Not everything has to be gray, Absolute good and absolute evil should be part of the story as well.
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Xusho, why you speaking to my heart so much?
Stahpit, itâs creepy.
Gotcha gotcha. That makes sense. Their immortality also included immunity to diseases as well which I believe was unique to them as I think other elves could get sick.
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The Quelâdorei were never meant to have a lifespan past about a thousand years, which is a stupid long time, in human terms, but not in terms of the Kaldorei who have lived ten times that. That only got murky in BFA because of that silly guy we do not talk about because he should not exist.
The Shenâdralar retained immortality but at a terrible cost. Most of the Highborne of EldreâThalas were murdered for a small handful to survive, and their prince went increasingly mad. Eventually most of their city fell to ruin and the few survivors were forced to flee into the jungles of Feralas with little more than the clothes on their backs when the Horde purged what few that remained from the ruins of Dire Maul. They were decidedly not a happy ending sort of story.
Hot Take: The blessings that made the Kaldorei impervious to disease and poison were far more valuable than that of timelessness. They were guaranteed a long and unnaturally healthy life which only extreme violence could end. Those blessings should be the ones they seek to regain by far.
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ShadowlandS was the greatest expansion story and lore-wise, and NOTHING they ever do or write in future will as good as SL. Also im pretty sure that the implications of SL story has went over the heads of like 90% players. Like SL donât care for your mortal fantasies about âgoodâ or âevilâ, - the only truth - every soul has purpose. For kyrian purpose - is servitude. Half of the Kirians is actually ether servants of Old Gods in live, or of Burning Legion. In introductory quest into Kyrian covenant is PC helping old servant of Burning Legion to forget, but most ppl somehow missed it out.
Illidan was better as a villain and Buring Crusader was a logical way to end the character that was introduced in WC3.
Xeâra did nothing wrong(not the meme, I actually mean it) and Illidan is a massive hypocrite given the Illidariâs philosophy is all about making any sacrifice to defeat the Legion.
Garrosh didnât deserve the villain bat. The few positive moments with him like Stonetalon Mountains shows what he shouldâve been turned into.
Jaina shouldâve died at Theramore and her role post-Cata taken by a new charcater.
Not sure if itâs a hot take, but Mists of Pandaria had one of the best overall stories of any expansion, its only weak point being of course, when it touched the faction conflict.
The Iron Horde were actually good villains and shouldnât have been suddenly usurped by the Legion at the last second.
We donât need the Titans and Light made soft-evil or morally ambiguous to the extent the story appears to be moving, let some of the âbig goodâ factions remain that.
The faction conflict has always been the weakest part of WoWâs lore, the recent attempts have just been worse than it was from vanilla-Wrath.
While dying a villain was certainly a logical way to take her character, Sylvanas couldâve just as easily taken a different path based on both the Legion introduction and the stated reason the Forsaken took their dark path.
Volâjin is cool, but a little overrated and shouldnât have been made Warchief.
Gulâdan is one of Warcraftâs best villains because heâs evil because heâs an awful person.
Bolvar shouldâve been the secondary villain of Shadowlands and wouldâve made more sense than Sylvanas.
The Alliance started both wars with the Horde, the writers just ignore that fact.
The only issue with Thrall post-Cata is he refused to return to the Horde, but the idea of him putting aside the name Thrall in favor of Goâel was actually good character development for him.
The Alliance needs more infighting between its members.
Moira should get the villain bat next. It makes more sense with how she was introduced than what sheâs turned into, especially during Blood in the Snow.
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Blizzard is hit-and-miss (more misses than hits) when they do grey.
Iâm glad somebody said it.
TBC had extremely good concepts and worldbuilding but the story writing was terrible.
Like, irredeemably bad.
The kind of bad that screws over all future story elements going forward.
The kind of bad storytelling that lands both Draenei and Blood Elves with no actual goals or anything to do going forward until Blizz decided on writing up new stuff for them to do retroactively.
Yrel is a way better and more compelling character than Velen ever pretended to be.
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Maybe thereâs a correlation between these two. A warmongering orcish Horde led by a Hellscream would probably have been more compelling expansion antagonists had Blizzard not done two of them back-to-back.
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Making NPCs named â[x zone] Visitorâ as a bandaid for your story doesnât retroactively make it good or consistent with the greater themes or the race nor address the core problem with a raceâs capital being on the opposite end of the world from their actual lands.
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My hot take is the criticism that Dragonflight is Disneyfied and too peaceful is more to with the fact that the hivemind doesnât understand what a consistent theme looks like. Dragonflight IS more World of Peacecraft but thatâs a deliberate stylistic choice for the expansion and I will bet my left nut that it wonât be the case in the next three. Itâs a consistent theme in a Warcraft story - we should be celebrating, not whining. Seeing the Blue dragonflight reunited alone was worth the entry price.
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Seeing someone with the name Grimdark fighting against people calling DF âDisneyfiedâ legitimately makes me smile.
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I think the problem is that it is dependent upon prior things for that theme, and said things just donât support it at all. And WoW is one continuous game with frequent updates, not something like Elder Scrollâs where thereâs a good amount of years between all of them to make sense of stylistic differences (but even then theyâre at least somewhat more consistent thematically).
Pandaria got flack out of this dumb idea that Pandaren were new. But itâs story, in my opinion, approached these ideas way more rationally. Whereas DF is so fixated on itâs own narrative that it ends up depicting cultural displacement and diasporas as âhealingâ lol.
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Night elf immortality does affect it with Tyrande slowly getting wrinkles now that they have lost it.
Which is why AU Blackhand stood out so well. One of the best antagonists in WoD for what little screentime he had.
Also his boss fight is one of the best in WoW history for end of raid bosses.
It is a real shame that the false meme of MoP being âKung Fu Pandaâ became a thing.
- The movie rocks. One of Dreamworks best
- Panderan existed as lore characters long before MoP. Thanks of Chen Stormstout in WC3: TFT. Who was all about that drunken fist martial arts all the way back then.
It does annoy me when people use memes as criticism (see Green Jesus as another example) but when you point out its wrong, they just go, âItâs just a meme, stop being so seriousâ. Even though everyone knows that it was more than just âa jokeâ.
People act like Pandaren had barely anything to them prior to MoP.
In the Warcraft RPG (the main source for lore at this point in Warcraftâs history), prior to the creation of WoW⌠There was more lore written for the Pandaren than there was for the Forsaken.
Not even kidding, look at the book Alliance & Horde Compendium (I think itâs that one), Pandaren get a full 5 pages of lore on them⌠Forsaken? One. One full page and a paragraph.
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Hell, Chen even mentioned he was from Pandaria back in WC3: TFT. Obviously this would be later retconned with the Lei Lei comics but the concept of Pandaria did exist back then as well.
To which people will of course say, âthey were an April fools joke, reeeeâ
To that I say, âSo was a dungeon needing a light source to progress. We ended up getting that somewhat with Vault of the Wardens in Legionâ.
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Yeah, the criticism behind Pandaren being added has always been pretty dumb.
âApril Fools Jokeâ yet they had more dedicated lore to them in the Warcraft 3 era than one of the races that would eventually become playable in WoW lol.
Never understood that criticism, it isnât like Pandaren donât fit into Warcraftâs universe. If anything, theyâre as encoded into Warcraftâs DNA as Tauren or Blood Elves.
MoP being King Fu Panda was sorta just the first incarnation of âDragonflight is all Disneyâ, which is to say, its themes and style were markedly different from bog standard western high fantasy and some people dislike change.
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Kind of makes me wonder if Kalimdor came out in a WoW expansion weâd see the same kind of criticism against it lol.