The nature of magic?

In most of the fantasy games, (one for all, Dungeons and Dragons) spellcasters are known to diverge in two main groups, depending on the source of their powers. That would be, performers of arcane magic (mage, warlock) and divine magic (druids, clerics).
Now, I'm intrested in learning more about the nature and different types of magic in warcraft and their eventual connection to each others.

Decent overview: http://www.wowwiki.com/Magic

Sub - Arcane: http://www.wowwiki.com/School#Arcane

Divine: http://www.wowwiki.com/Divine_Magic

Holy Light: http://www.wowwiki.com/Holy_Light

Shadow: http://www.wowwiki.com/Shadow

Evil magic energy = Fel : http://www.wowwiki.com/Fel

A lot of speculation and oddities there... I guess blizzard still hasn't relased many stable informations.

A lot of WOW Wiki is WoW-heavy (naturally), so reads like a techincal manual more often than literature. I can get you some info from the RPG books, but Blizz also alter various info in those too. The fundamentals should maintain though.

Oh, I was just curious about the origin of arcane magic, and its strange correlation with demonic beings. Because while it's obvious divine magic comes from a god, arcane magic comes from...?

But, knowing Blizzard, they probably don't know themselves.

Divine doesn't come from a god. The holy light is more of a grandeous philosophy of cutting yourself to prove you've got faith and then bending your emoness to cast cool spells.

In warcraft 1 there was a god. Then they switched to the generic "light" philosophy, wich is present also in diablo (talking about imagination... -_-).
So they called it "holy" magic, but in the end it's not really different from the "divine" magic from DnD, where the followers were granted part of their deity powers, wich in turn was partially generated by tributes and prayers.
In both cases, it is a question of faith.

Doesn't arcane come from the nether? Some other dimension or something, which can attract being such as the burning legion via its use (ergo why the Night Elves avoided it). That is it's connect with demons, as they basically feed off the same energy, only warlocks work with demons. I think.

There are 2 confirmed types of Magic, Arcane and Divine.

The two types are characterised by their effects:

Arcane is corrupting, its use warps reality and causes the wielder and the environment around the wielder to suffer its corrupting influence, if a mage is not strong enough to hold this back, he will find himself mutating into something very nasty. Arcane is also the most powerful of the magical types, it can create the impossible, such as a snowstorm in a desert or water in a vaccum. It's also the hardest to use and the most taxing. Arcane magic stems from the Twisting Nether, in fact, the Nether IS Arcane magic, thats all it is, a pure unlimited source of Arcane magic.

Divine is not corrupting, it can come from any source, not nessisarily a god, but it does not have the corrupting power of Arcane. Divine magics cannot do the impossible, they can only enhance what is already there, so you could turn a drop of water into a sea, but you can't create a sea from nothing. Divine magic stems from things such as the Elements, the Holy Light, Elune and other such locations.

Fel is a subcatagory of Arcane, its basically Arcane magic on steriods. It is MUCH more powerful, but at the same time is MUCH more corrupting, only Demons can wield Fel without suffering major adverse side-effects, but thats because technically they've already suffered those side-effects, thats what turned them into Demons in the first place.

Cool. That's some very nice infomation you have there Phoenix. :)

So... nature magic is the same as divine magic?

That sounds so similiar to 40k - The Warp

Yes, Nature magic, such as Shamanism or Druidism is a subset of Divine magic.

Well its no secret that Warcraft is highly influenced (is that a word...I'm tired) by Warhammer.

Half of Blizzard's stuff is a parody of something else.

Then again, almost nothing in the fantasy genre is origional, just taken from various different mythologies.

Theres only so many original ideas out there before everything is similar enough to be easily recognised.

Warcraft I was originally going to be a Warhammer game, but Citadel gave Blizzard the finger so they made Warcraft instead.