Moderator Edit:The thread has devolved into arguing and back and forth toxicity about real world religion, so we’re locking this thread.
I know many people are upset that the direction the lore is taking is that Light vs Void doesn’t equal good vs evil, with things such as some Naaru being douchebags and AU Draenei having turned into genocidal Light crusaders. However I think that the Light not being inherently lawful good makes perfect sense overall considering that the opposite side of the cosmic spectrum, namely the Void, isn’t inherently chaotic evil :
In WotLK, the Azjol-Anak Nerubians, who have Old Gods ancestry, are… somewhat decent folks all things considered. We help them retake their home, they thank us and help us back. In BFA we once again have friendly interactions with them. They’re mostly just a regular race at this point. It seems they have forgotten, or given up, on their Old God legacy, and have built themselves a culture of their own, just like all the Titanforged races (outside of maybe Tol’vir) have put their Titanic legacy aside and are now pursuing their own agenda.
Even though Chronicles is written from a Titan perspective, it makes it pretty clear that life arose from both Light AND Void. Also, mortality is highly valued in the narrative : mortality is associated with adaptability and creativity (see the “Age of mortals”, the whole Human Potential thing, the genesis of the Dracthyr…). The thing is, mortality is largely related to Old Gods (Curse of Flesh etc).
Old Gods are also associated with flesh and decay, and decay is not inherently bad either. Life can’t exist without Death and Decay ; all those forces are part of the same cycle, as exemplified by the Drust conception of druidism.
Ren’dorei wielding Void magic for noble purposes is not that big of a deal : don’t we have Fel wielders among our ranks ? Plus now we know that Demons are but the native races of the Twisting Nether ; as far as we know Demons, OG Demons at least, are not necessarily inherently evil (see the Shivarra who joined Illidan in Legion).
To me it seems like the “morally grey Light” trope does align with the lore. Thoughts ?
I like the fact that the light being used for good or for ill, largely depends on a persons faith and whether they truly believe what they’re doing is right.
It adds some ambiguity to the Light, and the cosmic force itself doesn’t need to be good or bad, it can be both. Just like the Void. The fact that there are militant Naaru out there who will do anything to see that the Light shines throughout the universe is also pretty interesting too.
The original chart formed a Sephirot, with the Light trinity consisting of Holy, Life and Disorder and the Shadow trinity consisted of Void, Order and Death. It always seemed odd that they put Order in the trinity of Shadow and not Disorder. I think that’s where the original design of the sephirot was flawed. Order and Life were in the pillar of Mercy and Disorder and Death were in the pillar of severity which makes sense. Eminations spiral outwards from the source.
I always wondered if they were low key alluding to the Burning Legion as being a skewed aspect of the Light, while Order/Arcane is a skewed aspect of Shadow. As both are very authoritarian in nature. Since Arcane is described as devouring it too does make sense to fall under Shadow… which means the Burning Legion is an emanation of the Light, and could explain why Sargeras looks… firey. Regardless they failed to explain without a reasonable doubt what the original cosmic chart actually means. The new one is… interesting but less complex.
I don’t mind a morally grey Light. What I dislike is more making the Light and Shadow (Void now) into forces with their own goals and agency as opposed to fundamental energies of creation that are part of a natural cycle.
they may still be just tools used for benevolence or malevolence. But I tend to lean that all cosmic forces are inherently evil, Light and Shadow alike. our universe was spawned out of thier mutual hatred of one another, that animosity bleeds through every layer.
But then again, canon says there is only one great evil in the universe and that’s Shadow so, if Shadow is inherently evil, than Light is inherently good.
The cosmic forces aren’t really “anything” morally… they have their own agendas collectively per cosmic force and will do any and everything to achieve those goals respectively: we’ve seen life try to overstep certain boundaries with the Botani and Genesaurs, we’ve seen Light impose its will where it was unwanted and not necessarily maybe for the better, Old gods and Void Lords come to mind obviously for Void but these do not necessarily make Void overall “Evil”, Fel with the Legion even if it was Sargeras a Titan who commandeered Disorder and Fel as a cosmic force to rule the Legion, Death and The Jailer/Lich King/Sylvanas and Undeath, etc etc…
None of them are really defacto “good” or defacto “evil”… they just all have goals and varying degrees of moral perspective within them as to how to accomplish those goals.
The people who think that the Light is, ‘Lawful Good,’ either ignore the existence of the Scarlet Crusade, or pull some truly impressive, Olympics-worthy (mental) gymnastics to convince themselves the Scarlet Crusade is also, ‘Lawful Good.’
Out of all the cosmic powers, I would say the Light is the most inherently benevolent, and the Void the most inherently malevolent. Just because these natures are mostly associated with them, doesn’t not make them innately, ‘Good,’ or, ‘Evil.’
I find it weird people have an issue with this. The light has been abused for evil as far back as Arthas. It’s only as good as the person wielding it. Righteous conviction is not automatically good.
The problem isn’t merely “don’t like making the Light morally grey”, it’s how poorly this was shoehorned into the setting after the Scarlet Crusade. Xe’ra - the Naaru I think you had in mind when you said “douchebag” - is a character with over a dozen plot holes who was sacrificed to be the punching bag in an edgelord power fantasy and the AU Draenei were a case of the writers throwing out established lore (eg; pretend the Iron Horde, who attacked the AU Draenei unprovoked first, never happened) to push a rehash of the Scarlet Crusade/Lei Shen’s Mogu/Taldrim Protoss/Imperius’ faction/Malthael’s Reapers.
I think “douchebags” is a bit of a strong word, especially as Xe’ra is a Judge Dredd or Deputy Marshal Sam Gerard rather than a Tywin Lannister or Prophet of Truth Ord Casto. Had Xe’ra not opposed Illidan and Alleria, she’d have evoked far more sympathy from the audience.
I think the Naaru are now, to borrow DnD’s alignment chart, Lawful Good at best and Lawful Neutral at worst. Three of the reasons; 1) they’re not trying to unmake the universe 2) they lack sadism 3) they don’t backstab each other like the Old Gods.
My understanding is that what you describe as “forces with their own goals and agency” corresponds to the Naaru and Void Lords rather than to their respective cosmic forces ; the Light and Void in themselves are closer to “fundamental energies of creation that are part of a natural cycle”
That’s an interesting way of looking at it. I wouldn’t say “inherently evil” then, but rather that the Light and Void both have the potential of being our ennemies
Yea I agree with that. Due to their respective natures, they understandably tend to be associated with good and evil, as death, despair and annihilation are obviously widely regarded as undesirable by sentient beings. Then again I do think it might not be universal : if you think about the Laughing Skull Orcs for example, they live in an environment in which Death is absolutely everywhere, and so they developed a culture that revolves around it and praises it as a worship-worthy force. Same goes for the Drust and others.
Yes I was thinking about Xe’ra, but also about the many Naaru who arrived on AU Draenor after we departed and who apparently brainwashed the Draenei into becoming Light zealots willing to forcefully convert the native races.
Though it can certainly be argued that this was all very badly written (as was pretty much everything WoD-related to be perfectly honest), I don’t think “the AU Draenei were a case of the writers throwing out established lore” : as bad as what the Iron Horde did was, we had left the Orcs and Draenei in a state of somewhat peaceful relationship at the end of the expansion ; also, the Light’s authoritharian tendencies were long known, so it doesn’t really contradict any established lore in my opinion
I was also thinking “ignoring consequences and character progression”, such as the asinine “DrAenOr iS FrEe!” Moment with AU Grom on WoD. He was the leader of the Iron Horde, at whose behest they did many atrocities… and also somehow the leader of the Mag’har when they fought Yrel’s group.
When AU Grom and Yrel had their showdown, I was rooting for Yrel - the former Iron Horde slave who lose a sister to them. This should’ve shown up more or played a role, but Blizzard seems to want to sweep all that aside for the dogmatism story that’s already been told repeatedly in WoW (the Scarlet Crusade, Algalon, the Cult of Twilight’s Hammer, Lei-Shen Mogu, the Naga, the Black Empire…) and told better those previous times. Why see it yet again? If they’re trying to convince real-life dogmatic people to change their ways, this isn’t how to do it, and they’re currently not qualified to be giving anyone moral lessons after everything that’s happened at Blizz.
The Scarlet Crusade were character progression that made sense. Yrel’s group rely on plot holes, double standards and Blizzard railroading us to be seen as villains (Railroading is when a game master forces an RPG down a predetermined story path that they’ve already decided the outcome or main beats of - and, as such, it cannot be changed regardless of what the players do - a huge problem when the genre is RPG).
It doesn’t help that Blizzard plays fast and loose with morality in the story, with multiple groups doing the same thing, but according to the writers we’re not supposed to consider them evil. How many people have Illidan, Sylvanas, Garrosh, Moira and even our own PCs forced to serve them… and then how did they escape the evil label?
K’ara, aka The Dark Star, was ejected out of the Genedar because she tried to kill D’ore and K’ure. She was the prime ‘God’ of the Shadowmoon Clan. The fact that Naaru have a Light cycle and a Void cycle show that they are also subject to change their nature. Was it the Void that made K’ara evil? or did the void just enhance her personality? That’s a good question.
Yeesh, that is some victim complex. As if this Xera/Lightbound plotline is part of some global atheist agenda to erase god and religion from humanity.
I think they are trying to make money and tell a video game story. I do not think they are trying to change perspectives on dogma.
What have we seen?
We saw one side of a story, the side of the race we are trying to get in to the Horde. We have not seen the truth of what is driving Yrel.
The way the narrative bends over backwards to make the Horde villains and the Alliance heroes, I wouldnt be surprised if we find out Geyarah stole Yrel’s night light, and drove Yrel into the evil Naaru. Or Yrel might even be half right - as in, not all wrong.
We have only seen one side.
I like the idea of Light based antagonists, same as I like the idea of a Tauren Raid - because it isnt explored enough. You seem to think the Scarlet Crusade is enough, but they are so basic and earth bound - we dont have Scarlets crusading across the cosmos. That might be were the Lightbound come in.
This is why I’m waiting to see the other side of the story.
If Yrel and her Draenei come over from the AU somehow, I won’t be at all surprised to learn the planet was dying and the Mag’har over-reacted. The idea of younger Mag’har willingly siding with the Draenei and embracing the light has certain elements of RL tragedies where younger generations of a population embrace other cultures, and older generations, fearing the end of their ways, aggressively combat this new cultural shift, even radicalizing the few young men and women left to them to actively hate it (Geya’rah anyone?).
Yeesh, you’re being disingenuous. I wasn’t talking about me or my faith, and I’m not the only one on these forums to suspect that agenda. Numerous works these days have pushed identity politics, it’d be unsurprising if WoW went further down this road.
While you have a point about only seeing one side of the story so far, the fact is given how poorly presented that side was ,I suspect the worst given Blizzard’s track record.
And it’s not just the Scarlet Crusade - Yrel’s group are also a rehash of the Taldrim Protoss, Imperius’ loyalists and Malthael’s Reapers. Those groups do/did crusade across the cosmos. Blizzard’s just telling the same story over and over again; Blizzard increasingly resembles a one-trick pony.
Your idea would work, especially since AU Draenor’s deterioration has an element of “he said/she said” to it. I just don’t think that’s what Blizzard has in mind.
I don’t think Blizzard has the capacity to write that well.
In all likelihood it WILL just be the Scarlet Crusade with hooves, horns, and curves, because Blizzard. In the hands of writers allowed to write, however, I think something more nuanced and tragic could have been told, a change from racism started from acts of violence manipulated by third parties.
