I totally forgot that thorim and co were good dudes. I miss thorim the most though. I hope we see him again during The Last Titan expansion
But yeah, you’re right 
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All of this. And again, it’s not like I don’t like them. I think they’re fantastic, and example of excellent writing. The very idea that in-game humans (especially) feel like the light is a force for good and good alone, when it is what it is, without moral concepts like good or evil makes for a MUCH deeper story. Because you can’t know the intent of anyone based on what magic they use.
I would throw Aman’thul on the “control freak” pile, at least based on the recent snippets we got from DF. Him raging at Eonar for planting Elun’Ahir and ripping it from the surface because it was “uncontrolled chaos” seems very controlling to me.
But that may have been something Danuser did and with Metzen back in control, who knows if that’ll get changed or not.
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I can 100% promise you First Ones, robot husk pantheons, and “The Titans are the real villains” is not Metzen era lore.
I think, at worst, Aman’thul is on the extreme end of Lawful Neutral—and you can bet a ton of early world building shared a lot of DNA with AD&D, especially the Gods. Killing demons/outsiders even sends them back to their home plane to reform.
Edit: also some comic books and Star Wars sprinkled in. The Titans and World Souls are basically Marvel Comics Celestials. Or were? I dunno where they’re going with it now.
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Oh yeah, I know the whole Jailer and First Ones garbage wasn’t Metzen. I’m just really curious to know how much of the BFA → DF lore will be changed now that Metzen is back. A lot of the whole “everything is shades of gray” was definitely Danuser, and I’m curious to see if Metzen is going to walk any of that back to what he was writing pre-Cata. If he’s given the power to do so by the higher ups, anyway.
Sadly, it sounds more like he is not being very overbearing with the creative direction. As a human being, it is good that he’s supporting his team and giving them room to work. As a selfish Horde main, it sucks that a lot of the themes I think have poisoned the well are going to likely carry forward.
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I think the biggest issue that the horde has, how do you make them look Heroic or even some semblance of being good guys again after BfA pretty thoroughly destroyed that concept for a lot of people?
On top doing it in such a way that doesn’t come off as completely tone deaf.
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Nah. That was pre-wow. They practically pioneered the “what if orcs were sympathetic protagonists because of human atrocities?” Trope.
It’s a less grim dark version of Warhammer. War is hell.
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Same way WC3 did. Strong leadership moderates (or attempts to) the fringes and tries to survive in a world that holds grudges. Can’t keep treating all of the Horde and Alliance as lockstep monoliths pursuing peace, though.
At this point, thanks to WoD in particular, it is pretty much impossible to paint the orcs as anything other than bloodthirsty savages (except for the Frostwolves, and maybe Laughing Skull). Just gotta pinch your nose and ignore the turd smeared green elephant in the room.
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WoD is interesting to think about for me personally, because it was before I became woke about the story. I was hyped. The 2d cinematics were exciting. I bought in on the fan service. Looking back I think “that story was kinda dumb” but I definitely was their target audience at the time.
That’s largely an audience issue. Someone will always nitpick everything you do to make a point about something that they have issue with, but you probably weren’t thinking of, much less even aware of.
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I’m not an elephant.
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I was thinking of exactly that when I said not making it come off as tone deaf. Because I know people are going to nitpick it badly.
Some people are generally going to tear the idea apart based solely on the whole War of Thorns event alone.
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I enjoyed WoD, largely. But it was exhibit 3 in the guided tour of orcs having a good old murder-death march. Two of those exhibits were uncorrupted or reformed from previous murder-death march orcs. It just is what it is at this point. If anyone witha whiff of authority says “I think we should start killing everything that isn’t us” there is just an immediate chorus of orcs that respond with “OhthankGod, I wanted to say it, but I was afraid I was the only one thinking it.”
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There was this weird phenomenon where Undead were the perfect feature. It appealed to a victim complex fantasy where “I’m being oppressed!” while being creepy and generally despicable enough that posting an occupying police force in Undercity was acceptable. When the undead were dark enough, it allowed them to do orc-y things and you could play whatever side you wanted and feel righteous.
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Thing is though, that source itself says it is unreliable.
So what could have happened is that Aman’thul did remove Elun’Ahir, but not because “omg, why u plant tree, stupid Eonar, tree is evil” but because of something else, say potential corruption from Old God blood. If the hints that the tree roots in Azj’kahet are from Elun’ahir are anything to go by.
I would not be surprised if the author, who clearly has an anti-titan bias, intentionally bended the truth to spread more anti-titan bias.
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The beauty of that is that the writing is usually so off-the-mark that they end up justifying the behavior they want to paint as tyrannical/wrong. Prime example (hurhurhur) is Odyn vs. Tyr on dragons.
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I didn’t interpret the writer as being anti-Titan. The book paints Eonar and Aggramar in a positive and sympathetic view. It seemed the writer just had a beef with Aman’thul, specifically.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if this idea goes nowhere as Danuser is no longer with Blizzard and a lot of this “recontextualizing the lore” in SL and DF came from him wanting a complex cosmology.
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I generally agree that the cosmology needed to be less black and white.
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I’d attribute the “everything is shades of gray” dreck to Kosak and Afrasiabi (given what they got up to according to a certain lawsuit, they’re the last people who should be giving moral commentary). It’s not Metzen’s lore.
Quite a few of the characters who get certain fans’ hackles up are Lawful Neutral.
Exactly, and that’s not the only time this has happened. Another prime example (hurhurhur) is Xe’ra vs Alleria on Void usage (she would’ve gone full “Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!” without Locus-Walker, and Xal’atath has sure gotten some mileage out of tapping into Alleria’s head with the Void)
I wonder if that’s a new Blizzard trend; make a character with “Prime” in their title and paint them as evil despite them fitting Lawful Netural better.
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