At this point, I think the writers are too fixated on “perspectives” to have any concrete lore, and they are trying to gaslight us fans into accepting this.
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Im sure event the vaunted first ones have a perspective that is “Morally grey”
Maybe. Problem is, moral greyness isn’t a ticket to nuance. It’s hard to do right and easy to screw up.
And grey wouldn’t exist without black and white. Some things are black and white, and it’s high time certain people remembered that.
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There should be conflicting opinions on how and why things work. Tolls should call elves deformed mutants with too many toes and tiny tusks, and Elves should reject the idea they come from trolls of all things.
I think players knowing more than the people in game usually harms suspension of disbelief. It often makes people see characters ignorant of things they have metaknowledge of as just… dumb. And it also makes a world feel smaller and sucks the mystery from it.
This is why I will always see Chronicles pitched as a definitive lore book a mistake to that will always haunt them.
You got that right, honestly Blizzard writers just need to go absorb other better media. Maybe read a few well written books? Maybe some brandon sanderson to see how to do world building idk
Players not knowing what characters know can work, depends on how it’s done. For example, when you first watch the Star Wars prequel trilogy, you can notice the similar voices and figure out that Palpatine is Darth Sidious long before the characters do.
Oh for sure, but that works because it is a movie and has certain motifs to draw on and a limited timeframe it has to fill. A live service game needs to keep that sort of mystery going for years and years. A book like chronicles is like the DM showing you their notes. That is not fun.
Yeah a measure of logical retcons are fair. Warcraft 3 changed a lot, but it did generally enrich a pretty simple and 1 dimensional world before. I think it’s the precedent for things that are tolerable retcons. Wow just… doesn’t do them lmao.
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I am still able to suspend my disbelief in FF when I read the unending codex and learn stuff like “Where said character was born, what their early life was like” and it isn’t colored by any persons own perspective, it is just a matter of fact.
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At this rate, what’s to stop the writers from retconning the lore so Thrall drank Mannoroth’s blood, making Garrosh’s goals of genociding non-Orcs correct, making Illidan a loyal servant of the Old Gods all long or making Jaina the savior of Azeroth?
This is why the line has to be drawn somewhere with retcons and the story needs some concrete facts that don’t change.
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Definitely, now I still am on the fence on how they changed draenei and demons from WC3 to make it more. . . . Sci-fi-ish? But whatever
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The thing in FF is they actually discuss the funky cosmology and lore in game and debate its implications. WoW does not… at all. The comsology is treated as mere set dressing. “Will the rocks glow purple and have tentalces, or be green and have demon spikes” is the most we see from them often.
The Kirin Tor debating it in game and throwing around ideas among which is a definitively true one would float a lot better in my opinion.
I’d tolerate it if they didn’t make all demons in WoW act like Khornate demons lmao. Slaaneshi and Tzeentch style demon fantasy in the Dreadlords and others. Then the ONE TIME THEY TRIED to make the Nathrezim seem smart, they did it by retconning them to ‘not be original demons’ anymore, and Jailer agents… which is still so goofy LMAO im glad that the Jailer planned for the 3 of them to squabble amongst themselves for Lordaeron in The Frozen Throne. Im glad that was a big part of the Jailers plan. 
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This is one of those rare instances where I think they need to have the Kirin Tor just blatantly admit: people with a mind oriented to Arcane or Fel cannot really properly grasp the mentality and ‘manifest spirituality’ if you wanna put it that way, of Nature, Void, Light and so on. That they defy science and the tangible on some level. They arent powers you can quantify like math or science.
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I sometimes wonder when they moved past WC1 who approached Metzen and quietly suggested they needed to cut out references to god and angels.
It is sort of wild to look back at the setting and how it has evolved from demonic orcs from another world Vs God Fearing Humans and their paladins.
The references where downplayed but present in Warcraft 2, even moreso in Warcraft 3. It was during WoW that they were finally removed (though angels were replaced with spirit healers and Naaru… only for this to get progressively retconned further and further).
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I assume someone in WoW started reading comicbooks or something and went “Gee that is swell”
And given that this was in the 90s when comics were fixated on edginess, the infamous “Dark Age of Comics”. Combine that with WoW fans being teenagers during this time and growing older with the game, and the 90’s also being when anti-authority attitudes really became vogue (sowing the seeds for hostility to parents, companies, law enforcement, religion…), it’s easy to see how that seeped into WoW.
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I have heard once, with no actual source, that it he was on his own journey with his faith at the time lol. I think maybe its later additions to lore you see it reigned in, and we just kept in vague diablo style angle ‘guardians of ancient kings’ with no lore… until you know. Kyrians destroyed their (mostly non existent) lore.
The later editions were also when other people started to take control of the narrative, like Hazzikostas, Danuser and Afrasiabi.