It may look like the Ashbringer, but it’s not the Ashbringer. There are too many differences.
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I went back and read the narrated text scrolls, you went with the scroll for the mission that follows Blackhand’s Overthrow.
" The time has come for you to seize control of the Orcish hordes for yourself. Blackhand has become foolish in the deployment of his personal troops, and has left an opening that you can now exploit. A key outpost in the Black Morass is the core of Blackhand’s supply lines - not only to his foremost battle groups, but to his castle at Black Rock Spire, as well. The complete destruction of this outpost will disrupt his power base long enough for you to secure his overthrow."
That is the scroll text for that mission, which means the scroll text you chose is depicting a Shadow Council falling in line to a leader who’s claimed the mantle of Warcheif by force. We have an unreliable narrator situation here.
Again, you are being disingenuous with your points and this conversation right from the start has been pointless.
My point was that starting from the end and writing backwards is a bad way to write a story. That building on preestablished lore is better for building a comprehensive narrative… You don’t debate that by saying “Blizzard has always retconned lore”… You just confirm they do something that I believe is bad form.
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If retcons were inherently bad, then there would be no good retcons. However, [retcons Rot liked] were good. Therefore, retcons aren’t inherently bad.
It’s a valid structure of argument. The only issue is that you and he don’t agree on whether the old retcons were any good.
Personally, I’m not impressed by your arguments that the old retcons were bad, since they mostly boil down to circular “they could have not retconned, and they should have (since retcons are bad),” and I am sympathetic to Rot’s examples because I liked most of the changes he mentioned and agree that they were, in fact, changes.
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They aren’t tho.
That’s the point, which doesn’t make it a valid structure of an argument. I disagree with the premise, so the argument isn’t one worth making.
The issue is those retcons could have easily been made without the need to retcon. Which is an issue when you are writing for a fan base. These are not just retcons made in peer review, these are retcons of a finished product. It’s like if Tolkien went back and changed The Two Towers so he can make a plot point work in Return of the King AFTER people have already read and enjoyed Two Towers.
You are ostracizing and upsetting a percentage of a fan base by changing or removing entire plot points because of lazy writing practices.
Just more to this effect… We all saw the Outrage to the last season of Game of Thrones. Now, imagine if Game of Thrones went back and said “Remember this from season 3? Well, that didn’t happen and this happened instead.” And changed a plot point from a season everyone regarded as good, to tell this sub-par storyline everyone hates in season 8?
From my perspective and the perspective of people who are bracing for impact with Warcraft 3 Retcons, that’s essentially what we are worried about and why I think retcons as a whole are just an all around bad and lazy practice.
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Pedantically, false premises in a modus tollens structure create a valid but false argument. More to the point though:
The only reason to have an argument is if you disagree on premises and want to have a discussion about them. If you’re not willing to do that, you’re just giving a one-sided opinion without the possibility of discussion.
From my perspective and the perspective of people who are bracing for impact with Warcraft 3 Retcons, that’s essentially what we are worried about and why I think retcons as a whole are just an all around bad and lazy practice.
This is a good point. Retcons punish players invested in the lore. I doubt Rot would disagree with this; I don’t either.
However, just because a device has bad features doesn’t mean they are completely bad. For example, direct exposition from a narrator in a novel tends to be “bad” because it distances the reader from the action. However, there are times when most writers need exposition because writing every single scene from a close narrative distance would bloat the story and drag. So you need to weigh the harm and the good for exposition.
Same re retcons. It alienates fans invested in the lore (bad) and undermines the stakes that come from having things like character deaths stick (very bad). But…if you are dealing with a situation with few invested fans and low visibility that does not seriously impact narrative stakes— a situation that describes a lot of the WC3 retcons— and the lore constrains an otherwise very good idea and you lack the time or the creativity or the resources to find something better, then I think in some cases the benefits of a retcon outweigh the harm.
Thus, retcons should be weighed on a consequences, do-whatever-works basis (like all writing), not according to a prescriptivist “retcons are never acceptable” rule.
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Not really… disagreeing on a premise is a dead end. A premise is evidence or reasoning to the formation of a conclusion. An argument is usually had when there are agreeing premises, but disagreeing conclusions… A conflict of premises is a dead end because it is a disagreement on the validity of an argument.
Edit: And more to that effect, I do not see Rot as someone to make a genuine argument.
I guess that’s true if you think something like “retcons are bad” is a really bedrock, no truths are more foundational kind of premise for which no argument outside pure intuition might be mounted.
Not many premises are actually like that, though, and I’m pretty sure “retcons are bad” isn’t one. See my edits above as an example.
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I do not agree. When you are dealing with a situation with few invested fans and low visibility, it is far easier to just build new lore around it instead of going back and changing pre-established lore.
Building up lore is always better than remodeling it.
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Building up lore is a viable alternative, but it also comes with a cost.
The more lore you force into minutely tied together and increasingly obscure details, the greater the burden the old lore has on new players, casual players, and new writers. I’m reminded of certain comic book continuities that are a tonal mess and totally inaccessible to newcomers.
Retcons that simplify the lore by cutting the fat off old stories (especially if it was bad fat or fat that doesn’t fit the tone of the universe you want, the way WC1 didn’t fit WC3) make the story more accessible and more aesthetically consistent, which is a positive.
If it’s always easier and it’s always better, then why don’t writers do it? It can’t be laziness since retcons are easy. I doubt it’s stupidity, since I don’t think the WC3 writers were stupid. So what gives?
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I think WC1 fit with WC3 just fine.
The thing is, I still think this is a lazy practice to do it with a finished product. These are things that should happen in peer review. I understand Warcraft 1 and 3 came out a few years short of a decade apart, but I think at that point, you already have set the tone of the fandom. The bed as been made, sleep in it. Personally, while I am the ultimate Night Elf Fan, the themes and art style of Warcraft 2 is ultimately what captures me as a Warcraft fan.
Good writers do.
It is laziness. I also don’t think Blizzard cared much about the lore following WC3.
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I do like that the other humans at the very least don’t have the stupid oversized shoulderpads. They look much better and I hope it means the art team changed the plate wearers design.
Edit: bleh nvm there’s a plate wearer there and he still has the stupid shoulders.
I’d prefer humans keep their iconic look and not change it because you think it’s dumb.
Something just occurred to me. Kel’Thuzad wasn’t presented as anyone special in WC3, just the necromancer leader, but later lore reveals he was a member of The Six in Dalaran and personally met Jaina in the past. According to that interpretation, if she doesn’t recognize him on sight because of being a decrepit cultist then she should at least realize his identity when he reveals his name.
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Even allowing the real possibility that its an unreliable narrator situation (which is still conjecture on your part), it still constitutes a gross contradiction of this earlier claim.
Supporting out of fear still has the word “supporting” in it. And for all your conjecture, its still contradicted by Warcraft 3 Lore, specifically Lord of the Clans, when the Shadow Council assassinates Durotan and Draka after Orgrim decides to rebel against Gul’dan and Blackhand. This in mind, how does it make sense for Orgrim to keep the Shadow Council intact and operational when the whole point of his rebellion is to stop them?
We’re not having a intellectually honest discussion. You just want to win an argument on the internet at this point. And to that end, you’ll deny what evidence I present on the flimsiest (and self-contradicting) pretense, and then call ME disingenuous.
Tolkien spent a lifetime writing Lord of the Rings, and in the course of that lifetime actually made countless revisions to his work prior to publication (it was all one big book divided by the publishers, so odds are Tolkien did EXACTLY what you offered as a hypothetical, just prior to publication). Martin is still writing A Song of Ice and Fire right now, having been outpaced by the Game of Thrones television adaptation much faster than even he anticipated despite having decades of work on it.
Blizzard is a game company that needs to release its products much faster than the glacial pace of your examples. They don’t have the same time frame to revise their lore before it’s officially released. I’d argue that comparing Tolkien and Martin to Blizzard, but leaving out the key context of the time needed to write their respective works, is incredibly dishonest.
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Plus there’s the earliest published versions of The Hobbit which had a completely incongruent interpretation of the Gollum scene, that contradicts everything we’d learn about the nature of the Ring and Gollum’s relationship towards it once Lord of the Rings was being conceptualized.
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Ahah! We have found the proto-Retcon of the fantasy literature genre!
Edit: Snap! Imagine if Tolkien held Akiyass’ chronic intolerance of retcons, and instead wrote Lord of the Rings with the Hobbit, intended as a children’s book, as the basis.
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He did EXACTLY that and went back and rewrote parts of The Hobbit after Lord of the Rings came out to remove inconsistencies between the two stories.
http://tolkien.cro.net/tolkien/changes.html
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When your model example against retcons turns out to have retconned his old works to fit in with his later ones.
Not really. I think it is pretty explicit. Clearly it is shown that the Shadow Council only approves of the new reigning Warcheif after he seizes Blackhand’s seat of power. While it can be interpreted a number of ways, the point remains that it is a plot point left open than can be built from without being contradictory.
Those are two separate events that don’t contradict one another… But alright, even if your point had a leg to stand on, you not even arguing the premise. You are only pointing out that Blizzard Retcons, when my whole point was that they shouldn’t.
Yes
more so about 11-12 years. It is true he went back to make textual revisions, but he didn’t retcon his work… He only built up background material.
Are you telling me that Blizzard, a multi billion dollar company, doesn’t have the resources to revise their work before release, for a world that is much less expansive than the world that Tolkien gave us as one man?
okay
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If you admit it can be interpreted a number of different ways, then its not explicit, is it?
Explicit
adjectivestated clearly and in detail, leaving no room for confusion or doubt.
Are you saying Blizzard was always a multi billion dollar company since the original Warcraft games they’ve since retconned?
And you did catch that Tolkien literally retconned the Hobbit, right?
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More models!
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