The other Vulpera will not forgive you. Agreeing with Moltensage should not be a sin. But here you are.
Ashamane was a Feral Druid…But was killed by the demons of the Burning Legion. Hence not a god. Wild gods is just a term, but they are not much different to Loa.
Loa is a different name for Wild God.
Correction. There are differences between Loa and Wild gods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnNNCXndjCM&ab_channel=WorldofWarcraft
Loa have a symbiotic / parasitic relationship.
They feed on faith - worship - prayers. Forgotten Loa or those with small following’s are weak Loa.
Wild gods are separate entities independent of faith - worship - prayers. Wild gods are almost exclusively connected to Druidism and Nature.
Loa can be spawned of anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4QvAh_uxz8&ab_channel=ThePodcastoftheLotusEaters
Jani the Saurid is the Loa of junk. It’s weakness means someone worships - prays to - has faith in it.
One can become a Loa as Bwonsamdi himself was once a regular Troll. But wild gods are born / created. One can never become a wild god.
Strong enough Loa can effect the real world. Like when Sethraliss of the Sethrak people died her loss terraformed Voldun turning it into the barren desert it is now. Her restoration could return Voldun back to a fertile jungle.
Rumours of Voljin of the Darkspear returning as a Loa once he fed on the anima of the dying Rezan. Could lead to Horde shenanigans if true.
Loa can be depowered. The Drakkari done so in Northrend where they fed on their gods. Prophet Zhul used the secrets of the Drakkari to remove Rezan as an obstacle with the Zandalari Troll’s civil war.
Wild gods can not be depowered. Only prevent their reincarnation through anima deprivation.
“All Wild gods are called Loa by the trolls, but not all Loa are Wild gods. The Loa spirits such as Bwonsamdi and other various loa resembling spirits of trolls have no connection to the Wild gods or the Emerald Dream. They are in fact, ancient and powerful troll ancestors that now live in the Shadow Lands. Not all trolls that die become Loa. What makes a troll spirit a loa is a mystery, though it is speculated that it has something to do with the amount and type of magics they acquired during life.”
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Loa#:~:text=All%20Wild%20gods%20are%20called,live%20in%20the%20Shadow%20Lands.
According to this, everything except the troll looking ones like Bobsalami and Mueh’zala are wild gods.
That does not actually make sense or add up.
https://www.wowhead.com/news/the-cosmic-forces-cosmology-chart-in-color-316394?page=2#screenshots:316394:8
Wild gods are fundementally tied to / connected to Life and nature.
Loa are something different. For there to be a Wild god of death is as nonsensical as a Naaru powered by Druidism or Elementals.
Kings and Monarchs represent order. So Rezan is closer to Order than anything else. With enough faith - prayers - worship there could be Fel Loa, Just as Bwonsamedi is the Loa of death. There could be a Loa of anything.
Shadowlands teaches that upon death mortal races brings Anima to the Shadowlands with us. Some carrying more than others. So it stands to reason that faith - prayers - worship are another power source that Loa have found ways of tapping into or feeding off of.
Death and Destruction is connected to Order in itself. Part of death and rebirth / creation and destruction kind of thing.
Which is why Druidism itself is connected to both life and death. As they have expanded on this with the Drust.
But there are other sources of Death and Undeath outside of Druidism and Nature. Just as there are other sources of life outside of Nature like the Curse of flesh that effected the Titan constructs.
Nature itself is not specifically tied to Druidism as the Elementals whilst being more chaotic in nature are itself very much a part of nature.
The Scourge Undeath is technically connected to the Fel as a creation of the Demons of the Burning Legion.
The chart itself is not entirely accurate as Death is something that is separate to Undeath. The Undead are part of disorder or chaos. During Voljins quest to learn who told Voljin to name Sylvannas as Warchief. They went to different keepers of the dead.
Despite not resembling Trolls there are Loa that are still Loa. Just take different forms.
Loa are not the same as Wild gods.
That got retconned in SL.
This is the new one
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Plane?file=Grimoire_of_the_Shadowlands_-_Cosmology.jpg
If what you said is true. Endless retcons makes it pointless to follow the lore.
What is the point? Since they are just going to retcon anything and everything anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpxyRu1qx4U&ab_channel=Nobbel87
Creation itself was the reaction between the Light and the Void. Now it is whatever they decide in the moment as they throw things against the wall and see what sticks.
Seems that fans and players care more about WoW lore than Blizzard Devs and writing teams.
This is almost as bad as the female Custodes retcon of Warhammer 40k.
Shadowlands done so much damage to WoW that it might be impossible to course correct.
That has been my point ever since SL.
It is in the twilight zone where anything is cannon.
They might as well make the Murloc timeline cannon. Where Murlocs rule everything. That would make more sense than whatever this is.
Maybe once. But now, with a second kid on the way, there’s no escaping real life.
Welcome to World of Warcraft Roleplay!!!
On that note, I think the only real way to prevent it from happening in the first place is to start introducing laws intended to preserve the integrity of an established setting.
It is often brushed off as ‘extreme’ and yet it makes quite a lot of sense. Firstly, in my country there are laws intended to prevent historical buildings from being demolished or changed to the point where the original architecture is lost.
I would like to see the same thing occur with video games. A lot of their success actually comes down to creating an immersive and memorable world. Yet grifters and tourists alike demand changes that take away from the world-building, tone and aesthetics to the point where it often becomes something completely different.
We already see people applying laws to force changes to be made in the name of ‘representation’. A focus on preserving established world-building and lore would mitigate that.
The other benefit is that the people wishing to hijack established settings and effectively risk killing them completely would not be able to do as much, instead having to make their own settings - which rarely seem to take off, if games like Forspoken are any indication.
It’s too late for franchises such as Dragon Age which are now very far removed from their core tone, premise and aesthetics but given the backlash I am not expecting it to be a massive success.
It is not roleplay. You just have to draw a line in the sand.
For example: Ghostbusters 2016 was such a failure that it was OFFICIALLY not canon. The actresses cried Ists and Isms but that did not change things.
Amy Henning former writer and director was the creative vision of Naughty Dog that brought Uncharted 1 - 3 and The Last of Us 1. Was booted out because she refused to bow to Neil Druckmann who is a believer in Sarkeesians brand of f3m1n1$m.
The Last of Us 2 was such a failure that for so many people. The Last of Us 2 is not canon is the stance taken.
So. This Disney Era Star Wars “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to” approach to destroying the lore of the World of Warcraft. Is. Just. Not. Canon.
Otherwise nonsensical things like Leia Organa flying through the vacuum of space like a Kryptonian. Means Force users can fly now. Is canon.
or in the Acolyte you can have a fire burning in the vacuum of space is now canon.
or Female Custodes, “Since the first 10000 there has always been female Custodes”. Almost 40 years of lore and merchandise disproves this. That it’s a very recent retcon.
If lore does not matter then nothing matters.
Why not retcon everything? The Nethraziem are the children of the Gnomes and just want their Gnome parents to love them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMi2b6U3ouA&ab_channel=Doronsmovies
Rumour has Blizzard at least acknowledge they made mistakes with Shadowlands. Time would tell if they continue with their mistakes.
Good luck with that in digital media.
Just look at the comic book industry. They have retconned 60+ years (and in some cases even more) of stories. They have deluded so many brands (character) because of race/gender/sexuality swaps. How many spider-men are running around in Marvel comics tight now? 10? 20? You know its bad when the title of your comic needs to specify which version of the character you are buying.
Books that used to sell in the hundreds of thousands are barely hitting 10k now, and that again is only because of brand recognition alone.
Hell even in the early 2000s something bellow 10k sales was considered cancelable, now 1000 is a huge success, enough to get you 7 reboots and 10 spin-offs.
Dead industry.
You touch on something larger. Activists are murdering multi billion $$$ industries.
For example: Victoria Alonso former president of physical and post-production, visual effects, and animation at Marvel Studios.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b1WTTwC_E8&ab_channel=AustinVerse
She declared that because X-men was call MEN that it was “outdated” and had to be changed. For context the first issue of X-Men came out in 1963. A generation is 20 years. 61 years of brand recognition was ignored. They renamed it “The Mutants” NOBODY had any idea what that was. So they had to go back to X-MEN which always had women from the beginning.
X-Men as it is now is dead. Now they are turning Wolverine and Cyclops in a same gender romance with each other.
Gotham High was another of many examples. Alfred is same gender romance person - Martha Wayne is the “real” wealth behind the Wayne family - Bruce was Chinese and in a love triangle against the joker for Catwoman.
Other peoples successes is what parasites have latched themselves to. Knowing their stories will not succeed. Hence they hijack intellectual property after intellectual property.
Before the rise of Wokeness. These old comics still outsell current mainstream comics. Including the big 3. Superman - Wonder Woman - Batman.
Female Thor has in the comic “That’s for saying “feminist” like it’s a four letter word, creep.”
When Western audiences flee to Manga and Anime. The activists try to ruin that as well with the Wokelizers = Woke Localisers. Meant to translate content for Western Audiences but they make things Woke and not make accurate translations of the comics. Then got mad that ai translators done the job they refused to do.
Spiderman is dead. Peter Parker is Spiderman. No matter how often they tear him down nothing would change this.
New Ultimate Spiderman had some rare success though. Where Peter Parker had a wife and family with normal Mary Jane. That actually sold so you saw fans - paying customers - content consumers voted with their money.
To say the quiet part out loud. DEI and ESG are developing their own negative stereotypes on demographics of people.
To explain.
Dragon Age Veilguard Trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F3N4Lxw4_Y&ab_channel=DragonAge
Time stamp 0:21
The War Within Announcement cinematic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBBEt8gfXks&ab_channel=WorldofWarcraft
Timestamp 1:59
In both trailers the Black Woman is portrayed as both masculine and disabled.
Feminine able bodied Black Women actually exist and are not difficult to find.
Sheva Alomar of Resident Evil franchise / Orchid of Killer Instincts / Elena of Street Fighter and more are examples of this. But are Black Women the scapegoat for DEI and ESG?
The one arm half elf is going to borrow the name Lothar. Probably to try and make her relevant.
Another major problem. That Amazon’s Rings of Power pushed the first dominos and caused a chain of events.
Diversified Elves. Elves throughout fantasy settings are not supposed to “represent” humans in anyway. But now there are more human resembling Elves becoming common place. Just pointy eared humans at this point.
0:40 timestamp of the Dragon Age clip. Chinese Elf. 0:52. Black Elf.
Elves are not humans. At least with Elder Scrolls the Dark Elves = Dunmer / Wood Elves = Bosmer / High Elves = Altmer. There are zero reminders of humanity and a true fantasy race.
To tie this back to the thread. It becomes increasingly more difficult to “escape real life” with constant reminders of the real world within what is SUPPOSED to be fantasy.
“Representation” is simply the Trojan horse to invade and subvert the intellectual property.
Let the Elves be Elvish.
I think they are still going to call the movie that instead of “X-men”.
Idk about that, last time I read them it was that they were in a polyamorous relationship with Jean Grey.
Also the X-men have always been “woke” or “progressive”. The whole point of the comic was that it was an allegory for marginalized people, it was up to the reader to decide if that meant sexuality/race/etc. One of the best X-men runs was a heavy critique on overzealous christians. What killed it was incompetent writers that decided that an allegory was not enough and they had to put blunt messaging on top of it, for example Ice-mans mother saying something like “I can live with the fact you are a mutant, but now you have to be gay on top of that!!!” (literally wtf). Literally the writer who wrote that said in an interview that he wrote that because that is pretty much how his mother reacted to him being gay.
Also that whole “House of X” thing where Xavier basically becomes a villain and the x-men “conquer” death by non-stop cloning themselves after they die, further deluded the brand. You are no longer reading the story of Cyclops or Gambit you are reading the story of the clones of Cyclops and Gambit. Oh yeah Nightcrawler is no longer christian because reasons.
Was an else world story written by YA author. The real damage to Batman was during the Tom King run where Batman was degraded to a useless incompetent vigilante that was doing more harm than good and constantly needed to be saved by someone, more likely than not that someone was Catwoman who was now bisexual, and culminated in Batman being left at the altar by… you guessed it Catwoman (also I would like to point out that either a month after or earlier we had Collosus being left at the altar by Kittie Pride).
You have no idea how right you are about Spider-man being dead. Peter Parker died when Doctor Octopus brain swapped him and left him in a dying body. The Spider-man running now is just a recording of Peter Parkers memories and personality downloaded into that body.
Tbf Mile Morales did have success also after Ultimate peter Parker died, however that changed after they moved Miles to the 616 (main timeline) and decided to focus on him by A) Having Doctor Octopus be Spider-man and B) After AI Peter Parker was downloaded into the body of Spider-man, they turned him into a discount Tony Stark by giving him a multi-billion dollar comapanny (which Doc Ock buyld and peter ended up running into the ground by I digress) which kept him away from NY, because Miles was the new NY Spider-man not Peter.
Speaking of that, they ofc had a divorce. And once after so many years of the fans complaining it looked like Marvel listened and they were going to get Peter and Mary-jane back together… nope some weird dimension opened up and trapped them both, Peter obviously escaped but left her there and by the time he was able to get her out she already had married some random nobody and had his kids, also she was way older than Peter because time worked differently there… I mean I know comics have always been crazy/silly but the amount of bile Spider-man has had this past decade is just… I seriously believe that Marvel hate this character.
PS I guess Daredevil is still fine.
PS2 Sorry for rant but talking comics always makes me angry
Instead of competing for Jean Grey they had Wolverine and Cyclops date each other instead.
It was never about having good stories it was always about activism.
For example: I tried to get into The Walking Dead World Beyond. But THE MESSAGE was as subtle as a sledgehammer.
Felix Carlucchi in the first few episodes. Despite the world now having zombies his dad was portrayed as bad for not accepting his sons orientation, His dad ended up a zombie anyway.
Things like that destroy immersion as they remove the audience from it as they are preached at. THE MESSAGE that even in a post apocalyptic world some people don’t accept others orientations and this is bad. Who cares?!! trying to not end up a zombie.
I had to drop alphabet converted Ice Man. As they completely ruined his character going forward with the focus being on orientation. Changing him to an Omega level mutant out of no where did not make him interesting.
X-23 I genuinely liked. But dropped her as they pushed her to be Girlvarine = Female Wolverine. She had potential, even made into Marvel VS Capcom games. Despite being a clone of Logan she was her own character.
That is a religious demographic that is “okay” to target in the West is why.
The Batgirl tv show on CW Network also torn down Batman as not only someone that gave up. Anyone that knows Batman understands he never gives up. EVER. But turned him into a Victor Zsasz like character that loves killing.
Warner Bros prevented the $90 million Batgirl movie fearing irreparable damage to the Batman IP.
It is a common trope of activists. Destroy the original character thinking that with no options left audiences will like their version. Like She Hulk attorney at law (failed show) somehow due to “catcalling” and such is better at controlling her rage than Bruce Banner.
Nope. They turned him into a b00ty call for She Hulk trying to save the tv show. But she was banging her way across town in that show.
Western comics is dying. But audiences really taking to Rippaverse stuff.
Activists will only ever double down. Despite the sales. They see the comic stores themselves as their customers. But comic store owners can not sell the Woke stuff as nobody buys them.
Brand recognition matters. Nobody knows what the Mutants are. They will almost always say something like: Oh so you mean the X-Men?