The State of the Keepers

 When we arrived in Northrend back in 2008 at the start of Wrath of the Lich King, the undead Scourge was certainly our top priority. The Scourge has a significant presence in every zone except possibly Crystalsong Forest (though Icecrown Citadel looms large over it,) though I think the zone it probably has the least presence in (Grizzly Hills gives it a run for its money) is Storm Peaks, because, well, frankly, there's other important stuff going on there.

When we arrived, we got swept into a very convoluted quest chain that had us first helping some goblins deal with some rogue Vrykul, then helping said Vrykul deal with hostile giants, then working with said giants to uncover some of the mysteries of what the hell had happened with the Keepers of Ulduar. Ultimately, we teamed up with Thorim, and discovered the treachery of Loken, his brother (so to speak) who had been corrupted by Yogg-Saron. How long ago had this happened? Like, tens of thousands of years ago, if not more.

Ulduar's significance at the time was primarily that it served as the prison for Yogg-Saron, one of Azeroth's four Old Gods, but it was also the home of the Keepers, the leaders of the Titanforged on Azeroth, effectively making Ulduar the central command for the Titans' facilities on Azeroth.

The Keepers, if I recall correctly, were Thorim, Hodir, Mimir, Freya, Loken, and Tyr, and we would later find that Ra (known as Ra-Den to the Mogu,) Archaedas, Ironaya, and Odyn were also among their number.

Exploring Storm Peaks, we found that all Keepers' respective temples were abandoned, though Tyr's had been for a very long time. Gradually, we pieced together that Loken had been corrupted by Yogg-Saron, gradually capturing the other Keepers and placing them under a kind of mind control. Tyr had uncovered this treachery long ago, and fled south to what are now the Eastern Kingdoms, where Loken sent a pair of C'thraxxi to kill him, one of them succeeding in what would become Tirisfal (literally "Tyr's Fall"). Actually, the other C'thraxxi would attack Zul'Aman, and ultimately be defeated by Ula'tek, though only imprisoned (which is why we'll have to fight Kithix in the upcoming 12.1.5 patch). I believe Archaedas and Ironaya left either with Tyr or around the same time, both ultimately falling to... um... us, in Uldaman (whoops!)

Odyn likely left before all of this went down, because he threw a hissy fit when Tyr empowered the Dragon Aspects after their help fighting Galakrond, feeling that they should not rely on beings that weren't direct creations of the Titans. Ra had left after Sargeras defeated the rest of the Titans and a fragment of their souls found their way into the Keepers, overwhelmed and seemingly the only one who really understood what had happened. (Though this must have happened after Loken programmed the Curse of Flesh into the creation forges, as Ra-Den accidentally spread it like a computer virus to the Mogu).

Truly, the timeline here is a little tricky, especially because we don't really have a calendar system in Azeroth - the War of the Ancients was ten thousand years ago, and I think we have a handful of events that are put in relation to that (I think the War of the Satyr was a thousand years later, and the War of Shifting Sand was only a thousand years before the present day).

I actually don't remember if Ironaya and Archaedas were technically Keepers, or perhaps Watchers, which I believe is a lower rank.

But last we checked, here's where each individual is at:

Thorim should be at Ulduar, and was most recently seen helping Beast Mastery Hunters claim Titanstrike back in Legion. He seems fine.

Freya should also be ok at Ulduar, having been freed from Loken's madness in the raid and, like Thorim, helped us fight Yogg-Saron (unless we wanted to get the cool mount).

Mimiron is the rebuilt body of Mimir, who created the Mechagnomes (not to be confused with the playable Mechagnomes, who, like the standard Gnomes, were Flesh-Cursed versions of the original Mechagnomes, but just underwent cybernetic upgrades to try to return to their Titanforged roots). After he was slain I believe by Loken, his creations came and built him a new body that appears like a giant Mechagnome. Again, we freed him from Loken's subsequent madness and he helped us out.

Hodir is in the same camp, freed from the madness and back to his old business. The war between giants in Storm Peaks was always actually a little vague, but given that it was all started by Loken, perhaps it has settled.

Loken is dead. After Odyn left, Loken became the Prime Designate, and thus effectively leader of the Keepers, which meant that his death at our hands triggered the Re-Origination contingency, though once we fought hard enough to convince him, Constellar Alganon the Observer decided to abort the process.

Odyn was trapped by Helya, his vrykul protege, within his sort of false afterlife, the Halls of Valor, where he seemed to have used the knowledge he gained by trading his eye to Mue'zhalla to make a weird facsimile of Bastion and his own pseudo-Kyrians, the Val'kyr, which, ironically, Arthas would then copy himself to make undead Val'kyr out of the Vrykul whose loyalty he secured. While Helya committed great crimes, a lot of that was apparently revenge for Odyn being just an absolute fuckwad to her. With Helya's death in her own false afterlife of Helheim, Odyn was able to leave the Halls of Valor and announced an intent to go back to Ulduar, so we can probably assume he's there.

Archaedas is dead, slain by us in Vanilla before we knew all that much about the Titans or their creations in the first place. Same goes for Ironaya. Real failure to communicate here.

Ra-Den was captured by Lei Shen, the Thunder King, his heart used as a source of power to, I think, reverse the Curse of Flesh. After who knows how long deep down within the Throne of Thunder (wait, have I never gone and done that fight?) we fight him to knock some sense back into him. However, while fighting off the madness of N'zoth, Ra-Den is captured and taken to Ny'alotha, where he is corrupted and we are forced to kill him for real.

Tyr died in the early days of humanity, but in Dragonflight, we were able to reconstruct a body for him and bring him back to life. Tyr seems... very depressed, but he also does seem to remain the pro-mortal champion that inspired, among other things, the Knights of the Silver Hand.

So, that means that most of the Keepers are actually still alive. What, then, though, flows from that?

Well, there's a pretty strong implication that The Last Titan is going to see us find ourselves in an antagonistic relationship with the Titans and the Titanforged, as we've strayed pretty damn far from their original designs (those of us who are even descended from their creations) and the Titans' benevolence has seemed less of a given of late, especially when their "Ordering" of Azeroth starts to look like a kind of Black Empire with different aesthetics (why was the Worldsoul relocated from Harandar to the Titan-created Worldcore? Harandar certainly doesn't seem like a hotbed of Old God corruption).

Still, I'm not convinced the Titans as a whole, nor their creations, are going to be unified in a condemnation of the mortals of Azeroth. While Aman'thul seems to be the patriarch of the Pantheon and is likely sort of... patriarchal in his attitude. We know that he objected to incorporating the power of Life into Azeroth when Eonar was doing her work on it because it wasn't something they understood and could control.

Indeed, Aman'thul is the first of the Pantheon, and helped to "awaken" the other Titans. Did this involve forcing them into a form similar to his own?

Among the Keepers, Odyn seems by far the most likely to be an antagonist. I mean, the guy was kind of a douchebag even when we met him in Legion, and while he was friendly enough to us, he was deeply patronizing, and we know that he did awful things to Helya and also made some really shady deals, like trading his eye to Mue'zallah, who then passed it on to the Jailer.

Given Eonar's general embrace of Life as a power (also, the fact that her spirit was hiding out on a world called Elunara suggests she has some alliance/connection with Elune, who appears to be some sort of Life Goddess) I'm inclined to think she'll be on our side, and perhaps because of that, Freya will as well (as Eonar's most direct creation among the Keepers).

Tyr also seems likely to be on our side, as he seems the most willing to go against the grain and fight on behalf of mortals.

The other surviving Keepers, though... I could see going either way. I don't know if our efforts in Ulduar earned us any slack, but given that the Titanforged are kind of by design sort of rigid in their ways, I wouldn't count on them being friendly.

Remaining Questions After Control Resonant

 I've only been waiting for three years to play the sequel to Control, as I was only sort of vaguely aware of it when it came out in 2019 and didn't play it until 2023, but given how much I fell in love with both it and the Alan Wake games, which are set within the same universe (universes, technically) I found myself really champing at the bit to continue the story of the Faden siblings and the deeply flawed and problematic federal bureau that has played such a huge role in their lives.

Remedy loves raising more questions than they provide answers. Resonant tells us a few things, but it also leaves some open for interpretation and then further just raises more questions.

I'm not going to be able to talk about every mystery, reveal, and open-ended question here, but I'll center on the ones I find most interesting and compelling.

And obviously, we're going to put this behind a spoiler cut.

Control Resonant and the Faden Siblings

 Control as a franchise, and Remedy as a studio, likes to lean into multilayered narratives. There's a straightforward story, the secrets behind that story, and then the deeper mysteries that we're left to speculate about.

Resonant's reluctance to say anything explicit about the Blessed Organization or its part in what goes on in Manhattan (my theory is that they were only observing, rather than instigating) ties into this: while we Remedy Sickos can speculate ourselves to insanity about Blessed, the games seem to be happy letting this be a background detail that doesn't really get into the spotlight.

There's another pretty out-there idea that was first presented in Control that gets some real fuel in Resonant.

Let's talk about Jesse Dylan Faden.

Control Resonant Complete

 I have beaten Control Resonant.

As one might expect given the first game, there's a post-game state in which you can get a bit of denouement and see where the state of things lands. I'll go light on details until we get past the spoiler cut, but I will say that I'm... not crazy about the final boss fight, to be honest. Again, details to follow, but in a game with some genuinely stellar bosses, the grand finale feels a bit like, well, the sort of underwhelming bosses that Remedy has often been criticized for in the past.

There is a New Game Plus mode that becomes available, though I'm probably not going to jump into that until I've really cleared out nearly everything, and given that I don't think there's any Final Draft-like "true ending" to it, I'm not really champing at the bit for it.

I liked the game, obviously, though I don't know where it really ranks. I think on paper, it's probably a better game overall than the first Control, but it's also less revelatory in that we already know this world (it's fitting that Dylan already knows a bunch about the FBC and its terminology, as we don't really need to go over everything again). The combat is better-balanced (Control's combat was great but you hit a point where using the Service Weapon was really just what you did while you waited for your power to recharge to do Launch again) and there's more of it.

Ok, let's actually talk about how it ends:

Speculation on Alan Wake III

 I got so jazzed by the Alan Wake easter egg in Control Resonant. While I think the "RCU" will benefit from having other series outside of Control and Alan Wake, I'm obviously just so enamored with Alan Wake as a series that I can't help but find my mind fixating on it.

Alan Wake II might not be my favorite game in terms of moment-to-moment gameplay (though I'd be curious to revisit it having now played a few other Survival Horror games) but it's right at the top for use of video games as an artistic medium, telling a story like none other I've seen in gaming in a manner unlike any I've seen in gaming (and honestly, playing into my own tastes as someone influenced by David Lynch as well as lots of twisty stories about dubious perception of reality, like Fight Club.

(Sidenote: Fight Club is one of those movies where saying your a fan kind of invites some follow-up questions, as there are plenty of people who seemed to miss the whole point of it. If you thought that the Fight Club video game where you could unlock Fred Durst as one of the fighters was a good idea that was consistent with the themes of the movie... I think you might need to re-think what that movie is about. Though hey, I never played that game, and maybe it was doing something subversive and ironic. I doubt it, but I can't say for sure.)

Anyway, Remedy has shown a willingness to go in very different directions with its sequels. While I actually don't think that Control Resonant feels unrecognizable compared to the first game, even with the shift to melee combat (we still, for example, are encouraged to play aggressively thanks to the health fragments dropped by foes, and there's a lot of floating in the air dodging things) we certainly saw a pretty big shift in Alan Wake's gameplay from a more action-oriented style to the slow-paced survival horror of the second game (though still keeping the signature "first flashlight, then gun" pattern.)

Thus, I'd be really curious to see whether a hypothetical Alan Wake III would shift things again.

First off, let's talk about the plausibility of a third game. The second game's true ending (the Final Draft version) sees Alan reawaken from his "death" with the Bullet of Light having gained the knowledge of his past cycles through the events of the game, and having become what he calls the Master of Many Worlds. There's something a bit ominous to that name, as an expansion of Joseph Campbell's "Master of Two Worlds" end-state for the Hero's Journey.

What seems won at the end of the second game is that A: the "Bright Falls AWE 2023" has ended, with no more Taken threatening the town or the world, and B: that Alan is finally out of the Dark Place (my understanding is that the Writer's Room he's in at the end is literally the room in the Valhalla Nursing Home, rather than the one in the Dark Place - though it's interesting that the Valhalla Nursing Home seems to have kind of become the "retconned" version of Bird's Leg Cabin).

Saga's story seems resolved: Logan has been rescued from the childhood death that was written into the story, and is now alive again, and this likely means Saga's life is back to how it was prior to arriving in Bright Falls. But Saga is also now initiated into the Weird and aware of her own parautilitarian nature. I do wonder if she'll stick with the FBI or join the FBC - certainly I can imagine Estevez would be eager to recruit her. I don't know whether Saga is likely to play as prominent a role in the next game, though her connection to Mr. Door could potentially draw her back into the conflict. Part me just wants her to be able to live her life again and not deal with all of this horror.

While Alan is victorious in the end, he's also kind of right back where he started: Alice is once again in the Dark Place, and while she seems to be better-equipped to handle that, he's still motivated to return to her. (Isn't it interesting that both Control and Alan Wake are stories in which people are struggling to reunite? I still haven't finished Control Resonant, but Dylan spends the bulk of it trying to find his sister, when the first game was motivated primarily by Jesse trying to find him).

It's interesting that it's implied that Alan's attempts to escape were so convoluted simply because he made it so convoluted, thinking it had to be. Thus, I wonder if his next plan to rescue Alice is going to be similarly convoluted and cause a bunch of other problems that will give us the events of a third game.

Sure, he's seemed to experience some kind of spiritual growth, but he's still Alan.

If the video we find in Resonant is any actual hint at what might happen in a future game (and that's a big if) here are the elements I think it could point to:

First, that he might be teamed up with Alex Casey. This does present a challenge given that Casey's voice actor, James McCafferey, died shortly after AWII's release. But unless he had also done any VO work necessary for the Max Payne remakes, I'd assume that they'll be looking for a sound-alike who can take over the role.

If we assume that retired FBI agent Alex Casey and long-missing author Alan Wake do actually found a Security company called A Watchful Eye (presumably as part of a scheme to investigate paranormal stuff,) perhaps the game will lean into a kind of mystery-solving gameplay system. (Alternatively, I wouldn't be surprised if this is actually a narrative Alan creates for them to get into the Dark Place.)

Alan Wake II was initially planned to have a mystery-solving mini-game that Saga would do in her chapters. But Remedy realized that they would effectively be making an entire other game to cram into its Survival Horror game and felt that this would A: take too much effort and B: might frustrate players in Saga's segments.

But a whole new game might be the perfect time to introduce this as the core gameplay system. Maybe they can take ideas they came up with for that and flesh them out into a new mystery game in which Alan and Alex solve paranatural mysteries as they search for Alice.

Now, why is Alex Casey involved here? Well, first off, he was a professional investigator, so he'd be a good person for Alan to have. But they're also two people who were hosts of the Dark Presence, and I imagine that might have forged a bond between them. (Also, it lets Sam Lake show his mug all over the game, which I know he loves to do.)

Obviously, Remedy hasn't actually announced anything (I think the only projects they actually have lined up are the Max Payne remakes - and I wonder to what extent those are just going to be straight-up faithful recreations of the games or if they'll inject more RCU connections into them) but here's hoping.

The State of the Scourge in The Last Titan

 The Scourge are my favorite villain faction in World of Warcraft. Indeed, they've had a pretty huge influence on my fantasy tastes in the 20 years I've played this game. Going into WoW, perhaps thanks to watching through all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel in my freshman year, I was all about demons as fantasy monsters to fight (in the Buffyverse, vampires are sort of undead but are technically a demon possessing a dead body, though the demon retains all the memories of the person that had died. Also, demons in that universe aren't inherently evil, though vampires are except in the rare cases, like two of them, where they have their human soul returned to them).

I had even kind of avoided playing an Undead character simply because I sort of assumed Undead players were all edgelords. And then I made one and I had a dark realization - that I'm a bit of an edgelord myself.

I will say that the utter menace that the Vanilla Plaguelands held got lost a bit in the Cataclysm revamp. The Western Plaguelands are more of a battleground between Alliance and Horde while the Eastern Plaguelands, though they do remain a hotbed of Scourge corruption, give us a somewhat more innocent story of the Paladin Pals and Fiona's caravan going around the zone. Back in Vanilla, both zones felt oppressive and hostile, and Light's Hope chapel truly felt like a tiny bastion of safety in the midst of a hostile land. A few details reinforced that: for one thing, Light's Hope didn't have any of the fortifications it does now, and was just a single little church building mostly in ruins that the Argent Dawn was posted up at (they even had a neutral and interactable Scarlet Crusade representative there, desperate for any help). Also, in the original level ranges, the Eastern Plaguelands was one of the highest-level zones in the game (maybe the highest? I think you wouldn't start getting quests there until 55 or so).

Icecrown is also a zone that I think radiates menace better than just about any other we've visited. Possibly the Antoran Wastes or The Maw give it a run for its money (I have so many thoughts on the Maw, primarily that the things I liked most about it were what a lot of players complained about, and I felt it got ruined in 9.1). The Scourge were a constant presence in Wrath of the Lich King, with at least some presence in each zone (maybe not Crystalsong Forest? But there was barely anything there).

But the Scourge is not what it once was. Originally created as a cannon fodder to clear the way for the Burning Legion's invasion in the Third War, Ner'zhul and Arthas managed to break away from the yoke of the Legion following Arichimonde's defeat on Mount Hyjal, and when Arthas became the Lich King, we had the period of "peak Scourge" that ran from the end of the Frozen Throne expansion for Warcraft III to the end of Wrath of the Lich King. (Bizarrely, their only real presence on Kalimdor post-Third War was in Razorfen Downs, where they were secretly corrupting and empowering the Quillboar - which comes as a real surprise when you quest through the Barrens given that there's no real hint of undeath elsewhere in the zone).

I think it's also notable that not all undead in WoW is Scourge - there are plenty of ghosts (particularly of ancient Night Elves who perished in the War of the Ancients or the Sundering) but we even see zombies and even Abominations pop up in places like Duskwood, where the corruption is probably coming more from Karazhan or just, you know, ancient curses and old crimes.

But still, the Scourge was the only real example we had of a disciplined and organized effort to convert the entire world into undead.

Arthas' death led to the crowning of Bolvar Fordragon as the third and final Lich King. In theory, this was necessary as a means to keep control over the Scourge and prevent them from running rampant over Azeroth. Now, I've often wondered if that was actually any worse than having someone like Arthas commanding them in an organized manner. While I do think the intent by the game's writers was that this would be somehow worse, it's easy enough to headcanon that, less than a warning of how bad it could get, Terenas' warning was more like "hey, you have a huge opportunity here to force the Scourge into just staying here frozen in Icecrown and not bothering people if someone with a strong enough will becomes Lich King." Bolvar's reign largely accomplished that. While he directed the Knights of the Ebon Blade to do some deeply questionable (ok, maybe just bad) things in their class campaign in Legion (the attack on Light's Hope - to be fair, I think Bolvar anticipated that it would be Darion and not Tirion who would be raised as the fourth horseman, but it did get a lot of paladins killed, and the attack on the Ruby Sanctum was also pretty indefensible,) for the most part, the Scourge ceased to be much of a threat.

He didn't have a short leash on everyone, though: we do see in those Cataclysm-era Eastern Plaguelands quests that there are still Scourge forces and the Cult of the Damned trying to cease the healing of the land and corrupt it further, like their attempt to make Gidwin into a Death Knight. But these splinter factions of Scourge are clearly not very powerful. There's a Crypt Lord who claims to be the new leader of the Scourge whom we take out in a fairly simple quest there.

Shadowlands complicated the Scourge narrative a lot: while the Shadowlands had been established as early as Wrath (Death Knight get their Acherus Deathcharger by journeying into the Shadowlands,) the actual structure of the plane was elaborated on quite a lot - initially, the Shadowlands were presented lik the Emerald Dream, as a kind of parallel plane to the mundane world, a bit like how in D&D the Feywild and Shadowfell are both reflections of the Prime Material plane. Indeed, my interpretation was (and still is, sort of) that when we die in-game and are in our spirit form to go reclaim our body, that "ghost world" we're in is The Shadowlands. The presentation of the plane in the expansion of the same name does seem to refute this, but it might be similar to D&D's Ethereal Plane, where there's the "Border Ethereal" that overlaps the Prime Material and can be used as a means to pass unseen and even through objects like walls, and the "Deep Ethereal," which is an endless misty expanse where one can find portals to other inner planes like the Feywild, Shadowfell, or the Elemental Planes. So, maybe the "ghost world" is the "Border Shadowlands" while the place we visited with Bastion and Revendreth is the "Deep Shadowlands." Just like in D&D, it's simpler to get into the Border region than it is to go to the deep region of the plane.

Anyway, beyond having this "realm of death," it also established god-like figures and a cosmic power of Death separate from the demons of the Burning Legion or the Void that the Undead draw their power from. Structurally, the Scourge as an army is a weird facsimile of the forces of Maldraxxus, though ironically, as gross and monstrous as Maldraxxus appears, it's not actually bent toward evil (well, at least not originally).

Shadowlands introduced a ton of new elements to the lore, and while I like the idea of making Death into this power with its own god-like figures in and of itself, certainly some of this could be handled more gracefully - especially as it was implied that the Jailer had secretly been behind nearly the entirety of Warcraft Lore (such as implying that his agents had even orchestrated Sargeras' fall from grace).

Indeed, the retcon of the Nathrezim being creatures of the Shadowlands, rather than the Fel, originally, was particularly jarring for a number of reasons. First off, their homeworld of Nathreza was already established, so then making them the creation of Sire Denathrius felt like it was giving a second origin of their names and natures. But it also makes it really weird that the Nathrezim were introduced as the Legion's handlers for the Scourge - if the Nathrezim were always secretly loyal to Death, wouldn't Mal'ganis and Detheroc and all those guys actually be in favor of the Lich King breaking away from the Legion? Sure, they're master infiltrators and can keep up a cover story, but this feels just so very weird and stinks to high heaven of retcon (which is 100% is).

The Shadowlands as an expansion had some very cool ideas, but there was so much messiness in incorporating it into the broader WoW lore that I'm almost inclined to think that Sylvanas' line about "the Shadowlands are not what they seem" could very easily be Blizzard giving itself license to retcon anything they presented in that expansion.

While I think the Jailer was a character who could have been super interesting but wound up being really dull (the reveal that he was the original Arbiter was a cool origin story, but his actual characterization and indeed just his physical design from a visual standpoint were... I didn't like them,) I do think the idea of "Domination Magic" coming out of the Shadowlands and forming the basis for the Scourge's power is an interesting one. And I do really like the idea that the Scourge's power is fundamentally different from the demonic power of the Legion.

But let's return to Azeroth:

At the start of Shadowlands, Sylvanas tears the Helm of Domination apart, effectively making the existence of a Lich King impossible. The Scourge is no longer held back by Bolvar, who is also left as effectively just a Death Knight now. We did spend the pre-launch event for Shadowlands in Icecrown fighting Scourge, but while the Scourge remains a general threat (even in Midnight, while questing with Arator we do have to fight some Scourge attacking Light's Hope) they really seem downgraded.

Now sure, this could just be a matter of emphasis. The Scourge were no less a danger during the events of Burning Crusade, but we were dealing with other issues, and so they didn't figure prominently in the story. Perhaps post-Shadowlands, the Scourge has become a bigger problem than it was under Bolvar, but we're just not seeing it as much because we've got dragons and void things to deal with.

One element we haven't really explored a lot is that there's a new helm: in Shadowlands, to counter the effect of the Jailer's Domination Magic (which incapacitates us at the end of the Torghast raid and forced Anduin into an Arthas-like role as pseduo-Death Knight,) the remnants of the Helm are used to forge the Crown of Wills, which acts as an almost diametric opposite to the Helm by magically reinforcing free will. Currently worn by Pelagos, who has become the new Arbiter (my main is a protection paladin, and had Pelagos as his soulbind, so I like to say that my character is canonically best friends with God,) it seems like its effects are tied more to the Shadowlands themselves, and likely embody a kind of reformation of the place where souls can decide where they want to go.

But does this have an effect on the Scourge? We really don't know. While the Forsaken have had free will for a while (though there were times from about Cataclysm through Shadowlands where it didn't actually seem that way - Night Elves raised by Sylvanas' Val'kyr during the War of Thorns pre-BFA event very suspiciously joined the Horde's efforts immediately after being raised - perhaps a hint of Sylvanas' alignment with the Jailer) what if that's starting to be a broader thing for the Scourge?

After all, it was Illidan's attempt to shatter the Frozen Throne that first allowed the Forsaken to break away. Surely the destruction of the Helm of Domination would lead to an even greater effect. But, of course, while the Forsaken did regain free will, plenty of them chose to do some nasty and evil shit.

While I assume The Last Titan is going to focus far more on the Ulduar/Storm Peaks/Titan stuff in Northrend, the fact that we're going back there means that we must have some interaction with the Scourge. I wouldn't be surprised if they play a major role in the middle raid tier of the expansion, similar to how we've gotten a kind of break from the Devouring Host while we deal with Ula'tek and her whole deal.

Not Much Left to Clean Up - Might Be Time to Finish Control Resonant

 While I devoured Alan Wake II in just the weekend it came out (in those innocent days of 2023) that also sort of makes sense for a survival horror game, which tend to be a bit shorter in length (you probably wouldn't want to be in such tension for such an extended time). Control Resonant now game out about a week and a half ago, and I'm sure my hours in the game are far more than they were in my first AWII playthrough (maybe total, actually). In comparison to the first Control, Resonant is for sure bigger, and its open-world design of course extends the length of the gameplay if you are doing lots of side objectives.

The main thing is that I've finished all the Side Stories, the last being the one where you have to find an Altered camera that appears in various locations across the world. There's like, more than ten of these, and you have to piece together where the camera can be found based on photos you find shot from the camera's perspective. The final stage, after finding them all in any order, is to do one last sequence where you have to capture one of several iterations of the camera in an area near the Oldest House one after the other, and if the cameras catch you, you're set back a step (it starts off with like seven of them, but the number diminishes each time you sneak up behind them and close a lid).

Anyway, not a terribly lore-heavy quest (though I really wondered if they were going to tie it to Alice Wake, who literally described photography as a means to "put a cage around the infinite," freezing a moment in time much like these cameras do. Maybe one little Alan Wake easter egg is enough) but fun enough. I should go talk to Langston and see if he has more dialogue about it.

Oh, another late-game side quest involves an experiment by Pope, and in the aftermath of this sort of dubious success, we get a bit of confirmation that while she and Jesse didn't have a relationship beyond a close friendship and professional respect, Pope had feelings for her that presumably went beyond the platonic. I don't know which way Jesse swings, but I know that Monty Zander (creator of the insanely amazing Alan Wake II review "Beyond the Lake" that is honestly a work of art in and of itself) is a... Jemily? Papen? shipper, so he'll be pleased that we've got at least a lean toward this.

I also finally found the last of the "Secret Organization" hideouts across Manhattan, and Dylan calls Zoe to tell her about all these spots. I am about 90% convinced that this is the Blessed Organization, but if we were hoping for more concrete answers about what is going on with Blessed, the game refuses to be explicit. Indeed, we do see Blessed-associated businesses mentioned and find a voicemail that could be Chester Bless himself speaking (if that's not a pseudonym, of course) but these explicit links to Blessed are in a separate sidequest with no explicit connection to these hideouts.

I think if we're seven years on and Remedy doesn't want to get explicit about Blessed, maybe we shouldn't hold our breath for them to become a major factor in the RCU. Still, if memory serves, the Cult of the Tree was hinted at in the Night Springs easter egg in Quantum Break (I never played that, as I've had PlayStation and Nintendo consoles for the past couple generations, but no Xbox) and that certainly played a huge role in Alan Wake II.

Like I often do with games I've really become invested in, getting to the stage where I can finish the main story (and to be fair, maybe there's a lengthy chunk of finale to get through) I find myself hesitating. On the other hand, I'm also really keen to avoid spoilers (which I've done a decent job of so far) so I might want to get in there before a random YouTube video's title or thumbnail gives something away.

Quick spoiler cut:

Alan Wake Sighting!

 With Control, Remedy officially initiated the "Remedy Connected Universe," linking its games to a shared cosmos and allowing crossovers between them. Alan Wake II made some use of this, with the FBC showing up and taking the case off of Saga's hands at a sort of midpoint shift moment (the game doesn't have a strict 3-act structure, but I'd say the attack on the lodge by the Cult of the Tree and the arrival of the FBC sure feels like such a moment in the story).

The first Control had only tiny references to Alan Wake in the base game, but its AWE expansion was all about that link, establishing Alice's status and the history of her coming by the Oldest House (though I seem to be the only one on the internet to think that the "organization" that helped her recover her memories from 2010 was not the FBC, but was instead the Blessed Organization, especially given Barry's connection to it and his growing bond with Alice over the years after Bright Falls). And, of course, it showcased Emil Hartman, or the thing that had been Hartman, warped by both Dark Presence and Hiss (and honestly showing off the physical distortions that would characterize more of Control Resonant's take on the Hiss) as the final boss.

Well, playing through Control Resonant, I've been perhaps a little underwhelmed by the lack of intrusions from the Alan Wake side of things - though it makes sense. Control as a series is kind of on a larger scale, and while the Bright Falls AWEs are among the most momentous in Bureau history, the crisis in America's biggest city doesn't seem to have anything to do with what is going on in the Pacific Northwest (though given Alan is from NYC, I wondered if we might come across the real Parliament Tower, which could have been cool).

I do know that Remedy doesn't want to alienate new players with too many references to other games, which is, honestly, the artistically responsible thing to do. But as a Remedy sicko now, I'm desperate for all my little references and such.

And I've found a big one! (I'm certainly not the first, as I've seen YouTube thumbnails that point to this, but wanted to stumble across it on my own.)

While trying to finish up the Freeze Frame side-story, where you have to track down an Altered Item camera that can freeze reality (to put a cage around the infinite? Is this Alice's camera?) and so you need to find a way to sneak around behind it to put the cover over its lens - the camera zipping around to many different locations across the world - I had to go into an apartment building to come around to the back of the camera in The Park.

In that building, there was an open apartment, mostly bare and smeared with what looked like black paint, as if someone had dipped their hands in paint and rubbed them on the walls. There, a television set was glowing with static, and upon interacting with it, I got...

A video, which thankfully goes in your archive (I watched it again immediately) under the category of The Master of Many Worlds. There, we see a dark scene and two lights - flashlights in the dark. Alan's narration comes in as we see him and Alex Casey (so, Ilkka Villi and Sam Lake) walk into focus. Alan talks about how he has nightmares every night, even when he isn't sleeping, and he's always terrified that "The Scratcher" will come and get him. But the taste of coffee in his mouth tells him it's real.

Something jumps at them, the two open fire on the unseen assailant. We see the two of them doing some kind of dance, and we hear what sounds like a Poe song playing in the background (paraphrasing Six Deep Breaths, with lyrics like "your dream is my nightmare," and "your nightmare can't have my dream.")

Alan says he's working as a night watchman, and has a patch on his jacket that says "AWE," and above it, "All Watchful Eye." (EDIT: actually, it's "A Watchful Eye," which is a bit less menacing and a bit more reasonable as the name of a security company.) Below I think it just says like "Security Company" (though the "Security" part is in shadow so I'm just guessing).

What could it mean?

Well, more than anything else, it's a fun and cheeky reference to Alan Wake, and maybe that's it. But at the same time, we did get stuff even in 2016's Quantum Break that would point to elements of Alan Wake II, like the Cult of the Tree and Saga Andersen, a video that could have been dismissed as a silly easter egg.

The existence of jackets that say "AWE" on them might actually close a hole in the plot when considering the "This House of Dreams" blog that came out a couple years after the first Alan Wake game. There, Samantha Wells (presumably a cheeky reference to Sam Lake, who almost certainly wrote the blog - there was some ambiguity over whether it was a fan project until the Thomas Zane poetry on the blog wound up getting quoted directly by Tom Zane in AWII) talks about I believe dreaming about being visited by people in jackets that say AWE, who came to confiscate some materials at the house there (oh, and the blog was in like 2012, but Samantha is writing about moving into a house in Ordinary, Maine, as part of some deal encouraging people to move into the abandoned town).

Probably what wound up happening is that the Bureau of AWEs was adjusted to be the FBC, but if Alan and maybe Casey (maybe Saga as well, though perhaps she's stayed on with the FBI) have formed their own company to look into the paranatural, this might make sense. Both spent time possessed by the Dark Presences, and Casey's retired from the FBI, so maybe he's willing to do this in his retirement.

It does start to make it feel more plausible that we get an Alan Wake III. While II will be an insanely tough act to follow, it also makes me excited for the extreme experimentation we might get.

Control Resonant has certainly had its big swings, but I'd say that while it feels a little more daring than the first Control, it's not quite as insanely out there as Alan Wake II was. It's probably (almost certainly) more fun to play in the moment-to-moment gameplay, but I don't know that any game has hit atmosphere quite as expertly as AWII.

So, I'm just feeling a buzz of joy from getting to see my boy Alan getting spoopy again. (Also, looks like he got a haircut, but kept the beard.)

EDIT: Oh, almost forgot:

Outside of the apartment where you find this video, there's a light that is blinking in a repeating pattern. I've looked it up online to see what it says in Morse code, but have gotten conflicting responses.

Rating the Resonants

 Remedy is not exactly known for having particularly great boss fights, but I think Control Resonant might change that - the Resonants, each zone's tragically patterned individual who has become a vessel for the dangerous resonance that threatens our reality, are all unique fights with really breathtaking visual design. The fights as well have their own rhythms to them that present unique challenges as Dylan fights to mercy-kill them.

I'll be going into a spoiler cut here. There are other "bosses" in the game that are directly tied to the main plot, and I haven't gotten to the game's final boss either, so it's not included here. Ironically, the Resonants are actually, with the exception of the first one, technically optional, but because each unlocks your combat powers, you'll definitely want to take each of them out. Doing so does respawn all enemies in the zone and also brings back various side objectives on the map, so I think that the optimal path is to "clear out" a zone before you go face them. Doing so isn't too tedious or hard, as there are plenty of objectives and other things in each zone that aren't affected by this respawning. I'm also not sure if clearing a Resonant lets foes endlessly respawn - I don't think so, but my general sense is that you should probably have enough foes to fight and resources to collect that you can unlock just about if not everything in a single playthrough (it's possible that some of the last few talents and Aberrant upgrades might require you to go into NG+, but where I'm at I certainly feel like I'd probably be at the right power level to fight the final boss).

So, let's take a look at these in terms of aesthetic design and then the feel of the fight itself.

Control Resonant's Earthbound Interlude and the Hardest Resonant Yet

 Ok, how to do this without spoilers...

When we played the first Control, we knew that Jesse ultimately tracked down the FBC and entered the Oldest House to rescue her brother, after 17 long years of separation. That was her whole motivation to begin with, not to become the FBC's new director and spend seven years locked inside of the Oldest House battling Hiss.

In the first game, we did slowly start to piece together the siblings' backstory and the events of the AWE that took place in Ordinary, Maine in 2002, but it was all detailed purely in documents and logs that only gave us fragments. I wondered if we would ever be able to see the events themselves.

Well... let's get into spoiler territory:

Drops: Sorrow Knight Fighter

 I think this might be the first time we've gotten a full-on subclass from D&D Beyond Drops, and this one's a fascinating one.

Hey folks, it's October! That means it's spooky season, all leading up to my favorite holiday, Halloweeen. Getting into the spook spirit, D&D Beyond Drops has unleashed a whole bunch of scary monsters, feats, and this subclass.

Sorrow Knight Fighters are attuned to the magic of the Shadowfell, with some tragedy or horror in their past that connected them to this realm of gloom and despair. The Shadowfell is probably my favorite D&D plane, and I love fighting (and running) spooky monsters in shadowy settings.

Broadly, the Sorrow Knight has some similarities with the Battle Master, but let's get specific:

Level 3:

Despairing Strikes:

You have a resource called Despairing Strike Dice, which can be used to enhance your attacks. You begin with 3 of them, which are d8s. At level 10, they become d10s and you get a fourth. At 15, they become d12s and you get a fifth. After expending them, you get them back on a short rest.

    So, this is, I think, a bit fewer dice than a Battle Master, and I think there's less versatility for your options, but it's reasonably comparable.

When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend a DSD and roll it (one die per attack maximum, though no limit on uses per turn), adding psychic damage to the attack equal to the amount rolled, and then get to add one of the following effects:

Abandoned: The target must succeed on an Intelligence saving throw (DC based on your Wisdom) or have the Deafened condition until the end of your next turn. While deafened, the target regards all creatures it can see as enemies until the end of your next turn.

    Hey, so this won't work on a Gulthias Blight, who is immune to being Deafened. Still, while deafened is a pretty weak condition to impose (it does almost nothing to hinder a foe) the "treat everyone as enemies" option is potentially useful. While it won't guaranteed that a foe will attack its allies given that you and your allies are still there to be targeted, it is something you might use on a healer or some other creature that is trying to do things to benefit other creatures. Or, you could use it on an enemy with a big AoE to ensure that they don't avoid hitting allies when going after your friends. Situational, and of course, not very useful against solo monsters, but interesting.

Dread: The target had Disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes before the end of your turn.

    This is pretty broadly useful, either setting up a spellcaster or someone else who has a clutch saving throw ability, or even just setting you up for Abandoned or one of the other options you get later on.

Solemn Gaze:

You gain Darkvision with a range of 60 ft, or if you already have Darkvision, the range increases by 60 feet.

    Nothing huge, but not bad to have.

Also, as a Magic action, you can attempt to search the mind of a creature you can see within 30 feet. They must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw (DC based on your Wisdom) or you learn an emotion that looms large in their mind, such as worry, love, hate, etc. If the target can see you, it knows you have read its emotions. You can do this Wis times per long rest (minimum 1).

    The utility of this feature depends a lot on DM interpretation. This isn't detect thoughts - you just get an emotion that looms large in them, not necessarily that they're feeling particularly strongly at the moment. In other words, I think this could add a ton of flavor to NPC interactions, but the degree to which this information is actionable is not obvious. Flavor-wise, though, it's amazing. And this is on top of the other level 3 features we're getting.

Level 7:

Dreaded Appearance:

When you use Tactical Shift, you can teleport 30 feet instead of moving. Immediately afte ryou appear, you can briefly take on the appearance of a creatures' fears, visible only to those creatures. Each creature of your choice within a 10-foot emanation muse make a Wisdom saving throw (DC based on your Wisdom) or take Psychic damage equal to a roll of your DSD (this does not appear to expend it) and is Frightened until the end of your next turn, or on a success, they take half damage only.

Once you take on this appearance, you can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

    Note that I think the alteration for Tactical Shift is unlimited (other than by, you know, how many times you can do that). The damage here is pretty trivial, but an AoE fear is not a bad thing to have. And we're getting that as a free carry-on with all the other benefits of Tactical Shift, so I think this is pretty good. Obviously, as we've seen a lot of features with DCs based on Wisdom, you're going to want to pump that up as much as possible with this subclass.

Level 10:

Unsettled Strikes:

You have the following new options to use with your Despairing Srikes:

Apathetic: The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or have the Incapacitated condition until the start of your next turn. While incapacitated, the target can only give one-word responses when spoken to.

    Damn. I mean, the one-word thing is fine, but incapacitation can be enormous. For one thing, it breaks concentration, but obviously the bigger thing is that it prevents them from taking any actions, bonus actions, or reactions.

Lost: The target makes a Charisma saving throw. On a failure, the target is Blinded and its speed is reduced to 0 until the end of its next turn. On a success, its speed is halved only instead.

    That's not too bad either - Blinded is usually a Con save condition, and so you're probably more likely to succeed with this one. A good way to lock down an enemy and then give everyone advantage on attacks against them.

Weary: The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or gain 1 Exhaustion level. The effect cannot increase the target's Exhaustion above 2, and the levels from this effect are removed at the end of your next turn.

    So, this is... you see Exhaustion and your eyes go wide, but this isn't quite that. That being said, giving a foe a -2 or even a -4 to all d10 tests (and the -4 will be more likely to happen if they're already at -2 to Con saves) isn't bad. But it's only for one turn. Essentially, I wonder if I'd be more enthusiastic about this if I weren't thinking about how insane it would be to have long-term and unlimited exhaustion from this. Don't forget that it also slows a target.

Level 15:

Grim Constitution:

You have resistance to Necrotic and Psychic damage.

    Right off the bat, these aren't bad ones to have, especially if you're in a spooky Shadowfell/Ravenloft game, where you're likely to encounter both damage types a lot.

In addition, when you are subjected to an effect that reduces your HP maximum, you can make a DC 15 Con save, and your HP is not reduced on a success. Each time you make this Con save after the first, the DC increases by 5, but taking a short or long rest resets it to 15.

    Less broadly useful, but it could be good when fighting particularly undead (again, common foes in a Shadowfell/Ravenloft game). I'm surprised this doesn't just give immunity to such things. Eh, this one's not amazing, though the damage resistances are pretty good.

Level 18:

Grieving Mantle:

When you use your Action Surge, you attune yourself to the Shadowfell for 1 minute or until you become incapacitated. For the duration, you have the following:

    Before we get into the specific functions, I do kind of like how this turns Action Surge into the trigger for a "super mode" for Fighters. While this does then kind of discourage using it multiple times per combat, it's an interesting bit of tech.

Shade Form: When you are hit with an attack roll, you can use a reaction to become insubstational for a moment and reduce the attack's total damage to zero.

    Wow! Not halved, not gaining resistance. This just full-on nopes out of an entire attack. Obviously this depends a bit on how many attacks you're taking in a round, but the ability to use this if you get crit by some massive monster is really clutch, and while Action Surge is a limited resource, this means that for a whole combat you're going to be undoing one attack that hits you each round, which is quite nice.

Unwavering Resolve: You have immunity to the Charmed and Frightened conditions, and if you have either when you activate Grieving Mantle, the condition ends for you.

    Naturally if you have a Devotion Paladin in your party, this won't do anything for you, but it's still pretty nice if you don't have those bases covered.

Overall Thoughts:

    I actually think this is a pretty solid subclass. It's doing a lot of things that Fighters can't really do in most cases - indeed, some of these effects are pretty rare even for spellcasters (is "Abandoned" kind of Enemies Abound, a spell from Xanathar's?)

    You will be pretty dependent on getting a high wisdom, because there are a lot of saving throws that enemies will be making against these effects. Fighters can afford a secondary ability score a bit, but if you have a way to somehow attack with Wisdom, that could be very helpful. Taking magic initiate Druid and grabbing Shillelagh could work pretty well here, and maybe Polearm Master to enhance the power of a Quarterstaff (as the cantrip won't let you grab something that works with Great Weapon Master). Multiclassing with Druid or Ranger could also make some sense here, though if the campaign is going high enough, I'd be pretty excited to get Grieving Mantle.

    Yeah, generally I think this is a pretty solid subclass, and it drips with flavor, which is always a big positive.

Warlock Patrons of Azeroth

 The WoW D&D book is going to give a lot of guidance for player to re-create WoW classes and specializations within D&D rules. In some cases, this will be trivial: a Guardian or Feral Druid can just go Circle of the Moon (though I'd freaking love it if they create a scaling template for Bear and Cat forms we could use at any level). But in some cases, namely the Death Knight and Demon Hunter, they'll be doing some unprecedented re-works of existing classes and creating subclasses that are sort of more than subclasses and really extensive re-works of the base classes they're being grafted onto (we've only seen level 1 and 2 features for Ebon Blade Paladins, which replace Lay on Hands and Paladin's Smite - though Rune Strike, which replaced Divine Smite, is basically the same spell except it does Necrotic damage and only gets a bonus die against Celestials).

But while it could be fun to play with restrictions to require players to build characters to fit with WoW's existing classes and specs, I think think it would be more fun to take adventures in Azeroth to places you can't replicate in the MMO.

Let's consider the Warlock.

In D&D, of course, a Warlock is a character who has forged a pact with a powerful magical entity (though 5.5 broadens this a bit to allow you to draw from multiple sources, as long as they're sort of in the same category.

By contrast, Warlocks in World of Warcraft are scholars just like Mages (the Wizard equivalent,) but while Mages study in very socially-acceptable learning institutions (though for a long time, their practices were forbidden among the Night Elves,) Warlocks are scholars of forbidden knowledge, specifically the knowledge of Fel magic, which is the inherently destructive power that suffuses demons.

Warlocks in WoW have three different specializations, like most classes, but all three are still Fel/demonic magic. Affliction is the one that might be easiest to reflavor as instead some kind of necromancy, but the other two, Destruction and Demonology, are both firmly in that Fel/Demon category (Destruction focuses more on blasting foes with demonic fire and raw chaos while Demonologists summon tons of demons to attack their foes).

D&D's Warlocks, thus, have a broader array of options in where they get their magic, and so I figured what I'd do is go through each Warlock subclass and talk about what kinds of patrons you might choose.

    Archfey:

While WoW doesn't have a Fey creature type, they do have some entities that would probably fit with the Fae, most notably the explicitly named Night Fae, who are the caretakers of the realm of Ardenweald, one of the afterlives in the Shadowlands. Here, natural creatures and people dedicated to nature go to take part in the cycle of life, eventually being reborn in a cycle of reincarnation. The Winter Queen is the leader of the Night Fae. But more broadly, the Wild Gods might fit this category - Wild Gods cover a lot of animal spirits worshipped or revered by various cultures across Azeroth. The Night Elves have their Ancients (not to be confused with the giant walking trees also called Ancients, who are... also nature spirits of course, but in a less divine way,) the Trolls have their Loa (which also include some beings that aren't quite as animalistic or even associated with nature) and the Pandaren have their August Celestials. Even the Orcs have animal gods like Lo'gosh (who might actually be the same as the Night Elves' Goldrinn...?) While not necessarily as fickle and tricksy as Fey tend to be, these are probably your best equivalents.

    Celestial:

It's really up in the air which of WoW's creatures would count as Celestials, but the ones that I don't think you could argue against are the Naaru. These are crystalline beings of pure holy light that are particularly important to Draenei culture. While it's supposed to be very rare, in game we often see Naaru go through a horrible cyclical transformation, turning to the Void as Dark Naaru (who are probably more on the Aberration/Great Old One side of things). Other options potentially include, actually, the Titans or their Titanforged creations. While the Titanforged act very much like constructs, beings like Tyr, Odyn, Thorim, Freya, Mimiron, or Ra-Den (the latter of which is dead by the end of Battle for Azeroth, but then, Tyr was dead for a very long time before we brought him back during Dragonflight) I think they'd fit pretty well in this category as well.

    Fiend:

I mean, there's plenty of demons in WoW. Warlocks in World of Warcraft tend to invert the patron relationship, with demonic minions bound to serve Warlocks through contracts that make any Warlock worth their salt the more powerful person in the relationship, but bargaining with power from a powerful demon certainly feels plausible on Azeroth. I think you could play a Fiend Warlock easily enough as a standard WoW warlock (just remember that Fel fire is typically green!) Another possibility is actually Illidan Stormrage. While sort of a half-demon (though he sure looks more demonic than even the Demon Hunters who he's trained) Illidan is WoW's ultimate edgelord antihero, a firm and hard Chaotic Neutral. (Also, Critical Role fans, if you didn't know already for some reason, will be excited to know that he's voiced by Liam O'Brien!) But also a somewhat more benign source of Fel power.

    Great Old One:

Two really great categories here: The most obvious is the Old Gods. While all four of Azeroth's Old Gods are (in theory) dead in the current state of the game, we did have to kill three of them as the final bosses of their respective raids (well, there was an optional extra-hard boss in Ulduar after Yogg-Saron). But these ancient flesh-mountain monstrosities certainly fit the bill. Alternatively, you could go for something less fleshy and more cosmic with the Void Lords. The only one of these we've ever actually seen or had named is Dimensius the All-Devouring (who was the final boss of the last expansion) but I think you could lean into the mystery of what your patron is if you went with an unnamed Void Lord. (The game's current antagonist, Xal'atath, and likely the final boss of the current expansion, is a former mortal turned void-entity that was probably not a true Void Lord, but might fit this, though she'd be an absolute perfect Hexblade patron).

    Undying:

This subclass... is weird because it could just be an undead patron, but it's also explicitly not just undead beings. If you for some reason really wanted to play this not-very-good and conceptually thin subclass, though, there are tons of extremely old beings on Azeroth. Maybe you go with Nozdormu, the Bronze Aspect, leader of the dragons who manage and safeguard the timeline (or his alternate-timeline-self nemesis, Murozond).

    Hexblade:

There are a few sentient weapons, most notable of which was Xal'atath, Blade of the Black Empire, which was the artifact weapon granted to Shadow Priests during the Legion expansion, but whose resident conscious being transferred into the body of a dead elf (that we provided for her) and has now been leading a deadly assault on Azeroth with her void-creature army called the Devouring Host. Two other weapons for Legion had personalities, with Aluneth, a staff that contained a powerful arcane consciousness, and the Skull of the Man'ari, the remains of an Eredar summoner who got into demonology before it was cool on Argus and ironically was arrested by future demon lord Archimonde for dabbling in such magic. Other weapons like Ashbringer, Doomhammer, or Frostmourne might fit here, though it's dubious whether they're actually sentient (technically I guess Frostmourne might be a conduit for the Jailer).

    Genie:

WoW does have genies, but they're a pretty rare category specifically of air elementals. If you wanted to take the idea of a powerful elemental, you could possibly instead go with the Elemental Lords, of which there are conveniently one for each element. The OGs are Ragnaros the Firelord, Al-Akir the Windlord, Neptulon the Tide-Hunter, and Therazane the Stonemother. However, there's been some turnover over the course of WoW. Ragnaros is dead, and was replaced by Smolderon, though we also had to take him down as well (though this was outside of the Firelands, so I actually think he's probably still alive and still the Lord of Fire). We killed Al-Akir as well, though his son Thunderaan I believe remains the Windlord. Basically, depending on when in WoW's timeline you want to set your campaign, you might need to pick alternatives. Note that the elemental lord of Draenor, the Orcish homeland (and sort of adopted Draenei homeland, though they were only there for about a thousand years, which isn't much for a people who seem to naturally live to be tens of thousands of years old) you could pick them.

    Fathomless:

Ok, there are probably some other options here, but I think the best one is Queen Azshara. Once the radiant and beautiful queen of the Night Elves in ancient times, when her capital sank beneath the waves, she struck a deal with the Old God N'zoth to save her people by transforming them into the serpentine Naga. Azshara is one of Azeroth's most dangerous villains, but she's a pragmatic and patient one (while her royal palace in her capital, now called Nazjatar, was a raid with her as the final boss, she survived this attack and we actually wound up rescuing her from N'zoth, a decision that will probably bite us in the ass somewhere down the line).

    Undead:

Boy howdy. So, the obvious options here would be members of the Scourge. The most powerful of which is certainly the Lich King. But if you're playing in a post-Wrath timeframe, the Lich King could be Bolvar Fordragon, a heroic paladin who sacrificed his freedom to try to hold the Scourge on a tight leash, and while Bolvar certainly did some questionable things as Lich King, he was certainly more benevolent than Arthas had been. WoW does have its fair share of Liches and Death Knights. I actually think making the entire Knights of the Ebon Blade a patron could be fun, or perhaps specifically having the Four Horsemen, the Ebon Blade's most elite knights (aside from the Deathlord, the player character, of course) as your patron would allow a DM to play the varying personalities between them (this latter option doesn't totally work if you're doing the Scarlet Monastery dungeon, as I'm confident its final boss will be High Inquisitor Whitemane, who is later raised as a death knight and becomes one of the Four Horsemen, ironically "redeeming" herself by becoming an undead killing machine. Better than a religious fundamentalist!)

    Vestige:

This new subclass from Arcana Unleashed ironically might actually make you play a little more like a WoW Warlock, who generally have a minion fighting alongside them in battle. (I play a Demonology one, who would always have a minion out, but I can't remember if the other two specs even have the option to not play with one). But mechanics aside, I do think there are some options here, even if they're a bit non-obvious. We have a few dead god-like beings, such as the nascent Titan Argus, or the lost (and very much beloved - the fans got up in arms) bear ancient Ursoc. Rezan, the Zandalari Troll Loa of Kings (he's a T-rex!) died to the treachery of the Prophet Zul. It also turns out that the Titans were, actually, for most of WoW's history, already in a state of more or less death - Sargeras slew them right around the time that he founded the Burning Legion, and it wasn't until we liberated their tortured souls at the end of the Legion expansion that they were able to return to their full power.

I think that's all of them? I'm actually quite pleased that there seems to be at least one pretty good option for every subclass, and there are probably more if you go digging.

Ironically, though, I think you could argue that these subclasses almost see representation in other classes in WoW. Shadow Priests, for example, have some abilities based around the Old Gods. And actually, the lore of the Shaman class is that they act essentially a mediators and negotiators between elemental spirits, which I actually think is pretty Warlock-coded (though it seems they'll be represented more by Barbarians - which is surprising on a mechanical level but sort of makes sense as two classes really deeply rooted in ancient/primal powers).

Into the Unknown

 I realize that the title of this post sounds very much like the kind of title for a post about the end of my current gaming fixation, Control Resonant, but I'm not there yet. No, instead I've made it to what I'm pretty certain is the last major area of the game, which is the most disorientingly Escher-esque region so far.

We're in the endgame, but given that we've also just unlocked a new zone, that means that we've got tons of side quests and other optional objectives to sort through, meaning that it's not exactly a race to the finale.

We did get what feels like it might be Control Resonant's big musical moment, though I can't say that it's necessarily the match of, say, the Ashtray Maze or the Dark Ocean Summoning. For one thing, the song isn't by the Old Gods of Asgard, but it's also more or less Dylan's entrance into this final area and while we arrive in the middle of a giant insane battle, it doesn't really conclude with any serious punctuation.

To be fair, the "Take Control" segment in the first game, as beloved and memorable as it is, was also kind of transitionary, acting more as the lead-in to final revelations about Hedron and the false game over. And hell, Dark Ocean Summoning kind of only works in the worst possible way, as triumphant as it feels.

I will say that after Alan Wake II, which had Sam Lake's fingerprints all over it, the relatively small role he played in this game (I'm actually not sure the degree to which he actively worked on it at all, other than being the Creative Lead for Remedy) has left Resonant with... I don't want to say less of a signature style, but I guess one that I'm not quite as attuned to picking up on.

Once again, I want to reiterate that the game's great - it's just that Remedy leapt to among my favorite game studios when I got into them three years ago, and so I'm holding this game to the tightest standards.

Anyway, I'm going to go into a spoiler cut - not that I've advanced the plot much since my last post, or I think two posts ago - but just because I want to get into things that have been revealed so far.

Control Resonant Opens Up Too Soon

 I very swiftly became a Remedy fan upon my entry into Control, on the recommendation of a friend in early 2023. The timing, as it turned out, was fantastic, as I had plenty of time to first play through Control and its DLCs, then pick up Alan Wake Remastered, and then have Alan Wake II ready to go that October.

Control was a sort of mish-mash of genres. I don't know that I'd truly call it a Metroidvania, as while your progression through various clearance-level keycards does slowly open up the game for you, the only real ability you get that actually unlocks new areas (at least in the base game) is Hover (I guess maybe Launch as well). But it did borrow things from Souls-likes (using the Control Points as your bonfire and losing some of your Source if you died - not quite the same) and naturally built on Remedy's tried-and-true 3rd person shooter bona fides they've been using since Max Payne.

It did also flirt with the idea of being an open-world game, with plenty of side quests and even randomized time-limited events that would pop up - there Bureau Alerts that, frankly, I got tired of pretty quickly and started ignoring. Ironic, of course, that being confined to the Oldest House meant the world was anything but open.

Control Resonant is an open world game by I think any reasonable measure. And I think that it might be somewhat to its detriment.

Let me just back up here and put my comments in context: I am really enjoying the game. I'll have to finish it to decide where it ranks among Remedy's games for me, but I do think that many of its systems are actually big improvements on what we got in Control. And as satisfying as it was to use Launch in combat in the first game, Resonant has really balanced things much better so that you feel like each attack, each weapon, each power, has its own particular uses, and there are far fewer "this thing increases some minor stat by 3%, and there's a higher quality thing that increases it by 5% instead," or what Monty Zander termed "Goot," meaning "garbage loot."

My critiques here are kind of grading on a very unforgiving curve - Remedy has made some of the most amazing gaming experiences I've ever played, and so I hold their games to a very high standard.

And here, I think the issue more about the game getting in its own way.

After the initial prologue in which we exit the Oldest House, partner up with Zoe, and get Pope to agree to let us help out once outfitted with the MCD, we are sent to the Watchtower, where we get to see various points of interest marking most of the zones (or at least the first few) out ahead of us. We then get to go to the Central Zone.

But we don't really have to say there: in fact, we're practically encouraged to go to both the Western Incursion Zone and Evacuation Zone. It's not even really clear that we're meant to even spend much time in Central (though I did) before going off to these other ones.

In other words, about half of the map (I think. I've gotten at least to the intro of what I assume is the game's final zone) unfurls for us right after the game's beginning.

I know that open world games, with the freedom that they afford, have grown a lot more popular over time. Perhaps I'm just turning into the old man yelling at clouds, but I prefer a more curated experience that guides me through an area. When Breath of the Wild came and transformed the Legend of Zelda series, I was one of the very few who seemed to not really like it that much. I did like Tears of the Kingdom better, but I still prefer the model established by Ocarina of Time (or arguably Link to the Past,) where the world was vast, but we only unlocked it by bits and pieces, creating a path that would ultimately guide us through it.

Now, I'd say that Control Resonant is arguably more of a Metroidvania than its predecessor. Levitate, Shift, and even whichever power you get off The Deserter boss, are all necessary powers to reach certain areas (I can't remember if you actually need to get some kind of fire power to reach The Park, but it's sure as hell useful once you get there!)

But I think specifically this moment after you take down The Artist where about three million things become available to you is a place where a firmer hand guiding us down a narrower path could have really helped with the game's pacing.

Indeed, I think a lot of reviewers have talked about how the game gets lost in its Open World conventions, and I think a lot of responses to that have said that the game picks up a lot once you get further into the main story. I agree - I think that our dealings with Arish and our sojourn back into the Oldest House give the game emotional stakes and character development that made me feel far more invested in what I was doing.

The real side-quests have been good for world-building, reminding us and fleshing out the world of the weird that Control is all about (indeed, some of the decisions to bring back familiar foes are a little frustrating to me - I had kind of wanted the Hiss to be over and done with and for the main threat here to be something totally separate) but the way that the game frames things - like counting finding the Faults to commune with Jesse, as well as finding each zone's Resonant boss - as being "main quests" that are... only sort of main quests, confuses things a little.

I don't know. Maybe that part is fine, but I do think it would have been good to have a main story thread that would directly take us from one zone to another, and then let all the side quests and side objectives branch off of that thread.

Cosmic Battles and Revelations As Dylan Walks Down Memory Lane

 If you kind of liked Casper Darling... Control Resonant might change that.

Obviously, Darling's role in Dylan's "training" in the Prime Candidate Program always carried with it his complicity in the ethical abyss that was taking a 10-year-old orphan and locking him up in a government facility and robbing him of any semblance of a normal life. But in the first game, Darling feels in a lot of ways like the good cop to Trench's bad cop, and his efforts to prepare for the Hiss invasion give him something of a heroic characterization.

But good cop or bad, we must remember that all cops are bastards.

Let's get into spoiler territory:

Mysterious "Project Lamordia" Announced, and Thoughts on Modding 5E

 WotC released a teaser for... something called "Project Lamordia." Details are scarce as to what this will actually be, whether it's some book or other product or, as I, frankly, suspect it will be, an actual play show (and look, I watch plenty of actual play, but it's not necessarily as transformative as something we can take home and read and use in our own games).

What's interesting about it is that the setting here is altered, imagining a modern techno-thriller version of Lamordia as, rather than a vaguely steampunk-meets-Bloodborne/Frankenstein riff the setting is presented as in Van Richten's and Horrors Within, instead a company called Mordenheim Kinetics, with something about a "longevity program" seeming to be some kind of experimental medical treatment.

Horror, of course, is a genre that can exist alongside many different other genres and settings, and the trope of ethically abysmal, corporate biotech companies committing unspeakable crimes against nature is well-established (the Umbrella Corporation from the Resident Evil games probably being the most iconic example).

This got me thinking:

I think D&D has historically been very hesitant to really mess with its own rules. We saw this with the rollout of 5.5, which prioritized backwards compatibility over rebalancing. While I'm happy that my 10 years of 5.0 book acquisitions aren't washed away with a full new edition, it has also left certain classes really struggling, like Rogues, who still need to wait until level 9 for their second subclass feature for the foreseeable future.

But I also think this is one of the reasons (though not the entirety) for the disappointment I and many other felt regarding the release of 5E's Spelljammer supplement. Anticipating a way to play D&D adventures in a science-fantasy space opera setting, we instead got a version of space adventures in which you'd fight out on open decks with swords rather than shooting laser cannons or piloting starfighters. As a note, this isn't really 5E's fault - Spelljammer has always been this "fantasy in space" setting rather than a true science-fantasy setting. But... I think most players would prefer the latter.

The thing is, doing so would require actually tweaking the rules of the game, at least somewhat.

Now, I know that Starfinder 2E is built less as an independent game from Pathfinder than its first edition was, but in that case, they really reimagined the whole game from the ground up to build around sci-fi tropes. It's still science-fantasy, because there are magic/supernatural things in it, but it's more in line with Star Wars, where the bulk of the world is built on technology and aliens, and there's this mystical underpinning that is exceptional and wondrous.

Again, my prediction is that Project Lamordia is an actual play show, where if there are tweaks to the system, it's likely not audience-facing. I could be wrong, though, and maybe this will be something like an adventure or other player/DM-facing thing that gives us guidance on doing a modern-set Ravenloft adventure. We truly don't know.

However, here's a reason for optimism:

Previews of the World of Warcraft D&D book have shown that they're doing some pretty extensive work to reframe things to fit the setting. And these aren't just side-systems that might fall by the wayside in a campaign, but pretty core reworks of class features, like how the Oath of the Ebon Blade subclass for Paladins replaces features like Lay on Hands and Divine Smite to work as a WoW-style Death Knight (whether the resultant class winds up being good is another question that I don't have enough information to answer, as we really only have these 1st and 2nd level feature adjustments so far).

WoW, of course, is pretty damn close to D&D in genre, or arguably simply the same genre but with just a few different proper nouns here and there (demons don't reform in the Abyss, but the Twisting Nether, for example).

What will be interesting is when we see the Star Wars Universes Beyond book. Indeed, the Spelljammer example here is particularly salient, as I think that basically anyone 50 (maybe 60?) or younger probably thinks of Star Wars first when thinking about any example of space adventures. While I'd probably prefer to shave off the serial numbers here and have the tools to produce my own science fantasy space opera setting that isn't beholden to the lore choices of George Lucas or Dave Filoni, I'm 100% into the idea of running a D&D game in a world with rust-bucket used future spaceships rather than 17th century sailing ships (or a bunch of weird bug-shaped ships for some reason).

The Star Wars book is still a ways out, and I think probably the overall balance of the game is likely to remain more or less the same. But here are some other thoughts that this brought up:

Ravenloft is, of course, a storied and beloved campaign setting for D&D, but one of the issues you run into with it is that D&D, particularly later editions like 5E, are kind of fantasy superhero games, where player characters tend to emerge victorious against the kind of monsters they're expected to face.

5E has had two Ravenloft setting books and one of its earliest and most beloved adventures was set there. Van Richten's in particular suggests a few special rules systems, like Stress, to up the scares. But I wonder if a more comprehensive rework of the game's rules might instead serve the setting better.

I'm going to try avoid getting fully in the weed here, but this could be something as simple as adjusting encounter balance math, maybe upping the challenges of combat, or giving guidance on running encounters with monsters too difficult to defeat and where the challenge is escape instead.

But wouldn't it also be cool to make a whole separate game from D&D that works on the same principles (classes, levels, species, ability checks, attack rolls, saving throws, etc.,) but is built to function in a horror setting and adhere to its genre conventions?

Sure, this might fly in the face of the modularity that D&D prefers. But it would be an interesting experiment.

One consideration for such a "mod" would be to take D&D's general medieval/renaissance assumptions about technology and armaments and rework them for a different genre. As firearms grew more reliable, accurate, and easy to shoot quickly, people basically stopped wearing big heavy plates of metal to protect themselves. Armor is still a think for modern soldiers, of course, but I think there's actually something of a gap there, between the obsolescence of metal armor like plate or chain mail and the development of stuff like kevlar, such that a soldier from maybe the 18th century through most of the 20th was just wearing, like, a thick jacket. (I'm sure that there's nuance and complexity to this that I, who am not anything like a military historian, am ignorant of.)

While Project Lamordia is obviously reimagining that Domain of Dread as a modern, high-tech setting, I think that broadly, Ravenloft in general tends toward classic Gothic Horror aesthetics, which tend toward a kind of 18th/19th century look and feel. If I were to build out Ravenloft as its own independent game, I'd probably focus on that era to look for my genre inspirations: for example, I'd likely make firearms the default ranged weapon, and thus make A: a greater variety of them and B: them seriously cheaper than they are in 5.5, and C: easier to use for martial classes without needing a special feat (I determined early in 5.5 that ironically, the people best able to use Pistols and Muskets are Druids and Clerics who take the Warden/Protector orders, though Gunner from Tasha's at least solves the biggest problem for actual martial characters).

Likewise, I'd find a way to represent armor in a way that doesn't fall into the D&D categories of Light/Medium/Heavy, because heavy armor isn't really a thing in that era, and maybe medium isn't really either.

A few months ago (not a year ago yet, right?) I did some thought experiments on a possible game called Deathblow, that would be about sort of Gothic Horror monster hunters. Some of the ideas in that, I think, would be really good for a game like this, such as capping the max level at 5. Horror needs the characters to be underdogs for the monsters to be threatening, but I also think that TTRPGs get some of their satisfaction from character progression.

That game was meant to have a tighter and more regimented adventure structure, where you'd spend a good while investigating the aftermath of monster attacks and then determining what methods you'll need to defeat said monster, really focusing on singular climactic fights against individual epic boss monsters. But I think there's room for a less dramatic modification to D&D that would allow for a more diverse set of scenarios and stories and retain more of D&D's base rules (even being able to potentially use a lot of the same monster stat blocks) but still limit and kind of alter things enough to fit better into the distinct genre's conventions.

We'll find out about mid-October what this thing actually is, but I'm tempted to start working on this Ravenloft mod (modification rather than module).

An Underpass Resonant and Feels Like We're Getting to Plot Point Two

 The Underpass is a real change of aesthetic for Control Resonant, a void-like space that brings back the brutalist concrete of the Oldest House but with a somehow more alien and hostile structure (our ability to Shift makes it profoundly disorienting, as we need that ability to navigate it).

Once again, the Resonants - the major bosses that grant you paranatural powers - aren't really directly tied into the main story in an obvious way besides being examples of the Pattern resonance that underlies the main threat of the story. While they haven't emerged as a true enemy faction the way the Hiss and Mold are, it seems that while the Pattern is less widespread, it's far more dangerous.

Given the alienness of the Underpass, it's an area I could imagine overstaying its welcome if they put as many sidequests and objectives there as they do in the other zones, but as far as I can tell, the game seems to understand that this place shouldn't overstay its welcome. There's a Fault there and a main quest story that is more of a series of confusing puzzles involving alternate timelines and of course all that variable gravity than any difficult combat encounters, but with that handled, you're basically done other than the optional assault objectives and a few other per-zone features.

The result is that I'm leaving the place (with a few things left to do post-Resonant boss) with fond memories.

As far as I can tell, the Western Incursion Zone is mandatory if only to get you the Shift ability, and the Park appears to be entirely optional. I do wonder how much of Downtown I might have completed prior to fighting The Artist, but my recollection was that you were on a pretty linear path to get there.

Let's get into a bit more detail past the spoiler cut: Oh, also, spoilers for Alan Wake II here as well.

WoW D&D Bestiary Monster List (Not Including Dungeon Bosses)

 All right!

The WoW D&D book looks like it will have some really interesting and innovative designs in an effort to replicate the feeling of WoW within D&D. I'm going purely on the information from Insight Check's video about the monster design, which only gave us a couple of (fairly generic) stat blocks, but the details about the blocks he couldn't actually show suggests that the book is going to have some really interesting fights, including the use of Mythic phases to replicate the feeling of a multi-phase WoW boss fight.

Speaking of bosses: the 30 "dungeon boss" stat blocks are not on this list. Presumably, we'll have figures like High Inquisitor Whitemane or Onyxia detailed in that earlier chapter. While I'd love to have an array of memorable bosses from outside of the seven included dungeons, I'm going to avoid getting my hopes up and just assume that we'll be getting the ones that go specifically with Dire Maul, Deamines, etc. The dungeons they picked are generally quite good (I don't really care much about Blackfathom Deeps, but I'll be curious to see how they handle it). Still feels like we should have gotten Hogger as a CR 1 legendary monster.

    (Brief aside: Hogger was the objective of an infamous quest in Elwynn Forest, the human starting zone. He's the leader of a group of gnoll bandits. But he's also the first "elite" creature many players came across when first playing the game, which are designed to be fought in a group and not alone. Players who didn't realize that they were meant to take him on with friends died in droves, giving this fairly nondescript gnoll creature a legendary status as a peerless and savage killer. In Cataclysm, they largely reworked group quests at low levels to be something you could complete on your own, but while players would face Hogger in more or less the same circumstances in Elwynn, the quest ended not with you killing him, but having him arrested. Then, in the Stormwind Stockades dungeon, he became the dungeon's final boss, leading a prison riot. While he was intended to be a challenge for players just about ready to move on from Elwynn around level 10, players have also formed 40-player raid groups of level 1 characters to fight him as well.)

Anyway, let's not beat around the bush and look at the list:

CR 1: Fel Imp, Murloc Forager, Voidwalker

CR 2: Shadowstalker Satyr

CR 3: Murloc Oracle, Voidcaller

CR 4: Felguard, Felsworn Satyr, Furbolg Totemic

CR 5: Felhound, Furbolg Ursa, Naga Myrmidon

CR 6: Green Dragonflight Whelp

CR 7: Blue Dragonflight Whelp, Naga Sea Witch, Quillboar Thornweaver

CR 8: Red Dragonflight Whelp

CR 9: Black Dragonflight Whelp, Naga Siren

CR 10: Bronze Dragonflight Whelp

CR 11: Doomguard, Moonkin, Nerubian Warrior

CR 12: Abomination, Green Dragonflight Drake, Infernal

CR 13: Blue Dragonflight Drake, Nerubian Crypt Fiend

CR 14: Ancient of War, Nerubian Venomancer

CR 15: N'raqi Faceless One, Red Dragonflight Drake

CR 16: Black Dragonflight Drake, Shivarra

CR 17: Bronze Dragonflight Drake

CR 19: Green Dragonflight Dragon

CR 20: Anduin Wrynn, Blue Dragonflight Dragon, Pit Lord

CR 21: Alleria Windrunner, N'raqi Faceless General, Red Dragonflight Dragon

CR 22: Black Dragonflgiht Dragon, Jaina Proudmoore, Thrall

CR 23: Bronze Dragonflight Dragon, Ragnaros, Sylvanas Windrunner

CR 24: Illidan Stormrage

CR 25: Lich King Arthas

    That's actually an impressive spread of CRs. Particularly, it's interesting to see certain monster categories like N'raqi only showing up at quite high levels. I do find it interesting that the Bronze dragons are the most powerful, given that in theory, the Red dragons are the "leaders" of the dragonflights (though the Dragon Aspects are pretty egalitarian, even if there's deference toward Alexstrasza, the Red aspect, who is basically the most benevolent living creature on Azeroth, sometimes to a fault.

Rather than spread out across all the expansions with all their different monster types, it looks like they've focused on a few iconic categories, which is probably wise even if it would have been cool to get, say, Titanforged constructs or something.

There are also a few individual people, and it's pretty impressive that they start at CR 20, though given how superheroic characters in WoW tend to be, that's not terribly shocking.

But let's go category by category here for those who are unfamiliar with WoW terms.

    Demons:

Demons in WoW are pretty much all associated with the Burning Legion, an apocalyptic army under the command of the rogue Titan Sargeras who seek to burn the universe to cinders rather than let it fall to corruption by the Void. (Demonic Fel magic is also corrupting, but think of this as, like, nuking the world to try to save it from horrible mutations.) While the Fel is inherently chaotic, the Legion itself is actually a bit more Lawful Evil, given Sargeras' leadership over it, and sees the madness of the deeply chaotic Void to be the ultimate enemy. Demons include the Fel Imp, Felguard, Felhound, Doomguard, Infernal, Shivarra and Pit Lord. While the Felsworn Satyr and Shadowstalker Satyr are also demons (satyrs are former Night Elves turned demons in WoW,) they sort of may or may not be affiliated with the Legion, as they're more likely to be associated with the Emerald Nightmare, which is actually a phenomenon created by the Void-affiliated Old Gods. Xavius, the first satyr, fought on behalf of the Legion during the War of the Ancients ten thousand years ago, but after the Legion's defeat, he got in good with the Old Gods. Another little asterisk here is that Voidwalkers were long considered demons (they're one of the minions that player Warlocks can summon, and are great for soloing as they basically tank for you) but over time, and as Blizzard has honestly just locked down their lore a bit tighter, Voidwalkers are now generally considered aberrations affiliated with, weirdly enough, the Void.

    Murlocs:

Among the most iconic and beloved (/hated) WoW creatures, Murlocs are silly little fish people. Honestly, not too far off from Kuo-toa, though less weird god-creating powers and more just being silly little guys who tend to be tightly-packed so that it's hard to pull just a single one at a time (this was a bigger problem when soloing out in the world was harder). Unofficially the mascots of World of Warcraft, they had to show up here.

    Void/Old God Creatures:

So, there's a bit of a divide here. The Void is one of the great cosmic forces in  WoW, and while there are benign aspects to it as a source of mystery and cosmic possibility, we usually interact with it as an antagonistic force - the "mystery" often leading to "horrifying abominations" and the yawning darkness of the void being more ravenous and consuming than an invitation to explore. Notably, beings called the Void Lords (only one of which we've actually had named, Dimensius, who honestly just looks like a massive Voidwalker, and was the final boss of 2024's The War Within expansion) send globs of void energy to Azeroth, which took on a physical form to become the Old Gods, eldritch, Lovecraftian flesh-mountains who spawned countless servitors. The Old Gods ultimately settled on Azeroth and created their dystopian Black Empire. Thus, Void-associated monsters come in two pretty distinct categories: ethereal blue/purple energy beings, which I'd say include Voidwalkers and Voidcallers, and then the more fleshy tentacle monsters like the N'raqi, which we see with the Faceless One and the Faceless General. (As a note, the Faceless General is likely technically a C'thraxxi, which are often associated with the N'raqi, but I think might be their own species. When both monsters were introduced in Wrath of the Lich King, they were both simply referred to as "faceless ones," and only later did we get these proper noun terms).

    Furbolgs:

Yes, that's not a typo, and Furbolgs are actually distinct from Firbolgs. Furbolgs are Bear people. That's about it. Just essentially sapient bears. They can be friendly or hostile, and are often affected a lot by whatever is happening to the natural world around them. Generally found in forested lands.

    Naga:

When the War of the Ancients ended and the destruction of the Well of Eternity led to the Sundering of the ancient Pangea-like continent of Kalimdor (the western regions of which retain that name,) the Night Elf Queen Azshara, the greatest mage to ever live on Azeroth, watched as her capital city was about to be consumed by the rushing ocean (Azshara had allied with the invading Burning Legion, so it was partially her fault). Desperate to survive along with her loyal Highborne followers, she accepted a deal from the Old God N'zoth, who transformed her and her people into aquatic, serpentine monsters called Naga. For the next ten thousand years, Azshara rebuilt her empire under the waves. Naga forces periodically raid the surface, and might seem to be just a threat to sailors and fishers, but they're basically the de facto superpower of the ocean depths.

    Dragons:

Dragons in WoW are a bit different from those in D&D. For one thing, broadly speaking, dragons were originally all pretty much good guys, though the Dragonflight expansion complicates that narrative a bit. Originally elemental beings who evolved into living creatures of flesh, the Titanforged Keeper Tyr allied with a group of proto-drakes to fight a dire threat, and upon recognizing their power, "uplifted" them to become the five Dragon Aspects, created modern dragons and having each become demigod-like beings who would sire broad draconic clans known as Dragonflights. The five flights are the Red, Blue, Bronze, Black, and Green. Each was given a domain over which they were supposed to serve as protectors: Red Dragons over life itself, Blue over magic, Black over the deep places under the world's surface, Green over the natural world, and Bronze over time itself. Among the Aspects, Alexstrasza was the most beloved and served as their leader, the Dragon Queen. Infamously, though, during the War of the Ancients (but sort of unrelated to the Legion's invasion,) Neltharion, the Black Aspect, was driven mad by the Old Gods and consumed with a desire to wreak utter chaos upon the surface of Azeroth. This madness spread to nearly all the Black Dragons as a sort of infectious corruption. Other flights have periodically played antagonistic roles: the Blues at one point turning on mortal spellcasters, Green dragons affected deeply by the Emerald Nightmare, and weird alternate-timeline Infinite Dragon versions of the Bronzes fighting to split the timeline into countless branches.

    Quillboar:

Strange that we just get a single Quillboar statblock. These are weird sort of boar-people that also have porcupine-like spines on their backs. Never really front-and-center, they're basically always hostile, though don't seem to be inherently evil on a fundamental level.

    Nerubians:

The Nerubians are spider-folk who were once vassals to the Old Gods' Black Empire. While a humanoid people in and of themselves, our first exposure to them (and where we're likely to see them the most) is after the Nerubian kingdom of Azjol-Nerub was conquered by the Scourge. Thus, the undead armies of the Scourge often have undead Nerubians among their ranks.

    Moonkin:

Weirdly sort of WoW's take on Owlbears, but only very loosely, Moonkin are considered favored creations of the Night Elves' Moon Goddess, Elune, and walk upright with bear-like bodies and owl-like beaks (though no wings other than their feathered arms). Possessing very rudimentary intelligence, they also have the power to call upon astral and lunar magic, and are the preferred form for Druids who wish to focus on offensive spellcasting (there's guidance that if you want to play a Balance Druid, you can take Circle of Stars and just flavor your constellation forms as a Moonkin instead).

    Abomination:

One of the most fearsome and gross weapons of the Undead Scourge, Abominations are massive flesh-golems with several arms and tend to wield hooked chains.

    Ancients:

Ancients are basically Treants, sapient trees that are often allied with Night Elves and help protect their settlements or fight in their wars.

    Individuals:

There are several named characters here. I won't go into a whole biography, but here's the basic rundown:

Anduin Wrynn: The young king of Stormwind after the death of his father Varian during the final Legion invasion. Anduin is a priest/cleric and deeply kind but also has experienced a lot of trauma.

Alleria Windrunner: Former Ranger-General of the High Elves, she left with the Alliance expedition to Outland and, thanks to weird time-warping, spent a thousand years fighting against the Burning Legion. During this time, she cultivated a connection with the Void, using its dark cosmic power in the fight against evil, which makes things... complicated with her husband Turalyon, one of the most devout paladins wielding the Holy Light.

Jaina Proudmoore: Now Grand Admiral of Kul Tiras (effectively the head of state of this deeply nautical nation,) Jaina is also one of the most powerful living mages. Allying with the Horde during the Third War, and ultimately allowing her father to be killed to save the nascent Orcish nation of Durotar survive, this act was thanked with the destruction of the city-state of Theramore that she had founded by an aggressive Horde, which has put her at both extremes of Alliance-Horde relations. Also, she was close friends with Arthas Menethil before he fell to evil (the characters in these games have lived through a lot of trauma).

Thrall: Former Warchief of the Horde, and one of the greatest living Shamans, Thrall was actually the first Orc ever born on Azeroth. Liberating his people from their internment camps they were put in following the Second War, he became a beacon of hope for Orcs who wished to see a Horde free of demonic corruption, but when he stepped down as Warchief and named the hot-headed and, well, honestly, fascistic asshole Garrosh Hellscream as his successor, he found himself weighed down by the erroneous decisions he had made as a leader. Now, basically a private citizen of the Horde but with a lot of power and influence, Thrall mostly tries to live as a family man with his two kids and wife.

Ragnaros: The Elemental Lord of Fire, Ragnaros is staggeringly ancient, having existed pretty much as long as Azeroth. Embodying fire's drive to spread and consume, Ragnaros is a force of pure destruction, and was the boss of WoW's very first raid, The Molten Core. (He would also be the boss of The Firelands later on, when he was killed permanently within the plane of fire).

Sylvanas Windrunner: Sister of Alleria, Sylvanas took over for her older sister as Ranger-General of Quel'thalas right in time for the Undead Scourge, led by Arthas, to carve a path of death and terror through her homeland, killing off 90% of the High Elf population, including her. Arthas personally tore her soul from her body to turn her into a banshee, though she later found her own corpse and possessed it. When the Frozen Throne weakened, Sylvanas was among the first to regain her free will, and led an attempted assassination against Arthas, driving the future Lich King from the Plaguelands. She then rallied the free-willed Undead to become the Forsaken, serving as their "Banshee Queen." However, while she had regained her free will, any semblance of morality had more or less drained out of her, and her rule as Banshee Queen was marked by atrocities. Sylvanas is one of those characters who see-saws between antihero and full-on villain.

Illidan Stormrage: The first Demon Hunter, Illidan was a lowborn Night Elf and twin to Malfurion, who would go on to become the first Druid. Illidan was ambitious, and worked his way up through the ranks of Queen Azshara's mages despite his lack of aristocratic status. When the Legion invaded and Azshara's elite partook of their fel powers, Illidan feigned collaboration but instead used his position to learn all he could about the power that the Legion held and found a way to use it against them. While he played a crucial role in defeating the Legion, many still thought of him as a collaborator, earning him the epithet of The Betrayer. For his crimes, he was imprisoned for ten thousand years, only freed during the Third War so that his expertise could be used again. Truly WoW's most classic antihero, Illidan is ruthlessly pragmatic and makes bold moves that many will... not agree with, though his goals are ultimately for the greater good.

Arthas Menethil: WoW's most iconic villain, Arthas Menethil was the Crown Prince of Lordaeron and protege to the first Paladin (well, the first human paladin,) Uther the Lightbringer. However, his actions when the Scourge began to ravage his kingdom led him to acts of reckless violence and callousness that many would argue showed he had already fallen to evil before he gave his soul to the runeblade Frostmourne. However, with the evil sword in hand, Arthas fully lost his humanity and became a Death Knight, acting as the Scourge's mightiest champion. Ascending the Frozne Throne following his victory over Illidan Stormrage (why Illidan was there is... too complicated for here,) Arthas merged with the Lich King, absorbing Ner'zhul's mind into his own to become the sovereign of the undead and one of the greatest threats Azeroth has ever faced.