Not going to lie, I still by far favor the idea that the creation of this Alternate Draenor by Garrosh and a Bronze Dragon is the cause for it dying since it is a fantastic explanation of the timeline correcting itself and removing the dopplegangers.
We also have no Yrel in the MU, killed off the important orc leaders named from MU WoW lore, Velen got gone, and Gul’dan was also exploded.
Can also note that AU Thrall also never occurred to further that case. Would make total sense the cosmic powers are correcting the universe again by turning Alternate Draenor into a barren rock that will inevitably force Yrel and the Army of light onto Azeroth less for conquest and more since, well, you cant exactly live on a lifeless barren rock.
It’s not necessarily the worst twist, there’s just not much work done to justify it, you know?
WoW is a game of Moral Absolutes, no matter what we may want different. Certain things are Evil (the Void, demons, the Horde) and certain things are Good (the Light, nature, the Alliance) and that’s how, despite deviances here and there, it always will be.
Blizzard is incapable of change.
So “the Light’s bad, too” doesn’t feel like an interesting twist to allow greater exploration of the Light as a concept so much as a lazy half-assed effort to make a boring conflict compelling. One that they’re just going to throw away the next time it becomes inconvenient.
This is fun to a point, but I feel like we’ve hit the point where players trick themselves into doing even the barest work.
Yrel’s heel turn demands more than what we’ve got. And while Blizzard is content to shrug, players will work hard to figure out what just isn’t there, letting Blizzard off the hook again.
See, I’m letting my Alliance bias show here because nothing in the Mag’har scenario suggests Yrel’s actually gone and turned heel. She’s aggressively converting the Mag’har sure, but we’re not given any sort of context behind why.
Meanwhile, Grommash was a guy who has subjugated the Ogre tribes, is still actively utilizing Iron Horde weaponry, armor, and tactics, and who has attempted genocide on a unsuspecting peoples based on the word of one Orc.
Even were I to RP my Blood Elf’s perspective for this scenario, the most fundamental question I come away with is “What did you do now, Grom?”
I was using “heel turn” for ease of reference, since Yrel is a case of ludonarrative dissonance wherein the narrative wants you to side against her but she hasn’t really done anything to warrant it, but if we keep specifying that, it’ll take all night.
And he has his biggest cheerleader and the bulk of his followers teleported away right before facing the music with Yrel. Almost like he was scared that something might be learned.
Right, that’s what I mean more or less, that those who represent the light or embody and wield it aren’t always good, like how those who wield the void aren’t always evil. The Scarlets with their zealotism and racism, the Naaru with their willingness to follow visions to a tee without warning the people they’re supposedly protecting of the consequences, hell, give us some more pompous paladins in lore who do terrible things and claim it’s for the light! I was too tired to really go into much more detail, so forgive that I wasn’t more clear on what I meant.
I dislike the light as a beacon of morality, precisely because it has none. It’s a cosmic force that naturally and constantly fluxes towards order, and order does not always equal freedom. I don’t find the approach to be lazy, personally, and I’m not the only one who saw a plotline like this coming years ago since the end of BC. I do think it could have used more time to gestate, since we just got the Xe’ra crap last expansion, but lazy? Eh, there’s more words I’d use for it. Rushed, more from my POV, but not lazy.
That’s just my viewpoint on it. As a writer, there are a thousand more egregious offenses that this game has done with its lore than introduce this as a plotline. The rush which this plotline was milled out is not that big a sin IMO, especially given we don’t have the full story, but as Miko said, yeah, it is a little strange that Mag’har who would have a better idea of what was going on would not actually know. I personally feel that’s a bigger issue than a story we only have a shred of detail on, but knowing Blizzard, I am with everyone else when I say I don’t expect the full story to be any good. When we get to fill in the blanks ourselves, it’s probably better than what we’ll expect, sadly.
The Xera plot line definitely felt rushed but I think the real disappointment was any lack of follow up afterwards. Turalyon was really bummed out in the cinematic when Illidan blew up Xera and then as soon as it’s over I can walk over and click on him and he cheerfully replies with KRONA KAI DESU and it’s never brought up again.
Xera’s death could have made her into martyr among certain members of the Lightforged, potentially lead by Turalyon because he was so bummed out about it, causing him and others to grow more fanatical in their beliefs.
I’ll always be mildly annoyed how the Lightforged and Turalyon where totally chill after Illidan blew up their god.
Anyway I like Miko’s theory that the bad AU Draenor was a mistake and now that time has fixed itself it’s fading from existence. So everything is desperately trying to find ways to save themselves and are just making it worst instead of accepting their impending doom.
Since the Naaru are connected to the Void, I wonder if Naaru are “persistent” between timelines? That means the Naaru are experiencing the gradual “fading” of AU Draenor and are doing what they think they need to in order to reduce the suffering of those lives that are going to be snuffed out.
Heck, maybe Lightforging them binds their essences to the Light as a concept - a means for them to live on after AU Draenor ceases to exist, where as before even their afterlife would conceivably cease to exist.
Of course, if the Lightmother is Xe’ra (Who got blowed up by her Senpai in Legion), then that suggests maybe Xe’ra is working to try and get enough energy to re-manifest in our timeline and can only do that by a planetary population’s worth of Light-touched essences.
Maybe Xe’ra’s on the same essence grind the players are in BfA, just a different sort of essence.
It was also kinda ambiguous what Yrel and the Naaru where doing in my opinion. This could be a lack of development into the scenario but one thought that I think supports your theory, is when I went to reinforce the Maghar camp that was defeated in the surprise attack.
The Maghar orcs are frozen in a stasis field of some sort? Are they (Yrel and Xera) literally trying to freeze everyone to prevent them from fading away into the abyss?
…or is this just cheapo in place graphic affects because Blizz didn’t put the effort creating a unique Lightforged Maghar orc unit for a throw away scenario that was like 20 minutes long.
It definitely felt the implication is the Naaru was forcibly Lightforging the Mag’har at the camp and this had been done before. But I was surprised they didn’t turn aggressive and were instead just frozen.
Gey’ah remarks how there was nothing that could be done for them now, but I found it curious that she opted to just turn around and leave when we aggressively put down an Ogre rebellion by an Ogre who was very much Lightbound.
It bothers me that a piece of Horde exclusive content is so deliberately crafted to be practically screaming “Something about this isn’t adding up” when as far as we know there’s no plan to really revisit this in any meaningful way.
The scenario feels like half a story, but for the life of me I can’t figure out where or when Blizzard plans to implement the second half of it. Especially since the Bronze Dragonflight is involved in whatever is going on.
Most of the questline felt like I was spending more time on fetch quests running around old zones before I finally got to the lame Draenor and was in and out in like 15 minutes.
But I’m also salty that Blizz just didn’t have us recruit the cooler better Maghar orcs from the main universe. The real MVPs of the Horde, not only did they avoid getting corrupted by the Legion, they also survived their planet exploding by the stupid corrupted orcs. That there is already a cooler story then this half thought out slapped together scenario.
Also I don’t totally understand what forcibly lightforging someone does. Being Lightforged doesn’t mind control you–even after being Lightforged Turalyon has disagreements with Xe’ra regarding Alleria, he isn’t just her mindless yes-man.
We never actually see anyone who has been forcibly Lightforged. Illidan eyebeamed his way out of it, and we don’t any lightforged orcs. Lothraxion may have been forcibly lightforged, but it is ambiguous. So it is hard to know what happens to your personality if you go from being adamantly opposed to the Light to being Lightforged.