Was Xe'ra good or evil?

[Thadeus-caelestrasz]

You’re still doing double standards; Syiax admitted he’s doing what you criticize me for, but you don’t call him out.

@Étel-nemesis

I said that what happened to Illidan was something similar to what we saw with Sylvanas recently. They both did whatever evil they wanted, so when the story demanded that the villain finally be punished, they allowed themselves to be punished.

In both cases I was left with the feeling that we only managed to win because of the villain. And that kind of victory feels more like a defeat, really.

That said, starting from the point where I consider Illidan a villain, I consider his act of killing Xe’ra to be absurd, as she was not a villain and the game did not treat her that way. I understand that she was wrong to try to forge Illidan against his will, but that mistake doesn’t justify what happened later.

And I say that our actions are relevant for me to form my argument, because in Dragonflight we massacred dragon eggs simply because they were not aligned with our positions, and the game treated this as irrelevant and normal.

If these are the game’s parameters for determining morality within WoW, then Xe’ra’s act against Illidan becomes even more banal.

All of this, however, comes from my point of view that Illidan is a villain.

Illidan and Sylvanas have quite a bit in common. I went over their traits in a thread.

Illidan's story vs Sylvanas' story

These two characters in WoW have these traits in common in their most recent expacs; They and views on them range from anti-hero to villain. They both got an expansion where they have a pivotal role in a cosmic conflict. Said expansion sought to both prop them up AND push them back to a previous characterization. Swathes of prior lore were retconned to make them look good/better/less bad. Long-running characters are used or dumbed down to shill them (eg; Khadgar, Velen and Turalyon for one, Ut…

The thing that makes it feel more like a victory for Illidan is that he gets exactly what he wanted. He gets to stay and guard Sargeras and which him suffer in his imprisonment. That’s a huge win for Illidan.

And World of Warcraft’s morals have often been built on double standards (maybe that’s why certain people on the forums keep using double standards in their arguments - like calls to like). I made a thread on that problem with the story too.

Killing Xe’ra is also absurd from a story perspective because she’s the most powerful representative of the Light encountered thus far. And not only is she jobbed, but it’s also a one-hit-kill. Illidan is not invincible - in the Harbingers’ cinematic a Pit Lord manages to knock him on his butt despite Illidan being a demon-killing specialist and a Pit Lord being a demon. In fact, those same eyebeams that job Xe’ra only scratch the Pit Lord. All this can be seen here;

Harbingers - Illidan (youtube.com)

If the writers want to villain bat Xe’ra, they’ve destroyed the idea that she can be a threat. Of course, that’s still a major double standard that some want to sweep everything Illidan did under the rug while at the same time cheering for the gratuitous demise of someone who was, at worst and to throw certain people a bone, a lesser evil.