Man'ari Questline *Spoilers*

Admittedly it’s a problem I’ve had with Blizzard for a while. While I liked that they went out of their way not to act as though the victims of their Redemption of the Week were acting like hysterical drama queens (thanks, Anduin), it’s not really much of a penance if they just sort of disappear into the crowd the moment they’re forgiven. I would have used this opportunity to bring the Broken into Azeroth and have the draenei reestablish a triumvirate with clearly defined rules and communication with the rest of the Alliance. It’s not perfect, but it would be a nice callback to Eredar society while demonstrating a legitimate effort to integrate them into the Alliance and rebuild draenei civilization together.

As it is now, Blizzard has a tendency of injecting popular themes in media into WoW without earning the pay-off of a traditional redemption arc, which has the consequence of making everyone on Azeroth seem kind of like gullible idiots. Arzal’kal may have alluded to others, but realistically he’s going to be our only example for a while, and we don’t actually have compelling reason to trust him.

I’m really not opposed to expanding customization and accommodating traditionally evil races from a playable standpoint, but I wish they handled it with more consideration for the larger story.

5 Likes

So it turns out there are now Man’arai scattered around the game after you finish the quest chain. A number of them have resources for the Krokul on Argus. There is also one in the Exodar as a demon trainer:

11 Likes

I hope everyone threw (and continues to throw) eggs at him.

2 Likes

Same here, There was a chance to implement more internal conflict within the Alliance. It was a chance to bring back fang to night elves, make them act harsh as they did in the past. Fast Forward to DF, and nelves are cool again with everyone. :F

I’d love to see return of the House of the Nobles and get into Human Politics, get something level grounded, something where you could see shady and oportiunistic people emerge that would try to wrestle power (Kinda sad it didn’t happen during Anduin’s reign, BfA was perfect time to do that, when he was sending farmers to fight)

I love the most Dark Iron Dwarves on the Alliance, because they’re not your typical alliance, they’re not meant to give a damn about honor, but on how to get things done.
They’re literally digging traps for others to fall into. And I’d hate to see them being “goodied” becuase I saw them as a breath of fresh air.

And last but least. The Worgen. They’re Alliance equivalent of Trolls when it comes to how badly they were mishandled. Even their heritage questlines shames them for being Worgen, instead of recognising it as both curse and a blessing. I was hoping that worgen would truly unleash darker side of Alliance.

But it also didn’t happen. :F

The better approach would be to allow players to decide if they want to be super friendly and morally good, being shady/ threading the line between good and evil, and even evil.

I think the reason why DF rubs me the wrong way, is that I haven’t found even ONE NPC (From H/A) that would display shady behavior. While you always fund such elements in previous expansions.

6 Likes

The Dragonmaw are part of the Horde again already. So are some of the Grimtotem.

3 Likes

I meant as customization options, especially since they’re already part of it.

5 Likes

Not really, The super Dark tone was already used by Darksprears, like Shadow Hunter Ty’Jin. And Dark Trolls were meant to have much more massive physique.

Forest trolls aren’t available, and neither are Frost Trolls.

Only Sand troll skin, which didn’t get even a unique quest chain. And there was a good opportunity in BfA, where old gods forces started their attacks from Uldum - there could be a quest that their forces are spreading to Tanaris, and Zandas + Darkspreads decided to send aid to Farraki. And voila. We have a proactive initiative, that gave something good in exchange.

Alliance could do the same to the people of the Desert, although in Uldum they already were a huge part of the story.

1 Like

Blizzard is definitely up there with the worst of them when it comes to trying to write dark storylines, at least in recent years. Even when it comes to the discrimination against Broken (up to and including draenei peacekeepers literally turning away when Broken flung themselves off Aldor Rise), it’s more implied by model placement and never gets too deep into the weeds. When they get the idea of writing a “dark storyline”, woop there’s a genocide and then another, totally uninvolved third party comes along to preach about not holding a grudge.

They just aren’t very good at nuanced or subtle storytelling, unfortunately.

6 Likes

If people are actually interested in that “you work until you die” kind of penance story for a character, I don’t really see anything wrong with the questline for red draenei. Provided that Blizzard doesn’t actually show that they’ve been integrated into the alliance in any way, it seems fine?

The story’s kinda lost me on the “nobody is beyond redemption” moral long ago, but given that this sort of thing would be way more explicitly opt-in on the part of the player, I don’t think the questline did anything wrong.

6 Likes

You can fly to see dark troll in dark shore right now its the same skin color that players can use now.

You’re obsessed with the hulking physique, just like wildhamner dwarves are implied so are other troll tribes when the new customizations came into play.

When The Zandalari empire joined the Horde, so did the rest of troll kind

Yea I agree, and there is no chance of achieving that with the current team that is afraid of writing stuff like that. Even if I’d really like to see level grounded approach that would get a deep dive into each subfaction, about their needs, and conflict of interests, (that means within Alliance, or Horde alone) , it doesn’t have to cause a total escalation, but it would be a great reminder that each society is different, and you can’t lump everyone into same bag.

2 Likes

Thia whole Man’ari thing is going to hijack the Draenei heritage quest, isn’t it? If this was going to be believable at all, they needed to start seeding story threads for this years ago.

These eredar repentants should have turned up in Argus questing. It’s just like Blizzard to rush something like this on a whim.

1 Like

How rude, I am not obsessed. Just pointing out that they simply look different. Sure, they might’ve take a shortcut with Dark trolls, but Forest and Frost trolls look absolutely different, and skin color won’t fix that.

But that would require to implement actual body types.

Trust me, I wish that was the case. But the game itself didn’t bother to elaborate on it.

2 Likes

It’s mostly opt-in at the moment, though there are a few scattered NPCs and I assume there’ll be more in the future. The questline didn’t do anything wrong, I agree with you on that: I actually think it was a breath of fresh air in how they handled it, I just wish they’d gone a bit deeper and used them as a jumping off point to address longstanding problems in draenei society – and who knows, maybe they will.

It’s a great opportunity to plant the seeds for the draenei rebuilding and getting a city of their own, and Man’ari and Broken having a hand in that would be a symbolic way of piecing the origins of the eredar back together and touching on the themes they seem to be going for.

4 Likes

Oh boy, I didn’t think of that. I hope it wouldn’t be the case. I’d rather if the Heritage quest would stick to original concept.

4 Likes

Yeaaaah, this is pretty valid. The heritage quest is worrying. Honestly, if we’re going to have a literal one-off lore quest per race, I’d much rather focus on the Broken than Man’ari given a choice between the two.

5 Likes

I mean, if anything, the Draenei heritage quest when it comes around, would be an excellent way to deal with the inclusion of the man’ari and how the rest of Draenei society is dealing with the possible consequences of that

3 Likes

I guess everything depends of exeution then. But I could see how it could go wrong.

1 Like

I’d like for them to be a component of it, but not the focus, personally. I’d like draenei, broken, Man’ari, and Lightforged to build a united front in the interest of recreating a flourishing civilization again. Only they tend to be pretty short by nature, so spreading out the plot too much could turn out worse. I guess we’ll see soon! I’m pretty confident we’re next.

7 Likes

I’d like to see the draenei heritage quest be about the draenei . The Exiled Ones; the draenei and the krokul. It should be about home, acceptance and unity specifically with the broken who have been an under-class of draenei society since TBC launch. Maybe even the Lost Ones who are so far gone that they’re practically feral.

The heritage of argus is now shared between three playable options, but the draenei deserve the focus of their own story. The Lightforged and Man’ari can get their own seperate stories.

8 Likes