The 9.1 storyline is nothing but Tyrande and the Night Elves choosing to go down the road of positivity and betterment and forgiveness and all of those humanistic ideals. The ideal that vigilantism and vengeance for the sake of vengeance are inherently wrong.
And the story forums have absolutely ripped that story decision to pieces.
It’s hilarious to hold the position that “Sylvanas has always been evil” and “Blizzard is obligated to tell a moral story” and “Sylvanas has been a major character in Warcraft for 15+ years” all at the same time.
And yet many posters here do hold those opinions. Schroedinger’s Canon? How about Schroedinger’s moral storytelling?
Sorry but positivity for the sake of positivity is boring. Jaina’s arc in BfA was boring. Jaina is now a boring character. That is not good storytelling, it’s almost the opposite. It would be like turning Sylvanas into a goody-two-shoe blonde-haired blue-eyed elf now who hugs Vareesa and all is forgiven.
That’s much worse storytelling than anything about Vulpera or Goblins.
EDIT: Almost forgot for video game examples:
SWTOR Empire side storyline. The Bounty Hunter, Inquisitor, Warrior, and Agent. All well-told stories that do not rely on fake morality to tell an interesting story.
Not when it’s tied to “The Dead Night Elves have a purpose to save Ardenweald which is Elune’s greater good plan”, which inherently has with it “I let you all die, the genocide was part of my plan” wrapped up in it.
Because what Blizzard is due to repeating the same mistakes and what Blizzard could be must be held in conjunction.
But after Dazarlor and “To attack the Zandalari would make us no better than the Banshee Queen” line Jaina’s story ceased to be interesting and she became just another generic goody-two-shoes character in a long line of goody-two-shoes characters. She’s the most pathetic rule-follower ever in Shadows Rising, she’s less morally complex than Anduin for goodness sake.
Why is this a bad thing? Other than whiny Night Elves?
Why is it a bad thing for the story to be that Elune has a dark side? Isn’t that exactly what the Night Warrior represents?
That can be a good story. It may not be a moral story, but it can be a good one. And again, Warcraft is not a morality play.
EDIT: Also just to point out, your interpretation of this interaction with Elune is assuming the worst. I do not think it is likely that Blizzard pursues the option of “Elune wanted the Night Elves to die.” It’s just not happening. I think even suggesting that it is proves your desire for better, more morally complex storytelling.
When people do not have fun, they start asking questions. When the devs made the choice to ignore the concern, situation started to escalate. As time goes on, it very well might go past the point of compromise and discussion to an outright rejection of the people who made such story turns. And there would be no1 to blame outside of the company called “activision-blizzard”.
You are free to financially support what they do. Does not mean that others are obligated to never criticize the story, or to exclude the story from the list of the problems of the game.
False. The devs themselves talk about morality (check the Evolution of Thrall panel) and lessions to learn. Nobody forced them to bring in irl morality and concepts into the previously fictional narrative.
Sure. Except they made a conscious choice to use exactly that way to evaluate and validate the characters and the story turns they wanted to. So, when the community does what the devs request, no point in complaining about community following what the devs state.
If you try to use “the intention of the devs” as a way to justify your take on the story, it would be nice if you yourself find out the language used by the devs themselves when they talk about the story they created, and their reasoning for why those choices were made.
It should be then advertised as such and provide equal oppotrunities to all parties to participate.
It’s 1 chapter out of the “9.1 story”.
They are chosing a path of “genocide is cool for the promotional materials, but will be waved away, because the horde is new, improved and corrected, thus the core of the problems are resolved automatically”.
[not to mention what that means to the value and the concept of the original W3-Classic-TBC horde]
Not to mention the false advertisement aspect of the story sold as “seeking justice” and the “aftermath of the event”.
It tells the story that if you’re a dev favourite then anything can be forgiven, regardless of what is done. And genocide is fine if for the greater_good™.
Well, what do you [not you personally, but as a figure of speach about the dev team] expect if you take money for 1 story, and then silently replace the things people are emotionally involved in, but by whatever the devs themselves prefer to do for the money they took.
different people are different. With different motivations, etc. Does not make “wrong” the whole rejection of the story revisionism and deconstruction of what people loved for the sake of validation of the devs’ biases and preferences.
Depends on the execution. Depends on the detail. Depends on the context. Depends on many implementation details.
Well, of course it was. It was 180 on the promo materials. Why would it be considered good? Some liked it though, despite inconsistencies, etc.
Yeah, and that is the funny thing that you support that the narrative is a problem, while ignoring the common problems that plague it, regardless if that is what was done to the elf story, or to the W3 horde identity.
Do you have a race / faction which is explicitly sold as the Empire equivalent? Do you think that with the current dev take on morality, that “Empire” side would have any validity or necessity shown in the story?
Because it’s not the ruleset of the universe. There won’t be a follow up of demolishing the “new” and “improved” horde and then saying “nah, it’s all fine - for the greater_good™”.
It was just an event for shock value that dragged a few participants on the border of “out of character”, and instead of a follow-up to the event, it brushes it off under the hood of conveniently appearing greater_good™.
Clear message, clear foundation, clear execution of the explicitly mentioned concepts - that is all that lies under those discussions as far as I can tell.
It matters what they show, not what they imagine which when talking to each other during the planning stage of the development.
Plus, Blizz seems to be doing exactly what those of us who did get invested in what the WC3 Horde represented and its characters were afraid of. They are writing more outs and putting FAR more effort in a potential “redemptive” story for Sylvanas than they ever intended to put into the “NOTHING” Horde. Which means the burden of guilt of that aforementioned genocide we were turned into a motiveless, opinionless plot device so Sylvie to settup Shadowlands will fall harder on the Horde when they do pull that trigger. Because they couldn’t even be bothered to do the barest obvious choice of going with a Horde entrapment narrative in BfA. Which wouldn’t have been more enjoyable to play through as a Horde player, but it at least would have helped parts of the story make more sense. But instead, they needed Sylvie’s “surprise” betrayal.
Not to mention the fact that they’ve done NOTHING but reinforced Sylvie’s narrative that the Horde is Nothing, while undermining Saurfang’s stance that the Horde has both value, and the capacity to be worthy of the honor he believed himself not worthy of. With Saurfang’s soul being made into a trinket (and thus, saving him seems beyond our abilities), Sylvie getting prepped with TONS of outs (or validations), and our BEST and HEART Baine being thrown away like worthless garbage by his own kidnappers. And allowed no personal relevance or story as of yet, despite being the main rep of the single most spirit worshipping PC race in the LAND OF THE DEAD!!!
Kaleaons point, I think, is that every…single…person who took up the Night Warrior power has died from said power. There IS a dark side to taking up such a power, as there should be.
Let’s repeat the path of the Accuser: Tyrande will kill Sylvanas (the attacker), then she will kill the Horde (the assistant attacker), then we will kill the Alliance (who did not intervene quickly enough), and then Tyrande will kill Shandris or Malfurion. Or Tyrande will die from the forces of the Night Warrior. But first - to kill all those involved and not involved.
What? Did you actually watch walking dead/game of thrones? Nearly every moment is showing is horrible the world is with only brief respites of peace.
They have not done so. At best they are saying Slyvanas may have a good reason to do it. But ultimately she is still on the wrong for doing it. In the same vein one might understand why Sargeras going on genocida might be understandable if wholly unacceptable.
So, none of this is “lore” in the canonical sense. These are fairy tail stories people tell. Removing the fact that Blizzard doesn’t understand what fairy tails are…
None of this should be taken as fact.
Which means that the moon in the first story isn’t Elune, the baby sister isn’t the Winter Queen (unless directly named). It’s Mush’a. It’s the Tauren mythology version.
There is another story, further on in the book, that deals with the Moon and how the Blue Child was born.
Please keep in mind these are stories told on Azeroth. They are not big lore reveals. Even the Sylvanas one. They are not out of world word of god. They are people inside of Azeroth sitting around a campfire telling stories.
Nah, it’s just a narrative tool so far for “tell, don’t show” with telling spoopy stories about “what would’ve happen if”, etc.
Black eyes on NPCs are not consistent and barely mean anything (Shandriss, Malfurion, and most other named NPCs did not get it, and the story won’t account for the ritual affecting them, most likely).
And the ritual which did not save Thiernax, will work now just fine, because 2 mortals is not enough, but 4 - that’s a totally different story, you know.
etc.
The whole story is for me “better not do at all than do like that”. I guess it’s kind of clear why are there jokes about “multi-dollar company”.
Will see where the resolution of at least Sylvanas, since they apparently wanted to use the horde as either plot tool or (not sure how to politely put it) characters incapable of not repeating the same path again and again, as a representation of what W3-vanilla horde truly is.
As well as what is there with this “purpose for souls”.
And the advertised story about justice.
This topic was brought up already, and the book already confirmed to have some canon meaning.
If there would be consistent application of any ruling on the stories (either canon or "some stories), there would be way less discussion / confusion.
Given some canon material in the book being confirmed, possibility of any element being canon have to be exercised as well.
Given tendency of the devs lately to use retcons whenever convenient, I am not really sure.
I got back into story of WoW because I though that maybe if Afrasiabi leading was about “what’s cool”, then a different leadership would be more concerned with consistency.
And, no luck. Might need another set of narrators before “common sense” or in-universe continuity might become something to have value.
We’ll see the details. So far the text suggests that “I was as much observer” from Tyrande. So, there could be no “Elune intervened” since, you know, it was Elune all along when it comes to night warriors.
(the one who is always there and by default a part of the ritual cannot suddenly appear and “interfere”)
Assuming having at least some narrative consistency.
Popularity has nothing to do with Veeresa effectively being portrayed as powerless AND useless most of the time (she was the trophy wife of a Gary Stu self insert up to ToW. Her actions post MoP -especially the one related to chickening out on killing Garrosh- don´t help her case either).
It was just a joke since her relative unpopularity is kind of a meme
IDK, she has good moments when she’s not strictly a satellite character, even if she does messed up stuff and has a bizarre moral compass (wow it’s like she’s an elf >.> ). The problem is she mostly is.
She´s a meme just like Aethas, only less in-the-face (I swear the stuff devs make her say sometimes is so stupid she has this vague “airhead” image in my mind).
