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Is the name of "Stormcast Eternals" Influence From Warcraft (esp with the Kingdom of Stormwind)?  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
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Having played Warcraft long before it morphed into WoW......... In the very first game Orcs and Humans, the capital of what was then called the Kingdom of Azeroth (which looking back in hindsight had suspicious similarities with the Empire-esp as Warcraft 2 verified Azeroth as the Superpower Kingdom of the world and Warcraft 3 sets up the recovery of the Kingdom as the franchise starts spinning off into World of Warcraft)........... The capital of Azeroth is Stormwind Keep.......... So much that the final mission of the First game is laying Siege to Stormwind Keep and destroying the central Residential Palace.

As Blizzard attempts to enter the MMORPG market, selecting the already existing Warcraft setting as the basis and culminating in a spinoff called World of Warcraft....... They underwent a massive rewriting of the entire existing Warcraft Mythos. Azeroth now refers to the entire world Warcraft takes place in and the former superpower Kingdom of Azeroth which got destroyed in the first game as mentioned earlier, becomes rebranded as Stormwind Kingdom. Warcraft as mentioned earlier expanded the mythology in the second game Tides of Darkness to include hosts of other Kingdom and races including Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, Trolls, and other standard stock and the generic good guy races esp Elves and Dwarves join the survivors of the Kingdom of Azeroth (which as I said later gets rebranded as Stormwind Kingdom by the time of World of Warcraft's release) who fled to other human Kingdoms to form an alliance of all good races and human natons to fght back the Orcs (who in turn form a coalition with Goblins, Ogors, Trolls, and other generic Evil Races)...... ........

Much of the other kingdoms get destroyed n between Warcraft 3 and WoW and so many non--humans flee their lands as Demons, Undead, and other creatures attack Azeroth.

Plent of them land in Stormwind Kngdom........... And Stormwind regains prominence as the most important center of the world as it once was during the events of the first Warcraft game....... It is from Stormwind that many heroes launch journeys to attempt to stop various evils that destroyed other Human Natons such as the Lich King in-gameplay in WoW and the expanded universe material emphasizes Stormwind Keep as the point that the remaining armies of not just humanity but the forces of Good including Elves and other races launch their counterattack to retake devastated lands.

Interestingly within WoW lore an emphasis has come of powerful noble warriors who often have magical powers gather around Stormwind (and a lot of players in the WoW game are assumed to be these heroes including non-magic class characters). Expanded canon even states various guilds and orders many which are warriors who know some sorcery gets formed within Stormwind...........

So I am curious if Stormcast Eternals is a case of reverse influence where the source of inspiration comes up with a suspiciously sounding similar thing? Its just too close that I cannot believe Stormcast Eternals as not in some way the result of WoW's influence? So is it now Games Workshop taking the cues rather than the 90s when much of Blizzard games were ripoffs that even were originally intended to be Warhammer games?[list]
   
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Fixture of Dakka




NE Ohio, USA

Wouldn't surprise me.
GWs had a long tradition of... let's say being inspired by... other sources/IPs. For WHFB it was a lot of historical/real world stuff + the typical Tolkien/D&D/etc sources. For 40k it's practically every sci-fi source up to the moment of whatever you're readings publication date. And some history + action movie stuff.
So why wouldn't they give a gigantic nod to Blizzards IP?
   
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Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle






...are you really trying to link the two based only on the word "Storm"? Because that is the only evidence here; the fluff is otherwise completely dissimilar.

The origin of the name "Stormcast Eternals" is self-evident; 'cast' in the sense of casting metal, except in this case it is magical lightning or 'storm' and 'eternals' because they are immortal, being reforged and returned to the fight if they die.

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Fixture of Dakka






Well storm is a godly common word to use, and literally Sigmar is a god that uses Lightning aka Storms (Some would say God of Thunder), i highly doubt they even thought about WoW when naming them.

   
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Longtime Dakkanaut






One of the biggest cases of overthinking it I've seen in a long while.
   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

It's more likely they were thinking of a name that reflected the fact that they are created by a god who uses thunder and lighting a lot and that they are made/cast rather than born.

Stormcast is basically just a descriptive name

If you boil it down you've a whole host of half parts of the name that could be used:

Storm, lightning, thunder, hurricane,

Cast, forged, hammered, moulded, reforged, born, remade, birthed


And others were in the pot for consideration.

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Regular Dakkanaut





Well blizzard did steal Warcraft from GW so the similarities are pretty strong.
   
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johnpjones1775 wrote:
Well blizzard did steal Warcraft from GW so the similarities are pretty strong.
Wrong subforum, gunna want to post that here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/forums/show/9.page

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I try to view Warhammer as more of a toolbox with examples than fully complete games. 
   
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UK

Blizzard was hired by GW to create a Warhammer fantasy game. The deal fell through and Blizzard were left with enough of a game that they didn't want to abandon it. So they changed some visuals and names and created Warcraft.

Since then there's been some back and forth as the two inspire each other. Eg Blizzard went and made Starcraft which, like 40K, is "Warcraft in Space" and added their own space Marines and all.

40K has added Raveners which visually are very much like hydralisks from Starcraft - heck the current form we have where they have a gun in their chest is actually much more like then than their original design where they held the gun in a set of arms.

Meanwhile World of Warcraft has basically defined and influenced fantasy for a few generations and you can see some influences of that in AoS here and there.


However Warhammer in itself is heavily inspired by Tolkien's work and there are loads of other sci-fi and fantasy franchises that inspire each other. So its all one big melting pot.

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 Overread wrote:
So its all one big melting pot.
Yup. Countless times I have seen causality ascribed to the matter as if inspiration was a single chain of events when it is really more like a pot of eternal stew; ingredients continually thrown in, mixed around, and sipped on.

There's also a really strong tendency to claim correlation between things based on superficial aspects when they are actually quite different (40k-Starcraft comes to mind) and/or just aren't that original a concept. I suspect a lot of such 'factual' ideas trace back to someone going 'I wonder if...' and just started getting taken as basic truth along the way. I certainly have fallen victim to many a theory like that.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/07/07 10:39:26


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Also you can see when generations all get inspired by the same ideas, ideals and concepts and then go on to create similar derivative works.

So you can sometimes see a whole wave of books, artwork or games which all suddenly have a similar set of themes appear, even if neither one of them inspired each other and they were all inspired by other things before.



Plus lets also not forget behind the scenes many designers are often floating between companies. You might see a similar style, idea or design by two completely different firms because they hired the same concept artist working in the same kind of field of interest and the design elements carry over even though both creations are unique.

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Yeah. But on the other hand that seems too nuanced for the internet and too rational for the 21st century

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Stormwind is the most boring kingdom in Warcraft's lore and Sigmarines are the most boring faction in AoS, so they have that in common I guess.
   
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Given that is one opinion on an extremely subjective topic, it seems unjustified to phrase it as fact.

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Biloxi, MS USA

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Given that is one opinion on an extremely subjective topic, it seems unjustified to phrase it as fact.


It's also a very odd position given the actual filled out fluff for Stormcast since 1st ed. The whole "hurr durr Sigmarines" generally means I can ignore that person for purposes of an actual conversation.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/07/09 22:33:06


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The concept of the term as an insulting one does speak to a certain mentality--and speaks poorly. Like yeah, they are sigmarines in the sense that they mimic a number of broad design aspects of Space Marines. It taking a design that obviously has a lot of appeal and adding it to their fantasy license with enough remixing to make it distinct and unique... there is nothing bad about that. That is one thing GW more or less did perfectly. Some individuals seem to... take offense to it almost? I don't fully understand it.

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Eh, Sigmarines have the misfortune of being Kirby's last play. They're fine in the context of AoS, but they were the face of AoS and a blatant attempt to sell Space Marines to fantasy players. The idea that the old setting got squatted for them has created a lasting image problem that doesn't really have anything to do with Sigmarines as an army, concept or visual design.

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Yep its a lasting element that will likely plague AoS until such time as most of the armies it has have full army rosters and updated old sculpts. Which doesn't mean every current sculpt is replaced, just that those seriously showing their age are. Eg the Skaven Doomwheel is fine - the legion of metal models and rat ogres and more are clearly up for being replaced/upgraded.

It's one reason that, whilst I love the new armies they've added, I kind of wish GW had slowed down and focused more on updating things. Heck some forces, like Cities of Sigmar and humans are totally without any updates and its 5 years or more since AoS started. Meanwhile you've got forces like Ossiarchs that clearly need more models to make them more interesting and fully featured; through to armies like Orruks who are clearly showing signs of a creative team lacking in inspiration. Heck Orks were as well - they had 3 separate blocks of units which were all the same concepts. This REALLY became apparent when GW fragmented them into 3 almost identical armies at the start of AoS with the only variation being the style of scupt - you still had your choppa close combat ork; your archer; your boar rider; your big boss; your dancing warlock et c.....

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 Geifer wrote:
Eh, Sigmarines have the misfortune of being Kirby's last play. They're fine in the context of AoS, but they were the face of AoS and a blatant attempt to sell Space Marines to fantasy players. The idea that the old setting got squatted for them has created a lasting image problem that doesn't really have anything to do with Sigmarines as an army, concept or visual design.
That's just a community invented concept. SCE could have definitely been added into the WHFB fluff after End Times where Sigmar became incarnate for the Wind of Azyr like halfway through. There were a lot of rumors going around in early AoS, tons of people were convinced Slaanesh was getting squatted despite explicit evidence to the contrary, for example.
   
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To be fair early AoS had seen insane things happen. Tomb Kings (which were not that old for many of their models) and Bretonnia got outright removed; Vampires, Dark Elves, High Elves, Wood Elves, Empire, Dwarves (and more) got shattered from whole complete armies into tiny fragments. Some of which had only 1 model in them.
Armies got randomly lumped together - suddenly a traditional evil dark force or a neutral one was allied with humans and the "good" armies.

A few, eg Skaven and Lizardmen, survived unchanged, but the majority got totally stripped clean and torn apart. The idea that GW could remove Slaanesh from AoS at that stage was very possible. In fact I suspect pretty much every army was "for the chop" if "sales didn't meet the quota".

That was AoS. It wasn't a long term game, it was a short term boutique model range that GW specifically designed to basically let them do that. 4 Grand Alliances which acted as hubs where GW could add or remove armies from them as a whole. Feeding into the idea of high sales when models are new then just dropping any that don't hit a sales quota over time.



That's basically what AoS was.
It wasn't really until 2.0 hit properly that that really changed in people's minds.

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Squatting Slaanesh was unsubstantiated fearmongering even in the context of the splintering of factions and removal of Tomb Kings and Bretonnians, and I say that as a Tomb Kings player (and Slaanesh - I know how to pick'em...). Slaanesh at the time was effectively daemons only and as such fully a crossover army for 40k, where there was no indication whatsoever of a change to the background that would pave the way for the removal of Slaanesh. The whole thing only picked up steam again with the Gathering Storm and Ynnead a year and a half later, but there was still no tangible hint in the new background that the Eldar plan to save themselves was actually going to come to fruition.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
 Geifer wrote:
Eh, Sigmarines have the misfortune of being Kirby's last play. They're fine in the context of AoS, but they were the face of AoS and a blatant attempt to sell Space Marines to fantasy players. The idea that the old setting got squatted for them has created a lasting image problem that doesn't really have anything to do with Sigmarines as an army, concept or visual design.
That's just a community invented concept. SCE could have definitely been added into the WHFB fluff after End Times where Sigmar became incarnate for the Wind of Azyr like halfway through. There were a lot of rumors going around in early AoS, tons of people were convinced Slaanesh was getting squatted despite explicit evidence to the contrary, for example.


The implication of community invention is a little unfair, don't you think? Where else but the community would that kind of sentiment originate? GW certainly isn't going to tell a portion of its customers to hate the new thing and stop buying stuff.

Yes, things could have gone differently if GW had been so inclined. The least invasive way of including Sigmarines and make a close enough version of AoS would have been to bring back the old gods of order background, have Sigmar come back with his new army of champions and instead of ravaging the physical realm with a successful Chaos invasion, have him beat it back and take the fight to the Realm of Chaos. That scenario is effectively the same as the Realmgate Wars where Sigmar's armies invade a place thoroughly in the grasp of Chaos and establish a foothold by raising bastions of order. The Realm of Chaos is an easy substitute for the Mortal Realms as the only significant difference is that there is no stable core to it unlike there is for the Mortal Realms, but that could be written in as part of the influence of the gods of order gaining their foothold and shaping the Realm of Chaos to their vision in a similar way to how the Chaos Gods shape their own domains.

This way GW could have had a new game with an almost identical setting, narrative freedom, creative freedom for new models and factions, round bases and skirmish formation, and a different rule set to take over as the big game while they could have retained Warhammer Fantasy as an alternative, hand it off to Forge World to maintain the rules and add to them as necessary and maybe add a few (probably resin) models here and there. Most of the model ranges would be able to be used in both games. Sigmarines could have been written in as daemons of order if you will, and used in Fantasy just fine alongside their actual home in AoS.

The issue is that GW did not want to keep Fantasy around, so instead of trying for a compromise where the old setting is left intact and somewhat supported for people who prefer it while the new setting gets the bulk of attention from now on, they chose to trash the old setting in its entirety. The former would certainly have entailed some grumbling, just like the inclusion of sky chariots and other big and occasionally mind boggling centerpiece models did, but it could have overall gone a lot smoother, not the least when you consider that Warhammer Fantasy has for the longest time gotten only a fraction of the support 40k did, so playing second fiddle would have hardly been anything new. There was never any chance that blowing up the setting and ending the game in favor of a reboot (in the ever so beloved Hollywood sense) was going to go down well.

This is a fairly long winded way of saying you're right and I agree with you. The way GW handled AoS was their choice alone, entirely in their hands and not without different paths to follow down. Unless I'm getting you wrong you recognize this. Why then would you make out community frustration as a problem originating in the community rather than in GW's actions?
   
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Oh no I do not at all mean to cast shade on the frustrations experienced by the community--I only fault where those frustrations turned into people peddling falsehoods. The idea that the entire WHFB setting was blown up just to make SCE is unsubstantiated to begin with, then utterly buried under the number of other known & plausible factors.

As the real world has shown us, when legitimate frustration turns into circulation of illegitimate information it only makes everything worse for everyone involved.

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Yeah, I can agree with that.

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