On some small level I can vibe with the idea that the Dreadlords are such masters of deception that their ultimate goals are unclear, even to those they work with directly. I don’t hate that idea. I even like that they’re master infiltrators, and I admit to being VERY intrigued as to what Turalyon’s Light-Dreadlord friend is up to. I think that could go places.
I hate that they’re simps for Denathrius though. Bound to this friggen, fairly minor first boss of a lacklustre expansion. In a way it would’ve been cooler if they served their own agenda independent of Denathrius, or if they simply remained a part of the Legion, which is a much more nuanced and interesting cosmic force in my humble opinion.
My first instinct is to call it revisionist crap, but I admit it’s very much a kneejerk reaction to these kinds of things. I still don’t quite like the idea. I don’t quite think it’s bad at its core, rather it feels underdeveloped and forced. Saying the Nathrezim, from the very beginning, were deployed to manipulate pretty much the entire cosmos for…reasons, I guess…kinda makes sense but I also don’t think it adds up quite enough with what we’ve seen of them in the past to feel organic to me. As such it also gives a feeling of trying to be sensational, though I suspect I’m being a bit pessimistic.
The more I think of it the more it reminds me of the writing of Lost; not entirely sure why, but I digress.
Hogger was behind Zovaal all this time. He disguised himself as a Gnoll on Azeroth to monitor The Jailer’s progress.
I think the even worse sin here than what I pointed out earlier is that this is more indication of being thrust into a cosmic war. The Dreadlords infiltrating every cosmic force and being confirmed now makes it obvious they’re leading up to more expansions with cosmic forces. It’s undeniable.
Which is not… right. The cosmic forces are forces that make up the fundamental universe. It’s not Hogwarts houses. This is like sending people to infiltrate gravity, like, what? Yeah the Light seems to have a consciousness but that’s the only one, even the Void Lords seem to be more denizens of the Void than the Void itself.
The cosmic forces of the game are meant to be settings, not plot. The universe works the way it does because of these six things. Then you write stories about people who use these things and nations that interact with these forces. That’s fantasy.
Having a cosmic war where we team up with or fight against various dimensions of yellow or green or purple is not fantasy. It’s not Warcraft. It’s not what I am paying to play.
I really don’t see an enjoyable way forward from here for this reason. They went way too far, way too fast in their idiotic arms race of BBEGs. All our favorite moments, heroes, villains, and escapades are just, on the grander scale that we’re now being exposed to, absolutely pointless. Our own involvement as the heroes of the story simultaneously have us being utterly broken demigod status because we’re suddenly playing on the same level of these forces and also a sort of reflection on Carl Sagan’s calendar analogy of the cosmos where our importance is the final milliseconds of the final seconds of the final minute of December 31st.
For starters, every faction pride post since Shadowlands or attempt to be edgy about allegiances just makes me laugh for how irrelevant they made everything with a few pen strokes but people still desperately hold onto “B-but, my Horde/Alliance tattoo?” in the face of oh btw none of that mattered and you’re an idiot for being duped by it.
Yeah this would be my preferred one honestly. Like, I like the idea that Lothraxion, fighting the Legion, has still been evil this entire time. Just pursuing the ORIGINAL dreadlord mission of sowing chaos and discord. Corruption.
I’ve always vibed with that aspect of the Dreadlords. The Scarlet Crusade, for instance, was founded in its original form with noble goals. But Dreadlords at the helm managed to distort it, and turn the whole thing into an evil and chaotic force. The idea that they’re doing that elsewhere is neat.
Just… I don’t get it for “Agents of Death” specifically. Lots of contradictions arise there.
Like Lothraxion could be a cool example of showing that the Dreadlords are so insanely chaotic that they even fight and undermine each other simply for the sake of causing chaos and anarchy. There’s no central leader or organization, they’re just out and about doing whatever they want. Imagine too, if Lothraxion was basically doing what the Dreadlords did to the Scarlet Crusade but this time the Army of the Light.
There’s so much potential with this explanation than bleh bleh agents of death.
It would be a good way to explain all the examples Altielle posted about the Dreadlords through out the game. All their plans and goals just falling apart because its in their nature to cause chaos even at their own expense. It’s like people with self destructive tendencies but a buncha demons that can’t keep it together for five minutes.
I haven’t uhh… Actually checked in on the source of all the discourse, so I won’t pretend that I’m particularly educated on the details.
But if what I’m hearing is “actually the dreadlords had a hand in EVERYTHING” with a dash of “also some crap retconning their origins for a fifth time”…
I mean… So they simultaneously revealed literally nothing as well as complety reinvented a wheel that no one needed?
Like, I’m pretty confident when I say that the Dreadlords were probably not whatever the hell they are now back when their initial retcon came around the first time.
I was considering not but then I guess I’ll comment on this, because as a younger lad me and the family would sit down and watch this thing. We watched the whole damn thing, over however long (a lot less long because we had the collection in physical rather than keeping up with it as current, which I can only imagine would have been significantly worse). I remember distinctly how irrelevant the ending of that series was, and I’m sure it’s had tons of it’s own essays written.
But we aren’t talking about the ending, we’re talking about somewhere in the late seasons where we already crossed the barrier of flocking time and were getting into some REAL nonsense ship. And that’s all this Dreadlord business is. It’s the part of the show where, after literal years of people having already mapped out every possible outcome, the marketing team has to pick which one will retain the highest viewership.
It’s not surprising, there’s no real shock or awe, because it doesn’t break any necessarily established roles. It’s just one of the least interesting choices they could have picked in their losing battle to stay on top of this mindless wave of perpetual reveals and drama in the battle for marketing. It’s not special because we’ve already broken every barrier and seen every heel turn, there’s nothing left to squeeze out but they have to keep squeezing because they built a decade of business on it.
It’s one of those "I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed’ kind of deals.
Perhaps ignoring the Lore is going to be a good idea going forward. Hrgh.
But I don’t want to do that, either. I’ve loved WoW lore for so long, for all it’s flaws.
Honestly? A cosmic war to me actually sounds awesome, but there’s only one problem. Our characters are not gods, they’re at most soft Demi-gods. They’re not really super mighty immortal god-king overwarrior superfellas who can 1v1 a Red Giant and win. They’re just heroes.
They’re mortal. They bleed, they die, and if they’re lucky, they go to a nice, comfortable afterlife. What this is setting up is well outside of what Warcraft has been about for some time now.
This wouldn’t be so bad if it was for example, an Action RPG of some sort from the perspective of some super powerful immortal character. But it’s not…
I’m not really worried about our characters being demi gods or whatever because when it’s all said and done, we’re probably going to get replaced with an actual canon NPC that did all this stuff.
Like the classhalls, sure you the player are the leader of whatever your classhall is but then you see the other classhalls and their canon NPC leader and it turns out actually a canonical NPC character is your classhall leader and it’s just a gameplay mechanic and your participation doesn’t matter.
So with that in mind and shadowlands, after all said and done I assume it’ll probably be like, actually it was Bolvar, Anduin, Jain and Thrall that stopped the jailer and maybe some no name maw walker rando that was probably a Death Knight NPC. Since it seems like only Death Knights and a few flavor NPCs went to the shadowlands anyway.
anyway not really bothered by it all, mainly bothered the cape i want for my current transmog seems to only be available for horde and now im big mad about it