I’m just saying in the untold millenia the gods experienced maybe he looked more like Gary Oldman in Dracula at a point.
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Exactly.
He was a villain that HAD to have been worked with for the specific moment in which he appeared. Bwonsamdi positioned himself to steal more power for himself because he placed himself exactly at Rastakhan’s side during Zul’s nonsense.
It’s why Odyn is so good. He’s our ally but he’s just such an utter POS. He’s just our POS. He’s a horrible person who has done horrible things and the story doesn’t even try to defend what he’s done. ODYN doesn’t even really try to defend what he’s done. But we need to be allied with him because we’re up against something worse.
Bwonsamdi could and should have been a Horde-specific villain they deal with in some story down the line, so that Talanji and the Zandalari are no longer tied to this clearly (during BfA) evil person manipulating an entire race to further his own goals.
They can still do this if, for example, Vol’jin ends up becoming the Loa of the Horde Trolls and Bwonsamdi gets upset about it, but at this point they’ve heel face turned Bwonsamdi into being our ally that it would seem super odd.
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I mean this doesn’t follow, he only “asked for her head” during the Zandalari AR questline (and was a “test”) and had indicated us in the Vol’jin questline it’s because “she keeps what she kills”.
Neither of which was at launch.
Could have, sure.
Should have, no. Way too Problematique™. Would dig a grave for themselves, moreso.
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I mean that was very obviously the original storyline. Everything about the Rastakhan/Bwonsamdi/Talanji interactions were super clearly implying that Bwonsamdi was manipulating them both to his own ends. So much so that Bwonsamdi flat out threatens her several times after her father’s death.
As just discussed with Dambala/Damballa, they clearly don’t care about offending the real world inspiration angle of it since Dambala is such a minor foot note in WoW that you could have just removed him from that Ardenweald quest and it wouldn’t have mattered.
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I’m just saying your SO is gone if a rival suitor turns up acting like this.
And the God of the dark wood and undeath playing around like this when the stars were babies would be fun.
Edit: Can we note how Dracula stops when he sees she’s too zoned out to consent? Then opps to show her how great he is with dogs? 200% Gentleman status. No wonder he lived with three brides.
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If you watch the conversation, he says:
“Dat is a real shame. Been wantin a warchief’s spirit for a long time.”
Notice the lower case “w”. As in not just this specific warchief. And he says he wanted a warchief’s spirit for “a long time.” While Sylvanas is new to the position.
So, it follows from that point. Blizzard acknowledge he was designed to be a villain, and I can see this as part of the set up to get Horde folks against him. It had me ready to kill him. But, they went another way.
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I mean we have Illidan for that archetype. And its not like he was totally spared. He did get stuck in the Halls of Valor for 10,000 years or so. I don’t care enough about Bwonsomdi one way or the other but I do want to point out night elven wild gods are not particularly treated better or worse then loas. I mean Ursoc was killed at the very start of the expansion to promote an emotional response from the players. A few of the wilds gods were turned into evil version of themselves before we killed/resurrected them.
The criticism isn’t that they killed the wild god/loa
The criticism is that they had planned to villain bat one of the only well written anti hero horde characters based on a real life religious being
And did villain bat another undeveloped loa based on an even more important real life religious being that in-game is one of main loas for Shadow Hunters but was retcon’d to be evil because “snakes are bad” (but Hakkar survived somehow?)
It’s the complex messiness that is being criticized
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Blizzard has villain batted real life religious beings before, usually from dead religions so that isn’t exactly a surprise. As for anti hero Horde, yeah, that isnt much of a surprise either.
Hakkar has survived because he is obviously going to be raid boss material someday.
Oh, I don’t know, maybe taunting everyone who died in Zandalar is not the best way to build rapport and an easy way to want a person get his comeuppance.
If Blizzard was only lampooning non-western religions, an argument can be made that they are tone deaf. As it is, they were also willing to do the same to Christian ones. Or are we ignoring the fact two of the Church of Light’s leaders(the closest equivalent we have to Catholicism) happened to be Old God servants/have discriminatory policies and nominally support fanatics like the Scarlet Crusade?
Like which ones
Also voodoo isn’t a dead religion so uh what
? Dude the community loved that and anyone with half a brain would’ve expected that
Old God servant was using the “Octopus Pope” motif from 20th century anticatholicism
Nominally supporting fanatics is an actual fair descriptor of the Church in the 20th century so here we are, so this is more an accurate depiction of real life history.
Only the former of these two things is in the same category of “villain batting two prominent beings of Voodoo”.
Also given women clerics, the Sola Fide nature of the Light in-game, and the UK-basis of majority of Human aesthetic, accent (taking into account Gilneas and Kul Tiras), and mythos otherwise (Arthur references etc), the CoL is more like the CoE/Episcopal Church.
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The Egyptian pantheon for example. The four end bosses were all egyptian god based characters.
Hence why I said usually.
Bwonsomdi is basically half a step above Nathanos. Sure, I was amused he managed to get a jab but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want some payback for said jab.
I don’t feel like too much a religious debate right now, but no the catholic church at least generally doesn’t support the sort of fanaticism expunged by SC. Not the least of which because it would be bad for recruiting new worshippers.
I would point out Blizzard lifted one of the central tenets of Catholicism, service, and use it as a motif for Velen’s short story. Also, the attempt at centralizing the church of light religion seems more evocative of the catholic ones.
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Notably, re Octopus Pope Anti Catholic Motif, the only Papal Tiara was Archbishop Benedictus and Lord Stormsong now that I think about it.
Ah yes, albeit Kemeticism is being revived by some neopagans. So not a dead religion as you stated.
But again, there are more voodoo practitioners than Kemetic revivalists.
This is blatantly false and you’re just saying this to argue with me lol
False, brush up on your 20th century history and how the Church handled fascists across Europe (especially Franco) and across America (especially look at Colombia and Chile).
Not villain batting. Or a misuse of a specific religious concept.
Which is the topic of conversation.
Also service is common to all Christians not just Catholicism
There is no centrality, Stormwind Cathedral just happens to be one of the few Alliance city Cathedrals left. Canonically in-game the Bishop of Stormwind is not some kind of Pope. All the Bishops are seemingly equal.
You’d be surprised, lots of right wing zoomers converting IRL because they think the Church is “le based”
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Oh please, most Allance have at best ambivalence to Bwonsamdi and at worse considering him part of the Horde(hence making an enemy by extension).
“Dead” is more of a discriptor that they are generally so few that they are negligable. In the same vein we would say latin is a dead language even though there are still a good number who can speak it.
On that note. I am actually having a hard time determining how many people actually still worship Baron Samedi.
A quick checks tell me is more complicated and probably would take more then a day to fully explore said relationship. Suffice to say, even if Vatican itself had dubious connections to dictators, as a general rule the catholic people(literally billions of people) would not necessarily agree to it/have the same opinion.
We are literally told the light, which have certain roots to Christianity, is now no longer portrayed as “purely good” and seems to be a more “neutral” force of the Warcraft universe.
Maybe, but considering the chruch’s attempt at more liberal(I am using this loosely) policies, I doubt extreme right wingers are their target demographic.
Okay man.
No Latin is a dead language not because of that, but because no community speaks it as the default language.
Kemetic religions are being revived.
And we were talking about the institutional Church, not the laity.
Which is accurate, all religions have good and bad people. Not a villain bat. It doesn’t undo the good Light-worshippers we have do.
And again, the example you gave, of Velen using a Christian theological concept, is not a villain bat or misuse.
??? “Policies”? Church hasn’t shifted in social doctrine in decades, and many teachings on notions of labor or ecology date back centuries. Strongly recommend you buy Denzinger and sit down and read the whole thing, or at least one of the “Social Doctrine” compendiums.
Certain Bishops are interested in recruiting more right-wing types (e.g. the Bishop of Austin Texas, or certain French bishops) while others are more left-wing (e.g. say Bishop of Brownsville, or certain German bishops).
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No kidding it’s not the player directly witnessing it.
In terms of the canon, there’s only one Garrison Commander for each Faction in Draenor, only one leader for each Order Hall in Legion, only one “Speaker of the Horde” before the throne of the Zandalari, and only one Alliance champion that goes to Kul Tiras with Jaina to see her get imprisoned.
Players have made the mistake for years that their theme park ride of an experience is somehow unique to them, as if they’re actually the only Ashbringer or the only slayer of Archimonde. Sylvanas can’t confide in all of us and Anduin can’t mount a last stand to save all of us from the maw.
When many can experience these moments, they are owned by none. I can’t say that I’m the one and only lord of Skyhold, even though the story tells me I am, without invalidating the experience of every other player who has rolled a Warrior in Legion. That’s just the nature of a shared world MMO.
I can’t be asked to read whatever dumb garbage is coming out of Zerde’s mouth.
But in response to the interview this is nothing new. There’s a complete lack of respect for anything that was created by Metzen before he retired and the current echelon of writers are dead set on destroying all of it in the pursuit of proving that they’re better at creating a fantasy story than Metzen was.
The difference being that Metzen wasn’t creating a fantasy story he was creating a fantasy world that could be interacted with by millions of players and be enjoyed. Marking chronicles as unreliable narrator so Danuser can’t be beholden to it is the perfect example of this complete lack of respect. Danuser’s name isn’t anywhere on any of the three volumes of Chronicles. He had very very little if not nothing at all to do with the creation of Chronicles if he’s not even credited with his name in the damned books. So Danuser saying that “oh they were written with the intention of being from the view of biased titans.” is frankly absolute horse crap.
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Yeah we know this is false both from Metzen’s words and from exemployees commenting on the issue in private channels
“Titan” is almost a code word for Metzen at this point lol
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That’s what always bothered me, it’s not like the old lore was super confusing and complicated to keep track of. There was enough mystery in the world to keep things interesting.
And yet the current team still managed to screw it up. 
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It seems likely because, in their arrogance, they feel they can tell a better story.
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Considering how things have been going the last couple years….can someone please convince Metzen and Co to come back and take control again?
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