WoW morality shouldn't be based on character popularity

Lore Story Forum
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Looking back, there has been a recurring problem in Warcraft lore for decades. Right and wrong seems to be based on first, whether the devs like or dislike the character saying or doing the thing, and second whether the fans like or dislike them.

Sylvanas vs Arthas is one of the prime examples of this. Remember, according to the Jailer: all people wielding his mournblades have one purpose - annihilation. That extends to Arthas, proving he was under the Jailer’s influence.

Dominated Anduin is freed and not evil.

The soul-split psycho who burned half the continents and helped make people mind slaves is OK and gets a full blown redemption arc.

But a dominated Arthas is irredeemable and NOT OK because… reasons.

This cheapens conflicts because if two characters can do the same action under similar circumstances, but one’s justified and one isn’t, it takes away a lot of the reason to side with one character or fight another when all sides do the same crimes but one is treated as right and the other isn’t without a lore reason for either.

The opposite is also true, when we have characters presented as antagonists who are clearly different in nature, motivation and scope, and yet some are treated worse than others.

If anything, this approach has been encouraged.

For more examples; Sylvanas tries kill Malfurion, Jaina, Anduin, Genn, her own sister Alleria and genocides hundreds of innocent Night Elves and you still get a lot of fans going “Yas, slay queen! For the Dark Lady!” but Taran Zhu goes “I’ve had it with these motherin warmongers on my motherin island” and people go “what a jerk” despite his legitimate grievances. Or worse, the naaru Xe’ra tries to imprison Alleria for dabbling in the dangerous Void and Lightforge Illidan from his dangerous fel fix, and a lot of those people didn’t think but jumped on the “Boo! Smash that evil chandelier!” bandwagon.

Again;

  • Sylvanas tries to murder her own sister Alleria twice; first with Forsaken assassins, then with Scourge blight - “Yas banshee queen!”
  • Xe’ra tries to temporarily and conditionally imprison Alleria once - “Eeeeeeevul windchime!”

WoW’s story desperately needs consistency in the nature of the lore, treatment of character and consequences for actions within reason. The lack of that is ruining the lore, cheapening the conflicts and dragging down the characters. If WoW’s story is to be saved, it needs to get consistent, and stay consistent, especially with morality whether the conflicts be amoral, black and white or the vaunted “morally grey”.

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Last I checked Arthas was one of this franchise’s most popular characters so your point kind of fails from the word go.

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I think Blizzard’s story reflects morality. It has clear standards of right vs wrong.

The writers have said multiple times they are exploring morally grey themes.

Grey morality may be against your personal preference, because as far as I know about you, you prefer moral absolutism and a strictly black and white moral narrative. You will get neither of these things from the WoW narrative, so you may be perpetually dissapointed over this.

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Well, Alleria did say she should have killed Sylvanas before Sylvanas detonated it.

Even Sylvanas says: “How rude, sister.”

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Without repeating everything the OP said, it is very unclear what is right and wrong in this universe. You will have character A do the same thing as character B however character B will be unanimously viewed as bad while character A is forgotten.

Aside from that, I am sorry but you cant write an evil character and call it morally grey. The writer’s line of thinking is “anyone who does evil and thinks it is for a good case is morally grey” meanwhile if you look at almost literally every fictional villain, they all do evil for what they think is good.

And I am sorry but…one of the writers (who I think we all know what he did) said this in a interview when asked about genocide: https://twitter.com/DaveofCanada/status/1501420501079633925/photo/1

In short, Blizzard does not know what morally grey is, and attempting to write themes of it made most of their characters evil. Don’t let people who cant understand right from wrong IRL tell you right from wrong in fiction.

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The secret ingredient you are missing that helps understand the difference between character B and character A is nuance.

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I don’t understand people complaining about Blizzard writing, refusal to give actual answers to the “wait and see” promise for years but at the same time claim that this story has nuance.

The last thing in existence here is nuance. Nuance would actually explain things. What we have is rushed, undeveloped story elements that are introduced and quickly wrapped up that makes all the conclusions be contradictory from one character to the next… not to mention redundant.

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Dalaran wasn’t a genocide though… Jaina just arrested them, sent them to violet hold and then Blizzard forgot about them.

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Morality is tricky to explore at the best of times and with the most adept of writers because it is so incredibly subjective, and peoples own ontological leanings often predispose them to object to perspectives that may be presented. It is neither the best of times, nor are the writers particularly adept.

Wow’s take on morality can be most easily seen in its cosmological design.

Up to Legion, Morality was fairly simplistic in WoW—Light, Order, and Life were good whereas Shadow, Disorder, and Death were bad. While there were outliers like the scarlets, there was a crude heavenly and hellish divide of sorts, a clear line where the divide of good and bad generally was seen to exist.

As of Legion, their outlook shifted from a Good-Evil spectrum, to more of a Law-Chaos bend. The Cosmic forces, and everything within the cosmos itself, were seen as morally neutral, able to express goodness and evil depending on their own choices. Unfortunately, their writing has not been up to expressing this particularly well.

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But there is no nuance, there is no “super deep” or complex writing here between these two. If you enjoy the story for what it is that great and I am happy. As for myself and many other the motives of these characters are pretty surface level if any at all.

These are the interviewer’s words, not mine. The issue is not the question, it’s the answer and cough who said it cough

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Oh I didn’t even look at the people giving the replies. Just the question and answer. Oh boy.

Anyway regarding good and evil in a morally grey setting, this is as best it can be described I think.

“Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with their world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence, and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods.”

Its from a book called Red Country. A really fun read.

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Except that it wasn’t true. While Arthas was spreading tons of death, disease, and destruction around. He found plenty of time to exercise his own urges… such as raising his favorite horse, or taking up extra time and effort to find new ways to torture Sylvannas.

None of these things fit nor served Ner’zhul’s or the Litch King’s agenda… they were simply things that he wanted to do… that were rooted in elements of his own Human personality.

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Ner’zhul encouraged him each time.

Furthermore:

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Hello,_Darkness

The Primus says: Domination is akin to communication, a language, if you will.
The Primus says: One so powerful that it interferes with a creature’s very understanding of itself. This is why it is almost impossible to resist.
The Primus says: If we can disrupt that interference long enough, we may find a way to thwart it.

Zovaal confounded Arthas’s Body’s understanding of itself(for one he made it become a separate sapient entity from the Soul) to make it want to bring ruin even as parts of him(like his last fragment of Soul) resisted.

The last fragment of Soul was of course pointed out by Ner’zhul upon which Zovaal focused his Domination to make the Body exorcise it sending it into Frostmourne and yet he failed to anticipate that the Body even without a Soul would have personal agenda thus blindsiding him to the backstabbing of Ner’zhul.

The Body despite having been made a separate sentience(basically an Id) from it’s own Soul(basically the Ego and Superego) still had urges the Jailer could not purge with his rudimentary understanding of Domination at the time and thus it still did things of it’s own volition like torturing Sylvanas.

Zovaal himself was under the effects of Domination due to the Runes engraved on him so his intelligence was limited and didn’t think of how to properly direct the now Soulless Body bereft of everything but the Id.

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Encouragement =/= mind control

Honestly that it only took a little nudge makes Arthas look even worse, imo, than him being fully in control

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Zovaal was in charge of having Domination effect those under the Vessels of Domination not Ner’zhul. Ner’zhul was in control over the Undead.

Zovaal was the one Dominating Arthas and as stated by the Primus Domination works by confounding one’s understanding of self not by utterly stripping it of Free Will!

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Which means THAT HE HAD A CHOICE. He was not a zombie like in Batman 1943.

If Arthas had to be encouraged, that means he had the Free Will to say no if he wasn’t persuaded otherwise.

THIS is Domination This is when free will is removed, you don’t encourage your puppet it simply does what you tell it to do.

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temporary?? What are you talking, alleria was imprissoned for decades, even centuries…

sometimes its sounds like “OH NO MY BELOVED LIGHT CHARACTER ISN`T ALLOWED TO CHANGE AND IMPRISSON WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES PEOPLE”

i mean, whats the heck.

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Arthas explicitly resisted domination.

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Ultimately he did to Ner’zhul what Illidan did to X’era only with less special effects.

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Clearly not enough to not create the Forge of Souls in Icecrown that channeled the Azerite into Zereth Mortis through Torghast!

If Arthas resisted Domination completely he wouldn’t have made the Forge of Souls in the first place!

The exact statement by Blizzard’s Interview claims that Zovaal simply hadn’t perfected the Domination to completely erase the Mortal Influences!

I think that you could look at the patterns of what’s going on with Ner’zhul, with Arthas, with Sylvanas…the Jailer is refining his techniques. He needed agents on the outside to carry out his will. He had willing ones like Sire Denathrius and he has others that he’s tried to coerce or encourage along the way. The results he’s gotten haven’t always been what he wanted. You could imagine that if the Lich King was an entity designed to get his influence on Azeroth, that these mortal influences, both Ner’zhul and Arthas, ended up getting in the way. Now, when you saw Sylvanas trying to say to the Jailer “let me win this one, let me convince him, he’ll be better as a weapon this way”…the Jailer gave her some latitude there but it reached a point where he said it’s time to go. So that’s how we see dominated Anduin now.

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