Future of Dalaran and the Kirin Tor

Honestly, I thought we were past Blizzard’s “blowing up cities for shock value” after BfA. In this instance, all it really generated was the general consensus that the lead writers do not understand what Dalaran is (A nation? A city? A secret order of mages? Jaina Proudmoore?)

From WC2 to now, reducing the whole thing to a vague non entity feels lame and shrinks the world of Azeroth a bit more. Not to mention the continued anachronism and confusion of how many versions of Dalaran there are (Wrath Dalaran, Legion Dalaran, Destroyed Dalaran (not to be mixed up with the Dalaran Crater)).

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I will say that I think there is more of a purpose to the cities we’ve seen destroyed than shock value. I’m probably missing a few but the ones that come to mind for me personally are Gilneas, Theramore, Teldrassil and Dalaran.

Gilneas isn’t really a shock I don’t think - it’s revealed and soon after it’s reveal it’s a dead zone for several expacs and the whole reclamation thing was kind of in the back of everyone’s mind for that whole time (and eventually got it’s payoff in Dragonflight)

Theramore set in motion an interesting character arc for Jaina that unfortunately Blizzard fumbled, but narratively I think it does serve the point of showing how far Garrosh fell in terms of morality, going from “hey don’t blow up that tree full of druids” to “hey let’s manabomb this city”.

Teldrassil and Undercity (but honestly mostly Teldrassil, sorry undead fans) were the catalyst to kick off BFA, and Teldrassil specifically was a starting point for Tyrande’s arc (which again maybe got fumbled a little) as well as a pretty significant plot in Shadowlands.

And Dalaran’s destruction I think was necessary for Xal’atath - she’s been a background presence for a while, but as a villain she never really did anything, just possess someone’s corpse after being freed from the dagger so I think she did need to do something big to establish herself as the main villain of not only this expac, but probably future ones also. There was definitely some idiot plot moments to get Xal to do that - nobody questioning why Dendran was suddenly there, going along with his plan outright - but I think if they’d done some better writing (just make it literally any other archmage that was already present in Dalaran, and say that said archmage was delayed off-screen and the idiot plot largely resolves itself) it would’ve done the job better.

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She never did anything because the writers never got her to do anything which then causes writer panic and they consistently default to Big and Shocking ™ instead of good writing to begin with. You can have your villains create horrific and shocking but more importantly meaningful moments without removing huge chunks of your world. A great example is Ilberd from FF14.

Dalaran’s destruction doesn’t have any meaning behind it other than what you mentioned.

“Man, Xal hasn’t really done anything. What if…

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The problem is that such developments are supposed to affect more than main cast, and that’s where Blizz fail regularly. Gilneans were introduced with a massive, justified beef towards the Forsaken, okay, but when the night elves’ view of the world suddenly shrinks to “Vengeance for Teldrassil!” without any presented attempts to live on aside from that (BfA hardly mentioned either Ashenvale or Feralas, with established towns and military bases) or any resolution at the end of the war that’s stated in the game, it’s not how a race, or a people, should be treated. Same as the Undercity, its loss was hardly noticed by the non-undead (where’s the long-coveted Silverpine/Hillsbrad warfront…), it took most of the Tirisfal out of the playable zones due to the phasing, and then it just got restored as it was (with the phasing still unfortunately present over an expansion after the cleansing). As of Dalaran, it’s both gone and there’s nothing rising up in its stead. We don’t see Aethas pondering the inevitable loyalty conflict of the needs of the Kirin Tor and his Magisters, no one explains how can a Lord Admiral also command the (formerly) biggest neutral arcane organization of the world and not use the influence for the benefits of herself and the Alliance in general, and in this wake it just formed another hole in the world-building.

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She was more interesting as a mysterious, eldritch dagger that symbolised a final artifact of a bygone age that didn’t exist in sight nor writing tbh.

As much as people can turn on cope machines and claim that she’s at least a ‘known’ villain whose ‘been around’ she…has absolutely no attachment to anyone who wasn’t a Shadow Priest in Legion (a good 85% of the playerbase) and of that 85% we know from twitter polls of a few thousand players that only around 18% even bothered to read quest text, never mind going out of the way to read Xal’atath’s whispers to Shadow Priest players. This isn’t even including the whole mess of her BfA existence which is a schrodingers situation because it relies on the Horde Player Character presumably taking every deliberately evil option in the questing experience (which we know can’t be the case because they canonically seem to side with Saurfang’s rebellion). To make matters even more complex, the whole BfA questing experience with Xal’atath doesn’t even exist anymore.

Turning her into Purple Foot Elf whose goals are essentially the exact same as the Jailer but this time her infinite army is dimensius’ respawning void monsters, her target is Alleria (instead of Anduin) and her way of claiming the Prime Worldsoul to remake the universe in her image is using Void Magic instead of First One’s Magic I feel personally has not really done anything for her appeal.

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Keep it that way sure. Or have her more involved without losing the intrigue. Not having her associated with the void elves for example is huge blunder if you ask me. There could have been tons of opportunities to flesh out their faction and Xal at the same time.

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Tbh if there was a city that made sense for an aspiring big bad to destroy, it’d be Dalaran, given how it’s been at the forefront of two major events already, going in three, one of them in the expansion Xalatath was at least relevant in. They wanted to set the stakes, and I agree they didn’t dwell on the consequences of its destruction long enough, or really even showed too much of a plan, but I wouldn’t consider this to be just for shock value.

I’d like to add to the above that Xal’atath would not have half the importance she does not (and especially for an entire saga) had she nod done something as big as bring ruin to an entire city.

In that sense it was a necessity from a story point of view (or at least it’s how I see it).

You can sum it up by being another example for the https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWorfEffect which in this case removes a hub for roleplayers.

Quoting for those who don’t wanna open the link:

Want a quick way to show how dangerous one of your unknown characters is? Simple, make them do well or win in a fight with a character that the audience already knows is tough. This establishes them as willing to fight and marks them as sufficiently dangerous.

When used sparingly and appropriately, this is a powerful way to establish said villain as a serious and credible threat, leaving the audience thinking, “Wow, they just beat up Worf! They must be bad news!”

Which was immediately invalidated when the characters she fought all survived… Even the one who supposedly died.

Blizzard needs to remember how to kill off their characters in meaningful ways :skull:
Imo, it takes away half the tension when we know things will work out just fine.

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Launch patch spoilers but still spoiling just in case

I will say to Blizzard’s credit with Khadgar, he’s not exactly “fine” - he’s alive, but he’s lost Atiesh which is him getting smacked with the nerf-bat, and he is currently stuck in a wheelchair and it remains to be seen if he’s going to recover by the end of the expac, if at all. It would’ve been a bolder move for Blizz to kill him outright and there’s a part of me that wishes they had - really cement the whole “end of an era” with Dalaran and the Guardian of Tirisfal going down together - but if they had to keep him alive for whatever reason, I’m glad he’s not just instantly back on his feet fighting as if nothing happened.

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If they didn’t kill Khadgar outright, it would’ve been more reasonable to heal him though the same methods the PCs possess. Even assuming no one thought to call a bronze dracthyr or a dragon to just rewind the wounds off, the great amount of paladins, priests and such present (with an occasional Ren’dorei to clear off the residual corruption) along with the technologies of goblins, gnomes and draenei should have been enough to put him on his feet even if Atiesh was broken.

A lot of people seem to draw some sort of inevitability between the city’s destruction at the hands of Xal due to her narrative lethargy. Xalatath destroying Dalaran is not necessary to bring her agency in the same way that crashing a car through your neighbours fence is not necessary to get home faster, but it is certainly an option if you’re either a sociopath or a really crappy driver.

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This is the bigger issue here, it falls a bit flat cuz all the ones that did matter made it out in the end. It’s much like how they claim the majority of the Kirin tor perished in the crash/assault – the cast that you always interact with anyway survived, so it doesn’t really feel like it did much of anything.

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Except Gallywix. I’d be just as happy for him to comically choke on a peanut. Happier, even, than dying in some epic stand-off.

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It does stagger me a little when people are talking about the Villain-ification of Gallywix.

Maybe they did some deep and meaningful work in Yet Another Not In Game Novel, I neither know nor care; his death from the Goblin starter area is LONG overdue…

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If you just take him as he is from Cata and the game he is a downright, objectively evil slaver who deserves no mercy or justice.

If you read some of the WoW books/external writings he does get more characterisation beyond being a Capitalist Despot but unfortunately its reserved to a brief, few short stories that essentially paint him as another victim of Goblin society as a whole. He’s been socialised into this way of life, of belief (and he started off as a worker at the very bottom of the food chain, mind) and he does try to run a tight ship and show empathy for his workers, but ultimately if he didn’t work them as hard as he did then Goblin society would chew them all up and spit all of them, Gallywix included, back out, even more destitute than they already are.

Essentially condemning them all to economic death because that’s just how Goblin society is. But it seems Undermine is making it more a symptom rather than an intended, millenia-long socialisation process which is…unfortunate.

Edit: I am personally not against external literature for WoW and in many ways it is understandably necessary - most people aren’t going to read it even if it were in game. More stories is almost always a good thing, provided they add substance and characterisation to the world and the people within it.

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Devs who don’t even try and put pretty core Key Character story beats in-game are Cowards and Im no longer going to pretend I think otherwise.

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Also he acts like the cruel Capitalist Despot to give the Cartel a public face to hate and a name to curse instead of directing that energy towards breaking down the system itself. “It’s all Gallywix’s fault!” the grieving widow of another workplace accident cries instead of organising a labour movement. He wanted to make waves, but ended up beholden to the shareholders, and along the way he lost sight of his humble origins. Upset them and they’d only replace him, making all his hard work to get where he is be for naught. His story was of a victim of the system forced to become its perpetrator.

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I’m curious if this opens path to more magical archetypes for RP being viable in long term. My mage originates from pnp in settings of pre-wow novels and I always struggled to play her in wow for a longer time. If you are a powerful mage, you kinda have to be dealing with Kirin Tor one way or another, but at the same time Kirin Tor behaves like a mere paladin order with wands, enforcing morality over any meaningful research, experimentation and development.

The whole setting also moved a lot over the years, beginning with warlocks restricted to secret sabbats in depths below Stormwind, but nowadays with undead and Legion demons happily playing with kids on the streets. And Kirin Tor never really reacted to this, it’s even highlighted in this questline again that any step aside from being arcane professor still automatically paints you as a baddie.

At the moment I feel like… alright, the morality police is gone. We have so many new flavours of magic added over the years both in and out of game (through Chronicles and similar) that were basically neglected and ignored. Where can we take the RP now, without being restricted to Kirin Tor laws and their view on what’s automatically good and bad?