In a visual media such as video games, if you need a book to tell people of new lore…you’re simply doing it wrong. Books should be supplemental material, to add small tidbits of extra or interesting lore.
But that’s me 
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I think in general, Blizzard has something of an insecurity issue with their content. If a story is interesting enough for me to follow, there shouldn’t be some stick trying to force me to care about it. I shouldn’t be motivated to participate in a story because I literally have no other choice - I should be motivated to jump into a conflict because I find the story around it to be interesting. As far as books are concerned, I think this comes out in them trying to tell the population of people who would buy them that this is must-know information and that if they don’t buy the books, then they won’t know about all of this crucial lore (instead of relying on the strength of an unrelated story that isn’t integral to the plot).
But again, as I’ve pointed out countless times, only a fraction of the playerbase cares about that, and so instead the story that they get which drives the impressions that they form comes from the core product - and because it’s a visual and interactive medium and because human beings are overwhelmingly visual learners - that information trumps information found deep in a book by a substantial margin.
The end result is that sure, a thing may be canon, but most of the playerbase does not understand that canon to be the case. The storyteller has either failed to get the audience to pick up on that point, or (and this I find to be more likely), the storyteller was choosing to emphasize things other than that particular canonical fact and wanted the audience to be left with the impression that they left them with.
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Arguing that a part of the player base doesn’t see content from the novels is irrelevant to your point: “night elves are often villain batted.” When the writers, yourself and the audience of this thread all know of the canon within the supplemental materials, complaining about an entirely different subset of players not knowing lore from the novels is just a red herring.
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No, that is not irrelevant to the point. What is important when critiquing a story is how the writer delivers impressions to the audience. If they very effectively communicate [Position A] to the audience, but at the same time weakly portray [Position B], the fact that Position B exists does not override Position A, and in the balance of the two, Position A is so much more strongly portrayed that Position B has been relegated to mere trivia.
One specific point:
The audience of this thread is not the general population, and I will not accept a redefinition of the audience that matters to how we discuss storytelling to being just this insular community.
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You need to distinguish between the perceptions of a part of the player base and the observable phenomenon in media. The former is based mostly in subjectivity, because it is subject to both the omission of information and the reinterpretation of it; the latter is based mostly in objectivity, because we as observers can source the material in question to determine truth. Your argument, as it relates to this thread, is based in the latter, not the former. “Discounting it” because a subset of players does not see it has no merit to your argument because you have seen it and you know it’s there. The narrative (including omission by ignorance) influences perception; perception does not influence the narrative. Arguing that “night elves often get the villain bat” is a different from arguing “the players often perceive the night elves as villains.” The distinction is clear, even to you, because in your own examples you provide evidence from material found both in game and in supplemental writing. So, red herring.
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Wrong.
As I indicated previously, I think that there are two possibilities when it comes to the writers presenting something that is at odds with their canon.
- The writer made a mistake.
- The writer intended to emphasize some parts of the canon over others with their presentation.
I regard the latter as more likely, which is critical to determining whether the writer has given this or that entity the “Villain Bat” in a given scenario. Why do I consider it likely? Because despite the missteps Blizzard has made in the storytelling, those missteps are largely strategic and not tactical - that is that they have wanted to present certain ideas and have molded the story around said ideas.
For example - the War of the Thorns canonically could be portrayed as a spirited defense but this would have gotten in the way of the presentation as a tragedy. Therefore Blizzard emphasized the elements that made it a tragedy and largely hid the elements that would have presented it as a spirited defense. The story gets criticized because of the strategic direction, not because Blizzard’s moves insufficiently portrayed that direction.
So, once again, I think your position is invalid because it is elevating strict text over how the story is told, and acting as though that’s the only or even the most important element to consider. It is not. Night Elves are often given the villain bat due to the choices in what the writers want to portray - and this is not overridden by asides and minor contradictions that they have chosen to bury in transmedia narrative.
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That would be true if the playerbase of this game would be more incline to have such storyline as questing since it would require way more linear questline in order to put as much lore as the book does.
Unfortunately, we saw with shadowland how most of the people playing this game hate linear questline with story and just want to be give many quest asking them to kill 10 npc each.
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I think this is an extremely limited way to look at both what the playerbase wants and the kind of storytelling that you should have in an MMO. I will be writing a future thread topic on this point - but I would direct your attention to the topic of emergent storytelling in video games for an alternative to the false choice you’re laying out here.
You’re interpreting intent of the writers without any objective support for that interpretation. You’re using your own perception, obviously biased, and trying to pass it off as a scientific methodology based in observable truth.
When you take examples from written media like The Shattering and like A Good War to support your argument, and then attempt to discount examples from those same sources because they conflict with your interpretation, on the premise that perception > reality when it comes to determining observable truth, that’s a red herring–and a poorly constructed one, at that.
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Given your objections, I’m unsure that you know what a red herring even is, and much of the rest of this is little more than incredulity in nice-looking language - not an actual response to my point.
As for the exception:
When something from transmedia narrative agrees with and aligns with the presentation that exists in the game, then I am perfectly comfortable with looking at that transmedia narrative for further expressions of the game’s overall message. Wolfheart, for instance, is where we began to see serious villainization of the anti-arcane point of view for instance, and that overall trend has carried through to Tyrande’s attitude towards the Nightborne.
Something inappropriate to do however, would be to take information from the Wolfheart that directly contradicts the presentation of the game. Blizzard does not portray Maiev on balance as a villain for example and it would be inappropriate to say so. Despite what Wolfheart had presented about her because they have chosen in the medium that matters to pretty much ignore that incident. But again, the positioning of anti-arcane sentiment as villainy persisted.
I hope that clears things up.
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It’s an informal fallacy that relies on the plausibility of an irrelevant statement to misdirect from a relevant path of conversation–e.g., your specialty.
Are you just flat out admitting that you’ll use supplemental media when it supports your argument and then disregard it when it doesn’t? Bold move.
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No, and the fact that you’ve characterized it this way tells me that you either didn’t understand the framework that I just laid out, or you’re pretending not to understand it.
If we’re talking about the former, go read it again. If subsequent posts convince me that it was the latter however, then we may conclude this discussion.
The only reason Teldrassil burned was because it was the prettiest city, so it looked all the more poignant engulfed in flame.
I’ve noted before how the Forsaken were spared not even tuppence for their profound suffering. Seriously there’s presumably their own version of Eulogy where a line of the living dead stretched to Razor Hill.
But that doesn’t get touched on for the inverse reason. Because they’re the most disquieting faction. Nobody unfamiliar with WoW’s mythos is going to look at a throng of walking corpses and feel sympathy or sadness.
But a bunch of blurple super models in touch with nature to an almost erotic extent? That’ll turn some heads. You could travel back in time to actual medieval Europe, snatch a random passing peasant, and after they stopped screaming they would likely feel a twinge of sympathy for the beautiful people in the beautiful tree being menaced by the red eyed ghost witch upon being shown the Warbringers cinematic.
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Dwarves are reigning champion of being irrelevant save to further Stormwind’s plotlines.
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No one is saying that “Night Elves deserved it.”
People are saying “Night Elves are jerks” which is 100000% true.
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Holy crap I just read this hogwash.
No Sin’dorei is alive that took part in Azshara’s bullcrap.
Night Elves who loved her and worshiped her as a goddess, then genocided for her, still are.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CcvKC6DUUAA8NHk.jpg
horde bad night elves good alliance bad blizzard bad kyalin is still subbing to make threads that look like something that was created for a bachelor thesis.
Of course, everything before me mentioning kyalin is pure speculation.
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“Good Guys”, “Bad Guys”, when it comes to geopolitics, these terms are generaly nothing more than agitprop fuel for propaganda aimed at drumming up support for political or nationalistic policies… or to recruit people as cannon fodder.
Were the Night Elf saboteurs in Quel’thelas heroes or villains? That’s entirely a matter of perspective. There are reasons for people to take either position, depending on what your starting bias is. If you’re a Blood Elf who has watched family members killed by the Scourge or lose themselves to the Wretched state, you’ve got every right to see them as villains entire.
Conversely, the Quel’dorei from whom the Blood Elves are descended from have a real nasty history as far as the Kaldorei are concerned no matter how cordial Tyrande and Malfurion may have been to individuals. And it’s worth keeping mind that the last contact that they had with Kael’ thas was before his people started taking fel energy as vitamin supplements. And again, in that last contact, Kael’thas was still technically an individual who had a history as an Alliance Prince. And that’s not even taking up the further context that at this point in the story the Sindorei are making overtures to join up with the people who had killed Cenarius, still a sticking point at this time.
“Good” and “Evil”, propaganda terms to motivate the masses. Weight of history and circumstance? That’s the driving force of politics and war.
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About the “sins of the father.” Should the father’s grudge be passed on to the children? That is, if the father was offended, then should the child hate the offender?
Hmm. Curious things to do. Should the trolls forgive the night elves for overthrowing Azshara?
Should Group N forgive Group H if Group H abandoned their government?
Scream.
That’s… not what Sins of the Father means.
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