Harronir Lore Controversy — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:03] inoffensive addition to the Warcraft setting. And of course, the Warcraft setting is one that probably does need to grow. They didn't blow people's And hey, they did look pretty cool in the War Within cinematic. But now,

[00:18] things have changed a little bit and it has finally happened. The big Har'ani drama has came. And this is all because from the very beginning controversy was always simmering just below the surface of this race's lore. And no, I'm not

[00:32] talking about the community discovery that the Har'ani were inspired by a race from an entirely different franchise, Kingdoms of Amalur, called the Herenar. Seems a bit in the nose. No, what I'm talking about though is this. This is a

[00:45] quest chain in Midnight's patch 12.07. It is named Revelations. So, the obvious question is what's being revealed? Well, what's being revealed is the trolls, elves, and Har'ani are all descended from the same people. That they are, at

[00:58] least according to the game, all of one source. Perhaps even all one people. Now, in a way, parts of that are something we've always known. Night elves and trolls. But the issue, once again, seems to come down to how

[01:12] Blizzard have executed the story. Now, the real controversy sparked from this animated cutscene and at the very least threw my Twitter feed into absolute chaos. Now, it presented a view of history that upended the origins of

[01:25] races that we've been engaging with for decades in the Warcraft setting. So, this has clearly became a problem for the community. Some are asking how you solve a problem like the Har'ani. Others, well, are asking why Blizzard

[01:39] keeps creating odd problems that seemingly don't need to exist. And today, we are asking is this our lore-loving community going completely hysterical over nothing? Or does this, for many, feel like another step in the

[01:54] wrong direction of Blizzard's handling of Azeroth. So, whether you're in the trenches fighting for the moral soul of troll kind, defending the ancient heritage of the Kaldorei, or just wondering what's got everyone's dickers

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[03:37] Haronnir were introduced in the War Within, and based on their design had some sort of connection to both trolls and elves. Seemed rather obvious. But through that whole expansion, it actually stayed a mystery. We really

[03:51] found out nothing. But then, in Midnight's Alpha, several lore objects, in particular these Har'aniir murals, reference the Har'aniir splitting off from lesser trolls to seek the world soul below. Now, thankfully, Blizzard

[04:06] rewrote that by the time it went live, and lesser trolls was eventually changed to say, quote, "Those who decided to remain on the surface." But this to us actually still did check out. Some trolls remain on the surface, some go

[04:19] underground. It's not that complicated. Now, we still don't know how dark trolls and night elves fit into things, but we'll get there soon. And that's because we can skip ahead to the story of patch 12.0.7. This is where Hagar, an elder of

[04:34] the Harathi, invites the movers and shakers of both elf and troll kind over to Harandahr. Many people come. Zul'jin, who has actually met dark trolls on Zandalar, is there. Then there's the Adrin, who watched her Sindorei soldiers

[04:47] in Suramar taunt the Kaldorei sentinels with tiki masks, telling them the night elves were actually descended from trolls, which is a little bit of a strange burn, because of course Liadrin's people are themselves

[05:00] descended from night elves, so you can kind of do the math there. It's pretty weird. Next though, the Amani trolls show up, then the night elves show up, the nightborne show up, and with everyone there, well, Hagar tells them

[05:13] that they are all descended from a common ancestor. And as soon as that historical context in that room immediately thought, "Yeah, we're all descended from trolls." They pretty much all know that. But that's actually not

[05:27] what Hagar was about to show them. She brought them to one of their magical vision-giving murals and presented a vision, by which I mean this animation. talking.

[05:41] >> Generations upon generations ago, we Har'aniir stopped the force of the world above until we heard the call of our goddess.

[05:53] >> [music] >> Seeking her warmth, some left the forest behind, vanishing deep within the sacred hollows >> [music] >> But many Haranir remained above, and

[06:08] over time they changed, splintering apart as millennia passed, splintering apart as millennia passed, giving rise to mighty empires and >> That's the line people are having a problem with. Many Haranir remained

[06:24] above, and the vision shows it in the split-screen format where we see two distinctly Haranir-looking characters evolving into their branches, troll and elf kind. Now, that interpretation makes the Haranir the origin of every troll

[06:40] and every elf on Azeroth. Now, this ended up not sitting right with people. forced a response from a Blizzard developer, which I will get on to in just a second. But first, you need the lore as it was understood before this

[06:55] revelation because it does paint a different story. Now, if you're not a this and thinking, "What what's up? What what what what's the drama? Why is over this? What's up? What's the big deal?" Well, to put it simply, after the

[07:10] events of, say, Shadowlands, where Zovaal the Jailer was what we would call a piece of parasitic lore, where to get all of his relevance, he basically fed established in the Warcraft setting, people are, well, worried that Blizzard

[07:25] are once again doing that, and it's all following a track record of Blizzard not doing a great job of taking forward and paying off the lore that they had established. So, with that in mind, let's continue.

[07:41] outside of say the game manual, Warcraft's official website was actually once a touchstone for the game's lore. And it speculated openly about a connection between trolls and elves. It began with one of our earliest

[07:54] renditions of Kaldorei evolution. And here is the quote. "A primitive tribe of nocturnal humanoids were drawn by the well's strange energies and built crude homes upon its tranquil shores. Over time, the well's cosmic power affected

[08:08] the tribe, making them strong, wise, and immortal. Their skin turned various shades of violet, and they grew taller in stature. The tribe adopted the name Kaldorei, which meant children of the stars." That was pretty huge, but then

[08:23] came the big leap, that those humanoids were actually trolls. And that leap happened back in 2004, where we were equally fascinated by the dark trolls that we fought alongside when we were defending Mount Hyjal in Warcraft 3.

[08:37] Their purple skin and nocturnal nature made them seem like a natural ancestor to the night elves. The lineage was really quite clear looking. Now, another early reference comes from a vanilla lore book, which was named The Twin

[08:52] Empires. Though its history of the aqir, basically the sort of old goddish bug people used to serve the old gods way back in the day, well, its history of them has been proven wrong. So, this should be seen more as a historian's

[09:06] because it's a lore book found within the game. Now, in this book, a claim is made that a small group of a Manny trolls broke off and then settled around the Well of Eternity, eventually becoming night elves. Now, that is

[09:21] wrong, but it is proof of a connection between trolls and elves, and how that is always been something within the game. But where it next featured prominently in the lore is actually the Legion expansion. Now, I mentioned

[09:34] earlier in the video the tiki masks that the blood elves were using to taunt the night elves. Basically, that they were doing a racist and calling them a bunch of savages. Obviously, if you're one of those blood elves, say troll allies,

[09:46] you're going to feel a little bit strange about that. And if the night you wouldn't feel great as a troll, would you? But to go beyond the taunting, a solid piece of evidence actually came from a gray item called

[09:59] the crumbling ceremonial vestments. Here's what its description reads. "The markings on this robe resemble both the sign of Elune and several venerated loa spirits. This is pretty cool. It is a direct connection. We know that whoever

[10:14] wore these robes worshipped both the loa and Elune in, I suppose, some form of early half-troll, kaldorei religion." Pretty neat. But then there is Chronicle, which had the ultimate word, and it actually opened the door for the

[10:29] highborne's existence. You see, here's what we learned in Chronicle. Quote, "Yet one tribe was unconcerned with these battles for land and power. Known as dark trolls, they lived in deep caverns beneath Mount Hyjal. They

[10:43] abhorred daylight, only emerging at night. Unlike their Gurubashi and Amani cousins, they longed for a peaceful connection to the natural world. Many of these trolls migrated toward the center of Kalimdor. In time, the dark trolls

[10:58] also discovered an enormous lake of scintillating energies, a lake they would later know as the Well of Eternity." Okay, boom. That's it. Seems pretty simple, right? Trolls ruled Kalimdor. Some were peaceful and loved

[11:13] nature and lived in caves. Those dark trolls then split into three the Well of Eternity and would eventually become night elves, then and became highborne, and of course

[11:27] those who just remained dark trolls, like say speaker Ign Nahl in Zandalar. But no, it's actually not that clean because according to this new Harinear version, the Harinear were once the united race, meaning that all trolls,

[11:43] dark trolls included, evolved from them, which is a little weird because the initial inclusion of the Harinear actually made complete sense with loads of established lore. So, it seemed a bit odd for Blizzard to change it for

[11:57] seemingly no reason. Let me continue. So, the way the Harinear present this to us is that there were the original progenitor Harinear. One group of them then basically evolved into the dark trolls, then those dark trolls found the

[12:10] caves under Highmountain and later still the Well of Eternity. And with that, you can see a little bit of a problem. Putting the Harinear first challenges what a lot of people thought about their own race, about their own characters in

[12:23] the game. And it leaves the whole idea of dark trolls being central to Kaldorei evolution in a bit of a funny place. But there is a solution to this, and it there is a solution to this, and it comes from a Blizzard developer.

[12:38] onto the official forums, and of course, onto X, a lovely place to have a nice chat with friendly people. The community discourse has raged on since the cinematic and quest line dropped, and it actually went to the point where senior

[12:51] quest designer Keith Riley stepped in to try and clarify things. This is the important part of what he said, quote, "The cinematic is an in-world Harinear presentation from a Harinear point of view via a Harinear vision. It is not

[13:05] Blizzard's presentation on the absolute truth of Harinear elf troll genealogy, though I'm sure some of you would enjoy a BlizzCon panel titled as such." Orwenna says that Harinear visions may contain missing or inaccurate details,

[13:19] but they cannot lie. So, the Harinear believe the general idea of the vision is the truth, that there were ancient Haronnir who stayed in the surface and they then became the modern trolls and elves. So, that's what our Blizzard dev

[13:35] said. He's promoting the idea that the Haronnir and their murals are unreliable narrators, or perhaps I should say unreliable interpreters, or maybe a more accurate word is interpreters who look at things that cannot lie but do so

[13:52] through their own world view. And because of that this new explanation is basically just what they happened to think went on in the past. There may be missing or inaccurate details, but as far as the Haronnir are concerned, the

[14:05] general message is true. Now, some players have really struggled with that and from a presentation perspective, I think you can see why. As a storytelling device, these visions have been our window into history. They were used in

[14:19] this very past just moments after Hagar's announcement to convince Zul'jan that they were all one people. Then, Orwenna showed him an accurate vision of Kith'ix fighting Ul'tek, the core mystery of the upcoming patch 12.1. But

[14:32] even just seeing that vision is confusing to Zul'jan. He essentially wonders how the Haronnir can receive visions from the Imani. I mean, it doesn't make sense, does it? Well, Orwenna actually does explain how. She

[14:44] says that the Haronnir receive visions from all of their kin. Meaning that, yeah, trolls and Haronnir are considered kin. Now, with all that covered, let's go to our own with these weird Haronnir vision murals. Our first interactions in

[15:00] the Den of Echoes were seeing Titan keepers and Nerubians and it showed the Harathi's journey to Harandor in great detail. It also showed us how and why the Haronnir made their murals. They explain that stories change over time.

[15:15] They're subjective, they change with every telling and eventually they will fade. So, they asked themselves, "How do we make our experiences as immortal as stone and as truthful as the land itself?" Their solution is this: [music]

[15:31] to use the magical Alun Dust to make enchanted paint. Paint that they say enchanted paint. Paint that they say defies time itself. So, we have got time-defying, vision-giving murals that, according to a senior quest designer,

[15:44] are just the Harronir's perspective. But, of course, they can't lie even though they may be inaccurate. Now, of course, uh that doesn't sound very immortal as stone or truthful as the land is to me, but I suppose those

[16:00] when it came to this whole scheme with the magical time paint. Okay. So, with all this said, Harronir revolution is kind of as [snorts] confusing as ever. We basically know that we can't fully trust whatever they say to us because,

[16:14] in the end, it's just what they think. But, it also might not even matter does matter here is that people are fired up. And they're fired up about something that could have been a very cool addition to the Warcraft canon, but

[16:29] putting their favorite new toy at the heart of some of the most structural lore, which, of course, well, does remind me of a similar character that the community turned on. And no, I don't mean the Jailer. I mean Med'an.

[16:49] of weird. So, before Dragonflight, game director Ion Hazzikostas told us that the development team felt that Warcraft 3 had been thoroughly mined out. That it was basically time to expand the franchise and find new stories. Now,

[17:02] plenty fits into that category. We have the new break-off of Arathi who are at Xal'atath, a fresh spin on an old threat. We're getting void stuff, but it's not old gods. And then, of course, there's the Harronir. And that is our

[17:15] context for understanding them. They're overtly there and meant to be an addition to expand the Warcraft canon and of course also to be a part of the World Soul Saga story all while still feeling natural to the Azeroth setting.

[17:31] make them feel natural was by making them a bridge between trolls and elves. But there was a problem. There was a problem with implementing that. In fact, a few of them. So by this time Magni Bronzebeard was out as Speaker of

[17:46] Azeroth and Azeroth seemingly had a bit of a new speaker in all but name. Or Waina, this new Highborneer super cool druid. Our curiosity was piqued by the cinematic and then the actual playable Highborneer got loads of customization.

[18:00] They really did feel part troll, part elf except that now both of those races come from the Highborneer. And basically what it's felt like to people is taking your OC, which if you're not in the internet art world means original

[18:15] creation, and basically putting them center stage in the story. Now if you're yeah, Wesley Crusher." But this is a Warcraft channel and Blizzard have faced this problem before. It actually happened back in 2009. It was peak Wrath

[18:30] of the Lich King era and the Warcraft comic had wrapped up the majority of its legitimately incredible and impactful story lines. Broll Bearmantle and Valeera Sanguinar had returned Varian Wrynn to the throne of Stormwind. It was

[18:43] a major moment and it was time to set up new stories to expand the canon. So they introduced this kid called Med'an. Sounds a bit like Medivh, right? Well, yeah, it should because Medivh was his father and Garona was his mother. And

[18:59] that makes him half human, quarter orc, and a quarter draenei. So that's a bit of everything, but it's not quite all because he was also a shaman, but not just a shaman. He could also channel the light with the same temperament as

[19:12] Anduin Wrynn and even, well, wielded the arcane like his father. But that is still not all that this wonder kid could do. He was also at one point the canonical wielder of one of World of Warcraft's most impactful sticks, of

[19:26] course uh that of the Guardian, and not because he, like players, had just ground out the Splinters of Naxxramas, but no, because he was made the new Guardian of Tirisfal and therefore Azeroth's number one defender. He was so

[19:41] weird. He was brilliant, smart, compassionate, strong, uncomplicated. He was the best guy who was afraid of nothing and could do anything. Literally the best of every character with none of the rough edges, which turned him into a

[19:54] bland bland retelling of the best parts of other stories, but without the grit and sacrifice that had defined Warcraft at that time. Now, Med'an's canonicity has been all over the place. It It really has. But one consistent thing is

[20:11] the community did not engage with him, so he was forgotten. In fact, if you look for Med'an in Warcraft Chronicle, you can find him, but you can only find him in the index, where he is listed as being on page 404. So, yeah, Blizzard

[20:25] with Med'an wasn't his powers or his titles, it was that he devalued what so many people felt was important about, say, Medivh's story as the Guardian, about Garona's traumatic history with the orcs and the humans, about how magic

[20:40] should work in the setting. It was weird because on the one hand it was an honest attempt to grow the universe, but it was one that ended up cheapening everything that it touched. Now, the Harbingers, to be fair, did a fairly great job most of

[20:54] the time integrating into the existing lore, but this one lore decision, as seen in 1207 and baked into the core of their narrative, has, for many, needlessly devalued the lore of the trolls and the elves. Basically, it's

[21:11] taken what people were already invested in and felt they pretty fully understood, and it's casting a bunch of doubt and confusion. Essentially, it looks like a little bit of a parasite thing that has been put into the game

[21:23] that doesn't really, in many people's minds, deserve the prominent place that make more interesting and feel more relevant by just kind of going through the past and stitching them into things that already happened. And on its own, I

[21:37] out over this. Okay, that's a lie. I think some people would have flipped out over this. But, overall, I think the problem is that Midnight, pretty much from end game onwards in terms of its story, that it's just felt really

[21:51] underwritten. It's felt way too short. There's a lot of interesting stuff that a lot of things feel just a bit sanded down. I think it's in the context of all that and the resulting angst that this Harioner story has uh has kind of just

[22:07] blown up because, yeah, to people it does feel like Blizzard have made an OC, they've rammed it in the game, connected it to everything, and the ultimate fear is that if one day Azeroth wakes up, she won't be what we thought she was.

[22:21] Harioner and it's the Harioner first, well, um yeah, what one of one of those theories is is really quite fun. You see, previously, we had known that the see, previously, we had known that the trolls actually dated to before all the

[22:34] lot of people thought that if Azeroth was to like wake up and to have some sort of humanoid form, that it would likely be quite troll-like or troll-inspired. I am now then just imagining the Azeroth egg hatching and a

[22:47] big Harioner walking out. And uh you know what? Twitter and the lore Reddit would be really fun if that happened. It's no surprise then that this one is burning through the lore community right now. So, have we also fallen to the

[23:01] hysteria? Have we went mad or do you think Blizzard just needs to rethink how Warcraft setting? Hit up the comments below. I want to know and honestly, I think Blizzard probably wants to know as well. But, if you're curious about where

[23:15] Blizzard are taking Warcraft and the Warcraft canon next, well, check out this huge video on all of the leaks that point toward a wow 2.0.