Lore Archive for New Dragonflight Questing and Max Level Content

[Aucald]

Ironically this is done well IMO with the Drakonid who turns evil, because even though he isn't present he's so far off from how Drakonids are presented, and his soldiers love him, so it's kind of a real surprise. And the Drakonids have a much better reason for going bad.

I assume you're referring to Eranog? Yeah, his turn is done pretty well, all in all. WoW has a goodly share of justified and/or well-built villains in the roster - but also a lot of examples where it's done with less panache as with Sarkareth. Balakar was another example where it became super obvious that he was going to be fielding the villain ball for the opposing team, even before you meet him and the Nokhud. As soon as they talked about how he came to power I was like "yep, this guy's going to be dungeon/raid fodder by the end of the zone."

[Super Dickmann]

I was thinking earlier today about the swerve of the final boss, or almost final boss, not being Murozond or Galakrond but actually Neltharion from the past. But he would be in visage form (mostly) to keep things interesting.

I still have some conspiracies that (elf) Azshara is going to show up but Young Neltharion would be a fun humanoid boss. Though it may just be Visage Form Murozond with some wacky appearance.

I don't know if he'd be the end boss or even a final boss of a raid, but his appearances and how mocked it is that Blizzard made a humanoid Deathwing model only to use it 1 (one) time for a meme quest guarantee to me that we'll see him as a raid boss. My bet would be a second to last boss in a Murozond raid, being plucked out of time, but a void vision underground could serve the same purpose and avert the dragon overload.

[Aucald]

Someone on reddit found one actual nelf at Valdrakken that remarked "had we not ventured beyond our sacred forests we would have never set place in this wonderous place" but it does still seem they're a rarity among the alliance so far

I found one in the Azure Span, as well. Steria Duskgrove is a Night Elven member of the Kirin Tor whose trying to help some of the slyverns in the Span that are suffering from arcane poisoning. She's involved in the quest "Mossing the Mark" alongside Callisto Windsor.

[Gurahk]

I really don't like how they portrayed the Centaurs here. A lot seems to be cut or changed at the last second, and there's even a "Farewell" dialogue from some of the NPCs that states the following: "May your family be blessed with daughters."
Did I miss something here? I get that their leader is a "Matra" or matriarch, but why this line? Nowhere else in the zone implies that outside of the 'Matra' that females are considered "special".
There's even a male Khan, despite his villain status.

[Aucald]

I really don't like how they portrayed the Centaurs here. A lot seems to be cut or changed at the last second, and there's even a "Farewell" dialogue from some of the NPCs that states the following: "May your family be blessed with daughters."
Did I miss something here? I get that their leader is a "Matra" or matriarch, but why this line? Nowhere else in the zone implies that outside of the 'Matra' that females are considered "special".
There's even a male Khan, despite his villain status.

I think it's down to their reverence for Teera, the first of the Maruuk who had a special relationship with both the Wild God Ohn'ahra and the Green Dragonflight - basically single-handedly forging a lasting peace between their tribes and stewardship over the plains themselves as their new home. They seem like a strongly matrilineal society, though it does seem males aren't relegated to secondary status and can even become khans as you noted. It's likely that the Khanam Matra, basically their highest leader, is always a daughter in the line of descent from Teera and with a special connection to Ohn'ahra.

[Gurahk]

I think it's down to their reverence for Teera, the first of the Maruuk who had a special relationship with both the Wild God Ohn'ahra and the Green Dragonflight - basically single-handedly forging a lasting peace between their tribes and stewardship over the plains themselves as their new home. They seem like a strongly matrilineal society, though it does seem males aren't relegated to secondary status and can even become khans as you noted. It's likely that the Khanam Matra, basically their highest leader, is always a daughter in the line of descent from Teera and with a special connection to Ohn'ahra.

Right, I understand that. It's just a very odd and out-of-place line that stems from them maybe planning to do more with this. I wouldn't be surprised if they cut this line in the future.

[Aucald]

Right, I understand that. It's just a very odd and out-of-place line that stems from them maybe planning to do more with this. I wouldn't be surprised if they cut this line in the future.

Eh, not really out of place if they revere Teera and want prospective daughters to perhaps be next in line to become Ohn'arahn priests or even the Khanam Matra when Sarest passes. Pretty much just an element of their specific culture.

[Gurahk]

Eh, not really out of place if they revere Teera and want prospective daughters to perhaps be next in line to become Ohn'arahn priests or even the Khanam Matra when Sarest passes. Pretty much just an element of their specific culture.

Guess it's just personal taste then. I just found it a bit jarring as lately Blizzard seemingly has tried its hardest to curbstomp gender/sex differences between the different cultures of Azeroth, including some of the playable races.

[Aucald]

Guess it's just personal taste then. I just found it a bit jarring as lately Blizzard seemingly has tried its hardest to curbstomp gender/sex differences between the different cultures of Azeroth, including some of the playable races.

I think that's more a gameplay vs. story disconnect than any kind of all-encompassing change. They wanted to allow PCs to have their own experiences without artificial boundaries placed on the creation of their envisioned characters - which is all well and good, IMO. People should have the linear freedom to create and customize their character as much as the UI will permit them to do so. But from a story standpoint, they're not retconning cultures or removing the concept of gender from the narrative in any sense, except perhaps where it's viewed as explicitly problematic to cross-sections of the player base. YMMV to how you view the implementation of those measures, but the ideas of specific societies having their own views (rightly or wrongly) within the wider story arc of the game is very much still in place, as show in the latest expansion's many stories.

[Skytotem]

I really don't like how they portrayed the Centaurs here. A lot seems to be cut or changed at the last second, and there's even a "Farewell" dialogue from some of the NPCs that states the following: "May your family be blessed with daughters."
Did I miss something here? I get that their leader is a "Matra" or matriarch, but why this line? Nowhere else in the zone implies that outside of the 'Matra' that females are considered "special".
There's even a male Khan, despite his villain status.

What do you feel was cut or changed?

The line seems... normal? They seem to have a matriarchy, what about it?

[Super Dickmann]

What do you feel was cut or changed?

The line seems... normal? They seem to have a matriarchy, what about it?

That's exactly it. They seem to have a matriarchy, but they don't. The leaders just happen to all be women and there's some incidental dialogue suggesting women are preferred, but there's no actual sexual dynamic to it and it goes completely unexplored. After all the bitching about how the centaur would be made more sympathetic so as to not offend Genghis Khan or whatever, Blizzard's solution has been to turn them into Highmountain Tauren.

It's a kind of meta revenge where in story the centaur hunted the tauren, so out of story the nu-centaur are exposed to essence of tauren and become dull. The entire Maruuk centaur story and culture, nice dogs aside, could just as easily be replaced by any other noblesavage stereotype while changing nothing, chiefly because it was already done to start with - Ohn'aran is just a flat Highmountain. In the effort to make them palatable to the phantom audience that'd be offended that they're smelly degenerates born out of a mistaken union between incompatible powers they've replaced all that with nothing. The entire zone main story is as rote as you can possibly manage. A machine could turn it out, though perhaps a machine'd do a better job since it'd turn the Maruuk into gazelle or zebra people to make them marginally more visually interesting.

[Syegfryed]

That's exactly it. They seem to have a matriarchy, but they don't. The leaders just happen to all be women and there's some incidental dialogue suggesting women are preferred, but there's no actual sexual dynamic to it and it goes completely unexplored. After all the bitching about how the centaur would be made more sympathetic so as to not offend Genghis Khan or whatever, Blizzard's solution has been to turn them into Highmountain Tauren.

It's a kind of meta revenge where in story the centaur hunted the tauren, so out of story the nu-centaur are exposed to essence of tauren and become dull. The entire Maruuk centaur story and culture, nice dogs aside, could just as easily be replaced by any other noblesavage stereotype while changing nothing, chiefly because it was already done to start with - Ohn'aran is just a flat Highmountain. In the effort to make them palatable to the phantom audience that'd be offended that they're smelly degenerates born out of a mistaken union between incompatible powers they've replaced all that with nothing. The entire zone main story is as rote as you can possibly manage. A machine could turn it out, though perhaps a machine'd do a better job since it'd turn the Maruuk into gazelle or zebra people to make them marginally more visually interesting.

Im still scratching my head of how blizzard got to the conclusion that the best fit race for a dragon island, to be enemies with dragons was a "centaur"

I can only think it was because it was the only enemy we didn't fought since early days of wow and didn't had a new model, still, anyone would think "humm, maybe something else'.

Well, what can i say, i don't plan being part of it amt, so who cares, im however, still excited to see how blizzard will completely forget the DRAGONMAW clan in the DRAGONflight Expansion.

[ohwell]

Im still scratching my head of how blizzard got to the conclusion that the best fit race for a dragon island, to be enemies with dragons was a "centaur"

I can only think it was because it was the only enemy we didn't fought since early days of wow and didn't had a new model, still, anyone would think "humm, maybe something else'.

Well, what can i say, i don't plan being part of it amt, so who cares, im however, still excited to see how blizzard will completely forget the DRAGONMAW clan in the DRAGONflight Expansion.

There's literally a quest in the first zone pertaining to them....

[Syegfryed]

There's literally a quest in the first zone pertaining to them....

Now that is surprising, im sure they play big role in he first zone and im sure it will lead to big things

[Aucald]

That's exactly it. They seem to have a matriarchy, but they don't. The leaders just happen to all be women and there's some incidental dialogue suggesting women are preferred, but there's no actual sexual dynamic to it and it goes completely unexplored. After all the bitching about how the centaur would be made more sympathetic so as to not offend Genghis Khan or whatever, Blizzard's solution has been to turn them into Highmountain Tauren.

I'm not sure what a "sexual dynamic" means in this context, but the Maruuk centaur's matriarchy is explored in the zone story as concerns their legendary hero and co-founder Teera, who led them to the Dragon Isles and the Ohn'ahran Plains, cultivated their relationship with the Wild God Ohn'ahra and with the Green Dragonflight, and basically set their culture into place. Storykeeper Jaru basically relates the entire story/myth to you that explains Maruuk culture.

[Reinhart11]

I think the moment would be perfect for Blizzard to bring in Wildhammer Dwarves and the Dragonmaw Clan as playable Allied Races into the game. In combination with Dragonriding, the fantasy of these two sub races/factions could truly be achieved and work well, especially if more flying creature models are integrated into Dragonriding. The potential for interesting story telling is there as well.

[Skytotem]

That's exactly it. They seem to have a matriarchy, but they don't. The leaders just happen to all be women and there's some incidental dialogue suggesting women are preferred, but there's no actual sexual dynamic to it and it goes completely unexplored. After all the bitching about how the centaur would be made more sympathetic so as to not offend Genghis Khan or whatever, Blizzard's solution has been to turn them into Highmountain Tauren.

It's a kind of meta revenge where in story the centaur hunted the tauren, so out of story the nu-centaur are exposed to essence of tauren and become dull. The entire Maruuk centaur story and culture, nice dogs aside, could just as easily be replaced by any other noblesavage stereotype while changing nothing, chiefly because it was already done to start with - Ohn'aran is just a flat Highmountain. In the effort to make them palatable to the phantom audience that'd be offended that they're smelly degenerates born out of a mistaken union between incompatible powers they've replaced all that with nothing. The entire zone main story is as rote as you can possibly manage. A machine could turn it out, though perhaps a machine'd do a better job since it'd turn the Maruuk into gazelle or zebra people to make them marginally more visually interesting.

I guess I'm confused by what you're looking for here outside of the centaur being more monstrous, which frankly the big 'burly' bodytype does fine imo.

You say it's rote but these guys have *more* detail to them than the Highmountain tauren, is your issue just that they're not ugly and violent enough or am I missing something?

[Super Dickmann]

Im still scratching my head of how blizzard got to the conclusion that the best fit race for a dragon island, to be enemies with dragons was a "centaur"

I can only think it was because it was the only enemy we didn't fought since early days of wow and didn't had a new model, still, anyone would think "humm, maybe something else'.

The simplest answer is that they didn't. The centaur are where they are not to tell the story connected with dragons but as a sop by the writers to a particular subset of complainers, mostly relegated to Twitter who believe that races like them are analogous to real races and have been presented badly, and ergo deserve a 'fairer' treatment. This is also what the issue with them is in large part. To answer @Skytotem, yes they should be uglier and more violent, the mistake of their creation and rejection by their literal and spiritual father is what defined the original centaur. The reason they're hostile, beyond just nature, is that their gods ditched them and they can see the world is full of prettier and more favoured versions of them in the face of the keepers - those they pursue are supported by gods or have some strong faith to bind them, be it the tauren with the Earthmother or obviously the children of Malorne. If you ditch these aspects, as DF does wholesale with the Maruuk who're not ugly, not warlike in the same sense, have good relations with the dragons, albeit with early hiccups, and have a god who supports them and who they support, you're not telling a WoW centaur story. You're telling a story about entirely new, unrelated horse people.

Beyond the obvious Highmountain tauren comparison, the thing the Maruuk most remind me of are the tol'vir, who are just as much of a cultural void, though that mostly lends itself to inept writing rather than deliberately avoiding anything concrete. The Maruuk myth is fine, the dogs are fine, but they're not centaur. Everything done with them is weak and wobbly - they're rude to outsiders, but then again not enough to not give you a pass once you hunt with them, they're run by women, but they're not a matriarchy - but there's nothing substantial about the roles of men and women in their culture, why women are favoured, what callings are appropriate for men and women. They've a clan structure with four major clans, but there's also other unmentioned clans who exist solely so that if their main audience - Twitterati, want to add something else to them, they're free to do so. They can't have a concrete, material culture lest they fail in their main purpose which is to not cause offense in the way the old centaur did to fuck even knows who. Hence they not only fail in telling a centaur story, they fail in telling a story entirely.

To answer @Aucald - the link provided does nothing to tell me about their sexual dynamic, which is to say, what role, if any, the different sexes play in their society and their reasoning for why. The Night Elven matriarchy was (before Vanilla gutted it and it barely showed up except as an aesthetic ever again) fairly concrete - women were priestess and warriors, men were druids and craftsmen. The Blood Troll matriarchy is clear - men are slaves and manual labour, women are chiefs and priestesses, men are literal meat. The orc relationship is clear - on Draenor the sexes, being roughly physically equal and with everyone needing to pull their weight and so they're fine, afterwards in the Horde Gul'dan breeds and ages babies, hence why (retroactively) you've no relevant women in that period. All these things have concrete, named consequences and the story does something with what it has introduced. The Maruuk don't have this. The superiority of women in their society has no meat to it save for a barely implied custom to do with their founder.

It's especially notable because freed from this straitjacket of dull mediocrity, races who aren't written to fill a quota for an imaginary audience don't have this problem. The Drakonid semi-death cult is an understated but entirely deliberate bit of storytelling communicated by each of their members. From Sendrax, a recruit, repeating like a mantra how she must be ready to die for the flights, even calling it their sole reason for being, to her horror at seeing said sole reason for being be defiled by the Primalists, to how readily she kills herself for it. Even past that it's in how her death is treated - it isn't, Alex cares about the egg, but doesn't note her. Her kin become more vigilant and treat her as an example. One of the defecting drakonid, the one who joins the Primalists in the Life Pools has actual back-up in his fight and cares for them, not ritualizing their deaths but with still the same impulse, hence why he's ready to lay down his life for the one he's protecting. Even the two gay Dragonspawn aren't just blase about the Drakonid because ha-ha quirky, but because dying for the cause is literally what the Drakonid are made for. It's entirely deliberate storytelling that the plot acknowledges, but it has enough confidence in to present in a myriad of ways through what by Blizzard standards is subtle but consistent.

Well, what can i say, i don't plan being part of it amt, so who cares, im however, still excited to see how blizzard will completely forget the DRAGONMAW clan in the DRAGONflight Expansion.

The Dragonmaw do feature in a better rendition of Sadfang's story than the whole of BFA was, with a reference to what their clan used to get to, breaking whelps natch. The Demon Soul also gets a mention in the old dwarf quest. The Djaradin are basically a version of the Dragonmaw and, much like the Drakonid, manage to have more actual interesting hooks for a culture within one NPC discussing how his peers were right to force him into manual labour once he was blinded in battle with a wyrm because he wasn't pulling his weight. All this, plus the unused part of the map on the west being implied to be the Djaradin home territory, suggests that they do want people to remember these elements for a possible appearance. If there was ever a time to bring in the Demon Chain this is it, even more so when binding a spawn of Galakrond, who's kind of a big deal in this expansion, was the last thing any of the Dragonmaw did besides have Zaela try (and sadly fail) to blow up Stormwind.

[Skytotem]

@Super-Dickmann Alright, I don't entirely agree on the flavor but I do agree they should have kept them tied to that original arc the centaur pariah had that tragically never got developed in Vanilla, where the centaur wanted to move past being the unfavorites of the cenarion descendants, the absence of any real meaningful resolution to that definitely hurts the Maruuk who were retconned into predating it.

[Aucald]

To answer Aucald - the link provided does nothing to tell me about their sexual dynamic, which is to say, what role, if any, the different sexes play in their society and their reasoning for why. The Night Elven matriarchy was (before Vanilla gutted it and it barely showed up except as an aesthetic ever again) fairly concrete - women were priestess and warriors, men were druids and craftsmen. The Blood Troll matriarchy is clear - men are slaves and manual labour, women are chiefs and priestesses, men are literal meat. The orc relationship is clear - on Draenor the sexes, being roughly physically equal and with everyone needing to pull their weight and so they're fine, afterwards in the Horde Gul'dan breeds and ages babies, hence why (retroactively) you've no relevant women in that period. All these things have concrete, named consequences and the story does something with what it has introduced. The Maruuk don't have this. The superiority of women in their society has no meat to it save for a barely implied custom to do with their founder.

You must've read a different explanation than I did, then; because that parable seemed to answer the question as to why the Maruuk value daughters, and why they are a somewhat strict matriarchy (which is basically an answer in and of itself). In Maruuk society, women are generally the leaders, have a special relationship with a literal god that they revere, and serve as extensions of the role model, Teera, on which their overall society is structured and based. In that light, why wouldn't they want daughters in terms of their offspring, since any daughter has a higher chance of social advancement and acclaim? It's not a requirement for clarity that your social structure is split into the privileged and literal slaves, right? I mean it is very clear, but it's also pretty hamfisted and unrealistic. In Maruuk society, men aren't made slaves, but they do have intrinsically less upward social mobility by dint of societal pressures and mores - falling more into guardian, hunter, and other similar roles. Men can even be khans, such as Balakar and his predecessor, but the topmost echelons of the society remain dominated and overall led by women. That's just how the Maruuk organized themselves based on their own mythology and values structure.

Your comparison to the drakonid, by extension, makes little sense to me since the two societies are radically different and have little semblance of shared values. The drakonid are quite literally a servant race used by the dragons, and while they're generally treated well, it's very obvious that many dragons (even Alexstrasza) consider them less independent individuals and more as valuable tools and resources. Most of the drakonid themselves think similarly, but the ones who've cultivated more individuality and independence, due to being separate from the Dragonflights for some time, very obviously rankle under the perceived yoke of service and many of them defected to the Primalists as a result. The Maruuk are all independent and individual from the start, and while constrained by their social mores to varying degrees, aren't truly beholden to anything other than themselves, free to more or less do what they desire.

The worst part of the Maruuk storyline really remains how they exist in the first place, given the original lore of the centaur and their rather recent creation comparatively. To my knowledge, nothing in the Ohn'ahran questing experience or additional lore really explains why an entirely separate branch of centaur exists and predates those spawned by Zaetar and Theradras.