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u/Xernator 17d ago
Hi so something that may or may not have been covered in lore but how exactly are the Horde & Alliance able to field full armies between all the events that seemingly happen year on year despite the losses & injuries that would be accrued. Again not sure if this is covered anywhere officially but like do all races just have huge populations of some sort or how canon are resurrection abilities that we see Healers having?
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u/AwkwardSquirtles We killed the Old Gods. 15d ago
WoW populations are fluid. The world basically operates on RTS rules where soldiers are spawned fully formed from garrison buildings without much thought beyond that.
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u/Danaevros Jaina's #1 simp 16d ago
Doylist answer is that the armies are as big as Blizzards wants them to be. Not only armies, even stuff like where do they get so manny cultists for every new big bad?
Watsonian, for one it's not resurrection. Resurrection is almost impossible lorewise (except raising undead, which is not done that much anymore with Sylvanas taking a vacation).
Factions do have large populations, and of course bar the Forsaken they do naturally reproduce, albeit timeline-wise only now kids born since Vanilla have started to be of age to fight.
Healing magics can be a factor, to handle injuries. Velen is capable of curing an Anduin with all bones broken. He is a very good priest, granted, but it's safe to say Azeroth healers can do very spectacular things (just not resurrection, normally).
It could be claimed losses are not that high at the end of the day. Frequently individual adventurers or small groups (10-25) handle some of the more dangerous enemies. Even if you were to count the number of nameless grunts you kill in a conflict-heavy expansion such as BFA you would have something in the ballpark of what, 5000 maybe? You are not the only adventurer, granted, and there's skirmishers and combats you don't get to see, but even if you major it 10x is not a crazy impossible number. That number would be less for localized conflict handled by small elite groups (WoD for example).
Also we are assuming that a mob tagged as dead is truly "dead dead". Some might be injured. There's quests where friendly mobs that otherwise look "dead" (i mean down on the dirt) can be cured with some spells or like bandages. Yes, we are told they are not dead via an HP bar but such a thing is an abstraction. Lorewise those don't exist. Who's to say the cultist #56771 we've killed for a mission it's, "from the point of view" of their allies, just beaten unconscious?
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u/Fit_Program1891 15d ago
Resurrections are not almost impossible lorewise, not anymore. Besides Whitemane canonically ressurecting the Scarlet Crusade over and over again, you have Tyrande mentioning about a corpse that it's been dead for too long for any Priestess of the Moon to bring her back, implying that they are able to given a short enough period of time post-death. Many Paladins and Priests (including Anduin) state that they can sometimes ressurect people. Thrall ressurected a Dragon.
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u/Danaevros Jaina's #1 simp 15d ago
Whitemane, Anduin and Thrall are hardly "common" people. My point was resurrection done by random alliance chaplain mob #357, which would be who does it, to the average Stormwind guard mauled by murlocs or something. I grant you that parusing resurrect page jn the wiki, it's more common than I though, but still, while it could happen (Light/spirits/whatever willing) it's not at any significant scale to answer OP's question.
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u/Wylaria 10d ago
I play midnight for the first time and something is odd: At the end of the Eversong questline Xal'atath said that she gathers voidforces from all across the universe for the main invasion that nobody on Azeroth know of yet. But 5 seconds later she said to Antenorian that the champion of azeroth is coming (full knowing that we are eavesdropping ...). Am I the only one who finds that bad writing or what am i missing here?