Future of Dalaran and the Kirin Tor

With the events of the War Within’s latest patch, it looks like the role of the Kirin Tor is going to change.

For Mage and Kirin Tor roleplayers, how are you feeling about the new developments? To me it feels a bit odd that they aren’t seemingly going to rebuild Dalaran, and a bit of the flavour for mage’s has been lost for a dramatic set piece.

The idea though of spreading the Kirin Tor around the world seems quite fun. Every city could have a Kirin Tor enclave. As for Dalaran, having exposed the weaknesses of a floating city, I think it would be interesting to see it return to its original spot, if it ever gets re-built in the lore.

So, how do people feel about the future of everyone’s favourite purple towered city?

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While I understand why alot of people don’t agree with the decision, for me, I hope this is one way for Blizzard to shove the racial organisations to the forefront!

Small Dalaran enclaves in different cities sounds like a good idea, but I rather see the Silvermoon’ Magisters, Shen’dralar, Conjurer’s of Azeroth, Duskwatch, Arcanitals and the rest take on more roles for their respective races with the Kirin Tor uniting these many different factions when they do need an overal magical offensive(like against Elisande and the felborne) and a organisation to lead it.

Remove Jaina and Kalecgos from the leadership, though; they should be to busy to govern Kul Tiras and the Blue Dragons to also handle this. Instead make the Council of Six a fluid Council with only Aethas as a permanent member, and then the other 5 to be named whenever the Mage organisations band togather for an assignment again!

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What future? With the latest developments the Kirin Tor is a purely Alliance-aligned organization. As it was historically and logically. But the same developments rightfully place it outside any other racial or faction arcane tradition, and even further, associating with the Kirin Tor too closely would reek of colonization to anyone who is not an Alliance member. Either Khadgar did not see it coming or he didn’t care (and in fact, bringing the biggest arcane organization to odds with the rest of the world sounds like what Xal’atath would have done)…

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Yeah. There’s always a balance when it comes to class-based factions. You don’t want to overly homogenise (some of the Legion Order Halls suffer from this), and lose the differences between a Highborne Mage, a Human Mage or a Goblin Mage.

Your idea of the Kirin Tor as a sort of umbrella, which allows each races mage faction to take more of the spotlight sounds great! That would open the door for possible conflict too (not faction conflict) but squabbles over say, the proper use of magic. Rivalling academic institutions.

Dalaran becoming a human kingdom is another angle. Although a cosmopolitan one. Its one of those things where you wonder how the civilian population feel about being constantly put on the frontline as a floating fortress.

But I can’t see the Blood Elves or Nightborne tolerating having their magical practices dictated too by the Kirin Tor. It is an avenue for conflict which isn’t necessarily even along faction lines. Perhaps the Shen’dralar don’t want to share all of their hidden knowledge with some Dalaran Archmage.

I was a little disappointed that it was decided Dalaran would not be rebuilt and that the Kirin Tor will instead be a network of scholars interacting from afar (if I understood correctly). Though the questline was very touching, it does not only feel like we lost some flavour in mage RP and its options, but also ended an era.

WoW has been doing a lot of destroying in regards to cities lately without making up for it. Bel’ameth lacks the magnitude of Darnassus, Undercity is closed off and the ruins above are not at all functional as a city, now Dalaran, a city so important, always enduring and the capital of two brilliant expansions, is gone.

It was a brilliantly established in the lore neutral capital that will be greatly missed and will leave a gap behind, both in regards to mage RP/fantasy, as well as the world at large a great gap which I doubt will easily close.

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That too is also problematic if we take Jaina’s words of protecting the Alliance and then Khadgar agreeing as safe-guarding the Alliance and its interests alone, especially after the wounds of MoP had closed in Legion - and even as Aethas’ contributions are recognized in TWW. But exactly because Aethas was suggested for an important role within the Kirin Tor, it may be that the Kirin Tor neutrality (at least in paper) will continue.

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Must feel odd for all the working Kirin Tor roleplayers to only now learn information that might’ve greatly impacted their RP this whole time. I hope everyone finds some kind of solution :flushed:

Ngl, I feel like this is pretty easily incorporated into a Kirin Tor-character no matter what he was RPing for(rebuilding, or what other future, have you) just say that the higher echelons decided on a different future for the order?

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I’m more referring to the heavy implication that the Kirin Tor wasn’t working as an unified order at all during TWW until this point, among other things

My mage celebrates the end of the Kirin Tor as a corrupt organisation. She mourns it had to take that many people to die for them to change.

It has always been depicted that way in the lore, but it wasn’t the focus of quests concerning the Kirin Tor in-game because dealing with the corrupt bureaucratic policies wasn’t interesting, which created this warped image. They reference it in-game still in side quests, with Khadgar mentioning in Legion his failure to rein it in, but the WoW twitter page ran a poll that showed only 17% of the playerbase actively reads quest texts — to speak nothing of optional side content.

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Shoves the Stormwind mages in there

Always have been there, always not been Kirin Tor, Stormwind mages were also clearly not Kirin Tor during Classic.

Bring back the Stormwind Conjurers.

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Wait, whaaaat? I never realised they weren’t a unified order? I assumed the factions within the Kingdoms, like the Sunreavers, Silver Covenant(and the Gilneans and Forsaken after them) and the Tirisgarde worked independently, only working together when “ordered” to by the Kirin Tor, but I always assumed all members of the Kirin Tor worked in a hierachical structure, with the Council of Six(or other higher echelons) being up to date on almost everything(a few example left aside like Kel’thuzad’s side gig in Necromancy and the torture in the Borean Tundra)

Like I said above, I hope this will give racial orders like the Conjurers of Stormwind to shine more! Hell, this could be a great time to re-establish the Order since its destruction during the First War!

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Oh, no, Kirin Tor itself was Corruption Inc. with The Last Guardian talking about how they spent centuries getting more and more concerned with learning how to navigate politics (both internal and external i.e. the Northern Kingdoms because of their generational plan to gain monopoly over northern mages by installing Kirin Tor-loyal court wizards across Gilneas, Lordaeron, Stromgarde and Alterac — they never had a foothold in Kul Tiras or Stormwind) than with actual magical advancement and research. One’s standing with the mage senate became the end all of a Kirin Tor mage’s career and everything else was secondary in pursuit of political power — even magical power.

That’s without even touching on the actually harmful teachings of the Kirin Tor concerning the nature of magic which Medivh strongly disagreed with.

Day of the Dragon, Path to Damnation also touch on it. Kirin Tor knew about Kel’Thuzad’s necromancy and only acted on it when it became a political liability if he were to be discovered — and the Kirin Tor’s covering of it with him. Yet ironically the only reason Kel’Thuzad did it was because he grew disillusioned with the politics and yearned to make waves with his research to inspire Kirin Tor to return to its roots.

Khadgar largely agreed that the Kirin Tor sucks on a systematic level, but unlike Medivh, he had faith that it can be fixed instead of doomposting about it. And the time to fix it was after Third War, but Khadgar wasn’t there to carry out the plan. When he finally joined the Council of Six in Legion, he mentions in a side quest that the Kirin Tor is still plagued with politics and in-fighting and he’s doing his best to end it, but it’s an up hill battle.

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It could be blamed on me not being a native speaker, but in my case I meant “unified” as in that the members operate under the same orders and interests. Expeditions and what not, like we’ve seen in previous expansions. I’m still learning though and it’s all super interesting!

My understanding is that the Kirin Tor was a unitary body, but rife with factionalism. Prior to Mists of Pandaria, both the Silver Covenant and Sunreavers were part of the Kirin Tor, but couldn’t be said to be working really for a shared interest. A Kirin Tor, riven by factions, self-interest, and plotting. Sounds like quite the fun angle really, especially if they go ahead with Kirin Tor interests in different cities and amongst the different nations.

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Everything wrong with the Kirin Tor ultimately spawned from the mage senate. Without it they might become a good organisation going forward, depending on how they reform themselves.

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The story frankly felt like garbage to me and is extremely difficult to meaningfuly incorporate into RP because of how it tried to go for some big Kirin Tor epiphany where they decide to do better after loss of Dalaran even though there is absolutely nothing about loss of Dalaran that should create those feelings (except for rethinking their position on accepting back Archmages that were thought to be dead for 2 decades). We´re talking about a city that teleported itself into the middle of 2 most dangerous wars (and if it weren´t for technical limitations, would have been in the skies above Orgrimmar in 5.4) and was able to withstand assaults from blue dragons and the Burning Legion armadas.

The fall of Dalaran wasn´t due to some politicking or biting off more than they could chew when it comes to meddling with local conflicts. It was the result of Kirin Tor bravely moving their city in defense of Azeroth for the third time and finally meeting an enemy that was able to bring it down.

At least it lead to funny situation where reaction of Kirin Tor characters after RPing out finding out about the decision of the leaders could be summed up as: “This is bull :poop:

Another aspect why the questline left a sour taste in my mouth is because it makes it seem as if fall of Dalaran wasn´t meant to be THE big event that starts off World Soul Saga and has repercussions and narrative follow-up in the coming expansions, but rather that it was simply a big shocking moment to make War Within start off with a bang. I wonder if in original Danuser´s version of the expansion Dalaran was even meant to be involved and if it wasn´t one of the things Metzen added in his goal to make the expansion look a bit more important compared to what was apparently just another ordinary expansion about cosmic stuff that Steve was cooking.

The other problem is overall dire state of neutral organizations when it comes to lore due to the peace between factions. In ye olde days, groups like Argent Crusade, Cenarion Circle or Kirin Tor were important because in a world focused on fighting each other, they provided an interesting dynamic of people who focused on the bigger threat despite the differences they had (with Kirin Tor adding another interesting dynamic to it of having sub-factions that belonged to Alliance and Horde, while also being more tied to the Alliance as a whole). Nowadays, these neutral factions need a strong identity to keep them interesting, otherwise what really is the point of joining them?

It´s one thing to destroy the base of a neutral organization. If anything, this can lead to (and has lead in RP) interesting stories for those who were part of it. However, with this change, we´re looking at effective dissolution of Kirin Tor outside of a role as just some neutral teachers, losing a big part of their identity. Frankly, I don´t see why anyone would want to join the Kirin Tor now because you´re no longer going to get prime access to the best magical education and libraries you can get, or the ability to be within a city of mages where you´re not going to be persecuted by farmer Joe who thinks you cursed his crops (I mean, you did, but he deserved it). You´re going to be just another mage doing the same things you could be doing as a mage representing your local magical authority/venturing out on your own, except without the authority of being part of the local institutions.

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Me or my character?

I myself have good memories of RP in Dalaran and am sad to see such a thriving RP hub, for both mage RP and neutral social RP, gone. There’s really no good replacement.

Lintian is devastated by the destruction of Dalaran, which she considered a city of progress and enlightenment and which was her home for six years before she moved to Bel’ameth.

And when Lintian learns about the decision not to rebuild Dalaran and to decentralize the Kirin Tor, she’s going to be livid. “Really? That’s it? We’re just giving up?”

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The amount of neutral organisations is a problem in and off itself anyways, especially with the amount of overlap they have and the spotlight they steal away from the more racial-orientated organisations…

If they had decided to keep Dalaran and the Kirin Tor around, I would’ve hoped they made and kept it an Alliance-only city and organisations finally, if only to give Suramar and Silvermoon their time in the spotlight as other the great magical City-states, but since that was never going to happen, and to be able to include more diverse racial organisations beside those two, Dalaran and the Kirin Tor had to go.

And I hope the Cenarion Circle and/or the Earthen Ring is next.

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It’s been a problem long before the peace was even in place, with all the order halls. Every single one of them represented but a single aspect of the respectful class, while completely overlooking all the other ideas. It was bad back then, it’s worse now with the peace at hand. I agree, they should take spotlight or fade into history.