I would have hoped that vereesa and Alleria play a role in “bring sylvanas from the past to life”, alleria is disapointed in her sister like never before, and take a bit of the blame because she litteraly helped her mother to raise her sisters and she was the one who learned her bowskills to the other silblings, only lyrath was never interested in it, because her mother as rangergeneral had litteraly no time for them.
So, a much older sister, sometimes even a mother for sylvanas und vereesa, and now? She play no role in any meaningfull term.
Instead of a "magical soul was taken away without notice for …the entire time), alleria could have remembered sylvanas to the person she once was, to compare this person to the person she is now.
I mean, Alleria, come on, blizz, one of the real legends of your entire Canon, the best bowmaster of quel’Thalas since Quel’Thalas fundation, and nothing? nothing?
The sister who fought against the trolls, and helped raising her other silblings, the one who was the big Idol of Sylvanas and vereesa and Lirath, the golden Sun of the family?? Pride of the Windrunner, loving sister, the symbol of an entire generation and she do nothing
…nothing?
I knew blizzard can from time to time fail, but hush…this is bad.
You may be right. Blizzard has been steadily retconning the naaru into knock-offs of the Vorlons for awhile (interestingly, Chris Metzen originally identified the naaru as the “angels” of the setting), but have failed to properly capture that in the story.
For comparison, the Vorlons’ failure was less a limited outlook, more losing track of their identity in trying to prove their method of teaching (“helicopter parenting”) was right and that the Shadows’ method (“sink or swim”) was wrong. Plus, in a way, the Vorlons won that conflict; despite turning against the Vorlons themselves, the younger races used the Vorlons’ ideas – not the Shadows’ - to solve their problems and build a new society (one even evolved into a Vorlon-like being).
Whatever their faults, the naaru have actually been helpful in the big picture (saving the Draenei and helping them rebuild twice, the Arcaztraz, the Sunwell, the Army of the Light… even Xe’ra - the naaru some fans only remember as “the dead fanatical chandelier who tried to Lightforge Illidan” was the one who discovered the secret of Argus’ world-soul and that it was vital to the demons’ immortality. Also, how many races or species have the Void/Old Gods saved from extinction?
These two things seem kinda parallel, to me. Or at least close enough, given that we’re dealing with a different setting and genre. Maybe the denizens of Azeroth won’t actually tell the naaru to go away, but it’s likely that they’ll stop treating them with any kind of reverence; actually, that may already have stopped doing so since Legion.
I think that would be bad writing if true, suddenly tarring all naaru with the same brush because one naaru got forceful with one elf.
The Army of the Light had served with Xe’ra for millennia. I can understand them being uncertain about her attempt to forcibly Lightforge Illidan or disagreeing with it, but turning against her at the drop of a hat is nonsensical. And that’s just Xe’ra, treating every naaru like that is stupid.
Not every Light user saw that - only Velen, Turalyon and some members of the Army of the Light. Plus Velen’s gonna dismiss the whole “saving his people from extinction” because one naaru tried to take the edge (lol) off of one Demon Hunter? This is writing as bad as Game of Thrones Season 8 where Dany went from good to evil like the push of a button. Even Alleria, who was imprisoned on Xe’ra’s orders, didn’t jump on the “Naaru bad” bandwagon.
I think a lot of fans turned against all naaru after Xe’ra’s actions (or wanted to hate the naaru and Xe’ra gave them the excuse/reason they sought), but that doesn’t mean every character did or should. But for many WoW fans - and, I strongly suspect, writers - the morality of actions in the story is based on “which of the characters involved do (I) like?” I don’t think many people would’ve complained if Xe’ra had tried to forcibly Lightforge Garithos or Gallywix.
P.S. It may seem that way, but I’m not having a go at you, but the writers.
One might also keep in mind that Xe’ra was apparently operating according to some prophecy all along. Prophecy that’s never really been elaborated upon beyond general visions of “Light Champion Illidan” from the Illidan novel - all of which could have been things shown to him as a means to an end rather than actual representations of the prophecy being pursued.
So everything she did - including the questionable stuff - could theoretically have been her knowingly playing a “role” to get the desired responses from everyone else, including even goading Illidan into destroying her. Trying to convert Illidan might have never been intended to succeed, but rather been meant to evoke the sort of reaction that would subsequently put him and his allies on the proper path with the proper mindsets to bring about the Legion’s defeat on Argus.
After all, Mu’ru willingly allowed its own capture, abuse and eventual destruction to fulfill the destiny Velen had foreseen for the blood elves, so it wouldn’t be unprecedented for another naaru to have engaged in behavior that was knowingly meant to steer events along a desired course by provoking everybody else to react in certain ways.
It could even be why Velen didn’t seem particularly stunned or upset by the whole Illidan/Xe’ra scenario. As someone who’s spent thousands of years himself being guided by prophetic foresight, Velen may have recognized that there was a fair chance of Illidan resisting conversion and destroying Xe’ra being exactly what Xe’ra herself had already expected and wanted to happen.
If Xe’ra was really so married to fulfilling a prophecy, then she might have considered her own destruction an acceptable price to pay in making it happen.
I am going to answer both of you because it is so much more convenient. I don’t think it went against his “morals”(I repeat, even back in Tides of Darkness I recall Turalyon using torture to get information) so much as the both wished it wouldn’t be necessary. One can be against say killing but realize it is something one has to do to defend themselves/those they love. Similarly using this tactic is not ideal in most situations but desperate times call for desperate measure.
The so called “victims” both helped wanted criminals escape and swore an oath not to reveal what they knew. If they had cooperated/not actually helped said criminals escape they wouldn’t have been put in that situation.
That sounds likely; in the quest chain after we use Elune’s Tear to unlock Xe’ra’s core, from the quest “Awakenings”, Xe’ra says the following to our PC’s;
“Light’s Heart is to serve as the vessel for Illidan Stormrage’s rebirth: my last act of service to the Light.” (bold for emphasis).
Sounds like Xe’ra knew she was about to die. Plus, in the story “A Thousand Years of War”, the words Xe’ra says as she lightforges Turalyon are the same ones she says to Illidan while trying to Lightforge him.
As for Alleria, for all that she refused to follow the Light, she never tried to dissuade Turalyon or Arator from doing so. Plus she never says anything about any other naaru besides Xe’ra, so her view of Xe’ra doesn’t apply to them.
To split hairs, they weren’t tortured for information.
Alleria used the Void to rip the information from their minds, and it happened to be a painful process. Alleria wasn’t inflicting pain until they told her what she and Turalyon wanted to know, the pain was an unintended side-effect. Alleria and Turalyon were doing the “Good Cop, Bad Cop” routine.
Would you object or call it torture if Alleria was able to painlessly extract the knowledge from their minds?
I would’ve liked to see it explained in universe that the reason Turalyon didn’t stop Alleria using the Void this way is because she didn’t stop him from following the Light and serving with the Army of the Light, thus it would’ve been considered hypocritical for him to stop her.
Yeah, because the pain is what makes it torture. But I still think that counts for being tortured for information; it was just done in a manner that doesn’t require the victim’s feedback. It being a side-effect doesn’t matter when they were aware of what it was doing to their targets and they continued anyway.
I think I need this clarified because I’m probably reading it wrong. Was the mind-reading not harmful until they found something? Or was it a “push harder now that they know something is there”?
They were pushing harder when they knew something was there. I was just saying they weren’t deliberately inflicting pain to force the victim to comply.
By the way, what about my question; would you oppose Alleria reading their minds with the Void if it was painless?
If you commit a crime and are punished for it you are not a victim. You are simply reaping the consequences of your actions. They had the option of telling what they knew about outlaws to both factions and they chose not to do so.
It’d still be invasive and a subtler start of slippery-slope actions but I think it would be much harder to object to. I think my main objection would be more meta-related, where I wouldn’t expect the writing to push it further as a temptation into abusing the power to form a sort of mind-scanning Big Brother issue.
So you feel torture is an appropriate response for a crime?
In Azeroth they literally hang people who commit crimes. We kill criminals all the time in the name of our factions. Torture(especially just phsycological torture) is actually a very lesser evil. Why is what Alleria did more monsterous that what any of us have done?
Personally I think the use of pyschological interrogation techniques is a very gray area. At the very least even the US(supposed paragons of humans right) have not totally abandon the practice because the gain can actually be greater then the cost.
I don’t like the idea of minimizing the psychological aspect. That stuff can be just as lifelong as any physical mutilation. While it’s true that the players do a lot of killing (it’s our gameplay loop, after all) and have even tortured an NPC on one occasion, I don’t think its availability makes it excusable. I remember disliking that Borean Tundra quest back when WotLK was new.
I get that you want to be a heroic monster, and blizzard is terrible at showing moral consistency, but a medieval fantasy world isn’t going to have pure good heroes. At least it shouldn’t. Isn’t this what people wanted out of the alliance?
Yeah, I know nobody’s going to be morally perfect or anything. Quest made me uncomfortable, I did it because it barred progression, I moved on.
But if I remember correctly, Zerde wants that too, and that he’s said that he likes the morally righteous, white knight aspect of the alliance. He’s technically playing a heroic monster too, so I think I was just a little confused to see him take that stance in-universe about torturing civilians, even if they aided a dark ranger.
It’s one thing to defend the desperation of the scene, but it was the whole “they deserved it” angle coming from him that threw me.
Edit: Rereading the bit you quoted of me and just in case, I don’t mean to say that the content shouldn’t exist. When I said excusable, I meant the “torture is okay because the players do it too” direction I thought he was going.
I haven’t read the book, but would it have caused pain to the subjects if Alleria had probed their minds for information and discovered they were innocent? That would put a different spin on the whole thing.
My rebuttal is the ideal the people who got mind probed/tortured are not some innocent bystanders. They weren’t innocent and did have the avenue of not helping the dark ranger, saying everything they knew beforehand.
If it was pointless torture/pointless killing I’d be the first to want to knock out Alleria. But as it is, there was a reason for it, namely to try and capture a dark ranger/hope said dark ranger to hopefully help stop Sylvanas before she did something crazy, like I dont know trying to break the veil between life and death.