To subvert or not to subvert

Lore Story Forum
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The Defias were bandits that could run to ground if any organized resistance showed up. They didn’t openly have fortresses and villages sitting in Elwynn.

Yes, and their entire military was off in La-la land chasing Baine for some dumb reason, the WoT should have been a steamroll with town guards and randos not being able to slow down an actual military convoy (the idea that it was writing malpractice to make Tyrande that dumb in the first place is a different story)

There’s a synonym I use frequently for “Almost won”. Its called “Lost”.

They had a organized murder-cult on their doorstep that was Alliance supported until early in Vanilla that was burning piles of forsaken bodies. In Cata they had to deal with Garrosh’s knife at their neck and a worgen infestation, along with the Scarlets somehow sticking around.

After that, sure, they were in a pretty secure spot until BFA, but still not a long term sustainable one if they couldn’t just use regular necromancy to sustain themselves. And BFA had the Alliance make massive inroads everywhere which kind of invalidates the idea that they’re untouchable, I think.

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I agree with a lot of your points; however, I took the developments about the light and cosmic forces in SL a little differently. My takeaway from SL was that the forces started off as neutral/benign, but are slowly devolving into something more violent.

A oversimplified parallel would be the warp in 40k, where, in absence of the old ones to manage it, the warp became the hellscape that it is now. Circling back to WoW, Elune may be benign now, but in time she could devolve into a wrathful aspect of life/nature (i.e., the night warrior), because that is what her followers are calling upon to survive. This would make “mortals” not just yet another pawn in a setting, but the subverting force itself. Obviously, this is Blizzard, so I doubt the story would ever truly take a dark direction.

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I think the best way to explain what I have been trying to say may start with this.

Forsaken are told the Scarlets are such a big threat. Burning piles of body and all. At the same time the Forsaken defeat them, the Gilnean war front, the Kirin’Tor remnant, the Alliance in the east, and destroy South Shore.

Sure, Blizzard told a narrative of the Forsaken facing dire threats. But they also showed a super power winning on every front. BOTH mutually exclusive narratives exist.

So, what is the actual state of the Forsaken? Are they a weak group on the edge of extinction? Or are they one of the stronger factions in the game? Depends on which narrative you listen to. You can find narrative arguments for both competing claims. And that is the problem with the Forsaken story. They are somehow treated as both a super power and a people barely avoiding extinction.

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I’m starting to think the problem is less subversion and more Blizzard’s writers trying to have their cake and eat it too.

They want to have things that are mutually exclusive, but they can’t. They do that often with power levels. Tyrande’s Night Warrior is supposed to be super strong from the most powerful entity encountered in the setting… but can’t kill Nathanos even with Malfurion’s help. Xe’ra’s supposed to be the Light’s answer to the Titans or the Old Gods… but she’s killed in a cutscene in one hit (even the Jailer got a boss fight).

This is a prime example of why black and white is necessary; some things are binary and mutually exclusive.

  • Good or evil (amoral or debated choices doesn’t mean good and evil don’t exist).
  • Powerful or weak (middling strength doesn’t mean powerful and weak don’t exist).
  • Rich or poor (average wealth or living hand-to-mouth doesn’t rich and poor don’t exist).

For all those who shill grey, grey can’t exist without black and white also existing, as you can’t make grey without black and white.

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it always comes back to xe’ra

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Not always (less than ⅕ of my threads). Or at least, less than it “always comes back” to the Forsaken with you.

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Mate if you’re gunna talk back atleast be accurate

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Some of the issues. Not all of them.

A lot of the time it is just a fixation on one aspect at the detriment of others. That makes simultaneous stories weird. I think a lot of that stems from still approaching story boarding/writing like was done for the RTS which were consecutive episodes, not events at the same time. So, they story board out one story and then when they need to write the other things they have to try and fit them in around what they were telling.

Some of it is their biases. Some of it is just rule of cool getting in the way. Etc, etc.

And some of it is just the nature of an MMO limiting the way a story can be told.

Point is, it is more complicated than just saying ‘Blizzard is bad at X.’ They have a number of problems that cause some stories to fail. Overall, most of it is generally good. But they have fails. There are certainly bad stories. But the causes vary from one bad story to another.

It is worth having discussions about specific failures and the causes. But you need to be careful not to lump all failures under a single umbrella.

Good and evil certainly exist. And there are certainly situations where there are clear lines. But, the reality is that people are not all good or all evil. Good people sometimes do bad things for bad reasons. And even terrible people will have some good. People are grey. And some choices don’t have an obvious clear good/bad answer. And people, being grey, will sometimes disagree on what is the right answer. So, the world we live in is grey.

And our fiction is typically a reflection of our reality. So, we should expect that fiction would tell stories of people and things that are some level of grey. So, in our stories, good groups (like the light) will have some that do bad. And even among the shadow (bad group) you find some who do good. Stories are grey.

My argument would be: Yes right and wrong exist. But nobody in our lives is all one of the other. So, why should the people and groups in our stories be all one or the other?

Best guess is the Naaru are the light’s answer to Old Gods. But even that is not clear. Logically at the top estimate of power that would put her around an Old God, who were no match for the Titans. Or around the power of Nature’s guardians, the Wild Gods. So, all together quite a bit less powerful than Titans.

And to top it off, it was pretty clear she was not at her full power. She had just been basically ‘put back together.’

And Illidan (who was a raid boss as well) was not exactly a slouch when it came to power.

So, the cinematic showed her in a weakened state restraining one of the most powerful characters we have dealt with. If anything is portrayed her as a very powerful character, even though she ultimately lost.

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Showing that anyone can become a monster even if they have the best intentions has kinda been a storytelling staple since words were made

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Black and white are just two shades of grey.

Nope… she was just supposed to be part of the narrative of bringing back Bat Boy. Once that happened, her purpose was done.

All things exist relative to each other. I’m very sure that George Washington wasn’t seen as a hero to honor during King George the Third’s time. That attitude changed when however the U.S. and U.K. became strong allies. All those things you listed are relative. Most poor Americans are well off compared to the average income North Korean. Stalin was our “ally”, but he killed far more of his own people than Hitler. And we killed more civillians in Firestorming Tokyo than Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together, and that after we used Dresden’s civillians in perfecting our fire bombing techniques… specifically designed to kill civillians in mass numbers that would put Israel’s present genocide campaign to shame.

Good and Evil are artificial constructs… subject to the politics of the day.

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That’s what makes them elemental forces. The natural state of the elements is to be a violent chaotic mess. The Titans ordered things by imprisoning most of the elemental powers. That’s why they’re so pissed off during Dragonflight, and engage in pointless cruelty to animals.

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For the sake of discussion, if it is all fake/artificial, then so what? By that same measure, then there is no rule against having the type of black&white morality that Thaddeus is championing; it is a free for all. The light can be good, the orcs can be a bloodthirsty warrior society, and the Night Elves can be a strictly regimented society of isolationist amazon women. Even the consideration of what is relative is yet another construct that can be dispensed with.

Circling back to WoW, the other problem is that Blizzard took a half-assed approach to grey morality, because they clearly have a point of view of what is right. For example, take the number of quests that are about characters shedding tradition, like the buggy, awful NE heritage quest. Clearly, breaking tradition is seen as a good thing by Blizzard.

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Completely false. Even the lowest estimates for Gaza are more than that. That doesn’t stop people from saying “We bombed Dresden. Let’s bomb them too.”

Your political beliefs are entirely U.S. centric. The United States and other smiliar countries kill more than that every year year through capitalism. Also there’s no basis for the 20 million number by Stalin.

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The answer is often something to the tune of “modern society knows better now.” Or “society evolves. Maybe one day things I do will be considered bad.” Such thinking implies that “modern societies,” specifically the western ones you’re probably arguing moral relativism from, since most of the world doesn’t believe in it, are a force for good or adequate.

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This is my exact problem with modern Star Wars (Other than bad writing and racism against John Boyega). I feel like this really began with the Bioware games, in particular SWTOR, and Disney has taken the ball and run with it.

Shades of gray are important. Nuance is essential. Moral relativism is an important thing to explore.

But grey, alone, is a boring color.

I don’t think this is even remotely close to the OP’s point. Everyone loves what WC3 did for Orcs and subverting typical fantasy tropes.

There’s a huge gulf between that and making everything a grey moral slop.

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Surprisingly, I find “society evolves” is a better answer than what I received in the past. In the past, the response I received was that the concept of “harm” and harm prevention were universal values, and that is how we determine the correct path. But then what is harm? It can go in circles forever.

I actually think relativism/constructionism can be a useful point of consideration, but by itself it is not a justification for any conclusion. For example, here, it doesn’t invalidate anything Thaddeus is advocating.

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I find it worse honestly. Considering how bad societies currently are. And with that answer, someone would have no basis to determine their current society is wrong about anything.

People don’t seem to have a problem defining harm here, considering people are bringing up death tolls.

Well, Thadeus is saying that good and evil exist. Others are disagreeing based on their relativistic points of view.

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You’re getting into fascinating territory that we both know Blizzard isn’t capable of processing.

If you want my general opinion? Morality, as a concept, does exist universally throughout human cultures, often with the same goals in mind (betterment of society, order, “harm” reduction), but it’s the details where things become beautifully complicated.

This is where we delve into the differences between morals and ethics, but I wont go there since I’m no expert on this stuff. I have a psych degree, not a philosophy degree :stuck_out_tongue:

Again, moral relativism is a real thing, but like the OP I despise when stories take an absolutist approach to moral relativism. Because it leads to the aforementioned gray slop of moral nihilism.

And unless you’re Hotline Miami or Postal, moral nihilism is not a fun topic to explore in video games.

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An answer of “society evolves” at least has the blunt logic of the majority does what it wants regardless what is right. That holds some consistency in my mind.

The problem with harm as a metric is what can be perceived as harm? Death or physical injury is an easy starting point, but then what of perceived harm (i.e., it hasn’t happened yet or at all), abstract harm, economic harm, emotional harm, etc. Further, at the risk of really going off-topic, is all harm bad?

I don’t think moral nihilism is the problem here, because in a sense it gives one freedom to make up the rules. It validates Thaddeus’ take just as much as anyone else’s opinion (it’s a free for all). The problem is when it is applied disingenuously or thoughtlessly to enforce a point of view or conclusion on the basis there can be no true points of view or conclusions.

OP, I apologize, I have gone way off topic.

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I don’t have a problem with the actual elements being elemental. But I think that putting all the other cosmic forces on the same footing represents a loss of complexity and is, to my mind, a bit boring.

It was orderly, but I don’t recall it being Order in the past, with a capital O. However, I may be misremembering. And I definitely agree that arcane being attached to Order is a weird mismatch with its original presentation.

Actually, all of those seem to me like excellent examples of things that are on a spectrum, not binary.

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