Have you actually been reading my posts? I said in the post that you just responded to that I agree with that!
It doesn’t mean the Light itself is “morally grey.”
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But it does though, did you read my reply about how passive benevolence doesn’t help anyone? The light has the power to smite it’s enemies, it could be a force of justice, but it actively puts justice in the hands of mortals and free will. The Light is part of the reason we live in an unfair cosmos. It’s passivity cannot compete with free will, it must resort to force like all other forces, therefore it ceases to be benevolent.
WoW is founded in the philosophy of humanism. We are the central focus of the lore, not the Divine. It’s in how we use these forces for good or evil, that shape the universe. Because mortals are capable of good and evil, these forces can be used for good or evil, making it morally grey.
Does this make sense?
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I started to type up a whole long reply and then finally just decided to sum it up as “Your definition of ‘morally grey’ is different from mine.” You seem to be heavily focused on concrete action and results—a thing cannot be good unless it produces beneficial results and only beneficial results.
I’ve already explained my views on that point, so I’ll just quote: 
I also don’t understand why you’re leaning so heavily on the quote about passivity, when it comes from a source that you yourself have acknowledged to be non-canonical.
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Because you claimed the Light has been retconned. It hasn’t, it was always a tool. It is still a tool. The moral greyness comes from how individuals use the Light. That has never changed in the history of this franchise.
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I don’t believe things that are used as tools can never have alignment of their own, even if they are used in ways that run counter to that alignment. You even seemed to agree with me on that point when you said the Light was benevolent (just ineffective).
I believe that moral greyness was in the universe and in the users—not in the Light itself (and that goes for whatever cosmic force we’re talking about).
I don’t see how you can dispute that the way the game portrays and talks about the Light now is different from how it was in the early expansions of WoW. All this stuff about “worlds frozen in crystal” and “light stalking the cosmos like a predator” is new.
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As Thedus likes to point out constantly, the Void sees the Light as a predator, that’s the Void’s opinion on the Light. we already established that this opinion is not entirely factual.
Okay, but the language is still new.
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It is new but it’s not a retcon. The Void hates the Light. They are enemies. It now has a voice to voice it’s opinions.
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The retcon is in portraying the Light as not inherently good. Prominently introducing the Void’s negative perspective is part of that revised portrayal.
Let me ask this: Do you think the images of worlds frozen in crystal are not supposed to be accepted as true? Because I submit that is an image placed into the game lore with the sole intention of making the Light sound undesirable to players.
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It’s more meant to portray that extremes of either order or chaos is bad for the universe. It needs a delicate balance between the two
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Since we have not seen any evidence in the cosmos of planets covered in crystals than I would say we could have resonable doubt they do not exist.
We do have two examples of how the Light is harnessed to make Paladins, 1) the humans reach out in prayer to the Light and the light recipricates with it’s blessing, this is passive, 2) the Blood Knights subjugated a Naaru and forced the Light to give us the Light’s blessing. Two paths, passivity and force, achieved the same goal.
Blood Knights were following the tenents of divine humanism, versus faith in the Light. There is the dichotomy here too between faith/religion and divine humanism. It’s always existed. It’s why I don’t consider WoW to be making any religious claims. It supports divine humanism just as much as it supports faith.
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Light being merely Order is part of the rewrite, though. (Interestingly, this also portrays Light as being super-active, if it actually is encasing planets in crystal against their will.)
And I definitely think that image was meant to provoke the reaction of “Ack, I wouldn’t want that to happen! Better not have too much Light!”
My question about passivity is why you’re leaning on the quote from the non-canonical RPG to introduce the idea that the Light deliberately refuses to act to bring about good, and using that to condemn the Light in the game.
I don’t think so either, but I don’t think having various cosmic forces that are aligned with good or evil constitutes a religious claim.
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not so much to condemn the Light, it just it seems since the Uiniverse is molded by will applying force to the universe to change the universe, being passive is not doing much, hence why the Light has adopted a more forceful persona. Y’rel and co are using force to change the Mag’har. X’era used force to try and change Illidan and illiden returned the use of force to destroy X’era, et. we just see the followers of Light using force now in a way we never did before.
I imagine this was done more to level the playing field between all of the cosmic forces.
Aternatively, because the Light is innately passive it cannot stop anyone using the Light for evil, thus you have more followers abusing the Light. That’s a possibility.
I’ve read this over several times and I still don’t understand it. I thought your point was that the Light was passive? And whose will is doing the shaping, in this case?
You mention Yrel and Xe’ra, but they are not “the Light”—they are using the Light, and as we both agree, other beings can use the Light for a variety of purposes.
I also am not sure what you are referring to here. In what way was the playing field not level before, and what does the alignment of the cosmic forces have to do with that?
Again with the passivity. This seems like a really major point to you, and it’s a sticking point for me. I just don’t see that the Light has been depicted in the games as innately or deliberately passive.
And passivity is not the only possible reason why the Light doesn’t stop anyone from using it for evil. It might simply not have the power, or it might choose not to stop them for some “long game” reason. (The second reason is unlikely, I grant, but not impossible.)
Followers can abuse the Light whether it’s good or neutral, though. It just flavors the story a bit differently depending on which assumption they’re starting from.
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Cosmic forces are not necessarily aligned or have a purpose, they just are. Neither ultimate Law or Chaos require thought in fact in both cases thought is a hindrance a pollution of their purity. Ultimate Law is stasis and thought is a function of change of state. On the other hand Ultimate Chaos is boiling over change without rhyme or or cease and thought is a shackle to it.
That’s why Law is beyond considerations of Good just as Chaos is beyond Evil as both Good and Evil require thought.
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And what does that have to do with Orcs vs Humans?
Not much… when that game came out… it was just that, a command and control game in which you played both sides in turn. There wasn’t thought of the franchise to come.
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Up into honestly vanilla there was basically a vague heaven and hell cosmology. The Void and Twisting Nether were the same thing. Death was something behind the curtain. There was some heavenly place where gods like Elune and the human Light God lived, but it was super vague.
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Actually it was pretty much just the hell of the Twisting Nether. Heaven wasn’t and still isn’t part of the package.
I just hope Adal stays alive and on our side. If there are bad Naaru and Light fanatics, I hope he is one of the leaders of the Naaru on the good team. He always seemed relatively cool and chill and generally OK. Especially in comparison to Xera. She had a bad attitude.
Well, there is the question about how seriously one considers the whole “Bridenbrad” thing, as far as the lore.
That can be a can of worms to open. Is it just a tribute to people the Devs cared about, or is it a canon statement about the Light being able to direct souls from the Shadowlands?
Luckily, Adal is a part of all that, so maybe Blizz will be reticent to hit Adal with the villain bat.
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