Yeah the story-telling was highly cartoonish (and raised a lot of criticism) but the duality was solid there.
Tirion represented the best values of humankind, while Arthas was the exact opposite (a traitor of humanity).
At this point Ion could sent the Old God crowd a signed letter saying “The Old Gods are dead. You killed them. They’re gone. Signed with love, Ion” and they’d still go “actually…”
1 Like
Depends. If the assault still continues after 8.3 so the content doesn’t get deleted then it’ll be the most powerful assault ever for messing with an RP zone on a near constant basis.
Guess he was the stronger old god after all…
Short: no.
Otherwise, the wowpedia bit summarises it well:
Some Old God minions claimed that “They do not die; they do not live. They are outside the cycle.”[55] The death of Y’Shaarj and of the Old Gods killed by Sargeras seem to contradict this.
We know that the Twisting Nether exists outside of time and space, connecting the Light and Void (which in turn makes them way outside of time and space—or as Chronicles says ‘[…] dwell in a realm outside the borders of reality’). While (technically?) headcanon, a being that manifested and heralds forces outside of reality probably doesn’t need to obey the rules of reality (or rather, they, timeless beings of a timeless realm as they are, do not necessarily see death as an end point but rather a point*).
What isn’t headcanon is that even a definitely-‘dead’ Y’shaarj can manifest through his curse (Sha) and continue doing what he used to do. Considering that Warcraft’s a universe where shedding your physical form isn’t exactly an obstacle (ghosts, demons, immaterial star bandage people) or total death, it’s difficult to see any one Old God as dead so long as their corruption still exists.
*The best question to this entire discussion is more philosophical, as defining death as an act is the start and end of it. I think that Shadowlands will give some definitive answers, or at least leads, in that regard.
Man I ain’t gonna trust a Twilight to tell me what’s up with the old gods.
They’re crazy!
Trust what you see Elenthas.
But can you?
That’s what the sunglasses are for. Haven’t you seen They Live?
I haven’t but I’ve absorbed enough of it through internet posts to make the reference.
2 Likes
Ion recently talked about this actually:
I think that’s a thing that remains to be seen. Certainly, the direct manifestations of N’Zoth’s power would presumably shrivel and wither away.
Of course, given the repeatable nature of content, we want to make sure you still have things to do, so even after you’ve beaten N’Zoth in the raid you’ll still be able to go out and do your Horrific Visions and continue to play the rest of the game!
But in terms of canon, in terms of how the storyline moves on, I think that corrupting power will no longer be present.
EDIT: ok im btuchering my formatting nvm
1 Like
(you messed it up chief!)
But that’s very interesting, I hadn’t seen that.
im rqing the forums for today
I’m not sure Y’shaarj was really read. His heart was still beating during SoO, and was whispering to players in the raid. I think it was more like he was severely weakened, to the point where he couldn’t really influence the outside world too much personally. Luckily, an arrogant Warchief happened upon him, and willingly drew its influence into himself and his warriors. Unluckily, we showed up shortly afterwards.
Who is the current lead writer of WoW?
Maybe that would explain why we got what we go in BfA. Maybe the lead writers past work would give some insight as of why the story of BfA is as horrible. I would not be surprised to find a complete nobody as the lead writer who has written some terrible games and graduated from some Hollywood writing school (which graduates are known to be massive failures).
Afrasiabi is the creative director, has been since WoD. Ion’s the Game Director.
Full credits for BfA: https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/world-of-warcraft-battle-for-azeroth/credits
1 Like
Googled him. Has no previous work in writing and was just hired.
Yikes. Explains a lot now.
BfA had 4 creative developers / writers. Double the yikes.
1 Like
I don’t think you can blame Afrasiabi alone for this. I believe there are plenty of reasons while the writing in WoW seems so bad:
- The foundations for Warcraft/WoW lore are kinda shaky. They hadn’t thought things out through very well initially (understandably so because I’m sure they didn’t expect Warcraft to end up as a succesful and long-lasting MMO), so a lot of basic stuff just wasn’t there.
- WoW writers seem to write like comic book writers. Comic book series tend to use character, plot & lore details that are only relevant for the current arc. If the writer wants a team up, Superman will be there to help Batman out. Otherwise, the guy who can beat all of Batman’s enemies in a second for some reason won’t be there. If one author finishes his run of the Flash, his successor will decide which character designs to inherit, which details of the Flash mythology to change, etc. Quite like the Vindicaar suddenly disappearing from existence because it’s inconvenient to the plot, or Jaina’s staff miraculously changing appearance. Also - we seem to struggle with worldly forces as much as cosmic ones, because power levels just fluctuate insanely without explanation. Another hallmark of comic book writing. Why do they this? Could be cultural influence, could be because we know it to be a proven way of handing a long-running fantasy/sci-fi series.
- I can imagine writing for an MMO with an expansion model can be quite annoying. So much coordination between the different teams, having to write the story so that every expansion and even every patch has distinct themes and aesthetics - the unfortunate truth is that the story will have to revolve around gameplay as much as the other way around. Sometimes they probably won’t even be able to write some of the things they want to write, because that needs to be represented in-game, and time and resources are limited.
Honestly, Afrasiabi and other incompetent people are for sure part of the problem (I still can’t get over how he called Outland a “death titan” lmfao), but I don’t think it’s as simple as “wow writers bad”.
2 Likes
i suspect a lot of it is corporate meddling too.
The suits want X because they think X will bring in players. The devs have to bend over backwards to somehow make X work no matter how silly it is.
Especially the ‘focus everything on the player doing cool stuff’ smells of it, like blowing up N’zoth in person. It’s unsound narratively but just the kind of weird player-pandering the suits probably love.
3 Likes
Oh yeah, true! I can totally see the marketing team going “hey stuff like Game of Thrones and Witcher is really popular these days, so can you write some realistic big-brain fantasy stuff, people love that” -> BfA and its garbage faction conflict
“People complained about Thrall’s Jesusbeam, so now they must love having their own Jesusbeam, right?”
Jaina as just being Ciri in Witcher 3
1 Like
But also Imlerith
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.