That’s not why people quit LMAO.
The expansion is just not as great as people hoped it would be. Maw is boring. Torghast is boring and unrewarding.
Has nothing to do with that. Wrath of the Lich king (which is all about Undead and unholy stuff) was the most famous expansion.
What about Islam
Not people, but a “number of people.”
I have a feeling that Queterons timeline starts way before Shadowlands, as you have rather well, but also self-deafeatingly mentioned in:
Shadowlands is literally a depressing expanssion. I hate it dude, it really sucked away all my desire to play it. Idk everything about it just puts me off. Revendreth and Denathrius are cool, but thats it
I think going into the afterlife of Azeroth(& the entire universe apparantly) was a mistake in general. All Shadowlands has done is make the whole universe of Warcraft feel alot smaller.
It’s very demystifying to have a broad and debated thing as “What happens after death?” be boiled down to “Just life 2.0, more of the same. Except you end up in one of these 4 places. And if you die again you’re gone for good.”
Human spirits embracing the light, orcs and their ancestors, elves and elune, tauren and the earth mother, pandaren and celestials, trolls and the loa, etc etc - no prima aprilis its just the maw all along lmao
I’m still bothered by that the troll afterlife is just a pocket dimension vortex at the corner of Ardenweald.
Yeah and some ancient god of death defeated in 5 man. They butchered all the mysticsm and secrecy of WoWs lore
Interestingly enough, I’m not actually sure if there are any specifically Islamic themes within the older, or newer Warcraft stories. This is, of course, barring the obvious ideas that the religion shares with other Monotheistic, Good vs Evil faiths.
This shouldn’t surprise us really, at least in the case of older Warcraft, due to the creators being heavily influenced by DnD - a game which itself is based off medieval European Fantasy.
As for the writers adding elements of Islamic theology into the more recent direction that Warcraft’s taking; I’m still unsure if they will, as it would mean a return to an approach to morality similar to that championed by Christian-influenced older Warcraft.
As a personal note (and while I’ve delved into this particular topic), I think it’s a real shame that we haven’t truly seen any proper Middle-Eastern influenced cultures in Azeroth. (I’m talking beyond Wind Elementals, and those wierd Broker-things)
Done right, with proper research and in good taste, Blizzard could explore aspects of what is an extremely fascinating culture that many people don’t know about.
And no offence to gnome players but adding Mllihouses to Da Other Side was cringe
I like them both, but there is not only a gap in their lore(Last we saw them Millificent wanted to kill Millhouse), but they should have had more troll themed fights in Da Other Side instead of them.
In a dungeon litterally set in the Troll afterlife, only 2 bosses are troll related.
Yeah I don’t think there is anything aside from these themes that it shares - the aforementioned Thousand and One Nights inspired wind elements etc, you could argue, as it does originate as a piece of literature from those regions (but I’d argue it’s much moreso based on the 18th century+ translations and versions of it)
It definitely is a shame, looking at Dune as a really good example of something that uses Islamic inspiration and themes for its setting and writing in an absolutely fantastic way, but that’s something I definitely can’t see Blizzard being even capable of doing at any time lol
Yes.
Brokers give me more of a Venetian merchant vibe than middle eastern tbh.
Also, pretty off topic but it’s kinda weird how wind elementals seem to be the only elementals pulling inspiration from some irl culture. Other elementals are called stuff like “Lord Burnerguy the Fiery” and then wind elementals come in here like “Ibn Al-Zephyrius”
Though it’s probably just elemental culture and history in general being little developed.
If I were to guess, I think Blizzard’s thought process with the wind elementals didn’t go much further than “Okay, we need wind…Hm, how about something Djinn-inspired? Because Djinn are cool? Okay, let’s just do that and go with it. Give them names that sound like it fits and lets go!”
If I recall correctly, the wind elementals with quasi-Arabic names and architecture came during Cataclysm, which leaves me a little skeptical:
The cynical side of me looks back to the other questionable lore choices Blizzard made in this period, and puts down the wind elemental change to them crudly replicating Western depictions of Jinn, rather than an effort to actually explore Elemental culture.
Edit: Did we just say the same thing, but in different words, Vixi? ^^
More likely they gave Al’akir his name way back when they were designing their RPG books (the name means something like “the ultimate one” or somesuch in Arabic if memory serves) and then that completely spiraled out of control when they were designing Uldum, aka Indiana Jones the Video Game.
but cooler. . .
We did yeah lol. Great minds thinks alike.
Very interesting read, thank you Queteron. Also to Wrall as well for his further insight.