Tolkien had some actual academic authority on matters like language, folklore and theology though. If he never published any fiction his name would still probably be known to at least some college students. That feels a bit like being annoyed the director of a low budget zombie flick didn’t live up to Kubrick’s vision.
I also think soft world building in WoW can be a benefit. Firstly because I think the core, meat and potatoes products of this IP will always be games and keeping stuff vague so you can add in extremely disparate adventure settings is wise. Mechagon didn’t really have anything to do with BFA but I certainly enjoyed zooming around on a jetpack and fighting Alliance over who got to then fight a big robot gorilla.
It also works well because of RPers who are using this as a sandbox to tell their own stories. Having some firm rules are nice but you don’t need to flesh out every single detail. I quite like that nobody can tell me I can’t RP a surly zombie cowboy because even if Westfallers don’t typically have a drawl, maybe they do when speaking Orcish.
Direction under Bottegoni has gone towards Hard Universe, Afrasiabi left and was the last OG Old Guard left, Danuser is Old(er) Guard (but not OG Old) and they’re rolling Afrasiabi title and role into Danuser’s instead of hiring someone new to help manage.
Meaning it’s bottlenecking story dev hierarchy. Team reports to Danuser who reports to Bottegoni. Small restructuring but it’s a gesture of control.
I think the First Ones are gone - as such, Elune is probably an Eternal of Life or Light. If she is a First One then she is probably the last of her kind.
Its a bit vague in some ways, but I think its less “she was allowed to go to ardenweald” and more she’s effectively turned into a wild god. We haven’t seen non-wild gods treated as seeds.
I can take that “code” accusation in a lot of directions for a lot of topics…
I want Elune to remain unexplained because the worship of that goddess informs the lion’s share of Night Elf cultural practices, and before you dismiss what that means, go look at any given country around the world, and ask yourself how many of their cultural practices are informed by the majority opinion in that country of what happens to them after they die. You’ll find that faith has an outsized impact on how people behave, even if they don’t believe in the faith that instituted those practices.
Now think about what would happen if, tomorrow, the patron god or gods for one of these cultures arrived and started explaining themselves. This would kick off massive changes to those cultures to the extent that they were wrong, and if they were VERY wrong, it would mean the end of that culture.
I don’t want to see that happen with the Night Elves - and I am sick of people who don’t have investment in them as a concept demanding to screw them over - to force their vision of what THEY think Night Elves should be down the throats of the people who actually have investment in the race.
Oh, you aren’t doing that? Excuse me if I don’t believe you. People rarely say what they mean, as you said. It’s always code. Right?
I think it could be fun to see other cultures’ interpretations of Elune, but NOTHING beyond that. The whole reason she’s considered one of the “truly divine beings” of the world is because she’s so untouchable.
Those rare moments we see her direct intervention (Ysera’s death is a BIG one for me) are so awesome because it feels like a touch of something far beyond anything we’ve already seen. If she becomes just another NPC in a cutscene, all her gravitas will vanish.
Honestly, I mostly want Elune to go unexplained because I do not trust Blizzard to deliver anything satisfying.
This is why I honestly think Tauren and Gnomes get off easy in the lore. Blizzard ignores them most of the time, sparing them of Blizzard’s narrative guillotine in a lot of instances.
At this point Blizzard’s writing team is like a gang of 4-year-olds playing make-believe on the playground who occasionally find some poor injured butterfly (prior lore) that they then rip to pieces.
I think this idea is absolutely cancerous to a civilization. A culture has zero right to maintain an absolute falsehood. This is talking about preferring to believe in a comfortable lie at the cost of scientific progress, the advancement of knowledge. Consider a hypothetical culture that believed the practice of medicine was evil and if anyone walks into a hospital, the world will immediately end, so they allow every sick person to die horrible deaths. They have no right to be protected from someone going in and demonstrating to them that their beliefs are completely wrong.
((EDITED right here, see below for retraction and apology :X))
No, you were pretty much spot on, that’s exactly something I was implying, evidently.
You’re framing this as though Elune has already been revealed and the culture is going on anyway. She hasn’t been - and I’m arguing that she should not be so that we may preserve these cultural institutions. Other than that, I think this entire screed is a swing and a miss. Unless you’re trying to say that people have zero right to do things like wear Bindis, make pilgrimages to religious sites, or celebrate religious holidays.
Which, why? Why is it morally bankrupt to say, exchange gifts every December to commemorate the birth of someone you believe is the son of God? Or to make statues of a guy who you believe showed humanity the path to nirvana? What is so wrong with that?
Further, why do Night Elves have zero right to have a set of unique cultural practices based upon their beliefs, whether they are right or wrong, that there is a moon goddess out there that they should pay homage to? Why MUST that Moon Goddess be revealed, explained, dissected, and determined to be definitively one thing or another?
Careful not to cut yourself on that edge, my dude.
Frankly, it might be the most disgusting take I have seen on these forums, and that is saying a lot since these forums is full of society’s bottom of the barrel.
You are not just writing off any and all human cultures to ever exist, but you are also saying any and all human culture’s outright shouldn’t exist.
Just to clarify in case, I would never, ever advocate hurting any human being. I just don’t respect cultural institutions based on lies that could hurt people or stall scientific progress, and believe that those cultural elements need to be discarded. You’re right, that’s a hot take, but I wouldn’t dare advocate any kind of physical violence, or implementing any forceful policy (like jailing people, forcefully shutting things down) if that makes sense. Believing a certain culture shouldn’t exist doesn’t mean I would want to enforce some kind of policy to enact that will; I just have no respect for said culture and wished it didn’t exist in that way from the start.
Believing something should have always been a way, and forcefully implementing a policy through violence are different. If I called for the latter, I’m with you, that would be extremely gross.
But calling out a civilization’s lies, and showing them that they are wrong and hurting the progress of their society? That costs nothing but a few hurt feelings for a while in exchange for progress. In fact, people do this every day, when holding up signs at protests rallies. There is no guaranteed protection from information.
I mean, okay, but this is still a pretty extreme position when it’s taken so far as to say that it’s morally wrong for a race of elves in a video game to have a religion and the cultural institutions that come with it.
I get the feeling that you don’t like religion in general. That’s fine, but why should that give you veto power over what people can enjoy in their media?
It doesn’t give me any kind of veto power, but nobody else has any such power either. If it were the case that people argue for Elune remaining mysterious and unknown were subconsciously arguing for the implementation of their chosen religion in a videogame, then half the players here are allowed to dislike that idea just as much as the other half are allowed to want it.
Attacking this position on Elune isn’t an attack on Night Elves, I have no beef with them. I’m just personally grossed out by a desire to insert certain themes into a game, just anyone else has certain desires. I want to ensure you that I harbor no ill will towards Night Elves, my complaint is a meta-complaint about narrative styles in general, you see, yeah?
I mean, if you get to imply that my desire to retain the Night Elves cultural institutions is secretly a desire to insert certain themes into the game so that you can, as you had previously, frame the desire to turn Elune into a Naaru as the expression of some righteous crusade against those themes, then I’m going to turn this power to imply malice onto one’s opponents in a discussion back on you.
I like that Night Elves have priestesses that appeared to tap into a different sort of power than the light. I like the temples, I like the moonwells. I like that the Night Elves have a pantheon of gods including Elune. I like the moon focus as it ties into their nocturnal nature. I like these fun aspects of their culture that make them unique from other cultures. Turning Elune into a Naaru, or revealing her at all is a threat to that. So if you are going to defend that threat, and at the same time imply motives about me and the other Night Elf fans who saw these elements, liked them, and don’t want to see them bulldozed by the “light”, then I’m going to question if you really do lack a beef with the Night Elves. You seem to want to toss away what they are in service to this weird crusade.
You’re 100% right, Elune being a Naaru would undo all that, and it wouldn’t even be a good thing, because Elune being a Naaru would generally be a boring idea, so nothing interesting would even come of it.
But the insinuation that Elune is a totally unique entity in the cosmology, separate from all things and unexplainable in any way? That’s not going to stand, and that’s not good. Elune will almost certainly be a First One, and all of those things you like can stay. But she isn’t going to be immune from explanation/scrutiny, and she shouldn’t be, just like nothing else should be.