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This page serves as an index for Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft fantasy franchise.

Tropes in the franchise:

• The Bad Kingdom: The franchise has two examples of the "Dark Kingdom" variant, both rather obviously inspired by the common threads drawn from She and other sources in different ways:
  • The Kingdom of Lordaeron has become this, after the death (and subsequent reanimation) of its population. The surface is plagued and desolate. Its residents, now calling themselves the Forsaken, live in the Undercity beneath their Kingdom's former namesake capital. They are ruled by an undead High Elf, Lady Sylvanas Windrunner (also called the Banshee Queen). Their loyalty to her is so absolute that she has an outright Cult of Personality. For the first decade and a half of the game's storyline, the Forsaken were the Token Evil Teammate to The Horde and (from The Alliance's perspective) had undergone a Face–Heel Turn after they Came Back Wrong. In the early years, they practiced cruel experiments on the living. In Wrath of the Lich King, some of their members outright turn on the Horde and the rest of the Forsaken, though at this point Sylvanas herself was still a fairly-sympathetic Anti-Hero. After the expansion, and Sylvanas's horrifying experience with The Nothing After Death, the Forsaken join in on Garrosh's warmongering and invade their neighboring Kingdom (and former ally) of Gilneas, outright conquering it and turning its people into refugees. After Sylvanas succeeds Vol'jin as the Horde's new Warchief, she turns warmonger herself, and the Forsaken take up leadership positions all over the Horde. This ends up leading to a second Civil War among the Horde, in which the Forsaken remain her loyalists nearly to the end. Only after she is defeated does the Rightful Queen Return, in the form of Calia Menethil (by all rights the rightful Queen of Lordaeron), who takes on the role of The High Queen to her people in all but name. An interesting quirk to all this is that, as part of the Forsaken's cultish tendency towards rather-excessive (and oddly literal) "That Man Is Dead" behavior, the fact that they even are the people of the Kingdom of Lordaeron (or the idea that they make up a Kingdom at all) is rarely, if ever, acknowledged.
  • The Naga Kingdom of Nazjatar, who raid the surface frequently for plunder and sacrifices to The Old Gods they worship. They were elves, once, and their Queen Azshara (a classic Ayesha expy, as evidenced by her name) ruled a mighty empire that dominated the world. This lasted until she made a deal with the Burning Legion to attain greater power than even she'd ever dreamt possible. This failed, led to a world-wrecking cataclysm, and she was only saved by the intervention of N'Zoth, one of said Old Gods. It transformed them into the Naga to survive the ocean depths, and they began a Religion of Evil centered around it.
• Constructed World: The fictional fantasy world of Azeroth, with its own races, languages and cosmology that have vastly expanded over time. And the worlds beyond it (Draenor/Outland, Argus, multiple worlds invaded by the Burning Legion etc).
• Doorway Between Planets: The Dark Portal, debuting in the very first strategy game, has been a major setting element over most of the franchise's history. It perpetually links the otherwise very distant (remnants of the) world of Draenor and the world of Azeroth. You can walk right through it with absolutely no ill effects: one step, you're on Azeroth, the next, you're on Outland, or vice versa, and the demon-corrupted orcs that built it, built it enormous. You can easily march an army through it and the orcs did just that, setting in motion the entire franchise.
• Expy: Originally, Blizzard's staff wanted to adapt Warhammer into a video game. However, as Games Workshop was notoriously slow with negotiations and the developers wanted more creative control, Blizzard ended up making their own setting with an Orcs vs Humans conflict and expanded from there.
• Firewood Resources: Units go through the trouble of chopping down trees and then forming them into nice little logs for you before actually bringing them back to the lumber mill. This is shown in human campaigns in all three WarCraft games, and it's referenced in World of Warcraft.
• Gut Buster: Abominations are overstuffed, misshapen undead Flesh Golems whose entrails hang out from gaping ruptures in their belly. This doesn't impede them in eating fresh corpses to regain their health.
• Our Gnomes Are Weirder: The gnomes of Warcraft are a diminutive humanoid race of geniuses, both intellectually and in mechanics. They used to be Mechanical Lifeforms made by the Titans and were hit by the "Curse of the Flesh".
• Our Orcs Are Different: Blizzard's version of these creatures is, alongside the Warhammer kind that debut a little earlier, the trope codifier for the modern incarnation of orcs as tall, muscular, tusked and green-skinned warriors led by war-chiefs and shamans, with a culture centered around independent tribes and clans and focused on physical might and combat, which evolved into being a civilized and a Proud Warrior Race with a code of honor and a notable Big Good — which doesn't mean there aren't villainous orcs — in contrast to the older Tolkienian orcs, which were Always Chaotic Evil bandits and Mooks around the size and strength of humans, apelike in build, and more inclined to ambushes, cowardice, and technical skill than Proud Warrior Race-style brawling.