Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Joshuaj]

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[Jastall]

@Jastall

God damn, you have no idea how gratifying all of that is to read.

Don't get me wrong, I am thoroughly with you Dickmann on the need to have some form of continued faction conflict and turmoil and tension. But the problem is that the overfocus we got meant that the characters that didn't align with it looked stupid, weak, and ineffectual.

So characters inevitable to survive a narrative that requires everyone to get along eventually are doomed to be the leftovers that looked pathetic to make way for the drama bombs with a face.

So that's still a part of how we got here. We can't like Thrall, he's an Uncle Throm, and even before we learned he was starving and dehydrating his people for Reasons, he was wagging his finger at Garrosh for doing things he's killed people for less while treating him as if he's a teenager rather than older than him. I still do not understand the Gallywix appointment and I hate it. Cairne is dead. Vol'jin did absolutely nothing. Sylvanas is a character that could only have subsisted in the shadows of her race plot and was doomed to be fucked over the moment she became the central focus without losing her edge. Saurfang said some of the dopest, coldest shit ever to Garrosh and then IMMEDIATELY LEFT because his warrior son from the war culture died in war, because 5k cleave numbers are inconvenient to Garrosh.

Bolvar is a character now. No wait sorry he's "dead." Jaina is now a weeping hormonal mess about Arthas and when she isn't doing that, she doesn't exist until it's time for her to recreate that 30 Rock bit about nuking Iran because she's on her period. We can't possibly make a character that already made clearly defined decisions with agency have a meaningful change without the most absurd 180 possible. Why do anything with the other dwarves in the A plot when we can just bring back Muradin and make him one of the other 10 characters that want Arthas dead but play absolutely no role in it. It allows us to sideline him after and it means we can relegate the others to a book conflict so some asshole who just came back gets to dictate their council. But his son likes it, so it's fine. I'm so fucking proud of my king.

Even Anduin is part of the outcome of this history. Golden did a lot of his work within the Shattering, but he was otherwise a tabula rasa that could have gone anywhere, and the reason he was a soft peacenik was to be a contrast to the scarred dual wielding anime rival character that was his daddy. If they didn't go scorched earth in their attempt to immediately flip the status quo to "war in Warcraft" all at once through the most heavy handed two players to insert as possible, there wouldn't have been the need to course correct Varian so explicitly and utterly in Mists, and Anduin could have been a more dynamic and flexible character not defined by the false dichotomy of "giant unstable warmonger racist or superhero."

So we get left with the characters that didn't die and now we hate all these losers. Was it worth it?

The only thing I'd disagree with is on Anduin. Mists is when he peaked, because not only was he less of an ineffectual sadsack and more of an intrepid youth that sometimes used Shadow magic, but he was played off against a character that was merely more ruthless, instead of being a caricatural evil monster. That's where a guy like him shines; put him against Bad (wo)Man and he's just right by default while not otherwise being interesting enough to shine. Put him working with less savory people who nonetheless have a point and can teach him to have a spine, while he reins in their worst impulses without crafting a cult of personality out of his sheer angelic goodness, and that's a fun dynamic. Good guys should exist in the setting, making them both right all the time and lame however doesn't satisfy anybody. They didn't have to write him like he was written post-Mists, and they really didn't have to make him the very center of 90% of the main casts's universe for two expansions straight. And, they really didn't have to copy-paste him in Arathor. Those are not faults that started with Wrath, and while Golden is a convenient scapegoat and obviously contributes to the problem she definitely isn't the sole driving force of this dynamic, or lack thereof. Why he has talked about his experience being Dominated to a bunch of Paladins and not to a friggin Death Knight is something I'll never understand, but probably has to do with the fact that Mr golden child here has to be kept as squeaky clean as characters get this side of Dora the Explorer.

But yes, essentially a lot of story problems, and nearly all faction related problems by my reckoning, were caused by the radical swerves from the cold war of Classic-Wrath, to the silly world wars of Cata-Mists and BFA, to the Kumbaya peace forever wonderland we have now. It's painfully obvious the devs went with a typical "okay we want X to happen, how does it happen?" approach and make shit up from there. The story feels inorganic because it is. That's not a big problem when said story is us against the monster of the week. Simple storytelling by design makes the details matter less, and also where Warcraft's best villains lie. But when you're trying to tell this whole war epic with dozens of characters having wildly different cultures, motivations, powersets, end goals, and methods things get really complicated. And since this is just an MMORPG where the story is mostly an excuse to go to cool location X and beat up raid boss Y, and you don't have time (or skill) for complicated, well, roll out the caricaturally evil warmongers and the caricaturally inept rest of the cast wagging their finger at them until it's time for a fight and/or big dramatic cutscene that ousts the warmongers and leaves, well, just the inept ones that few care about anymore. Maybe a 9th council will work this time?

If Midnight can get some faction/racial tension going without throwing in the entire kitchen sink, then it'll already be better on that front than any expansion since, hell, forever I guess. I think it's possible blizzard pulls it off as somehow Lor'themar in particular is almost always written decently, but then again he may lose the limelight fairly fast in order to make way for the Windrunner family circus that we know is coming.

[DenPhoenix]

I cannot see it happening, realistically. Even ignoring how it's a complete retread of Cataclysm, the elemental lord's don't seem like they would want to join him. Either because world conquest isn't something they seem into (Neptulon), or because it would mean allting with Iridikron (Fyrakk, assuming he actually became Firelord).

What I could see happening though is an Elemental civil war of sorts. Where Iridikron allies with powerful elementals hoping to dethrone the existing ones. Though even then, Iridikron seems the type to prefer using dragons in that case.

I feel like if we really do get a civil war between the elementals, it’ll mostly be a fire war — Fyrakk versus Ragnaros, who is quite possibly still alive, as they hinted in the Dark Iron quests in BFA. Ragnaros returning actually fits the whole Worldsoul Saga idea of bringing classic Warcraft moments back.

[Vakir]

@Jastall It's not that Anduin isn't enjoyable in Mists, and I liked him there as well. It's more that, just like Garrosh was eventually good and became a strong antagonist, probably WoW's best, Anduin was eventually doomed to suck because his purpose existed to be a foil to Varian and after that they already had struck him as the paragon of all that is good through being the source of his redemption over multiple installments and several comics, including one that posited one of many potential AUs where he would be an old man with Velen fighting the big final fight.

Mists was kind of the outlier, but the symptoms and his albatross remained the same. Anduin characterization wise as early as the Warcraft comics pre-Cataclysm was to be the reasonable and even-minded diplomat to Varian's perpetual "magical mood disorder." Still a wild thing to type or read no matter how many times I do. A goofy split personality Conan story and then rejoining isn't the same as, y'know, being spiteful over being a reanimated corpse or the equivalent we have now. It was all an excuse to give Garrosh a big dumb dummy to fight until it was inconvenient.

Varian being a caricature to match a caricature, Garrosh, as the only two characters that actually mattered until the end of their grand plan where we all join hands and mea culpa meant Anduin was already pigeonholed into being wise beyond his years etc. etc. rather than just learning to be king with an interesting king.

And, y'know, making a single human king a monolith by characterizing the Alliance as akin to the Horde and not an alliance, but that's another story.

[Lady Atia]

I feel really bad for you if you react like this to fictional storytelling. Do you only enjoy stories that have sunday morning cartoon villains?

No, I enjoy stories with anti heroes like Sargeras, Thanos, Doom, Apocalypse or Illidan.

Now I bite your bait and say the Jailer would have been great if they build him up from Legion onwards (which they didnt). But his base concept is good, with him wanting to unite the cosmic forces to unite against an enemy from without.

[Joshuaj]

Literally only one of those examples was an actual Anti-Hero...

Maybe 2, if you argue certain interpretations of said character right. But that's it. Everyone else is a straight bad guy.

[Vakir]

Yeah, even the charitable reads on near all of those are anti-villains.

Even Doom when he's being a weird surrogate uncle to Valeria and a "benevolent" dictator is still supposed to be framed as having a twisted sense of nobility from ego. The entire Bast schtick in Doomwar is explicitly supposed to be a representation of his own inflated perception of his "righteousness" to make the world better at the expense of free will. It is not Bast endorsing his bullshit. But everyone has stupidly misinterpreted it since. Doom will save the world but only if he is the one to do it and everyone knows it.

This isn't a dig - he's my favorite comic character as Illidan is my favorite in Warcraft for many of the same reasons. But it's the entire point of the character and we lose a lot of the appeal and enjoyment otherwise. Latveria didn't even get the pseudo-utopic quality it has now until much later of the character's iterations.

I'd argue Illidan was also closer to an anti-villain than an anti-hero in WC3 before they assassinated his character in TBC and then overcorrected into Legion.

Just because Sargeras et al. sometimes have sympathetic motivations or do things for a greater goal doesn't make them anti-heroes.

[Lady Atia]

Literally only one of those examples was an actual Anti-Hero...

Maybe 2, if you argue certain interpretations of said character right. But that's it. Everyone else is a straight bad guy.

Have you read the krakoa comics? Apocalypse is no longer a "villain". Neither will Sargeras be when he is back. Thanos ..... well, atleast in the movies he wasn't an "evil cartoon Fyrrak". Secret Wars Doom and Illidan are straight up anti heroes aswell (as will be RDJ in Doomsday).

Oh, I also forgot Magneto. Hahhaaha.


Anyways.

[Vakir]

Oh, I also forgot Magneto. Hahhaaha.


Anyways.

I love Magneto, but he's usually depicted as a villain. An extremely good anti-villain once we got more into the Claremont run, but he's still a villain. The entire point of the character is that he's flirting with become the very same oppressor in situations where he has power after being oppressed in situations where he lacks this. There's obviously iterations and storylines and variations where he joins the team on and off, but the status quo of the character through most of his run is still primarily antagonistic.

You're confusing anti-heroes with anti-villains. Anti-heroes are characters that have the same role as a traditional hero in a setting but use unsavory methods or lack traditional heroic qualities. Originally, it meant characters lacking in heroism as more loser-like than a traditional protagonist - think Charlie Brown or Shinji from Evangelion. An anti-villain is still playing the role of a villain but has sympathetic qualities. Magneto is a good example, post-TAS Mr. Freeze is as well.

Secret Wars 2015 Doom literally loses because he didn't pay basic dignity and respect to Molecule Man, who was responsible for a lot of him holding up Battleworld, and proceeds to admit that Reed would do better than him. He's an anti-villain through and through, because he's unable to imagine a better world than the one he's holding up for himself, and he's unable to leave things as they are when he realizes the one dude he absolutely hates is still alive. The entirety of Secret Wars is everything falling apart around him and the characters aware of their own agency in the situation rebelling against him.

(The original Secret Wars he's just straight up a megalomaniac who happens to out-villain the Beyonder and it's glorious)

Not sure if disingenuous or just slow.

[Lady Atia]

I love Magneto, but he's usually depicted as a villain. An extremely good anti-villain once we got more into the Claremont run, but he's still a villain. The entire point of the character is that he's flirting with become the very same oppressor in situations where he has power after being oppressed in situations where he lacks this. There's obviously iterations and storylines and variations where he joins the team on and off, but the status quo of the character through most of his run is still primarily antagonistic.

You're confusing anti-heroes with anti-villains. Anti-heroes are characters that have the same role as a traditional hero in a setting but use unsavory methods or lack traditional heroic qualities. Originally, it meant characters lacking in heroism as more loser-like than a traditional protagonist - think Charlie Brown or Shinji from Evangelion. An anti-villain is still playing the role of a villain but has sympathetic qualities. Magneto is a good example, post-TAS Mr. Freeze is as well.

Secret Wars 2015 Doom literally loses because he didn't pay basic dignity and respect to Molecule Man, who was responsible for a lot of him holding up Battleworld, and proceeds to admit that Reed would do better than him. He's an anti-villain through and through, because he's unable to imagine a better world than the one he's holding up for himself, and he's unable to leave things as they are when he realizes the one dude he absolutely hates is still alive. The entirety of Secret Wars is everything falling apart around him and the characters aware of their own agency in the situation rebelling against him.

(The original Secret Wars he's just straight up a megalomaniac who happens to out-villain the Beyonder and it's glorious)

Not sure if disingenuous or just slow.

Than call them anti-villains? Still my answer is the same. No, I don't like saturday-morning villains like Fyrrak who are just evil for evils sake. They are fucking boring.

And another reminder that they totally fucked up Zooval by not introducing him with Legion. The basic idea of a metapher for communism/fashism would have been great, with more buildup :/

[Jaggler]

Wouldn't mind going back to a Azeroth focus too, I'll be fine with both cosmic route or more Azeroth focus route. But they can easily have stronger villains even if they focus on a smaller scale. Kinda like how aliens would still get their asses kicked by vampires or demons in other franchises. So a new Hakkar, Azshara, or old god could easily surpass the power of Argus, Zovaal, Dimensues, and even Xal'atath and Kil'jaeden/Archimonde and N'zoth while being focus on a smaller scale event due to their motives and agendas.

Totally agree, I would love an expansion centered around a resurgence of Hakkar, Azshara, rebel factions of the Infinites who don't want to keep peace with the Bronze, Scourge remnants, Avaloren/Arathi Empire/Scarlets.

The possibilities for more grounded enemies/factions are endless, I just hope Blizz takes them up. I don't need to fight the very embodiment of Void/Death/Light whatever at the end of every expansion.

[Joshuaj]

While I would like to see a step back on things post-Worldsoul Saga, I'm unsure that's actually going to happen, given what's being built up or, at the very least, hinted at.

As for the recent talk of potential power scaling amps...I'm too tired to bother rn.

[huth]

Than call them anti-villains? Still my answer is the same. No, I don't like saturday-morning villains like Fyrrak who are just evil for evils sake. They are fucking boring.

And another reminder that they totally fucked up Zooval by not introducing him with Legion. The basic idea of a metapher for communism/fashism would have been great, with more buildup :/

I think with Fyrakk that was actually the point. The guy was an insane shortsighted idiot who didn't really have any goals beyond having it all burn and Iridikron basically just threw him at us to buy himself time, never expecting him to succeed. He was never intended as a major character and didn't even get much focus in the patch that revolved around killing him.

[Xilurm]

No, I enjoy stories with anti heroes like Sargeras, Thanos, Doom, Apocalypse or Illidan.

Now I bite your bait and say the Jailer would have been great if they build him up from Legion onwards (which they didnt). But his base concept is good, with him wanting to unite the cosmic forces to unite against an enemy from without.

My point is that doesn't mean everyone else should be censored if they start being a bit more evil you know?

[Super Dickmann]

I think that it's less about that and more to the fact that Turalyon is one of the last few remaining masculine, hero warrior type of character left. I mean, who else IS there? The main fear here is that as soon as a character starts behaving like he does, which is contrary to the doctrine of Anduinism, they either get killed off, retired or emasculated. I wouldn't be surprised if at the end of 12.0, given the context of the Army of the Light actually losing, he becomes another woe is me character who will need multiple therapy sessions to 'rediscover' himself. That is, if he survives

That's what I'm getting at though. There was no more emasculating portrayal of Turalyon than in Legion in particular and his pre-Midnight stint in general. We'll set aside the wisdom of, after exhausting all generico paladins available, turning the first archetype of it into a space-faring 1000-year old draenaboo infused with the divine by a turbo naaru and fighting a total war in those centuries. Taken on his own terms, Turalyon is meant to be this faithful warrior ontologically compelled with the Light, a strong and strong-willed veteran. However, he can't be faithful enough that the death of the archangel he's served for this long has him refuse to work with Illidan, as it's Illidan's story. So he flails impotently at Illidan, has illidan block his sword with his hand and then he and his unit of people infused with the Light just go along with it and never bring it up again. He also can't be faithful enough because Alleria needs to become the first void elf, which means he can't actually be opposed to his wife infusing herself with cosmic entropy or running off with a much older set of bandages (sometimes with a Spanish accent). Cosmic cuckoldry aside, he follows up this feat by immediately forgiving the undead (BtS), having no issue as a peaceful ruler of regular people despite being in a 1000-year total war (SL onwards) and nodding along as demons join the Alliance (DF). The plot doesn't allow him to stand up for anything, he's an accessory to Illidan, then his wife, then Anduin. He was not written with Tides of Darkness in mind, I can promise you.

This isn't a case where Midnight follows up on this terrible characterization and is therefore understandable, if not good (see the post-TBC blood elves). It's that Midnight is the only version of this character who's allowed to be disagreeable (coming to blows with and leading a pseudo-occupation force, his clashes with Bob), physically confront people about beliefs that should be anathema to him (his wife at the end of Voidstorm) and actually act as someone who prioritizes the holy war that's been the massive majority of his life over side issues. Does he only exhibit part of these traits due to cosmic rays and ultimately as part of the overarching family drama? Sure, but even then, acknowledging that he might actually be ontologically affected by being literally infused with godly power and intent rather than it making so little of a difference that he and his poor man's Astartes are perfectly okay working for world peace on behalf of a demon and a teenage king respectively is itself an improvement. This is the best version of Draenaboo Turalyon they've managed to produce.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

The only thing I'd disagree with is on Anduin. Mists is when he peaked, because not only was he less of an ineffectual sadsack and more of an intrepid youth that sometimes used Shadow magic, but he was played off against a character that was merely more ruthless, instead of being a caricatural evil monster. That's where a guy like him shines; put him against Bad (wo)Man and he's just right by default while not otherwise being interesting enough to shine. Put him working with less savory people who nonetheless have a point and can teach him to have a spine, while he reins in their worst impulses without crafting a cult of personality out of his sheer angelic goodness, and that's a fun dynamic.

I'm glad to see the righteous sentiment, as I've shilled for it for a while. Manduin was a total scam and Anduin has never been as proactive or competently-executed as he was in MoP.

Have you read the krakoa comics? Apocalypse is no longer a "villain". Neither will Sargeras be when he is back.

I don't think they can spin it that way given they've already effectively enshrined him in the lore as a great cosmic pedophile.

[Super Dickmann]

It's the Star Wars Prequel Effect to me. Give bad writing enough time and all of a sudden it was good, actually, especially when there's memes or "charm" involved so you don't actually have to defend the substance, only the idea. Just gesture at something else that's perceived as bad and it's all the defense your pet writing requires. Apparently changing the exact movement of characters at the Battle at Blackrock Mountain is more damaging to the characters involved than the guy previously characterized as a rigidly principled Light user not caring one bit about his wife hungrily seeking out every scrap of the power opposed to the Light, and some half demon with a fairly poor track record when it comes to freedom exploding a proverbial archangel in his face in the name of freedom.

I don't generally think the whole Lightblinded thing is well written. It should lean more on the idea that the Light becomes stronger/more manifest as the Void does in opposition, rather than incarnation # 719560 of "color makes people go bad" except the color is yellow instead of green or purple. But Turalyon doesn't seem out of bounds. His son is another matter, and predictably enough his wife is a lost cause because lolWindrunner but of the three obvious main characters of the expansion he's the only one handled with the barest amount of nuance. They could always swerve and make him a raid boss but I doubt that, his fate is probably to die defending his family because Windrunner drama is something the writers can't get enough of for whatever reason.

With the prequels, it's that the ideas (both narrative and visual) were subsumed by the godawful script and even at the time of release there were endless side stories meant to salvage them. That said, in this case I'm not even talking about rose-tinted goggles in respect to second order effects, like how whatever Mists' strength in terms of individual racial writing and worldbuilding its end effect on the orcs ended the premier race of the setting, and that child-squashing methhead Dezco lecturing you for trying to arrest Anduin as Horde in Mists is the grandpapa of everything rotating around him back then. Hell, it's not even that there's a direct throughline between Jaina "Just kill my dad fam" Proudmoore in TFT and Anduin, and killing one requires killing the other. That's two paragraphs and two quotes down, actually.

It's that the reason I can produce fresh examples of BFA's anemic tract that passes for a story in each of those posts is because the entire main story is like this. BFA isn't just bad because it ended the factions and trapped us in friendship purgatory being led by different types of Anduins, but because it was also told from start to finish under that paradigm. The Alliance ruling council gathering post-raid (said ruling council consisting entirely of humans) so that Jaina and Anduin can solemnly cry that they can't follow up and attack the Horde while they're sad over Rastakhan because they'd be mean is every scene and sequence. It didn't lead to shit and it wasn't the same kind of shit, it was itself shit in all the ways this is and worse. The same applies to TBC - you don't need hindsight or to look at the current blood elves to gauge that it's shit, you can just play through it itself and see sequences like how Liadrin's (then terrible old voice actor) renounce the entire premise of her subclass and race and accept Jesus, while the elves team up and learn about love while killing their only pre-TBC lead character and the face of the race twice.

In all ways, TBC's blood elf story is the blue print of all the terrible faction stories to come later - killing off the best and most established character of the race, natch, evicting its entire identity because it isn't nice, check, having the Alliance and classical heroes resolve their problem and divesting them of their already tenuous ties to the faction, oh god check. It's also the worst executed one sans BFA. Warcraft, or rather Blizzard, has the good luck that most all of its writing problems are very old and very clear and recur across franchises. I've banged the SL and SC2 drum on end, but even the current factional discourse is one that dates back to mid-Vanilla, which is where we hit those second-order effects we're going on about:

Garrosh did a ton of damage to the setting and characters, I'd argue, especially the Horde. He was fine in TBC, but as soon as Wrath came other characters started to be diminished to put him in the limelight. Cata is where this peaked; Vol'jin became an idiot that threatened him openly, Thrall was emasculated into some penitent sadsack hating his own race despite this absolutely not being the case beforehand, the only Tauren character of note that wasn't a villain was outright killed in a book, and the Alliance lost to him left right and center in general, all to push him as a character that promoted the faction war, when his portrayal on how skilled and intelligent he was varied wildly from source to source and they already were planning to serve him to the playerbase as raid boss fodder- and this was before Mists and the sheer comedy of making him Orc Hitler and subsequent fallout of the faction war taking a lot of the Horde's personality down with it. Now, it wasn't as bad as when Blizzard did the exact same thing again with Sylvanas, but that doesn't mean it was anywhere near good writing. It was about as bad as TBC villain batting an entire cast of characters (all of which has been variously retconned or walked away from since then, rarely enough), and subsequently making the setting's only remaining interesting elves into generic High Elf fare in the same expansion they were introduced in.

But even when it isn't movements made at the insistence of destroying the factional conflict, I'd argue that some of the problems we have now are grandfathered in from that time even when it was pro-faction conflict. Garrosh was great eventually, but I'd argue that the amount of characters damaged or chucked out the window in service to slamming Garrosh and Varian action figures against each other (which only eventually happened in a damn book) meant that after that arc, there weren't a ton of existing characters to be interested in that weren't ruined except those dragged in from WC2 to take part in a conflict that ended up an almost literal repeat of what we already did in the RTS trilogy. It was hard to care anymore about characters popular in WC3 or even Vanilla because they were sacrificed at the altar of the polar opposite of BFA onward's peacenik circlejerk, and I think said circlejerk may have been a huge misinterpretation of that same reaction.

Allow me a digression for a second. Eitrigg in Midnight? Old Horde orc becomes a Son of Lothar. "Strength, peace and honor!" he mutters solemnly, as he helps Anduin Arator kill his fellow orcs to advance the story arc of Arator and his dad - who killed his Warchief and friend Orgrim. Then he goes to a Christmas party with all the other Sons of Lothar, who, unlike the WC2 orc cast are all alive. Absolutely putrid, isn't it?

Now here's my question. Where else could this guy possibly go? His entire premise, the entire reason he exists is to be one of the good ones. Unlike all those smelly WC2 orcs he regrets participating in the purpose of the game and just wants to live and coexist. He meets and gets along with a human who wants to give him a chance and then he heads off. There are mean humans who oppose this and our guy, the good human, also is in exile. This is the orc and human story in WC3 in miniature, as its dry run.

In WC3, both orcs and humans have an enlightened, universally kind leader divorced from their prior incarnation, who unlike those old fuddy-duddies want to live in peace. In the orc story, as it has some focus, we actually follow this guy for a while and he's the main source of conflict and really the only one capable of moving the plot along in Grom, as Thrall is perfect and has only physical obstacles before him. Jaina has no Grom and so she doesn't get to be a main character. The setting itself ensures that our two Moseses can leave the old world and its grudges behind, thus neither forcing Jaina to make her case before old established rulers and kingdoms or forcing Thrall to physically carve out a land in a limited space against a hostile human state, in favor of starting over. The setting also ensures that all of these old figures are either dead and nonexistent (the orcs) or just off-screen (the humans). They have their tabula rasa on Kalimdor, and with their old burden (Grom) symbolically dying, they're ready to live in this new world in peace. The only thing left is to also expunge the versions of Uther and the Silver Hand from Blood and Honor writ large in the form of Daelin, hence Jaina giving the okay to have the Horde off her dad.

So now what? Diverting to gameplay for a second, a faction unlocked MMO with actual attention on each race would be impracticable, effectively leading to a single story and one path, More than two factions requires having to maintain several relations at once and thrice as much content, even more difficult than two and as with ESO, will eventually degrade into the former. This leaves two factions, as WoW popularized, as it has been since the first RTS and as it has used to enormous sales effect. This being the paradigm, the premier races, orcs and humans, are led by messiahs. The plot can't pivot because the MMO has as its camera locked to the factions and can't pivot to other perspectives the way the RTS could actually end that story in a neat bow and move on to other parts. If allowed to simply proceed, then naturally the next step is for them to work out their differences and fully unite. So long as Jaina and Thrall remain right, and all threats are external, there is no plot and Eitrigg's destiny is to be a House Zug.

I don't actually dispute any of the points you raise - yes, Cataclysm makes Thrall a complete chump who was wrong about his people (though Vanilla to Wrath also seeded this), he must be, because he must be wrong about his race. This also makes him a much better character but I digress. Yes, Jaina becomes a schizophrenic, surely what else could she be, if she let orcs brain her dad for nothing? That's a good thing, as it's a price worth paying for these races to actually ever do anything again. The alternative is right in front of you - Anduin is Thrall and Jaina and if he's right, and he is, about everything and everyone, then the natural step is for everyone to align to him or vanish, unless they're simply ontologically evil. Retvrning to the WC3 Horde or retvrning to prior Jaina (as they've done) solves nothing, because they're just the start of the slippery slope which, if not cut off, logically can only lead right here. The Vanilla to Cata writing staff and in a sense, even Mists to Legion, given that they continually seeded further racial conflicts, realized this.

To end on an example, you mention that Vol'jin becomes an idiot by openly threatening Garrosh. Who's to say he wasn't an idiot before? I couldn't tell you, as he has no personality before Cataclysm and neither does any Darkspear troll. Rokhan, the only troll in a lead role in WC3 never expresses a position or says anything that's not immediate exposition, he's just an appendage to Rexxar, even Misha has more of a thematic role. Vol'jin becomes a character and the Darkspear become an actual polity whne they can no longer parasitize on the orcish characterization and are put opposing it. They exist, in any narrative sense, only in Cataclysm and Mists. Garrosh makes them, as he makes every non-Blood Elf race exist by virtue of opposition. That's incidentally why he's incomparable with Varian, as the Alliance races, being made out of whole cloth in Vanilla and not weighed down by WC3's Orc mini-me and messiah problem, were already defined and were only made worse when united.

[Nymrohd]

It was about as bad as TBC villain batting an entire cast of characters (all of which has been variously retconned or walked away from since then, rarely enough), and subsequently making the setting's only remaining interesting elves into generic High Elf fare in the same expansion they were introduced in.

I'd say the Illidan novel and Legion villain batted Illidan even worse than TBC did. In TBC the premise was that he was driven mad by his loss from Arthas and the pressure from KJ and was just paranoid and delusional. The novel and then Legion turned him into the world's biggest hypocrit, ready to sacrifice everyone else for his glory but completely unwilling to sacrifice anything himself.

[Super Dickmann]

I'd say the Illidan novel and Legion villain batted Illidan even worse than TBC did. In TBC the premise was that he was driven mad by his loss from Arthas and the pressure from KJ and was just paranoid and delusional. The novel and then Legion turned him into the world's biggest hypocrit, ready to sacrifice everyone else for his glory but completely unwilling to sacrifice anything himself.

To be fair, being a huge hypocrite making short-term decisions that are approximately well-intentioned but incidentally also result in him looking good/gaining power is pretty in line with WC3 Illidan.

[Lady Atia]

My point is that doesn't mean everyone else should be censored if they start being a bit more evil you know?

But there is a difference between being evil and having phrases similiar to nazis on one of your main pc races lol. And we all know from where blood and honour comes ...