That’s exactly what the Vorlons are in Babylon 5; energy beings wearing encounter suits to interact with others. That’s what humanity also became at the end of Babylon 5.
lol, maybe.
I don’t think the path of light is ascension by any means.
Yeah, probably. At least, it’ll happen if there are still Babylon 5 mega-fans on the WoW writing team when that happens, and there seem to have been fans on that team since the start:
I wonder what they thought of the “humanity becomes Vorlons 2.0” ending.
I’m conflicted as to whether I’d like to see WoW go that way with the Light, but I’d prefer it to the edgelord dreck we got in Legion and BfA.
I’m desperately hoping I’m wrong and they don’t go that way. I didn’t like Babylon 5 THAT much, and I think it would be really boring if they just lift that storyline wholesale.
I’m curious if any of the writers have talked about being fans of Babylon 5, or even what their inspiration has been. And if they DO like Babylon 5, I wish they’d lift the political intrigue and geopolitics instead of the cosmic order versus chaos stuff (Narn versus Centauri was a much more interesting conflict than the Vorlons versus the Shadows, imo)
Also Deconstruction Of Falling Stars was such a weird episode because of behind the scenes production reasons, I don’t know if I’d want much directly lifted from it. Not that I think any of the races in World of Warcraft are going to get “endings” outside of weird bronze dragonflight flash forwards.
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I think that they were more inspired by Babylon 5’s Vorlons who were originally presented as the typical Mysterious Elder Race With Good Intentions, only to find out that the one that the heroes interacted with was the only who actually had compassion and empathy for the younger races.
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Not that I know of, but it’s pretty obvious from the references they keep slipping in. That may even be why they hired Claudia Christian—which I am all in favor of, because she is excellent at audio acting. Check out the Anne Manx series too.
Agreed, but I could see the writers deciding to get rid of the Naaru by having someone (probably Anduin) give them the Sheridan speech.
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Ironic that a Death Knight main isn’t the one necroing threads.
Agreed.
Didn’t the Vorlons leave because Lorien - the First One both the Vorlons and the Shadows respected - returned and led them outside the galaxy to resolve their conflict? I know that millennia later, humanity became Vorlons 2.0.
Plus, for any Naaru who turn out as nasty as certain wow fans claim, a speech wouldn’t dissuade them.
Sheriden gave the boot to both the Vorlons and the Shadows with an assist from Lorien who promised that he’d stop ignoring them.
According to Passing of the Techno-Mages(which Babylon 5’s Creator J. Michael Straczynski says is Canon) the Shadows like the Vorlons took on the form of Energy yet prefer a Material Form over Environmental Suits.
Humans became Energy Beings that want Material Form and Environmental Suits. The best of both worlds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7-165hJAis
https://youtu.be/ridEK4z1Vqc?t=2
Sheridan told them to leave the Galaxy and Lorien used his persuasiveness to talk them into leaving and telling them he will go with them beyond the rim.
Eventually? I believe so. There’s been a mixed degree of foreshadowing here & there that the light aren’t all as kind & benevolent as they’re made out to be …
- However what I find most intriguing is how the Naaru tend to have different personalities, worldly views & goals.
Although personally I’d LOVE if there was a split faction within ‘The Light’ itself – Give some complex agency amongst the entities themselves — Allies who are beings of light to fight against their kind who are more oppressive.
For instance, I’d find it wicked cool if we had to save A’dal & the Sha’tar from others of their kind: Given they didn’t fit into their views of universe & refused to enforce them — Then have A’dal & their followers as a faction to fight with us against their more zealotry kin.
There’s been a handful of naaru we’ve helped & who’ve helped us in the past, such as A’dal and Z’rali - So it’d be neat to see them by our side again. 
I have had a headcanon for awhile that at the top level of the Light instead of a Pantheon there is a singular being known as the Radiant One. Early on in the history of the cosmos, the Void Lords cursed the Radiant One into eternal slumber out of fear, but the Radiant One still communicates with the Prime Naaru through visions known as the Will of the Light. Being visions they are subject to interpretation, and so there are distinct factions that all think they are serving the true will of the Radiant One.
The Faction created by prime Naaru Xe’ra, for example, became known as the Army of the Light and has a very militaristic outlook about proselytizing the Light—at swordpoint if necessary.
Making Light Villainous in it’s extremes is hardly a novel concept.
What I’m currently waiting for is them to stop being cowards about making the Void on the smaller scale into something unconditionally beneficial
I don’t even care if they rip off the Night’s Blessed from FF XIV at this rate I am just dying for them to bring some semblance of balance to this wretched scale. It’s currently so woefully uneven
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They’ve gone the more nuanced route of nothing being unconditionally beneficial.
The Void is the path of madness and that’s never an unconditional benefit.
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And they’ve done so poorly. Every Naaru who hadn’t gone full Void has helped us in some way, even the oft-maligned Xe’ra (the defeat of the Burning Legion is a big deal, and the Army of Light also tried to save species of animals from extinction).
“What poor writing?” one may ask. They shouldn’t have killed Xe’ra off in Legion if they wanted to show a negative side to the Naaru, especially not such a ham-fisted jobbing. Xe’ra’s only “crimes” were clashing with fan-favorites Alleria and Illidan - if she’d done that to Gallywix instead, no one would care. If they wanted to show her as a zealot, they shouldn’t have shown she allows mages into the Army of the Light.
Compared with cosmic antagonists (like Sargeras, the Jailer, Mueh’zala and the Old Gods), even the Mag’har recruitment scenario feels lacking. In fact, unlike most other cosmic characters, she doesn’t even kill or mind control anyone.
They shouldn’t have tried to hide the plot holes of the Mag’har recruitment scenario behind a time skip.
The same people who gave us that think Sylvanas is morally grey with the Burning of Teldrassil, either both are “morally grey” or evil. To hell with these double standards. They’re not qualified to make any moral statements in a story when they can’t even keep things straight.
I, for one, refuse to blindly swallow these sloppy plot holes.
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They could depict that Xe’ra was simply but one of the high-tier hierarchies – But there’s more? 
Regardless, yeah I think it’s silly to introduce potential villain characters – Only to dispatch & discard them in the very expansion they were released in …
- Establishing a connection & awe-appeal is always fantastic, because it gives way to great story telling or paving the way to greater villains or even heroes (and anti-heroes) from the progression.
Ultimately, I hope there’s more to the naaru than meets the eye (such as having allies amongst them should we go to war with their kind).
On a semi-unrelated note to Naaru, but the subject of keeping adversary characters beyond a single expansion to return later – I’d LOVE to see Iridikron come back as an anti-hero for confronting titan threats in the future
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Also didn’t they have light based villains with the Scarlet crusade going all the way back to vanilla? And if the issue is they’re not “cosmic” level, frankly I’m sick of “cosmic” villains, they’re boring and impersonal, give me someone who had a life before becoming a villain and had hopes dreams and aspirations.
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Not just Christianity, but all religions. Religion of any kind taken to it’s natural conclusion is destructive and harmful to humanity. Any faith taken literally have us killing each other because our god is better than your god or the word of our god demands us to act a certain way and you’re not adhering strictly to the faith, blah blah blah.
The faith stays in the temples, mosques, and churches not in our daily lives. Especially in what laws we obey and what actions we take as a society. If that were not the case then LGBT people would be executed, women would be property of their husbands and fathers, life would be terrible as slavery would be justified as well as every atrocity we can imagine to the infidels who disagree with the faith. 86 all religions. No good comes from worship to magical fictional things.
Not every faith is like that. Quakers and the B’hai come to mind as examples of exceptions. And Jews specifically do not seek to evangelize or convert. The problem however is when religion is married to politics.
I’m not interested in discussing Sylvannas in a moral sense. Morality is one of those trippy subjective subjects. The same goes with Uther, the Jailer got his hooks into both of them because of what they had gone through, both were victimized by Arthas and his bloody Domination sword. They both did terrible things as a result of what was done to them. Yet the same people who want to crucify Sylvannas want to exalt Arthas…to exercise some male fantasy of making him her Jailor… again.
Illidan said 'NO" I’m not sure what X’era was trying to do, nor do I pretty much care. No one has the right to inflict anything on someone else when the word “No” is spoken. Their would-be victims have the right to defend their autonomy with any means they have.
A lot of men don’t really seem to grasp the importance of “No”. It is perhaps the most important word a woman can invoke.
X’era has no one to blame but herself for how things turned out.
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