The cutscene called "The Rejection of the Gift" was a huge curveball thrown into the lore of World of Warcraft. It was the first time we saw a Naaru, a being of pure light, and not one going through its evil void cycle, but a full-fledged holy Naaru, act in a way that most of us would consider evil.
Illidan Stormrage is, I think, a perfect example of the Chaotic Neutral character. He's not a good guy - see all the people he has sacrificed and all the bad things he did on Outland (let's never forget that he was perfectly happy to have corrupted Fel Orcs fighting for him) but his intentions were all for the greater good. He wasn't there to become a tyrant (or at least he didn't think he was) but his good intentions (and ultimately, results) balanced out his evil deeds. Ultimately, he wanted to tear down the Burning Legion, and he was willing to use both good and evil to do so. In fact, his decision to stay at the Seat of the Pantheon may be the most chaotic neutral thing he's done: "I've brought my enemy low. I really don't care how you guys rebuild after it. I'm out!"
The Naaru have generally been seen as unequivocally good since their introduction along with the Draenei in the Burning Crusade. After all, the Draenei are one of the most unambiguously good groups of people in the game, and they learned their kindness, heroism, and forgiving values from these crystal entities.
Now, for the record, we've seen the Light used by villains in the past. The Scarlet Crusade has many priests and paladins in its ranks, and we were told early on that people can channel the light if they believe they are righteous, regardless of whether they're actually correct in that belief. That, of course, opens the floodgates to any zealot who believes hard enough that they are on the right side of history, which, you know, has plenty of real-world examples of that not going so well (see any religious extremists from any religious faith.)
We've learned more about the Light and its distinction from the Void. While in one way it's simply the essence of existence versus the essence of non-existence, apparently part of the way that this manifests in the Warcraft universe is that the Light believes in one narrow possibility and the Void believes in an infinite number of possibilities. Essentially, it's a conflict between determinism and non-determinism. But while we generally mark the present by how the past is sort of retroactively deterministic (there was only one past, as far as we know,) and how the future is in a kind of superposition (quantum physics says that the future is actually non-deterministic and only probabilistic,) the Void doesn't even really care about where we are in the timeline, and is happy to entertain all possibilities for past, present, and future, while the Light looks at the whole timeline as a single true possibility.
What's really interesting about Xe'ra actions in the Rejection of the Gift is that, while super creepy, it's clear that she believes she is doing Illidan a favor. It's clear that the Light brings people joy, happiness, and a sense of purpose, and I don't think there's any Lightforged individual who regrets doing it.
That could mean one of two things: either it's an unquestionably good idea to become Lightforged because it just makes your whole existence more joyful, happy, good, and meaningful... or part of becoming Lightforged involves getting totally brainwashed.
But here's the question: is there actually a difference?
I actually entertained this idea once: imagine if, when you were Undead in the Scourge, you never felt pain anymore and only felt a sense of peace and joy and comfort. And naturally, remembering the pain of life, with all its insecurities and anxieties, you wanted to impart this blissful state to those who you cared about so that they would share in it. From your perspective, you're doing a favor by infecting them with the plague and ridding them of their curse of flesh, but as we all know, the living look on this with horror.
Being Lightforged is a lot prettier than that, but to an outsider who values making their own choices - who values freedom more than joy - it's horrific.
There's some datamined stuff (actually you might be able to do it on Beta if you've done the quests,) in which we find out that the Mag'har (Draenor B's orcs, formerly the Iron Horde, but kind of the generation after that as now the timeline has caught up,) are now in a desperate fight against the Draenei, who have gone on a crusade to convert the planet to the worship of the Light. It's jarring because it paints the Draenei as villains, with Yrel, the most likable character from that expansion, as the big bad. One of the greatest horrors that the Mag'har speak about is that there are some Orcs who have become "Lightbound," which seems to be the equivalent of Lightforged, and have joined the Draenei.
There's a lot of talk about this: like whether they only seem so villainous because we're seeing it from the Orcs' side of things. But as upsetting it is to see "good guys" becoming villainous, it does present a way for the Alliance - a Lawful Good faction if ever there was one - to become something the Horde actually has a reason to fight against. I wrote a while ago about how the problem with the Horde is actually a problem with the Alliance - that the Horde seems to always start conflicts with the Alliance without provocation. Well, this is maybe the first time when it actually seems like the Horde are the wronged party here.
See, I think that the Draenei get a huge benefit from Velen. And my interpretation of what this benefit is is that while Velen is deeply religious on a personal level, he is ultimately a secularist. Secularists are not anti-religious, and they're not even necessarily irreligious. But what they fundamentally believe and respect is that one must tolerate a fellow person's religious beliefs or the lack thereof.
Velen may believe in the Light. He might desire to become one with the Light when he finally dies (like his Draenor-B counterpart.) He may believe that everyone in the world would be a whole lot better off if they accepted the Light into their hearts.
But he does not push it on people.
He respects that others have different traditions. Shamans are in touch with the invisible spirit world. Druids are tied into the great connections between all living things. He has a nuanced enough understanding of the world to see that the Light is part of the equation that adds up to goodness in the world, and it's the one that he chooses to pursue, but that that goodness, whether it is one and the same as the light or something greater, comes to different people in different ways.
The Light was seen for most of Warcraft's history as being good itself, but to introduce some nuance to their world, Blizzard is showing it to be more of an embodiment of Lawful Good - and sometimes that skews more toward good, sometimes more toward law.
It is the heroic figure who uses the Light in the name of good, but as we've seen, this is not the only form it takes.
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