The thing is, other than Zovaal, none of the other "Eternal Ones" seem that impressive. We took down Denathrius without any special empowerment. Kyrestia almost fell to Devos, the Winter Queen seems useless, the Primus pretty much walked into Zovaal's trap. And Elune is supposed to be the Winter Queen's counterpart so . . . not that impressive.The Titans did not require power from an external source. They were power by themselves. The Eternal Ones apparently are only powerful as long as they get anima. That's just not as impressive.
Thanks for the analysis, i wish i could have seen something of this. Imo the cinematic was vague and lacking some content, answers to many questions. I guess we will have to revisit elune later.At least one thing is clear to me. This has nothing to do with sylvanas. There was much theorycraft about dark bargains and whatever but no. Sylvanas did her actions and elune did hers. No one is washing anyone. In fact, this is so laughable that whenever i see someone trying so hard to push that idea forward the only thing that comes to me mind is carbot's greymane yelling "sylvanaaaaaas!" because he ran out of pizza (check the video, you'll laugh, it's a version of the prepatch/introduction's cinematic). How in hell can this be washing sylvanas' actions if the deaths are still there? The only thing that does so is the jailer manipulating her by keeping away of her part of her soul and deceiving her so she would blindly follow a terrible cause in the belief that she was fighting for a greater good. Yes, i think she won't be killed, but in fact i think she will have something worse than death. Now she can acknowledge everything she did and suffer for it, so my bet for now is that she will end as some kind of penitent character, forever trying to atone for her crimes protecting a world whose people hates her (excepting a few like anduin in case he lives, vereesa, some blood elves and forsaken, and probably her trained dark rangers, aka new playable class)That said, i'm glad tyrande stopped her revenge pursuit. Why? It only could have ended with two corpses, and both of them being very important characters, one of them being one of the most iconicals in wow's history (yes, even before she received a nice body, unlike almost any other female character in the game, try again waifu guys) and pivotal for this expansion. Yes, she got turned into some genocidal looney during bfa, but guess what? Blizzard said that that sylvanas wasa mistake due to bad writing (not with those words but they admitted their failure there), so okay, let's move on from there. And the other corpse? I don't want malfurion (who basically killed ysera being dumb) nor shadris (a non racist night elf; yes, they are, that's part of their character, they don't love humans, they believe themselves superior) as leaders. I prefer someone who represents the whole race, with their flaws included, even if i'm not a fan of that character.Anyway, the feeling i had about the elune's cinematic is that it lacked some content, more duration. I guess she did know ardenweald's situation because of her bond with her sister, but since she couldn't see the rest of the shadowlands, she didn't know about the bigger picture, the souls falling into the maw. After all, not few knew about this very late. For example, among the kyrian, only the ascended knew (and for some reason kept working as normal). However, as much as i believe this, it should have been made clear during the cinematic. As it is right now, it goves me bfa vibes, which is a bad thing. Why is tyrande so happy now with elune after she left her people to be burned alive (just slept them sparing the pain)? What happened to the "elune has abandoned us"? Idk but this reminds me too much to anduin using light necromancy or sending an entire army to be slaughtered to the last soldier in nazmir just for no one questioning his actions.And one last thing... blizzard shouldn't push their luck. I mean, an argument can work a limited amount of times before losing credit. The "i didn't know" card was already used before. Okay, sylvanas seemed as dumb as anyone would seem after being deceived, but it was still understandable as long as you wanted to stop and think. However, with each use of this card, the characters look more stupid, regardless if they truly are or not, so that argument shouldn't be used anymore. Once was fair enough, twice was probably excessive (and in many cases it already is). Thrice... chances are it will be too much.
They are turning anything mysterious and mystical into a living joke. How can you be this bad at writing ? I know kids who can come up with better fantasy story lines than theirs.Jeez even an amateur made a better cinematic than their team in less than a week.These last weeks showed us that the World Of Warcraft Franchise is a dead end we're finally facing. They have to reset the whole thing, and possibly with another studio or crew, cause if they do give us some new WoW (2 or whatever), it can't be with this team.
So many of you criticize issues with the lack of communication Elune and the Winter Queen seemingly have. Think it through though.They directly exist on opposing planes: Life and Death.Elune's reaction to the Winter Queen's call for aid was an act of desperation. It was one that she had no way to "look into the state of affairs in a realm not her's to really exist in". Overarching viewpoint: No other realm, be it Order (Titans) or Fel (Legion), Light (Naaru) or Void (Old Gods, etc.), Life or Death, have any real clue what is going on in the Shadowlands, or each other's spheres of control. With one known exception: The Dreadlords of Sire Denathrius, that have infiltrated every single facet of the other five, as agents of Death and, more specifically, Zovaal, the Jailer.So, they may have relations in some way across the cosmos, like Elune and the Winter Queen, but it's not like a phone call. It's more of a "cry of desperation echoing through" and it's a one-way message. Do you respond and send help, or not? You don't get to check the state of the realm, to know if your action works or not. You do what you can. It just happened to backfire in Elune's face horribly, due to the situation at hand. Had the normal course happened, and all those Night Elves turned to Wisps, all would have avoided the Maw.As to someone who brought up the Forsaken Dark Rangers, and why they were not sent to the Shadowlands with the other souls, it is simple: Sylvannas and her Val'kyr had already intervened, and effectively cut them off from Elune, right at their moment of death. Elune could do nothing, once the soul was anchored back to an unliving body.Is this the best story-writing? No, it's not. It's up there with R.A. Salvatore's writing of Drizzt Do'Urden (Pretty good in the early years, Mary Sue as HELL as the years moved on). You don't come to WoW for "intense, in-depth, character-based story-telling with huge narrative focus". They don't have the time for it, and a company like Activision-Blizzard (the corporate side) doesn't care if there is one or not, cause it's the gameplay content that props up MAUs, pushes sales, and brings in the money they care about, not the story-telling.
Why does everyone seem to be missing the whole White Lady and Blue Child Reference throughout the entire thing.Winter Queen = White Lady, Elune = Blue ChildThe entire cinematic screams this, the positioning, the coloration, the size difference, the 'Stern Mother' and 'Apologetic Child' demeaner.Yet I haven't seen a single streamer/youtuber notice this. 🤪There's also the tie in with the Blue Child wandering off (vanishing from the Skies of Azeroth), and Elune being invoked by people of different worlds (perhaps relocating the blue child to that world).
The tattoos Tyrande has are not NW tattoos like you say in the article. She's had these markings since WC3.
Isn't all of this few (or more) weeks old? I mean how is this suddenly news ?
Right, so i did enjoy the cutscene, however, what i don't understand is why Tyrande "lost" her power momentarily when choking Sylvanas... And then this cutscene comes around and Elune is all like: Yeh, Tyrande has to choose if she wants vengeance or renewal...Like... What do you mean Elune? Sure you let Tyrande run around ganking stuff in the maw for months! Yeah you let her get her grip on the "prize" but as she was about to take it home, you went like: Nah fam.. I'm not feeling it today..So what does she mean by "vengeance"? She has already denied Tyrande once, why on Azeroth would she change her mind the next time?Or was it simply done due to a mix-up at the office? Like the story team finding out waaaay late that Sylvanas was the last boss in the raid or something so a massive 180 had to be done? Cause that's what it feels/looks like.
So a few things:1. This write up is excellent, and I really dig the interpretation of Elune giving Tyrande an agency she hadn't before - nice catch. But y'all are missing the flavor text of the Stonewright - the first mortal venthyr - who explained just what happens to a Night Warrior who manages to survive the experience - they essentially become twisted with the power and become the thing they hated. The Stonewright became the Night Warrior to destroy a tyrant, and in the end, kept destroying, until she threatened her own people, and then was, herself destroyed. Basically - power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So I suggest someone go back and catch that "Stay awhile and listen" as it is absolutely UNCLEAR TO THE PLAYER this vital lore drop exists (I missed it).2. This cinematic has nothing to do with Sylvanas. This is Tyrande's arc and story for the Night Elves. Tyrande took on a deadly power to avenge her people. In a clue-by-four metaphor - Tyrande took on a self-destructive rage to seek vengeance at the expense of her obligations as leader of her people, and at the point where she would suffer the inevitable concusion of that decision, and leave her people leaderless, two gods intervened and saved her. By every and all accounts, Tyrande should have died, and if strong enough to not be torn asunder, she would have been corrupted by that power and either died or have been destroyed. There is no "buts" there is literally nothing in any of the lore drops that indicate that Tyrande was going to get out of this without divine intervention. Everything else was speculation and you can't be angry the story and your assumptions don't align. 3. The major takeaway from Shadowlands in general is that we are dealing with "Greek gods" rules. Cliff's notes vision: The greek gods were not omniscient. They were fallible, there were things they did not know, and things they did that seemed omniscient to mortals. They were basically uncaring of mortals unless something struck their fancy or someone bellowed at them long enough to get their attention. This is how the Eternal Ones, the Titans, Elune, et. al. work. We see this with how NONE of the active Eternal Ones knew why the anima drought was happening, and the one who had the savvy to figure it out was taken off the board and even then, no one knew! And no Eternal One knows what happens in other domains, thus there would literally be no way for Elune - "a" or "the" "Goddess of Life" to know what happened in the Shadowlands, including knowing that the machine of death was broken and all souls were sucked into the Maw.The "gods" are also not intimate. If any of you ever played a game like Planetbase, where you build out a city and watch little ant-people go about their tasks - that's the perspective of the Winter Queen, Elune, Titans, et. al. to mortals or the denizens of their plane. extremely few times does the "god" dip in to a "first person view" of events (as Elune has done with Tyrande), which is why the Night Warrior Power destroys the host - it's like you giving power to one of the ants in your video game. The fact that we, the murder hobos of Azeroth, are known to them frames us as cognates to Hercules and Theseus.We are dealing with new lore. We are being told the "god rules." The "gods" know a lot, they don't know ALL things. The gods have great power, but are not omnipotent. The gods are fallible. Their power is in the ability to manipulate the fabric or the cosmos as it pertains to their domain more directly and with more efficacy than their subjects or mortals. Those are the working rules.4. As for Elune, a part of me suspects that she is alone - whether or not her Pantheon died or was corrupted by the Nightmare, or she was always alone, I think Elune's profound sorrow comes from a sense of never-ending loss. For life to exist, things must die, and she must bear testimony to everything dying, most of which she will never see again. And I think that sense of loss, and of solitude drives her to act more directly with mortals than the various Pantheons were meant to, hence her being an "upstart," because she's basically spending her time on "Twitter" engaging with ants, than doing her job tending the Life domain itself and leaving the ants to their fates. Eonar is tricky. My working theory is that in order for the Pantheon of Order to do their "Purpose" each took on specific studies of the cosmos - basically they all have doctorates in some cosmic force, and Eonar essentially has a "PhD" in Life, maybe from Elune, and was allotted a swathe of the Emerald Dream to create the "Azeroth back up" in order to save the life of Azeroth the World Soul. Azeroth, then, would be a "polymath" having numerous PhDs in many domains, which is why the murder hobos of Azeroth, her children, all manifest abilities to manipulate all manner of forces.
I don't get why Bwonsamdi keeps getting brought up when considering why Elune can't see the exact state of the Shadowlands. There's a major difference between the two: Bwonsamdi is himself an inhabitant of the Shadowlands, while Elune is an outsider. Of course he has more insight.In fact, it would appear that Elune can't actually see anything that happens in the Shadowlands, and only knew about the Drought because her Sister sent her a message.
Removed