/dungeon/raidfights where we dont stop something bad from actually happening, last time was in the first raid in Dragonflight where we defeat Razageth but failed to stop her freeing the other Incarnates and in the Dawn of the Infinites dungeon where we had to chose bettwrn stopping Iridikron or Saving Nozdormu and decided to do the 2nd option
so yeha, it happens
Halls of Reflection, we have to run from Arthas and the only objective is literally do not let him catch us, reach the airship so we can get out of there.
Dazar'Alor if you're a Horde player. You literally get forced to sack your own expansion capital in Alliance cosplay while they not only get away scott free, but Mechatorque gets to "dying was merely a setback" himself into becoming even more powerful
fuck that raid
The Horde in Second half of Battle for Dazaralor. After Rastakhan gets merced by Alliance adventurers the goal of the Horde was now to intercept them and go full PVP on them as revenge. The alliance decided that to prevent wasting the lives of Adventurers/champions they would just sacrifice a good part of the invading force to slow down the Horde champions. While the Horde sent the suicide squad to their graves, put King Mekkatorque on life support and sent Jaina packing the Alliance ultimately succeeded on all their goals and Horde lost all of theirs.
Technically Neptulon gets captured when we try to free him in Abyssal maw dung, so we fail to save him at the end and never free him cuz the tie in raid never happened, so later he just escaped on his own without our help, soo I mean we sort of lost there with no redemption.
I mean if you think about it most major world ending events are created by a list of loses only for us to finally get a win when it truly mattered most.
A lot of people have given responses for the losses, but I wanted t address the part where you asked about quests where you're tricked into doing some evil stuff. There are actually lots of quests where we're duped into or convinced to do something evil/cruel/wrong, or literally are asked to do something terrible outright.
Some examples:
The Badlands quest line where you help a red dragon torture a black dragon.
The infamous quest in Hillsbrad where you can choose to dig up buried alive humans or execute them.
In wrath, you're sent to kill blue dragon allied targets and two (one human and one troll) at least were there by force and are actually trying to sabotage malygos from within. It's extra messed up what happens after, you return a letter you find on their person to be sent back to their family. Their relative then sends you a letter in the mail thanking you for finding the letter, not knowing you were the one who murdered them.
God, so so many questionable choices made in Pandaria, the Landfall questlines on both sides in particular.
I believe in BFA you're asked to kill some little raptors which then gets you in deep crap with Jani the loa and he schools you on how crappy that was.
There are more but those were just from the top of my head. So many times I've turned in quests and just felt like a jerk afterward lol
From the top of my head.
- Wrathgate was a failure back in WOTLK.
- Hall of reflections was also a failure. (Even if we got a bunch of info)
- The battle at the end of Jade Forest in MoP was a failure of massive magnitude, I would argue.
- The Broken Shore was a HUGE failure. (Due to a part of the Rogue Orderhall campain story)
- Most of Val'sharah was a major failure, with Xavius pushing us back constantly, and winning more and more ground every moment. (Honestly, one of the reasons I love that zone. It actually feels as if we might fail, even if that is not happening because story)
- The Eternal Palace was a failure, we did defeat Azshara but N'zoth got freed. (Got "killed" a chapter later but eh)
- Our First venture into the maw to save the leaders was a failure.
- Our attempts preventing a possessed Anduin from taking the sigils was a failure.
- Sanctum of Domination was a failure.
- Vaults of the Incarnates was a failure.
So... yeah. :P
We have failed a few times. Not a complete loss, but it is something.
The Lich King twice, in Halls of Reflection and atop Icecrown Citadel.
Argus.
The Broken Shore when Dreadlords trick us into an ambush and kill a bunch of the main characters.
Sylvanas atop Torghast/Oribos.
I'm pretty sure we lost in wod at the final raid. Sure, we killed Archemond, but his goal succeeded, and Gul dam prepared the world for the legions return.
Vault of the incarnates, sanctum of domination, and icecrown citadel
We failed to stop the release of the incarnates, we straight up fail to actually kill sylvanas, the jailer actually gets away with his prize and just leaves her behind, and in ICC the lich king straight up kills us. Its just in the end everything works out in our favor
There is that one wotlk dungeon where we're in icecrown to steal something I think, and then at the end the lichking shows up and our plans fail, making us flee for our lives in the last boss encounter which is just running away.
Also, Ysera being corrupted by Xavius in Legion of course. She eventually came back a few expansions later, but at the time it still felt like a massive loss. She's not exactly a deep character, but she's been with us since wotlk and especially cataclysm.
Even going as far back as TBC when killing illidan. We lost hard, because it creates the Ilidari and Demon hunter arc and now they're currently ruining tank meta, so we all lose.
Given how blizzard's storytelling ever since cataclysm has basically been: AND HERE'S THE NEW BIG BAD GUY WHO'S SECRETLY BEEN MANIPULATING EVERYTHING INCLUDING THE LAST BAD GUY AND THIS IS ALL PART OF THEIR PLAN MUAHAHAHA *twirls moustache*.... we have canonically lost absolutely every engagement ever, because even when we win the next expansion retcons it into being part of the new guys plan.
The beginning assault against the legion during the legion expansion. Ended with Varian and Voljin both dead and us having no choice but to search for more powerful ways to vanquish the legion and even bring demon hunters back into the horde and alliance after the events of TBC
There are two boss fights where we canonically die: Lich King and Argus.
Against the Lich King, Tirion shatters Frostmourne with the Ashbringer, and the spirits within resurrect us.
Against Argus, Eonar herself resurrects us.
Given the three part format of the Worldsoul Saga, and the very Star Wars/MCU key art and story structure, I absolutely guarantee that Midnight will be a total downer ending and the first time we "lose" an entire expansion. Which I think will be great.
Yeah, several different times:
In raids:
* Vault of the Incarnates, we kill Raszageth but she frees her fam
* Sanctum of Domination, we fail to beat Sylvanas and we also fail to stop the Jailor
* The Eternal Palace, we beat up Aszhara but she succeeds in releasing N’Zoth
* Battle of Dazar’Alor, the Alliance is able to invade Dazar’Alor, loot the royal treasury, kill King Rastakhan and escape without losing any major characters; then Jaina gets bored of fighting Horde players after freezing their ship and ports away. The Horde side loses
* Canonically the Alliance wins the Icecrown Gunship Battle (but that’s not reflected in Horde playthroughs of the raid)
In expansion narratives/notable story beats:
* BfA starts out as an Alliance vs Horde conflict, but the Horde implodes and loses the war. Some Horde players eventually turn on Sylvanas and kind of don’t lose as badly, but the Sylvanas loyalist players pretty much do
* Horde players canonically lose both warfronts (not reflected in their playthroughs)
* Horde players lose the Battle for Lordaeron
* Alliance players lose the War of Thorns
* We straight up get washed in the first invasion of the Broken Shore and both faction leaders die
* MoP starts out as an Alliance vs Horde conflict, but the Horde starts a civil war and Orgrimmar gets invaded by the Alliance. Horde players have turned against Garrosh by this point so debatable if any players lost
* The Alliance loses the Battle for Gilneas
* We get ambushed by Forsaken acting under Sylvanas’ orders at the Wrathgate and gassed
* Halls of Reflection has us trying to steal Frostmourne but Arthas shows up and chases us out of his crib
There are many quests where we get outsmarted by an evil questgiver or that straight up end in defeat. I’m not going to try to go over them all
We went to the Vault of Incarnates to stop the other Incarnates from being released and absolutely failed.
Following that thought: We have canonically lost against every single Incarnate. Raszageth got her goal of rescuing her family Fyrakk obliterated the Loamm Niffen and we couldn't save them all. Iridikron put us in a Catch-22 and forced us to choose preventing a New World Order situation. Vyranoth managed to attain Plot Armor. In addition, we've also 'lost' against several other bosses this expansion. Decaytriarch Wratheye managed to escape instead of dying. Sarkareth opened up a direct portal to the void (And we had an achieve where we chucked a mass of void-flesh into it). Primal Council ended with Dathea escaping, and demanding a second attempt to kill us. Other past failures include not saving the Blue Dragon against Brutallus in Sunwell. Every time a boss escapes to fight another day. The biggest failure of course has to be that by killing Argus, we cause the Shadowlands to go out of whack.
You missed a BIG ONE fkn GARROSH ESCAPES TRIAL AND CREATES A WHOLE NEW EXPANSION
Garrosh going to draenot did way more. He started the whole draenor wich made guldan come to our timeline wich started the whole legion expansion. It killed varian and voljin so sylvanas became warchief wich directly caused battle for azeroth and shadowlands.... three full expansions direct result of garrosh escaping
Three full expansions result from Wraithion being a little shit who gets off scott free from the various war crimes he is directly linked to and responsible for. FTFY P.s Fuck Wraithion, new dreanor , legion invasion and shadowlands are all directly his fault
I mean... not Scott free... Anduin did punch him so hard his Visage dropped for like... a second.
I was low key kinda hoping he would get corrupted when we went to the caverns/Aberrus, falling prey to the same madness that plagued his father so we could take his ass out and protect the future of Azeroth from his tactical genius.
I mean. He did get shut down this expansion. He saw that he isn't the big shit he thinks he is. Same with sabellian.
To be fair, Sabellion did a lot in not only stabilizing his flight but finding a way home, where as Wraithion murder hobos everyone in his flight still on Azeroth. The only concern towards Sabellion was the fact that his number one priority was his flight, and then the other problems of the mortals afterwards.
I actually really enjoyed the black dragon flight story this expansion. But I fully agree that Wrathion and Sabelllion were both way to selfish / single-minded.
BFA was a directly consequence too, sword in the planet/azerite was from legion. When this asshole was going on about having saved Azeroth from N'zoth, I was thinking the whole time "bitch, you're the reason he escaped in the first place" I did not support Wrathion one bit until Sabellian rep was maxed.
What sword? /s
I mean there was a bronze dragon who allowed him to go to old draenor, don’t recall his name. He would be to blame as well, without him wrathion and garrosh would just be running around on normal Azeroth.
AND JAILER WAS BEHIND THIS ALL ALONG
Except... That's not the players losing. That's Kairozdormu, an Infinite dragon, tricking several named NPCs into powering up a time travel object so that he can break Garrosh out. The players have 0 interaction with Kairoz during the events of War Crimes...Because it's a book.
And you know who helped him escape? Wrathion.
That silly little dumb dragon and his dumb plan
We also lost Ursoc permanently in the shadowlands. As a druid main who wears his claws I'll be mourning that forever.
We WHAT? I was deep into my "Just tell me who we have to kill" phase of WoW and wasn't paying attention.
We killed him in the emerald nightmare and they had to sacrifice his rebirth pod in ardenweald due to the anima drought I think
It was a short video leading to launch. Search YouTube, it's a good (albeit sad) video. There's a few.
Afterlives, there's 1 for each realm, for Ardenweald: https://youtu.be/p_IHQJy8feU?si=ej52mIuoZPq3LIWe
we killed Ursoc in legion, we also kinda killed cenarius but not totally, we killed ysera as well and that's all because Xavius Then when anima draught happened they had to leave Ursoc behind in the pod in Ardenweald and he withered away but his sacrifice helped Ysera's pod to stay intact [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p\_IHQJy8feU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_IHQJy8feU) - Ursoc short
For Horde specifically you fail to protect Rastakhan during Battle of Dazar'alor. If you go by quests related to dungeons there's Blackrock Depths, you get sent in by Magni back in Classic to free Moira who he *thought* was mind controlled by Dagran Thaurissan, but nah, turns out she actually loved him and you just killed him in front of his wife. OG Sunken Temple - all we succeeded in doing is slowing down Hakkar from coming back. Halls of Reflection, you're sent in to hopefully get Frostmourne without the Lich King noticing, which obviously fails, and the last encounter is literally you running from your lives from him. ***Previously***, we lost in Throne of the Tides where Ozumat abducted Neptulon, it's been retconned when the dungeon got updated in Dragonflight though so he doesn't get kidnapped at the end. Then there's the quests where "player gets tricked because they're a moron so bad thing happens" which is us losing, at least at the time. For example the whole reason Kel'thuzad came back in Wrath is because, canonically, someone out there is a dumbass who instead of destroying his phylactery to make sure he never came back decided it turning it over to someone who happened to be working for the scourge. Dude was playing 4D chess with us too, he just gave us some shiny purples from turning it over to him as reward so he could claim his reward of becoming a lich.
Sarkareth is the one that stings the most IMO. He's a step ahead of you for that entire questline. Almost every time you catch up to him, he gets what he wants, and someone on your side dies. I felt the same fury Emberthal did during that story.
Wait when did Iridikron do anything? I must have either missed something or be having a brain fart but I thought he pretty much fucked off after he told Frank to unlock Abberus. EDIT: Fyrakk, not Frank. Thanks autocorrect.
Dawn of the infinites. We fight him to stop him getting the void soul thing but as a result Deios succeeds in corrupting Nozdormu early so we go back again to stop Deios and as a result Iridikron gets the void soul thing to xalatath.
Dawn of the infinite mega Dungeon. Iridikron pretty much wins there
In my headcanon its frank now. What would you call fyr'alalala, oh wise one?
I wouldn't say the Blue Dragon was our fault. She blocked us off because she wanted him to herself first
I really need to pay more attention lol.
Man we suck without getting carried by lore characters. Why are we even still employed
They need waiters at parties
Nothing like getting a thank you for saving Amirdrassil let alone the world yet again, then getting told to go serve drinks.
The weird "I want to be a nobody adventurer again" people probably logged out of their characters at that quest so they could pretend their story ends by being caterers.
Because we have amnesia. Seriously, our canonical character is "i will follow the most recent orders given to me, no matter who it's from". If the bad guys stopped trying to play coy, and literally said "go kill chromie", we would just kill her. The bonesmith proved this to me, by suggesting the single \*dumbest\* idea of bringing the final sigil directly into torghast, and we just.. did it. Not a single question asked. Even the guy we saved scolded us for the incredibly stupid plan!
the weekly quest in naxxramas to hand kel'thuzad's phylactery over to a completely trustworthy stranger remains the funniest bit of fourth wall breaking ever. why did you *think* he keeps coming back every weekly reset?
WoW pcs would destabilise the world for some exp and gold.
Who else gonna do this shit?
Nathanos was the only NPC in the game that talked to us like the fucking unhinged lunatics we are and everyone hated him for it.
Reminds me of in Shadowlands where both the Jailer and us were looking for the Primus Sigil and instead of leaving it lost to time we restore his memory, hunt for it and find it, only to essentially lose it immediately.
We lost hard several times in Legion starting with the Broken Shore.
Rip varian
And Tirion.
Did we lose Vol'jin there too?
Voljin got stabbed by a quest mob on the broken shore and died from the wound later im pretty sure
Varian tanked half the raid mobs (right outside) only to be disenchanted for TBC dust.
Awesome fucking death scene
Speaking of people getting dusted, I felt we lost hard too when they quickly did away with Arthas by turning him into 30 anima right at the end. Such a legendary character deserved much better.
That was kinda the point, I believe. Arthas the prince, to death knight, to the Lich King... and ultimately, to nothing. I thought it was a rather poignant moment. A man with so much potential to good who ends up causing immense, almost unquantifiable, suffering. Ultimately, he is slain and defeated and his "essence" is diminished to nonexistence. I wasn't sure if it was out of punishment or simply a consequence of all the horrors he had wrought upon Azeroth, but I actually felt sad for the character... whom I am only familiar with through my own readings of the wikis and WoW. Can only imagine someone who has played all the WC games leading up to that.
That's a romantic way of looking at it, I guess. Honestly, it didn't even feel like a lore thing like that, to me. More like they wanted to end the expansion, the community was kind of wondering if they were ever going to do anything about him and as a sort of closure, they did that. Glad they gave it an end regardless but it came off more as a rushed job than a proper end, imo.
To me it just felt insulting tbh. Nothing epic, no melancholy, no fight etc. he just became a disenchanted green item. There was no epic final scene to give one of the most iconic characters his end, he had a really good ending back in WotLK but then they brought him back in SL and made it a wet fart, I mean just compare the ICC cutscene to the SL cutscene. Varian died in a "stupid" way as well but at least he was a badass until the end trying to save Azeroth. Even Garrosh's final moment in SL was way more impactful than Arthas'.
The Shadowlands story wasn't about Arthas though, not really, it was about Sylvanas. Arthas got his ending in Wrath, he was just there because of how heavily tied to him Sylvanas is.
You would think though a character so tied to Sylvanas’ story would get more than well nothing
Don't even bother, everyone ignores Vol'jin in favor of Varian, ypu even see it in the comments "Vol'jin got stabbed by a quest mob, Varian tanked half the raid"
I feel like everytime Vol'jin's mentioned there's a justified round of "Blizzard failed the character and killed him off lazily".
Vol'jin's story at least had an interesting turn in Shadowlands, provided you played through the Ardenweld campaign. Still just added to thr list of Horde leaders who got the shaft though.
Shafted so the Special Cool Girl Sylvanas could be promoted to Warchief despite not being someone literally anyone outside of the Forsaken would willingly follow.
Extremely justified! He was Warchief for the expansion where you're not on the fucking planet, and he shows up at the end to check out your base and see your cool boats Blizzard literally can't undo how bad they handled Vol'jin, because even a retcon won't fix that I had to experience that bullshit live at the peak of my time playing Warcraft.
God, Legion was so peak…The start of it especially made you feel SO many emotions.
Legion was the apex imo.
Dude the best, having you carve your way through just to have that dramatic wow changing death right at the start of the expac, I’ll always say what a great lead up
Arthas just kills us when we get his hp low enough. He could have done it at any time, too.
Also halls of reflection where the only objective is to escape the Lich King.
We didn't lose. We just advanced in the opposite direction!
What happened in ICC was literally Arthas’ entire plan. He actually DID kill us and was in the process of making us scourge when Tirion took out the sword. Without a literal deus ex machina arthas wins lol
Literally divine intervention (the concept not the spell) saved the players.
The fun part is he asked the light for one final blessing. And then a few expansions later he gets fucking rocked because the light said "damn bro, you said back in Northrend that would be the last time!" RIP Tirion
His master plan was foiled by... *Checks notes.* A paladin having conviction and getting power from the Light. ...I don't think his plan was great.
Tirion asked for one final blessing, he got it, and when he asked for another on the broken shore he got fucking obliterated. The light doesn't play.
Sometimes you gotta learn to sound less cool and ask for like a dozen more blessings.
Bubble was still on cd
I still think he should have died at the end of ICC. His death would have been far more deserving if he died resurrecting the raid team and killing arthas than to some random demon 4 expansions later just so he can hand off Ashbringer to every paladin in the game.
Nah he lost to an ultimate level of holy power.
*Sighs* Microtransactions man. Every damn time.
Ha, jokes on him. My dk \*really\* did not want to be back under his control and survived the one shot mechanic back in the day. I still remember people yelling at me in vent to stop hitting Arthas because apparently if you killed him, you wouldn't get credit for the kill, but he'd be dead in the lockout.
“Local Death Knight Literally Too Angry to Die.” *The Red Rage has consumed him in his moment of triumph, he is literally unstoppable, Tirion reportedly holding him back in a full nelson while also monologuing.*
LighT GrAnT MeeEEEeee rfgg onE FinAaAAL BLeSSiInGggrgg
All according to the Jailer's plan
Arthas and Argus are currently the only wow characters that kill us and it's canon. We needed Eonar's (a titan) help to get back up and defeat Argus.
There's a Horde quest in Azshara where we die as well. We go to help some blue dragon that's in love with a spirit healer and have to go to the spirit realm.
Does it actually kill us or just separates the spirit from the body? Found [a quick video of the quest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfKHc4PpYnI) and while you enter the portal and drop down from considerable height and split from your body, the character window doesn't show the player as dead
And that's why the lich king is undoubtedly the best boss they've ever made. Literally the pinnacle of wow.
Well, except the part right after that where Tirion whips out a deus ex machina and Arthus loses... Like that part is still cannon - the good guys beat Arthas.
I think the argument is WE lose though. We were supposed to be the chosen champions of the Argent crusade and oops, it literally was the Lich King's plan all along and now we are dead and about to be brainwashed into lackeys. TIRION wins...only to not be saved by the light in Legion because he's called in his huge final favor to save us and stop Arthas. That results in things getting messy enough that Varian and Vol'jin both die, spiralling everything which... They later tried to say was the Jailer's plan all along but unlike Arthas, where we could see how things led to what he wanted, the Jailer clearly hadn't existed in their minds for that to actually work.
We kind of awakened an old god in Nazjatar
Only a little, though.
Just a little old god awakening. As a treat.
Oopsie!
Arthas, in 5-man dungeon, and in ICC. Without Jaina or Lights intervention, we would've been subjected into being scourge puppets. Legion intro, we assaulted Temple of Sargeras and lost both Varian and Vol'jin.
Tirion as well
When you think about it, the legií assault is such a tragic loss, it's refreshing for the story Yea it was a huge meta blunder to lose Varian and Voljin bcs blizzard failed to give us characters that we loved even half like them but still
Or Sylvanas. If you were horde, you do that entire dungeon series with Sylvanas and she is the one that saves your booty cheeks.
We lose in dawn of the infinites. Even going back in the second half to try and undo our loss, we just end up losing in a different way and iridikron wins.
It was a tally in the “that’ll probably come back to bite us later” category
I mean, Iridikron practically says "You won't see me again until the final installment of the World Soul Trilogy" after that, so I would guess he's coming back. Then again, Wrathion wasn't in Legion, so who knows what Blizzard will do in 6+ years.
I'm a little surprised no one has mentioned the Wrathgate.
fair, Amazing cinematic too
*Did you think we had forgotten... did you think we had forgiven?*
This scene is what got me to roll Forsaken
Everyone lost there.
Arthas didnt
that was a tough one. that cinematic messed me up as a kid.
We lose alot in Zandalar. 1. The ritual in Vol'dun is completed 2. We lose alot of loa including Rezan 3. We slow down the blood trolls and make new alliances in Nazmir but I wouldn't say we win until we come back later to kill G'huun All this culminates in a big battle in Zuldazar where king Rastakan has to make a sacrificial deal just to keep the kingdom alive. Know all of this isn't technically a loss but it's a Pyrrhic victory.
Alliance story: Rise and repair of Kul'tiras. Horde story: Decline and ransacking of Zandalar.
The WoW storyline is pretty much a chain of pyrrhic victories. Every time we win, it’s generally at a great cost.
Like when the Burning Legion killed the leaders of both the horde and the alliance and we had to retreat at the start of the expansion?
I have to say, it was a refreshing change of pace to see the Horde and Alliance immediately agree to a truce and throw absolutely everything they had at the Serious Problem from the start. It was so nice that the writing was just straightforward and reasonable. No petty disagreements from the outset, no angry leader shrugging off attempted diplomacy to do it their own way, no sending in a ragtag group of mercenaries or special forces. They just did the most logical thing in the world: attempt to utterly crush the invasion before the enemy could really dig in. It just so happened that their best wasn't enough. That hyped me up so much.
Jaina literally quit the Kirin Tor and disappeared the entire expansion because the Horde were allowed back into Dalaran.
The Alliance and Horde immediately broke that truce when Genn decided it was time to wage war on the Horde in the Broken Isles and Sylvanas was more than happy to return the favor the entire time. Yes, I get it Greymane's forces hold this warden tower. I will break their ranks and show no mercy. Legion is won not by the Horde or Alliance but by the order halls and the army of light. Jaina is a piss baby and quits the Kirin Tor because they let the Horde back in (reminder, she indiscriminately killed every blood elf she could find in the purging only years earlier which is the only reason they weren't there anymore) BFA begins because those tensions never relax (because Sylvanas doesn't want them to). We then fight that extremely costly war which in canon leaves the Horde and Alliance both completely depleted and unable to really continue the war which leads into shadowlands which we deal with by the skin of our teeth and necessitate blizzard doing the time jump to dragonflight just to give the world 'breathing room' for the first time since the time gap between Warcraft 3 and 1.0 WoW.
in one of the ice crown dungeons, the final boss is the lich King, and all you do is run from him, clearing mobs and such. in the end he chokes jaina/sylvanas (not sexual), and you barely escape (sexual). you do suffer minor set backs in quest zones. freshest in my memory is that the bald night elf lady technically beats you early on, though you do come back to win in round 2 later on at the end. also we fail in uldum when the time dragons destroy the artifact you came for. we certainly don't lose when it's important though lol
Wrath of the Lich King [GONE SEXUAL]
Arthas, Rise of the Sex King?
Red Room Citadel
Us barely escaping (sexually) from Arthas was all part of the Jailer’s master plan
(Sexual) 🤣
Literally every expansion. Normally multiple times. People seem to focus on the fact that our world has never been annihilated as a proof we always win. We've never lost against a world-ending threat, sure, but we've certainly lost plenty. BfA, Eternal Palace - we're tricked into letting out N'zoth. Huge L. Shadowlands, zone questlines - Denathrius is uncovered too late and beats us. Tears open a massive funnel of anima to the Maw so big it changes the Oribos skybox. Next patch, we don't stop Sylvanas fast enough and the Jailer expands the Maw to Oribos, walks through a portal with Anduin, and has his prize. The Jailer gets non-stop dubs the entire expac, he just loses in the final hour. We can go back earlier, too. Icecrown, we lose - Arthas lured us there and he one-shots us all. It takes a literal miracle to save the day. Previously in the expansion, at Halls of Reflection, the final boss fight is to run the fuck away because we can't beat Arthas. There's also the WoD opening. We rattle the cage a bit too much and the entire Iron Horde comes for us. We bail as fast as we can and even get a debuff that makes us run faster but takes away mounting while we run for our lives. I'd also consider the final raid an L - we kill the big bad, but he launches Gul'dan into our timeline and starts the most intense Legion invasion to date. I could go on. In WoW, we take L after L after L. We just happen to usually win the final fights.
The whole Warcraft setting exists because various factions keep getting duped by agents of the Burning Legion. And when you think about it, the Burning Legion did so much damage to Light-aligned forces throughout its history that Sargeras kind of got baited by the voidlords, in a way.
>We bail as fast as we can and even get a debuff that makes us run faster but takes away mounting while we run for our lives. TBF, the first mission portrays you as, essentially, a suicide squad only meant to close the Dark Portal from the other side. You're not really *supposed* to survive. Then they make the same mistake that MoP makes where they go "also, you're trapped!" but in a world where mages and portals exist, so you pretty much immediately open up a portal to Stormwind/Orgrimmar to build your garrison.
During the pre-patch for BFA on Alliance side, Ally players are tasked with trying to save as many civilians as humanely possible within a time limit while inside a burning Teldrassil-- no matter how much you do or how fast you do it, you can literally always see a fire that needs to be put out or an NPC to be saved as your screen turns black (PC passes out from smoke). It was rigged from the start that you just -couldn't- save everyone/everything during that quest.
This night elf wept playing that part.
Seriously, I cried about this quest 😭 I played so many alliance alts thinking maybe I need to be faster/save people in a certain order to get everyone, but it's the entire Darnassus that's alit in flames, I was doomed from the start :( I thought the quest was REALLY well written to emphasize that the Alliance/PC is losing here. It felt very severe. It felt awful yet super good to know the PC isn't always the savior
Night Elven players have helped a satyr do evil things twice, once in vanilla darnassus and once in Hyjal questing.
Hey now it wasn't just us night elves!
Arthas could kill us at any point during Wrath, he was just toying with us the whole time. Garrosh escaping to Draenor, then Gul'dan coming to our Azeroth leading directly to the Legion invading again. That in itself is kind of a loss, but then the Broken Shore where so many are killed and everyone retreats allowing the Legion to gain a greater foothold.
The Sanctum of Domination raid in Shadowlands was intended as an alpha strike against Sylvanas/The Jailer, but The Jailer escapes during the final boss fight and not much was accomplished other than stopping Sylvanas and Kel'thuzad from being annoying.
Hey we got to make sure that Nerzul and Garrosh were perma dead tho
Dunno about you but with my impressive 800 rating I lose quite often
Does Argus count? Then yeah. Does the Stabbing of Azeroth count? Then yeah.
Taking away demons' immortality, effectively disbanding the Burning Legion, and capturing Sargeras are *absolutely* victories. Azeroth could have been destroyed by Sargeras, but our intervention made it only a wound.
Only a WOON
How many turtles *didn’t* make it to the water, champion? How many?
When one boss fight results in two terrible expansions, that'd definitely count as a loss
Technicly we lose in Eternal Palace. The goal was to prevent Azshara from setting N'zoth free. While we defeat her we fail that goal.
I mean there’s a giant fkin sword in Azeroth. I feel like that’s a big L
The broken shore opening in Legion We straight up lost 2 faction leaders and Tirion and got nothing in return
This is definitely the biggest disaster the heroes have faced in lore (in WoW at least, some events of WC1 and 2 could be argued to be worse for their individual factions)
Well, there was that time we mercilessly beat up Peons with the dreaded BOOTERANG!
Work is da poop! No more!
We failed to stop Rasageth releasing the primals. We also failed stopping azshara releasing nzoth.
First one isnt a fail. We planned it so i could get a legendary
you're tricked by an npc and get the title gullible
My favourite title.
Broken Shore was a fucking blood bath. So many men lost. I happened to be there. I don't think I'll ever be the same mentally coming off thay beach head.. and many of my brothers feel the exact same way.
It was a dark day whether you wore red or blue. We were so close to unity, then it all fell apart and we lost the best of us.
To be frank, the last time I ever felt like we truly lost was the beginning of Legion. Assaulted the broken shore with everything we had, lost two major leaders, a good number of our troops, and were pushed on the back foot while the legion invaded our territory. Which placed the comeback to the broken isles and pushing them all the way to even Argus felt so good
R.I.P. Vol'Jin
And Cairne
Dawn of the Infinite: we literally beat Iridikron in a fair and square fight, but the infinites successfully change the timeline, therefore Murozond rises as a result so Chromie literally rollback the fight to prevent everything from happening. Iridikron escapes, becomes stronger than ever and he's now a major threat in TWW and we have yet to face him again. And something tells me the next encounter is not gonna be so easy.
Never forget the wrath gate
> or a quest giver thoroughly outplays us and tricks us into doing stupid/evil shit that we don't get to make up for. This happens a lot, depending on what you mean by "make up for". In Teldrassil there's a satyr that night elves give a bunch of reagents by slaughtering forest critters. They turn him into a frog temporarily afterwards and that was the end of it in vanilla, but in Cataclysm he moved to Darkshore and spread a fel taint throughout the wildlife as revenge for the humiliation, killing/corrupting a shitton of animals. In BC we were tricked to help Teron Gorefiend free himself from his prison by 'killing' ghosts of his victims and then were possessed by him to kill his warden before he went and joined Illidan (for some reason that i dont think they've ever explained). In Wrath, Drakuru tricked us into cleansing Drak'tharon Keep of any remaining resistance and securing it as a Scourge stronghold, which it still is to this day lorewise, even post-Shadowlands. Speaking of Shadowlands, there's a quest-chain in Korthia where we help a dreadlord in disguise hunt down Fate-scribe Roh-Kalo, who *was* successfully hiding from the Jailer because he knew very important things. As a result, Fatescribe got captured, dominated, and turned into a raid boss - and probly told the Jailer exactly where to find the Sepulcher. There's definitely more, but thats just off the top of my head.
The Wrathgate was a total loss, literal worst case scenario.
The Horde have lost every war they have fought against the Alliance after the first - so if you play Horde the answer is yes. Do we as the players really face that consequence? Nah, not really. We take part in all the war crimes under Garrosh and Sylvanas until they are mean to our next faction leader (Vol'Jin or Baine respectively) then we decide we're heroes again and siege orgrimmar and depose the warchief only for them to be dealt with in the next expansion. But we still lose, the horde lost those wars. The Alliance has also lost - but in smaller less meaningful ways. The Alliance has lost Theramore, the Alliance has lost Southshore, the Alliance has lost its foothold in Andorhal, the Alliance has lost Teldrassil, the Alliance has lost all of Darkshore. But the kicker? They have all that back - off screen of course. During Legion and BFA the mission tables explain how the Alliance take all these places they have lost through cataclysm til BFA back. This isn't reflected in the world which is largely time locked to Cataclysm with exception of the few areas that have moved forward due to BFA phases or the events like retaking Undercity and Gilneas - but they have reclaimed these things. Similarly the Horde has taken back some of the stuff it has lost. It has Undercity (well, the ruins above it) back after Sylvanas plagued the whole place to spite the Alliance. It has also secured its land routes between Thunder Bluff and Orgrimmar back after the Alliance were besieging it in the war - but it has also never pushed the Alliance back out of its territory since the war. The Alliance still has a staging point within Durotar and the Barrens to harass the Horde if they ever go to war again. The Horde has all but pulled out of Ashenvale in-lore, with only Zoramgar Strand remaining. There is probably still a logging operation, but it is likely not sanctioned and under constant attack by night elves while the Horde looks the other way.
I would like to think that the fight against N’zoth was a loss and wasn’t actually him but just a mind trip
Ask Khadgar why everyone keeps messing things up for him and his definition of order, he has a very strong opinion!
Freeing Guldan in the WoD intro was the biggest L we took It killed Varian, Voljin, Ysera, Cenarius, Ursoc, Tyrion and maybe some more I forgot in legion Put the events of shadowlands in motion via the Argus kill and Silvanas became warchief. Then we got the whole 4th War and probably more events because of sargeras sword sticking in azeroth
You can count all the loses here, but in the end we won because we stopped masterbrain jailer
Argus straight up murders us repeatedly and it's only through eonars magic life tree that we win. Arthas killed us all in ICC. Like canonically everyone dies. Terenas (it's yogg saron actually and I'm dying on this hill) rezzes us.
Elaborate on it being yogg please
Yogg saron is the main villain in northrend, he is just overshadowed by arthas. Yogg sarons actual body is massive, with influence in multiple zones of northrend. It's like cthun in ahn qiraj and ilgynoth and nzoth in nyalotha. Their bodies are so massive that entire rooms and corridors can exist inside them. Yoggs brain was chained in ulduar, but his body was still there underneath northrend, actively functioning. In howling fjord, grizzly hills and icecrown there are places where you see his presence. Yogg sarons blood is saronite ore. We see this in icecrown in the caves with the insane miners. His blood and then saronite ore corrupts things and is a conduit for his power. When arthas was a death knight he went thru azjol nerub to reach icecrown. Anubarak showed him the way and they were separated and arthas had to fight a huge old god looking monster with tentacles and a stationary central point and all. Anubarak was surprised arthas survived and called it a forgotten one. This can be presumed to be one of yoggs presences. Like he corrupted the tree in grizzly hills, he also had influence deep under azjol nerub. After arthas became the lich king he built all his fortresses and walls and the citadel out of saronite. He made additions to his armor with saronite. He built his entire capital with the blood of an old god. The blood that is shown to have corrupting capabilities in small amounts. He built a castle out of it and covered himself in it. Yogg shows us arthas torturing bolvar during his brain phase. "He will learn, no king rules forever" is what yogg says as we trying to escape. "I am the lucid dream, the monster in your nightmares, the fiend of a thousand faces, cower before my true form. Bow down before the god of death". Yogg says this as he emerges after phase 1 and Sara becomes a valkyr and rises above yoggs body. He is the lucid dream and the monster of nightmares as he was the first old god to breach the emerald dream with his corrupted tree in northrend, creating the emerald nightmare. He is the fiend of a thousand faces as he has influenced and manipulated key events in azeroths history. He created the curse of flesh. He is the god of death because outside of his brain in ulduar, the largest concentration of his power is icecrown glacier. Arthas built everything with saronite. All that death, all or the scourge machinery and weapons, is saronite. When arthas is beaten and frostmourne shatters, all the souls "escape?" Sure it looks that way but why is Terenas so much more powerful than the rest? Uther makes sense, he is the lightbringer. Terenas was just the king, he had no actual power like uther. The ghost we see in icecrown as terenas is yogg saron. "At long last, my son, no king rules forever" He's just that powerful. All the things yogg did mentioned above, he did after his brain was shackled in ulduar. So we raided ulduar and hit him around a bit and threw Valanyr at him and he went back to sleep. Yoggs still active, he's just not going to be at full power. When we revisit ulduar in legion, his essence is still lingering. Yogg saron is the ghost terenas menethil. Yogg was manipulating arthas. When frostmourne breaks, yogg is free to rise in northrend unchallenged as his influence is insidious and he's presumed defeated. He rezzes us because we are needed for the old gods plans. Arthas was testing us so we could become his strongest scourgelords, yogg was testing us at the same time. Telling us there must always be a lich king is because a wild feral scourge would be an obstacle for yogg saron. He's manipulated one lich king, he can do it again. Now after the jailer used ICC as an azerite conduit, we aren't too sure as to the damage it did. So yoggs presence there now is hard to guess. However he's got all of northrend, and if his presence is still there, he now has a DIRECT path to the heart of azeroth that the jailer ripped open using the forge of souls under icecrown. The world within won't just be about xalatath. Yogg is coming back.
there are 3 raidfights where the Champion and his companions die/failed and only survive because of an outer source saving them (Lich King kills the Raid and we get saved by Tyrons last blessing, Argus/Sargeras kills us during the Argus fight and we get revived by Eonar, N'zoth gains full controll over you at the end of the fight and Azeroth breaks you out of it) there are multiple quest/dungeon/raidfights where we dont stop something bad from actually happening, last time was in the first raid in Dragonflight where we defeat Razageth but failed to stop her freeing the other Incarnates and in the Dawn of the Infinites dungeon where we had to chose bettwrn stopping Iridikron or Saving Nozdormu and decided to do the 2nd option so yeha, it happens
Halls of Reflection, we have to run from Arthas and the only objective is literally do not let him catch us, reach the airship so we can get out of there.
Legion intro, dawn of the infinites, arthas and Argus fight are losses, and all but the first required outside help to give us another chance.
Dragonflight first Tier Raid. We let all the dragons out because our fat asses are too slow.
We do but not massively. I hope that at the end of last Titan we win while loosing everything and new saga starts somewhere other than Azeroth.
I mean... Technically we lose when we defeat Sylvanas because the Jailor can only go where he needs to go because we did what he needed to be done
Dazar'Alor if you're a Horde player. You literally get forced to sack your own expansion capital in Alliance cosplay while they not only get away scott free, but Mechatorque gets to "dying was merely a setback" himself into becoming even more powerful fuck that raid
We lost a lot of friends along the way
The Horde in Second half of Battle for Dazaralor. After Rastakhan gets merced by Alliance adventurers the goal of the Horde was now to intercept them and go full PVP on them as revenge. The alliance decided that to prevent wasting the lives of Adventurers/champions they would just sacrifice a good part of the invading force to slow down the Horde champions. While the Horde sent the suicide squad to their graves, put King Mekkatorque on life support and sent Jaina packing the Alliance ultimately succeeded on all their goals and Horde lost all of theirs.
Yea everytime you play pvp or wipe in a raid
Technically Neptulon gets captured when we try to free him in Abyssal maw dung, so we fail to save him at the end and never free him cuz the tie in raid never happened, so later he just escaped on his own without our help, soo I mean we sort of lost there with no redemption.
I mean if you think about it most major world ending events are created by a list of loses only for us to finally get a win when it truly mattered most.
A lot of people have given responses for the losses, but I wanted t address the part where you asked about quests where you're tricked into doing some evil stuff. There are actually lots of quests where we're duped into or convinced to do something evil/cruel/wrong, or literally are asked to do something terrible outright. Some examples: The Badlands quest line where you help a red dragon torture a black dragon. The infamous quest in Hillsbrad where you can choose to dig up buried alive humans or execute them. In wrath, you're sent to kill blue dragon allied targets and two (one human and one troll) at least were there by force and are actually trying to sabotage malygos from within. It's extra messed up what happens after, you return a letter you find on their person to be sent back to their family. Their relative then sends you a letter in the mail thanking you for finding the letter, not knowing you were the one who murdered them. God, so so many questionable choices made in Pandaria, the Landfall questlines on both sides in particular. I believe in BFA you're asked to kill some little raptors which then gets you in deep crap with Jani the loa and he schools you on how crappy that was. There are more but those were just from the top of my head. So many times I've turned in quests and just felt like a jerk afterward lol
From the top of my head. - Wrathgate was a failure back in WOTLK. - Hall of reflections was also a failure. (Even if we got a bunch of info) - The battle at the end of Jade Forest in MoP was a failure of massive magnitude, I would argue. - The Broken Shore was a HUGE failure. (Due to a part of the Rogue Orderhall campain story) - Most of Val'sharah was a major failure, with Xavius pushing us back constantly, and winning more and more ground every moment. (Honestly, one of the reasons I love that zone. It actually feels as if we might fail, even if that is not happening because story) - The Eternal Palace was a failure, we did defeat Azshara but N'zoth got freed. (Got "killed" a chapter later but eh) - Our First venture into the maw to save the leaders was a failure. - Our attempts preventing a possessed Anduin from taking the sigils was a failure. - Sanctum of Domination was a failure. - Vaults of the Incarnates was a failure. So... yeah. :P We have failed a few times. Not a complete loss, but it is something.
Not a Raid but if you played Horde in BFA you lost the war.
We lost at the Vault of incarnates, lost at the first battle of the legion invasion
If you play as a night elf.... yes we lose. Blizzard hates us.
Yeah, it's called Shadowlands.
The Lich King twice, in Halls of Reflection and atop Icecrown Citadel. Argus. The Broken Shore when Dreadlords trick us into an ambush and kill a bunch of the main characters. Sylvanas atop Torghast/Oribos.
Broken Shore is a pretty universal L
We definitely lost our minds in the maw
Don't we retreat from Arthas in HoR?
argus straight up kills everyone until eonar intervenes and revives us all
I mean we technically never beat Arthas. Tyrion had to break the sword for the souls to hold him down so we could kill him.
I'm pretty sure we lost in wod at the final raid. Sure, we killed Archemond, but his goal succeeded, and Gul dam prepared the world for the legions return.
Vault of the incarnates, sanctum of domination, and icecrown citadel We failed to stop the release of the incarnates, we straight up fail to actually kill sylvanas, the jailer actually gets away with his prize and just leaves her behind, and in ICC the lich king straight up kills us. Its just in the end everything works out in our favor
There is that one wotlk dungeon where we're in icecrown to steal something I think, and then at the end the lichking shows up and our plans fail, making us flee for our lives in the last boss encounter which is just running away. Also, Ysera being corrupted by Xavius in Legion of course. She eventually came back a few expansions later, but at the time it still felt like a massive loss. She's not exactly a deep character, but she's been with us since wotlk and especially cataclysm.
The most recent relevant 1. We, the gullible champions that we are, released xal'atath. Who knows what mayhem she'll unleash in The War Within.
Even going as far back as TBC when killing illidan. We lost hard, because it creates the Ilidari and Demon hunter arc and now they're currently ruining tank meta, so we all lose.
The jailer won all along, he's still here in the shadows plotting his next move
Given how blizzard's storytelling ever since cataclysm has basically been: AND HERE'S THE NEW BIG BAD GUY WHO'S SECRETLY BEEN MANIPULATING EVERYTHING INCLUDING THE LAST BAD GUY AND THIS IS ALL PART OF THEIR PLAN MUAHAHAHA *twirls moustache*.... we have canonically lost absolutely every engagement ever, because even when we win the next expansion retcons it into being part of the new guys plan.
The beginning assault against the legion during the legion expansion. Ended with Varian and Voljin both dead and us having no choice but to search for more powerful ways to vanquish the legion and even bring demon hunters back into the horde and alliance after the events of TBC
Alternate Gul'dan escaping after we defeated Archimond in Helfire citadel gave us the entire Legion expansion.
There are two boss fights where we canonically die: Lich King and Argus. Against the Lich King, Tirion shatters Frostmourne with the Ashbringer, and the spirits within resurrect us. Against Argus, Eonar herself resurrects us.
Theramore? Voljin?
Broken Shore we got our shit kicked in and lost 2 heroes
Given the three part format of the Worldsoul Saga, and the very Star Wars/MCU key art and story structure, I absolutely guarantee that Midnight will be a total downer ending and the first time we "lose" an entire expansion. Which I think will be great.
Halls of reflection we straight up run from lich king
We’ve never won. We just steadily kick the can down the road. Sometimes we lose that can and we find a bigger harder can and kick that instead.
Yeah, several different times: In raids: * Vault of the Incarnates, we kill Raszageth but she frees her fam * Sanctum of Domination, we fail to beat Sylvanas and we also fail to stop the Jailor * The Eternal Palace, we beat up Aszhara but she succeeds in releasing N’Zoth * Battle of Dazar’Alor, the Alliance is able to invade Dazar’Alor, loot the royal treasury, kill King Rastakhan and escape without losing any major characters; then Jaina gets bored of fighting Horde players after freezing their ship and ports away. The Horde side loses * Canonically the Alliance wins the Icecrown Gunship Battle (but that’s not reflected in Horde playthroughs of the raid) In expansion narratives/notable story beats: * BfA starts out as an Alliance vs Horde conflict, but the Horde implodes and loses the war. Some Horde players eventually turn on Sylvanas and kind of don’t lose as badly, but the Sylvanas loyalist players pretty much do * Horde players canonically lose both warfronts (not reflected in their playthroughs) * Horde players lose the Battle for Lordaeron * Alliance players lose the War of Thorns * We straight up get washed in the first invasion of the Broken Shore and both faction leaders die * MoP starts out as an Alliance vs Horde conflict, but the Horde starts a civil war and Orgrimmar gets invaded by the Alliance. Horde players have turned against Garrosh by this point so debatable if any players lost * The Alliance loses the Battle for Gilneas * We get ambushed by Forsaken acting under Sylvanas’ orders at the Wrathgate and gassed * Halls of Reflection has us trying to steal Frostmourne but Arthas shows up and chases us out of his crib There are many quests where we get outsmarted by an evil questgiver or that straight up end in defeat. I’m not going to try to go over them all