To be fair, only one person has gone off track with it. I’ve said my piece to him and I’m moving on.
Fair enough. I am not even gonna touch that. If they are wise they won’t either. All I can really say is Blizzard does not really have deftness to handle delicate topics like this. But story has never been their focus historically. Gameplay First, and all that.
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You’re not wrong, it’s just disappointing when there are clear ways to show man’ari have been defecting in small numbers for thousands of years rather than a 10 minute quest where one helps Velen get a crystal.
Edit: To add to this, the reasoning Kohnila laid out in their post would make a lot more sense for Velen to welcome any man’ari if there was evidence some have been defecting since before the Legion fell.
I won’t disagree this was not their best path forward. But I will say it was certainly not the worst one either. They met the low bar, but they did not manage the higher one.
Personally? I would of said they are not true Man’arai but a couple generations removed from a group of defectors that hijacked a legion ship and fled to a remote corner of the cosmos after staging its apparent destruction. Their skin is just red because its a lingering effect.
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That would work too. But if it’s about the unification of the people, then having some defect and Velen giving all of them a chance would have made more sense.
Given the rabid hatred certain WoW fans have for Xe’ra, doesn’t it seem like she’s done far worse than what she actuallly did? I just brought up her up to highlight fan double standards.
Playable demons have some practicalities that make little sense. Like a Man’arai paladin should… explode. And why would the elements listen to such a tainted being? Man’arai wielding arcane magic is also an odd idea as Order is Chaos’ cosmic foil.
To be fair, Eonar is a titan and wields life magic. The denizens of a particular cosmic force aren’t limited to wielding on that realm’s magic.
I suppose that is true, but the idea of a demon paladin feels like a oxymoron. And Shamanism is all about having a relationship with the elements, and the elements do not like fel energy. Unless they want to be a dark shaman and enslave the elements… which is a good way to get blacklisted by the Earthen Ring.
Absolutely. But if they can give Draenei the man’ari skins and customizations they can DEFINITELY give Void Elves some plain old High Elf customizations (Non-greasy hair, for example)
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I would love some good long hair for my void elf. I am sad they do not have any. Let me live my long haired pretty elf guy dreams blizzard. Geez.
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Same, I really want to RP a quel’dorei but I can’t stomach the void elf male hair options so… nah.
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Imagine these Races being farmed unleashing Rage Against the Author and the Players!
In an Infinite Universe(which logistically should contain an Infinitely Vast Multiverse) such a thing is ultimately possible.
No doubt the Players who self righteously treat Fictional Races as Real are ignorant of that and if such a thing happens will pull the Never My Fault Trope acting as if they can divorce the Actions of their Player Characters from themselves so easily despite blaming the Races ingame with extreme prejudice.
Therefore I call on such Players who treat Fictional Races as real beings to condemn to repent of their condemnations as an Infinite Universe has a chance of bringing the wrath of the other more innocent Fictional Races they slew without remorse down upon them!
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Are you OK?
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That’s just how Yvenathlim is. They have very… colorful ideas. Best to just read and go on with your day.
In truth, the United States is Israel’s main backer and pretty much lockstep in allof it’s policies. and I do my part by expressing my opinions of our government’s role.
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That’s nice but off-topic.
Unfortunately, Blizzard has shown itself to be pathologically incapable of handling any remotely serious “dark” theme in their writing, particularly because they use it as a crutch to cynically pounce on growing media trends, making the inevitable attempted redemption arc fall flat.
Seeing Red wasn’t perfect by any means, but I appreciated the attempt by Blizzard to draw a clear line between forgiveness and redemption. By virtue of being on an RP server, I know I personally have had to remind myself several times already that we haven’t actually seen a carte blanche reintegration of Man’ari into open society. The one NPC I can think of off-hand that was added to Azeroth is slumming with a krokul warlock in the shadiest part of the Exodar.
At this point, I don’t see the quest is doing anything particularly wrong. It’s how they choose to handle it past this part that concerns me. Would I have preferred for them to plant these seeds much, much earlier? Definitely. But for what amounts to adding new customization on a whim, I found it inoffensive.
By the way, I also think Velen’s comparison was deeply flawed. I won’t touch on the points you already raised, but it’s worth noting that Man’ari have a lot more going against them. Illidari and Death Knights were both emergent forces poised against an overwhelming world-ending threat, and both of them were structured factions with clear delineations of power, leadership, and a fairly inarguable public perception that considered them a necessary evil.
By contrast, any repentant Man’ari could have spent the rest of their lives on Argus, or some other empty conquered world. There’s no way to verify their intentions, and since we’re talking about an evil demon race fully capable of deception that revels in malice I can’t see the vast majority of draenei accepting Velen’s decision at face value.
But that’s good material for storytelling. Velen has a very personal reason to believe that Man’ari can be redeemed, against all logic (with Hatuun’s input, no less). Having one restore a shard of the Ata’mal to him is enough to convince me that he’d bite the bullet despite his doubt and misgivings, and he’s the only one we’ve actually seen who does. If anything, I got the impression he was trying to convince himself. Whether or not I believe Blizz will meet my personal hopes for where the story goes from here (I…definitely don’t, they haven’t earned that level of charitability at this point), I think this is overall a net positive starting point.
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Well-written!
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Of course Velen wants to believe that the Man’arai have some spark capable of redemption in them—His own son was turned into one.
As it is right now, I believe this was a foundation for future content for the Draenei that they likely literally lacked the bandwidth to even think about before now. It is also an encouraging thing to see them progress something from a past expansion. In the past once an expac was over it might as well of stopped existing.
It is similar to how they pulled the Druids of the Flame forward from cataclysm (although I think they handled the DotF a lot more thoughtfully than the Man’arai and with a lot more believability as their misdeeds are infinitely less horrible.)
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