I am so annoyed with those mounts. They are all so special/supernatural and extremely hard to make use of IC.
They didn’t just go for a fancy ox or yak or something, it has to be a solid gold mythical and singular being.
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I mean the book doesn’t, it’s just treated as a factual thing. In the context of that statement about a higher power, Duncan believes that the Light had ordained their path before them and it’s their destiny to see it through. Sounds a lot like what every Light worshiper has ever said – the Light guides them. “Higher power” is just a synonym the author used to not sound repetitive by writing The Light 87 times on the same page.
I don’t have a wowpedia account 
yeah that’s cool
Perroy is this one of those things where we fundamentally agree about the same thing but we’re wording it differently and our replies are really just reinforcement of the fact that we’re on the same side of this?
People with whacky personal beliefs are cool and it’s something I endorse and hope to see more in RP because it makes the world feel more diverse and the people unique. Someone RPing a Durgan One-God esque concept with an emphasis on a single all-powerful creator god would be interesting to me. The bit about RPing Christian lore in game isn’t so much aimed at you but some of the other takes in this thread that I initially (perhaps mistakenly) thought you were in fact endorsing as though Duncan is the herald of Christ.
Seems so
A herald of characters having non-standard beliefs about the nature of faith / divinity moreso (like One-God and Abbendis and so on) than me actually thinking someone should just begin quoting passages from the New Testament IC in /yell
My point is rly that I think if you want to take the lore that exists and is canon (if heavily outdated and ill-fitting in many ways) and say “I am this old Northshire man who follows some half-remembered dogma (or maybe even have just made it all up, who knows) and believe that the Light is a big floating bearded man who speaks to me in my dreams and tells me to do this and that” - perhaps reconciling old creation myths / Aman’thul / misc titan lore like people do with Tyr or something like that - that concept is not inherently bad and can be played in a way that both fits the lore and is enjoyable for others
In fact I will add before I go to bed 
and as kind of an aside that I think the Scarlet Crusade as an example simply does not work narratively without at least some deification/personification of the Light
Can you imagine a guy yelling “in the name of positive energy magic … die heathen” unironically
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I don’t think anyone has argued to RP God and Christ himself in WoW. Just the Holy Light has deep Christian themes and some lore suggesting characters have deity beliefs that line up more in theme of the the abrahamic tropes and themes; and if it’s a god it is more likely to line up with that over other religion.
I don’t really understand why people are being so combative. Even if, hypothetically speaking, WoW today had a lot of strictly Christian themes and even if the Church of the Holy Light was representative of many of those themes in the modern orientation of WoW, would it really matter to people that much on a personal level? Even if, hypothetically speaking, it wasn’t akin to any branch of Christianity irl but just possessed some similarities, that could produce a lot of top quality RP.
Considering that this thread was posted because the (supposed) lack of Christian themes in World of Warcraft matters to the author on a personal level, it does seem like the presence of these themes in this game (or lack thereof) is a big deal. Otherwise, this thread wouldn’t exist.
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But that’s not what was bring argued!
This is an interesting hypothesis, but I don’t think an accurate one. For one, not everybody plays warcraft for the story and lore. There’s plenty of people on PvE realms who log in, do their dailies, raid with a Discord call, probably say the word “poggers” a whole bunch, then go on about the rest of their lives. To that audience, the only thing that matters is if gearing is fun, and if the raid you can access through the gearing process is fun. Repeat this for people who do PvP or just run M+'s. When I was raiding back in Tomb of Sargeras, people literally talked over the end cutscene. None of them cared about getting rid of Kil’jaeden, they just wanted to know if their BiS dropped.
This may be true for the human characters of the settings, with comparison between the men of the Alliance (having clerics and priests in the 7th Legion for example), but that doesn’t extend to all races of the Alliance - and certainly not many races of the Horde. Regardless of one’s opinion of religion as a whole or specifically of Christianity, I think most people can agree that the bible houses a fair few memorable stories, but there’s plenty of other culture’s stories which are equally captivating, memorable, and iconic, and I don’t think it’s necessary an issue for Blizzard to focus less on one source of inspiration and more towards others. In fact, I’d argue that’s likely a good thing. We already have the bible, Warcraft can - and really should - exist as it’s own mythos. Otherwise why not cut out the middleman and have people just read the good book if WoW was going to borrow so heavily from it?
I won’t argue that the game has fallen off in the eyes of many players, to some extent myself included, but I think to sum it up in a brief TL:DR - it’s probably the gameplay that’s doing that, or maybe even people just moving away from a game that they’ve been playing for up to 15 years.
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I think the idea of a God of the Light in the setting isn’t what Queteron or Wrall were referring to when they declared that Warcraft shared Christian values (though if we were to follow that path, I think they’d give this position to Elune).
After all, in Christianity, God acts in mysterious way, and having him descend from the heavens to play in WoW is not what they’re talking about ~ I’m certain about it. I imagine they’re speaking about core christian beliefs such as the immortality of the soul or at least a safe heaven, the idea of divine providence - that God actively intervenes, helping humanity to realize their ultimate goal, a goal that involves love and wisdom. Or synderesis, the idea that we can discern the difference between good and evil in an innate way. More than that, Warcraft’s dichotomy between Good and Evil followed a traditional christian approach: from vices and virtues, to darkness and light as images for good and evil, to the defeat of the evil dragon symbolizing the hero triumphing over the forces of evil.
If you think about, say, the way in which the Light manifested through Tirion during his confrontation with Arthas, his actions seemed driven by a quasi-divine intervention. Or as mentioned previously, M’uru’s sacrifice and Velen’s prophecy for the blood elves hint to the idea of a divine plan of sort ~ the whole point of Velen seeing the future as a sort of message from a higher power (be it the Light, be it a God) rather than use a technique such as divination, is always indicative of a sort of providence, a “plan” that happens to be a promise to the races of Azeroth. A promise involving a better world. While I’m not a believer, I found this idea comforting and no one can deny its grip upon any of us, I’m sure.
And while races such as orcs don’t have many Christian elements in their lore, let’s not forget that a huge point of their arc in WC3 - one that sets them up for WoW Classic - sees them redeeming themselves for their previous actions (read: sins), guided by a prophet, and doing so by embracing a sort of spiritual discovery that involves bonding with others, and becoming aware of something greater than themselves.
However, as of Legion, that plot already had taken the route of “actually, the Light just wants to spread its influence across all of the cosmos and enslave people, it just happens that it uses empathy and love”.
I opine the loss of mysticism and mystery within the setting. Everything now is so sterile and formulaic. Even the Old Gods who are supposed to be beings beyond our ken, who drive those that attempt to understand them into madness, are now all entirely understood. All sense of wonder has been lost and even moments meant to inspire some emotion or feeling often feel as if they fall flat.
Too many things have been explained in an almost scientific fashion that has removed so much luster and enjoyment from the setting. Sure, we all like understanding how things work - it’s necessary for roleplay on some level - but it’s went way too far in some places. The Titans and Old Gods are a good example, I fear Elune is going to suffer a similar fate too.
It doesn’t feel like there’s much space for small stories. Some people have made allusions to Lord of the Rings and I find myself agreeing with such. There’s no room for stories like Frodo and Sam’s, no time for last stands at the Black Gate or Boromir’s redemption. The Broken Shore could very much have succeeded there but, Varian Wrynn steals all the limelight and leads a one-man charge against the Burning Legion to buy the entire Alliance force time to escape. It would have been nice if there were ordinary footmen there too fighting beside him, men and women that were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their homes and families and allow their fellow soldiers to escape. But no, just Varian.
It’s all so tiresome. Maybe I’m wrong in a few places, I’m sure there’s the odd example here and there that might challenge my ephemeral assertions but, it’s a feeling that pervades me as a player when I look at the setting as-is. Too much focus on a “grand spectacle” that is rather vapid and hollow at heart. I much prefer the stories players tell and roleplay is this game’s true saving grace.
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I can’t tell you how much I agree with this. I was thinking about it the other day, and just how depressing, hopeless and grim WoW’s setting has become.
I’m not entirely sure if Blizzard realized the consequences of what they were actually writing?
To give an example: (Probably) Hundreds of thousands of people died across Azeroth during the events of BFA, most of them just average folk.
Imagine being a farmer living in Brennadam: Your home is invaded; you and your whole family are brutally murdered infront of each other. You lay dying, hoping that in whatever comes after you and your family will find peace.
Fun fact; nope. Your wife, your children, and you find yourselves, along with numberless others, in a blasted hellscape. There your fate is to be tortured non-stop, until all that you were is gone forever; replaced with an empty shell.
Just take a step back and see how messed up this really is. This is the kind of grim-dark horror you expect to find in Warhammer, not in Warcraft. Personally I’m trying to avoid mentioning the Shadowlands IC at all, when I have a justification for it (Khel outright refuses to believe that Light won’t save her soul). Otherwise the utterly depressing nature of this expansion would probably jeopordize the escapism I get from the hobby.
Becoming increasingly hard to do, but is still possible.
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Warcraft is abandoning its foundations, just like Western society is abandoning its traditions. And as a result, people feel lost because there’s nothing left to cling to. The future of the game is uncertain; and so is what comes next for our society. People have a feeling of no longer being in control, which the 99% simply cannot comprehend, (because modern science has given everyone the impression that everything can be ordered and calculated — including, one day, even death.)
Of course, this simply isn’t true. Death can’t be avoided any more than seasons changing can. But Warcraft liked to play around with this cosmic riddle. ‘‘What comes after death?’’ Or better yet, ‘‘what if the fear of death is manipulated and turned against the playerbase?’’ (Arthas’ scourge invasion.) — Nowadays, however, the game doesn’t attempt to engage with these themes in any kind of engaging way. It’s all action-based flash-fiction with no substance. Warcraft has lost its ‘‘thriller’’ themes, (for those who’re into story-telling, you’ll know what I mean. But I’m afraid the differences are too much to go into here.)
Although, ironically, Warcraft is now closer to reality than ever. Modern society is all about being entertained through a series of increasingly violent sensations. The game has been engineered to do just that, but ultimately this is proving very unsatisfying, just like capitalism. People don’t understand why, (because the language tools we use to understand this change are frankly difficult to grasp), but we all:
Tl;dr: Warcraft now lacks depth. You only have to log onto the Warcraft 3 campaign to see the night and day difference between the storytelling then and the storytelling now.
Also… I feel like you could swap out ‘Christian’ for ‘Buddhism’ in the OP and the tone of the overall post would remain the same. I think the problem isn’t that Warcraft has lost its sense of ‘Christianity,’ as the OP sort of suggests and never really pulls the curtain back on, but rather Warcraft has lost its fundamentally relatable overtone. (Making it feel nihilistic. Making it feel lacklustre. Because Warcraft no longer makes any attempt to explore what’s intrinsic in all of us, (whether you identify as Christian or not.) — But then again, what can you expect from a game ran by corporate shills…? The griminess trickles down…
As several people have already mentioned, duality’s what makes storytelling feel so real. Low-fantasy elements in the high-fantasy world… Yes please, Sir! Life and death. Joy and sorrow. Good and bad. And lots of it, thanks! — The current writers don’t get this, and probably don’t care, because at the end of the day… cheap thrills sell well to a crowd based on cheap thrills, (people who’re wrapped up in their pleasure-seeking egos, in other words.)
If you ask me, Warcraft’s headed down the behavioural sinkhole. It’s festering, slowly but surely, just like society is. (Hence why we see Warcraft being used more and more as an ERP hub, because carrion are always drawn to rotting corpses.) I don’t want to sound like a drama-starter; or a melodramatic cad; but you can see the reflection of it slowly turning sour, just like everything is prone to doing eventually.
P.S: I don’t feel like I’m adding much to the conversation here, because this topic has already been pretty thoroughly covered by some very intelligent people, but maybe this will shine a light on the OP’s post a little… either way, I learned something editing and re-editing this bad boy. — Thanks OP. Great post!
I too praise my Lord and Saviour H. P. Lovecraft and his First Saint, Mr < Censored Cat Name >.
I’ve ranted about this several times. But BFA onwards has very much felt like when you get new management and they feel like they need to make their “mark”. So they change working systems and flows. And it all slowly deteriorates and gets worse because “I’m boss man now not them, NOT THEM, I am the better manager!!! Look!!! Look!!!” And to me, this comes across quite painfully obvious in some instances, e.g the new precursors who I bet are just going to be some mash of Xel’naga and the titans.
I 100% agree with you that the direction they’ve taken lacks depth, though a lot of the depth it has is unintentional. As said earlier there is a lot of unintentional storytelling Blizzard have done lately, if you go through the beta feedback on the Kyrian covenant for example - players pointed out that it doesn’t seem much like a “good” after life. That the Forsworn are pretty sympathetic and Uther has a point. To which Blizzard mumbled some lip service “yeah we’ll explore that” and they never really did. It just became a “no… i see I did wrong…”
Warcraft has always been relatively pulpy, and I bet we have all whinged about the story or aspects of it in each expansion. But the massive lurch into a comic-book style narrative focused on cosmic powers clashing has veered Warcraft into something that really doesn’t feel like Warcraft any more.
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Woah-yeah, agreed. All I can think of when I read this is, ‘‘Marvel movies.’’
You can see where the writers have been influenced and how they want to make their own take on the writing.
Instead of etherals - an established merchant race that can transcend our reality - we have the new brokers who are the same thing but someone’s new take.
I couldn’t say for certain but it feels in some regard the new writers don’t like following old rules and establishments where they can and sound rather claim their own takes even if it conflicts or something is ready and waiting; because it’s not theirs.
Oh yeah and we have the Zand trolls who are a Wakanda rip off now instead of the more menacing themes of MoP and before.
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It switched from the kind of comic books you’d read in the 90’s to Metallica and Iron Maiden before you went off to the live Alice Cooper performance to the kind of comics you’d read today.
And I have no idea what music people listen to today.
There are honestly some improvements you could easily make with some soft recons and the like to the setting. But these idjits are literally just reselling the same stuff in different paint.
The coolest thing from BFA was the dark moon plot and that’s already been doomed to “its actually evil tho…”
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If Warcraft has no Christian themes how come Blizzard bans my account whenever I type “I hate the anti-christ” into Stormwind area defence?
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While I do much prefer vanilla and WC3 lore I acknowledge Metzen and other originals didn’t make the best decisions later on. But I think something more internal went on there for investors or conflicting ideas.
I do think it was in better hands when it was run by old D&D Tolkien fan nerds though — and when it even had a RPG book.