Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Archmage Xaxxas]

I'd argue the final cinematic at least finally paints the Primus in the light we ought to see him, because you're absolutely right.
The game doesn't forget, it just doesn't emphasize that- because it's one of the narratives of Shadowlands:

History is written by the victors.

In this case, The Primus and the Eternals being the victors, have entirely painted Zovaal as the "big bag jailer" of the Shadowlands, all that's wrong with it, when THEY are his jailers, the makers of the Jailer.

The First Ones, who created The Primus, (and to a lesser extent on this, Denathrius) are the ones responsible for "The Jailer" because it's implied they either-

A: Ordered Domination magic into their pattern, and authorized The Primus to be it's primary wielder?
B: CREATED Domination Magic as well, and bestowed it upon The Primus.
or C: They indirectly created Domination through creating The Primus.

People shocked that Zovaal has/had 'good intentions' just might not have gotten the point of his character, or perhaps that's me, but I feel it's been clear since before launch, at least going back as far as beta, he was a "framed character" shall we say.


It's like the story of the garden of Eden:

The claim is this 'Serpent' is the deceiver, tricking Eve to eat of the Fruit of Knowledge. Meanwhile when you read, it's written plain as day that the Serpent revealed to them that God's commands were a lie, to keep Adam and Eve subservient. That they would -not- die if they ate from the fruit, as told by God.

Strangely, there are millions who gloss over these simple hooks of the story, and think the secretive, punitive-of-truth-seeking Yahweh is still the good guy in that tale.


edit: my bad.. I meant to edit my last post not quote.

[Gloriandus]

People shocked that Zovaal has/had 'good intentions' just might not have gotten the point of his character, or perhaps that's me, but I feel it's been clear since before launch, at least going back as far as beta, he was a "framed character" shall we say.


It's like the story of the garden of Eden:

The claim is this 'Serpent' is the deceiver, tricking Eve to eat of the Fruit of Knowledge. Meanwhile when you read, it's written plain as day that the Serpent revealed to them that God's commands were a lie, to keep Adam and Eve subservient. That they would -not- die if they ate from the fruit, as told by God.

Strangely, there are millions who gloss over these simple hooks of the story, and think the secretive, punitive-of-truth-seeking Yahweh is still the good guy in that tale.


edit: my bad.. I meant to edit my last post not quote.

That's the theosophical interpretation of the fall, of course. It's actually far plainer: the serpent deceives them with "the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16) by the lie that they will becoming "like" God, and they bring not just physical death upon themselves, but spiritual separation from God. You're the one with the left-field interpretation here.

[Archmage Xaxxas]

That's the theosophical interpretation of the fall, of course. It's actually far plainer: the serpent deceives them with "the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16) by the lie that they will becoming "like" God, and they bring not just physical death upon themselves, but spiritual separation from God. You're the one with the left-field interpretation here.

What you've said is "what's told" by the Cult of The Primus, to use SL terms.

My "left-field interpretation" is through the lens that what you're being told by them is actively trying to push their 'truth', not the whole truth or real truth.

Yahweh/Yaldabaoth being "The World" and not the "The Father", using that John quote. 'spiritual separation from God' being scare-tactics.

becoming 'Like' 'God' being the act of expanding consciousness beyond the desired limitations of an Archon.

[Lady Atia]

People shocked that Zovaal has/had 'good intentions' just might not have gotten the point of his character, or perhaps that's me, but I feel it's been clear since before launch, at least going back as far as beta, he was a "framed character" shall we say.


It's like the story of the garden of Eden:

The claim is this 'Serpent' is the deceiver, tricking Eve to eat of the Fruit of Knowledge. Meanwhile when you read, it's written plain as day that the Serpent revealed to them that God's commands were a lie, to keep Adam and Eve subservient. That they would -not- die if they ate from the fruit, as told by God.

Strangely, there are millions who gloss over these simple hooks of the story, and think the secretive, punitive-of-truth-seeking Yahweh is still the good guy in that tale.


edit: my bad.. I meant to edit my last post not quote.

Same - I also got the same vibes as you since playing the Alpha. The other Eternal Ones are the true baddies of this Expansion, similiar to the whole Helya / Odyn situation back in Legion. Also you have to remember that the First Ones did create ... or better said programmed Zovaal as Arbiter of Death and Judge of all living Souls. It actually makes sense that if he may see a thread from outside the cosmos that's impossible to defeat as long as the Cosmic Forces are fractured, he would do what he can do best - judge the Universe and re-write it in his image (or send all cosmic forces to where they belong, not just mortal souls). Or atleast that was his plan. And than his siblings just say "nope, what you do is evil so we cast you down into the Maw" which of course turns him mad over the millenia.

[huth]

I mean, him inventing Domination magic as a whole. That whole school of magic is kinda fucked up, and the game kinda forgets that the Primus invented and created that entire school of magic.

He already puts himself down for it.

- - - Updated - - -

People shocked that Zovaal has/had 'good intentions' just might not have gotten the point of his character, or perhaps that's me, but I feel it's been clear since before launch, at least going back as far as beta, he was a "framed character" shall we say.

I'm not really convinced he actually did. It might just be a flimsy justification or twisted self-image. Just because he thought he was doing the right thing doesn't mean anybody else would have actually wanted that... and Firim suggests his interference may well have cracked the seal and may thus be causing the very thing he supposedly wanted to prevent.

[Skildar]

I was wondering after rewatching the end cinematic if the fact that the veil between reality and the shadowlands is once again restored and that the helm of domination has been turned into the crown of will, are going to be issues in travelling back to Azeroth.

I didn't spoil myself by reading the coming quests, if you guys did then do you have the answer?

[Revamp Man]

The 7th Force could be a First One who went rogue. The first Void Lord and progenitor of the Void.

The main villain of Starcraft is Amon, a rogue Xel'naga who went rogue and became one with the Void. Essentially becoming a Void Lord. The climax/ending of Starcraft took place inside the Void itself. Blizzard likes to recycle their stories.

So the ultimate villain could be a Void Lord. But because that Void Lord is a rogue First One, it is seen as a 7th Force.

Possible

I definitely think the first ones were a pantheon style group

- - - Updated - - -

I was wondering after rewatching the end cinematic if the fact that the veil between reality and the shadowlands is once again restored and that the helm of domination has been turned into the crown of will, are going to be issues in travelling back to Azeroth.

I didn't spoil myself by reading the coming quests, if you guys did then do you have the answer?

The veil is gone and we have the portals

[Le Conceptuel]

Eh.

Like I said, you're just going with option 1 here, answering with "self-existent" is just a sidestep along the lines of "don't think too hard about it". I think it's pretty unreasonable to describe the cyclical approach as "nonsensical" when the self-existent one is just answering "Yeah, but what is the Light, and where did it come from, and why is it doing all the stuff its doing for seemingly no reason at all?" with handwaving, "It just is". It's an approach, but by no means a better one.

You say "it made sense for the Light to exist on its own", but why? Why did the Light exist?


Because (I assume) the new force was very specifically written to have a background role, and written after they saw the problems play out with those previous examples. Ulduar has stained glass windows depicting the Old Gods--Zereth Mortis, as far as I'm aware, does not have even the slightest hint of what they might look like. Even their minions, the automa are deliberately designed with all sorts of forms that have no coherence, some are orbs with legs and arms, some are humanoid, some are like elementals, some are robot tanks.

If even going to the workshop/microrealm of the First Ones has the design decision to omit any actual representation or indication of them, then they don't plan on involving them anytime soon or at all.

I suppose I see what you mean. I do disagree, however, with the idea that a self-existent entity is a bad idea, though—there are only two explanations for the sequence of things existing, since everything originates from something preceding it as a rather commonly-accepted law of nature. It is either that everything originates from an infinitely-recursive sequence of things, which isn't really reasonable because it doesn't logically hold up when you ask what preceded the sequence in itself, or that everything originates from something which already exists. If something already existed before anything else existed, and preceded the entire sequence, it would logically have to be the default state of existence which exists solely on its own merits.

Perhaps applying real-life scientific and philosophical concepts to this fantasy video game is a bit much, but I still do maintain it feels a little too simplistic to say "it just kind of goes back with different things creating other things forever". Something realistically ought to have existed before everything else, presumably having always existed since nothing comes into existence at any given point on its own merits. The idea of a self-existent being is a very solid idea originating from religious philosophy.

I said this before in the initial cinematic discussion but "what is to come" doesn't really have agency. They could have gone with "what is coming" if they wanted imminence and threat, instead they went with the phrase that indicates something is going to (eventually) play out.

See:
"You will learn in the days to come"
vs
"You will learn in the coming days"

The first one is entirely open-ended, the speaker could be talking about an entire lifetime, or if to group of people, multiple generations. Where the second one probably means relatively soon.

I suppose that's reasonable enough.

- - - Updated - - -

Same - I also got the same vibes as you since playing the Alpha. The other Eternal Ones are the true baddies of this Expansion, similiar to the whole Helya / Odyn situation back in Legion. Also you have to remember that the First Ones did create ... or better said programmed Zovaal as Arbiter of Death and Judge of all living Souls. It actually makes sense that if he may see a thread from outside the cosmos that's impossible to defeat as long as the Cosmic Forces are fractured, he would do what he can do best - judge the Universe and re-write it in his image (or send all cosmic forces to where they belong, not just mortal souls). Or atleast that was his plan. And than his siblings just say "nope, what you do is evil so we cast you down into the Maw" which of course turns him mad over the millenia.

Realistically, his decision would be disastrous. It would result in serious destabilization to put something seemingly contingent on a cyclical conflict under a single, overarching meddling figure.

Frankly, I think it would've been better if Blizzard actually emphasized the apparent stupidity of the Eternal Ones to make us sympathize with the Jailer and Sylvanas, and then subverted that when we see people trying to make things better invariably making them worse. I think it's only sensible that, assuming the existence of a grand design from the architecture of superior consciousness, it would stand to reason that our own criticisms of it may be drawn from a misguided or limited perspective. For instance, it goes back to the common question of "why is there evil?" in religious philosophy, which is usually answered with "logically, if there does exist a theistic God, then He must know something we don't, since we're operating under the assumption already that said theistic deity is [1] omniscient and [2] benevolent." Assuming these two things, which is natural in any setting where a higher power canonically exists, it would make sense for any mortal criticism to be moot.

I think it would be far more interesting to, instead of having mortals show up and, in their ineffable wisdom of "freedum gud", rewrite the systems underlying the afterlife, we show up and see precisely why a being with a less developed consciousness shouldn't be operating on a divine level and why Sylvanas and the Jailer are both bad when their attempts to rewrite the system constantly fail. Instead, make the system Kyrians go through explicitly good by showing what happens when skewed perspectives judge mortal souls—maybe instead of Argus, the reason why people are getting chucked into the Maw like crazy could've been because the Kyrians were directly interfering with the system and chucking people in themselves after the memory system was damaged by Sylvanas at some point. Even Sylvanas' presumptive judgement of a higher system as "broken" because she was punished for being a bad person could've been emphasized—if someone goes to hell, then complains about going to hell after they committed genocide, I don't see why anyone would say that system is broken.

I think it's inherently impossible to apply judgements devised by beings of limited intellectual scope to systems made by beings of infinite intellectual scope, is my point. Philosophically, it would've only made sense.

- - - Updated - - -

If this is the route they take I expect it to be the Devourers. They're monochrome, have a unique aesthetic as far as Warcraft villains go and most importantly of all they have 0 (zero) lines.

Past that I agree with @Hitei and have made that point too previously. Chronicle's chief long term failure is solving the Titans and Old Gods which were previously distant powers and in turn, essentially changing the Titans drastically from their previous portrayal as uncaring absentee Gods who operate more on sci-fi than fantasy rules. This demystified the setting and hemmed you in. The First Ones are basically a return to that, if not more so as they aren't human, have no lines, no names and no known members. If the 'Seventh Force' or 'what is to come' isn't system collapse, which would be my preference by an order of magnitude, then it would be the Old God equivalent as an ineffable outside actor we know little of.

I suppose it could work out better to have some return to the original state of things with the mystery and whathaveyou. I do miss the mystery around the Titans—where it was unclear if they were really gods at all, or just sufficiently-advanced Aliens, or if they were benevolent or sinister. There were a lot of questions that didn't really need to be answered, and it may have even been better to simply have the Titans be in absentia while we only ever saw their remnants—the machines they built and the cities they devised.

If we do need a malignant ineffable actor, though, I'm not sure why it couldn't be the Void Lords. We know very little about them, haven't seen them, and have never seen them speak. It would still be very interesting to just have them stay entirely in the background—we already have some preexisting reason to expect that, since we know they have to act through the Old Gods. Maybe establish them as something you can't actually defeat, but more an abstract concept of evil. All evil could originate from them and their actions, and from that we know the role they play. We wouldn't need to see them, only know that we can't stand against the Serpent With No Eyes if it actually came to our reality, so they act as more of a disaster to prevent and something we don't and shouldn't learn about.

[Ersula]

Sargeras didn't create Demons, nor Fel, nor the Twisting Nether (realm of the Demons). All he did was give order to that which was chaotic.

Yes & No. Demons are just alien races who were transformed by Fel magic. Fel is described as "Sargeras' power" and the Twisting Nether has applications outside of demonkind: It was referred to as where souls naturally go when they die, before this Shadowlands buisness. Considering the Shadowlands is a construct, we can assume Garrosh & Arthas aren't exactly obliterated as they've returned to the Twisting Nether.

BfA had so many cinematics. It'd be weird if SL didn't have an equivalent to Saurfang vs Sylvanas.

The guy who did those was busy making Arcane

The story will NOT improve as long as Simpuser quartermasters the ship. And god forbid he ascends to captain

He is the highest rung of the totem pole, story wise right now. But I'm willing to give Danuser the benefit of the doubt as multiple sources have explained Afrasiabi was head of Shadowlands story until he was fired & by then they already had the outline of the expansion done & too far to make any radical changes. I'm going to wait for a full expansion hes been in charge of to condemn Danuser.

Firims diaries after the boss fight explicitly say it is NOT the Void.

It is an unknown 7th force.

"Hi, I'm an ominous force of unknown origin namedropped in 9.0" ~The Dark One, Elune's ancient Enemy

I've seen that.
What's the point of giving her a new model, then? Or publishing a book about her after she's removed? Or even redeeming her? Beats me.

I can't imagine clearing out the maw of souls will be as time consuming as say, Illidan standing vigil over Sargeras for all of eternity. She could be back halfway into the next expansion.

- - - Updated - - -

Are the Voidwings from Nya'lotha canon or just a flavor mount? I really love that dragon model and I think it'd look really nice in the traditional dragonflight colors. Would hate for it to be a single-use thing..

Yes, despite what Varodoc keeps saying, Wrathion is pretty clear in the BFA legendary questline that the Twilight Void dragons are harmless as long as he destroys their progenitors' bones, which he does. Also he was using the Infinite Dragon's wanting End Time to happen, the thing the Old Gods programmed Deathwing to do, as false proof they were working for the Void Lords: Two groups sharing a goal is not proof of collaboration.

[Revamp Man]

I still can’t get over “a cosmos divided will not survive” when the jailer worked towards dividing them Lol unless they twist the story and Denathrius actually worked against the jailer and aligned with the 7th force

[Palapop]

Erm... does anyone knows sup with 4th 9.2 encrypted cinematic?

So far we just had Anduin finale, Janitor intro, Janitor finale.

Sup with last 1?

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Erm... does anyone knows sup with 4th 9.2 encrypted cinematic?

So far we just had Anduin finale, Janitor intro, Janitor finale.

Sup with last 1?

Probably for the end of the Campaign, so the big Sylvanas-Tyrande one.

[Ersula]

I still can’t get over “a cosmos divided will not survive” when the jailer worked towards dividing them Lol unless they twist the story and Denathrius actually worked against the jailer and aligned with the 7th force

When he says "a cosmos divided" he means the way the First Ones ordered the universe: Separating it into 6 cosmic forces & 3 demi-planes.

But the criticisms of this ending are totally fair: They already did this ending with Wrathion at the end of MoP. By the way, did we ever get a concrete explanation of Wrathion's role in the Iron Horde? All the figures who helped Garrosh create the alternate Draenor were working directly under Wrathion; with that & the MoP ending where he condemns the Alliance & Horde for working together, it's clear we were supposed to infer that he funded the Iron Horde, so they would take over Azeroth & creatue a unified force against the burning legion.

But then, during Legion they realized creating an alternate Gul'dan means Wrathion indirectly caused Varian's death.

They didn't want to deal with the dramatic implications of that so they just removed Wrathion completely from the Legion Beta: The devs refusal to awknowledge it has put the canon in a kind of limbo. Was Wrathion canonically responsible or not? Does Anduin punch him in 8.3 because he put 2 & 2 together like the audience did? Or was it just purely n'zoth influence? We don't know. Perhaps they'll never clarify this.

The biggest reason they won't is because they've apparently decided to use this plot development AGAIN with Zovaal.

[Revamp Man]

When he says "a cosmos divided" he means the way the First Ones ordered the universe: Separating it into 6 cosmic forces & 3 demi-planes.

But the criticisms of this ending are totally fair: They already did this ending with Wrathion at the end of MoP. By the way, did we ever get a concrete explanation of Wrathion's role in the Iron Horde? All the figures who helped Garrosh create the alternate Draenor were working directly under Wrathion; with that & the MoP ending where he condemns the Alliance & Horde for working together, it's clear we were supposed to infer that he funded the Iron Horde, so they would take over Azeroth & creatue a unified force against the burning legion.

But then, during Legion they realized creating an alternate Gul'dan means Wrathion indirectly caused Varian's death.

They didn't want to deal with the dramatic implications of that so they just removed Wrathion completely from the Legion Beta: The devs refusal to awknowledge it has put the canon in a kind of limbo. Was Wrathion canonically responsible or not? Does Anduin punch him in 8.3 because he put 2 & 2 together like the audience did? Or was it just purely n'zoth influence? We don't know. Perhaps they'll never clarify this.

The biggest reason they won't is because they've apparently decided to use this plot development AGAIN with Zovaal.

Ok so the thing with Wrathion and the iron horde was he planted the idea in his head and nudged Kairoz into doing the thing. He also supposedly he freed Garrosh.

His goal was use the iron horde to unite Azeroth but garrosh went rogue

[Ersula]

I think it would be far more interesting to, instead of having mortals show up and, in their ineffable wisdom of "freedum gud", rewrite the systems underlying the afterlife, we show up and see precisely why a being with a less developed consciousness shouldn't be operating on a divine level and why Sylvanas and the Jailer are both bad when their attempts to rewrite the system constantly fail. Instead, make the system Kyrians go through explicitly good by showing what happens when skewed perspectives judge mortal souls—maybe instead of Argus, the reason why people are getting chucked into the Maw like crazy could've been because the Kyrians were directly interfering with the system and chucking people in themselves after the memory system was damaged by Sylvanas at some point. Even Sylvanas' presumptive judgement of a higher system as "broken" because she was punished for being a bad person could've been emphasized—if someone goes to hell, then complains about going to hell after they committed genocide, I don't see why anyone would say that system is broken.

Partially because they wanted to do the idea "What if Jaina actually did genocide Orgrimmar?" we had characters who were talked down before they did bad things & characters who refused to change after doing bad things, we needed a character who actually chose Redemption: So they chose Sylvanas: But also she didn't commit genocide yet: So they did Teldrassil first.

That combined with the neoliberal idea of "Tearing down a flawed system is evil because the new system to replace it might be worse!" that I think all major pop culture staples have done at some point: Both the MCU & DCEU does this a lot.

Plus this is especially confusing considering Kerrigan: She committed genocide and was told by an eldritch monster that it would all be justified when her rampage was over. Just like Sylvanas & the Jailer. Only Kerrigan succeeded, so she's justified? That's the exact opposite moral they're trying to impose on this story.

Ok so the thing with Wrathion and the iron horde was he planted the idea in his head and nudged Kairoz into doing the thing. He also supposedly he freed Garrosh.

His goal was use the iron horde to unite Azeroth but garrosh went rogue

Right, but did they backpedal on this so hard it's no longer canon? It's obviously Wrathion, but after promising to reveal who was behind all those things.....they just never did. If they wanted to say it wasn't Wrathion they could.

Also how did Garrosh go rogue? He seemed to do everything Wrathion wanted him to do: Including dying so he couldn't implicate him.

Honestly in retrospect: Wrathion should have burned Teldrassil. This redemption arc would have fit his character way better.

[Syegfryed]

Also how did Garrosh go rogue? He seemed to do everything Wrathion wanted him to do: Including dying so he couldn't implicate him.

Honestly in retrospect: Wrathion should have burned Teldrassil. This redemption arc would have fit his character way better.

He was supposed to make a powerful horde and bring the armies to azeroth afaik, extra power, but he killed the orc dragon with him and said fuck it

[Super Dickmann]

He was supposed to make a powerful horde and bring the armies to azeroth afaik, extra power, but he killed the orc dragon with him and said fuck it

Garrosh has a sixth sense for retarded plot directions. When he ended up in a time travel expansion he immediately killed the time traveler to prevent it from turning into a nonsensical mess. When he was in the afterlife the moment he got free he yeeted himself into nonexistence while restating that he'd do it all again to prevent any malarky from altering the conclusion of his character. The hero we deserved.

[Raetary]

What about Vol'jin ? We still have to wait another xpac to see the end of his story ? Iirc he's in Ardenweald, with the Spirit of Rezan and ... that's it.

Rezan is dead, he infused Vol'jin with his essence before he died.

Vol'jin will become a loa, probably the next Loa of Kings.

[Lady Atia]

Rezan is dead, he infused Vol'jin with his essence before he died.

Vol'jin will become a loa, probably the next Loa of Kings.

I could see Vol'jin being the reason that all troll tribes unify again under the Horde, maybe against Hakkar for a revamped Zul Gurub.

[Marlamin]

Erm... does anyone knows sup with 4th 9.2 encrypted cinematic?

So far we just had Anduin finale, Janitor intro, Janitor finale.

Sup with last 1?

Used in the scene where Pelagos becomes the new arbiter.