https://youtu.be/qPzmPyxYW24
New Alliance intro!
Not a fan personally 
2 Likes
Why are the developers so set on turning everything in to grey mush? What made the Alliance unique was not being a homogenous blob with no culture or distinct differences. What do we gain by erasing what makes the factions interesting? We’re now officially the Blue Horde 2.0 with out any of the soul or the character. I don’t know about anyone else but I play because of the individual race, their lore and the actual traits that make them interesting not because of a lion banner.
Whether we’re speaking about philopsophical beliefs or even just the base aesthetics, we’ve gone from a mutual defense pact of independant Kingdoms to this. The High King (read: blue warchief) nonsense has been bad enough, truely a cursed meme and I had hoped when Metzen backpeddled on twitter they would cut it out like they did with Me’dan but obviously they can’t help themselves.
Seeing a draenei walking around in footman armour, reading the text, it just makes it clear the developers aren’t keen on the races being races…? Having any kind of individuality? We’re just going to pretend the individual races don’t exist anymore I suppose? Supposedly it’s not the Exodar, their own people or their own culture that’s most important to the draenei it’s the human’s Kingdom? Making the Alliance in to a single nation state is dumb.
9 Likes
Another week, another week of no priest changes.
My insanity drain is ramping up.
4 Likes
Apparently they’re coming… In the same way the dragons in Got are.
1 Like
Anduin’s brainwashing them with the Light.
In the Light…All are One.
Lukewarm take but The Light is probably one of the most boring fantasies faiths/power sources I’ve seen in a universe. It’s the most bland, generic “Catholicism Branded”, golden-coloured, will-powered organisation as you can get. Universes where the humans worship a plethora of gods, or at least a tangible deity, are far more nuanced with a lot more potential. The Light is as basic a holy faith as you can get; you believe in it/yourself, therefore you get yellow powers.
The Naaru/morally grey angle is sometimes interesting, but then that reduces it to a core component of the universe as opposed to anything really faith-based.
I really wish the Warcraft universe had real, proper gods. Something to differentiate the priests and their powers, as opposed to having every priest use the same power interchangeably (except night elves except maybe not?). The Loa are as close as we’ve got, but they’re exclusive to one single race. Wild Gods are kind of the same, and not really powerful enough to warrant proper worship (they die all over the place).
Anyway humans were cooler when they worshipped Tyr, and Kul Tirans are cool cos The Tide Mother.
I’d unironically enjoy the light based faith if it come more with nuances and middle grounds rather than serving us the extremes. Either you get the complete and crazy good light welders who can do no wrong or you get the Spani- I mean the Scarlet Crusade or Lightbound who want to convert all into them.
If the light had to be interesting, I’d execute it in the same way as Deidric Princes in ESO, each representing some form of quality or virtue necessary to wield it but all are also needed to be explored to be an accomplished Paladin/Priest.
Another issue being the lack of actual conflict within Light wielders themselves, can you imagine if the fledgling human faith had to cohabit in close proximity with the Scarlet Crusade (Not as enemies but neighbours) but also be sneered at by the so ancient Draenei who’ve had this going for them for eons but also have to not fall over to the extremism of the Lightforged. Dwarves and Gnomes having no idea where to head among those ideologies while the isolationist Kaldorei and their faith in Elune won’t allow any blasphemy about their goddess?
Now wouldn’t that be cool?
PS : Arakkoa are still the superior Light AND Void welders cuz they had Demi-Gods are medium, an entire society around intelligence and faith plus conflict to spice everything up.
I mean none of the other races really do anything interesting besides Humans, so why not just make everyone else “Slightly bigger Human; Blue Human, Tiny Human. Sidekick Human” and stick them all in guard gear?
That’s Blizzard’s mistake because they focus on the Humans on the Alliance side… and then the Forsaken, or orcs, or blood elves on the Horde side.
Hence why no one but the humans on Alliance side get any lore or do anything interesting except a token patch here and there.
I would say that the Loa already explore this with how they each represent a different aspect of life and explore them in very different ways. Be it good or bad, they don’t really care. Just like the Daedric Princes. As long as they have followers, that’s all that matters.
That aside, the camera angles are atrocious and in panning from the park show all the worst of a 2004 grey lego city screaming for a visual update.
You’re laughing. A man has fallen into the river in Lego city and you are laughing.
4 Likes
Which is great, but it’s a troll/exclusive faith. Meaning trolls are the only race that has any variety in their religion and worship; the only race with a proper choice of pantheon to revere. You could argue that the same could be said for night elves and Wild Gods, but they also already have their own unique form of worship (Elune).
I just want gods, man. A game like Pillars of Eternity will have priests that vary immensely depending on their god of worship, whilst all WoW priests bar night elves get their power from the exact same place. It’s so narrow and lame.
EDIT: Yeah it could be said that the different priests get their Light-powers from different forms of faith (pandaren faith in Celestials, tauren faith in An’she, etc.) but Blizzard has made very little effort to show this, especially thanks to Legion.
Oh and making this Shadowlands relevant; everyone goes to the same four places when you die. Or maybe a small “pocket dimension” if you’re a lucky race. Great
1 Like
Blizz have done a dumpster-tier job of explaining how shadowlands works so far, but my understanding is that if you’re judged ‘Useful’ or whatever by the Arbiter then you get sent to the ‘Custodian’ planes (Bastion/Ardenweald/Maldraxxus/Revendreth) and if you’re just like…not useful to the ongoing maintenance of the shadowlands then they punt you off to a normal afterlife to chill.
I guess Cairne was neither dutiful or strong enough to warrant being a glorified mopman.
2 Likes
I find the Light itself to be very dull but I still like Paladins because of their moral code. Trolls and Night Elves have the best religion in the setting out of the playable races imo but I think that the latter religion suffers from being too vague.
1 Like
Yeah the video is unacceptable no matter how we slice it. Posters made great points so far and truth be told… we should hold Blizzard’s feet to the fire like we did with the Silver Hand (now Silvermoon – still not ok but a step in the right direction) banners in the Orgrimmar barracks.
I held out on buying Shadowlands, and funny enough this little tidbit of the direction they wish to take things pretty much brought me over the finish line. And I don’t even play Alliance.
I won’t support them, I’ll buy subs until my gold runs out and then that’s it I guess. This game is… nothing like what I remember it to be. And I don’t mean mechanics wise, but just what the heck happened to the “world” in World of Warcraft.
4 Likes
Apparently it became impossible to maintain, with every starting area and expansion zone stuck in their own time bubble.
So Blizz decided to create a new starting experience which is as generic as possible, so it doesn’t become outdated so quickly – and if it does, one starting area and intro cinematic is easier to update than 12 (excluding the pandaren and allied races).
2 Likes
AKSHUALLY, the night elves worship a pantheon of Gods, with Elune bieng the prime god.
Alas, Blizzard never expendad on that Pantheon and the most commonly accepted headcanon has it that the Titans are the rest of the Pantheon.
Honestly, they could go a long way with giving the various priests of different races (and paladins) unique, racial additions to their “Light”. Tauren priests and paladin spells would be more fiery (thanks An’she), Pandaren one would appear more red (Chi’ji), night elven ones would be silver (Elune), troll ones could be more white (Bwon’samdi), etc.
It is, how many people know of the night elven Pantheon of Gods? I mean we know Elune exists but we don’t know the extent of her power or ability to interfere on the mortal plane (apparently she can directly interfere sometimes? But other times not?)
Should’ve been a tauren banner with a Sunwalker. If you want an elven paladin trainer get to Silvermoon!
Sad to see you go, another roleplayer lost to Blizzard’s refusal to build a coherent story and world 
I mean, they did. But do they? Really? Nah. That’s obscure lore that blizz has forgotten and essentially discarded.
1 Like
Same with troll fur. Mentioned once, never again, WoD models shows them having leathery skin akin to toads.
https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/wowpedia/f/f3/Zekhan.jpg