So let me start this long winded rant off with a TLDR;
Lore don’t make no god damn sense.
Okay; so way back in WC3 when Ner’zhul the lich king, takes control of Arthas; we are told to believe that Ner’zhul this entire time was working with the jailer? Why? To weaken Azeroth thus bringing everybody together against the legion.
Zovaal(the jailer himself) turns out not to be a devil-like hell thanos; but a robot automa made and empowered by “The First Ones”
The First Ones - Apparently created everything that exists in all of reality so they are even more powerful than the void lords and old gods because they created the void lords who created the old gods…yet we know next to nothing about them other than that they are “The First Ones”
This means that a robot created by a old god(not an actual old god) that predates Azeroth waaaay before the war of the ancients created the Lich King which embodied Ner’zhul and than Arthas? WC3/WOTLK is basically just about minions of a robot in hell who wants to strengthen the cosmos for a coming conflict. Man. Thats terrible writing.
IDK whats going on anymore. I always assumed the final big bad would be the void lords after Legion, but now its blown wide open. Thanos was a weak mob like automa with a P2W skin on and apparently he was responsible for everything that ever happened outside of Sargeras who at this point it seems was working with Zovaal?
The Legion and The Lich King working together to cause the cosmos to produce heros for a coming conflict?
MAKE IT MAKE SENSE MAN I DONT GET IT.
EDIT 1: Also now that we have all this new lore on “The First Ones” and that they created literally all of reality how do you guys think they are gonna follow up on that? Especially given they are releasing Dragon Isles (the expansion we wanted back in the day)
My man I dont think they thought of that when they destroyed the Helm of Domination. That said; since DF is based on Azeroth. Im hoping that problem gets answered as a catch up raid or zone event mid expansion.
I remember thinking I’d like to check out WoW lore once, then realized you can’t play the game to get the story. They want you to read books and comics and whatever else.
This story will never make sense to me, but thankfully I can skip most cut scenes and quest text.
The little cinematic they throw in here and there is cool though.
They threw out the old lore and soft-rebooted the universe. All you need to know now is everything they tell you in SL and expansions going forward.
Also, never buy a book from them(like the chronicle). They will just retcon it out of existence in two or three expansions.
As a side note, I have to say the First one stuff is horrible. Just terrible, pseudo-intellectual BS. Also, it doesn’t even look cool. They do all this, butcher the lore for this, and then produce something that looks like a cheap crappy knock off brand toy from Big lots or dollar store.
I dont mind the First Ones. Out of all the SL lore they are the one thing that makes sense. Theyre basically god; the grand creators. That said; having a robot made by them retcon basically all of WC3 and Frozen Throne/WOTLK lore; was the dumbest mistake. Now Ner’zhul is just a puppet and Arthas is a puppet of a puppets puppet.
Not really dumb, just poorly implemented, and the pain point is Zovaal himself as a character. Make it Primus or Denathrius? Yeah I could absolutely believe Denathrius could scheme a centuries long plot like that up, to a lesser degree even the Primus makes slightly more sense for the role, but Zovaal? Zovaal has no accolades to back this claim… nothing strikes me as “clever” or “Scheming” about him at all… us and everyone else making dumb mistakes and Zovaal capitalizing on them does not make him “smarter”, it just makes everyone else look dumber.
Negative, the universe was originally made by the Light and Shadow clashing against each other. We don’t know how powerful these First Ones were, just that they built a lot of stuff.
Good, having a predictable story is bad too.
Definitely not weak since we had to use the power of the most powerful Titan to exist to beat him, along with gear made from a forge of the First Ones (the creation catalyst tier gear). It’s not so much he was responsible for everything, more that he cast 10,000 lines out and we see the one that worked and not the 9,999 that failed, as well as his plans being vague enough to allow room to maneuver and change. Sargeras likely doesn’t know of Zovaal’s existence, Zovaal saw Sargeras as predictable and used that to his advantage.
In Grimoire of Shadowlands and Beyond; it states that the First Ones created Light, Void, Order, Disorder, Life, and Death. You might of missed that one.
Which was worse in your opinion? SL or BFA? I found BFA content wise to be garbage outside of raiding. The writing in BFA was much better though. Which says a lot considering everybody hated its writing when it was current.
People are so hung up on robots. If you’re going to dismiss every construct as a robot, you’re setting yourself up to be disappointed. Too many are taking a totally anthropocentric view of the lore and acting as if non-biological life was unusual or inferior, when it actually dominates much of the cosmic timeline.
My theory has always been that Zovaal was once noble and fair when he was the Arbiter. During that time, seeing souls enter the Shadowlands, he was alerted to some sort of threat in the cosmos (unknown, maybe Void related?), and he felt he needed to take matters in his own hands to correct it.
But the other Eternal Ones only saw him as overstepping his bounds and disobeying his duties as set by the First Ones. The Primus created and used Domination magic upon him. It was a new magic and its effects were not totally understood. During his thousands of years in the Maw, he became corrupted by it, but also powerful.
While his actions may have once been out of genuine concern and care for the cosmos, Domination magic twisted his mind, corrupted his cause, and he began using it to twist the minds of others, including the Lich King(s), to carry out his will, which was now not just correcting the cosmos from some threat, but creating a cosmos where he dominates all.
