Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Ersula]

What was dumb about Shadowlands was not releasing a Necromancer or Dark Ranger class when people were more than ready for a new class. A new Dark Ranger class would have made having to deal with Sylvanas for another expansion a bit easier to bear.

The idea that everyone who joined the Necrolords was now a necromancer, complete with armor sets. They even gave necrolord hunters the ability to tame undead. You people are really never happy, are you?

[Revamp Man]

The idea that everyone who joined the Necrolords was now a necromancer, complete with armor sets. They even gave necrolord hunters the ability to tame undead. You people are really never happy, are you?

I can honestly say that if I pay for a steak and get a pork chop I am unsatisfied yes

[Edward Wu]

Really hoping we get a faction merge in 10.0, otherwise the Alliance is basically doomed.

[Palapop]

Really hoping we get a faction merge in 10.0, otherwise the Alliance is basically doomed.

I can't wait to see "Hall of fame" race in 9.2

probably gonna be like 100 H guilds and 5-6 A.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I can honestly say that if I pay for a steak and get a pork chop I am unsatisfied yes

Pork is better anyways

[Revamp Man]

Really hoping we get a faction merge in 10.0, otherwise the Alliance is basically doomed.

Idk why they don’t take the traitor quest line that was used in an April fools joke

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Pork is better anyways

I don’t think I’ve felt this attacked since my mother asked me for a well done steak

[Khaza-R]

Really hoping we get a faction merge in 10.0, otherwise the Alliance is basically doomed.

Factions will still maintain their identities even if full cross faction grouping is allowed. Horde and Alliance are integral to WarCrafts brand at this point. Its not going anywhere.

[Syegfryed]

San'layn are okay because they're "dead elves transformed by a curse, elves being a race that existed before".
But Venthyr are not okay despite being "dead elves (and other races) transformed by the afterlife, elves being a race that existed before (along with other races)".

Yes, one of those is ok the other isn't, i don't know why you have to repeat what i said.

Maldraxxus, IMO, embodies the viking concept of "Valhalla": an afterlife where warriors who died in glory go to revel and fight for more glory. The problem with is that Blizzard felt that they had to shove in the "undead/Scourge" theme somewhere, and Maldraxxus apparently got the short straw.

That was already covered by Odyn and the valajar, so, extra problems.

"Frostmourne" is just a name. Are you going to say that Arthas mourns as well because of the sword? I can give you a long list of weapons with elements in their name (such as 'frost', 'fire', flame', etc) that don't give elemental abilities to the wielder.

But it does give ice abilities to the wielder, he just doesn't use much., for obvious reasons.

Getting frost powers is a retcon.

then what is this scene in the reign of chaos where arthas, used frostmourne to hurl a huge blast of ice to break the elven gates?

And yes, you can find on the original game as well, don't worry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgwE...nnel=JanDoedel

[FossilFree]

Just make warmode on have hostile factions and with warmode off you can talk, group, and guild together with the other faction.

[Syegfryed]

Who cares?

Nerubians cribing their aesthetic makes as much sense as Odyn cribing his from the Kyrians. The necromantic powers required to peer behind the veil clearly existed in some form before the Scourge. IE there were undead & necromancers in this franchise before WC3

Everyone who cares about warcraft? the nerubians are much more interesting than maldraxus by a huge mile.

[Ielenia]

Yes, one of those is ok the other isn't, i don't know why you have to repeat what i said.

Because they're contradictory statements. Both are the exact same in the description, but one is okay and the other isn't, and the sole reason, as far as I could glean, is because you don't like Shadowlands.

That was already covered by Odyn and the valajar, so, extra problems.

So what? Clearly that is not a problem since Maldraxxus does resemble the concept of Valhalla of warriors going to "warrior heaven" to fight for glory. You even have a Kyrian covenant daily where you judge souls, and when you judge the orc, the Kyrian says "he went to earn much glory in Maldraxxus".

But it does give ice abilities to the wielder, he just doesn't use much., for obvious reasons.

Except... it didn't, until WoW retconned that.

https://youtu.be/eCQfvWBfJUM?t=701

then what is this scene in the reign of chaos where arthas, used frostmourne to hurl a huge blast of ice to break the elven gates?

And yes, you can find on the original game as well, don't worry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgwEkirVJMI

Funny. It doesn't look like frost magic in the original.

[Syegfryed]

Because they're contradictory statements

they aren't, one thing is a race, say an elven one, getting a vampiric disease related to undead, and other races morphing themselves into ghotic vampires in a wananbe purgatory afterlife..

So what? Clearly that is not a problem since Maldraxxus does resemble the concept of Valhalla of warriors going to "warrior heaven" to fight for glory.

And that is a problem, is a concept that was already done but didn't meshed well, valhalla is the place of amazing warriors, but you have different sects that does not work like that, they do different things, you have characters who don't even work like that(vash) and the whole thematic of scourge 2.0 does not click with valhala and are more related to Hel where "bad" people goes, but again, none of the the ice theme the land of helheim would have, because helheim was also a thing in Legion.

Shadowlands try to do a collage of different afterlives in one and they simple don't work, it would be much better if they decided to go full greek, or even follow divine's comedy ambience that at elast would have a full thematic to stand on. i Would care much more about the Janitor if he was depicted in a Lucifer kind of way inprisoned in ice and shit until Sylvanus release him, and he want revenge or something like that.

Except... it didn't, until WoW retconned that.

Except it did, and i proved you that. there is other stances as well, i just can't bother to find it now, one is enough.

Funny. It doesn't look like frost magic in the original.

a literal blast of white and blue energy doesn't look like frost magic, despite being how the magic is presented in the old game because of low graphics, all right.

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In your opinion sure but Nerubians are done to death. They're not interesting or compelling at all anymore. They're just bugs that talk.

They Just appear in wtLk, how they are done to death? lmao, we just saw but a fraction of their ancient empire.

[Vladier]

I literally posted the clip where the jailers explains exactly this. He learned Frostmorne's location from the Primus' memories. Did you post this before reading my entire point?

It seems like I'm in the middle of two camps, one saying (falsely) that this was all some grand design planned years ago, and the people who treat the recontextualization of old lore as a much bigger deal than it is.

No, he learned the designs of the Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination from Primus' memories, alongside the designs for his armies. Nowhere does it say that he learned any kind of location for anything.

It's been extremely clear that the Lich Kings were a failed attempt by him at getting a powerful pawn, and he created them by giving the blade and the armor to the Nathrezim who passed them off as their own creations. They were never hidden from him, not especially since the Helm has a direct psychic link to him.

I cannot understand how you managed to take this cutscene so out of context (or, indeed, text) and ignore the rest of the lore that directly contradicts your interpretation. I think this is the wildest of your conceptions, and I mean this including the strangest of your Sylvanas theories.

[Ielenia]

they aren't, one thing is a race, say an elven one, getting a vampiric disease related to undead, and other races morphing themselves into ghotic vampires in a wananbe purgatory afterlife..

Again: "race changed into another race" is okay, but "race changed into another race" is not okay. Hence why the statements are contradictory. The sole difference between those two is your feelings because you don't like Shadowlands.

And that is a problem,

Not really. It's not a "perfect fit", but it's not a problem, either. Maldraxxus is the militaristic side of the Shadowlands, and being "undead" works because that means even after falling in battle they can be reassembled, to fight for more glory or reclaim what glory was lost.

Except it did, and i proved you that. there is other stances as well, i just can't bother to find it now, one is enough.

Except you didn't. We never see Arthas casting frost spells in the original Warcraft 3. Being white does not mean it's ice spell.

[Makorus]

Everyone who cares about warcraft? the nerubians are much more interesting than maldraxus by a huge mile.

The nerubians are more interesting because they are from Warcraft 3 and Maldraxxus is from Shadowlands. Just say it. Your entire argument from the last two pages boiled down to this.

old game good new game bad. Why pretend like you aren't biased?

Nerubians are literally just bugs. It's not any more interesting than Maldraxxus lmao.

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Really hoping we get a faction merge in 10.0, otherwise the Alliance is basically doomed.

I just want to play Kul'tirans considering they are never gonna give me Ogres for the Horde

[Luck4]

Guys, I know I'm not a mod but this discussion isn't going anywhere, Shadowlands lore will be over in a couple of weeks, it's time to move on.

[Super Dickmann]

That's true, though. It also contradicts Chronicles' suggestion that Spirit Healers originally were Odyn's Val'Kyr.

That's one of the most impressively pointless retcons out there since the Kyrian already fit with Odyn creating the Val'kyr/Spirit Healers. The warrior class hall info about Odyn in Legion says outright that for his Val'kyr he looked into the Shadowlands to find the means and concepts. Legion went out of its way to say that both Helheim and the Halls of Valor weren't the afterlife proper but essentially pocket realms dedicated to hijacking the flow of souls, which is interesting by itself. Modeling his Val'kyr after what he saw beyond the Veil was already the case. He sees hell and negotiates with a spirit there too. So all the retcon really does is move the Spirit Healers from renegade Valks to being what he based them on. Which isn't even bad, but it is contradictory and useless.

The entire expansion is a little fucky with this. They never seem to understand that this is the afterlife, not normal life—it seems more like you live twice, once potentially forever (partially dependent on which afterlife you go to) and once on Azeroth, as opposed to once and then your consciousness exists forever or you are resurrected in a perfect state like any real-life religious belief and metaphysics states. It simply takes a lot out of the concept of an afterlife to say "lol it's just like life 2" as opposed to being something either unfathomable to the living or something which entails perfection and immortality, like a Christian-style resurrection or Heaven.

I'd say one thing that I do hope they do is go back to the idea of souls going to the Light directly as a common theme. It would be nice to fix some of Shadowlands' impact on the story by having people actually start entering the Light directly more often.

It's their riff on a D&D style afterlife which is itself a riff on things like the Greek or Norse ones where going to Valhalla doesn't mean you aren't still a dude in a basically physical body who can both eat, drink, fuck and die again, but for real this time. D&D is the more likely influence given the themed planes and this being a fantasy game, but it's the same basic gist. This shit is far from alien from this strain of fantasy or sci-fi and where they're borrowing it from is fairly obvious. I think a big part of the discrepancy comes from the fact that while WoW had taken Elemental Planes and the like blatantly from D&D in the past and Metzen is a huge fan, the afterlife was one aspect where the influence wasn't apparent. In as much as WoW had lore on an afterlife, that belief was either vague (ancestor worship, a part of which is a fraud based on a space jigsaw piece passively dragging souls to it in its death throes, see Nagrand) or far more Christian inspired, with salvation coming from the Light while in a particularly bleak take, damnation is either tied up with undeath, regardless of deeds in life or just in general if no other power claims your soul. I found that bit compelling and simple and while I've found myself enjoying parts of Shadowlands' take despite my massive reservations before it came out, it's also much busier and lacks the same evocative punchy quality that served the franchise well for a very long time.

Curiously, the House of Constructs alone seems to specifically be what you're thinking of, where the people of Maldraxxus are actually completely immortal and seemingly indestructible—we see the souls removed from the constructs, suggesting that they're not dependent on them.
I think one way they could've dramatically fixed Shadowlands is by showing how different a "war" would be in a world where everyone is, by definition, immortal. It could be like most of Maldraxxus, where we see everything's halfway between Undeath and spiritual forms, permitting a sort of weird state of infinitely recursive human wave tactics—it wouldn't be a totally new idea, given that's what early Legion essentially had us dealing with. I figure another interesting thing could be the use of constructs and Shadowlands natives—I recall long (at least nine-ten months) before Shadowlands was announced, I had my own concept of a Shadowlands-based expansion which would work with the whole afterlife thing more properly. The idea is that you'd essentially be mostly destroying constructs and undead, while the actual souls would be all around you as untargetable flavor NPCs. It would also replace "dead" as a label (in the vein of how Garrosh is "unconscious" after SoO) with varying different things based on the zone. For instance, if you killed a Wraith somehow, the flavor would be that you're returning it to the jurisdiction of the local afterlife's ruler.

It's a trend in general in Maldraxxus, there it's just most visible, but even random NPCs from the Chosen or Rituals you kill tell you they'll get you next time or they'll be in a new body. They work in the same was as undeath does on Azeroth, with the body and soul being detached, but as the body's just a receptacle instead of something that has to feel and live, most of the most unpleasant implications are moot until they're applied to the real world, which is what I was getting at in my previous post. To them, death is a slap on the wrist and only a risk on the soul, incidentally what every other power making an attempt on their domain (Legion, Light, Void etc.) is capable of, is real. None of the other Shadowlands realms work like this hence the bit with the Kyrian who, since they have their souls and bodies entirely attached like living people, get put into a construct which then maintains some self-awareness as you drive it out and, a lot like classic abominations one of them begs for death as you put it out of its misery.

As it concerns the soul, this is one aspect that was a very iffy concept to start with but also suffers from execution problems. Because the concept itself is that the soul isn't actually all that important to the mechanism of the Shadowlands, as opposed to how important it is for the denizens. Sure, for the realms themselves, the soul is important, it's what these realms are there for, be it so it can protect the Shadowlands or so it can return and do its ordained role like with Ardenweald or because it needs correction so it can have its consciousness hang out in a better place, etc. The people in the Shadowlands care a great deal about the souls involved and how they end up. But the Shadowlands as a mechanism don't and their 'native' races don't either. What matters to them is the anima the soul generates over its time in the living world. The anima is transferred by the act of dying and so feeds the Shadowlands. What happens to the soul from then on matters to those close to it and those charged with maintaining it, but it doesn't matter in a grand scale. The functioning of the Shadowlands does not require souls past death much like the anima the soul accumulates is useless in the living world, but since the two are connected in a Grand Cycle one hangs around with the other until it runs its course. This isn't some extrapolation either, it's the premise of how the Brokers think, Al-Firim says in the Tazavesh notes that he figured that the living world exists solely to that end and everything else is just a quaint delusion. He also believes that his gods are actually very real, when we later know that they came out of a machine and were themselves banned from accessing the knowledge lest they realize their own artificiality. The soul and consciousness are in this case separate concepts. It's good you mentioned the Curse of Flesh because it reminded me of how old this issue really was since the problem posed is the same. Progenitors used machines to create constructs with consciousnesses and individuality. But at what point do they have souls and where do the souls come from? Did Yogg's curse imbue them with souls or do the Titan assembly lines produce constructs that have souls already? At what stage does the defective vrykul, which is self-aware in either case, go from a construct to something that gets to have an afterlife?

It's a good question. The writing is vaguely aware of it too. Hence why some of the Old God minions go on about how they are your true creators and how in 9.2 the transition from template to individual is brought up explicitly. It's high concept fantasy/sci-fi and Shadowlands has thought about it a lot more than prior expansions has, even though the concepts it's playing with are not at all alien to the setting. It's also entirely beyond the means of either the game as a medium or the writers in terms of proficiency. Front-loading it in an expansion makes for a fun mental exercise on a forum, but it doesn't make a good story to experience especially when the game itself is only half-interested in telling it and does so largely through out of the way side materials in and out of game while the main story is preoccupied with a handful of boring assholes on a quest to kill Satan while their lines are carefully curated to say as little as possible with as few contractions as possible.

Don't even get me started on how it simultaneously toys around with concepts of malleable fate and probability, expresses it outright as a story mechanic the baddie is getting his hands on and then does nothing with it despite it being a silver bullet for explaining some of the contradictions or extreme contrivances the plot is based on.

[Skildar]

--maldraxxus snip --

You know what's funny is that I was never sure that what you describe with the souls of Maldraxxus is the intended truth. Most of what we do and see comes in contradiction with this notion.
Draka's video shows the death of her house and she straight up says "hurry there could be survivors". Then when we reach Maldraxxus we proceed to kill a lot of people to end them, Margrave included.

I discovered what you described through the covenant abomination feature and really liked the design of having the souls remain and in need of another body, it suited everything else that was happening.

I'm convinced that the depiction of Maldraxxus must have changed quite a lot and it's campaign as well because I just cannot think of a valid reason to make a specific model for the Chosen's magrave and then offing him behind the scene... Maybe the same was done with the eternal aspect of the Maldraxxus denizens souls...

[Super Dickmann]

You know what's funny is that I was never sure that what you describe with the souls of Maldraxxus is the intended truth. Most of what we do and see comes in contradiction with this notion.
Draka's video shows the death of her house and she straight up says "hurry there could be survivors". Then when we reach Maldraxxus we proceed to kill a lot of people to end them, Margrave included.

It's because the writers are still hacks and can't decide despite one option being transparently coherent and interesting and the other being nonsensical and dull. Maldraxxus is visually presented and most of its quests are depicted under the premise that those involved are immortal unless their soul is destroyed. Throwaway lines, the souls for the Covenant feature, the House of Constructs with the souls waiting in line to be refitted, Emeni having you send souls back into open bodies, etc. etc. Even in Bastion the idea that they come back is so essential that you get a quest item to disrupt their souls else they'll just come back endlessly. In the assaults, which came out in 9.1 so well after any miscommunication about a beta are done, two quests are based on it. One where you find Maw souls and stick them in bodies and one where you bring your own dead back to new bodies so they can keep fighting. You can see how torn up they are about their experience:

Disembodied Soul says: The stitchers can fix this!
Disembodied Soul says: Where is the nearest stitcher?

or how concerned the doc is that they'll lose their eternal soul:

Front-Line Stitcher says: I wonder how many mawsworn this one will kill before I see it again...

But then you have bits like Draka being sad about her skeletons getting offed or Danuser's word salad about necromancy and how dead is dead, despite his own tweet mentioning you can move souls from one body to another. I think Krexus's unique model was probably the Primus model at some stage or maybe was even Vyraz for a Maldraxxus raid with KT, but when it comes to this part it's entirely inconsistent plotting at work. Draka's inclusion as a whole did nothing for the zone.

[Syegfryed]

The nerubians are more interesting because they are from Warcraft 3 and Maldraxxus is from Shadowlands. Just say it. Your entire argument from the last two pages boiled down to this.

old game good new game bad. Why pretend like you aren't biased?

Nerubians are literally just bugs. It's not any more interesting than Maldraxxus lmao.

tell me you don't know about nerubians without saying you don't know about then.

Again: "race changed into another race" is okay, but "race changed into another race" is not okay. Hence why the statements are contradictory. The sole difference between those two is your feelings because you don't like Shadowlands.

Its only contradictory if you distort facts, "san'layin" are not "changed from another race", they are just dead elves with a disease/curse, very different than say, a tauren becoming a venthyr, because reasons;

Except you didn't. We never see Arthas casting frost spells in the original Warcraft 3.

He literally hurl a blast of ice to destroy the elven gates, are you even trying? lmao

Being white does not mean it's ice spell.

What a joke, and what would be? its literally the same color of frost spells, the ice orb and the blue dragon frost breath, but keep grasping at straws.