Some new images from the Grimoir book

With the delay of the “Grimoir of the Shadowlands and Beyond”, some people managed to get the book early and did share a few texts. Here is what one of owners shared on twitter:

4 images

corners of the “new” cosmology map

the “new and improved” cosmology chart (3 images)

a bit about the 1st Ones

A bit about forsworn:

text from the Ardenweald pre-Shadowlands preview

A mention of wisps

“Exploring Azeroth” style message in the book

Mention of Mueh’zala

Personal early notes:

  1. the book reuses a bunch of stuff from the game texts, previews posted around the expansion announcement, and from the collector’s edition book.

  2. it… does not feel like improvement over the old lore to me, at all. But it’s just me.

Maybe will mention some other ideas later.


gl hf

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They already went ahead to reinvent and retcon the previous cosmology chart?

They really decided to just undermine one of the coolest appeals and assets Chronicles had?

Like, what appeal do they expect this book to have when they are blatantly undermining the work of the previous one?
How long will it take for this one to have the same treatment?

PS: Not a fan of how they smeared troll afterlife to retcon it as some sort of special hell that has Muezala as the jailor that tortures said souls and prevents them from being “elevated” to their rightful place in the rest of the afterlives.

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I think their approach is that Chronicles is written from the Titans perspective. Or our perspective if you will.

The Grimoire is written from the perspective of one of the Brokers (Shadowlands). And he’s naturally an unreliable narrator. He may or may not be right about what he presents.

Cornicles is supposed to be the same. Blizzard just didn’t infer an actual narrator, so the unreliableness of the information within doesn’t come across very well. Unfortunately.

But yeah, I think the idea is that these compendiums are perspectives of someone. And then as we get more and more (one from The Void, one from The Light, one from Fel, and so on), we get to compare and weed out the wrong from the right.

So it’s not really retconning. It’s just Blizzard making heavy use of the unreliable narrator to tell their story.

A Blizzard employee previously mentioned this new cosmology chart is how the cosmos are viewed from the Shadowlands, while the old if how it is viewed from the mortal plane.

It is not really a retcon, but rather an invention to give the worldbuilding some more depth.

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Sounds like a cash grab that spills out content people are expected to pay extra bucks for, additionally thrown to mask the fact that writers can’t be bothered to stick to the foundations laid out by their predecessors.

So, instead of having a solid source to explain the universe (the way Chronicles was marketed), we will have a whole bunch of unreliable sources that have about the same credibility as some fan theory. And also get peppered with retcons such as the one already displayed regarding the troll afterlife.

Great.

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as someone whose native language is not english, I’d say

retcon
a piece of new information given in a film, television series, etc. that changes, or gives a different way of understanding, what has gone before. Retcon is short for “Retroactive Continuity”.

© https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/retcon

that it’s a “textbook example” of a retcon.


gl hf

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I quite like the mystery and the speculation that these books offer.

Initially when Chronicles came out and most people just took the information for granted it was fairly…mundane. Just a lore compendium. But when Blizzard revealed it to be unreliable information, then it suddenly got more interesting, because you then got to read it with a critical mind.

With the Grimoire book you also get to read that with a critical mind and not just take everything at face value. And you get to compare it to the information you have in Chronicles and try to figure out what seems more plausible.

There’s some detective work there which is super fun if you enjoy tumbling down the rabbit hole of speculation and theory.

But it’s of course not for everyone.

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I mean, has it really changed anything? We still have the old cosmology chart for the living beings, and Blizzard never stated that, that cosmology chart counted for all planes of reality. It has definetly added something, but I fail to see what it has altered.

They’re just using an unreliable narrator, which is not a very unorthodox way of telling a story.
For reference:

I’d say it regressed quite a bit. But I’m not feeling to well to go in details currently.

Yup. Starting from the origin story, to the contradictions with the formerly known afterlife / “gods” related stories.

People did not “took” the information. That is how it was advertised:

It’s not a “reveal”, but a change of the explicitly stated intention.

That’s not how “unreliable narrator” works, I’d say.

For example, The Elder Scrolls 3

  • it does not matter if the Tribunal are gods, or just degular dunmer that took a new source of power - the story works regardles…
  • it does not matter if the Secular Houses are traitors on the only ones who were loyal - the story works regardless
  • it does not matter in the protagonist is the Nerevar himself, a different person that inherited his essence, just a random character who happened to be at the right time in the right place, or a play thing of daedra to settle the score with the Tribunal - the story still works.

In WoW, we have contradictions and the stories where using one PoV makes another impossible, etc., e.g. sudden Suramar reveal, or “but Illidan had another intentions”.

So, it’s not a different perspective on the events, their connections, or motivations, but outright “we did not bother to make it work together, so let’s just slap a fancy badge on top”.


gl hf

2 Likes

Would you be more specific as to what it has actually changed, and not just state the context in which it has chnaged things?

We’ll agree to disagree, I think. :slight_smile:

There is no “critical mind” approach when explaining how the universe came to be. It should have but a single correct interpretation for it.

Chronicles didn’t expect you to take anything at face value. It aimed at explaining the overarching setting where the actual stories happened.

Having this approach, far from building a cohesive narrative, basically undermines every work done to build it.

If everything is unreliable, then there is no way to define whats canon, as there is nothing that can be held to mark said distinction.

Let alone, that this all sounds as a mixture of “Lets find a way to grab at some extra bucks by having the audience buy some material that we don’t need to stick to anyway”, and “Let’s find a way to discard everything that could hold us back in terms of what we feel the story should be about”.

Both predicaments are very offensive. To both playerbase, and to the previous narrative team.

They literally renamed Void into Shadows.
And to pick on a single bit of information, they’ve retconned Troll afterlife into a particular “hell” that prevents trollkind from going to their “proper” afterlife.

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“Origin story” - from the clash of Light and Void that prodused things ranging from volatile, like the Twisting Nether, to more stable in the Great Dark Beyond, - to the story that (if the foundation are Life+Death) places Anima+Vita at the core.

When it comes to the afterlives and such, the idea turned into “build from the ground up” (mentioned in the Grimoir interview) instead of building on top of what was there, so we see sudden change in the status of Elune from “one of true deities” to “a part of a yet another pantheon”, to the troll stuff mentioned before, to the “neverending party” afterlive of goblins, suddenly (by default going to Revendreth?), to “shaman ancestors are just echoes”, to this “wisps are there, but let’s not talk about them so our story would work”, and so on.

Sure thing.
/cheer


gl hf

The terms “Void” and “Shadow” also appeared on the original Cosmology Chart and have often been used interchangeably.

All this really means is that the denizens of death call the Void/Shadow “Shadow” from their perspective, which is fully compatable with the cosmic pov theory. This does not really change anything about the original Cosmology chart as viewed from the physical plane/titans perspective in Chronicles.

What does any of this have to do with the Shadowlands cosmology chart?

I think the approach is similar to a crime investigation where there are a number of witnesses.
You’ll want to question all of them and then piece the information together with the clues you’ve collected in order to form the truth.

Like a crime story.

I myself am a fan of Hercule Poirot and really enjoy that kind of detective work where everything is unreliable and then you sort of have to deduct your way through it.

WoW is sort of the same. You’ve got some incomplete information, some unreliable information, some that appears distorted, and then you’ve got your own experiences and observations. And then you try to piece all that together as best you can, and from that is born all the crazy theories and speculation that the community comes up with.

But as said, then it’s of course not for everyone and it’s perfectly understandable if someone doesn’t enjoy the goose chase and just wants a book that lays it out straight as it is.

I quite like it though. :slight_smile:

Science isn’t subject to debate.
This was presented as it’s equivalent in Warcraft universe, in Chronicles.

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Did you read all the stuff available from the Grimoir though?

The chart itself is oversimplified in comparison to the original IMO.


gl hf

I mean, I have not read it due to the delay. I am merely asking how the existence of this new cosmology chart retcons anything.

The only way I see this being true if if Blizzard stated that this new chart was the “true” one, but they are instead portraying it as how the cosmos are viewed from the Shadowlands.

I’m just telling you how Blizzard are setting up this book experience and how it can be appreciated from an audience perspective.

If you are principally opposed to what they’re doing for whatever reason, then alright. The book is not for you.

I quite like it though. :slight_smile: