Jaina is out for blood in this lavish new animated World of Warcraft short

News
By published

The Warbringers promo series shines the spotlight on three of WoW's most powerful women.

While dataminers have sussed out a great deal of information about World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth's story, huge gaps still remain—particularly when it comes to some of the bigger heroines and their motivations. That's what Warbringers, a three-part series of animated shorts about Warcraft's most powerful women, looks to help establish.

The first film, focusing on Jaina Proudmoore, is gorgeous and rousing. As one of the oldest Warcraft characters, Jaina's story hasn't been an easy one to follow. After things went so poorly with Arthas during Warcraft 3, she endured several tragedies during the life of World of Warcract. Arguably the most devastating was when she sabotaged her father's attempts to fight the Horde, ultimately resulting in his death. Jaina believed he was stuck in the past and blinded by his hatred, but after the Horde destroyed her neutral city-state of Theramore, Jaina has since changed her mind, as evidenced by her saying "I'm listening now, father" at the end of the short.

Jaina's Warbringers short explores some of that past, with lyrics detailing her struggle to reconcile all the terrible things that have happened in her life as a spirit ferries her through the wreckage of her dead father's navy. There's a lot of symbolism here to unpack, too. As someone that's eagerly awaiting Battle for Azeroth, I'm really interested in seeing how all this character development pays off in-game.

Two other Warbringers shorts centered around Warchief Sylvanas Windrunner and Queen Azshara will be releasing in the next few weeks leading up to Battle for Azeroth. You can check out the teaser trailer for all three below.

World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth launches on August 13/14 in North America and Europe.

Steven Messner
Steven Messner

With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.