I feel bad, because I’m thinking this every time Alexstrasza is talking throughout DF. Nothing wrong with the VAs voice, I just feel she got given really poor Directing, and it’s way too slow paced/pausey. Such a damn shame.
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How tolerant are humans in lore right now?
Take Stormwind, are DK’s, warlocks with demons, demonhunters, shadowpriests, Eredar and the likes ‘tolerated’ when they chill in town? Hang out in the bars around town? Practicing their ways openly?
I have a hard time thinking humans being okay with all of that happening in their city. And then even have one of their leaders openly accept void powers and turn herself into a teenage sithgothlord.
Shouldn’t there be like major discomfort and discontent brewing? Or are in-game humans the pinnacle of tolerance? (Except when it comes to Horde races or Kobolds)
In nu-Blizzard lore, everyone is super-tolerant of everyone and everything.
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I mean, Humans have been the cornerstone of the (various) Alliances over the years, and literally had one of their racials as Diplomacy so… I think they’re pretty tolerant as a broad stroke, yes?
Who knows, maybe Diplomacy being reworked/removed with the Warband update is IC now? 
You can be diplomatic without inviting everyone to your hometown.
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Well, unfortunately in a Meta sense the Devs decided that “We have Capital Cities at home” and so only Stormwind ever gets functionality and so is the only valid capital for Pretty Much anything, so…
Lol.
Lmao, I guess?
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The best we got is whenever something new shows up some vocal minority of NPCs get a bit fidgety while the rest just carry on doing the same thing they have before.
Void Elves - Cathedral of Light priest tells you it might not be the best idea to meander within the cathedral as a void freak
10.2.6 Warlock editions - They still hang out in the Slaughtered Lamb and now the Barracks basement, while the ones in the public seem to be wearing civilian clothes / are incognito
Eredar - 0 presence
Dark Rangers - 0 presence
Dracthyr - Turalyon and Shaw have SI:7 keep tabs on them when they first showed up, probably that’s no longer the case
It’s extremely vague and most people draw conclusions rather than rely on actual lore. I’d even say people are free to RP their humans as either intolerant or hypertolerant because we don’t see either being the default in canon lore, with Eredar and Dark Rangers/Darkfallen not getting ganked by the guards being a gameplay decision rather than a lore-friendly design.
In my humble opinion the fact we don’t see NPCs being on edge or hostile towards Demon Hunters, Death Knights, demons, etc etc. is strictly a gameplay concession so you don’t feel unwelcome as a player in the main hub of the Alliance (even though it’d be incredibly immersive) and also its cheaper / politically OK to treat every player avatar equally. What we don’t have is lore / world building justifying this.
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If I was a citizen of Stormwind and I learned my king made a (peace) agreement with likes of intergalactic timetraveling space locust who’ve invaded multiple times and wanted to wipe us all out, I’d still be upset even if there weren’t any lore-wise walking around in town. If they then openly enact void business which even these intergalactic timetraveling space locusts are afraid of, well welp.
You’d think the people in charge drank too much of the cool juice doing whatever they want that a French Revolution style uproar would be inevitable.
This is a key part, and I still feel a lot of people really do forget that Meta=/=Lore?
Like, we still, as Horde players, get attacked in Surumar. That’s not an IC thing, that’s a mechancal/gameplay/meta thing.
Likewise, saying “Oh, why are Stormwind civilians ok with x?” often disregards that, mechanically, excluding certain characters/classes from THE faction hub (again, because of the design decision to have only the one, for whatever reason) is not going to go down well.
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That’s what roleplayers incorporate into their interactions, the problem is they are hamstrung by Blizzard’s lack of lore blurbs that’d set a clear stance on how the general populace treat the more dubious races.
I wouldn’t even ask for ingame representation of justified bigotry or prejudice against creatures that are basically walking Fel/Void/Undeath WMDs, just actual lore on how such adventurers are looked at and treated by the masses.
And this is just regarding Adventurers, who seem to be a social class by themselves. It gets murkier when we talk about demon hunter bartenders, dark ranger sheriffs and other results of acute brainrot that should render the establishment these concepts frequent inoperable.
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I don’t really ask for such a thing, though I wouldn’t mind. But just more acknowledgment in general that NPCs aren’t just sheep accepting everything. Good or bad.
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It’s all true, but it doesn’t mean someone who RPs as an enchanter/spellblade wouldn’t want something sensible to use. After all, there are matters of ergonomics even in magic, and it’s often simplier and better to take a regular weapon, imbue a normal spell like an arcane blast into it and enjoy the performance as good as the big-as-tauren vrykul sword from the trading post would achieve, even with drawbacks like the need to keep track of the charge level and such.
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Oh, most likely. I myself was wondering, why do I like it?
- I kind of enjoyed the simplicity of it all. Alleria ultimately looks like a simple person trapped in extraordinary circumstances. Her way of fighting her own issues is very upfront: she solves other people’s problems and meanwhile she displays a facade of positivity. She has shadows of her own, but she is not dealing with them [yet].
That’s very good: for once, I don’t see a character being constipated on screen as they sigh and look at someone else for a hug (all of DF, all of SL), I don’t see a therapy session of characters hugging and crying and whatever (the TWW cinematic with Anduin). She just strikes me as an actual adventurer-hero. With actual problems. Dare I say, it looks nice?
- Beneath Khadgar’s reassuring tone, I believe the Void still felt something serious that he is underestimating: Alleria makes it clear that she can’t be near her family, likely where she wants to be, because she is a void elf. Despite Khadgar going “you’re the same, Void or no void” (and Alleria’s face being like: please stop man), I think it highlights that her choice to use the Void is not without consequences, and it is likely why she is alone.
I don’t think this cinematic means anything for TWW mind, but I can say that I appreciate it without having to consider a bigger picture.
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i’m going against elenthas. i like khadgars new face
Why does Alleria feel like a person suffering from Leopards-Ate-My-Face syndrome after chasing the Void with the Army of Light for 10k Years? Are you only suddenly NOW starting to realise your mistake? Is it only just dawning on you after 10,000 years? You’re not that stupid Alleria, come on now. We had 5 books of you being warned about it throughout Legion and you still kept going further-and-further willingly, are you really going to play the “haha wow, it actually sucks putting your head inside a leopard’s mouth” card?
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Counterpoint: Windrunner, yes she is.
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I actually enjoyed the cinematic, it was a decent spotlight on some characters and it reflected the strains one character is going through while highlighting the relationship between two old friends.
It’s probably one of the better “feelsy” cinematics Blizzard have done. The conversation felt quite natural.
It’s refreshing to see a character uncomfortable with their circumstances and choices without wallowing in self pity/loathing. Which is something we got spoonfed heavily in the past.
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I don’t really get this criticism.
I don’t see any points in the cinematic where she seems shocked about the consequences of the Void or appears to complain about them. Just a few moments of her looking uncomfortable, which make sense considering that she’s living with the consequences of being a vessel for mind-destroying corruption.
What would be more appropriate? Should she be absolutely stoic and unyielding regarding the topic of the Void and refuse to react to the consequences of it at all? That would just remove the narrative of Alleria wrestling with her potential fall to corruption, and lead to criticism that the Void seems like it’s a consequence-free power source.
This is one of the two points where Alleria looks somewhat uncomfortable, in a “yeah I’m not so sure about that” kind of way.
Blizzard seems to have put a lot of work into making their characters look expressive and in subtle ways, not in the dramatic and overwrought way that emotion often seemed to be handled in Dragonflight cinematics. Like Aerilen says, it came across as a more natural conversation, rather than a “cinematic” one.
In this cinematic, I see an Alleria who tries to be resolute and keep her chin up, but she’s clearly wrestling with some doubts and concerns. This makes sense, considering the whole Void corruption thing.
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Yeah, it’s clearly come at a cost and Khadgar’s reassurances don’t really achieve anything. How can they? They both know what she is now.
Again. Probably one of the better interactions between characters in recent years.
As you pointed out, the more subtle reactions she has are extremely obvious showings of concern and “shock” (not in the sense of gasping shock, but rather emotional shock), yet for some reason it never crossed her mind in the 10,000 years of seeing the Void as a, as you say, “mind-destroying corruption”, she never thought to stop her study or tutoring on the Void? Even when her own mentor warned her and gave her visions of the futures, of her murdering her Husband and Son when she begins to isolate from them (which is now happening). It simply screams, “I shoved my head into a Leopard’s mouth and it bit me” to me and I feel like Alleria doesn’t have the 6 Int you would need to not realise that’s an incredibly obvious reaction from the Leopard.
It’s already largely written and treated as one, I will applaud them if they can continue this on a larger-scale for Void users and Void Elves in general, but its just as likely they’ll introduce another “we must balance the world-ending cancer tumours with the force of objective good because we just must don’t question me” NPC in TWW-TLT.
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