I think Dragonflight has been exactly what the game needed in a number of ways. For a bunch of reasons they burnt the game down to its foundations in the BFA-Shadowlands arc, after crashing through like four expansions worth of content. On top of that, they had resolved the foundational issue that drove the franchise in Legion with Sargeras being imprisoned and the Burning Legion effectively falling apart. They needed a full expansion to just rebuild from the foundations up, to tackle everything from gameplay to lore. It did not need to be a risk taking expansionâIt needs to provide the launch point for the next risk taking âMetzen Styleâ expansion, which to all appearances is exactly what they are doing.
I also think to a degree we will need to re-calibrate our story pacing and structure expectations for WoW as well going forward. They are aiming to tell multi expansion arcs and not self contained expansions, which calls for a much different story layout. Things that happen in this expansion may not actually pay off for another one or two. In the past there is no way we would of seen a core expansion bad guy like Iridikron escape an expansion alive, now he seems to be serving as an expansion bridging villain thatâll be reoccurring. I also have some strong suspicions we will see Vyranoth turn antihero in a sort of Illidan kinda way.
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That has promise, though for my part, letâs not see Vyranoth turn into another 90âs antihero pastiche (especially if it also involves retcons). Iâm fine with her coming around and turning against the Primalist goals, even if sheâs one of the rougher good guys.
Ehh⌠I likely should not of invoked Mr. âI AM MY SCARSâ, to be fair. I meant more she likely wonât be on our team exactly, but she wonât be working against us either. She is never gonna be on TeamTitanDragons, as she fundamentally hates the Titans and what the forces of Order did to her kids and fellow primal dragons.
How the hell is there nothing bleak about the afterlife where they torture you until you think right and the afterlife where if you fail to fight you get to turned into a piece of someone else, or the afterlife where they brainwash you until you forget everything you where and everyone you knew and loved, shlands was bleak as hell and its not that sylvanas didnât have a point cause by the end of shlands each afterlife for the most part has these negative points adressed and fixed
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While my feelings on him are clear, maybe I overreacted. That idea of yours sounds fitting for Vyranoth. I like it.
Revendreth and the Maw are for actually evil people who either get reformed or locked away for eternity- and, we are told, rightly so, because the Arbiter can see directly into mortal souls. Bastion and Maldraxxus? No complaints here either. Souls arenât forced to go to Bastion and Maldraxxus, they choose to go there if they want to do help defend the Shadowlands and have a natural affinity for it. Draka could go to another afterlife after her duty is done. Nobody is forced to climb Bastionâs military hierarchy and become an archon. Nobody has to get their memories wiped if they donât want to become a Kyrian. And if they do, they better play by the rules. Shadowlands is about people trying to fix a system that was never broken. And thatâs also the main reason why people find SL so infuriating. It turned fan favorite characters into a gullible, incompetent fools.
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torture isnât suddenly good because a person did a crime and the crimes we saw in revendreath range from the minor to world eating, in bastion we straight up saw people say they didnât want to have their memories erased that was the entire plotline of that afterlife, they were objectivly forced to go there. Punishment needs to fit the crime in order to be truly just and the maw and revendreath were just heartless cruelty.
Bad people are being punished for being bad people, and the punishments vary according to their crimes with the aim of reforming them, if possible. Thatâs justice.
They werenât forced to go anywhere. Not every good person has to become a Kyrian.
It literally is not, torture is never a just punishment, they objectivly were forced there or they wouldnât be cut about having their memories erased
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Oh no, evil people donât like getting punished and itâs painful. Thatâs like, too bad man.
Where does it say that good people are being forced to become Kyrians? They are elite forces of the afterlife who have to be impartial to do their job, which is why their mortal memories are seen as an obstacle. Itâs completely rational and if you complain about that, youâre a fool.
We literally saw a whole faction of kyrians who rebelled cause they didnât want to get their memories wiped out
Iâm not arguing that thereâs a memory wipe, Iâm saying that everything about it is framed as completely voluntary. The aspirants CAN choose to undergo the rite of defeating their own memories if they want to climb the hierarchy. They KNOW the memory wipe (which is more about defeating their past selves) has the explicit purpose of becoming impartial. The rebels have no leg to stand on. Are Kyrians better off, now that they can keep their memories if they choose to ascend? Is that progress? Why?
Because its the story saying that former stance of memories wipes is wrong, that cold impartiality is wrong, this isnât just enforced with the kyrians removing memory wiping but also with the new arbiter abolishing such cold impartial practices
by the end of Shlands the kryrians no longer wipe memories, Revendreath no longer tortures, Maldraxxus doesnât really change at all and neither does ardenweald cause it didnât really have any problems and the maw is discontinued and ordered to be emptied.
Thatâs Pelagosâ stance, and itâs questionable at best. Now every Kyrian has an option within an option, without bothering to explain why âcold impartialityâ is wrong.
Thatâs news to me. The biggest change is that nobody is sent to the Maw anymore- for obvious reasons. I guess Revendreth is now the Maw minus torture?
Most peoples original criticisms of the shadowlands was how cold, cruel and impartial the system was and the story went and showed that sylvanas did indeed have a point, She simply allied with a person who had zero intention of fixing anything, They donât explain why its wrong cause story showing you all these horrible things was supposed to tell you its wrong
Wanting to enable family reunions in the afterlife by sending an excessive amount of souls into the Maw doesnât magically mean she âhad a pointâ just because the new Arbiter feels bad about memory wipes.
Circular reasoning. âImpartiality is wrong, because, uh⌠it just is, ok?â is not a valid argument.
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its one thing to be impartial its another to be heartless, we donât lobotomise all our judges do we, the ending of shadowlands was that a cold logical machine should not to the job that requires empathy and judging another beingâs actions in a court does indeed require a modicum of empathy
As far as I can tell, the criticisms of the Shadowlands themselves are;
- No one gets to choose their afterlife (For good reason. Would every criminal and tyrant choose an afterlife of punishment for the crimes if they could choose?)
- Bastionâs erasure of identity so Kyrians can be psychopomps (Total identity erasure to erase their biases. Personal bias interfering with the job is a valid concern, but I agree that making everyone undergo it without a choice is a problem).
- Maldraxxus is a society based around never-ending, brutal wargames and over-reliant on the Primus to keep control (A valid concern, though Maldraxxusâ existence is justified as they have to keep an unstoppable, fearless, merciless army ready to trample invaders).
- All afterlives being reliant on Revendreth for anima, Revendreth relying on a continuous influx of wicked souls for anima and some people are squeamish about the torture (Makes sense that thereâs suffering in Revendreth, as this is the afterlife to punish wickedness AND itâs part of the anima extraction, which may not be possible without pain. Those first two are valid concerns, though).
- Families can be split apart (This feels case by case to me. Sometimes thereâs good reason a family is split, such as when one member did good and another member did evil).
Ironically, that Uther cinematic accidentally made an argument FOR AND AGAINST Bastionâs system. It argued for it, as Utherâs memories led to him joining Devos in bypassing the Arbiter to chuck Arthasâ soul directly into the Maw personally, where the Jailer got his hands on said soul and weaponized him. The argument against it was how quickly and easily swayed the Paragon of LOYALTY was to not only abandon her job, but join her sworn enemy too.
It feels like another one of those âaudiences put more thought into it than the writers didâ situations. We need to stop getting suckered in by that.
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There is also the fact that when the literal paragon of loyalty tried to tell kyrestia about all the awful stuff in the maw kyrestia just chose not to believe her for some reason
Thatâs easy to say when everyone is a human judging a few humans, not an immortal judge of the dead of uncertain origins who has to sort billions of souls every day. Now a Kyrian might feel empathetic if a particular soul reminds him of his past life as a lava eel in the realm of Magmaris. Or not. Progress.
Yes, makes sense for Revendreth (and the Maw, to a certain extent. I think all punishment should be temporary with the goal of reform). But Bastion and Maldraxxus were always described as a place for people who feel a natural affinity for it, with an optional path of ascension that (understandably) demands that they transcend their past lives.
I think we can all agree that itâs a flawed storyline. Now the arbiter has to make harsh decisions, but also feels really bad about it.
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