Modern WoW Lore, Star Wars: TLJ, & KOTOR 2 - A Hot Take

Lore Story Forum
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Hello. I have a hot take I’ve been thinking over these last few days on Danuser’s writing.

So there’s a lot of problems I could criticize over the years regarding WoW’s writing, but I want to focus specifically on Danuser’s goals for Warcraft.
Danuser’s goal is to reinterpret old lore and perspectives.
People criticize this as just retconning things, and this is true-ish, but I don’t think the storytelling method is inherently doomed.

This is gonna be a bit strange, but I want to compare Danuser’s goal with Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: KOTOR 2.

It’s not super well known, but (part of) the reason TLJ is written the way it was was BECAUSE Rian Johnson was inspired by KOTOR 2. KOTOR 2 has a character named Kreia, and she has a very unique take on the Force I won’t get into. All you need to know is that her views on the Force are very controversial. Additionally, the game makes it clear that a lot of the Jedi Order, while not outright evil like the Sith, have A LOT of flaws, flaws which allowed a lot of preventable problems to happen.

Knowing this, it’s easy to see where Rian got his ideas for book burning and rejecting the old teachings, Luke falling into despair and acting poorly.
Though there’s two problems with this.

  1. It doesn’t work for Luke’s personality. (off topic opinion)
  2. This was one of three Star Wars FILMs released of a VERY small new canon.

2 is key here, because while Kreia’s hot takes on the Force may be very controversial, she is also a character in a single video game existing in the Old Republic era, an era of canon that was already quite a bit more established than I think most people realize. If you didn’t like her hot take, well, there’s tons of other eras and sources from that same era you can enjoy while ignoring her. Ultimately, while Kreia will remain controversial in nerd circles forever, she is unquestionably a net positive for the franchise. The Last Jedi? Less so.
The Last Jedi was not only larger and more promoted, but it basically existed as the main source of story for an entire new canon. So to have that new source be wildly controversial and contradictory of most previous portrayals was… not a wise choice.

Which is somewhat more akin to World of Warcraft expansions. Shadowlands isn’t one of several expansions or concurrent stories, it’s THE current expansion in a game that constantly tries to encourage you to only play the current expansion by nerfing or destroying everything older.

While I think Danuser’s reinterpretations could work on a smaller scale alongside other stories (similar to KOTOR 2’s), they don’t work as the main platform of storytelling, as they just leave people unhappy.

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Book burning and rejecting the Force wasn’t the problem the problem was Luke being on the verge of murdering his Nephew!

Rian made Luke act in an out of character way to justify him rejecting the Force.

One of the Students should have been the one who was on the verge of attacking Ben with Luke ripping the Lightsaber out of the Student’s hand only for Ben to wake up and notice the Lightsaber in Luke’s hand!

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I see KOTOR 2.

I remember amazing video.

Seriously, the video may be near 2 hour long, but it is hella amazing to watch. Grab a hot cup of tea or a whole pot, kick your feet up and just watch. It is absolutely amazing.

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I personally am not a fan of Kreia. I thought KOTOR 1 still portrayed the Jedi as fallible but much more subtly and without turning it into outright Jedi-bashing (which frankly bores me).

I’d like to see you expand on how this relates to Danuser and WoW, though. What are examples of this “Kreia” approach in WoW?

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I think he may be refering to Danuser’s preference for Sylvanas, the turn Sylvanas’s character took since Legion, and is comparing it to Kreia.

Kreia turning to the Dark Side is seemingly similar to how Sylvanas became an agent of Zorvaal. He may be speculating that just like Kreia, Sylvanas will reject Zorvaal and the Dark Side and begin a journey of self cleansing, getting a redemption, as a neutral character.

Sylvanas getting remeeded is bad, despite what Dansuer thinks, and the fall out from Sylvanas’s redemption will be similar to the fallout around Kreia’s redemption.

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What I find interesting is that Kreia shows that you can see the fallibility in the two sides and STILL be fallible in the end, that just because you can see what’s wrong in the dichotomy but still not realize that there’s a third, still wrong opinion that is probably just as bad if not worse then adhering to that dichotomy.

Not realizing that maybe there isn’t a “right answer,” just one hell of a lot of wrong answers and it’s up to the individual to choose the “least wrong answer.”

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so, you are already wrong here, its well known RJ literally just winged TLJ like he is not even subtle about it, he openly admits it. Inspired would imply he took ideas and wanted to in a way mimic it, but he did not, he openly has said he wanted to purposefully subvert expectations, and during rise of skywalker they said they were painted into a corner because of RJ crap he did. So im sorry but you are objectively wrong on this.

When it comes to Danuser is that he is trying to make his story, not the warcraft story, which in a way IS something he and RJ have in common. Both did not care or dont care about warcraft as a story and want to tell their story.

Every since BFA, we have no longer been building on the warcraft story, we have been following the jaina and friends story that happens to take place in wow. Danuser is trying to take the lore that has existed for a decade and reshape it to fit what he wants. Adding a crap ton of cosmic lore that no one asked for that does not help anyone, or help the story, has now gone 2 whole exp, techincally 3 if you count back in legion of sylvannases BS that everyone is literally fatigued on hearing about.

While this would be fine, the problem is now, they are trying to make ALL this cosmic lore at the same time as they are feeding it to players. They are making these massive cosmic lore changes while also having players go through it well before its established, they are basically feeding us the setting and story raw and undercooked. This is why everyone is kinda rejecting shadowlands, no one has time to process these massive and i mean MASSIVE sweeping changes to the lore, things that fundamentally rock warcraft to the core, and what happens is because they are feeding it to us raw they dont have all of the very important loop holes explained and end up patching that informaiton on the fly and no one buys it.

The example of the patching of lore im talking about is dreadlords because people rightfully pointed out, “So the dreadlords corupted sargarus, to make the burning legion, but they also made the litch king, to help the burning legion, but then fight their own forces by sabatoging the buring legion, that the dreadlords were also in control of, that were all being controlled by the jailer. So the jailer just made a civil war happen because…he could?”

Which leads into the other example of the raw and undercooked story. Danuser is trying to make the jailer out as this big bad that has been pulling the strings this whole time, but no one is buying it, it feels shallow, it feels weak, it feels forced and no one wants it. If anything it just ruines the previous villain’s, not make them better.

The TL;DR for why danuser is not doing a good job for wow is this.
He is trying to make new cosmic lore on the fly, connect everything together for reasons, uses the same trope over and over and over again (Wait and see cliff hanger, and every this is morally gray), is forcing us to be saterday morning side kicks to jaina thrall bane and crew, and we have been dealing with the same bad guy sylvannas for 3 exp now and we are fatigued by it.

He is trying to be super clever in his writing but sucking horribly at it.

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All of what you typed falls under:

Luke falling into despair and acting poorly

~

This was actually most likely Afrasiabi. In Legion, Danuser wasn’t lead, and his biggest claim to fame was writing the Hunter Order Hall. It’s also very likely Danuser only wrote part of BfA, taking over whenever Afrasiabi departed.
Shadowlands is probably the first expansion I would really call Danuser’s.

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and his first expansion is a absolute flop.

To the point of “luke falling into despair” is literally the problem though, thats 100% NOT what luke would have done.
Luke, the guy that literally fought to save his father the guy that killed children and thousands of innocents, because he believed that his father had a sliver of good in him, fell into despair because of one bad dream about his nephew.

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I’m not sure what’s making you think I’m trying to justify TLJ’s bad writing?
I’m pointing out why two stories, neither of which work, have both failed (SL & TLJ), and contrasting with how it has been done correctly (KOTOR 2) - on a smaller scale and not in the main stage of the storytelling.

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WOW actually represents the Disney Anti-Kreia approach in that just like the Jedi-Sith struggle, the war between Blue and Red can never cease. That’s the inevitable price of story becoming franchise.

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Ah yes, the Hunter Order Hall

  • on a Tauren mountain named after An’she
  • Tauren motifs everywhere
  • But founded and maintained by Night Elves

Yeah agreed 100%

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In fairness, while it was founded by Night Elves, it has Tauren motifs because it was led and championed by the Highmountain Tauren for most of it’s existence.

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They’re not perfectly 1-to-1. Though maybe there’s an argument for that. But rather, they’re both trying to convince you of a radical perspective.
I think the fact that you didn’t like KOTOR II is perfect: You didn’t like it, but it wasn’t a primary feature or the only source of canon, it was just one game. Kreia annoyed you, but she was just one voice of many. If you didn’t like her, you had several other sources coming out around the same time contradicting her. She wasn’t the “one version” of the Force.
SL is primarily Danuser’s voice.
Danuser wants to rewrite perspectives and try to make up new ways to look at things, similar to how Kreia’s character was with the Force.
Though I think the issue lies in the fact that Danuser wants to make a bunch of different POV takes, which is problematic because Warcraft was (almost?) never written that way before. But it also doesn’t work because when you introduce only one voice, then call it a POV voice, but add no others for VERY long periods, is it really POV, or just an opening for retcons? Same thing for when you go back and change old perspectives. It’s not just a retcon, it’s rewriting the framework of the entire canon.

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This is really where they should take a page out of FFXIV’s book, and just explain everything in game.

Throughout A Realm Reborn, Heavensword and Stormblood we were told one thing, and then suddenly in Shadowbringers all of what we have been told is then thrown upside down, EVERYTHING changed because we got the perspective of an antagonist, and we learn something entirely knew about FFXIV’s elemental wheel.

If WoW did like FFXIV, then we would have had the chronicle part 1 which is supposed to be the titan’s perspective, directly explained to us by the titans themselves, or indirectly by the titans through some titan structure left behind by the titans on Azeroth, and that selfsame explanation would have been expanded upon and potentially contested by a vision from Old Gods creation, aka, the next iteration of the Warcraft Chronicles.

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Yeah Grimoire’s two biggest disappointments for me were:

  1. I was under the impression we’d get the funerary rituals for every playable race
  2. Grimoire wasn’t the personal journal of the Primus or etc.

In one of the Maldraxxus dailies for the abomination The Professor, you are told Prince Renathal used to house a venthyr historian that would accompany the Primus on battles to write down histories.

I was hoping grimoire would be written by her.

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Oddly condensed version of Kreia’s story. Be more true if after being betrayed by Zovaal Sylvanas decided to destroy magic entirely like Kreia sought to destroy the Force.

Wasn’t aware there was fallout to Kreia’s death.

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On the topic of KOTOR.

A remake is coming.

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Kreia was also presented flawed and at time a self admitted hypocrite.

She may have solid point about the force but her perspective is that of an old bitter woman who may be blinded by her own hatred.

While Shadowland presented as deliberate uprooting of the old lore, done not from small perspective that you can ignore but from meta perspective that you can’t.

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