With Blizzcon over, we've now gotten the big announcements done. Yes, there was some... shall we say controversy? While Diablo fans are perhaps feeling dramatically underwhelmed (I'd say we should actually see if Diablo Immortal is any good, but the fact that it's Mobile-only and won't even have a PC version like Hearthstone is a bit disheartening) I think those of us looking for WoW news mostly had our expectations met.
There wasn't anything particularly mind-shattering about the announcement that 7.2 would take us to Nazjatar - given Azshara's role in the expansion and the many hints that N'zoth and his favorite former Night Elf were behind a lot of the nasty stuff going on, the Naga capital seemed like a logical place to go, especially after last year's Blizzcon announced Azshara as a raid boss (admittedly one who was expected in 8.1 rather than 8.2, but that's not terribly far off.)
While it wasn't full of surprises (though both Warcraft III Reforged and Mechagon were pleasantly unexpected announcements) I can't say that I saw any reason for disappointment. BFA has of course gotten a mixed reception. I think that its worst flaw was one that it couldn't avoid: that it had to come after Legion, which I think is the best expansion they've put out (still love you, Wrath!) But its focus on a faction conflict that old-school fans might be into but that a lot of people who have kept up with the game feel is repetitive and kind of goes against the character development that they feel their heroes have earned, coupled with some mechanical experiments that have perhaps not proven as fun as Blizzard hoped (yes, this is my mention of Azerite armor,) might have left some WoW fans with the desire to see 8.2 entirely blow up the paradigm of the expansion.
To an extent it does, giving us a universal big bad to fight against, but if you were expecting them to bring back tier gear or something like that in the middle of the expansion, you (hypothetical straw man!) maybe didn't have realistic expectations. (For the record, I think that once we ditch azerite gear in the next expansion, we'll probably go back to tier sets.)
The point is: we now have connecting dots for most of BFA, assuming the traditional three-tier rollout of content. If Tides of Vengeance is the Return to Karazhan (the patch, not the dungeon) equivalent, opening up the first major raid and moving the story forward a bit, Rise of Azshara will be our Tomb of Sargeras equivalent (man, Legion's patch names were not very creative, come to think of it.)
What that leaves is the final, Fury of Argus (there we go!) equivalent in 8.3.
To be sure, we could go the Mists route and have more in-between patches. 5.1 and 5.3 gave us story development and world content without any major raids. It's possible that we could have an 8.3 that focuses primarily on building up the final confrontation with... I'm just assuming here that N'zoth will be the final boss... while also putting the Alliance versus Horde conflict into context around this Old God.
There are, as I see it, two major stories we have to resolve in BFA:
First is the threat to Azeroth's Titan World Soul, also named Azeroth.
Second is addressing the fate of the Horde and Sylvanas as its leader.
The first is, I think, simpler. The Old Gods exist to corrupt Azeroth, and N'zoth, while less overtly powerful than the other big four back in the Black Empire days, is clearly the most cunning and canny. While C'thun's and Yogg-Saron's official status (alive, dead, or "sleeping, Cthulhu style") is a little ambiguous, N'zoth has clearly never been harmed since his imprisonment, and seems to have the best shot at actually finishing their terrible work.
With Azeroth in such a vulnerable state, N'zoth is closer to his goal than ever before. So we've got a strong ticking clock and a fight against a villain who easily stands worthy as an expansion-ending boss. Indeed, it's bizarre that we've fought two Old Gods prior to this and neither has been the final boss of their given expansion/release period (even though with the removal of the old Naxxramas, C'thun sort of retroactively became the boss of vanilla.)
Having an 8.3 (or 8.4 - whatever is the last 8.x patch) in which we battle our way through the eldritch city of Ny'alotha and ultimately confront the unspeakable ancient evil that is N'zoth would be a perfectly appropriate and epic way to end the expansion. Maybe not shocking, but I think that a story that has sufficiently foreshadowed something like this so hard shouldn't swerve from it just for the sake of a twist.
But what of Sylvanas?
Sylvanas currently seems at risk of becoming Garrosh 2.0. Garrosh of course was a divisively aggressive Horde leader who ultimately became a tyrant, trying to kill dissenters and ultimately becoming too much of a threat to the Horde itself for its heroes to stand by and allow him to continue. The Alliance was forced somewhat to watch this plot from the sidelines while the Horde dealt with internal politics until it was time to attack.
Sylvanas was shown holding Xal'atath in a slide at the What's Next panel talking about story, and this in particular echoes Garrosh once again - Garrosh attempted to use the power of the dead Y'shaarj to empower himself against us. If Sylvanas is going for Old God magic, it feels very much like the same plot.
At some point, Sylvanas needs to zig where Garrosh zagged.
One area where there is a subtle difference is that Saurfang, who fits a similar role to Vol'jin's during Mists of Pandaria, has received some help from the Alliance. After Saurfang refused to return to the Horde during the mission to extract Zul and Talanji (man I bet the Zandalari wish that they'd left Zul) he has left the Stockades well aware that Anduin wants him out there - Anduin left the door open for him.
Does Anduin's permission inherently taint Saurfang? I'm sure some Horde players feel that way. The real question is whether that brings down any rebellion that Saurfang might lead against Sylvanas.
Generally speaking, Sylvanas has tended toward the ruthlessly pragmatic. The Burning of Teldrassil is something that players have debated a great deal since it happened. It's possible that Sylvanas acted rashly, but she might have been acting deliberately. Occupying Teldrassil might have been very costly in terms of resources and troops, and by wiping it off the map, she might have seen that as a way to severely dismantle Kaldorei resistance in the area, denying them a safe harbor.
She is also known to play things close to the vest - Horde adventurers were not really told what she was doing in Stormheim, and there are things like her deal with Helya that remain unexplained.
There is a possibility that her goals are ultimately advantageous to the people of Azeroth - one thing I've speculated about is whether she intends to use Xal'atath to trap N'zoth. If she is ultimately trying to save the world, she might find herself in a more Illidan-like position - performing evil deeds in the name of a good cause.
But she has also been somewhat mustache-twirlingly evil. Her taunting monologues in Lordaeron, while clearly a tactic to delay while the blight-bombs were set up, oozed with unrepentant malice. There's also a reasonable take on her actions at Teldrassil that the burning was ultimately a move of petty spite over Delaryn's compassion and recognition of the humanity (elfishness?) that Sylvanas lost.
There's a scenario here where Sylvanas is either evil and therefore siding with N'zoth in the name of power, or that she has been turned by N'zoth and is Old God crazy. Neither would be very satisfying.
The notion that she's actually playing a long con with N'zoth, or at least plans to strike at him, would be better, though I would worry about her getting let off the hook like Grommash - at the end of Warlords, Grommash recognized we were the good guys and decided to help us, but at no point did he actually answer for the crimes of the Iron Horde, which were numerous. I don't want everyone to simply laugh and shake hands just because Sylvanas plays a role in destroying N'zoth.
But let's take some tin foil and start speculating! (8.0 and 8.1 spoilers)
There are tons of references to the Death domain throughout BFA. We've got Sylvanas in a prominent role - an undead elf and former member of the Scourge. We've got the current Lich King's daughter, Taelia Fordragon, as a prominent new character. We've got Bwonsamdi playing a bigger role in Zandalari culture than ever before. We've got the Drust, who use death magic for their witchcraft. We've got Jaina, haunted by memories of many people, but notably Arthas. We've got some cinematic shots that are clearly drawing a line between Anduin and Arthas. And finally, we have a mysterious entity that whispered to Vol'jin as he was dying to name Sylvanas his successor whom three Shadowlands-affiliated entities - Bwonsamdi, the Lich King, and Eyir - all deny being.
I've held a certain headcanon, largely based on stuff that happened in Wrath of the Lich King, that the undead and necromancy seem to have a certain resistance and extra effectiveness against the Old Gods. It's actually a bit of a recurring element to the quests there (particularly the mine near Wintergarde Keep and the entirety of Icecrown) that suggests that the Scourge is more powerful than Yogg-Saron in myriad ways, but including a certain resistance to his mind-warping powers.
Could it be that Sylvanas has found a way to use necromancy to defeat N'zoth? We've seen her demonstrating more explicitly magical abilities than what she had before. Prior to BFA, she basically only empowered her shots with dark magic and happened to also be one of Azeroth's greatest hunters. But now, she seems to really have mastery over her banshee nature (remember that Sylvanas is basically a ghostly banshee who is possessing her own body, rather than a traditional Forsaken zombie-like person.) Has Sylvanas been working on these skills, and has she gone beyond the foremost Dark Ranger to become a full-on necromancer? Her ability to raise those skeletons at the Battle of Lordaeron without the assistance of any Val'kyr seems to imply that this is a big yes.
So Sylvanas employing a type of magic that works well against the Old Gods might force us - maybe even both Horde and Alliance - to follow her gameplan in the battle of Ny'alotha. And it might work, ultimately allowing us to kill N'zoth in a truly effective way, rather than what we all suspect were temporary setbacks for C'thun and Yogg-Saron.
But double-twist.
Sylvanas has convinced herself over and over - disregarding all evidence to the contrary, like the summit in Arathi Highlands from Before the Storm - that the living will never accept the Forsaken. Obviously this ignores the rest of the Horde's toleration for the Forsaken, and it also ignores the fact that the Alliance has Death Knights and often works with faction-neutral Forsaken like Alonsus Faol or Leonid Bartholmew. But it's a world view that she is fixated on, and she has said in novellas like A Good War that she ultimately seeks to convert every last human of Azeroth into Forsaken, expecting that only after Stormwind is as undead as Lordaeron that there can be peace.
We see in 8.1 that she has found a way to raise Night Elves from the dead as well. Delaryn, for example, becomes a Dark Ranger (again we need a little more clarification on how much mind control is going on because I really can't imagine her willingly turning against her people.)
Sylvanas' singular focus on humans seems to be expanding to the Alliance in general (and I'm sure some members of the Horde are beginning to worry that she won't stop there.)
But what if there's a much bigger game here?
The Old Gods seek to corrupt Azeroth and create a Void Titan. We know that Telongrus (whose husk the Void Elves have claimed for themselves) would have been such a thing if Sargeras hadn't sliced the world in half, and we've also seen Fel Titans like Aggramar, Argus, and obviously Sargeras.
What about a Death Titan?
Sylvanas has been accused of being in service of Death, and being undead, that might come naturally to her. Obviously we have heroic Undead characters like our own player characters (at least my Rogue is a True Neutral antihero, but I'm sure plenty of players think of their Forsaken toons as fully heroic good guys) but Sylvanas has been going down a path that is blurring the lines between the Banshee Queen and the Lich King a whole lot.
If Sylvanas is beginning to see a shared state of undeath as the only path to peace, might she seek to convert the World Soul itself into this undead state?
Wouldn't it be a great lead-in to the next expansion for us to, at a moment of triumph with N'zoth's destruction, find that the World Soul has become undead? Sylvanas, her mission complete, flees the scene, with us in pursuit.
And to where does she flee? The Shadowlands.
You think I'm done? Nope, get another role of tin foil because there's more!
Our mission is not just to capture Sylvanas. We've got a huge problem: Azeroth is undead. And that's going to have reverberations throughout both the Shadowlands and primary reality. Zombies everywhere, ghosts and spirits on the rise. It's everything we were warned would happen if the Scourge didn't have a Lich King but like a thousand times worse.
What we need is a way to cure Azeroth.
The Forsaken were first brought into the Horde by, of all people, the Tauren. The Tauren felt that there had to be a way to cure their condition and return the Forsaken to a state of living humanity.
Between them and the raising of Calia Menethil as some sort of light-touched undead, both factions would be desperately searching for a way to bring Azeroth back to life - a true, necromancy-free life.
We would fight through various threats from the Shadowlands - all spooky and undead. Maybe we'd even figure out where Mal'ganis was during Legion!
But the end result is that we find that the dark entity that rules the Shadowlands has been manipulating things behind the scenes, and we have to defeat them to save Azeroth's soul.
Now: the most fun part.
That mission to cure the Forsaken of undeath is a plot that one would be forgiven for simply assuming that Blizzard had dropped. But in this perhaps third layer of tin foil: what if defeating the lord of the Shadowlands actually allowed us to do that?
Imagine that the Forsaken could be cured.
But this does not mean they just go back to Stormwind as happy humans. See, with the Kul Tirans and the Zandalari Trolls, we now know that different members of the same race without any profound magical distinction (particularly when viewing the Kul Tirans) can still make a new playable race.
This cure, following the plot of this expansion, would lead to an allied race of sorts for the Horde that would be, essentially, Living Forsaken.
Just as the Kul Tirans are bigger and broader and stouter than your traditional human models, Living Forsaken could be gaunt, rail-thin but tall, with dark circles under the eyes and an extremely gothic look to them in terms of hairstyles and default armor. (Alternatively, it might involve the process that Nathanos underwent, leading to red eyes and such, but let me stay on track here.)
While cured of undeath these Living Forsaken would still resent the Alliance for abandoning them and they would continue their practices of necromancy plague-based alchemy. They're still Forsaken, culturally. But it would complicate matters to a far greater degree. The only real reason the Alliance had to claim that the Forsaken didn't have the rights to Lordaeron was that they were undead. These people would have no such challenge to their legitimacy.
Obviously, after a war in the Shadowlands and all this stuff surrounding Sylvanas (who could either be a raid boss or somehow find redemption and be allowed back into the Horde) would probably mean there were already a lot of complicated plot developments, so how important returning to Lordaeron would even be for the Forsaken might be an open question.
While Blizzcon 2018 made me far more confident in N'zoth as the final boss of BFA, I'll confess that while I think a Shadowlands, or at least Undead-based expansion is still likely to come next, I can't really say much beyond that. Still, this tin-foil hat theory (theories, really) has been a lot of fun to think about and I can only hope we get something along the same lines.
No comments:
Post a Comment