Thankfully I don’t treat anything remotely morally grey or evil in the setting as fodder to cut down and exile for the sake of a portrayal of zealotry that would make even the Scarlet Crusade urge a bit of restraint.
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Just unlocked them on the NA and… Yeah, that questline kinda started with a bang and then fizzled. Something as momentous as remorseful Man’ari Eredar rejoining the Draenei needed more than just a quick whizz around Argus and a cliffhangar ending with ‘I need to talk with more who think as you do’.
Honestly it almost feels like Blizzard started this one off with the full intention of delivering what we wanted, reached the halfway mark and then had to divert it’s resources elsewhere due to the staffing requirements that a patch like 10.2 requires (or perhaps the new expansion, who can say at this point) so they left it unfinished, gave us some rather drab red Draenei recolors (which I think has dissapointed all parties, they should have at least given us more skin colors and faces to let us use the existing fel-pocked Man’ari assets, especially as the key NPC we interact with that initiates their joining is fel-pocked himself) and then slapped on a 'Oh hey, look! The hidden recolors of these items you’ve been wanting since Legion, look at that! Go get ‘em and increase your time spent in the game through farming this old zone, champ!’ McGuffin to distract us from the short sell.
It really feels like it needs a part 2. We need to see that meeting with Velen and the repentant Eredar and we need to see how they’d be integrated into the Alliance (though in fairness we’ve had stranger things happen before where monsters joining player factions are concerned, hello Illidari and Death Knights). At least they aren’t pulling their punches with the forgiveness angle though, as the main Eredar NPC we interact with flat out states that he won’t apologize to us… Because any apology he can give would be an insult to us. He can’t apologize, only do what good he can until his life is spent. So I’d say they nailed that part.
I think at this point their joining is kinda handwavium at best. ‘There was a big meeting and Velen introduced these Eredar, Turalyon wanted to smite them but then he got reminded about Hatuun and Illidan and how not everything Fel is neccessarily evil. Then Velen showed the glowy relic crystal they retrieved to prove their intentions at trying to do some good, and things kinda got ironed over with a ‘you cause trouble in our town and we turn you into glowing green stains on the cobblestones’ clause that the Illidari also signed as enforcers.’ That kind of thing.
At this point, so long as the Man’ari player in question is sticking to a vague theme (I want to do good with what’s left of my existance, I can’t apologize for what I did because it would be insulting, but here is why I did what I did) I can easily see them being… Tolerated. I just wish they hadn’t gotten hit with the ‘obviously cut/unfinished content stick’ on their release.
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We see the reason why in game in Ashenvale in the form of the Horde and Warsong’s logging operations. In spite of now knowing these forests were sacred to the night elves, the Horde kept encroaching on their territory in order to collect lumber, and with how battered the night elves were after the Third War, they turned to the Horde’s old enemy - the Alliance.
I think this is good summary, it really needs part 2. There is however still a hope. We might get some small thing next week as it sometimes happen recently and Draenei heritage still have to come. Altough I wouldn’t stick to it.
On a completely different scale. I don’t think the two are remotely comparable, when the worst thing the Shen’dralar ever did was to themselves.
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I think a better comparison would be to the Illidari and the Death Knights. Granted, the Man’ari have an ocean of blood on their hands compared to them, but they still follow the notion of ‘We’re monsters, we’ve done awful things to you and your friends and we know we disgust you, we disgust ourselves too. However, we’re not going to apologize and ask for forgiveness because that would be demeaning and insulting to you and we know we’re beyond redemption, instead we’re going to use what power we have to do some measure of good going forwards until we’re finally dead.’
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I like this mindset, I think we all missing the “rejoining”. Did they actually rejoined or is there just a small Eredar faction which isn’t hostile to Azeroth? And if they rejoin some cleasning and dedemonizing should take a place. Draenei would apparently help Eredar who would want to repent. At least few lines already back from TBC implies that. Accepting repentant doesnt imidately mean forgivnes and hearty welcomes ofc.
While I see what you mean, I think that comparison is also almost a stretch. Demon Hunters were set on their path to destroy the Legion, and while they have undertaken some horrible ritual, their crimes against their own people seem social rather than actually evil?
As for the death knights, the comparison is closer, but even here there are substantial differences. The mind control is the most obvious one, of course.
Death Knights were also risen unwillingly at the 1st place. At least most of them.
In the Exodar of all places. At least he does wear a hood rather than an Archimonde cosplay with felfire.
And it does imply they’re starting to be integrated to some degree?
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The trouble is we don’t really know the size of the repentant faction within the Man’ari, and even if it’s small in comparison to the Man’ari race’s overall population we need to remember that this population likely extends to two thirds of a planet’s dominant race that was at the height of it’s power when it joined the Legion and still had the opportunity to further expand itself over the millenia since, as unlike the Draenei there was nothing actively hunting the Man’ari. That could mean that this small group could extend to the hundreds of thousands, we really can’t be certain without some kind of official figure given by Blizz.
As for de-demonizing and cleansing them… I don’t know if that can be done. We’ve only seen one being in WoW that has the potential to purify a demon, and that being is currently in thousands of tiny shards that the Lightforged occasionally tread on while they move around the Vindicaar. Unless we find any more Prime Naaru, or more of Xe’ra’s line (doubtful, as O’ros was said to be the last) then it’s a safe bet that cleansing is out of the question.
There’s also that satyr being redeemed right back into his night elven self by Elune.
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That’s true, but that’s also a case of a god directly intervening in mortal affairs. I doubt you’d get that on any kind of mass scale. Plus I’d imagine there’s a bit of a gap between a Satyr that was altered ten thousand years ago and a Man’ari Eredar that’s spent millenia wielding dark magics that the Satyr could only have dreamed of commanding.
There’s precedent of such besides the artist formerly known as Xe’ra, which was mainly the point I was going for.
A neat detail is the change to the Gift of the Naaru when using a man’ari skin. There’s supposedly no functional change to the spell, just its visual effect.
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Well I can’t say what the Illidari as a collective did to many peoples on Outland can be seen as anything but god awful.
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Are you talking about the Illidari as in the DH alone or the Illidari the whole army, there is a distinction here as they were secret weapons hardly employed by Illidan except for a few instances, one of them being the defeating of Kruul during the opening of the Dark Portal thus allowing a Foothold to the factions. The DHs mentality of sacrificing everything for victory does align with the whole “oppress the whole of Outland” goal with a zealous following of Illidan so…
i’d like to have had a bit more detail on how these new eredar are going to be percieved by Their Allies™ more than just input from haatun, but its neat that they kept the approach very hostile and the eredar unrepentant
it was a serviceable questline
I think this is probably the worst option they could have gone for when it comes to showing whether they are now in the Alliance. By nature, what he’s doing isn’t really legal, especially in the city he’s in and he’s in an area utilized for that activity.
Comparing it to Stormwind, it would be like seeing a demon in Slaughtered Lamb and saying that demons are allowed in Stormwind now because, after all, there’s a demon in Stormwind and is tagged as Friendly to the Alliance.
Or, seeing an eredar in Legion Dalaran Underbelly and saying eredar as a whole were allowed to be in the city above.
Where else then with a race that has always been portrayed as very forgiving? I get not exactly being a fan of Man’ari joining the Alliance, I really get it. But for me it was never a question of Velen and his Draenei would allow their lost brothers and sisters to return. I could have told you that during BC.