I dunno, I feel like they’re actually removing agendas from cosmic forces by making them largely non-sentient. There’s no particular nuance to “fire just wants to burn things” or “order just wants to preserve things”—it’s more like a robot with very limited programming.
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I mean, fire and order were always that. Just we know now that each cosmic force has a patheon with it’s own agenda
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Fire and the other elements always that. Order wasn’t really a big thing before the cosmic overhaul, and it wasn’t associated with the Light in the way it is now.
Now there’s no real difference between the elemental forces and the others, which feels like a loss of complexity to me, rather than a gain.
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And it’s fine to not like it. One thing a lot of people loose sight of is that we all have different tastes. There’s things people are going to agree with and things people will die on a hill to argue against. 
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Light has always been very lawful and orderly. Arcane is the one that’s weirdly attached to Order now.
Blizzard can’t seem to make up their mind anyway since they keep presenting Light as order and Shadow as chaos while Arcane is shown to be chaotic in its wild state and Fel even in the absence of Sargeras still has an orderly system within the Legion.
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These are literally all things that have been in the series for years, Since atleast WC3 like if you don’t like the foundational stories that WoW was built on then don’t know what to tell ya
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The examples you gave worked. A lot of what they’ve done since then hasn’t (and even the Scarlet Crusade have been reduced to flat cliches).
While it’s been foundational to the stories WoW’s been built on, it can - and has - been done badly quite a bit.
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying things have gone too far the opposite direction, let’s roll it back a bit. Let’s have the black and white evil Burning Legion along the “has a point but horrible methods” Scarlet Crusade or Primalists.
That wasn’t the point of this thread, as much as you want to think it is. The point is let’s bring back some of the earlier style.
Yes, former human paladin, FORMER, the evil stuff he all has to do with him not being a paladin anymore. It’s not really a subversion for a good person to stop being good and become bad, it’s a subversion when those good things are shown as actually bad.
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“I think Halo is a pretty cool guy eh kills aliens and doesnt afraid of anything.”
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Tbf he actually could still use the light well into his evil schtick, its not until he slaughtered lordaeron that he could no longer convince himself he was doing good that the light stopped responding iirc
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Ah for the days when men were men, women were women, and furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were furry creatures from Alpha Centauri!
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You got it backwards. Arthas did plenty of evil AS a Paladin. Not just Strathmore either, the betrayal of the mercenaries and his friend in Northrend.
The drum you’re beating on this thread is pretty much pounding the same rhythym. You’ve been taking the portrayal of the Church of Light as a surrogate attack on your Christian beliefs.
The rest of society moved beyond simplistic White Hat/Black Hat morality ages ago. Just as many of no longer naively believe that even America is a force for anything beyond it’s own badly perceived self-interests.
I hear there are Christian flavored MMO’s that cater to your preferred story style. Maybe you should consider seeking them out as you’re clearly not going to be happy with this one.
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None of these are paladin things though lmao, and IIRC in one of the novels the light abandoned after he culled Stratholme.
A subversion would be saying the paladin stuff he does and paladins in general are evil. Having a paladin who’s good and stops doing good paladin stuff and becomes evil is just afrirming the stuff he did prior as good.
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Like a Forgotten Realms novel where the heroes are trying to head off a stampede of Paladins as they are perceived to not take notice of who they trample when they’re fanatically pursuing a goal?
The best subversion of Paladins were the original Blood Knights when it was shown that they were drawing their power by the enslavement of a Naaru. They also had lepergnome slaves in Silvermoon City.
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If everything is a subversion, nothing is.
This is my personal feeling when it comes to those things anyways.
Warlocks as heroes or in the case of wow, playable warlocks as people on “our side” only works because people that deal with fel is normally on the other side. Meanwhile paladins work because of their expected nature of being rightful warriors of light full of justice.
Having evil paladins, or evil light users is nothing new, but those were treated as the exception, not the rule, once you flip that, and the light and everything related to it becomes an enemy, and playable paladins become the exception that are good willed instead of the rule, it diminishes the fantasy of said group.
Let’s say, if the void becomes a “misunderstood force” and not inheritly evil, would not that reduce the impact of shadow priests, void elves or warlocks that resist the pull of said forced towards madness?
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That’s kind of the point… the ideal itself is the illusion. Everyone sees themselves as heroes, their choices as justified.
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Can a MMO truly be Christian without the ability to walk into an AH and start flipping tables and bullwhipping people?
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We only do those if people are doing auctions on the temple
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No it wouldn’t, Cause i’m capable of separating the force from the user.
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Nothing you listed falls under the category of ‘subversion of expectations.’
You seem to think not being the cliche and/or stereotype means expectations are subverted. And that isn’t really the case.
It seems to be coming from a binary view of everything.
Take for example:
IF you are paying attention to the story telling, the light is still generally considered a good force. Anduin’s whole arc atm is not feeling worthy of the light. It is just not portrayed as perfect, flawless and unquestionable. There are problems with it. Like extreme zealotry. Which is hardly a subversion, because that is true of many well meaning groups throughout real life history. And even Tolken, you know the originator of epic fantasy, portrayed his good guys as flawed people. Even the literal angels of his mythology, including Gandolf, had problems and failings.
So, the light having flaws and its followers potentially being a problem is FAR, FAR from any kind of subversion of expectations. That should have been the expectation for anyone even kind of paying attention from the start.
You are also applying the wrong complaint.
This wasn’t a ‘subversion of expectations.’ Yes, it was bad story telling. But it was more about them wanting to tell competing narratives at the same time. They weren’t trying to subvert anything.
I think the issue is you are acting as if everything is a binary. All good or all evil.
Blizzard has proven to be far from the best story tellers. Part comes from the struggles of the medium. But part is also a flawed approach and imbalanced priorities. But, they have tried to put nuance in the good vs bad since the RTS days. It is not subversive, it is just not binary.
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