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Dead according to lore Edit

Moved from the Village pump on 17-Apr-2009.-- Gengar orange 22x22 Beware the sneaky smile! Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:12 PM PST 17 Apr 2009

certain major lore characters like Illidan and onyxia got the status of Deceased (lore), Killable (WoW) which is all fine becaue we have in game or out of game confirmation about their death. but what about the more minor lore characters like Teron Gorefiend? since their lore importance is low the chances for us to ever get direct confirmation about their death is slime to none. therefor, their status should be changed from killable to Deceased.

in all of the Warcraft games and in WoW there is not a single case of a characters who was dead and came back to like without an explanation. and they were considered dead in the storyline until such event as happened. -- Gargar (talk) 11:27, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The issue here is not him coming back to life (ironic you bring this up teron but thats a discussion for a different time), it's if he ever was killed in black temple. It's true, confirmation of his death is highly unlikely, but that's irrelevant. Without that confirmation deceased does not belong in his infobox. That exactly why we use Killable instead of dead or alive.Warthok Talk Contribs 11:33, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
since i know you're basing this on the fact you believe our actions doesn't consider lore i will just copy and paste my reply in Teron Gorefiend's talk page. out actions does considered lore. there are numerous examples of this. let's look at the wotlk manual. about Kael'thas "Rather than see the prince's plan reach fruition, Out'and's heros defeated him" next about Illidan "they began by overcoming one of Illidan's top lieutenants , the naga witch Lady Vashj. the emboldened fighters then stormed the gates of the Black Temple and confronted Illidan himself, ultimately killed the Betrayer" it goes on and on about Zul'jin and Kil'jaden. while i wish it was Maieve and Akama killing Illidan (and we acting as their army) it is not. the one and only character in game which was killed by us and was later retconed was Onyxia. Nefarian death was never truly confirmed. the closest we got to this was Sinestra stating that "he has fallen" she doesn't say by who in any other source including day of the dragon.
also, it is not strange i took Gorefiend as an example, as he was Ressed by US! again, another example of our actions considered lore by Blizzard.Gargar (talk) 12:54, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Warthok was referring to the irony that the centrepiece of your argument about lore death was, in fact, undead.
The "Deceased (lore), Killable (WoW)" status emerged as a violation of standing convention for two reasons: 1) because certain individuals were unable to accept that Illidan was dead and needed to be publicly reminded of that fact, and 2) because questions kept being asked as to why Onyxia was still listed as Killable even though her head was on display. The "Killable" status, in fact, is meant to include any character killed as part of plot or quest progression, and who is still in the game to be killed again, regardless of outside confirmation.--Ragestorm (talk · contr) 14:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
I understand that. however, that is a good status to have. the lore is going forward with every game and expansion. Blizzard does threat events in the former expansions and games as history. or lore if you want. so should we. if you give the killable tag to everything which is killable in WoW why not expand it? you can still kill Blackhand in WC1 if you want. so he's still technically killable.
I believe we should give this tag to dead characters to differ between past events and current events (current expansion/game) so unless we know that a certain character survived the current events (Arthas/Illidan WC3) Kael'thas (Tempest keep) we should simply assume that characters we killed are dead by the end of that expansion/game.Gargar (talk) 16:43, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Minor problem with your last statement - WoW doesn't end. Even though we have new expansions, bosses like Onyxia are still killable, not deceased. edit: I see your argument that you can replay the Warcraft series. However, those games have a clear ending, whether you choose to start over or not. WoW is a perpetual world that never has a clear ending.
another edit with an example: I never killed C'thun, or Nefarian, so in my version of WoW they are not deceased. A perpetual world is a different experience for every player. -- Mordsith - (talk|contr) 16:48, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
you may have never killed him, just as you may have never killed Zul'jin for example. yet, he his still officially dead. i believe you can see my point here. Blizzard takes the outcome of the current expansion/game as official lore. if C'thun can die in the game he is officially dead in lore. same for the rest of the big guys we killed in WoW and are now dead in official lore. also, every WoW expansion is considered as a new part in the total Warcraft saga. this is why the WOTLK manual specifically states our past deeds. same with TBC manual again, Blizzard does take our actions as lore. we got so many example for this. i think we should adept this policy too and in the end of every expansion we should post a killable status with that corresponding game/expansion (be it WC2 or TBC) and deceased according to lore. it is so much more logicalGargar (talk) 23:45, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
"yet, he his still officially dead" Says who? The only thing going here in favor of blizzard considering them official is your word. Only the things blizzard specificly states are considered canonical. Theres very little room for speculation. Illidan is considered dead for this reason but i don't see any claims of "heros once again banishing" or "putting down the death knight Teron Gorefiend." (And no, Illidan's defeat is not proof) Theres plenty examples of player action being ignored, see Baron Rivendare, Onyxia, Nefarian, Azuregos, original Naxx, Scarlet Monastery, along with 90% of PvP actions. Part of the reason killable is used is partialy because of the shifting timeline. Were in northrend fighting Arthas but the defias still roam in Westfall. So when is something considered done/past? When it's released? When the first guild kills them? When you as an individual kills them? When the next expansion comes out? Varian just returned and killed Onyxia just before Wrath of the Lich King, after the events of the Burning Crusade though according to your logic she was already dead as soon as Burning Crusade hit shelves. And don;t go claiming retcon, i used Onyxia as an example but theres others and if you claim everything is a retcon than nothing we ever do has any impact and it's counterproductive to your own point.
Lets be perfectly honest. I don't disagree with you. I am in complete agreement that most of the big events we the players do are considered to have happened by blizzard, but thats just my viewpoint, i have no basis, no evidence, Chris Metzen is not on speed dial where i can just ask him. I just have my own conclusions, so i'm not gonna try and put that in an article. I consider Teron dead. It's a slippery slope, it opens up the door for more speculation, which is something to be avoided at all costs. It's a very tricky and sensative field all around which is why Killable was decided upon a reasonable comprimise. claiming everything as deceased when many of them may not be and misinforming wowwiki users is not logical in any way shape or form.Warthok Talk Contribs 04:50, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
look, i will try to make it short. maybe i'm not explaining it well. Warcraft works by timelines. this is why you can kill the Defias in the deadmines yet still fight Arthas in Northrend. they are located in a different timelines, this is specifically stated in TBC manual (take place 2 years after WoW) and WOTLK (1 year after TBC) about your "yet, he his still officially dead" you are not reading! in the wotlk manual he is specifically stated to be dead alongside Illidan and the rest. Naxx comeback is explained directly in WoW. you (the player) give Kel'thuzad phylactery to Father Inigo montoy way back then 3 years ago (by game timeline). this is also explained by Eligor Dawnbringer in Northrend. Rivendre was probably resurrected by Kel'thuzad as he was his servant. however, this is indeed not directly stated in game. Nefarian killer is not stated anywhere. just that he his dead. i got day of the dragon book and not a word in there about the matter. timeline is the key here, not the fact that it is all WoW
So when is something considered done/past? obviousl, when the next chapters in Warcraft shows up. TBC is the second one in WoW and advances us by 2 years. WOTLK is the third, it advances us by another year. WoW was done when TBC came, no more events will happen in that timeline. it's like that in all of Warcraft.Gargar (talk) 10:52, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Well, look, "killable" is a term being used by this wiki, it's not a Blizzard term. It simply means that in WoW you are still able to go back and kill a character. I'm not too familiar with the finer points of the lore, so I'm not going to discuss the "deceased" term other than to point out the difference in terminology. But here's my take on "killable": In WoW, you can take the same avatar with the same equipment and the same skills, etc and kill Onyxia, or Nefarian, or any other WoW mob, as many times as you want. In the single player Warcraft games, you would have to start over, recreate a character, build up their skills and gear from scratch and play through the whole storyline to do the same thing. "Killable" is simply a term used to describe the type of timeline inconsistency that is inevitable in an MMO. If you list characters as simply "deceased", it is misleading to WoW players who can take an avatar that killed Kil'jaeden and go back and kill Onyxia again. -- Mordsith - (talk|contr) 15:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Gargar i'll make it even shorter. It's not that you are not explaining it well, i get what you are trying to say, i got it from the very first post. It's the fact that you have no basis for your claims. No proof, no evidence, just your own opinion, and a indefensible one at that. That's the issue. I've already showed you exceptions, half of them you misunderstood (Naxxramas i was refering to our initial invasion never occouring, Darion doing it instead and most of Naxx's bosses never being defeated). You want to call Teron Gorefiend deceased?, provide a source other than the MMO that calls him that. Yes, the MMO advances, we know that from the little snipets blizzards posts ever time a new expansion comes out about the heros of azeroth. But the only events we can be sure of are those that they specificly state, like Illidan and Kael'thas. Or those events the storyline advances past in a different source (Novel, etc...)Warthok Talk Contribs 17:17, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Lore characters who are "Deceased" are confirmed to be deceased by Blizzard, in either an in-game book, comic (Onyxia), book (Sintharia), or other sources. Characters who are killable does not mean they are deceased when they've been killed by players, unless Blizzard confirms it in other written pieces. User:Gourra/Sig2 16:05, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Seems like this could use a WoWWiki article to explain the differences for future reference. I know we have a category for game terms, but this is a wiki term. Where would something like this go? -- Mordsith - (talk|contr) 16:10, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
A policy or guideline page somewhere. I think a 'List of wiki terms' page would be stupid.--SWM2448 21:37, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I read this whole thing and I wonder why the wiki tag is so strict to begin with. I mean, the way I see it is that you do a zone, like Westfall, you help people out, you kill stuff, then you level up and move on to the next zone, and the story in the zone you left is to be assumed developing according to your past actions there. Unfortunately WoW does not have reactive content, except for a few areas in Icecrown and Storm Peaks in Northrend, where the world truly changes as you progress through the quests (if you want to see an example of a truly reactive game, where the entire world changes as you complete quests, take a look at Guild Wars). If the entire game was made that way, it would be more obvious what's dead and what's alive. Unfortunately the game mechanics don't allow it to really follow the lore to the letter.

But to get back to what I started with, why do we have ONE tag to define the status of dead or not dead? Death has always been a grey area in WoW. In Warcraft 3, when your hero dies you merely resurrect him at the altar. In WoW, you call upon the nearest healer and they bring you back to life. Even when a Death Knight blows up your dead corpse in a battleground, you can still be brought back to life. Nothing ever really dies in the game, so why have 1 tag to say that they do? I think Gargar is partially right here, though the obvious solution (well obvious to me anyway) does not seem to spring out for anyone.

My suggestion is to make an infobox type thing, going by expansion, or patch level if need be. So like, for Illidan, it'd be (alive) 1.12, (killable) BC, (dead) WOTLK (I don't remember how to make the boxes or I would). The fact that you can go back and kill them over and over again doesn't really have any relevance to the lore, in terms of whether they're alive or dead. When you go back to a lower level zone, you are effectively going back in time. There's a reason why going through the instances and killing the bosses is called progression. Because you move through the story of the game. It only makes sense to reflect on the wiki that the status of a given character, or environment, depends on where you are in the progression of the story. Doing dead/alive/whatever status by stage of the game would make more sense than simply declare them dead or alive. And even adding 'presumed dead', or 'status unknown' wouldn't hurt anything. Rather it'd help clarify that we don't actually know where these characters fit into the progressed story. --Metalbunny (talk) 19:53, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

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