World Of Warcraft

Antoras is speeding it up from my understanding. A demon takes a long time to respawn in the twisting nether if it has been killed outside of said twisting nether, its power being a modifying factor.

With Antoras it is implied to be near instant, which I assume its the Titan's power of creation fueling that in addition to giving an actual avenue of returning.

edited 22nd Sep '17 7:30:53 AM by Memers

But regardless, any demon we kill on Argus is dead forever, right? Or do we still have to nuke Antorus for that to be the case? You see, quite a few times in the audioplay and elsewhere, characters talk about destroying demons in the Nether to perma-kill them. So I assume that isn't retconned or contradicted by the Antorus mechanism.

Also, the audioplay makes it seem as if demons fear perma-death, so one wonders why they seem so cavalier about getting murdered on Argus ... by me.

edited 22nd Sep '17 7:35:01 AM by Fighteer

Argus is no longer in the twisting nether, Illidan fucked that up, the demons will rez in time no matter what. The Destruction of Antoras will slow it down to the standard rate and lock that huge avenue of returning.

Kil'jaden and Archimonde were killed inside the twisting nether though so they wont be returning at all.

edited 22nd Sep '17 7:37:20 AM by Memers

Oh, goddamn it, Illidan. How many times must you break shit in the course of fixing other things? No wonder Xe'ra wanted to remake you in the Light.

Oh, and I thought we'd established that Archimonde canonically died outside the Nether. I remember having that exact conversation a few dozen pages back.

edited 22nd Sep '17 7:41:29 AM by Fighteer

I still think Illidan went a bit overboard in bringing Argus closer to Azeroth. It looks like a Bruce Almighty Moon.

Astrophysicists would have heart-attacks with how close they are: that's going to wreak havoc with planetary dynamics and orbital mechanics. Did Illidan actually physically move Argus, though, or is this more like a semi-permanent bridge between distant parts of the universe that can be undone when we're finished with Antorus?

Seriously, though, someone needs to have a chat with him about breaking the freaking universe every time something annoys him or he needs to make a point.

edited 22nd Sep '17 7:48:07 AM by Fighteer

Umm I assume the mythic version where he pulls you into the nether to power up was the canonical version. The canonical version of Imperator Mar'gok is the Mythic version as well where Cho'gall shows up and you kill him.

Velen's lines on Argus itself imply that the two of them are indeed dead.

It seems like some demons can return to Antorus to be reborn while others can't. The world-soul is basically a giant battery for Sargy's inner circle while he works on plan B corrupting the Pantheon.

That's a relief, at least. I'm long past done with those two.

edited 22nd Sep '17 7:48:55 AM by Fighteer

I remember in The Frozen Throne, Malfurion at least tried to talk to Illidan about that, since he almost inadvertently destroyed Azeroth when he tried to defeat the Lich King by literally turning up the heat on him, and Illidan just said "Shove it." At least I think that's how it went.

Even with Antorus though it seemed to take all the time between WCIII and Draenor for him to come back. Without it I doubt we'll be seeing him again anytime soon.

So... Discipline Priests are on to something? With the whole using both Shadow and Light, finding a balance between them?

Seems like it. And Paladins really do have a cosmic stick up their collective asses.

"The rod up that man's butt must have a rod up its butt"

edited 22nd Sep '17 11:25:22 AM by sgamer82

I mean, in a cosmic sense, yeah, but this means exactly dick to the ordinary people of Azeroth for whom paladins have been a beacon of holy asskicking.

It'll matter when the Void finally comes calling on Azeroth and those Paladins are getting torn to pieces because they can't adapt...

... Or, more pertinently, fighting against those who try to use the Shadow against itself. "The enemy of my enemy..." Xe'ra couldn't accept that and died for her trouble. Turalyon has yet to face his ultimate test in that regard.

Edited to add: I wonder if the lore surrounding Discipline and Shadow Priests in the Priest Order Hall questline was intended as foreshadowing of this conflict. It certainly seems like it.

edited 22nd Sep '17 12:08:38 PM by Fighteer

Man, I wish this audio drama came out sooner. Definitely puts things into a proper context. I was hesitant to jump on the "Light is also bad" bandwagon but hearing Xe'ra's attitude and what Alleria discovers about the nature of both forces definitely puts things into perspective.

And I just called Locus Walker an untrustworthy bastard last post—if he's not a very subtle void cultist going to betray us, then he might be the voice of reason in finding a balance between powers.

Yeah, I didn't understand how Illidan is the "child of light and shadow" when he has nothing to do with either. Warcraft has some problems recently with the reveal that the primary conflict of the story isn't "holy vs. unholy". We're still in this weird position where the Light and the Fel are the battling rivals when they technically aren't—the Fel "defeated" its rival and the Light hasn't started fighting the Shadow yet. At least so far as mortals know.

This isn't a bad thing. Glad Blizzard established its new lore ahead of time rather than surprise! RETCONS! next expansion. I just think it's funny there's a Light-Darkness and Order-Chaos axis and the decades long thrust of Warcraft is Light vs. Chaos...

Technically to keep Shadow from consuming Order?

It seems like the Light and the Shadow cannot fight each other directly without causing the same cataclysm that created the universe in the first place. If you really want to play around with this semantically, though...

The three axes of Creation are Light-Void, Order-Chaos, and Life-Death. Light is Holy magic, Elune, and the Naaru. Order is Arcane and the Titans. Life is Nature and the Emerald Dream. Void is Shadow and the Void Lords. Chaos is Fel and the demons. Death/Undeath is... something. Not quite sure if someone's in charge of it specifically.

The Void and the Light have been opposed forever. The Titans ordered the Light side of the universe, but found the Void eating away at it. Sargeras decided to use Chaos to oppose the Void, destroying Order in the process. Then the Light had to step in and stop Chaos, even though the Void is still the true enemy.

Can't Gul'dan of all people come back? He did make a pact with demons and the audio drama implies that he himself is effectively demon so wouldn't that mean that he can return? Or did Illidan kill him deader than dead?

He never actually got "promoted to demon" within the story. Nor did any of the orcs, really. There's something that the Burning Legion does when it conquers a world that metaphysically binds its inhabitants' souls to the Twisting Neither and makes them true demons. They never managed to do this for Draenor (never mind Azeroth).

Apparently the drinking of demon blood alone was not enough.

edited 22nd Sep '17 1:27:58 PM by Fighteer

Why do the people in the Favorites section on my Friends list have orange stars next to their names? :S

Redundancy?

A thought—Blizzard should combine artifact knowledge with Pandaria's rep tokens. Your main suffers through the rep grind and buys a token to speed it up on the account. Every alt that reaches revered/exalted can buy another token to speed rep gains. It doesn't have to be as exponential as artifact knowledge, I'm not asking to do one emissary and hit exalted from 500,000% rep bonus, but it would help reduce the tedium and also provide another reason to continue doing the reputation.

I don't necessarily agree. There's already a catch-up mechanism for alts: once you're exalted with any given Legion faction, any rep tokens you get from Order Hall missions become bind-on-account. I've gotten at least one alt all the way to Revered with every faction before they even set foot in the expansion content.

@Fighteer to clarify something from your second to last post, Death/Undeath used to be the realm of Bwonsamedi (the Loa of Death) according to Chronicles, very much Dark Is Not Evil and Death as a natural and not twisted form of entropy, it wasn't until the Lich King and the scourge came around that the sphere of Death was twisted into something evil

Also on the topic of killing demon's permanently, eventually they'll start dropping soulstone, which (Gameplay and Story Segregation aside) explicitly states that destroying it allows you to permanently end their regeneration, even on Argus, and kill them, so something funny is going on there, I have a theory that they might only start dropping after Antorus is available, since we'll be putting Argus out of commission as a source of faster/nether-less revival.

Something that I also saw mentioned is Illidan explicitly says in the trailer that "any demon killed (on Argus) dies their final death" and learning that they can revive in Antorus comes as a very unwelcome surprise to him, so Argus is apparently so fel-saturated that if the fake world-soul didn't exist, they would all be perma-killed.

edited 23rd Sep '17 9:13:06 AM by NaraNumas