A better expansion idea than “Light Crusade”

Lore Story Forum
21

Im gonna tell you why a light crusade exp would be garbage in a lot less words.

A light Crusade would would mean we are dealing with more cosmic level entities. WoW’s story sucks when it comes to its Cosmic Lore, and largly has been rejected/not enjoyed by the community. Source on that being the reception of SL and the respecitive realms.

The reason wows cosmic lore is garbage is because before SL, wows cosmic lore was pretty straight forward, you had light, shadow and reality which was the 2 of those combined, and you had the elemental planes, that was really it, it was simple, it worked, and everyone was fine with it.

Now blizzard is trying to make more cosmic lore, while at the same time, expecting the player to just accept anything and everything they throw at them, and that they will love it. When in reality, you get the following happening.

Light crusade would just be more cosmic level crappy story that no one really wants.
The best thing we can get for an exp would be going back to azeroth and dealing with more azeroth problems. There is far far more to do there then going into other realms. Here is a great list of things that we can still do:
South Seas exp (Give us a fun ship mechanic that we get to build.)
Exploring the other side of the azeroth
Caverns of time exp (Going back to make sure the time line is set right, and preserve it)
Narubian empire (Let us explore ancient and old narubian empire under the earth, something with the dwarfs would be great as well)

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22

I mean yeah. When I said I wanted a more “Cosmic” expansion I was thinking more in line with Outlands.

Not as in Cosmic on the Scale of light and void etc.

Just you know have a big meteor be coming for azeroth or something and we must go there and do stuff etc. Idk. something like that or just go to another planet cosmic.

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23

I would say no to other words as well, because once agian, it does not really pertain to azeroth.

Outland worked because it was directly tied to the origins of warcraft, and the orcs, and like 90% of the problems that happened on azeroth. There is not really another world we could go to now that would not just be some random freaking world for lol reasons.

We just need more things to do on azeroth, not else where.

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24

How about Light vs. Order? Cleric vs. Scientists, Scarlet Crusade vs. Followers of King Mechagon, Humans vs. Gnomes. Science provides the most appropriate activity for everyone through the search for difference, and this is perceived as racism. Clerics treat everyone equally and drive to death all those unable to cope with the work.
No?

25

Also we need to stop the bad guy arms race, we dont need another big bad.

Thats one of the key problems with SL for me, we are fighting a commically powerful/evil bad guy, for christ sake, you can literally sum of SL as: “Go to the after life to stop souls going to giga hell, only to find out you need to stop giga satan from remaking reality.” Like that is so comedically bad, how do you seriously follow that up with a new threat? You cant, you reached the end of the road, We are going into hell to puch giga satan in the face, the shark has been jumped.

We need more grounded expations, with things that are far more tangible and relatable. Not relatable in that, Oh yeah i totally relate to fighting the undead, but relatable in the idea that they are concepts we can grasp and understand the importance of.

A world ending event, most people dont really understand that, its like 1 billion dollar, yes you know that number, but you cant really understand just how freaking much that is, vs stopping a town from being over run by a warband, you can understand that.

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26

I think a, “The Light is actually bad,” expansion is inevitable.

That said, I think there will be a right way to go about it, and a wrong way. For one thing, I think it’d be important to establish that the Light isn’t as unified as it seems to be on the surface. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, an AU Xe’ra coming over to the MU should be confronted by A’dal, in which we see two Naaru whom both serve the Light clash in what ideals they understand the Light to embody.

Xe’ra is very much a zealot that see’s the Light as the only legitimate power and the only answer, and everything else to be antithetical to the One Truth.

A’dal is very much a benevolent force that see’s the Light as a spectrum of power made stronger through the diversity of other ideas and cultures coming together under it’s banner willingly.

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27

I think there is no right way, its going to go badly. the cosmic realm bullcrap is not being taken well.

The issue is with these cosmic realms, is that by us the players seeing them and interacting with them, it removed the importance and mystery about them. SL for an example, has removed the importance of death. Before death was a very finite thing, and anyone who had any knowlege of what was beyond death was very few and far between, its what made characters like KT, and The litch king so unique and powerful, they understood more then mortal could.

Now, the knowlege is so common that it removed the mystery about it, it removed the finality of death and makes it just another thing. There is a very good reason why you dont want to expand upon your cosmic relms beyond the most basic level. Like a good example of this, the emerald dream, its a untouched version of azeroth, by NOT showing us that, it leaves the players the ability to wonder what it might be, it leave the chracters that DO have knowlege of it more room to be used.

By showing us the light lands, or what ever the hell they are going to be called, its only going to remove from the narrative not add to it because its setting in stone a very mysteries aspect of wow.

On top of this, the light lands or what ever, are also proabably going to be veyr VERY high level fantasy if the current light tech we have seen is any indication, IE, lots of space ships and crystal ships, and lasers, and light mech suits, you know things that are not very warcraft like.

So no matter how you cut it, a light crusade exp is going to be very retarded.

And to the point of “The light is morally gray” thinking is equally bad. We dont need everything to be grey or questionable. Using and making something a morally qustinable action or belief is a fine story method, when used sparingly, when every single faciton in the game or realm starts to become gray, you dont have a good picture anymore, you have just blobs of gray.

Its 100% fine, if the light is “Objectivly good” its fine to have Objectivly good factions, abilities and being. When you try and make then all morally subjective, you are not then making a good narrative, you are just being a pretentious snob who thinks you are making deep meaningful stories but really you are just convoluting everything into a setting in which no one is right, and no one is wrong, so you dont really have any good narrative set up because no one is the good guy, no one is the bad guy.

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28

In the case of the Light being morally grey, this is something we’ve seen as far back as Vanilla World of Warcraft, so exploring that hardly seems as if it’s pretentious writing in an attempt to inject depth where it’s unnecessary.

The Scarlet Crusade demonstrated to us that the Light was not all rainbows and sunshine, that it could be dark, grim, and cruel as well. This idea of one extreme of the Light being zealotry was only further enforced by Xe’ra, whom is referred to as the Light Mother, a Prime Naaru.

I completely agree with you that going to the, ‘Lightlands,’ would be pretty dumb. I’m all for a conflict on Azeroth between Xe’ra and A’dal, between two very different ideological spectrums of the Light.

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29

Let me point out several facts that undermine your latest personal attack on me.

Blizzard themselves made these allusions, and several key devs have openly stated that various parallels are deliberate (eg; Chris Metzen outright called the Naaru Warcraft’s angels), even if the Light and Void/Shadows dynamic now looks more like Yin (dark) and Yang (light) and dualism.

You, and anyone who sees my chat history, can clearly see I don’t have a problem with Light villains - there’s the Scarlet Crusade, nor have I denied that religious belief in fiction or real-life can lead to dogma, radicalization and violence. Plus, I’ve given plenty of lore and meta reasons as to why this is a bad idea; one of my complaints about the Lightbound is them being a Scarlet Crusade rehash. Also, my history clearly shows I don’t do this kind of post “every month”.

You may want to rethink making such easily disproven claims. No one is going to be impressed by your attempts to strawman me as some fanatical “sheeple”.

  1. Still disproves the idea that the Naaru are just as bad as the Old Gods or Sargeras.
  2. Certain groups, but the narrative treats it as otherwise.
  3. Actually, the AU Draenei do have grievances; chief among them are the Iron Horde and AU Grom.
  4. Look those groups, their games and the themes up if you don’t believe me.
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30

Eh, the light was far far FAR more one sides in classic, the example of the scarlet crusade is not really a good one, because also remember, they were being tricked by a dreadlord.
If anything the light was more akin to an element then it was a being/realm.

All it showed was that the light could be used by peole who still belived they were doing the lights work, but being tricked by teh dreadlord

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31

Indeed, it set the stage for the idea of the Light being used for evil, something that had been previously considered impossible, that the Light would abandon anyone who tried to misuse it. Even that idea wasn’t entirely lost since the Blood Knights reinforced it while the Scarlet Crusade broke it. Arthas Menethil was convinced he was doing the right thing in Northrend, but unless I’m mistaken, in the novel he began losing his power to command the Light the further he went along his path towards becoming the Lich King.

We were given a very clear idea from the start of WoW that the Light is content to permit atrocities so long as they work in the Light’s favor.

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32

I agree, and what we saw in classic, again im only speaking from within classic, was that the lights favor was always on the side of justice and what was right. The reason the dreadlord was able to trick the scarlet crusade was because in their minds and hearts they belived they were doing justice. So its not really that the LIGHT is being morally gray, is that if anything the light is the most consistent thing out there, it followed only the just and the rigorous, what was defined as justice was not something the light cared about, but was was defined by the user.

So its not that the light permits atrocities and it morally subjective itself, its that wielders can have a differing view of justice so long as that justice and rigorousness is held true the light answers, and be morally subjective. Like between scarlet and anyone else, the light would not answer a thief, or a murder.

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33

This comment is… ‘chef kiss’.

Blizzard didn’t need to villain bat anyone for that narrative, objectively good characters can fight among themselves; for example, maybe they’re being duped by the villain, or ignorant about each other’s goals. I’d be fine with the narrative being Xe’ra and A’dal going head-to-head against each other over being on opposite sides of The Trolley Problem or a “spare the guilty to save the innocent” dilemma.

Too many people think that “morally grey” = profound or mature. Objective good and evil do exist. Some things are uncertain, some things are certain. A lot of this current fixation on “morally grey” in modern fiction seems to be a combination of not wanting to offend people and pretentious antipathy toward objective morality. You can have morally grey characters as much as you can have objectively good or objectively evil characters.

That’s still a retcon, plus the Blood Knights were retconned into using the Light by forcefully siphoning it from a captive Naaru (M’uru).

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34

There… wasn’t a retcon here at all. It was always a matter of draining M’uru and forcing the Light to bend to their will. The Light resisted the Blood Knights’ use of it, because they were using it for evil purposes. In, Blood of the Highborne, Liadrin likens it to a headache or something to that effect.

The Blood Knights were an example of the Light trying to stop others from using it for evil, the way Arthas lost his command of the Light the closer he came to Frostmourne. The Scarlet Crusade, however, never faced that dilemma. It was never hinted at that they struggled to wield the Light. I doubt one can say their cause was just or righteous either, considering the actions they took in the pursuit of it were no less damning than those of Arthas.

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35

While you’re right about the Blood Knights, that does make the Scarlet Crusade a retcon. Nice comparison between the Scarlet Crusdae and Arthas; in fact, the Scarlet Crusade was even founded by some survivors from Lorderaen.

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36

How does it make the Scarlet Crusade a retcon?

37

How you said the Light resists or abandons people who use it for evil. This was how it worked pre-WoW… but wasn’t the case with the Scarlet Crusade. That dynamic was changed with the Scarlet Crusade, so I call it a retcon.

38

This is where I disagree.

It’s not a retcon to demonstrate a new angle to the Light, while maintaining what previously existed. The Scarlet Crusade were able to wield the Light while doing horrible things, because the Light stood to gain something for it (a foothold on Azeroth, against the Scourge). By contrast the Blood Knights struggled to compel the Light to obey them because the Light had nothing to be gained by being enslaved by them.

A’dal believed the Blood Elves could be redeemed through M’uru’s sacrifice, but that didn’t stop the Light itself from resisting their efforts, because the Light wasn’t gaining anything in the process.

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39

But the new angle changes and contradicts what came before. In hindsight, that could be a mistake rather than a retcon (look at the debacle of the Draenei/Eredar lore between Warcraft 3 TFT and WoW Burning Crusade).

40

Not necessarily.

Consider, for example, Lothar’s fall and Turalyon’s ascension with the Light at the battle of Blackrock Mountain. The Orcs were broken and fleeing, and yet Turalyon felt the Light’s wrath and pushed the offensive all the same. It’s not really all that different than, say, the Alliance firing on Orcs trying to swim to shore during the arrival on Pandaria scenario in MoP.

Even in WC3 when Arthas went after the Orcs, the light condoned his butchering.

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