A Hypothetical - Cancelling Afrasiabi

So, I came across this:

Which leads me to ask - let’s say that we actually did cancel every single quest and item that Alex Afrasiabi ever worked on. What would be left? Would we recognize it?

Probably nothing. The lore is a cake and saying “what would happen if we removed this one ingredient” is like saying “what if we removed all the baking soda?” after the cake has already been baked.

But at the same time, it’d also be inaccurate to point at the cake and say “this is just baking soda.”

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Well sure, but the presence of baking soda is pervasive throughout the cake and can be called integral to its construction, no?

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Depends on what he worked on. I would not miss the majority of WoW quests, considering they are largely boring filler.

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I remember for my 16th birthday, I got it into my head that I wanted to bake my own birthday cake. No idea why, I just wanted to.

I forgot the water.

The poor thing came out looking like crusty shriveled butt and nobody wanted to eat it, but amazingly it tasted great anyway.

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If I was Blizzard my main take away from this would be never to add anyone in any of my games as a reference to anyone in real life. At least anyone living. And maybe then not even someone who has passed away as an hommage.

As for the topic on hand, I dont recall any of the characters using Afrasiabi name to be too important and removing/changing his name would have very not have any major consequences.

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I should put an addendum on my metaphor to say that you can still have a passible cake as long as you have at least one ingredient (sugar)

That seems like the sort of birthday cake that you’d give to Scarface.

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Too late.
Sorry, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

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Yes, in the sense that every ingredient is integral to its construction. In this case, you have a group of people who all contributed an ingredient that was then fused with all the others and made into a cake via baking them together. We’re now learning that at least one of the people who contributed ingredients was a huge jerk. Does this ruin the whole cake? Is him being a jerk tantamount to him poisoning his ingredients, thus ruining the whole cake? Or are we just going to have to accept that one of the cooks was a huge jerk but enjoy the cake anyway?

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In general, a cook’s personal or political opinions aren’t going to have an impact on the product that a cook creates - at least so long as we keep them well away from the arsenic. So I have to dispute where you’re taking this analogy. In art, the creators’ biases are absolutely things that can and do bleed into the product.

Or you just have to learn to separate their potential biases from their work.

Plenty of lgbt+ people can enjoy say Harry Potter and still realize Rowling is a piece of work. Some choose to still remember the good memories they have while refusing to buy anything that can give Rowling a penny, still other are willing to make exceptions because they love the work more then they hate the person. Everyone’s tolerance is different.

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Well, let’s take Rowling as an example.

Rowling raised a lot of eyebrows for suggesting on Twitter that Albus Dumbledore, a beloved character in the franchise, was gay. She never wrote anything of the kind in any of her books, and it wasn’t really portrayed in the films. She just sort of said it - possibly entirely cynically. She may have been willing to say that in transmedia formats, but she didn’t seem willing to put it in her actual work.

Does that matter? If not, why not?

Sylvanas ordering Wrathgate was out of the blue and only ever implied by him.

Edit: I’ve been personally working on her since 2006, making stories for her - Alex.

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What? Even without any input from him(this is honestly the first time I ever heard him tweet/talk about it) most people DID NOT TRUST Sylvanas. The was part of her character. There were entire threads back in Wrath about how much Sylvanas actually knew/was part of the Wrathgate.

Mostly likely Varimathas did jump the gun and wanted her dethroned but at the same Sylvanas was probably the kind of character that would have rained plague bombs on all our heads if it meant Arthas died along with us.

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I agree with you but no one is saying Sylvanas should have been trusted or that’s she’s a trustworthy character.

I like to give Sylvanas the credit she’s due, but I think giving her credit for the Wrathgate is wrong. If Sylvanas planned Wrathgate she’s absolutely as smart as cdev would like for us to believe. Talk about genius.

Edit: She’s literally light years steps ahead if that is the case.

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I have a feeling we will get an answer one way or another in Sylvanas’ book. My belief is she probably knows more then she would like us to believe and that she isnt as innocent as she claimed back in Wrath.

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A disjointed mess.

Compared to what we’ve got, that sounds like an improvement.

I could see her planning to rain blight on everyone atop ICC and not at the bottom. As Sylvanas is a speech giver there wouldn’t have been any denying it; there would have been tons of witnesses and survivor to give their account. Her planning Wrathgate is a harder pill to swallow. If Wrathgate is Alex idea we could certainly deal with it being a retcon and the story would be better for it.

Maybe he’s the mustache behind Sylvanas’ twirl. We can certainly purge all that crap.