I have knoticed many simalarities between WarCraft and LotR, and thought I'd make a topic about it.


Overall Plot: The plot of LotR and WC is much the same. Its the Humans (Men, in LotR), Elves, and Dwarves (and eventually the orcs in WC) fighting against a great evil. That is the Burning Legion in WC, and the people of Mordor in LotR.

Races: LotR and WC have similar races, also. The humans, or men, who are normal like us, the Elves, who are immortal and excelent marksmen in both cases, the Dwarves, who are short, and excelent craftsmen, and the orcs, who are ugly, green, gross, and brutal.

Characters:
Grom Hellscream / Saruman:
They both fought for the good side (Thrall / Gandalf) but influenced by the dark side (Burning Legion / Sauron), they fought for evil. Both eventually turned back to the good side, although this was not shown in the LotR movies.

Saruman + Gandalf / Archmagi:
Both are men of magical powers, and AFAIK, both immortal. AFAIK, both just magically apeared one day, also.

I will add more when it comes to mind. I had more ideas, but I seem to have lost them.

Warcraft and Starcraft were largely .. borrowed from the Fantasy War game "Warhammer", and the Science Fiction version, "Warhammer 40k".  In fact, in Warcraft 3, one of the dwarf's annoyed lines is, "Do you like this Warhammer? It cost me 40k!"

Thats like artanus on starcraft says "This is not Warcraft, this is space!" :P

This isn't Warcraft in space!

Its much more [uh.. i forgot]

I know its not 3D!

1: Noticed does not begin with a k... don't even say that was a typo. :P
2: It was Grom not Grok. :-p Though Blizzard naturally did have one of their tauren random hero names as a Grok. /cheer
3: There is like a million more even far more obvious similarities in World of Warcraft.

ummmmm. WoW just continues the Story line from TFT. btw:is saruman from LotR cause i dont recall him in Warcraft,

Yes, Saruman was from LotR.

@"Grok": Wow. Typo of the year.
@"Knoticed": Yeah, I learned it the wrong way and never got over it.

lol. nice comparison ;). well anyways which warcraft are you talking about? theres Warcraft(THE ORIGINAL WHICH TOOK 4 MINUTES TO BUILD BASE LMFAO), Warcraft 2(2 races, orc and human. they battle cause they enemies), RoC(Arthas becoming Undead), Frozen Throne(Arthas gains too much power), or WoW? theres also a diffrent story line in http://www.worldofwarcraft.com which has EVERYTHING detailed.

WoW is a continuation of the aftermath of Warcraft 3 and its expansion, yes. But I would highly argue that there will be any significance in the story line of WoW changing future Warcraft (4) games. Most likely (if anything, probably same will be with SC:Ghost) It will just be a between time of the Warcraft 3 and Warcraft 4 story lines meeting up. There aren't a huge ammount of Warcraft 3 heros actually in WoW, and nearly no enemy bosses that I can think of which just proves they don't want to touch the Warcraft storyline much.
If you look at Warcraft 3, the only real direct references that added into WoW were their Bonus Campaigns for example Rexxar (who is killable in WoW) and just filled in the blank for where the orcs are now and how the horde alliance came togather. It doesn't take much to figure out they added the bonus campaign to set the place for WoW a bit better (or maybe they were just bored?). Either way, with Blizzard who knows. I'd like to say this is totally true but I've also seen them change things because of realizations/experiences they've had as they went along so who knows. It is also quite possible that some of the WoW stories/NPCs will continue on because they become favored in the game or then maybe just get used as a filler if some Blizzard people run out of ideas.  :P

[quote author=Mangix link=topic=10724.msg101658#msg101658 date=1109408401]
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Mangix, on the mid-left side of your signature picture - is that a tiny basketball player flying through the air? Isn't that kind of random? A panda with a weapon and a basketball player that can fly? hehe.

WHAT...THE...FUCK..? Thats no fucking basketball player. that looks like a homo jumping FYI. anways the maker of my sig calls that his logo [img]http://www.dota-allstars.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif[/img] [img]http://www.dota-allstars.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif[/img] [img]http://www.dota-allstars.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif[/img] .

Oh boy...similarities between Warcraft and The Lord of the Rings.

*rubs hands together excitedly*

Although Warcraft owes much to Tolkien, as all modern fantasy does (Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, and many other things would either not exist at all, or would be totally different if not for Tolkien's establishment of a sort of base from which everything else could build), the similarities are really not very profound.

Re: Overall Plot
I don't know if you've ever read any fantasy stories or played any other games set in a fantasy world, but virtually EVERY fantasy story consists of good people struggling against some great evil. You can't have a story without conflict, and epic conflict is much more fun than many of the alternatives.

Re: Races
Of course the races are the same. Probably 90% or more of fantasy worlds today directly draw their races from Tolkien's world. He defined the genre. I will point out, though, that nowhere in Tolkien's writing are Orcs described as "green," to the best of my knowledge. I'm aware of some being called black, and Saruman's Uruk Hai were described as "swart" (which implies dark of skin). No greens, though.

Re: Characters
You're completely wrong here. Saruman never returned to the good side. (Spoiler warning) He gets killed by Hobbit archery back in the Shire toward the end of the book because he'd seized control of the region using bands of brigands as his muscle. He was evil right down to the very end.

Also, Gandalf and Saruman most definitely did not appear from nowhere. They were sent by Manwë, the 'steward' of the world, if you will, to Middle Earth from Aman, the Undying Lands (the place the Elves go when they weary of life in Middle Earth). There were both spirit-beings called Maiar who, along with three more of their fellows, took physical form in order to become part of the struggle against Sauron (who was also a Maia in origin, though of a somewhat different history).

@ Plot: Yeah, I guess so.

@ Races: Also true, but other games such as Starcraft had no Orcs, Dwarves, or Elves. Also, my assumption that Tolkien's orcs, or orks as they seem to be sometimes spelled, were green was based upon their color in the movies. There were also some blue ones, though. Maybe thats how the Ogre Magi got their color? (WC3 only.) Now that we came to that, I also remembered my one last idea. The WarCraft trolls weren't like Tolkien's trolls, but perhaps the Ogres were based off of them.

@ Characters: Sorry about the Saruman thing. I'm reading the books randomly part by part, and I put it down when Gandalf and Saruman were having a discussion at Orthac, and it looked like he was coming back to the good side. Also, woot @ hobbits for p00ning the bastard.

@ Wizards: I was reading a LoTR timeline in the back of my RoTK book. Aparently, this is altered from Tolkiens book, and perhaps the writer misundersood it? The book is at school right now, but I'll try to remember to bring it home tomorrow.

Last but not least..
@Magnix: The entire WarCraft Series.

[quote author=Zakath link=topic=10724.msg102063#msg102063 date=1109665780]
Re: Races
Of course the races are the same. Probably 90% or more of fantasy worlds today directly draw their races from Tolkien's world. He defined the genre. I will point out, though, that nowhere in Tolkien's writing are Orcs described as "green," to the best of my knowledge. I'm aware of some being called black, and Saruman's Uruk Hai were described as "swart" (which implies dark of skin). No greens, though.
[/quote]

With these works being from early 1900's, don't you think the Orcs were just modelled on savage negros? Fierce evil warriors, black or dark of skin, and as far as I can tell, the elves and humans were all white or arian?

[quote author=JoeTheOdd link=topic=10724.msg102111#msg102111 date=1109715872]
Last but not least..
@Magnix: The entire WarCraft Series.
[/quote]lol what about illidan, arthas, sylvanas, kel'rhuzad, maiev, naisha, and all the others?

I mean that I grabbed little bits from everywhere in the series.

[quote author=Adron link=topic=10724.msg102116#msg102116 date=1109716221]
[quote author=Zakath link=topic=10724.msg102063#msg102063 date=1109665780]
Re: Races
Of course the races are the same. Probably 90% or more of fantasy worlds today directly draw their races from Tolkien's world. He defined the genre. I will point out, though, that nowhere in Tolkien's writing are Orcs described as "green," to the best of my knowledge. I'm aware of some being called black, and Saruman's Uruk Hai were described as "swart" (which implies dark of skin). No greens, though.
[/quote]

With these works being from early 1900's, don't you think the Orcs were just modelled on savage negros? Fierce evil warriors, black or dark of skin, and as far as I can tell, the elves and humans were all white or arian?
[/quote]

It's certainly possible...although as far as I know, Tolkien (who died in 1973) was never known personally as having racial opinions.

The humans were not universally white, though. Those coming from southerly environments (i.e. the deserts of Harad) had darker skin, just as you would expect they would. Moreover, it does not appear that Orcs were really all that far from men in some respects. Saruman was cross-breeding them, and the four Hobbits encounter a "sly southerner" in Bree who one of them (Sam, if I remember right) remarks looked half Orcish.

Orcs were, if you read some of the background history that's been published since JRRT's death, originally twisted by the early dark power from Elves.

@Joe: the stuff about the Wizards comes from Unfinished Tales. You won't find that information in The Lord of the Rings itself. Read The Silmarillion sometime, it'll make a lot of things much clearer regarding the history and makeup of the world.