So, playing back through TBC Classic, and having played through Shadowlands and xpacs before… I was wondering why we haven’t seen any other beings like Al’Ar, the Phoenix God?
From my understanding, Al’Ar is an elemental being that’d come from an elemental plane likely. We don’t see any fire elementals resembling it, and, in the Firelands itself, in Cataclysm, the closest we’ve seen to it are the Firehawks but those are not the same.
The one exception is a rare spawn in Mount Hyjal that i honestly didnt even know existed until today despite being there tons before, Blazewing.
There’s also the Blaze of the Heavens in the High Prophet Barim Fight, in the Lost City of the Tol’vir, as well as its dark counterpart, the Harbinger of Darkness.
The short answer is: “We don’t know.” However, I would love phoenix-themed customizations for Blood Elves.
Phoenixes also appear as part of the Rhukmar encounter on AU Draenor.
Rhukmar’s powers are heavily solar-themed, Barim’s “of the Heavens” names for his fiery attacks lean toward a sun aesthetic and between his family name and eventual title of “the Sun King” even Kael’thas falls into that thematic category.
Rather than just fire entities, phoenixes of Al’ar’s sort (as opposed to the fleshy and feathered pandaren variety) seem to be more like “sun elementals,” which one supposed could amount to a sort of hybridized Fire/Light situation.
Except in the Great Dark, none of these forces exist in a vacuum. That’s the point; our reality is where they all interact and blend to cause existence to “happen,” so while solar energy is indeed tied to Life, it would also be of Light as well, and of Fire.
I was thinking about Alar recently. Reading the little tool tip on the mount. It seems like a slap in the face to Sindorei fans that the blue store mount Phoenix “burns hotter” or some such.
And after reading some insightful posts in this thread, and the release of that sun cat thing, it got me thinking a bit more.
Arthas says death has come to the high home of the Elves. The Ashes of Alar tooltip says Kaelthas wanted to keep it from death. It seems like Phoenixes are some sort of burning life elementals, or something? Strange that Mages would wield them. Maybe it is like a fire of life sort of thing?
I wonder what would happen if Death got control of Phoenixes. Could they be burning Death Elementals?
And the cat mount tooltip says he is killing the birds in the sky. Does that mean there will be flying cats and flaming birds at war?
Sindorei have been associated with the Phoenix. It is a hot fire bird. And then Blizzard introduces a different type of phoenix that burns hotter? Like the phoenixes that chill with Sindorei are suddenly weaker than this new thing they just invented. Basically down grading our phoenixes.
Your physics argument might hold up if this game were bound by them. However, there are purple and green flames - how do those compare? I admit, I must have skipped that class. And there are giant swords in planets. And catapults that can’t hit ships in front of a tree, but can suddenly hit the tree.