If Med’an and his comics are in a wierd canon limbo, why is Aegwynn permadead? And of all characters to kill effectively offscreen from WoW, why the everloving hell is Medivh’s mother and the former Guardian of Tirisfal one of them?! Worst part is they remembered her long enough to bring her back as a recording in Tomb of Sargeras.
The events of the comic are canon, just not Med’an being Guardian.
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Why not? It suits the narrative to have her sacrifice herself in at least partial redemptionj for some of the sketchy decisions she made as Guardian.
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It is fun when you get into arguments with people over that. They insist that the comics are not canon, one reason being that they are never referenced outside of the comics themselves. I reply with
- Cho’galls design in Cata is a result of his attempt to resurrect C’thun in the comics
- Aegwynn’s death is mentioned in the shattering novel by Jaina. Aegwynn died in said comics
- original characters from the comics, such as Meryl Felstorm show up in game later on. Hell the mage order hall campaign is a continuation of the secondary plot of the comics.
Then they go “well Me’dan himself has yet to appear in game, therefore he is non-canon”.
Gotta love moving the goalposts but I reply with
“Lots of characters have yet to appear in game. Jevan Grimtotem for example”
After that point they stop replying.
Which is a shame, cause I wanted to link the quote from Micky Nelson how just because X was not mentioned in chronicles, does not mean X is now non-canon.
But I always find “X has not appeared in the games, therefore non-canon” to be a strange argument. Sure the games are the primary sources but there are characters that are original to the secondary material and only show in them because… they also die in said material. An example of this would be the First Gen DK Tyrygosa and Jarod Mace encounter in the Shadow Wing manga duology. That being Ragnok Bloodreaver. He is first mentioned in the novelization of Beyond the Dark Portal and is killed in the second Shadow Wing Manga.
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They mostly aren’t, what’s canon in them is surrounded by things that have either been retconned (often almost immediately) or are at best of dubious canonicity.
Given the only thing we got from Blizzard in relation to whether or not they are canon is simply “Me’dan is not the Guardian”, beyond a joke in Chronicles vol 3, I think the comics are still canon. It is just Blizzard is too ashamed to actually reference them directly (as in flat out referencing them in dialogue etc). I honestly find Blizzards comment kinda weird as Me’dan gives up those powers after crushing Ahn’Qiraj on top of Cho’gall anyway. And goes off to his own thing. Obviously stopping by Shattrah in Outland to give Khadgar Atiesh.
I would say moving forward the Me’dan comics are like Shadowlands. We know Blizzard is ashamed of how Shadowlands was received, its story being the major factor to that. So they will try and reference as little as possible going forward. With the only references so far being Anduins domination trip and Amidrassils origins.
Which is a shame. I think Blizzard should add Medan regardless of how his initial reception is. If Blizzard wants to kill him off, go for it but I think he could still have interesting stories tied to him before that happena.
Why should it be? If I don’t encounter these characters, if they are not referenced in any way, I have no reason to be invested in the fact that they ever existed.
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You know that Simpsons episode where Poochie is killed off after an unpopular run? Med’an is Poochie. The events of it still exist, but his future role in the narrative has been eliminated entirely.
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It’s pleasant to imagine that “Canon” is a real thing. That there’s some carved-in-stone list of things that happened and things that didn’t happen, and that all statements and assertions can be neatly sorted into one column or the other.
This is, of course, a fantasy. A huge amount of lore exists in a quantum state of being both canon and not canon until such time as future content either validates or invalidates it.
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The Medan section of the comics are still canon. Him being a “real” guardian isn’t. But everything that happened, including him powering up to fight Cho’gall all happened in canon still.
They just aren’t brought up because they’re unpopular.
Average WoW player knowing the lore they have such heated opinions about? It’s less likely than you think.
devs just seem to want her that way.
maybe because it’s neat to not have someone as powerful as her on beck and call to save the world.
primarily i think it’s just neat to have old powerful figures who are long removed but have left deep footprints in the story.
If that was the reason, they could’ve killed her off after she resurrected her son. Instead of surviving and hiding out on Kalimdor until Jaina encountered her in the Cycle of Hatred novel.
Side note (so not directed at you Dread), why wasn’t Aegwynn in Theramore during vanilla? Even under her alias. I would’ve liked that as an easter egg.
I know Cycle of Hatred came out in early 2006, so around a year after WoW came out but they could’ve added her as an npc in a patch as an undocumented change. For example during patch 2.3 when Blizzard added new quests and NPC’s in Dustwallow Marsh.
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