World of Warcraft®

A ballistic cannon that can drop a projectile about 10000 miles (is that a fair estimation of the distance between Aszhara and SW?) away. Did those blizz guys pay attention during physics lessons at school? There is a reason why modern countries use missles you know.
Farthest distance reached that I know of with a cannon is about 130km. And that was a small projectile. Even the german supercannons in WW2 that were used for similar purposes (and incidentally were of similar size as the goblin cannon) olny had a range of 30 miles.
Apart from that the velocity you need to get to a distance of 10000 miles is so high you will shoot the projectile straight out of orbit.
Stretching known limitations a bit in a fantasy game is fine but not to this extend.
Next thing we know we have to take events like Varian killing a thousand orcs by gassing them with a giant fart serious.

25/04/2012 16:34Posted by Bluelightnin

A ballistic cannon that can drop a projectile about 10000 miles

No, no. Examination of the schematics for the Azshara Cannon notes that what appears to be the "muzzle" of the cannon is actually a complex teleporter device with a careful timing arrangement. The intent is to [after experimentation clears up a few small bugs] [mostly gnats, but occasionally mosquitoes] induce a consistent teleporter malfunction as the projectile nears the end of the barrel, inducing the projectile to teleport [retaining its current trajectory and velocity] to an area just outside the Stormwind dockyard. Sadly, the test fire which occurred during the "dragon incident," so-called, succeeded in teleporting one very fast, very angry, very brief chicken to an area just outside the Stormwind dockyard.

Experiment ongoing.

I think the WW1 Paris guns had a range greater than that, like 50 miles or so.

TBH Judging from the jump action and the way large creatures fly I assume gravity is lower on Azeroth.

25/04/2012 17:05Posted by Lexgrad

Judging from the jump action and the way large creatures fly I assume gravity is lower on Azeroth.

That would make sense for the WoW version of the setting, as the planet itself seems to be "physically" quite small in this version of the setting, judging by the various globes we can find.

I think the WW1 Paris guns had a range greater than that, like 50 miles or so.

TBH Judging from the jump action and the way large creatures fly I assume gravity is lower on Azeroth.

130km. The projectile went 40km high and caused only minor damage and deaths in paris. Not to mention highly inaccurate. It was mostly to demoralise the french. We can hit you, you cant hit us, stuff.
If gravity is lower on azeroth the fall speed would be considerable slower as well and you would be able to jump much higher than you do now. But stuff like flying dragons, floating in the water with full plate armor and such you can write of with magic or game mechanics.
A cannon shooting 1000 times further than it should be able to is pushing it to much imo.

I wouldnt try to argue that something can't be done on Azeroth because it wouldnt work on Earth, by doing means arguing against one of the most basic truthes about the world our characters inhabit, there is no doubt (unless your character is an azerothian Descartes..allthough down this path lies madness, how can your character even know that the world arround them is real?!) that magic exists, there may be limitations to what a magic wielder is capable of but there is not strict, all encompassing guideline to help us judge exactly what is impossible. The only way we can know for certain something is impossible is for the gameworld to specifically tell us that the thing in question cannot happen under any circumstances and i think its quite unlikely that any piece of evidence will be so specific as to entirely rule out that this use for magic is possible, the sourse might only point to impossibility because its range of experiance or knowledge is too limited to understand how such a thing might come to pass, there may be a tiny window of opportunity in which some obscure variable changes the usual rules of play, an individual might need to posess an affinity for channeling the arcane which has not yet been seen, perhaps the limitations of the races native to azeroth are greater than those of other beings, there could be any number of reasons we have not yet seen such an event in game but we cant really rule it out simply because we havnt seen it.

No, no. Examination of the schematics for the Azshara Cannon notes that what appears to be the "muzzle" of the cannon is actually a complex teleporter device with a careful timing arrangement. The intent is to [after experimentation clears up a few small bugs] [mostly gnats, but occasionally mosquitoes] induce a consistent teleporter malfunction as the projectile nears the end of the barrel, inducing the projectile to teleport [retaining its current trajectory and velocity] to an area just outside the Stormwind dockyard. Sadly, the test fire which occurred during the "dragon incident," so-called, succeeded in teleporting one very fast, very angry, very brief chicken to an area just outside the Stormwind dockyard.

Experiment ongoing.

I guess this was intended to be a joke but i really think that it was a good example of how such applications of magic or technology (an in this case the combination of the two) could be explained in game, personally id like to see more magitech in game...

Mokay, so in Azeroth just about anything is possible and the only limits is the stretch of your imagination. Guess there is nothing to fear then from that cannon. We simple put a giant trampoline in place and bounce those slugs right back. Then hand a couple of skilled engineers some iron tubes and ducttape so they can make stormwind into a giant transformer robot that teleports to the other continent and pounds Ogrimmar into dust.
Point is if you stretch things into cartoonlike situations like that there isnt anything to be taken serious in this story anymore.

Dunno if its been mentioned but if you look through the cannons sights you can clearly see its aimed at Stormwind ......

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&biw=1680&bih=935&tbm=isch&tbnid=i_XbM-FIpeoVZM:&imgrefurl=http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/12/know-your-lore-goblins-and-the-bilgewater-cartel-page-2/3&docid=m65Rn27mgD4l6M&imgurl=http://www.blogcdn.com/wow.joystiq.com/media/2010/12/stormwindsights.jpg&w=580&h=278&ei=uhCbT5G0JObT4QTZ

Maybe the Horde were aiming at Deathwing but missed and hit the park instead? Anything could be the real reason and hopefully we shall find out soon.

Dunno if its been mentioned but if you look through the cannons sights you can clearly see its aimed at Stormwind ......

How does that cannon sights work actually? Stormwind is on the other side of the globe (unless Azeroth is suddenly retconned to a flat coin instead of a planet. Even if it is flat you cant look through several thousands miles of athmosphere.
I think you have been nicely deceived. Some goblin swindler put a stormwind sticker on the looking glass.

Foolish sheeple. It was obviously a staged explosion. There were explosives planted in the park beforehand! I have a sensationalist youtube video with dramatic music, and blurry images, to prove it.

Wake up, sheeple.

Foolish sheeple. It was obviously a staged explosion. There were explosives planted in the park beforehand! I have a sensationalist youtube video with dramatic music, and blurry images, to prove it.

Wake up, sheeple.

Bah. Everyone knows it was Bigfoot trying to throw us off the scent by dressing up as Deathwing. Hell, the Maelstrom was probably him faking his own death!