Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Varodoc]

You know I'm still surprised they haven't removed Auschwitz yet:



Oh wait... right... world revamp

[Grimbold21]

It never has.

The context in which it is not to be taken seriously has shifted over the years, however.

It used to be an affable buddy who was larger than life, but was willing to laugh at how bombastic he was. Now? They're... whatever this is.

This is the equivalent of what people, sorry, some americans tried to do with tiki torches and the OK sign, except those times no one took them seriously.

Christ all mighty, it's a pointy hood, and that's problematic in game where mass genocides occur?

[Makorus]

It never has.

The context in which it is not to be taken seriously has shifted over the years, however.

It used to be an affable buddy who was larger than life, but was willing to laugh at how bombastic he was. Now? They're... whatever this is.

You mean it used to be a dudebro who would joke about bitches and hoes and told random girls to get back in the kitchen, but it turns out now that he was just some overcompensating shitter?

Trueeee

[Sondrelk]

You know I'm still surprised they haven't removed Auschwitz yet:

[IMG]

Oh wait... right... world revamp

I mean you say that, but really, why is it there at all? It's horribly bleak even by Forsaken standards in Vanilla, and the game makes no effort to acknowledge how immesnely fucked up it actually is.
I mean, it isnt even used to parody The Great Escape or somesuch, it's just massively evil for no better reason than to show new Forsaken players that they are definitively the evil ones. That is, before you start going further into the Horde stuff and learn that you are actually just misunderstood or something.

- - - Updated - - -

This is the equivalent of what people, sorry, some americans tried to do with tiki torches and the OK sign, except those times no one took them seriously.

Christ all mighty, it's a pointy hood, and that's problematic in game where mass genocides occur?

You generally do not hear about people who are traumatized by their beloved treehouse being burned and their entire family being killed. You do however hear stories about kids being harassed by men in white hoods.

Context matters here. The hoods looking like the ones used by the KKK is far more damning on the company than the genocide stuff. No reputable journalist is going to claim that Blizzard supports the bombing of a town because such a quest exists in the game, they might however argue that Blizzard are idiots for making white robes with pointy hats that looks eerily similar to the KKK.

[Grimbold21]

I mean you say that, but really, why is it there at all? It's horribly bleak even by Forsaken standards in Vanilla, and the game makes no effort to acknowledge how immesnely fucked up it actually is.
I mean, it isnt even used to parody The Great Escape or somesuch, it's just massively evil for no better reason than to show new Forsaken players that they are definitively the evil ones. That is, before you start going further into the Horde stuff and learn that you are actually just misunderstood or something.

- - - Updated - - -



You generally do not hear about people who are traumatized by their beloved treehouse being burned and their entire family being killed. You do however hear stories about kids being harassed by men in white hoods.

Context matters here. The hoods looking like the ones used by the KKK is far more damning on the company than the genocide stuff. No reputable journalist is going to claim that Blizzard supports the bombing of a town because such a quest exists in the game, they might however argue that Blizzard are idiots for making white robes with pointy hats that looks eerily similar to the KKK.

Then that's just evidence of intellectual dishonesty and inconsistency. If one has issues with representations of repugnant ideologies and horrific acts, then they should take issue with all of them, and not go about and cherry pick whatever suits them to make their tweet at that moment.

[Makorus]

Then that's just evidence of intellectual dishonesty and inconsistency. If one has issues with representations of repugnant ideologies and horrific acts, then they should take issue with all of them, and not go about and cherry pick whatever suits them to make their tweet at that moment.

If you don't see how "damn, those forsaken pretty much have concentration camps, that is really fucked up and reprehensible" and "oh yeah, the new tier set that you really really want looks like a KKK outfit" isn't comparable in any way, then I feel like you are kinda being dishonest.

Yes, the game has war crimes and war and death in it. But it's never portrayed in a positive way. It's about the context, not just what is being displayed.

[Makabreska]

Is this company meant to be taken seriously?

Not sure what was that supposed to mean. Blizz situation is known, so they will instantly respond to stuff like that. And the tier helmet was compared to KKK hoodie right away on social media. Blizz reaction was pretty logical.

[Chickat]

I think the set looks awesome but I understand why they would change it. I just hope they keep the cool faceplate part of the hood.

[Grimbold21]

If you don't see how "damn, those forsaken pretty much have concentration camps, that is really fucked up and reprehensible" and "oh yeah, the new tier set that you really really want looks like a KKK outfit" isn't comparable in any way, then I feel like you are kinda being dishonest.

Yes, the game has war crimes and war and death in it. But it's never portrayed in a positive way. It's about the context, not just what is being displayed.

No, this isn't about the context. This is about certain individuals' subjective interpretations of a given object and excessively problematising, to the point that it's almost satire like. Hell, it wouldn't even surprise me at this point that some of the people that were fooling around about the resemblance, they did so just to see if Blizzard would actually fall into the same trap again.

The game doesn't portray war and death in a positive way? We have had whole races and characters whose whole schtick is to acquire fame and glory in battle.

[Makabreska]

Damn, Zereth Mortis plate set looks sick:

[Ersula]

The game doesn't portray war and death in a positive way? We have had whole races and characters whose whole schtick is to acquire fame and glory in battle.

also nothing in this game resembles a concentration camp. Dont compare turning into a cool zombie anything like the holocaust, thx

[Varodoc]

also nothing in this game resembles a concentration camp. Dont compare turning into a cool zombie anything like the holocaust, thx

Eh, I'm pretty sure that, in your quest throughout the years to white-wash Sylvanas and the Horde and paint the Alliance as the villains, you made that comparison with the Alliance internment camps.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I am pretty certain the citizens of Lordaeron didn't just want to become Seedlings out of the kindness of their heart and their pleas for you to bash their skulls in. But, hey I guess this is the world we live in now where we are trying to chill the fuck out and go "Achsually you can't compare that" meanwhile Twitter is continuously trying to unmask "problematic" people and pointing a finger at how the World of Warcraft playerbase is awful and needs to be subjugated to T-1000 Machine Learning Beep Boop for punishment instead of using live humans cause Bobby wants to save a few millions in operational costs to have human customer relations.

When it comes to the "Hood", Earthbound censored and altered that in the North American release of it in 1995. So yeah, this isn't "news" in that sense. It's just funny to me how the comparison brigade thinks that the problem doesn't become illogical real quick when you start to just look over everything in the Warcraft universe. There are plenty of things in-game still that are extremely problematic and they haven't changed that for a myriad of reasons. At least for now, until we get actual datamining and our periodic WoWHead virtue signalling articles.

Also again the entire franchise is problematic from a settings perspective, regardless of what anyone feels. But, the developers realized that with Warcraft 3 and hence why we had a pretty strong Anti-Racist plotline that continued into World of Warcraft.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I mean you say that, but really, why is it there at all? It's horribly bleak even by Forsaken standards in Vanilla, and the game makes no effort to acknowledge how immesnely fucked up it actually is.
I mean, it isnt even used to parody The Great Escape or somesuch, it's just massively evil for no better reason than to show new Forsaken players that they are definitively the evil ones. That is, before you start going further into the Horde stuff and learn that you are actually just misunderstood or something.

- - - Updated - - -



You generally do not hear about people who are traumatized by their beloved treehouse being burned and their entire family being killed. You do however hear stories about kids being harassed by men in white hoods.

Context matters here. The hoods looking like the ones used by the KKK is far more damning on the company than the genocide stuff. No reputable journalist is going to claim that Blizzard supports the bombing of a town because such a quest exists in the game, they might however argue that Blizzard are idiots for making white robes with pointy hats that looks eerily similar to the KKK.

That camp (and also the spider-bears south of it) were a huge part of why I was for years calling Sylvanas as a future raid boss.

[huth]

How about the "many threads of one rope"? If Varian, for instance, was killed in our world by Fel magic, his soul was undone, it didn't go to the Shadowlands. But how about the Varian "threads" from other dimensions or alternate realities? Sure some of them should be in the Shadowlands?

Same goes for Sylvanas. She's "our" Syvlanas, but she isn't dead dead, are there other Sylvanases at the moment in Shadowlands, that have died already in their worlds?

What about Bolvar? Anduin? When another Anduin dies, does he just join the already dominated Anduin?

The entire story of the expansion is a hole. Shithole, to be exact.

They should just have had alternate selves as seperate souls. The Shadowlands are infinite, so the question of why we don't meet them is easy, and they'd have avoided all those other issues.

[Grimbold21]

also nothing in this game resembles a concentration camp. Dont compare turning into a cool zombie anything like the holocaust, thx

I didn't, quote the correct poster.

[UndedoKoleda]

The example he should have used was Draka. And the Devs already explained even if a soul is severed that doesn't make it two separate entities. Souls are quantum entangled. The Jailer having a piece of your soul only gives him a tether to it. And losing a piece of your soul only means you are stuck in the emotional state you were when you died. IE Sylvanas & Uther. The point is they've been acting out of hurt & betrayal.

Fel magic didn't undo Varian's soul, it undid his body AND essence.

Essence as described by the devs, because it wasn't in the game, is essentially your Shadowlands body. Essence is the result of residue accumulating around your soul as anima passes through it. A lot of residue gives you a strong, material body, while just a little residue gives you that wispy, ethereal form you see on souls: Without Essence, souls are invisible. You can destroy Essence but you can't destroy a soul. If you essence is destroyed your soul still exists but its returned to the Twisting Nether like the canon said before shadowlands: This is what happened to Garrosh & Varian.

What... are you even talking about?


Fel is fueled by drawing life from living beings and consuming their souls, utterly destroying them in the process. - As source is cited the first Chronicles.

Mortal souls begin in the mortal plane: Azeroth, other worlds etc. And when they die, that soul with all its anima that it’s built up in life, crosses over into the Shadowlands. And in the Shadowlands, the threat to your existence is real. If everything goes the way it’s supposed to go, you should be able to exist for eternity; either enjoy or endure whatever afterlife you are a part of. But if something happens to your soul there, if something destroys it, that soul is gone. There is no afterlife beyond Shadowlands. That’s why stakes are real in these battles, in these conflicts. - Steve Danuser himself said that.



We’ve done some stuff that’s involved with time travel and alternate realities. What happens to those souls when they pass on? Do they go to the Shadowlands?

This is a complicated question. How do you deal with things like alternate Draenor? There was a Draka there. What is that Draka? Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she related to the Draka in Shadowlands that we see? Or is there another Draka? We know that in Warlords of Draenor, Velen of that universe died. Does that mean there is a Velen in the Shadowlands? But what about the Velen in Azeroth? All these things are very complicated questions.

The way I would have you think about it is think of a rope… If you look at a rope, it is one thing, right? It’s something that you can grab onto, you can hold it, you can see it; think of that as a character. Think of that rope as Draka or Velen.

If you look at that rope more closely, you can see there are different threads that make up the rope. There are different twines that pull together, and you can pull off one of these threads if you want. But it’s still a rope, and each of those threads you can think of as one of the realities of the character, one of the streams of time… There is a thread that is the Draka from Draenor we visited in the Warlords of Draenor. There is another thread that is Draka on Azeroth as we know her… And there are many other threads that could be other realities that we never peered into. But all of those threads at some time come together to make that rope. And remember also that, as you’ll see, that there are many characters in the Shadowlands when they refer to time, they usually say that time is not a construct of Death. Time and Death are not related. Death is about eternity, not linear time. The manner in which these threads come together, that can take a very long time from mortal perceptions. Those threads can be separated for a time, but sooner or later, they do combine to make one rope that is that character. You can think of it as the threads of that rope, all the individual threads, are just waiting. And over time, they will come together but they can exist as separate entities for a time. That still doesn’t change the fact that they are part of one rope.

Our Sylvanas and Uther are threads of the rope. So are Varian and Garrosh, the rope still exist, even if a thread in it is missing. Our thread Varian didn't make it to the Shadowlands, but there is a rope Varian in there. If a thread Anduin dies right now, he's getting part of the dominated rope Anduin in Shadowlands. If a honorable, best-warchief-in-the-history-of-the-horde died prior to SoD, he got a part of the suicidal-going-out-with-a-bang rope Garrosh.

How does any of this makes any sense to you?

[shoc]

What... are you even talking about?


Fel is fueled by drawing life from living beings and consuming their souls, utterly destroying them in the process. - As source is cited the first Chronicles.

Mortal souls begin in the mortal plane: Azeroth, other worlds etc. And when they die, that soul with all its anima that it’s built up in life, crosses over into the Shadowlands. And in the Shadowlands, the threat to your existence is real. If everything goes the way it’s supposed to go, you should be able to exist for eternity; either enjoy or endure whatever afterlife you are a part of. But if something happens to your soul there, if something destroys it, that soul is gone. There is no afterlife beyond Shadowlands. That’s why stakes are real in these battles, in these conflicts. - Steve Danuser himself said that.



We’ve done some stuff that’s involved with time travel and alternate realities. What happens to those souls when they pass on? Do they go to the Shadowlands?

This is a complicated question. How do you deal with things like alternate Draenor? There was a Draka there. What is that Draka? Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she related to the Draka in Shadowlands that we see? Or is there another Draka? We know that in Warlords of Draenor, Velen of that universe died. Does that mean there is a Velen in the Shadowlands? But what about the Velen in Azeroth? All these things are very complicated questions.

The way I would have you think about it is think of a rope… If you look at a rope, it is one thing, right? It’s something that you can grab onto, you can hold it, you can see it; think of that as a character. Think of that rope as Draka or Velen.

If you look at that rope more closely, you can see there are different threads that make up the rope. There are different twines that pull together, and you can pull off one of these threads if you want. But it’s still a rope, and each of those threads you can think of as one of the realities of the character, one of the streams of time… There is a thread that is the Draka from Draenor we visited in the Warlords of Draenor. There is another thread that is Draka on Azeroth as we know her… And there are many other threads that could be other realities that we never peered into. But all of those threads at some time come together to make that rope. And remember also that, as you’ll see, that there are many characters in the Shadowlands when they refer to time, they usually say that time is not a construct of Death. Time and Death are not related. Death is about eternity, not linear time. The manner in which these threads come together, that can take a very long time from mortal perceptions. Those threads can be separated for a time, but sooner or later, they do combine to make one rope that is that character. You can think of it as the threads of that rope, all the individual threads, are just waiting. And over time, they will come together but they can exist as separate entities for a time. That still doesn’t change the fact that they are part of one rope.

Our Sylvanas and Uther are threads of the rope. So are Varian and Garrosh, the rope still exist, even if a thread in it is missing. Our thread Varian didn't make it to the Shadowlands, but there is a rope Varian in there. If a thread Anduin dies right now, he's getting part of the dominated rope Anduin in Shadowlands. If a honorable, best-warchief-in-the-history-of-the-horde died prior to SoD, he got a part of the suicidal-going-out-with-a-bang rope Garrosh.

How does any of this makes any sense to you?

Which one of those ropes can I hang myself with

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Everything became a question and there are no answers just more questions.

[huth]

Our Sylvanas and Uther are threads of the rope. So are Varian and Garrosh, the rope still exist, even if a thread in it is missing. Our thread Varian didn't make it to the Shadowlands, but there is a rope Varian in there. If a thread Anduin dies right now, he's getting part of the dominated rope Anduin in Shadowlands. If a honorable, best-warchief-in-the-history-of-the-horde died prior to SoD, he got a part of the suicidal-going-out-with-a-bang rope Garrosh.

How does any of this makes any sense to you?

I don't think you got Anduin correct. The whole rope-thing only applies once they die and go to the Shadowlands as souls. Anduin, to the best of our knowledge, hasn't done that yet, and neither has Sylvanas (well, technically she has but was then de-roped and kicked back).