Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[allegrian]

That's what the Red Dawn are. If what you're asking is "Why can't I play a racist?" that question is going to turn a few heads.

Well blizzard keeps giving out scarlet crusade cosmetics which is basically a racist spanish inquisition, I guess thay's okay for them lol.

[Vakir]

tbf the SU criticism is more on steven instantly forgiving the diamonds and them making no actual effort to atone for their crimes to earn that redemption which happens over like... 4 episodes? or something

A valid but separate and distinct issue.

My point was more even putting all that aside, ANYTHING in any piece of fiction these days will have idiots implying it's endorsing something if it's present. There's ways to also mess something up wildly if you're depicting it even if you aren't endorsing it (e.g. Berserk not endorsing SA doesn't change that Wyald is egregious, fucking sucks, and can be easily cut), but people lacking that kind of critical thinking react that way to literally anything uncomfortable.

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This game was not for them, but people showed up, cried for years, and now we're playing some weird DnD campaign with Warcraft skins.

I don't think that's entirely true that it's all outsiders. A lot of people got their start with the more moralizing-heavy and straightforward heroic WC3. They wanted to play good orcs and humans that were attempting to coexist, no matter what the absolute lie of the Vanilla intro said, because characters like Garithos and Daelin are presented with nearly no redeeming qualities in that context. That's valid and what they were sold going into 2004. But since WC3 ended on factions that were both more inclined to cooperate, it ended up meaning a lot of shakeups were required to bring back the WC2 sensibilities or have any kind of inter-faction conflict.

Where I think we lost the plot is that even with the shift that happened that had some thematic challenges for those people, people forgot that racism of characters isn't a personal 1:1 of people they're engaging with in the game or an endorsement of values of the people making it. You can be challenged on these things without it being chucked out the window to make people feel comfy.

But what we have now even independent of race or factional issues is conflicts that fail in just about every area. So I don't think bringing that back is going to instantly fix that - these are seemingly writers that will fail at that as well.

[Nymrohd]

Random idea. What if the First Flame is Aggramar's original spark that was inside Tyr?

[Super Dickmann]

A valid but separate and distinct issue.

My point was more even putting all that aside, ANYTHING in any piece of fiction these days will have idiots implying it's endorsing something if it's present. There's ways to also mess something up wildly if you're depicting it even if you aren't endorsing it (e.g. Berserk not endorsing SA doesn't change that Wyald is egregious, fucking sucks, and can be easily cut), but people lacking that kind of critical thinking react that way to literally anything uncomfortable.

Wyald is an absolute avatar of 90s Ultra Edge and I can see why he’s cut from every other version. I do find him a lot of fun though, especially in the shitty online translations that only added to it (“There’s no hope for you fucks, not one spoonful of it”).

That said he does also serve some story role. His introduction (the King’s flashback) is genuinely well done and unnerving. His fight with Guts before he gets any of his gadgets is tense and well done, chopping off dicks aside, but most importantly, one of the core scenes for Griffith - when he’s both literally and figuratively exposed before himself and the Hawks doesn’t work in any of the adaptations without Wyald. The build-up and comfort Guts and Casca provide for him after he’s maimed, the illusions of his troops, him still trying to contribute, only to be picked up like a rag doll and stripped by a demonic demigod while it shows both him and his army how they’ve run out of road is essential for his pre-Eclipse headspace. A random human soldier doing it like in the original anime misses the godlike element entirely and the low scale instead of in front of his entire remaining force means it’s also missing the perverse humiliation. Wyald, even while dying and the least of the apostles, a feeble old man living out a destructive fantasy, and dying, can put someone who was previously a paragon to his men through. This is also where Wyald being so comically over the top about the rape works in contrast to Griffith being castrated, especially in light of it as a show of power and what the first thing Griffith does once he is a god himself is.

[Vakir]

Wyald is an absolute avatar of 90s Ultra Edge and I can see why he’s cut from every other version. I do find him a lot of fun though, especially in the shitty online translations that only added to it (“There’s no hope for you fucks, not one spoonful of it”).

That said he does also serve some story role. His introduction (the King’s flashback) is genuinely well done and unnerving. His fight with Guts before he gets any of his gadgets is tense and well done, chopping off dicks aside, but most importantly, one of the core scenes for Griffith - when he’s both literally and figuratively exposed before himself and the Hawks doesn’t work in any of the adaptations without Wyald. The build-up and comfort Guts and Casca provide for him after he’s maimed, the illusions of his troops, him still trying to contribute, only to be picked up like a rag doll and stripped by a demonic demigod while it shows both him and his army how they’ve run out of road is essential for his pre-Eclipse headspace. A random human soldier doing it like in the original anime misses the godlike element entirely and the low scale instead of in front of his entire remaining force means it’s also missing the perverse humiliation. Wyald, even while dying and the least of the apostles, a feeble old man living out a destructive fantasy, and dying, can put someone who was previously a paragon to his men through.

Oh wow, I hadn't seen that one. Up there with the glorious "I'm human unlike you f----ts" and other awkward edgelord fanslations. Or the "official" Dark Horse guide's luridness about him. Yeesh.

I can definitely see all of that contributing on the Griffith end of things, and that part for sure otherwise doesn't land - I also think that his presence actually undercuts the Eclipse a bit by giving overexposure to monsters too soon before it, even if we get Zodd prior and whatnot. I hate his fight, it's one of the few times I felt like I was watching an overlong battle shonen with extra Casca fanservice instead of a dark fantasy. There's probably a version that can work. His Musou version plays up him being silly instead of depraved and that didn't do it for me either. But it's also a pretty meh game.

Either way, more to the general topic, I don't know where the pivot happened that people way more commonly conflate challenging material with something that's endorsed by the creators. I have the gut feeling to blame social media like an old man yelling at a cloud but I also don't want to make that assumption from the jump. But it definitely resembles a lot of these narratives are a kneejerk reaction from a few people on platforms that have surface level concerns that insist something is going to reflect poorly and want it changed ahead of any real examination either to try to white-knight the pure intentions of the creators, or to do the opposite and insist the creators responsible are actively bad people. That or it's external people concern-trolling about something that they don't actually engage with.

[Nymrohd]

I do think there is some value in making the argument that not all bigotry is identical, that bigotry can stem from hatred of the Other which can be just egotism, but it can also stem from past trauma or from ignorance and for many other reasons or simply be a learned value. But when a lot of people relate to the world of ideas instead of the actual world, there is difficulty in grasping nuance. And when performative outrage is either bait for engagement or simply a defense mechanism from exclusion, there is even less space for it.
I would like characters and cultures that have stereotypes and who do discriminate but are shown to be giving, sincere people among their communities and who are confronted for their bigotry not by writer inserts that behave like teenagers and are morally infallible but by the reality of the world. Like Tirion & Eitrigg. And I'd like their fantasy racism to be properly established like Turalyon's once was (that such evil can only be Other to his world) or Alleria's (as a response to trauma). And we can still have evil racists whose bigotry stems from supremacism; elves/trolls are better than everyone is a fantasy staple which is why they always had subcultures that were more cosmopolitan (it's why Forgotten Realms has both Sun Elves and Moon Elves being High Elf archetypes, color coded for our convenience).

[Viridiel]

Random idea. What if the First Flame is Aggramar's original spark that was inside Tyr?

I definitely think there's a strong chance it's connected to the titans given that the Sacred Flame is a combination of Holy and Arcane magic. Personally I want it to be connected to Amitus because her powers look a lot like it and I like the idea of canonising her, especially if we really are leading into a titan civil war.

[Nymrohd]

I definitely think there's a strong chance it's connected to the titans given that the Sacred Flame is a combination of Holy and Arcane magic. Personally I want it to be connected to Amitus because her powers look a lot like it and I like the idea of canonising her, especially if we really are leading into a titan civil war.

Also Fire, which is Aggramar's element

[Enrif]

Also Fire, which is Aggramar's element

Fire and Earth are Khaz'goroths elements, while Golganeth has Water and Wind. Aggramar has no element, as he was the fighter after Sargeras of the pantheon. The only association to fire is the Aggramar boss encounter in Antorus.

[Nymrohd]

Fire and Earth are Khaz'goroths elements, while Golganeth has Water and Wind. Aggramar has no element, as he was the fighter after Sargeras of the pantheon. The only association to fire is the Aggramar boss encounter in Antorus.

Which is the one time we've seen him, so he is associated with fire.

[Xilurm]

Yeah, their basically all but law marriage survived a thousand years fighting infinite evil.

I know they say relationships built on trauma don't last, but they kinda had it beforehand, they're both doomed to be in constant trauma anyway, and I don't think this makes sense to be the straw, lol.

No this is just dumb as fuck because Turalyon is over a thousand years old and Alleria is thousands of years old. Write them with their age in mind for fucks sake.

[Schwert]

I checked your post history aswell and honestly you just have to stick to Classic. You have way more issues with the current game than just class design and addon changes. You are the type of wow player that hates everything about certain new characters but would drool over Arthas or Variann for example. The irony is insane, im sorry

Yes, people may actually prefer characters that established the IP over characters that act absolutely nothing like what we had for 20+ years.

[Xilurm]

Xalleria shippers hope still burns

Ah yes, she left her husband because she saw the rage the light induced in him, but she'd get in bed with a being that wants to destroy everything.

Sad part is, with how the writers are writing this, it might actually happen. Completely incompetent.

[Enrif]

Which is the one time we've seen him, so he is associated with fire.

its not. We see him on the seat of the pantheon, as he normally is. And he is not fire.


It's like saying Garrosh is a C'thraxxi because he got some old god powers in his fight in Siege of Ogrimmar.

[Xilurm]

Question: Why isn't my priest using void powers harming all the paladins and holy priests that she groups up with huh? Why does this only happen to Alleria and Turalyon?

How come Illidan wasn't harming all the Lightforged Draenei on Argus when he was fighting alongside them?

Is it because the writers wouldn't get reddit points for that?

[Viridiel]

Also Fire, which is Aggramar's element

No, it actually doesn't contain fire at all, despite the name. It's an odd choice, but that's what we've got. They were clearly going for a combination of Strom's priests and Quel'thalas' mages, despite the First Flame short story having the Sacred Flame come from a hidden temple that has nothing to do with the priests and mages.

Aggramar seems to be generally elemental considering he created Grond. That's always bothered me because Grond looks a lot more like Khaz'goroth's creation.

[Pyrophax]

Blizzard damage meter certanly lack info. Overall data is fine, but numbers are not visible. How much each skill do in % and raw numbers, % of crits etc.
I hope they will add that functionality.

[Nymrohd]

No, it actually doesn't contain fire at all, despite the name. It's an odd choice, but that's what we've got. They were clearly going for a combination of Strom's priests and Quel'thalas' mages, despite the First Flame short story having the Sacred Flame come from a hidden temple that has nothing to do with the priests and mages.

Aggramar seems to be generally elemental considering he created Grond. That's always bothered me because Grond looks a lot more like Khaz'goroth's creation.

Or they can all do everything, they just have preferences. They are gods that can order planets, I am sure they can all manipulate the terrain, they just have themes they favour and notable associations.

[Enrif]

Aggramar seems to be generally elemental considering he created Grond. That's always bothered me because Grond looks a lot more like Khaz'goroth's creation.

i think all titans are capable of basic elemental mastery, considering they are literal worlds. Grond is rather crude. If it would have been done by Khaz'goroth it would likely be more akin to a keeper. That's at least my explanation

[Nymrohd]

i think all titans are capable of basic elemental mastery, considering they are literal worlds. Grond is rather crude. If it would have been done by Khaz'goroth it would likely be more akin to a keeper. That's at least my explanation

I'm assuming they all create their own keepers and they all largely conform to a similar ideal.

Which reminds me, when are we reactivating Archaedas? Should have been part of the Uldaman dungeon imo

Also on the topic of Aggramar, Taeshalach