Was Xe'ra good or evil?

Lore Story Forum
486

Sylvanas is probably one of the most hated characters in WoW.

It’s just a force of nature, it doesn’t really have a will of ‘good’ or ‘evil’ as far as we know.
Just as gravity isn’t ‘good’ or ‘evil,’ it simply just is.

This is wrong.
In fact, the lore from the Warcraft 3 era specifically states that the Nelves are the only race to worship ‘Gods.’
The only time there has ever been any semblance of a God along the lines of Christianity would be War1, which was retconned out of the lore by War2.

As I said before, it’s simply a force of nature.
What people do with it is up to them, whether they use it for health or harm.

And that was retconned out by War2, it’s been a looooong time since then.
No use dwelling over it now.

In War2 there still was no tie to Christianity or any ‘God’ as was seen in War1.
They borrowed aesthetics from Christian Europe, but that’s about it.

The Naaru themselves can be considered angelic, but they’re very different from angles.
Through the interpretations of the Draenei they could be considered similar to angles within Jewish belief, but the similarities aren’t too present.
Beyond the belief of the Draenei, the Naaru themselves are simply elemental beings.

Okay, I don’t really care about what happened in the past.
I’m mostly trying to understand your thought in the now.

‘He said, she said’ forum politics don’t interest me all that much.
To me, you’re a clean slate until I personally see otherwise.
And to be entirely clairvoyant, I’ve had a couple less than positive interactions with you before.
But I reserve any judgement on your character for now.

I’m not even going to bother reading all that nonsense, I’m gonna be entirely honest.

That being said, from my current understanding you DO NOT believe that the Light is a stand-in for IRL Christianity.
You seem to think there are very vague similarities, but that’s about it.

You DO seem to believe that the Light represents ‘good’ within the Warcraft universe.
For that, we do not agree, and the personification of the Light as a force of ‘good’ has long been retconned out of the lore (since at least WoW).

Now, you used a lot of fluffy language around those parts which makes me skeptical…
Am I understanding you correct?

487

I conflated it because you seemed to be parroting their arguments and accusations. If that’s not the case, I’ll gladly retract that part about you (you have at various points both accidentally and deliberately misrepresented my position, though).

Why did you parse only tiny parts of my whole comment?

While not wrong about Sylvanas, Xe’ra’s pretty hated too. Though Sylvanas one had a much bigger fanbase. I’d say Sylvanas is WoW’s most divisive character.

Maybe now, though from effects and function, it’s still the closest thing to good among the cosmic forces (since Titans’ arcane seems to be “Order”).

A word of caution; cutting off large chunks of the sentence makes it look like you’re taking my statement out of context or twisting my words. The full sentence was;

And I thought there were enough of those elements left in War 2 to open the possibility that the Light in Warcraft 2 was God by another name.

*Perhaps now, the question is whether it was this way before, which I’m not sure of. At worst, we can agree to disagree.

Perhaps. See *

Same response. See*

I agree, though I think they also draw from the description of angels in Islam, which has them take a more active role than they do in Judaism or Christianity.

You need to know the past to gain a full understanding of now.

Apart from what I said about the importance of knowing the past, fair assessment.

Like I said; it is important to know the past, that is a fair assessment.

A few others will say otherwise, but thanks for the fair go.

We agree on a lot there. At worst, we’d have to agree to disagree about earlier lore.

A lot of people use fluffy lanauge and emotional arguments on these forums. What fluffy language specifically do you think I used?

488

I am really not. Any similarities between my arguments and those of others when it comes to you are caused directly by similar or identical encounters with you. I tend to be much more forgiving towards you than others, and treat each new thread as a chance for a more positive interaction.

Which, although you’ve chosen to forget, we’ve had plenty of. We both had a grand time discussing Illidan’s hammy, over-the-top, so-edgy-I-cut-air dialogue, as one example. We have a history going back a few years, which is why blatant lies like this:

stand out so much to me.

Recent? Like, since BfA? Five-ish years ago? That recent?

You’re constantly misrepresenting things, and yet I keep hoping.

“Maybe this time. Maybe this time will go different and we can have an honest discussion.”

Because at the end of the day, I don’t hate you. Sure, you’ll attribute all manner of lies to my name and only half-hearted apologize if certain conditions to your liking are met. But I don’t hate you.

Not at all.

Rather, I find your non-Crusader Thad discussions entertaining. Not in a derogatory “I’m laughing at you, not with you” sense. Genuinely entertaining.

But…

Uhg. I know I’m wasting my time. You’ve already proven that by just lumping everyone who disagrees with your stance into the same basket of crap.

I dunno, maybe I ust keep hoping still that the next time will be different.

489

Perhaps, though you definitely are better towards me than certain others are.

All I meant was our butting-heads was more recent than when I started butting heads with people like Mith/Ren, Micah/Kareste and Drah. And even when I thought you were lying about me (as you’ve thought the same of at times), while I can see a few here definitely hate me, I know you don’t hate me and iirc I haven’t said you do. Nor do I, or have I ever, hated you.

I didn’t mean to infer any timeframe, so there was no lie. If you want a timeframe, iirc we started having grating interactions about 1-2 years ago. How long ago would you say friction between us started?

490

Like I already said, about five years ago.

But… Whatever. I’m exhausted with this whole argument. I’m done.

Mocha Elf Out.

491

I returned to WoW Jan 22, 2020. That was less than four years ago.

Summary - Thadeus-caelestrasz - World of Warcraft Forums (blizzard.com)

Our first interaction didn’t happen until awhile after that, and it was even more time until we had friction.

But time can get fuzzy, especially with all the madness in the world these days.

But now we’ve gotten all that out of the way, let’s get back to the topic of Xe’ra’s actions.

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492

…

Ok, y’know what I blame all this on?

Shadowlands. It felt like four years there.

But you’re correct, it was post-lockdown, so that’s on me.

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493

The lockdown almost feels like those space-time anomalies from Star Trek, or time magic in WoW going crazy.

I don’t have much to say about Xe’ra that hasn’t already been said except to call out the many plot holes surrounding her, but that’s best saved for another thread. Maybe someone else has a perspective on her actions.

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494

She is most definitely toast.

495

Again, you’re misrepresenting me. Our focal point of disagreement is the claim that there is such a thing as “objective morality”, which you’ve failed to either define or point specific examples of.

I do believe that it’s a mistaken concept that’s caused a great deal of harm in the hands of self-appointed morality police since before the days of the In quisition.

And if you believe that I “hate” you… I only have one thing to say. You ARE full of yourself if you think you loom that large in my universe to add that much entropy into my life. There are people I hate with an unholy passion. Next to them, you’re not even on the board.

496

she seemed pretty evil to me

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497

Your argument - like relativism/subjectivism themselves - is self-defeating.

As I already explained elsewhere (so I’m almost surprised you repeated this argument), saying there is no objective morality is itself an example of objective morality, because by saying that you’re making an objective moral statement (remember Obi-Wan’s self-refuting comment “Only a Sith deals in absolutes” :wink: ). In true relativism, one would not say such a thing.

Whether or not you actually hate me, I don’t trust you enough to take your word on that.

498

I don’t mind disagreements when it’s done respectfully, like we both had some respectful talks about this in the past. Only thing I can suggest is we both try and go back to that and put our personal biases aside when discussing stuff like this.

Morals are subjective mainly because, for example, we all agree that something like murder is bad. But depending on the situation people will disagree on how bad it really is. Like was it self defense or not, situations like that

If Morals were objective, we wouldn’t need a court system and laws to differiente the degrees of a crime. It would be set in stone with no room for arguing the severity of a crime.

499

Which is not a personal attack against you.

This is the crux of what you refuse to understand. You take any criticism of Christanity as a personal attack.

Can you do this?

Can you seperate your feelings for Xe’ra as a reflection of your faith to objectively see that her actions against Illidan were wrong? Because I don’t think you can…

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500

We all could probably afford to step back and try to look at things objectively before responding. But that’s easier said than done :blush:

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501

As you’re being civil… there are some objective morals, disagreement doesn’t change that, it just means some people are right and some people are wrong (no matter how unpopular it is to say that these days).

Needing courts doesn’t change that, because we need courts for the same reasons as why disagreements exist;

  1. Some people don’t have full knowledge on some matters
  2. Some people have differing underlying assumptions about reality
  3. Some people have an agenda they prioritize over truth, so they deny/lie for it
  4. Any combination of the previous three.
502

That’s true. There are people out there who are evil and unscrupulous who will try to use whatever they can to their advantage

But going to the other subject, I wouldn’t necessarily call it being right or wrong per se, just people might need to be educated on things they didn’t know previously

But I agree with your points. They do have merit :bear:

503

Personally, I’m partially reminded of the story of The Farmer and the Viper when I think of Illidan and Xe’ra (and Xe’ra wasn’t the Viper).

504

How does this remind you of that story at all?

Did Xe’ra save Illidan’s life and then he killed her?

No, doesn’t seem that way.

Xe’ra had her own prophecy for Illidan, which she intended to see the end of regardless of other’s belief in that prophecy or not.

Xe’ra reformed and went to instantly ‘reward’ Illidan with something he didn’t want.

So he stopped her.

505

I don’t know if you know the story of The Farmer and the Viper. If not, here, it’s one of Aesop’s fables;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farmer_and_the_Viper

In Legion, Gul’dan found Illidan’s body in the Vault of the Wardens and used a ritual to trap Illidan’s soul in the Twisting Nether, where Illidan was constantly on the run from its demonic denizens.

Xe’ra came up with and enabled the plan to retrieve his soul and reunite it with his body (the reason for all those fetch quests and Illidan’s life story quests the PCs did with Xe’ra in Legion), even housing his soul in her core - Light’s Heart - for a time. Then we brought Light’s Heart to the Nighthold and there with the help of Khadgar and Xe’ra reunited Illidan’s soul with his body and stopped Gul’dan from using it as the Legion’s tool.

Yet Xe’ra doing all that for Illidan didn’t stop him from killing her on Argus, just like the Farmer taking in the Viper from the freezing snow and giving it warmth didn’t stop the Viper from giving the Farmer a fatal, venomous bite.