That's all we want. And maybe jump.

I'd love to be able to jump from a ledge and do a landing attack on someone...

that would be pretty sweet i agree .

Right, and the Volikhar have been so properly represented according to the lore thusfar?
Again, it's exactly my point: no respect for the lore. You're absolutely right about the Cyrodiil vampires, but the Volikhar are thusfar nothing like their lore. I don't recall ever hearing the Volikhar are butt-ugly, have wings and fly around wrecking havoc. I recall reading they can appear directly from the ice itself, living under frozen lakes and emerging only to feed. What's baffling is that they show they can program spriggans emerging from trees, and yet they don't think to let the Volikhar emerge from ice...
You may say "well those new guys will be the Volikhar" but I think that's just ridiculous. Why would a lake-dwelling vampire need wings, why have we NEVER heard of this before and why do they look so damned similar to other popular media depictions of vampires? Because obvious retcon is obvious, that's why.


Once or twice is ok. Constantly? That ruins the integrity of your story and makes it hard for people to take any of it seriously when they know it could change completely in the blink of an eye. In Skyrim we've seen Redguards suddenly love and utilize magic whereas the Nords suddenly hate it, Winterhold got a "did we say it's a city? I mean...it WAS, but a wizard did it," we've seen Snow Elves be nothing more than goblins ("becuz the dwemer wanted 2 help dem and saev dem frum dying but da dwemer were also scurred da snow elves wuld taek over so dey enslaved da snow elves and poisoned dem to maek sure they wunt take over, cuz every1 knos poisoning ur slaev labor iz da best way to get [censored] done." Yeah, round of applause for the genius who thought up that story...) and Jyggalag and werebears are...well they're just not mentioned at all.

Why should I take any of this seriously if it all changes on a dime? Yes, they write up little excuses for all of this, sometimes decent, sometimes horrible, but personally I can't take this seriously when I KNOW the lore isn't being written because the writers thought it was a cool idea, but because the dev team wanted to copy an already popular idea (dumb barbarians in the Nords, vampire lords) or slack off on making previous lore (werebears, falmer, Winterhold) and it's just the writing team's job to come up with an excuse. The writing team is taking an obvious backseat, forced to clean up changes, rather than having an authoritative position in what gets in and what doesn't. You said it yourself, "if you want to," and that's my complaint. What I see? Seems obvious the writers probably don't want to....maybe the programmers or the marketing team wants to, but the writers? Doubt all of what I listed was their idea.

molag bol created the first vampire. can he not take a vampire and create a vampire lord. look how the chimer were changed to dunmer by azura. or when boethia and trinimac had there little run in and the orcs were transformed in what they are today.

the daedra and aedra are very powerful and have had a huge impact on many of the races throughout history so surely if written well and done properly bethesda could have something involving molag bol and creating a vampird lord.

I'm not saying they can't. The way the gods are, they could decide that from now on, Nords poop out Orville Redenbacher popcorn for all we know.
What I'm saying is that I simply find it a cheap and uninteresting literary tactic to CONSTANTLY change the story and lore around so they can implement new things. The result is that after a while, you can kinda wear out on it because NOTHING they say in the lore can be relied on. It can change on a whim.

I definitely don't like the idea of vampire lords, at least not with wings. Seemed silly to me.

why change the lore you could make it into a quest line for molag bol, vampires or both...
" with vampires bein hunted by the vigilants of stendar there numbers are indecline, they are shadows of there former selfs. molag bol decides to up the ante and one last insult to arkay and srendarr unleashs a powerful strain of vampireism upon a vampire he deems worthy. he seeks out someone powerful enough to take on the role (you). "

could be something like this, then maybe we could get some vampire questlines. me personaly i couldnt care about a vamp lord id be happy with just a skill tree. but if bethesda want to add more content, providing its done well of course then go for it...

i agree with you i hate the way lore gets butcherd, like volkihar in skyrim were nothing like in lore. but if there careful and do it right then why not?!

Of course they can, they can do everything. Also every author can do this. But they shouldn't. Because if they do this they have bad story and lore and so they will be bad writters and their products will not be worth of time. It's just simple I like intelligent products, okay it exist many people who don't care about such things who just want to play a GTA wit swords (regardless how the story and lore is) - but so the game go to be a product for idiots or at least just a game for kids and not a roleplay game for matures or a epos.

But just my opinion.

And sorry for my english.

Only in Oblivion and Skyrim Im afraid.
Vampires in Daggerfall and Morrowind were instantly recognisable.

Vampire lords most certainly have foundation in lore.
Vampires get more powerful as they age, its not difficult to imagine that aside from vampire ancient there exists another type of old and powerful vampire.

Nothing has changed.
Just added to.

There are over one hundred distinct kinds of vampire in Tamriel.
Vampires of the Illiac Bay, part 1

You shouldn't. It's a [censored] video game.

The whole issue would be fixed if they removed the wings. Without the wings, the Vampire Lord would definetly be more believable. Because most, if not all vampires not of the Cyrodiilic clan are suppose to be horrendous, terrifying and ugly. But then the whole issue with the character being able to interact comes into play. I always found that wearing a helmet or a mask would help out, or at least using a powerful illusion spell. This would be a great opportunity to add the Volkihar clan and make this vampire lord a vampire of that tribe. If the vampire lords can be programmed to fight the other vampires of the Sangunaris(or Cyrodiilic type vampire) then it would be great. Add three or more quests and we have a vampire vs vampire plot. No wings, Bethesda!

This idea that they were inhabitants in Molag Bal's realm is a bit unlikely, since Molag Bal is different from Hircine. TIme and time again we see Hircine prizing his hounds/children. Molag Bal would most likely trap vampires in his realm and mock them. In Morrowind, he mocked the player calling him "Little leech.". And his realm is said to hold no love for anyone who ventures there, willing or unwilling, and they by all means will be subjugated and thrown into one of the charnel houses. It's in Molag Bal's nature to be a jerk to mortals, it wouldn't be surprising if he hates vampires. He created them for the sole purpose to spread seeds of discord and to mock Arkay.

There is a difference between adding to lore and mutilating it. Bethesda adds to the lore with each game. The Dragon Wars we learn about in Skyrim are completely new. If you went back through all the games and the books you would know enough about Vampires to realize the absurdity of their new cosmetic feature. Do the same with Dragons and the idea of their wars are much more plausible . This is not just adding a new magical creature to the world, this is taking one that already exist and twisting it beyond recognition.


In the context of this game as a universe, we have the benefit of actually witnessing history being made, being there, making it, as well as the access to all the information we could ever need. I name Vampire Lords, RETCON, because we have enough information and actual 'field time' if you will, to KNOW that Vampire Lords did not exist up to this point. The JAM video is the ONLY time that Vampires and wings have been in the same room. We have encountered Ancient Vampires before. We have faced Vampires that have woken up from hibernation. Never any wings.


Correct.


We are privy to a multitude of historical facts, fables, theories and offhand information from Tamriel, Akavir, Nirn, Oblivion, the Elder Scrolls universe. Obviously not everything has been discovered, many things may never be discovered or explained but this is more or less a huge piece of informaion that no one has ever heard of before, more so, considering the prevalence of Vampires in the series. We know of several ways that we can prepare Kwama eggs, we have heard the secrets of creation from the lips of gods but have never had an inkling of winged Vampires? I do not buy it.

I can't really see this as a lore contradiction. As far back as Daggerfall, they told us over 100 types of vampires exist. In Oblivion, they described like, five of them. The precedent given is that vampires can have huge variations; there's one that's described as being able to swallow men whole. There's no way that could be mistaken for an average mer. Wings don't look to be outside that range of features they could have.

It's true that something like that's never been mentioned before, but I don't think that's a reason for it not to exist when the information we do have explicitly tells us we've only seen a tiny portion of what's out there. It's not like they're tacking an unexplained change onto something that they've previously given the impression that it's been very well documented and described completely.

Regarding vampire-lords, keep this in mind: Most of the books and legends concerning vampires in Tamriel are based on folklore and half-truths. As a result, there are many things not mentioned in-game about vampires that may very well be true. Case in point: in oblivion most npcs think vampires can NEVER go out in the daylight. In the in-game book, "The Locked Room" the author apperently believes vampires pass out in the daytime and only awaken when the sunsets. Perhaps vampire lords turning into monsters was just another aspect of vampirism that is unknown or misunderstood by the people. Vampire lords are rare, and who would believe some old wives' tale about a flying bat monster? It's very easy to add this into current lore.

Wow. You shouldnt be here. Shoo. Shoo. Go away.

A week from today we will know if vampire lords are here to stay

http://th03.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2010/099/8/1/VTMB_Gangrel_warform_by_tatsu_wolfie.jpg

Werewolves can be friends with them now. Because Gangrel are involved. This is the closest picture I could get to something that looks like a mutated gangrel(they often look like a snail and a whale had a baby if they frenzy, or go on a vampiric rage, too much.) Strangely, this looks too much like the goofy description I'm getting of vampire lords. If the vampire lords fit in, great. If they don't, oh no! Can I still laugh about the idea of vampires making a parody of themselves?

The easies way for this to fit into lore is for vampire lords to be the first vampires sired by Lamae Bal, and the combination of disease and Daedric taint warped their forms into what they are today.

While I think the idea is kind of stupid I would like to put forth a plausibility argument that would still fit into the lore which I'm a big fan of.

Since it is established that Vampire Lords do not exist in Tamriel then they must logically come from another Continent (I'm going to ignore the other realm theory since it was already covered). Now there are three candidates Yokuda, Akavir, or Atmora (there is on that was sank and raised again but it wasn't really large enough to hide Vampire Lords so I'm ignoring it for this argument). Yokuda and Akavir seem unlikely for this game leaving the Nord Homeland of Atmora of which we have absolutely no lore regarding vampires from.

Dawnguard is theorized to take place around Dawnstar and if this is the case then Vampire Lords could come from Atmora for the first time across the sea of ghosts.

Anyway just an idea.

Maybe extreme age has warped them into ugly monsters.

People keep bringing this up.
No, it has not been established that vampire lords do not exist in Tamriel. Who told you that?
People talk about 'mutilating the lore'. Where do they get that from?

Fact is that we know Tamriel sports over 100 types of different vampires.
So far, in the games, we have seen less than 20 types.

Therefore, it is entirely plausible that a type of vampire exists that we have never seen before, and it also cannot be discounted that some vampires might evolve into other, more powerful forms due to ageing.

So we have never heard of vampires with wings before.
So what?
Lore cant be added to?

This is making a mountain out of a molehill, people.

But it still seems cheesy and it's the way they're adding it.

As it's been said, where the HELL are the Volikhar? We had a description for them and the "Volikhar" we've gotten are nothing like them. Hell, they're almost exactly the same as Cyrodiil's. You can sit and say "well obviously the Cyrodiilic race of vampires had some influence over Skyrim in the past 200 years," but no, the reality is the devs were just lazy or didn't give a [censored]. Skyrim is also supposed to be known for werebears, but there are none. Again we can say "oh there wuz a Nordic version of St. Jiub that drove them out so ya they're gone now" but no, again the truth is it's just laziness.
Meanwhile, we supposedly have an entirely new breed of vampire introduced that looks like it was ripped straight out of popular movies just to appease people OR they will be the Volikhar and we're supposed to believe no one mentioned they had wings for millenia.

The point is it's sad that their own original ideas they once had simply aren't being developed despite them being capable of developing them, whereas cliché forms of lore are getting plenty of attention and addition, such as Nords hating magic (barbarians hate magic, it's the RPG rule!), dwemer must be short cause they're dwarves (pretty sad a dev missed this...) and vampires must look like that movie that was released a couple years ago.
The writers should be laying the foundation, the developers bringing their ideas to life. Instead it's working the other way around: the devs are doing whatever the hell they want or whatever's easiest and the writers are in charge of coming up with excuses for their existence. This is clear as day.

While it is true that things that appear in lore did not make it into Skyrim, I see this as restrictions inherent in the medium of games rather than mutilating lore.
Sure, I would have loved to have seen Volikhar vampires reaching through ice and more types of werecreatures, but their absence from the game does not mean that lore-wise Skyrim does not have them.
As I recall, vampires (like horses) were originally not in the game at all, but were added later due to massive fan demand.
It seems logical that due to time constraints they went with what they knew would work.

Im also not one of those people that invents lore explanations to explain these things, as I think that would be silly.
The game is not the world.

Yes, Nord hating magic makes no sense.
Dwemer were not short. I havent seen anything in Skyrim to suggest they were.

Im quite sure twilight has nothing to do with it.
Winged vampires go as far back as Bram Stoker, its part of the vampire trope.

While I agree Skyrim lore is rather abyssmal, (Hardly anything new, motivations for Alduin absent, zero mention of past events, atrocious dialogue.) I just dont think that the addition of a winged vampire is something to despair about.

I agree with your "the game is not the world" point. The problem is that we know more about races from other continents that have never been in game, than we know about these winged Vampires, even though Vampires have been a prevalent and consistent part of the series. Again I say that the only time Vampires have ever had the notion of wings is from the Jam video. That is why Vampire Lords are RETCON. Something well known and established has been mutilated into something else for no really good reason.