It doesn’t take players a week to travel down 2/3rds Kalimdor.
The Horde God is evil and the Alliance God is an idiot.
It’s like poetry, each stanza, it rhymes.
12 Likes
Saurfang was a hypocrite because there was never any such thing as a good war, and he knew it:
- Sylvanas turned back toward the World Tree, watching it burn. Saurfang made himself watch the flames consume city and citizens alike. He would not dishonor himself further by turning away.
The screams continued. They reminded him of Shattrath. He had loved the sound, then. Smoke filled the air, reminding him of Stormwind, of racing through the streets as buildings burned all around him, finding cowering humans and butchering them as they begged for their lives. He had loved the slaughter, then.
And he had loved this war, too, hadn’t he?
Saurfang did not move for hours, not until the screams faded and the flames had burned themselves down to embers. Before him stood a smoking husk that had once been a great civilization. Inside him was a feeling of despair, a feeling of shame. There was no haze of corruption now to soften the horror.
Saurfang would remember this moment in his dreams forever. He would relive this shame, and all the new ones to come, over and over again.
You have led your Horde in the service of death, Malfurion had said.
As others have pointed out, Tyrande did not make a move for Silithus until after Saurfang did, tricking Shaw’s spies and starting his march south was the entire set up for Saurfang’s strategy.
Afrasiabi was involved with the Loyalist content from the start, which was never even intended at the beginning. Following Saurfang’s rebellion was originally been the only plan, and we even got to watch them hobble together to Loyalist option during the 8.1 PTR, and ultimately saw how little they did with it, having the Loyalists follow along with all of Baine and Saurfang’s quests right up until the epilogue. And even on the end, we had Afrasiabi say at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nGnT6WZbeI&t=22m54s :
- We have to have two story narrative lines that we have to pursue, and we have to make sure we're doing both of them justice. So now the loyalist [to] Sylvanas need to have their own line. And loyalist to Saurfang and the old honor bound Horde need to have their own line, right? Which I actually think is awesome. Which I think is just super cool. It's just not something that's ever been done in World of Warcraft. It's been done in a lot of games in a lot of different ways. So, that's really where that stems from. And so for us this is a bit of test to see how far we can take this. And you know, I push back as far as like, take it all the way, right? And delete your characters. The losing side: You're done. And Pat [Patrick Dawson, Lead Software Engineer] keeps telling me we can't do that. And I keep saying "We can do whatever we want." But he keeps saying we shouldn't. So I'm going to err on the side of professionalism and say we shouldn't.
For further context, just before that in the interview Afrasiabi said at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nGnT6WZbeI&t=22m04s :
- There are people that are going to be loyal to Sylvanas. No matter what she does, they're going to want to follow her. And then there are people that are going to be loyal to the old Horde, and the old ways, and honor, and virtue, and- am I making this sound- am I biased? Is this bias happening? No, not at all. Not at all. No.
I don’t think Afrasiabi ever had any intentions for Sylvanas to have cared about the Horde or the Loyalists ever having been on the correct side.
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Horde
Evil
Alliance
Idiotic
Touchdown
On paper?
Unbreaded
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Except for the war against the Legion, the Scourge, Old Gods, the Iron Horde…
War’s only bad when it’s used against the factions, despite it being the “pillar” of warcraft.
I’m pretty sure in the setting everyone generally regarded people being attacked by the Legion, Scourge, Old Gods, and even the Iron Horde as bad.
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Reading this whole thread makes me agree on a few points. A fallen Anshe being zovaal would have been horrible on that I agree it just would’ve been wrong not because of racism but because it reinforces stereotypes. Number 2. Slyvanas should never have had a redemption and the developers shouldn’t have flipped flopped because of afansabi they ruined shadowlands because of it. Slyvanas was always a lawfully evil character since Warcraft 3 when she was reborn as a banshee. This redemption arc does not belong to slyvanas because it happen so abruptly and so fast with no hints at it at all ingame. No I won’t count the novel it needs to be shown ingame not outside of the game where the books are based off
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The arc they put her on through BFA and beyond didn’t belong to her either. It belonged to the reigning Lich King. The default servant of Zovaal on Azeroth. Sylvanas’s arc should have been something else entirely, not requiring a redemption arc.
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Given Elune in Shadowlands was shown to be kinda dumb and unaware and confirmed to value Nelves above all other peoples who worship her, I can definitely see a Non-Zero chance that Elune is a raid boss down the road.
Assigning Anshe “Good But Corrupted” alongside side the above possibility means that if he gets restored he may also be a raid boss next to Elune.
Basically it’s a worry a Meaningful or Majority of the Devs are Anti-Theist/New Atheists and want to villain bat all gods and religions in-game.
As they admitted to wanting to originally do with Bwonsamdi
Which would undermine a lot of the setting tbh
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It undermines the whole setting. Not just the majority, because it means races like Worgen(most who worship Goldrinn), Trolls, Tauren, Orcs, humans, etc are all wrong about their faith.
I’m with you and we both been saying it for a while now that this new direction definitely feels intentional and outright malicious
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Slowly you realize that looking at the game the way baal does can inevitably lead to an anti-attitude towards everything, i mean, baal have a point in some of his topics…but not EVERYTHING is meant to be a racism paralel or other things, this is…uff, overblown.
And to the topic; I just don´t see An’She/Belore in Zovaal, it makes not so much sense if you ask me
Afrasabi clearly had bias towards the old Horde. Danuser in other interviews said tye Loyalusts were right.
Regardless, it seems like you proved my point that Afrasabi supported Saurfang.
I can see why you would be worried about that, but Hermeticism as the framework for the lore suggests the exact opposite, the writers are not anti-theists or New Atheists… they are Gnostics.
First Ones lore is based on Gnosticism.
This isn’t new to WoW lore in Shadowlands. The first hints that they were proposing Gnosticism as the overall faith of this franchise was in the Velen short story, where Anduin sees the nature of the universe as a microcosm. “Each life is a Universe.”
Nah the ones whose religion we know about we know are New Agers and Wiccans
Which, I’ve met Anti Theist New Agers before. Quite common.
I mean, they clearly show every religion - every god - with more weaknesses then strength so far, even at the Elune pillar they had taken the axe and caused proper damage.
I guess it’s supposed to mean as much as no god in this setting is…really trustworthy…and any exception then is more of an oversight than really intended.
If those in charge of the story were anti-theists they wouldn’t have created the First Ones unless to kill them in Shadowlands. The First Ones are literal gods of the universe, before them it was just deities belonging to particular cosmic realms. If we do kill any gods in Warcraft it’ll be due to it being a symptom of power creep. Elune is a case of incompetence, maliciousness would’ve had her allowing the Night Elves to die to spite the Winter Queen instead of trying to help her. They definitely wouldn’t have allowed the Archon to live.
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Azeroth isn’t a Titan or the Earthmother… She is the Universe.
It’s Neoplatoism.
Nah, because the first ones are just engineers 3D printing Gods
A suspect for self inserts and wish fulfilment if I ever saw one
Just because we aren’t killing them today doesn’t mean we’re never killing them. All of WoW’s mythologies and deities seemingly exist for the sole purpose of becoming loot bags. We have killed titans. We’ve defeated one Eternal One, with our eyes set on another sometime this year. Wild Gods are warm-up fights, Old Gods are an endangered species, Naaru corrupted by the void are practically dungeon bosses. The only reason we haven’t killed WoW’s OG Satan is because he got Hoovered up before we could.
Gods in WoW are meant to be broken.
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It’s why I prefer DnD and how they treat a god or gods dying. Generally only another god can kill a god or goddess, and the victor usually absorbs the portfolio of the defeated god/goddess adding it to their responsibilities
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