Can we all admit that the Forsaken

[Zerde-sargeras (Zerde)]

@Denona-khazgoroth

But like I said, why use it on your allies, even if they are just a means to an end when there was the possibility that it won’t kill the Lich King? Who was the primary target for it.

Or Sylvanas was confident(or arrogant) enough to assume she was guaranteed a kill. So consequences be damned, she didnt care if there were collateral damage/un intended consequences. Wouldnt be the first time.

[Mawthorne-lightninghoof]

Yeah. Obviously, by cata, cdev had decided that it was going to be a Putress plot officially. But I think, when developing Wotlk they still hadn’t settled on that narrative. It is, without a doubt, not something Sylvanas would have been opposed to, if it had a chance to further her goals. Also, it could have helped paint her as singleminded in her quest for vengeance.

[Denona-khazgoroth (Denona)]

Yeah Edge of Night makes it that Sylvanas was only focused on killing Arthas and thus any other purpose with the new plague / blight were the ideas of others, such as Putress. Given that Sylvanas attempted to commit suicide following the ending of ICC.

Another reason why I believe she only gave the order to use it on Arthas and the scourge. It was Putress who decided to use it on everyone else.

[Tenebrae-eredar]

I’m back. Sorry for the late response, irl and stuff.

---

I’ve realized that there are differences between:
A. The interpretation of a work.
B. A new iteration of a work.
The first part of my post refers to A, while the second part refers to B.
We may have mixed these up before.

---

@Alynsa-wyrmrest-accord

I was gonna try and respond to the rest of what you’d typed, but to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure of the point you’re trying to make now. It feels entirely too convoluted to me, mixing “original authorial intent” with “canonicity” in ways that neither really fit. But that is very possibly me not getting your point.

My thesis is that authorial intent is essential for preserving a work’s artistic integrity, and retroactive changes by rights holders undermine consistency and trust in the narrative. The creator’s vision defines the story’s original purpose. Rights holders can alter canon, yes, (just wanted to agree with you here, not mixing stuff up) but cannot retroactively claim their changes reflect the original intent. (my actual point)

Shadowlands and Chronicle were examples of this. Danuser(s Team?) claimed that their changes reflect the original intent. Imo, he can only do that from a legal perspective, not from an artistic one, because he didn’t write it. That’s why I expressed my disappointment with people who actually believe ‘WC3 was the Jailer’s plan’ because ‘Chronicle is unrelieable’.

So my post wasn’t meant to be about artistic merit. My post was about how the original author’s word is more authoritative about how their work should be understood than that of an outside third party. The phrase “final say on interpretation” refers to Chronicle itself.

@Alynsa-wyrmrest-accord

@Tenebrae-eredar

For this reason, it is significant when Warcraft’s creator sells his work (Chronicle) as hard canon. In other words, he wanted it to be interpreted as such.

So here’s the thing about that.

Metzen wrote the story for Legion. It was already done by the time he left. It was also the first expansion to release following Chronicles. It also immediately put the question of Chronicles as “hard canon” to bed when it contradicted Chronicles regarding the fate of the Titans and the existence of Argus.

With Hard canon (emphasis on hard) I’m refering to sources that aim to represent the ultimate truth as provided by the narrator (or DM). It is the polar opposite of flavor lore (character-driven and thus untrustworthy). Perhaps ‘hard canon’ is misleading though, and objective lore is a better term.

---

When objective lore is contradicted by later sources, it is simply an inconsistency or retcon. As a result, it does not call into question the overall credibility of the source, as it would if it were officially declared flavor lore.

However, I believe that the fate of the Titan souls and Argus as a Titan was purposefully left out to avoid spoiling Legion’s climax just before its release.

So, in my opinion, nothing was ‘put to bed’.

@Alynsa-wyrmrest-accord

Well before Danhausen went and spoke (always a mistake for him) and used the “titan’s perspective” line, we had reason to question the veracity of Chronicles to some degree.

Chronicles was meant to tighten up the lore. It was meant to take some of the plotholes Metzen made and fill them, the loose ends he left dangling and tie them off, but it wasn’t meant to hold them to a singular path through the past. Metzen never described it in that way.

World of Warcraft: Chronicle is a series that attempts to codify, tighten up and clarify the history of Warcraft. [S]

It was clearly meant to be a reliable source.
Please also keep in mind that the source served as an advertisement for Chronicle on Amazon.

Also:

According to Micky Neilson (Co-Author), the book is like a bible with illustrations.
Chronicle is checked by internal readers and Blizzard’s historians

@Alynsa-wyrmrest-accord

Except… No. From an artistic standpoint, both versions of the character can be seperately evaluated, while acknowledging one is the prior canonical version and the other is the current canonical version.

Again, Batman. I’ll stick with him since you said you’re unfamiliar with Spider-Man.

Bob Kane and Bill Finger originally created Batman. They made that character, wrote his first story, etc. They gave him a very basic origin story.

Frank Miller, who wrote Batman Year One, did not create Batman. He came around something like 40 years later and took elements of that original origin story, threw out others, and vastly expanded on it to create the most definitive origin for Batman to date, one that heavily inspired not only later writers, but also movies like Batman Begins.

Frank Miller did not create the artistic equivalent of fan fiction, just because he isn’t the original creator. That is just silly nonesense talk. He did, in fact, create art. And he did so regardless of the intentions of the original creators.

Unfortunately, I am not familiar with Batman either.
Superheroes, in general, aren’t my cup of tea.
I’ll try to answer anyway.

The author uses copyrighted characters, settings, or other intellectual properties from the original creator(s) as a basis for their writing and can retain the original characters and settings, add their own, or both. [S]

So, if it’s professional rather than amateurish, and created by the rights holder, it still isn’t artistic equivalent to that?

Though, I’ve realized that the term fan fiction has more negative connotations than I thought. Of course, even fan fiction can outperform the original in terms of artistic merit. It’s rare, but it happens. Like covers.

About Batman specifically: I mean, there are multiverses, right? This creates a completely different basic situation than in a setting with only one universe. So I don’t know if your example here is comparable to Star Wars or Warcraft.

@Alynsa-wyrmrest-accord

And this should all be moot regardless, because Metzen only started dictating the Warcraft story with WCIII. He himself is not the original author of the franchise; he simply expanded it and did a much better job than those who came before him. If we’re going to keep with your argument, he effectively also only wrote glorified fan fiction.

Not a bad argument. I argue that the universe was still in development at the time, that we are only discussing the section that Metzen explicitly wrote, and that expanding does not imply rewriting or ‘covering’. According to your description and my understanding, it is not comparable to Frank Miller’s work because he did not continue the Kane/Finger story but instead created a completely new iteration.

I also don’t want to diminish collective creative efforts. Perhaps I’m oversimplifying things, but I don’t want to write a novel here.

---

@Mawthorne-lightninghoof

Chronicles was less than canon before the ink was dry

Why do you think that?

@Mawthorne-lightninghoof

So, the Wrathgate might have succeeded, if Sylvanas didn’t order the Forsaken to use a special blight created specifically to kill the Lich King? Or the Wrathgate might have been a success if Putress hadn’t betrayed everyone? Because it’s possible that the writer of that statement wasn’t particularly clear on what the story was going to end up being.

I don’t think that’s so farfetched. The Lich King might have simply withdrawn. And, since the Wrathgate leads directly into the Icecrown Citadel, ICC would have occurred sooner?
After all, the Elite of the Horde and Alliance were present. (7th. Legion, Kor’kron)

@Karestae-moon-guard

Timothy Zahn was also bought in to write the new thrawn novels though. That’s how beloved the character is and how respected the author is

Of course. He’s the author of Thrawn, after all.
But I don’t think Rebels or Mandalorian do the character justice.

---

see ya next year

[Alynsa-wyrmrest-accord]

@Tenebrae-eredar

I’ve realized that there are differences between:
A. The interpretation of a work.
B. A new iteration of a work.
The first part of my post refers to A, while the second part refers to B.
We may have mixed these up before.

Ok, now I think we’re on the same page. Thank you for clarifying!!

@Tenebrae-eredar

So my post wasn’t meant to be about artistic merit. My post was about how the original author’s word is more authoritative about how their work should be understood than that of an outside third party.

I find nothing to dispute or disagree with here. Nicely put!!

@Tenebrae-eredar

However, I believe that the fate of the Titan souls and Argus as a Titan was purposefully left out to avoid spoiling Legion’s climax just before its release.

So, in my opinion, nothing was ‘put to bed’.

While we won’t know the truth of it until someone inevitably writes a tell-all book about the inner workings of Blizzard and WoW specifically, I’m inclined to disagree based on Metzen’s own history.

I love Metzen. I love his big comic book-y style of writing. I love how he will do whatever it takes to build to a big, epic conclusion.

But the man has a history of making a choice, then choosing to go back on it. Or rather, he has a history of forgetting his own lore or throwing some aspect away just to make something cooler. Or at least not paying attention to what lore bits other people wrote under his watch.

Who leads the Wildhammers?
What do draenie look like?
Is Garrosh a hot-headed but decent leader who might grow into the role of warchief or is he a genocidal maniac thirsting for a way to repeat his daddy’s mistakes but with void instead of fel?
How many old gods are under Azeroth anyway?
Whatever did “rebuild the final titan” mean?

I could go on, and I’m sure someone is gonna respond to this post with more.

Legion’s finale was written before Metzen left, but Chronicle was written even longer before that. I find it just as likely, if not more likely, that given his history, Metzen realized as he was writing the Argus story that he wanted a big titan reveal, to fix the pantheon, to lock Sargeras away instead of killing him off, and the easiest way to do that was to come up with a small retcon (one common enough in comics, which he also reads) about the otherwise never before mentioned fact that titans can survive death as soul-things that can just be made to come back.

But we won’t know which of us, if either of us, is right. So, just sharing my theory.

@Tenebrae-eredar

So, if it’s professional rather than amateurish, and created by the rights holder, it still isn’t artistic equivalent to that?

Well, quality also matters.

You wanna call Danuser’s writing the artistic equivalent of officially canonized fan fiction? The only response I’m likely to give is something along the lines of…

“But… The FRACTALS tho!!!”

Because the man’s work with WoW speaks for itself. I think even calling it officially canonized fan fiction is giving it way too much credit.

So as far as artistry goes, quality matters.

But canonicity is decided by the rights holders, whether we like it or not.

@Tenebrae-eredar

So I don’t know if your example here is comparable to Star Wars or Warcraft.

Ah-hah!! Yes, I can give a better example using Star Wars. Although I will hate myself a little bit for reminding anyone of this…

Ewoks: Caravan of Courage. The made-for-tv movie. Written by George Lucas.

Like it or not, it was canon pre-Disney. For the sake of simplicity, this is just gonna be pre-Disney Star Wars discussions, because I’m not so sure anymore about what Disney threw away and what they kept.

It’s own artistic value is irrelevant to its canonical state. It fluctuated from being canon to non-canon, then back to canon again, but regardless, it ended up in the canon bin along with works such as Crystal Star. It was equally as canonical as Timothy Zhan’s Thrawn trilogy, which is of obvious artistic merit.

But since Ewoks was made by the OG creator, does it have more artistic merit than Heir to the Empire? Is it a superior Star Wars work because Lucas wrote it? Or can we all avoid thinking about that terrible movie and just agree that Zhan wins that discussion?

But to be fair to you, I now understand that this wasn’t the type of discussion you were trying to have, and I just kinda made it that discussion.

@Tenebrae-eredar

Perhaps I’m oversimplifying things, but I don’t want to write a novel here.

Oh no, you actually explained everything perfectly now. Had I understood earlier, I doubt we’d even be having a disagreement at all.

I just really was hoping this was a discussion about “authorial intent” vs “death to the author” and maybe went a little gung-ho.

[Denona-khazgoroth (Denona)]

@Tenebrae-eredar

However, I believe that the fate of the Titan souls and Argus as a Titan was purposefully left out to avoid spoiling Legion’s climax just before its release.

So, in my opinion, nothing was ‘put to bed’.

In a way, this would be similar to how certain movie trailers, such as Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, or more recently Sonic 3 intentionally changed scenes shown in the trailers to avoid actual spoilers present in the movie itself.

Chronicles as a whole was written around the time of Legion, with Chronicles vol 1 releasing alongside Legion. Akin to other tie in novels for previous expansions. Such as Rise of the Horde for TBC, which covers the whole ‘Draenei retcon’ in full.

[Mawthorne-lightninghoof]

@Tenebrae-eredar

I don’t think that’s so farfetched. The Lich King might have simply withdrawn.

It’s not that it’s far fetched. It’s that the writers have to pick one or leave both up for possibility or neither. These aren’t actual events that happened and we are theorizing the details. They are a fictional narrative. To say “It might have been a success if…” And then say that means that the reason it didn’t succeed is “because of…” Is absurd. One could just as easily argue that, had the blight not been deployed, the Lich King might have rallied and wiped everyone out. Only what was written happened and this is one of the things that sucks about Chronicles unless you say it is an unreliable narrator.

[Zerde-sargeras (Zerde)]

@Mawthorne-lightninghoof

One could just as easily argue that, had the blight not been deployed, the Lich King might have rallied and wiped everyone out.

That is the point of the wording. Maybe the Lich King would have destroyed the combined forced or maybe he would have been rolf stomped. Who knows. But it is worded in a way that implies the factions did have a chance at victory and the Forsaken destroyed said chance.

[Cursewords-tichondrius (Cursewords)]

@Mawthorne-lightninghoof

Chronicles was less than canon before the ink was dry

@Tenebrae-eredar

Why do you think that?

I felt the same way Mawthorne did, when I first heard of it all those years ago.

I remember when the first Chronicles was being advertised. I was a big hater of it - not because I am against a lore compendium. But because I felt it would be a Retcon storm with the purpose of solidifying the story they want going forward.

“Recontextualizing” the past events to frame them for the story they want going forward. And then Chronicles itself would be retconned at some point.

I didnt trust it to be an encyclopedia of facts and events. I knew it would be more of a reframing of the past to match the future they are designing. And that it would be retconned itself when it became inconvenient.

Fast forward to today, and we have the whole “titans perspective” thing slapped on to it. To further muddy the waters when Chronicles was supposed to clarify things.

I found the whole Chronicles project rather dubious to begin with. And it has proven to be so. The way the lore is changed so often, keeping these Chronicles as PoVs instead of some gospel makes more sense.

[Kaileath-wyrmrest-accord]

A de facto Word of God lore compendium for a live service game was sort of an insane idea to begin with. It is like Metzen had to get his D&D campaign setting writing fix in after the one he did a few years before.

[Kagehiro-zuljin]

“It might have spelled the end of The Lich King.”

I am in agreement here: the word “might” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Implying Bolvar and the remaining forces definitely would have won holds no more weight than Arthas would have turned all 9,000 troops of both combined armies into more Scourge fodder (plus a few Death Knights).

[Mawthorne-lightninghoof]

@Kagehiro-zuljin

I am in agreement here: the word “might” is doing a lot of heavy lifting

I think it’s a big part of why Chronicles was such a horrible idea and why “unreliable narrator” was the only solution.

The commentary it adds only works if the narrative is over. It’s like a “remembering warcraft 20 years later” type of book. At that point it’s fun to speculate. When our characters no longer exist and the stories are no longer being told. When Sylvanas is still on a journey of character development, you want to throw “might” around all willy nilly?

It was an ill-concieved cash grab.

[Dreadmoore-wyrmrest-accord (Dreadmoore)]

mawthorne you’re looking pretty blizzard employee right now.

[Alynsa-wyrmrest-accord]

@Mawthorne-lightninghoof

It was an ill-concieved cash grab.

@Dreadmoore-wyrmrest-accord

you’re looking pretty blizzard employee right now.

Uhm…

I cannot imagine a Blizzard employee coming 'round here to besmirch one of their relatively lucrative products.

[Karestae-moon-guard]

@Alynsa-wyrmrest-accord

Uhm…

I cannot imagine a Blizzard employee coming 'round here to besmirch one of their relatively lucrative products.

We can give him a half of a point for an attempted insult. But we’ll have to deduct twenty for not paying attention to what was said

[Kagehiro-zuljin]

Disagree there. Chronicle is basically just a setting guide to serve as a foundation for telling stories within an existing framework. Arguing that there shouldn’t be a framework, or ignoring said framework, is tantamount to saying lore does not matter.

[Mawthorne-lightninghoof]

@Alynsa-wyrmrest-accord

I cannot imagine a Blizzard employee coming 'round here to besmirch one of their relatively lucrative products.

I mean, tbf, cdev basically blamed the bestselling expansion ever on a disgraced predator.

Glad to see you again Alynsa.

[Thadeus-caelestrasz]

Oh, so war crimes to take over the world are okay when the Forsaken do it? But when some Draenei want to wage one little holy war in another timeline… THEN EVERYONE LOSES THEIR MINDS!

[Dreadmoore-wyrmrest-accord (Dreadmoore)]

@Alynsa-wyrmrest-accord

I cannot imagine a Blizzard employee coming 'round here to besmirch one of their relatively lucrative products.

everyone who’s going to buy chronicle has already bought chronicle.
no one with half a lick of sense is going to support blizzard’s “tell the players lies we’ll retcon every single time we make up anything” design.

[Alynsa-wyrmrest-accord]

@Dreadmoore-wyrmrest-accord

everyone who’s going to buy chronicle has already bought chronicle.

This argument only works if Chronicle goes out of print, and there will never be another volume. Given Vol 1 is still in print and available nearly 9 years later without going full clearance price, and we recently got another volume, I’d say Blizzard at least feels they can get more sales, and book retailers agree.