Video Game / Warcraft

The drums of war thunder once again.

"Welcome to the World of Warcraft."

— Warcraft: Orcs and Humans intro

Yes, there were Warcraft games before World of Warcraft.

While Dune II is considered the Trope Codifier of the Real-Time Strategy genre, Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft series was one of the franchises that popularized it.

Taking place primarily in the magical world of Azeroth, Warcraft chronicles the many fantastical wars between men and orcs, (not to mention a gallery of elves, dwarves, the undead, demons, Lovecraftian horrors...) often with greater political strife, betrayal and a healthy dose of moral ambiguity in the background. Most notably, its narrative led to the creation of Blizzard Orcs.

The franchise began life as a hopeful Warhammer Fantasy game, which accounts for certain similarities in aesthetic and lore, but the studio was having trouble negotiating licensing rights, and the developers became more interested in owning their intellectual property and creating their own world, so Blizzard scrapped the Warhammer angle and Warcraft was born.

In terms of gameplay, its many innovative features really pushed the series ahead of its competitors in both game play and sales. Blizzard focused on online play and custom games, believing them to be an important part of the Real-Time Strategy experience. This ended up indirectly creating the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre, with Defense of the Ancients as prototype/originator.

The success of Warcraft III eventually gave birth to World of Warcraft in 2004, which grows with a new expansion every two years on average. It shifted the Warcraft universe's storytelling from RTS to MMORPG, retconned some of the backstory developed by the previous games and continues the universe's story after the end of The Frozen Throne. It also created the Warcraft Expanded Universe. A feature film based on the story of Orcs and Humans and owing much of its Worldbuilding and lore to Warcraft III and what followed (including WoW) was released in June 2016.

Games in the real-time strategy series include:

• Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (1994)
• Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995)
  • Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal (1996)
• Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002)
  • Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (2003)
  • Warcraft III: Reforged (2020)

Also worth noting is Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, a Point-and-Click Adventure Game originally announced in 1997, but cancelled the next year; its plot would become the basis for the novel Lord of the Clans. However, a nearly feature-complete version of the game was leaked in September 2016.

Despite the shift to the MMO series, at Blizzcon 2018, it was announced that a long desired remake of Warcraft III was in the works. The remake, called Warcraft III: Reforged, was to be a—from the ground up—remaster of Warcraft III, complete with new models, voice overs, and redone cutscenes. The game was released in January 2020, but was severely stripped down due to an incredibly Troubled Production, and EULA goofs.^note In an effort to avoid "the next DOTA" escaping them like Defense of the Ancients did, they inserted a clause claiming ownership of any user-created contents... Which in addition to sparking outrage, killed any will users may have to create maps.

In addition, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition are currently available on GOG.com.

---

The following have their own pages:

• Useless Useful Spell

---

This series also provides examples of:

Tropes A — G

• Abnormal Ammo:
  • Undead Meat Wagons fling diseased corpses by way of a catapult.
  • Night Elf Glaive throwers launch giant shurikens, despite looking very much like their ballistae predecessors.
• Action Girl:
  • Tyrande Whisperwind, Jaina Proudmoore, Sylvanas Windrunner, Maiev Shadowsong... and there are even Mook style action girls: the Night Elf Archers and Huntresses, High Elf Sorceresses, and Undead Banshees.
  • Alleria Windrunner from the WC2 expansion is the first Action Girl to appear in the series (the first female characters to appear in the games, Garona and Griselda, were both non-combat units), who also happens to be Sylvanas' older sister.
• Actually Pretty Funny: When Arthas bluntly tells Sapphiron he's come to kill the latter and get any of his treasures, the dragon finds his honesty "refreshing".
• Adapted Out: Some elements in Reforged were removed.
  • The bonus ending credits where the Terran Marines and Space Fel Orcs duke it out were omitted, this is due to the latter lacking a remade model (contrasting the former where they have an HD model).
  • In the original "The Culling" in III, there is a neutral faction called "Zoo Animals" comprising of a Lightning Lizard, a Sludge Flinger and Minion, and 2 Wildkins. They are removed in the remake to make it closer to its WoW counterpart (where it lacks a zoo).
• Adaptational Badass: Banshee Sylvanas, in the original version she was not really more powerful than a regular banshee, but in Reforged she is a hero.
• Adaptational Context Change: In the Reforged version of "The Culling", the map is rebuilt and looks more like Stratholme in WoW, and the map adds some Mini-Boss encounters from the Caverns of Time instance, Meathook and Salramm the Fleshcrafter. In their original instance in WoW, these Mini-Boss encounters show up after facing several waves of enemies, but in Reforged, they hide in the houses and spawn from them when the player reaches a key number of culled humans. The newly rebuilt level still has waves of Undead that will attack Arthas' base, so it is a big departure for them to be in the houses instead.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: The Reforged version of "The Fall of Silvermoon" was rebuilt to be more like Silvermoon in World of Warcraft, including having the Sunwell on a separate island from the rest of the city. There is a new scene where Arthas sees a short channel of water separating him from the Sunwell. When faced with this, he uses Frostmourne to create a large ice bridge for his troops to cross, which was depicted in Arthas: Rise of the Lich King. However, it was established in the previous mission "Key of the Three Moons" that Arthas was roadblocked when Sylvanas destroys a bridge (of the same size) and he had to use Goblin Zeppelins and Way Gates to get across the river. This mission was not changed in Reforged, making Arthas' ice powers come across as an ability he forgot to use originally. To make things worse, there's another mission later that was unchanged from the original game ("Into the Shadow Web Caverns") where the enemies destroy a bridge to prevent Arthas from crossing it, and he once again chooses to go around instead of creating an ice bridge.
• A Day in the Limelight: Every novel and comic released is technically there to provide the backstory of the side characters. Though since every campaign has a different set of main characters, each campaign is probably one itself, since there is no single 'main character' in the story.
• The Ageless:
  • Night elves used to have this form of immortality, before sacrificing it to save the world from the Burning Legion, after which they became merely Long-Lived and Really 700 Years Old. Their high elven cousins made this switch long before this, when they were exiled from Kalimdor and the lands to which their immortality was tied.
  • Dragons, or at least the Aspects, seem to be undying as well. Might no longer be true as they lost much of their power in World of Warcraft's third expansion.
  • Demons are this due to being infused with fel energy. Moreover, it grants them Resurrective Immortality, as their spirits return to the Nether when their body is destroyed, and may manifest in a new body with time (or much faster with assistance from the living).
• The Alliance: The Alliance in both the sequels, and the Horde as well in III
• All There in the Manual: Much of the games' story and set up is found in their manuals and novels.
• All Trolls Are Different: In this case, a savage yet spiritual people with ties to the elves who happen to have Cuban and Jamaican accents.
  • There are several sub-species of trolls, mainly differing by skin color but sometimes with more pronounced differences. Sand and Jungle trolls, including the playable Darkspear tribe, are hunched and lanky. Forest and Ice trolls are notably larger and more muscular. The Zandalari trolls, being the civilized, pureblood ancestral race, look much less monstrous, and actually stand upright.
  • Night Elves are evolved from Trolls — specifically, a tribe of now-extinct Dark Trolls settled by a magical lake (which would later become the Well of Eternity), and the exposure to magic turned them into Night Elves. The Elves don't really like to talk about it.
• Altar Diplomacy: It's mentioned in Warcraft III's backstory that Arthas Menethil (crown prince of Lordaeron) and Jaina Proudmoore (the daughter of Kul Tiras' admiral and high up in the Magocracy of Dalaran)'s relationship was seen with a favorable eye by all, as this would surely bring about good relations between all nations involved. However, they drifted apart due to their duties, even before Arthas became the Lich King.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The Horde, Demons, and surprisingly few others. The naga and satyr are both borderline examples, as both races are actually just evil night elven factions that were transformed by magic. Funnily enough, many of the races a player would expect to be Always Chaotic Evil from other works are anything but, whereas a lot of races that are portrayed as good elsewhere are actually pretty nasty in the Warcraft universe. Tauren are basically minotaurs, but deeply honorable and spiritual. As detailed in the description, the orcs made a Heel–Face Turn toward Proud Warrior Race Guys. Meanwhile, centaurs are brutal savages — which is admittedly true to their original depiction in Classical Mythology - and satyrs are former night elves turned demon-worshippers. As for goblins, see Our Goblins Are Different.
• Amazon Brigade: While the night elves have units of both genders (as well as several animals, forest spirits, and other creatures of the wilds), their core army — Archers, Huntresses, and Dryads — is all women. They also have the only two female heroes in the game (not counting neutrals), the Priestess of the Moon and the Warden, with the former having the distinction of being the only female hero in Reign of Chaos.
• Amicable Exes: Jaina and Arthas used to be in relationship in the past, but had to end their romance so they can fully commit themselves to their duty. They are still friends, though, at least before the entire Frostmourne affair.
• Ancient Tomb: The Tomb of Sargeras.
• And I Must Scream: What Kil'jaeden did to Ner'zhul to transform him into the Lich King.
• Animal Stampede: In Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, The Beastmaster's ultimate skill, appropriately named "Stampede", summons Thunder Lizards to run in straight lines until they run into something and explode.
• Animated Actors: The Hilarious Outtakes in the closing credits for Reign of Chaos.
• Animate Dead: The Scourge's entire modus operandi.
  • Necrolytes in Warcraft, Death Knights in Warcraft 2 and Scourge Necromancers in Warcraft III can make skeletons from corpses. In the third game, the Graveyard and Meat Wagons provide infinite (if slowly spawned) corpses. Thus the only limiter is mana. Even that limit can be raised to an extent using Obsidian Statues.
  • The Death Knight hero unit has for his Ultimate "Animate Dead", which revives any six nearby corpses to fight for him. In Reign of Chaos it lasts for 180 seconds or until they're re-killed, while Frozen Throne changes it so it lasts 40 seconds and makes the units invulnerable (in either case, the animated units don't leave reusable corpses).
  • The Night Elf Avatar of Vengeance spams a variant of Animate Dead (on top of being huge).
• Anti-Gravity Clothing: Kel'Thuzad and other Liches have magical floating vests and chains, and Kael'thas has three green orbs called Verdant Spheres flying around him.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • One of the drawbacks of playing as The Horde is the lack of healing, which can make using heroes a liability. As a way to mitigate this, in Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, Grom Hellscream followed by Kargath Bladefist and Dentarg only appear in the first two missions and the final mission (where all heroes are expendable, and you finally command Deathwing). Teron Gorefiend meanwhile appears in the many of the missions and can heal himself with his Death Coil spell, and has respectable health and a good basic attack; just try to keep him away from Paladins with Exorcism or Magi with Polymorph.
  • The solution to heroes dying and failing a mission in III was to allow heroes to resurrect at an altar, and failure from losing a hero only being possible in a Baseless Mission.
• Anti-Hoarding: Heroes in Warcraft III have an inventory capacity for six items, and at most three heroes per game. The expansion's orc campaign gives you a persistent six-item stash. The expansion's multiplayer gives each race a "backpack" upgrade that lets certain ground units carry 2 items (4 for the Kodo Beast), but they can't use those items and will drop them all if they're killed.
• Anti-Structure:
  • The vast majority of buildings in Warcraft III possess Fortified armor, which resists most attacks. The primary exception is Siege attacks, which deal extra damage to Fortified armor instead, and is naturally used by units intended for sieging structures (the long-ranged artillery of each faction, along with other base raiders like Troll Batriders, Siege Engines, Chimera and of course Raiders).
  • Each faction also has upgrades that can be researched for dealing with structures. Orcs can upgrade Batriders with Liquid Fire, which ignites structures for damage over time and reduces their attack speed. The Undead Frost Wyrms can unlock Freezing Breath to completely disable a target building, stopping all of its functions as long as the Wyrm focuses it. Humans can give their Dragonhawk Riders the Cloud ability, which channels a blinding cloud that stops towers from attacking. Finally, Night Elves can give their Chimeras a Siege attack used against structures specifically.
• Arbitrary Gun Power: Basic expectations of this in an RTS aside, very much the case with the Flying Machine, whose ground-dropped bombs will do at least a seventh of the damage a Mortar Team's rounds will do, its anti-air machine guns will do around double damage of said bombs, and hell, the bombs do less damage than Footmen's swords. As one might expect from that, the real point of the Flying Machine is for anti-air and the bombs are mainly there to make them not be complete dead weight once you have air superiority. That, and you're never going to be sitting on just one Flying Machine.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: Siege units all have minimum range and are completely defenseless against melee units.
• Arc Villain: Warcraft III has this approach with its campaigns, often having a primary villain for each one.
  • Exodus of the Horde has The Sea Witch (named Zar'jira in WoW), the leader of the Underworld Minions, who tries to sacrifice Thrall and the Darkspear Trolls. She is only present in the demo of the game, and is restored in The Frozen Throne and Reforged.
  • The Scourge of Lordaeron has Mal'Ganis, the Dreadlord commander of the Undead Scourge that is attacking Lordaeron. Prince Arthas undergoes a Protagonist Journey to Villain to defeat him.
  • Path of the Damned has Arthas himself taking this role, destroying much of Lordaeron, Quel'thelas, and Dalaran. However, he is acting on the orders of Tichondrius and the Big Bad only acknowledges and credits Tichondrius at the end of the campaign, making him the true villain both in the story and to the player.
  • The Invasion of Kalimdor has Mannoroth, who is seeking to bring the orcs back under his control, using them as his own personal army and having them slay Cenarius. Tichondrius also advises Mannoroth in the campaign without taking center stage like him.
  • Eternity's End has Archimonde himself taking the reins by leading the invasion of Ashenvale, with Tichondrius once again appearing as his main lieutenant on several maps.
  • Terror of the Tides has Illidan Stormrage for the majority of the campaign, who hunts for a dangerous artifact for use in an apocalyptic plan, though he gets hijacked by the Undead Scourge once they hunt Tyrande, so he performs an Enemy Mine with his brother to save her.
  • Curse of the Blood Elves has Lord Garithos and the Undead Scourge who are both trying to kill the Blood Elves in the first half of the campaign. Then the second half pivots to Magtheridon, the ruler of Outland that Illidan seeks to topple.
  • Legacy of the Damned has Balnazzar for Sylvanas, leader of a triumvirate with his two brothers, Detheroc and Varimathras. They seek to control Lordaeron in the name of the Burning Legion. For Arthas he has Illidan, who is leading the assault on Icecrown. Though it can be interpreted that Arthas himself is the villain, and he fully becomes a real Big Bad at the end of the campaign by becoming the Lich King.
  • The Founding of Durotar has Admiral Proudmoore, who is attacking Durotar over his hatred of orcs.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: In life, the Death Knights were, well, knights, so now you have Death Knights with names like Lord Darkscythe, Duke Ragereaver, Baron Frostfel... In addition, many evil units and heroes have 'lord' in their names.
• The Artifact:
  • The Horde's "you don't have enough food to train more units" warning in III is "We need to build more Pig Farms". Orcs were originally going to keep using the Pig Farms from II, but they were changed to Burrows during development.
  • In III, runes that can be touched by hero units for an immediate effect, such as acting like a Scroll of Healing, were added to the Frozen Throne. However, the original Reign of Chaos campaigns lack runes, which makes the usage of Health and Mana scrolls a lot more prevalent. Especially for micro missions that don't involve base building. The most obvious example is the dungeon crawl mission, "The Oracle," for the Horde campaign where it's quite common to come across Health and Mana scrolls to heal up Thrall's little army. If this was a level updated after the release of Frozen Throne, such scrolls would no doubt have been runes.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Piercing damage in II ignored armor.
• Artifact Mook: In one mission of III, Malfurion and Tyrande discover spiders that have grown to gigantic size when they came into contact with demonic corruption. However, there are many more giant spiders in the world, both in this game and in WoW, spiders that have never met any demons.
• Artifact Title: The Warcraft title as well as the Orcs & Humans subtitle are remnants of early development, when Blizzard planned a series of Real-Time Strategy games set in different periods of human history as well as fantasy/sci-fi themes. In the end, only StarCraft came out of the original design idea.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Highly visible in WC2:
    • Melee units will happily stand still and get killed by a ranged attacker two spaces away.
    • Pathfinding is very basic, leading to units just "giving up" if an obstacle is too lengthy to navigate. These stuck units are easy pickings for caster Area of Effect spells.
    • Casters will ignore using some spells completely, or use whatever spells they can use in limited capacity. Death Knights will never use Death Coil against Biological Air units nor will Magi try and Polymorph air targets.
    • AI players will never build Cannon Towers, Demo Squads / Sappers under their own power, nor try to detonate any preplaced demolition units. This is presumably because the computer isn't aware enough to avoid having units stand around the exploding canon balls, and would easily get duped into blowing up demolition units next to their own units. Any preplaced demolition units will just flee when attacked and do nothing to defend themselves.
    • Naval combat with the Sea Attack AI is almost a joke as you don't even have to engage them on the sea. One decoy Shipyard and their fleet will set sail and try to destroy it. Magi or Death Knights can then proceed to spam Area of Effect-type spells on the fleet for easy kills and the AI will continue throwing away resources trying to destroy your Shipyard. Rinse and repeat, building a new Shipyard if needed until they're bankrupt, and just be careful of transport invasions with ground units. This is even easier if their ships get stuck on a shore trying to sail around to your Shipyard.
  • Visible as well in WC3:
    • Sometimes a computer opponent will just stop evolving at the second tier. Worse, if you choose to start with a random hero they sometimes ignore it completely and build up to second tier before starting to explore and level their new hero.
    • Taken to absurd heights by some Night Elf AIs, who will promptly box themselves in with various buildings. It gets worse: quite a few of those buildings they're trapped by? They can move.
    • On the topic of Night Elf AI, they generally use Druids of the Claw as overglorified Footmen, running them into battle in their Druid Form instead of making use of the much more powerful Bear Form (to make it worse, the AI actually researches the Bear form but is too stupid to actually use it), while also not realizing that said Druids can heal. Computer-controlled Night Elf ground armies tend to have rather short lifespans compared to human-controlled ones as a result.
    • In Frozen Throne, units can be really stupid when ordered to get on a transport ship, trying to get to it through a longer route instead of trying to go to the same spot the ship is heading to.
    • Curiously enough, Frozen Throne's Normal AI tends to be dumber than the Easy AI, due to them having the map awareness of a statue. It's not unheard of for them to sit in their teammate's base twiddling their figurative thumbs while their own base is being bulldozed, or to lose entire armies in transit due to not noticing that they've been ambushed by the enemy or are marching said army through creeps.
    • Bots can be quite iffy about using items. For instance, they will never deploy Sentry Wards, Dagger of Escape, Tiny Great Halls, or Ivory Towers, nor will they purchase the latter two from shops. Scroll of Town Portal also leads to questionable AI behavior, as they are coded to respond to attacks on their base by teleporting in, but often fail to take into account the behavior of allied AIs, the size of their own army, or the severity of the threat. This, in turn, leads to the common scenarios of three armies teleporting to defend a base from a Spirit Wolf scratching the paint and conversely a lone level 2 hero teleporting into the middle of an 80-food army.
    • One particularly pathetic bug in the later updates caused the AI to no longer level up their heroes' abilities properly (which was thankfully fixed when Reforged came out). Needless to say, this means they fare rather badly against players that do put skill points in their heroes' spells.
    • One reason it's possible to actually face 11 or more "Insane" computer opponents at once on certain maps is that the opponents are saddled with poor situational awareness leading to situations like opponents going out creeping and wandering past your units like you're not there. The computers also have difficulty with the concept of expansions surrounded by trees and other land barriers and won't try to intentionally fell trees to attack your expansions and can only occasionally overwhelm these by air attacks. Defeating 11 computers at once usually boils down to exploiting bad finding and unit control to pick off units until they're all out of money; granted, this can take a while due to Not Playing Fair With Resources.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Some of the major characters were initially just mentioned briefly in the early games. For example, Sargeras was nothing but a throw-away name for a demon whose sceptre Gul'dan was trying to steal.
  • Ogres in Warcraft I are just random dungeon monsters, but they take on a more prominent role in Warcraft II.
• Ascended Glitch: In II, it was possible to expedite a building's construction at extra resource cost by having spare peasants or peons "repair" it. In III, this was made an explicit ability of the Human faction.
• Assurance Backfire: Arriving at Hearthglen, Arthas sees emptied and discarded shipping crates and asks a guard what was in them. The guard is quick to assure him it was grain from Andorhal and it's already been distributed, so the townsfolk aren't in danger of going hungry even under siege by the undead. But Arthas has learned that the Plague is spread through sabotaged grain and Andorhal was the main vector, so the news doesn't calm him; quite the opposite.
• Asteroids Monster: Hydras. As there's no way to represent one hydra's head being replaced by more, a dying hydra will be replaced by two smaller and weaker hydras. Some other monsters also spawn other units when they're killed.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: While attacking hero units with a horde of weak units is an effective tactic, you need enough Mooks to overwhelm the heroes. This is not the case with the small bandit gangs at the beginning of the Human Alliance campaign...but they insist on making a beeline for paladin Arthas and his high defense stats and enormous smite-mallet anyway. It's common for him to one-shot *thock* them (for honour). Very entertaining, but the labour turnover for bandits has to be ridiculous.
• Author Appeal: Character Designer Samwise Didier's love of pandas led to the creation of the Pandaren, though it was the fans' affection for the notion that finally made them canon. You have to squint to see it, but Illidan also has tiny pictures of panda faces on the hilts of his weapons (which also appear on certain gates). And there's somebody in the Blizzard staff (probably several) who really, really likes Monty Python.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: The Power of the HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRDDEEEE!!! .
• Auto-Revive: The Tauren Chieftain's ultimate ability revives him with full health and mana after being killed once every few minutes. The Ankh of Reincarnation item gives any hero holding it a weaker version of this ability (reviving them with only 400 health), but is consumed on use.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Played straight or averted, depending of the circumstances.
  • The heroes (who seem to fulfill the role of commanders) are usually the strongest units.
  • Uther, Leader of the Silver Hand is a mighty level 10 Paladin.
  • Played with captains, they are stronger than a Foot soldier, but they are weaker than a knight.
  • Averted with Kel'thuzad. Despite being the right hand of the Lich King, he was originally a regular Necromancer, much weaker than an abomination. That seems to be exclusive to gameplay, being that in the lore he is a powerful wizard.
• The Backwards Я: In Warcraft II, the book in the human campaign briefings is written in plain English, but with Cyrillic letters substituted for the Latin ones. One example of such substitution is "Лордаерон", or "Lordaeron". It's done rather inaccurately, for example "the" is transliterated as "тче". Ч reads "ch" like "chest", not "h" or either form of "th".
• Badass Army: The army of Kul Tiras and Fel orcs in III. They are equal to units of humans and orcs, respectively, but with increased statistics.
• Badass Bookworm: Jaina Proudmoore. "All I wanted is to study."
• Bag of Spilling:
  • Thrall can gain a couple levels and a few low-level items in the prologue campaign. However, by the time you get control of him again in the proper Orc campaign, he'll be back to level 1 with no items.
  • Happens to Arthas between the Human and Undead campaigns of Warcraft III, going from a level 10 Paladin with Chaos damage and decked in powerful items to a level 1 Death Knight with no items and normal damage.
  • Averted with Illidan in the Frozen Throne. When you get control of him in the last Night Elf mission, you can find very powerful items for him such a Crown of Kings or a Ring of Protection +5. Illidan will keep those items when you control him again in the Blood Elf campaign.
• Balance Buff: Several things in Warcraft III.
  • The Steam Tank in the original game was, for all intents and purposes, a battering ram, a mobile building that could only attack buildings at short range. In the expansion, it was replaced by the Siege Engine, which serves the same purpose but has a multitarget anti-air attack (though this has to be researched).
  • Archers in the original game could permanently mount a Hippogryph, which combined a ground ranged unit and a melee air unit into a flying ranged unit. The expansion made it reversible, allowing the archer to dismount and suddenly deal more than twice the damage against flyers.
  • Catapults are replaced by Demolishers, which set the ground on fire with every attack.
  • The Undead make heavy use of corpses for theirs units: Abominations (heavy melee units) gained the ability to regenerate health by eating corpses, while Meat Wagons (plague-spreading catapults and corpse carriers) gained the ability to generate corpses, making Meat Wagon / Necromancer combos self-sustaining.
  • Each race's Worker Unit was given the ability to defend itself against attack: Peasants can become Militia (a slightly weaker version of a Footman), Peons can bunker down in Burrows, Ghouls are the Undead's lumber harvesters and basic melee unit, and Wisps can self-destruct to cause damage to summoned units and remove magic buffs in an area (and also rob the enemy of the experience from killing them).
• Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick:
  • In III, the four playable races are Humans, Orcs, Undead, and Night Elves. Orcs emphasized the brute force of their units, while the Undead emphasized strength in numbers. Humans struck a balance between these two, and the Night Elves are different from all three in that they emphasized magic and ranged combat.
  • In Frozen Throne, all of the factions gained a fourth Hero unit they could choose from. Since the Orcs already had one hero for each attribute (Far Seer being Balance, Tauren Chieftain being Power, and Blademaster being Skill) while the others had a trio of a frontline warrior^*Mountain King, Demon Hunter, Dreadlord (Power), an offensively-oriented mage^*Archmage, Keeper of the Grove, Lich (Skill), and a supportive Magic Knight^*Paladin, Priestess of the Moon, Death Knight (Balance), the fourth one often filled the Gimmick slot with less conventional abilities than their predecessors, such as the Warden's ability to Teleport Spam with Blink and the Shadow Hunter giving the Orcs some defensive support. The main exception seems to be the Undead, whose brand new Crypt Lord serves as a much better powerhouse than the Death Knight and Dreadlord, relegating the Dreadlord to Gimmick status.
• Baseless Mission:
  • In the first game, the human side has the rescue of Sir Lothar and an expedition to kill Medivh. A mission at Sunnyglade was for all effects baseless due to a bug with the rescue of the peasants, a Berserk Button for the entire enemy orc camp that resulted in a Death or Glory Attack before the 1.21 version. The orc campaign has the death of Griselda at The Dead Mines and the rescue of Garona from Northshire Abbey.
  • Nine missions in Warcraft II and its expansions, including escort missions for Cho'gall and Uther Lightbringer. Some missions have peasants who can't build any new structures. The game aso removed the dungeon levels from its predecessor, which makes a return in the third game.
  • Frequent in Warcraft III where you usually get to play as a main hero of the current campaign, aided by a handful of units. In Frozen Throne the whole Orc campaign is RPG-style (though one mission gives you a base, but by that point, your heroes should be overpowered enough that you won't need one).
• Bears Are Bad News: Druids of the Claw, Furbolgs, the Beastmaster's summoned bear, Pandaren and the Largest Panda Ever.
• The Beastmaster: The, uh, Beastmaster hero. However, gameplay-wise, he's closer to Summon Magic; every one of his abilities involves summoning an animal companion to fight at his side from nowhere.
• Benevolent Mage Ruler:
  • The High Elves of Quel'Thalas were ruled by the Sunstrider dynasty, all powerful mages, until Arthas's invasion.
  • Jaina Proudmoore while she was the ruler of Theramore.
• The Berserker: Grom Hellscream. And, of course, Troll Berserkers.
• Best Served Cold: Ner'zhul thinks this way. His brilliant plan to destroy the Legion and install the Scourge (with himself as head) as the dominant power in Azeroth is one of the finest examples of this trope. Also given his powers, it works as a good pun.
• Beware the Skull Base: In Warcraft II, some of the advanced Orc buildings use this aesthetic:
  • A fully-upgraded fortress looks like a massive obsidian skull surrounded by black spires, complete with a volcanic glow from the eye sockets.
  • The Temple of the Damned is a colossal jeweled skull and partial ribcage where Death Knights are animated.
• Big Bad:
  • Blackhand and Gul'dan in Warcraft I, as the leaders of the Horde.
  • Orgrim Doomhammer in Warcraft II, Ner'zhul in the expansion Beyond the Dark Portal, the new leaders of the Horde.
  • Archimonde in Reign of Chaos, who plots to destroy all Azeroth.
  • The Frozen Throne didn't have a single Big Bad, but the main campaign sequence was driven by the Evil Versus Evil conflict between Kil'jaeden and the Lich King Ner'zhul, who both acted through proxies for the various conflicts. Ner'zhul had Arthas, while Kil'jaeden had Illidan through multiple continents, Balnazzar in Lordaeron, and Magtheridon in Outland (who ended up fighting Illidan).
  • Admiral Proudmoore was Big Bad for The Frozen Throne Orc bonus campaign, more or less detached from the main conflict.
  • Sargeras is this for the entire RTS series as the leader of the Burning Legion. This is not factoring in any post-Legion World of Warcraft expansions and new cosmic villains that have shown up since then.
• Big "NO!":
  Thrall, to Grom: "You... did this... to our people... knowingly!? GGRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!"
  
  Mannoroth, to Grom: "Within your heart, you know, we are the same."
  Grom: "NUUUUUUUUUUURGH!" (It's actually a "NO", but his yell sounds almost inarticulate.)
  
  Thrall, to Grom: "No, old friend. You've freed us all... RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHH!!"
• Big Red Devil: Kil'jaeden is the most famous example. Several other demons including the Succubi, the Eredar and especially the Doomguard also qualify.
• Bilingual Bonus: In The Frozen Throne's Orc campaign, there's a bear called Misha, which is a name often given to bears in Russian fairy tales (due to its resemblance to 'medved' meaning 'bear' in Russian).
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Balnazzar and Detheroc in the "Legacy of the Damned". Used to be a triumvirate before Varimathras joined Sylvanas.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Human ending in Beyond the Dark Portal. You manage to close the portal for good, and The End of the World as We Know It on Draenor won't touch Azeroth. But with the portal destroyed, you and your army are stuck on a planet that is being destroyed by rifts opened by Ner'zhul, and going through one of these rifts is the only escape from the doomed planet. It took years before there was finally any closure as to what happened the Alliance heroes involved in the war.
• Black Magic: According to Canon, most types of magic in the Warcraft universe are this. Although Shadow magic (used by Shadow Priests, Death Knights and the Undead) and Fel magic (used by Demons and Warlocks) are explicitly derived from The Dark Side, even Arcane magic (used by Mages) has the twin drawbacks of being extremely addictive and acting as a beacon to attract demons to Azeroth — as the High Elves found out long ago. See also White Magic.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The Horde and the Alliance versus the Scourge and the Burning Legion. The flawed but justifiable mortals vs the omnicidal legions of the undead and their equally monstrous demonic creators/masters.
• Black-and-White Morality: The Orcs vs. Humans setup in the first two games, where the orcs are alien invaders driven to conquer, kill and destroy for the hell of it, while the humans are just defending themselves.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: The members of the Admiral's elite Guard are much weaker than the Admiral himself. Downplayed for the fact that they are still strong enough to defend him from waves of enemies.
• Body Horror:
  • Along with everything else the Undead do, one notable example is in Warcraft 3, where Necromancers (and Rods of Necromancy) raise two Skeletal Warriors from one body...
  • Also, the aptly-named Abominations, which are monstrosities made entirely out of random anonymous stitched-together body parts (who, by the way, get consciousnesses of their own), all have gaping holes in their chests, leaving their stomachs hanging wide open for everybody to see. Or, whatever else is in there, at least...
  • From The Frozen Throne, the Crypt Lord can create, from just about any body, some kind of giant beetle. Although it's more like he calls a beetle to eat the corpse. Or lays a larva that becomes the beetle. Or something.
• Bombardier Mook: Dwarven Flying Machines in III can be retrofitted with the ability to drop bombs on enemies. They're more effective against structures, but even then they don't do much damage, as Flying Machines are intended to be used in swarms.
• Bones Do Not Belong There: Most units whose corpses are flagged as being usable for abilities will leave skeletal corpses, even invertebrates like spiders and crabs. Reforged corrected this, and made invertebrate creeps no longer decay into skeletons (Nerubians still do because they're fantasy spider-people).
• Bonsai Forest: The forests seem to be very thick compared to how short the trees are.
• Booze Flamethrower: Pandaren Brewmasters in Warcraft 3 have both a "throw booze" and "spit fire" abilities, which can be combo'ed to deal considerable additional afterburn damage.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • In Warcraft III, the Undead's Death Knight hero may not be the most exciting hero available, but their healing abilities are vital to the Undead as the UD are unable to heal off of blight and they can use their Death Coil to either heal their undead allies or harm a living enemy. Their ultimate spell, Animate Dead, is also relatively boring but if you're doing a Death Pact build, you can sacrifice the invulnerable minions to recover the Death Knight's health in an emergency, and potentially spare them from dying.
  • Human Footmen in Warcraft III are basic foot soldiers, but their training with using a shield makes them valuable against ranged, piercing attackers, and thus a common sight in Human Alliance armies.
• Born Under the Sail: The island nation of Kul Tiras, whose contribution to the original Alliance was its powerful navy, which they had built up to protect their fleet of merchant vessels. Their national emblem is also an anchor.
• Borrowing from the Sister Series: 'Warcraft III takes several cues from [1] for game mechanics:
  • The Undead summon structures instead of building them, allowing Acolytes to perform other actions while the summoning continues, much like Protoss warping in structures. They can only build structures in Blight, which is spread by their structures, much like Zerg Creep.
  • Night Elf Wisps get consumed when building an Ancient, like how Zerg Drones get consumed when building any kind of structure.
  • The Orc faction overall takes cues from the Protoss, their units being more expensive, costing more Food but being stronger one-versus-one than equivalent units of the other factions.
  • The Orcs can also load their Peons inside Burrows to both protect them and attack at range, similar to how the Terran can load their Marines inside Bunkers.
  • The Undead basic infantry unit is fast, fragile and has a late-game upgrade to considerably increase their attack speed, similar to the Zerg Zergling.
  • The Night Elf basic infantry unit is the only one that is ranged, similar to the Terran Marine. Their secondary infantry units attacks at very close range (but not outright melee) and can damage multiple units with their attack, like the Terran Firebat.
  • The Undead Shade is a permanently invisible scout, similar to the Protoss Observer. Both also require their own, dedicated building to allow producing them.
• Boss Battle:
  • Kathuulon, Ra'Adoom, and Xaxion Drak'eem from the "Warchasers" scenario in Reign of Chaos are explicit bosses.
  • Beyond the Dark Portal has some, most notably Deathwing in the human campaign. In the final orc mission you also have to kill all human hero units together. They still die like anything else to a catapult or Death and Decay.
  • Being the Poorly Disguised Pilot for World of Warcraft it is, the Frozen Throne Orc campaign brings a number of these to the table, usually taking the form of super beefed-up versions of regular units.
• Boss in Mook Clothing:
  • Admiral's Elite Guard. They look like average footmen (the basic infantry in the human army), but they are much stronger than a Knight or a Tauren.
  • Captain Thornby in the second act of Rexxar's campaign. He looks like an ordinary human Captain, but he is strong enough to give your Hero party a challenge, if they don't have a high Level.
  • Due to the increased stats suffered by most units in Rexxar's campaign that applies to most enemies one encounters in act 2, to the point where one can encounter Murlocs that do over 100 damage per hit.
  • At the end of the Beyond the Dark Portal Baseless Mission "The Tomb of Sargeras", you must defeat a flying Daemon with substantially buffed stats. The Daemon is visually indistinguishable from a normal one, but normal Daemons are weak (similar to a Level 1 Grunt), while this one has stats equivalent to a hero and can only be hit with ranged attacks.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Pre-release versions of II had voices from the Footmen and Grunt units sucking up to the reviewer and the shareware version similarly had them request that you buy the game or advertised it to you (and the Grunt threatened to chop you into little bits too...or start singing).
• Breakout Character: Yes, Uther gets Killed Off for Real in the third game, but afterwards, he pretty much solidifies himself as Azeroth's model Paladin and if there's any Warcraft spinoff that needs a Paladin, that role always goes to Uther, in spite of his long dead presence. Way to go.
• Broken Armor Boss Battle: Some boss characters in Warcraft III have "Divine"-type armor that makes them immune to anything except "Chaos"-type attacks. Getting units with chaos-type attacks to defeat divine-armored enemies becomes a plot point in three of the campaign missions:
  • Arthas needs to gain Frostmourne in the last mission of the Human campaign, which gives him chaos damage and allows him to defeat Mal'Ganis (even though he still has Frostmourne in the Undead campaign, it no longer gives you chaos damage, most likely for balance reasons; it makes you way too overpowered against buildings).
  • When the orc hero Grom Hellscream angers the demigod Cenarius, he and his men drink demon blood from a corrupted pool, transforming themselves into Fel orcs and giving them the ability to kill Cenarius.^note Gameplay-wise, this is the only one of the battles where breaking the armor is not necessary to win. While very difficult, it is still possible to kill Cenarius without drinking the demon blood. Meanwhile, for Arthas, you cannot beat the last mission of the Human campaign if you don't grab Frostmourne, even if you somehow overcome Mal'Ganis's nigh-infinite Ankhs of Resurrection. For Illidan, Tichondrius will teleport all your units away if you bring him under a certain amount of HP without having consumed the Skull of Gul'dan
  • Illidan Stormrage devours the skull of Gul'dan, transforming him into a half-demon and giving him the ability to defeat the demon Tichondrius.
• Burning the Ships: In Warcraft III, Arthas Menethil leads his troops to Northrend to capture Mal'Ganis. While Arthas is out of the basecamp, a messenger from King Terenas arrives with orders for the men to retreat. When Arthas returns to find his men preparing to leave, he has their boats burned, thus forcing them to go on while framing the mercenaries he hired for the job as scapegoats.
• Butt-Monkey: Alterac, during the Second War and before the Syndicate. Lore keeps reminding us that they were "the weakest of the Human nations" and "only a minor contributor of troops and equipment to the Alliance" before their betrayal. The Orc campaign in Beyond the Dark Portal has a mission in which you aid the survivors of Alterac and one of their mages. Its mission briefing reminds you how weak the nation is, and an accompanying cutscene in the Playstation version shows Orcs killing the Alterac mage's bodyguards, just because they can, while the Alterac mage helplessly dips his head (skip to 3:09).
• Buzzing the Deck: Invoked in a Stop Poking Me!, where the Dragonhawk Rider asks for permission to buzz the tower.
• Calling Your Nausea: In Warcraft II, clicking on an orc ship enough time will make a crew mate say he's gonna be sick. Continue to click and you'll hear a vomiting sound.
• Cannibal Tribe: The Bonechewer Clan and various Troll tribes.
• Cap Raiser:
  • Each faction increases its unit cap with a special building.
    • Undead Ziggurats can be upgraded into towers.
    • Orc Burrows can be garrisoned with workers.
    • Night Elf Moon Wells will restore health and mana to friendly units.
    • Human Farms actually do nothing special, but they're often used to barricade areas or defenses thanks to their small footprint.
  • Peasants can be upgraded to carry more lumber per trip.
  • The Mana Drain spell can temporarily cause a unit's mana to exceed its maximum mana.
  • All caster upgrades increase the caster's maximum mana and regeneration.
• Captain Ersatz:
  • Between his Undeathly Pallor in lieu of albinism, his soul-drinking runeblade, and his being monarch of a kingdom he eventually turns against and destroys, Arthas has a lot in common with Elric of Melnibone. Even the naming and art of the swords is similar.
  • While not exactly a Captain Ersatz the similarities between Arthas Menethil and Anakin Skywalker are obvious. Driven to the dark side by what they love (Padmé/Lordaeron), killing the thing they love, exchanging their good weapon for an evil one, and eventually killing their old mentor. And don't forget the angst.
  • Sylvanas is Sarah Kerrigan with the serial numbers filed off.
  • In fact, a large portion of the game's plot is suspiciously similar to that of Starcraft and its expansion Brood War.
• Capital Letters Are Magic: The Forsaken and the Scourge
• Chain Lightning: The Far Seer can use this. The Naga Sea Witch has a variant called Forked Lightning, which hits fewer targets simultaneously.
• The Chessmaster: A fair few: Ner'zhul, Tichondrius, Kel'Thuzad, Sylvanas and Mal'Ganis being prime examples.
• Chew Toy: Malygos... until World of Warcraft.
• Civil War vs. Armageddon:
  • The campaigns in Warcraft III consist of getting the Alliance, Horde (who want to exterminate each other for past war crimes), and Night Elves (who want to keep their lands free of outsiders) to work together against the undead (and their master, the Burning Legion) after a great deal of infighting. Even the demon side isn't immune, as Arthas is none too pleased about handing over leadership of the Scourge and points out a way to remove a demon general to the Night Elves. This has far greater consequences than they thought.
  • In the expansion, the Night Elves end up fighting the now part-demonic Illidan when he casts a spell meant to destroy part of the world and the Lich King, taking out the undead once and for all. It fails, so Illidan tries to kill the Lich King personally.
• Civil Warcraft: The Trope Namer.
  • The trope was introduced as early as Warcraft I, where both campaigns had exactly one mission where you had to fight your own race. When playing as the Humans, you have to stop a band of mercenaries from sacking Northshire Abbey, while in the Orc campaign you must wrest control of the Horde from Blackhand.
  • Both campaigns in Tides of Darkness also had one each. The Humans need to destroy treacherous Alterac, while the Orcs must stop Gul'dan from taking the power of Sargeras for himself.
  • Beyond the Dark Portal didn't have any for the humans, but the first three Orc missions on the other hand had you fighting other Orcs to assert Ner'zhul's control over the Horde.
  • The final Orc mission in Reign of Chaos has the player fighting against the Warsong Clan after they have been corrupted by Mannoroth. These Orcs all have Chaos damage meaning they will more often than not do better in combat than your orcs, plus there are Burning Legion units in the level.
  • The Undead campaign in Frozen Throne mostly consists of this thanks to the Lich King's control over the Scourge weakening and giving the undead free will.
• Classic Cheat Code: All Your Base Are Belong to Us gives instant win, and Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb gives instant failure.
• Climax Boss: Two very powerful Dreadlords serve as this in Warcraft III.
  • Tichondrius in Reign of Chaos. After being one of the main villains for the majority of the game, Illidan steals his weapon, The Skull of Gul'dan, and kills him in the penultimate mission. Doing so fractures his relationship with Tyrande and his brother, who both choose to fight Archimonde without him.
  • Balnazzar in The Frozen Throne, who had acted as the antagonist to both Arthas and Sylvanas for the entire Scourge campaign. He is one of the strongest enemy heroes in the whole campaign. His defeat concludes Sylvanas' arc, and the last major foe of the campaign is Illidan himself.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Siege Engines were originally utterly unable to attack units in III. They later could avert this in the Frozen Throne expansion with the Barrage upgrade, allowing them to shoot weak rockets at air units.
• Les Collaborateurs: The human nation/city-state of Alterac, the weakest human kingdom, collaborated with the Horde, fearing that should the Alliance fall, Alterac will be destroyed as well.
• Color-Coded Armies: An RTS mainstay for telling people apart. Notably, the campaigns have different factions associated with different colors: The humans of Lordaeron and Night Elf Sentinels tend to be various shades of blue, the Orcish Horde is colored red, the Undead Scourge and Naga are purple (although the Naga switch to teal when both are in the same mission), and the Burning Legion is usually green. Neutral units always use the color black.
• A Commander Is You: The first two games feature Cosmetically Different Sides, but Warcraft III features far more diversity. The four sides are:
  • Human Alliance: Numbers — Balanced/Spammer, Doctrine — Economist/Unit Specialist/Turtle. In one of the biggest cases of Irony in the game, Humans are arguably better Spammers than even the Undead. Their units are average early on and though they fall off in late-game power, Gryphon Riders are very well-rounded end-game air. They have relatively cheap food costs, and their spellcasters are among the best in the game when massed and backed by an Archmage's Brilliance Aura. Even in the early game, Humans' go-to creeping strategy involves throwing a horde of Militia at the nearest creep camp, and since Militia revert to Peasants after their timer is up, this incidentally makes them great at capturing early expansions by having Militia mow down the creeps guarding them and then speed-build a Town Hall after they're done. Even their towers can be easily spammed, due to their quick build time, cheap cost, and high damage, which also makes a fortified Human base very hard to take without heavy losses. Humans also have a large number of specialized counter units, such as Dragonhawks for bulky air units, Siege Engines and Flying Machines for massed air units and buildings, Knights for ranged enemies, Gryphon Riders for devastating massed Heavy Armor targets and Spell Breakers for mages, letting them prepare for any foe by grabbing whatever counter they need in sufficiently large numbers.
  • Orcish Horde: Numbers — Elitist, Doctrine — Brute and Technical. Their structures and units cost more overall, but have more health and/or damage than their contemporaries in other factions. The Orc army mainly specializes in charging into enemy ranks with bulky melee units and a few high-damage ranged attackers, with their spellcasters mainly serving as force multipliers with the Shaman buffing them using Bloodlust and the Witch Doctor giving area-of-effect healing. While they lack significant air power, their Wind Riders are still potent harassment units against bases while the opponent is away. They have a few unconventional anti-air defenses, such as the Raider's Ensnare and the Batrider's Unstable Concoction, though a certain amount of micromanagement is required to use these well and to get the most out of their casters and heroes. The best representative of their Technical side is the Blademaster, a speedy and stealthy Glass Cannon hero. A well-controlled Blademaster is an utter terror, capable of shredding armies and putting unrelenting pressure on the enemy's workers, but if your control isn't up to scratch, he will not be able to use his massive damage output to its full potential and get put down in seconds.
  • Undead Scourge: Numbers — Spammer/Elitist, Doctrine — Technical/Industrialist/Brute. Possessing cheaper but more fragile units and structures, they are different from the Orcs and Humans in how they gather resources — Worker Units gather Gold from Gold Mines after they have been "haunted", but Ghouls, your basic infantry, are responsible for gathering lumber. This is ultimately to their advantage, since it means committing less of your food count to resource gathering than other races require. Replacing the Orcs as the faction who summon expendable skeleton Mooks, they also have nifty abilities obviously designed for dirty fighting, and their heroes' main power comes from their ability to indiscriminately blast apart anything that crosses their path with their spells. Also in their favour is that, uniquely, their buildings are constructed summoned to the battlefield automatically, letting them build multiple structures simultaneously without tying up multiple workers; buildings also have the unique ability to be "unsummoned", recovering some of their cost and allowing the Undead to pack up and leave areas they no longer need or that can't hold against an attack. Despite their image as the resident Zerg Rush-y faction, you can only get so far with masses of Ghouls and Skeletons, and the Undead actually have some of the strongest high-tech units of any faction, whose high health also synergizes nicely with the Death Knight's strong single-target healing. This allows them to make a late-game transition from masses of expendable units into a small core of powerful ones, which can be a nasty shock to enemies preparing solely for the former. Undead can also go Elitist right from the start by focusing on Crypt Fiends, which are the most expensive early units in the game, and then rushing out their Black Citadel to bring out the big guns; this playstyle focuses very heavily on using your heroes to kill things, but Undead heroes are so good at nuking enemies down that it doesn't hold them back. Their supply structures can also be upgraded to serve as base defense, giving the Undead a potential advantage in space efficiency, while the blighted ground mechanic means Undead can auto-heal on blight regardless of time of day which pairs well with the Death Knight's Unholy Aura for additional regeneration.
  • Night Elves: Numbers — Balanced/Elitist, Doctrine — Gimmick/Ranger/Turtle/Technical. They also have the most unique mechanics of any faction in the game: their Wisps can gather lumber from trees indefinitely without removing them^note For balance purposes, individual Wisps gather 5 lumber per trip, which is less than Peasants, Peons and Ghouls; the former two gather 10 per trip (although Peasants can be upgraded to harvest more lumber per trip, up to 30), the latter 20., many of their abilities and even their health regeneration are reliant on night-time, their Ancients (large treants that serve as production buildings) can uproot to fight if necessary, and they have shapeshifting Druids that can change from spellcasters to combatants and back, to name a few. While the Night Elves' early game army is made up of fragile ranged attackers with high damage and moderate cost, they also have a good amount of Magikarp Power. Their Demon Hunter and Warden heroes are some of the scariest combatants in the game once they reach high levels, their fragile Archers can eventually be upgraded into fairly powerful Hippogryph Riders if they live past your early game, and they also have a selection of powerful melee attackers, namely the Druid of the Claw and Mountain Giant. Night Elf bases tend to be the second hardest to siege after Human bases, since defenders can constantly heal using Moon Wells (but they will run dry eventually during the day), Ancients can heal quickly by eating trees and generally pack a wallop, and their lumber-harvesting method means they will never open up new attack paths late in the game.
• Combat Medic: Druids of the Claw are the rare melee-oriented spellcaster, capable of turning into a rampaging bear as well as being able to heal their allies. They're even pretty beefy when not in bear form. Paladins in Warcraft II and III are also melee-oriented healing spellcasters.
• Combat Tentacles: The Forgotten One in the Frozen Throne Undead campaign spawns these.
• Combined Energy Attack: The Wisps' combined energy is what killed Archimonde.
• Command & Conquer Economy: You assign peasants to their tasks and build farms and lumber mills, as well as more military kinds of facility.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • It can see the entire map (including player bases hidden by Fog of War), gains double resources on Insane difficulty (10 gold from a mine adds 20 gold to the CPU's funds, and likewise for lumber), can control more units more quickly than you can, and seems to prioritize human players over other AI opponents.
  • In Warcraft I, the computer doesn't need an economy at all - it has infinite resources and therefore potentially infinite units, with the only limitation being that a Peasant/Peon must gather 100 gold or wood before he can rebuild a lost building. Its units don't need food, either. This is balanced by it not being able to build new buildings or research unit upgrades.
• Computers Are Fast: Computer Ogre Mages. You don't know pain until you've seen the AI cast Blood Lust on its entire army at once. Instantly. Likewise, Healing in Warcraft II is much more dangerous when used by the computer — its Paladins can heal each other instantly, while a human player has to issue the order for each Paladin separately, making it highly impractical in the middle of combat.
• The Computer Shall Taunt You: In a cutscene preceding one mission in Warcraft III where you are controlling the Undead Scourge, the orc leading a charge against you opines that killing a bunch of weak, mindless undead like you guys should be no problem. Kel'Thuzad doesn't bother to explain otherwise, just condemning the attackers of the old Dark Horde for failing the Burning Legion and declares that they too must be scourged.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: In "Old Hatreds" there is only one Elite Guard. In "A Blaze of Glory" there are several elite guards, but they are weaker than the first.
• Construct Additional Pylons: Farms for both sides in the first two games. The orcs switched from farms to burrows in III, while the two new factions got their own equivalents: Moon Wells for the Night Elves and Ziggurats for the Undead. Unlike most Pylon-type buildings, all of them except the farm have other functions: Burrows can be garrisoned by Peons to attack enemies (which also protects them), Ziggurats can be upgraded to defense towers, and Moon Wells can heal and restore mana to nearby units. The main draw of farms is that one only generates 6 supply points instead of 10, but is very inexpensive to construct, and thus multiple farms can be built to form a relatively low cost wall around vital areas while raising the supply limit.
• Continuing is Painful: If your hero dies in Warcraft III, they can be resurrected at an Altar, but it will cost a good chunk of your gold and takes quite a bit of time — which your opponent, who just got a chunk of experience for their own heroes, may not give you. Alternatively, you can instantly resurrect a dead hero at a Tavern, but it costs twice as much gold as reviving them the old fashioned way and the hero is brought back with half health and no mana. One mercy is that you'll likely be back at "no upkeep" and not have to contend with the gold tax until you cross the 50-supply threshold while your opponent(s) will will still need to contend with upkeep costs.
• Contractual Boss Immunity:
  • A crucial aversion exists in Warcraft II where Polymorph may be cast upon heroes. This makes Teron Gorefiend a joke on the mission where you assault Shadowmoon Fortress, and in the Orc expansion campaign, you can even lose Teron Gorefiend to Polymorph and fail a mission.
  • The Beyond the Dark Portal Alliance mission where you have to kill Deathwing, a very powerful foe with eight times the HP of a normal dragon, enforces this trope in a very roundabout way: neither Khadgar nor your regular wizards can use the Polymorph spell so you don't just oneshot Deathwing with it, with zero in-universe reason for this restriction.
  • As you might expect, Heroes in Warcraft III are immune to certain abilities, like the Sorceress's Polymorph and campaign bosses' Finger of Death. The ones that do affect Heroes often have their effect reduced compared to when they're cast on a regular unit. Certain non-hero units, such as the Mountain Giant and Infernal, also have this immunity through the passive ability Resistant Skin, which causes them to be flagged as Heroes for spell effects.
• Cosmetically Different Sides:
  • In the first two games, the two factions are identical, save for the range and damage of their archers/spearmen (archers have greater range, spearmen do more damage), the firing and reloading rates of ballistas/catapults (catapults fire faster, but ballistas reload faster), their spellcasters, and some upgrades. The Human nations/Orcish clans are only different in game by their color.
  • Thoroughly averted in Warcraft III, where each of the four factions (including the formerly identical humans and orcs) have very different units and play styles.
• Crate Expectations: In Warcraft III, there are many breakable crates, some of which contain different items or runes.
• Creative Closing Credits: Warcraft III and The Frozen Throne have humorous scenes playing during the credits, such as Archimonde trying to film a remake of the scene from WC2 where a footman shoots down a zeppelin with a catapult, or Arthas holding a rock concert.
• Critical Hit Class: The Glass Cannon Blademaster from Warcraft III. His three non-ultimate abilities are a Critical Hit for double, triple and quadruple damage depending on level; a sneak attack that makes him move faster, turn invisible, and deal extra damage on his next attack; and creating illusions of himself to take damage. Inverted with the Mountain King, a Mighty Glacier whose Critical Hit has a chance of stunning the target and doing a little extra damage, but his attack speed is much lower (he has active abilities to stun and slow units, however).
• Cutscene Incompetence:
  • A well-remembered one, where a Footman successful sneaks up on a Grunt to deliver a fatal sword stab, something that isn't actually possible in gameplay 1 on 1 between these two units. Also has Cutscene Power to the Max where the Footman uses the nearby Catapult as Anti-Air.
  • This happens twice in the text-only storyline in regards to security of the Dark Portal. Despite the Alliance knowing that the portal still remained after Khadgar "destroyed" it once, the Alliance fails to keep a sufficient garrison nearby in case of the inevitable second invasion where the Horde completely retakes the area surrounding the Dark Portal. The Alliance secures the Portal again and you can guard it with a maxed-out army, but somehow, Ner'zhul and a gang of Death Knights successfully get all the way to New Stormwind Library to steal the Book of Medivh and go back through the Dark Portal in a stealthy manner. The Portal being secured in the previous mission seems to be forgotten.
• Cutscene Power to the Max:
  • One of Warcraft 2's cutscenes shows a human using a stolen Catapult to destroy a Goblin Zeppelin, despite the fact that catapults cannot attack flying units in actual gameplay.
  • The cutscene at the end of the Alliance campaign in Warcraft 2 shows a human mage casting a spell (which does not exist in game) that summons a great pillar of light that destroys the Dark Portal (the tankiest building in the game) in one shot.
  • The cinematic ending of the orc campaign in Reign of Chaos has Thrall charging his hammer with electricity and throwing it at Mannoroth (a move that sorta does exist... but is used by the dwarf Mountain King), while Grom kills him in one hit (admittedly, Grom does have Critical Strike).
  • In Reign of Chaos, Cairne's War Stomp causes an avalanche and Sylvanas destroys a bridge with Starfall (which Tyrande also does in The Frozen Throne). Neither is possible in gameplay.
  • After being awakened, Malfurion turns an entire forest into an army of Treants, who proceed to lay waste a nearby Undead base. While Malfurion can turn trees into Treants, he obviously can only do it on a much smaller scale in the game.
  • Similarly to Malfurion, Cenarius is introduced by turning a large cluster of trees into an army of Treants. Then, he uses his Ultimate spell (which normally is just a wide area heal) to regrow all the trees the orcs had cut down in the previous mission.
  • The ending to the entire campaign of Warcraft III. The wisps do a mass detonate on Archimonde as he climbs up the world tree, destroying him, half the forest, and the World Tree. In reality, detonate... drains mana and damages summoned enemies. And Archimonde was summoned by Kel'thuzad back in the undead campaign.
  • In Frozen Throne Varimathras easily kills Garithos at the end of "A New Power In Lordaeron'' after being ordered by Sylvanas. In actual gameplay, Garithos can take on Varimathras and Sylvanas at the same time and win.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Several examples in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its Frozen Throne expansion.
  • Druids of the Talon's "Faerie Fire" autocast ability removes some armor from the target and allows the user to see that unit until the effect fades.
  • Troll Berserkers' "Berserk" ability allows the user to attack faster but take more damage (in %).
  • The Orb of Corruption item reduces the armor of units attacked by a Hero who carries it.
  • Ethereal units are immune to physical attacks, but cannot use their own attacks and take increased damage from Magic-type attacks and spells (including healing magic). The Blood Mage's "Banish" spell temporarily makes a physical target ethereal and slows it.
  • The Alchemist's Acid Bomb spell reduces the target's armor and inflicts damage over time.
• Damage Is Fire: Buildings and mechanical units catch on fire (cosmetic only) as their health is depleted.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: A lot of the boss type enemies in the campaigns but especially in The Founding of Durotar. Special mention goes to Lord Talendar, who is a giant skeleton with 10,000 (14,000 on Hard) health and no abilities, and the Ultimate Boss Eldritch Deathlord who has 10,000 (14,000 on Hard) health, 120 armor (which reduces all damage to Scratch Damage) and his abilities are Rejuvenation (which heals him over time) and Evasion (which lets him passively avoid getting hit). It takes a lot of time and grinding to just be able to damage him.
• Dancing Mook Credits: III has a concert with all the character models. They're all enemies if you're played all the different races' campaigns (and you did, because that's at the end of the last campaign).
• Dark Action Girl: Sylvanas Windrunner.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • The Night Elf race.
  • The Orcs after their Heel–Face Turn in III.
• Darker and Edgier: In Warcraft III, both Undead campaigns are unrelentingly dark compared to the other campaigns. Path of the Damned is set during their destruction of Lordaeron, Quel'Thalas and Dalaran, while Legacy of the Damned is a series of Evil Versus Evil conflicts where ultimately The Bad Guy Wins, the Scourge defeats Illidan and Arthas becomes the Lich King.
• Death of a Child: Children can be killed. However, the first Undead level has you looking for cultists without getting too near villagers. While adult villagers become marked as hostile, allowing your units to auto-attack them, children remain neutral, meaning they won't be attacked unless specifically ordered to. You Monster!.
• Decoy Protagonist:
  • Maiev Shadowsong starts out as a protagonist of Night Elf campaign in the Warcraft III TFT, but then ends up sidetracked by original night elf heroes — Malfurion and Tyrande, and the final mission of the campaign does not feature her at all.
  • Similarly, Kael'Thas is presented as the protagonist of the human campaign in The Frozen Throne, but after meeting Illidan, he pretty much fades from being a character of his own and Illidan takes center stage. Unlike Maiev, Kael is still playable, but receives next to no characterization from that point forward.
• Defenseless Transports: Both sides have unarmed transport ships in Warcraft II.
• Degraded Boss:
  • The Elite Guard in the orc bonus campaign. In "Old Hatreds" the elite guard plays the role of boss, but in "A Blaze of Glory" they're degraded to Elite Mooks.
  • The giant phoenix in the orc bonus campaign. Initially it is a boss that the player has to defeat to get an egg, and then Chen joins the team. After that it becomes a standard enemy, with several of them being in the same area. However, facing them is optional, because the player has no need to return to that area beyond farming experience and gold.
  • The Abomination. In its initial mission, the abomination is treated as a unique enemy (though not hard to beat), in the next mission there are 5 of them acting as a mini-bosses protecting Kel'thuzad, but after that, they become standard enemies that the undead can train normally.
  • Doomguards in "Warchasers". The first to appear is a boss named Kathuulon, but the next ones to appear are standard enemies, first in Hell if the player is unlucky enough to fall into it, and then in the final stage of the game.
• Demanding Their Head: During the mission briefing for the Tomb of Sargeras level, the player is asked to "return with the head of Gul'dan."
• Demonic Possession: Banshees in III can turn enemy units to their side by possessing them (this removes the Banshee herself from play). Interestingly, if you manage to possess an enemy worker, you can actually create their own buildings, hire their units and effectively start playing as two factions at once. This trick is mostly disabled in the campaigns, but at least once (during the mission where you get the Banshees in the first place) you can possess an Elven worker and create some normally unavailable units and buildings.
• Demonic Vampires: Dreadlords are the commanders of the Burning Legion with vampiric traits, such as healing themselves and their allies by attacking in melee, sending swarms of bats against enemies or putting selected victims into unnatural sleep. They can also summon enormous burning demons to crash-land on their enemies.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Ogres have a major role in Warcraft II but are neutral creeps and mercenaries in Warcraft III. Ditto for Goblins (mostly as merchants.) Goblins get hit with a double whammy as they were originally planned to become an Ascended Extra — being the sixth playable race in Warcraft III^note the fifth was the Burning Legion, before Blizzard realized that even just four races would be hard enough to balance.
  • Gnomes were cut from WC3 entirely, only seen again when World of Warcraft came around.
  • The Alliance campaign in the Frozen Throne expansion focuses largely on the plight of Kael'thas and his Blood Elf remnants... for about two and a half missions. Then they became more or less Out of Focus as the story importance shifted to Illidan and his Naga (made worse by the Blood Elf forces being completely irrelevant alongside the much stronger Naga). By the middle of the Undead campaign, the Blood Elves are out-and-out Mooks with the exception of Kael'thas himself.
• Dig Attack: III: The Frozen Throne gave Crypt Fiends a burrow ability that increased their regeneration but prevented them from moving or attacking. Crypt Lords have the animation, but it goes unused save for certain cutscenes.
• Disposable Decoy Doppelgänger: From III:
  • '' The Blademaster's Mirror Image ability creates up to 3 copies of himself (with the same stats, but 0 damage) that can be used to scout, distract, tank, etc. Using the move also dispels all buffs and debuffs on the Blademaster.
  • The Wand of Illusion item lets the caster make an illusion of the target unit that deals no damage.
• Divergent Character Evolution: The Alliance and Horde are pretty much identical until the sequels.
  • The Alliance has sturdier buildings, advanced technology and better healing magic.
  • The Horde had expensive infantry (being a Proud Warrior Race) and their magic was geared to the offensive.
  • Many, many models in Reforged were changed to show hierarchy and aesthetic of similar types of units. For example, some High and Blood elves units were merely recolors of night elves and human units in the original Warcraft III but were given pieces that wouldn't look out of place in World of Warcraft. Listing all examples would take too much text, as Reforged gives every unit (and building) that in Warcraft III Classic was a resizing, recolour, both or plain identical of another's model their own unique models (even if the alterations are minimal for units that are supposed to look similar).
• Divided We Fall: In spite of the previous two campaigns establishing that the undead and their demon masters are the real threat of Warcraft III, the orc campaign is devoted almost entirely to fighting humans and night elves. They're fighting humans because Grom is a bloodthirsty idiot that can't follow orders and the night elves because they're as crazy as Grom and can't be bothered to say "Hey, could you quit cutting the trees down? We kinda like 'em" before attempting to wipe them off the face of the planet.
  • The Night Elf Campaign as well. Tyrande learns fairly early on that the Legion is returning and that the humans and orcs are fighting them. Despite Malfurion's advice, she continues to attack or ignore them instead of allying against their ancient enemy bent on destroying the world. It takes Medivh pulling a stupid complicated plan to strong-arm them into reluctantly working together.
  • Lordaeron, Dalaran and Quel'thalas fell because the latter two refused to help when the Scourge was destroying the former. This allowed the Scourge to pick off the kingdoms one by one.
• The Dragon: Just to name a few:
  • Kil'jaeden and Archimonde for Sargeras.
  • Tichondrius for Kil'jaeden
  • Anetheron and Azgalor for Archimonde
  • Orgrim Doomhammer was the Dragon and The Starscream for Blackhand
  • Cho'gall was the Dragon for Gul'dan (WC2)
  • Dentarg was the Dragon for Ner'zhul (WC2 Expansion)
  • Both Arthas and Kel'thuzad for the Lich King
  • Kael'thas and Lady Vashj for Illidan
  • Varimathras for Lady Sylvanas
  • Master of Pain and Mistress of Torment for Magtheridon.
  • Chief of Chaplains and Chief Petty Officer for Admiral Proudmoore.
  • Morbent Fell and Ras Splinterspine for Balnazzar.
• Devour the Dragon: Or the Mook, anyway — Death Knights can eat minions for a health boost. Liches can do the same to get mana. Om nom nom. Fortunately, the Undead have plenty of ways to summon disposable Cannon Fodder to feed their heroes, and the abilities are pretty efficient to begin with so sacrificing a Ghoul will probably still get you decent value. One could theoretically devour a frost wyrm in this fashion, making this more literal — and a massive waste of a good unit (unless it was about to die anyway, in which case you get to deny the enemy a huge chunk of experience). The Undead later also got the Ritual Dagger item, which sacrifices an Undead unit to heal allies over time, and the Necromancer's Unholy Frenzy ability was reworked into an area-of-effect buff cast by killing an Undead unit, preferably a skeleton summoned by that same Necromancer).
• Double-Edged Buff: In Warcraft III:
  • Unholy Frenzy increases movement and attack speed at the cost of steadily draining health.
  • The Berserk ability increases the caster's attack speed but also increases damage taken.
  • The Banish ability can be cast on friend or foe, makes the target immune to physical attacks, but also slows them, makes them unable to attack, and increases their vulnerability to spells and the Magic damage type.
  • The Purge spell removes all buffs and debuffs from a target but slows their movement speed afterwards.
  • The Defend ability greatly reduces Piercing damage taken and can even send a Piercing attack back in the attacker's face, but greatly slows movement.
  • The Dragonhawk Rider has two: Aerial Shackles prevents a flyer from moving and deals damage to it, while Cloud prevents enemy buildings from attacking. Using either one prevents the unit from moving or attacking without ending the spell prematurely.
  • The Druid of the Claw's Bear Form spell turns him into a bear, making him a heavy melee unit, but greatly reducing mana regeneration and preventing him from casting its Rejuvenation spell. The Druid of the Talon's Storm Crow Form similarly turns him into a purely Anti-Air flyer that can't hit ground units or cast Cyclone. In the original game, both are unable to cast their first buff spell (which increases ally damage/decreases enemy armor) while the expansion lets them do so with another upgrade.
  • The Tinker's ultimate transforms him into a Tank-Tread Mecha, increasing his damage (especially against buildings) and making him immune to a number of spells by making him a Mechanical unit. However, this includes healing spells, requiring the use of healing items or a Worker Unit to slowly repair him (admittedly, if the battle isn't too heavy, this can be a benefit, using resources rather than precious mana to heal him).
  • The Crypt Fiend can burrow in the ground to become invisible and heal much faster, but can't move or attack.
  • The Obsidian Statue (a support caster that restores mana or health around itself) can transform into a Destroyer, a heavy air unit with powerful Anti-Magic spells. The catch is that it has negative mana regeneration, and has to use most of those spells to keep dealing high damage.
• Dragons Are Demonic: In Warcraft II Dragons are inherently evil, used by orcs as flying shock troops. Warcraft III has them released from the orcs' mind control into a more neutral position, though their leaders are either good (Alexstraza, the formerly imprisoned Dragonqueen) or evil (Deathwing, who provides the page image).
• Dragon Variety Pack: III adds several types of dragons (fire-breathing red, acid-breathing green and black, frost-breathing blue, and lightning-breathing bronze), retconning the Warcraft II versions (which were green with red hair) as having been enslaved Red Dragons and the Hero Unit Deathwing as being the leader of the Black Dragonflight. Whelps are the smallest, followed by Drakes, and then Dragons, which are immune to magic and can devour most units alive.
  • Frost Wyrms are the skeletons of dragons reanimated by the Undead, whose attacks slow units and freeze buildings.
  • Wyverns are a Biological Mashup that would usually be called a manticore (lion head, bat wings and scorpion tail, although the artstyle makes it hard to tell what it is) used by the Horde as their main flying unit mounted by a spear thrower.
  • The expansion adds several more:
    • Snap Dragons are a poison-spitting reptilian species used by the naga, although whether or not it's an actual dragon is unspecified.
    • Dragonspawn are wingless dragon-headed centaur-like creatures that use magic, unlike dragons.
    • Nether Dragons are shadowy creatures that throw bolts of darkness. The Nether Dragon can't eat units but can cast Cripple.
    • Faerie Dragons are the Night Elves' flying caster. They're tiny butterfly-winged lizards that are immune to magic, can phase out of existence to evade damage, and damage spellcasters whenever they cast.
• Draw Aggro:
  • The Taunt ability forces all nearby enemies to attack the caster, used by the Stone Wall Mountain Giants.
  • The Shadow Hunter's Big Bad Voodoo turns all other units around invulnerable except the caster, meaning the enemy has no choice but to attack the Squishy Wizard casting the spell.
• Dread Zeppelin: Used by the Orcs in Warcraft II as the equivalent to the Gnomish Flying Machine. It comes back in Warcraft III, but only as a neutral unit that any faction can purchase.
• Dream Intro: III starts with a cinematic of the orcs and humans going to war (again), before it cuts to Thrall waking from his Catapult Nightmare.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Dagren the Orcslayer, the paladin guarding the grave of the necromancer Kel'Thuzad.
• Drums of War: The Orc unit called the Kodo beast is ridden by an orc drummer. It increases the damage done by all nearby allied units. Heroes can also pick up the item Warsong Battle Drums, which grants the same effect.
• Dual Boss: Anasterian Sunstrider and Thalorien Dawnseeker in "The Fall of Silvermoon"
• Duel Boss: Rexxar vs Kor'gall, invoked by the latter to settle Rexxar's challenge for leadership of the Stonemaul ogres.
• Dumb Muscle: Ogres and Undead abominations. Some Orcs fall into this, but not the Orc Shamans.
  Ogre(s) "Kill!"
  Abomination "We done waiting!"
  Orc Peon "Me not that kind of Orc!"
• Dying as Yourself: Grom Hellscream, after killing Mannoroth and freeing the Orcs from their Blood Pact.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Jaina and Thrall, contrary to their WoW selves, display a great deal of fantastic racism and initially refused to work together. It's implied that defeating Archimonde made them Fire-Forged Friends. Which is understandable, given that Thrall's experiences with humans have been less than positive and Jaina's father was a racist piece of work himself.^note This is later explained in one of the books by her older brother being killed by orc dragonriders in the Second War.
  • Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is almost completely unrecognisable as being connected to the series as established in Warcraft III and solidified in World of Warcraft, resulting in it being subjected to extensive retcons to make it fit better. For one thing, the name is perfectly literal as the two sides are comprised entirely of human and orc units, with no "Alliance" or "Horde" (well, the orcs are referred to as "the orcish hordes" but it's not the same). Oh, and the gameplay is incredibly primitive compared to even Warcraft II (to be fair, it was only the second real RTS game in existence after Dune II), with no right click movement, buildings only being able to be built next to roads, and units slowly waddling around tiny maps in groups of no more than 4 at a time (again, though, this was an improvement over Dune II, which didn't allow grouping units at all). Tactics are also very different, with the early game involving trying to lure the enemy into archer/spearman walls, and the late game being dominated by incredibly powerful summoned units — Daemons and Elementals — and possibly creative use of Catapults to splatter enemy Daemons/Elementals while leaving yours intact.
    • The Rain of Fire spell is used by the Human Conjurers instead of it being one of the Warlock's signature spells as in World of Warcraft. ^note Pitlords and Doomguards favor this spell too. Warlocks meanwhile use Poison Cloud, a variant of the Death and Decay magic favored by Death Knights and Liches.
    • The orcs are blatantly evil demon worshippers (even if the manual states that there is still a good portion to an orc's soul), and their Warlocks summon generic "daemons" from "the Underworld", explicitly treated as hell.
    • The humans explicitly worship God rather than the more vague Holy Light.
    • Orcs and Humans's Water Elementals had a distinctly-feminine◊ design◊ with the shape of a bust and the vague appearance of a human head with long hair on them. III would later use a different design style that stuck for later instances of Water Elementals, with them having a more barely-humanoid appearance that had a shape more akin to a gorilla with large forearms and had a less-humanlike head which was leaned far more forward over its torso. There's no particular explanation for this change when other distinctions and differences between units throughout the series got explained by background events or the ravages of war eliminating the predecessors.
    • Catapults can be healed by clerics in the first game.
  • Warcraft II has very a rudimentary array of aerial units and they can NOT stack up on each other, making managing an air force clunky. There is also only one buildable attack flier for each faction, the Alliance Gryphon and the Horde Dragon, and they both have the same stats and only require a hefty 2500 gold per unit for resources and only take up one food/supply unit. StarCraft would introduce stackable fliers, multiple types of air units besides basic attackers and the concept of air units requiring secondary resources to build; Warcraft III inherited these improvements and even added air units who can land and/or take off in some fashion.
  • Warcraft II largely discontinued summonable units, leaving only the weak skeleton summons for Death Knights, and Eye of Kilrog air scouts for Ogre Magi. Warcraft III reinstated major summons, but restricted them to mainly heroes and better balanced their attack power and unlock requirements (for ultimate summons especially).
  • Warcraft II is unique in Blizzard's RTS line in that there is a mechanic where you can harvest bonus resources with the appropriate refinery structure. (Castle/Fortress, Lumber Mill, and Oil Refinery for instance) However, later games dropped this idea in favor of mostly fixed map resources, and the oil resource was also discontinued in III.
  • Before Warcraft III, unit weapon and armor upgrades had only two tiers instead of the now-standard three tiers introduced in StarCraft, and didn't have unlock requirements. Air units also have no upgrades. Unit weapon and armor upgrades are also not centralized in your Blacksmith structure, with your ranged troops having their upgrades in the Lumber Mill. Warcraft III merged the Lumber Mill and Blacksmith into a single structure for the Horde, Nightelves ^note This mainly applies if you're using a Goblin Shredder, Wisps don't need to return lumber. and Undead. The Humans still have a separate Lumber Mill that's relatively inexpensive for easier lumber expansions and has upgrades for your Peasants' lumber carrying capacity as a faction bonus.
• Earth Drift: The original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans made numerous Christian references in regards to Human Clerics. The Church building explicitly had a cross. The Map Reveal spell was said to be seeing as God (with a capital G) does, and healing was said to be spreading the injury across all humanity, comparing it to the act of bearing the cross of another. Later games have retconned this monotheism into being a nontheistic belief in "the Light" and "the Twisting Nether".
• Easy Level Trick:
  • Warcraft I
    • Human Mission 7. The mission is in two parts where you have to rescue a group of peasants before being able to properly build up your main base. However, your starting army (4 Knights, 4 Archers, 2 Clerics and a Catapult) is already so powerful that with decent micro, you can instead just destroy the enemy's main base right away.
    • Human Mission 8. Due to the level's final room being right next to the player's starting location, it's possible to kill Medivh right away. After using a Cleric's sight-seeing ability to reveal Medivh's location, there's one square for an Archer to stand on at the starting area that can reach over the cave wall to hit Medivh. He can hit back and hard, so the classic way can be faster because the fragile archers need healing and you still need to clear the rest of the enemies to win the mission.
    • Orc Mission 8. After you have dispatched the enemies that attack you at the beginning of the mission, instead of making your way through the dungeon, you can just sit in the narrow corridor you start in. The enemies will eventually come to you one by one, allowing your units to easily kill them.
  • Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
    • Orc Mission 8. The level starts you off with an island base in the top left with 5 Ogres and 2 Catapults, which is more than enough to just rush out a Transport and ferry your starting units down to the island in the bottom right and take out the Blue AI's gold income right away due to the huge lack of enemy defenders. Overall, you still have to eventually clear out the enemy's middle island to claim the Runestone for the mission objective, but it will be extremely easy since the enemy is economically crippled right off the bat.
    • Orc Mission 12. The mission is an island hopper where you take over the map's southern islands, and then build up a force to attack the large northern enemy island that's controlled by two Orc enemies (Blue and Violet). However, your starting army (5 Ogres, 3 Catapults, and 5 Goblin Sappers) is actually more than enough to just attack the enemy's main island right away. Particularly, making landfall along the southern coast as the gold mines for Blue and Violet are situated quite close to one another. Thus, you ruin the enemy's economy, and effectively shut them down right off the bat. Knowing the right targets to blow up with the Sappers, especially the enemy coastal towers to break in, is a huge part of this tactic's success. The hardest part is actually getting to the main enemy island with your navy as you have to micro the 2 Destroyers and 1 Juggernaut you start with to clear a path for your Transports, which at the very least, you also start off with a Zeppelin for scouting.
    • Human Mission 9. The level is a naval micro mission where you got to transport Uther across the waterways to reach a Circle of Power on the other side of the map. However, it's really easy to rush the level. You start off with so many ships that they can easily clear out the water of its enemy ships. As for transporting, enemy Catapults and Cannon Towers cover the waterways, but their attacks are so easy to dodge that you can just beeline the transport carrying Uther through the waterways, and hardly take any damage as the shots will always land behind the moving transport as long as you keep moving it forward.
    • Human Mission 12. The level is really navy focused to the point that the mission objectives are only centered around the need to destroy certain navy targets, and your starting base doesn't even come with a nearby Oil Patch. However, you can ruin that whole navy experience by just transporting to the massive enemy Orc base that holds the large northern island, and attack from there. The part that makes this very easy to pull off is that the left side of the enemy's northern island has very few enemy defenders, and even comes with a free gold mine to just start up a new base on the enemy island.
  • Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal - One thing observant players will notice about a lot of levels in this expansion is that the enemy AI tends to start with weak bases that they need to build up before they become absolute juggernauts later on. As a result, they can be taken out rather quickly if the player chooses to rush the opponent right away with just their starting forces.
    • Orc Mission 4. Even though there's three enemy Human AI's to deal with in the level, it turns out that two of them can be easily taken out really fast with your starting forces. After destroying the Teal base that's revealed by your starting Zeppelin in the top left corner, you quickly rush south to the bottom left corner to destroy the Purple base where it turns out that they're only just starting to get off the ground. As a result, with just the toughest center Blue base left to deal with, you've instantly turned a 1v3 mission into a 1v1.
    • Orc Mission 5. The level ends the moment you rescue the dragons on the other side of the map. You only need one unit to make it to reach the dragons, and you start off with quite a few units to just have them all rush through the enemy without fighting anything. With enough proper micro, and map knowledge of the path that will have you taking the least damage to rush your starting units towards the rescuable dragons, you can finish the level in a minute at most.
    • Orc Mission 10. The mission starts you off with 3 Dragons, which is more than enough to shut down one of the enemy Human factions right away. Particularly, the Red AI, which has no air-defense other than a couple Archers near their gold mine. As a result, you can just rush Red by sneaking the 3 Dragons up along the right edge of the map, and situate the 3 Dragons behind Red's gold mine to kill the gathering peasants until they've run out of gold; effectively shutting down Red in just the first few minutes.
    • Orc Mission 11. You only need to eliminate the Dalaran team (violet), but using your starting forces, you can rush through to the center of the map, knocking down Dalaran's towers (mandatory to win) with your Siege Engines, and attack Dalaran's main base in at loosely the southern end of the map while they're still weak. This leaves most of the mission complete and only the Lordaeron team's mild attacks to worry about. Also, like what's mentioned in the Mission 10 example, Orc Mission 11 is another mission that starts you off with 3 Dragons. Thus, you can pull off the same starting rush tactic by camping the enemy gold mine with your 3 Dragons until they've run out of gold on making peasants, and finish them off soon after.
    • Orc Mission 12. The final Orc mission gives you Deathwing; a powerful Dragon hero unit with 800 health. Like the Dragon tactic mentioned for the previous two missions, Deathwing is more than capable of shutting down an enemy Human faction on his own by having Deathwing camp their gold mine. Especially the enemy Blue base that likes to send Gryphons at ya, which starts off with no anti-air defenses around their gold mine other than a mage or two that will try to shoot fireballs at Deathwing.
    • Human Mission 4. You start off with a pretty generous army and can easily go on rampage, taking out the base in the south, and then doing the same for the western base while you build up your own base in the southern end of the map. All that's left is an airbase in the northeast that offers light ground resistance and doesn't send air attacks for a very long while; your starting Gryphon Rider can also eliminate the few Axethrowers near the Goldmine and pick off workers without further resistance.
    • Human Mission 6. The level expects you to take your starting army to destroy and take over a nearby Orc base, such as the nearby weak Red Orc AI base, and then build up to attack the Orange Orc AI mission objective later on. However, it turns out that the Orange base also starts off really weak. The units you start with is more than enough to just head for the Orange base right away and completely destroy it; effectively beating the level in just the first few minutes.
  • Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
    • Human Mission 9. While normally a brutal slog between you and Mal'ganis, who starts with three bases and is all too willing to drown you in frost wyrms, Arthas just gained Frostmourne, giving him Chaos Damage to deal full damage to structures, and is now a level 10 Paladin. Simply running Arthas in inbetween the Undead attacks, and using his Divine Shield to hack away at the Undead base's ability to build at all, you can quickly reduce him to running at you with nothing but Ghouls.
    • Orc Mission 8. With enough proper micro, you can complete the final Orc level of Reign of Chaos in just a couple minutes by rushing Thrall through the Warsong Clan forces to Grom's location, place Grom within the Soul Gem, and then backtrack to the starting base beacon where Grom is to be cleansed of his demonic influence. As long as Thrall has the right item loadout, the Necklace of Spell Immunity that drops from the previous mission being especially needed as it makes the wearer immune to all enemy spells, Thrall should have enough beef to survive through the whole trip.
    • The Goblin Land Mines whenever they're available to the player, and paired up with an Invulnerability Potion to rush into the enemy base to safely drop the mines on key enemy structures, can make for an effective cheese tool to make certain levels much easier. One major example being Night Elf Mission 7. This is done to effectively destroy Archimonde's base by rushing Tyrande or Malfurion into the enemy stronghold using an Invulnerability Potion to drop mines on Archimonde's structures. The first targets being the Black Citadel and Acolyte workers to make sure that Archimonde can't rebuild. At worst, multiple trips will be needed to retrieve more Goblin Land Mines from the goblin shop near Thrall's base.
  • Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
    • The Goblin Land Mine and Invulnerability Potion combo makes a return for Undead Mission 1. In the mission, you're required to destroy outlying villages that are protected by a Paladin camp in the center of it all. Since the 3 Paladins are well known amongst players to be a pain to deal with, the most common tactic to deal with said Paladins is to have one of your heroes rush into the Paladin camp at the start of the level under the Invulnerability Potion, and lay the mines amongst the 3 paladin Altars to destroy them. That way, the Paladins can't return after they're killed off the first time.
    • Sentinel Mission 4 is normally a tense Hold the Line affair as you try to get your runner to safety while your base is under siege, but if you build a very tight wall of Ancient Protectors at your base and have Archers camp behind them near Moon Wells for healing, melee units will have to go a long way around to reach them. The Dragon Turtles will catch a bad case of Artificial Stupidity and try to go around and Devour the Archers and get burned down fast by projectile fire. The remaining Naga units attacking won't fare much better to the hail of boulders and Arrows and it's a simple matter of repairing structures between battles. This makes focusing on sending your Runner to sea very simple.
    • Undead Mission 3 is also a more involved affair if played the normal way, but if you rush a few Banshees to key faction leaders right off the bat, you'll take control of all of their creeps and you'll have a sufficient amount of units to just rush down Varimathras and his base and win the mission relatively quickly and easily.
    • There's a lot that you can pull off during the starting sneak attack in Undead Mission 5 to potentially end the level with a low time. If you're skilled enough and fast enough at controlling your army, and knowing the right enemy units to possess with Banshees and Sylvanas' Charm ultimate, completely shutting down one enemy right off the bat is very doable as long as the enemy hero is locked down from using any spells by Sylvanas' Silence spell. It's also possible to just be fast enough to shut down both Detheroc's and Garithos' bases during the sneak attack. Though the latter accomplishment is quite difficult to pull off.
    • Undead Mission 8. Due to the lack of enemy sightseeing to see invisible units, it's possible for the player to trap the enemy heroes with at least 4 surrounding invisible Shades to keep them stuck in place. Trapping Illidan within a Shade encirclement in particular really changes how the level can be played as it means that he can no longer move around to try to take the Obelisks. This not only takes away the time aspect of the map to not lose all the Obelisks to Illidan, but it also messes with the Blue Naga faction to no longer send attacks around to take the Obelisks as the Naga army usually only moves with Illidan. At worst, the Blue Naga army will head over to the trapped Illidan's location, but then reset back to its main Naga base that's across the water. Overall, the Shade trick to mess with Illidan and his Blue Naga army makes the level significantly easier.
    • The second part of the Rexxar bonus campaign's 3rd Act, "A Blaze of Glory," is quite easy to cheese. The map expects you to help the Horde slowly invade Theramore Isle from three different entrances with your hero group as if you're playing a MOBA. However, your group of heroes (especially if you have the optional Pandaren Brewmaster) should be so leveled up and decked out on items and such that you can easily just rush over to Daelin Proudmoore's location, and quickly kill the enemy boss and his defenders without the help of the Horde forces.
• Eating the Enemy: Kodo beasts and some high-level monsters like dragons can devour an enemy whole, slowly digesting it (unless killed, in which case the unit is returned slightly harmed). The ability is based on levels, so it's entirely possible for the kodo to eat something its own size.
• Elemental Shapeshifter: Warcraft 3's Pandaren Brewmaster's "Storm, Earth, and Fire" ability splits the hero into three different beings, each themed after the particular element.
• Elite Mooks:
  • The Myrmidons for Lady Vashj and Illidan. They are as strong as an abomination and are usually the most common unit in Naga armies. The Royal Guards go one step further, being the elite version of the Myrmidons that can stun, deal area damage, and summon a ranged elemental.
  • Level 5 and level 6 neutral creeps are this compared to the standard creep, being stronger and with the ability to cast spells. Levels 7 and up are closer to being considered King Mooks than elite.
  • Doomguards and Infernals for the Burning Legion. The former combines powerful attacks with various potent spells, the latter are immune to magic and burn everything around them, and both are far more powerful than any playable unit. In the multiplayer maps, they can also be summoned by the ultimate abilities of the Pit Lord and Dreadlord respectively.
  • Abominations for the Scourge. They are Tier 3 units of the Undead and strongest melee fighters of the race. The Frost Wyrm also counts, being one of the most powerful playable units overall and requiring a lot of dedicated tech to train.
  • Although the Kul Tiras army might as a whole qualify compared to standard human units, they have their own Elite Mooks in the form of the Elite Guard, which are capable of slowing down the waves of horde soldiers. They are usually defeated when overwhelmed by numerical superiority, or when heroes appear.
• Embarrassingly Dresslike Outfit: Poking the Dreadlord enough will have him adamantly state, "No, this is not a dress! It's the standard Dreadlord uniform!". This is a bit of an Orphaned Reference however; the Dreadlord is wearing a suit of plate armor in the release version, but the beta version had him in a very dress-like robe. The voiceline was never changed or removed to match the newer model.
• Enemy Civil War: The Forsaken against the Dreadlords' enslaved undead forces (starts out as a three way war with Undead still loyal to Arthas, but he took off to Northrend); Thrall's orcs against fallen orcs under a corrupted Grom.
• Enemy Exchange Program:
  • Warcraft II: While it's possible to do this according to technical mechanics, but it's not a situation that ever occurs during the campaign mode. In custom scenarios, it's possible to confuse the game's soundbytes by abusing the mechanics, resulting in the Command & Conquer situation where human footman would start grunting like orcs. The expansion for Warcraft II, however, has such scenarios in each campaign (Alliance and Horde).
  • Warcraft III: The Undead Banshee unit can possess a single enemy unit, sacrificing itself to give you control of it^note in the campaign, although normally possessing a builder with a Banshee locks out their building capabilities, the High Elf workers that appear in the same Campaign mission where the Banshees are introduced do not, meaning you can then begin constructing their structures and units; in freeplay matches online or versus computers, there is no such restriction. The Death Knight hero can temporarily raise up to 6 dead units regardless of former allegiance to fight for him, although without any special abilities or spells that the unit might normally have. The Frozen Throne Expansion Pack adds the neutral Dark Ranger hero, who can permanently take control over a single enemy unit, abilities and all, with her Charm level 6 spell. Blood Elf Spell Breakers can convert summoned units.
• Enemy Mine:
  • The Horde team up with the remnants of The Alliance to defeat Mannoroth. They then both team up with the Night Elves at the Battle of Mount Hyjal.
  • The Night Elves and Naga team up to rescue Tyrande from the Undead. Later, the Naga help Kael'thas out, but unfortunately, Garithos considers it treason and has the Blood Elves imprisoned.
  • The Forsaken strike an unholy alliance with Alliance forces to defeat the Undead force holding Lordaeron.
  • In one mission in the human campaign of Beyond the Dark Portal, you command an orc tribe that wants you to crush their enemies. They give you the book of Medivh for your trouble.
• Entropy and Chaos Magic: The Burning Legion, and associated warlocks, demons, and mages, often use a highly destructive form of magic, including many spells with "chaos" in the name, and Chaos damage serves as the Infinity +1 Element in Warcraft III, with the ability to deal full damage to everything.
• Escort Mission:
  • Nearly every Hero Unit who appears before Beyond the Dark Portal. Lothar, Garona, Zul'jin, Cho'gall, and Uther Lightbringer are all either escorted or rescued-then-escorted. Of those, only Cho'gall is of any special use in the mission.
  • There are also some of escort missions with normal units. The Alterac PoW's spring to mind.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In the Orc ending of Beyond the Dark Portal the Slayer of Shadowmoon has a moment of this in your only bit of characterization. After Ner'zhul opens up rifts to other worlds on Draenor, the Slayer questions if they should recall the troops they still have on Azeroth. Ner'zhul doesn't care and states they have served their purpose and departs with his forces on Draenor, presumably abandoning the orcs on Azeroth to their fate.
• Everything Fades: Eventually, the corpses disappear (unless grabbed by a Meat Wagon in III).
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Warcraft III plays this perfectly straight in the form of Death Knights and Paladins (the Death Knight's description even reads "evil counterpart to the human Paladin"). Paladins' "Holy Light" heals living allies or harms undead enemies; Death Knights' "Death Coil" does the reverse. Paladins can improve their lifespan with a "Divine Shield" that makes them temporarily invulnerable; Death Knights can improve their lifespan with a "Death Pact" that sacrifices a minion to regain health. Paladins have a defensive "Devotion Aura" that improves allies' armor for direct combat; Death Knights have an offensive "Unholy Aura" that boosts health regeneration (even for mechanical units, which otherwise must be repaired instead) and movement speed for hit-and-run attacks. Paladins have a "Resurrection" spell that permanently raises (as if they'd never died) the six strongest dead friendly units near him under their original owners' control; Death Knights' "Animate Dead" temporarily raises (they explode and leave no usable corpses when the spell ends) the six strongest dead units of any affiliation near him and puts them all under the Death Knight's control.
  • Subverted in Warcraft II, where Paladins and Death Knights are actually counterparts to the Ogre Mage and Human Mage respectively. This rears itself in Warcraft III to an extent, with Liches being something of the scourge counterpart to the Arch-mage.
  • In a similar vein, due to all units being essentially Faction Palette Swaps of each other in the first 2 games, most units on the Alliance side has an evil counterpart on the Horde side. The most interesting one is the Troll and Elf, who both function as the range unit in Warcraft II. It's not until World of Warcraft that we learn they are both descendents of the same species, which would make them textbook counterparts.
  • Chaos and fel orcs to the rest of the orcs. While the orcs managed to break free from demonic influence and abandoned their ways of conquest and destruction under Thrall, chaos orcs only grew more loyal to the Burning Legion after drinking pit lord blood and became stronger and much more brutal than their uncorrupted counterparts.
• Evil Feels Good: Most of Arthas's post-corruption quotes sound downright delighted
• Evil Is Burning Hot: The Burning Legion, as you would expect from the name.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: The Undead Scourge. It's based in a snowy continent of Northrend, and many of their units have ice-based powers, such as the Lich, a powerful frost mage, and the Frost Wyrm, an undead dragon that breathes ice.
• Evil Plan: Ner'zhul the Lich King. Everything he does leads up to the end result he gets (although it does fall apart on him very very slightly at the final stages, as he didn't count on his host being such a stubborn punkass). Actually kind of terrifying if you think about it. Even Illidan playing roflstomp-the-glacier ultimately works to his benefit.
• Evil Prince: Arthas Menethil devolves into this.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Illidan's voice gets a bit deeper after he absorbs the Skull of Gul'dan and becomes half-demon.
• Evil Versus Evil: The battles between the Scourge and the Burning Legion in The Frozen Throne. Also, Illidan versus Magtheridon. There's quite a lot of infighting in the Horde in the first two games.
• Expanded Universe: Specifically, the Warcraft Expanded Universe.
• Experience Penalty: In the III Frozen Throne expansion, heroes gain experience for killing creeps up to level 5, after which only enemy units give experience (creeps can still be killed for gold and items).
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • Arthas, who goes from a noble human prince to being the Lich King.
  • Sargeras, in the backstory, abandons the Titans' mission of brining stability to the cosmos to become the leader of the demons of the Burning Legion..
  • The Nation of Alterac turns against the Alliance in Warcraft II.
• Faction Calculus
  • In Warcraft: Orcs and Humans: Humans (Powerhouse — they can heal units and make them invisible, ergo preserving existing units over creating new ones) and Orcs (Subversive — they can use The Undead as Cannon Fodder and halve a unit's health to make them temporarily invincible, which suggests they should always have units to spare). This is a weak example because Cosmetically Different Sides was at its strongest in the first game.
  • In Warcraft II: Humans (Subversive — they rely on incredibly useful Swiss Army-Mages) vs. Orcs (Powerhouse — their casters are actually better at buffing, Bloodlust being the most powerful buff, but they still can't heal).
  • In Warcraft III: Humans (Balanced), Orcs (Powerhouse), Undead (Subversive) and Night Elves (Cannons).
• Faction-Specific Endings: In Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, the Orcish Horde and the kingdom of Azeroth both have an ending where they defeat the other one. Same thing in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and its expansion Beyond the Dark Portal for the Alliance of Lordaeron and the Horde. The sequels reveal that the Orc ending is canon for Warcraft, and the Human ending is canon for Warcraft II.
• Fairy Dragons: Fairy dragons, also called fey dragons and blink dragons, are bright blue creatures with colorful butterfly wings and toadlike faces. In size, they range from being as small as a hand to as large as a dog. They're not true dragons, but rather creatures of the Emerald Dream, and are often found alongside Night Elves.
• Fairy Ring: A pair of fairy rings appear as part of an Easter Egg in the first Ashenvale mission of the orc campaign in III. Taking Grom to two hidden Circles of Power will cause a free artifact to spawn in each ring. Additionally, grabbing the item causes ghosts to appear and attack him.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • Lordaeron is quite obviously European. The Jungle Trolls are Jamaican-like. The Tauren seem to be the native peoples of America's Great Plains, but with their cultural ties to buffalo herds emphasized.
  • The Pandaren are a race of anthropromorphised pandas. Nevermind being the mascot of Chinese culture, the Pandarens also believe in a religion similar to Daoism, practise similar style martial arts, wear stereotypical Asian clothing and have an equally stereotypical accent.
• Fantastic Racism: A lot of races in Warcraft really don't like each other. The most prominent example is the Humans and Night Elves viewing Orcs as murderous war-like savages (while having some basis in fact, this isn't completely true). Then there's Grand Marshal Garithos, who hates other Alliance races. The trolls of the Eastern continent also hate the elves of Quel'thalas, and joined the orcs in the second war mostly so they could fight their ancient enemies. Warcraft loves this trope.
• Fantastic Underclass: The Orcs were well on their way to becoming this after the Second War. The survivors were rounded up and placed in internment camps where they were kept for years afterwards as a strange lethargy (caused by a kind of withdrawal from losing the demonic power that had propelled the original invasion) settled over them. Some were taken and trained as gladiators, one of which, Thrall, eventually escaped and set about to free his people and reclaim their heritage.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • Being turned into an undead is generally regarded as this, belying Medivh's claim that Arthas would find "only death in the cold north".
  • Arthas refuses to give Sylvanas a clean death for resisting him and instead tortures her and raises her as a banshee.
• Fauns and Satyrs: Satyrs in the Warcraft universe are half-demonic corrupted night elves, and Fauns are half-daughters of the Demigod Cenarius.
• Fake Ultimate Mook:
  • The ogre in the tutorial mission of Warcraft III, although Thrall mentions that they would have a hard battle if the ogre was not asleep, the ogre really is very easy to defeat (In fact the Ogre is weaker than a Grunt and Thrall has 3.)
  • In The Dungeons of Dalaran quest. Kael mentions that they must prevent the foot soldiers from activating the alarms, because if they manage to activate it the humans will send elite troops to stop them. These "elite" troops are barely stronger than a foot soldier and are much weaker than a knight.
• Fat Bastard: Detheroc, one of the three Dreadlords who were left to oversee Lordaeron on the behalf of the Legion, uses a standard Dreadlord model in the original Warcraft III but uses a unique skin in Reforged, standing out among his fellow Natherizm with his obesity.
• Fed to the Beast: There are some missions in the third game that take place in prisons. In two of them ("Brothers in Blood" and "The Dungeons of Dalaran"), there are prisoners in cells about to be eaten by a Giant Spider.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Warcraft III has Warrior heroes^note Paladin, Mountain King, Tauren Chieftain, Death Knight, Crypt Lord, Mystical heroes ^note Archmage, Blood Mage, Farseer, Lich, Keeper of the Grove, and Cunning heroes^note Blademaster, Shadow Hunter, Dreadlord, Demon Hunter, Priestess of the Moon, Warden, which respectively use Strength, Intelligence and Agility as their primary attributes (though the Dreadlord is actually a strength hero). Of note here is that the humans have no Cunning heroes, while the night elves have no Warriors.
• Final Boss:
  • Archimonde in Reign of Chaos, of the Hopeless Boss Fight variety, since the final level is a Hold the Line mission. Archimonde shows up in the final 45 seconds to join his army in attacking you or your ally. For most of the mission, he functions as a Beef Gate to prevent the player from attacking his base.
  • Admiral Proudmoore is this in The Frozen Throne, moreso in Reforged where "The Founding of Durotar" is unlocked last. By himself he is not very difficult to defeat, but he is accompanied by his elite guard, a Paladin and an Archmage (both level 15).
• Final Exchange: When Grom succumbs to his wounds after killing Mannoroth (a demon who had enslaved the orcish race via Blood Magic), he and Thrall have this conversation:
  Grom: I have freed myself.
  Thrall: No, old friend... you've freed us all.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Reign of Chaos introduced the Orb of Fire (attacks have splash damage), the Orb of Frost (attacks slow the target) and the Orb of Lightning (attacks dispel buffs and deals extra damage to summoned units).
• Firewood Resources: Though the Lumber Mills show them as planks, worker units carry them as fireplace-sized logs.
• Fire Keeps It Dead: Several factions in the franchise do this when fighting the Scourge, both to their own dead and to the undead they just killed again. It's enough to prevent lesser necromancers from raising the bodies, but not the Lich King. This is first seen in a cutscene in III after Arthas has an entire city purged to stop the Scourge, then made common practice in World of Warcraft.
• Fishing for Mooks: A glaring case is Warcraft 1, where computer-controlled units defending their base would pursue you all the way to your base, allowing you to draw them away one by one and kill them easily. Alternatively, hitting an enemy building would draw away the all base defenders, who would usually clump together and make easy targets for your catapults. Because the computer was not smart enough to replace dead defenders, this became the standard tactic for eliminating strongly-defended bases.
• Fish People: Murlocs and mur'gul, the latter of whom are sometimes enslaved by naga.
• Fission Mailed: The ending of the final night elf mission of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos plays the same line by Archimonde you'd get if you lose the mission — but then it adds another conversation between Malfurion and Tyrande afterwards.
• Flaming Meteor: Warcraft has featured flaming meteors since its first installments, always summoned by spellcasters:
  • The first game had 'conjurers' summon a multitude of these using the 'Rain of Fire' spell. It was then absent from Warcraft II as their counterparts in that game, the 'mage', conjured blizzards instead. By the third game the 'Archmage' still summoned blizzards and left the Flaming Meteor summoning to the demons in the form of the 'Rain of Fire' ability, used by both the Pit Lord Hero Unit and the Doomguard (which, incidentally, can be summoned by the Pit Lord for double the fiery fun).
  • Another example of a Justified Flaming Meteor from the third game and onward; Infernals are flaming Rock Monsters which are summoned by high-level demons, sending them impacting against the ground in a curled-up meteor-like state, after which they get up and begin wrecking their summoner's enemies.
• Flaming Sword: Doomguards wield them.
• Flesh Golem: The abominations through necromancy, and in TFT you get actual flesh golems.
• Fog Feet: The Firelord hero from Warcraft 3.
• Fog of War: In 'Warcraft I,' the map is initially covered by a black shroud, which is permanently revealed upon exploration, similar to 'Dune II.' In 'Warcraft II' and subsequent versions, a unit must be present in an area to maintain vision over it.
• Forced Transformation:
  • Sorceress' "Polymorph" and Shadow Hunter's "Hex" spells can turn opponents into critters for a short while. Quite a few mobs and bosses have access to these spells as well.
  • In WC2, the wizard's polymorph is a permanent instakill move, which simply turns any hostile (or friendly if it has disappointed you somehow) unit into the tileset-appropriate critter. There's a reason it's one of the most expensive abilities to both research and cast.
  Archmage: You'd better watch your tone with me, or I'll turn you into a mindless sheep.
• Forged by the Gods: Frostmourne... well it was forged by something pretty powerful, anyway.
• Forgot About His Powers: In Reforged, Arthas creates a frozen bridge to reach the Sunwell, whereas it was accessible by foot in the original. This raises the question why he doesn't do it in the mission before that, when Sylvanas destroys the bridge and Arthas is forced to use Goblin Zeppelins instead.
• Forgotten Phlebotinum: The Alliance and The Horde went to war over oil in part 2. Not so in part 3.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The thirteenth human mission of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness begins with a group of knights (three blue and one purple) getting slaughtered by the Blackrock Clan. Only by slowing the game down to a crawl, or having quick reflexes, can you identify the non-controllable purple knight as Sir Lothar. A very skilled player can even save the blue knights by having them run south and sending a transport ship to pick them up.
• Friendly Fireproof: Downplayed. While many abilities cannot be used to harm allies (such as the Mountain King's Storm Bolt and the Tauren Chieftain's Shockwave), there are just as many that aren't as selective (such as the Archmage's Blizzard and the Blood Mage's Flame Strike). Similarly, units with Splash Damage can and will deal damage to your own frontline units, and there's nothing stopping you from manually ordering your own units to attack an allied unit (or your own units, if you need to clear up your food count).
• From Bad to Worse: The Human Alliance Scourge of Lordaeron campaign is just a perfect example of this. What starts out as a few isolated cases of mysterious, scary illness quickly escalates into a full-blown disaster, and as all hell breaks loose Arthas starts to gradually lose it. This is, of course, all part of the Lich King's colossal bloody Evil Plan.
• Fungus Humongous: Giant mushrooms that can be substituted for lumber first appear in Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, on the orcish homeworld of Draenor. Similar mushrooms appear in Warcraft III in underground levels, where they can also be used for healing Ancients or summoning Treants, and as we revisit Draenor (now Outland) in The Frozen Throne, we see the same giant mushrooms there once again, filling the same role.
• Funny Background Event: In Jaina's first appearance, two sorceresses duel and one of them gets turned into a sheep. The Reforged version of the cutscene adds a wizard in the background animating a War Golem, whose arm falls off near the end of the cutscene. The golem picks up the arm and puts it back in place, only for the arm to fall off again as the cutscene fades to black.
• Game Lobby: The series works this way. They're strategy games, so drop-in/drop-out would be disastrous. Fortunately, the games are very popular, and matches are relatively short.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • In Warcraft III, wisps deal damage to summoned units when exploding. In the final cutscene, Archimonde, a demon who has been summoned to Azeroth, is destroyed by thousands of wisps flocking to him and using detonate on him.
  • In the undead campaign of The Frozen Throne, Arthas loses levels as the Lich King loses more and more power.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Alterac still has non-human units after it's revealed to be traitorous (in particular, after it's revealed that Alterac was responsible for an ambush on a band of elven scouts earlier in the campaign). Lore-wise, it's unlikely that dwarves and gnomes would be willing to assist a traitorous human kingdom, and especially unlikely that elves would.
  • In Gul'dan's first flashback in The Frozen Throne, he's seen being accompanied by several orc shamans. They're likely meant to represent orc warlocks, considering that there's no way that shamans would be subservient to Gul'dan. This is corrected in Reforged.
  • Kul Tiras has several dwarven and few high elven units in The Frozen Throne Bonus Campaign. In the lore and World of Warcraft, it's never mentioned that other Alliance races beside humans live there. However, it's also likely that they are dwarves and high elves who live in Theramore and simply decide to join Admiral Proudmoore's anti-Horde war.
  • In the Horde campaign in The Frozen Throne, Rexxar challenges the leader of an ogre tribe for his position. Before the fight, the ogre says that they'll use no tricks or magic toys, just muscle and skill. Despite that, you're free to use Rexxar's special abilities in the fight, and the ogre does the same (they temporarily remove your inventory, however).
  • In Reign of Chaos, the old Horde (not affiliated with Thrall) has Darkspear troll units and Far Seer orc heroes, which is unlikely story-wise. Story-wise, they're actually meant to represent Forest Trolls and Warlocks. Corrected in Reforged where Forest Troll Berserkers replace Darkspear Headhunters for the Blackrock faction.
  • Combined with Cutscene Power to the Max in the last level of Warcraft 3, when Thrall defiantly tells Archimonde that the orcs are now free, hitting him with a lightning spell before teleporting away. In-game, Archimonde is immune to magic, meaning not only would the spell do no damage, you wouldn't even be able to target him with it.
  • Way back in Orcs and Humans we have the description of the Summon Daemon. Summoning a daemon is described as only being a dream of warlocks and the spell to summon one is only described as only being a legend. In actual gameplay the spell is just unlocked via research like anything else, although in the campaign you can only learn it in the last two missions.
  • Ogres by lore are supposed to be some of the biggest and strongest guys around, and this is reflected in them being equivalent to the Alliance's Knights in Warcraft II. In III Thrall has a line in the tutorial about not waking a sleeping ogre to avoid a fierce battle, but ogres are much less impressive this time around. The basic Ogre Warrior that Thrall warned about is around the same strength as a human Footman, which is itself quite weaker than an orc Grunt. Only the highest level ogre creeps, Lords, are more powerful than an upgraded Grunt. The Stonemaul ogres from The Frozen Throne's bonus campaign avert this. Even though they aren't fought, their stats put them above orcs and almost as strong as Tauren.
  • The Naga Sea Witch in skirmishes cannot swim for gameplay reasons, despite being from a race that lives underwater.
• Garrisonable Structures: Orc Burrows in III can contain up to 4 Peons to gain a ranged attack. The attack rate depends on the amount of Peons, and can be faster than the Watch Tower.
• Gender Flip: In Reforged, the Demon Hunter and the Death Knight in skirmishes get skins that change them to females, with voice lines to boot. Some of the creeps were also changed from male to female, particularly the centaurs and satyrs. Count as Guys Smash, Girls Shoot since the swapped gender of those units were archers and spellcasters.
• General Ripper: The bigoted Garithos, who planned to get Kael and the Blood Elves killed by the Undead. And Jaina's father Daelin Proudmoore who wants to continue fighting the orcs, despite their peace treaty with Jaina's forces.
• Gentle Giant: The Tauren. Don't piss them off, though.
• Ghastly Ghost:
  • Banshees are the ghosts of High Elves slaughtered by the undead Scourge and raised up by the Lich King, who gave them voices to avenge themselves on his enemies by shrieking at them (and going by their voicelines, also a literal case of And I Must Scream). Their ultimate ability Possession kills them in exchange for permanently controlling an enemy unit.
  • Ghosts, Wraiths and Specters are the neutral monster version, having similar spells (including Possession). However, they don't have voices, only sad moans.
  • Shades are unarmed ghosts used as scouts for the Scourge, made by sacrificing an acolyte.
• The Ghost:
  • Gilneas is the only faction that never appears in an official campaign mission in Warcraft II, in either the original or the expansion.
  • The Lich King, Ner'zhul, is often mentioned but never seen in the Reign of Chaos campaigns. He appears in person in the Frozen Throne, where he becomes the target for Illidan and his faction.
• Give Chase with Angry Natives: It's (sometimes) possible to pull this off in III, which contains monsters equally hostile to all players. However, it requires good timing so they don't attack you, and if your enemy is strong enough, fighting them merely gets him more money, experience, and items. In fact, trying to steal kills from other players to get the experience is a fairly typical tactic, one that some builds and heroes (such as the Blademaster) depend on.
• Gladiator Revolt:
  • Thrall, the warchief of the Horde, was raised as a gladiator by humans, but turned against his former masters.
  • The comic photocopied this (however narmily): After the king of Stormwind washed up on the shores of Durotar after escaping his imprisonment, some orc found him and made him fight as a gladiator.
• God Save Us from the Queen!:
  • The only Queen known by name in the series is Azshara, a narcissistic egomaniacal Night Elf largely responsible for bringing the Burning Legion to Azeroth the first time. After the plan was foiled and the Well of Eternity consumed itself, she was lost in the deep sea along with her servants... only to reemerge as the Naga.
  • The speculative Lich Queen Jaina nightmare in one of the manga sure fits this too.
• Going Through the Motions:
  • It really kills the mood when Illidan, in the middle of a dramatic speech, starts flipping out and going through his idle poses. How exactly does standing on one foot and throwing your hands in the air help your case, great demon hunter?
  • The Blood Mage has one where he puts his hands on his hips, thrusts his chest out, and laughs. It pops up during Kael'thas' story at some very unfortunately timed moments.
  • Warcraft III indulges in the voice equivalent, if such a thing exists — unit or hero quotes are sometimes inserted into cutscenes, especially in Frozen Throne. Nazgrel, Drek'Thar, and Sylvanas all have alarmingly large amounts of cutscene dialogue recycled in their unit responses.
  • The portraits can be guilty of this. It ruins the drama when after his serious dialog, Thrall turns to the camera and does this weird half-smile.
  • Footmen have an animation where they sheathe their sword and take a swig, ending up looking like The Snack Is More Interesting.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors:
  • Warcraft I has the classical good guys in blue (Humans) vs. bad guys in red (Orcs). The Human mercenaries who attack Northshire Abbey in the Human campaign are also red. The only aversion are Blackhand's forces in the Orc campaign, which wear blue (though only because your guys are red in that mission).
  • In Warcraft II, there is one Human nation or Orc clan for each of seven colours, while yellow is used to represent the generic traitors of each faction. However, in Tides of Darkness you always play as the blue or white nations in the Human campaign, and as the red or black clans in the Orc campaign .
• The Good King:
  • Although not much is revealed about him, what is known about King Llane Wrynn seems to point to this trope.
  • King Terenas was beloved by Lordaeron as he ruled for many, many decades, as well as the primary figure in the formation of the original Grand Alliance of Lordaeron which led to their victory of the Second War. He also helped rebuild the kingdom of Stormwind after its destruction at the end of the First War, once the Second War had ended. After being murdered by Arthas, the absence of his leadership was likely a large part of the reason Lordaeron fell so easily to the Scourge. Obviously, the "newly crowned" "King" Arthas was not nearly as benevolent to "his" people and homeland...
• Good Weapon, Evil Weapon: The knights in Warcraft 1 are a rare aversion of this trope: they wield nasty-looking flails even though they're the good guys.
• Government in Exile: Azeroth in Warcraft 2 has lost both its homeland and its king, but it remains one of the most powerful human nations and is leader of The Alliance.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Sargeras is the ultimate evil in the setting, but as he's usually on his throne and/or out of commission, this is the role he takes in most of the games and novels, rather than direct Big Bad.
• Great White Feline: The Night Elves ride panthers into battle, with the Priestess of the Moon Hero Unit riding a white-furred tiger.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Orcs vs. Humans in III becomes this, with the humans having forced orcs into internment camps after they defeated them and the orcs being revealed as having been a race corrupted from their original peaceful roots by demons and now trying to return to those roots.
• Grumpy Old Man: The Archmage hero's appearance and quotes present him as such.
  Archmage: Whatever.
  Archmage: This had better be worth it.
  Archmage: *bitter sarcasm* I can hardly wait.

Tropes H — Z

• Hair-Raising Hare: The Easter-egg hunt-themed custom map includes horrifying bunnies.
• Hard-Coded Hostility: By necessity, the creeps in III (since they're there to provide experience and items, they're even called Neutral Hostile in the map editor). However, in the campaign they're often set to being allied with your enemies (to prevent them from being killed).
• Hate Sink: Garithos was basically a minor lord who only became relevant because of his ability to rally the living survivors of Lordaeron and is forever known as "the racist who exiled the High Elves" and maybe the one who helped the freed undead take back part of Lordaeron but rarely is it remembered how Sylvanas quickly pulled a You Have Out Lived Your Usefulness. This only really accomplishes the exile of High Elves, the Face–Heel Turn of some and for Sylvanas' murder of him to look less like a Kick the Dog moment.
• Happily Married: Malfurion Stormrage and Tyrande.
• Heel–Face Turn: Again, sort of Sylvanas at the end of the Frozen Throne expansion, though she remains quite ruthlessly hostile to any possible threats against her new people.
• Hell Is War: In the Broken Isles mission from the Night Elves campaign from Frozen Throne, there is a never-ending battle between skeletal remnants of the orcish clans who followed Gul'dan to the tomb of Sargeras and later were slaughtered by Orgrim Doomhammer. Drak'thul, a former Gul'dan's follower, asks Maiev to silence these ghosts in exchange for telling her his history.
• Herd-Hitting Attack:
  • Many hero skills are built to hit crowds of units, such as the Warden's Fan of Knives, the Pandaren Brewmaster's Breath of Fire, and the Blood Mage's Flamestrike. However, the majority of these spells possess a damage cap, limiting the number of units they can affect at a time, and they tend to deal less damage than their single-target equivalents (compare, for instance, the Death Knight's 300 damage Death Coil to the Dreadlord's 200 damage Carrion Swarm).
  • The Pulverize ability, used by Tauren and a number of neutral units, gives the unit's attacks a chance to deal area-of-effect damage around the target.
• Heroic Neutral: The Night Elves in Reign of Chaos, who initially don't show any interest in the conflict before the Burning Legion shows up.
• Hero Must Survive: First appeared in Warcraft I, where each campaign has a mission where you have to rescue a hero unit (Lothar for the Humans, Garona for the Orcs). Also present whenever a hero is involved in Warcraft II (Beyond the Dark Portal is the Trope Namer, where plot-important heroes first started to appear in non-escort missions, and this exact line is displayed in the mission objectives). In III it's a condition in the limited-forces campaign levels and it's averted in the base-building campaign levels, in which an altar can be built to resurrect fallen heroes.
• Hero Unit:
  • Heroes in Warcraft 1 include Lothar (roughly as strong as a knight, but he appeared before you got to build them in the campaign), Medivh (far more powerful than any normal unit — and you had to kill him) and Garona and Griselda (both defenseless units with Peon stats).
  • Warcraft 2 started the prototype "Blizzard hero", almost identical to other units of the same kind (with greater hit points and the exception of Zul'Jin's slightly higher range) at first, these type of units grew more unique over the course of subsequent Blizzard games. The hero units who were stronger versions of normal units didn't show up until Beyond the Dark Portal.
  • Warcraft 3:
    • Heroes level up, collect equipment, and can be resurrected for a fee if they die. Gameplay in both the single-player campaigns and multiplayer skirmishes revolve heavily around heroes.
    • The campaign still occasionally features "Blizzard heroes", stronger versions of regular units with modified or unique models but who technically aren't actually heroes (having none of the associated mechanics). Examples include the Captain, a Footman with fancier armor who serves as Arthas's Number Two throughout the Alliance campaign, and Naisha, a Night Elf Huntress with a slightly larger and purple-tinted model who works for Maiev in The Frozen Throne.
• Hindenburg Incendiary Principle: In a cutscene in Warcraft 2, a footman uses an Orc catapult to destroy a goblin zeppelin (catapults can't hit air units in-game). This scene is replayed for a Credits Gag in Warcraft 3.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Paladins and Priests can use the Holy Light to attack enemies. The Paladin much more so, being able to burn Undead with their main heal for huge damage, while Priests are more built as defensive support casters.
  Elf Priest: By the power of the Light, Burn!
• Hook Hand: The Shattered Hand Clan and its leader Kargath Bladefist, who have a custom to cut off their left hand to replace it with a weapon as a part of the clan's initiation ritual.
• The Horde: The titular example, though only in the first two games. The Scourge and the Legion take over in the third.
• Horned Humanoid: Illidan, Dreadlords, Kil'jaeden, and — well, Malfurion is more antlered, but still.
• Horrifying the Horror: Orcs during the villainous phase are a Proud Warrior Race Guy who thanks to demon corruption are naturally bloodthirsty. But the demons of the Burning Legion still terrify them, with good reason.
  • Almost the entire Burning Legion is terrified of Archimonde, Mannoroth is described in the War of the Ancients trilogy as being almost as afraid of him as he is afraid of Sargeras.
  • Anub'arak, one of the most entrusted Lich King's lieutenants, becomes very worried when he learns he has to challenge the Faceless Ones. He becomes even more horrified to fight with the Forgotten One, desperately calling Arthas to "fight as you've never fought before".
  • Tichondrius clearly becomes astounded when he sees Illidan's demon form.
  Tichondrius: What? Who are... you?
  Illidan: Let's see how confident you are against one of your own kind, dreadlord!
• Horror Hunger: The Undead's Ghoul units are noted to be "ravenous cannibals", and even have "Must feeeeeed!", "Me eat dead people!", and "Me eat brains!", as some of their Stop Poking Me! options.
• Horse Returns Without Rider: In the second mission of the Human campaign, Uther tells Arthas that he sent two of his best knights to parlay with the orc leader. Right on cue, two riderless horses run into the encampment.
• Hostile Terraforming: In Warcraft III, the Undead's buildings produce Blight which kills the surrounding ground, converts trees into dead wood, but still enables the Undead to regenerate and build on such ground.
• How Much More Can He Take?: Unless attack damage and skills are edited, heroes with levels above 2,000 can hardly damage each other. Of course, this is extremely unlikely to show up in practice except in particularly outlandish custom games since heroes only go up to 10 in regular matches.
• Humans Are Ugly: When Thrall's expedition in Kalimdor meets quillboars for the first time in the Orc campaign in the Reign of Chaos, a random grunt comments that they are at least prettier than humans. Mind you, this comes from orcs, who to a human eye appear as extremely ugly, hulking, toothed brutes. Humans in turn probably look like imps to them.
• Humongous-Headed Hammer: Huge warhammers are a franchise tradition:
  • Warcraft II: Downplayed with Knights and Paladins, whose warhammers are large enough to be visible on the sprite and still quite a bit larger than historical ones, but not disproportionately so.
  • Warcraft III: The Paladin Hero Unit (represented by Arthas Menethil and Uther the Lightbringer in the campaign) carries a two-handed sledgehammer the size of their own torso.
  • World of Warcraft: Warhammers are implemented as a cosmetic variation on maces, may be either one- or two-handed depending on the item, and are uniformly gigantic.
• Hungry Weapon: Frostmourne, which consumes the souls of those slain upon it. This actually leads to Arthas' Catchphrase, "Frostmourne hungers!"
• Hybrids Are a Crapshoot:
  • After conquering the ogres, the Old Horde bred with them to produce a race that were meant to have the strength of the ogres but the intelligence of the orcs. The resulting race, the Mok'Nathal, were tougher than orcs but not as tough as ogres, and proved far too stubborn to control.
  • One of Nefarian's failed experiments with dragon blood produced Maloriak, a fusion between a kidnapped human alchemist and a dragonspawn. The process rendered Maloriak a bumbling idiot and failed to grant him any useful draconic abilities.
• Hypocritical Humor: A possibly unintentional example, since it is not treated as a joke in universe, but this line from a huntress in response to Grom Hellscream cutting trees.
  "You were right, sisters. These green-skinned brutes have no respect for life! Slay them in Elune's name!"
• Ice Magic Is Water: III: The Archmage can summon water elementals and bring down shards of ice from the sky. The naga (underwater snakemen) also use both: the Siren can create frost armor, the Sea Witch can use cold arrows, and the Royal Guard can throw huge iceballs and summon a sea elemental.
• Idle Animation: Most consist of the unit looking around, but there are a few interesting ones, like the footman taking a swig, hydra heads snapping at each other, blademasters sitting down and meditating...
• Ignored Epiphany: Before becoming the Lich King, Arthas remembers the voices of his friends and teachers telling him what a bad idea all the other things were that he's done to get this far. This doesn't stop him.
• Ignored Expert: The Dalaran Ambassador from "The Warning" counts as this; when he warns the council that "The orcs are not our primary concern here... this plague that has gripped the northlands could have dire ramifications", another ambassador laughs him down: "Plague? You wizards are just being paranoid!"
• I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin: In The Frozen Throne expansion's Horde campaign, a dying orc gives the player character, Rexxar, a report meant for the orc warchief, Thrall. This brings Rexxar to the orc capital of Orgrimmar, but otherwise has little to do with the overall plot of the campaign besides getting it started.
• Improbable Power Discrepancy: On most maps, creeps have a standard power that does not vary, with a few exceptions.
  • In warchasers, creeps have low stats so that heroes can play off as one-man armies against them.
  • In Act 2 of the Rexxar campaign, most creeps have increased stats to pose a threat to Rexxar's party, this reaches the point that many normal creeps have damage over 100 per hit.
• Immortality Field:
  • Warcraft III had a prison which caused this effect, used to hold Illidan Stormrage. It apparently causes a constant regeneration effect (probably similar to the druid spell Regrowth). This was to prevent him from killing himself since night elves couldn't normally die of old age. Although this was probably done out of love by Malfurion, it's unlikely Illidan saw it that way. Illidan does eventually get released and the night elves eventually lose their immortality as well since, surprise surprise, they weren't exactly responsible enough to handle it.
  • In a downplayed example, the Shadow Hunter Hero Unit from Warcraft III has a skill called "Big Bad Voodoo" that turns ally units gathered in an Area of Effect around him invulnerable for a few seconds. The catch is that the Shadow Hunter himself isn't affected by it, making him their Achilles' Heel and it dispels if he is killed or stunned.
• Immune to Mind Control: The Charm Person spell doesn't work on heroes, spell-immune units (except the version used by the Dark Ranger) or neutral creatures above a certain level.
• Increasingly Lethal Enemy:
  • High-level paladins in Warcraft III have a shield that makes them invulnerable and a mass resurrection ability. If not neutralized quickly, they spend the fight unable to take damage and bring back half a dozen dead units at full health.
  • The Firelord's Incinerate ability deals ever-increasing damage with every attack.
• Inertial Impalement: In Warcraft III, Orc buildings can be outfitted with spikes that damage melee attackers, implied to be this trope. Some units (Crypt Lords, turtles) have an ability that does the same (and in the Crypt Lord's case, gives it extra armour).
• Informed Ability: The Warsong Clan is supposed to be an Elite Army, but have the same stats as other orcs. Well, until they drank Mannoroth's blood, at least.
• Instant Gravestone: Units with the Reincarnation ability leave a large cross/ankh-shaped marker on death. Played With, as the unit comes back to life a few seconds later.
• Instant Militia: In III, Humans can use Call to Arms at their Town Hall to call all nearby Peasants (or command individual Peasants directly) to go to the Town Hall and arm themselves, becoming Militia for 45 seconds. Only the starting Town Hall can do this by default; expansions must upgrade to Keep or Castle first (they used to be able to Call to Arms at the base Town Hall level until Human players started abusing it).
• Instant-Win Condition: In Warcraft III it was destroy all buildings. It doesn't matter if your opponent has an unstoppable army compared to yours, if you trash all of your opponent's buildings before he trashes yours, you win. Several parts of the campaign, particularly Hold the Line missions, do this as well.
• Instrumental Weapon: The Orcs' Kodo Beast riders use throwing axes as drumsticks. When they need to attack, they simply throw the axes they're holding and pull out a new pair.
• Interface Spoiler: In order to avert So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear in Warcraft III, all the items a hero carried before they are no longer playable for the rest on the game are dropped at the start of the following mission. While convenient, players will quickly become savvy enough to realize that means they will never use a hero again, even if, in terms of story, it does not look like it's going to be the case (e.g. Jaina in the first human campaign).
• In-Universe Game Clock: In Warcraft III, the in-game timer affects the Night Elves the most, as they can shadowmeld only at night, can research night vision and their Moon Wells only recharge at night. It also affects healing rates for humans, orcs and Undead. Finally, it affects all races via creep behavior: Most creeps (not CPU-controlled armies, scattered enemies to kill for money and hero XP) fall asleep at night, meaning they would do nothing until you actively attack them. Some campaign maps lock the time, usually for plot purposes (a Stealth-Based Mission where you can't, y'know, stealth does not make for good ratings) or for atmosphere (an underground tomb haunted by demons and ghosts looks a lot better without bright sunlight everywhere).
• Invincibility Power-Up: Drinking a Potion of Invulnerability in Warcraft III will briefly turn a hero invulnerable. It comes in three variants with different durations, with the stronger two being harder to get while the weakest can be purchased cheaply from Goblin Merchants in multiplayer.
• Item Amplifier: III hero units can carry items that improve the damage dealt by their weaponry, such as Orbs of various types (fire, lightning, venom...) and Claws of Attack.
• Jerkass: Lord Garithos is nigh insufferable.
• Just Eat Him: Kodo Beasts and Dragons have an ability that does this. Dryads have a spell immunity, that somehow results in them being indigestible. In the story, Alexstrasza also did this to Nekros Skullcrusher.
• King Mook:
  • Bloodfeast,and the Butcher. They look like abominations but much bigger. Bloodfeast is not that strong, and only benefits from having a lot of health points. Whereas Butcher does pose a great threat, even to two high-level heroes like Illidan and Kael.
  • Creeps of level 7 and above usually fulfill this role, being the leaders of the highest level groups and being as strong as a hero of medium or even high level.
• Klingon Promotion:
  • Arthas claimed the title of king of Lordaeron after killing his father Terenas.
  King Terenas: What are you doing, my son?
  Arthas: Succeeding you, father.
  • Orgrim Doomhammer becomes the Warchief during the First War after murder of Blackhand, the previous Warchief.
• Knight Templar: The Silver Hand under Arthas, during his Start of Darkness.
• Knight Templar Parent: Daelin Proudmoore insists to Jaina that the orcs have been irredemably evil since their original invasion of Azeroth and must all be slaughtered, no matter what their attempts to reform or the human-orc alliance begun at the Battle of Mount Hyjal.
• Large and in Charge: The hero units, and by extension the "leader" units in the campaigns, are much larger than the other units...and sometimes the buildings.
  • Lore wise, the Aspects who lead the Dragonflights are described as being giants among their kind. And dragons are already gigantic.
  • Archimonde and Kil'jaeden are described as being very big under normal circumstances, but can increase their size to bring this trope into play. Archimonde during the ending to Reign of Chaos grows hundreds of feet tall to the point where he makes normal trees look puny and Kil'Jaeden memorably appears at the end of the Blood Elves campaign with a custom model so large it doesn't fit on screen normally (the camera for the cutscene has to angle to eye level and he's also standing in a pit).
• Large Ham:
  • Bill Roper, THE narr-A-tor for Warcraft II is a bombbastic joy, especially when proNOUNcing names like Orgrim Doomhammer and Lord Lothar.
  • He also does the voice for the Orc mission briefings. One word: DRAGONS!
  • He also does the voice work for footmen, grunts, peons, elven archers, Danath and Grom Hellscream.
  • For a taste click here.
  • Kael'thas to an extent, most apparently when he's promising loyalty to Illidan at the end of the Black Citadel battle. Illidan gets in on the fun, too, when he's taunting Magtheridon.
  • Let's not forget the Paladin. "STRIKE with great VENGEANCE!" and "In Lightbringer's name, HAVE AT THEE!"
  • Chen Stormstout: "I will bring PANDA-MONIUM!"
  • Dwarves in general, but the Mountain King takes the cake. "FOR KHAZ MODAAAN!"
• Lady of War: Tyrande and Maiev.
• Lawful Stupid: Again, Tyrande and Maiev. Tyrande grows out of it eventually, though. Maiev doesn't.
• The Law of Power Proportionate to Effort: The most powerful spells often require channeling, which puts the caster at risk; a good portion of the Warcraft III heroes' ultimate abilities fall under this category, and can be interrupted by enemies with stuns and the like. Some very powerful spells like summoning a demon lord or breaking the earth's crust under the northern continent took several in-game days to complete, with the summoners completely dependent on others for protection.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Before the last Undead expansion mission, Arthas says "It's time to finish the game."
• Leeroy Jenkins: Grom pulls this off in the third Orc mission in Warcraft III; when Thrall is about to move on past the humans, Grom goes along to attack some human bases despite being directly ordered to ignore them.
• Left for Dead:
  • Arthas left Muradin, his old friend, to lie fatally wounded after claiming Frostmourne in Reign of Chaos.
  • Maiev to Tyrande in The Frozen Throne, abandoning her in order to pursue Illidan. She might've gotten away with it too if Kael'thas hadn't spilled the beans.
• Left-Justified Fantasy Map: The map for the first game has the sea and human territory to the west, and orc territory to the east.
• Legacy Boss Battle: Warcraft III has an optional fight against an enormous monster called "the Butcher", a boss from the Diablo series.
• Legendary Weapon: Frostmourne (among others).
• Lighter and Softer: Both Orc campaigns in Warcraft III have a lighter tone and setting than the other campaigns. The Invasion of Kalimdor in Reign of Chaos is focused on Thrall befriending Cairne and later Jaina while saving Grom from the demonic influence, while The Founding of Durotar is focused on the Orc's new home and trying to keep peace with the humans.
• Light Is Not Good: Arthas during the first Human campaign and Grand Marshal Garithos both have holy powers, but if Arthas goes more evil as the story progresses, Garithos is a plain racist asshole.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Ogre-Magi and Paladins in Warcraft 2. They are the fastest land units, hit hard, and have three spells to boot.
• Limited-Use Magical Device: In Warcraft III scrolls of various types (healing, armor, town portal...) can be bought in shops (higher-level spells or multiple buffs can be found as high-level loot) and are one-use, though it's relatively easy to make a stacking system in custom maps.
• Living Ghost: In Warcraft III, Spirit Walkers are casters that can switch between Ethereal and Corporeal Form. In the latter they can't be attacked (save for spells and Magic-type damage) or attack (but can cast spells).
• Living Lava:
  • In Warcraft III, the Firelord neutral hero can summon Lava Spawns, spiky red minions made of lava that shoot fire at people. While every spawn has a timed life, it replicates itself after attacking a number of times into an identical Lava Spawn.
• Loads and Loads of Races: There are tons of sapient races in existence: orcs, humans, demons, draenei, dwarves, high elves, night elves, gnolls, gnomes, goblins, naga, ogres, tauren, trolls, etc..
• Looks Like Orlok: Dreadlords have bald heads, prominent horns, jutting fangs, clawed Four-Fingered Hands, etc.
• Lord British Postulate: Archimonde in the final mission of Reign of Chaos is incredibly powerful, tough, has Divine armor, and regenerates his health extremely fast. However, he's not truly invincible — you can actually kill him before the time limit hits with enough units and mines. Hilariously, this means the end-of-level cutscene proceeds with an invisible Archimonde, as the game was never programmed to handle the event of him actually dying.
• Love Triangle: We have the old Malfurion-Tyrande-Illidan triangle in Reign of Chaos. In Frozen Throne, we get hints that there was a triangle between Arthas-Jaina-Kael, which is confirmed in Rise of the Lich King.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Any unit killed by artillery gets splattered and doesn't leave a corpse behind. This actually serves a purpose in-game: abilities that require corpses (e.g. Necromancers' Raise Dead) can't make do with chunky salsa.
• Luring in Prey: Invoked by one of the Dryad's Stop Poking Me! lines in Reign of Chaos, where she uses a "human call" where she pretends to be drunk to attract the enemy.
• Low-Tech Spears: In Warcraft III the Noble Savage Horde uses spears for its main ground and air-ranged attackers, compared to the Night Elves' bows, Alliance's arquebus/magic hammers, or the Undead's Spider Swarm.
• Magick: The first and second games use the word "magiks" to describe arcane and demonic magic.
• Magic Knight: The Paladin in Warcraft 2 and 3, the Ogre-Mage in Warcraft 2, and the Paladin, Death Knight, and Priestess of the Moon in Warcraft 3.
• Make Them Rot: Death Knights in II have the Death And Decay ability, which does devastating amounts of damage in a huge area as long as they have mana. In III, the ability is now the Lich's ultimate ability, has a much smaller area, does percentage-of-maximum-health as continuous damage, has a fixed duration and mana cost, and kills trees.
• The Man Behind the Man:
  • Gul'dan for Blackhand. Mal'ganis for Kel'Thuzad, then the Lich King for Mal'ganis, then the Burning Legion for the Lich King.
  • In 3 it turns out the Burning Legion was behind Gul'Dan, specifically Mannoroth was the one who tainted him and the horde. In turn, Mannoroth was doing the bidding of Archimonde and Kil'Jaeden, the commanders of the Burning Legion. Kil'Jaeden was also behind Illidan's quest to kill the Lich King (who betrayed the legion), and Sylvanas was behind the coalition of various monsters and rebel factions in Lordaeron after using her banshees to possess their leaders.
• Mana Burn:
  • Literally the name and function of the Demon Hunter's first ability, which burns away some of the target's mana and deals damage based on the amount removed.
  • Arcane Towers and Spell Breakers burn mana on every attack, dealing bonus damage based on the mana burned as well as getting a damage bonus against summoned units.
• Mayincatec: The Trolls. They live in jungles, have ziggurats, and have been known to practice human(oid) sacrifice.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The names of Arthas (Arthur), Medivh (Merlin), and Uther (Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father) have some obvious Arthurian connotations.
  • The name of Sylvanas, coming from the Latin word for "forest", is fitting for a forest ranger.
  • Grom Hellscream, at least in his first appearance. He had a remarkably high and screamish voice in Beyond the Dark Portal, and one of his responses when selecting him was simply screaming "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHH!!!"
  • Thrall, who was a, well, slave for most of his young life.
  • Korgath Bladefist has a prosthetic hand in the form of a blade.
• Mechanical Animals: The Mechanical Critter is an item that creates a critter (small animal that can be found wandering the map like sheep, deer or pigs) that doesn't register as belonging to the player and used for scouting. Despite the name, the unit isn't actually mechanical.
• Medical Monarch: Arthas Menethil, crown prince of Lordaeron, starts the game as a paladin with a strong healing spell. Even after his Face–Heel Turn to Death Knight, he still has a healing spell (though it now heals undead and hurts the living).
• Mercenary Units: In Warcraft III some maps have mercenary camps where you can hire creeps to fight for you. The Frozen Throne introduces Taverns, which can be used to hire heroes this way. In one mission, Arthas uses mercenaries to burn his forces' own ships before they reach them and retreat back home, and then turns around and blames the mercs for it.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: Several appear in Warcraft III:
  • Infernals are giant demons made of burning rocks, summoned by pulling one from the sky as a meteor, dealing damage and stunning the units it lands on.
  • Rain of Chaos summons multiple Infernals, though it's harder to hit precise targets (it can happen that the summoned Infernals get trapped on cliffs or behind terrain).
  • The Rain of Fire spell invokes this by having burning rocks fall on the target area, damaging friend and foe.
  • The Priestess of the Moon's ultimate spell causes stars to come crashing down on all enemy units in range for a long time.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Dragons/Gryphon Riders in Warcraft 2 are a variation. They're extremely powerful and actually move pretty fast, but they react very slowly to commands.
  • The Tauren Chieftain is slowest in movement and attack speed, though fortunately he gets an aura that increases both but has the highest Strength of all the original heroes.
  • For a semi-literal example, there's the Frost Wyrm. It has the highest base HP and attack damage of any trainable unit, but has rather slow movement speed (particularly for a flying unit) and a painfully slow attack rate of one attack every three seconds.
  • The daemon in Orcs and Humans. It has the most HP of any unit in the game and can kill many units in single hit. It's also rather slow.
  • Mountain Giants are intentionally this since they're built to draw aggro. They are also immune to spells just for good measure, and can hit like a truck if they pick up a tree.
• Mirrored Confrontation Shot: Box art for the first two games.
• Misplaced Wildlife: In an underground cave in Kalimdor, Thrall runs into a bunch of sheep, remarking he'd never seen them on that continent... then the Forced Transformation wears off and leaves you fighting a bunch of footmen.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: The Frozen Throne uses the same gameplay model as Reign of Chaos, but adds new missions, units, abilities, and options to freshen up the game.
• Mistaken for Granite:
  • At one point in the third game there's a hallway with statues of armored men on either side. Further down the hallway are Battle Golems which resemble the statues and attack when you approach them (complete with "The statues are coming to life!" in case you missed the point).
  • In the same game certain treasures are seemingly out in the open, only for the nearby rocks to crumble and turn into golems. The game script destroys the rocks (which are normal, destroyable doodads that would otherwise yield additional loot) and spawns golems almost instantly after the rocks are "destroyed"; the animation of the rocks crumbling and the golems being summoned (which they are formed from rocks coming out of the ground) blend together well. A variant of this happens with piles of bones and flesh turning into skeletons.
• Mook Commander:
  • The Kodo Beast unit has a passive ability called "War Drums", which is essentially an aura that makes surrounding orc units deal more damage to their opponents.
  • Many Hero Units have some kind of passive ability that works like this. The Tauren Chieftain's Endurance Aura increases movement and attack speed, the Paladin's Devotion Aura increases armor, etc.
• Mook Lieutenant:
  • Captain Thornby in Rexxar's campaign
  • The liches fulfill this role for Balnazzar's forces, and the Blademasters fulfill this role for Maghteridon, despite being heroes their role is limited to being simple lieutenants who lead a part of the forces of their respective bosses.
• Mooks:
  • Each race has basic troops that are not individually strong, but they will be the most common troops at the beginning of the game, in the late game, they are usually replaced by the elite ones like Tauren or Abominations.
  • Creeps between level 1 and 4 usually fulfill this role for neutrals, being easy foot soldiers to kill.
  • The Mur'Gul Reavers are these for the naga, although as in all the missions you control naga, the myrmidons are available from the start, there is not much motivation to train them.
• Money Multiplier: In II, you can get up to 25% more oil and wood with each load, and 20% more gold, but in III it works the opposite way with upkeep, and you bring in less and less if you have over a certain food load. The Humans have an upgrade that allows them to increase the amount of lumber their peasants bring in.
• Mounted Mook: A number in III:
  • Night Elf Archers can mount Hippogryphs to create a ranged air unit, sacrificing the Archer's ranged damage reduction and the Hippogryph's strong Anti-Air attack to give the Archers a much-needed health boost and mobility. In The Frozen Throne, the ability os made reversible, meaning a Night Elf player can deal with air attacks by dismounting the riders to deal far more damage than with mounted archers alone.
  • The Goblin Tinker's ultimate lets him pilot a mini-tank that changes him into a mechanical unit, making him immune to a number of spells and giving him extra damage against buildings.
• Moving Buildings: Justified for Night Elves, since some of their buildings are sapient, partially-humanoid trees.
• Ms. Fanservice: The Sorceress, and she's painfully aware of this.
  Sorceress: You don't get out much, do you?
• Multiplayer Difficulty Spike: The campaign AI is quite blatantly railroaded into the same attack patterns over and over again and protected only by cheating. Online AI, on the other hand, is intended to emulate how human players will act.
• Multiplayer-Only Item:
  • The Night Elf campaign denies you the use of Chimaeras, their most powerful air unit, for Fake Difficulty. The expansion allows you to use them near the middle and the penultimate mission, but only due to a case of This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman for the latter. Said campaign's final mission restricts players from creating all flying units altogether to make it longer to reach the mission's objective.
  • The expansion's Blood Elf campaign removes all human and dwarven units after the first mission (though some have elven equivalents). However, it also gives you Purposely Overpowered Naga units to compensate.
  • Many missions have only one or two neutral structures (and even then tend to be watered-down versions), while Multiplayer can have many more. In particular, Taverns never appear in the campaign.
• Multiple Head Case:
  • Ogres. At least the Ogre Magi varieties are more focused, and don't argue with themselves.
  • Hydras are three-headed, and when killed split into two smaller three-headed hydras (and one animation actually has the heads snapping at each other).
• Murder Into Malevolence:
  • Banshees are ghosts of elven women slain during Arthas' conquest of Silvermoon, with only their voices left to express their hatred and suffering.
  • The first banshee was Sylvannas Windrunner, the honorable Forest Ranger who leads Silvermoon's defense. Arthas ignores her request for a quick death and instead consigns her to the eternal suffering of undeath; when freed from his domination, she becomes a cruel and spiteful creature who eventually leads the independent splinter faction of the undead known as the Forsaken.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: Kel'Thuzad. It helps that Arthas later has to help him get better after initially killing him.
  Kel'Thuzad's Ghost: Told you my death would mean little.
• Mystical Plague: The plague of undeath that turns people into zombies, preparing the way for a demonic invasion. Well, that was the original intention, anyhow. Ner'zhul had other ideas.
• Mythology Gag:
  • When Arthas and Jaina set foot for the first time on Undead soil in Warcraft III, they say "What the hell is that? Looks like the land around that granary is...dying". Just like Jim Raynor in StarCraft when he sets foot for the first time on Zerg soil, only in this case the ground is alive.
  • If you click multiple times on an Undead Acolyte, he will say "My life for Aiur!... uh... Ner'zhul".
  • In similar vein, one of Mortar Team's Stop Poking Me! quotes is "Clearly, Tassadar has failed us! You must not!".
• The Name Is Bond, James Bond: One of the Druid of the Talon's Stop Poking Me! quotes:
  Druid of the Talon: Talon. Druid of the Talon.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Rend and Maim Blackhand, Grom Hellscream, Archimonde the Defiler, Orgrim Doomhammer... The list goes on and on.
  • Undead and demonic heroes have names like Baron Bloodbane, Baron Felblade, Duke Ragereaver, Duke Wintermaul, Lord Lightstalker, and Lord Soulrender (Death Knights); Terrordar, Bleakill, Necros, and Fearoth (Dreadlords); Rage Winterchill, Ras Splinterspine, Venim Iceblade, Rak Coldskull, and Kryptikk Soulslayer (Liches); Destromath and Brutillus (Pit Lords); and Blazefury, Hatespark, Ragepyre, and Singeslayer (Firelords), among various others.
• Nerf: Due to the online-play aspect of the later games in the series, this happened quite frequently to units and abilities. More details are available on the trope page.
  • Warcraft II reduced the effectiveness of basic ranged units as their high rate of fire, coupled with their ability to ignore enemy armour in Warcraft I proved to be far too powerful. In addition, they were made more fragile.
  • Warcraft II also reduced the effectiveness of long range siege. This game's Orc catapults and Human ballistas were nowhere near as devastating as the Warcraft I catapults, which were capable of annihilating entire armies with just one well placed shot.
  • Warcraft II greatly reduced the effectiveness of the Healing spell, which gave the Humans a big advantage at least until Catapults and Daemons/Elementals started appearing (these units could kill most enemies in one or two hits, so there was no time to heal them).
  • Finally, Warcraft II removed the Major Summoning spell because the creatures it summoned (Daemon for Orcs, Water Elemental for Humans) absolutely dominated the game once they began appearing; not only were they extremely strong, but they also did not require any gold to produce. Daemons do appear in ''Warcraft II', but only as enemies and with much weaker stats.
  • Warcraft III changed the polymorph spell to only last for a certain amount of time until changing back after the permanent-kill polymorph spell in Warcraft II proved to be too powerful in the hands of a capable Mage user.
  • The Warcraft III Reforged revamp ended up nerfing Malfurion and Tyrande in the "Brothers In Blood" mission due to the switch to Frozen Throne rules where they can't gain experience from low level creeps after reaching level 5. You used to be able to get their level 6 ultimates early on, which made it easy to use Starfall and Tranquility throughout the level. However, this is no longer the case now that there's so few units on the map that actually provide the two of them experience. Thus, making it a lot more difficult to rely on their ultimate abilities for the level. The loss of Tranquility for Malfurion makes his section to awaken the Druids of the Claw a lot harder (if you don't know about the three hidden Furbolgs that are rescuable).
• Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps: Warcraft I had a rudimentary version of this, as Dungeon missions contained enemy units that were not available to either faction, such as Brigands, Slimes, Ogres, etc. Warcraft II introduced Critters, harmless animals that appear on most maps, but serve little purpose other than adding flavour and occasionally getting in someone's way. Warcraft III also had critters, and introduced Creeps, small bands of neutral monsters that mostly served to provide experience points for Hero units and loot before fighting the enemy proper.
• Never a Self-Made Woman: Gets used to a greater or lesser degree with Tyrande Whisperwind and Alleria Windrunner.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers for Reforged promised completely revamped cutscenes which ended up being cut completely from the final game.
• New Skill as Reward: Played with; Demon Hunters in multiplayer can temporarily turn into a demonic form with a ranged attack as their ultimate ability. Illidan does not have this ability when you first play as him in the campaign, but he transforms permanently near the end of his mission where he absorbs the energies of the warlock Gul'dan's skull in order to kill the demon Tichondrius.
• Nice Day, Deadly Night:
  • Inverted in the case of most neutral monsters which sleep at night, making it easier to approach them. However, some turn invisible and remain awake, turning a Curb-Stomp Battle against a few monsters into a sudden ambush.
  • Inverted for the Night Elves, who fight much better at night than in the day, being able to turn invisible and slowly regenerating. More importantly, their Moon Wells will regenerate mana at night, giving them a constant source of healing; anyone raiding a Night Elf base at night is in for a bad time.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Averted by Night Elf Archers firing at a (fixed) angle, but some other projectiles don't arc.
• No Canon for the Wicked: Inverted in the first game, where the orc campaign was Canon, though some parts of the human campaign also took place — notably the slaying of Medivh. Used in the second game, though parts of the orc campaign did take place despite their eventual loss. Averted in the third game, where all the campaigns are canon and part of the same story.
• No Cure for Evil:
  • In Warcraft I and II, the Orcish Horde had no healing spells (although Berserkers in Warcraft II had the ability to slowly regain lost health, and Death Knights could heal themselves with Death Coil). In the expansion for II, the Orc heroes (whose deaths meant mission failure) had way more HP then their human counterparts to make up for this. Even after their Heel–Face Turn in Warcraft III, the orcish Horde only had the Witch Doctor's Healing Ward (which requires an assload of research to actually unlock) till the expansion added the Shadow Hunter and the Voodoo Lounge to buy early healing items.
  • Averted with the Scourge in Warcraft III who had several effective skills to heal their units like Death Coil and Vampiric Aura. The expansion even gave them a dedicated healing unit, the Obsidian Statue.
  • Played straight with the Naga, who don't have any unit or hero capable of healing.
• Non-Entity General: Sometimes given a name and face in the sequels, such as Doomhammer being the Warcraft 1 Horde player and Turalyon the Alliance Warcraft II player pre-expansion.
• Non-Human Undead:
  • The Scourge in Warcraft III includes undead spider-men called Crypt Fiends, undead elves called banshees, and a super flying undead dragon with ice breath. Plus, generic skeletons can be made with the corpses of any species.
  • In fact, the creator of the Scourge, Ner'zhul, was once an orc shaman. Most of the Liches (aside from Kel'Thuzad) were former orc warlocks and death knights as well, which is why they have those enormous fangs.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • "Infernal" literally means "from below". Given that, you'd expect Infernals to erupt from the ground rather than rain down from the sky. Though of course, if you interpret it as "from hell", a giant golem made of hatred and fire is pretty appropriate...
  • Orcs and Humans human Archer units...are actually crossbowmen.
  • In Warcraft 3, of its sixteen units and heroes, only five of the Human units are actually Humans. The rest are Elves and especially Dwarves. Arguably something of an Artifact Title due to the name being inherited from past Warcraft games, where the faction was almost exclusively Human (and was exclusively Human in WC1).
  • Similarly to the above, in Warcraft II, despite being called the "Orcish Horde", only two of the eight units are actually orcs (the Peon and the Grunt), the rest being Trolls, Goblins, Ogres, Undead and Dragons. Thankfully averted in III which gives the Horde a wider Orc representation in both units and heroes.
• Not the Intended Use: Militia are ostensibly used for defending your town against surprise attacks by turning your Peasants into makeshift infantry, but in practice, you'll more often see Human players using them to either bum-rush creep camps for early expansions or just transferring them between bases. Similarly, Night Elf players quickly realized that the Ancient of War, their primary barracks structure, makes for a great creeping tool when uprooted due to its high health, powerful attacks, and ability to heal by eating trees.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Goblin Sappers in III were subject to a lot of these, removing some of the more degenerate tactics for sneaking them into the enemy's base and blowing everything to hell. Various patches have disallowed loading them into Goblin Zeppelins, targeting them with the Invisibility spell, and giving them speed boosts with the Scroll of Speed.
• Older Sidekick: The third game has some examples.
  • Cairne is a 90-years old chieftan of Taurens who becomes takes a secondary role in the Horde of Thrall, a 19-years old Warchief.
  • Muradin, a 221-years old dwarf, becomes an aide for Arthas, a 24-years old human, during the Northrend campaign.
  • Kel'thuzad, a 58 necromancer turned Lich, becomes the right-hand man to Arthas.
• Ominous Floating Castle: The Undead Necropolis. Though it can still be attacked by melee units.
• Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Orc Shadow Council.
• On-Ride/On-Foot Combat: Night Elf archers can learn the Mount Hippogryph ability, which lets them use their ranged attack from the air (but loses the hippogryph's powerful melee Anti-Air attack). Careful timing of the Dismount ability lets you slaughter flying enemies by suddenly doubling the amount of units they have to face.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • A direct hit from a Catapult in Warcraft I will kill any unit except a Daemon.
  • The Polymorph spell in Warcraft II will instantly eliminate any organic unit (ships, flying machines and siege engines are immune), turning it into a harmless animal permanently.
• One-Man Army: High-level heroes in Warcraft III can often handle maps by themselves, especially if you've been giving all the stat upgrades to one guy. But in the campaigns would include:
  • Uther in the Human mission "Blackrock & Roll", though he protects your base while you complete the mission.
  • Arthas alone with Frostmourne can annihilate the Undead and the buildings all on his own in the final chapter of the Human Campaign if used properly.
  • Cenarius in the Orc mission "The Hunter of Shadows". He has the most HP of any other unit in Reign of Chaos and Divine armor, on top his other high stats.
  • Archimonde in the last Night Elf mission, complete with Divine armor, which makes him almost invincible for your attacks, and Spell Immunity. To top it all off he as item that brings him back to life at full health and mana. The player isn't supposed to actually kill him.
  • Admiral Proudmoore in Frozen Throne's bonus Orc campaign is also powerful and capable of slaying the entire Horde army (if player doesn't involve) on his own.
  • Rexxar, Chen, Rokhan, and Cairne in the bonus campaign, especially if well equipped. Granted, since they usually have to take on hordes of enemies alone, aside from missions where you have hired or quest-given units, or one mission where you have a base under control, and even in those cases you can usually get away with ignoring the other units and doing the mission with only the heroes.
  • The original version of Anub'arak was an accidental example, due to a problem with the armor bonus, Anub'arak was able to fight with Illidan's forces on his own.
  • Tichondrius isn't too special at a glance aside from having some really good items. Then you look at his spells and see that he swapped out two of the normal dreadlord spells for ones that can't be accessed by the player. Also he has Divine armor. You can see why the player never gets to use him the Undead campaign. He's placed at the Undead base in "Awakening of Stormrage" to keep the player from actually destroying it on the off chance they decide to attack it instead of completing the objective of reaching the Horn of Cenarius first, and at that point the campaign the player doesn't have access to any flying units to exploit Tichondrius' being a melee unit. You actually are supposed to kill him "A Destiny of Flame and Sorrow" but only when Illidan takes the Skull of Gul'Dan and gains a permanent Metamorphosis state.
  • Balnazzar is the only enemy campaign hero that attacks enemy bases alone. This is because he has Rain of Chaos and Earthquake, which makes him stronger than a small army, especially when it comes to sieging bases.
  • Magtheridon, not only he has a huge health pool, but also 11 abilities, many of which are used to attack multiple objectives at once, you can end up losing all your troops if you are not careful with him.
  • Illidan in Frozen Throne', Due to all the items you can get at the end of the Elven campaign and in the Human campaign, he can become this, to the point where he can potentially beat Magtheridon in a one-on-one battle. Luckily for Arthas, he loses all those items in the undead campaign.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • For the most part it is very unlikely to have more heroes than there are names for them. If it does happen, the game just slaps a roman numeral after the name (Samuro III, Destromath II, etc.)
  • Played with between the second and third game. The Death Knights of Warcraft 2 (the spirits of orc warlocks from Warcraft I, forcibly inserted into the corpse of a human knight to animate it) were bound to Ner'zhul and transformed into Undead hero units. The Undead have a hero called the Death Knight. The two have absolutely no relation, however, and the Warcraft 2 Death Knights were transformed into Liches.
  • A little boy named Timmy appears in the first human level. A ghoul named Timmy later appears in the same campaign. But according to a developer, they aren't the same Timmy, different level designers just happened to use the same name. Another Timmy, or possibly the same Timmy, later appears as an Easter Egg selling rare items to the undead Arthas (and is mechanical for some reason), and later still in Theramore in Rexxar's campaign, while a ghoul named Timmy makes an appearance in WoW.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: Frostmourne in Warcraft III, encased in a floating block of ice.
• Our Centaurs Are Different:
  • Pretty much the same as the Greek version (barbaric and violent), except they have a Mongol-inspired society. Said to be the cursed offspring of Cenarius (a night elf/stag god), whose daughters are the much nicer Dryads (night elf/doe).
  • There are also Magnataurs, a much larger polar creature that are a mix of human and mammoth.
  • Dragonspawn are draconian versions, following the same body layout as a centaur.
  • Nerubians and Crypt Lords are centauroid versions of spiders and beetles respectively: a large abdomen supported by four legs, a vertical humanoid torso (head, arms and shoulders) and the thorax joining the two together. Apparently a pre-release version of the Crypt Fiend was a drider-like unit, rather than the mutated spider it is now.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Dragons of Azeroth take a lot of cues from other fantasy stories, though there are some differences. There are 5 main "Dragonflights", each headed by an "Aspect" of a particular part of Azeroth.
  • Red: Life. Led by Alexstraza the Life-Binder, who also happens to be the queen of all the dragons. (Except for Black, and more recently Blue). They are enslaved by the orcs during Warcraft II to be used as mounts, a feat only possible with the Dragon/Demon Soul.
  • Blue: Magic, led by Malygos the Spellweaver. Nearly wiped out in the past which threw Malygos into a Heroic BSoD for a several millennia. When he snapped out of it, he decided that Magic was being over used, and that he should get rid of it... by killing all Mortal Magic users and their allies, i.e. pretty much everyone, and trying to redirect the planet's ley lines to a central point, and direct the energy into space, which could result in an Earth-Shattering Kaboom.
  • Green: Nature/Dream, led by Ysera the Dreamer. This Flight mostly resides in the Emerald Dream, protecting nature. They're also responsible for the introduction of Druidism to the mortal races, through Cenarius. Recently, the Emerald Dream has been corrupted by a strange force called the Nightmare, and there are rumors of powerful Green Dragons being corrupted by it, including (possibly) Ysera herself. Solved in a tie in novel.
  • Bronze: Time, led by Nozdormu the Timeless One. These dragons have the power to travel through time, ensuring history isn't altered. Recently, a strange flight known as the Infinite Dragonflight has been attempting to derail history, keeping the Bronze Dragons very busy. There are rumors that the Infinite Dragonflight is actually a future version of the Bronze Flight, as indicated by quests in Dragonblight and a timed event in the Caverns of Time)
  • Black: Earth. This Flight is led by Neltharion the Earth-Warder, now known as Deathwing. Once charged with shaping the earth, this Dragonflight now seeks to subvert all of Azeroth to its masters will.
  • There are also some other dragonflights that seem to have mutated from these five, such as the Infinite, Chromatic, and Twilight Dragonflights. You can also find the ancestors of the Dragons, known as Proto-Drakes, throughout Northrend. Also Nether Dragons of Outland, black dragons warped by the Twisting Nether.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Aside from having the funniest unit quotes and the Wildhammer clan taming Gryphons, they're about as bog-standard as you get.
• Our Gargoyles Rock: Flying undead bats that can turn into statues to regenerate health.
• Our Ghouls Are Creepier: They're decidedly not-okay lumberjacks, for one thing (AIIIIIEEEEE!). They're described as mutant zombies with a ravenous hunger for flesh and brains.
• Our Goblins Are Different: Warcraft goblins are smaller than orcs, but also have some knowledge of technology, particularly that which explodes. They first showed up in WarCraft II as the inventors of the Horde, are characterized by their suicidal insanity and seem to be fighting for kicks. In WarCraft III goblins left the Horde, becoming a neutral force, but they still aren't exactly good. They've become a bunch of greedy industrialists with a Screw the Rules, I Have Money! attitude, a taste in clothes that would shock Paris Hilton, a deep belief that people from other cultures are inferior to them, and a mercantile ruthlessness that would be horrible if it wasn't Played for Laughs.
• Our Kobolds Are Different: Kobolds are rat-men found in tunnels and dungeons and who wear candles on their heads as primitive miner's lights, sometimes available as mercenaries. They speak in grunts, but as of World of Warcraft they became better known as the Trope Namer for You No Take Candle.
• Our Hydras Are Different: Hydras appear as neutral creeps in Warcraft III. They're three-headed, two-legged reptilian creatures. When a hydra is killed, two smaller hydras spawn from its corpse, as a variant on the usual regeneration. They also have high passive regeneration, and will heal faster from wounds if left alone.
• Our Manticores Are Spinier: Lion head and body, bat wings and scorpion tail, and are called wyverns.
• Our Nymphs Are Different: Dryads first appeared in Warcraft III as Anti-Magic units for the Night Elf faction. Rather than forest spirits, they instead look like night elf women with the lower body of a deer. Notably, "dryad" is almost exclusively the name used, with "nymph" being a rare interchangeable term for the same creature.
• Our Ogres Are Hungrier: For starters, they have two heads and can use magic. Except Stonemaul Ogres, who have only one head.
• Our Orcs Are Different: At first they appear to be (and pretty much are) traditional orcs, but then Lord of the Clans and Warcraft III reveals them to have been actually fairly decent folks in the past, and now, under their new visionary leader, they are reverting to that state again. The world, however, continues to revile them for their past deeds. As the trope page indicates, Warcraft's general style for them is a popular kind type of depiction of "Orcs".
• Our Titans Are Different: There seem to be two flavors of this trope within Warcraft. The benevolent creator race of Titans, and the Old Gods.
• Palette Swap:
  • In the original game (Orcs & Humans), the Necrolyte, Warlock and Medivh all used the same recoloured sprite.
  • For some reason, in the PSX version of Warcraft II Zuljin is a yellow unit rather than a green one.
• Panthera Awesome: The panthers ridden by Night Elf Huntresses and white tigers ridden by Priestesses of the Moon.
• The Paragon Always Rebels: In the Back Story, Sargeras had a bad experience with demons.
• Pelts of the Barbarian: Beastmasters in III wear animal skin loincloths and hoods... and that's it, really. Orc shamans wear wolfskins as well.
• Perpetual-Motion Monster: RTS mechanics aside, the Scourge is so dreaded across Azeroth precisely because it's mainly comprised of the undead, who require no rest or sustenance, and who can replenish their lost numbers with those they kill.
• Pinball Projectile: Projectiles with the Missile (Bounce) attribute, such as those of Night Elf Huntresses.
• Plague Master: The Lich King spends much of Warcraft III spreading his Plague of Undeath across Lordaeron, and the Scourge's units have a few disease-related abilities on the battlefield.
• Planetary Parasite: The Old Gods are planetary parasites that merge themselves to a planet and slowly corrupt it. Whether this would eventually destroy the planet is unknown, as the Old Gods on Azeroth were sealed away by the Titans (they could not be killed, having already corrupted the planet to such a degree that removing them would've required the destruction of Azeroth).
• Posthumous Character: The Draenei before The Frozen Throne were only present in the background, as it was believed that they had been exterminated by the Horde.
• Power Glows: Hero units in Warcraft III have a team-colored glow to help with identification.
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: The Frozen Throne's "The Founding Of Durotar" campaign with its shift from real-time strategy to RPG gameplay is a preview for World of Warcraft.
• Possessing a Dead Body: Death knights (the orcs' mage unit) were made by forcing the spirits of Gul'dan's warlocks into the corpses of human knights. In III, the original death knights were remade into liches (ranged Squishy Wizard), while the new death knights (evil version of The Paladin) are the reanimated bodies of human nobles under the Lich King's thrall.
• Praetorian Guard: Admiral's Elite Guard, the Chief Petty Officer and the Chief of Chaplains.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • In Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, Mogor the Ogre and his clan, the Laughing Skull, decide to ask the Alliance to help them get rid of rival clans near their village and take over the Blade's Edge Mountains, offering as incentive the Book of Medivh, which they stole from Ner'zhul.
  • In The Frozen Throne, Balnazzar mentions that he doesn't trust Sylvanas, because she would never bow to them, and is only working with them against Arthas because she wants revenge. Varimathras reassures him that they only stand to benefit from her undying hatred for Arthas.
• Precision F-Strike: Done a few times.
  Uther the Lightbringer: This urn contains your father's ashes, Arthas! What, were you hoping to piss on them one last time before leaving this kingdom to rot?
  Sylvanas Windrunner: Give my regards to hell, you son of a bitch.
  Kael'thas Sunstrider: Insolent son of a... let's get this over with.
  Dwarf Rifleman: They don't pay us enough to put up with that asshole.^note Garithos
  • Oddly enough, the dwarf units seem to get a pass on this: "Take this, yeh bahstud!" for both the Mortar Team and Muradin, though with different word emphasis.
  Mortar Team: Move yer arse!
• Pre-Rendered Graphics: WarCraft III's in-game cutscenes use standard unit models, while every campaign ends on a cinematic cutscene. The expansion only uses in-game cutscenes except for the very beginning when Illidan summons naga from the seas and ends on a much more complicated animated instead of a cinematic.
• Press X to Die: A fourth-wall breaking example from the Sorceress unit's Stop Poking Me! dialogue in III: For the end of world spell, click Ctrl-Alt-Del.
• Pre-Insanity Reveal: Drek'thar mentored future Warchief Thrall in the ways of the shaman, and serves as the chieftain of the Frostwolf Clan. Despite his blindness, he was an extremely powerful shaman, fierce fighter, and wise leader. However, he became senile with age, and now his rare moments of lucidity are indications that something is about to go very, very wrong.
• Primitive Clubs: Mountain giants rip entire trees out of the ground and use them as clubs, and ogres also use maces and big wooden clubs.
• Prodigal Family: In "The Founding of Durotar", Jaina Proudmoore ends up meeting Thrall, the young orc leader, on the path to Kalimdor. Her interactions with him lead her to realize that these orcs are not the same as the ones who invaded Azeroth and, regardless of her father's bigoted teachings, they do deserve a land for themselves. Jaina still loves her father and is glad that he went out of his way to seek her. However, when he becomes the campaign's Arc Villain by attacking the nascent Horde, it only complicates matters for her. Holding true to her heart, she sides with the orcs, resulting in Admiral Proudmoore's death.
• Projectile Webbing: Crypt Fiends and some Nerubians have the Web ability, which spits a mass of webbing at an enemy flyer, bringing it down to earth where ground units can attack it.
• Prophetic Fallacy: "Your young prince will find only death in the cold north." What he actually found was a Fate Worse than Death, at least until the second expansion of World of Warcraft.
• Proud Merchant Race: Kul Tiras was known for its merchant fleet before the Second War. The Goblins are a more violent example.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy:
  • The Orcs, who maintain their warrior traditions even after being freed from influence of the Legion. Maybe the Tauren as well, but they don't actively seek battles.
  • The human nation of Stromgarde, led by a family named Trollbane. Guess how they became famous.
• Psycho Rangers; Illidan's Blood Elf, Naga and Draenei forces are similar to Alliance, Orcs and Night Elves.
• Pun: Warcraft III began to let puns drift into the mix in addition to jacking the pop-culture references up to eleven. Mostly Visual Puns, but a few others exist.
  • Dryad: I'm game. (she's half-deer)
  • Pit Lord: You know what burns my ass? A flame about this high.
  • Death Knight: I'm a Death Knight Rider!
  • Several people wielding hammers: It's hammer time!
  • Druid of the Claw: Quit clicking on my bear ass!
• Purple Is Powerful: The nation of Dalaran, home to many of the Alliance's most powerful mages, is represented by the color purple (or violet) in Warcraft 2. The Warsong Clan, the strongest warriors in Thrall's Horde in Warcraft 3, are also represented by purple, as is Balnazzar (the strongest of the Dreadlords in The Frozen Throne).
• Put on a Bus: Gnomes disappeared entirely in Warcraft III, their role having been taken over by the dwarves. They are eventually brought back for World of Warcraft. Also the Beyond the Dark Portal heroes excluding Grom Hellscream. Probably justified by them being trapped on Draenor when it blew up.
• Quest to the West: In Warcraft 3, the Prophet urges Thrall and later Jaina to take their people (orcs and humans respectively) to the previously-unknown western continent of Kalimdor, as the eastern kingdoms are lost to the Undead. By allying themselves with the local night elves, they can assemble a sufficient force to repel the demonic invaders.
• Rate-Limited Perpetual Resource:
  • All factions but the Night Elves collect lumber by chopping down trees at different rates (10 per trip for the orcs, 20 for the undead and naga, 10, 20 or 30 for humans), which makes them take longer trips as the forests shrink and eventually run out (not to mention allowing entry into their base from undefended directions). The Night Elves don't damage the trees at all and so never run out, but harvest lumber at a much slower rate (5 per cycle).
  • Items and mercenaries are available in limited quantities (usually 3), and have a cooldown before they can be bought/hired again once depleted, but are never Lost Forever (except for Marketplaces, which produce items based on what creeps are dropping around the map and so refresh their inventory every few minutes).
  • The Goblin Alchemist's Transmute spell instantly kills an enemy unit and gives the player gold based on its cost, but is limited to weaker units and has a long cooldown.
  • The Orc Pillage ability gives the player resources with every attack made on an enemy building. While theoretically the player can live entirely off what the ability gives them (up to 3 gold and lumber per attack) or even leave enemy buildings standing so they can be attacked after being repaired, it's best used to supplement worker-provided income.
  • The Undead's Graveyard building continuously produces up to 5 Ghoul corpses which are used by the Undead as a source of animated skeletons or emergency rations for damaged Ghouls and Abominations. Meat Wagons can similarly be upgraded to produce Ghoul/Crypt Fiend corpses by themselves instead of having to harvest them.
• Recurring Extra: Thornby, Timmy, Captain Falric and Dagren the Orcslayer.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: Each paladin expresses their shame and contempt with Arthas in the second Undead mission in Reign of Chaos, with some of them even saying that they never expected that the Royal Brat to be anything but an embarrassment to the Silver Hand.
  Gavinrad the Dire: I can't believe that we ever called you brother! I knew it was a mistake to accept a spoiled prince into our order! You've made a mockery of the Silver Hand!
  Ballador the Bright: Vile betrayer! You are not fit enough to even carry your father's name! Why Uther ever vouched for you is beyond me. You've stripped him of his honor by casting yours to the winds! You deserve a gruesome death, boy!
  Sage Truthbearer: Light have mercy on you! Your betrayal has broken Uther's heart, boy. He would have given his life for yours in a second, and this is how you repay his loyalty?
  Uther the Lightbringer: Your father ruled this land for seventy years, and you've ground it to dust in a matter of days.
• Recruiters Always Lie: The last few "Stop Poking Me" quotes from the Footman in Warcraft II: "'Join the army,' they said. 'See the world,' they said. I'd rather be sailing!"
• Redemption Demotion: Inverted in Warcraft III. Arthas goes from a level 10 Paladin with awesome gear to a level 1 Death Knight with no items. He doesn't even get the damage boost from Frostmourne he had at the end of the Human campaign.
• Redemption Equals Death: Grom frees the Orcs from demonic corruption at the cost of his life.
• Red Herring:
  • The Warcraft 2 manual has a few. Gilneas thinks its army is powerful enough to face the Horde alone? Well, no need to find out. The Black Tooth Grin Clan is led by the sons of Blackhand, who was killed by the current Horde leader Doomhammer, and now they're secretly plotting revenge? And the Dragonmaw Clan has close ties to them? Well, no worries; you won't hear anything about them, ever. However, these storylines have been developed further in World of Warcraft.
  • The Reign of Chaos demo campaign has the Underworld Minions as a villainous faction, Murlocs worshipping a Sea Witch and sacrificing the Darkspear Trolls. At the end of the campaign the Sea Witch makes a Badass Boast that "the whole world will be drowned beneath the wrath of the tides". Though this plot element becomes incorporated into the Naga in The Frozen Throne and the Old Gods in World of Warcraft, it's inconsequential to the main plot of the game, which features the Undead Scourge and the Burning Legion as its villains. This may have been why the missions were cut in the final game, though they are canon. They are restored partially in The Frozen Throne and fully in Reforged.
  • The Orc campaign in Reign of Chaos features Thrall seeking out "The Oracle", a supposedly all-knowing legendary being in Kalimdor. When Thrall and Jaina think they find said "Oracle" they find it was actually Medivh impersonating the Oracle to get the two factions to ally against the Burning Legion. It's not known if the Oracle ever existed, and it's not talked or asked about again after this.
• Reference Overdosed: Half of the purpose of III's Stop Poking Me! lines is to make Shout Outs.
• Refuge in the West: Warcraft III begins with the Prophet urging the leaders of the Alliance and Horde to take their people to the west, to the ancient lands of Kalimdor to have a chance of surviving the return of the Burning Legion.
• Remixed Level:
  • The first and last Murloc island maps in the demo's Prologue campaign, included with the Frozen Throne expansion.
  • Andorhal is visited twice in Reign of Chaos ("The Cult of the Damned" and "Digging Up the Dead" respectively), during different seasons and for literally opposite reasons.
  • "The Siege of Dalaran" in Reign of Chaos becomes "The Ruins of Dalaran" in The Frozen Throne.
  • The Tomb of Sargeras, initially featured in Warcraft II, makes another appearance in Frozen Throne.
• Replay Mode: In the third game, interlude cutscenes in between levels can be selected from the screen.
• Resource-Gathering Mission: The first Ashenvale mission of Warcraft III's orc campaign requires Grom Hellscream to collect a ridiculously large 15,000 units of lumber, without a reliable goldmine, with the least effective gatherer of all four armies, and under constant attack by Night Elves. Fortunately, you can acquire mercenary shredders that harvest 200 lumber at a time instead of the usual 10, or go around killing the Night Elves' Trees of Life, which give you 3000 lumber when killed.
• Resurrection Gambit:
  • The necromancer Kel'thuzad isn't too worried when Arthas kills him. He comes back to haunt (well, advise and snark at) him as a ghost after Arthas' Face–Heel Turn, and then gets reborn as a Lich, a much more powerful spellcaster, all according to their master Ner'zhul's plan.
  • The Tauren Chieftain's Reincarnation ability brings him back to life with full mana once killed, though it has a long cooldown. As he tends to run out of mana rather quickly, leaving him to tank an entire army's worth of attacks can be a valid strategy.
• Retcon: The third game made quite a few.
  • The orcs being an an evil bloodthirsty horde in the first two games was attributed to the blood of Mannoroth and demonic influence in general, rather than them being naturally belligerent even before making contact with Kil'jaeden.
  • Shaman magic has been changed into wholesome nature magic, incompatible with the warlock magic and necromancy that the old Horde switched to.
  • Medivh was changed from an Evil Sorcerer who had been evil all along into a Fallen Hero in one of the tie-in novels, Warcraft: The Last Guardian.
  • There are also some retcons specific to Reforged. One of them involves siege units and some flying units. Those were remodeled and renamed in the Frozen Throne expansion (orcish catapults became demolishers, for example), while the original Reign of Chaos campaigns kept the original versions. Reforged, however, changed all the siege units in Reign of Chaos to their Frozen Throne versions.
• Revenge Is Not Justice: One of the cornerstones of The Paladin is the acknowledgment that that "vengeance cannot be a part of what we must do", Warcraft III centers around The Wise Prince and Paladin, Arthas Menethil, Slowly Slipping Into Evil as more and more of his people die in plots by The Undead and his increasing frustration with always being too late to save them, until he decides to forego the paladin oaths and begin his descent into Fallen Hero territory, eventually becoming a servant of the very undead he swore to destroy as his obsession with vengeance led to him picking up Frostmourne which promptly stole his soul in exchange for a hollow victory, after which Arthas returns to his kingdom, murders his father, and brings his kingdom to ruin, raising everyone he can find as undead.
• Revive Kills Zombie: In Warcraft I, casting Healing on a Daemon actually hurts it. This is, however, not even hinted in the game, manual, or the Insider's Guide, and as such hardly anyone knows about it. In III, the Paladin hero's Holy Light spell would heal allied living units, but instead deal half of the healing amount as damage upon enemy units that were considered undead. Inverted with the Death Knight hero's Death Coil spell, who had the reverse quirk, healing when used against friendly undead units and doing half that as damage against enemy living units.
• Rewatch Bonus: In Frozen Throne, some players observant enough may notice that a couple one-off Paladins seen in certain campaign levels aren't actually one-offs.
  • Magroth the Defender is a Paladin that the night elves rescue from the Naga in the level, The Ruins of Dalaran, where he goes about supporting Malfurion and Maiev's effort of putting a stop to Illidan's Eye of Sargeras spell. He actually appears again later on in the King Arthas level as one of the three Paladins that are trying to protect human refugees from Arthas' onslaught, but ends up dying to Arthas' forces.
  • Dagren the Orcslayer is a Paladin that is first seen fighting alongside Magroth in the King Arthas level as one of three Paladins trying to protect human refugees from Arthas' onslaught. Unlike Magroth, it's shown that Dagren survived Arthas' onslaught as he's seen again later on as part of the Kul Tiras navy that journeyed to Kalimdor. Dagren is seen again in bonus campaign's second act, Old Hatreds, as one of the defenders of a Kul Tiras coastal base that Rexxar's group needs to sneak by. Unfortunately, he and his Kul Tiras forces are eventually slaughtered by a group of Naga.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: Sometimes justified, like buildings summoned by the Undead in Warcraft III. The Humans have this as a game mechanic in III; by having multiple Peasants working on a single building, it goes up faster but costs more resources.
• Roar Before Beating: Infernals in teaser trailer, and Grom in his battle with Mannoroth. Justified with units that have Roar or Howl of Terror, as it increases/decreases your allies'/enemies' damage.
• Runic Magic: Runes are one-use powerups with various effects, from providing area healing or mana to spawning an invisible spy ward to resurrecting dead units or even a powerful monster under the player's control.
• Running Gag: The Demon Hunter, the Dreadlord, Tichondrius, and arguably Arthas and the Death Knight have a running gag based on the line "Darkness calls". Darkness attempts to call them but can't because of his mediocre phone service.
  Demon Hunter: "Darkness called... But I was on the phone, so I missed him. I tried to *69-Darkness, but his machine picked up. I yelled 'Pick up the phone, Darkness!,' but he ignored me. Darkness must have been screening his calls."
  Dreadlord: (phone rings) "Yes? Darkness, hey, what's up? The Demon Hunter left you a message? No, I don't have his number."
  Tichondrius: "DARKNESS... needs to get DSL. His line is always busy."
  Arthas: "Who is this 'darkness' anyway?"
  Death Knight: "I am the darkness!"
• Samurai Shinobi: The Blademaster hero has elements of samurai in his design (giant sword, banner with a flag on his back and a Critical Hit ability) and ninja (one of his skills creates illusions of himself, the other lets him go invisible and deal extra damage on his next attack).
• Savage Piercings: In Warcraft III, trolls have bone piercings.
• "Save the World" Climax: It starts with Thrall leaving the continent to find another one where his people can find a place to leave in peace, while Arthas investigates an epidemic. He then fights against a growing army of undead that threatens his kingdom. The climax has every faction of the world making a Last Stand against The Legions of Hell who want to destroy all life in the universe.
• Scarab Power: Spiderlords, and their undead counterparts, Crypt Lords, are heavily based on scarabs in Egyptian mythology, being mummified and reanimated beetle-mantis-spider mashups. Their names are all vaguely derived from Egyptian mythology (Anub'arak, Thebis-Ra, Pharoh-moth...), one of their abilities generates a huge beetle from a corpse, and their faces have a spike invoking the false beards on pharaonic funerary masks.
• Scavengers Are Scum: Out of the various Beast Man species that populate the universe, the gnolls (humanoid hyenas) are one of the least noble races.
• Schizo Tech: Thanks to the gnomes, dwarves, and goblins. Bows, crossbows and thrown weapons are still used alongside guns, though.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Frostmourne. "Just as the blade rends flesh, so must power scar the spirit." Arthas falls for it.
  • One of the Sorceress' pissed quotes:
    Sorceress: "For the 'End of the World' spell, press Control, Alt., Delete."
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The original games and early lore described the Second War as a conflict of attrition, lasting several years. However, current lore implies that the Second War lasted only about one year, or perhaps just a few months.^ExplanationFor those of you keeping track, that's a year for the formation of the Alliance with seven human nations and four nonhuman nations, the uniting of the Horde with three native species (one of them being enslaved), the very conception of the death knights and paladins and ogre-magi, the invasion of Khaz Modan and building of the Horde fleet, then the campaigns through southern Lordaeron and Aerie Peak, then the burning of Quel'thalas, then the march west through Alterac's mountains and the siege of Capital City, then the sending of troops across the sea to the Tomb of Sargeras to punish the traitorous Gul'dan, then the destruction of the Horde fleet, then the march from Capital City first south then east across the continent then south again across Khaz Modan, then the lifting of the siege at Ironforge, then the Battle of Blackrock Spire and destruction of the Dark Portal. Busiest. Year. Ever.
• Scunthorpe Problem: The official map Booty Bay cannot be played in custom Reforged lobbies.
• Secret Character: The Attack Peasant and Attack Peon units in Warcraft II. They can only be placed on custom maps by using third-party editors and are completely indistinguishable from normal Peasants/Peons in-game, apart from having a different command interface (they cannot build, repair, or gather resources, and lack even an Attack command, though they can be still ordered to attack by right-clicking). Attack Peasants appear in two missions of the Tides of Darkness human campaign, first as peasant rebels you must kill, and then as Alterac prisoners you must escort to your base. Attack Peons do not appear in any official campaign at all.
• Seeking Ultimate Strength: At the end of the Night Elf campaign of The Frozen Throne, Illidan makes a point to his brother Malfurion that he was never interested in world domination, and that all he wanted was as much magical power as possible in the world.
• Selective Obliviousness: Warcraft 2. Level 8: There's been a peasant revolt by guys wearing Alterac colors — how strange. Level 9: Uther Lightbringer was almost killed by Alliance ships sailing with Alterac colors — how strange. Level 10: Let's interrogate these traitors who were wearing Alterac colors when they were caught. Level 11: Alterac has betrayed us! So that's why their national banner has a Horde emblem on it.
• Serrated Blade of Pain: Frostmourne has a barbed blade. And the whole 'scarring the spirit' warning on its plinth isn't for show. It rips souls out.
• Shape Dies, Shifter Survives: The Phoenix unit has negative health regeneration and turns into an egg every time it dies (through enemy action or left alone). But if the egg isn't killed, it quickly turns back into a fully-healed phoenix in a endless cycle.
• Shapeshifting Heals Wounds:
  • The Blood Mage's Phoenix summon automatically turns into an egg (with very low total HP, but fully healed) when it dies (unless over water or impassable terrain), and if the egg survives, turns into a Phoenix with full health. To balance this, the Phoenix has negative HP regeneration, and will still die and be reborn without being attacked once. This can lead to Artificial Stupidity where the AI's Blood Mage summons a Phoenix as it leaves its base, resulting in a nearly-dead bird by the time it arrives at the enemy base.
  • Wisps are Night Elf spirits that are consumed as they grow into giant mobile trees that serve as Night Elf buildings. Unlike Starcraft's Drones, the tree's life isn't linked to the wisp's and finishes construction fully healed (if it wasn't attacked in the meantime).
  • Avatar and Metamorphosis are two abilities that grant enhanced combat abilities while they last (like spell immunity or a ranged attack) along with increasing the caster's current and maximum life by 500.
  • An accidental version with destructible gates, which return to full health when switched from open to closed by default.
• Shared Life-Meter: III has the Spirit Link ability, which spreads damage across multiple units.
• Shockwave Stomp: The Tauren Chieftain does it for his Shockwave and War Stomp abilities.
• Shoot the Dog: The infamous Culling of Stratholme mission has the noble and heroic Prince Arthas learn that an unknown number of civilians, perhaps all of them, have eaten plagued grain and will soon die and resurrect as Scourge zombies. The only option he feels he has is to raze the city and kill all the citizens before they turn because there is no cure, no time, and he doesn't have the military forces to fight the already existing enemy forces and all the citizens. Tactically, this is the correct decision - the Scourge is defeated here, driven out, pursued to Northrend and defeated there - but being forced to make this decision infuriates the normally kind and caring Arthas, eventually leading to extreme actions that result in losing his soul to a cursed artifact and championing the very force he originally destroyed.
• Shout-Out: Plenty of them, especially in Warcraft III. Here are a few examples:
  • Naga Royal Guard: I come to you now, at the turn of the tide.
  • Naga Royal Guard: I'll make it so.
  • Naga Royal Guard: In the depths, no one can hear you scream... well, they can, but it's, really muffled.
  • Peasant: D'oh!
  • Mortar Team: Clearly, Tassadar has failed us. You must not.
  • Acolyte: My life for Aiur! Uh, I mean... for Ner'zhul.
  • Illidan: Wings, horns, hooves... what are we saying, is this Diablo?
  • Illidan: Bah Weep Grah Na Weep Ninny Bong. It's a universal greeting.
  • Night Elf Archer: Shot through the heart, and I'm to blame.
  • Gryphon Rider: This Warhammer cost me 40K!
  • Crypt Lord: (in a sudden British accent) I'm the fifth Beetle.
  • Mortar Team: "MORTAAAAAAAR KOOOOOOMBAAAAAT!"
  • Druid of the Claw: Only you can prevent forest fires!
    • Firelord: ...Why is that bear with the forest ranger hat following me?
  • Grunt: (singing) It not easy, being green!
  • Forest Troll: Say hello to my little friend!
  • Ogre: It's clobberin' time!
  • Bandit: Smokey.
  • Bandit: What we have here is a failure to communicate.
  • Bandit: I don't want Fop, I'm a Dapper Dan man, damn it!
  • Bandit: And this one time, at bandit camp...
  • Muradin Bronzebeard/Gryphon Rider/Paladin: It's hammer time!
  • Goblin Zeppelin: I laugh in the face of danger. Hahahahaha!
  • Spell Breaker: I stole your precious.
  • Goblin Tinker: I'm more than meets the eye.
  • Uther: I'm getting too old for this.
  • Priest: I have been chosen by the big metal hand in the sky! (also doubles as Breaking the Fourth Wall because your cursor while playing Human/Alliance is a metal glove)
  • Crypt Fiend: Spider sense... tingling.
  • Garithos: Never trust an elf!
  • Rifleman: This! Is! Mah! BOOMSTICK!
  • Abomination: Us dead sexy!
  • Lich: I am the ghost of Warcraft past.
  • Muradin Bronzebeard: I'll play your game you rogue, I'll take "The Rapists" for 500, I'm onto you Trebek!
  • Multiple Monty Python and the Holy Grail references.
    • Footman: Tis only a flesh wound!
    • Knight: My favourite colour is blue. No! Yelloooooooooo.../Victory for (helmet falls shut) Lordaeron!/By the gods you're annoying!/I never say 'Ni'!
    • Paladin: Let me face the peril./Touch me not — I am chaste!
    • Peasant: You're the king? Well, I didn't vote for you./We found a witch! May we burn her?/Help! Help! I'm being repressed!/A horse kicked me once. It hurt.
  • And several Star Wars references:
    Flying Machine: Stay on target.../They came from behind-!
    Dryad: I'm not the Dryad you're looking for.
    Blood Mage: I find your insolence... disturbing.
    Gryphon Rider: Judge me by my size, do ya?
    Acolyte: Once you head down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny! And you get dental.
  • The final mission in the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne expansion is called "A Symphony of Frost and Flame", referencing George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.
  • In the final cutscene of The Frozen Throne, once Arthas dons the Helm of Domination, Ner'zhul makes a similar quote to the StarCraft Dark Archon, noting his merging with Arthas. Appropriately, the Lich King Ner'zhul has mind control over the entire Undead like the Overmind or Kerrigan control the Zerg:
    • Ner'zhul: Now, we are one!
  • The first mission of the Exodus of the Horde bonus missions in the Frozen Throne is called "Riders of the Storm".
  • Various cheat codes are shout-outs, such as thereisnospoon, keysersoze, greedisgood, and allyourbasearebelongtous.
  • The spirits that orbit around Fountains of Health look exactly like the fairies from The Legend of Zelda: winged orbs of blue light.
  • Two villagers called Robert and Tyler are seen boxing in the first mission of the undead campaign.
  • Among other story elements, this stands out: In The Frozen Throne, Arthas and company must reach the Lich King through a mountain. Instead of climbing the mountain (which they couldn't, because the enormous enemy army was doing just that) they decide to pass through a fallen underground kingdom full of enemies, including an Eldritch Abomination which has crawled from even deeper beneath the ground. Now why does that sound familiar?
• Side Effects Include...: The Priest's "Stop Poking Me" quote:
  Priest: Side effects may include: Dry mouth, nausea, water retention, painful rectal itch, hallucinations, psychosis, coma, death, and halitosis^note Bad breath. Magic is not for everyone; consult your doctor before use.
• Simpleton Voice: Peasants and Ogres in Warcraft II and III. Averted with the orcish peons, who are supposedly just as dumb as human peasants, though you can still hear some Hulk Speak from them.
• Single-Use Shield:
  • The Amulet of Spell Shield item, automatically blocks one negative spell before requiring a 40-second cooldown. Savvier enemies will hit the hero carrying it with a weak spell first, then pull out the harder-hitting attacks.
• A Sinister Clue: Arthas begins a right-handed paladin, but switches to his left after he changes class, though the cinematic at the end of the Human campaign does show him wielding Frostmourne in his right.
• Sinister Scimitar:
  • Warcraft III Skeletons wield scimitars, no matter what weapon the creature they were created from was holding.
  • The then-evil Raiders used scimitars in Warcraft I. Daemons have used flaming scimitars throughout the series.
• Skill Gate Characters: An army of Necromancers and Meat Wagons form a self-sustaining Zerg Rush of skeletons, which definitely looks fearsome and can steamroll an unprepared opponent. However, they become walking sacks of experience if the enemy is savvy enough to get mass dispels, of which every race has one.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Northrend.
• The Smurfette Principle:
  • Each faction in Warcraft III seems to have only one significant female character: Jaina for the Alliance, Tyrande for the Night Elves (until Frozen Throne introduced Maiev), Lady Vashj for the Illidari, and Sylvanas for the Undead. Reforged also plays this straight for the Undead in skirmishes by making the Death Knight female, and gender-flips the principle for the Night Elves, whose only male hero is the Keeper of the Grove.
  • There is only one female unit in Warcraft II — Alleria Windrunner — and even she only appeares in Beyond the Dark Portal. Even Kurdran's gryphon, Sky'ree, was only identified as a female in later lore.
  • Warcraft I has one female Orc hero (Garona) and one female neutral hero (Griselda). No female Humans appear in-game at all.
• Snake People: The Naga.
• So Last Season: Heavy and elite units suffer this in the bonus campaign. The best example would be the Kul Tiras units, whose statistics are superior to the average human units but still aren't a match for Rexxar and his teammates.
• Some Dexterity Required: The first Warcraft game required much more clicks to move a single unit than most of the modern RTS games.
• Song Parody: "I'm a medieval man", a bonus track from Warcraft II OST, makes fun of the "Mechanical Man" tune from Command & Conquer, a friendly rival.
• Soul Eating: Frostmourne hungers!
• Space Is Magic: The Twisting Nether.
• Speed, Smarts and Strength: The game uses three stats for its heroes, which increase damage if it's the main one: Strength (increases health and regeneration), Agility (increases armor and attack speed), and Intelligence (increases mana and regeneration). They don't affect the damage of the heroes' spells, but most custom maps do so in order to increase their usefulness. While only one of the four factions (the Horde) has all three types, the expansion allows the hiring of mercenary heroes to round it out.
• Spider Swarm:
  • In the first game, orcish warlocks can summon groups of weak but fast spiders with timed life. Human conjurers summon scorpions instead, to the same effect.
  • Nerubians in Warcraft III are spider-men with a social structure, with Queens and Spider Lords as the most powerful units. Though they're more of a mishmash of various arthropods including spiders, beetles and mantids.
• Spike Shooter: Warcraft 3 has quillboars, a race of Pig Men who can throw their quills at enemies. The quilbeast, a warthog-like creature summoned by the Beastmaster, does the same. Harpies can launch razor-sharp pinfeathers.
• Squishy Wizard: The Conjurers/Clerics and Warlocks/Necrolytes in the first game are quite weak in direct combat, but Warcraft II, while also having these (Mages and Death Knights), introduced units that are good at fighting and spellcasting — Knights and Ogre Mages. Warcraft III has fragile support spellcasters in all factions, though the Spirit Walker actually has a decent health pool and attack damage and Night Elf druids can shift into forms better suited for combat.
• Staged Populist Uprising: During a mission in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, a peasant revolt erupts in the township of Tyr's Hand while the Alliance is still fighting the Horde. It's later revealed that it was started by spies from Alterac, whose king had been working with the Horde the whole time. And in that game, peasant attacks are almost as strong as that of a footman!
• Standard Fantasy Setting: Averted as most races, including humans, have 20th century technology but have for the most part been blown back into the dark ages by infrastructure loss resulting from cataclysm and war.
• The Starscream: The Horde has had several. Orgrim Doomhammer (read as: you) in the original game. Gul'dan in the second game. Ner'zhul himself.
• Starter Villain:
  • Mal'Ganis in Reign of Chaos as a whole. He was introduced as the Big Bad of the first campaign and as Arthas' personal nemesis, before the greater conflict of the story would unfold.
  • The nameless Sea Witch (named in WoW as Zar'jira) from the prologue campaign qualifies for Reign of Chaos too, and for Reforged. She was the main villain of the game demo before the game's release but her missions were cut in ROC. The missions are restored in TFT and Reforged.
  • The Blademaster of the Blackrock Clan in "The Scourge of Lordaeron", the first enemy hero of the game (not counting Reforged). He is a demon-worshipping lunatic that foreshadows the return of the real villains, the Burning Legion, while not directly working for them.
  • The Centaur Champion in "The Invasion of Kalimdor" is the first dangerous opponent Thrall faces upon landing in Kalimdor.
  • Varimathras for Sylvanas' arc in The Frozen Throne. He is the first and weakest of the Dreadlords she must face, and manages to get him on her side by convincing her that he would be valuable in betraying his fellow Dreadlords.
• Stat Overflow: The Blood Mage's Siphon Mana ability can be used on enemies to take their mana away or used on an ally to give them the Blood Mage's mana, possibly pushing it over the limit (this mechanic is not used with the Drain Life ability).
• Stompy Mooks: The heavier units in III make loud thuds when moving.
• Stop Poking Me!: Featured in Warcraft II, the "annoyed" messages for the various units are the inspiration for all games afterwards.
  • At least some versions of the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans featured this; this game was the Trope Namer.
• Storming the Castle:
  • The Blood Elf/Naga/Lost One Draenei coalition storming the Black Citadel Temple, the residence of Magtheridon, the Lord of Outland.
  • The final missions of both sides in the first game, with the Humans assaulting the Blackrock Spire and the Orcs storming the Stormwind Keep. The siege of Dalaran for a notable one from the second.
• Stuff Blowing Up:
  • Demolition Squads and Goblin Sappers in 2.
  • Goblin Sappers and Clockwerk Goblins in III.
  • Also in III, click on a sheep or other critter enough times. Some in the campaign might drop items.
• Stealth Mook:
  • In Warcraft III:
    • Night Elf Archers, Huntresses, Priestesses of the Moon, and Wardens have an ability named "Shadowmeld", which turns them invisible during the night as long as they stand still. Bandits also possess this ability and are some of the few creeps to not sleep at night, and can catch unwary players off-guard as a result.
    • The Undead Shade is an always-invisible unit that can see other invisible units, made from a sacrificed acolyte.
    • The Alliance's sorceresses can make any unit invisible for a while, but any action other than moving breaks the spell. It's especially nasty in combination with a high-level Archmage, as you can sneak the invisible unit into the enemy's base and then have the Archmage Mass Teleport the rest of your army to it. Later game patches prevent you from casting this on Sappers and Clockwerk Goblins.
  • Subverted with Goblin Sappers/Demolition Squads in Warcraft II, casting Invisibility on them kills them instantly due to the Game-Breaker nature of the combo.
• Space Compression: All maps are much smaller than as described in the lore. For example Stralhome is described as a city that used to have thousands of inhabitants, but in the game it only had about 60 houses.
• Special Ability Shield: The campaign-only Shield of the Deathlord increases armor, health, and Mana, and also gives the wielder a Permanent Immolation aura that damages enemies.
• Status Effect-Powered Ability:
  • The Drunken Haze spell slows enemies and causes them to miss, while Breath of Fire does a lot of damage at once to multiple enemies. A unit hit by Breath of Fire while still under the effect of Drunken Haze will continue to take damage over time.
  • The Banish spell makes a unit temporarily ethereal, where they are immune to regular attacks, but move slower and take increased damage from magic-type attacks and spells.
• Status Infliction Attack: For Warcraft III:
  • The Firelord's Incinerate passive/autocast (depending on the game version) inflicts the debuff on the target with every attack, which causes the target to take increasing damage over time, and if it dies under the effect, it explodes and deals damage to nearby units.
  • Blue Dragons and Frost Wyrms breathe cold air that slows enemies, as do heroes with an Orb of Frost. Frost Wyrms can be upgraded to have Freezing Breath, which stuns buildings.
  • Troll Batriders can be upgraded to have Liquid Fire, which causes affected buildings to take damage over time, attack slower, and can't be repaired.
  • Units with Envenomed Weapons deal damage over time to the target, though they can't die from it. Slow Poison does the same but also slows the target.
  • The Black Arrow spell and Orb of Darkness inflict a debuff on targets that spawns a skeleton warrior if the target dies under the effect.
  • Cold Arrows slow the target's movement and attack speed.
  • The Orb of Slow sometimes reduces the target's movement and attack speed.
  • In the expansion, every faction can buy an Orb item that gives melee heroes a short-ranged anti-air attack and has a passive effect with every attack:
    • Depending on the game version, the Alliance's Orb of Fire either deals Splash Damage or causes healing spells on the target to lose potency.
    • The Undead's Orb of Corruption reduces the target's armor.
    • The Horde's Orb of Lightning can purge a target of its buffs and debuffs, slow it, and deals extra damage to summons.
    • The Night Elves' Orb of Poison deals damage over time.
• Strategic Asset Capture Mechanic: In Warcraft 3. While not captured in the traditional sense, gold mines can only be used by one player at a time (preventing allies from stealing each other's gold, while killing the workers frees up the mine). The Night Elves and Undead make it harder by entangling/haunting the mine for their own workers to use (creating another structure on top of it that must also be destroyed). It also has RPG-like item shops, Goblin Mercenary headquarters, and (in the Frozen Throne expansion pack) a tavern to recruit neutral Hero Units.
• Stuck Items: Sometimes heroes will receive items they can't drop for plot related reasons:
  • After killing Uther, Arthas will carry the Urn of King Terenas with him for the next three missions, since that urn is the only object that can preserve Kel'thuzad's remains. Thankfully you get rid of it once Kel'thuzad is revived as a Lich.
  • Thrall will be given a Soul Gem to capture Grom Hellscream in the last Horde mission. The gem is critical to complete the mission, so you can't drop it.
  • After being woken up, Malfurion will carry the Horn of Cenarius for the rest of the campaign, given that it's needed to wake up the rest of the druids, and it's later used to trigger the trap that kills Archimonde. Thankfully, unlike the Urn of King Terenas, the Horn provides +200 health and +2 health regeneration, so it doesn't just sit there taking up a valuable inventory slot.
• Studded Shell:
  • Turtles have the Spiked Shell ability, which causes melee attacks to deal damage to the attackers.
  • The Crypt Lord (undead mantis-beetle-spider... thing) hero has the similar Spiked Carapace, which deals damage to melee attackers and increases the Crypt Lord's armor.
  • The Horde's Spiked Barricades upgrade deals back fixed or percent-based damage (depending on the patch) to enemy attackers.
• Sucking-In Lines: It's hard to see, but the Infernal Contraption/Machine do this before they attack.
• Suicide Attack:
  • The Goblin Sappers teams in Warcraft III, whose sole use is suicide bombing enemy buildings (or trees). One of the trio that makes up Goblin Sappers walks to the target while inside of a soon-to-be-exploding barrel (and no, there isn't even holes for him to see out of).
  • The Troll Batrider has the Unstable Concoction ability, which causes it to charge at an airborne enemy and explode, dealing heavy damage. They're also pretty cheap as far as Orc units go, which is often more than can be said for their targets.
    "DA ENDS JUSTIFY DA MEANS!"
• Summon Magic:
  • Many heroes or magic caster units can temporarily create other units to fight in your army. Hero-summoned units are usually pretty tough, however, dispelling effects damage or destroy the summoned creature (a Tauren spirit walker can wipe out a squadron of skeletons).
  • In Warcraft: Orcs and Humans the Major Summoning spell is the most powerful and expensive for each side, summoning for a limited time ranged water elementals and huge blade-wielding daemons for the humans and orcs respectively. There is also a Minor Summoning spell, that summons up to four Fragile Speedster Scorpions (for Humans) or Spiders (for Orcs).
• Super Boss: In Act 2 of The Founding of Durotar in The Frozen Throne, Rexxar and his companions have the option to face bosses that are as strong or even stronger than Admiral Proudmoore, being the main ones:
  • Talnivarr the Sleeper, Sinstralis of the Pain, and Destroyer Zardikar. These three bosses can be fought repeatedly and get stronger each time and their battles (with their minions) are among the most challenging in the whole campaign, requiring excellent micromanagement to take down without losing any allies, even if you are at the level cap.
  • Eldritch Deathlord is a powerful revenant who is the most powerful enemy in the campaign, being level 20. See Damage-Sponge Boss for more information.
• Super Mode: Several heroes can temporarily transform into a more powerful form, usually as their ultimate ability.
  • The Demon Hunter's Metamorphosis turns him into a demon, which increases his maximum health, gives him a ranged attack with splash damage, and changes his attack type to Chaos, letting him deal full damage to everything.
  • The Mountain King's Avatar covers him in stone, which gives him increased health and attack damage and makes him immune to magic.
  • The Goblin Tinker's Robo-Goblin has him suiting up in a mini-tank armed with a giant hammer that deals bonus damage to buildings. He also gains increased health and armor in this form and counts as a mechanical unit, effectively making him immune to most disabling abilities and letting him be repaired by workers, but also preventing him from receiving most regular heals. Unlike most other hero transformations, Robo-Goblin lasts indefinitely and the Tinker can change between forms at any time (much like the Night Elf druids).
  • The Goblin Alchemist's Chemical Rage is a lesser version, as its only benefits are increased movement and attack speed, and is a regular ability rather than an ultimate. It also turns his ogre purple for the duration.
• Supernatural Floating Hair: Banshees, Ghosts, and Wraiths have this.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: In Reign of Chaos Archimonde's lieutenants are the Dreadlord Tichondrius and the Pit Lord Mannoroth. Both are major villains of earlier missions and killed before the player faces off against Archimonde. In the last mission of the Night Elf campaign Archimonde has the next highest ranking member of their race leading the charges: Anetheron the Dreadlord (who was introduced briefly in a cutscene) and Azgalor the Pit Lord. As this relates to a military invasion, this is a Justified Trope.
• Suspiciously Small Army: With a 90- or 100-food cap, you can have "armies" of under 25 individual units.
• Symbolic Weapon Discarding: In Warcraft III, at the end of the Alliance campaign, Arthas drops his paladin's hammer (and even has a unique animation for it) to pick up the cursed sword Frostmourne, despite it having just killed his friend Muradin. This marks the beginning of the end for Arthas, and while the sword boosts his stats to the point where he can take out bases on his own, the campaign ends with him murdering his father and launching the invasion of Lordaeron as the Lich King's champion.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors:
  • In general, melee units beat artillery, artillery beats towers, and towers beat melee units. In Warcraft II, destroyers beat gryphons, gryphons beat battleships and submarines, and battleships and submarines beat destroyers.
  • Warcraft III introduces armor and attack types, with certain attacks being stronger against some armor types and weaker against others in addition to being modified by the actual armor value:
    • Normal Damage is used primarily by melee units, and is more effective against Medium armor (primarily used by ranged units) and less effective against Fortified armor (i.e. buildings).
    • Piercing Damage is given to most ranged units, and deals more damage against Light (used mainly by flying units) and Unarmored units (spellcasters and some ranged units), but is less effective against Medium, Fortified, and Hero armor (hero units, naturally).
    • Siege Damage is naturally given to siege units, and is the only damage type that deals extra damage to Fortified armor, in addition to being strong against Unarmored units. However, it suffers a penalty when attacking Medium and Hero armor.
    • Magic Damage is used by spellcasters and certain heavy units. It gets a damage bonus against Light and Heavy armor (used by most melee units and some weaker buildings), being the only damage type that doesn't do neutral damage to the latter. However, it's weaker against Fortified, Medium, and Hero armor, and units with Magic attacks can't attack units with spell immunity.
    • Hero Damage is naturally used by heroes, and deals normal damage to everything except Fortified armor, which resists it.
    • Chaos Damage is the game's Infinity +1 Element and is used mainly by strong neutral units, certain powerful campaign units, and a small handful of playable ones (like the Demon Hunter under Metamorphosis and the Dreadlord's Infernal). It deals normal damage to all armor types, including the Purposely Overpowered Divine armor which reduces all other attacks to Scratch Damage.
• Tank Goodness: Dwarven siege engines in Warcraft III. They're restricted to attacking buildings only barring an upgrade that lets them chip away at air units, but given that destroying all your opponent's buildings is an Instant-Win Condition and that Siege Engines are among the only mobile units with Fortified armor (meaning they take less damage from anything that's not intended for knocking down buildings), a mass of them can still end games easily by bulldozing the opponent's base faster than they can be killed.
• Tattered Flag: Orc (and the Horde in general) flags are generally in tatters but are still proudly flown to symbolize how much of a beating they are willing to take in order to achieve victory.
• Technicolor Toxin: Mainly green, seen with the Orb of Venom, the Scourge's Disease Cloud, and the attacks of Dryads, Wyverns/Wind Riders, and Assassins.
• Teleportation with Drawbacks: In the third game:
  • The Mass Teleport ability can move up to 24 units to a friendly unit, but it has to be a ground unit or building.
  • The Scroll of Town Portal makes the user invulnerable while casting, but it has to be used on a town hall building.
  • Blink is a short-ranged teleport that requires vision of the target area. However, having seen the location once is enough even if it's under Fog of War, so the campaign has some secret areas that require the use of other vision-granting spells or units to access.
• Terminal Transformation: The Goblin Alchemist's ultimate ability "Transmute" turns the target to gold, dealing a One-Hit Kill and adding money to your cache.
• Themed Cursor: The cursor is the hand of whatever race you're currently playing as (or a metal gauntlet for humans, which is also how the Order of the Silver Hand got its name).
  Priest: I have been chosen by the big metal hand in the sky!
• This Is My Name on Foreign: Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, human mission 5, gives us this: "You must reclaim the nearby island keep at Tol Barad^note Sindarin for "Island Keep"..."
• Three-Stat System: The Hero Units in Warcraft III use either Strength, Agility, or Intelligence as their core stats, and increases to the core stat increases your attack damage as well. Regardless of which type you are, Strength boosts health, agility boosts attack speed and (slightly) armor, and intelligence boosts mana.
• Thunderbird: Two kinds appear in III:
  • The Beastmaster hero can summon a Hawk/Thunder Hawk/Spirit Hawk (which looks more like an eagle), a flying bird that attacks with bolts of lightning.
  • The expansion's orc campaign has Thunder Phoenixes, which look identical to the regular Phoenix except that they attack with lightning bolts.
• Tiered by Name: In Warcraft III, most neutral creeps of a line use different suffixes (but there's no universal "this suffix means this type" effect) in addition to the usual size, model and hue differences. For example, Bandit/Salamander/Ogre Lord, Forest/Ice/Dark Troll Trapper/Priest/Warlord, Ancient Sasquatch/Wendigo/Hydra, etc.
• Title Drop:
  • The intro of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness ends with the narrator saying "Now, united in arms with new allies against a common foe, mankind stands at the shores of destiny and awaits the coming of the tides of darkness."
  • In the same game, the narration for the final Orc campaign mission, The Fall of Lordaeron, ends with the following words:
  All that remains is the shrill, clarion call to battle and the fulfillment of our destiny. The tides of darkness are now at hand!
• Too Dumb to Live: The blood elven spellbreakers in the intro cutscene of the Lord of Outland mission in the Curse of the Blood Elves campaign in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne rush wave after wave into the Black Citadel, only to be instantly killed by the Citadel's defenses.
• Took a Level in Badass: Thornby. In "The Defense of Strahnbrad" he became a regular Footman, while in "Old Hatreds" he's a stronger Elite Guard.
• Tornado Move: In Warcraft II, the Whirlwind spell moves slowly and randomly within a certain range of its target, damaging everything it touches. In Warcraft III, the Cyclone spell creates a tornado under a unit that propels it into the air, unable to move, attack or be attacked. The Tornado spell channels a large, slow moving tornado that does large amounts of damage to nearby buildings, and randomly casts the aforementioned Cyclone on nearby units.
• Touch the Intangible: Ethereal units can only be hit with magic (spells and the Magic attack type), and take extra damage from it.
• Tower Defense: The gameplay of Crossing bonus level in The Frozen Throne, accessed after third level of the Human campaign by stepping on platforms in front of caged sheep to make them say the phrase "Baa-Ewe-Ram" in the third level. Custom maps using this genre's style for III were Trope Codifiers for the genre.
• Translation Train Wreck: Warcraft 3: Reforged received hysterically bad translations in several countries, with the Chinese version being one of the more ridiculous, with many sentences and even character names being completely mangled along with numerous instances of characters overlapping each other. Highlights include Arthas declaring that he'd gladly get fucked by elephants^*But are they good elephants? to save his homeland and ordering his men to strip in Northrend, and Jaina Proudmoore somehow becoming "Lookstona Moronmoore".
• Transmutation: The Goblin Alchemist's Transmute ability in III instantly kills an enemy unit and gives gold depending on its cost. It can only be used on weaker creeps and has a long cooldown period, though.
• Treants:
  • Treants are human-sized treemen, usually summoned by the Keeper of the Grove by targeting a forested area. Corrupted Treants can be seen in some maps, where they also have poison attacks or the Entangling Roots ability.
  • The giant trees that serve as Night Elf buildings are known as Ancients, and while they can attack and move around, it's very much a last-ditch option, as they do both very, very slowly.
• Trick Arrow: Several hero units can shoot magic arrows, such as the Priestess of the Moon's Searing Arrows and the Dark Ranger's Black Arrow.
• Undead Counterpart:
  • The expansion has Skeletal Orcs, Skeletal Orc Grunts and Skeletal Orc Champions, all of which are differently-statted variations on the Orc Grunt. They're neutral monsters, however, and there's no spell to turn dead grunts into their undead equivalent in standard games.
  • In Warcraft II, Death Knights were orc Squishy Wizards, the Horde equivalent to the Alliance's mages. In III, orc Death Knights were remade as Liches, retaining only their signature Death and Decay spell, while the Archmage kept the (nerfed) Blizzard spell. This transformation also happened to Kel'thuzad, a human mage who explored the darker arts and was kicked out of The Magocracy for it.
  • In III, Paladins and Death Knights (now a melee unit, human nobles who pledged themselves to Nerzh'ul) are designed to be good/evil counterparts of each other (each has a healing spell that hurts the undead/living, an invulnerable shield/ a Devour the Dragon self-heal, a defensive/regeneration aura, and a Resurrection/Animate Dead spell), though only one paladin is seen falling into undeath (Arthas).
• Unexpected Genre Change: In The Frozen Throne, the Orc campaign is an Open World RPG and later single-player version of a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.
  • The Human campaign has a Tower Defense secret mission.
  • The multiplayer counts as well, as it is played less as the intended RTS and more as the Trope Codifier for MOBA.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The last mission of the Alliance campaign in The Frozen Throne is an unusual mix of a base mission and a Baseless Mission. Instead of harvesting resources, Gold is collected from gold coin items in the Black Citadel, lumber is not a resource in the level at all, there are no workers, upgrades, or towers. Instead there is a set number of buildings that are just there by default to train land units from. The level has no air units available to train, and Kael can't use his Phoenix spell. The only sense of urgency is that the Fel orcs send some squads to attack Illidan sometimes. Of all of the final missions, it is one of the most unique.
• Unexplained Accent: Unlike other Orcs, Blademasters have a comically thick Japanese accent to fit their Samurai imagery. There's no justification for the accent in-universe.
• Unholy Ground: In Warcraft III, undead buildings spread a corruption called Blight, which turns ordinary ground into a black, fog-emitting morass with bones sticking out, and makes undead units regenerate health while on it. Undead buildings (save for the Necropolis and the Haunted Gold Mine) can only be built on blight, while non-undead buildings dispel it in a large radius when built. It can also be removed by area-of-effect dispel-magic spells, a good way to infuriate an Undead opponent since it prevents them from building until they put down some more blight. In The Frozen Throne expansion, the Undead have an item to create a circle of Blight at a location without needing to wait for a slow-building Necropolis.
• Unholy Holy Sword: Frostmourne when you first encounter it, though it's not too long before The Reveal.
• Unique Enemy: Some campaign missions will feature unique, custom-made enemies:
  • "Countdown to Extinction", the last Prologue mission, has Siege Golems (not to be confused with the regular creep of the same name), modified Rock Golems with Siege damage and Fortified armor that can only attack buildings, but have the Slam ability to hurt and slow down your ground units. They take a lot of firepower to take down, and can reduce your defenses to ruins if they're not quickly dealt with.
  • "King Arthas", the first "Legacy of the Damned" mission, has Milita Captains and Milita Commanders. The former are ranged units with Command Aura, Critical Strike and Envenomed Spears, while the latter are horseback Magic Knights with Chaos damage, the Healing Wave spell, Hardened Skin and Devotion Aura.
  • The dwarves from "Into the Shadow Web Caverns", the seventh "Legacy of the Damned Mission", use modified Siege Engines that can attack normal units. Mercifully they lack their regular counterpart's Fortified armor, but rather than a slow, close ranged cannon blast they attack with rapid-fire flamethrowers.
• Uniqueness Rule: In III, in skirmish games, you can have up to three heroes, and only get one of any type including the mercenary ones.
• Units Not to Scale: Very obvious. The Tauren Chieftain in Warcraft III is as tall as the barracks! Frozen Throne's bonus campaign gives buildings slightly more reasonable proportions, but they are usually still smaller than they should be. This is generally fairly useful for heroes, which almost always get bigger character models than other units in their faction, since their size combined with their team-colored glow makes them easier to keep track of in a chaotic battle.
• Untranslated Catchphrase: The orcs get "Lok-tar ogar!" (Victory or death!).
• Unwinnable Joke Game: Warcraft II includes a joke custom map in which the player only controls a single peasant surrounded by dozens of AI enemy controlled units. Predictedly, it ends with a defeat after a couple of seconds. The unwinnable status of the mission is even lampshaded in its file name ("Suicide") and ingame description ("If you win, you are a Warcraft god" or something like that). It is possible to win it if you enter the invincibility code quickly enough.
• Updated Re-release: Warcraft II: Battle.net edition, released three years after Tides of Darkness, upgraded the game to support the eponymous Battle.net online service and added several improvements such as hotkeys for groups and full Windows 9X compatibility.
• Useless Useful Spell: Has its own page.
• Vanilla Unit: Warcraft III:
  • Downplayed by the base units of each faction. Humans have Footmen, Orcs have Grunts, Night Elves have Archers, and Undead have Ghouls. They are the overall weakest (non-worker) in each faction and do not come with any abilities by default. However, each can gain a (rather unexciting) ability via research. Footmen can learn "Defend" which slows them down but increases their defense, Orcs get a passive health/damage boost, Archers gain additional range, and Ghouls can learn to "Cannibalize" nearby corpses to regain health.
  • Some maps feature mercenary camps where different creeps can be hired to supplement a player's forces. For the most part they have no special abilities apart from higher stats (and being unaffected by weapon and armor upgrades means they'll die faster against late-game units), though some have spells or abilities otherwise unavailable to a player (such as the Harpy Windwitch's Faerie Fire, a Night Elf spell, or the Razormane Medicine Man's Healing Ward, an Orc spell). Even those with abilities are situationally useful (a Forest Troll High Priest has Heal and Inner Fire, same as an Alliance priest... but its food cost is twice that of a priest).
• Variant Cover: Warcraft III gives four box artworks, one for each of the playable races.
• Vague Stat Values: Units' movement and attack speeds are listed in a range from Very Slow/Slow/Average/Fast/Very Fast, where each label itself covers a range of speeds. And the text color changes from white to green or red if the current value is due to a buff or debuff, respectively.
• Vengeful Ghost: In Warcraft III, the Avatar of Vengeance can spawn invulnerable Spirits of Vengeance from corpses, regardless of the corpse's original allegiance.
• Vestigial Empire:
  • The trolls controlled most of the world until they were defeated and overthrown by the night elves, and the Sundering and consequent conflicts with humans, elves and their own people have reduced the once proud people to borderline barbarism.
  • The night elves used to control most of Kalimdor until they too fell victim in the Sundering, and decided to retreat into the forests.
  • The human kingdom of Lordaeron has been reduced to practically nothing as of the Zombie Apocalypse of WCIII.
• Video Game 3D Leap: Warcraft III.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: In the very first level of Human Campaign in 3, nothing prevents you from slaughtering innocent villagers. And while the game doesn't punish you for this, it does give you something of What the Hell, Player? by making their (non-hostile) ghosts appear in the graveyard during the night.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Some acts of cruelty are punished.
  • In the third Orc mission of third game, killing a Warsong orc will make this faction hostile and can destroy your base easily.
  • In the Night Elf campaign, if you kill a Furbolg, they will become hostile.
  • In "Warchasers" the player character can be sent to heaven or hell, if he is sent to heaven he would be sent to a quiet area where he can heal, if he is sent to hell he will be sent to an area with a lot of Doomguards and a ground that hurts. If luckily you are sent to heaven, but you make the mistake of killing an angel, you will end up being sent to hell anyway.
• Villain-Beating Artifact:
  • Not a specific weapon, but a damage type. In Warcraft III, Divine armor is only affected by Chaos damage, which is mostly reserved for the Legions of Hell or extremely strong monsters. In order to defeat the otherwise invulnerable demigod Cenarius, Grom Hellscream's orcs reactivate a demonic pact, allowing them to defeat him (by giving them Chaos damage).
  • Illidan devours the Skull of Gul'dan which the Legion was using to spread corruption throughout the Night Elves' forests. This transforms him into a half-demon (in-game, the Metamorphosis form becomes his default form), and gives him the ability to defeat the demon Tichondrius. He tries this again in Frozen Throne by trying to use the Eye of Sargeras to destroy the Lich King (along with most of the continent of Northrend). This time, however, Maiev and Malfurion aren't having any of it, especially given that Illidan neglected to mention what exactly what he was planning to do with the Eye and that he didn't exactly consider the consequences.
  • Arthas expected Frostmourne to be this. We all know how that turned out.^note To be fair, though, it did let him defeat Mal'Ganis, the villain he was hunting.
• Villainous Vow: Prince Arthas The Paladin makes what he thinks is a Heroic Vow to hunt down the demon general Mal'ganis, even to the end of the earth...however, it turns out that Mal'ganis was manipulating him all along to do so, and his rash vow made in anger is what leads to Arthas' fall, undeath, and, ultimately, transformation into the lich king.
• Villain Shoes: A quarter of the story mode, an entire campaign, has the player lay waste to innocent civilizations, massacre innocents wholesale, and summon forth The Legions of Hell as the Undead Scourge in Reign of Chaos. The Frozen Throne ups the ante by having this quarter also cause The Bad Guy Wins.
• Vocal Dissonance: In Warcraft II, every human ground unit has the same death cry. This include Alleria, who'll let out a masculine scream if she dies.
• Voice Clip Song: II's "I'm a medieval man" bonus track's lyrics consisted of remixed clips from some of Bill Roper's performances in Orcs and Humans.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: In Warcraft II, Ogres vomit when they die.
• Walk on Water: Unlike other Demon Hunters, Illidan can walk across water as a gameplay provision for keeping up with his amphibious Naga underlings.
• Water Is Womanly: Water Elementals in Orcs and Humans resembled women. This turned out to be Early-Installment Weirdness since in III and other appearances in the universe thereafter, Water Elementals had a more gorilla-like shape with massive forearms and a less humanlike head which leaned far forward from their torso.
• Weaponized Offspring: In III.
  • Nerubians and Hydras spawn two smaller Nerubians / Hydras on death (the Ancient Hydra spawns two normal Hydras and they in turn each spawn two smaller ones). In the Nerubian's case it's explained as their carrying their young into battle.
  • Crypt Fiends and Nerubians attack with what seems to be tiny, floating spiderlings. You can also notice that said spiders will float back to the user after being cast. Furthermore, the description of the Nerubian unit implies this.
• We Have Reserves: Despite the Command & Conquer Economy, this is indirectly discouraged in III by the presence of heroes, as each unit the enemy kills gives their hero that much more experience. God help you if you have to face a level 6 hero with a level 3 because you let him kill way too many of your early units.
• Weak to Magic: In Warcraft III:
  • Units with Heavy armor (mostly tough, high-end melee units) are more susceptible to Magic attacks. In standard games, Magic attacks come either from casters (which do pitiful damage) or heavy air units (which do scary amounts of damage).
  • The Banish spell slows the target and causes it to become ethereal, meaning they can't attack or be attacked except by Magic and spells, and take additional damage from all magic sources. This ability is used by the Blood Mage, who happens to be in the same faction as the Mountain King, who packs Storm Bolt, a powerful single-target nuke; combining the two can often one-shot lower-tier units.
  • Tauren Spirit Walkers have an ability that turns them ethereal at will, with all the same benefits and weaknesses.
• Weird Weather: III.
  • This exchange in the final level of the orc campaign:
  Jaina: Thrall, the sky is... burning!
  Thrall: Blessed ancestors... This is no natural storm!

  Shortly followed by giant burning demons attacking your base from all sides in addition to the fel orcs.

  • In the expansion, the final level of the Blood Elf campaign has what looks like a firestorm rapidly approaching the just-captured Black Citadel, only to reveal itself as Illidan's pissed-off boss Kil'jaeden, who's approximately twice the size of the battlements.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Arthas, Grom, Tyrande and Illidan.
• Wham Episode: The Culling in the Reign of Chaos Human Campaign. It marks a grim shift in the tone of the game when Arthas orders his men to kill villagers and meets Mal'Ganis, the demon in command of the nightmarish Scourge.
  • In the Lighter and Softer Orc Campaign The Hunter of Shadows leads to the death of Cenarius and Grom's Face–Heel Turn by Demonic Possession
• Wham Line:
  The Guardian: Turn away... before it's... too late.
  Arthas: Still trying to protect the sword, are you?
  The Guardian: No... trying to protect you... from it.
• What If?: One of the tie-in manga brought up an interesting question: What if Jaina didn't leave Arthas at Stratholme? Well, Arthas wouldn't have become the Lich King. There'd be a Lich Queen, though.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Uther, Jaina, and Muradin all call out Arthas on his morally questionable tactics against the Blackrock orcs and the Scourge. And he hears it all again as he climbs up the Frozen Throne, though it doesn't stop him from making another big mistake...
• When Trees Attack: Treants and Ancients, both employed by the Night Elves. While Treants are disposable cannon fodder that rely on weight of numbers, Ancients are used primarily as production buildings that also work as serviceable base defenders when uprooted (the exception being the Ancient Protector, the Night Elves' defense tower).
• "Where? Where?": Inverted. In one mission of the Undead campaign in The Frozen Throne, Arthas and Anub'Arak get ambushed by (living) Nerubians, chanting to kill the "traitor king". Arthas immediately assumes they're referring to him (as Arthas has betrayed a lot of people, namely just about everyone in the Human Alliance of Lordaeron), but Anub'Arak states that they're referring to him for once (Anub'Arak is an undead Nerubian Crypt Lord).
• White Hair, Black Heart: When Arthas becomes a Death Knight, his hair turns white. Similarly, Death Knights in Warcraft III multiplayer maps have white hair as well.
• White Magic: Consists of Holy magic (used by Paladins and Priests) and Nature magic (used by Druids and Shamans). In lore, these are the only pure sources of power; all other types are either corrupt to begin with or inevitably lead there. See Black Magic, above.
• Will-o'-the-Wisp: In III, Wisps are Nature Spirits that act as the Worker Unit for the Night Elves. Their duties include mining gold from entangled mines, harvesting lumber without killing trees, creating buildings or being consumed to make Ancients. They also have the Detonate ability that blows the wisp up to drain mana, damage summoned units and dispel buffs. Wisps also show up as a Lethal Joke Character in the final level, where the goal is to prevent the demon lord Archimonde from reaching the World Tree as more Wisps gather around it. When the level ends, the ending cinematic has the titanic demon lord start scaling the tree... then the Wisps start rushing him and use a mass Detonate, killing him with a World-Wrecking Wave (also a major case of Cutscene Power to the Max, since Archimonde is immune to magic in gameplay, the Detonate spell wouldn't affect him, much less deal damage).
• Wings Do Nothing:
  • Demonic Dreadlords, Doomguards, Illidan Stormrage and other Demon Hunters in Warcraft III have huge bat wings, but can't fly. One of the Dreadlord's Stop Poking Me! quotes says, "If I have wings, why am I always walking?" Most ridiculous are the Pit Lords, enormous scaled demonic centaur things with a set of woefully inadequate wings sprouting from their humanoid torso (although Mannoroth uses his wings as a shield in a FMV scene).
  • The Daemons in Warcraft I also have non-functional batlike wings.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Arthas, very shortly after claiming the Frostmourne and defeating Mal'Ganis.
• With This Herring: The beginning of the Blood Elf campaign in The Frozen Throne sees Kael'thas's forces tithed to the bone by Alliance high command, depriving him of cavalry, artillery, and air support before telling him to take on the approaching undead horde anyways. This, plus Garithos's racism-fuelled actions, leads to Kael allying with the Naga and later with Illidan.
• Wizard Beard:
  • In Warcraft I, all Human spellcasters wear long, white beards — Conjurers and Medivh have classic ones, while those worn by Clerics are more neatly trimmed.
  • Mages in Warcraft II sport beards of the classic length and shape, but brown, as they represent a generation of younger battle-wizards.
  • In Warcraft III, the Archmage hero (and, by extension, Antonidas) sports a classic one. Night Elf Druids also have rather impressive beards; it helps that they probably haven't shaved in goodness knows how long.
• Wizards Live Longer: Many of them are elves to begin with, but the human Guardians of Tirisfal gain longevity rivaling that of the elves along with their power.
• Wolfpack Boss: To overcome some missions it is necessary to defeat a group of powerful units at the same time.
  • The 3 Paladins in the first undead mission "King Arthas"; during most of the level it is only necessary to face 1 at a time, but to destroy the main base it is necessary to defeat all 3 at the same time.
  • In the undead mission "The Fall of Silvermoon", it is necessary to defeat the Sunwell's Guardians, which are 4 powerful golems.
  • In "Old Hatreds", to escape from Theramore, the heroes need to defeat a Paladin, a Mountain King and an Archmage at the same time.
• Worker Unit: Human Peasants, Orc Peons, Acolytes and Ghouls for the Undead, and Wisps for the Night Elves.
• Working-Class People Are Morons: Both human peasants and orc peons are portrayed as very dumb. By the third game they both speak in a Simpleton Voice.
• World of Muscle Men: For example, the standard villager's arms are about as thick as his head.◊ Even elf units like the Worker and Druid of the Talon have highly defined muscles.
• World Pillars: The continent of Northrend is sometimes known as the "roof of the world". In Warcraft 3, Malfurion received a vision of Northrend crumbling and feared that Illidan's spell from the Eye of Sargeras may destroy the world.
• Wreathed in Flames: The Flame Shield spell, The Immolation ability, the Cloak of Flames item, Infernals, and Doomguards' Flaming Swords.
• Xanatos Gambit: Tichondrius pulls this in the Reign of Chaos Orc Campaign. He convinces his fellow dragon to Archimonde Mannoroth to try to bring the Orcs back under the Legion's control. If Mannoroth succeeded, they would have a new Elite force of Fel Orcs that they could both take credit for. If Mannoroth failed as he did, Tichondrius will consolidate his influence with Archimonde.
• You Can't Kill What's Already Dead: Invoked in Warcraft III's expansion, where the Death Knight's Animate Dead spell brings up six invulnerable (meaning they can't even be targeted) corpses to fight for him. In the first game, they weren't invulnerable but they lasted longer.
• Young and in Charge: In Kalimdor, Thrall and Jaina are the leaders of their respective faction. (In Reign of Chaos, Thrall was only 19, while Jaina was 23)
• You Have Failed Me:
  • In Reign of Chaos, at the start of the 2nd Night Elf mission, Archimonde and two doomguards corner Tyrande, but she uses her invisibility to make them think she got away. Archimonde was so pissed, he killed one of the doomguards.
  • In Frozen Throne, Kil'jaeden drops this on Illidan, but gives him another chance.
• You Have Researched Breathing: And you'll need to learn them again with every new level or game.
  • Ghouls and Abominations have to research the ability to cannibalize corpses for health.
  • Night Elves have to learn Ultravision to see as well at night as they do in the day.
  • Crypt Fiends (spider people) don't know they can burrow into the ground, or for that matter shoot webs.
  • Only the most elite Druids of the Claw can Roar in bear form.
  • Chimaeras haven't figured out that their second head spits acid.
  • You need an upgrade to make your Abominations (which are sewn-together corpses) rot. Likewise for the corpses the Meat Wagons launch.
  • Gyrocopter pilots need training to drop the bombs that are already loaded on their Flying Machines.
  • Footmen need to learn how to put their shields in front of their faces.
• You Have to Believe Me!: The Prophet might have had more success in getting people to go to Kalimdor if he warned them in a calmer tone.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Sylvanas Windrunner promises to give the Capital to Grand Marshall Garithos if he aids her in destroying the Dread Lord Balnazzar. After a two-pronged attack, their joint forces overwhelm those of Balnazzar, and he is (seemingly) killed. Garithos then demands that Sylvanas leave his city, and she has no problem commanding her lieutenant, Varimathras, to kill him.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: Gold and Lumber are your resources here. Also oil in Warcraft II for naval units.
• Zerg Rush:
  • Undead players can pull off an exponential Zerg Rush using cheap, expendable Ghouls backed up by Necromancers with the "Raise Dead" ability. As the Ghouls die, the Necromancer can summon two skeletons from its corpse to continue the attack. All of the units in question are rather weak, but it is possible to simply overwhelm the enemy with numbers.
  • The Undead in general tends to be good at Zerg Rushing, as the Ghoul serves both as their lumber harvester and their basic attack unit. This lets them devote less of their food count to Worker Units as they can simply train up a bunch of Ghouls, stockpile enough lumber to last them awhile, and then march those same Ghouls into battle. It also helps that Ghouls are more efficient at harvesting lumber than the workers of other races.
  • Before a patch eliminated this ability, Human players could create an army of Peasants, have them hastily build a Town Hall outside of an opponent's base, and then convert the Peasants into Militia to storm the enemy base with sheer numbers. Human players are still known to bring Peasants unto battle... in order to Zerg Rush the enemy with towers, as they tend to be dirt-cheap and very quick to build.
• Zero-Effort Boss: You have to kill Blackhand's daughter Griselda in one of the Orc missions Warcraft I, as she has run off with a band of Ogres. She has less health than a Peon, and cannot attack at all.
• Zombify the Living:
  • During the human campaign in Reign of Chaos, Arthas encounters the Cult of the Damned, who are doing this to the people of Lordaeron by spreading magically diseased grain. Later, you have to kill a city full of townspeople before the Dreadlord Mal'Ganis can use Dark Conversion to turn them into zombies and Soul Preservation to teleport them away "for later use".
  • During the undead campaign in Reign of Chaos, Arthas turns Sylvanas Windrunner into the first banshee while she's still alive. This was retconned in the World of Warcraft novel Arthas: The Rise of the Lich King, however.
  • There's also Arthas himself. By the time he returns to Lordaeron from Northrend he's officially considered undead, but there has been no point in the canon showing him actually dying to become as such. He simply picks up Frostmourne, and its influence strips away his humanity.

---