Talk:Legionlord

I'm not sure a non-existent NPC with an obviously incorrect name who only exists in a third-party strategy guide really deserves an article. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 23:10, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree. -- Alayea (talk / contrib) 06:01, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it hurt anybody to keep it either Xporc (talk) 07:13, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Is the book it appears in, "officially approved"? I believe it is, but I am not entirely sure. PeterWind (talk) 13:54, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

"Officially approved" and "Official" are two different things. Knowing the strategy guide industry, I guarantee you that Blizzard's sole interaction with BradyGames was the contract to create the guide. It is very rare for any game company to vet the finished product, and very common for such guides to present the writers' misunderstandings or headcanons as fact, or for countless other errors to be included.

While the article includes insufficient references to determine context (not that I even have the strategy guide to verify anything), my assumption is that an eredar was probably referred to in-game or by Blizzard as "a Legion lord" and someone at Bradygames misunderstood. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 17:21, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

In this case, the various NPC names and stats must have been taken from somewhere, no? Stuff like the Bonechewer Cannibal, the writer can't have fanficed that... Xporc (talk) 17:27, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

In theory. My point is that the strategy guide is not a reliable source. You could certainly make a list on the page for the guide of things like this that appear in the guide but not in-game, but it's hard to rationalize creating articles for them. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 21:31, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

By that reasoning, should everything from the Bradygames strategy guides go under speculation instead, or just the parts concerning subjects seemingly removed from beta? While I don't question that most guide authors probably don't have much contact with the developers, the World of Warcraft Official Strategy Guide at least has an interview with Jeffrey Kaplan in it, but then that book also has "Official" in it's name. I also own the World of Warcraft: Dungeon Companion, and while the filler text was probably written by the Bradygames staff, all the numbers and various lists check out, as far as I can see. I haven't taken a look at the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Battle Chest Guide but I don't think there's any reason to doubt the validity of the info presented in them. With that said, I'm not entirely happy with the mob/NPC pages from that guide book. I have mixed feelings on this one, but if nothing else is using the name Legionlord, I don't really see a reason to remove this page. PeterWind (talk) 23:18, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Live release didn't have it, Wowhead doesn't have it. The guide does have it. I think it was just removed. Thottbot had a lot of stuff from the TBC and WotLK betas, but their data was wiped when they were bought out by Wowhead.--SWM2448 23:30, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I'd suggest deletion as simply non-notable trivia. The sole interesting message here ("this NPC was in the manual but doesn't actually exist") could possibly be communicated on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Battle Chest Guide, but even there it's difficult to imagine why anyone would care. While we do not have a specific notability policy, it might be worth reiterating that not every passing mention of every random thing needs an article. — foxlit (talk) 23:58, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I think it's reasonable to say that anything whose only source is a third-party strategy guide should be removed, yes. Obviously something like an interview with Jeffrey Kaplan is a bit different, since then the source is the interview rather than the guide it's contained within.

Also, what Foxlit said. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 00:37, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

"I think it's reasonable to say that anything whose only source is a third-party strategy guide should be removed, yes." I vehemently disagree with this. You may have noticed that in the last few months I've been working on several articles related to the various cut content of Warcraft III and WoW, and even on one cut game, Lord of the Clans. You may not care about this, but I know some people are interested into cut content, and I fear that deleting this kind of content could potentially start a slippery slope. I'm already sad enough about the previous wiki team having tried to "clean" the wiki of pre-Cataclysm content... Xporc (talk) 07:34, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

At the "core", I agree with, unvarifiable info shouldn't be taken at face value, but this ofcourse becomes problematic, in cases where Blizzard straight out covers their tracks, and where database websites simply overwrite old data. We have already had discussions about the validity of screenshots, because they can be doctored, so even that could be considdered an invalid source. Where is the line drawn for what is a proper source? Again I don't know the exact wording in this book, so I don't know if it's official or "only officially approved. All the Bradygames strategy guides have Blizzard's logo on the front page. A, perhaps unreasonable, example could go as follows: In vanilla wow, I see an NPC, I take a screenshot and make a page for it. Years later it is removed in the Cataclysm. It can still be found on several third-party sites, but not anywhere "official". In some ways, sure a removed mob that many people had access to is not the same as a mob removed from the beta, in terms of exposure, but the situation is the same in terms verifiability. It is not often that NPCs are actually removed, but we do know that it happens.

Here in this book we have a couple of, NPCs with, as far as I can tell, lore appropriate names. The Springpaw Matriarch was mentioned in that book, yet is not found ingame. Three other Springpaw lynx are however found ingame, so the name is believable. Believable ≠ Truth, but more so, as Xporc points out, it is a slippery slope. If we remove these 15 or so NPCs with an officially supported source, removed or not, how many other things have to go based on the same principles. It will be difficult to enforce consistency on this area, especially when so much of it happened 10+ years ago. PeterWind (talk) 13:13, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Xporc, I think you fundamentally misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not saying to excuse cut content from the wiki. I'm saying don't use a BradyGames strategy guide as a source for content that was cut when the strategy guide could just as easily be in error. It's not a matter of it being difficult to properly verify that these NPCs were once in the game so much as it's a matter of the source being unreliable. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 06:57, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I sounded like I overreacted. But if strategy guides are to be considered as unreliable, once again, where is the limit now? We recently had a big discussion about GM conversations being entirely faked, so as PeterWind said screenshots are not reliable anymore, strategy guides are not reliable anymore ... I use a lot of 3rd-party sources for my articles, maybe next someone will accuse them of being unreliable too? :/ This page and the 15-or-so others that are similar are not intrusive in any way. We could probably change the text to make it more obvious that they may be misspelled mobs or something, but I'm still against removing them. Xporc (talk) 07:15, 14 April 2017 (UTC)