Nothing is more anoyying then a FF XIEKXMSJD-fan, because they just cannot help themselves but tell everyone how good it is and how big of a fan they are 
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itâs not so much a lack of manipulation and cunning- He had Azshara by the ropes in that cinematic.
However, he did a cardinal mistake: Never reveal your hand, unless you are 100% confident that the other side canât find a way to one-up you.
Had he not revealed that heâs a god stuck at the bottom of the ocean, Azshara may well have just agreed to the power at any cost.
Same with Xalatath. Letting her go was a mistake.
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His one cardinal mistake was dealing with Azshara, she was someone who only saw a literal God to be worthy of becoming her mateâŚ
Whatâs a oversized goofy Jellyfish, who could literally be ripped out of the planet by her preffered God-mategonna offer her? She wouldâve preffered drowning if he had not made her Queen of his new Empire and even then, she switched loyalty on a whim
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Canât wait for the Queen to become the leader of Alliance-aligned naga!
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You know one thing that actually annoys me the most about the Dalaran Defender Gear from the prepatchâŚ
Is the fact its just AoTL/Argus recolor gear, instead of something thatâs actually Dalaran. Instead they went with one of the things that so far removed from Dalaran itself?
Like the WoTLK/SL prepatches atleast had gear linked to the Aargent Dawn and/or Argent Crusade, but there is almost zero connection between the AoTL/Draeneiâs and Dalaran, so the whole choice of the recolored Argus gear is kinda⌠Feeling weird? I Most of it isnât even usable in RP due to it, except by (Lightforged) Draenei, I suppose?
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Realistic body standards. 
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wowpedia/images/f/f6/Troll_Female_Old_Model.png/revision/latest?cb=20160518194446
They were heftier.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wowpedia/images/9/97/Townhall_Races_of_Azeroth_Tauren_art_6.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20190220005739
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True, my pacts have done my skin no favours.
Infusion turning you human-looking is a Titan thing, as we know through elves. Xalâatath is a titan confirmed, cue my clickbaity youtube career.
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Pre-Old Gods they have dreads. Post Old Gods they lose their ethnic features and become whitey.
The message from Blizzard is clear: the Void are white supremacists.
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if the first void lord we ever see has a southern drawlâŚ
âumm well akshaully you see xalâatath is actually umm well you see a corrupted umm titan soul sent here by um akshually.â
Sure, but we should be fair and acknowledge this is like, the most generic void ability to ever void ability; this is the [Level 1 Cultist] Tier stuff, not anything unique or special. I too, am capable, of whispering into someoneâs ear and going âat the hour⌠of your third work break⌠you will usher in excelâs comingâŚâ the only difference is that I donât need a cosmic power to help me do it, I can just. . .do it, and people will, appropriately, just give me a weird side-eye and go about their day. Her honesty or sincerity doesnât matter, because none of my 12-points were about her honesty or sincerity; the Jailer wasnât honest or sincere either.
From what we know from Beta lore (pending changes) Xalâatath has been upgraded from mere Artifact weapon to âHerald of Apocalyptic End Timesâ across the entire known universeâ to the point where she is known by name in even other planetary civilisation for resulting in their apocalyptic demises. Iâm not sure if this is news, but it does change her imo, and makes her much more jailer-esque than what she was in Legion (a simple whispering dagger with a golden-brown name-tag).
Neither does Xalâatath, and Iâm not going to humour Blizzard and clap like a seal when they show me her floating in a cinematic; thatâs not manipulation or cunning deception, thatâs just floating above someone and going âkillyourmomkillyourmomkillyourmomâ which, again, I can do that too if I wanted. The Plot just wouldnât give me the same level of idiot-success.
This is literally beat-for-beat Xalâatath in the Beta and from the Trailers. Iâm not sure if weâve been playing the same Beta and watching the same Trailers but all she does in the Beta is appear throughout the zones to gloat about how close she is to her millenia-long plan unfolding to finally claim the worldsoul of Azeroth before disappearing into another Void Portal (whilst also flirting with Alleria for some reason, I guess Turalyon consented to an open relationship). Every trailer thus far has had her monologuing about how sheâs been planning this for millenia and sheâs so close now etc. etc.
Is she though? Her manipulation skills are equivalent to Zovaalâs atm currently, all she does is yet again whisper stuff like âat the hour⌠of your third work break⌠you will usher in excelâs comingâŚâ and the NPCs just fall to their knees and go, âyes⌠I will usher in⌠excelâs comingâŚâ, thereâs nothing cunningly manipulative or deceptive in that; itâs whatâs called an idiot-plot, wherein the villain is only succeeding because of the sheer idiocy of everyone else involved in the plot. Thereâs really no effort here.
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Well, using this latest trailer as an example, letâs quote every single thing that she says in it.
You have heard my voice in your dreams, Great Queen.
Seems like a pretty direct statement and a way of telling the audience that this isnât the first time that Neferess has gotten such visions.
Yes, of the empire that was.
But the Old Gods are dead, the empire lies in ashes, and a shadow has fallen upon your kingdom.
She is talking about the Black Empire when accused of being the Harbinger. Again, none of this is cryptic, the Old Gods and the Black Empire have both been defeated and prior exposition in the trailer has explained that the kingdom (queendom?) of Azj-Kahet is suffering.
But the blood of the Old Gods⌠can make your people powerful again.
We know that she is talking the Black Blood of the Old Gods quite literally here and not being vague, as that is what is used in the expansion to empower the Nerubians.
Your reign could last for eternity.
All you have to do is take my hand.
A very simple promise of power and greatness, thereâs nothing particularly special about this.
How sad, to have a queen so wise, and yet so ignorant to the call of destiny.
Yes, there is one instance gloating from Xalâatath when it is revealed that she has been talking to Ansurek at the same time as Neferess, and that Ansurek had heard Neferess spurn these offers of greatness.
Long live Queen Ansurek.
She is simply flattering the ego of her latest pawn and pandering to her delusions of grandeur, after having convinced her to seize power from her mother.
If I have missed any sections in this trailer where she says nothing but:
âat the hour⌠of your third work break⌠you will usher in excelâs comingâŚâ
âyes⌠I will usher in⌠excelâs comingâŚâ
Then please let me know, but as far as I know, I couldnât hear or read Xalâatath actually saying any of those things at any particular point.
Itâs just a basic story of manipulation that unfolds over the course of five minutes.
- It is revealed to us that the queen spurned the dark powers in order to keep her kingdom free from the yoke of the Old Gods.
- It is then shown that after this, the kingdom falls upon hard times. The princess is sad about this and believes that there is no point in being free from the Old Gods if the kingdom has to suffer as a result. The queen insists that these hard times will pass and that the kingdom just needs to endure them.
- We then get to see a spat between the princess and the queen. The princess believes that her mother refuses to do what is necessary to end this time of hardship, while the queen believes that her daughter lacks the experience necessary to make the right decisions for the kingdom.
- Then weâre shown that the queen is being offered a way out, a deal from Xalâatath that would end this period of hardship. The queen identifies that the power being offered comes with a cost and that it would be no different from serving the Old Gods again, so she refuses.
- Then weâre given the revelation that not only was the princess offered the same deal, but she was witness to her motherâs refusal of the deal. The princess got to see the queen refuse an opportunity to end the suffering of her people, which widened the rift between daughter and mother even further.
- Given the choice between being responsible for the restoration and ascendancy of her people, and allowing her mother to continue to spurn these offers and keep the kingdom trapped in an age of suffering, the princess decides to overthrow her mother and empower her people.
- In the end, Xalâatath gets what she wants, a nation of minions enhanced with the blood of the Old Gods whose ruler listens to her whispers. Sheâs shown in the background, ominously looming behind Queen Ansurek and her army, because sheâs behind their rise to power, sheâs the puppetmaster and the kingmaker.
Is it complicated? Is it masterfully written? Of course not.
But in this trailer we actually do get to see her convince someone to do as she bids, by turning family against family and by promising that she can provide their solution to their problems.
This is manipulation and in this trailer, we get to see her actually manipulating. It isnât just floating above someone and going âkillyourmomkillyourmomkillyourmomâ as you put it. Ansurek was given all of the reasons that she needed to kill her mother, that pandered to the beliefs that she already had.
And we see this sort of manipulation elsewhere in the War Within, such as with High Speaker Eirich who is convinced to make Earthen into Skardyn because he is convinced Xalâatath that she offers the solution to his problem.
The Azj-Kahet story is still a stale rehash of the same old âmisguided rulers of a declining civilisation is convinced to embrace evilâ story that we get every other expansion.
But that doesnât change the fact that we do get to see Xalâatath actually manipulating someone here by exploiting their desires and their fears, not just by going âat the hour⌠of your third work break⌠you will usher in excelâs comingâŚâ
Not clapping like a seal over here, just not declaring her to be as bad as one of the most poorly written villains in the history of video games either.
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Nor am I. But I think its very important to point out that whilst you were going through that trailer to quote her, Iâm wondering why you never pointed out the consistent and flagrant breakage of the most important rule in writing: show, do not tell. All of your examples, whilst I suppose, of very poor quality are instances of manipulating but they also break the most important part of trying to sell a story - especially one about manipulation - that being to show the short-and-long term-effects of such manipulating, do not ever simply just lay it all out in a monologue.
Itâs just. . .bad, and whilst this standard isnât new from Blizzard storywriting, it doesnât feel like its heralding a return to form or tradition either. Itâs the exact same issue that caused so much disruption and breaking of the worldâs immersion in Shadowlands. Flagrant use of having your characters simply talk like automatons laying out their grand deceptions through vagueries isnât really how you do manipulation, or at the very least, it shows a very poor literary understanding of how to write deception, coercion and manipulation.
Edit: Letâs say that we remove the convolutions of manipulation from the discussion, even then weâre re-treading ground thatâs already been dead-and-buried in this franchise over the past 30 years and thatâs arguably an even more egregious sin than Xalâatath just being Zovaal 2.
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i like the knife wife and her new spider gf. cinematic was cool and spooky.
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All of this is just a reaction to you saying that she is âfunctionally the exact same character as Zovaal,â which is something that I disagree with.
Itâs also interesting that youâve gone from saying that:
to saying that Blizzard just âlays it all out in a monologue.â
So weâve gone from Xalâatath apparently not doing any manipulation at all and just spouting cryptic nonsense and us being shown people bending to her will for no explainable reason, to Xalâatathâs manipulation apparently being over-explained in a monologue and told to us with no shown consequences of this manipulation.
I think it comes across as over-explanation because I had to over-explain it just now. I laid out what Xalâatathâs grand deception was in that post, she doesnât do that herself in that trailer. She says less than a hundred words throughout the whole five minute shebang.
Thereâs also the fact that five minutes is not a lot of time to show much with, hence Blizzardâs tendency to resort to a lot of telling with all of these story trailers, as far as back as the Burdens of Shaohao. Many of them have a narrator telling us every single step of the story, far more deliberately and frequently than this trailer does.
Could you come up with a couple of examples of Blizzard could have done more showing and less telling in this instance? I struggle to grasp exactly what you were looking to get out of this trailer, even if I agree that itâs just another case of retreading the same old story.
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This isnât really a hypocrisy, its absolutely possible for these both to be truths by the way, one doesnât necessarily contradict the existence of the other. Is it, perhaps, possible that these are both issues and that theyâve been writing it both ways from Legion-TWW? Because thereâs examples of both, ergo, it must be in some form true of how they handle it.
To clarify further, its why I replied by saying that I âdo supposeâ they are examples of manipulation, but they fall into the trap of telling the manipulation with no build-up, prior knowledge or basis. Thus the opportunity is floundered.
See my issue here:
I can agree its a consistent problem, but I heavily disagree with the Burdens of Shaohao being involved, I very much feel like the Shaohao shorts embody the spirit of showing and not telling.
It shows us the effects that negative emotions have, not just upon an individual, but the land of Pandaria (though through stylistic representation of the land twisting into various sha-like shapes when Shaohao allows his emotions to overcome him), and whilst the Celestials do âtellâ us a solution, they do not do so in a way that feels immersion-breaking or flagrant, they speak with the wisdom of an ancient being and in a lyrical, poetic way to represent the uniqueness of their own existences. We are shown the malice of the Sha, its malevolence, we are shown the consequences that can result from the Shaâs influences upon an individual and we are shown Shaohaoâs journey to overcome the emotional burdens of the Sha. The Celestials act as Sage, but do not offer an easy means or solution out of the story of struggle Shaohao must endure.
Iâve spoken to others and offered my personal word salad in private conversations regarding how I wouldâve handled this entire trilogy before but to make a very long 5 pages short so that we can focus just upon this trailer: I wouldnât have shown you this sort of video whatsoever. Itâs a Catch-22 to me. A lose-lose situation where you waved the ability to succeed the moment you began.
Xalâatath is a none-character for a huge % of the playerbase, she is an unknown spawned from thin air with no unique lore to her name as of yet. Nobody knows anything about it, nobody knows why sheâs doing what sheâs doing, nobody even really knows what sheâs actually doing or what she even is. The ideal, I suppose, would have been to actually have these shorts focusing upon various different characters and showing us what theyâve been doing leading up to TWW: Anduin, Alleria, Thrall, Faerin etc., show us the direction their stories have taken over the years and show us, from their own perspective, where their story is going now in this new trilogy.
How is Alleria managing in her new state? Show me what she does in the quiet hours of the days to make peace with the mental afflictions she is constantly struggling against. In what ways does she try to find periods of peace from the acceptance of her fate? This a good opportunity, actually, to have Xalâatath involved too, perhaps she is the one tormenting her mind of late; donât show me her, donât give me her voice, but show me someâŚburdens and memories Alleria holds, show me them twisting in her mind, changing in ways she canât be sure of and leave it there to simmer in the audienceâs minds.
How is Anduin doing after the torments of the Jailer upon his mind? How does he feel, so disconnected from the Holy Light, his faith and his friends? What has he been doing to try and reconnect with himself, with the Light, and how did this lead him to Silithus? Show me the pains and regrets he harbours, the doubts since abdicating his throne.
What of Thrall? How does he fare since having made a new leadership for the Horde? Show me how recent events with the Hordeâs troubles are weighing on him, and in what ways they manifest. Show me how he finds peace with the past, and how he intends to forge a future now that he has returned to lead the Orcish people and grow his family amongst them. In what ways does this lead to his relevance in TWW?
In a slight side-note, I did actually like the discussion between Ansurek and the Queen whilst showing the greyed, faded version of Azj-kahet and the starving people below. That was a good piece of symbolism and imagery. I wish it focused more on those strifes.
Perhaps Iâm screaming into a Void (heh), but I just feel an overly-damned sensation that Iâm constantly being led through a bunch of rides instead of a world before hopping on to the next 4, the Vanilla-WotLK and MoP Trailers just have such a different vibe from the new ones. The world doesnât feel like it exists in any tangible way in the writing room.
Has this sort of storytelling ever been commonplace in the Warcraft setting whatsoever, outside of novels which have the time and the space in order to handle such things?
Not only that, but showing this sort of thing on screen would likely lead to a marked increase in the âboring, Iâve had enough of this emotional crap, make Warcraft manly again, Iâm not here to watch women whine about their feelings, this game really lost its teethâ complaints that WoW has gotten over the past couple of years.
Though that hasnât stop people from throwing those complaints at this trailer, even though it features a daughter stabbing her own mother in a bid for power.
Iâll stop here since continuing this conversation doesnât seem it would be productive, but Iâm of the opinion that you expect a sort of storytelling out of Warcraft that it has never really done before now, and that youâre taking out your frustration by exaggerating certain issues - I could agree that Xalâatath is a mediocre manipulator, as Blizzard is bad at writing intricate and subtle plots without them collapsing under their own weight (see Sylvanas) but I canât agree with this comparison of Xalâatath and Zovaal.
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Has it been explained by the way why these particular Nerubians are in decline to begin with?
You have in Pandaria the Chad Mantid who despite the death of their main god, re-arranged their society and strengthen it over the millenias in an era where they had naught but enemies everywhere on a Titan dominated planet. Took them 4-5 years to get back to full strength with a new Empress and attack again when a god they donât mainly revere began running amok.
Why are these Nerubian losers? Whatâs the Mcguffin magic juice they ainât getting that causing them to all go poor, hungry and their cities collapsing below?
May a Beta tester kindly answer me please.
âItâs complicatedâ. We donât really get an explanation, from what Iâve seen (thereâs plenty of encrypted cinematics etc. we donât have access too yet mind) why they started falling during BfA-onwards. I think the implication is that Xalâatath has been doing it, and orchestrated the fall to benefit them - that seems the most logical to me given that she has her finger in Ansurekâs pie and it directly benefits her. But thereâs no direct âit was all totally thisâ, but again, lots of encrypted stuff, it might be explained in one of those cinematics. But their current (by the time we get there) issues are all caused by Ansurekâs very poor treatment and leadership, so we help the previous Queenâs Loyalists regain control of the city.
Part of it might be their sheer isolation compared to other areas as well. Pandaria is a very resource-rich land, as is Northrend, and both Azjol-Nerub and the Dread Wastes are quite open, above-ground-esque areas even though theyâre also huge underground areas. The Azjol-Kahet Nerubians in contrast are entirely underground, parts of their city is collapsing down, it seems like they lack any notable resources etc.
An interesting thing to note is that Queen Neferess (the Old Queen)'s Loyalists are very Anti-Void. They donât treat with it, their perception is that theyâre manipulative enslavers and that theyâre better off freed of their influences; but that doesnât make us friendly-friends, its much more âenemy of my enemyâ and âoutsider who can restore my peopleâs freedomâ.
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My hope is that she becomes the leader of a reunified elven rave. Just imagine the carnage in this forum.
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The combined aesthetics of the elven realms would make one heck of a raveâŚ
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