Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[KainneAbsolute]

I intentionally left my last post to be based on art and models we actually have, but to indulge the speculation a bit more, I want to draw some other conclusions about what I said about the gold and silver cosmetics.

I wonder if the Jailer was always meant to be, well, the Jailer, and not the Arbiter. Something that's never addressed in the version of the story we have is who watched over the Maw before Zovaal was sent there, or why the Maw isn't just a prison or wasteland, but is conspicuously fragmented. My theory is that Zovaal was originally the Eternal One of the Maw, the Jailer of the Damned. He kept the rest of the Shadowlands safe from evil in prisons of golden spires.

At some point, however, he still turned evil. Perhaps it was even more like Sargeras, or the original Sargeras. Being the warden of such absolutely, terrifyingly evil souls destroyed Zovaal existentially, so he sought out the Sepulcher of the First Ones in order to remake reality without the potential for such evil. With the realms of the Eternal Ones reflecting their nature, as Zovaal turned bad, the gold faded and the Maw became desolate.

When his siblings learned about his desperate plan, like the Pantheon they turned against him to stop him. A war broke out, and the Maw was shattered. Ultimately, Zovaal lost and was chained in his own realm, then they sealed the place off and threw away the key.

Or maybe Zovaal tried to create a new Shadowlands. I don't like that Zovaal's original role was the jailer because precisely Sargeras also had a jail (Mardum), and the similarities between Zovaal and Sargeras go too far (unless Blizzard wanted that).

I prefer to look Zovaal and Sargeras as opposites sides of the mirror:
- Sargeras defeated his family///Zovaal defeated by his family
- Sargeras created a jail /// Zovaal sought redemption for the true evils.

[Le Conceptuel]

10.0 prepatch: Scarlet Rising
The recent events with Anduin and the other leaders has led to the perfect opportunity for the scarlet crusade to make their move. They have teamed up with a few familiar enemies in order to raise the true heir to lordaeron to the throne but their leader seems….different. Stop their assaults and use the currency from defeating the enemies to buy gear and other rewards

10.0: Launch
The scarlet crusade has revealed secrets that have led to a few changes in the alliance and the return of the black prince. Wrathion leads us to the dragon isles where he needs our assistance in uniting the factions of dragons. The twilight cult and scarlet crusade have made their way to the floating isles as well and we must discover their connection.

10.1: the infinite flight
Nozdormu is missing and Chromie has tracked him here with a message left behind saying “do…rescue…time’s….end…coming…isles” the time fragment has led the bronze flight here under Chromie’s supervision and led us to the time lost wastes. We find Nozdormu and he doesn’t remember sending any message but has found members of the infinite flight and is investigating. Nozdormu finds a time rip and prepares to sacrifice himself to seal it putting an end to the infinite flight by breaking the loop and plans on leaving Chromie as the next leader of the flight. Chromie is then taken hostage by moruzond and Nozdormu decides to save Chromie thus allowing the infinite to remain and now they can harness the rift. When Chromie asks why he did that Nozdormu replies “your future is the future of our flight” and then the rift turns him and multiple bronze dragons into the first of the infinite. The rift is then used to turn other bronze members.

10.2: Twilight Scales
The Twilight cult has succeeded in their goal. The heart of the Isles has given them the resources to revive the greatest dragon to ever be created…Chromatus. Chromatus is back better than ever with two extra heads and new void and death powers. His new form also grants the ability to appear as multiple mortals which must all be defeated in order to be killed and he aims for dominance over the isles by revealing he was the rulers of each faction including the black dragon behind the SCARLET CRUSADE?!?!?! Now we must put an end to him and the cult once and for all.

That makes no sense. Where would Chromatus get the new heads? Why would the Dragons use the Scarlet Crusade (well, save for them just being plain moronic)? Why would Nozdormu become Murozond just from being caught in a rift? Isn't it already established that the Infinites aren't """corrupted""" (in the Blizzard vernacular), but have an actual ideological motive underlying their behavior?

[Shadochi]

Interesting thing crossed my mind, we didn't see any Order or Chaos cosmic forces in Shadowlands, other cosmic forces are represented. I guess you could stretch the Dreadlords as Chaos presence but I don't think it is well since they originate from the Shadowlands and were just on a mission among Chaos forces.

Death is obvious.
Light is present in the form of Naaru in Revendreth.
Void invading Bastion.
Life in the form of Elune's magic.

But no Titan stuff for Order or demonic stuff for Chaos

[Archmage Xaxxas]

The entirety of the Shadowlands we visited are Ordered, and concept art shows the makings of "Order" and "Chaos" zones that turned into Bastion and Maldraxxus respectively.


Bastion orders righteous/just souls.
Revendreth orders twisted/sinful souls.
Ardenweald orders the Cycle of Death into Life.
Maldraxxus orders the defense and offense of the Shadowlands as a whole.

The Arbiter of course at the helm of all of this ordering. The First Ones are being pitched as beings who Order things.. If it sounds familiar to the Titans, it's simply intended. Either they are the Titans (thankgod), or the Titans are truly just underlings to their cause. (plsgodno)


And honestly if Zereth Mortis isn't the most Order-based zone ingame, I can't immediately think what else would be.

[Revamp Man]

That makes no sense. Where would Chromatus get the new heads? Why would the Dragons use the Scarlet Crusade (well, save for them just being plain moronic)? Why would Nozdormu become Murozond just from being caught in a rift? Isn't it already established that the Infinites aren't """corrupted""" (in the Blizzard vernacular), but have an actual ideological motive underlying their behavior?

1. However he gets revived likely messes with his body

2. Tear apart and possibly end up controlling the kingdom that led to the defeat of every past black dragon…plus they like it lol
3. He became moruzond by trying to stop his own death so by not trying to stop it he wouldn’t become moruzond but if he stops it by not going into the rift he technically tried to stop his death also blizzard retcons stuff as recent as the previous expansion


If you are wondering about Chromatus and why though then it would be to sew discord and weaken the forces of Azeroth enough for him to get his revenge on the aspects and their allies leading to him conquering Azeroth with his empire since his enemies only succeed when United

[Shadochi]

The entirety of the Shadowlands we visited are Ordered, and concept art shows the makings of "Order" and "Chaos" zones that turned into Bastion and Maldraxxus respectively.


Bastion orders righteous/just souls.
Revendreth orders twisted/sinful souls.
Ardenweald orders the Cycle of Death into Life.
Maldraxxus orders the defense and offense of the Shadowlands as a whole.

The Arbiter of course at the helm of all of this ordering. The First Ones are being pitched as beings who Order things.. If it sounds familiar to the Titans, it's simply intended. Either they are the Titans (thankgod), or the Titans are truly just underlings to their cause. (plsgodno)


And honestly if Zereth Mortis isn't the most Order-based zone ingame, I can't immediately think what else would be.

I meant more as the cosmic force of order and representatives. The zone forces are in essence still creatures of Death. Order would be something titanic and chaos demonic based on current info.

While I agree that the first ones are close (my theory being 1 First One for each force) we didn't actually see them. Something being ordered is different than it being Of Order. Legion command had and ordered structure and was still a force of Chaos.

[Revamp Man]

Interesting thing crossed my mind, we didn't see any Order or Chaos cosmic forces in Shadowlands, other cosmic forces are represented. I guess you could stretch the Dreadlords as Chaos presence but I don't think it is well since they originate from the Shadowlands and were just on a mission among Chaos forces.

Death is obvious.
Light is present in the form of Naaru in Revendreth.
Void invading Bastion.
Life in the form of Elune's magic.

But no Titan stuff for Order or demonic stuff for Chaos

The light attacked because they found the dreadlord infiltrator

The void likely did the same because they don’t like death

The Titans are busy and likely Order is limited

Chaos is being hunted by the army of the light

[Archmage Xaxxas]

Instead of blowing off the link to proof I provided why not check it out?

I'm not the one saying the Shadowlands have "Order" in them on my own, the concept art began with that in mind:



"I did some early visual development sketches for World of Warcraft - Shadowlands at the end of 2018. The goal was to explore the visual possibilities for the "zone of order" and the "zone of chaos," which later evolved into Bastion and Maldraxxus." - Phillip Zhang

Legion command had and ordered structure and was still a force of Chaos.

The Legion commanded by a Titan, a fallen being of Order? Demons in general is one thing, but The Burning Legion was gathered and raised by a Titan.

[Shadochi]

The light attacked because they found the dreadlord infiltrator

The void likely did the same because they don’t like death

The Titans are busy and likely Order is limited

Chaos is being hunted by the army of the light

I am aware of what each is doing, just feels weird that they didn't put all of them in after they did 4/6 or 5/7. Closest we got to Order is that one item for Research in Korthia mentioning a titan (and Azeroth I guess in Jailer fight?)

[Hitei]

Interesting thing crossed my mind, we didn't see any Order or Chaos cosmic forces in Shadowlands, other cosmic forces are represented. I guess you could stretch the Dreadlords as Chaos presence but I don't think it is well since they originate from the Shadowlands and were just on a mission among Chaos forces.

Death is obvious.
Light is present in the form of Naaru in Revendreth.
Void invading Bastion.
Life in the form of Elune's magic.

But no Titan stuff for Order or demonic stuff for Chaos

I mean it checks out. Death is death. Life is part of the Life and Death cycle so it is involved. The void likes to actively pursue incursions, so it shows up as an invading force.

Light is only there because Denathrius and the Nathrezim fucked around with it and it counter-attacked.

Order is overwhelmingly preoccupied with the mortal plane, to the point of barely being aware of the other five, and Chaos is historically also only concerned with the twisting nether and mortal plane. The hierarchy of Order seemingly has little interest in actually getting involved with the others (beyond stopping the Void and Legion), and Chaos, appropriately, doesn't even seem to have an actual hierarchy at all, so there's nothing to seek an invasion outside of the Legion, who are only looking at mortal worlds.

Not much reason for either of them to show up.

[Jokubas]

Honestly, I still haven't managed to understand the whole "Kyrestia is bad" narrative—I definitely get that the Kyrian are mind-numbingly stupid beyond any reason because "le pattern le purpose le duty", but as far as I've seen it 100% makes sense to brainwash the Kyrians because otherwise a bunch of independent, possibly-malicious actors would make hasty decisions based on short-term emotional judgements of a person. It frankly would've been a better plotline to instead show what happens when something like that does happen and have people agree to stop trying to hijack nature for the sake of freedom, especially since it's rather hypocritical to be upset about failing a set of trials that are opt-in in a place which is also opt-in.

I agree with this overall.

I know a lot of people take the idea and run with it, and treat her like she's maliciously and proudly evil just because they don't agree with her actions. I don't think she's evil, and I don't think she was meant to be seen as such, but what you called mind-numbingly stupid I could argue as evil in a 'good does evil-through-inaction or evil-through-enabling' sort of way. The whole knowingly throwing people into the Maw is one of the worst actions done in the expansion, especially since it's a major contributor to the main villain's plan (well, ambiguously at least, since it theoretically should be causing or heavily contributing to the drought, but the story treats the drought as something Denathrius exclusively caused just by hoarding).

I agree that the whole narrative should arguably be framed differently, though. Not having their memories or personal biases should be a good thing if they're going to be judging people on some level. You would think that was the purpose of the Bastion Afterlives video, but the consequences of that turned out to be a mess.

On another note, am I missing something that is leading to so many mentions of the Scarlet Crusade? The Scarlet Crusade were a splinter group of a splinter group, and we've wiped them out on three or four separate occasions. Now, the fact that we've already done that shows Blizzard doesn't usually pay attention to such logistics, but what's the reason we're expecting them to still have a fighting force after all of that?

[Revamp Man]

I am aware of what each is doing, just feels weird that they didn't put all of them in after they did 4/6 or 5/7. Closest we got to Order is that one item for Research in Korthia mentioning a titan (and Azeroth I guess in Jailer fight?)

Eh I kinda want to blame cut content

[Izalla]

It's a case of less is more. In Lovecraftian horror, something like that should be so beyond comprehension it should make our heads explode or something.

He should reveal himself eventually but it happened perhaps a bit too fast with not enough consequences for her.

Not only that, but the fact that he would feel the need to act intimidating at all just makes him seem weak in that moment. If I'm a god, what the hell do I care about puffing myself up for you? I'm so far above you that I don't give a shit what you think because you're laughably irrelevant. When Azshara kinda mocks him and rejects him and he gets so mad he tries to attack her, that made him seem like a petulant child who wanted to seem more impressive than he was and was pissed off that he got called out on his bullshit. The scarier, more impressive villain doesn't need to toss their weight around to be intimidating. It's why Silco was such a good villain in Arcane; the dude never really did anything personally, just orchestrated it all, but he OOOZED bad guy charisma. And that moment where he is playing with the little girl? Sooo much tension just because of the implication of what he could do based on what kind of person he was, was enough.

[Le Conceptuel]

On another note, am I missing something that is leading to so many mentions of the Scarlet Crusade? The Scarlet Crusade were a splinter group of a splinter group, and we've wiped them out on three or four separate occasions. Now, the fact that we've already done that shows Blizzard doesn't usually pay attention to such logistics, but what's the reason we're expecting them to still have a fighting force after all of that?

It's not really the original Scarlet Crusade people are expecting to see returned—rather, they're talking about a new group in their spirit, a Neo-Scarletist mindset. They'd be a resurgence or ideological successor, not the Scarlet Crusade proper.

[Shadochi]

Instead of blowing off the link to proof I provided why not check it out?

I'm not the one saying the Shadowlands have "Order" in them on my own, the concept art began with that in mind:

[IMG]https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/041/550/765/4k/phillip-zhang-phillip-zhang-ordervsdisorder.jpg?1632024828[IMG]

"I did some early visual development sketches for World of Warcraft - Shadowlands at the end of 2018. The goal was to explore the visual possibilities for the "zone of order" and the "zone of chaos," which later evolved into Bastion and Maldraxxus." - Phillip Zhang

I am not blowing off proof. I saw the sketches. But based on what we got in the expansion Maldraxxus isn't a zone representing the Cosmic force of Chaos, just a chaotic zone. Likewise for Bastion, being an ordered zone.
And as I said in my post I gave example what would be actual representation of that as we have for Void and Light showing off with Naaru and void creatures. For Chaos it would be demonic stuff, while for Order it would be titanic stuff.

Even the picture you embedded furthers the point that they didn't use the Cosmic forces for the definition of those concepts, but general meaning of chaos and order. The "Unordered" stuff doesn't look like any of the demonic stuff we've seen, and "Ordered" doesn't really resemble Titanic stuff, also keywords further prove that. While Kyrian architecture does a bit resemble titanic architecture, that is because it looks similar to Odyn's Halls, which were modeled after a combination of Titan and Kyrian styles when he peered into the Shadowlands.

I guess Odyn's eye is some sort of SL Order presence.

[Hitei]

I agree with this overall.

I know a lot of people take the idea and run with it, and treat her like she's maliciously and proudly evil just because they don't agree with her actions. I don't think she's evil, and I don't think she was meant to be seen as such, but what you called mind-numbingly stupid I could argue as evil in a 'good does evil-through-inaction or evil-through-enabling' sort of way. The whole knowingly throwing people into the Maw is one of the worst actions done in the expansion, especially since it's a major contributor to the main villain's plan (well, ambiguously at least, since it theoretically should be causing or heavily contributing to the drought, but the story treats the drought as something Denathrius exclusively caused just by hoarding).

I agree that the whole narrative should arguably be framed differently, though. Not having their memories or personal biases should be a good thing if they're going to be judging people on some level. You would think that was the purpose of the Bastion Afterlives video.

On another note, am I missing something that is leading to so many mentions of the Scarlet Crusade? The Scarlet Crusade were a splinter group of a splinter group, and we've wiped them out on three or four separate occasions. Now, the fact that we've already done that shows Blizzard doesn't usually pay attention to such logistics, but what's the reason we're expecting them to still have a fighting force after all of that?

People are just obsessed with them and will never let them go. It's one of those things.

Like how we literally went to the Emerald Dream, to its most important place, it's actual heart and source, and defeated its primary antagonist, but for some reason people are very sure there's an Emerald Dream expansion right around the corner.

I guess it helps that Void vs Light is an expected future thematic, and the only two standing forces of the Light we have with the potential to immediately be villainous without much change to lore are the Scarlets, and Yrel's Lightbound. And since people are also expecting a return to Azeroth and low end threats, the Scarlets appear the optimal choice, given their old Vanilla-y status.

[Raetary]

Death as a force was lumped in with Light and Order, as forces that grant structure and rhytmn.
With that it makes sense for it to overlap with the others, hence why Death is so orderly.

[Ersula]

The light attacked because they found the dreadlord infiltrator

The void likely did the same because they don’t like death

The Titans are busy and likely Order is limited

Chaos is being hunted by the army of the light

Titans & Eternal Ones work under the First Ones: They're basically their employees. That they made. Finding out the closest thing to a god this universe had are actually robot butlers is.... something. The Titans were meant to Order the mortal plane, so obviously they consider themselves the head of Order. The Light & Void seem to feel indifferently toward the ordering of the universe. Their true priority is cosmic territory. Not so much in the form of land, but of people: the Lightforged are essentially people they have conscripted into their cosmic army.

When we have evidence of both of them attacking the Shadowlands in Maldraxxus, that makes sense because the Naaru & the Void lords seem to have no concept of mortality the way we do. There are no naaru souls in the Shadowlands, for example. Because if S'era is any indication, they don't die. For a naaru the equivalent of death is becoming a Void Lord, and vise versa. In fact this dichotomy may only exist because of the ordering of the universe. Do you think the Naaru & Void lords know this? That before the First Ones created this order, that Naaru & Void Lords may have been a unified lifeform?

Perhaps that is the "Seventh force." A force so terrible the First Ones saw fit to separate them into two different forces.

[Vakir]

Not only that, but the fact that he would feel the need to act intimidating at all just makes him seem weak in that moment. If I'm a god, what the hell do I care about puffing myself up for you? I'm so far above you that I don't give a shit what you think because you're laughably irrelevant. When Azshara kinda mocks him and rejects him and he gets so mad he tries to attack her, that made him seem like a petulant child who wanted to seem more impressive than he was and was pissed off that he got called out on his bullshit. The scarier, more impressive villain doesn't need to toss their weight around to be intimidating. It's why Silco was such a good villain in Arcane; the dude never really did anything personally, just orchestrated it all, but he OOOZED bad guy charisma. And that moment where he is playing with the little girl? Sooo much tension just because of the implication of what he could do based on what kind of person he was, was enough.

Attached video source is basic bitch, but it's still the best, and I never miss a chance to sing the praises of it.

Pretty much exactly how it would make sense to see 95% of the Warcraft villains to see us. Should all of them do it? Nah, that'd get old just like the 80s Saturday Day Morning Cartoon schtick they have going now. But it would be nice to see it, and you're on point that the most appropriate would be the Old Gods/Void Lords.

[Hitei]

They There are no naaru souls in the Shadowlands, for example. Because if S'era is any indication, they don't die. For a naaru the equivalent of death is becoming a Void Lord, and vise versa. In fact this dichotomy may only exist because of the ordering of the universe. Do you think the Naaru & Void lords know this? That before the First Ones created this order, that Naaru & Void Lords may have been a unified lifeform?

The Void is very explicitly aware of this. Xal talks about it.