Concerns about the future

Wyrmrest Accord
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Having finished Midnight’s current story, I’ve been very entertained by the fact that as a now-hero of Quel’thalas, the Silvermoon guards’ comments about my demons (I’ve mained a warlock for this expansion) have gotten somewhat more respectful - and even more entertained by the various blood elf civilian NPCs who make passive-aggressive comments about guests who don’t know when to leave. That’s such a great touch, so very blood elf.

That’s not what has me concerned; I know Blizzard won’t be locking Alliance players out of the new Silvermoon, even if that does happen in lore. You can still visit Darnassus, Undercity, and both Dalarans, after all.

What has me a little concerned is the couple of little groups of Horde characters I’ve passed - minor lore characters from previous expacs, I think - having philosophical discussions about peace, and the future of the Horde and Alliance.

Blizzard has apparently spent the time since BfA stubbornly ignoring the faction conflict, and I know some players have been disgruntled about that, but for my money? Good. The faction war has not been interesting since Pandaria and hasn’t been the subject of a well-told story since Warcraft III. It kinda sucks to never get a satisfying resolution on it, but the position to which I’ve come after all these years is that if that’s the price that must be paid for never having to wade through that miserable slog again, I’ll gladly pay it. Blizzard cannot write the faction conflict in a way that isn’t stupid, insulting to everyone involved, a pure degradation of the setting and story and characters, and generally torturous to be a participant in. I hope they never touch it again.

So here we have these subtle little hints at a future… What, exactly? It’s hard to say, they’re vague. One effect of that good old The Writing Is Bad issue is that it’s hard to tell what foreshadowing is meant to foreshadow. Blizzard writes with all the subtley of a bag of bricks to the carotid artery so you’d think it would always be obvious, and it often has been, but on the other hand their storytelling is so incoherent and they’re so prone to pulling random nonsense out of their butts that sometimes what’s blatantly foreshadowed has no bearing on what happens.

But sometimes it does.

Anyway, there’s no telling; I’m pretty sure I’ve already thought about this more than the actual writers have. I just really hope they leave the faction conflict alone. I do not trust them to have the writing chops to do it justice.

What do you think these little hints are suggesting?

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Honestly? I think we’re being given breadcrumbs that the Mega-Factions might be getting shaken up significantly, and the ‘Champions’ of Azeroth might be going cross-faction in a subtle way.

There’s broad fracture-lines in the Horde and the Alliance. Cliques are forming between political, spiritual and racial lines. The Alliance is tearing apart at the seams over the war-efforts and the strain on the weaker links in the chain, while the Horde is more healthy but impotent when the chips are down without the Thudd and Blunder fire of the Orcs stoking the whole thing along.

Folks want peace. Some of the older folks feel that it’ll be impossible, because as soon as the bigger threat goes away, there’s also some vengeful victim or angry aggressor running around trying to start the old conflicts back up again because “Muh pahyne!!” and getting tens times as many people killed before they’re stopped, but not before they’ve kicked the cycle of vengeance over for yet another go-round.

We just lost 90% of our Paladins and Priests in the lore, with only those whom the Light didn’t want or had roles that were too vital to ignore being not invited to the world’s most frantic pool party at Quel’thalas. Our Army of the Light just got gutted like the aisle with the toilet rolls in a global pandemic. The Elves of both Mega-Factions just made a very concerning pact that might just shaft both the Alliance and the Horde, who I will state again, do not have a peace-treaty, only a cease-fire.

And we’re told we are ‘going to lose, big-time’ by the end of the Midnight expansion. And I am hoping it is a real, actual, gut-punch kick-over-all-your-sandcastles loss, not “Oh, you lost an NPC and got teleported away.” loss.

IF they tell us our loss of Turalyon and Alleria at the Void Raid was the ‘big loss’ they were talking about, I’m going to need to start buying keyboards in bulk again …

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I like your ideas but see, my concern is they are more rooted in extrapolating from existing events than Blizzard writing usually is. Like, you’re not wrong about anything, but I can’t really trust that it matters, y’know?

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I did try to warn you about the story.

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You sure did!

It’s okay, I was pleasantly surprised by how functional the story is since I returned; it’s still not what I’d consider great storytelling, but it actually works as a story, which is an upgrade from the Blizzard writing I knew. Characters have consistent motivations, actions spring from previously established events rather than randomly out of the ether, and there are real, honest-to-Light themes. WoW now has a story that wouldn’t flunk a 101-level creative writing course!

I still know what Blizzard is like and I’m not setting myself up for heartbreak.

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I brought it up before but I really think at the start of TWW they should have stood up a Scooby Doo gang of young newbies from both the Horde and Alliance to push the post faction war and this new narrative approach vs all the old heads and their baggage.

I agree it just seems out of character for some individuals to just be like, we are now pals because the plot says so. If it was a younger cast that didn’t take part in genocidal conflict 1 , 2 and 3 it doesn’t seem so silly because they aren’t carrying all that baggage. Also the game is a young adult/teen game and maybe it’ll be more appealing to the audience it’s intended for than us old farts.

I think Arator is a good example of what a new younger face to represent the newer generation could be. However, it’s wasted because almost all his narrative, even his heal his trauma quest line is about his bad parents and all their crap.

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Death to the living.

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I believe when Blizzard started forcing the Alliance and Horde to begrudgingly cast aside their grievances in order to vanquish the Thanos level threats the world was facing, that was the ultimate signaling of the end of the hardcore faction conflict. I don’t believe Blizzard was simply able to write two completely separate story narratives for the Horde and Alliance from a gaming company pushing out a product within a certain timeframe, it was much simpler and faster to group them up instead.

This felt like such wasted potential to me. I used to really like Arator, but in my opinion, the writers have made him into another emotionally broken character. Not only does Arator have C-PTSD like Anduin, but Arator also seems to suffer from Identity Distress. Then there’s that time he jumps in front of Turalyon’s active swing like a complete idiot when he could have either blocked using his own sword or just bubbled like any paladin would have done. Nope, instead he just decided to eat the hit. Complete DA move…

Us old farts were once young farts who played the game when it first came out. The ESRB hasn’t changed, but the game changed as the culture shifted.

Next, there are the hints being referred to in the opening post. Without specific context, I’m not entirely sure which direction to spin off into with that, so double-barreled shotgun blast has been selected.

One hint seems to be the further dissolution of the faction conflict hinted at by the reunification of the elves/trolls. If Azeroth’s original Gucci family can squash their long-standing feud with each other, that would make them the largest unified lineage-linked race when compared to the others.

Another hint could be a couple of things stated by Metzen during Blizzcon 2023 when Chris said, “Things may not go to plan”. So, we think we pushed back Xal’atath and the void, though at the cost of a crap ton of Light-wielders, but ultimately, Xal’atath still made it where she intended to go. Yeah, well that happened…I wouldn’t exactly call putting our expansion nemesis within a hair’s breadth of the world soul she is after, “going to plan” as it were.

Now what would I do in a situation like this to tie everything in? Once again in Metzen’s own words, “How epic? Real epic”. Tin Foil Hat Time because epic items in WoW are purple and the Void is also depicted as purple. What better way to clue someone in on how, “Things may just spiral wildly out of control”, than by throwing out an obscurely masked plot like having Xal’atath who thinks she is about to ascend to godhood by overwriting Azeroth, but instead gets overwritten by Azeroth. It is only then our boy Iridikron shows up stating this was his plan all along because Xal’atath thought she was the mastermind but ended up the DoorDash driver who brought the World Soul an “epic” smoothie.

Then there are the Titans. Being no strangers to backup plans and redundancy, the moment Azeroth absorbs the Void energy, alarms go off and the Titans immediately cancel their day spa appointment and book it back to Azeroth faster than that last mile to your home when you’ve had to poop at the start of rush hour traffic.

I have concerns about the future of Azeroth, both inside and outside the game. Time will tell for both.

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If things may not go to plan and we end up losing, then we’ll have to work together (probably) in order to banish whatever the threat is (if we can).

As an old head, I’d like to see both room for the older heroes and the newer ones alike, but I still have the complaint that some of the other races aren’t getting enough hero screen time. Where’s my hero/leader Kul’Tiran? Vulpera? Panda? Etc.

With us having so many cross-faction races right now, I’m not sure I see faction conflict coming back in any big way to retail.

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I’m just dreading that Azeroth is gonna emerge as some stupid amalgam of all the races and have ‘no chosen form’ because ‘of all the races that worked together through the ages to keep her safe’. If they even give Azeroth a gender and don’t just have the voice be a layered amalgam. I just really hate that not because ‘one of those’ but it’s just such a cop-out, writing wise. Like sure I would really like for Azeroth to be a Troll but she won’t because it’ll make Alliance players pissy and they’ve essentially written the Horde out of the story, so just…make no one happy and have her be a Haranir.

And then that’s the big ‘cue’ that they just drop the factions entirely.

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I’m okay with dropping the factions.

This is probably a pie-in-the-sky notion but I feel like a good first start would be if all the elves became cross-faction, like the pandaren and various allied races. That feels like it’d flow logically from the Midnight main story. Bit of a harder sell for any kaldorei to join the Horde, but not more out of left field than some other things Blizzard has done.

ETA: Azermom should remain a formless blue and gold sphere. I know she’s probably gonna be what the other Titans we saw at the end of Legion look like, but meh. I can’t see any form she takes doing justice to all the buildup. Our worldmom should stay world-shaped.

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i wouldnt mind if one faction wanted to kill the world soul to solve all the extra terrestrial problems and the other faction wants to save it to solve all the extra terrestrial problems

ill be horde no matter what path they choose

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would be neat if some cinematic showed us that various race members see her in a different form, simultaneously!

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You make that sound like it’s a bad thing. Never knew a paladin who didn’t have a holier than thou art stick up their rear. As far as I’m concerned Xal did Azeroth a favor by culling the population.

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I mean … the biggest problem with the Light is it responds to will and belief.

You have to believe with absolute conviction in what you’re doing for the Light to answer, and the will to see it through to the end to keep the Light answering your call.

Those traits do tend to make for strong-willed and charismatic individuals, but it can also quite easily make you stubborn, prideful, arrogant and disdainful of those who don’t share your convictions, or who oppose your direction in life.

That’s one of the reasons that the Three Tenets of the Light, Respect, Tenacity and Compassion, are so important, and why so many Paladins and Priests either fail to achieve their full potential, or get sucked into dangerous groups like the Scarlet Crusade, because those ideals are indeed noble and worth pursuing, but it also can make them very hard to live up to when you’re stuck in grinding race-wars or fighting enemies who don’t share those same three pillars of faith.

Why would you respect an Orc Warlock whose magic is powered by the souls of your people? An ally whose magic taps into a hostile or dangerously chaotic faith like a Wild God or the Elementals when the Light is right there?

How can you keep your tenacity when you’re surrounded on all sides by enemies that never stop, and having to deal with allies and civilians who can’t stop quibbling about minor inconveniences?

How can you possibly embrace compassion when you’re surrounded by needless cruelty, ancestral blood-feuds and short-sighted greed? When every act of kindness and healing you perform is shouted down and overshadowed by the heedless, mindless cruelty of the people around you, both allies and enemies?

There is a reason that the Alliance isn’t just fielding entire armies of Paladins and Priests and just drowning the Horde in Light. This :poop: is meant to be hard to not only reach a level of being useful, but to maintain that level of connection to the Light through all of …

waves hand vaguely at everything

… takes a very special kind of person to pull it off successfully.

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Sorry Gentarn, but The Light didn’t come to Arthas as Invincible laid dying in the snow, which is why Arthas rebelled against The Light.

The Light only answers if there are plot importance, or relevant shenanigans afoot.

Sometimes it won’t answer, just to be funny.

This post is hyperbole.

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I mean, isn’t the implication there that Arthas was doubting his path, but his pride and his hatred pushed him onwards regardless?

And we also know that the Jailer was trying to manipulate Arthas, and there was Dreadlord interference as well as the region being loaded with Old God influence via saronite?

Wouldn’t surprise me if there was some Light Pantheon robot going "Pick up! PICK UP!" and there’s just a Loony Toons-version Dreadlord gnawing on the phobe-cable just out of sight …

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Doubting his past, being jealous of Varian Wrynn, worrying about his sister being married only for political reasons, the grueling schooling from Uther.

Arthas had a lot going through his mind while he took Invincible out in a snowstorm, when he over assumed the strength, agility, and experience of Invincible, which results in Invincible dying.

Arthas took the death of Invincible very heavily, he blamed himself, doubted himself, so the Light didn’t answer, and Arthas had to watch his horse slowly die.

Sort of like how we watched Arthas slowly die.

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Arthas was only a teenager and not yet fully trained in the Light when Invincible’s legs got broken during the snowstorm. Arthas wouldn’t be able to call upon the Light and heal his horse since he lacked the training. This was the first of several events that would foreshadow his downfall by exposing his character flaws.

I blame the writing and current storyline on this assumption, mostly. There were a few notable paladins who weren’t rectally compromised with broken tree parts. Tirion Fordring, Uther the Lightbringer, and Sunwalker Dezco. Unfortunately, only one of these three is even alive at this point. Coupled with Blizzard pushing hard on the Lightblind plot device, causing Light wielders to go berserk, I’d say the sticks lodged up there were most likely Light wood. At least none of my paladin characters act like that thankfully.

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Tirion and Dezco pass the vibe test.

Meanwhile Uther was the one who made paladins have sticks up their butts, he was as militant as could be, and even as a blue angel, he was vengeful and spiteful.

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