Velens line that went “The Light will triumph over the Shadow this day” has been apparently removed.
It was one of the final lines in the last panels that showcased some distant future where Old-man Anduin appeared on some Draenei ship with Velen at his side.
Now, they close it with a simple “It begins”.
What do you guys think this might signal for the upcoming lore?
Do you feel this is relevant?
It’s just a theory, but i feel it may have to do with Blizzard loading a bullet about some “Evil Light” plot, and refraining from issuing said sort of stances. They might even have said fight be explicitly against Light forces.
Absolutely nothing we didn’t know before. It just shows us again that Blizzard doesn’t consider the future as written, even when they already wrote it. Trusting the comic as a source for anything is folly. It’s about as certain as any old god whisper.
They cannot do this right now, because Final Fantasy XIV showed how to handle a good story with this specific trope. They have to wait until people forgot about Shadowbringers.
Oh, by the way, what I did find kinda interesting was WoWhead actively trying to run defense for Blizzard, by brushing away player concerns before they happened.
While many players will rage over the idea of any change, misleading information, or retcon, it’s important to remember the challenges of telling an evolving story over that long a period of time - unlike a book or a movie, a game changes along with circumstance, as new technology, player trends, real world events, or even fan reactions can influence gameplay decisions which are then reflected in the lore, and setting those ideas up even a few years ahead of time won’t always pan out the way they’re originally imagined - for example, Zappi boi was never intended to be an important character, but became so popular that he was added into Saurfang’s story.
Thanks for the news speculation, I guess… Especially in such a measured tone. Beware, ragers.
10.0 will be more than 3 years after Shadowbringers. That’s probably a century in internet time.
I think it was to be expected in the sense that both Velen and Anduin particularly have shown themselves tolerant and accepting of the usage of the Void. I actually like it.
I just hope that “Many, many years later” actually means “Many, many years later”. It’d be weird for Anduin to have aged to be like 60 and Jaina to remain 40 or Genn not dead and stuff.
We truly are sinking to a new low if we are to start accepting retcons as something excusable/inevitable.
Not that players had already tacitly accepted said truth, but having these sort of “official” free passes from cemented sites…
The issue I have with this is that according to the Arthas novel the Light will abandon you if you commit acts that the individual knows is evil. So I dont see how the light itself can be evil? Individuals themselves can be misguided or commit evil acts but if they believe it is for the greater good than the light will stick with them.
However that isn’t the light being evil.
So not sure about this light/shadow not necessarily good/evil when everything in lore at the very basic level is exactly that.
by the power of retcon, of course, as is the topic here.
But no, I agree with you. We can have tons of tons of Light-themed bad guys, but the Light has been introduced as the power of good intention. They might pave the way to hell, but you certainly won’t get to heaven without them.
And, like I always like to point out, even Blizzard people don’t think the Naaru have a unified agenda of “the Light”.
As long as the Light is not a character in itself ascribing personal morality to it is strange anyways.
Probably not that big of a deal considering that Blizzard said that distant future with Velen and Old Man Anduin is actully just a possibility, something more like a vision, not a certainty that it’s going to happen for sure. So as the whole future is being subject to change, the dialogues can too.
Also they probably now think it’s an incorrect line as the Light actually cannot exist without the Void so the Shadow cannot permanently be defeated, they are two faces of the same coin forever bound.
it’s not even a good defence, either. “writing for an MMO is hard you guize so don’t rage when there’s multiple retcons forever!”
my retort: writing for an MMO is not any harder than writing for any other kind of game, as long as the people you hire to write for you are bound over to actually learn about the universe they’re writing in and to respect established lore. do that and you create consistency and continuity, which, as we all know, enchances a story greatly.
if your changes emerge naturally from events in the continuity of the universe then you can mock people for raging at them. when they’re the latest in a series of stupid retcons designed not to enhance the story, but to enable your new writers to tell the stories they want to tell and to hell with the lore, then you’ve no leg to stand on.
when you say “continuity exists to enhance a story” then allow your writers to ignore and change it whenever they like, that’s you admitting your story is unenhanced and sucks.
To add to that… If you don’t want to lock in the future… maybe you should just not lock in the future? I mean, everyone and their grandma could have told Blizz that jumping ahead without a clear plan was a mistake. It just creates an unnecessary source for contradictions.
Now the mistake was already done of course, no use going on about it. They did the right thing and told everyone that the ending of the comic is not something they feel bound by, essentially de-canonizing that part. Well enough. So why the heck would thay go back to “fix” it, essentially restarting the discussion about their mistake again? It’s just another stupid thing to roll your eyes at.
Yes, we know that they have some ideas about Azeroth’s future that might end like this. But since we also know that they don’t feel bound by it until they implemented it in their games and novels (if then…), this pretty much is nothing but a “what if” that distracts from the plot instead of enriching it.
Maybe because the felt like throwing a bandaid to salvage the situation, and now they feel like their credibility as writers is being bombarded excessively and want to back-pedal on their initial stance.
This might be them trying to signal in some way that they care a bit about continuity, while trying to rid themselves from the elements that could threaten said predicament.
They still narrowed the outcome for several plots, but now tried to make it a tad wider just in case.
The final scenes for said comic, always seemed as some unimaginative resource in order to add more gravitas to the whole “King Anduin” angle. Something that made the audience go with some “ooooh”s about what a great king Anduin is destined to be.
It was shortsighted, but we should’ve grown accustomed to Blizzards love for cheap shock value. Regardless of how badly they handle the consequences of it.
Fighting the undermining of your credibility as writer, by retroactively changing your work? Well, it that’s the plan, it’s certainly genius beyond my understanding.
“I care about countinity. Which you can tell, because I am willing to change that continuity.”
Like I said, a mistake, but nothing worth harping on about. Esssentially de-canonizing that part was all the fix it needed, and they did that.
More like: “Better adjust this past work of mine now, so when this thing over here comes to pass, people can’t grasp at it as something that discredits my work. Also, I’ll gain additional bonus points because I’ll signal some consistency facade”.
Yes.
But now that they’ve touched it, it’s obvious that they haven’t “decanonised” it as much as we think they did.
That, or some narrative team has a lot of spare time in their hands, to the point they can meddle with discarded stuff like this.
Honestly, if that’s the case I would’ve drawn butts over the characters faces.
