We’ve had too many Void Holy Wars with rants and ravings about Darkness so replacing them with a Light Holy War would be slightly refreshing yet still hit on the same flaws so one would hope the Naaru’s grand invasion of Azeroth would be the last we see of Religious Fanatics!
The Light Holy War is only different from the Void Holy War in that it’s brighter and grander.
It should be brought in as soon as possible during the Life Expansion and have the Naaru’s creator Elune from the Pantheon of Life help resolve the matter leaving the Light Realm(now deprived of Naaru) to not have Religious Fanatics but instead clearly defined Good Guys and Bad Guys(both being beings of Light)!
We had no void holy war either. We had battling the void.
We dont have an expansion the defy the notions people hold strong for no actual deep reason that “Light = Good” / “Void = Bad”. We had the hints of it in the one mentioned, and in the Maghar allied race questline.
We never had a xpac dedicated to show what lore have shown consistently many times:
What is good is Balance, and nothing short of it will be good.
Or like the people from here use to say:
“Too much of anything is a bad thing”.
This talk of balance shows that WoW’s cosmology was written around the Golden Means Fallacy/Argument to Moderation.
The fallacy is not merely saying that compromise between opposing viewpoints is good. It is saying that extreme solutions are never reasonable or correct, and the correct solution can always be found in the middle. For example: some say cyanide is a lethal and dangerous poison and should never be consumed (unless you want to die). The opposite position would be that cyanide is nutritious and beneficial to your health and should be consumed frequently. The Golden Mean Fallacy would state that cyanide should therefore be consumed in moderation.
We have fought Void worshipers many times, Void fanatics trying to make everything the Void’s way. The Cult of Twilight’s Hammer, the Mantid and N’Zoth’s forces in BfA trying to rebirth the Black Empire. We also have Old Gods seeking to make a Void Titan to unmake the universe. We’ve had plenty of fanaticism story already. To me, a Yrel’s Holy Terror expansion is beating a dead horse.
I’m guessing you’re an Illidan fan. Good for you. I’m not. Never was. I personally considered him alright but overrated, so couldn’t stand the shilling he got in Legion where my opinion of him dropped as the expansion went on.
All Illidan was missing in that cinematic was a fedora and a katana. I could have tolerated that cinematic if Xe’ra said “Sometimes the hand of fate must be forced” before trying to Lightforge Illidan.
It’s 2 am and I’ve got several hours before my shift ends and I even see another a human being. I’m not really sacrificing much by putting in a couple posts a week.
Having villains that just happen to be religious and heroes who are religious is an even bigger and more overused cliche.
You clearly didn’t click the links, as they go into more detail regarding dozens of examples of the above. A dozens is more than 10. Why do you not acknowledge examples you ask for and lie about basic math?
Did Illidan respect Akama’s “bodily autonomy” when he made the Shade of Akama?
There’s a difference between doing bad things for a goal and doing bad things being the goal; do you know anything about Xe’ra’s goals? Legion didn’t introduce Xe’ra as a villain, but instead as anti-hero to the rest of the naaru’s heroes. Then it wasted her to shill Illidan, be a jobber for Illidan and shoehorn in a lazy attempt at a moral relativism arc.
Legion was successful due to fanservice as much, if not more, than plot. Even then, the moment between Illidan and Xe’ra was a footnote in the plot. I already acknowledged and explained how Illidan removed himself from position as “The Man”, and your acknowledgement of him as an edgelord reinforces that.
You claimed I accused the majority of people who upvoted your posts when that applied to one comment with 5 upvotes at the time. To be fair, there was a pattern with a few of the upvotes your comments got.
You claimed I was suspicious of the 20 something people who upvoted that comment when I only said some and named just 4 of those 20.
You tried to paint me as endorsing blind obedience to authority when I only criticized contrarian and edgy stories as overused, lacking nuance and often agenda driven.
You twisted my words about your arguments to try and paint me as close-minded. I said authority has good reasons for existing and a lot of people forget that. That’s not saying it’s infallible and above questioning. Why did you claim I was arguing that?
You keep trying to paint morally grey and edgy as only smart and good vs evil as only simple-minded.
But what makes righteous anger righteous? Which fictional characters do you consider morally good? Would you say they’re infallible?
How and why the “retcons” you cited came to be isn’t the topic or reason behind this thread, hence why I didn’t address them. Retcons contradict previous lore, and most of the ones I complained about don’t even give an in-universe explanation. I have acknowledged the changes to the Light, that’s why I’m criticizing some of them. Appeals to emotion can break suspension of disbelief when done poorly.
About my threads, I’ve made 48 threads on the forums, 11 of them were made with a focus on Light-related characters or story (9 if we don’t count my “Dogmatism bad” thread and my “Light and Void prophecies” thread).
I acknowledged and thanked you for clarifying the definition of brotherhood and explained about the other terms.
You never acknowledged that the Titanforged are not unthinking constructs, but thinking constructs mutated by the curse of flesh while the aqir are spawned from the Old Gods bodies, nor acknowledge the difference between the two processes. Why?
I acknowledged the Nerubians formerly known as Aqir didn’t serve the Old Gods, but wasn’t sure they aren’t villains. But I’ll concede that point now due to benefit of the doubt.
As for the Forsaken, the fact remains that Lilian Voss got the job over Calia.
We also don’t see any forced conversions or genocide in that Mag’har recruitment scenario (btw, you originally said cultural genocide).
Lorewise, I enjoy the Death Knights as tragic characters trying to make the most of their horrific situation and rise above what the Lich King forced on them such as a literal hunger for pain; unlike Demon Hunters, Death Knights aren’t possessed and didn’t choose to be what they are. Gameplay-wise, I like their durability and crowd control.
Regarding your criteria of acceptable sources… I’ve given you game content and official published material, such as an in-game quote from Scarlet Onslaught founder and leader Brigitte Abbendis renouncing the Scarlet Crusade and proof that the Scarlet Crusade was wiped out… and you still denied both. Why?
The buildings in Warcraft 2 that produces the Paladin unit are literally called Churches.
Turalyon asked her not to do something; if you asked your employer not to do something you think they want to do, are you defying them? As for Velen, here’s the interview;
Turalyon and Lothraxion opposed harming Alleria and Xe’ra’s assertion that virtue didn’t matter if you rejected the path the Light chose right before that on page 42. Quote (bold added for emphasis); “Virtues count for nothing if you stray from the path the Light has chosen for you.”
And yet, despite her anger, Xe’ra hesitated.
The quest you linked and the Wowpedia text references that story.
Citation needed for the characters who are non-villains or heroes due to their religion. Though I never argued that religiously-motivated villains outnumber all other character types, just that it is overused these days.
You still haven’t given more examples than me here. For one, there are 134 story examples on the trope page for “The Good Shepard”… but there’s more, almost twice as many, for its negative counterpart, the “Sinister Minister” trope, which has 260 story examples on that trope page, as seen here;
The Light is not always right. Even noble paladins like Turalyon can be blinded by faith.
Velen losing his faith after having to kill his own son is not “edgy” it’s personal. Having personal conflicts and a crisis of faith is… relatable.
The Light isn’t a stand in for Christanity and you probably won’t go to Hell for liking one (or more) shirtless demon edgelord.
It’s okay Thadeus, you can admit to liking Illidan, no one here is going to judge you for it or damn your soul.
At this point, your persistant hatred for Illidan and his “edginess” is 100% rooted in psychological projection.
He’s who you aspire to be. The only thing holding you back is religious guilt because demons are “bad.”
Choosing a Death Knight and the way you explained why you like them is also rooted in shame of sin, you treat the death knight condition as a peneance for sin, so you justify liking them through that lens.
Maybe if you allow yourself to like Illidan and then give yourself righteous lashings maybe God will forgive your edgelord fantasies.
Illidan is weird for me, because I mostly liked him during WC 3 and BC(when he was pretty unrepentant about what he was doing), I loathed how….edgy they made him seem during Legion. Though the scene with X’era was pretty cool to watch.
That’s what I hated the most about what they did to Illidan. Would’ve been better if he was a still a massive prick with a huge ego and messed up badly because he didn’t communicate his intentions during legion.
Like we got to Argus and he’s horrified because he overestimated the sheer presence the Legion had on the planet and he looks to Khadgar and Velen like A little help would be nice right now.
Are you sure your latest personal attack on me wasn’t a coping mechanism for you admitting you agree with me/share my distaste for how Legion shilled Illidan?
So, like me, you loathed how edgy Illidan was in Legion… but, unlike me, you enjoyed his edgiest moment? That’s quite the mixed message, Micah.
One can think a character is edgy and still enjoy a particular scene Thadeus…like sorry you don’t understand the concept. I said I ENJOYED it, what I didn’t say that it was the pinnacle of story telling or necessarily good but it was just amusing because everyone but Turaylon just stood there like Yeah…she deserved that
Thanks for explaining. Nearly all Edgy-dan’s dialogue in Patch 7.3, especially that cinematic was snarky one-liners, and he had enough plot armor to make Batman greener with envy than Joker’s hair. It makes no sense that only Turalyon was mad but Arator, Lothraxion and the Lightforged Draenei did nothing, though.
I can’t help thinking that Xera’s story was really just a story that was so bad that she needed promptly and immediately to be put out of her misery. Either that or wherever it was going was not somewhere they ultimately wanted to take it.
On a slightly separate tangent, my thinking at the time was that Xera and the Naru had been gene seeding the cosmos with bio weapons in host populations like the nightelves and were waiting for them to come to fruition. In the fullness of time they would have had their ideal army of the light except the legion destroyed most worlds that they had seeded, and Illidan turned out be be the only fruit from their eon spanning program. Whether he was willing or not they felt he belonged to them.
