Listen to the Rain

I haven't played World of Warcraft in over a decade but I still keep up with the storyline out of nostalgia and curiosity, but with everything that's happened since Legion it's getting harder and harder to care. Nowadays, it's that classic feeling of watching a trainwreck.

Here's the latest controversy:

Apparently during the Mal'Ganis and Kintessa fight in the Sepulcher, they reveal that they've been several dungeon and raid bosses spanning all the way back to Classic.

Let's... talk about this a lil' bit. pic.twitter.com/D3eGtCUX7u

— 🅱️en Grandblade 🌱💙💛 (@BenGrandblade) March 12, 2022

The Shadowlands expansion is very, let's say, controversial for introducing a new villain called the Jailer and, in order to build some kind of narrative weight behind him, implying that he was the secret mastermind behind essentially everything else that happened in the Warcraft universe despite his presence never being hinted at and not being required for any previous story development. After two years where he never once actually explained what his plan even was other than to "remake reality," he dies and claims that he was really trying to unite the cosmos because:

"You preserve that which is doomed. A cosmos divided will not survive what is to come."

Okay, whatever, I guess there's another universe that's going to invade the Warcraft universe or something.

Maybe the next expansion is the moment World of Warcraft finally becomes a JRPG and the players have to kill G-d.

Anyway, dreadlords. Throughout Warcraft's history, the demonic dreadlords are shown as consummate manipulators and schemers, and often disguise themselves as other people. This can be cool--I remember how neat it was doing Stratholme, fighting the over-zealous Scarlet Crusade, and having Grand Crusader Saidan Dathrohan transform into the dreadlord Balnazzar halfway through the fight. Gasp! The dreadlords had created the Scarlet Crusade, which was dedicated to fighting the undead Scourge, which the dreadlords had also created?? What were they planning??

The latest twist is that but in overdrive. Assuming that Mal'Ganis and Kin'tessa were indicating that they were impersonating all the people they transform into during the fight, they were manipulating, in order: The Twilight's Hammer, the Dark Iron Dwarves, the Arakkoa Outcasts, Kael'thas's blood elves, the Vrykul, the Blue Dragonflight, the Twilight's Hammer (again), the Twilight's Hammer (again again), the Order of the Cloud Serpent, the Mogu, the Burning Legion, the Nightborne, the Alliance (raid on Zuldazar), and Kul Tiras. "The Horde" is, of course, absent from this list.

This isn't all. There's a piece of loot called Alandien's Tortured Twinblades whose flavor text reads

"A trophy from Kin'tessa's favorite deception."

Alandien is the Demon Hunter trainer trainer in infiltration, which is fun and ironic except that Demon Hunters have an ability called Spectral Sight that lets them see demons in disguise, so it never would have worked. And I like how these demons were impersonating other demons, because even though the Burning Legion is literally an army with an actual command structure, sometimes you just have to do things yourself. Or manipulate other people into doing them instead of just ordering them to do it.

There's nothing wrong with revealing that a scheme or a villain was secretly part of a greater plot. Warcraft itself did this with the Burning Legion, revealing in Warcraft III that the Orcish Horde was actually a ploy by an army of demons to invade Azeroth, but there are some key differences: we already knew that demons existed and were tied to the orcs because in Warcraft: Orcs and Humans warlocks could summon them; it was revealed gradually over three games; and the revelations in Warcraft III specifically emphasized that the orcs took on demonic power of their own free will because they wanted to be better at genocide--they weren't manipulated into it, and thus retain agency. Shadowlands skips all that and tries to provide borrowed credibility to the Jailer and still doesn't manage to make him a compelling villain because even if he is a master manipulator the players never learn why he's manipulating people!

I might have my problems with the plot of Endwalker--which mostly come back to "it's the most cliche anime plot imaginable"--but at least we know why the villains did their villainous deeds.

I am very curious to see how much more train the WoW devs find to wreck.