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Warcraft III
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Warcraft III (Video Game)

"We never paid any heed to the ancient prophecies. Like fools, we clung to the old hatreds, and fought as we had for generations... until the day the sky rained fire, and a new enemy came among us. We stand now upon the brink of destruction, for the Reign of Chaos has come at last."
— The Prophet

WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos is the third entry in the Warcraft Fantasy Real-Time Strategy video game trilogy by Blizzard Entertainment, released in July 2002 for PC and macOS. While the previous two games popularized the genre and demonstrated promising multiplayer capabilities (in the second), WarCraft III invokedmade its popularity explode worldwide in the wake of StarCraft and (like the latter game) became a smash hit in Professional Gaming (being one of the rare series to pull off its 3D leap flawlessly also helped). It received an Expansion Pack in July 2003, titled WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne. Several updates followed until 2019, adding new heroes and maps and refining the game's features.

For the story, see the Recap page.

Following The Frozen Throne, the franchise underwent a Genre Shift to MMORPG with World of Warcraft in 2004, with the story picking up from where Warcraft III left off and continuing it to this day, with some Retcons here and there and massive lore expansion.

WarCraft III is also notable for spawning the MOBA genre, through a Game Mod made with the Level Editor that became Defense of the Ancients, which itself would rapidly have a massively successful Spiritual Successor in League of Legends (the team of which included some former developers of Blizzard). Blizzard themselves would try to gain a footing in that new genre with Heroes of the Storm, which includes characters from WarCraft and every other Blizzard franchise.

While Blizzard shifted focus towards StarCraft II before abandoning the RTS genre altogether under pressure of Activision sometime later, a remake of WarCraft III, titled WarCraft III: Reforged, was released in January 2020. Its messy conception, false advertising, rushed release and the absence of many well-liked features of the 2002-2003 game have remained infamous in the fandom.

There is a Fan Remake titled Azeroth Reborn, created using the StarCraft II Game Mod toolset.

"Something need troping?":

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    A-F 
  • Abnormal Ammo:
    • Undead Meat Wagons fling diseased corpses by way of a catapult.
    • Night Elf Glaive throwers launch giant shuriken, despite looking very much like their ballistae predecessors.
  • Action Bomb: Wisps, the Night Elf Worker Units, can blow themselves up, but this can only damage summoned units (though it also dispels buffs that don't help you). Goblin Sappers deal great damage to units and incredible damage to structures. The Horde get Troll Batriders, which can suicide-bomb enemy air units for massive damage in the Frozen Throne.
  • 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", 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.
  • Adaptational Villainy: A very Downplayed example in Reforged. There is an interlude where Tichondrius talks to the other Dreadlords about their plans and then they all walk off. In Reforged, the other two walk off, while Tichondrius is approached by an Acolyte, whom he murders. While Tichondrius is already a soul-eating demon, there was no indication he was a Bad Boss to his minions in the original version of the game, and he never does anything like that again.
  • 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. A new scene was added where Arthas sees a short channel of water separating him from the Sunwell and uses Frostmourne to create a large ice bridge for his troops to cross. This was an addition taken from 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. Said 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 (though one could handwave this with the fact that Arthas has been weakened), though it doesn't explain why he never used it before (which the novel got around by having the Lich King himself speak up about doing, another example of the adaptation not making sense).
  • All There in the Manual: A lot of the backstory is only covered in the game's manual. Particularly, everything having to do with Thrall's rise to warchief, his friendship with Hellscream (who is basically a different character from his Warcraft 2 self), and his reforming the Orcs into a Proud Warrior Race of shamanists are just covered in the manual, as Lord of the Clans, the game that was supposed to cover this plot, was cancelled by Blizzard when near completion, and the game mostly treats the events as a done deal, referencing them vaguely but never covering why the orcs are so different. Similarly, why Ner'zul from Beyond The Dark Portal is the Lich King is only covered in the manual. Similarly, most of the backstory for the Burning Legion, and how the High Elves and the Night Elves relate to each other is only covered in the manual.
  • The Alliance: The Blood Elf campaign is referred to as the Alliance campaign because it refers to the new alliance which they forge with the Naga and Draenei.
  • Altar Diplomacy: It's mentioned in the 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.
  • Amazon Brigade: While the night elves have male and female units (as well as several animals, forest spirits, and other creatures of the wilds that have no clear gender), their core army — Archers, Huntresses, and Dryads — are 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, which returns from Warcraft II. This time it's Illidan looking for its secrets, learning them from Gul'dan's memories. Unlike the orc, he succeeds in attaining the artifact in the tomb.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: Whenever you start a new campaign, the protagonist also changes.
    • In Reign of Chaos, Thrall and Arthas are both the protagonists of the first four campaigns (with Thrall as the first and last, and Arthas the two in between). The final campaign introduces Tyrande Whisperwind and Malfurion Stormrage, two characters never seen or mentioned before then, as the new protagonists while Thrall and Arthas have supporting roles. Illidan Stormrage also briefly has his own mission without his brother or Tyrande near the end of the game, playing this trope on two levels.
    • The Frozen Throne alternates a new protagonist in each campaign as usual, but Illidan Stormrage becomes the main character by the end of the first two campaigns, demoting the protagonists to just Decoy Protagonists. In a way, playing as Arthas and defeating him at the end of the Scourge campaign kind of stops him from doing it a third time.
  • Animal Stampede: In 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, where Archimonde is the one trying to film a scene from Warcraft II.
  • Antepiece: In the six mission of the original Scourge campaign "Blackrock & Roll Too!" you have to destroy an orc base with a custom tech tree that allows them to train Red Dragons, very powerful flying units far stronger than even the Frost Wyrms you've just been given. North of your base there are a pair of wild Red Dragons with a bunch of Dragon Whelps that you can fight against in order to test how well you'd do against such an imposing enemy.
  • Anti-Air: All factions have dedicated anti-air.
    • The ground-based ranged examples are the Troll Headhunters/Berserkers for the Horde, Dwarven Riflemen for the Alliance, Archers for Elves, and the Undead Crypt Fiend which cannot attack air, but they can entangle air units with their auto-cast web shooters. Some unconventional ground-based examples are Orc Raiders who can Ensnare air units to the ground and Dwarven Siege Engines which can learn Barrage, which gives them the ability to damage air units.
    • The air-based examples are respectively Troll Batriders (who can perform a Suicide Attack), Flying Machines (which have splash damage against air units) and Dragonhawk Riders (which can immobilize and damage them), Hippogryphs and Druids of the Talon in Crow form, and Gargoyles.
  • 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-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-Magic: Every faction has at least one way to remove buffs, and the expansion added one for each. Neutral heroes also can prevent spellcasting alltogether.
    • The Alliance:
      • Priests can cast Dispel Magic to remove negative buffs in an area and damage summons.
      • The aptly-named Spell Breakers can autocast Spell Steal (taking positive buffs from enemies or putting negative buffs on them), use Control Magic to steal summons, their melee damage also drains spellcasters' mana... oh, and they're immune to magic as well.
    • The Horde:
      • The Shaman's Purge dispels and slows enemies (and damages summons).
      • The Spirit Walker can cast Disenchant, an Area of Effect dispel that damages summons. Ironically, it starts in ethereal form which makes it more vulnerable to magic.
    • Night Elves:
      • The Wisp's Detonate has the same effect as Dispel Magic (though it kills the Wisp).
      • The Dryad are Spell Immune and can autocast Abolish Magic (a single-target dispel).
      • The Faerie Dragon's Mana Flare causes it to passively damage any enemy that casts a spell near it (though it can't move or attack) and is passively Spell Immune.
      • The Demon Hunter's Mana Burn damages and neutralizes spellcasters.
    • The Undead:
      • Banshees can cast Anti-Magic Shell. The original version rendered a single target temporarily immune to magic (including buffs). It was changed so that it no longer granted immunity to buffs and debuffs, but blocked a set amount of magic damage.
      • The Destroyer can Devour Magic to instantly remove all buffs and debuffs for units in an area, replenishing its own mana. It is also Spell Immune.
      • A 2024 patch of the game added Wand of Negation (which is an item that allows casting Dispel Magic) to the Tomb of Relics.
    • Neutral:
      • The Dark Ranger has Silence, which is an Area of Effect ability which prevents affected enemies from casting spells.
      • The Pit Lord has Doom, which damages and silences a target until it's death.
      • The Firelord has Soul Burn, a single target silence that also deals damage and reduces attack damage.
      • Many creeps have the same spells as the standard playable races, with the most common being Abolish Magic. The Naga Couatl also has it.
  • Anti-Structure:
    • Every faction has a Siege Engine to deal with towers from beyond attack range. The Alliance has Mortar Teams which is the only non-mechanical siege unit. The Horde Demolisher (formerly Catapult) fires huge rocks and can be upgraded to set them on fire. The Undead Meat Wagon hurls corpses at long range (spreading disease where it fires) and stores corpses for use by necromancers and hungry troops. The Night Elves have Glaive Throwers (formerly Ballistae) which throw big metal throwing stars. While not as powerful as the siege options of other races, they're available much earlier.
    • Every faction also has unique anti-building units:
      • The Alliance's Siege Engine (formerly Steam Tank) is essentially a motorized Battering Ram with high Fortified armor (ironically making it vulnerable to Anti-Structure attacks) that can only attack buildings at melee range, Flying Machines can be upgraded to deal very weak siege damage to ground targets (since they're meant to be used in swarms), and Dragonhawk Riders can be upgraded to prevent towers from attacking via their Cloud spell.
      • The Horde's Raiders are BFS-wielding wolf riders who deal high damage to buildings and can make money doing so but have less HP than Grunts, while Troll Batriders can be upgraded to throw napalm that slows building attacks and prevent them from being repaired. The Farseer's Earthquake ultimate damages buildings while slowing units caught in it.
      • The Undead's Frost Wyrms can be upgraded to temporarily freeze structures, preventing them from attacking, training, researching, or being repaired.
      • Night Elf Chimeras can be upgraded to deal high damage to buildings (and even outrange Anti-Air towers), while Mountain Giants are Stone Walls that can rip a tree out of the ground to deal siege damage at increased range.
    • Neutral heroes and units also have their own abilities:
      • The Naga Sea Witch's Tornado is a controllable unit that deals damage to buildings just by being next to them.
      • The Tinker's Robo-Goblin transformation gives him the Demolish ability that increases damage to buildings.
      • The Firelord's Volcano blasts waves of molten rocks that deal extra damage to buildings.
      • Goblin Sappers are suicide bombers who deal particularly huge damage to buildings.
  • 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.
  • 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 initial release version of the campaign lacks a major antagonist, with the closest being the Captain that captured Grom and tries to attack Thrall.
    • The Scourge of Lordaeron has Mal'Ganis, the Dreadlord commander of the Undead Scourge that is attacking Lordaeron. Kel'thuzad serves as the initial threat as the head of the Cult of the Damned and the mastermind of the plague before Mal'Ganis is revealed. Prince Arthas undergoes a Protagonist Journey to Villain to defeat Mal'Ganis.
    • Path of the Damned has Arthas himself appearing to take 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. In terms of the gameplay side of things, there are various Hero Antagonist characters that face the player throughout each of the campaign's invasion arcs. Uther in Lordaeron, Sylvanas in Quel'thelas, and Antonidas in Dalaran.
    • 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. Much of the conflict of the campaign is with Grom Hellscream (between his uncontrollable bloodlust and later becoming an Unwitting Pawn of Mannoroth) and he is the last opponent of the campaign, relegating Mannoroth to a Cutscene Boss. Tichondrius also returns in a pivotal but minor role in advising Mannoroth 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, as Archimonde doesn't actually fight until near the end of the final mission.
    • 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. However, once his plans are stopped, the campaign gets hijacked by the Undead Scourge once they try to hunt down Tyrande, so Illidan performs an Enemy Mine with his brother to save her.
    • Curse of the Blood Elves has Lord Garithos and Dalvengyr who are both trying to kill the Blood Elves and each other 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 two separate plotlines, one with Sylvanas and one with Arthas. While Balnazzar, Detheroc, and Varimathras start off as the villains to both when they seek to control Lordaeron in the name of the Burning Legion. The Dreadlords, led by Balnazzar, largely turn their attention to Sylvanas (who wants to be free of both them and the Scourge) once Arthas takes off to Northrend pretty early on in the campaign. For the rest of Arthas' story, his main villain is Illidan, who is leading the assault on Icecrown against the Lich King. However, it can be interpreted that Arthas himself is the villain of his plotline, 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 has taken over Theramore Isle from his daughter and is attacking Durotar over his hatred of orcs.
  • Arc Words: The Prophet keeps warning everybody about the "shadow" which has come to consume Azeroth. Everything points to the Burning Legion. That is until the human campaign ending where Prince Arthas kills his father King Terenas. The murder is seen in silhouette. The shadow was in fact Arthas himself, and through him, the Lich King.
  • 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. Lore wise, this has been explained that many members of the Cult of the Damned were lesser nobles who were easily swayed to the Lich King's service with promises of power, and those Death Knights are willing followers.
    • The Night Elf Highborne were disliked for their greed and arrogance. Their abuse of magic allowed them to be corrupted by Sargeras. After the Sundering, many of them were cursed to become satyrs or naga. The few who didn't turn into monstrosities fled to Lordaeron and became the High Elves. After the Scourging, the surviving High Elves became Blood Elves and decided to serve the Burning Legion to feed their hunger for fel magic.
  • The Artifact:
    • The Horde's "you don't have enough food to train more units" warning 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.
    • 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.
  • Artifact Mook: In one mission of the Reign of Chaos Night Elf campaign, 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.
  • Artificial Brilliance: The final RTS level of the expansion "A Symphony of Frost and Flame" is the only mission where instead of sending pre-set waves, Illidan's AI will take note of your army composition and build appropriate counters in their attack waves note . If the player goes heavy on Crypt Fiends, they build a lot of Naga Myrmidons. If the player decides to go heavily on Frost Wyrms, Illidan will attack with a lot of Couatl. If the player decides to go for a lot of Abominations, Illidan will bring more Dragon Turtles and Naga Sirens. This more or less forces the player to diversify their army or risk heavy losses. Or the player can rely on the pure power of the Arthas and Anub'arak duo and just overpower Illidan even if their army is countered.
  • 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.
  • Autobots, Rock Out!: The Frozen Throne has a rock song called "The Power of the Horde" as its credits theme.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Frost Wyrms from the undead are meant to be their late game powerful unit, and they can be powerful tools in an army, but they also require their own building be made, cost a lot of population to build, and are fairly expensive, their attack is slow and their abilities don't stack with each other. They also have lots of counters, meaning they are at risk of dying quickly, and feel very hard to field properly.
  • 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.
  • Back from the Brink: The Cult of the Damned was damn near obliterated by Arthas before he himself was converted and helped reassemble it. Most of the surviving members went into hiding until the time was right.
  • Badass Army: The army of Kul Tiras and Fel Orcs. They are equal to units of humans and orcs, respectively, but with increased statistics.
  • Badass Bookworm: Jaina Proudmoore, who is as well read as she is a powerful mage. "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 (more so in Reforged, which adds 3 more missions and allows him to get all the way to level 6). 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 Reign of Chaos, 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:
    • 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 their 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:
    • 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* (Power), an offensively-oriented mage* (Skill), and a supportive Magic 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: You usually get to play as a main hero of the current campaign plus a handful of units. There are some variations in The Frozen Throne, however:
    • The fifth Night Elf mission starts with a base and workers, but the base is heavily damaged and you have no gold mine. You need Malfurion and Tyrande to fight their way to Maiev's base before being able to claim a gold mine.
    • In the final Blood Elf mission, you have no workers but you have access to most Blood Elf and Naga military structures. To get resources to train more units, you have to find resources scattered in the Black Temple.
    • The first Undead mission has you managing three factions with only a Crypt (and access to Ghouls only) and another military structure (Slaughterhouse for Arthas and a Temple of the Damned for Necromancers for Kel'thuzad and Banshees for Sylvanas), as well as no workers, but resources are practically infinite.
    • The whole bonus campaign is RPG style with the player controlling only a few heroes and their summons for nearly the entire story. There's only one section ("Tidefury Cove") where the player builds units from structures. Act I has mercenary camps, but they cannot leave the main map into any submaps.
  • Bears Are Bad News: Druids of the Claw, Furbolgs, the Beastmaster's summoned bear, Polar Bears, Pandaren and the Largest Panda Ever. All of them are powerful and dangerous bear creatures and most are hostile to all.
  • 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.
    • Among the major races, the Orcs are exceptional in taming beasts. Their Beastiary structure allows them to train Wolves, Kodo Beasts and Wyverns all ridden by Orcs. Contrast this with humans who just ride puny horses.
    • Elves are no slouches when it comes to beast taming as well. Night Elves ride battle cats, elk and hippogryphs while High Elves ride on dragonhawks.
  • Became Their Own Antithesis:
    • Arthas and Sylvanas become undead after fighting the undead for so long, both becoming cruel and malicious after they are converted to the Scourge.
    • Illidan, the greatest Night Elf Demon Hunter, becomes a demon enthralled to the Burning Legion.
    • Maiev, who pursued the betrayer Illidan, is herself labeled a betrayer by Furion due to her lies and deception.
  • 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.
  • Betrayal by Inaction: The first real hint that Sylvanas has betrayed Arthas is that her banshees are absent in "Flight from Lordaeron".
  • Big Boo's Haunt: The cursed glade in "The Druids Arise" spawns never ending skeleton mooks and ghosts which possess allied units. A Death Revenant must be defeated at the end to restore this part of the forest.
  • 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, Detheroc, and Varimathras in Legacy of the Damned form one for the entire Lordaeron storyline. Gradually Sylvanas takes them down one by one, with Varimathras defecting to her side, and Detheroc being killed, leaving Balnazzar as the Final Boss of that plotline. It's possible Balnazzar was already the Big Bad and his brothers were his Co-Dragons however, as he is the most powerful and speaks most authoritatively of the three.
  • Black-and-Gray Morality: The Horde and the Alliance versus the Scourge and the Burning Legion which makes up the main conflict of Reign of Chaos. The flawed but justifiable mortals vs the omnicidal legions of the undead and their equally monstrous demonic creators/masters. This is in contrast to the Black-and-White Morality of the first two games.
  • Blatant Lies: The main quest in "The Culling" is to kill 100 zombies. What the game does not tell players is that there is no penalty for killing the citizens before they turn.
  • Blue Is Heroic: In the campaigns, the most common color for player characters is blue, and it is heavily associated with heroism with no unambiguously evil characters using it note . Blizzard seems to be aware of the heroic nature of blue to the point there's a color toggle setting where sets the player to blue, allies to teal, and enemies to red.
    • Arthas is blue throughout the entire Human campaign as a heroic Paladin, which changes to purple once he is corrupted into a Death Knight.
    • The Alliance of Lordaeron if it doesn't have a clear leader is also commonly associated with Blue, even as an enemy. Sometimes they are light blue or grey instead. If they are the less sympathetic Kul'Tiras, they will be Dark Green.
    • In the Night Elf campaigns, the player is always blue.
    • Sylvanas Windrunner, both living defending Quel'thelas and Undead as a Dark Ranger, is blue. In the former she's a Hero Antagonist and in the latter she's head of the least evil faction in a conflict between her, the Scourge, the Dreadlords, and Garithos.
    • Illidan Stormrage is mostly associated with purple throughout The Frozen Throne, which is used by villainous characters. However, in the final mission of the Scourge campaign, he becomes Blue while the player-controlled Arthas is Purple, subtly signaling to the player which of these two characters is the more heroic and which is the more villainous.
    • Rexxar and his friends are all blue throughout The Founding of Durotar.
  • 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:
    • Necromancers (and Rods of Necromancy) can 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.
  • Bookends:
    • The Human campaign begins with King Terenas in his throne room refusing to heed the prophet's warning. The campaign ends with him being murdered there by his son Arthas.
    • There is a gameplay and story parallel between the first mission Arthas performs an evil act ("The Culling") and the final mission of the expansion ("A Symphony of Frost and Flame") note . In both, he is racing against a winged, demonic character (Mal'Ganis/Illidan) towards control of a key objective (killing villagers, controlling the obelisks) that represents victory in the battlefield, without expectation of actually destroying his enemy in gameplay. He succeeds both times but loses a part of himself afterwards (he allows his rage to draw him to Northrend and Frostmourne, and his mind is absorbed into the Lich King after beating Illidan).
    • Rexxar starts The Founding of Durotar out in the wild, comes to Orgrimmar and stays based on the idea that he's been out too long in the wilds. At the end of the campaign after leading to the Horde to victory against Kul'Tiras, he splits from Thrall again by saying his place is out in the wilds.
  • Booze Flamethrower: Pandaren Brewmasters have both a "throw booze" and "spit fire" abilities, which can be combo'ed to deal considerable additional afterburn damage.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • 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 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.
  • Borrowing from the Sister Series: Warcraft III takes several cues from StarCraft I 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 but like the Protoss psionic matrix, Blight does not prevent other factions from constructing their structures.
    • 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.
    • Both games have a level titled "The Culling". In StarCraft, it is a Zerg vs. Zerg level. In WarCraft, Arthas purges an infected city.
    • The phrase "It's done" is said during an a great act of betrayal. In StarCraft, Mengsk says it while abandoning Kerrigan. In WarCraft, Arthas says this when he dismisses his friends who refuse to help purging Stratholme.
  • Boss Banter: Enemy heroes frequently speak some kind of taunting phrase when you engage them in combat for the first time. Future meetings tend to no longer exchange any dialogue. There are a few exceptions that are much more talkative, however. Cenarius, Balnazzar, and Admiral Proudmoore love to do Battle Cries when fighting, with Balnazzar being the most extreme example as he has special lines for casting his most powerful spell, and full on dialogues with the player characters if they are near him.
  • Boss Battle: Even though every enemy Hero Unit would be a "Boss" there are a few cases where there are special boss battles.
    • Kathuulon, Ra'Adoom, and Xaxion Drak'eem from the "Warchasers" scenario in Reign of Chaos are explicit bosses, down to their names (ex: Mini-Boss — KATHUULON).
    • 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.
    • Kor'gall in the above campaign deserves special mention because he is the only boss encounter that is framed like a standard boss battle. He is fought in an arena, the campaign-wide "immediate resurrection if you die" is disabled against him, and the player does not have access to their items and party members, only Rexxar.
  • Breather Episode: The 4th Orc level where the player must hit a lumber quota is sandwiched in between a level where hostilities with the humans is resumed and the next level where Grom and his clan are corrupted by the Burning Legion.
  • Broken Armor Boss Battle: Twice in Reign of Chaos. Both Cenarius in the 5th Orc mission and Tichondrius in the 6th Night Elf mission have the Divine armor type, which makes them take Scratch Damage from all attack types except Chaos, which is not available to most units. The first half of both missions is to empower your army or hero (respectively) with the Chaos attack type, and the second half is killing the Divine-armor hero with your new Chaos attacks which will deal full damage.
  • Building Location Restrictions:
    • The orcs and humans can build more-or-less wherever they want, minus unbuildable terrain (including usually rocky ground, and shallow water).
    • Justified for the Undead faction. Most of their buildings (except the Necropolis and Haunted Gold Mine) need to be summoned on corrupted ground called "blight". When a building is completed, it corrupts a radius of ground around it into more blight so that their base can continue to expand. In the Frozen Throne expansion, you can purchase a Sacrificial Skull from the Tomb of Relics, which allows you to blight ground without buildings, as Blight has a number of beneficial effects on Undead soldiers as well (and, of course, lets you establish a forward base quickly, say placing a Graveyard and some Ziggurats for wood collection and defensive towers).
    • Inverted for the most part by the Night Elves — they can build buildings anywhere, and many of their buildings are sentient humanoid Treants that can uproot themselves to move the base to a new location. However, they play it straight in one specific way — to harvest gold from a gold mine, it must be within a certain radius of the Tree of Life. The tree sends out roots to envelop the mine, turning it into an Entangled Mine that their wisps can harvest from.
    • Inverted by the Nagas as well — on top of being able to build anywhere they want on dry land like the orcs and humans, they can also build on shallow water too.
  • Burning the Ships: In Reign of Chaos, 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.
  • The Bus Came Back:
    • Several units that were in WarCraft: Orcs & Humans, but were gone in Warcraft II, make a return in Warcraft III
      • Orc Raiders were the high tier melee cavalry units for the Orc faction in Warcraft I, but got replaced by Ogres in Warcraft II. They're back in Warcraft III as harassment units for the Horde.
      • Orc Necrolytes were the low tier Horde spellcasters in Warcraft I, but were replaced by Death Knights in Warcraft II. In Warcraft III, Necrolytes return as hirable mercenary units, appear as neutral creeps, and the Undead faction natively boast their in-universe successors, the Necromancers.
      • Orc Warlocks were the high tier Horde spellcasters in Warcraft I, but were replaced by Death Knights in Warcraft II. In Warcraft III, Warlocks return as campaign units used by the Blackrock Clan and Fel Orcs.
      • Water Elementals were once the powerful endgame summon units for the Human faction in Warcraft I, but were nowhere to be seen in Warcraft II. They return in Warcraft III as a summoning spell for the Alliance faction's Archmage hero, and as neutral creeps.
      • In Warcraft I, Necrolytes had the ability to raise skeletons that had Skeleton Orc skins. Skeletons just had common skins in Warcraft II, but in Warcraft III Skeleton Orcs return as neutral creeps.
    • The Horde and Alliance navy units from Warcraft II were gone in Reign of Chaos apart from a brief flashback appearance for the Orc Juggernauts. They return as campaign units in The Frozen Throne.
    • After it turned out that Ogres were no longer a part of the Horde in Reign of Chaos with the exception of some still being a part of the 2nd war remnant Blackrock Clan, Rexxar's Bonus Campaign in The Frozen Throne has the Ogres of the Stonemaul Clan integrated into Thrall's Horde.
  • Buzzing the Deck: Invoked in a Stop Poking Me!, where the Dragonhawk Rider asks for permission to buzz the tower.
  • Call-Back: The Blackrock remnants in the Undead campaign employ units that participated in the Orcish invasion in the previous two installments but are no longer a part of the Thrall's Horde and are relegated to neutral creeps and campaign-only units: Dragons, Warlocks, Ogre Magi and Goblin Sappers. Weirdly, the Blackrock Clan still uses Darkspear Troll Headhunters instead of Forest Troll Axethrowers, despite it never encountered the former, although Reforged fixes this.
  • 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. Interesting enough, Arthas' story predates the last Star Wars prequel being released and came out the same year as Attack of the Clones, so it may have been a coincidence, rather than a conscious attempt to imitate Star Wars.
    • Sylvanas is Sarah Kerrigan with the serial numbers filed off.
  • Capital Letters Are Magic: The Forsaken and the Scourge.
  • Captive Enemy as Ally: Inverted; in one Undead level has you invade Dalaran. You can find cages holding creatures that would normally be neutral hostile (golems, giant spiders...), but when you destroy the cages they switch to your control.
  • Cataclysm Backstory:
    • Draenor, the homeland of the Orcs, became infested with demons thanks to Gul'dan's dimensional portals. He then tried to replicate this in Warcraft II.
    • Lordaeron itself becomes infested with demons and undead. The Alliance and the Blood Elves are defined by this disaster known as the Scourging.
    • Kalimdor used to be one supercontinent, but the Sundering caused it to break apart into three; the remnants of old Kalimdor in the west, Lordaeron in the east and the arctic continent of Northrend.
  • The Cavalry Arrives Late: Uther and a legion of knights ride in to relieve Arthas during "March of the Scourge". Ungrateful Bastard that Arthas was, he blamed them for being late instead.
  • Cavalry Betrayal: Both involve Arthas.
    • He orders that Stratholme's people be purged before they are claimed by the undead. That city has never recovered from The Culling and by the time of World of Warcraft, it is the main bastion of the Scourge.
    • "Flight from Lordaeron" from The Frozen Throne. Arthas and what's left of his army flees from the capitol when the dreadlords revolt against him. He is met by Sylvanas Windrunner but she instead massacres his army and tries to kill him slowly. She would have succeeded if not for Kel'thuzad and his necromancers arriving in the nick of time.
  • Chain Lightning: The Far Seer can use this as a spell. The Naga Sea Witch has a variant called Forked Lightning, which hits fewer targets simultaneously.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: The Frozen Throne name drops Kil'jaden in the first campaign before he's revealed as Illidan's master in the second.
    • The fourth mission "Wrath of the Betrayer" has a hidden encounter with an Infernal under the faction "Kil'jaden's Seekers". This suggests that his demon master was sending him help by trying to destroy Maiev.
    • When Illidan is first fought as an enemy hero on the next mission "Balancing the Scales", he is carrying a unique Orb called "Orb of Kil'jaden". This will likely be confusing as all other orbs are elemental. The mission's ending will reveal that he has pledged his loyalty to a new master.
  • The Chessmaster: A fair few: Ner'zhul, Tichondrius, Kel'Thuzad, Sylvanas and Mal'Ganis being prime examples. Most of the plot of Reign of Chaos is orchestrated by Tichondrius, Mal'Ganis and Kel'thuzad, while Ner'zhul surprises and outwits Tichondrius at the end of Reign of Chaos, which he spends much of The Frozen Throne dealing with the consequences of. Sylvanas spends her plotline in The Frozen Throne using her wits to overcome several much more powerful opponents by manipulating them against each other.
  • Chromatic Arrangement:
    • The factions are tinted different. The Alliance is blue, the Horde is red, the Night Elves are green and the undead is purple.
    • Blue fountains restore health, purple fountains restore mana. Green fountains are tainted and have driven anything which drank from them mad. Red fountains is pulsing with demonic energy which makes anything which drinks from it super strong but get enslaved by the Burning Legion.
    • The three most notable locations in The Frozen Throne are Lordaeron (green), Northrend (blue) and Outland (red).
  • 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:
    • Reign of Chaos:
      • The Horde battles the demon possessed Warsong Clan in their final level.
      • Tyrande must fight fellow Elves to rescue Illidan in the Prison Level "Brothers in Blood".
    • The Frozen Throne:
      • The Blood Elves fight for freedom against the faltering Alliance in "The Dungeons of Dalaran" and "The Crossing".
      • There is a three way Undead civil war; The Forsaken VS. Scourge VS. Dreadlord Insurgents.
  • 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 the original game and the expansion.
    • 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.
  • Les Collaborateurs:
    • The Nerubians of Northrend were enslaved by the undead after the War of the Spider ten years prior to the game. They serve the scourge as crypt lords and crypt fiends.
    • The Blood Elves are offshoots of the High Elves who serve the Burning Legion who orchestrated their downfalls because of their dependence on fel magic.
    • Blackthorn was possessed by one of Sylvanas's banshees and convinced his bandit gang to fight for her. Considering they are criminals, this act seems superfluous.
  • Combat Tentacles: The Forgotten One in the Frozen Throne Undead campaign spawns these. However, these tentacles cannot move and are treated as wards.
  • Combined Energy Attack: The Wisps' combined energy is what kills Archimonde at the end of Reign of Chaos.
  • 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 themnote , 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.
  • The Computer Shall Taunt You: In a cutscene preceding one mission in Reign of Chaos 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.
  • Continuing Is Painful: If your hero dies, 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 still need to contend with upkeep costs.
  • Convenient Replacement Character: Through the campaigns, all of one type of unit will have the same voice and personality (usually matching the voiceset of that unit when you control them), such as Footmen, Knights, Grunts, Archers, Necromancers, or Naga Myrmidon. Even if the player kills that particular one that taunted them, the next time that unit shows up in a cutscene they will look and sound the same. One of the most egregious cases of this is two separate Satyr Hellcallers that say the exact same line to both Tyrande and Illidan two missions apart.
    Satyr: Come no further, weakling! Lord Tichondrius commanded us to kill anyone attempting to enter this place, and we shall!
  • Corrupted Character Copy:
    • Arthas Menethil is the fantasy counterpart to King Arthur. Not only is his name similar to the Once and Future King, but his arc is a dark reflection of Arthur's legend. Like Arthur, Arthas claims a magical sword and goes on to be crowned the ruler of a great kingdom with the aide of a wizard, only the blade is the cursed Frostmourne, the kingdom is the Undead Scourge, and the wizard is the Necromancer—turned undead lich—Kel'Thuzad.
    • Other characters borrow traits from StarCraft I but have a dark edge. Like Fenix, Kel'thuzad was killed but resurrected except Kel is a Lich who summons a demonic legion. Like Zeratul, Illidan seeks to help his people despite their mistrust except his lust for power enthralls him to the demons he swore to hunt. Like Jim Raynor, Kael'thas is condemned for accepting help from someone that is considered an enemy yet Kael's journey leads him to becoming a magic hungry villain. Like General Duke, Garithos frowns upon his inferior Kael'thas seeking help from forbidden sources. Duke joined the Sons of Korhal as well while Garithos made a temporary truce with Sylvanas and was killed for it after he outlived his purpose.
  • Crate Expectations: There are many breakable crates (as well as barrels and barricades) in the campaigns, some of which contain different items or runes.
  • Create Your Own Villain: The undead rampage through Quel'Thalas would help create Sylvanas and Kael'Thas, each with their own unique grudge against Arthas.
  • Creative Closing Credits: Reign of Chaos 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.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Siege Engines were originally utterly unable to attack units, though they later could avert this in the Frozen Throne expansion with the Barrage upgrade, allowing them to shoot weak rockets at air units.
  • Critical Hit Class: The Glass Cannon Blademaster. 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 slower (he has active abilities to stun and slow units, however).
  • Crossover Cameo: A hydralisk from StarCraft can join the party in the Night Elf mission "Daughters of the Moon".
  • Cutting Off the Branches:
    • Finishing off Sylvanas Windrunner in the Reign of Chaos Undead Campaign is an optional quest. The entire cutscene of Arthas turning Sylvanas into a Banshee is possible to never see in a playthrough. Whether or not the player killed her, she still becomes one of the main characters of The Frozen Throne Scourge Campaign as a Dark Ranger. Reforged changes this so that she has to be killed and turned into a Banshee before entering Silvermoon.
    • Sapphiron is a Optional Boss, a Blue Dragon that Arthas and Anub'arak can fight and turn into a Frost Wyrm. Even if the player did not kill him, he will show up in the opening cutscene of the next Arthas mission as a Frost Wyrm.
  • 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.
  • Dancing Mook Credits: The game's campaign credits 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 becomes this after she becomes Undead. She leads her faction to victory and independence from both the Lich King and the Burning Legion.
  • Dark Is Not Evil:
    • The Night Elf race, despite seeming to be dark and mysterious, are by-and-large a heroic faction.
    • The Orcs become this in this game, as they are under the leadership of Thrall, who brings them back in touch with their shaman roots. The campaign shows that the Orcs can still embrace their dark nature, as seen with the Blackrock Clan and Fel Orcs.
  • Darker and Edgier: Both Undead campaigns are unrelentingly dark compared to the other campaigns, and especially the previous games. 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 by Racism:
    • Garithos harbors nothing but disdain for any non-human creature and in the end, he ends up dooming himself with his obnoxious attitude. When Balnazzar conquers his city, he's left defenseless without his once loyal allies, the Blood Elves, who would have probably come to his aid if he didn't try to sentence them to death over petty prejudice. Sylvanas goes on to repay Garithos in kind for his treatment of the Blood Elves by using him like an expendable tool and killing him instead of giving him his lands back.
    • Admiral Proudmoore is much more sympathetic than Garithos, but he still ends up forfeiting his life with his bigotry. Even his daughter ends up indirectly supporting Thrall's quest to kill the Admiral because his unprovoked aggression made him such a huge threat to the Horde's kingdom.
  • 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.
  • Decomposite Character: Since unlike its two predecessors, this game averts Cosmetically Different Sides, some returning Alliance and Horde units from the past two games are no longer identical:
    • The Grunt is no longer the Footman's equal, having now greater HP, attacking power (and an upgrade to increase both) and a Loot-Making Attack, though he's also more expensive. The Footman, however, has greater armor and an ability that makes him impervious to Piercing damage attacks at the expense of his movement speed.
    • The Wolf Raider went in the opposite direction; he's no longer a powerful frontline fighter like the Knight, but a mid-tier unit with siege damage and the same Loot-Making Attack as the Grunt that makes him great at Hit-and-Run Tactics, while also having a disabling ability in Ensnare.
  • Decoy Protagonist:
    • Thrall is the first major character introduced. His journey to redeem his race is completed in the 4th campaign. After that, he recedes into the background while Tyrande and Furion take over for the last campaign.
    • Arthas has this role in Reign of Chaos. The Human campaign presents him at first as the heroic Paladin protagonist and then shows his fall to darkness to becoming the first of the Lich King's death knights. The Undead campaign hints him being The Heavy for the rest of the game at first but soon reveals that his master is effectively enslaved by even more powerful demons, and ends the campaign cast aside in favor of Tichondrius. The last two campaigns have Archimonde and his lieutenants taking center stage as the main villains while Arthas almost disappears, only making one final appearance near the end of the Night Elf campaign to betray Tichondrius. The Frozen Throne has him take the Villain Protagonist role in the final act.
    • Maiev Shadowsong starts out as a protagonist of Night Elf campaign of The Frozen Throne 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. The main hero of that mission is Illidan, the villain of the campaign until that point.
    • 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.
    • Similar to Arthas, Illidan is set up to be the central character in The Frozen Throne, with two whole campaigns where he takes prominence as both hero and villain. The third campaign has his appearance only come at the end as the Final Boss and lose definitively.
  • 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 thunder 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.
    • The Naga Myrmidon in The Frozen Throne, in much the same way as the Abomination. One (two on Hard mode) is fought at the end of the first mission "Rise of the Naga". Afterwards the enemies begin building it as a normal heavy melee unit.
    • Doom Guards 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.
  • Demonic Possession: Banshees 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.
  • Demon Sorcerer: The Warlock class draw their power from demonic sources, known in-universe as "Fel Magic". This includes the ability to summon demons as their minions. The original ones were Eredar who joined Sargeras and became leaders and tacticians in the demonic Burning Legion and will train inhabitants of the worlds they target as warlocks prior to invading. Modern warlocks on Azeroth more generally use their abilities to defend their world, but they are still regarded with suspicion by most others.
  • Demoted to Extra:
    • Since the races that made up the Horde split up at the end of Warcraft II, the roles of the non-orc races are greatly reduced.
      • 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 IIInote , before Blizzard realized that even just four races would be hard enough to balance.
      • Forest Trolls were a major part of the Warcraft II Horde only to be turned into neutral creeps and mercenaries in Warcraft III since they were replaced by the Darkspear Tribe as the Horde's troll race. Forest Trolls do come back a little in Reforged where they replaced the headhunter units for Lordaeron's Blackrock Clan.
      • Dragons were the Horde flyer units of Warcraft II only to be turned into neutral creeps and mercenaries in Warcraft III (except the one undead mission where the Blackrock Clan has Red Dragons).
    • Gnomes were cut from WC3 entirely, only seen again when World of Warcraft came around. Later lore handwaved the reason they were missing being them losing their home city and being unable to send forces to assist.
    • The Horde and Alliance navy forces were a major part of Warcraft II, but other than Orc Juggernauts making a brief flashback appearance in the Undead campaign, and popping up in the Warchasers custom game, they're completely absent in Reign of Chaos. The ships make a return in The Frozen Throne, but they're campaign only, and can only be purchased from pre-placed shipyards.
    • Elven Archers basically got replaced by Dwarf Riflemen as the basic ranged unit for the Alliance. The Elven Archers are still in the game, but they're only fought an enemy in the Undead campaign of Reign of Chaos, and are units used by Kael's Blood Elves in the The Frozen Throne campaigns.
    • 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.
    • The Book of Medivh and the Skull of Gul'dan were important artifacts in Beyond the Dark Portal. They make one more appearance in part III.
  • Detrimental Determination: The Blackrock Clan remnants in Lordaeron maintain their zealous adherence to the old demonic ways, even as they are threatened to be crushed by the domineering powers of the Eastern Kingdoms and their old masters no longer having use for them.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • In "The Defense of Strahnbrad" from Reign of Chaos, if you go to the graveyard and wait till night, ghosts will appear that have the same names as the villagers who have died during the level. By default the only ones that appear are those who died in cutscenes or semi-scripted moments, but if you go out of your way to kill the other villagers, they will also appear in the graveyard as well.
    • In "Daughters of the Moon," a micro mission from Reign of Chaos, it's possible to lose too many units throughout the mission that it becomes really difficult to fight through the undead base at the end of the level. Fortunately, there's a secret unguarded path that goes around the right side of the undead base. The secret path is blocked behind a wall of trees that needs to be opened up with siege units, which there just so happens to be ballista / glaive throwers in front of said tree wall.
    • In the 6th Night Elf mission in Reign of Chaos, you're supposed to destroy the Skull of Gul'dan, which gives Illidan a new form with Chaos Damage that the player must then use to kill Tichondrius, who has Divine Armor. However, Tichondrius is not invulnerable and still gets Scratch Damage from other attacks, meaning it would be possible (if tedious) to inflict Death of a Thousand Cuts and complete the mission without destroying the skull first. To avoid this Sequence Breaking, Tichondrius will always teleport your entire army to the middle of the map once his health drops below 50%.
  • 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 temporarily reworked into an area-of-effect buff cast by killing an Undead unit, preferably a skeleton summoned by that same Necromancer).
  • Diabolus ex Machina: While most of the bad things that happen in the campaigns have some build up or foreshadowing, the Naga's sudden appearance in The Founding of Durotar Act II is this. Rexxar travels to Theramore Island to talk to Jaina about human incursions in Durotar and an assassination attempt on Thrall that the Horde believes she is responsible for. She denies it and asks to Rexxar to take her to these hostile humans. Unfortunately, when they all return, they find the base has been razed by the Naga, who had not appeared at all in this campaign (nor do they come back after this segment), and none of them talk about why they did it and who sent them.
  • Disposable Decoy Doppelgänger:
    • The Blademaster's Mirror Image ability creates up to 3 copies of himself (with the same stats, but 0 damage until a patch eventually had them deal 20%) 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.
  • Disturbed by Not Being Disturbed: After becoming a Death Knight, killing his own father, King Terenas Menethil, and leading the destruction of his kingdom of Lordaeron, Arthas admits that he's surprised that, despite having betrayed everyone and everything he once cared about, he doesn't feel any remorse for his actions. Tichondrius, the Dreadlord supervising the Scourge, tells him that it's because Frostmourne took away his soul and ability to feel guilt.
  • Divergent Character Evolution:
    • The Alliance and Horde were pretty much identical, and this changed a bit in Warcraft III. 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. Their buildings are made of wood and can't afford better masonry so they instead build barricades which damage melee units who try to destroy those structures. Orcs also gain the Pillage ability which allows them to steal resources from destroyed buildings
    • 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, 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 the Prophet 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 Dog Was the Mastermind: The renegade Alliance faction from The Frozen Throne bonus campaign are the Kul Tiras Marines, whom the Horde fights just once in the often-neglected prologue campaign.
  • Doomy Dooms of Doom: Demonic characters like to invoke it. There are also the Legion's elite guards: Doom Guards, which can be summoned by the Pit Lord's ultimate, also called "Doom". Also, the main villains of both games invoke it as one of the first things they say.
    Archimonde: "Tremble, mortals, and despair! Doom has come to this world!"
    Illidan Stormrage: "Now go forth... Unleash the tides of doom... Upon all who would oppose us!""
  • Double-Edged Buff:
    • Unholy Frenzy increases attack speed at the cost of steadily draining health.
    • The Berserk ability increases the caster's movement and 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 Spirit Walker also have the ability to turn Ethereal which follows the same rules (minus slowing them).
  • Dragon Variety Pack: III adds several types of dragons (fire-breathing red and black, acid-breathing green, frost-breathing blue, and lightning-breathing bronze, the expansion adds shadowy Nether Dragons), 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.
  • Dream Intro: Reign of Chaos starts with a cinematic of the orcs and humans going to war (again), before it cuts to Thrall waking from his Catapult Nightmare.
  • Driving Question: Throughout Reign of Chaos, the main question is "Who is The Prophet?"
  • 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 Reforged version of "The Fall of Silvermoon". They fight the Undead forces together and take the position of the new boss of the level, replacing the four Granite Golems from the original version of the map.
  • Duel Boss: Rexxar vs Kor'gall, invoked by the latter to settle Rexxar's challenge for leadership of the Stonemaul Ogres. To add to this, Rexxar also cannot use items in the battle.
  • 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.
  • Dying Object Drop Shot: Enemies sometimes drop items related to abilities they had, implying the abilities came from the item (e.g. a magic-immune monster dropping an item that grants spell immunity, a monster with a damage-boosting aura drops an item granting the same aura, etc.).
  • Elemental Shapeshifter: Pandaren Brewmaster's "Storm, Earth, and Fire" ability splits the hero into three different Pandaren 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.
    • There are lots of armies marked as "Elite" in the campaigns The Undead Elite Guard was headed up first by Mal'Ganis then by Tichondrius. Garithos sends his Elite Guard to destroy the portal the blood elves are using in "The Crossing".
  • Elites Are More Glamorous: In Classic, random melee hero units used the same models as named characters from the campaign. In Reforged, while campaign characters retained the grandiose designs from prior and later art, melee heroes were redesigned to look less grand and heroic, a cut below campaign characters but above normal units, reflecting their roles as battle commanders but not rulers.
  • 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 left over piece of dialogue 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 voice line was never changed or removed to match the newer model.
  • Enemy Civil War:
    • In Reign of Chaos, the Scourge fights and destroys the Blackrock Clan, despite both claiming to be loyal to the Burning Legion. Later, Grom Hellscream allows his entire clan to become Fel Orcs and bound to the Legion so Thrall has to stop him.
    • This trope pretty much makes up the whole conflict of The Frozen Throne. Kil'jaden is basically waging a civil war against the Scourge because the Lich King betrayed the Legion near the end of their invasion of Ashenvale. Kil'jaden acts through Illidan and the Dreadlords for this. However, Illidan does take a moment to attack another Legion aligned leader, Magtheridon, in Outland. The Dreadlords took advantage of the weakened Lich King to enslave most of the Undead in Lordaeron to lead an insurgency against Arthas, who is forced out and flees to Northrend to protect the Lich King from Illidan. The Dreadlords also target Sylvanas, who manages to defeat them and come out on top.
  • Escort Mission:
    • "The Long March" is a mission where Thrall has to guide Cairne's caravan of Kodos through the plans past a series of Oases.
    • "Wrath of the Betrayer" is a play on it. While the main quest is for the Night Elf Runner to get to sea, she is be controlled by the player, so they are escorting their own unit.
    • "Shards of the Alliance" requires Maiev and Tyrande to protect Kael'thas' caravan. Compared to "The Long March", this mission is more complex, as Kael's troop AI will fight with you more, you can hire mercenaries, and there is a crossroad where the player can choose a short difficult route or an easy long one.
    • "The Search for Illidan" is a variation on it. While it is effectively a Capture the Flag level, one of the two sides has to escort Illidan's cage (which is invulnerable) to their base. Capturing the wagon is as simple as approaching it when there are no enemy heroes in the vicinity and it will start to automatically move towards the controlling side's base.
    • In the "Mul'gore" submap in Act II of The Founding of Durotar, there is a quest where the player has to bring Baine Bloodhoof (a level 2 Tauren Chieftain) back to Cairne. The player does control him, but he is very fragile and easy to kill.
  • Evil Counterpart:
    • The Blackrock Clan serves as this for Thrall's Horde, who unlike the latter they didn't pull a Heel–Race Turn. They still use units from the previous two games such as Forest Trolls, Warlocks, Ogres, Goblins and Dragons.
    • Blood Elves split from the old Alliance and have turned to the demons to feed their addiction to fel magic. They construct the same buildings as humans.
  • Evil Counterpart Race:
    • Centaurs are often depicted as this to Tauren, being both races of half-human ungulates inspired by greek mythology monsters that fiercely battle for the same territory. Furhter compounded by how the Centaur Khan, the strongest Centaur creep, has three of the same abilities of the Tauren Chieftain.
    • The red-skinned, demonic Fel Orcs are this to the green skinned, regular orcs.
    • Satyrs are Night Elves who were corrupted by the Legion. They look different from Night Elves and have different units, but they use corrupted versions of the same buildings as them.
    • The Frozen Throne introduced the Naga, a race of sea-dwelling, snake-like people who used to be Night Elves.
  • Evil Feels Good: Most of Arthas' post-corruption quotes sound downright delighted.
  • Evil Is Burning Hot: The Burning Legion, as you would expect from the name. They use demonic flames and their elite warriors (Infernals, Doom Guards) are fiery in nature.
  • 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.
  • The Evil Prince: Arthas Menethil devolves into this after he attains Frostmourne and has his soul taken by the Lich King.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: Illidan's voice gets a bit deeper after he absorbs the Skull of Gul'dan and becomes half-demon, though only when transformed. Demon Hunters all have deeper voices in his demon forms.
  • Evil Versus Evil:
    • In the 6th mission of the Undead campaign, Arthas and Kel'thuzad's Scourge face off against the Blackrock Clan, a villainous Legion-loyal orc faction. They had shown up earlier at the beginning of the Human campaign and were murdering villagers and sacrificing innocents there, so unlike the rest of the campaign, there's no shame in killing them.
    • The battles between the Scourge and the Burning Legion that takes up a large portion of the second half of The Frozen Throne, with The Forsaken having a horse in the race too. Also, Illidan versus Magtheridon, which is a bit of a civil war between Burning Legion proxies, as both Illidan and Magtheridon ultimately answer to the same boss.
  • Experience Penalty:
    • In The Frozen Throne, 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). This incentivizes players to fight each other to level up their heroes at a certain point, instead of focusing on creeps.
    • Each mission of the campaigns has a max level of each hero for that, where they will stop receiving experience. This is to prevent Level Grinding and so each mission is balanced towards certain hero levels, as they grow very strong with levels.
  • Fairy Ring: A pair of fairy rings appear as part of an Easter Egg in the first Ashenvale mission of the orc campaign. 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.
  • Fake Ultimate Mook:
    • The ogre in the tutorial mission of Reign of Chaos, although Thrall mentions that they would have a hard battle if the ogre was not asleep, the ogre really is very easy to defeat. 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.
  • Fallen Hero: It is indicated that some paladins from the previous game did not take too well to peacetime. Some became bandit lords. Still others defected to the undead scourge and became death knights.
  • 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. Anetheron also gets the same model change.
  • Fate Worse than Death:
    • Being turned into an undead is generally regarded as this, belying the Prophet’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.
  • 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.
  • Fire Keeps It Dead: Several factions 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 after Arthas has an entire city purged to stop the Scourge, then made common practice in World of Warcraft.
  • 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). He can be considered a Post-Final Boss too, given his lack of impact on the main story of the game and the lower difficulty of the campaign he appears in, so it can be argued the role is given to Illidan Stormrage instead.
  • 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).
  • Fixing the Resource Scarcity: During the early missions of the Orcish Horde portion of the main campaign, the Bloodhoof Tauren are forced to migrate their tribe to the northern grasslands of Mulgore because their enemies, the centaurs, have driven all the game animals away from their current homeland and their chieftain Cairne fears starvation if they stay.
  • Flaming Sword: Doom Guards wield them as their primary weapon, using them for melee combat or to throw fireballs.
  • Flesh Golem: The abominations are multiple corpses stitched together and raised through necromancy. The Frozen Throne gives actual flesh golems, being part metal and part flesh.
  • 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.
  • Fog Feet: The Firelord hero has these, which ends up making him look very top-heavy.
  • Foreshadowing: While hardly discernible, the first sign of Arthas's spiritual corruption upon taking Frostmourne in the final Alliance mission is him reading his holy book upside down during spellcasting.
  • Forged by the Gods: Frostmourne... well it was forged by something pretty powerful, anyway. The end of The Frozen Throne reveals the Lich King used to keep it in the Frozen Throne but thrust it out to get it to Arthas.
  • Framing the Guilty Party: Arthas hires troll and ogre mercenaries to scuttle the fleet to prevent his army from deserting. He then tells his army that the mercs sank the ships without telling them he hired those guys.
  • Franchise Three-Invention: The game is a huge step up from the previous two, greatly expanding the world and lore, introducing two new factions and countless new species/races, Hero Units are now an integral part of the game, RPG Elements have to be managed, etc.
  • 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.
  • 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.

    G-M 
  • Game-Breaking Bug: Among Reforged's many issues, the 2.0 patch introduced a bug where some units have no models (only shadows) and can't be selected or targeted... by the player. Letting units auto-target them is the only way they can be dealt with.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration:
    • 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. The final level has the Lich King give him all the remaining power he has left to ensure Arthas wins, allowing Arthas to gain experience faster and quickly catch back up to level 10.
    • Mannoroth's blood empowered Grom and the Warsong Clan with Chaos damage that can pierce through any and all armor. In a CGI cutscene, Grom effectively turned Mannoroth's own power against him by destroying him with one precise Chaos-infused strike.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • Sometimes (for gameplay reasons) units are classified in certain ways they really shouldn't be. This primarily applies to units that are Undead (as it determines if they will be healed or damaged by spells like Holy Light or Death Coil or if they'll be immune to Disease Cloud). Acolytes aren't Undead but are classified as such, while the commonly playable demonic units (Infernals, Doom Guards, Fel Stalkers) are but neutral demons like Succubi and Eredar are treated as living. Another example is Centaurs in The Founding of Durotar, which starting in Act II are classified as "Tauren", so that Deathcallers can revive other Centaurs with Ancestral Spirit (a spell that only targets dead Tauren units).
    • In addition to Undead and demonic heroes being much stronger in lore than in gameplay (as seen with Arthas and Varimathras), the Undead Scourge itself is supposed to be a tireless army that grow stronger with each foe they slay. They are still bound by Real-Time Strategy rules of requiring gold, lumber, and food to function as an army. In story, they are explicitly psychically controlled slaves to either the Lich King or the Dreadlords and would no doubt see gold as Worthless Yellow Rocks.
    • Some heroes have abilities that don't fit what they are in lore or are misplaced in the setting. Admiral Proudmoore is a Badass Normal in lore but has weather-based powers, and the demon worshipping Blackrock Clan has shamanistic Far Seers as their heroes instead of Warlocks. The latter was changed to Warlocks in Reforged, but the abilities remain the same, which only partly addressed the issue.
    • The campaign Naga Sea Witch, Lady Vashj, can swim given her aquatic nature. The Naga Sea Witch cannot swim in the normal game for balance reasons, however.
    • Arthas as a Death Knight is canonically stronger than he was as a Paladin, yet he starts the undead campaign at level 1 and Frostmourne has lost its power from the finale of the human campaign. The story still treats him as a powerhouse in spite of that, which can be a little odd when he defeats Uther, a level 10 hero and veteran warrior, when the previous level had him sneaking around normal guards because he'd lose in a straight fight.
    • The opening cutscene of the last mission of Reign of Chaos has Malfurion go to the summit of Mt. Hyjal and leave Tyrande to help Jaina and Thrall fend off Archimonde's forces while the Archdruid makes preparations. In the actual mission, Malfurion is fully playable, and the player will definitely be using him to defend as much as Tyrande. This can make it a little strange in the cutscene after Archimonde destroys Jaina's base where he demands that Malfurion come out of hiding.
    Archimonde: Stormrage! Show yourself! Or do you intend to have mortal girls do all your fighting for you?
    • Archimonde is immune to magic attacks in gameplay, but during the final level of "Reign of Chaos", Thrall manages to hit him with a blast of lightning magic before he teleports away, with Archimonde even saying the attack hurt. Try something similar with any of your units that can use magic attacks, and it will not damage him or allow him to be targeted.
    • An antagonist not seeing Malfurion when he's there happens again in the mission "Balancing the Scales", where Malfurion and Tyrande arrive together to save Maiev from Illidan. Illidan is an enemy hero who joins attack waves against the player's three heroes, and he has dialogue when he runs into Tyrande. However, throughout the mission will not have any dialogue when he sees or fights his brother. It's only at the end of the mission when Malfurion confronts him in a cutscene that Illidan reacts as if he's seeing his brother for the first time since Reign of Chaos, even if they were fighting just minutes ago.
    Illidan: Brother! What are you doing here?
    • Garithos is easily killed by Varimathras with one attack, but gameplay wise he's a unique hero with abilities that would make him a beast in melee combat including Avatar for spell immunity, meaning he'd be durable enough to survive the attack, or even No-Sell it. In fact, if you fight Garithos with Varimathras in the previous level, it's not going to end well with Varimathras.
    • Kael'thas talks a lot about how the Blood Elves are barely scraping by after the Scourge rampaged through Quel'Thalas, with it being clear his people have barely enough forces to hold out against the undead alone, and it is why he accepts Lady Vashj's help despite it getting him into trouble. While the game does account for this by not letting you use the majority of the Alliance's troops and instead you have variants of units like footmen and archers, Kael is able to field a massive amount of Blood Elves in Outland and Northrend that doesn't get discussed or acknowledged by anyone. He goes from barely being able to lead his people from a moderately large undead force, to being able to throw forces into two massive battles that result in massive losses.
  • Garrisonable Structures: Orc Burrows can contain up to 4 Peons to gain a ranged attack. The attack rate depends on the number 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:
    • Arthas massacres his people and sacrifices his army to defeat Mal'ganis but he turns to the Undead Scourge anyway.
    • Tyrande killed fellow Elves to release Illidan (a traitor to their people) from his prison to fight the Burning Legion. When Maiev Shadowsong chastises her for it in the expansion, Tyrande's response is a simple I Did What I Had to Do.
    • The bigoted Garithos, who planned to get Kael and the Blood Elves killed by the Undead.
    • Jaina's father Daelin Proudmoore who wants to continue fighting the orcs, despite their peace treaty with Jaina's forces.
  • Generational Saga: In both games, the children of two of the protagonists from the previous games turn against them. Prince Arthas joins the Undead Scourge and kills his father King Terenas to usurp the throne. Jaina Proudmoore lets her father Admiral Daelin be killed in battle against the Horde to preserve the peace between it and the Alliance.
  • Gentle Giant: The Tauren, who are giant cow-men and have insane stats, but are generally peaceful. Don't piss them off though, as their attack lines are among the angriest in the game.
  • 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: Despite his pre-eminent influence throughout the entire game and his role in the creation of the Scourge, corruption of Arthas and plotting against the Legion during their invasion of Ashenvale, Lich King Ner'zhul never appears in person in Reign of Chaos, having his spirit permanently encased in the Icecrown Citadel. He makes his appearance in Frozen Throne when Kil'jaeden tasks Illidan to confront the Lich King head-on.
  • Give Chase with Angry Natives: It's (sometimes) possible to pull this off with creeps. 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.
  • 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.
    • The campaigns indulge 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, Grom, and Sylvanas all have alarmingly large amounts of cutscene dialogue recycled in their unit responses. Bovan Windtotem in The Founding of Durotar has all his dialogue taken from the default Spirit Walker's voiceset, making him come off extremely vague and taciturn in his exchange with Rexxar.
    • 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: The game has color coding for each player and uses certain colors for good characters (and factions) and certain for evil ones. The three main colors used for this are Blue (almost entirely for heroic characters), Red (used for both heroic and evil characters), and Purple (used exclusively for evil characters).
    • Outside of the main three; Light Blue, Grey, and Dark Green are associated with Human factions (with Dark Green being given to the least sympathetic Kul'Tiras faction), Teal with Night Elves, and Green with the Undead and Burning Legion. Other colors such as orange and brown are used loosely by all factions.
  • Great Offscreen War:
    • The Burning Legion had battled the Night Elves 10,000 years prior.
    • The War of the Spider occurred in between the end of Warcraft II and the start of this game. It explains how Northrend became the stronghold of the undead scourge.
  • Green Hill Zone:
    • Reign of Chaos
      • Played straight with the human campaign, the first part of which takes place in green and pleasant farming country before progressing to some noticeably more hostile environments. The Wham Episode moving into a city almost feels intentional and the climax takes place in an extremely hostile polar setting.
      • Inverted with last (Night Elf) campaign. The entire campaign takes place in Ashenvale Forest. While there is the penultimate mission in Felwood where the land has been visibly corrupted by demonic influence, the final battle is in the beautiful forests of Mount Hyjal.
    • The Frozen Throne
      • The Sentinels campaign starts in Ashenvale, moves to the ruined Broken Isles, and the final act moves to the blighted ruins of Lordaeron.
      • The Blood Elf campaign begins in Dalaran which is surrounded by evergreen woods. This is a stark contrast to the barren red soil of Outland in the later levels.
      • Inverted in the bonus campaign (which is last to be released and unlocked last in Reforged) which takes place in the tropical Durotar in contrast to the fallen Lordaeron, the barren red, Mars-like Outland, and Northrend.
  • Guest-Star Party Member:
    • In Reign of Chaos:
      • Jaina Proudmoore is playable only in the third and fourth missions of the Human campaign and leaves before she's able to hit level 6, so players don't get to use an Archmage's full skillset. When she's next seen in the Orc campaign, she's leveled up to 10.
      • Kel'thuzad is playable in the sixth and seventh missions of the Human campaign but becomes an NPC in the final mission that has to be protected as he needs to summon Archimonde to Azeroth.
    • In The Frozen Throne:
      • After acting as the Arc Villain throughout the Sentinel campaign, Illidan (along with his Naga) becomes a playable character in the final mission, acting alongside his brother to save Tyrande from the Undead attacks.
      • Akama joins the assault on the Magtheridon's citadel in the final Blood Elf mission (after previously being an optional allied hero in the last mission), with his and his Draenei's stealth skills being indispensable for the fortress infiltration.
      • Kel'thuzad is only playable for one single mission yet again in the first mission of the Scourge campaign. He stays in Lordaeron to look after Arthas' land, but the narrative quickly drops him in favor of Sylvanas and the Dreadlords.
      • Freed from Detheroc's mind control, Lord Garithos agrees to a begrudging alliance with Sylvanas against Balnazzar in the Scourge campaign, with his Human remnants acting as a playable force alongside the Forsaken. Once the last Dreadlord is defeated, Garithos is quickly disposed of by Varimathras now that he has outlived his usefulness.
      • Drek'thar is briefly playable in an optional quest in The Founding of Durotar, Act I in the submap "Thunder Ridge" as Rexxar helps him learn about what's driving the thunder lizards mad, then put them down.
      • Jaina Proudmoore, who was last playable in the first campaign of Reign of Chaos, joins Rexxar's party in the Frozen Throne Orc campaign, seeking to investigate the cause behind the human incursions against Thrall's Horde (and defeat the rogue Naga who slayed the Kul Tiras forces along the way). She leaves immediately when she returns to Theramore with her Horde's companions so she won't have to betray her truce with Thrall or fight against her own father.
  • Hair-Raising Hare: The Easter-egg hunt-themed custom map by Blizzard includes horrifying bunnies.
  • Hard-Coded Hostility: By necessity, the creeps (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).
  • Happily Married: Malfurion Stormrage and Tyrande Whisperwind. The two are very much in love and work together to save the world, even if they have a few disagreements (mostly about Illidan).
  • Happy Ending Override: The previous Warcraft game ends with the Orcs defeated by the Alliance. At least, the Orcs reassesses their priorities and expels the Cult of the Damned from their ranks. However, the Cult survives and finds new converts among humans. Years later and the Cult is ready to pave the way for the Burning Legion's invasion.
  • Hazard Attack:
    • The Scourge can research the Disease Cloud ability, which gives Abomination and Meat Wagon attacks a Damage Over Time ability. It also creates a Disease Cloud when the unit dies (or attacks, in the latter's case) that gives the debuff to any enemy unit that walks in it.
    • The Horde can research Burning Oil, which causes the Demolishers' attacks to create a small area of flames on the ground for a few seconds.
    • The Blood Mage's Flame Strike leaves lingering flames on the ground.
  • Healing Spring:
    • The aptly named Fountains of Health and Mana, which restore what they're named after.
    • The campaigns have two additional fountains: Defiled Fountains, which often cause problems for wildlife and sometimes will unlock a quest to purify them, and the Well of Chaos, a fountain tainted by demon blood that causes the Orcs to drink from it to turn into Chaos Orcs. Unlike the fountains in the previous point, these fountains have no gamplay effect and their existence only affects the story.
  • 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 Flame Strike. 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.
    • Siege units all have it built in, at the cost of have a non-homing projectile. Some units like Frost Wyrms, Chimeras and Dragons also have built-in splash attacks.
  • Hero Unit: The game refined the trope much further than Warcraft II by borrowing a page or two to the Diablo series in that hero units now gain levels with each enemy unit slaughtered, have an inventory that allows them to gain bonuses from various items and can be resurrected. Some heroes also have auras that benefit the units around them. The Orc campaign of The Frozen Throne took it even further by being a quasi-RPG featuring nothing but hero units as protagonists, being basically a prototype of World of Warcraft in everything bar the number of characters and the third person view.
    • 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.
  • 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. Though they do fight the Warsong Clan when they encroach in Ashenvale.
  • Heroic Team Revolt: Arthas decides to purge the city of Stratholme before its people turn into undead. His mentor Uther the Lightbringer and his friend Jaina Proudmoore abandon him, perhaps hoping he will not go through this drastic course of action if they were not there. He does not and years later, Stratholme is still scarred by the horror and tragedy of "The Culling".
  • Hijacked by Ganon:
    • While Illidan Stormrage and his naga is the villain for almost all the missions in the first campaign in The Frozen Throne, the final level has the Undead Scourge, the villains from Reign of Chaos, take center stage once again. This continues for the rest of the expansion.
    • Subverted with the overall conflict of The Frozen Throne, where the Burning Legion is trying to hijack the main villain status from the newly independent Lich King and the Undead Scourge, but they fail. The end of The Frozen Throne makes it clear that the Lich King is now the top dog when it comes to threatening Azeroth.
  • Hold the Line: Every race has such a mission at least once.
    • Reign of Chaos examples:
      • "Countdown to Extinction" has the Orcs and their new Troll allies fighting off murlocs while their ships are being repaired and the island they are on is sinking.
      • "March of The Scourge" has Arthas leading the defense of the town of Hearthglen from the undead until Uther arrives.
      • "Frostmourne" has a section at the beginning where Arthas and Muradin leave Captain Falric in charge of protecting the base while they retrieve Frostmourne. After Arthas gets the sword, he and his army perform a counterattack.
      • "Under the Burning Sky" has the undead fighting off the Alliance forces of Dalaran while Kel'thuzad summons the demon lord Archimonde.
      • "Twilight of the Gods", the final level of the whole game, has the Horde, Alliance and Night Elves defending the World Tree from tides of demons and undead.
    • The Frozen Throne examples:
      • The fifth Night Elf mission, "Balancing the Scales" uses this as framing for a Timed Mission: rather than defending your base for a determined amount of time, it is so that Malfurion and Tyrande arrive before Maiev's dwindling resources run out.
      • "The Crossing" has the Blood Elves building towers to defend Kel'Thuzad's portal from being destroyed by Garithos who is sending waves of suicide bombers against it.
      • "Gates of the Abyss" has a bunch of mini defense missions instead of one big mission. Illidan must capture each demon gate then he must be protected from swarms of demons until he closes them.
  • Horned Humanoid: Illidan, Dreadlords, Kil'jaeden, and — well, Malfurion is more antlered, but still.
  • Horrifying the Horror:
    • Orcs are a Proud Warrior Race Guy who thanks to demonic corruption are naturally bloodthirsty. But the demons of the Burning Legion still terrify them, with good reason.
    • Himself no stranger to treachery and brutality, Arthas is taken aback by Archimonde's swift decision to transfer the control over the Scourge to Tichondrius as he commences his quest of destruction. Kel'thuzad, however, assures him that this is also a part of the Lich King's plan and later events prove him right.
    • 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. Tichondrius is very much a Yes-Man to him to keep him placated, and his Bad Boss tendency shows up when he kills a Doom Guard for losing Tyrande.
    • 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!
    • 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".
  • Horror Hunger:
    • Demons and Blood Elves are driven by their hunger for magic.
    • 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: Undead buildings spread Blight which kills the surrounding ground, converts trees into dead wood, but enables the Undead to regenerate and build on such ground. Later lore makes it clear this is in effect in the story as well.
  • 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.
  • Hungry Weapon: Frostmourne, which consumes the souls of those slain upon it. This actually leads to Arthas' catchphrase, "Frostmourne hungers!"
  • 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.
      Huntress: You were right, sisters. These green-skinned brutes have no respect for life! Slay them in Elune's name!
    • A pretty similar exchange happens with the possessed Warsong Clan towards Thrall.
      Fel Grunt: You are the humans' lapdog! We serve only the Legion now!
  • Ice Magic Is Water: 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.
  • Immortality Field:
    • The prison 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 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.
  • Impaling Arthropodal Legs:
    • The Crypt Lord is a massive undead Biological Mashup of scarab beetle and praying mantis. While it fights by stabbing and slashing with its mantis-like claws, Signature Move is Impale, which causes a line of tendrils to erupt from the ground and send its victims in the air, stunning them on landing.
    • In the background story "Road to Damnation", Anub'arak kills someone by stabbing them through the heart with one of his claws.
  • Implied Infernal Destination: Uther the Lightbringer tells Arthas Menethil "I dearly hope that there's a special place in Hell waiting for you, Arthas!" When the two confront each other after Arthas' Face–Heel Turn.
  • 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.
  • Impersonation-Exclusive Character: It is never made clear who "the Oracle" is supposed to be in the Orc campaign in Reign of Chaos, and whether if he is a real person is left to anyone's guess. While Cairne speaks of him like he has been the stuff of legend among the Taurens for generations, the search for the Oracle only brings Thrall to the Prophet, who uses this as an excuse to bring the Orcs and Humans together, but it isn't clear if Medivh was always the person behind the legend, since he is a relative newcomer to Kalimdor.
  • 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 from the start. It's not until near the end that creeps are as strong as they are in the melee game.
    • All over the place in The Founding of Durotar due to the campaign raising the level cap and giving easy access to powerful items. In Act II, most creeps have increased stats to pose a threat to Rexxar's party, this reaches the point that many normal creeps such as Murlocs that deal over 100 damage per hit. The campaign's bosses are mostly powerful beasts who would just be high level creeps in the normal game, but in this campaign have tougher stats than world-threatening demon lords like Archimonde, Magtheridon or Tichondrius. The campaign's Big Bad, Admiral Proudmoore is a character who in canon would be weaker than Uther the Lightbringer, but he is stronger in gameplay than the aforementioned demon lords to make him a proper Final Boss.
  • Increasingly Lethal Enemy:
    • High-level paladins 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. Their lava spawns also multiply if they attack a certain number of times.
  • Inertial Impalement: 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 Container: Peasants and Peons collect gold in an inexhaustable supply of Stock Money Bags that come from nowhere.
  • 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:
    • Humans can convert Peasants into Militia that have the same amount of health but more armour, move faster and around the same damage as a Footman; this can only be done at a nearby (starting) Town Hall or any Keep or Castle. The effect doesn't usually last long enough to reach an enemy base and do any appreciable damage except at the very beginning of a game.
    • Meanwhile, Orcs can garrison peons into burrows and turn food buildings into temporary towers and the Undead actually use their basic fighters as lumber harvesters so their bases almost always have militia present.
    • As for the Night Elves, their buildings can defend themselves. The Night Elf wisps can also use their suicidal Detonate ability to damage summoned units and drain Mana from heroes and spellcasters.
  • Instant-Win Condition: It is to 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, 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: The in-game time of day affects the Night Elves the most, as they can shadowmeld only at night, can research night vision and their Moon Wells only regenerate 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 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: Heroes can carry items that improve the damage dealt by their weaponry, such as Orbs of various types (fire, lightning, venom...) and Claws of Attack.
  • It's Quiet… Too Quiet: This is how the orcs describe Ashenvale forest. Soon enough, they are attacked by night elves.
  • Jerkass: Most of the characters (even the evil ones) are pretty agreeable to their allies, but Lord Garithos is nigh insufferable.
  • 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.
  • Knight Templar: Knights in this game are not portrayed in a flattering light. They could not give a damn who they kill so long as they do it for king and country. The first time that Knights can be trained is in the culling of Stratholme. One Knight in "Dissension" tells his comrades to massacre the mercenaries hired by Arthas. Garithos is a Knight turned warlord whose discrimination to the Elves weakens his own army and then there's Arthas himself who damns his own soul in the name of defending his homeland but becomes a Death Knight in service to the monsters he used to fight.
  • Knight Templar Parent: Daelin Proudmoore insists to Jaina that the orcs have been irredeemably 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.
  • Lady of War: Tyrande and Maiev. Both are very graceful and feminine night elf leaders, and extremely badass.
  • Legacy Boss Battle: There are two from Diablo (1997). Both are Optional Bosses.
    • The Skeleton King in "A Destiny of Flame and Sorrow" is a powerful King Mook skeleton whose main ability is summoning a bunch of other Undead, just like the Skeleton King boss in Diablo.
    • The Butcher in "Lord of Outland" is a more explicit example, where it will play the same line from the original game when approached.
  • Lawful Stupid: Tyrande in Reign of Chaos and Maiev in The Frozen Throne. Tyrande grows out of it eventually to ally with Jaina and Thrall. 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 hero 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 Reign of Chaos 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.
  • Legendary Weapon: Frostmourne has this reputation in universe. Given that it used to be inside the Frozen Throne, it would make sense that whoever wields it would be extremely powerful.
  • Level in Reverse: Once Maiev goes through the Tomb of Sargeras, she finds Illidan getting his hands on a magical artifact. He then collapses the tomb so Maiev has to escape by going back the way she came.
  • Light Is Not Good: Arthas during the first Human campaign and Grand Marshal Garithos both have holy powers, but Arthas becomes eviller as the story progresses while Garithos is a plain racist asshole.
  • Limited-Use Magical Device: 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. A stacking system is implemented into the Reforged campaigns.
  • Living Ghost: 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: 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.
  • Location Capture Boost: The Night Elves and Undead can entangle/haunt gold mines for their own workers to use, creating another structure on top of it that must also be destroyed by other players before they can use the mines.
  • 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.
  • 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: 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.
  • Make Way for the New Villains:
    • At first serving as the introductory villains for the Human campaign, the demon-worshipping remnants of the Blackrock Clan are quickly displaced by the Undead Scourge as the Burning Legion's chosen vanguard. One mission of the Undead campaign is even dedicated to killing them.
    • The Underworld Minions in the prologue campaign defeat and enslave the human expedition and become the main antagonists of the second half of the campaign (though only in Reforged and the original Reign of Chaos demo). While they disappear from the rest of the game, the very similar Naga faction rises up as the main antagonists of the expansion.
  • 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 with a passive ability called Feedback, dealing bonus damage based on the mana burned as well as getting a damage bonus against summoned units.
  • Marathon Boss: Eldritch Deathlord, the ultimate opponent of The Founding of Durotar has 10,000 (14,000 on Hard Mode) health, 120 armor, with the ability Rejuvenation (heal over time) and the passive ability to evade 15% of attacks. Even with the overpowered heroes the player has, the Eldritch Deathlord takes at minimum two minutes to defeat.
  • Marathon Level: "The Druids Arise" for the Night Elves. Even if the mission isn't long, there are a lot of objectives. First, they must gather resources on the march (thank goodness that they're buildings are living trees) while being bombarded by enemy air units. Then they must storm an enemy base and take it so they can put down a permanent base. They must then go through a haunted glade filled with ghosts and skeletons which never stop spawning until the Mini-Boss at the end is dead. And when they get to the Barrow Dens, they must destroy the Night Elf base which has been corrupted by satyrs. Whew! That's a lot.
  • Mauve Shirt: In campaigns, there are player-controlled units who are stronger than regular ones and often play a role in cinematics or lore, but who are ultimately expendable and can't be resurrected through an altar:
    • The Captain in the Human campaign is an empowered Footman with gold-ornamented armor and authority among the Human forces. He appears in cinematics as the figurehead for Arthas' army in relation to the Prince and other characters.
    • Despite her earlier role as Hero Antagonist, Undead Sylvanas in the original Undead campaign is just a stronger Banshee without the Possession ability. Reforged changes her into a hero.
    • Downplayed in the Orc campaign mission "Where Wyverns Dare", where the orc who informs Thrall about the Human base is called "Orc Scout" in both the cinematic and the game proper, but he has the exactly same stats as a regular Wolf Rider, despite being named differently. Reforged removes his unique name.
    • Shandris Feathermoon, the captain of the Night Elf Sentinels, is playable in the final mission as a stronger Archer unit with a unique model and voice acting. Reforged retroactively adds her to the first mission as Tyrande’s companion, replacing a regular Archer who, despite being called Shandris in the cinematic, lacked any unique traits.
    • Naisha is a powerful Huntress who acts as Maiev's confidant in the first few Sentinel campaign mission. After she dies by Illidan's magic, Maiev hardens her heart further in her pursuit of the Betrayer.
    • The third mission of the Blood Elf campaign initially revolves around rescuing the Blood Elf lieutenants, who are represented as a stronger variation of Elven Swordsmen who are immune to magic. Despite their supposed importance in the lore, they never feature again after this mission.
  • 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.
  • The Medic: All factions have a dedicated medic unit and a hero with a healing spell.
    • The Alliance have the Elf Priest unit, with a cheap auto-cast Heal spell, and the Paladin, whose Holy Light can heal non-undead or damage undead.
    • Trolls are the Horde's medics. Witch Doctors can drop Healing Wards and Shadow Hunters have Healing Wave similar to Chain Lightning.
    • Undead get Obsidian Statues, which restore health and mana passively. Death Knights can heal undead units (or damage non-undead) with Death Coil.
    • Night Elves have Druids of the Claw with Rejuvenation, a dispellable heal-over-time, and the Keeper of the Grove, with the area-effect heal Tranquility.
    • The mercenary Goblin Alchemist has Healing Spray which heals an area of both allies and enemies. The spell was eventually adjusted to only heal allies, but a lower amount.
  • 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).
  • Memento MacGuffin: After King Terenas' death, Uther takes possession of the urn that contains the ashes of the Lordaeron's beloved monarch, which, unfortunately, is also what Arthas needs to carry the remains of Kel'Thuzad to Quel'Thalas.
  • Mercenary Units:
    • Some maps have Mercenary Camps, which allow any player to hire certain creeps. Most are underpowered compared to standard units and generally not worth hiring, except a few that have special abilities. The mercenaries are the focus of the second-to-last mission of the human campaign. Arthas hires mercenaries to burn his forces' own ships before they reach them and retreat back home, and then turns around and blames them for it.
    • Maps that can support six or more players have Dragon Roosts that allow players to hire Dragons. The fully-grown Dragons are easily the strongest units outside of the campaign, and also the most expensive units in the game by a wide margin.
    • Neutral Goblin Laboratories (regardless of tileset), allow any player to hire three Goblin units. The Frozen Throne added Goblin Shipyards on water-based maps, where all players can hire Transport Ships.
    • The expansion pack The Frozen Throne introduced the Tavern, where any player can hire one of eight Hero Units (though no more than three of the standard or mercenary heroes). It also allows you to revive a dead hero instantly, but at a much higher cost, at half HP, and no mana.
  • Meteor-Summoning Attack: Several appear in Reign of Chaos.
    • 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.
  • Mid-Season Twist:
    • Reign of Chaos:
      • Prologue campaign note  ("Riders on the Storm"): Thrall and the orcs meet a tribe of trolls led by Zul'jin.
      • Human campaign note  ("The Culling"): Arthas slaughters an infected city then chases Mal'Ganis to Northrend. Jaina heeds the prophet's warning to flee to Kalimdor.
      • Undead campaign note  ("The Fall of Silvermoon"): Arthas turns Sylvanas into a banshee, corrupts the Sunwell and resurrects Kel'Thuzad.
      • Orc campaign note  ("The Hunter of Shadows"): Grom and his clan kill the Night Elf demigod but they are enslaved by Mannoroth.
      • Night Elf campaign note  ("The Druids Arise"): Malfurion reveals the Burning Legion's goal capture the World Tree.
    • The Frozen Throne:
      • Sentinels campaign note  ("Wrath of the Betrayer"): Maiev asks for help from Malfurion to capture Illidan.
      • Alliance campaign note  ("The Search for Illidan"): The Blood Elves pledge themselves to Illidan. He also reveals that he worked for the Burning Legion.
      • Scourge campaign note  ("The Return to Northrend"): Arthas must go through the Old Nerubian Kingdom to reach the Frozen Throne. First appearance of Anub'Arak and Sapphiron.
  • Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot:
    • Reign of Chaos Human campaign: Death cult spreads plague —> Demon invasion.
    • The Frozen Throne's bonus campaign: Disruption of thunder lizard habitat —> Renegade humans trying to start another war with the Horde.
  • Mirror Character: Gromash Hellscream falls into a similar trap in his side-story of the Horde campaign. This journey calls back to Arthas Menethil becomming corrupted by Frostmourne. Grom seeks out a dangerous power to defeat his overwhelming enemies and he and his fellow Orcs become corrupted by the Blood of Mannoroth much like Artha had his soul stolen by Frostmourne and he became loyal to the Undead Sourge. Much as Grom is chained to Mannoroth's will, Arthas is chained to the will of Ner'zhul who was once an Orc himself interestingly enough.
  • Mirror Match: Occurs in the Undead campaigns
    • There is a three way Undead civil war in The Frozen Throne. This is the straightest example of this trope as all three factions use the same units.
    • Two levels ("The Fall of Silvermoon" in Reign of Chaos and "Dreadlord's Fall" in The Frozen Throne) allow the player to have a Banshee possess an enemy Worker Unit which allows the player to build their own Alliance armies against their own countrymen.
  • 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 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, leading a group of Kul'Tiras soldiers in Act II.
    • The liches fulfill this role for Balnazzar's forces, and the Fel Blademasters fulfill this role for Magtheridon, 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.
  • Mook Maker: These are just from the main factions. There are any more examples.
    • The Alliance have the Paladin who can Resurrect dead allied units, the Archmage who can summon water elementals and the Blood Elf Mage who can summon a Phoenix as its ultimate spell.
    • The Horde have the Far Seer which summons spirit wolves, and the Blademaster which summons decoys to confuse enemies.
    • The Undead have Necromancers which summons skeletons, Death Knights which turns both ally and enemy corpses into invincible zombies for a short time, the Dreadlords which summons demonic Infernals and Crypt Lords which spawn Carrion Beetles.
    • The Night Elves have the Keeper of the Grove who can turn trees into treants, and the Warden with her Spirit of Vengeance spell.
  • More Hateable Minor Villain:
    • The Blackrock Clan, while just the Starter Villain and The Remnant of the Horde from the last game, manages to be seen as much eviler than the Scourge. They engage in kidnapping, human sacrifice, and demon worship. Unlike the Scourge, who are basically all slaves to the Lich King, they choose to perform the evil to appease the demons and fail to accept they are no longer the Legion's agents.
    • Lord Garithos is a pretty minor villain in the setting, but his racism and the fact that he's completely unreasonable towards Kael and the Blood Elves really makes him more hateable than any of the demonic leaders.
  • Mounted Mook: A number of them:
    • 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 is 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.
  • 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.
  • Myth Arc: The redemption of Medivh and the search for the Tomb of Sargeras are both concluded here.

    N-S 
  • 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.
  • Nerf: The game saw many units and abilities nerfed to balance online play. These occurred via patches and, especially, when the Frozen Throne expansion was released. A few notable examples include:
    • The cooldown time for the Demon Hunter's Mana Burn ability was increased in one early patch when it proved to be too overpowered. Prior to this, when attacked, the Demon Hunter could stand near the Night Elf Moon Wells (which instantly recharged mana,) allowing the DH to deal both damage and drain the mana of the enemy heroes using Mana Burn until the wells dried up.
    • The Witch Doctor's Healing Wards saw their HP reduced so that nearly any unit could destroy them in one hit. Prior to this, it was a popular technique to have a group of "docs" all place Healing Wards near the player's army, healing said army and forcing to the opponent to focus their fire on the wards to destroy them.
    • The additions of extra weapon and armor types in Frozen Throne were seen as nerfing a number of units. No longer could spellcasters, who now did Magic damage instead of Piercing damage, be relied upon for anti-air duties. (Air units being strong vs. Magic damage.) Likewise, Huntresses went from medium armor to unarmored, making them useless as a primary melee unit. (Unarmored being weak to the Piercing attacks of most ranged units, and vulnerable to siege weapons. [1])
    • A buffed example in Frozen Throne is the ability of the Night Elf buildings to defend themselves without uprooting. A popular tactic prior to this was for attacking armies to "rush" the Night Elf player, forcing him to uproot his trees to defend himself and thus, cut off resource flow and unit production until the buildings were re-rooted. Unlike the Orc burrows and Human militia, which could each return to work immediately after the attack, the Night Elf player would be delayed waiting for his gold mine to become entangled once again.
    • Humans were gradually toned down and buffed in other aspects over time for Competitive Balance sake, but the most pronounced change was in the towers they can build; in counter-chronological order, the "Masonry Upgrade" (Building HP) effectiveness was reduced in half for all three tiers which also affects every building the Humans can build, the towers were nerfed to gain 1/2 the armor points from the same upgrade, the tower's initial phase (before an upgrade is selected) was reduced in hitpoints and given ZERO armor mitigation and in The Frozen Throne expansion's release, the towers were changed to an armor class that takes full damage from all attacks, but is vulnerable to magical damage. This was all likely an effort to nerf the effectiveness of using towers to fortify an attack on an enemy town and the annoyance of attacking a human town that is swarming with towers. The Sole EXCEPTION is the Cannon Tower upgrade, which was allowed to keep the "Fortified Armor" attribute.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers for Reforged promised completely revamped cutscenes which ended up being cut completely from the final game.
  • New Perk Every Level: Every time a hero gains a level, they gain a skill point which can empower their spells (in some maps / campaign, especially fan-made ones, you can also give the hero a stat boost instead of their skills), though some spells require the hero to reach level 3/5/6 to be available.
  • 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.
  • New Weapon Target Range: While the campaigns averts this for the most part, there are two missions in The Frozen Throne that plays it straight.
    • In the second to last mission of the Night Elf campaign you have to kill four Naga Summoners before the time limit expires. The Summoners are ethereal (meaning that they're immune to physical damage, but take 66% more damage from spells and magic attacks) and are constantly channeling a spell. This is the mission that gives you Faerie Dragons, whose Mana Flare ability causes magic damage to enemies casting spells, making them excellent choices to complete the objective.
    • The first Blood Elf mission, where you first get the Spellbreaker, has a custom creep called the Blood Wizard, a Renegade Wizard with a tinted red model and different spells. Said spells? Bloodlust (which the Spellbreakers can take with Spell Steal) and Summon Water Elemental (which the Spellbreakers can hijack with Control Magic).
  • 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-Gear Level: Both fromThe Frozen Throne.
    • The Blood Elf campaign has a level where you start with just Kael and Vash, freeing your imprisoned elf soldiers. Most are actually locked up without arms or armor (and use the civilian elf models to reflect this), but as soon as they're rescued run over to a rack to regain their weapons, armor, and magic powers.
    • In the second act of the Bonus Campaign, Rexxar goes through a No Gear Fight, during which he has to fight the Ogre Chieftain Kor'gall solo without the use of any of his items (and the stat boosts they impart). Fortunately, he still has his Summon Magic and whatever magic runes are lying around the arena, but Kor'gall's more versatile array of spells will make it a difficult fight indeed.
  • No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: After several levels with open maps and sidequests, "The Culling" level from the Human campaign has Arthas and his army purging a city of civilians who are about to turn into zombies. Block by block, street by street, every house must be razed and their occupants killed. There are no optional quests or interesting events. Just the horror and monotony of committing mass murder.
  • Non-Human Undead:
    • The Scourge 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-Standard Game Over: While most missions give you a simple "Defeat!" screen after you fail the main quest, some of them give a short cutscene before going to the Game Over screen.
    • If Mal'Ganis claims 100 villagers in "The Culling" he will mock Arthas as a disappointment and unleashes an army of powerful undead to attack his base, though not long enough to actually destroy it all before you get the defeat screen, short of your base already nearly being destroyed. Interestingly, this can be the first time the player can become aware that Mal'Ganis is actually The Dragon to a bigger boss. If the player just wins each mission, Mal'ganis won't mention a "Dark Lord" at all until the last mission of the campaign, a full three levels after this one.
      Mal'Ganis: Obviously... you are not as strong as the Dark Lord believed. Now, feel the wrath of the Scourge, as you drown under the flood of the living dead!
    • "Twilight of the Gods" has a scene where Archimonde destroys the player's base and declares that they have failed, and the end of the world is coming. Winning the mission also starts with this cutscene, though this time with Malfurion's narration that he set a trap, so there is also a crossover with Fission Mailed.
  • Noodle Incident: In "Lord of Outland", some orc warlocks and demonic felguard are being kept captive in "cages of discipline". Why they need discipline remains unexplained.
  • Nostalgia Level: The Quel'Thalas missions lets the player go up against the High Elves which harkens back to more primitive Alliance units in the previous games. The sixth Undead mission ("Blackrock & Roll, Too!") pits you against a set of Orc bases which function much more like the old Horde. They field units such as goblin sappers, ogre magi casting bloodlust, and even fire-breathing dragons.
  • 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 sneakier tactics for bringing 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.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The final mission of Reign of Chaos has something of a Bolivian Army Ending, with the Burning Legion destroying you and your allies' bases and sending apparently endless waves of demons and undead. Archimonde ascends to the World Tree alone and is killed in a Combined Energy Attack by the wisps. Despite almost certainly being overwhelmed by undead, the Night Elf, Orc, and Human forces killed the entire Undead army offscreen and won the Battle of Mount Hyjal. According to developers, they had a mission planned to destroy the remaining undead with the help of the Chimaera, but decided Archimonde's death is a good place to end the story note . A possible explanation is that the undead army was destroyed by the explosion, but that was not shown.
  • Older Sidekick: A few examples.
    • Cairne is a 90-years old chieftain of Tauren who becomes takes a secondary role in the Horde of Thrall, a 19-years old Warchief. Grom Hellscream who is 46 according to the manual also serves under Thrall, though he is less cooperative.
    • Arthas gets three of them, Muradin, a 221-years old dwarf, becomes an aide for Arthas, a 24-years old human, during the Northrend campaign. Then Kel'thuzad, a 58-year-old necromancer turned Lich, becomes the right-hand man to Arthas when he turns to the Scourge. And then Anub'arak, the self-proclaimed "ancient king of Azjol-Nerub" with no defined age, but far more than Arthas takes the role in the Scourge campaign of The Frozen Throne.
  • Ominous Floating Castle: The Undead Necropolis. Though it can still be attacked by melee units.
  • Once per Episode:
    • In almost all of the main Reign of Chaos campaigns, one of the main characters (Arthas, Grom, Illidan) will encounter a powerful enemy (Mal'Ganis, Cenarius, Tichondrius) and nearby a convenient power source (Frostmourne, Well of Chaos, Skull of Gul'dan) of very shady (or outright sinister) nature, ignore the warnings, use the power source and beat the enemy but become corrupted in the process. Undead are exempt because there's nothing to corrupt there anymore.
    • The Frozen Throne makes sure that the Naga appear in all of the campaigns and make things worse for the heroes, even The Founding of Durotar in a mostly irrelevant place. In the Sentinels campaign, they are Illidan's new army and help him attain the Eye of Sargeras. In the Alliance campaign, they help Kael but put him at odds with Garithos which leads to the Blood Elves having to flee for their lives. In the Scourge campaign they march on the Frozen Throne. In the bonus campaign, they massacre a human outpost before Jaina can question said humans about their true allegiance.
  • 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 The 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 and the player, he loses all those items when fought in the undead campaign.
  • Only the Chosen May Wield: Frostmourne, encased in a floating block of ice, has this as its inscription.
  • 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.
  • Our Founder: Azhara was high queen of the night elves until she betrayed them to the Burning Legion. Her followers became the Naga and built statues of her as Naga.
  • Our Gargoyles Rock: Flying undead bats that can turn into statues to regenerate health.
  • Our Ghouls Are Creepier: They're described as mutant zombies with a ravenous hunger for flesh and brains. The Scourge use them as their basic infantry and lumber harvester.
  • Our Hydras Are Different: Hydras appear as neutral creeps in The Frozen Throne. 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: 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.
  • Panthera Awesome: The panthers ridden by Night Elf Huntresses and white tigers ridden by Priestesses of the Moon.
  • Passing the Torch: The surviving characters from the previous games such as King Terenas, Uther the Lightbringer, Grom Hellscream and Daelin Proudmoore die because they can't let go of their old prejudices. The Lich King, formerly the orc warlock Ner'Zhul, is a disembodied spirit who commands the undead and comes back into the world by possessing the body of Arthas. The Night Elves and Medivh the last guardian are the only ones who understand that their time on this world is over and steps aside so that new generations can take over. Ironic then that after focusing on the Alliance, Horde and even the Undead in the previous games, the true protagonists in this game turn out to be the Night Elves.
  • Pelts of the Barbarian: Beastmasters 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.
  • Perspective Flip:
    • The prologue campaign is about the orcs led by Thrall who are fleeing from persecution by the Alliance. The first two levels of the Human campaign portrays the Alliance as heroes fighting orcs who worship demons.
    • Arthas is seen as a beloved figure in the Human campaign. The Undead campaign reveals that he was not liked by his fellow paladins.
  • Pinball Projectile: Projectiles with the Missile (Bounce) attribute, such as those of Night Elf Huntresses will bounce to additional targets.
  • Plague Master: The Scourge spends much of Reign of Chaos spreading the Plague of Undeath across Lordaeron, and the Scourge's units have a few disease-related abilities on the battlefield.
  • Plot-Triggering Death:
    • Kel'Thuzad dies at the hands of Arthas. His resurrection is the focal point of most of the Undead campaign.
    • The demigod Cenarius is killed by demon-tainted Orcs. Without him, the Night Elves have to awaken their druids. Along the way, Tyrande also rescues the infamous betrayer Illidan.
    • The death of Archimonde at the end of Reign of Chaos triggers the three-way Succession Crisis in The Frozen Throne over who will control the Undead Scourge: Its creator The Lich King, Archimonde's remaining dreadlords or the Forsaken led by the Dark Ranger Sylvanas who seeks to remain independent of both factions.
  • Posthumous Character: Though Gul'dan has been dead since the second game, his impact is felt through the events of the Third War and its aftermath. Not only the Orcs reckon with the effects of demonic corruption that Gul'dan orchestrated, but his enchanted skull becomes the source of Illidan's demonic power, and the first half of the Night Elf campaign in Frozen Throne is mostly centered around the Tomb of Sargeras, which he raised from the sea and where he left the record of his own demise.
  • 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.
  • Praetorian Guard: The Blademasters are Thrall's personal protectors. For Admiral Proudmoore, he has the Admiral's Elite Guard, the Chief Petty Officer and the Chief of Chaplains.
  • Precision F-Strike: Done a few times, as the game has little profanity despite being very violent.
    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 
    • 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!
  • Premature Aggravation: In the "Founding of Durotar" bonus campaign, Jaina Proudmoore founds her neutral city of Theramore in the faraway Kalimdor to establish pacific relations with the New Horde. Jaina's father, Admiral Daelin, grows worried for her safety upon hearing that the orcs are settling in Kalimdor. His (understandable) prejudice against the orcs leads him to believe they will attack his daughter, so he sails as soon as he can in order to save her. In truth, Jaina is at no risk from the New Horde due to her friendship with the orcs' new Warchief, Thrall. Unbelieving of Jaina's assurances, Daelin forcefully takes control of Theramore and gears for battle.
  • 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 starting from Warcraft III.
  • Prison Level:
    • "The Fires Down Below", the 4th mission of the prologue campaign (which was removed from the original Reign of Chaos but is available in other versions of the game) is about Thrall busting his soldiers and the trolls out of the murloc prisons before they are all sacrificed to the Sea Witch. The Underworld Minions have also captured members of the Alliance who are attempting their own prison break.
    • Reign of Chaos has the "Brothers in Blood" level where Tyrande rescues the betrayer Illidan Stormrage from an underground prison in the Barrow Dens to get his help in fighting the Burning Legion.
    • In The Frozen Throne, Lady Vashj and Kael'thas free the Blood Elves awaiting execution by Lord Garithos from the Dalaran dungeons, which are full of ultra horrifying monsters captured or created by the former wizards of the city.
  • 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.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: Maiev, the leader of the Watchers, despises Tyrande for the deaths of her warriors and for setting the Betrayer free yet it is she who becomes hated because she lied about Tyrande being killed by the Scourge instead of washed downriver when cleaning up her mess chasing Illidan. The final level even shows that Tyrande didn't really need the help to survive on her own anyway. She and Malfurion go on about how Maiev had become vengeance itself as if they are innocent of all responsibility.
  • Protagonist Journey to Villain:
    • Arthas goes from Lordaeron's champion to its bane as he leads the Undead Scourge.
    • Illidan was the greatest Demon Hunter but his thirst for power causes him to be enthralled to the very demons he used to fight.
    • Kael'thas's need to save his people from magical starvation causes him to join Illidan to serve the demons who used to be the masters of the Scourge.
    • Sylvanas was the Hero Antagonist opposing Arthas but she is turned by him into a banshee. She breaks free of the mind control and turns against the Burning Legion, the Lich King and the former Alliance. She now heads her own undead Renegade Splinter Faction called The Forsaken.
  • Psycho Rangers: Illidan's Blood Elf, Naga and Draenei forces are similar to Alliance (between sharing a lot of the same units or having equivalents like Swordsmen for Footmen), Orcs (being a healing starved power oriented faction) and Night Elves (being a spellcaster heavy, stealth-based Glass Cannon race).
  • 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 Impure: The game mostly uses purple as a color for evil characters and factions that are in some way corrupted.
    • Once Arthas, the corrupted prince of Lordaeron, takes charge of the Undead Scourge, its main color changes from green (from Mal'ganis) to purple.
    • The Warsong Clan, whose color is purple, falls to the demonic corruption in the Orc campaign.
    • The Naga led by Illidan are purple throughout Terror of the Tides, matching his partly demonic self, and the Naga themselves being night elves that were transformed by the Well of Eternity. Interestingly, Illidan and the Naga lose purple in favor of Red (throughout the Alliance campaign, shared with Kael's Blood Elves) and Blue (as the Final Boss faction at the end of the Scourge campaign when facing Arthas), to subtly show the player Illidan's complex morality and that Arthas' Scourge is the bigger evil.
  • Put on a Bus:
    • The gnomes provided the Alliance their Flying Machines and Submarines in Warcraft II, but by Warcraft III, the gnome race is completely absent. Not even a simple mention in dialogue.
    • Since oil's no longer a resource to gather in Warcraft III, there's no need for the Warcraft II Horde and Alliance Oil Tankers. Most of the Horde and Alliance navy was actually this in Reign of Chaos since water gameplay was no longer a thing, but navy makes a small return to the campaigns in The Frozen Throne.
  • Quest to the West: The Prophet directs everyone to go to Kalimdor in the West to better fight the Burning Legion, but only Jaina and Thrall's factions listen to him and make the journey. Since both stay in Kalimdor, it's actually Refuge in the West, especially since the Undead Scourge consumed both of their homelands. The Sentinels campaign actually inverts the trope, with the Night Elves of Kalimdor going east first to the Broken Isles and again to Dalaran in their pursuit of Illidan.
  • The Quisling: Kel'thuzad and Illidan are obsiquous butt-kissers to the Burning Legion.
  • 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.
  • "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.
  • Recurring Extra: Thornby (shows up as a recruitable Footman in the first mission of Reign of Chaos and returns as Captain in the expansion working for Admiral Proudmoore), Timmy (several little boys and ghouls are named Timmy), Captain Falric (the Captain throughout all of the Reign of Chaos human campaign) and Dagren the Orcslayer (who shows up as an opponent in both "King Arthas" and "Coastal Base").
  • Redemption Demotion: Inverted. 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 by killing Mannoroth and then dying himself.
  • Red Is Heroic: The game often (but not always) uses red (the default color for players) for heroic characters.
    • Thrall's heroic and redeemed Horde is associated with red, in contrast to the more traditional and corruptible Warsong Clan being purple.
    • Kael's Blood Elves are red, not only to match their names but because their campaign shows them as sympathetic victims of the Scourge, Garithos and arguably Illidan if the player sees the Blood Elves as his Unwitting Pawns.
  • Red Is Violent: While mostly used as a heroic color in the campaigns, there are a few antagonistic forces who are also red.
    • The Dreadlords Tichondrius and Varimathras. Tichondrius is the closest thing Reign of Chaos has to The Heavy, and Varimathras who is Sylvanas's Token Evil Teammate that she forces to join him under threat of death.
    • The Blackrock Clan is a demon-worshipping orc faction, and their leaders are red.
  • Redshirt Army: Several missions have allied computer-controlled forces that will help the player by defending their base or by attacking their enemies. As the player is supposed to control the flow of the mission (and it wouldn't be very fun to feel redundant in their victory), these allied armies will be doomed to fail in their attacks unless the player joins.
    • The Warsong Clan in "Cry of the Warsong" has a purely negative version. Grom leads doomed attacks onto various human bases, which will begin to prompt responses to your base. Never his. And if you think you can just kill him like with most allies, his whole army will turn on you instead.
    • Jaina's Alliance in "By Demons Be Driven" is a somewhat useful version. She has a large base, will lead doomed attacks against the possessed Warsong Clan, but will also assist in defense of your base and will send troops to support your attacks, and her base absorbs a lot of attacks from the Warsong as well.
    • Both Jaina and Thrall's bases in "Twilight of the Gods" are different than most versions of this trope in the game. They never try to attack nor rebuild; they just stand in the way of the Burning Legion to delay the ascent. They will likely be destroyed by the end of the mission but will last much longer with the player's support.
    • Kael'thas' Blood Elf base in "The Ruins of Dalaran" is also among the more useful versions. Since his base is right next to yours, he will take no time to send troops to defend your base in case it's attacked, and his base also absorbs attacks from Illidan and the Scourge. But like every other example in this trope, his attacks will barely scratch Illidan's base unless you join him.
    • The Draenei in Outland are this in "Gates of the Abyss". At the start of the mission, they are a neutral force and will futilely attack a single fel orc base. If the player destroys that one, they will become allies and will launch doomed attacks on the remaining fel orc bases.
  • Refuge in the West: While originally presented as a Quest to the West, it's actually this trope. 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. Both Thrall and Jaina stay in Kalimdor afterwards.
  • Remixed Level:
    • The prologue campaign's "Riders on the Storm" and "Countdown to Extinction" levels are the same but the latter is a defense mission.
    • 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 (killing and digging up Kel'Thuzad respectively).
    • "The Siege of Dalaran" in Reign of Chaos becomes "The Ruins of Dalaran" in The Frozen Throne.
  • The Remnant:
    • The Blackrock Clan Orcs still fight for the Burning Legion despite losing the previous war.
    • The Human Alliance in Lordaeron becomes this by the end of The Frozen Throne.
    • The few living Nerubians in Northrend still battle the Scourge and their traitor king Anub'arak.
    • The Stormreaver orcs were a clan of warlocks earmarked for destruction by the previous warchief Doomhammer. They wander the land and treated as enemies by all, even their own kin.
  • Replay Mode: Interlude cutscenes in between levels can be selected from the campaign screen.
  • Resource-Gathering Mission:
    • "The Spirits of Ashenvale", the fourth mission of the Orc campaign in Reign of Chaos has the relatively simple objective of harvesting 15000 lumber. The Orc race has the worst lumber harvesting in the game note . To speed up the process, destroying the enemy Trees of Life will yield 3000 lumber, and there is a sidequest that will give you access to the extreme lumber harvesting capability of Goblin Shredders. This harvested lumber will carry into the next mission.
    • Not the main mission, but a series of optional quests in the 3-part Azjol-Nerub missions in The Frozen Throne is to find some hidden gold. This gold will carry over to the final mission and helps it start smoothly.
  • 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 from previous games.
    • 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.
  • Retired Monster: Drak'thul, one of the few survivors of Gul'dan's expedition to the Tomb of Sargeras, chose to become a hermit rather than cling to the old warlock ways, although he is still haunted by his Undead Orc brethren. When he tells his story to Maiev, she expresses No Sympathy to his plight after learning what his clan did to the isles and wishes she had never helped him put the old ghosts to rest. He responds only by walking into his hut in silence.
  • 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". The Human campaign 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: The human paladin's healing ability can be used on undead to damage them. Additionally, there's an evil counterpart in the undead faction, which heals undead but harms living creatures.
  • 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.
  • Roar Before Beating: Infernals in teaser trailer before it kills the Footman and Grunt, 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 introduced in The Frozen Throne as 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!"
  • Same Character, But Different: Faction rather than character. After being absent in Beyond the Dark Portal, the Blackrock Clan returns in this game, yet they're nothing like they've been portrayed before (or after), as they're depicted as a bunch of fanatical demon worshippers ruled by warlocks (which would befit other clans like the Stormreavers or the Burning Blade better), which clashed with their previous characterization of fierce warriors and skilled blacksmiths who weren't big on Fel magic (or any magic at all) nor cared much about doing the Legion's bidding. Also, their base of operations is in Alterac (despite Lord of the Clans establishing that Alterac was where the Frostwolf clan had its main settlement) rather than Blackrock Mountain. Rather tellingly, both World of Warcraft and later supplemental material mostly ignored this game's depiction of the Blackrocks, handwaving them as a small, rogue subfaction led by a Burning Legion zealot.
  • 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).
  • Samus Is a Girl: In "The Spirits of Ashenvale", the orcs feel uneasy about a presence in the woods. When they get attacked, they are surprised that the beings they were wary of were night elf women.
  • Savage Piercings: Trolls have bone piercings starting with this game.
  • "Save the World" Climax:
    • Reign of Chaos starts with Thrall traveling westward to Kalimdor to find a new life for his people at the urging of a prophet, while Arthas fights off evil orcs attacking villagers and then starts investigating a strange plague. He gets to fighting a growing army of Undead that threaten 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 and plan to do so by draining the powers of the World Tree.
    • The Frozen Throne has a subversion. While the plot seems to start with Maiev chasing Illidan after he was freed, Illidan really is enacting world-threatening plans by trying to use the Eye of Sargeras to destroy a whole continent. Stopping that plan is the climax of the first campaign and it's revealed that this plan was meant to target the Undead, revealing the game's true conflict being Evil Versus Evil. The rest of the game has the Scourge and Legion (the latter then replaced by Illidan's followers) fight for dominance for who will get to be in control for the chance to threaten the world next, but no other world-ending plans are ever made in the duration of the expansion note .
  • 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.
  • Schizo Tech: Elves, demons and the undead rely on Magitek, dwarves and goblins rely on Steampunk and everybody else is stuck on medieval technological level.
  • Schmuck Bait:
    • Frostmourne. "Just as the blade rends flesh, so must power scar the spirit." Arthas falls for it, thinking he will only die rather than be possessed.
    • One of the Sorceress' Stop Poking Me! quotes:
      Sorceress: "For the 'End of the World' spell, press Control, Alt., Delete."
  • Scunthorpe Problem: The official map Booty Bay cannot be played in custom Reforged lobbies because of its name. The map has a reputation for being poorly balanced for one-on-one due to being oversized and having multiple choke points.
  • Seeking Ultimate Strength: At the end of the Sentinels 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.
  • Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:
    • Arthas was warned by the Prophet that he will deliver Lordaeron to the hands of the undead faster the more he tries to save it. He ignored it and it came true.
    • Kael's attempts to prove that his people are loyal to the Alliance end up causing him to ally with the Burning Legion instead.
  • Sequel Episode:
    • Reign of Chaos has "Blackrock & Roll!" and "Blackrock & Roll, Too!" where Arthas battles Orcs first as a paladin then as a death knight.
    • In Tides of Darkness, the orc warlock Gul'Dan gets killed at the Tomb of Sargeras. The tomb is rediscovered by the Night Elves in The Frozen Throne and they learn the (retconned) fate of Gul'Dan.
    • Andorhal is visited twice ("The Cult of the Damned" and "Digging Up the Dead" respectively), during different seasons and for literally opposite reasons. In the first, Arthas must kill Kel'Thuzad in the spring. In the second, he must reclaim Kel'Thuzad's remains in the autumn.
    • "The Siege of Dalaran" from Reign of Chaos has the wizard city being captured by the undead. "The Ruins of Dalaran" from The Frozen Throne has the city being reclaimed by Night Elves and Blood Elves. Both involve killing a specific group of spellcasters.
    • In "The Shores of Northrend" from Reign of Chaos, Arthas arrives in the frozen continent to end the undead threat once and for all. He also meets Muradin Bronzebeard. In "The Return to Northrend" from The Frozen Throne, he comes back there as one of the undead. He also meets Anub'Arak and Sapphiron.
  • 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.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The undead campaign lets the scourge succeed where the horde failed by destroying the important locations that the horde destroyed in their non-canon campaigns such as Quel'Thalas, Stratholme and Dalaran.
  • 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 an 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: 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.
  • 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 halitosisnote . Magic is not for everyone; consult your doctor before use.
  • Signature Move: Some heroes have an ability that became iconic to them due one of three reasons:
    • Their playstyle revolves around said ability while the other two have a more supporting role, like the Paladin's Holy Light, the Death Knight's Death Coil or the Lich's Frost Nova.
    • They have multiple abilities that allow different playstyles, but one of them is vastly favored by players over the others, such as Mountain King's Stormbolt or the Blademaster's Windwalk.
    • Their Ultimates are way more powerful than average (often to compensate for middling regular spells), such as the Dreadlord's Inferno or the Priestess of the Moon's Starfall.
  • 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 like Slow or Faerie Fire, then pull out the harder-hitting ones.
  • 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.
  • Slain in Their Sleep: "The Culling" has Arthas and his army purging an undead infected city at night. They can wait till the citizens turn into zombies but its faster to kill them in their sleep.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Northrend, an entire arctic continent that is crawling with powerful beasts and is the seat of power for the Undead Scourge.
  • Snake People: The Naga are this. Originally Night Elves, they were transformed when the Well of Eternity exploded.
  • So Last Season: Heavy and elite units suffer this in The Founding of Durotar. 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.
  • Soul Eating: Frostmourne is stated to steal souls, starting with Arthas. It's also something that the Nathrezim do, with Tichondrius being seen consuming the souls of some humans.
  • 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.
  • 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 Legacy of the Damned. 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).
  • 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.
  • Stealth-Based Mission:
    • The first undead level has Arthas going through a town and rescuing undercover acolytes. He must make use of shades to explore the map as well as kill any villagers who try to sound the alarm.
    • The second Night Elf level has Tyrande gathering what's left of her army in the dead of night while evading battling alliance, horde, undead and demon forces.
  • Strategic Asset Capture Mechanic: 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.
  • Status Infliction Attack:
    • 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.
  • 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.
  • Sudden Name Change: A lot of name changes happened between the main game and the expansion.
    • Malfurion is called Furion in Reign of Chaos, but suddenly stops going by that in The Frozen Throne. Though it can be explained as being a nickname, no one refers to Malfurion by either his name or his old nickname in the expansion's campaigns either, with everyone using descriptors (e.g. my love, brother, or an honorific "Shan'do"). This includes Tyrande, who used his name frequently in Reign of Chaos.
    • Various units had their names changed, among them Ballista to Glaive Throwers, Catapults to Demolishers, Steam Tanks to Siege Engines, and Gyrocopters to Flying Machines, most of which were renamed due to similarities to machines of the same names in Warhammer Fantasy. Owlbears were renamed Wildkin due to being owned by Wizards of the Coast. This also applied to the Boots of Elvenkind item which were named Boots of Quel'thelas.
    • While not an outright name change, all instances of Thrall calling his sworn brother "Grom" in Reforged were awkwardly changed to "Hellscream". Like the Malfurion example above, no explanation for change was given.
  • Supporting Protagonist: Rexxar in the bonus campaign. While he and his friends are the ones on the adventure and he becomes Champion of the Horde, the future of Durotar is threatened by Admiral Proudmoore, who is much more at odds with Thrall himself, rather than any real care for Rexxar. The final battle between Rexxar and Proudmoore only has dialogue between the admiral and Thrall, not Rexxar. This characteristic would carry over to World of Warcraft, where the player character's boss who often joins them in the raid and talks to the villain is the protagonist of the actual story, instead of the player character themselves.
  • Suicide Attack:
    • The Goblin Sappers teams, 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!"
  • Super Boss: In Act II 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:
    • 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 and a Marathon Boss who takes several minutes to defeat.
  • 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 in their designs.
  • 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.
    • The last mission of the Sentinel campaign in The Frozen Throne requires the player to destroy a red Undead base led by a Dreadlord in the first mission Illidan is playable. This unnamed Dreadlord is in charge of the Scourge and is unaware that they have betrayed the Burning Legion, very much like Tichondrius who was also red and killed by Illidan in the first mission he was playable.
    • Magtheridon is the Pit Lord leader of an army of Fel Orcs that is defeated as the Arc Villain of the second-to-last of the main campaigns, very much like Mannoroth in the main game.

    T-Z 
  • Tank Goodness: Dwarven siege engines. 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.
  • A Taste of Their Own Medicine: During the Dalaran dungeon level, Kael gets the idea to open the cages to get the imprisoned creeps to attack their jailers. Later, the jailers do the same thing against the blood elves.
  • Technically Living Zombie: Used as a gameplay mechanic; while the Acolyte, Necromancer and the Death Knight hero are all living humans, they're classified as undead just like the rest of the Scourge's units.
  • Teleportation with Drawbacks:
    • 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.
  • 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 The Frozen Throne
    • 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.
  • Thundering Footsteps: Some big units like the Kodo Beast have extra-loud booming footsteps.
  • Tiered by Name: 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.
  • Timed Mission: There are a few in the campaigns.
    • "Dissension" requires Arthas and Muradin to burn the five ships in 25 minutes (15 on Hard).
    • "The Awakening of Stormrage" has an unusual example of a timer. Tyrande has to defeat all of the Ancient Guardians before all the trees protecting Furion are knocked down by the Undead. On Normal mode, this gives around 27-29 minutes to complete the level, that's reduced to around 15 minutes on Hard (as there are more Ghouls and they are upgraded with Ghoul Frenzy). While there isn't any normal way to reach the ghouls and kill them, there is an exploit that makes it possible to do so and thus freeze the timer, and even destroy the normally unreachable undead base.
    • "Balancing the Scales" requires the player to bring Malfurion and Tyrande to Maiev's base before she is destroyed and while her resources are dwindling. Unlike other examples, the player controls both the base and the rescue party, and gold that the rescue party collects will also be used by the base.
    • "The Ruins of Dalaran" requires killing the four Naga Summoners in less than 30 minutes.
    • "The Brothers Stormrage" is a subversion. Even though it seems like Tyrande has little time left and Malfurion is supposed to protect her while Illidan saves her, neither side can reach her, she has infinite resources, and she has a trigger that will heal her so she will never die.
    • The goal of the beginning section of "Dreadlord's Fall" is to put a heavy dent in the enemy's bases in the first 8 minutes while they are sleeping. Failing to properly do so will almost certainly lead to a Game Over, as both sides will do a coordinated assault on your base.
  • Too Dumb to Live: The blood elven Spell Breakers in the intro cutscene of the "Lord of Outland" mission in the Curse of the Blood Elves campaign rush wave after wave into the Black Citadel, only to be instantly killed by the Citadel's defenses.
  • Took a Level in Badass:
    • Jaina Proudmoore, who starts off as the soft-spoken student of Antonidas, becomes the leader of the human resistance against the Burning Legion by the end of Reign of Chaos.
    • Thornby. In "The Defense of Strahnbrad" he became a regular Footman, while in "Old Hatreds" he's a stronger Elite Guard.
  • Touch the Intangible: Ethereal units can only be hit with magic (spells and the Magic attack type) and take extra damage from it. They also maintain their collision boxes.
  • 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 were Trope Codifiers for the genre.
  • A Tragedy of Impulsiveness:
    • The determination of Arthas to save his people from the undead scourge causes him to purge an entire city, trap his own army in Northrend, take up a cursed sword and fall into the control of The Lich King.
    • Grom's hatred of humans drives a wedge between him and Thrall. He then drinks from a pool of chaos energy in order to defeat a night elf demigod thus damning himself and his clan into becoming pawns of the Burning Legion.
    • Tyrande breaks Illidan out of prison and kill Maiev's watchers in the process. Illidan instead becomes more trouble than he is worth and he is banished.
  • 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* 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 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.
  • Turncoat:
    • First and foremost is Prince Arthas who falls to machinations of the Lich King and becomes champion of the Undead Scourge.
    • Illidan Stormrage was once the greatest Night Elf demon hunter but his lust for magic caused him to turn to very demons he battled for more power. The Blood Elves followed his example out of necessity
    • In the final Blood Elf level, some captured felguards and fel orc warlocks can be rescued and turned against their former allies.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: The game is broken up into the standard build missions, many Baseless Missions, and some that combine them to an extent (like "Frostmourne" which has a baseless section and build section concurrent at the beginning). Reign of Chaos largely stuck to this, but The Frozen Throne takes some more innovative level design.
    • In Reign of Chaos, the first Undead and second Night Elf missions are stealth-based, acting as a Baseless Mission where the goal is to avoid most of the enemies, rather than killing them with brute force.
    • "The Brothers Stormrage" is the first mission where the player controls two bases, each with their own resources, techtrees, and objectives.
    • "The Crossing" is a bonus Tower Defense level, where the enemies do not attack and instead perform suicide charges at the portal. The heroes are still playable (and required to do well on the level).
    • "The Search for Illidan" is a simple Multiplayer Online Battle Arena style map with elements of Capture the Flag, where the player only controls heroes while allied troops are controlled by the computer. If heroes die, they will respawn shortly after in their base, and the goal of each side is to escort the cage back to their side's base.
    • "Lord of Outland" is effectively a Baseless Mission that is disguised as a build mission. While there are buildings, there are no workers, upgrades or towers and money is instead found from gold coin items dropped from enemies. There are no air units and Kael has his Phoenix spell disabled. Heroes dying doesn't fail the mission, but there's no way to just harvest gold, so the player may just get stuck if they are unable to revive their heroes. 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.
    • "King Arthas" has a similar setup to some of the previous examples, where they have 3 bases with their own resources and buildings, but no workers or towers.
    • The Founding of Durotar campaign is a simple open-world RPG where the player only plays as Rexxar (with his fellow heroes and their summons). Any hero that dies will be revived at the last Resurrection Stone they approached. Exploring and sidequests are encouraged far more than any of the other campaigns (where linearity and objectives take priority). It's been said the campaign is meant to be a sort of concept demo for World of Warcraft.
  • 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: 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.
  • Unintentionally Unwinnable: While the campaigns are mostly designed to be beatable with cheats without any No Fair Cheating mockery, there is one instance where using the whosyourdaddy cheat (which causes player-controlled units to deal enough damage to kill everything else in one hit, while taking none themselves) can break the map: "A Destiny of Flame and Sorrow", the penultimate mission in the Night Elf campaign in Reign of Chaos. The main objectives are to capture the Skull of Gul'dan and then use the new Chaos-empowered Illidan to kill Tichondrius. If the player chooses to break the sequence of events and attack Tichondrius before empowering Illidan (as there is nothing physically preventing it), he will fight them until he falls to 50% health, then teleport them to the center of the map, healing himself to full. While this works to prevent Sequence Breaking if the player doesn't use this cheat, if they try this with it active, Tichondrius will die and the mission cannot be completed. The quest to destroy Tichondrius doesn't trigger until the Skull of Gul'dan is claimed and he can't be killed if he's already dead.
  • 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 Militia Captains and Militia 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 skirmish games, you can have up to three heroes, and only get one of any type including the mercenary ones.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Finding the hydralisk in "Daughters of the Moon" does not surprise any characters. Considering the unusual nature of their universe, an alien is the least bizarre thing they have encountered.
  • Useless Useful Spell: Has its own page.
  • Vanilla Unit:
    • 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 most basic, often 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 against ranged attacks, Grunts get a passive health/damage boost, Archers gain additional range and damage, and Ghouls can learn to "Cannibalize" nearby corpses to regain health and gain greater speed.
    • 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: Reign of Chaos gives four box artworks, one for each of the playable races. The official one has orcs, which is used as the icon of the game. The Frozen Throne only has Undead Arthas in contrast.
  • Vengeful Ghost: The Avatar of Vengeance can spawn invulnerable Spirits of Vengeance from corpses, regardless of the corpse's original allegiance.
  • Vestigial Empire: The humans used to be the top race within The Alliance. By the end of The Frozen Throne, they have no monarchy and they have to share the continent of Kalimdor with the Night Elves and their former enemies the Horde. They are not even based on the mainland but on the island of Theramore because their leader Jaina Proudmoore is from the island of Kul'Tiras which is known for their navy.
  • Video Game 3D Leap: With Reign of Chaos, the series made its leap from Isometric Projection in 2D to full isometric 3D.
  • Video Game Tutorial: There are a lot of levels committed to it.
    • The first two missions of the prologue campaign teach key concepts, with a special narrator exclusive to these levels. The first is about basic mechanics, controls, combat, and creeps. The second mission teaches how to build a base, harvest resources, and train units.
    • The first base mission of each campaign (the second mission for the Prologue, Human and Undead campaigns, the third for Orc and first for Night Elf ones) has a main quest where you need to build the main structures of the techtree and then train a certain number of their main combat unit (this is shortened to just a Great Hall in the Orc campaign, as the other steps were previously done in the Prologue campaign). It is after you do this that the real main quest is assigned to you. The Undead and Night Elf tutorials come with explanations about their race mechanics (such as blight and entangling gold mines), which fits since they are the new races added to this game. The Night Elf one can feel pretty ridiculous since the enemies have two full techtrees (with units like Wind and Gryphon Riders) and the story is almost at the climax, while Tyrande is explaining to the player how Wisps and Ancients work, and the player is only able to train Archers.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: In the very first level of Human Campaign in Reign of Chaos, 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, 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:
  • 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:
    • Both Undead Campaigns are from the perspective of evil, omnicidal monsters who lay waste to innocent civilizations, massacre innocents wholesale, and summon forth The Legions of Hell. The Frozen Throne even gives you a Dreadlord to play as, when they were previously unplayable agents of the Burning Legion.
    • Fel Orcs are playable just once in "The Hunter of Shadows".
    • The Naga faction is playable at the end of the first two campaigns of The Frozen Throne, though both times when facing off against even eviler opponents (the Undead Scourge and Magtheridon respectively).
  • Was Once a Man: Satyrs and Naga were Night Elves who were corrupted by the Burning Legion.
  • Weird Weather: It happens whenever the Burning Legion is around.
    • 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.
  • Walk on Water: Unlike other Demon Hunters, Illidan can walk across water as a gameplay provision for keeping up with his amphibious Naga underlings. He presumably can only do this for short distances, as whenever he needs to travel to a faraway place in story (the Broken Isles, Dalaran), he still needs to take a boat.
  • Weak to Magic:
    • 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.
  • Weaponized Offspring:
    • Nerubians, Spiders and Hydras spawn two smaller versions of them on death. The Ancient Hydra even spawns two normal Hydras which in each spawn two Hydra Hatchlings when they die. In the Nerubian's case it's explained as their carrying their young into battle, and it's likely the same with spider creeps.
    • 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 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.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist:
    • Arthas, Grom, and Illidan all use a dark power source to defeat a powerful foe that is threatening their lives. While the first two become possessed by evil powers, Illidan retains his free will but ends up working for these same evil powers anyway once they tempt him with more power.
    • Tyrande kills prison wardens to free Illidan during the Burning Legion's invasion, and defends it as I Did What I Had to Do when Maiev tries to shame her for it.
    • Admiral Proudmoore believes he is prematurely neutralizing a future threat by attacking Durotar and the orcs. It's not unfounded, as the orcs rampaged throughout the alliance kingdoms in the first two games.
  • Wham Episode: While not a totally lighthearted game, Reign of Chaos shows a peaceful setting at first that is gradually torn away.
    • The main instance of this in the game is "The Culling", the 6th mission of the Human Campaign. There's a grim tone shift when Arthas stops acting like a heroic prince and orders an entire city he's meant to rule to be purged, lest the citizens all become undead. Additionally, he meets the commander of the Scourge, the Dreadlord Mal'ganis who mocks him about his powerlessness and shows that the Scourge is a kingdom-destroying threat. The next interlude after this mission opens with the ruins of Stratholme and villagers burning bodies of people that you killed.
      • A more understated but applicable version of this trope comes the mission before, "March of The Scourge" where Arthas discovers that the plague has been turning his people undead. His abandonment issues rear its ugly head and his attitude takes a turn for the worst.
    • The trope is used again in the (to this point) Lighter and Softer Orc Campaign during the mission, "The Hunter of Shadows". The mission ends with the death of Cenarius, one of the Big Goods of the setting, and Grom's Face–Heel Turn by Demonic Possession. The climax of the campaign becomes very dark and emotional afterwards.
  • Wham Line: Several times in Reign of Chaos.
    • This line shows why "The Culling" is the game's Wham Episode, as Arthas goes off the deep end in regard to what he'll do to stop the Scourge.
      Arthas: This entire city must be purged.
    • The mysterious Guardian reveals it was Good All Along with this type of line. Doubles as Five-Second Foreshadowing about the nature of Frostmourne.
      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.
    • "I am Medivh, The Last Guardian". Anyone who's played the previous games would have had their mind blown that The Prophet was a character who was presumed long dead.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Uther, Jaina, and Muradin all call out Arthas throughout The Scourge of Lordaeron 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 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-and-Grey Morality: Unlike the Black-and-Gray Morality of Reign of Chaos and the Evil Versus Evil for most of The Frozen Throne, The Founding of Durotar has the redeemed orcs of Durotar (now free of demonic corruption) facing off against the human nation of Kul'Tiras led by Admiral Daelin Proudmoore. Proudmoore is holding onto old hatreds and is looking for revenge for the Horde's crimes in the first two games. While not shown as justified, the forces of Kul'tiras are a far cry from the omnicidal Scourge, Burning Legion, or even the Naga who want to conquer the entire surface world. Jaina even begs for their lives, and the player has to show them some mercy by not destroying all their buildings, lest they lose the mission.
  • White Hair, Black Heart: When Arthas becomes a Death Knight, his hair turns white. Similarly, Death Knights in multiplayer maps have white hair as well.
  • Will-o'-the-Wisp: 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).
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Arthas, very shortly after claiming the Frostmourne and defeating Mal'Ganis. He wanders into the wilderness of Northrend for a while and loses his mind and soul.
  • 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-fueled actions, leads to Kael allying with the Naga and later with Illidan.
  • Wolfpack Boss: To overcome some missions it is necessary to defeat a group of powerful units at the same time.
    • The original version of "The Fall of Silvermoon", it is necessary to defeat the Sunwell's Guardians, which are 4 powerful Granite Golems (a level 9 creep and the strongest unit in the rock golem creep line). Reforged changes it to Anasterian Sunstrider and Thalorien Dawnseeker.
    • The 3 Paladins in the first undead mission in The Frozen Throne, "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 "Old Hatreds", to escape from Theramore, the heroes need to defeat a Paladin, a Mountain King and an Archmage at the same time.
  • World Pillars: The continent of Northrend is sometimes known as the "roof of the world". Malfurion received a vision of Northrend crumbling and feared that Illidan's spell from the Eye of Sargeras may destroy the world.
  • 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 would consolidate his influence with Archimonde, which is shown by him being The Heavy of the Night Elf Campaign.
  • Young and in Charge: In Kalimdor, Thrall and Jaina are the leaders of their respective faction by the end of Reign of Chaos. Thrall is only 19, while Jaina is 23.
  • You Are Too Late: Happens twice in The Scourge of Lordaeron for two missions in a row. Hearthglen and Stratholme's populations both receive infected grain before Arthas can get there, despite destroying the granary.
    • In Hearthglen, Arthas is forced to have Jaina reach Uther for reinforcements, defending the town until he arrives, using the "hero has to come up with a new plan" variant on the trope.
    • With Stratholme, it forces him into the "hero may still interfere with the villain's plan, but at a high price" variant as Arthas takes drastic measures and unleashes the game's first Wham Episode.
  • You Can't Kill What's Already Dead: Invoked 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.
  • 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.
    • Roar is the basic ability of all Druids of the Claw, but 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 Failed Me:
    • The Blackrock Orc clan have lost favor with the Burning Legion since they lost the war in the previous game, and they are allowed to be slaughtered by the Undead Scourge.
    • 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 Outlived Your Usefulness:
    • Reign of Chaos:
      • In "Dissension", Arthas frames the mercenaries he had hired for scuttling the fleet and massacres them.
      • Once Mal'Ganis finished bringing Arthas to The Dark Side in "Frostmourne", he is killed by Arthas and the Burning Legion doesn't interfere. Tichondrius even throws Mal'Ganis under the bus the first time he meets Arthas.
      Tichondrius: Calm yourself, Prince Arthas. I am Tichondrius. Like Mal'Ganis, I am a dreadlord, but I am not your enemy. In truth, I've come to congratulate you.
    • The Frozen Throne:
      • In "King Arthas", he returns to Lordaeron months after the end of Reign of Chaos and tells the remaining dreadlords that their master Archimonde is dead and that they will soon follow him. They escape and their revolt turns into the batte for the plaguelands.
      • In "A New Power in Lordaeron", Sylvanas has Garithos killed after he and his army helped retake the capitol.
  • 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.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!:
    • Arthas spends the human campaign trying to stamp out the undead threat. He first strikes down Kel'Thuzad but he is just serving Mal'Ganis the dreadlord. He then purges Stratholme on his warpath to Mal'Ganis but he just escapes to Northrend. There he finally defeats the dreadlord but loses his soul and becomes the new champion of the undead scourge.
    • This is pretty much Maiev's entire journey in The Frozen Throne. She is pursuing Illidan from the beginning of the story but he's so slippery and surrounded by his Naga army. She pursues but fails to catch him in the first three levels (he flees to the Broken Isles by ship, goes into the Tomb of Sargeras, then destroys the tomb when Maiev reaches him), again in the fifth (fleeing over the sea to Dalaran), and they finally confront and defeat him in the seventh. Due to a temporary alliance with Malfurion, Illidan gets away again at the end of the campaign and Maiev continues to give chase to Outland where she actually catches him just in time for Lady Vashj and Prince Kael'thas to save him.
  • Your Soul Is Mine!: The Death Knight and Lich can steal the life force of allied units to restore their health and mana, respectively. The Dark Ranger can steal life force as well but does not instantly kill.
  • 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.
  • 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.
"The hope for future generations has always resided in mortal hands. And now that my task is done, I will take my place amongst the legends of the past."

 
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"Succeeding you... father."

Prince Arthas, driven insane by the runeblade Frostmourne, kills his father. We only see the act silhouetted in shadow.

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Shadow Discretion Shot

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Kaldorei

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Alternative Title(s): Warcraft 3, Warcraft III Reign Of Chaos, Warcraft III The Frozen Throne, Warcraft III Reforged

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"Succeeding you... father."

Prince Arthas, driven insane by the runeblade Frostmourne, kills his father. We only see the act silhouetted in shadow.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (6 votes)

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Main / ShadowDiscretionShot

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"Succeeding you...

Dissension

Kaldorei

Archimonde
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