“Uh yeah… I know another Light Demon… you uh, wouldn’t know him, he goes to a different school.”
8 Likes
damn that interview bums me out for real
9 Likes
The frustrating thing is, this could hook into two good AND existing plot-points for progression;
- Dark Irons who are not loyal to Moira and who are trying to bring Ragnaros back, and us possibly realising that that is a thing that could happen as the Big R isn’t actually Gone Forever?
- Tying in the Earthen Ring and the Elemental Lords we helped set up as “Not always super friendly but also genuinely want what’s best for everyone on Azeroth for the most part” and having them make sure Big R doesn’t come back/dealing with the Primalist threat, which seems quite keen on riling up the Elementals?
Hell, you could even have Thaurissan II turn up and get a new model (the kid’s like 15 now, poor thing needs an update badly) and tie in the Dark Irons to progressing from their past.
But no. Depth Not Allowed In Dojo 
2 Likes
Yes. In a big ??? moment, they intentionally didn’t let their Alliance, Horde, and neutral writing teams communicate, or at least that’s what they claimed after the fact.
The charitable interpretation is that they intended to make some kind of message about propaganda demonizing the enemy, but even if so, they completely failed to telegraph their intent and at any rate blundered it. Players are used to assuming that what they’re seeing in-game is real in-universe unless explicitly said otherwise, like with the visions of N’Zoth. And now you’re telling me failing to tell me that the night elf civilian corpses I saw in Astranaar with my own eyes are just Alliance propaganda? What?
2 Likes
magic isn’t real on azeroth
it’s just propaganda
They said it from a personal pov. 
I’m gonna start dubbing this as “canonfluid”.
4 Likes
Unreliable narrators can be cool, but it all hinges on that:
- It was planned when writing the story ahead of time.
- Despite seeming counter-productive, it is crucial that the audience knows it is an unreliable narrator, to some extent.
It completely falls apart the second option 2 isn’t adhered too in a certain way. If you wish to keep it a secret that the narrator is unreliable, the only way to do this is to have the narrator be an actual character in the story. And the audience MUST know this from the first sentence.
2 Likes
Also you need several narrators for it to work, and WoW has never used several narrators in its god-damn life, its always the player-shown perspective with some [epic voice guy] giving us a brief overview of events. So just waving your hand and saying all these errors and inconsistencies are now just other points of view makes the narrative directors/story guys just looks mindnumbingly stupid.
15 Likes
The Chad
Greek/Roman philosophers and historians are the best because they would literally invent places and battles that never took place because it sounded cool. They also were the first ones to write their enemies as soyjaks.
Vs
The Virgin WoW Story devs
Will use “unreliable narrator” as an excuse for their own lack of knowledge and expertise on the setting and the lore.
3 Likes
What I will never understand still is why? Even if they can’t for whatever reason keep track of their own writing, they got decades of players and fans who has very methodically done it for them across forums and wiki pages and other websites.
How long would it take them to just google up the character they are writing and do a quick read-over?
10 Likes
Any number bigger than zero is infinitely larger than zero itself.
5 Likes
It’s such a stark contrast to another question raised as well.
“Are blue eyes canonical to Blood Elves now?”
Yes.
“So eredar paladins…?”
Imeanit’snottotallyunlikelyactuallybecausetherearelightforgeddemonsrightsoconceivablyperhapsonedaytheycouldtotallyfeaturebutitwouldbeadeliberatenarrativechoiceandabsolutelynotusforgettingaboutconsistencyinthestory-- and so on.
The interview gave me a nugget or two of solid stuff to work with, the rest just came off as noncommittal chatter. Which is a huge shame when you’ve been around long enough to recall the “AskCDev” rounds with lore.
3 Likes
An eredar paladin can happen, but I see it as a Petinent Engine sort of thing. A demon willingly sealed in a set of armor, fighting in the Light’s name while being tormented with each spellcast until there’s no fel left. And then a bit more, but without excruciation in the process.
2 Likes
Something about continuity
you can either have this or a raid tier
chris metzen
4 Likes
“I would sacrifice a hundred raid tiers, before I let this world-building die!”
Man I keep being reminded about how the whole Markarth incident in Skyrim has so many PoVs and yet it’s from there that the very early stones for what would become the Stormcloaks are being laid.
I cannot trust WoW writers to ever come halfway as good as that.
They don’t care. Even that one Forum thing or community stuff people had to apply for has fallen into total silence.
Blizzard really has no excuse be this mediocre to barely serviceable as of late.
2 Likes
They don’t value continuity. It’s like someone who drops a cigarette butt on the street even though there’s a trash can right there, because they don’t value not littering.
Their lore is basically window dressing to explain who the raid bosses are and why we’re fighting them, and sometimes they don’t even bother with the latter.
What do you mean Maiev was a wanted criminal and it was never explained how she was pardoned? Where did that happen? In a book? Someone buys Warcraft tie-in books? Get a life, nerrrrds.
8 Likes
To this day I still wonder if they could’ve actually succeeded. When I did that quest back in BfA I believe I did see Raggy’s horns sticking out of that pool in which we killed him…
For the sake of a raid boss, nothing is ever truly dead, even Ragnaros despite the rules stipulating that he ought to be really, really dead in the elemental plane.
The problem is that most of the “unreliable narrator”, when it comes to Blizzard, is utter bollocks. It’s just Blizzard exploiting the previous popularity of the narrative to then switch it in a new direction, thus not having to make it more complicated or original, or follow whatever intuition they had in the last couple of months.
Chronicles being a prime example of something written and sold to us from an omniscent narrator POV, yet now turned into just “a titan’s point of view” because they lack the skill to keep the setting coherent with itself. It is under the Sun: they don’t know what was Warcraft, what the previous writers did to envision a continuity, a spirit to it, thus now everything goes.
Perhaps ironic that, as of Shadowlands, even wowpedia has stopped to track down all the lore developments. But quite frankly, Blizzard should be able to do it. They should be able to know that Margaux in Suramar literally has two quests, and in the second one she freaking dies. It takes about one click of wowpedia to check: Status: DEAD. Oh. Can’t use that.
4 Likes