I have a couple cold gives:
'1. Retcons aren’t necessarily a bad thing
'2. A World Soul isn’t a literal [singular] unborn fetus, but is more like a dynamic, continuously-fluid, ever changing collective conscious of all the parts that comprise the ‘World’ as a ‘Whole’(Soul)
You have no idea? You really can’t understand that other people have different opinions? I mean, I don’t like Pumpkin Pie - in fact I hate Pumpkin Pie - but I have an idea why others would enjoy it.
I never liked Garrosh or Arthas. To see them both get ground into dust - even in the Afterlife - was nice. It was the most I ever enjoyed seeing them on screen. Both seemed like bratty man-children, two sides of the same coin, and watching that coin get melted down was just great.
I don’t think it is that hard to weave them together. I think there are many ways to work that out, actually.
I mean, who says Xera is the Naaru Prime?Her and her army/hype squad? What even is a Naaru Prime? Adal never mentioned it. There is a good chance that Xera is just some Rogue Naaru who went interventionalist early, calling herself the Light Mother, and other Naaru are like “that crazy Xera is always up to something.” I don’t think that would be a Retcon, so much as revealing more context we were unaware of.
One then might ask - Why should Elune’s Tear help a Naaru, in any case? I don’t think that means they have to be tied together. Perhaps Elune’s Tear is just something she reacted to for other reasons we are not aware of.
It isn’t exactly concrete at the moment, with people like Velen and Khadgar throwing out their best guesses at why stuff is happening. I think there is a lot of room to get creative with that.
Naralex is the real supervillan of this whole franchise. I hate him so much.
Aren’t hot takes supposed to have some believability to them? No one can get upset at you calling the Jailer a great villain, because the person gets confused trying to remember what the Jailer even did.
Adding to that, Hogger did nothing wrong and was a hero 
The criticism towards the concept of the faction war storyline that it can’t be fulfilling because neither side can permanently defeat the other is missing the point of the storyline.
That neither faction can permanently defeat the other is a feature not a flaw.
Under a better thought out plot, the appeal of the faction war is the journey not the destination.
War is terrible and makes monsters of all. War, in Warcraft, also involves spikey orcs (normal and time travelling) invoking the power of grandma and pig-iron to punch shiny paladins powered by God while screaming about Blood and Honor at each other, while undead necromancers throw corpse stitched abominations at holy mechas and that is pretty cool.
I’ll agree with you here. Speaking of night elves, Sarannha Skyglaive taunting the Horde over the bell being sent to Darnassus will never not make me shake my head. Granted the heavy Night Elven presence would have been a clue, but she could have said any other city or none at all, and give the Alliance more time with counter measures, and what not.
I don’t think was a recon but Anduin simply not having all the facts. In-game there are like four or five Sunreaver mages, who made a cloaking barrier on the Darnassus’ outskirts to help shield the Horde from defection. Furthermore Garrosh role in the manner wasn’t actually revealed in-game but was mention on the Lor’themar’s character page
in the the Characters of Warcraft section that was on the site.
Now when it comes to the theft itself, we know at least four or five nameless Sunreavers were involved in it and that once the deed was done Aethas had discovered the manner, between the wrath of Garrosh and Jaina, decided to risk hers over his. It’s also heavily suggested that Fanlyr Silverthorn, a member of the Reliquary who led the theft, is the reason Jaina discovered a portal to Dalaran and not the ones to Silvermoon and Domination Point.
From what I recall, Fanlyr Silverthorn’s actions and how it benefited Garrosh by stopping negations between Varian and Lor’themar is the closet we get to the game showing us he had a role. Though exactly how Garrosh discovered these negations were happening is unknown. Someone involved could have informed him or as he was growing paranoid about the other Horde leaders could have simply feared that Lor’themar could switch over, especially after the clashed during the Pandaria Campaign.
You know, I never actually considered Thalen having a role before. Thalen got outed as a Garrosh loyalists before Pandaria was even discovered and would be smart enough to stay away from Dalaran, with Jaina in charge. Though he could have easily sent word to fellow loyalists and help organize things, in the background.
I now wonder what Thalen is up too. With Shokia turning up in the orc heritage quests, perhaps Thalen will show up down the road too. Perhaps in Midnight?
Warcraft can do whatever with the storyline as long as it doesn’t involve players. I’m tired of the faction war primarily because I’m tired of the effect it has on players. I’m tired of forum posts that do the “who is the bigger Hitler” thing of using real-world atrocities and real-world evil people and real-world ethical standards for war in the Warcraft universe. I’m tired of the audience seeing each other as rivals/enemies in the narrative. I’m tired of which faction you choose being considered important enough that decided things like what guilds you could and could not join. I’m tired of the idea that the faction battle storyline is so important that we can’t have players talk cross faction (even though characters talk cross faction in cutscenes all the time) because Blizzard is concerned the faction war will drive toxicity between players.
All this drove me to FF14, where the whole dang community is one big party and discussion about the lore isn’t about playing a fantasy-realm version of apologia and accusing the other side of having more fascism points banked than the other. The crying about Disney-ficiation, “World of Peacecraft”, the loss of heavy metal and the gradual erosion of faction divides is the only thing that brought me back after Pandaria.
My lore/content hot takes!
Vyranoth gets Chromatus out of prison and joins the Aspects as leader of whats left of the Chromatic dragonflight and become the story behind Drakthyr Hero talent/spec unlock and new powers! 
Demon Hunters get a story/quest to get their green powers deep into Shadowflame. (like the warlock green flame quest 
)
The Story of the Thirds spec of Demon Hunters Class is tie in with the Legend of The Night Warrior Twilight powers and how Elune gain her reputation in the Twisting Nether of the “Upstart Goddess”… in the lore.
Specs makes an appearance in or before the Midnight expansion. 
Death Knights gets new story related to what happend to Arthas when he was capture by the Jailer. Frost Specs get a new FX look to their Ice base power to reflect the Shadowland lore and Deathbringer Hero talnet/spec more accurately. Frost powers look more ghostly and soul stealing oriented than just elemental ice… showing the Icy cold of death as its steals the heat of all living creatures it touches… till only the ghostly soul remains for you to use it as icy ghost weapons/powers!
Those are my lore/content related hot takes… lol (or wishful thinking in any case!) 
I also liked how subversive it was. When you hear the word “Warchief” the last thing you picture in your mind is “elf lady with bow”.
The Horde as we know it from WC3 onwards was a subversion of the standard fantasy tropes. The Horde was saying “Yes you can have a violent warrior culture and not have them automatically be the bad guys.” I know Star Trek was already beating that drum for decades but it still felt fresh at the time.
But as time went on the whole “monster races are okay when you get to know them” thing became pretty mundane and no longer made the Horde feel special, but having such an unconventional Warchief felt like a return to that.
The Ashbringer comic is an atrocity.
Wow, and here I thought “Xe’ra’s jobbing in Legion was a bad idea” would be the thread’s biggest hot-take.
Velen was the one who said Xe’ra’s a Prime Naaru. She just identified herself as one of the first that was made.
It also raises the plot hole of why Xe’ra would react to Elune’s Tear if Elune is a Life entity and Xe’ra is supposed to be such a Light hardliner.
It’s all another example of poor writing that people are trying to tie together after the fact. We need to stop doing the writers’ job for them.
THANK YOU! An enemy you won’t automatically defeat by the end of the expansion cycle is much more engaging to me than the conga line of raid bosses being glorified bowling pins for us to knock over.
Almost every time there is a major shake-up to the world’s status quo, it’s a byproduct of the faction war. The absence of it causes stagnation.
Not every unexplained thing is a plot hole, sometimes the writers want something to be mystery that doesn’t get revealed until later. This doesn’t just go for Warcraft, but many different works of fiction as well.
Source? Maybe my perspective is warped from dealing with series like Undertale and Five Nights at Freddy’s on a regular basis, where theorizing about the story is half the engagement, but I disagree with this take heavily.
This story is far from perfect, but I find it to be pretty bad faith to assume the utmost incompetence when there has been a deliberate effort to sort out and make sense of the Cosmology since Legion.
Even things like the Shadowlands Cosmology Chart not being a retcon, but instead a literal different perspective from the Chronicles one indicates that there’s some genuine thought being put into this stuff.
It’s tiring that even though they’re trying to cook up something interesting that can be engaged with beyond the surface level, there are plenty of people who are all too quick to assume that they’re incapable or unwilling of writing anything other than whatever “rule of cool” ideas come to their minds one day, and tossing it out the next.
Not to say that they don’t have a track record of these “rule of cool” “figure it out later” decisions, but they have had a pretty solid track-record of attempting to keep the story coherent and consistent for at least a few years now.
I have to agree with the others. The faction war was never any good, and players are kidding themselves if they think that Blizzard can make it compelling. Its the same stupid story that never changes, and I’m tired of Blizzard using it to bait fans against eachother for cheap drama and engagement. I’ll take a cosmic story any day of the week over that low-brow drivel.
If the sci-fi element of WoW bothers you, go back and play WC2 and WC3. Its always been there.
Arthas was never a compelling villain, and attempts to make him compelling have been mega-cringe.
Faction leaders being discount marvel heroes take the spotlight away from the player, and their engagement is stupid.
The Warrior’s class hall is a snoozefest for anyone who isn’t obsessed with Vikings. The genre is oversaturated.
Sorta Hot-Take:
The cosmic chart is mostly a mess and has simply raised more questions than it has satisfyingly answered. However, I do kind of like how arcane and fel magic are now objectively separate magics and thus can both be judged on their own merits.
In old lore, fel and arcane magic were basically the same thing. With fel magic just being supercharged arcane magic. It gave me the impression of this really dumb argument that PC warlocks could present that they were mages but objectively better. With the chart though, potential warlock/mage debates feel like both sides can argue from more equal footing.
Hot Take/Prediction: puts on tin-foil hat
The Arathi of Harrowsfall from the War Within are not completely isolated. They have been secretly sending agents and infiltrating the human kingdoms and outright maneuvering to take over the Scarlet Crusade. These infiltrators are the source of the absolutely crazy propaganda the Scarlet Brotherhood was producing. These infiltrators are not really familiar with the history of Azeroth and so have been producing somewhat random drek to try to sway people.
The previews show we will be fighting some paladins so it is reasonable to predict there may be an extremist sect of the Arathi that we will be fighting. This extremist sect wants to return to the human kingdoms and declare a second Arathorian Empire.
The Purge Of Dalaran was justified, and deserved.
Furthermore the Burning of Teldrassil and the destruction of Undercity was a terrible idea just as the faction war is. You are a fool if you think Blizzard can make a meaningful story out of the destructionof those cities, and missed the warning flag as destroying long-valued locations and people out of the blue are textbook signs you are dealing with a hack writer. In the tabletop community we call them “That Guy™” because its clear they are edgelords with zero respect for the setting.
To add on to this:
A 2-faction faction war is just very stupid. It’s unsustainable. It forces things to be siloed in ways that don’t make sense. It induces faction landsliding via network effects. And narratively it creates manichean dichotomies that have been the source of bad behavior between players for two decades now. These are things Blizzard and all of their copycats have had to face without anyone in leadership sitting there and going, “huh. Maybe Blizzard just got lucky here, and two-faction design is inherently bad.”
Realm versus Realm games typically have at least three primary sides because it allows the heat to come off one, lets people see a group from multiple perspectives. That goes both narratively and in play.
You want a faction war no one can win and provide an interesting story? You want three factions.
Raise your hand if you think Blizzard could reasonably add a third faction in this game at this point and have it have any success.
Simple, Elune is the brother of someone in the Light Pantheon, Musha.