No Warcraft without Christianity

[Vixí-argent-dawn (Vixí)]

Even the souls we do free literally just become blocks of soul concrete for us to do actual building with.

[Telaryn-argent-dawn (Telaryn)]

@Chíeun-argent-dawn

To bring up the WotLK Scourge again, what they did was really dark, but there was hope too. At several points you on-screen freed the souls of the undead so they could go on to redemption. Compare to SL, where your dead grandma goes to an ultrahell where she has since been turned into a sword / a broken husk soldier / anima juice / pavement, or just been tortured until the soul literally breaks apart and unravels. And that’s the whole multiverse’s afterlife, now.

You also save souls from the Maw regularly on screen so that they could go on to find redemption like numerous innocent night elf souls unjustly slain at Teldrassil being rescued in the Night Fae campaign. Compare to Wrath of the Lich King where your dead friends go to suffer as an undead abomination, forced to kill everyone they ever loved (see the Crusader companions in ICC). That’s their existence now. They get no redemption.

At no point does this expansion ever entertain the narrative that all souls going to the Maw to suffer is a thing we should all just accept. We’re actively fighting against that and fixing the problems ailing the different zones we quest through that are directly caused as a result of the Jailer messing everything up with his agents influencing the events across different zones.

[Dorlas-magtheridon (Dorlas)]

@Telaryn-argent-dawn

The Sylvanas who was so irredeemable that she was instantly judged belonging to the Maw

You mean the experience during which, according to Blizzard, she made her first contact with Jailer, who has had some influence outside of the Maw for a while before that?
Convenient that she ended there, isn´t it?

@Telaryn-argent-dawn

and is now working with the prime evil of the Maw to destroy the afterlife? Who committed genocide for no reason other than to maximise the amount of souls being funneled into the Maw? That Sylvanas?

Exactly. This is Blizzard we are talking about.

@Telaryn-argent-dawn

As for the Kyrian, although I’ve never done their Covenant campaign because I never found them all that interesting, the Bastion storyline always gave me the impression that other Kyrians themselves start to recognise the flaw in the system in light of how so many of them fall to the Forsworn, and that something needs to change.

And then they throw soul of Lakeshire´s citizen into the Maw during their campaign, because tHe pUrPOsE. Kyrian start questioning their own ways, not the actual system of the Shadowlands in their questline, they still ferry countless souls into Shadowlands and then to the Maw even though they have the knowledge of what happens to them there.

@Telaryn-argent-dawn

The only actual sources I can find for the claims of the Light seeking to destroy planets and enslave its populations largely stem from characters like Locus-Walker and the actions of Xe’ra which are narratively framed as not being trustworthy.

Or with Mag´har recruitment scenario which tells us that it was naaru who put AU draenei on their genocidal zealous path.

@Telaryn-argent-dawn

Considering the passive influence of the Void as a contrast is to corrupt and devouring everything it touches, while Chronicles attributes Light as being the origin of all life in the cosmos, it’s not a very big leap to draw the conclusion that the Light still fundamentally represents a cosmic good in the setting when the only people claiming otherwise are deranged cultists, demons, and Void-corrupted people intentionally framed as untrustworthy sources.

You mean Chronicles which are told from the point of view of the Titans who are enemies of the Void?

[Chíeun-argent-dawn (Chíeun)]

@Dorlas-magtheridon

Or with Mag´har recruitment scenario which tells us that it was naaru who put AU draenei on their genocidal zealous path.

Tbf, after WoD, the Mag’har are one of the last groups I would take the word of at face value.

When the wanton murderer has their community decide enough is enough only to call it ‘oppression’ then yeah… Sorry, you made that bed yourself.

[Vixí-argent-dawn (Vixí)]

The Mag’har is one of the few races in WoW who as a whole are objectivly evil.

Smaller individuals might have disagreed(As we saw a handful of defectors+Frostwolves), but the species in majority was well happy with inflicting as much pain as possible. They weren’t just conquering but very deliberately relished in tormenting their foes.

[Telaryn-argent-dawn (Telaryn)]

@Dorlas-magtheridon

You mean the experience during which, according to Blizzard, she made her first contact with Jailer, who has had some influence outside of the Maw for a while before that?
Convenient that she ended there, isn´t it?

Yeah so she joined the Objectively Evil Guy We Need To Stop in order to escape the consequences of her actions and decided to start doing genocide so that everyone goes to turbo hell.

That’s not a good guy, my dude.

@Dorlas-magtheridon

Or with Mag´har recruitment scenario which tells us that it was naaru who put AU draenei on their genocidal zealous path.

While glossing over the fact that the Naaru =/= the Light, or the fact that the Naaru are capable of independent thought and having their own agendas (Xe’ra wanting to redeem Illidan forcefully, while A’dal wanted him dead), the Sermon of the High Exarc implies that the naaru who came to AU Draenor was Xe’ra.

@Dorlas-magtheridon

You mean Chronicles which are told from the point of view of the Titans who are enemies of the Void?

I don’t know about you, but personally I find the people who are trying to stop the Horrific Visions we saw in 8.3 from happening far more trustworthy than the ones committing those horrific acts in the name of the Void.

Someone who says that violently murdering everyone around you in a bout of Void-corrupted madness is wrong and something we should prevent is someone I’d consider to be on the side of “good”.

@Chíeun-argent-dawn

Tbf, after WoD, the Mag’har are one of the last groups I would take the word of at face value.

It’s actually the Draenei who tell us this, and they don’t equivocate the genocide to any wrong doing on the orc’s part. They in fact praise the orcs for their conduct, in the Sermon of the High Exarch, but some of them rejected the Light’s Will so it needs to be forced on them. Xe’ra wills it.

[Aerilen-argent-dawn (Aerilen)]

@Chíeun-argent-dawn

WotLK was super dark. Have you seen Icecrown?

Warcraft has always kinda had dark undercurrents to be fair. From Vanilla Thaddius to the Maw, it’s very much high fantasy with some pretty dark themes that rear their heads every so often.

[Vixí-argent-dawn (Vixí)]

There was still a small sense of relief though. When you kill/killed Thaddius, the souls thanks you as they are released and freed of their torment.

In Shadowlands, they’ve already made it clear that those souls broken or bent into the Mawforged are beyond fixing, and when a soul dies(either by getting killed by us, the Mawsworn or torture) their existence is obliterated.

There is no sense of relief there. Ending their suffering means they cease to be entirely, not that they get to go on to whatever comes next or get peace. They just stop existing.

[Telaryn-argent-dawn (Telaryn)]

I’ll take this moment to also remind everyone that genocide apologism is not very Christian.

[Moody-argent-dawn (Moody)]

Didn’t God genocide the peoples of Sodom and Gomorrah tho

[Telaryn-argent-dawn (Telaryn)]

Queteron, what did Moody mean by this?

[Aerilen-argent-dawn (Aerilen)]

@Vixí-argent-dawn

There was still a small sense of relief though. When you kill/killed Thaddius, the souls thanks you as they are released and freed of their torment.

Oh yeah, I should have added this. It’s heavily counteracted by the pop culture seepage/lazy mmo gamer playstyle too so at times Blizzard put things in and people skim over it.

@Moody-argent-dawn

Didn’t God genocide the peoples of Sodom and Gomorrah tho

There’s a response about this earlier in the thread by Sylvare and he goes into why it actually happened.

[Moody-argent-dawn (Moody)]

@Aerilen-argent-dawn

There’s a response about this earlier in the thread by Sylvare and he goes into why it actually happened.

It’s a 408 post thread and I was late. Can you recount it to me in your narration voice?

[Nerathion-argent-dawn (Nerathion)]

@Chíeun-argent-dawn

You lose before you even knew you were playing.

I guess it might be one of the few reasons why I’m not connecting with SL’s story at all. Before even starting the expansion, as a night elf player I also see Ursoc dying (also why is there no afterlife for the dead in the afterlife, what happens to them even lol) without a chance to come back, I learn that everyone in Teldrassil went to ultrahell (like hello, why even take that route?), and everything’s falling apart in the afterlife.

Even though there are like, multiple afterlives as Telaryn said, we’re all introduced only to the four zones + Maw, so while several of my own headcanons for elven afterlives can still work, there’s no real safety net of a good afterlife right now. Almost to the point where previously I might’ve been even okay-ish with character deaths for a fun little finale story for my characters, but now I don’t want to so I don’t have to touch Shadowlands lore with a whatever long pole.

I don’t agree with the arguments that nihilistic themes are inherently bad. I’d say for most of the Azerothian denizens (the other planets have it even worse really), life is actually very much hopeless. You’re an innocent farmhand? On top of bandits and murlocs and whatever that harasses you but the nobles won’t care - one day you just die because world-ending-threat. I don’t think Shadowlands or recent expansions have deviated from it much.

The recent expansions have only elaborated and expanded on the current story, however the problem IMO is that the execution is bad. Compare with MoP, where they managed to convey a lot of the story through in-game scrolls and quest texts, they managed to bring in new foes without going too outlandish. Why couldn’t that have been a thing again? Upping the stakes completely gets a little tiresome especially when you know that you will win in the end, even though it might be Pyrrhic.

Because while currently it feels very depressing to play Shadowlands not only for the gameplay, we know that in the end, we’ll fix everything as always. But because we rarely explore all story threads to their fullest, much is left unanswered and we’ll just have to work around all the obfuscated lore yet again. When Danuser says that he can talk for hours on the afterlives and Death and whatnot, we don’t really see that in any writing - and what is there is also very questionable.

Which is why elaborating on already present mysticism can be risky - the chance of failing is very high and at least with the afterlives, they’ve already done so IMO. It also feels like Sylvanas seems to get a pseudo-redemption arc (unless she has just gone unrepentantly evil until some random one-liner of desperation that’s meant to make us feel bad during her fight?) through wanting to break the choice-less afterlife everyone gets, but… what about literally all the evil she’s done? Instead the Night Elves have an ominous brush looming over them just waiting to paint them as villains through the Black Moon thing.

I’m not sure how Blizzard can even salvage Shadowlands’ story right now. However, I’m also not sure how much of it is because the lack of Christian themes or just generally bad storytelling and the need to one-up the stakes and threats all the time.

oh crack why is this so long

[Aerilen-argent-dawn (Aerilen)]

@Moody-argent-dawn

It’s a 408 post thread and I was late. Can you recount it to me in your narration voice?

People were wanting to/got a bit frisky with the angels he sent to check the place out, god wasn’t happy with this as you can imagine.

[Moody-argent-dawn (Moody)]

I found the post now thanks to Blizzard’s in-thread search system which is a p neat feature. Thank you for pointing it out, but God still did kinda murder those people

[Desartin-argent-dawn (Desartin)]

I mean, there was also the flooding of the whole world.

“Okay Noah, I want you to take two pair of each animal to save them. As for the rest of humans? Yeah they deviated from what I intended, so I’m going to wash them all off the face of this earth.”

[Moody-argent-dawn (Moody)]

God got sick of the old lore and decided on a soft reboot.

[Faceslinger-argent-dawn (Faceslinger)]

@Chíeun-argent-dawn

the soul literally breaks apart and unravels

From both a story point & RP respective I find that people/writers who make < Unimaginable Soul Sufferings TM > the epitome of evil, are boring and lame (maybe because it’s overdone by now, but I never cared for it).

Yeah thanks consciousness/the soul disappearing after death is the ultimate evil across all realities—depending on your belief/philosophy, that’s just RL afterlives. It’s unconvincing. WotLK’s abominations/people turning into ghouls offered perceiveable conflict and consequences, suitable for a fantasy universe.

While I won’t get into Christian themes, I do agree with Wrall and Queteron that WoW’s attempt to portray morality has fallen flat: good vs. evil has become corrupted good vs. justified evil. I find myself supporting characters like Sylvanas because they’re cooler, and because the “good” characters always goof up—why would I want to support a screw-up?

Just look at the Ardenweald campaign. Put a mask on someone and they can either die or be forever corrupted—no redemption, no turning back, no good. If that’s meant to inspire fear or give a sense of urgency, it fails, because I have no investment in hairy monkey-fairies anyway.

Typical fairytales, or heroic tales, fantasy, etc, have some kind of paragon to rally behind—you know, a protagonist—and they don’t need to be perfect, just unmistakeably doing something good. In attempts to “shake up” the factions we end up with worse and worse leaders/lead characters in the foreground (and consequently, a worse story overall). Anduin was headed down the right way IMO (since they lowkey dumped the Shadow part of his priesthood) but that also had to fall into what I mentioned above. Corrupted good vs. justified evil.

And I don’t even dislike Shadowlands.

[Dorlas-magtheridon (Dorlas)]

@Telaryn-argent-dawn

Yeah so she joined the Objectively Evil Guy We Need To Stop in order to escape the consequences of her actions and decided to start doing genocide so that everyone goes to turbo hell.

That’s not a good guy, my dude.

Just you wait until Patch 9.2: War for Torghast will come out and Sylvanas will get empowered by all the Eternal Ones to become one of them and defeat Amon…I mean, Zovaal.
Also it will include 50 new layers of Twisting Corridors with reward for completing all being 1 toy and a mount that´s recolor of one that will be added to Jewelcrafting.

@Telaryn-argent-dawn

While glossing over the fact that the Naaru =/= the Light, or the fact that the Naaru are capable of independent thought and having their own agendas (Xe’ra wanting to redeem Illidan forcefully, while A’dal wanted him dead), the Sermon of the High Exarc implies that the naaru who came to AU Draenor was Xe’ra.

You could apply the same to Void Lords and Old Gods. They are not Void, merely beings of Void and anything they or their servants do should therefore not be considered as the cosmic force being evil, but simply those who came from it.

@Telaryn-argent-dawn

I don’t know about you, but personally I find the people who are trying to stop the Horrific Visions we saw in 8.3 from happening far more trustworthy than the ones committing those horrific acts in the name of the Void.

Someone who says that violently murdering everyone around you in a bout of Void-corrupted madness is wrong and something we should prevent is someone I’d consider to be on the side of “good”.

We are speaking about powers, not people. Obviously NPCs in Visions are good, however the powers like Light, Void, Chaos, Order, Life, Death and their representatives, such as Naaru or Void Lords, have been all turned into this “morally gray” things where victory of Light won´t be good, as this cosmic force, those who represent it and goals they are working toward are no longer good.