First of…I understand that we are the end of the Shadowlands chapter. However, I couldn’t help but express doubt on a particular point of the lore. We know that the Runecarver was none other than the Primus who was bereft of memory. We also know by the end of the Shadowlands story-line that it was he who discovered/invented the “language” of Domination and carved it on Zovaal’s face when the latter was being imprisoned, eons before he was in turn imprisoned by the Jailer and his memories taken.
This begs me to ask the question then, how come the Primus-as the runecarver and someone without memory-created the Helm of Domination and Frostmourne, riddled with domination magic? Am I missing something? or is it a “lore bug”???
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about any of Shadowlands. Your mind would be at ease if you pretended that it didn’t exist just like I do.
Smile and wave boy, smile and wave
You see, as much as we want to forget the lore and everything else of the Shadowlands, we cannot deny that it was an expansion-a major storyline-of the WoW universe. There will definitely be connections from it that will force WoW to continuity. I mean Sylvanas is still active. We don’t yet know what exactly happened to Vol’jin, the Drust haven’t yet been defeated completely (Gorak’Tul is still out there), Sire Denathrius is at large (speculation that he might become the new Master of the Legion, given the connection that dreadlords have between the denizens of Death and Chaos) and the presence of the Brokers and the Devourers is still a mystery.
No matter how much the lore team of WoW tries to correct continuity issues, these are ridiculous amount of plot holes that needs to be filled. That aside, I still need to know how the runecarver could make a domination induced weapon and helm when he had no memory which also probably include wielding domination magics.
As fas as I’m concerened, I’d rather just see them drive around all of them. And they could, and even might. Things that only loosely touch on the Shadowlands, like Vol’jin, are one thing, but everything that needs any deeper dive into the Shadowlands lore just turns a lot of players off. The devs don’t really have much, if anything, to win by doing that. Making new storylines has a much better chance of working than dragging Sylvanas’ corpse out once again. After tons of soft and hard retcons in WoW that nobody asked for, this is one that many players actually want.
Now, that doesn’t mean that the devs see it the same way. If they did what seems reasonable more often, we wouldn’t be in this position. But if other players, or the interns ask about if and how the Shadowlands plotholes should be filled, my answer is clear:
They shouldn’t. The less I’m reminded of that stuff, the better the chance I might the lore that is to come.
You know what I want to know…
In the first quests where we meet the runecarver we “save” the guy by unhooking ONE off his chained arms. ONE. For the remaining off season 1 into 2 we just leave the guy hanging there.
“Thank you for freeing me” he says.
What? We littarly free one hand so you can make us items, but we keep you chained so we don’t lose track off you…
In the end it turns out he is the Primus and continues to help us.
Why? We left the guy rot in the oubliette…
We kinda do though.
We know he died after the battle off the Broken Shore due to poison.
Afterwards his spirit guided us through BFA and into the Maw before merging with Rhezan (was that his name?) to help the dino after bieing wounded.
Because off this the Winter queen allowed him to be able to podtender into a possible ressurection.
I still think the Primus was the shadowy figure behind Sylvanas in that first Shadowlands cinematic we got and he was ultimately meant to be the end-baddy. He is shady as hell and what kind of good guy would even invent something like domination magic in the first place. I think Zovaal was meant to be the one that lost his memory and was then used as a puppet by the Primus. But a lot of stuff, and I mean A LOT OF STUFF feels like it was just cut from Shadowlands.
If you are referring to this article…you may be spot on
but the lore-makers of WoW could have then made a better closing in revealing the Primus’s true intentions at end of Shadowlands apart from Sylvanas just doing the free souls quest in the Maw (if the speculation is true). If the theory of wow-head is indeed true, then all this façade will make somewhat of a sense, in a bizarre kind of way though.
I mean Primus is stated to be greatest strategist in the cosmos, Yet in game it does not seem like that. Maybe that is the point, He might have manipulated the events and is playing long game. No idea what is his end goal, If it was dominating all of reality due to Zovaal being somehow under his control/influence, It clearly failed. Primus clearly lacks the Power to do anything agains Us, we would Curbstomp him at our current Power lvls. Unless He is hiding His true strenght.
…we have never seen any great strategies in WoW, even though many characters have been lauded as great strategists. Maybe the devs just don’t understand what that means, considering it’s way outside their realms of expertise.
Stratego is a very hard and complicated game with lots off strategies.
When incapable ppl play it becomes a “move one pawn a turn” game. It becomes eassier then checkers or chess.
If you look at my last reply, that is exactly the narrative that Danuser or his team failed to express as one of the major end-game plot-twist (if the theory is held to be true). This revelation of the Primus being behind all the death-arc would have benefitted the Shadowlands lore in two ways:
It would have brought at-least a sensible continuity to the Scourge/Lich King/Denathrius/Dreadlords storyline (please read the theory in wowhead 1st before you come into an argument for this, the speculative condition is already given).
It would have been the 1st expansion where we realize we as heroes have screwed up, doomed Shadowlands and the cosmos even further and the prospect of what will the Primus do next would have been an interesting opening to a continuing story-line, further strengthening the cosmos-based lore that WoW was trying to establish since the chronicles.
There is still an opportunity for that to surface in DF seeing that we come into conflict again with the Infinite Dragonflight and Bronze Dragons. We probably get to know who was the Primus’s “ally” that made him see the future moves of his opponents.
PS: I understand that this might get me a bit of stick from fans who hate the Shadowlands lore, but then again, I’m basing this on a theory, not cannon
Do “it would have”'s help us in any way, though? I mean… they could have had a genius plot for Shadowlands, which only fell apart when production’s limitations came into play, and instead we got a mess of half-developed ideas that had to be discarded halfway through… But that still means that what we got was a mess. Whatever they could have done… the devs didn’t reveal the Primus as a villain, and didn’t show us our failure. They just finished off the Jailer, fridged Sylvanas and were done with it. And good riddance, as far as I’m concerned. We can argue if it could have been cool… but it didn’t happen. And if they did it now it certainly wouldn’t be cool, it would just be another disjointed mess that told us that the manipulators of the manipulators of the manipulators were actually manipulated all along, so that we would raid that guy now that for some reason won’t see our plan to punch him in the face coming.
Well, if you look into the initial Warcraft 1 and 2 story line (orcs were manipulated by Kil’Jaeden, who was actually working for Medivh-Sargeras) and the Warcraft 3 story-line (Scourge manipulated by the Legion, manipulated by Ner’zhul), warcraft is a story of manipulations. Although in this case the “manipulation” strings are a bit longer but to deny that it didn’t exist since the advent of WoW is overlooking things.
I also hate the Shadowlands lore, but as a long term WoW fan, I was still clinging to hope. And to me, this theory may possibly bring stupid to place considering the “manipulation” logic that I just mentioned.
Proving you can’t convincingly keep that up indefinitely. For me at least. At some point you need a new idea. There is no reason at all to treat Warcraft as if it was one long continuous story. Having multiple stories within a shares world over time would be much, much easier and would allow us to have actual endings to these stories.
Isn’t it “might have”? Which was my point, it’s not something that happened, and not something they can satisfyingly add after the addon. It might have been a better idea, it might even have been the original plan, but since they didn’t go with it, it is just too late for this idea.
even if you wrote a tactical genius people would just say he or she is a gary stue, mary sue no matter how well written today’s wow community is seething with hatred and will crap on anything i’m not saying we’ve seen one it’s just that people don’t like to lose so if your facing a bad guy that is 10 steps ahead they’d hate on it
ZUG ZUG